The air outside the Walden Hotel didn't smell like freedom yet; it smelled like cordite, old grease, and the collective anxiety of one thousand five hundred people holding their breath.
When the Fortress Four team stepped onto the veranda_ dust-covered, blood-streaked, but very much alive_ the silence snapped. Sunshine didn't even have to say the words. The absence of the Walden mercenaries, those overseers who treated the residents like a low-yield crop, was enough.
"It's over!" Sunshine shouted, her voice raspy. "Mark Walden is gone. The territory is under new management, the fortress four management."
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, a roar of cheers that rattled the cracked windows of the hotel. People hugged strangers; some fell to their knees. But the jubilation was short-lived.
A middle-aged woman with hands calloused from hard labor pushed through the crowd, her eyes searching Sunshine's face with a desperate, terrifying hope.
