The light finds me first. It’s the thin, sourceless grey that comes with ruin, after the roof has gone but before the world properly remembers how to be morning. There’s a taste in my mouth, not quite copper, not quite rust, but insistently metallic. I try to swallow, and it clings to my tongue, thick as spit. I press my palm to the floor. Cold, stippled concrete studded with something sharp. Chips of brick. I flex my fingers, let the grit push into the lines of my hand. My body is an afterthought: every limb heavy, skin tight and raw at the joints, one eye glued nearly shut by the crusted fan of dried blood that curls from brow to cheekbone.

There’s no coat on me. I don’t need to check twice. No sleeves to haul over raw elbows, no reassuring heft of waxed canvas at my back. I reach down. The knees of my pants are soaked and gritty, and my feet—exposed. Someone has taken my boots, or else I’ve lost them to whatever storm spat me up here. The lack is immediate and offensive; even after all these months, I still half-believe I am owed basic decency, a right to warmth and shoes and food that didn’t die terrified.

Memory returns in lances: hands on my arms, the stink of spirits, a figure shaped like an argument. Voices, not language but volume. Then nothing. I am alone in the bones of a building. The walls that remain are little more than suggestion, their mortar pocked with holes large enough to see the bruised sky. I push myself upright and nearly black out from the spike that runs from temple to jaw. Nausea follows like a loyal pet.

I check for breaks. Collarbones, arms, shins, ribs: all accounted for. My left hand is a mess of shallow scrapes and something under the thumbnail. The blood on my face is dry, so at least I’m not actively dying. No sign of a pack, no hint of the kit that should hang at my belt. The loss of the kit hurts most. If they were going to strip me, why not take the rest? I have nothing now but my blood, my name, and the knowledge of all the ways I might die in the next six hours.

The wind shifts, brings with it the scent of wet moss, burned plastic, and the indeterminate rot that sits over Doomcaster like a quilt. I lean forward, arms braced on knees, and finally allow myself to take inventory of the space. It’s the shell of a house, or maybe a store; the kind of ruin that, before collapse, might have sold cigarettes and lottery tickets and microwaved burritos. The counter is a blackened length of particleboard, half-melted, with a register toppled behind it. The shelves are bare, stripped to bone, but the ceiling remains in patches, dribbling flakes of plaster to the floor.

A glance outside. The street—or what passes for it—is glassed with recent rain, the pooled water reflecting the broken window frames and the flat, apologetic daylight. No one moves out there. No voices, no shapes, no threat. But that doesn’t mean the threat is gone; only that it is waiting, like everything else in this city.

I try to remember how I got here. The Centre—always the Centre first, even when I am supposed to be invisible. The heavy faces at the tables, the ritual of weighing, counting, marking. The wrong man at the end of the line, smile wide as a crack in bone. A drink I didn’t want. The taste of fruit turned, a cloying bloom in the mouth. Then hands, then nothing. Maybe I should be grateful to wake at all.

With a groan I push myself upright, testing my weight on bare, slick feet. The floor stings, the cold working quickly into the bruises and cuts I have not yet located. No sign of food, no weapons. Not even a rock to swing. I circle the perimeter once, steadying myself on the scarred walls, searching for some token of my life before this room. My mother would call this penance. My body, I remind myself, is not currency. My value is what I can do, not what I can survive.

But survival is what’s demanded now. And all the talk, the plans, the careful rationing of virtue, mean nothing when you are barefoot in a stranger’s ruin, bleeding, with no idea whether you have been sold, abandoned, or merely mislaid.

I drop to a crouch behind the counter, gathering myself. The skin on my face pulls tight with dried blood, and my stomach turns over with hunger and shame. I clamp my hands together, more reflex than faith, and let my head fall into the shadow of my arms. The air here is thick with mildew and the ghosts of what this place once was, and I think, not for the first time, that if any gods survived the plague, they are deaf to prayers like mine.

But I pray anyway, mouthing the old words out of habit, not conviction. Not a prayer for rescue—I am past expecting rescue—but for enough time to decide my own next move. For the hands that come next to be, at the very least, clean.

I finish and sit, unmoving, for a full minute. Then two. The only sound is the slow drip of water off the ledge and the crackle of something alive in the walls. I do not let myself cry. Crying is energy, and I have none to spare.

My name is Mercy. I have woken up in the dirt before, but never with so little left to lose.

It is not the worst start. I have seen worse.

I decide to wait out the daylight, or at least the first hour of it. Let the city wear down its curiosity, let whoever dumped me here think I am dead, or gone, or not worth the effort of retrieval. I have patience, when it suits me. The cold at my feet, the ache at my temple, these are not new adversaries. They remind me I am still alive, and where there is life, there are always trades to be made.

I will not die in this hole. Not before I have learned who took me, and for what price.

But first, I will wait. I will listen. I will let my body remember itself, and then I will see what remains of the world outside.

God, if you have any sense of humour left, now would be a good time to show it.

I sit, head in my hands, and wait for the world to blink first.

###################

The day refuses to hurry. Time moves like a headache, stretching and contracting in pulses, every minute measured by the drip of water off some distant ledge or the persistent itch at the crusted bloodline on my cheek. I keep my head down, but after a while the waiting gnaws holes in my patience, and the cold at my feet and the rumble in my stomach reminds me I have not the luxury of indecision.

I rise. The pain in my skull has faded to a steady throb, and I can almost forget the dried mask on my face until I flex my jaw. My first movement sets off a chain: the grit under my toes, the creak of bone as I stand, the ache in my thighs from too long crouched. I edge toward the front of the ruin, every step a wager against the world outside.

There’s nothing to be done about the noise I make—naked feet slapping the cold stone, the occasional whimper when a shard bites into my sole. The counter is my only cover, so I hug it, moving slow and low, and peer out through the broken window frame.

The city is emptied of motion. No birds, no cats, not even the foraging rats that are supposed to rule the morning. The silence is so pure I hear my own blood, a hush so absolute it rings in my ears. I hate the way it makes me visible, the way even my breathing could betray me. I keep still, barely daring to blink. My own vulnerabilities echo around my skull as I contemplate my next steps.

Wind stirs, shifting the pile of litter in the gutter. A wrapper—red, incongruous—skids across the road and catches in a rusted grate. I see where the rain has scored the sidewalk, cutting rivulets in the filth, and where the curb is stained dark with old fire. Farther down, the skeleton of a car lists on two wheels, its doors gnawed off, interior gutted. Behind the car, a wall tilts precariously, still displaying a mural: three grinning children, painted in colours so bright they seem obscene in this grey.

I scan for movement. Nothing.

Then, in the deep distance, thunder. Not the tidy, rolling kind from before the world cracked open, but a single, heavy concussion—like the city itself heaving out a cough. It rattles the window glass still left in the frame, and I duck, heart jolting. When I risk a look, I see only the same deserted street, the same ruined horizon. But the noise is a warning, a reminder that this place is never truly empty.

I have to move. Whoever or whatever knocked me out and left me here could come back. Or worse, someone new could stumble onto my sleeping, defenseless form and decide I was worth less alive than dead. I slide along the wall to the door, pausing to listen at every step. The only sounds are the ones I make: breath, heartbeat, the faint slick of sweat as it cools and evaporates on my arms.

I’m at the threshold when I hear them.

At first, it’s just a scrap of laughter, a raw, canine bark that echoes off the walls. Then more voices: crude, uneven, too loud for this silence. The kind of men who talk to fill the space, who need to be heard even when the only audience is the ruin itself. They move fast, the sound of their boots a staccato hail, splashing through last night’s puddles and crunching over whatever debris the city throws at them.

I flatten myself to the wall and risk a look. Five, maybe six of them, bodies pressed together like a school of fish, each elbow and shoulder in constant motion. They wear the bare minimum—cargo shorts, torn tanks, one in a threadbare blazer with no shirt beneath, their skin bright with sweat despite the chill. Their feet are wrapped in rags or scavenged sneakers, legs painted with old blood or marker ink. They push and shove, one slapping another hard across the back, laughter rolling out and bouncing down the empty block.

They are not Godless Brothers—I know that at a glance. These men move with the swagger of street survivors, but lack the discipline and uniform cruelty of the Brothers. They are dangerous, but they’re amateurs. I take comfort in that, briefly, before I realize it only makes them more unpredictable.

They veer toward my building. I freeze. If they come in here—if they see me—there will be nothing but the counter between me and whatever they want. I clench my jaw, swallow, and hope the darkness behind the register is deep enough to hide me.

But they don’t stop. They surge past the door, arguing about something in words I can’t catch, too fast and loud to be careful. One of them peels off, kicks a bottle across the street, and yells after it as if it had betrayed him. The rest follow, momentum pulling them forward. They turn the corner, voices fading but never quite gone.

Except for the last one.

He lingers. Maybe to piss on the wall, maybe to collect himself. His head is shaved, but he wears a filthy bandage around one ear. He glances at my window, eyes narrowing as if he senses the change in air. For a moment we lock gaze—his, sharp and animal, mine, terrified. My body goes cold. He says something, a single word, and leans closer.

But then the others call. “Come the fuck on!” One of them laughs, a high, yapping sound. The moment snaps; the man shakes his head, spits, and jogs to catch up, his rags trailing behind him. Their voices recede into the city’s hollow, until nothing is left but the afterimage of their presence and the hush that returns like a punishment.

I slump against the wall, heart still thrumming, legs weak. That was too close. Much too close. They didn’t see me, but that means nothing—the next ones might, and they might not be amateurs at all.

I gather myself, counting my breaths. If I am to get out of here, I need to move now, while the street is still half-empty and the men are busy tormenting something farther down the block.

I pick up a jagged chunk of brick, more talisman than weapon, and edge out the door, my soles raw and screaming at the cold. I stick to the wall, moving in the wake of the group, but on the opposite side of the street, ducking into every shadow, every doorway. My head throbs with every heartbeat, but adrenaline pushes me forward.

I do not know where I am going, only that I cannot stay here. The silence presses at my back, and somewhere in the city a new sound begins—a siren, maybe, or a woman’s voice carried on the wind. I do not stop to listen. I do not look back.

I go. Because that is what Mercy does, even when there is no one left to witness it.

###################

I follow them. There’s no other option. The city is strange to me—different in daylight, even this flat, lightless hour, every landmark distorted by collapse and weather and the slow gnaw of years. I keep to the edges, darting behind trash bins and half-standing walls, the raw soles of my feet leaving prints I hope the rain will erase. The men are loud, careless, but I am not fooled; any pause, any mistake, and they will double back and find me trailing, and I will be at the mercy of their boredom.

But I know how to follow. I know how to make myself small, how to move only when their shouting peaks, how to breathe when the wind is in my favour. I stay just close enough to keep them in sight, but not so close that I have to see their faces. I let their voices guide me, ricocheting through the ruined boulevards, sometimes growing faint when they duck into side streets, sometimes swelling as they round the corners and close the gap between us. This might not be the best way forward, the ricocheting voices fooling me into wrong turns here and there, but it is the only way to find the centre.

I am losing blood, maybe—not much, but enough that my fingers feel cold, and the world comes in sharp, bitter flashes. Once, I stop too long, waiting for a horse to pass on the main drag, and when I look up again the men are gone. The panic is total, a black hole opening under my ribs. I scramble, nearly falling, chasing the echo of their laughter. I find them again on the far side of a drainage ditch, hurling stones at the windows of an office block. Their aim is terrible, but the glass gives in the end, raining blue shards across the sidewalk. They howl like children at a game, then sprint on, ducking under a collapsed footbridge and into the deeper city.

I lag behind, careful not to silhouette myself against the open spaces. My skin crawls at every alley, every doorway. Somewhere a dog barks, thin and defeated. The wind lifts, and I taste ozone and the bitter chemical tang of the factories near the city’s edge. It makes my nostrils sting, but it masks the blood, the sweat, the animal stink of fear I am sure trails me like a flag.

It takes an hour, maybe more, before the city begins to resolve into something I recognize. The trading centre is always marked by sound—the low, constant buzz of voices, the clatter of carts, the occasional shout when someone gets bold or careless. But today the Centre is quieter, the usual chaos stifled to a murmur. The men ahead of me fall into step, straighten their shoulders, and check themselves, as if bracing for the rules that hold here, the brief interlude of law that keeps this place from burning.

I follow, head down, arms wrapped tight around my ribs. The foot traffic thickens, but no one looks at me. I am dirty, barefoot, blood streaked; I look like every other desperate, castoff soul that haunts the city’s margins. Inside, the trading centre is exactly as I remember it: the gutted shell of the old train station, its grand clock still frozen at 3:12, the battered length of tables running the span of the concourse. Flags and tarps in the colours of each faction. The stench of sweat, wet cloth, and smoke. The air feels charged, full of the possibility of violence barely held at bay.

The men angle for a table at the far end. They jostle a pair of smaller traders out of the way, laughing, their show of force as casual as breathing. I hang back, letting the crowd fold around me, shrinking into invisibility. I scan the room. The New Humans’ table should be near the centre, marked by the green-black banner my mother embroidered herself, but I see only the blank strip of wood and, behind it, the tent—a single sagging structure, canvas folded and lashed, abandoned.

My heart clenches. The others—my mother, the rest of the trading party—they are gone. No presence, no banner, no sign that they were ever here. They have left me, or worse.

I circle the perimeter, eyes searching for anyone familiar. At another table, a pair of women from the east side barter strips of jerky for a battered radio; they ignore me. A group of men in matching armbands—Blue hands, maybe, or a splinter—huddle around a map, whispering. None of them look my way. My body, in its current state, is beneath their notice. Or maybe that is the point.

I drift toward the New Humans’ tent. There’s nothing to see: the camp bed has been stripped, the pack of tools gone, the scraps of wire and felt that usually littered the space swept away. Even the small lamp, my mother’s prized lantern, is missing. The only thing left is a single length of green ribbon, looped around the tent pole. I snatch it, fist tight, and let my anger burn bright enough to hold back the cold for a few seconds.

There is a ripple behind me. I turn, expecting threat, but it’s only the shaved-head man from before. He watches me, one eye bloodshot, the other ringed in yellow bruises. His mouth curls, but he says nothing. I wonder if he remembers seeing me in the window, the brief electric lock of our gazes. I do not break from his stare, not even when he snorts and turns away.

My feet hurt. My skull is splitting. There is no one to ask, no way to know if I have been written off or if they wait for me somewhere farther in. I feel the old panic rising, but I force it down, counting the seconds, focusing on the weight of the ribbon in my hand, the sour burn in my throat.

I sit on the tent’s edge, blood drying in a rough mask on my face, and let the trading centre’s noise wash over me. I am a ghost, and no one cares to see me. But I am still alive, and I will make them see me, if I have to walk this ruin barefoot to the next outpost.

I wrap the ribbon around my wrist. I will not give them the satisfaction of being the first to break.

The day grows brighter outside the shattered windows. The other factions close their deals, shift their wares, barter lives and calories in the old language of want. I watch. I listen. I wait for the world to blink again.

It will, eventually. It always does.