The fortress rules were simple: if you couldn’t reach the Supplier by radio, you came to the gate.  

A steel mailbox sat beside the armored door like a relic from an older, kinder world.  

You wrote what you wanted, what you could pay, and how to contact you.  

If the trade was accepted, a reply found you—no courier, no footstep, just a note that turned up by your bed when you woke.  

Nara Vivienne had used that ritual the first time.  

This time, she didn’t touch the mailbox.

She stood squarely before the camera, wind pushing dust across the concrete.  

“I’m seeking shelter,” she said. “Not a trade.”

Reina Cole folded her arms in the control room. “She’s back,” she said, eyes never leaving the monitor.

Gene leaned closer, expression unreadable. On-screen, Nara lifted her chin and forced the rest out.  

“My first visit… I was sent. 

A group wanted me to check your defenses. They’re armed, and they won’t stop.”  

She swallowed. “I told them you couldn’t be taken. Now they’ll turn on me. I’d rather take my chances here.”

Silence hummed with the generators.  

Trust was extinct, and mercy was a luxury item nobody stocked.

Kayla set a plate in the sink a little harder than necessary. “We’re not a hotel,” she said.

Liz propped her elbows on the console, voice sing-song. “But she’s got great camera presence. Points for posture.”

Alyssa pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Body language suggests sincerity. Pupils steady, breath controlled. Either she’s honest or very well-trained.”

Reina tapped the screen once. “Well-trained is the problem.”

Inside Gene’s skull, the familiar invisible presence spoke in a tone like a call center smile.  

> **System:** “Risk assessment: low. Intent analysis: protective, not predatory. Recommendation: grant provisional shelter.”  

Gene stared at the monitor. “Provisional—what, exactly?” he muttered under his breath.

> **System:** “Temporary intake protocol. You designed it. I merely remember it better than you do.”

He exhaled slowly. Five women already lived inside these walls, and the air felt thin whenever jealousy lit the fuse.  

Letting another stranger in wasn’t logistics—it was chemistry.

Liz tilted her head, watching him instead of the screen. “You’re doing the face again.”

“What face?” Gene asked.

“The ‘I’d like to help but I also like not getting stabbed in my sleep’ face,” Liz said, cheerful. “Classic Supplier dilemma.”

On the yard camera, Nara didn’t shift or plead. She just stood there, letting the wind pull at her sleeves.  

“I won’t go back to them,” she said, quieter now. “If you refuse me, I’ll keep moving. But I won’t lead them here.”

Reina’s jaw worked once. “She knows we’re watching our perimeter trails.”

“Or she’s simply not suicidal,” Alyssa said.

Kayla glanced at Gene. “Your call.”

He rubbed at the corner of his eye. “We use the safe room. Vetting first.”

Freya, who had been feeding a limping mutt in the corner, looked up, earnest. “Do we… tie her up for the questions?”

Four heads swiveled toward her.

Freya blinked. “What? Tying stops running. That’s… logistics.”

“No tying,” Gene said, raising a hand. “Talking. In a room built for… talking.”

Reina toggled a switch. The intercom crackled.  

“Step to the side door,” she told Nara. “Arms out, palms open. Face the wall until instructed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nara replied, relief barely cracking her voice.

In the corridor behind the wall, locks thunked in sequence.  

Kayla prepared a pair of gray canvas bags—one for weapons inspection, one for personal effects.  

Alyssa laid out a compact med scanner and a sterile kit.  

Liz adjusted a microphone with a grin. “For archival purposes,” she said, already composing the evening’s broadcast in her head.  

Freya hovered near the safe room door with a thermos. “If she’s scared, tea helps,” she whispered to the dog. The dog thumped its tail, noncommittal.

Gene watched the cameras as Nara entered the decontam corridor, bright lights bleaching color from everything.  

He pressed the control for the speaker inside the antechamber.  

“State anything on your person that can harm you or us,” he said, tone flat.

“Knife, right boot,” Nara answered. “One spare magazine in my jacket. No explosives. No comms tracker.”  

A pause. “And a fruit. From earlier.”

Liz’s eyes warmed despite herself. “She kept one,” she murmured.

Reina opened the inner door a handspan and slid the canvas bag through. “Boot off. Jacket on the table. Knife in the bag.”  

Nara obeyed, movements careful, deliberate.  

A metal detector purred. Alyssa’s scanner beeped.  

“No fractures, mild dehydration, old contusion left forearm. No contagion markers,” Alyssa reported. “She’s clean.”

“Seat her,” Reina said.

The safe room looked like a police interview space designed by a minimalist: table bolted to the floor, two chairs, a camera in the corner, a speaker above the door.  

Nara sat, hands flat on the table, eyes tired but steady.

Gene didn’t step inside. He never did. He took the second chair in the observation booth behind a one-way panel and clicked the mic.  

“Why here?” he asked. “Why not run to another settlement, or back to your… friends?”

“They aren’t friends,” Nara said. “They won’t forgive failure, and I failed them. If I run to a settlement, they’ll follow. 

If I run alone, I’ll starve. Here, at least, I can be useful.”  

She lifted her gaze toward the dark glass. “Let me earn it.”

Kayla leaned closer to the console. “Useful how?”

“I drove trucks before the fall,” Nara said. “I can fix engines, patch tires, negotiate routes, keep books. I don’t steal from people who feed me.”  

A beat. “I don’t betray twice.”

The room held that sentence like it was heavier than the table.

> **System:** “Corroboration probability: high. Emotional index: shame to resolve ratio consistent with defection.”

Gene ground the heel of his palm against his brow.  

“Terms,” he said finally. “You’ll be housed in the north annex. You’ll not enter restricted floors. 

You’ll answer questions when asked. If any of your old group approaches within one kilometer of these walls, you tell us before we see them on a scope. That keeps you alive. Understood?”

“Understood,” Nara said.

“Also,” Kayla added, voice edged, “you cook when it’s your turn and you don’t complain about the menu.”

Nara’s mouth twitched—almost a smile. “I can work with canned beans.”

Liz clicked her pen, satisfied. “She’s a keeper.”

Reina remained stone. “We’ll see.”

Freya nudged the door with her hip and set a steaming cup on the table, careful not to cross the tape line.  

“It’s tea,” she said brightly. “We don’t tie people for questions. It’s a new rule.”

Nara blinked. “I… thank you.”

Gene killed the mic and leaned back, feeling the day sink into his shoulders.  

He wasn’t a hero. He kept inventory and avoided conversations. He traded in goods, not people.  

But the world kept pushing people to his door anyway.

He nodded once to Reina.  

“Annex key,” he said. “Provisional badge. We start the clock.”

Reina didn’t smile, but she moved. Orders turned into motion; motion turned into a new variable inside a very small ecosystem.

On the monitor, Nara wrapped cold hands around the warm cup and breathed out something that looked like relief.  

Outside, the wind pressed against the fortress like a hand testing a wall.

Inside, mouths would argue about wisdom and risk until dinner.  

Gene wasn’t sure if he’d chosen right. He only knew the choice had been made, and Hancock Fortress, stubborn as it was, had a way of surviving its choices.

The generators kept humming. The door locks sang their old metallic song.  

And in a world that no longer mailed letters, the mailbox by the gate caught a new scrap of paper in its slit—a different hand, a different plea, already waiting for tomorrow’s argument.