The glass door gave a soft, reluctant sigh when Kyle pulled it open, as if the shop itself didn’t want to make room for anyone’s nerves.

  Afternoon light poured through the strip mall’s front windows in wide, clean sheets. It made the posters in the glass look loud: SALE blocks, stylized silhouettes, bright promises of control and certainty. Kyle paused just long enough for the angle of the sun to catch his reflection--pale face, neutral mouth, eyes that looked too awake--and then he stepped inside before he could talk himself into leaving.

  The air hit him first. Not oil or smoke the way his imagination had kept insisting. Recycled, filtered, lightly chemical. Clean enough to feel deliberate. The kind of air that had been turned over so many times it had forgotten where it came from.

  Then the bars.

  Thick metal bars, already there, already watching. Not just across the entrance--across the inside of the front windows too, an afterthought to daylight. They ran parallel and close, making the bright world outside look segmented, like a view through a cage.

  His chest tightened anyway.

  Months, he thought. Months of rehearsing this in his head. Months of telling himself that it was stupid to be afraid of a counter and a conversation. Months of hearing Ethan’s voice in memory--confident, casual, unbothered by the idea of other people.

  Just show up. It’s easy. You’ll like it.

  Ethan had said it when he still lived in San Diego, before Austin. Before the move made his advice feel like something mailed in from a different life. Ethan had been Alice’s brother, loud in the way Kyle was not, the type who could talk to strangers and leave with a friend’s number without seeming like he was trying. He’d been the one to take Kyle out for beers once, lean across the table, and say that stress didn’t come out of you on its own. You had to give it somewhere to go.

  “A range,” Ethan had said, like he was naming a restaurant. “RangeSafe. You’ll be fine. You’ll love it, dude. You just stand there and do the thing. It’s… it’s clean. It’s straightforward.”

  Straightforward had been the hook. Kyle’s life worked best when things were straightforward.

  At NexPath, nothing was.

  It wasn’t that the work was impossible. The systems made sense. The failures had causes. You could trace them. You could isolate them. You could fix them. But the people--meetings that went in circles, vague directives, shifting priorities delivered as if they’d always been the priorities--those were the parts that ate him from the inside. The days weren’t physically hard. They were mentally abrasive. Hours of pretending he understood what the room wanted from him before the room said it.

  He’d come home with his jaw sore from holding it in place.

  Alice had tried, in her way. She’d suggested exercise, something that burned the frustration out. She’d said it with that crisp practicality she used when she was trying not to sound worried. Go run. Go lift. Go hit a heavy bag. Kyle had tried. The effort felt like punishment, not relief. His body didn’t turn anger into calm. It turned exertion into irritation.

  The range had seemed different in his head. A set of rules. A target. A defined outcome. No interpretation required.

  Alice had made her boundary clear: no gun in the house. Kyle hadn’t argued. He didn’t want one in the house either. He didn’t want something that would sit in a drawer and become part of their domestic inventory, another object with emotional weight it didn’t need. But a range--controlled, supervised, something he could do and then leave behind--had sounded plausible enough that even she had nodded after a day of thinking about it.

  Try it, she’d said. Just… be safe. And don’t buy anything.

  Kyle’s gaze moved through the shop, cataloging the way he always did when a place felt unfamiliar. Frozen yogurt next door, bridal seamstress on the other side--he’d seen the signs walking up, and the contrast had registered as absurd. Romance, sugar, and guns stacked side by side in a “nicer than normal” strip mall like someone had planned it for a joke.

  Inside, the shop was bright and clean and arranged in rows. Shelves filled with accessories--cleaning kits, holsters, ear protection, targets, solvents--created narrow aisles that forced proximity. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like the fact that he would have to walk past people with only inches to spare and pretend that his body wasn’t bracing for collision.

  The counter sat opposite the entrance, spanning the wall’s length. Behind it, firearms lined the back wall in controlled displays: pistols in orderly ranks, hunting rifles and shotguns angled like museum pieces. The sheer amount of metal made his mouth dry, not from fear of being shot but from the awareness of seriousness. Every object behind that counter had consequences built into it.

  There were a few patrons. Not a crowd. Enough to make it feel real.

  Kyle forced himself to move.

  His footsteps sounded too sharp on the floor, each one a small announcement. He kept his hands loose at his sides, resisting the urge to fold them into himself. His eyes tracked the counter, the employees, the customers. Two staff members were engaged--one with paperwork, one hauling boxes of ammunition from below the counter. Their voices were low, professional, practiced.

  Kyle stopped near--near--the counter without actually stepping up to it. Close enough to be seen. Far enough to pretend he wasn’t demanding attention.

  He waited.

  His pulse sat high in his throat. The familiar sensation: like his body had interpreted “small talk” as “threat.” His face stayed neutral, the way it always did when he tried to hide discomfort. He’d learned early that his expression didn’t reliably match what he felt, and people sometimes read neutrality as disinterest. He preferred that to panic.

  A minute passed. Maybe less. Time felt thick in his head.

  From the far back corner, a heavy fire door sat inset into the wall, its small glass window darkened by distance. Behind it came muffled pops--contained, rhythmic, faintly percussive. The range. The reason he’d done this at all.

  The door buzzed.

  A heavy click followed, loud in the shop’s bright quiet. Then the door swung inward.

  A woman stepped out from the range, and the smell changed for a moment--faint gunpowder, a sharp metallic tang that vanished as the door began to close. She didn’t guide it. She let it swing.

  It slammed.

  The sound was hard enough to make Kyle flinch. His shoulders jumped before he could stop them. One of the customers did too. The staff member nearest the range door snapped his head up with a look that carried irritation and familiarity at once.

  “Sam,” he said, reproach in a single syllable.

  The woman lifted her hands in a loose apology. “Sorry,” she said, but her voice didn’t carry much guilt. More habit than regret.

  She walked behind the counter, moving with the ease of someone who belonged there. Jeans, short-sleeved button-front shirt. Her arms were bare, inked with fine-line ivy that wound down her forearms in intricate loops. Kyle’s eyes caught on the tattoos because details were safer than people. He registered the darker shape of more ink higher up under her collar--something broader, concealed. She didn’t look like the version of a gun shop employee Kyle had assembled in his head over the last few months. She looked like someone who had decided what she was and didn’t care if strangers approved. Calm, plain-spoken, steady--the kind of presence that made other people adjust around it without realizing.

  She found an open space behind the counter and turned toward Kyle as if she’d felt him waiting rather than seen him. Her gaze landed on him, direct but not invasive.

  “Hey,” she said, easy. “Did you need something?”

  Kyle’s heart stuttered.

  His brain did its usual thing: a brief lag as it tried to choose the correct response from a file folder of possible scripts. He could feel the beat of silence stretching. He could see it happening--her watching him, the second ticking past that would become awkward if he didn’t fill it.

  His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

  He stepped forward to cover the pause with movement. He’d learned that people interpreted movement as intention, even if the intention was just “keep going.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and the word came out flatter than he meant. He forced his voice into something closer to normal. “Um. I--this is my first time here.”

  Sam’s expression didn’t change in a way he could immediately decode, but her posture softened a fraction. Not pity. Not impatience. More like recognition.

  “Range or shop?” she asked.

  “Range,” Kyle said quickly, relieved by the clarity of the question. “I--someone recommended it. Ethan. He used to come here a lot. Alice’s brother.”

  Sam nodded as if names weren’t important, only categories. “Got it. First time shooting, or first time here?”

  Kyle hesitated. The truth felt embarrassing in his mouth.

  “First time shooting,” he said. Then, because he couldn’t leave it alone, because honesty tended to spill out of him under stress, he added, “I’ve been trying to come in for a while.”

  Sam’s eyes flicked over him--his hands, his stance, the way he held himself like he was trying not to take up space. It wasn’t judgment. It looked like assessment, like a bartender reading a room.

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s not uncommon.”

  Kyle’s shoulders lowered a fraction without his permission.

  Sam leaned her forearms on the counter, ivy tattoos folding with the motion. “You have any gear? Ear pro, eye pro?”

  “No.” Kyle cleared his throat. “I don’t own anything. Also--” He stopped, then pushed through. “I’m not buying a gun.”

  Sam’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “We don’t require you to buy a gun.”

  “It’s not--” Kyle felt heat in his face. “It’s just… my girlfriend doesn’t want one in the house. And I don’t, either. I just… want to try the range.”

  “Totally fine,” Sam said. No judgment. No surprise. Just a clean acceptance. “We do rentals. We’ll set you up with something manageable. We also do a safety brief before you go in.”

  Kyle nodded, a little too quickly. “Yes. That’s--good.”

  Sam reached under the counter and pulled out a clipboard with forms, sliding it toward him with a pen. “Basic waiver and lane rental. I can walk you through it if you want.”

  Kyle stared at the paper. Text, boxes, signatures. Concrete. He could do concrete. He took the pen and began filling it in, careful, methodical. His hand trembled slightly at first, then steadied.

  While he wrote, Sam didn’t hover. She didn’t crowd him with attention. She glanced toward the other employees, toward the customers, toward the range door, keeping track of the space like it was her job to hold it stable. Kyle appreciated that more than he could explain. It gave him room to exist without feeling watched.

  When he finished, he slid the clipboard back.

  Sam checked it quickly. “All right. Kyle, yeah?”

  “Kyle Evans,” he said, because full names felt correct in paperwork contexts.

  Sam’s eyes lifted again, and this time Kyle noticed something else: the steadiness in her gaze wasn’t aggression. It was the kind of steadiness that meant she didn’t need to perform friendliness to prove she wasn’t a threat.

  “Okay, Kyle,” she said. “You got any concerns before we go in? Noise bothers you? Crowds? You want a lane further from other people?”

  Kyle’s throat tightened. The fact that she’d named the thing--crowds, noise--felt uncomfortably precise. Like she’d seen the outline of his anxiety without him giving it a label.

  “I… yeah,” he said carefully. “Noise is fine. I have ear protection, right. But--” He swallowed. “I’d prefer not to be next to someone.”

  Sam nodded as if he’d requested a seat away from the bathroom in a restaurant. “We can do that.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Kyle’s lungs loosened. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding air.

  Sam reached under the counter again, pulling out a set of earmuffs and clear safety glasses, setting them down like standard kit. “These are yours for the session. We’ll do a quick brief. I’m one of the range managers, so I’ll get you set up.”

  “Kyle,” she added, and her voice went slightly drier, slightly more honest, “if you’re here because you’re stressed, the first ten minutes can feel worse. New place, new rules, loud environment. But once you’re on the lane and it’s just you and the target, it usually evens out.”

  Kyle blinked. The words landed cleanly in his chest. Not reassurance as a performance. Just information.

  “Okay,” he said. He meant it. The sound of his own voice didn’t feel as foreign now.

  Sam gathered the gear, then paused with it in her hands. For a second, she looked at him--really looked--like she was making sure he understood that he had agency here.

  “You can stop at any point,” she said. “No one’s going to be mad at you.”

  Kyle nodded once. Slow. “Good.”

  A beat passed.

  Kyle felt something in himself shift--small, but real. The part of him that had been braced for humiliation eased its grip. The shop was still bright and barred and full of objects that carried weight, but the conversation had not been a trap. He hadn’t misstepped into ridicule. He hadn’t been punished for being uncertain.

  He looked at Sam and let his face move the way it wanted to.

  A cautious smile, more in the eyes than the mouth.

  Sam saw it--and her own expression answered without effort, a grin flickering across her face like a reflex she hadn’t bothered to hide.

  They smiled at each other, and for a moment the shop’s bars and glass and posters didn’t matter at all.

  ---

  Morning in the bunker didn’t arrive the way it used to. No pale light seeped around curtains. No distant traffic softened into routine. There was only the metal tube holding its own temperature, holding its own smell, and the weak LED that made the air look thick.

  Kyle lay on his back on the wool blanket between the bunks, eyes open long before he moved. The single diode on the hanging lamp picked out the underside of the upper bunks and the edges of the clutter he’d shoved aside last night--packs bunched near the ladder chamber, stray batteries that had rolled out of their torn bag, a can turned on its side in the aisle as if it had tried to escape and given up. The bulkhead door still stood open to the front chamber, a darker rectangle where the ladder rose into the roof of the world. In that direction the bunker always felt narrower, like the air knew which way led out.

  Sam slept on Kyle’s usual lower bunk to the left. She was on her side, knees drawn in slightly, boots still on. Her hands were near her chest, not clenched, not relaxed--placed. Trish was sprawled on the opposite bunk, facedown and diagonal, one arm hanging off the edge. The cleared space around her looked wrong in the bunker, like an empty shelf in a store after a rush.

  Kyle listened to their breathing. Three tempos last night had felt like an invasion. Now it felt like proof that something had changed, even if he didn’t know what to do with it.

  He tried to sit up and realized his shoulders were stiff from sleeping on the floor. He rolled carefully and pushed himself to his feet without making the bunk frames rattle. His movements were economical. Not quiet as performance--quiet as habit.

  At the pantry shelves in the back, he stood for a moment and looked at his inventory like it was a spreadsheet he could stabilize by staring. The grid of cans was still mostly intact. Water containers sat in their ranks. Propane cylinders didn’t move unless he moved them.

  He reached up and pulled down two cans that were set farther back, behind more common things--beans, corn, soup. The cans were heavier than the others in a way that wasn’t weight so much as meaning. He turned one, reading the label by the lamp’s thin light: peaches.

  He hadn’t thought about peaches in months. He hadn’t thought about “treats” in months. Food had become categories: calories, salt, shelf life. Fruit lived in his head as a memory that belonged to before. But the sight of those cans now--bright label scuffed, metal unrusted--made a small, unpleasant pinch happen behind his sternum. Not longing. Something closer to regret. The kind that didn’t have a direction.

  He set the cans on the fold-down table and grabbed two bottles of water from the shelf below. Then he hesitated, looked back at the pantry, and added a third bottle. He told himself it was practical. Three people. Symmetry.

  He carried everything to the table and clicked the lamp up one notch. The bunker brightened just enough to show dirt on fabric, sweat-darkened seams, and the faint smear of dried blood still on his jeans from yesterday that he hadn’t dealt with because there had been other priorities. He sat on the bench and waited.

  Trish woke first, the way she came into most things--sudden, animated, as if sleep had been a brief interruption she resented. She pushed up on her elbows, hair tangled, eyes blinking hard against the light.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, then looked around as if expecting the ceiling to be different. When her gaze landed on Kyle, she froze for a second, recalibrating. Then her eyes dropped to the table.

  Her mouth opened a little.

  “Is that--” She sat up fully, boots scraping on metal. “No way.”

  Sam stirred on the other bunk and rolled to her back. She didn’t sit up right away. Her eyes opened and fixed on the ceiling, then slid toward Kyle, then toward Trish, taking inventory in the same controlled sequence she’d used last night when the world had been sharp and dangerous. Only when she saw the cans did her face change.

  Not dramatically. Just a small loosening in her brow that looked almost like disbelief.

  Kyle cleared his throat. The sound felt too loud.

  “Breakfast,” he said. Then, because silence made him nervous and he didn’t know what expression belonged on his face, he added, “It’s… fine. It’s just canned.”

  Trish swung her legs off the bunk and moved to the table like the cans might disappear if she waited. Sam sat up more slowly, rubbing her eyes once with the heel of her hand. She stood, rolled her shoulders, and came over.

  Kyle slid a can toward each of them and set the water bottles beside. He’d found an old manual can opener in the bunker months ago--cheap metal, bent handle--and he handed it to Trish because she looked like she’d take it from him anyway.

  She did. But instead of tearing into the can immediately, she turned it over, staring at the label like it was a photograph of someone dead.

  “I haven’t seen peaches since…” Her voice trailed off. She swallowed and laughed once, short and not entirely steady. “Since the first week. Like, those first--” She shook her head, unable to finish. She didn’t need to. Everyone had the same reference points now: first days, headache weeks, storms.

  Sam took her can and held it a moment too, fingers tracing the rim. When she looked up at Kyle, her eyes were careful.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Kyle nodded once. He didn’t trust himself to answer without making it worse.

  Trish got the can open with two hard motions, metal squealing softly. The smell hit the bunker--sweet syrup, fruit--an aroma that didn’t belong in steel and sweat. Kyle felt his throat tighten again, irritated at his own body for reacting to something so trivial.

  Trish ate with a plastic spoon Kyle dug out of a drawer. She shoveled the first bite in like she was afraid someone would grab it, then stopped mid-motion. Her eyes closed. Her shoulders dropped.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered around the sweetness, like she was speaking to the peaches themselves.

  Sam was quieter. She ate slower, but not with restraint--more like she was forcing herself to experience it properly, to confirm it was real. She’d lift a slice to her mouth, chew, swallow, then pause with the spoon hovering, eyes half-lidded as if the taste pulled her away from the bunker’s walls for a few seconds. Kyle watched her and felt a strange, clean elation he didn’t know how to name. The act of giving them something good didn’t solve anything, didn’t change the outside world, but it cut through the morning in a way nothing else had.

  He didn’t eat. He drank water and tried not to look like he was waiting for them to finish.

  When Trish finally scraped the last syrup from the can, she sat back with a small sound of satisfaction and then looked toward the back of the bunker, toward the curtained shower stall.

  “Okay,” she said. “So. About the bathroom situation.”

  Kyle blinked.

  “There’s a toilet,” he said. “Back there.”

  Trish stared at him. “I know. That’s why I’m bringing it up.”

  Sam’s mouth twitched once--almost a smile, almost not. “She means… can we use it.”

  Kyle nodded immediately, then realized his nod might look like permission granted by someone with power and that made him uncomfortable.

  “Yeah,” he said, too quickly. “Yes. Of course.”

  Trish was already up, moving toward the stall with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for luxuries. She paused at the curtain and looked back.

  “Dude,” she said, “you have no idea what it’s like to not squat over a hole in the ground for--” She gestured vaguely. “Forever.”

  Kyle did, actually. But he kept that to himself.

  Sam followed at a slower pace. At the stall she hesitated, eyes flicking to Kyle as if checking boundaries, then pulled the heavy plastic curtain aside and stepped in. The curtain fell back into place with a soft slap. Trish went after her, impatient, and the bunker filled for a few moments with awkward domestic noises that didn’t match anything else about their reality.

  Kyle sat at the table and stared at the empty cans. He tried to make his mind do the next thing: plan. Route. Supplies. Risk.

  Instead, he thought about Sam’s face last night in the dim--how she’d asked about Alice. How the name had landed between them like a dropped tool. He felt the shame rise again, familiar and corrosive. He had spent months training himself to live without thinking about that part of his life, and now it was sitting in his bunker, eating peaches.

  The curtain rustled. Trish emerged first, looking almost giddy, like she’d just gotten away with something illegal.

  “I could cry,” she announced.

  Kyle stared. “Why?”

  Trish rolled her eyes, but there was no real heat in it. “Never mind.”

  Sam came out next. Her posture looked different--still guarded, but less cramped. She washed her hands at the small sink, using water sparingly, movements precise. When she finished, she met Kyle’s gaze briefly, then looked away, as if eye contact was something they both had to ration.

  The three of them stood in the narrow aisle, suddenly without a task. The bunker held their silence and made it feel heavier.

  Trish broke it.

  “So what now?” she asked. She tried for casual, but her voice carried fatigue beneath it. “We just… hang out in your murder tube forever?”

  Kyle’s jaw tightened. He didn’t correct her description, though he noticed it. Tube. Bunker. Shelter. The exact word mattered to him. He let it go.

  Sam leaned back against the bunk frame, arms loosely folded. “We need to move,” she said. “We’re not staying.”

  Kyle felt his stomach sink, irrationally, like the bunker’s air had been holding him up and now it had decided to stop.

  “Where,” he asked, and heard how flat he sounded.

  “North,” Trish said immediately, like it was a punchline everyone knew. “That’s where people say it’s better.”

  Kyle stared at her. “People said that two weeks after the End.”

  Trish’s eyes narrowed. “So?”

  “So it’s probably not true.” The words came out blunt, sharper than he intended. He tried to soften them but couldn’t find the correct shape. “It started up there. The wave came from the north. If it did this here--” He gestured at the bunker, the metal, the idea of hiding underground. “Then up there would be… worse.”

  Trish’s face tightened like she’d been slapped. “Why are you--” She stopped, then tried again, voice climbing. “Why are you trying to talk us out of it? Like, what do you care?”

  Kyle’s throat constricted. He looked down at his hands, at the dirt under his nails, at the line where the water bottle had left a damp ring on the table.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m just--” He paused, searching. “It’s data. It’s… likely.”

  Sam pushed off the bunk frame slightly, not moving closer, but shifting her weight in a way that put herself between Kyle and Trish without making it obvious.

  “He’s not trying to screw us,” Sam said. Her voice was calm, the tone she’d used with nervous customers at a range--firm without being aggressive. “He’s just… direct.”

  Kyle nodded once, relieved and embarrassed at the same time.

  “I didn’t mean to make you mad,” he said, because it was the truth and because he didn’t have a better tool.

  Trish held his gaze a second longer, then exhaled hard through her nose. “Okay. Fine. Sorry. It’s just--” She waved a hand. “Everything sucks. And if there’s even a chance it doesn’t suck up there, I’m not gonna sit here and--” She stopped again, swallowed. Her voice dropped into something rougher. “Whatever.”

  A silence fell. Not hostile, but awkward, like a room after someone knocked over a glass and everyone is pretending it didn’t happen.

  Trish forced a crooked smile. “Besides,” she added, too casually, “it’s probably a lost cause anyway. We’ll get killed by a monster or wander into a storm and get vaporized or something before we make it ten miles.”

  Kyle’s skin prickled at the casual mention of dying. The bunker made it too easy to imagine bodies. He swallowed.

  “You should travel with more people,” he said. “If you go anywhere.”

  Sam’s eyes sharpened. “If we find the right people,” she said. “All we’ve seen are… things.” Her gaze flicked briefly to the back of the bunker as if she could see yesterday’s black figures through steel. “And bandits.”

  Kyle’s hand twitched toward his thigh--habit wanting the reassurance of his knife. He kept it still.

  “I saw tracks,” he said.

  Both women looked at him.

  “Yesterday,” he added, because their attention was suddenly too intense and he needed to justify why the information was arriving now. “A lot of tracks. Tires and shoes. All heading north. It looked like… a big group. Some on foot. Moving slow.”

  Trish stared at him like he’d spoken in a different language. “Why didn’t you say that sooner?”

  Kyle blinked. “You didn’t ask.”

  Trish made an exasperated noise and threw her hands up.

  Sam’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t snap. She looked at Kyle steadily. “Where are the tracks?”

  Kyle pointed vaguely, then realized vague was unhelpful. “A couple miles. West first, then north. I can show you.”

  Sam nodded once. Then, after a beat, “Can you… help us get to them?”

  Kyle felt the bunker’s air shift again. Help meant leaving. Help meant exposing the hatch, the ladder, the world above. It meant walking with them into open land where storms could appear without warning and things with claws made human-shaped choices.

  His chest tightened. He stared at the floor for a moment, watching his own thoughts stack into hazards like cans on a shelf.

  “I can show you,” he said, careful, and heard the limitation in his own voice. “And then you can follow them.”

  Sam watched him. She didn’t press immediately. When she spoke again her tone was quiet, but it carried intention.

  “It would be safer,” she said, “if you came with us until we catch them. Just to… get us there.”

  Kyle’s heart thudded once, hard. He pictured himself walking north, away from the bunker, away from the one controlled environment he’d managed to maintain. He pictured himself near Sam for hours, days--close enough that old memories would keep rising like bubbles in stagnant water. He was ashamed of what he’d been, ashamed of what he’d done, ashamed of how much seeing her destabilized him.

  And yet she was asking. Not demanding. Not manipulating. Asking.

  He forced himself to look at her face. Her eyes were steady, but there was fatigue around them, and something else--an edge of hope she hadn’t let Trish see.

  He didn’t want to disappoint that.

  “Okay,” he said, and surprised himself with how quickly it came out. He tried to add structure, to make it manageable. “I’ll help you catch up. Then I’ll… drop you off.”

  Sam’s brow tightened slightly at the phrase drop you off, as if she heard what it really meant--leave. Abandon. Retreat. But she didn’t argue. She just nodded.

  Trish clapped her hands once, abrupt. “Great. Awesome. So, uh--” She glanced at the pantry shelves like a person remembering there were other pleasures in the world. Her grin turned sly. “You wouldn’t happen to want to donate a few more peaches to the cause, would you?”

  Kyle processed the sentence literally. Donate. Peaches. Cause. He looked at her, confused by the tone, unable to locate the joke.

  “You can take whatever you want,” he said. “If it helps.”

  Trish’s expression shifted, caught off guard. For a second she looked almost guilty. Then she moved fast, stepping in close and wrapping her arms around him in a quick hug that smelled faintly of sweat and syrup and the outside world.

  Kyle went rigid. His hands hovered, uncertain where to put them. His body treated contact like an alarm.

  Trish let go just as quickly, darting past him toward the pantry with sudden energy. “Okay,” she called over her shoulder, already reaching for shelves, “don’t mind if I do.”

  Kyle stood in the aisle, stiff and blinking, trying to recalibrate to the fact that someone had touched him without violence or threat. His skin still held the impression of it like heat.

  Sam watched him from near the bunk frame. There was a small, knowing softness in her face that made him want to look away. He didn’t.

  Sam didn’t move to follow Trish. She stepped closer instead--only a step, careful, as if she didn’t want to spook him. Her gaze dropped to his hands still hovering in the air from the shock of contact, then lifted back to his face.

  In the thin light, her expression wasn’t playful. It was tired, and steady, and strangely gentle.

  “Kyle,” she said, quietly.

  He swallowed. “Yeah?”

  A beat. The bunker hummed around them, the world outside held back by inches of steel.

  “Thank you,” Sam said.

  Two simple words, and the way she said them made them heavier than the peaches, heavier than the water. Not gratitude for a can. Gratitude for being seen--fed--let in.

  Kyle’s throat tightened. He nodded once, too small to be brave, but honest.