By midday, the skyline ahead began to change.
Most of the ruins they'd passed were skeletal—half-collapsed residential blocks, crumbling office towers, streets clogged with rusted cars and silence.
But now they stood before an old commercial plaza, its signage warped by heat, letters hanging by threads. A faded logo of a grocery chain was barely visible across the cracked windows.
Ava squinted at it.
"This your supermarket?"
Lucas smiled like a cat with a mouse already in its mouth.
"Military used them as drop points early on. Supply caches. Some were decoys, some real. This one's legit."
"How do you know?"
"Because it's not marked on the official maps, but there's still satellite shadow data showing movement in and out of this block long after the fall."
"That sounds like something you weren't supposed to access."
"Almost everything I know is something I wasn't supposed to access."
Ava raised an eyebrow.
"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"
Lucas grinned wider.
