Moving In

The troops moved like a slow, mechanical tide—methodical, relentless, sweeping through the ruins with the certainty of men who believed they owned the ground they walked on. Their visor lights glowed red through the ash-filled air, giving them the look of predators whose eyes had adapted perfectly to darkness.

But they weren’t alone in the ruins.

High above them—perched at the broken edge of a collapsed freeway ramp—Maren watched.

She had extinguished her lantern.
Her breath was slow, controlled.
Only the faintest outline of her silhouette broke against the storm-lit sky.

Below, the squad advanced in perfect formation, unaware they were being observed.

From her vantage point, she could see everything:

The scanning beams sweeping back and forth like hungry tongues.
The drone searchlights stabbing through cracks in buildings.
The subtle tension in the air—the kind soldiers carried when they sensed they were close to something important, something dangerous.

But it was what she felt that chilled her.

Silen was near.

She didn’t know how she knew—whether it was instinct, memory, or something deeper threading through whatever strange dreamlike shifts reality had recently taken—but she could sense him like a dim pulse beneath her feet.

The troops were closing in on him… and on her.

A gust of wind tore down the freeway, scattering ash and tattered paper from a fallen billboard. A piece fluttered by her boot—an old government poster from the early days of the collapse:

“STAY SAFE. OBEY DIRECTIVES. PROTECT THE COLLECTIVE.”

The smiling faces on it were faded, sun-bleached into cruel mockery.

Maren’s fist tightened.

Below, the squad halted.

One soldier raised a hand.
He had seen something.

Maren froze.

Through a jagged break in the rubble, she saw what had caught his attention: a footprint, half-smudged but unmistakably fresh. It led downward—toward a gap between two collapsed buildings that formed a narrow stone chute.

Toward Silen.

The officer knelt beside it, touching the edge with two fingers.

“She’s close,” he said. “And he’s not far ahead.”

Maren’s heart hammered once—hard.

They knew.

The squad fanned out, rifles raised, each man scanning angles and shadows. The officer pointed toward the chute.

“Two teams. One follows the tracks. One circles to cut them off.”

Maren’s decision had to be immediate.

She crouched lower behind the cracked concrete barrier and watched as the soldiers began their descent. The formation split, half slipping into the ravine-like chute, the others moving along an upper ridge.

She knew that path.
It led directly into one of the underpasses—one of the corridors Silen used.

If they found him first—

Lightning split the sky, briefly illuminating the city in a blinding white flash.

The troops became silhouettes.

For an instant, Maren saw her reflection in their visors from afar—small, hidden, but vulnerable.

She whispered into the storm:

“Silen… you have to move.”

And then she slipped backward into the shadows of the freeway skeleton, preparing to descend, to try and reach him before the troops did—but knowing she was impossibly outnumbered, outgunned, and watched by eyes trained to see everything.

Behind her, the storm throbbed with electricity.
Ahead, the soldiers moved like wolves.

And from deep below the ruins…
Silen felt a sudden jolt of awareness—like a memory breaking through, like someone calling his name through water.

They were converging.

All of them.

The hunter, the hunted, and the one who refused to let the story end here.