Iris was arguing with a dead man when we found her.
Not shouting. Not panicking. Just standing in the open snow, shoulders squared, breath fogging in steady rhythm, speaking in a low, controlled voice like she expected him to listen.
"You don't get closer," she said. "I'm not scared of you. That's not the same thing as being stupid."
The dead man took another step anyway.
Rowan lifted his crowbar instinctively.
I grabbed his arm.
"Wait."
The infected—if that's what it was—moved wrong. Not the staggered pull I'd learned to recognize. Its joints bent too cleanly, feet finding purchase in the snow without slipping. Frost clung to its clothes in a way that suggested it had been still for a long time.
Watching.
Iris didn't back up. She adjusted her stance instead, shifting her weight like someone who'd practiced this more than once. Her coat was oversized, patched at the elbows and cinched tight with rope. A scarf hid the lower half of her face, but her eyes were sharp—too sharp for someone who'd survived alone by luck.
"Last warning," she said.
The dead man lunged.
She moved first.
The knife came out of her sleeve in a blur of motion, not a wild slash but a precise, brutal thrust under the jaw. Bone cracked. The body jerked, stiffened, and collapsed at her feet in a spray of snow and blackened blood.
She didn't look away.
Didn't breathe heavier.
She wiped the blade on the corpse's coat with practiced disgust and only then seemed to notice us.
Three heartbeats passed.
Then she smiled.
Not relief. Not gratitude.
Assessment.
"You two gonna stand there all day," she asked, voice muffled by the scarf, "or are you planning to introduce yourselves?"
Rowan lowered the crowbar slowly.
I didn't move.
"You killed it clean," he said.
"Of course I did," she replied. "Mess is how you die later."
She glanced at me then—really looked. I felt it like pressure, the way Controllers watched, catalogued. Her gaze lingered on my hands, my boots, the way I favored my right leg. When she met my eyes, something flickered there. Recognition, maybe. Or suspicion sharpened by hunger.
"You're cold," she said. "Not the usual way. You ration heat."
I hated how right she was.
"And you don't," I said.
She snorted. "I ration everything. Heat's just the loudest."
She crouched, checking the dead man's pockets with quick efficiency. Found nothing worth keeping. Stood again, eyes already scanning the horizon.
"Name's Iris," she said. "I'm heading south. There's a grain depot that hasn't collapsed yet. Wind keeps the snow thin. Infected don't like open ground."
Rowan blinked. "You're just… offering?"
Iris shrugged. "You didn't rush me. You didn't steal my kill. And you didn't shoot me from a distance like a coward. That's three points in your favor."
She looked back at me.
"You haven't spoken yet," she said. "You thinking of killing me?"
I considered lying.
"No," I said. "I'm thinking about whether you'd kill us in our sleep."
Her smile widened slightly.
"Only if you deserved it."
That was answer enough.
We moved together without ceremony, spacing ourselves instinctively. Iris took point, her pace brisk but controlled. She didn't chatter. Didn't ask questions she didn't need answered. The snow creaked under our boots, the sound loud in the open field.
After a while, Rowan spoke.
"You really alone out here?"
Iris hesitated. Just long enough to be noticeable.
"Mostly," she said.
That was when I noticed the marks on her gloves—deep gouges across the leather, reinforced with wire stitching. Defensive. Repeated.
She'd been grabbed before.
She'd survived it.
The wind picked up as the sun dipped lower, turning the sky into a bruised stretch of gray and violet. Iris led us to a stand of half-buried trailers clustered around a collapsed service road. She stopped twenty yards out, raising a fist.
"Wait."
She listened.
Counted.
Then nodded once.
"Safe enough for a night."
Rowan looked at her. "That doesn't mean safe."
"No," Iris agreed. "It means not immediately fatal."
She ducked into the nearest trailer, checking corners, tapping walls for hollow spaces. When she emerged, she waved us in.
Inside, the air was stale but dry. Iris lit no fire. Instead, she unpacked a small metal container and set it between us.
"Eat," she said. "You'll think clearer."
Rowan hesitated.
I didn't.
The food was thin—grain mash, barely warm—but it felt like a gift. Iris watched us eat without touching her own portion. Only when Rowan noticed did she finally take a few bites, slow and deliberate.
"Why help us?" Rowan asked.
Iris leaned back against the wall, eyes half-lidded.
"Because winter lies," she said. "It tells you isolation is safety. It isn't. It's just quieter when you die."
I felt that settle somewhere deep.
She looked at me again. Longer this time.
"You've been running," she said. "Not from the infected. From people."
I didn't answer.
"That's fine," she continued. "I'm not asking for trust. I'm asking for movement. Staying alone too long does something to your head."
Rowan shifted. "You speaking from experience?"
Iris's jaw tightened.
"I'm speaking from the graves."
Night pressed in. The trailer creaked as the temperature dropped, metal contracting with sharp pops. Iris took first watch without discussion, positioning herself by the narrow window, knife resting easy in her hand.
As I drifted toward sleep, hunger dulled but never gone, I caught her reflection in the glass—eyes open, unblinking, tracking the dark like it owed her something.
For the first time since winter began, the silence felt… different.
Not safe.
Shared.
Much later—hours, maybe—I woke to whispered voices.
Rowan was speaking softly. Iris listened.
"He doesn't talk about before," Rowan said. "Just… keeps moving."
Iris didn't look back.
"That's how you last," she replied. "Until it isn't."
Rowan hesitated. "You think he'll turn?"
Iris was quiet for a long moment.
"No," she said finally. "I think he'll make it longer than he wants to."
She glanced toward me, eyes sharp even in the dark.
"And that's worse."
I closed my eyes and let the cold press in.
I didn't know then how much she'd matter.How her warmth would become a constant I didn't realize I depended on.How her voice would one day be the last thing I'd never hear.
But that night, as winter tightened its grip, Iris kept watch—and for the first time, I let myself sleep without counting breaths.
That was the beginning of the mistake.