Damp chill of the old military depot settled into Ares’s bones long before the first grey light reached the cracked high windows.
He lay on a folded canvas tarp beside empty supply crates, his spear resting against his left leg.
His right arm remained bound tight against his ribs, his shoulder pulsing with a slow, grinding heat beneath the blood-stained bandages.
He closed his eyes and listened.
The compound in his blood had broadened his hearing until the quiet was filled with details.
He picked up the rhythmic drip of condensation from the corrugated roof fifty yards away.
The dry scraping of a rat inside a cinderblock.
The steady, wet hiss of the wind pulling at the rusted wire perimeter.
He did not hear the footsteps.
“Come outside, Ares.”
The voice came from the open loading bay door.
Low, dry, no louder than the wind.
Ares shifted his weight instantly.
The sudden movement pulled hard on his right shoulder, sending a spike of white pain down his spine, but he forced his left hand around the ash wood shaft of the spear and pushed himself up.
He leaned against the damp concrete wall for two seconds until his vision cleared.
Someone had crossed thirty yards of open gravel without making a sound his ears could catch.
He stepped out into the yard, spear held low in his left hand, his feet spaced wide on the cracked asphalt.
Garrow stood twenty feet away by a rusted oil drum.
His heavy canvas coat was unbuttoned at the top, his hands resting loose near his sides, his rifle slung over his right shoulder.
He was not aiming, but his legs were set, his body completely still.
“Don’t be so tense,” Garrow said.
His pale eyes moved from Ares’s face down to the left hand holding the weapon.
“If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have called your name.”
Ares didn’t adjust his grip.
“You found the depot.”
“I followed your scent from the ridge,” Garrow said.
“I saw you yesterday by the fence.
You had a line on my wife and daughter.
You had a loaded crossbow.
And you backed off.” He tilted his head a fraction of an inch.
“So tell me are you a threat, or just lost?”
Ares met his gaze.
“001.”
Garrow went motionless.
His breath stopped mid-chest.
His left hand rose slowly, his fingers pressing into the thick canvas coat right over his heart.
“I haven’t heard that number in years,” Garrow murmured.
His eyes dulled, pulled back by an old visual.
A stark white shirt.
Harsh overhead lighting throwing hard light across steel tables.
Black ink printed over cotton: 001.
A voice coming through a ceiling speaker calling for ‘Candidate One’ right before the needles went in.
“I read the report,” Ares said.
Garrow’s focus snapped back to the yard.
“What report?”
“Candidate 001,” Ares said, his voice flat.
“Male.
Thirty-one.
Exposure: FAILED.
Response: TERMINAL.
Subject presumed deceased.
Status: DECEASED.”
Garrow stared at him.
His chest expanded once, slow and heavy.
“They wrote me dead.”
“Yes.”
“And I survived.”
“Yes.”
Garrow shifted his weight, his eyes lingering on Ares’s right arm, bound tight under his coat.
“Your shoulder will slow you down,” Garrow said.
“Not for long.”
“We’ll see.” Garrow adjusted his stance, pivoting slightly.
“Vanessa my wife found me under the ruins after the first collapse.
I woke up.
I was normal at first.
Then people started disappearing.
I knew what was happening before anyone else did.”
Garrow looked directly at him, his eyes hollow.
“I left before I killed my family.”
“The hunger,” Ares said.
Garrow’s jaw tightened.
“You have it too?”
“Not like you.”
“Blood,” Garrow said, his voice cold.
“That’s what quiets mine.” He took a half-step sideways.
“Join us.
There are others like us out past the district.”
Ares’s eyes narrowed.
“How many?”
“Enough,” Garrow said.
“We take what we need.”
“No,” Ares said.
Garrow watched him.
“Vane trades people.”
“Yes.”
“I hunt them.”
“Sometimes.”
“I’m not doing either,” Ares said.
“Then what are you doing?”
“Building a camp.”
Garrow looked around at the ruined concrete walls, the sagging wire, the empty loading bays, then back at Ares.
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Children?
Women?
Families?” Garrow asked.
“Everyone?”
“If they reach my gate,” Ares said.
“My men will hunt them before they reach the valley.”
“If something happens to you,” Ares said, keeping his voice steady, “your daughter needs somewhere to go.”
Garrow’s hands twitched near his belt.
“You’re threatening my family?”
“No,” Ares said.
“I’m giving you an option.”
The silence between them stretched, thick and rigid.
A gust of wind rattled a loose sheet of tin on the warehouse roof, but neither man turned his head.
Garrow stood motionless, calculating, his breathing steady in the cold morning air.
Garrow shifted his weight back onto his heel.
“I’ll tell them,” Garrow said flatly.
“Tell them what?”
“Families go to you.
Children go to you,” Garrow said.
“They don’t touch them.”
“And the rest?” Ares asked.
Garrow looked at him, his expression unreadable.
“My people won’t cross the drainage ditch.
But you have one arm.
We both have power.”
“We both have power,” Ares said, his voice hard as iron.
“I choose what mine is for.”
Garrow stared at him for a long moment, then stepped toward the overgrown fence line.
He turned his head slightly before stepping into the gray brush.
“You can’t save everyone, Ares.”
“I can’t save everyone,” Ares said to his back.
“But I choose who comes through the gate.”
Garrow vanished into the thick scrub without making a sound.
Ares stood alone in the center of the yard until the wind died down.
His right shoulder burned, a dull, agonizing pulse beneath his bandages.
He turned back toward the depot.
The fence was broken in three places.
The water tanks were rusted through at the seams.
Half the storage bays had no doors.
Ares walked inside the bay.
He leaned his spear against a wooden crate, reached down with his left hand, and picked up a heavy, rusted length of steel pipe lying in the dirt.
He dragged it out into the yard and dropped it by the front gap in the perimeter fence.
Tomorrow, he would repair the wire.