The truck tore through the welded cars and was gone—metal shrieking, sparks fountaining, the bridge rattling itself awake under all that weight.
For a heartbeat there was only the echo of it and the tick of hot steel cooling.
Sera stood where she'd stepped out, Luci tight to her knee. The wind licked her hair, sending it dancing all around her. She was still barefoot, still in the same white dress that she had been in when she was in the lab.
It was still covered in dried blood that not a single person had asked her about.
Fuel stung the air; someone's chain clinked against a boot. The riders who'd been jeering a blink ago went quiet the way men do when the script slips out of their hands.
On the far side of the blockade, the truck fishtailed, straightened, and thundered down the span.
She didn't watch it long. She didn't need to. They would circle and she would meet them. That was the shape of things.
