Chapter Two: The City That Remembered Rin
The wind tasted of rust and distant fires.
Rin walked down the centre of the dead street because the sidewalks felt like hiding places, and hiding felt like something the old Rin used to do.
She was small. Barely five feet in boots that swallowed her ankles, narrow shoulders lost inside a flannel shirt whose sleeves were rolled so many times the cuffs looked like donuts. Seventeen, maybe, but the body could pass for fourteen on a dark night. A child's frame carrying an adult's weapons: the oak chair leg balanced against her shoulder, the chef's knife riding low on her hip, the backpack dragging at her spine like it wanted to fold her in half.
Petite didn't mean fragile.
Not anymore.
Every step felt guided. Not lost. Never lost.
Abandoned.
She passed the husk of Lee's Market and her legs shortened stride without permission, remembering the exact spot where the curb dipped and she used to hop down without looking. She passed the dry fountain in Memorial Park and her fingers twitched, ghost-reaching for coins she once threw in for wishes she no longer recalled.
Rin.
The name had settled hours ago, quiet and certain, the way a splinter finally works its way to the surface. It fit the shape of her mouth. It fit the hollow behind her eyes. Someone had tried to erase it and failed.
She whispered it now and then, just to remind the wind who was walking.
"Rin."
Walking alone felt eerie, yet natural.
She was used to walking alone—headphones in, hood up, smaller than everyone, slipping between crowds like a secret. Solitude had always been her element. Now it was a leash made of memories she didn't own.
The sun sank into a sky the colour of dried blood. Shadows grew long and hungry. Rin kept moving, small silhouette swallowed by the widening ruins, violet eyes catching the last light like warning beacons.
She reached the edge of the old river warehouses just as dusk bled into true night.
Here the destruction was methodical. Storefronts torched in perfect lines. Cars flipped to form barricades. Spray-painted arrows on walls—some pointing deeper into the district, others crossed out with brutal red X's. Territory. Warnings. Someone was still organised enough to leave signs.
Rin slipped between two collapsed loading docks, boots silent on broken glass. She was deciding whether to follow the river south or cut east toward the rail yards when she heard them.
Voices. Male. Low, clipped, impatient.
She dropped into a crouch behind a stack of mouldy pallets and eased forward until she could see through a gap in the planks.
Twenty-five yards away, four men moved through the shell of a pharmacy.
Flashlights swept in practiced arcs. One carried a rifle slung easy, muzzle down but finger indexed. Another hauled a duffel that clinked with every step—cans, bottles, medicine. A third stood watch at the shattered entrance, scanning the street with the calm boredom of someone who had done this a hundred times.
They wore mismatched gear: construction hard hats, knee pads, one with a catcher's chest protector spray-painted matte black. No insignia. No colours. Just scavengers who knew how to move as a unit.
Hunters, not survivors.
Rin's breath fogged in the cooling air. She was downwind; they hadn't scented her yet. She counted heartbeats, the way her body already knew how.
The one with the rifle paused, head tilting like a dog catching something on the breeze. He raised a fist. The others froze.
Rin stopped breathing.
He turned slowly, flashlight beam slicing across the darkness, passing inches from her hiding place. For one endless second the light caught the edge of her boot and she felt the night narrow to a single point.
Then he clicked the light off and muttered something she couldn't catch. The group laughed—short, humourless—and resumed stripping shelves.
Rin eased back, silent as snowfall.
They weren't random. They moved like they had a route, a quota, a place to report back to. Someone had sent them out with lists and deadlines. Someone who still had walls and rules and enough power to punish failure.
People were alive.
Organised.
Close.
She backed away until the pallets hid her completely, then rose and slipped deeper into the maze of warehouses. The river smelled of rot and old oil. Somewhere far off a metal sign banged in the wind like a slow heartbeat.
Rin adjusted the too-heavy backpack and kept moving, small shadow swallowed by bigger ones.
She had seen them.
They had not seen her.
Not yet.
But the city had narrowed its leash another notch, and tomorrow—or tonight, or the next corner—she would run out of empty streets.
Rin tightened her grip on the chair leg, violet eyes bright in the dark.
She wasn't ready to meet anyone.
But the world, it seemed, had already decided the meeting was overdue.
(End of Chapter Two)