Twenty pairs of hungry eyes slowly turned toward Ashford. The shift was almost physical, like the temperature in the room had dropped another ten degrees.Every man in that corridor was starving. Every man in that corridor had watched Ashford eat portions slightly larger than theirs, sleep in a warmer spot, and talk endlessly about shared sacrifice while making none of his own."What's the matter, Mr. Brotherhood and Sacrifice?" Marco's voice dripped with amusement. "You told these men you'd give anything for the group. Here's your chance. One small personal contribution and every single one of your loyal soldiers eats tonight. Unless all that talk about shared sacrifice was just a speech you gave to keep the dogs in line while you kept the biggest bone for yourself."Ashford felt the weight of every stare in that corridor pressing down on his shoulders like concrete blocks.If he refused, his carefully constructed image of the selfless leader would shatter in front of the only people

He turned to face his followers, adjusting his expression mid rotation from raw fury to calm leadership, like a man changing masks between one step and the next."You see?" Ashford spread his hands wide, addressing the group. "I delivered on my end. I made the sacrifice. He took the woman and now he's trying to cheat us. This is the kind of man he is. A thief. A liar. A coward who sprays poison from a toy and hides behind steel walls.""You didn't sacrifice anything." Marco's voice cut through the slot, clear and sharp. "You traded a woman like she was a used couch you didn't want anymore. You handed over the mother of your own child without blinking. That's not sacrifice, Ashford. That's what a stray dog does when it pushes its weakest puppy out of the litter so there's more milk for itself."Several men in the group exchanged uncomfortable glances."Shut your mouth, Ferretti!" Ashford's neck veins bulged. "You don't know anything about sacrifice!""I know you're standing out there h

The men shifted, glancing at each other, glancing at the pot, glancing at Ashford, glancing at the sprinkler nozzles overhead.Twenty. Nineteen.One man near the back, thin as a broomstick with hollow cheeks and cracked lips, could not hold out any longer. He muttered something under his breath, an apology aimed at no one, then dropped to his knees."I'm sorry, Mr. Ashford." His voice shook as his forehead touched the cold concrete. "You worthless fool!"He scrambled forward on his hands and knees and sat down beside the pot before anyone could stop him. Reasoning that he was safe from the sprinklers as long as he stayed close to Marco, he grabbed the chopsticks with trembling fingers and shoved a piece of beef into his mouth.Tears rolled down his face immediately. Not from pain. From the warmth. From the flavor. From the simple, devastating relief of tasting something real after two weeks of eating cardboard flavored survival.That was all it took.The dam broke. One after another,

But Ashford was already gone, swallowed by the darkness, running on pure survival instinct with no thought spared for the woman or the child he left behind.Marco watched the thermal display on his wrist device flicker to life, tracking a single heat signature moving fast through the black expanse of the garage.He raised his arm and fired a controlled volley of system stored ammunition into the darkness, each round guided precisely by the heat signature that Ashford could not hide from no matter how fast he ran or how dark the garage became.The first round caught Ashford in the leg. He stumbled but kept running, adrenaline overriding pain. The second and third rounds found his back within the same second, punching through his coat and dropping him instantly.He hit the concrete face first and slid nearly two feet on the frozen surface before coming to a stop, motionless, his outstretched hand inches from a puddle of frozen rainwater.Silence fell over the garage.Marco lowered his a

Marco grunted in acknowledgment and returned his attention to the garage surveillance feed, where something far more interesting had been happening for the past several nights.He rewound the footage. A group of large men emerged from Building 4's stairwell every two or three nights, moving quietly between the frozen cars, dragging something heavy back toward the entrance each time. Marco zoomed in on the leader's face. A broad shouldered man he did not recognize by name, but whose movements carried the calm, practiced confidence of someone who had done this exact task many times before.He pulled up an older feed and cross referenced timestamps. Body count in the garage dropping. Same stairwell. Same group. Same schedule."Greg." Marco muttered the name once he found it mentioned in an old neighborhood chat thread, tied to a man from Building 4 who used to run a butcher counter at a grocery store before the world ended.Marco did the math in his head, calculating the caloric yield of