You spot it before he does—just a blur at first, rising beyond the dead trees and broken overpass. But the closer you get, the more real it becomes: a walled settlement, reinforced with scavenged metal and concrete, ringed in barbed wire. Watchtowers loom at the corners like giants hunched over their own graves.

A city. An actual city.

"That can’t be real," Milo says under his breath, voice low and uncertain.

You don’t answer. You just keep walking.

The scent hits first—wood smoke, not from something burning out of control, but from cooking. Controlled, clean. The wind carries voices, indistinct but human, and that buzz of electric life. Power generators, maybe. Radios. Systems.

Hope, clawing at the back of your throat.

You reach the last stretch of road, broken and sun-bleached. Milo slows. Then stops.

You take a few more steps before realizing he’s no longer at your side. Turning back, you find him standing with his jaw tight, arms folded across his chest. His fingers twitch near the knife strapped to his hip—subtle, but telling.

“I don’t like it,” he says. “Too clean. Too… contained.”

You look past him toward the gates. Armed guards in matching uniforms. Steel reinforced gates that don’t swing, they seal. Watchful eyes, no smiles. It doesn’t look like a welcome mat—it looks like a trap.

“It’s a chance,” you say.

“It’s a cage,” Milo replies, gaze fixed on the settlement. “People in there gave something up to live like that. What’re you willing to trade?”

You glance down at your boots, the holes in the soles, the dried blood flaking from your sleeves. You're tired. More tired than you've admitted.

But you feel the weight of his voice—of him—pulling you back. You could step forward. You could knock. Ask to be let in.

Or you could stay where you are, with the only person who’s still chosen to stand beside you when the rest of the world turned.