The air shifted the moment they crossed the boundary.
Jin didn't need the system to tell him they'd been noticed. He could feel it.
There was something different about moving through an abandoned city and moving into a claimed one. The streets didn't look much different, still cracked pavement, still rusted cars, still the eerie emptiness that had defined the past two weeks.
But there were signs now. Subtle, but there.
Windows weren't shattered, they were boarded up, carefully, evenly, like someone had measured the boards before nailing them down. Trash wasn't scattered randomly, it had been pushed into deliberate piles along the curbs. And the biggest giveaway, the road ahead wasn't layered in dust the way every other street they'd crossed had been.
Someone had been walking here. Recently. Often.
"Echo," Jin murmured, barely above a breath. "Stay on it. Anything close, tell me before it matters."
