We left the tunnel before dawn, like thieves in an old story. The city exhaled into morning light that had the color of bone. Dust rose in lazy plumes where traffic had once eaten the day whole. Kade carried the book under his jacket, against his chest, hot and heavy like a small animal. The map's presence made the world seem narrower, as if every alley and ruined façade had folded in toward him.
Jun walked behind him, shoulders hunched against a wind that had long since forgotten mercy. She moved with the economy of someone who had measured how much she used of herself and decided to ration the rest. Her rifle was slung low; her eyes flicked constantly, little steel knives in a face sharpened by fear and habit.
We used to measure distance in time. Two hours to the river, four hours to the bridge, a half-day to the squat that pretended to be safe. Now we measured distance by how many places we had to pretend at before someone demanded our names and our dignity. Kade thought of those measurements as maps you burned once you used them. Landmarks became bargains—whoever controlled them got names on their ledger, and names become weapons.
They passed the Old Quarter in sections: a block of dental clinics, their windows like teeth gone yellow; a string of shuttered cafes where mannequins remained frozen mid-laugh; the municipal library, its face cracked with ivy and paint flaking like old skin. The world here was made of surfaces that had been peeled back and the raw stuff beneath—steel bones and circuit ghosts. People left messages on walls with chalk or with blood. Sometimes both.
Jun found a route that kept them off the main roads. "Less sightlines," she said. "Less obvious to anyone with a scope." She didn't bother to say anyone with a scope probably had a mind for things you carried and the patience to wait until you looked away. That part was implied.
Kade walked one step in front, listening. His thumb brushed the leather of the map twice under his jacket until his fingers knew the book's stitches like a second pulse. He could have hidden it in a hundred places—buried in the hollow of a dead dog trainer's boot, sewn into a mattress of an abandoned apartment, swallowed and then vomited back out if they had the stomach for it. But he didn't hide it because hiding felt like giving up. You hide treasures when you don't intend to use them; he needed that book like a compass, and compasses were useless if you couldn't read them close.
They found breakfast in the corpse of a supermarket. Jun had an eye for cans that still sealed and a hand for pulling labels without waking the rats. They ate slowly in an aisle where the fluorescent lights had long ago gone sinister and yellow. The food tasted of metal and memory and the way the world used to keep promises it no longer could. Kade didn't waste words. Jun tapped a cigarette pack shut and then, with a quick small laugh she didn't seem to enjoy, she pitched it out a broken window and crushed it with the heel of her boot. Habits die hard; habits get recycled into superstition.
"You ever think about going back?" she asked after a long silence, voice skimmed rough from lack of sleep. "Not to the old life. Back before the Blackout. I mean—do you ever think about being someone else entirely? Not Kade, not the guy with the map, but someone who doesn't smell like smoke?"
He swallowed a mouthful of cold beans and thought about it. He could remember a face—like everyone else he didn't get to choose—and sometimes names tumbled in his head at odd hours, the names of teachers, the names that had crusted over in memory. But those names belonged to people who had already made the switch between existence and legend. "Sometimes," he said finally. "Mostly I think about the next step."
"That's a depressing life plan," Jun said. Her tone held a smile like a blade. "You know that, right?"
"I'd like to think it's efficient." He tapped the map under his jacket by accident and felt it move. The book was a quiet irritant, like a tooth that will not stop aching until you have it pulled. It gave him something to aim at. Ambition in the old world had been a circus of reach—now, it was a compass needle that didn't quit.
They followed a line of transit scaffolding, crossing an overpass that had partially collapsed into the river of rust below. From that height the city looked stitched up, an old quilt frayed at its edges. The sun threw shadows that looked like cages. A child would have called it beautiful. Survivors called it a warning.
They'd scarcely gone a mile when they saw the first sign: ribbon tied to a lamppost, red cloth frayed and fluttering. No one used markers for fun out here. Markers had purposes. They pointed now to the east, a red flash that said someone wanted to be found—or wanted to be avoided.
Jun stopped and narrowed her eyes. "Trail markers," she said. "Not ours."
Kade leaned forward until he could see the stick's knottings—bits of twine knotted three times, a looping that meant 'passable' in the scavenger code, or so he remembered from some barter-fair lecture he'd once pretended to understand. The code was a loose grammar; different groups used their own dialects. This one read like a trap set by someone who'd had practice.
"You think Sable?" he asked.
She paused. "Sable do ribbons in black. These are made to look like they're just markings. Meant to lull. No, this is either a new gang or someone wanting the world to think they're honest."
"Or someone tracking us," Kade said.
They skirted the lamppost and took a wrinkled alley, the kind with a dead-end that smelled of copper and old sorrow. It was there—the sound coming from the old bakery—low, like someone moving metal. The instinct to bolt rose like bile. Jun went silent, a sleeping animal's readiness in her stance. Kade put one finger to his lips and moved toward the noise, boots quiet on broken tile.
Inside the bakery, light lay in gullies where the roof had collapsed. Someone had made a lean-to of awnings and cloth. A small fire glowed and someone hummed, a soft monotone that belonged to someone who had a long list of reasons to be awake at dawn. The person was a woman—late twenties, hair tied back in a messy knot, clothes layered and rubbed with the kind of grime that acts as armor. She looked up when Kade entered, not surprised. Eyes like that belonged to people who expected strangers and had made peace with the practice.
Kade had his hand on his knife before he saw she had none in sight. He'd learned long ago that hands tell truth—hands that folded gently meant either trust or cunning, one can't guess which.
"Morning," she said, voice practical. "You folks lost?"
Jun stepped in behind him, rifle level, but not yet threatening. "Depends who's asking."
The woman nodded at Jun, then at Kade. "Both of you look like you carry more than rations." Her gaze flitted to his chest, then away. "I don't want trouble. I don't want company unless it's useful."
"You got both," Jun said. "That's the bad news."
The woman smiled without smiling. "Name's Mara. I trade. I trade questions for answers, scraps for stories." She nudged a small pot on the fire. "Sit if you like. Food's rancid but fills a gut."
Jun lowered her rifle with a half-grin, and Kade sat on a cracked bench facing the woman. Her eyes were watchful and bright, a dangerous combination. She moved with confidence and a method to her movements that suggested the kind of person who had learned how to make a living off the world's leftover promises.
"What do you want?" Jun asked.
"What I always want." Mara's hand closed around the pot's handle. "A story. I collect them. And I pay for them. I like to know who's passing, what's being traded, what new rumors float by. I keep a ledger." She tapped her chest—there was a pouch there, a raggy little thing with pages folded crammed inside—and winked. "Ledger's worth more than a pistol sometimes."
Kade felt naked under that ledger. He suppressed the urge to show his hand, to reveal where the book lay. Mara's eyes were honest enough to be greedy. "We're heading south," he said. "Towards the water."
Mara whistled softly. "Brave or stupid."
"Depends on what you call courage," Jun said.
"You mean what you call greed," Mara countered, but her tone didn't carry malice. It was more appraisal than attack. She reached under her bench and felt along the floor, coming up with a small stack of paper—a map, or rather, a page from some old atlas. She unrolled it and tapped a route. "Folks say the southmouth's clogged with raiders, but there are gaps. There's a place, east of here by two day's walk, where river forks into three. If you can cross neat, you can avoid the worst of them. But you need stuff. You need rope, you need a pass, you need."
She didn't finish. Her eyes flicked to Kade's jacket as if she'd felt the map's presence in the air. "You look like you have something that won't rest."
Kade felt the blood move to his face. He had been careful. He hadn't shown the map to anyone since the tunnel. "No more than you," he said.
Mara inclined her head like a judge at a hearing. "You ought to be careful who you tell. The south's a rumor with teeth these days. We don't like new teeth coming our way."
They talked until the sun climbed and burned its name across the city's face. Mara traded a few small facts—routes, names of caravans that still moved like ghosts, the price of a spool of fishing line in a barter town. When Kade left, she pressed a small coin into his palm and whispered, "If you really have something that matters, come back and tell me. I'll know how to find what you need."
He should have felt safer. He felt less safe. People's faces were maps too; each crease indicated how many times someone had been folded. Mara's ledger seemed hungry for the map in the same way a moth is drawn to a candle. Information here was currency and curses wore a similar mask.
They left the bakery with their packs lighter in food and heavier in the knowledge that they were known. Kade tried to piece through his unease, to cradle it like something fragile and important. The map was a hinge; when you carried one, everything either opened for you or slammed shut.
They moved on through a part of the city that had once been residential. Porches sat like clenched fists, and the scent of baking—ghost baking—clung to doorframes. A child's shoe lay abandoned in the street, its laces still tied into a neat bow. Kade thought about small things and how the world stripped them until there was nothing left but outlines. He tried not to imagine the last set of hands to tie that shoe.
Jun kept to shadow. She wanted to cross open spaces without being seen. "You never told me why you took the book," she said quietly, voice as small as an oath. They walked close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
Kade almost answered. He rehearsed there were a dozen reasonable replies: curiosity, hope, greed, obligation to a past he barely remembered, or the bone-deep belief that people who bury maps also bury their best lies. Instead he said, "Because it was there."
That wasn't a lie. It was also not the whole truth. The truth would have required the language of wanting—wanting the map to be a promise, wanting to break the new world open and see what old things lay inside, wanting to find the reason the sky had fallen. Those wantings were private and dangerous. They shivered in him like a fever.
They were a good distance from the bakery when the first shots rang out.
The sound was clean, no flourish—just a soft knell of distance that told them someone had decided to close a bargain with a bullet. Jun froze, pupils pinpricks in the light. Kade went still and listened. The shriek of a vehicle, the loud bark of profanity, a person screaming—these sounds layered into a pattern they both recognized: ambush.
"Left," Jun hissed. They ducked into an open lot, diving behind a rusted bus that had been converted to a shelter by someone with patience and a hammer. The bus stank of oil and old grief. The map's weight under Kade's jacket felt like a second heartbeat trying to push out.
"Contact?" Jun breathed.
He heard voices—coarse, cataloging. Footsteps on broken glass. The Sable. Not the same crew from the tunnel—different men, different angles, but the black sun at the nape of a neck could be recognized in the way a truth shows itself. Predators used symbols like grease for their gears.
"Hold quiet," Kade whispered. The old world's lessons told him concealment buys time. Time buys breath. Breath buys choices.
They listened as a figure loomed into the lot, silhouette cutting the dawn. A man moved with purpose, rifle at his side, a lantern slung low. He didn't immediately see the bus. Another voice came from further down, closer, laughing like a small animal. The sound of clamps and the snap of a torch. The Sable were stripping something—maybe one of the small homes nearby, or a vehicle. They were looking for anything with value: copper wire, batteries, the time it takes to crack open the old world and see whether anything was left.
Kade counted the breaths. He estimated their escape route—a narrow gap between two toppled vending machines that led to an alley choked with trash. If they could reach it, they could drop into the storm drain that ran under the city and come out by the river. The plan had risks: the drain was a maze and sometimes traps were set there, and the Sable knew the city better than they did. But the alternative was being dragged out, stripped, and likely matched to a ledger under the wrong hand.
He touched Jun's sleeve lightly. "On three."
She nodded, eyes flat and ready. When a person is ready to die for nothing, they often live because the anger is focused. They moved like shadows, a small quiet machine of two bodies. The gap to the drain's grate was as thin as a promise. Kade jolted across first, scraping skin on rust, breath snapping. Jun followed with a soft curse, her knuckles scraping.
They dropped into the drain without so much as a whisper. Water sloshed around their ankles, filth tickling the tops of their boots. The tunnel smelled of iron and old cigarettes. The map's leather pressed against his ribs, warm with a gravity that did not obey the river's flow.
From above came the shout: "They went this way!"
Pursuit followed, footsteps like machine hearts, and the Sable's voices carried—not just commands but a charade of good-humored cruelty. The drain turned and twisted. Sometimes the tunnels opened into small chambers where the city above had once had basements; sometimes they narrowed to the width of a dog's spine. They moved until their legs burned and their lungs felt as if someone had tightened a band around them.
Jun swore softly. "We're not going to outrun them forever."
"We're not trying to outrun them forever," Kade said. He had thought of options. He had thought of the map and the way a book changes a man's priorities like a moon changes tides. He had thought of how people might kill for directions, for the smell of a safe place, for the idea that someone else might hold a future. "We need to mislead them."
"How?"
He studied the tunnel. The old storm pipes converged at a junction ahead. There was a maintenance hatch above that opened to an abandoned storefront. If they could get to it, they could climb out and cut across a side street to an alley Mara had mentioned. But the hatch was rusty and needed time—time they might not have. Kade felt the map under his jacket like a second pulse telling him to move fast.
"On my mark," he said. He set a hand to the wet concrete and pushed, feeling the grit. He wanted the Sable to think they had a route and then scramble them in the wrong direction. He wanted to leave false clues that would waste time—time enough to get far enough away that being hunted became a different kind of problem.
They ran the angle, made the climb, and when they pushed the hatch, a scream of rust split the tunnel. They hauled themselves up into a storefront that had once sold children's clothes; faded cartoon dinosaurs leered from peeling wallpaper. They didn't have time for nostalgia. Jun shoved the hatch down after them and jammed a shelf against it. The metal scraped and clanged—music of panic for any who heard.
Above, boots pounded. A beam of light swept the storefront window. Kade flattened against a counter while Jun worked the shelf like a woman with a mission. The light passed. The voices swore and circled then moved on. The Sable weren't foolproof; they were arrogant, and arrogance often blurred the line between thorough and sloppy.
They stayed pressed in the children's shop until their breathing slowed. Jun's shoulder had a fresh scrape where the hatch had bitten her, and Kade's palm twitched from the strain of the climb. The map under his jacket felt heavier with each breath. He had thought he'd carry it alone. He had not counted on the living being so interested in its promises.
"You could have hidden it," Jun said finally, voice small and vicious. "You could've given it up and we'd be eating tonight, sleeping under someone else's roof."
"And be in debt to the kind of men who buy people for coins?" Kade nearly laughed, but it sounded hollow. "You think I took it to make my life harder?"
"I think," Jun said, "you like making your life a story."
"I like maps," he said honestly. "And I won't apologize."
There was a silence full of small things unsaid. Then Jun leaned her forehead against the counter and, for a moment that felt like a crack in a vase, she let herself look tired—not just bone-aching tired, but tired of swearing, of bartering, of keeping one eye always open. "You're a hazard," she said simply.
"So are you," he replied. He wanted to say more—tell her why. He wanted to confess that the book made him feel alive in a way the old world never did. That the map offered a place where the question of whether the world could be something different hung in the air like a possible song. Instead he kissed the corner of the leather with the back of his knuckles like a thief claiming his prize.
At dusk they left the storefront through a back alley that smelled of vinegar and old dogs. The city around them had changed tone; the day's bright certainty had been replaced by a hush and a scraping expectation. People moved like ghosts trying on flesh; smoke from distant fires colored the sky with a permanent bruise.
They made camp in the shell of a church whose steeple had been taken by lightning a century before the Fall. It was dry enough, and sanctuaries have a way of attracting those who need them even if they no longer need anything divine. They ate, less than they needed and more than they'd found, and for a few hours the world narrowed to the circle of fire and the soft grind of insects.
Kade unfolded the map. He had not allowed himself to look at it for long since the bakery, though Mara's faded atlas and the little marks Jun had traced in the dust told him the book's language was older than the barters and the gangs. He opened it carefully, as if careful handling might prevent the map's truths from unraveling.
The pages were dense with ink, not the crude scratchings of someone who had been hurried but the deliberate lines of someone who had believed in precision. There were diagrams that looked like machinery, but not the kind the pre-Fall world made. These sketches were domestic and strange—pulleys, chambers, lines indicating water flow not meant for irrigation but for concealment. In the corner of one page the words "Miriam" and a date—long before the blackout—were written in a hand that trembled once and then steadied. Near them, an annotation in a smaller hand read: bury where the currents hide.
Kade traced the letters with a fingertip until the ink's ghost smeared on his skin. The name Miriam made his stomach clench in a way that was not entirely comfortable