Virginia found Mendez by the fortress well at first light. She adjusted her glasses and set a tin cup down between them. "We're four days from empty," she said. "Three if the kids keep eating." Mendez set his makeshift rifle across his knees. He was a broad man in worn fatigues, goatee gone gray at the edges, and he had spent the last two weeks counting the seventeen mouths inside these walls. Every one of them was somebody he had promised himself he'd keep breathing. That was the whole job now. Keep them fed, keep them alive, keep the gate shut. "I'll take the jeep," he said. "Riley too." Virginia nodded once and walked back toward the gate. Riley was already loading cans of fuel when he got there. Blonde ponytail, white tank top gone gray at the seams, her scratch-built rifle propped against the tire. She looked up at him and grinned like they were going hunting instead of scavenging. "Two of us against the wasteland," she said. "Feels about right." "Just supplies," Mendez said. "In and out. No fights we don't need." They rolled out through the gate in the sun-faded jeep, dust curling behind the tires. The Vael hunted by heat, so daylight was the worst time and the only time. Mendez kept the engine low and his eyes on the ridgeline. A mile out, something thumped behind them. Riley's rifle came up before Mendez had the brake down. He killed the engine. They both twisted in their seats. Under the blanket in the back cargo well, something shifted again. Small. Wrong-sized for a person. "Vael scout," Riley whispered. "Had to be riding under there since the gate." Mendez slid out slow. He circled to the tailgate with the rifle up. Riley climbed over the seat from the other side, ready to pin whatever came out of that blanket to the floor. "On three," Mendez said. He counted. Riley yanked the blanket back. Emmy stared up at them. Twelve years old, black and blue hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, dirty t-shirt, gym shoes worn through at the toe. She did not flinch at the rifle barrel two feet from her face. "Don't yell," she said. Mendez lowered the gun. His hands were shaking. "Jesus. Jesus, kid." "My camp had more people than mine and Dad's," Emmy said. "Some of them made it. I'm going to find them." "Your father thinks you're inside the walls," Mendez said. "He'll figure it out." Riley sat down hard on the tailgate and swore quietly at the sky. Mendez looked back the way they'd come. The fortress was already a smudge on the horizon. Turning around meant burning fuel they didn't have and losing the light. Going forward meant taking a twelve-year-old into Vael country. He looked at Emmy. Emmy looked back, waiting. "Get in the front seat," he said. "Head down."

Mendez drove another hour before he found a place that looked worth stopping. A half-collapsed building sat alone off the broken road, its walls cracked, one corner spilling brick into a ring of rubble. He killed the engine behind it, where the jeep would sit in shadow. He turned in his seat and looked at Emmy. She met his eyes without blinking. "Three rules," he said. "You stay between me and Riley. You don't speak unless we speak first. If I say down, you go flat and you don't move until I say up. Understand?" "Understand," Emmy said. Riley checked her rifle and slid out. "Kid's tougher than half the grown men I've met." "That's what worries me," Mendez said. Inside the ruin, the roof had caved on one end. Sunlight cut through the dust in white bars. Riley found the cache first, under a fallen shelf: four dented cans, a sealed bag of rice, two jugs of water. Not much. Enough to matter. Emmy crouched by the doorway and watched the road, exactly where Mendez had put her. "Load it fast," Mendez said. He was bent over the last jug when he heard the click behind him. Not Riley's rifle. Wrong sound. "Stand up slow," a voice said. "All three of you." Mendez stood. The man in the doorway was thin, sunburned, and holding a real pistol, not scrap. His eyes moved across Riley, across the cans, across Emmy, and stayed on Emmy a beat too long. "Easy," Mendez said. He set the jug down and showed his hands. "There's enough here to split. Take half. Walk away." "I'll take all of it," the scavenger said. "And the jeep. And whatever the girl's worth to somebody." Riley's knuckles went white on her rifle. Mendez shifted his weight, one boot forward, the movement small enough to look like nothing. "Fair," Mendez said. "Just let me set the rice down first." He crouched. The scavenger's pistol tracked him down. Mendez grabbed a brick from the rubble at his knee and threw it in one motion, hard, at the man's face. The pistol went off into the ceiling. Mendez came up under it and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. They hit the wall together. Mendez got a hand on the pistol, twisted, and put two rounds through the scavenger's ribs. The man slid down the wall. He was dead before he settled. Riley was already moving, sweeping the doorway, checking the road. "Clear." Mendez's hands were shaking again. He wiped them on his fatigues and looked at Emmy. She was still crouched by the doorway. She had not made a sound. "You okay?" he said. "Gunshots carry," Emmy said. "We should go." Mendez picked up the pistol and the supplies. She was right. The shot had gone up, and something in this wasteland was always listening.

Mendez shoved the pistol into his belt and grabbed the rice. Riley was already at the doorway, rifle up, watching the road. Emmy stood between them, small and quiet, the way he'd told her to be. They moved fast to the jeep. He threw the cans into the back. Riley set the water jugs beside them. He reached for the driver's door. "Wait." Riley's voice was low. She was looking past the jeep, at the far side of the ruin. "Behind the wall." Mendez followed her eyes. A shape sat under a torn canvas tarp, half-hidden by fallen brick. He walked around and lifted the corner. Another jeep. Older, wrapped in weathered canvas, tires cracked but holding air. The bed was full. Ammo boxes. Two jerrycans of fuel. A crate of sealed rations. A medical kit still taped shut. "That's a month of food," Riley said. "That's the fortress fed," Mendez said. He looked at the road. Empty. The gunshot had gone up ten minutes ago. Something had heard it. Something always heard. "We can't take the second jeep," he said. "No time to check the engine. Load ours. Fast." They moved. Riley hauled the ammo boxes. Mendez took the fuel cans, one in each hand, and swung them into the back of their jeep. Emmy carried the medical kit without being asked. He didn't stop her. He just watched her set it down and go back for more. They worked in silence. Sweat ran down Mendez's neck. Every trip out from behind the ruin, he checked the road. Every trip back, he checked the sky. Riley's jaw was tight. She knew what he knew. They were burning minutes they didn't have. The last crate went in. Mendez tied the tarp down over the load and yanked the knot hard. "Riley. In. We're gone." He got in the driver's seat and turned the key. The engine caught. He looked at the passenger seat. Empty. He looked over his shoulder at the back seat. A pistol on the floorboard. A dented can rolling against the wheel well. No girl. "Emmy." Riley froze with her hand on the door. "She was just here," Riley said. "She brought the kit. I saw her." Mendez killed the engine. The quiet came back fast, and it was the wrong kind of quiet. He got out. He walked around the jeep once, fast, checking the shadow of the ruin, the rubble ring, the space under the canvas of the other jeep. Nothing. "Emmy," he said, louder. Not a shout. Not yet. No answer. He stood with one hand on the hood and made himself breathe. The supplies were loaded. The fortress would eat. He had done the job. And the child he had promised to keep between them was gone.

Mendez stood by the jeep and stared at the empty seat. Riley came around the hood with her rifle low. He could see her thinking the same thing he was. "We can't leave without her," Riley said. "I know." "Thomas will kill us. The fortress will kill us." "I know, Riley." He wiped his mouth. "She wants her camp. The people who made it out. That's why she stowed away. That's where she's going." Riley looked past the ruin, at the row of broken buildings across the lot. A shape moved between two doorways. Small. Black and blue hair, dirty shirt. Then gone. "There," Riley said. Mendez was already in the driver's seat. He turned the key. The engine caught. Riley swung in beside him and braced the rifle on the frame. He drove hard across the lot and cut between the buildings where Emmy had vanished. The jeep bounced over rubble. He caught another flash of her, two blocks ahead, ducking under a leaning wall. He gunned it. When he cleared the wall she was gone again. He stopped. He listened. Nothing but the tick of the engine. "She's faster than she looks," Riley said. "She knows we're behind her. She doesn't want to be found." He put his hands on the wheel and breathed out. "We're burning fuel chasing a ghost." "So what do we do?" He didn't answer. He drove another slow loop, checking every doorway. The sun was high. His shirt stuck to his back. After the third pass he knew. She had gone underground, or into a basement, or through some crack a twelve-year-old could fit through and he couldn't. Then the windshield chimed. A small dark bead hit the glass and stuck. It hummed. A soft, steady sound, like a wasp trapped in a jar. Riley went still. "Mendez." He knew what it was. He'd heard Virginia describe them. A tracker. A Vael scout had painted them. He scanned the roofs. Nothing. That was the point. The scout didn't need to fight. It only needed to mark them and step back and wait for the others to come. "Drive," Riley said. "Drive, drive, drive." He threw the jeep into gear and swung it hard around. The bead hummed on the glass. He clawed at it with his thumbnail. It didn't budge. Riley leaned across and pried at it with her knife. It popped loose and stuck to the blade. She flung the knife out the window into the bed of a rusted pickup rolling past on their left. The humming went with it. Mendez didn't slow. He drove east, away from the buildings, away from Emmy, back toward open ground. His hands shook on the wheel. "We lost her," Riley said. "They saw us," he said. "They know the jeep now. They'll come for the fortress next." He kept driving.