They decided to stay.
Two weeks under the bridge — long enough to heal, to train, to breathe without the constant hum of engines or the echo of pursuit.
It wasn't safety, not really, but it was the closest thing either of them had come to it in years.
Every morning began the same.
24 rose before dawn, sharpening his blades by the river while the fog still clung to the rocks. Lumen — Lu, as he'd started calling her — would join him soon after, moving with her usual quiet precision.
The first few days, she stumbled often. Her footing was off, her balance too stiff. The blades felt unnatural in her hands. But she never quit. She watched him move — every strike, every shift of his shoulders — and mirrored him until her body began to remember what her mind could not yet master.
By the seventh day, she was holding her own.
Their training sessions had taken on a rhythm of their own:
steel and water, breath and dust, the whisper of blades cutting through air.
"Again," 24 said, stepping back as she finished a swing.
"You said that an hour ago."
"And I'll say it an hour from now."
She exhaled sharply through her mask, wiping sweat from her neck. "You're relentless."
"You're improving."
That made her pause. "That a compliment?"
"Close as I get."
She gave a faint laugh — the kind that carried warmth beneath the exhaustion. "Careful. You keep this up, and I'll think you actually like me."
"Don't push your luck, Lu."
The nickname had slipped out days earlier — unplanned, effortless. She hadn't corrected him, and that was answer enough.
When the sun fell, they'd rest by the river, the sound of flowing water masking the silence between them.
24 would sit with his back to a bridge pillar, repairing gear or carving small notches into one of his blades. Lu would clean her rifle or adjust the worn straps on her armor.
Sometimes they talked — fragments of pasts neither wanted to remember.
"Before the collapse," she said one night, staring into the fire, "I was stationed in one of the outer colonies. Small place. Dust storms and silence. When the comms died, command just… stopped answering."
24 looked up. "You were military."
"Used to be." She glanced toward him. "Guess you were too."
He didn't answer. Instead, he threw another piece of driftwood into the flames. The sparks rose like ash ghosts before fading into the night.
"They used to call me by a number," he said quietly. "Nothing more."
"And now?"
"Now I'm the number that won't stay dead."
She didn't respond, just stared at the fire until it burned low.
The days blurred together — training, eating, patrolling, sleeping.
Their movements began to sync, unconsciously. When 24 shifted his stance, Lu mirrored him. When she reached for her blade, he already knew which angle she'd strike from.
By the second week, she was landing glancing blows — small victories she didn't gloat over, but he noticed them all the same.
One evening, as the last light bled over the desert, Lu managed to disarm him — barely. The short blade clattered to the ground.
She froze, breathing hard.
He looked at her, then at the weapon, then back at her.
"You cheated," he said.
"No," she said, her voice steady. "You got predictable."
24 blinked — then, to her surprise, he laughed. A real one this time. Short, rough, but real.
"Maybe I did."
She retrieved the blade and handed it back hilt-first. "Then I guess I'm learning from the best."
"Or the most dangerous."
"Same thing, isn't it?"
He looked at her for a moment, the faintest trace of respect in his eyes. "Not always."
They stood there in the fading light — two soldiers in a dead world, breathing like the world wasn't trying to kill them for once.
The river murmured below. The wind carried the faint scent of rain.
For now, under that old bridge, they weren't fugitives or weapons.
They were just two survivors, teaching each other how to live again.