Sarah wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nodded quickly, eager to prove her value beyond the obvious transaction."People tried to kill the preacher." She swallowed hard and sat up straighter. "Pastor Warren. Two men from Building 6 went after him for your ramen bounty. But his followers stopped them before they even got close. Beat them half to death and threw them out into the rain.""And?""It doesn't matter." Sarah shook her head, a strange flicker of dark amusement crossing her gaunt face. "His people are falling apart from the inside. Half his followers haven't eaten in three days. They sit in that room praying and crying and waiting for God to drop food from the ceiling, and every morning they wake up and the ceiling is still just a ceiling. People are starting to leave. Two families walked out yesterday. One woman told Pastor Warren to his face that his prayers were worth less than toilet paper, and she'd rather starve alone than starve in a group while some fraud i

"Gone." The man wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Most of them left three days ago. The ones who stayed were too weak to stop me. Two of them actually held the door open when I walked in. One woman spat on Warren's face on my way out and told him she hoped he choked on his own sermons."Marco nodded slowly. He thought about what he had just watched with a strange feeling that was not quite satisfaction but something close to it."Your reward is in the corridor behind you." Marco pointed toward the far wall where ten boxes of instant ramen and a case of bottled water sat stacked on a metal shelf. "Take it and leave."The man's eyes nearly fell out of his skull. He stared at the boxes like a man seeing the sun after a month underground.Without a single word, he loaded the ramen onto his shoulders, two trips, grunting under the weight, and disappeared through the corridor without looking back.Marco watched his heat signature move through the basement, up the stairwell, and out

Valentina did not hesitate. Not for a breath. Not for a heartbeat. Not for the fraction of a second it would have taken a normal person to reconsider what they were about to do.She drove the sharp heel down into Brando's temple with the full weight of her body behind it.Her brother convulsed beneath her, his legs kicking against the carpet, his fingers clawing at the floor in wild, mindless spasms.His mouth opened but nothing came out except a thin, wet gurgling sound that lasted three seconds before it stopped entirely.His body went limp. His hands uncurled. His eyes stayed open, staring at the ceiling with the blank, frozen confusion of a man who had died still waiting for his mother to save him.Rosa screamed from the doorway, a sound so raw and broken it barely sounded human."MY BABY! VALENTINA, WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BABY!"Valentina stood up from her brother's body, turned toward her unconscious father on the kitchen floor, and struck Sergio twice across the skull with the s

Sarah stood in the entry corridor with her hands clasped together and her eyes fixed on the floor, looking like a dog that had been caught stealing food off the table and was now trying to decide whether to run or roll over."I need to tell you something." Her voice came out small and thin. "About why I'm really here."Marco leaned against the wall and watched her with the patient, slightly bored expression of a man who already knew what was coming but wanted to hear her say it anyway."My husband sent me." Sarah's shoulders curled inward. "He joined Valentina's alliance yesterday, but he doesn't actually believe it's going to work. He's watched three groups try to break in here and every single one of them ended up as frozen decoration in your garage. He figured if Valentina wins, he's on her side. If you win, I warned you first. Either way, we eat.""So your husband is playing both sides of the fence like a stray dog that begs at two different back doors because he's too lazy to hun

The silence that followed the discovery of the steel wall was the kind that breaks men from the inside out.Twenty three people stood in a cloud of concrete dust, staring at a seamless barrier of polished metal that reflected their own filthy, exhausted faces back at them like a mirror showing them exactly what they had become. Their sledgehammers hung at their sides like dead weight. Their shoulders sagged. Their breathing was heavy and ragged, and the freezing air turned each exhale into a ghost that disappeared before it reached the ceiling.Powell let his hammer drop to the ground with a dull clang. "We can't get through this. Not without a plasma torch or hydraulic cutters. And unless somebody's been hiding a welding shop in their apartment, we're done.""There has to be a weak spot." Briggs ran his palm across the steel surface, pressing hard, searching for a seam, a bolt, a weld, anything. His fingers found nothing. The metal was smooth, cold, and absolutely perfect. "This is