Gene Hancock woke up to the dull hum of generators and the faint smell of bacon.  

Sunlight cut through the slanted blinds, landing on piles of old ration boxes and tools he never used.  

The world outside was dead quiet—no birds, no traffic, just the faint wind scraping against the walls of Hancock Fortress.  

“Breakfast: bacon, half-cooked eggs, and one glass of orange juice,” Kayla Winston announced from the kitchen. Her tone was the same mix of authority and irritation she used when issuing commands during a siege.  

Gene yawned, sat up, and scratched his head. “You’re getting fancy with breakfast again, huh?”  

Kayla slammed a pan onto the counter. “You’re lucky I didn’t serve you canned beans again. Eat.”  

He ate without protest, eyes half-open. “Any traders today?” he asked between bites.  

“One,” Kayla said, glancing at her clipboard. “Name’s Nara Vivienne. She wants to trade thirty boxes of clean bottled water for food. You offered her five boxes of canned goods—three-year shelf life.”  

Gene nodded lazily. “Sounds fair. Let’s do that.”  

At eleven, the security monitors flickered. 

Reina Cole leaned forward from the control station, her usual calm wrapped in suspicion.  

“There’s movement at the east gate,” she said.  

On the screen, a battered truck crawled across the dirt road toward the fortress.  

The driver was a woman—mid-twenties, hair tied back, eyes sharp from years of survival. The kind who’d learned not to trust anyone but still hoped someone out there would.  

Reina toggled the mic. “Identify yourself.”  

“Nara Vivienne,” the woman replied, breathless. “I’m here for the trade.”  

“Proceed to the side entrance,” Reina said. The steel gate groaned open. 

The truck rolled inside, engine sputtering, before the gate clanged shut behind her.  

The trade yard had two small steel houses facing each other. 

One was open—the designated input room.  

“Place all your goods inside,” Reina instructed through the intercom.  

“Anyone gonna help me?” Nara asked, half-hopeful.  

“No,” Reina said flatly. “Please handle it yourself.”  

Gene sipped his juice, watching the monitor feed with disinterest. Then a voice echoed inside his head.  

> **System:** “She’s cute. Definitely your type.”  

Gene groaned. “Oh great, not this again.”  

> **System:** “I’m just saying, statistically speaking, you’ve had five female residents for over a year, and your reproductive isolation index—”  

“Shut it.”  

He leaned back in his chair, muttering, “Five women already. Another one and this fortress’ll explode.”  

He paused, staring at the screen where Nara struggled to carry a box.  

“It’s not the fortress that’s too small,” he sighed. “It’s their hearts that aren’t big enough.”  

He took another lazy bite of bacon, resigned to another day of chaos in paradise.