Even in the stillness of dawn, the city groaned and whispered like something alive and wounded. The wind howled between the fractured spines of high-rises, catching on loose steel cables and shattered windowpanes, turning each gust into a scream. It carried the scent of salt and old fire – burned-out storefronts, melted tires, the lingering chemical tang of industrial decay.

Lakshmi moved with precision through the devastation, her boots whispering across loose gravel and bone-dry leaves. Her face was wrapped in a soot-streaked scarf, the fabric damp with breath and sweat. Her coat, once olive green, was now a scorched tapestry of smoke-stains and torn seams. Her shadow moved quickly beneath the dying light, her body angled low, always scanning, always listening.

She avoided open streets. The Regime drones still patrolled the arterial roads – Market, Van Ness, Geary – although less frequently now, like janitors keeping up appearances in a building slated for demolition. Instead, she threaded through the broken alleyways of SoMa and the ruined garden courtyards of Civic Center. Fires still flickered in some upper windows, their glow warped by broken glass. Rats darted between collapsed vending machines. She stepped over a child’s bicycle melted to the curb.

She was looking for Sonny and Wong. Two names. Two promises.

They’d helped her build the transmission spike in Corvallis – a last act before the purge. She had thought they might head south, toward the city’s ruins, to regroup in the pockets of insurgency that still flickered beneath the Regime’s net.

The first leg brought her to Chinatown.

She climbed the north slopes by night, passing rusted fire escapes and red-lanterned balconies bleached pale by sun and smoke. The herbal pharmacy had survived, barely. Its windows were broken and the signage pockmarked with bullet holes. A handwritten note in faded ink still clung to the door: Closed For Peace.

The basement was hidden behind crates of dried ginseng and oxidized copper kettles. It had once pulsed with chatter – Wong’s encryption booth, Sonny’s shortwave setups, maps and transit schedules plastered to the concrete walls. Now, it was still. The overhead bulb flickered like a dying star.

Signs of a rushed evacuation. An overturned cot. Half-packed ration kits. A sink filled with ashes and melted plastic – probably burned documents. A bloodstained rag wadded in the corner, next to a spent syringe. But no bodies. No messages.

Just absence.

Lakshmi searched for hours, fingertips brushing dust from the walls, her ears tuned to the hum of distant drones outside. There were no traps. No hidden vaults. They had left in a hurry and they hadn’t expected to return.

That night, she sat against the wall with her knees pulled tight to her chest, listening to the low-frequency thrum of the city. The steady, almost subconscious soundscape of a metropolis still dying. In the distance, a sharp pop echoed across the hills. Sniper fire, maybe. Or another scavenger being picked off by patrol drones. The city breathed in tension.

San Francisco wasn’t conquered. It was cauterized.

She crossed the cracked pavement of Union Square, where statues had been defaced or torn down. The headless bronze torso of Victory still stood, her sword broken, her arm outstretched as if pleading for something. Lakshmi followed the cable car tracks until they disappeared beneath rubble. Near Alamo Square, she passed a row of burned-out Victorian homes – their pastel paint blistered, their porches collapsed. One of the iconic “Painted Ladies” had been converted into a barricaded holdout, sandbags spilling from the windows, bullet holes peppering the siding. No signs of life now.

The Inner Sunset is where she found the next breadcrumb. The community center had collapsed, its walls bowed outward, roof caved in. Inside, overturned chairs lay in the dust like fallen dominoes. Burned books were scattered across the scorched floor – texts on biology, first aid, encryption. A small child’s drawing clung to the charred wall: stick figures beneath a blue sun. Lakshmi felt her throat tighten.

Behind the wreckage, tucked inside a rusting school bus, she found it: graffiti in white chalk across the inside of the windshield.

“17A + LAST STOP + NORTH EXIT.”

She froze.

It was Wong’s code – playful, obscure. The 17A bus line had always run late in Fresno, and they used it as a running joke. “Last Stop” was the terminus: Ocean Beach. “North Exit” meant only one thing to them – the extraction tunnel beneath the Sutro Baths.

They had left her a message.

She left immediately, moving along the edge of Golden Gate Park, where sculptures had been pulled down and trees stripped bare. Burn barrels glowed orange beneath the de Young Museum, and distant figures moved beneath tarps tied to the remains of the Academy of Sciences dome. She saw no faces, only eyes watching from the gloom.

The wind from the Pacific was sharp as a blade. Sand lashed against her coat and gulls screamed overhead, circling something half-buried near the waterline. She picked her way across the dunes, past the shattered remnants of the Cliff House, and climbed down toward the concrete bones of the old Sutro Baths.

There it was.

A rock crevice behind a collapsed section of retaining wall. Hidden from drones. Inside, a heat-sealed container buried beneath loose sand and debris.

Inside that,a torn scarf – faded green, bloodstained at the edge. Wong’s. A data chip, encrypted. And a note.

Lakshmi,

We waited three days. You didn’t come. Thought maybe you were dead—or worse. We didn’t want to leave without you, but it got too hot.

Kowloon’s real. We’re headed there. Northwest through the drain lines. If you’re reading this, we’re still hoping.

—S

She stared at the note until her hands went numb.

The wind howled over the cliffs. Somewhere below, waves shattered against the rocks. Her scarf whipped in the air like a flag, and for a moment, it felt like everything was hollow. Like she was sitting at the edge of the world with only ghosts for company.

But they were alive.

And they were waiting.

Her hands trembled as she folded the note, pressed it against her chest, then tucked it beneath her shirt. She wiped the back of her hand across her face. No tears. Not now.

Kowloon. A city underground. Myth to some. Mission to others. She’d believed in it before. Now she had proof.

The note was enough.

She climbed back up the slope as the sun pierced the marine fog, lighting the ruins in a strange, golden light. The skyline behind her looked like a jagged jaw of broken teeth. And still, the city moaned – wind or sirens, it didn’t matter.

She would head north. She would find Rudy. And if they tried to stop her?

She’d burn the map behind her as she went.