The cart stopped in the clearing, the ground as hard as a rib buried under the wheel.

  Ahead, the already open gate spewed screams, whistles, a laugh that sounded like it crawled out of a broken pipe.

  From the darkness under the arch, the soldiers appeared.

  A lot of them.

  A dozen at least, maybe more—enough to look like a single mass splitting apart as it advanced.

  Same livery as the psychos tormenting the refugees at the gate,

  but clean,

  tight,

  almost elegant.

  The crowd opened before they could touch it.

  Where it didn’t, the soldiers solved it with a sharp shove or by lifting their pistol two fingers upward.

  No words.

  Behind them, three carts dragged along on iron-rimmed wheels, squealing like they were sawing the air.

  They moved straight toward the clearing.

  Toward the cart.

  Toward the sacks.

  Arrows shot from the walls fell around them like dead insects.

  Not one soldier turned his head.

  Their trajectory was clear.

  And allowed no detours.

  Antea, Nahely, and Mark were still on the cart.

  Mark had stood up, his back to the two of them, staring at something ahead—probably the soldiers approaching the clearing.

  What the hell is this idiot doing? Antea thought, exhaling with a kind of irritation that tightened across her shoulders like a cramp.

  You want to get an arrow stuck in the back of your skull, you moron? Get down. Don’t expose yourself like that.

  She wanted to say it.

  She didn’t.

  His bare back was tense, the muscles lean and defined—something Antea might even have appreciated, only to feel guilty afterward, as if a single thought could somehow dent his masculinity—if she hadn’t been, in that moment, emotionally stubborn to the point of rudeness.

  Right now she’d have preferred to shove him off the cart.

  Mark said something to the driver.

  Words that meant nothing to Antea.

  None of the few terms Nahely had taught her—mostly through mimed demonstrations—appeared in that sentence.

  Or maybe she’d forgotten them, but her memory had been performing too well since arriving here, so she doubted it.

  From Mark’s reaction to the driver’s reply, she sensed he hadn’t gotten either a confirmation or a denial.

  One of those useless answers that leave everything exactly where it was.

  Meanwhile, Nahely moved closer and brushed Antea’s back with her hand, as if checking whether she’d calmed down even a little after the previous outburst.

  Or maybe it was just one of those small gestures of kindness she gave without thinking.

  Antea smiled at her.

  She returned the smile with disarming ease.

  She really is a good girl, Antea thought.

  Now that she thought about it, last night — with the exact same temperature as the first evening — Mark hadn’t shivered at all.

  True, it hadn’t been cold enough to cause real trouble, even if there had been a few sneezes, but still — not exactly pleasant.

  Why hadn’t he shivered?

  Is his body’s resistance and immune system co-evolving with the growth of his powers?

  Lucky bastard.

  His body had been burning hot, unnaturally hot, the second night.

  The first one had been normal.

  A kind of heat that, in an ordinary human, would’ve been a symptom; in him it seemed more like a side effect of whatever evolution was underway.

  Too many knots to untangle to waste time thinking about it too much.

  I wonder if that half-wit even noticed, she’d thought that morning, before starting her pseudo-lessons with Nahely.

  The soldiers approached.

  The driver climbed down from his seat and made his way toward the back of the cart.

  They spread out around the vehicle with no clear formation, yet close enough for her to feel every stare on her skin.

  A brief, epidermal pressure that ran up her spine.

  A few of them exchanged quick comments, a strangled laugh, then looked straight at her.

  What the fuck do you want, you hicks?

  She threw them a defiant look: it didn’t intimidate them, but it unsettled them at least a little.

  Or at least that’s how her body chose to read them in that moment —

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  the first interpretation rising from the constellation of quasi-fungible bodily configurational entities that had activated all at once, and of which the dominant one had decided, without asking permission, what pre-emotive sense to impose on the scene.

  The soldiers began unloading the goods.

  Meanwhile, the three travelers prepared to get off the cart.

  One soldier offered a hand to Nahely to help her down.

  She accepted it with the same calm with which one accepts any gesture of courtesy in a world that had very little courtesy to offer.

  When it was Antea’s turn, another soldier stepped forward — young, very tall, the kind of guy who clearly cared about his appearance: teeth a bit whiter than the others’, though still yellowed; a lean, toned build; a symmetrical face that, judging by the whole package, a “real girl” would probably have found attractive.

  He offered his hand with a slightly showy politeness.

  Antea ignored it with a curt gesture and climbed down on her own.

  Mark followed right after, dropping down from the right side of the cart — his torso now facing the city walls — landing in a short, firm hop.

  He said something.

  One of the soldiers replied with a comment.

  Someone laughed loudly.

  A faint trace of self-satisfaction flickered across Mark’s face — quick, but noticeable.

  They greeted the driver.

  Then they started walking.

  Antea’s ears were assaulted by a constant barrage of noise — a tangle of sounds with no meaning.

  Nahely’s lessons, in the end, hadn’t helped much.

  The soldiers surrounding them — now forming a loose shield around Nahely as well, who clung to Antea’s arm like a safety latch — were far more respectful than she’d expected.

  Maybe, she thought, she had misjudged them.

  Mark walked ahead, rigid, his eyes slicing through the surroundings as if searching for something to carve open.

  He looked furious.

  One of the few situations where language barriers are actually useful, she thought.

  At least I don’t have to understand whatever those half-wild idiots are yelling.

  Looking around, she noticed many were staring at her and shouting things that could only be obscenities: lewd requests, lewd jokes, lewd insults.

  Almost certainly something lewd.

  Then, without real warning, something snapped.

  A scuffle erupted between one of the soldiers acting as their human shield and one of the “corrupted” soldiers twisted by anarchic decay.

  A civilian — corrupted just the same — pulled out a weapon and shot the soldier in the head, and the entire balance collapsed in an instant.

  The brawl spread like a small but lethal flash fire: a micro-guerrilla involving only their tiny faction and a sliver of the human fauna clogging the gate area.

  Two more soldiers dropped dead.

  The young man who had offered her his hand earlier said something to her.

  Antea understood enough to know he was telling her to get behind him.

  He wanted to protect her, despite how coldly she’d treated him.

  Either he had a strangely commendable sense of honor,

  or her pussy power was doing its dirty work.

  In any case, with an instinctive reluctance — as if accepting that protection threatened some precise point of her fallen masculinity — she moved behind him.

  Up close she could smell his tension, hear his heartbeat pounding like an animal tick.

  Her eyes, in the agitation, shifted to Mark — not out of worry, nor out of any desire to move closer, but with irritation, as if she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t doing anything.

  And Mark, indeed, stood there, frozen, in the middle of the little cluster that had tightened around them.

  He looked like a chimpanzee paralyzed by a problem far too complex for his emotional hardware.

  Eventually, the situation ground to a halt.

  One of the soldiers — probably an officer — was talking to the small contingent of anarcho-sadists they had just clashed with in that miniature skirmish.

  Then a thud — heavy, full — followed by a cry of pain tore the negotiation apart.

  From above, two guys with crossbows were shouting something at them, their words shredded by distance and rage.

  One of the allied soldiers bent forward, screaming.

  Antea’s gaze snapped toward him: an arrow had struck his right shoulder and was buried deep in the flesh.

  She jolted.

  Shit, this is getting bad, she thought.

  Mark, use that psychokinetic bullshit to do something. Idiot.

  But she didn’t say it.

  Mark was staring at the crossbowmen on the walls.

  They were the ones who were few — the small group of soldiers escorting them, torn out of the larger mass — and most of them were already distracted by the pain, the confusion, the blood.

  The little pack of “corrupted” men on the ground seized the moment and charged again.

  Meanwhile, the two crossbowmen loosed another pair of bolts.

  On the left edge of Antea’s field of view, something moved too fast.

  A distant thump.

  Someone had fallen from the walls.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Many were dropping from the ramparts because some creature — or someone — moving at terrifying speed was wiping the place clean up there.

  She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like one of those arrows was coming straight at her.

  Eyes wide.

  Body jolting.

  That brutal impulse to run.

  And she would have run, if Mark hadn’t lifted his right arm at that exact moment, releasing a convulsing knot of air that shattered the two arrows mid-flight, reducing them to a rain of harmless fragments.

  Or mostly harmless: the spray of splinters hit one of the guys in their temporary clique on the head, hurting him a little.

  As she watched the two bolts disintegrate inside that deranged little whirlwind, her eyes caught the wave of lightning-fast movements that, in a flash, had reached the two crossbowmen who had attacked them — and was now kicking the shit out of every man on that stretch of wall.

  Then the thing stopped.

  Leaned over the edge of the rampart.

  But Antea’s attention had already fallen back on Mark.

  She was somewhat proud of him.

  And now everyone was afraid of him.

  It was obvious — just as it had been obvious with the two mercenaries from that shithole clearing — that people here are truly scared of anyone with powers.

  And probably, Antea thought, that was the reason why the officer had spoken to him in that tone — authoritative, yes, but with a fracture of fear in it — saying something that Mark answered with irritation, as if he felt reprimanded.

  If he had used his powers from the start, none of “ours” would have died.

  Mark hadn’t reached that conclusion as fast as she had — that was her immediate impression, one that never even had the time to pass through the brain areas responsible for verbalizing impressions and turning them into actual thoughts.

  She noticed only in that regained quiet that one of the carts the soldiers were using to transport the sacks of provisions had overturned.

  Now all the scum in the area had scattered.

  Mark had become a sadist-scarer.

  The young soldier turned toward her, and so did Nahely.

  They were probably both asking if she was alright, but she couldn’t be sure — and not knowing made it impossible to answer.

  The soldier asked something to Nahely.

  He probably thinks I’m mute, Antea thought.

  She smiled at both of them.

  Once everything was sorted out, they started walking again.

  Do I really look this weak, fuck?

  Everyone’s worried about me — even Nahely, who until yesterday was basically one of those sacks… as if I were the only one who couldn’t make it on my own.

  But maybe it’s just my impression.

  I feel weak, so I read in other people’s eyes the same overprotective stance I would take myself if I were dealing with someone I considered as weak as I am right now.

  What the fuck was that called? Projection?

  Or maybe that was something else… Aaaaaah, shit!

  Too many things are happening way too fast. I don’t understand a fucking thing about myself anymore.

  Beyond the gate, the city didn’t really begin.

  First came a wide, worn strip of land: earth compressed by years of wheels, boots, and blood; patches of dry mud that cracked underfoot; dark streaks that looked old, but not old enough—leftovers from ugly episodes abandoned there to oxidize.

  There were pieces of smashed crates, cut ropes, twisted scrap metal, and cold embers still breathing a tired smell of dead smoke.

  Noise was everywhere: metal clanging, clipped orders, muffled groans, iron-rimmed wheels shredding the ground as if they were filing down a bone.

  This was the city’s transit zone, its backroom—the place where Anarchy shrugged off the outside chaos before absorbing everything else.

  Antea caught up to Mark—a couple of steps ahead, rigid in his usual way—and tapped the opposite shoulder, the dumbest trick in the world.

  And Mark fell for it without thinking: he jerked around, then smiled, a tired kind of complicity on his face.

  “Doesn’t take much to entertain you, huh?”

  Then, with a faint tilted smile:

  “Not angry anymore?”

  “Let’s say you made up for it properly.”

  She said it with a lightness she didn’t fully trust, one that evaporated almost instantly.

  “Right. But why the hell didn’t you use your powers earlier, idiot?”

  And she shoved him lightly in the arm—more theatrical than violent, but full of the leftover anger still sitting in her stomach.

  “Maybe because…”

  But the sentence died: the soldiers were taking their leave.

  Mark thanked them with a tired nod; Nahely with a small, shy smile; Antea did the same, half out of politeness, half because she was alive and that was enough for now.

  Then she turned to the young soldier—the one who’d worried about her more than anyone else—and thanked him more directly.

  He blushed immediately, a sincere flush rising up his cheeks as if someone had opened a valve under his skin.

  Antea couldn’t pretend not to notice.

  Not to feel it.

  A warm, tyrannical jolt ran through her chest—forced, automatic, almost violent.

  Her body didn’t give her any choice: he was cute, and it hit her like an ambush.

  They started walking again.

  And that was when Anarchy’s outskirts swallowed them completely.

  First the smell came: thick smoke, burned bread, stale sweat, meat left out too long; a heavy blend that seemed to push them back.

  Then the sounds: metal striking metal, children crying and laughing in the same wrong tone, voices soaked in alcohol and exhaustion.

  Then the sight.

  Grayish buildings, three or four stories tall, crooked like badly grown teeth; peeling plaster falling off in flakes, metal pipes protruding from walls like rusted veins; doors reinforced with planks and bent iron bars nailed on diagonals.

  Narrow alleys where only one person could pass; wider streets clogged with people who looked like they’d been living there for generations without ever moving more than two meters.

  Brutality was still everywhere.

  A cart full of bodies collected from the streets—piled like old furniture; two men pushed it forward with total indifference, occasionally picking up a body that had slipped off and tossing it back up without looking at it.

  The ground was dotted with dark stains, layered over years, telling more about the city than anyone would dare to.

  Inside was certainly better than outside—but “better” didn’t mean good.

  Antea silently begged whatever randomness governed this world to let the exponential growth of confusion finally slow down,

  so they could understand where the fuck they had ended up

  and maybe—just once—begin formulating a real plan for the future.