The smoke was still north.
Six people walked toward it through what had once been the Hollywood Hills. Now, they were just hills—massive, untamed, and aggressively green. The trail they followed used to be a road. Will could tell by the unnatural flatness beneath the overgrowth, the sweeping curves designed for vehicles rather than feet, and the occasional ghost of petrified asphalt pushing through the thick, wet moss. The air was suffocating, a heavy, sickeningly sweet mix of 100,000-year-old rot and morning humidity that glued their ash-stained clothes to their backs.
His fractured rib had settled into a steady, grinding ache. He managed it by breathing shallow, keeping his right arm pinned tightly against his side, and keeping his mouth shut.
Allison had drifted to his side somewhere in the last ten minutes. Nothing obvious. She just stayed close, using her improvised spear as a walking stick to keep weight off her bruised ankle, asking about the trail ahead with her voice pitched slightly lower than the wind required.
The dark-haired one, Khan said privately, the ancient conqueror's presence sliding smoothly across their synaptic bridge. She positions herself with intention.
She's just walking, Will thought back, stepping carefully over a massive, fossilized root system.
Men who believe women are just walking spend a great deal of time confused about their lives.
Allison asked whether his ribs were broken or bruised, tilting her head toward his right side. It was a perfectly practical, legitimate question.
She already knows the answer, Khan noted, the Sovereign's resonance thrumming with absolute certainty. She is not asking about your ribs.
Will told her they were probably just bruised. She nodded like this was vital tactical data and stayed exactly where she was.
Maddie started the interrogation ten minutes later. Maddie used small talk the way a scout uses binoculars. It was just information gathering with better manners.
"What zone were you in when the Tutorial ended?" Maddie asked, using her scavenged blade to hack a thick vine out of their path.
Will told her. Zone Seven. A corridor system that dumped into an open arena for the final wave. She had been in Zone Four, something that used to be a forest. Curtis volunteered his own details immediately, slightly too eager—the actor in him recognizing a scene he could play a part in. Don confirmed Curtis's story with the automatic loyalty of a guy who had spent years acting as a human echo chamber.
"Same structure, though," Will said, his boots squelching in the wet loam. "Wave one manageable. Wave two harder. Final wave designed to make sure not everyone—"
"Came out," Maddie finished, her voice flat.
"Seventeen went into ours," she said, her eyes locked dead ahead on the trail. "Eleven came out."
Will looked at the dense canopy of ancient oaks. "Eleven went into ours. Seven came out."
"Nobody over twenty in ours," Allison noted, her grip tightening on her spear.
"Same," Curtis agreed, wiping a permanent smear of ash from his forehead.
"Nobody under fifteen, either," Will added. "I checked."
"Old enough to fight," Allison said softly. "Young enough to still think it might be worth it."
"Young enough to be stupid about it," Maddie corrected, stepping over a rusted piece of metal that might have once been a street sign.
"We're all still alive," Will said.
Maddie glanced back at him, evaluating his battered, dirt-caked appearance. "Seven out of ten."
Even Curtis laughed at that, the sound sharp and desperate in the quiet jungle.
The trail narrowed where two ancient oaks had grown together, forcing them into single file. Allison went first. Will followed.
She glanced back over her shoulder. A routine trail check, completely legitimate. But her eyes found his and held a half-second longer than the terrain required.
Ah, Khan rumbled across the telepathic tether.
Don't start.
I said nothing.
You said 'Ah.' From you, that's a full paragraph.
I am a general. I survey the full landscape. It would be irresponsible not to.
The trail widened, and Allison dropped back into that ambiguous zone—not quite beside him, not quite behind. She asked about his [Luck] stat. She wanted to know if it felt like anything from the inside, or if it just showed up in the results.
Will answered more thoroughly than he intended to. There was something about the absolute quality of her attention that pulled the words out of him. He was entirely aware she was doing it, and he kept talking anyway.
"Honestly," Will said, pushing a low-hanging branch out of the way, "mostly it just shows up in the math. Things land strangely. Timing breaks my way. Half the time I don't know whether I did something smart, or if the world just tripped over itself trying to help."
Allison looked at him a little differently after that.
Maddie, walking four feet to Will's left with her eyes constantly scanning the hills, said absolutely nothing. She just filed it all away.
The blonde noticed, Khan said quietly.
I know.
Good.
They had spread into a loose, comfortable cluster, the adrenaline of the ambush finally wearing off. Allison waited for exactly the right lull in the conversation to strike.
"Curtis had the biggest crush on Maddie before all this," Allison said conversationally, as if they were sitting in a coffee shop instead of a prehistoric meat-grinder. "Like, genuinely embarrassing levels."
Maddie didn't react. She didn't even break stride.
"Allison," Curtis warned, his face flushing violently under the layer of dirt. "We are in a jungle."
"A hundred-thousand-year-old jungle," Allison countered, entirely unbothered. "Which means society's rules are dead, and I can finally talk about how you tried to trade three food rations for a plastic comb in the Tutorial just in case you ran into her."
Don couldn't help himself. "It was a really high-quality comb. And he talked about her literally every day. Every. Single. Day."
"Don!" Curtis snapped, looking wildly between his friend and Maddie's back.
"What? Everyone knew."
"Everyone knew," Maddie agreed, eyes still forward. "And for the record, Curtis, my investment strategy does not include hygiene products. I haven't brushed my hair in a week."
"I was just trying to be prepared," Curtis mumbled, staring fixedly at his ruined boots.
Nobody said a word. It was an entirely ridiculous standoff for people who had almost been eaten by mutated cats an hour ago.
He ran from her, Khan noted, analyzing the social dynamic with cold precision. Now he follows her. This is the oldest story.
Does it end well? Will asked privately.
That depends entirely on what he does next.
Curtis stared at the back of Maddie's head like a man running math, desperately hoping the numbers would change.
They crested a ridge, and the basin opened below them.
The grid of the old city was still there, faint but readable beneath the sprawling apocalypse. The 405 river caught the morning light and threw it back silver, rushing violently through a canyon of fossilized concrete. Farther out, whole sections of the basin had drowned under the weight of time. Entire city blocks were swallowed by dense forest, leaving long, straight corridors of old streets cutting sharply through the green canopy. The ocean to the west was a brilliant, painful blue. The mountains to the north were wild and completely unbothered by the end of the world.
Maddie stopped walking.
"This is Hollywood," she said quietly. Not really to anyone.
"Was," Allison corrected.
"Is." Maddie didn't look away. "It just got a renovation nobody asked for."
Will looked at the distant hillside. The iconic white sign was still there, though three letters were missing, the jagged remaining white metal choked by thick vines. He didn't let himself think about what lay buried under a hundred thousand years of healed earth below it. He filed the thought away next to the other things he couldn't afford to process yet.
"My agent's office was down there somewhere," Curtis said quietly, pointing vaguely toward a cluster of drowned skyscrapers.
Everyone looked at him.
"I was an actor. Before."
"That explains everything," Maddie said, adjusting her grip on her blade.
Don's loyal reflex kicked in immediately. "He had a callback for a Marvel thing right before—"
"Don," Maddie interrupted, turning to look at him fully. "Has there ever been a single moment in your life where your first opinion wasn't just Curtis's opinion on a slight delay?"
Don opened his mouth. Closed it. He slumped slightly against a petrified tree trunk, his legs trembling from the sheer exhaustion of the hike.
"He's my brother," Curtis said, surprising everyone. His voice was defensive, but hard. "He gets to."
The banter died. Don didn't argue, and Maddie just gave Curtis a single, appraising nod before turning back to the trail.
As the trail sloped downward and widened, the group spread out naturally.
Allison drifted close again. She wasn't asking about [Luck] this time. "Do you always listen when he talks to you?"
Will glanced at her. "Are you asking whether I take advice from the voice in my chest, or whether I answer him out loud in front of people?"
She almost smiled. "Either."
"Not always," Will said. "Just when he's right. Which is, unfortunately, often."
"Unfortunate for you, or everyone else?"
"Still gathering data."
"Eyes on the trail, both of you," Maddie called out without turning around.
"Good advice, generally," Allison murmured to the trail.
Behind them, just below confident audibility, Curtis and Don walked with their heads together. Their voices had dropped low. Will caught fragments drifting on the wind—his name, something about the group dynamic, and a hushed question shaped exactly like what do we do about... without the noun attached.
Don't get comfortable, Khan warned through the synaptic bridge.
I'm not.
You saved their lives. They have already finished being grateful and have started being strategic. Gratitude is brief, boy. Ambition is patient.
Will glanced back over his shoulder. Curtis and Don looked up at precisely the right moment, their casual smiles perfectly calibrated.
I know how these stories go, Will thought quietly.
Then you know the man who stops watching always finds out too late.
The smell reached them first. Woodsmoke, close now, layered with something cooking over an open fire—meat, something starchy, and a bitter scent that couldn't possibly be coffee but smelled desperately like it. It was domestic. It was the smell of people who had been in one place long enough to make it theirs.
They rounded a long bend in the trail, and the sound hit them like a physical wall. Voices.
A dozen at minimum, probably more. Overlapping conversations, rough laughter from somewhere to the left, and a single, sharp voice giving orders with the distinct tone of someone who expected to be obeyed.
Will stopped the group with a raised hand.
There was still a thick line of trees between them and the source. All they had was sound. Six survivors stood dead still in the overgrown hills, listening to absolute proof that they weren't alone.
"How many?" Maddie whispered, her hand drifting toward her scavenged gear.
"Dozen minimum. Probably more."
Allison stepped up close beside him. "Friendly?"
Will listened. The casual laughter. The recurring argument over the fire. The smell of hot food.
"Sounds human," Will said.
"So did we," Maddie replied coldly. "Twenty minutes before the monsters showed up."
In Will's chest, Khan went dead still. The ancient conqueror was giving the situation his undivided attention.
Someone is already organizing, Khan rumbled, an unfamiliar, sharp edge to his archaic voice. Someone got here before you, Will, and they have already started building.
Khan paused, his spectral gaze turning toward the dark corners of Will's mind. You think you are playing a game, boy. You think the System is a gift. It is a cage. And the things outside are finally starting to chew through the bars.
Will kept his eyes on the tree line.
How you enter a room you did not build, Khan added, tells everyone in it exactly who you are.
Then how do we walk in? Will asked.
Do not walk in there like a refugee. Walk like you were already planning to be here.
Will looked at Maddie. Her jaw was set. She was already running the exact same math.
Will lowered his hand, squared his shoulders, and pushed through the heavy curtain of hanging ferns.
The camp wasn't a haven. It was a contradiction.
Set against the backdrop of shattered, vine-choked Hollywood skyscrapers was a perimeter of blindingly stark, battery-powered floodlights. The beams cut through the gloom, illuminating a temporary forward operating base that looked entirely too clean for the meat-grinder of the surface.
There were eight guards in the camp. They wore matching, sterile white tactical armor made of high-density corporate polymers. The sleek, matte-black rifles slung across their chests were completely untouched by the dirt and ash that permanently coated Will and his group. Stenciled across the back of the nearest guard's pristine chest plate were the letters: P.A.C.I.F.I.C.
But the modern corporate aesthetic stopped at the equipment.
Arranged in the center of the camp, positioned carefully away from the barbecue pit, were the cages. They weren't high-tech containment units. They were brutal, rusted iron bars, crude and agonizing.
Inside the largest cage sat a massive man—easily six-foot-four, built like a brick wall, his arms shackled with heavy iron chains that had already rubbed his wrists raw and bleeding.
"Corporate slavers," Maddie whispered, the sitcom banter instantly evaporating. "Look at the branding. They brought that gear with them."
A standing army of bureaucrats, Khan's voice rumbled, dissecting the mercenary formation over the synaptic bridge. They organize their camp like frightened men. Look at the perimeter. Overlapping fields of fire on the south approach, but they blind themselves to the northern ridge with their own floodlights. They rely on the intimidation of their armor, not the discipline of their watch.
"There are eight of them," Don whispered, his hands starting to shake again. "Eight people with actual firearms. We have a rusted pipe and a pointy stick."
"We aren't fighting their guns," Will murmured, his eyes locking on a cluster of highly pressurized fuel canisters stacked carelessly near the roaring fire pit.
You cannot charge a line of rifles, boy, Khan warned. You need a Vanguard. Someone to draw the eye. A distraction that demands their immediate violence while you exploit the flank.
Will looked to his left. Maddie was staring down at the mercenary camp. Her jaw was locked in dark, adrenaline-fueled anticipation. She didn't look like a refugee; she looked like someone ready to break the world back.
"Maddie," Will said quietly.
She snapped her gaze to him.
"I need you to draw their fire," Will said, offering no clean solutions. "I need three seconds of them looking at you instead of the tree line. If I miss the throw, they're going to shoot you."
Curtis looked horrified. "Are you insane?"
Maddie shifted her grip on her blade. She looked at the giant bleeding in the cage, then at the heavily armed corporate mercenaries, and finally at Will.
"Three seconds," Maddie confirmed, her voice a deadpan, lethal calm. "Don't miss the throw, Will. I'd hate to have to haunt you."
Will hefted the heavy piece of scavenged masonry in his hand. Structure, Khan murmured approvingly. Trust.
"Go," Will said.