I kept myself busy the only way I knew how, by watching people.
The window glass was cracked and dust-coated, but if I leaned close enough, I could still make out the street below. From this height, the world felt distant, muted; the shapes moving beneath the flickering streetlights were little more than silhouettes drifting through a city that had long forgotten how to glow. Government patrols. Scavengers. Workers heading nowhere. Ghosts wearing human shapes, I thought.
It wasn't much of a world anymore, but somehow, it still moved, dragged forward by momentum alone, like a dying creature too stubborn to collapse. The world was dying, , gasping through its own decay, and every breath tasted like dust and something faintly metallic. The air hung heavy, thick enough to coat your lungs if you weren't careful. Even inside, you could feel the grit settling on your tongue, clinging to the back of your throat.
A gust of wind rattled the window frame, shaking loose a soft drift of dust that floated lazily to the floor. My breath fogged the glass, fading almost immediately. Winter would come early again. It always did now. The cold arrived like an unwelcome memory, a reminder of everything we'd lost, settling into the walls, into the floorboards, into my lungs.
I used to tell people I loved autumn.
But that was bullshit.
What I loved weren't the actual months, it was the promise of them. The stories of golden light in windows, warm leaves beneath your hands, the gentleness before the dark thickened.
Not the cold itself. Never the cold.
Reality had stripped those illusions quickly enough.
The door creaked behind me, its hinges complaining the way they always did. Eli stepped in, dripping rainwater, cheeks flushed red from the wind. His hair clung to his forehead in messy strands. For a heartbeat, the tightness in my chest eased, like I could finally exhale.
"I was worried," I murmured, my voice smaller than I meant it to be.
He grinned, that same lopsided grin that chipped years off his face. "It's fucking freezing. You're lucky your big brother's a saint."
He shook his head like a wet dog, scattering droplets everywhere.
"Stop!" I yelped, dodging.
When I asked if he'd found anything to eat, he dropped his bag with an exaggerated flourish, bowing like a street magician about to reveal his grand finale. Two bruised apples. A half-loaf of day-old bread that had gone stiff around the edges. And one gleaming gold wrapper.
Chocolate.
My heart stuttered. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a color that bright.
"I found it in the trash," he said proudly, as if he'd discovered treasure buried beneath rubble instead of fishing it out of some metal bin.
"That's disgusting," I told him, even as my hand was already reaching for it.
He smirked, triumphant. "You're welcome."
It melted on my tongue slowly, rich and sweet, almost painful in its unfamiliarity. It tasted like childhood. Like a life that was long forgotten.
For a few minutes, the world softened around us.
We joked about fireplaces with real wood, matching blankets, hot chocolate with marshmallows, things we'd never had, yet fantasized about like longing alone could manifest them.
Dreamers, our parents would've said.
And maybe they were right.
But it made the world seem softer, even if the warmth was only in our heads.
That was our rebellion, to laugh, even though life had dealt us a shitty hand."
The laughter faded into the sound of the rain and for a while, we didn't speak. As the candlelight waned, Eli wrapped a threadbare blanket around his shoulders. He looked exhausted, shadows carved under his eyes, fingers trembling from cold or hunger or both.
"You should sleep," I said.
"Not tired."
He always said that.
And I'd woken too many nights to see him sitting by the window, eyes searching the darkness like he expected it to swallow us whole.
I crawled into our narrow bed, blanket stiff with cold. Sleep dragged me under almost instantly.
The dream found me before the darkness settled, like it always did.
A sunlit house.
My mother singing.
My father's laugh, warm and familiar.
Then the light flickered.
Warmth drained from the air, replaced by a thin, unnatural hum that slithered beneath my skin. The sunlight was warped, colors bending wrong, gold bleeding into red, red into blue. The kitchen stretched around me, distorted.
"Mom?" My voice sounded small. Fragile.
No answer.
The walls shuddered. Picture frames trembled. Smoke crept under the hallway door. Sirens rose, faint, then choking.
The doorknob seared my palm as I touched it.
Red, blue, red... merging with a deeper vibration beneath my ribs, like a second heartbeat ready to tear me apart.
I woke with a gasp.
My heart hammering too fast. Sweat slicked my skin despite the freezing air. The echo of that pulsing red light throbbed behind my eyes.
My thoughts circled familiar wounds, the ones that never quite healed no matter how many years I tried to pretend they had.
The fire.
The night our parents died.
The so-called electrical surge the officials insisted on.
The swarm of social workers arriving before the ashes had even stopped smoking.
I had been eleven.
Eli had just turned eighteen.
They said he was too young to be my guardian. Too unstable. Too irresponsible. They said it with clipped voices and tired eyes, already writing their reports in their heads. They looked at him like he was a problem they had been forced to deal with, not a brother who had just lost everything he had ever known.
They did not know him. None of them did.
They did not know that the moment they tried to pull us apart, he grabbed my hand so tightly it hurt. They did not know that he ran without hesitation, without money, without a destination, guided only by the fierce, stubborn belief that I was safer with him than with any system that claimed to care.
For seven years we became shadows sliding through the bones of the city. We slept in abandoned buildings that creaked like old ships. We lived off scraps and luck and the kind of desperation that teaches you how to survive even when you should not. Eli knew every alley that disappeared into darkness, every fire escape that led to a roof no one bothered to watch, every corner of the city where you could breathe without being seen.
Sometimes I blamed him for the life we lived.
Sometimes I resented the hunger and the cold and the constant running.
But even then, even in the worst moments, something deeper whispered the truth I never wanted to admit out loud.
He saved me.
He saved me the night of the fire, and he kept saving me every day after.
Evening settled heavy and unnaturally still.
Fog drifted between the buildings like smoke, swallowing the street in slow, curling waves. The candle behind me flickered, its flame stretching thin, as if bending toward something I couldn't see.
That's when I saw the car.
Dark. Unmarked.
Parked beneath the last working streetlight at the end of the street, a place no one ever lingered.
I leaned closer, breath fogging the glass.
Three figures sat inside. A faint red light pulsed across the dashboard. For some reason, they instantly made me feel uneasy. My stomach twisted.
"Eli..." I whispered, forgetting for a moment that he had gone out to check the traps, muttering something about rats.
The figures in the car moved. One lifted a silver device. Another leaned forward, speaking into a radio.
I stepped back, pulse climbing.
"Eli," I said louder, voice cracking slightly.
A soft click sounded from the front door.
Someone testing the handle.
"Eli Daven! Serra Daven!"
A voice roared through the storm.
"This is the police! Step outside with your hands where we can see them!"
My blood froze.
Boots hammered against the pavement outside. Shadows crossed the cracks in the boarded windows.
The side door burst open. Eli stumbled through it, soaked, panting, eyes wild with panic.
"Seri! pack your shit. Now."
"What? What's..."
"They fucking found us!" His voice broke. "We have to go!"
The pounding on the front door intensified, shaking the whole frame.
"Open up! Final warning!"
My hands fumbled over my bag. The straps slipped. The contents spilled.
"Eli..."
He grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the back room, breath sharp and frantic.
"Seri."
His voice cracked.
"When I tell you to run, you run. Don't stop. Don't look back. Do you hear me?"
I swallowed hard. "Eli—"
The front door exploded inward.
Boots stormed across the floorboards, heavy and merciless.
Eli shoved me toward the window with everything he had.
"Go!"