The shelter was quieter than it had been in days.

  Not empty — never empty — but subdued, like a room after an argument where no one wanted to be the first to breathe too loudly. Bodies lay close on their mats, the usual small movements reduced to the bare minimum. Someone coughed and smothered it into their sleeve. The drip near the back wall kept time, slow and irregular since the diversion.

  Kael lay on his side, facing the wall, eyes open.

  He had stopped trying to measure time by sleep. Nights blurred now. He knew he’d worked Hall C at least five times since the morning with the blood on the stone, but the days between felt like copies made from worn plates. Details stayed sharp — cuts, weights, the sound of a belt changing pitch — but the edges between them softened.

  Riven shifted on his mat behind him.

  “Kael,” he whispered.

  Kael didn’t answer immediately. He waited until the whisper didn’t carry any farther, until he was sure it was meant only for him.

  “Yes.”

  Riven rolled onto his side, close enough that Kael could feel the movement through the floor. “We need to talk.”

  “We’ve been talking,” Kael said quietly.

  “Not like this.”

  Kael turned over. The dim light from the corridor filtered in through the cracks around the shelter door, just enough to outline Riven’s face. His eyes were open too. Red-rimmed. Alert in the wrong way.

  “They warned you,” Riven said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you think that was it? Just a warning?” Riven’s voice stayed low, but there was an edge under it now. “You think they do that for fun?”

  Kael exhaled through his nose. “No.”

  Riven waited.

  Kael pushed himself up onto an elbow. The mat creaked faintly. Somewhere across the room, someone muttered and turned over, but no one woke fully.

  “They warned me,” Kael said, “because they didn’t need to do anything else yet.”

  Riven’s mouth tightened. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s supposed to make you understand the timing.”

  Riven huffed a quiet, humorless laugh. “Timing. Right.”

  They lay there for a moment, listening to the shelter breathe.

  After a while, Riven said, “How many?”

  Kael knew what he meant.

  “Kids?” he asked anyway.

  “Yes.”

  Kael thought back over the last weeks — overheard scraps, names that vanished, the way certain absences clustered. He hadn’t counted exactly. He hadn’t needed to.

  “Seventy,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Maybe more. Per year.”

  Riven went still.

  “From Seven?” he asked.

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  “Mostly lower,” Kael said. “But not all.”

  Riven swallowed. “That man you mentioned. The one with the hand.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  Kael hesitated. He hadn’t planned to recount it in full. He’d filed it away, another piece in a pattern he hadn’t wanted to see complete.

  “He said his daughter didn’t come back from work,” he said. “Outer detail. This time of year. He asked around for weeks. Then someone stopped him in an alley on the way back from his shift.”

  Riven’s fingers curled into the mat.

  “He took his hand,” Kael continued. “He didn’t see him move. Just… blood. And then he told him if he asked again, he’d disappear too.”

  Riven stared at the ceiling. “Awakened.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s not just enforcers,” Riven said. “It’s not just beatings and cells.”

  “No.”

  Riven laughed once, sharp and quiet. “Of course not.”

  They fell silent again.

  Outside, something clanged — metal on metal, distant and muffled. Kael waited for it to pass before speaking again.

  “They don’t care if we tell people,” Riven said suddenly.

  Kael looked at him.

  “They don’t,” Riven went on. “You see that, right? They don’t care if we talk. Because who would believe us? And even if they did — what then? Who do you go to? Who do you complain to?”

  “No one,” Kael said.

  Riven turned his head, eyes finding Kael’s in the half-light. “So what happens next?”

  Kael didn’t answer right away.

  He sat up slowly, careful not to draw attention. The mat beside him shifted as Riven mirrored him, both of them hunched forward now, knees pulled up.

  “What happens next,” Kael said, “is that we stop being useful where we are.”

  Riven frowned. “We’re useful every day.”

  Kael shook his head. “We’re useful until we’re not.”

  Riven opened his mouth, then closed it again. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging lightly at the ends.

  “So we just wait,” he said finally. “That it? Wait until they come get us?”

  “No.”

  The word came out flat. Final.

  Riven looked at him sharply. “Then what?”

  Kael leaned back against the wall, feeling the cold through his shirt. He pictured the exchange yard — not as a whole, but in pieces. Crates stacked three high. The way certain corners were always in shadow. The pause before redistribution.

  “We leave,” Kael said.

  Riven stared at him.

  “For real?” he asked. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes.”

  Riven let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Leave where?”

  “Out.”

  There it was. The word neither of them liked to say.

  Riven’s jaw worked. “You’re insane.”

  “Probably.”

  “You’ve seen the carcasses,” Riven hissed. “The stuff they bring in from outside. You’ve cut them open.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think we can survive that?” Riven said. “Two half-fed kids?”

  “I think we don’t survive here,” Kael said.

  Riven looked away.

  “You remember Tier Nine,” he said quietly.

  Kael didn’t answer, but the memory rose anyway — smoke, screaming, the way the ground shook when something hit the wall hard enough to crack stone.

  “The horde,” Riven went on. “Seven years ago. You remember what they brought back from that.”

  “Yes.”

  “They didn’t even bother saving everyone,” Riven said. “Not until the inner city decided the labor was worth it.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what you’re suggesting,” Riven said, voice tight, “is we run into that.”

  Kael nodded once. “Yes.”

  Riven laughed again, louder this time, and clamped a hand over his mouth immediately after. A few heads shifted nearby, but no one sat up.

  “This is insane,” Riven whispered. “This is suicide.”

  Kael waited for the words to finish echoing.

  “Staying is too,” he said.

  Riven stared at the floor.

  They sat like that for a long moment, the shelter pressing in around them, heavy with other people’s sleep and fear.

  Finally, Riven said, “If we go… what do we need?”

  Kael’s shoulders eased, just a fraction.

  “Food,” he said immediately. “Real food. Stuff that doesn’t rot in a day. Dried, salted, hard.”

  “Water.”

  “Yes. Containers. We can’t carry much.”

  “How much is ‘much’?”

  Kael thought. “Enough to slow us down.”

  Riven snorted. “That’s helpful.”

  Kael ignored it. “Two sacks. Maybe three, if we can manage the weight. Anything more and we don’t move fast enough.”

  “And where do we get all that?” Riven asked, though his tone had changed. Less resistance. More calculation.

  Kael didn’t hesitate. “The exchange yard.”

  Riven’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “That place is crawling with guards.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  “And enforcers.”

  “Not all the time.”

  Riven leaned back, staring at the ceiling again. “We’d be dead.”

  “Maybe,” Kael said. “But it’s the only place with what we need.”

  Riven closed his eyes. “Fuck.”

  They went quiet again, both of them thinking through the same problem from different angles.

  After a while, Riven said, “If we do this… Denzel.”

  Kael’s chest tightened.

  “He could still be alive,” Riven said.

  “Yes.”

  “You think we can find him?”

  Kael shook his head. “Not from here.”

  Riven’s jaw clenched. “So we just leave him?”

  Kael met his gaze. “We can’t help anyone if we’re chained.”

  Riven looked away again. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “I hate that you’re right.”

  “I know.”

  They didn’t talk for a long time after that.

  The shelter slowly settled deeper into sleep, the small movements easing as bodies gave in to exhaustion. Somewhere near the door, someone snored softly and was nudged quiet.

  Kael shifted his weight, feeling the wall cold against his back.

  “There are other things,” he said eventually.

  Riven hummed a quiet question.

  “We can’t take everything,” Kael went on. “No metal that clanks. No glass. No containers that leak. We’ll need cord. Something to tie sacks tight.”

  “Where do we get cord?”

  Kael shrugged. “Trade. Find scraps. We don’t rush it.”

  Riven frowned. “You just said—”

  “I said we don’t wait until they come get us,” Kael cut in gently. “Not that we move tomorrow.”

  Riven considered that. “How long, then?”

  Kael thought about the warning. About the enforcer’s smile. About how information moved in this place.

  “Not long,” he said. “But long enough to do it right.”

  Riven nodded slowly.

  “And the walls?” he asked. “Where do we even go once we’re out?”

  Kael hesitated. “There are gaps. Old breaks. Places patched badly after the horde. I’ve heard about one near the lower end of Eight.”

  Riven raised an eyebrow. “Heard how?”

  “People talk,” Kael said. “When they think it doesn’t matter.”

  Riven let out a breath. “And caravans?”

  “Unreliable,” Kael said. “But real. They move between settlements. Sometimes they take strays.”

  “Sometimes they don’t.”

  “Yes.”

  Riven was quiet for a moment, then said, “So that’s it.”

  “That’s it.”

  Riven lay back down, staring up at the patchwork ceiling. Kael followed a moment later, easing himself onto his mat.

  They lay there in silence, the decision settling between them like a weight.

  After a while, Riven said softly, “If we’re going to do this…”

  Kael turned his head.

  “…we only get one try,” Riven finished.

  Kael nodded, though Riven couldn’t see it.

  “Yes,” he said. “One.”