Catherine stepped into the house, a space that had finally begun to shed its clinical coldness and feel like a true home. Her father, Marcel, kept busy overseeing the colony's growing infrastructure as a council member, while her mother, Eleanor, held a vital role in the agricultural department. Though Eleanor's expertise was undeniable, New Hope's regulations were strict: to prevent consolidated power, only one member of a household could sit on the council at a time.
The sisters were carving out their own paths, too. Catherine was making steady strides in medicine, while Ileana had earned a reputation within the local militia.
If anyone had told them a few years ago that an apocalypse would reshape their world, stripping them of their old lives only to deposit them here as a nurse and a soldier, they would have laughed in disbelief. Now, it was simply their reality.
