The ruin swallowed their footsteps. Cracked walls, blackened tiles, rusted support beams clawing at the ceiling all that remained of Zone 3's old medical outpost. What once hummed with power now hung still in the filtered gray light that passed through collapsed roofing.
Captain Rivas motioned forward. The team fanned out, weapons raised, flashlights cutting across the debris.
"Spread slow. Don't assume empty."
They passed under a warped doorway marked with a faded sign:
INFIRMARY EAST WARD.
Inside, something was wrong.
The decay here was... organized.
A broken gurney had been pushed against the door makeshift barricade. Vines had been pulled away from certain hallways. The floor, once thick with ash and rot, had been swept in narrow paths.
Rivas dropped to a knee beside an old rolling table. A tin can sat near its base. She picked it up, turned it in her hand. The label was burned off, but the seal had been cleanly opened.
Inside: still some residue. A few flakes of rice clung to the bottom.
Someone's here. Recently.
Elen knelt by the far wall where scorch marks faded into soot-colored plaster. A stack of empty water containers leaned carefully beside a cracked sink. One was still half-full. She unscrewed the cap, sniffed it. Clean. No smell, Clean, Clearly filtered.
"Someone's treating their water," she said. "And stashing it."
Rivas stood. "We're not alone. Not far from them, either."
She turned toward a dark hallway leading deeper underground. A warm wind blew from within faint, unnatural. They followed the scent of smoke.
Past what remained of the surgical rooms, past overturned carts and shattered monitors. Then through a narrow metal stairwell that dipped beneath the facility.
There, in the lowest chamber once a storage wing the space had changed.
Blankets formed a crude nest in one corner.
A pile of empty cans had been organized by size.
There was a fire pit in the center, surrounded by soot stains, half-burned wood, and scorched bones small animals, stripped clean. Nearby: a cluster of stashed supplies. Canned beans. Bandages. Bottled water in tightly-packed bundles. And a journal, its pages torn but not destroyed. The front was scorched, but faint handwriting remained inside. The last entry was. . no date.
Rivas opened the pack beside it.
Food. Tools. Two knives.
A worn-out medical ID tag: Lucia Tarek. Elen stepped closer to the fire ring.
"Ma'am," she said. "That's cooked beans."
They froze. A faint sound echoed from somewhere deeper in the ruin.
Not stone shifting.
Not wind.
Breathing.
Soft.
Measured.
Watching.
Rivas raised her weapon slowly. Her voice barely above a whisper.
"Eyes open. We have Company."