2026-08-30 20:34:15
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CHAPTER 142
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
CHAPTER 141
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
CHAPTER 140
He moved the light slowly across the floor. Drag marks. Long, smeared streaks in the frost leading from the empty spaces toward the stairwell of Building 4. Someone had come down here, grabbed the corpses by the ankles, and hauled them upstairs like bags of groceries.Tank whined softly and pressed his body against Marco's leg."Yeah." Marco stared at the drag marks for a long time, his face completely still. "I see it, boy."The cold prevented decomposition. There were no animals down here large enough to drag a full grown man up a flight of stairs. Which meant the starving residents of Building 4 had finally crossed the last line that separated desperate humans from something else entirely.Marco thought about his previous life. About the way Valentina's family had killed him. About the things that happened afterward that he had never fully understood until this exact moment, standing in a frozen garage with an empty space where a dead man used to be."Let's go home, Tank." His voic
CHAPTER 139
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
CHAPTER 138
"Don't bother." Valentina set the knife down on the counter and wiped her hands on her jeans with the calm, mechanical motions of a woman who had just finished a household chore. "That gash is going to bleed out before she makes it down two flights of stairs. And even if it doesn't, where's she going to go? Every person in this building has been eating corpses for three days. A bleeding old woman running through the hallway is just fast food with legs."Kevin stared at her with a mixture of awe and absolute terror. Valentina caught his expression and something cold and calculating flickered behind her eyes.She looked at Kevin properly for the first time. Thin arms. Narrow shoulders. Hands that trembled even when he was not afraid.He had freed her, yes. He had swung the ashtray, yes. But in a real fight against a real threat, Kevin was about as useful as a paper umbrella in a hurricane."Kevin." She walked toward him and placed both hands on his chest, looking up into his face with a
CHAPTER 137
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
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