The testimony of the man who had returned alone in his box did not leave the gym after he did.
It stayed there.
In the looks.
In the silences.
In the sentences people started and then cut short before going too far.
Even the next day, Evan could still feel the weight of the atmosphere.
At first, no one spoke about it openly.
Not in the middle of the court.
Not near the supplies.
Not loudly enough for it to sound like a debate.
But in the corners, in the back courtyard, near the rolled-up blankets and crates of water, the word was already coming back.
Alone.
Empty box.
Automatic victory.
***
Two days later, Evan and Hugo were training behind the gym.
It still was not elegant.
Not even truly effective in their eyes.
But it was no longer the clumsy chaos of the square from the first days either.
They could run a little longer.
Hold their balance a little better.
Try to break free from a hold without immediately panicking.
They tested their limits again and again, with the painful awareness that they were starting from very far behind.
That morning, Hugo was catching his breath, hands on his thighs, while Evan took a sip of lukewarm water.
"We're improving a little," Hugo said between breaths.
Evan looked at him.
"You call this improving?"
"I call it being a little less pathetic than last week."
Evan let out a short breath through his nose.
"When you put it like that…"
Hugo slowly straightened.
His features were drawn. He had lost weight. They all had, one way or another. Not only because of the lack of food. Because of stress, broken nights, the duels, that general sense of being worn down that kept the body from ever fully recovering.
"Honestly," Hugo went on, "I prefer this."
"What?"
"Hurt because of training."
He took the bottle back from Evan's hands.
"It's better than hurting for the other reasons."
Evan did not answer right away.
Because he understood.
A pulled muscle.
Heavy legs.
A breath that ran short too quickly.
All of that still felt almost reassuring.
Pain they had chosen.
Not imposed.
Not fallen from the sky.
Not born from a white box.
***
Around them, the gym courtyard already lived differently than it had a week earlier.
People brought equipment there.
Dried laundry there.
Moved supplies there.
Shared information there.
Trained there whenever there was a little space or a little strength left.
And Evan noticed something else, without being able to say exactly when the impression had begun.
He saw fewer fragile faces.
Fewer very old figures.
Fewer people who looked completely lost.
Fewer profiles that still seemed to come from the old world without having been crushed by it.
The people he passed now seemed, overall, more closed off.
Quicker to react.
More tense.
As if the survivors themselves were gradually changing in composition.
The world no longer looked like one huge crowd struck by an incomprehensible evil.
It looked more and more like a collection of people who were still there because they had endured.
Or because they had been lucky.
Or both.
At the far end of the courtyard, Evan briefly spotted the girl they had already noticed in the previous days.
She was helping move equipment with others, speaking no more than necessary.
Hugo noticed her too, but neither of them lingered on it.
***
Late in the morning, a new rumor passed through the gym.
Another survivor had come back alone from his box.
Not here, this time.
At another gathering point farther south.
The information first came from two guys bringing blankets, then from the radio, then from a quiet discussion near the supplies.
Within an hour, no one seemed to truly doubt it anymore.
The man who had come back alone the other day was not an absolute exception.
There had been another.
Maybe more.
The simple fact that it was no longer unique changed everything.
Hugo was sorting cans when he murmured,
"Now it's becoming real."
Evan was lifting a crate of water.
"It already was."
"No. Now it's becoming a possibility."
That sentence stayed in his mind.
A possibility.
Yes.
That was the most dangerous part.
An empty box was no longer just a monstrous anomaly.
It was becoming an outcome some survivors were already starting to think about.
***
The proof came later, in an even dirtier form.
Evan was coming back from the courtyard with Hugo when they heard two men speaking in low voices near the rear storage room, clearly thinking no one could hear them.
They had not seen Evan or Hugo yet.
The first one said,
"An empty box is still better than a fifty-fifty."
The second gave a nervous laugh.
"Yeah… except for there to be an empty box, the other person has to be dead before it starts."
The first shrugged.
"So what?"
Evan froze.
So did Hugo.
The second lowered his voice a little.
"Don't be stupid. You know exactly what you're saying."
The first looked around before answering, even more quietly,
"I'm just saying that eventually, some people are going to start thinking about it."
The words fell into the silence with something icy about them.
It was not a threat yet.
Not a plan yet.
Not a faction yet.
Just a thought.
But a thought that now existed out loud.
Hugo deliberately took a step, loud enough for the two men to finally notice them.
They immediately fell silent.
One looked away.
The other grabbed an empty crate and walked off without a word.
Evan said nothing either.
But for several minutes, he could still feel the sentence clinging to him like something dirty.
So what?
Maybe that was the worst part.
Not the words themselves.
The fact that they could be spoken almost calmly, like one calculation among others.
***
At noon, the gym radio broadcast a news program clearer than in previous days.
A journalist was speaking with two guests. One was clearly a scientist. The other probably worked in crisis management or energy.
There was that particular exhaustion in their voices, the kind belonging to people who kept reasoning even though the world no longer obeyed them.
"...several peripheral areas are no longer being properly served," one of them said. "Maintenance teams have been reduced to critical levels in certain regions."
The other replied,
"And we have to understand that technical skills cannot be replaced overnight. Some infrastructures are still holding, but they are holding on the momentum of the world before."
The journalist asked,
"Are you saying that we are currently consuming the last reserves of a system that can no longer renew itself fast enough?"
"Yes," the scientist answered. "And this is only the beginning."
The entire gym was not listening.
Not really.
But certain sentences always find someone.
Always a few ears that slow down.
Always a few gazes that lower.
The scientist continued:
"There is an important point people do not fully perceive yet. This phenomenon does not only reduce the global population. It also unbalances its distribution. Entire regions can find themselves with too few essential professionals, too little maintenance, too little emergency response, long before total disappearance."
Beside Evan, Hugo murmured,
"So basically, the world can die faster than people."
Evan did not answer.
Because the phrasing was horrible.
And probably right.
***
When they left the gym in the late afternoon, they crossed several streets they had known only a few weeks earlier.
Or rather, streets they thought they had known.
A school was closed, silent all around.
A convenience store was running with a single employee.
A traffic light turned green on an almost empty avenue.
It was no longer only the absence of people that struck Evan.
It was the fact that everything was still continuing, but worse and worse.
At one point, they passed a small fenced playground between two buildings.
It was empty.
Two swings moved faintly in the wind.
Hugo slowed down.
"Maybe it's stupid," he said, "but I think this is what feels strangest to me."
"What?"
He nodded toward the playground.
"Before, there was always noise here."
Evan looked at the swings.
The metal creaked once.
Then nothing.
"Yeah," he said.
They stayed there a second too long.
Then started walking again.
***
At the corner of the next street, they saw a group of about ten people outside an old community center.
Bags, blankets, crates. Two men were screening the entrance. A woman was writing names in a notebook. Someone was handing out water.
No official sign.
No banner.
But it was clearly another gathering point.
A little farther away, in front of a church, several people were gathered around a man speaking with his hands raised toward the sky.
Across the street, two survivors were nailing boards over a glass door.
The world kept emptying.
But at the same time, it was redrawing itself.
Point by point.
Group by group.
Wall by wall.
Hugo watched the three scenes for a few seconds.
"You think everyone's eventually going to end up somewhere?"
Evan looked at the silhouettes, the bags, the screened entrances.
"No," he said. "I think eventually, there'll mostly be places that hold… and places that don't."
Hugo nodded slowly.
"Yeah."
Then he added, more quietly,
"And there'll be people who want to decide who has the right to hold."
This time, Evan did not answer at all.
Because he could already see that too.
***
When he got home, his mother's phone felt heavier than ever in his pocket.
As he did every evening, he placed it on the coffee table before sitting down.
The room was silent.
But no longer completely empty.
The gym.
Hugo.
The conversations.
The rumors.
The groups.
The dirty thoughts already being born in some people.
All of it kept living in his head long after he had left the others.
Evan stared at the phone for a few seconds.
Then lifted his eyes toward the window.
The black ship still dominated the sky.
Below it, the survivors were already learning to gather.
To hold on.
To sort.
To close doors.
To open others.
To choose who could enter.
To imagine what an empty box might be worth.
And the more the days passed, the more Evan understood one simple thing:
the next duel would not arrive in the same world as the previous one.
The world was changing too fast between them.
And so were they.