Our journey home is bleak. The nighttime is cold and rainy, making the ride miserable, but the two of us persist. We don't talk to one another, too tired to shout over the engine, too bothered by the camp to pull over and get some sleep.

I play the scene in my head over and over again--the bodies, the smoking rubble, the wires in the ground. A spy but no Legion present in the area, assimilated but still conscious, still themselves. Mal, Number Seven...none of it makes any sense.

We stop at a centuries-old bunker left from the war, one of the many scattered through my District and the others. Still functional and reinforced over the years, now they stand as resting places for weary travelers. The structure is simple, a gray steel dome hardly distinguishable from the rocks surrounding it, but it hides a chamber that burrows deep into the ground. A living tomb for pre-war culture. The lifestyle of the superior and the wealthy still peels from the walls inside, built by those rich enough to have their pristine doomsday bunkers, but not brave enough to wait out the ninety years of nuclear winter. I guess we have the Elite to thank for their spoiled impatience. Libraries, classrooms, hydroponic gardens and fisheries, it all languishes underground, indirectly saving our ancestors all those years ago.

Mossy hills cover the concrete entrance where deep cracks in the sidewalk create gardens of weeds. We ditch our bike among several others. I grab my pipe and Thief's empty light gun, she takes nothing except for her soaked bag of ruined supplies. We drown in the heavy rain on our way to the entrance. I wrench open the rusty iron door and follow Thief inside, slogging mud across the moldy laminate with our untied boots.

Travelers lounge about a filthy common room in silence. They curl around one another and shiver, some dipping their fingers into preserves and slathering their food across infected lips. One old man sleeps beside a puddle of stomach acid that drips through one of the many holes in the floor, his wrinkled fingers curled around an empty bottle. Others lean against the walls shoving drugs up their noses and their veins--anything to get them through the night. I've been there. I was there last night. And I will probably be there again.

The place stinks. Mold, rot, sick, it diminishes my appetite despite my empty stomach. Tables sink into the floor as if the tile were made of acid, black mold pushes the wallpaper to the baseboards, and busted fluorescent lights bounce above us on rusted springs. Springs, of course, so that the missiles wouldn't shake them from their fixtures. I guess it worked. Ah, but the artwork is nice though. Pensises everywhere. They provide what color and vibrancy the bunker lacks.

We steal everyone's attention when we make our way to the merchant in the back. Everyone except for a poor sick mother, who hides her daughter underneath her hair caked with mud, and shivers inside a moth-eaten blanket. Her daughter is way too small, with her skin sucking to the bones in her arms, stomach bloated and yellow boils devouring her neck. She hides her tiny face behind a messy mop of red hair and refuses the tough jerky and stale crackers her mother offers. Both of them sweat with fever.

We make our way to a bar that used to be immaculate, now it's a slab of wood ridden with holes from termites and carpenter bees. Behind it waits an old man without an arm. He smiles at me with an impressive overbite, his gross snaggletooth black and hanging over the edge of a greenish lip.

"What an honor." He gestures to the crooked seats with his stump, hidden inside a gray t-shirt that strains against his stomach. "Please, sit."

Gross. He opens up his other arm as if to welcome us, skin hanging from his bones and flapping with the movement. He's fat, a rare sight, not from infection but from greed. Green discharge runs from his nose into his mouth. He licks it with a tongue covered in blisters, his lips red and irritated. I can't stop staring at it.

Thief and I don't argue with him. We drag our tattered bodies over the rough stools. I lean my forearms on the counter and stretch my back, sore from all those hours on the bike. Our nasty damp clothes stick to the hairs on our arms and chills our bones; Thief doesn't hide her discomfort. She hangs her miserable head and waits for her supplies, rubbing her nose every few seconds before collapsing over the table to rest her chin on her arms.

"We need food, water, dry clothes if you have 'em," I say.

Thief nods against her sleeves. "Water first, please. Someone ruined our supply." She doesn't have the energy to shoot me an exasperated look, but I feel it anyway.

Overbite nods. "It'll cost you," he says, his smoker's voice so intense that he's hard to understand, and that thick outlander's accent doesn't help.

"Trade or credits." I rub my nose too. His body odor brings tears to my eyes.

He scratches the armpit of his stump with long yellow fingernails. "Trade works."

I close my eyes and lean away from him. "Ugh. Sure." My damp pockets present a challenge, the fabric stuck together with a protein packet that melted while we were burying bodies in the heat. Still, I manage to find my precious black bag of opium and weed, hesitant to put it on the counter.

He undoes the drawstrings and shoves one bulging eyeball inside, sticks it under his nose, and drips snot into the bag just to take a whiff. Satisfied, he puts it away. "Anything else you'd like?"

"You got light charges?"

"One."

"That'll be enough."

He dips into the room in the back. I lean over to peer behind the cloth over the door, which catches on the side of the ragged frame to show a sliver of what it hides. The pantry is a different world, not a pretty one with its leaning wooden walls and drab gray colors, but it's clean. Rows and rows of canned food stack on high shelves, cases of produce chill on ice, fresh game hang from butcher hooks with the meat wrapped in brown paper. Despite the bunker's smell, my mouth waters. The storeroom catches Thief's attention too; she considers the large red box with a white cross painted on the front, the cabinet doors open enough to show the heaping medical supplies within.

Overbite returns with steel canisters of fresh water and food, not packaged and spoiled like the meals the others hover over. Apples, bread, kale, tomatoes, and thin slices of turkey, a meal fit for royalty. He reaches under the counter and pulls out a light charge, then slips it under the edge of my plate so that it's harder to see. Not that it matters. Everyone stares. Everyone notices.

We don't touch our food even though our stomachs cave into our spines. My blood sugar's low enough that it's difficult to see, so I squint and focus on my breath just to stay upright. I don't doubt that Thief does the same. She sips her water, I load her light gun. But sitting there is torture. After months of living off of skinny game and packaged protein meals, the plates are mouthwatering. Why'd he have to include cherry tomatoes.

"You want to beat me in a fight? Give me a few cherry tomatoes and I'll let you win for free. For a few minutes, anyway."

Thief lifts her gaze from the inside of her cup. "What did you say?" she asks around a smile.

Weight settles on my eyelids. "I don't even know. I didn't even know..." My head is so heavy. "I was talking."

Thief pats me on the shoulder. "You wanna get some sleep?" she says as if I were a child. "Not here though. I got a tent, we can camp somewhere outside."

I rub my eyes with the inside of my palms, hoping it would take away the heaviness--it doesn't work. "I don't have time. Mars, Eli, Titan, Mal, the fucking girl...Ink Creepers, Empress...Thief, I got so much shit to do. And I'm so fucking tired. My head hurts, I'm cold, I'm sober...I hate it."

"I'm going to take that as a yes."

Overbite sits on a stool by the wall, chewing on a toothpick and staring off into space. Thief cocks her head to get his attention. "You gotta smoke?" she says.

He digs through the grease-stained pocket of his shirt and flicks a cigarette her way. She catches it between her palms, sizes it up before her nose, then puts it between her teeth. "I'll be back," she says. "Be good."

Thief picks up her food and carries it to the mother in the corner. When she places the plate next to them, the mother doesn't thank her, nor does she pause. She gives it to her daughter who shoves her brittle hands into the turkey and eats it off her fingers like an animal, her red hair sticking in her mouth with every bite.

The mother wraps her daughter in the blanket as tight as she can, and struggles to her feet. She wears no shoes, legs covered in yellow sores, and she limps to the merchant with her right knee black from an infected cut. Stitches line her sweaty face and she holds onto the table's edge to keep her balance.

"Sir," she says. "S-sir, please, can I have medicine for my daughter. Please."

Overbite uncrosses his arm from his stump. "I've got bandages but no pills."

"No, come on." She sobs and struggles against the counter, knuckles white as she grips the wood. "You have to have something. I know you do."

Overbite grunts, stands, and shuffles to the back, this time careful to keep the door covered. No sounds come from the storage room other than his labored breathing and lurching footsteps, so I doubt he even looks inside the medicine cabinet.

The woman crumbles, her heartbeat rapid and loud in my ears, her breath short and quick. She places her head on the table and folds her hands over her hair, raking her fingers through the roots as if to tear them out. A dirty brown dress struggles to cover her body with all its rips and tears, showing damp bandages underneath.

I set my water down and push my food away. "What happened to you?"

"Titan," she whispers. Her fingers tighten. "She took..." Shivers wrack her bony spine. "E-everything. Everyone is dead."

I hum under my breath. "Where?" I say.

"It doesn't matter anymore," she says. "It's gone. It's all..." she slams her fist against the table. "It's all fucking gone. There's nothing left." She stares at her crooked fingers with silver eyes, as if to hold something that's not there anymore. "My kid's s-sick. She's s-so sick, and I'm going to lose her because this asshole--" She shoves a shaky finger at the door. "Won't give me...he won't give me...how could anybody be this cruel?"

Overbite returns with nothing but bandages wrapped in soggy yellow plastic. He throws them on the counter before the woman. I suppose he tries a little, he does reach under the counter and give her two basins of water, a rag for washing, and a bottle of antiseptic.

"Hey." I snap my fingers to get his attention. "Get her some damn medicine, will you? Come on."

"I have no medicine to give," he says. "You can see for yourself. The cabinet's on the wall." He jabs a slimy thumb over his bloated shoulder.

"What do you mean, you have no fucking medicine? And why the hell are you giving these people shit food?"

Overbite straightens. He crosses his bloated arm over his fat stomach, the gray shirt lifting from infected hairy skin. "Well, Eden," he says. "Our supplies come from the Aurelian. So maybe you can answer that question for yourself."

I blink. Heavy silence bathes the room. The old man on the floor wakes up and puts his chin on his hands to watch me with blind eyes. All the junkies in the corners raise their heads at once, some shooting wicked smiles at the merchant, others too dazed to understand what they see.

"You've got a leak in the ceiling," I say. "Right above your head."

He follows my gaze to the concrete dome. "Yeah, I kno--"

What a brilliant wave of light. The beam bursts from the end of Thief's light gun with hardly a tap on the trigger, and in my tired eyes, the bullet is enchanting. I aim as if unhindered by exhaustion, my surroundings cleared from that fuzz I'd grown used to, just in time to see the bullet pull apart the sores around his neck.

The light shoves a hole into the shredded beer cabinet behind him, forever marking how tall he used to be. His hands fly to the ripped sinew in his neck, blood squeezing through the last of his fingers, while his stump tries to reach. The barrel of my gun smokes, the chamber hot from the blast. I stare over the sight to watch him fall, tongue lulled over blackened lips, snaggle tooth loosened from his gums.

The woman screams but her daughter doesn't flinch, still sucking bits of turkey from her fingers. All the others go back to their business, disappointed by the fight, but a sense of anticipation hangs in the air. His body lies still behind the bar, lifeless eyes forever watching the rain drip through holes in the ceiling, at least until the insects start to squirm beneath his skin.

I pop a red cherry tomato in my mouth. Delicious seeds squeeze between my teeth; the peel snappy with a center full of juice. The mother gawks at Overbite's corpse with great bug eyes, her heartbeat so loud that it's hard to enjoy my meal.

"So," I say around my greens, saving the turkey for later, the other tomatoes for the very last. "We have a bit of an ultimatum here."

WC: 2357