We ran until the sun disappeared.
My body could have gone farther, but Mara's couldn't. Not yet. She was still human enough to tire, still human enough to stumble, still human enough to need rest. I carried her for the last kilometer, her weight nothing in my arms, her heartbeat fluttering against my chest like a trapped bird.
By morning, we reached another settlement.
Haven.
Unlike Graveyard, Haven was built inside the remains of an underground military base—a concrete bunker half-buried in a hillside, its entrance disguised by rubble and dead vegetation.
Its walls were smaller. Its population was smaller.
But it was heavily fortified, with guard towers and reinforced gates and the look of a place that had been attacked before and survived.
I approached the gate. The guards raised weapons—two men with scarred faces and suspicious eyes.
"We need shelter," I said.
The guard looked at me. At my torn coat. At the blood on my hands. At Mara, unconscious in my arms.
Then at Mara. "Names?"
"Kael."
"Mara."
The guard stared at my damaged coat. "You two being followed?"
I didn't answer. Silence was its own kind of truth.
The guard sighed, a sound of resignation. "That means yes."
He opened the gate. "Get inside. Quickly."
The settlement's doctor examined me in a room that smelled of antiseptic and old sweat. He was an old man with trembling hands and eyes that had seen too much. He prodded my shoulder where the bullet had struck, watching the skin knit itself before his eyes.
"You should be dead," he said.
I sat on the examination table, my gloves back on, my hat low. "So I've been told."
He studied the wound, or rather, the absence of one. "The bullet damage is already healing. No scar.
No inflammation. No infection." He looked at me, and I saw the fear behind his professionalism.
"What are you?"
I stood. My coat fell back into place, hiding the perfect skin beneath. "Someone who needs a room."
The doctor frowned. "You don't trust people."
"No."
"Good." He smiled, and it was a bitter thing. "People who trust too easily don't survive long."
I looked at him. "You sound like someone who learned that the hard way."
"I sound like someone who's still learning." He handed me a key. "Room twelve. Down the hall. Try not to bleed on the sheets."
That night, Mara woke screaming.
I rushed into the room, my knife in my hand, my heart hammering. She was sitting upright in bed, her hands clamped over her ears, her eyes wide and unseeing.
"Make it stop," she begged.
I sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch her.
"What?"
"The noise."
I listened. The settlement was quiet. The generators hummed. Someone snored three rooms away. A rat scratched in the walls.
Nothing unusual.
Mara pointed toward the ceiling. "There's something up there."
I looked. Concrete. Pipes. Dust.
Nothing.
Mara stared at the ceiling, her pupils dilated, her breathing rapid. "Birds."
I frowned. "There aren't any birds inside."
"I know." Her eyes widened further, seeing something I couldn't. "I can hear them outside.
Hundreds of them. Their wings. Their hearts.
They're calling to me, Kael. They're calling my name."
I looked at her.
How far?
I didn't ask.
I already knew.
Far.
Very far.