“Where did you come from?”

“Northeast of the Old Frontiers,” Sam said immediately, almost reflexively, and I quickly elbowed him hard in the ribs. Dort winced, either from pain or realization, and looked away. But it was already said. There was no taking it back.

“Frontiers?” Robert asked again, now looking directly into my eyes. “And how did you make it to the north of the Isthmus Region?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” I tried to respond firmly, although my heart did a somersault and dropped to my heels.

“No, quite straightforward. I'm curious how the customs officials granted you permission to cross the checkpoints and how the reapers let you through. The directives of the last days weren't favorable.”

“Apparently, due to the importance of our investigation, we were allowed to proceed,” I said evasively, holding the soldier's gaze, then turned away, silently praying to the heavens that Robert wouldn’t ask more questions. I wasn’t ready to come up with a lie. The man seemed to understand. He asked the question but not the expected one, and it was even somewhat surprising:

“Military correspondents?”

“No,” I answered quietly and weakly after a brief pause. “Civilian journalists.”

We moved quickly. The sensation was like a coma, an intoxicated daze. The situation itself felt no more real than a staged performance: the soldiers followed strangers into the unknown, while we blindly hoped they could help us. My mind was in chaos. I felt like nothing more than a puppet, with blind faith and a panicked horror. What had I hoped for? What was I afraid of? The uncertainty was grinding me down and exhausting me.

A shattered helicopter. A police car. The blacked-out windows of a store. Doors. Down the stairs. The bookstore. Soldiers moving, communicating with silent gestures. Flickering dots of their sights. The grave silence broken by the hum of flashing lights.

And I kept wondering why there hadn’t been any centralized or large-scale action from "above." If the entire North had descended into this waking nightmare, this chaos; if this plague – an infection, a virus, or madness – was spreading so rapidly and taking everything around it, why wasn’t anyone trying to stop it? Why silence the press? Why sacrifice the health and lives of people?

What kind of disaster was it if surviving a night in the city was considered an impossibly difficult feat?

Again, the eerie grocery store. Again, blood on the floor. Again, the bookstore.

Five days had passed since we left for °22-1-20-21-14. Five days ago, everything was so different. I couldn’t have imagined that I’d end up in such a predicament; that just two days earlier, sunlight had gently filtered through the colorful blinds into the trailer’s cabin as we drove past another checkpoint, celebrating our luck. I remember the euphoria we felt as we set out, the insane happiness of the initial departure – ahead lay a long road, but I was happy about it, thrilled that we had work ahead, looking forward to seeing new lands, and that I’d get a chance, even if briefly, to glimpse the mountain ranges.

I had a feeling this wouldn’t just be an investigation but something much more significant and important. No, it wasn’t just a feeling, I knew for certain – those in power knew the extent of the disaster and had hidden it from their loyal subjects. We were meant to bring light to this dark game, even if it meant we would have to ignite ourselves. They had trusted us. They had trusted me. And the bearer of the surname whose signature had authorized our travel documents had made us another tiny link in an enormous, significant chain.