The wagon ahead hit a rut and Nadia’s hand went to the rifle before she caught herself.
Old reflex.
Inside the wall you watched the wheels because a breakdown meant delays and delays meant questions and questions meant someone sorting you back down where you’d started.
Out here the wagon just rolled through and nobody cared.
She rode drag on Elias’s order, last position, eyes on the road behind them.
Smart placement for the new hand who might run, or might bring trouble.
She would’ve done the same.
The pack between her shoulders carried three days’ hardtack, the stamped bill folded small in the inner pocket, and a loaded spare magazine she hadn’t mentioned.
The weight felt like the only honest thing she’d brought.
Priya rode the wagon ahead, half-turned to watch her.
Testing.
Nadia let her look.
She’d been watched her whole life by people deciding what tier she deserved.
One more set of eyes didn’t change the count.
The Commonwealth sorted you at intake.
Lower, mid, upper, decided by which side of the wall you were born on, who your parents knew, whether the registrar liked your face.
They gave you a band and a number and a floor you weren’t supposed to fall through.
Nadia had worn hers for six years.
Marisol still wore hers, mid-tier, proud of it, believing the ladder was real.
Marisol, who’d looked at Nadia the day she cut the band off like she’d cut her own throat.
The forest thinned and the road widened and the convoy slowed for the crossing Elias had logged yesterday.
Nadia scanned the tree line as she’d once scanned Commonwealth checkpoints: find the watcher, mark the exit, know who’s armed.
Nobody.
Just trees and a cold ford and Cassius up front testing the depth with a stick like they had all the time in the world.
Inside the wall you moved on the registrar’s schedule or you didn’t move.
Out here they stopped for a stick.
The first wagon crossed.
Then the second.
Priya’s wagon lurched into the ford and Nadia followed, water to the hubs, the horse snorting cold.
Halfway across Priya called back without turning.
“You always ride that tight?”
Nadia’s voice went flat.
“Tight keeps you alive.”
“Tight makes the horse nervous. Relax or you’ll spook her.”
“I’ve ridden worse water than this.”
“Didn’t ask what you’ve ridden. Asked why you’re sitting a horse like it’s about to turn on you.” Priya glanced back, quick, reading her the way Nadia read checkpoints.
“Nobody’s chasing you out here.”
“Old habit.”
“Bad one, out here.” Priya faced forward again.
“Break it before it breaks a horse under you.”
She didn’t relax.
The horse steadied anyway once they hit the far bank, and Priya didn’t say anything else, which felt like the start of a test Nadia wasn’t sure she’d passed.
By midday they stopped to water the horses and Elias walked the line checking axles.
When he reached her wagon he crouched by the wheel, ran his hand along the rim, then stood and met her eyes.
“Good pace,” he said.
“You’ve done this before.”
“I’ve done a lot of things.”
“Which ones bring you to riding drag for wooden chits?”
“The kind that ran out of better options.”
“Fair enough.” A pause, weighing whether to spend the next question.
He didn’t.
“You’ll get paid same as anyone at the end of the run. Trial or not.”
“I know what you told me.”
“I know you know. I’m saying it again anyway.” He didn’t press further.
Didn’t ask.
Just nodded and moved to the next wagon, and Nadia watched him go, the stamped bill sitting in her pocket like proof of exactly what men with smooth words actually wanted.
She’d set the trap that morning.
Small.
Invisible.
The kind that caught you if you weren’t watching.
Elias had logged her hardtack ration in his tally, three days’ worth, standard issue.
She’d taken four.
Slipped the extra brick into her pack while his back was turned, quiet as breathing, and waited to see if he’d notice the count short when he inventoried tonight.
If he did and said nothing, he was running the same scam as the Commonwealth, just with wooden chits instead of stamps.
If he didn’t notice at all, he was careless.
Either way she’d know.
The convoy rolled through low country, grey sky pressing close, and Nadia’s mind wouldn’t stay on the road. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
It kept going back.
The wall.
The sorting.
The day the registrar told her the broker job was mid-tier work and she should be grateful they’d bumped her up from the loader docks.
Marisol’s face when Nadia made mid.
Proud.
Relieved.
Like the band meant safety and not just a slower way to fall.
They’d believed it together for two years.
Then Nadia had started running supply routes outside the wall and seen what the stamps bought when no one was watching.
Seen the Commonwealth’s licensed contractors shake down settlements for “taxes” that never reached the city.
Seen the lower-tier workers sorted down for asking why the medicine ran out while the upper-tier clinics stayed stocked.
She’d gone back and told Marisol.
Marisol hadn’t wanted to hear it.
“The band means something,” Marisol had said, arms crossed, refusing to look at her.
“The ladder’s real, Nadia. You’re going to get us both reassigned asking questions like that.”
“The ladder’s not real. It’s rope, and they’re the ones holding the other end.”
Marisol hadn’t answered that.
She’d just walked away holding the same argument she always held: that the floor was real, that the tier meant safety, that asking why the medicine ran out was the reckless thing and not the medicine running out.
Nadia had cut the band off a week later and walked out the gate with a rifle and the clothes she’d been wearing.
Marisol hadn’t come.
Marisol had called her a coward for running and begged her to stay in the same breath, and Nadia had left anyway because staying meant sorting and sorting meant dying slow while you pretended the floor was real.
But Marisol was still inside.
Still mid-tier.
Still believing.
The thought sat in Nadia’s chest like a stone she couldn’t spit out.
By evening they camped in a clearing Cassius called secure and Nadia called exposed, but nobody asked her opinion so she kept it.
Elias built the fire.
Priya cooked something that smelled better than it had any right to.
The band, Hands, Elias called them, like the word meant something, settled in with the easy rhythm of people who’d done this enough to stop thinking about it.
Nadia sat apart with her back to a tree and her rifle across her knees and watched Elias log the day’s run in his tally.
He was methodical.
Wrote every name, every load, every mile.
When he reached her line he paused, and Nadia’s hand tightened on the stock.
He logged three days’ hardtack.
Standard issue.
Moved on.
“That’s short,” Nadia said, before she could stop herself.
“I count four you handed me this morning.”
Elias didn’t look up from the book.
“Four’s what goes to every rider this run. I logged three against your name because that’s the trial rate you’re owed. Difference is mine to eat, not yours to carry.”
“You’re shorting yourself on paper to pay me extra, and not telling anyone.”
“Wasn’t planning on making a speech about it.” He capped the pencil.
“Eat the extra brick. Don’t make it a thing.”
She’d taken four.
He’d counted four into her hand that morning and logged three in the book.
The trap had sprung backward.
He’d overpaid her and logged it honest so she wouldn’t know, and the realization hit her like cold water.
He hadn’t skimmed.
He’d padded.
Priya brought her a bowl of something that wasn’t beans and wasn’t quite stew and sat down on the log beside her without asking.
Nadia took the bowl and didn’t look at her.
“You staying past the trial?” Priya asked.
“Haven’t decided.”
“He overpaid your ration this morning. You know that, right?”
Something in Nadia went rigid.
“I know.”
“He does that. Thinks nobody notices. Cassius yells at him for it twice a week.” Priya ate a spoonful, shrugged.
“If you’re waiting for the catch, you’re going to be waiting a while. He’s just like that.”
“Nobody’s just like anything.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a fact instead of a scar.” Priya tipped her chin toward Nadia’s left wrist, where the sleeve had ridden up over the pale tan-line.
“That from a band?”
“Doesn’t matter where I’m from.”
“Didn’t ask where you’re from. Asked what marked you.” Priya wasn’t unkind about it, just steady, the way you’d press a bruise to see how deep it went.
“You watch him log the tally like you’re waiting for the number to lie. Whatever taught you that, it wasn’t learned out here.”
“Inside a wall. A long time ago.” Nadia kept her voice flat, giving up exactly nothing more.
“Figured.” Priya didn’t push for the rest.
“He’ll disappoint you eventually. Everybody does. Probably not about the hardtack, though.”
“We’ll see.”
Priya stood, took her bowl, and walked back to the fire without another word.
Nadia sat in the dark with her rifle and her stolen hardtack brick and the memory of Marisol’s face the day she’d left, and hated how much she wanted Priya to be right.
Inside the wall, a promise was a stamp.
Somebody with power said it was worth something, so it was, until the day they said it wasn’t.
She’d lived that.
Survived it.
Built her cynicism like armor because the Commonwealth had taught her that every word was backed by leverage, not honesty, and trusting anything else got you sorted down or dead.
But Elias had given her four days’ hardtack and logged three.
He’d passed a test he didn’t know she’d set, and the only reason to do that was if fairness was reflex and not performance.
If his word was the thing itself and not the wrapper around a hook.
Across the fire Cassius said something low and Elias laughed, and the sound carried wrong, too easy, too warm, like a man who didn’t know the world was a sorting line and everyone on it was looking for the angle.
Nadia had come here to confirm this was a scam.
To find the catch so she could stop hoping there wasn’t one.
She’d set her trap and he’d walked through it backward and now she was sitting in the dark with a choice she hadn’t expected to have to make.
She could walk.
The trial was one haul and she’d done it.
The road was open, same as he’d said.
Take the hardtack, take the rifle, disappear into the grey country and never think about wooden chits or checkable words again.
Or she could stay.
Not because she trusted him.
Not yet.
But because if this was real, if fairness could survive without a wall or a stamp or a man with a gun backing it, then maybe there was leverage here.
Maybe there was a way to reach Marisol.
Maybe the thing she’d been calling a fairy tale was just a road she hadn’t walked yet.
Nadia pulled the stamped bill from her pocket and turned it over in her hands.
Commonwealth issue.
Backed by nothing but Pamela Milton’s word, which was backed by walls and guns and the threat of sorting.
Worth exactly what the registrar said it was worth, until the day it wasn’t.
She folded it small and put it back.
Kept it like a splinter.
Like proof of what promises looked like when power was the only thing holding them up.
Then she pulled her bedroll from her pack, laid it out apart from the others, and made the decision she’d been fighting since the burned rest-stop.
She’d stay.
One more day.
One more run.
Not because she trusted Elias Okonkwo or his wooden money or his checkable Word.
Because she wanted to.
And that, for a woman who’d survived by trusting nothing, was the most dangerous thing she’d found on this road.
Across the fire, Elias logged the last line in his tally.
He paused before he closed the book, pencil hovering over her line like the count itself might still catch him out.
“Sleep near the fire if you want,” he said, not looking up.
“Ground’s warmer close in.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Didn’t say you wouldn’t.” He closed the book.
“Just said you don’t have to prove anything by freezing on principle.”
“Is that a Waymarket policy? Free advice nobody asked for?”
“Just an Elias policy. New Hands freeze, I lose a day training someone else to run drag. Purely selfish, if that helps you take it.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Didn’t figure it would.” He stood, knees popping, and looked down at where she’d already laid the bedroll apart from the others.
“For what it’s worth, staying’s not the same as owing anybody anything. You can leave in the morning and the trial still counts as passed.”
“I know how trials work.”
“Figured you did.” He didn’t push it further than that.
She didn’t answer that.
He didn’t wait for one.
He banked the fire and settled in like her staying or leaving, tonight and every night after, was her choice and not his concern, and Nadia hated him a little for making it that easy.
The stamped bill sat in her pocket.
Marisol sat behind the wall.
And Nadia lay down in the cold with her rifle and her stolen hardtack and the first crack in a cynicism she’d built to survive, wondering if fairness without a floor was the trick or the truth, and knowing she wouldn’t leave until she’d found out.