The wind howled outside, raking over the rusted walls of the pump station like a wild dog trying to claw its way in. Inside, silence pressed on us, thick and uncertain.
Charles was alive.
That truth didn't land like hope. It landed like a warning.
I stared at Rey, trying to read past the blood on her face and the rasp in her breath. Her eyes didn't flinch. She believed it. Believed it enough to get chained and beaten for it.
"You're sure?" I said.
"Yes," she croaked. "Name, face, records. Transfer logs. They have him."
Ava paced the far side of the room, hands on her hips. "This is suicide," she muttered. "Even if it's true. Sector 12's blacklisted, off every map. You don't sneak into a place like that. You vanish into it."
I watched her. She wasn't angry. Not really. She was scared.
"Then we don't sneak," I said. "We break the door off its hinges."
Ava snorted. "Oh sure. Let's just stroll into a secure Federation vault with knives and bad attitudes. That'll work."
Rey sat up straighter. "It's not just a vault. It used to be a corporate blacksite. Pre-Fed. I pulled fragments—schematics, logs, personnel rosters. Half the facility's offline. Automated systems still run some security, but it's not fully occupied."
Ava crossed her arms. "And you got all this from where, exactly?"
"Old cache node in a desert relay tower. Federation never wiped the deeper layers. It's like they forgot it existed."
I moved to the table and cleared the junk, laying out the brittle map she'd stolen. Sector 12 looked like a maze of reinforced tunnels, cooling chambers, drone corridors, and a central vault labeled "Deep Reserve."
"That's where they've got him," Rey said, pointing. "I think they're keeping him in cryo. Not dead. Not awake."
Ava leaned over it. "There's only one viable entry—the maintenance chute here." She tapped a service tunnel marked in faint blue. "Flooded in some places, but navigable."
"And once we're in?" I asked.
Rey pulled a separate scrap of paper from her satchel—smaller, more detailed. "We'll hit the second level. Surveillance is clustered there. If we knock it out, the rest of the base will be blind for a window. Fifteen minutes, maybe less."
"Long enough," I muttered.
Ava gave me a sharp look. "You planning on bringing an army in those fifteen minutes?"
"No," I said. "Just us. In and out. Silent."
"You're out of your damn mind," she said, but there was a spark in her voice now. The old Ava—reckless, sharp, always one step from setting fire to the world.
I glanced at Rey. "You said they're experimenting with cryo there. That means labs. Data."
She nodded. "And blackmail. Blueprints, names, hidden Fed movements. I saw traces. If we pull it, we don't just save Charles. We hit them where it hurts."
I looked between the two of them. "Then we don't have time to wait. We gear up. We hit Deadman's Market by morning."
Ava scoffed. "You really think Scorch is still there?"
"If he's alive, he'll trade for information. And if he's not..." I shrugged. "We find someone who is."
Rey stood, wavering. Her legs buckled, but she caught herself against the wall. "I can move."
"Barely," Ava said, stepping forward. "You go down in that chute and we all die."
"I'm not staying behind," Rey growled.
"You don't have to," I cut in. "You're coming with us to the market. After that, we'll decide."
Ava's lip curled, but she didn't argue.
I packed the maps and secured my knife. Rey grabbed what was left of her satchel, and Ava double-checked her sidearm. The tension between them was still thick—two different flames, both burning hot.
As we stepped out into the night, the stars above us were faint, drowned by a wall of windblown sand. The city ruins stretched out before us like bones reaching for the sky.
"You really think we'll find him?" Rey asked quietly.
I looked out into the wasteland, where old highways disappeared beneath dunes and the sky never quite stopped bleeding.
"No," I said. "I know we will."
---
The trek to Deadman's Market started before the sun even had the decency to rise.
We moved in silence through the ruins, our boots whispering over broken stone and powdered glass. Rey limped but kept pace. Ava was five steps ahead, rifle in hand, eyes scanning for movement.
No one spoke.
You don't waste breath out here unless you're trying to die faster.
The market was nestled in the remains of an old metro hub—half-buried under centuries of sand and radiation-poisoned wind. Scavengers, raiders, and black-market brokers called it home. They had a rule: you don't start a war in the market.
But rules are only as strong as the people willing to enforce them. And Deadman's Market hadn't had an enforcer in years.
By the time we saw the first watch fires flickering against the early dawn haze, Rey was nearly dragging one leg. Ava stopped just inside the ridge line, crouched low behind a rusted freeway sign.
"There," she muttered, pointing toward the collapsed platform.
A rust-colored flag fluttered above the central ruins—three slashes painted across it in white. Scorch's symbol.
He was still here.
"Stay close," I said. "Don't make eye contact unless you want to get followed out."
Rey nodded, jaw tight. Ava didn't answer—just led the way down the slope into the belly of the dead city.
The market smelled like fire, oil, and piss.
Tents made of car doors and repurposed shipping tarps lined the walkways. Generators hummed in the corners. Traders barked in a dozen dialects. Old-world tech, scrap parts, ammo, rations—it all changed hands here for water, blood, or worse.
We found Scorch's den near the old ticket counter.
He looked worse than I remembered—half his face burned to scar tissue, cybernetic jaw twitching with every word he spat at his latest customer.
But his eyes still worked.
They locked on me the second I entered, and he barked a laugh so loud it cut through the crowd.
"Well shit," he said. "I thought the desert finally chewed you up. Or maybe Ava did."
Ava raised a middle finger without a word.
He beckoned us closer. "Come to trade, or just passing through?"
"Need info," I said. "And gear."
He leaned back. "Expensive things, those. What's in it for me?"
I glanced at Rey, then back to him.
"You ever hear of Sector 12?"
The smile vanished from his face.
And just like that, the market got quiet.