Morning didn’t arrive cleanly anymore.There was no gradual light, no birds, no distant engines warming the city awake. Just a thinning of darkness and the slow reemergence of shapes ruins resolving into function again.He descended from his shelter before full visibility returned. Height was an advantage at night. A liability during the day.The interchange below had changed.Not dramatically. That was the problem.Two vehicles had been moved since the night before—shifted just enough to widen a path between them. The debris field was tidier, though no single handprint betrayed the work. Someone had cleared lines of movement, not for comfort, but for flow.Groups didn’t announce themselves. They optimized.Caelan crouched behind a fractured barrier and watched.Three figures moved through the lower levels with practiced coordination. Not tight formation—too obvious—but close enough to respond quickly. None of them spoke. They didn’t need to.One carried a makeshift spear reinforced w

The proposal arrived. He found the marker just past dawn a strip of cloth tied low on a bent railing, neutral in color, visible only if you were already looking. Not a summon. An invitation to pause.He waited.Minutes passed. Everywhere remained quiet in the way only broken places could be. Then footsteps—unhurried, deliberate.The woman from the loading dock approached first. She stopped well outside striking distance, posture relaxed, eyes sharp. Two others emerged seconds later, flanking loosely. No weapons raised. None hidden poorly.No smiles.“You move clean,” the woman said. “You don’t disrupt routes.”“I don’t stay long,” Caelan replied.“Still counts.”Silence stretched. This wasn’t negotiation yet. It was calibration.“We’ve been watching you,” she continued. “Not closely. Just enough.”That was how alliances began now not with trust, but with observation.“What do you want?” Caelan asked.“A trade,” she said. “Short-term.”The emphasis mattered.She gestured toward the ru

Caelan had stopped trying to disappear the moment he realized it was no longer possible.Visibility wasn’t something you chose here. It accumulated. Each efficient movement, each avoided confrontation, each clean exit added weight. People noticed patterns faster than they noticed faces.He had become a pattern.The first sign was silence.Conversations paused when he entered contested spaces, they didn't stop abruptly, not dramatically, but just enough to register. Eyes flicked toward him, then away. Paths adjusted subtly, as if by mutual instinct.Not fear.Assessment.He felt it most when resources were involved.At a collapsed transit hub where scavengers once competed openly, he passed through without challenge. No one blocked him. No one rushed him either. They waited, watching how much he took, how long he lingered, whether he would overreach.He didn’t.That restraint only sharpened the attention.By midday, the offers began.Not direct. Never spoken aloud. A cleared corridor w

Hunger surfaced differently once survival stabilized.At first, it had been simple—calories, shelter, rest. Needs that could be quantified, pursued, satisfied. But once routes stabilized and violence grew selective, a different deficit emerged.Influence.He felt it before he named it.People lingered near him longer now. Not close—never that—but within visibility. They waited for cues that weren’t given. Watched reactions that didn’t come. They spoke cautiously, framing statements as observations rather than requests.“I heard the west tunnels are unsafe again.”“They say movement’s slowing near the river.”“They’re watching the corridors you passed through yesterday.”Information, offered freely.Not generosity.Investment.Political hunger wasn’t about power yet. It was about proximity to it. Being adjacent to the variable that shaped outcomes.He rejected most of it with silence. Silence was safer than refusal. Refusal created edges; silence let people project restraint instead of

Power doesn't announce itself.It settled.The city moved differently the morning after the stand. Not calmer—more deliberate. Routes adjusted earlier. Disputes stalled before escalation. People paused longer before acting, as if consulting an invisible reference point.Him.He felt it most in absence. No one came to him with requests that day. No markers. No envoys. The hierarchy was testing its own integrity, probing how much it could function without direct input.That was the real measure of power.Not command, but persistence.The system observed in silence, no longer interrupting with metrics or notices. Its restraint was telling. It was no longer studying emergence it was recording outcome.He walked the perimeter zones deliberately, making himself visible without engaging. Presence without intervention. A reminder, not a directive.People noticed.They always did.But the hunger had changed. It wasn’t sharp anymore. It had flattened into something colder acceptance edged with