Chapter 13: Distrust
Some minutes later, Merek stepped into a underground parking lot. The air was stale, thick with dust and silence, and the overhead lights flickered dimly, casting long shadows across rows of abandoned vehicles.
Sedans and motorbikes stood eerily still, like forgotten relics of a world that no longer existed.
When the apocalypse hit, most people must have fled in panic, leaving behind the very machines that once defined their lives. The ones who remained calm—who didn’t rush for escape—might have had a fighting chance.
Merek was among the lucky few.
On the day everything fell apart, he’d been indoors with his brother, burning up with a fever.
Thanks to his brother’s job-related perks—whatever strange immunities came with it—the fever passed quickly. It allowed him to care for both of them, resuming his duties as the elder brother.
That window of calm might’ve saved their lives... at least until the Howling Moon Gang took his brother.
As they moved further into the lot, Felicity walked a few paces ahead of Merek and Tevin. At one point, she turned slightly, casting a sideways glance over her shoulder—not at Merek, but at the three armored figures trailing beside him. Her gaze lingered on the gray-armored wraith at his left flank.
The aura it radiated was wrong—an unsettling presence that made the air feel heavier.
It wasn’t just intimidation. It was something deeper, like staring at a ghost born of iron and war, a being that defied logic and existence. Even with her experience, even with the monsters she’d faced since the fall of the world, Felicity had never encountered something that made her instincts scream like this one did.
The armor was unmistakably that of a woman—its shape, while deadly, retained a sculpted grace.