The city had died a long time ago.

  Kira Vance picked her way through the cracked bones of it — rusted skyscrapers leaning like drunkards against the bruised sky, streets split open like old scars. Every step sent ash swirling around her boots, a fine gray mist that coated everything, even the inside of her throat.

  New Seattle was nothing but a memory wrapped in decay. And yet, it still tried to kill her.

  She ducked into the shadow of a collapsed overpass, hand tight around the grip of her blade. No guns. Too loud. Too dangerous. A girl with a gun painted a target on her back faster than blood in the water. Quiet kills were better.

  A scream echoed somewhere behind her — high, raw, then abruptly cut off. Kira flinched but didn’t turn around. In the Zones, screams were background noise. You lived by ignoring them.

  She adjusted the strap of her scavenger pack and moved faster.

  The target was close: a fallen hospital tower. Someone had whispered about unlooted supplies inside — syringes, antibiotics, maybe even clean water. Kira didn’t put much stock in rumors. Hope was a currency worse than bullets here.

  As she approached the building, the hairs on her neck lifted.

  Someone else was already here.

  Kira crouched low behind a wrecked car, scanning the ruins. Shadows shifted near the entrance. Two figures — lean, dirty, moving with the desperate, twitchy energy of scavengers on the hunt. One carried a jagged piece of pipe. The other had a blade not unlike her own.

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  They hadn’t seen her yet.

  Kira gritted her teeth. She could turn back. Find another mark.

  But hunger gnawed at her gut like rats. Supplies meant survival.

  Survival meant everything.

  She unsheathed her knife — a salvaged surgical blade, still sharp enough to whisper through flesh — and crept forward. Heart hammering. Every instinct screamed at her to be quick, be quiet, be brutal.

  The first scavenger turned — too late.

  Kira drove the blade up under his ribs, felt the shudder of impact as he gasped and sagged against her. Blood spilled hot over her hand. She shoved him aside and pivoted just as the second scavenger lunged with a snarl.

  He was faster than she expected.

  The pipe smashed against her shoulder, spinning her sideways. Pain flared white-hot. Kira hit the ground hard, coughing as ash and dirt exploded around her.

  The scavenger grinned, crooked teeth slick with spit. He raised the pipe again —

  — and a sharp crack rang out.

  The scavenger jerked, eyes wide, before crumpling to the ground. A dark bloom of blood spread across his chest.

  Kira staggered up, knife ready, but the shot hadn’t come from the building.

  A man stood at the edge of the ruins, a smoking pistol loose in his hand.

  Broad-shouldered, scarred, wearing a battered jacket with the sleeves ripped off to show arms marked by old burns and fresh bruises.

  His eyes — cold, grey, dead — pinned her in place.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, voice rough like gravel.

  Kira tightened her grip on her knife. “Didn’t ask for help.”

  The man gave a humorless snort and holstered his gun. “No. You didn’t.”

  He turned, walking toward the ruined hospital like she wasn’t even a threat. Like she was an afterthought.

  Something about the casual way he moved — not cocky, just dangerously sure — made Kira’s skin prickle.

  She watched him disappear inside the crumbling building.

  For a heartbeat, survival instincts screamed at her to run the other way.

  But another part — the part that had kept her alive this long — knew better.

  If the supplies were inside, and if this stranger found them first…

  Kira cursed under her breath, wiped the blood from her hands onto her pants, and followed him into the dark.