Zone 6 did not feel abandoned.

  It felt packed.

  Not with people.

  With movement.

  We slipped in through a narrow maintenance stair that opened into a side street lined with taller buildings than Zone 7. The stone here was cleaner. The archways wider. The windows bigger.

  It didn’t matter.

  There were infected in every direction.

  Not rushing. Not screaming.

  Just… there.

  On the main road ahead, at least twenty shuffled in loose clusters. Some pressed against a metal barricade that had collapsed inward. Others drifted out of a broken transit station entrance. A few stood under balconies like they were waiting for something that would never come.

  One body hung halfway through an iron gate, ribs caught between the spikes. Its legs twitched slowly as if trying to finish a step it started hours ago.

  I felt my throat close.

  Zone 7 was empty when we entered it.

  Zone 6 wasn’t.

  Zone 6 had tried to move.

  And failed.

  “Back,” Nysera whispered.

  We ducked behind an overturned delivery cart tipped on its side. It still had faded lettering on it for a Zone 6 bakery chain. The wheel nearest me spun slowly from the wind.

  Lioran shifted his weight and stepped on something sharp.

  He sucked in air through his teeth.

  I looked down.

  Broken glass.

  A thin line of red opened across his palm.

  Nysera grabbed his wrist before he could react. “Quiet.”

  He nodded quickly, pressing his sleeve over the cut. His ankle was already swollen from the tunnel. Now this.

  He looked tired in a way that scared me more than his injury.

  Lucien crouched low, eyes scanning the street ahead.

  “There’s a side lane,” he murmured. “Left of the transit arch.”

  I followed his gaze.

  A narrow lane split between two buildings about fifteen meters away. It was half-shadowed. Fewer infected clustered near it.

  But to reach it, we’d have to cross open pavement.

  And pavement in Zone 6 was not empty.

  We waited.

  We counted.

  One infected turned slowly toward the broken gate. Another bent awkwardly at the waist, jerking like its spine was arguing with itself. A third dragged one leg behind it, leaving a faint smear on the stone.

  The smell carried even from here. Damp fabric. Blood. Something sweet and rotten.

  I swallowed hard.

  “On my signal,” Lucien said.

  He didn’t look at me when he said it. He just said it like I would understand.

  I nodded anyway.

  A group of infected near the barricade drifted toward the right, distracted by something we couldn’t see. A loose metal sign scraped across the ground in the wind, pulling two of them farther from our path.

  Lucien moved first.

  Low. Quick. Not sprinting.

  We followed in a tight line.

  Five steps.

  Ten.

  My boots felt too loud. Every breath sounded like it echoed.

  Halfway across, one infected turned its head.

  It saw us.

  Its mouth opened.

  It made a low sound, not loud but deep.

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  Nysera hissed under her breath.

  “Don’t run,” Lucien said.

  We didn’t.

  We kept moving, faster now but not frantic.

  The infected lurched toward us.

  Then another.

  Then two more lifted their heads.

  We reached the mouth of the side lane just as the first one lunged close enough that I could see dried blood crusted around its nose.

  Nysera swung her rod in a tight arc.

  The metal connected with a wet crack against the infected’s jaw.

  It didn’t drop.

  It stumbled sideways.

  Lucien shoved me into the alley.

  “Inside!”

  Cirellan slipped past me. Lioran limped hard, teeth clenched.

  Vaelle and Vaeris moved fast but controlled, not pushing, not panicking.

  The alley narrowed to barely two meters wide. Trash bins lined one side. A fire escape ladder hung above us.

  Behind us, footsteps scraped faster.

  They had noticed.

  Not all of them.

  Enough.

  Lucien turned, grabbed one of the trash bins, and kicked it over into the alley mouth. It crashed loudly, metal echoing.

  Two infected tripped over it, tangling together.

  Nysera slammed the rod into one’s temple this time. Harder. Again. Again.

  On the third strike, it dropped.

  The second clawed over it.

  I didn’t think.

  I stepped forward and drove my shoulder into its chest.

  It felt wrong. Too solid. Too heavy.

  We hit the wall together.

  Its face snapped toward mine.

  Its teeth clacked inches from my cheek.

  I smelled it again. Rot and stale breath.

  My hands pushed against its shoulders, but it was stronger than it looked.

  It forced me backward.

  My heel slipped on something slick.

  I thought, This is it.

  Then Lucien was there.

  He grabbed the back of its collar and yanked with force that surprised me. The infected jerked away from me just enough.

  “Move,” he snapped.

  I stumbled sideways.

  Lucien shoved the infected into the brick wall and drove his blade up under its jaw.

  The sound it made wasn’t human anymore.

  It sagged.

  He let it drop.

  For a second, everything was just heavy breathing and the ringing in my ears.

  Nysera dragged the trash bin fully across the alley mouth, blocking most of it. Two infected clawed over it sluggishly, but not fast enough to reach us yet.

  “Go,” she said.

  We ran deeper into the alley.

  Not full sprint. Not screaming.

  Just pushing forward through tight space, ducking under laundry lines and stepping over scattered crates.

  The alley bent twice before opening into a small courtyard between buildings.

  We spilled into it and pressed ourselves against the far wall.

  I bent forward, hands on my knees, sucking air in.

  My chest burned.

  Lucien wiped his blade on the infected’s coat before sliding it back into place. His sleeve was still torn from the runner in Zone 7. The fabric flapped slightly in the wind.

  No one said anything for a moment.

  Then the speakers crackled.

  Every single one of us froze.

  The sound came from above, from somewhere mounted along the wall. A city speaker. The kind used for curfews and announcements and festival openings.

  Static filled the courtyard.

  Then a voice broke through.

  Human.

  Male.

  Shaking.

  “If anyone can hear this…”

  Static swallowed half the sentence.

  “…Containment in the inner district has failed…”

  My heart stopped.

  Inner district.

  “…Zone 1 breach confirmed…”

  A distant scream cut through the transmission. Not from the speaker. From wherever the voice was broadcasting from.

  The man’s breathing was ragged.

  “We are losing—”

  Static.

  “Do not gather at gates. Do not attempt inner movement. The walls are not secure.”

  More static.

  Then the clearest thing he said.

  “There is no safe sector. Repeat. There is no safe.”

  The speaker cut out.

  Just like that.

  The courtyard felt smaller after that.

  Like the walls had moved in closer.

  Lioran slid down the wall until he was sitting on the ground.

  “So it’s everywhere,” he said quietly.

  Nysera stared at the speaker like she could punch it back to life.

  Cirellan pressed her palm against the stone, eyes unfocused.

  Vaelle and Vaeris stood still, shoulders touching lightly. They didn’t look shocked.

  They looked like they were calculating.

  Lucien didn’t speak right away.

  He looked up at the ring wall visible over the rooftops.

  Thick stone. High enough that even from here you couldn’t see over it.

  I followed his gaze.

  The walls were supposed to separate.

  But now all I could think about was how they trapped.

  If something got inside a ring, and the gates shut, then everyone inside stayed with it.

  I thought about the explosion we saw from the tower.

  About smoke swallowing the center.

  About something moving too fast along the inner wall ramp.

  My stomach twisted.

  Nysera broke the silence first.

  “We can’t stay in Six.”

  “No,” Lucien agreed.

  “We can’t go inward,” Cirellan said, her voice barely there.

  Lucien shook his head. “The inner gates will be chaos.”

  “Back to Seven?” Lioran asked.

  Nysera gave him a look. “You saw Seven.”

  I looked at the courtyard entrance we came through.

  More infected drifted past at the far end of the alley. Slow. Dense. Like the zone was filling up from every direction.

  I felt something shift inside me.

  All my life, every plan pointed toward the center. Toward the cleaner districts. Toward better air and better buildings and better futures.

  Everything was built to move inward.

  But what if the center was the worst place to be?

  I thought about the maps we studied in scholarship prep.

  About the outer ring.

  Zone 13.

  The poorest. The most crowded.

  But beyond Zone 13…

  There was land.

  Not inside walls.

  Industrial belts. Waste fields. Water treatment plains. Land that wasn’t divided into sectors and ranks and gates.

  No official residents.

  No registered density.

  Just open ground.

  My voice felt strange when I spoke.

  “What if we leave the walls?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  Nysera frowned. “What?”

  “Not inward,” I said. “Not deeper. Out.”

  Lucien’s eyes sharpened slightly.

  “Past Thirteen,” I said.

  Lioran let out a weak laugh. “That’s… that’s the edge.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Cirellan swallowed. “That’s seven zones away.”

  I nodded. “Then we start walking.”

  Nysera stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “You want to cross Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. And Thirteen?”

  “Yes.”

  It sounded insane when she said it out loud.

  Lucien stepped closer.

  “You understand what that means,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “It means we don’t wait for gates to close on us.”

  Silence.

  The speaker above us gave one last weak crackle, then died completely.

  Lioran rubbed his face with his uninjured hand.

  “My mom didn’t make it,” he said softly.

  No one corrected him.

  No one lied.

  Cirellan looked at the wall again.

  “If my brothers went inward…”

  She didn’t finish.

  I forced myself to say it.

  “If they’re alive, they won’t stay there.”

  It hurt. Saying it like that.

  Lucien looked at me for a long second.

  Then he nodded once.

  “We move.”

  No vote.

  No argument.

  Just movement.

  We slipped out of the courtyard through a rear stairwell that led deeper into Zone 6’s outer blocks.

  The streets ahead were worse than the ones we crossed earlier.

  More movement.

  More bodies.

  But also more space between buildings.

  I looked once over my shoulder.

  Smoke still hung faintly in the direction of the center.

  The walls rose high behind us.

  For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like they were protecting me.

  I felt like they were something I needed to get away from.