The train was slowing.

The lights flickered once, the weight of the engine shifting beneath our feet. The tracks had gotten rougher, the ride jerkier, like the train itself was struggling to keep going.

Lilith stood next to me, gripping the overhead bar, her gaze fixed ahead. She hadn’t said much since the enforcers.

I glanced at her, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

The speakers crackled, barely audible over the screech of metal. “Final stop. All passengers off.”

People shuffled around us, muttering, moving toward the doors.

Lilith and I stepped off the train into thick, humid air.

The station was barely a station at all—just a rusted platform stretching out over cracked pavement. Ahead, the city loomed, broken and half-flooded, but we weren’t that close to the water yet.

Most trains stuck to the routes where there was still some law left. Some kind of order. Out here? You were on your own.

Lilith exhaled, scanning the ruined skyline. “This is the place?”

I nodded, already watching the crowd. People filtered through the station—traders, workers, wastelanders looking for a way inland. No one paying us much attention.

Good.

“We’ll have to go on foot from here,” I muttered.

She hesitated, taking in the crumbling buildings ahead. “And you do this often?”

I smirked. “You seem to like this question. No, not that often.”

We started walking. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of wet earth and rust. The roads here were uneven, patches of stone and dirt giving way to weeds and pools of stagnant water.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then—

“You gonna tell me why you did that?”

Lilith didn’t look at me. “Did what?”

I scoffed. “You know what. With the enforcers.”

She exhaled, slow. “I wasn’t going to let them take you.”

I frowned. “Yeah, I got that part. What I don’t get is why.”

Lilith kept walking, her boots tapping against damp pavement.

“You’re an officer,” I said. “Golden Land’s law. You’re supposed to be on their side. Instead, you’re out here, walking through wastelander territory, sticking your neck out for someone like me.”

She stopped.

I almost walked past her before realizing she wasn’t moving.

I turned. “Lilith?”

Her jaw was tight. She was staring ahead, but not really looking at anything.

Then, finally, she spoke. “I know what the law says.”

Her voice was quieter. Measured.

She looked at me then, really looked at me, and there was something in her eyes I couldn’t place.

“The law says you’re a criminal,” she said. “That wastelanders are dangerous. That people like me shouldn’t even be here.”

She shook her head slightly. “But I don’t care what the law says.”

I blinked.

I wasn’t sure what I expected her to say, but it wasn’t that.

Lilith turned, kept walking. I hesitated, watching her. Why would she do this? 

Then I followed.