Tanya laughed loudly on purpose.Sound still meant something on the girls’ campus. It carried. It gathered attention. It told people where confidence lived—or where it pretended to.“So that’s it?” she said, voice sharp as glass. “One boy with a gun and suddenly everyone’s a believer?”A few girls shifted uncomfortably. Others watched her with thinly veiled relief. Tanya said the things people wanted to say but were too afraid to own.Kyle.His name had become a pressure point and whispered with hunger. Spat with resentment. Wrapped in fear, curiosity, and something dangerously close to reverence.Tanya refused all of it.“He’s not a saviour,” she continued, pacing near the fountain. “He’s a thief who got lucky. Hoarding food while people die and calling it a strategy. Pathetic.”Someone muttered, “He saved them.”“Please,” Tanya scoffed. “Anyone with weapons could’ve done that.”She didn’t believe it. Not fully. But belief wasn’t the point.Reputation was.If Kyle became untouchable,

I didn’t think he would choose me.When my name left Kyle’s mouth, it felt like a mistake—one that I hadn’t realised was wrong yet.“Nandini,” he said, calm, precise. “You’re coming with me.”The courtyard went quiet.Not the tense quiet of fear, but the stunned kind, where people pause because their expectations have just been denied. I felt eyes turn toward me, measuring, comparing. Some were confused. Some resentful. A few were relieved that it wasn’t them.I stood there with my hands clasped in front of me, my mind oddly blank.“Why her?” someone whispered. Loud enough to be heard.I wondered the same thing.I wasn’t the prettiest. That was Aarohi.I wasn’t the coldest. That was Rhea.I wasn’t the richest or loudest or sharpest-tongued.I was just… there.Helping when I could. Sharing water when it still existed. Sitting beside girls who cried and saying nothing, because sometimes words made it worse.Kyle didn’t explain himself. He never did.He turned and walked, and somehow my

They didn’t say his name at first.Names made things real, and no one wanted that. So they whispered instead—shapes without edges, fear without proof. Stories passed mouth to mouth like contraband, growing sharper every time they changed hands.By the time they reached me, he was no longer a person.He was a thing.“They say he makes girls kneel.”“They say he enjoys watching them break.”“They say he smiles when they cry.”I listened without reacting, arms folded tight against my chest, back pressed to the cold wall of the lecture hall that had become our shelter. The air inside was stale again. Hunger had returned quietly, like it always did—no alarms, no drama. Just the slow tightening in the stomach, the dull ache behind the eyes.The whispers fed on that ache.Someone said he was worse than the zombies because at least the dead were honest. They only wanted flesh. Kyle wanted something else.Your dignity.Your fear.Your choice.I didn’t interrupt them. I rarely did.Being the ic

I had never been ignored in my life.Even before the world ended, people listened when I spoke. Money did that. Confidence did that. The certainty that you belonged somewhere higher than the rest of the room did that. In the old world, my name opened doors. In this one, it still carried weight—at least among the girls who hadn’t yet bent their backs or lowered their eyes.So when I climbed onto the overturned desk in the central hall, they looked up.Not all of them. Some were too tired. Some are too hungry. But enough.“That’s enough,” I said, my voice sharp, cutting through the low murmurs and the sound of shallow breathing. “We’re not doing this anymore.”A few heads lifted. A few eyes narrowed.“Doing what?” someone asked hoarsely.“Feeding him,” I snapped. “Feeding his system. His games. His need to watch us crawl.”A ripple went through the room. Anger, recognition, relief. I felt it catch, like a spark finding dry grass.“He’s turned us into workers,” I continued. “Clean this,

They came in a group.Not quietly. Not cautiously.They came loud, shoulders squared, voices raised before they were even close enough to see me clearly. I heard them first from inside Paradise, the sound bleeding through the barrier like pressure against glass.Anger had a tone. So did performance.I stepped out before they reached the courtyard, letting the door seal behind me. The open space amplified their noise, turning it into something reckless.Five boys. No, men, they would have insisted. Most of them were familiar faces from before the collapse. Class representatives. Sports captains. The kind who had been used to being listened to.Each of them carried something sharp.Knives. A broken pipe. One had a metal rod scavenged from a bedframe. None of it was enough to make me tense.What caught my attention was their posture.They weren’t here to fight.They were here to be seen.“You,” the one in front said, pointing at me. His hand shook slightly, though he tried to hide it. “W