The fire had burned low to embers when the noise woke him.

In one fluid motion, Mingyu was up—axe in hand, muscles taut like a coiled spring. The safehouse (an abandoned auto shop with boarded windows) had been secure for two nights. But in this hellscape, safety was an illusion. The second you let your guard down, you ended up dead. Or worse.

A shuffle. The deliberate clink of glass vials—his glass vials—being pocketed.

Motherfucker.

He moved like a shadow, boots silent on the concrete. The storage room door stood ajar, a sliver of flashlight cutting through the dark. There—a figure hunched over his supplies, greedy hands shoving his last morphine syringes into a pack.

Rage ignited in his chest, white-hot and vicious. Medicine was blood currency now. This wasn’t theft. This was a knife to his throat.

The axe blade kissed the intruder’s jugular before they even heard him move.

"Breathe wrong and I carve you open." His voice was lethally calm. The kind of calm that came before slaughter. "Who sent you? Raiders? The fucking Scavengers?" The steel pressed deeper. "Talk. Fast."