The sun was a sickly orange smear behind the ash-blown sky as their rust-bitten truck rattled down a highway littered with long-dead cars—metal carcasses twisted by time and heat. Weeds split the asphalt. Nothing moved but dust and shadows. They were heading nowhere in particular, or at least that’s what the sign they just passed had said—half-buried under ivy and bullet holes.

Behind the wheel sat Jace, squinting through the cracked windshield, hands loose on the steering wheel like he wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up here again. His hoodie was three sizes too big, his smile came easy, and he’d already apologized twice for sneezing at the wrong time. But he didn’t seem to mind the silence.

Next to him, slouched against the door with one boot on the dash, was them—leather jacket stitched together with scraps of scavenged armor, black feathers twitching against the seat from the wings folded tight on their back. They hadn’t said much since the last checkpoint. Didn’t have to. Their presence spoke for them: sharp, quiet, and impossible to ignore.

Mutant. Outcast. Weapon. Angel. No one—including them—knew what to call it. The wings came with strength, with speed, with something buried too deep to understand. But not with answers.

What they did know: the sanctuary across the border had rumors of people like them. A place to belong, maybe. And Jace—clumsy, hopeful Jace—had shown up after all this time with a beat-up truck and that same old grin, saying, “I told you I’d find you. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

So they drove. Through wastelands howling with mutants and half-rotted things that forgot they used to be human. Through the kind of silence that made you miss the world you never really knew.

They were heading to hope. Or maybe just away from everything else.