Luc's routine in Resistance was almost always the same - and too predictable for a world that never gave respite.

He shared tasks with the other inspectors, helping the youngest to learn the basics: how to walk without making noise, how to identify a gray before it was too late, how not to panic when the smell of death became too strong. He went out on weekly patrols with Eli, traveling routes already mapped, reviewing old accesses, closing tunnels that had become dangerous. And, from time to time, he sat in meetings with the elders to chart new routes - always less safe, always more distant.

The greatest concern of the Resistance was no longer the shortage. It was the increase in the grays.

Years had passed since the explosion phase of the apocalypse, when everything collapsed at once. Now, the virus was no longer chaotic - it was persistent. HNV-7 continued to spread, mutating slowly. The grays were not just reanimated bodies. They were people whose brain had been corroded until only instinct remained. Some slower, others too fast. Some who were guided by the sound, others by the smell. None predictable.

The world wasn't ending. He was already done.

It had been two weeks ago.

A simple patrol after food and drinking water, entering through an old subway wing - forgotten tunnels, rusty rails, torn posters announcing destinations that no longer existed.

That's where Luc found her.

At first, he thought it was an abandoned mannequin. The skin is too pale. The body is too immobile. But when he approached, he heard. An almost non-existent sound. A low murmur, like someone trapped inside a bad dream.

Luc's brain screamed first. Move away. She's contaminated. Don't be an idiot. But emotion spoke louder than reason - as always.

When he realized, he was already crouched next to her. There were no visible bites. No clear sign of infection. But she was sick. Very sick. The body burning with fever, the breathing too weak.

Then, for a few seconds, her eyes opened.

Confused. Lost.

And she clung to him with the rest of the strength she still had.

That's where Luc found out. He couldn't leave her there. With the help of the others, they took her to the Sublevel in a hurry.

In the sublevel, she became "the unknown" - as the younger ones liked to call her. A foreign body brought from outside, an unknown lying in the infirmary. She was unconscious for two weeks.

Two weeks in which Luc went to see her every day.

I sat next to the improvised bed, pulled the chair carefully so as not to make noise. I read to her the book I had found in my backpack - worn pages, folded corners, words that seemed too important to be left there.

He observed the small changes: The least pale face. The most stable breathing. The fingers that sometimes moved in their sleep. But it wasn't enough.

He wanted her to open her eyes. He wanted to her say something. He wanted to her know who he was. Damn.

He was crazy, right? Completely crazy.

That day, everything was different.

Luc came back from a mission tired, dirty, with his body asking for rest. But even before dropping the equipment, he noticed the buzz in living together. Whispers, looks, a strange atmosphere in the air.

"Luc's girl woke up.”

The world seemed to stop. He ran.

Even exhausted, even with his muscles burning, he ran through the corridors of the Sublevel as if he had returned to being a scared boy again. He had known her for days. But now... now I wanted her to meet him too.

When he arrived at the door of the infirmary, the nurses smiled at him - accomplices, understanding - and let him in.

The environment was quiet. Smell of improvised antiseptic. Weak light hanging from the ceiling.

And there she was.

Sitting on the bed, still fragile, wrapped in blankets. The most lively face, attentive eyes - confused, but awake. The misaligned hair, the expression of someone who had crossed something too big to understand.

Luc stopped at the door for a second, his heart racing.

She was no longer an unconscious body.

She was there.

Awake.

Finally.