In the days that followed, Evan began to understand that survivors were no longer simply holding on.
They were sorting themselves.
Not officially.
Not with written rules at first.
But everywhere, the same logic was settling in.
Buildings that remained open were starting to check who came in and who went out. Improvised distribution points were appearing in certain streets. Groups went out together to look for water, food, medicine. Others refused to share anything at all.
And above all, it was no longer only about surviving.
It was about choosing with whom.
That idea had been returning to Evan often since the third duel.
Before, he had still felt as though the entire world was suffering the same thing at the same pace.
Now, that was no longer true.
The world was still suffering.
But the survivors were beginning to respond differently.
Some gathered.
Others closed themselves off.
Others were already trying to gain something from the horror.
***
The morning it all truly took shape in his mind, Evan went downstairs to meet Hugo in front of the building with two bottles of water and a packet of biscuits tucked into his bag.
Hugo was already there.
He was talking with the neighbor from the third floor, the one who had been trying for days to keep the building standing with lists.
When Evan approached, the neighbor finished his sentence with a motion of his hand.
"...in the residence at the end of the avenue, they blocked the entrance with furniture. No one gets in unless they're known."
Hugo nodded.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. And they take turns standing guard. Claire heard they're even turning away people from the neighborhood."
The neighbor noticed Evan.
"Hey."
"Hey."
The neighbor glanced at Evan's bag.
"You're going to the gym?"
Hugo answered before him.
"Yeah."
The neighbor gave a joyless half-smile.
"You're not the only ones. I heard about an old sports center farther south too. And a school where families have gathered."
He lowered his voice.
"And another place where they mostly take 'useful' people."
Evan frowned slightly.
"Useful how?"
The neighbor shrugged.
"People who know how to heal. Repair. Fight. Guard. The others, I guess they come after."
The word lingered for a moment.
After.
As if some survivors had already begun establishing a hierarchy between those with immediate value… and everyone else.
The neighbor went on:
"Be careful anyway."
"Of what?" Hugo asked.
"Of people who are starting to believe they already know what kind of world will be left afterward."
No one answered.
Because none of them wanted to put into words what that sentence truly contained.
The neighbor finally nodded goodbye before going back inside.
Once he had disappeared into the building, Hugo breathed out.
"The more this goes on, the more I feel like we're choosing a side without even realizing it."
Evan looked at the street ahead of them.
Fewer and fewer cars.
Less and less noise.
"Or we end up in someone else's," he said.
Hugo nodded slowly.
"Yeah."
Then they set off.
***
The city was still emptying, but no longer in quite the same way.
It was not only the absence that struck him now.
It was the way survivors were redrawing the space.
A building with a locked gate and a makeshift sign:
SURVIVORS ONLY
An old café whose tables had been stacked behind the window, as if to reinforce the entrance.
A schoolyard where blankets were drying on fences.
A parking lot where several cars had been moved close together to form a kind of barrier.
Almost no one was outside without a reason anymore.
Everyone walking had something in mind.
A route.
A task.
A place to reach.
Even the rare conversations in the street no longer sounded ordinary. They were hardly ever about the past or the present anymore. Only about setting a departure time, finding a gathering point, deciding whether some place was still "holdable."
At the crossing of an avenue, they spotted a small group gathered near a bus stop.
Three women. Two men. A teenager. All loaded with bags.
One of the men was pointing at a folded map.
A woman shook her head.
"Not there. They're not taking anyone else."
"And the church?"
"Already full, I told you."
"Then what do we do?"
Silence.
Then the teenager said,
"We can't keep moving like this every time."
The words every time chilled Evan more than the rest.
Even in the street, even among strangers, the phenomenon had already found its place in people's habits.
The group kept talking. Evan and Hugo continued on without slowing any further.
"You see?" Hugo murmured.
"Yeah."
"Some people are already living according to the next one."
Evan did not answer.
Because he was doing the same.
Everyone was.
The only difference was the degree of honesty.
***
The gym seemed even fuller than the day before.
Not packed.
But denser, more structured, harder to move through without immediately feeling that you did not know its codes.
At the entrance, the guards had added a makeshift table with two separate lists.
One for supplies.
One for names.
Beside it, a rolled-up sleeping bag and a crate of water bottles gave the checkpoint the look of something permanent installed in a hurry.
The tall guard who had seen them several times already gave them a quick look.
Then his eyes dropped to the bottles in Evan's bag.
"Put that straight inside," he said. "And if you're staying, we're short on hands with sorting."
Hugo nodded.
"Okay."
The guard paused briefly.
"And don't hang around near the entrance. It gets blocked fast."
It was not a reproach.
Almost a normal instruction.
As they entered, Evan realized that maybe this was the real change.
The gym was beginning to look like a place where new rules were born every day.
Not fair rules.
Not stable rules.
But rules all the same.
***
Inside, several things had changed since their last visit.
The supplies were better separated.
Water on one side.
Dry food on the other.
Medicine farther away, near a table occupied by two women and a man who wrote everything down in a notebook.
A floor area, roughly marked off with tape and stacked bags, now served as a shared sleeping space.
Another corner seemed reserved for those on guard duty or helping run the place.
Improvisation was still everywhere.
But so was the will to last longer than the day before.
They set down their bottles and were immediately directed toward a pile of clothes, blankets, and sheets to sort.
Evan got to work without speaking.
Hugo did the same.
For several minutes, the sound of the place was reduced to movements, rustling fabric, low voices, brief orders.
Then, a few meters away, an argument broke out.
Not huge.
Not violent.
But loud enough to make several heads turn.
A woman in her forties, clutching a bag against herself, was facing a thin man with a closed-off face.
"We were here before them," she was saying. "Why should they get to stay and not us?"
"Because there are six of them," the man replied. "And we already don't have enough room as it is."
"So what? We're sorting people now?"
The man shrugged, a nervous gesture.
"We've been sorting from the beginning. What did you think we were doing?"
The silence that followed was brief, but very dense.
The woman turned slightly pale.
Then replied more quietly,
"I'm not talking about the boxes."
"I am."
This time, several people truly stopped what they were doing.
Not because the sentence was shocking.
Because it said too directly something everyone was already thinking in silence.
Evan felt his fingers freeze for a second on a damp blanket.
The man went on, even more harshly:
"If we don't start thinking in terms of space, food, and what each person brings, we won't even last until the next one."
The woman did not answer right away.
Then she shook her head.
"You're going insane."
"No," the man replied. "There just aren't enough of us left to pretend."
The sentence hung over the entire gym.
Then someone farther away intervened. An older woman, probably already involved in organizing the place, pulled the debate back toward something concrete:
who sleeps where,
who can leave,
who has family elsewhere,
who brings what,
who watches the entrance at night.
The argument did not really stop.
It was simply absorbed by necessity.
And maybe that was even worse.
***
After a while, Hugo moved a little closer to Evan as they folded blankets.
"You hear that?" he murmured.
"Yeah."
"It's really starting."
Evan did not ask what "it" meant.
He knew.
The box had brought death.
But between the boxes, the survivors were beginning to create something else:
rules,
priorities,
exclusions,
alliances.
The world was no longer only falling apart.
It was reorganizing itself according to logics none of them would ever have wanted to see born.
***
Later, in the back courtyard, the atmosphere felt even rawer.
That was where things seemed least polite.
People moved equipment there, dried laundry, stacked crates, and, in one corner, a few survivors continued training whenever they could.
Evan spotted the girl from the gym near the side wall.
Lisa.
Still silent.
Still with that way of standing as if exhaustion was forbidden to her.
She was watching two men trying to break out of a clumsy hold.
One of them got irritated, forced the movement badly, lost his balance, and nearly fell.
She stepped forward.
"No."
The word cut everything short.
Not loud.
Just precise.
She briefly positioned herself beside them, showed something with her arm, repositioned a leg, moved an elbow aside.
Not a lesson.
Not a scene.
A few seconds.
Then she was already stepping back.
Evan watched her without realizing it.
Not exactly because of her.
Because of the difference.
Even her corrections seemed designed to save time.
Not a single unnecessary movement.
Hugo, beside him, noticed the scene too.
"Is she always like that?" he asked quietly.
"Like what?"
"Like she's already several steps ahead of us."
Evan breathed out very faintly through his nose.
"Maybe."
At that same moment, Lisa lifted her eyes.
Not for long.
Just enough to catch both of them.
Hugo looked away first. Evan did the same almost immediately.
They said nothing more.
And that was just fine.
***
Late in the afternoon, a man arrived at the gym speaking too loudly before he had even passed the entrance.
He did not look injured. Only shocked, emptied out, agitated like someone who needed the words to come out before he collapsed.
They had him sit near the table at the back.
Two people brought him water.
The entire gym seemed to be listening without appearing to.
After a few minutes, the man spoke more calmly.
Evan and Hugo were close enough to hear.
"I was alone," he said. "There was no one."
No one answered right away.
The man went on, his voice still shaking:
"Just the box. The timer. The voice. And then… nothing. No one across from me."
This time, several heads turned openly.
The woman holding the medicine notebook looked up.
The tall guard took a step closer.
"You're sure?"
The man gave a nervous laugh, almost insulted by the question.
"What do you think?"
Then he lowered his eyes to his bottle.
"I waited fifteen minutes alone."
Silence fell.
Heavy.
Thick.
Evan immediately felt something shift in the air of the gym.
It was not just another testimony.
It was a new possibility.
Or rather, a possibility becoming real.
Hugo murmured, almost voiceless,
"An empty box…"
Another man, farther away, reacted faster than the others.
"So his opponent died before."
No one raised their voice.
But several glances crossed.
And this time, Evan felt it clearly:
the thought was being born in several minds at once.
Not clearly stated yet.
Not acknowledged yet.
But there all the same.
The fewer opponents alive enough to enter the box, the easier some duels become.
Someone breathed quietly:
"I'd rather have that than a fifty-fifty."
The discomfort was immediate.
Not because the sentence was false.
Because it was too true.
And because, spoken aloud, it had already opened a door no one wanted to see open so soon.
The tall guard cut it short.
"Not now."
His voice was not aggressive.
But it left no room for discussion.
The man who had been alone in his box lowered his head again.
The gym gradually resumed its movement.
But something had changed.
Something important.
Evan felt it in his stomach before he could clearly think it through.
The real world was beginning to be contaminated by the logic of the boxes.
***
When they finally left the gym, the day was already fading.
The gray light of the sky darkened between the buildings, and the ship still dominated the city with the same monstrous patience.
They walked for a long time without speaking.
Then Hugo finally said,
"You heard the thing about the empty box."
It was not a question.
"Yeah."
"I'd rather have that than a fifty-fifty too."
Evan turned his head slightly toward him.
Hugo kept his eyes ahead.
"But it disgusts me to know I thought about it before he even said it."
Silence returned.
Then Evan answered:
"It disgusts you because you're still normal."
Hugo let out a short breath.
"No. I think I'm just normal in a world that isn't anymore."
Evan looked at the sidewalk ahead of them.
Then the facades, the dark windows, the streets that were too wide.
"Maybe that's the same thing," he said.
They kept walking.
Above them, the black sky slowly closed in.
Ahead of them, the city was emptying.
And somewhere between the two, the survivors were already learning to gather.
But not always for the same reasons.