Ashley’s “high-level supervision” was over.
The so-called high-level supervision had amounted to a single cell with a private bathroom and two extra pieces of meat in her meals each day.
Leon went to collect her himself.
The iron door swung open and Ashley walked out.
She’d changed into a clean prison uniform, her golden hair combed back without a single strand out of place.
There was no trace of defeat on her face.
She looked like she’d just come back from a short vacation.
“How do you feel?” Leon fell into step beside her as they walked the corridor back to Block C.
“The single bed was comfortable.
Just a bit boring.”
Her tone was easy, unbothered.
She glanced at Leon.
“Maria and Jessica — they’re okay?”
“They’re fine.”
“Thank you.” Soft, but completely sincere.
When they reached the entrance to Block C’s common area, the noise died.
Instantly, completely.
Every pair of eyes in the room turned toward them.
Fear.
Curiosity.
Scrutiny.
And underneath all of it, a flicker of something that couldn’t quite be called admiration , but wasn’t far off.
Ashley stopped walking.
Her gaze moved across the room without hurry.
The women who had once looked through her, or watched her with the detached amusement of spectators, now dropped their eyes one by one.
No one could hold her stare.
Maria and Jessica pushed through first.
Their faces were still a little pale.
But their eyes held something new , a clarity that hadn’t been there before.
“Ashley!”
No speeches.
No explanations.
They just moved to stand behind her, solid and still, like two sentinels who had finally found what they were guarding.
That single movement was a signal.
A few others stirred.
Women who had taken Ashley’s cigarettes, who had helped engineer the chaos in the cafeteria , they hesitated for half a second, then crossed the floor and took their place behind Maria and Jessica.
One.
Two.
Five.
The crowd reorganized itself in silence.
They were making a choice, and they were making it with their feet.
The ones who stayed put looked like rocks left stranded when the tide pulls back.
They stood isolated, expressions cycling through a series of calculations they were rapidly losing.
The power map of Block C settled into its new shape in the space of a minute.
The room didn’t breathe.
“Beds will be reassigned.”
“Maria handles all daily supply distribution.”
“Anyone have a problem with that?”
Silence.
No one did.
They watched Ashley standing at the center of the room, surrounded, and something about the moment made it impossible to see her as anything other than what she was.
Leon leaned in the shadow by the door, one corner of his mouth lifting.
He turned and left.
Block C didn’t need him anymore.
…
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He found an empty corner and answered.
Shane.
“Done.” Shane sounded exhausted, but underneath it, barely leashed excitement bled through.
“Everything’s ready, Leon.
That shit — we could open a goddamn Walmart.”
“I’ll text you the address.
Have them deliver tonight.” Leon meant Rick’s rental house.
“Tell them to unload in the yard.
No talking to anyone.
They leave the moment it’s done.”
“Got it.” A pause.
Then Shane couldn’t hold it back.
“That master of yours — when does he start treating Rick?”
“He already has.” Leon said it without a flicker of hesitation.
“He says Rick’s condition is unusual.
He needs to regulate the Qi with gentle methods first.
About a month.”
“Qi…”
Shane repeated the word like a man sounding out something in a foreign language.
He had no idea what it meant.
But the certainty in Leon’s voice was the kind you didn’t argue with, and Shane chose , again , to believe.
Leon hung up, checked his watch, and walked out of the prison.
He wanted to see the first loading of his doomsday ark with his own eyes.
…
The night was black past the windows.
The standalone wooden house on the edge of town showed only a faint slice of light.
Lee Mi-ju had just finished changing Rick’s nutrient bag when she heard engines in the yard , low and heavy.
She moved to the window.
Several large panel vans had stopped outside.
The doors opened and a handful of big, quiet men dropped to the ground.
Under the direction of one person, they began carrying crates into the house in a steady, wordless stream.
Leon was there too, standing back, watching.
Lee Mi-ju spotted him and felt some of the tension ease out of her chest.
Then she looked at the supplies.
They kept coming. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Box after box, filling the garage, spilling into the first-floor living room.
Her mouth slowly fell open.
The calm in her eyes gave way to something much larger.
This wasn’t a shopping run.
This was…
an apocalypse-grade stockpile.
Leon walked down to the basement.
The space had been cleared specifically for this , to receive the heaviest load.
What didn’t fit would go into empty rooms upstairs, the rest stacked in the yard.
“Give me a hand,” he said, behind her.
“Take inventory.”
A hundred thousand US dollars.
In 2010.
Before inflation broke anything, before the panic spread, in that last quiet window before the world changed.
It had bought three hundred cases of military MREs.
Enough to feed ten people for three full years.
Five hundred cases of canned goods , luncheon meat, canned peaches, everything in between.
Towers of compressed biscuits.
Pasta.
Rice.
Flour.
Beans in every variety.
Enough bottled water to fill a room, stacked beside two top-of-the-line reverse osmosis purifiers and hundreds of replacement filters.
Medical supplies formed their own mountain.
Potent antibiotics.
Painkillers.
Epinephrine.
A complete surgical instrument set.
Sutures, IV bags, and enough bandages and gauze to wrap a small army.
In the yard, a brand-new high-output diesel generator sat surrounded by twenty massive fuel drums, lined up in neat rows.
In the corner of the garage, still in factory packaging: a full solar panel array with a matching battery bank.
Tools , axes, entrenching shovels, complete electrical and carpentry kits, everything anyone could need.
Cases of lighters, matches, batteries, flashlights, high-tensile nylon rope.
And two full pallets of basic daily supplies.
When the last crate hit the basement floor and the big, quiet men drove their empty trucks away into the dark, the house was completely full.
Not just inside , the yard was buried under it too.
Lee Mi-ju stood before the accumulated mass of it all and said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
Leon’s face held a quiet, particular satisfaction.
“When you have time,” he said, “organize all of it.”
He patted the nearest crate , stacked with canned beef.
“I’ll pay you extra for it.”
“Every single item needs its own place.”
➤ Next: Frank is Dead