I couldn't sleep.
It felt like I'd been out there for hours, sitting with my back to cold concrete and my eyes fixed on nothing. The night air had sunk into my bones— sharp, biting— but I'd gotten used to it. My body had. My mind hadn't.
My eyelids burned. Every blink lasted a second too long.
I tightened my grip on the gun.
The fire behind me had long since died down to embers. Conversations had faded one by one, voices dissolving into the quiet until there was nothing left but the wind and the distant creak of metal shifting in the dark.
Everyone else was asleep.
I wasn't.
Paranoia sat heavy in my chest, pressing down with every breath. No matter how hard I tried to focus on the shadows ahead, my thoughts kept betraying me.
Lila.
The weight of the corpse pinning me to the floor.
The way her blood had soaked into my skin.
The hollow click of my trigger when it should've roared.
Click. Click.
My jaw tightened.
Could it really be—..?
No.
