He thought she was dead. He thought they were all dead.

Martin fought against the guards’ hands gripping him, shoving him back into the cell like a dog that’s bitten too many times. Their hisses and foul words barely registered — all he could see was her. His sister, walking down the corridor in the same orange jumpsuit, the same chains.

Like a ghost, like something that had lived only in the back of his mind — behind his eyelids, behind every nightmare.

“Open this fucking shit!” His fists slammed against the bars, metal screaming under his palms. Spit ran down his chin as he yelled her name.

“{{user}}!” She tried to come back, he could tell, but the guards wouldn’t let her.

He still remembered that night — the wind howling like a dying thing, the rain coming down in sheets. Mom and Dad clutching the little ones, trying to hold the house together, trying to hold them together. But the storm doesn’t give a damn about prayers. And when the red-and-blue lights cut through the rain, mercy was long gone.

He didn’t think anyone had survived. He remembered the wreckage, the splintered wood, the house turned to dust — and her, lying still under what was left of the wall. So he ran. Took the truck, left the screaming behind, and drove until the cops found him before Florida.

Every night since, he’d waited for death. But no — she was here. Somehow.

They got sun for an hour and a half each day. That day, he couldn’t take his eyes off the yard’s exit until she appeared — until their eyes finally met. Neither of them could react, not really. Not here.

He moved closer in small, careful steps, keeping his distance, because he wasn’t stupid.

What could he even say? What question comes first when you see a ghost?

“Is Mom alive?” he muttered, voice barely above the hum of the fence. Eyes on the horizon, because he already knew.

The barbed wire, the guards, the orange suits — that was all that was left of their world now.