They stumbled out of the woods like survivors of a shipwreck. Lilly’s feet registered the change before her eyes did, soft earth giving way to broken pavement. The road stretched on in both directions, littered with abandoned vehicles and the shapes of those who hadn’t made it. They weren’t running anymore. No one had the strength for that.

  Shion was first, as if she were being tugged forward by an invisible line—her weapon bloody, shoulders squared. The others formed a ragged procession: Haruto limping and pretending not to. Satsuki whispered someone’s name under her breath. Hayami counted them twice, three times. Amira watched with a guarded look, as if she’d decided to trust no one, least of all herself. Shigure brought up the rear with his head lowered.

  Night was retreating, though morning hadn’t claimed victory yet. The horizon wore a narrow crown of pale light. The road bent sharply, revealing a service station they’d passed on their way up. Lilly should have felt relieved at the sight of civilization, but instead her insides coiled.

  Shion lifted her palm. They froze mid-step.

  Gravel shifted on the far side of the road. Three figures emerged from shadow. Midori first, his massive frame somehow diminished, shoulders bearing invisible anchors. Behind, Kurobane moved like a man sleepwalking, his face drained of color except for the muscle jumping in his jaw. The blood on his collar had turned the color of old engine oil. When Haruka appeared last—her eyes raw and swollen—Lilly felt her lungs forget their purpose.

  Where is she…?

  They stood like strangers at a funeral. Eyes cataloged the living, counted the missing. Midori tried to speak, but his throat closed around the words.

  Lilly’s feet carried her forward while her mind was still deciding whether to be brave. “Reina,” she said, not quite a question, the name itself demanding answers. “Where’s my sister?” The silence that followed wasn’t empty; it was full of every answer she didn’t want. A cold weight settled in her stomach. She forced the names past lips that no longer felt like her own. “What about Ren? And Ms. Fujimori?”

  “We got separated from Ren and your sister. And Yuka…” His voice cracked on the name. “She’s gone. She’s dead.” The way he said it, the way Haruka folded in, the way Kurobane, who seemed to always have something to say, didn’t say anything at all.

  If Yuka’s dead, what were the odds her sister wasn’t?

  Lilly’s ears filled with that fizzy hum you get before you faint. It seemed wrong that the machines were still humming in the background, that a strip of cheap promotional flags along the canopy was still flapping in the breeze. She reached for memories of Reina like lifelines: morning whispers still warm with sleep, that absent gesture of fingers tucking stray hair behind an ear, her hands pulling Lilly behind her whenever trouble found them. Always between her and the world. Always there.

  Darker visions crowded in. Her sister’s mouth stretched in a final scream, crimson blooming across fabric, fingers grasping at empty air where Lilly should have been. Her hands trembled where they pressed into the seam of her jeans. She had spent years accepting Reina’s protection without question, mistaking dependence for closeness. It felt like love then.

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  “We watched her die.” Kurobane’s mouth twisted into a scowl. When he finally inhaled, the smoke caught in his throat and doubled him over. After the coughing subsided, he straightened and looked at each of them in turn.

  Haruka’s face contorted as though she’d been struck. The heel of her palm dragged across her wet cheek, leaving a dirty streak behind. A muttered curse broke the silence. Shigure’s voice, or maybe Haruto’s, Lilly couldn’t tell. The road seemed to tilt, just a little. She locked her knees and stared down the center line stretching down—the one fixed point in a world that refused to stop spinning.

  The ground vibrated beneath her. Her heart skipped a beat—helicopters? She remembered how the dead reacted to rotors, hurling their bodies against windows in a frenzy. But no, this sound rolled past them, distant and low. It lingered too long to be thunder, too deliberate to be wind.

  A plane.

  Haruto scrubbed a hand over his face as if it might erase the last hour. “What now?” His eyes cut to Shion, defaulting to the person who looked least like she might fall apart.

  “The airport.”

  “So we just leave? What about your families? Your parents? Are you really going to abandon them to die while we run away?” Haruka’s words scraped against Lilly.

  “Nobody wants to abandon anyone!” Satsuki snapped. “My mom was already sick when this started, and my father—” She swallowed hard. “He wouldn’t pick up my calls before the phones went dead.” Her shoulders slumped. “Some of us don’t have anyone left to save.”

  “Dad was downtown when it hit. Fifty-third floor. And Mom—” Haruto swallowed. “She would’ve stayed with her patients.”

  “I-I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me. Everyone’s lost something, someone.”

  “It’s better than dying on this stretch of road,” Amira added.

  “The airport,” Shigure mumbled. “That’s all we’ve got.” His lips tightened into a hard line. “Whatever is back there, I’ve seen enough of it.”

  “The fire,” Hayami said, “is finally working in our favor. The infected will follow the flames. We won’t get another opportunity like this.”

  “Save your breath for walking,” Kurobane said, already turning toward the road.

  One by one, they came alive again. Lilly remained rooted. She couldn’t stop seeing it: her sister cornered somewhere in that burning building, infected clawing at whatever barrier separated them.

  Something hot and thin as wire threaded through her chest. A thread of anger warmed through the cold. Anger at herself. At the version of her that had always accepted the safest place without checking who had to stand in front to make it safe. At the universe that kept taking the people who knew how to be brave and asking them to be braver.

  “Lilly,” Shion’s voice pulled her from the undertow of her thoughts.

  Makabe Shion steadied her. If Shion hadn’t been there, she would have curled into herself, becoming another nameless tragedy in a burning building. Lilly nodded. “I’m with you.”

  Their path curved around the skeletal remains of a gas station, its canopy casting long shadows across their faces. A sun-bleached billboard promised paradise somewhere else. When someone’s sneaker sent a bottle cap skittering into the ditch, they all went stone-still, counting the seconds until they remembered to inhale again.

  They passed a pickup truck, its driver’s door yawning open to nothing, a cartoon unicorn peeling from the window. Lilly shadowed Shion’s steps, re-calibrating herself with each footfall. She studied her vigilance: the subtle rotation of her neck that never stopped scanning, the way her eyes flicked to every ditch before her feet drew near.

  That thread of anger—fragile as kindling but just as capable of starting a fire—remained. She couldn’t shape it into anything useful yet, but she tucked it away anyway, guarding it like the last ember in a world going cold.

  A mile marker tilted sideways in the dirt. The number on it meant nothing now. The sun broke the horizon, pale and cold. It didn’t feel like morning.