"Wake up."
The voice arrived sowhere at the edge of my consciousness, distant and muffled.
Then sothing landed on .
Not lightly.
"Hmm—" The groan ca out before I was fully conscious of making it, dragged out of my chest by the sudden weight.
"Wake. Up."
I turned my head and forced my eyes open with considerable effort, blinking against the groggy resistance of a sleep that had evidently been deep enough to leave grooves. My vision swam, blurred, then gradually resolved itself into a face hovering inches above mine.
I recognized her before my brain had fully caught up.
"Wake up, dear," the voice said again, and Sydney smiled down at .
She was straddling , her dark hair loose around her shoulders and her blue eyes narrowed in mischief.
Before I could produce a coherent response, she leaned down and kissed .
I was surprised enough that it took a full second to catch up to it. Then I kissed her back without much thinking about.
She pulled back after a couple of seconds, far enough to look at my face properly, her smirk settling into place.
"You slept like an absolute log today," she said. "Quite unlike you. You’re usually insufferably alert first thing in the morning."
"Am I?" I managed, my voice rough and unhurried with sleep. I turned my head toward the window.
The light coming through the gap in the curtains was not the thin grey light of early morning. It was full, warm, and entirely unambiguous about the hour. The sun had been up for a aningful amount of ti. I had slept through most of the early part of the day without any awareness of doing so.
"Oh," I exhaled, pressing the back of my hand over my eyes for a mont.
"So," Sydney said conversationally above , propping her chin on one hand, "let make sure I’m understanding the situation correctly. i is currently locked up sowhere in Callighan’s place, alone and surrounded by people with no particular incentive to be kind to her—and anwhile, our fearless leader is here achieving what appears to be the deepest and most restorative sleep of his entire post-apocalyptic life." She stroked her chin with exaggerated consideration. "I wonder what she would think of that."
"You are genuinely terrible," I said, my voice still rough around the edges. "Do you know that?"
"Isn’t that exactly why you love , though?" Sydney replied, her grin widening.
I didn’t have an imdiate counter to that, which was its own kind of answer.
I pushed myself upright, shifting her weight in the process but not dislodging her since she had apparently decided she was comfortable and had no imdiate plans to relocate. She adjusted her position without ceremony as I sat up, and I wrapped one arm loosely behind her back.
"I must have several screws loose sowhere in my head," I said, looking at her.
"Oh, definitely," she agreed with great sincerity. "Your common sense, for a start. Very clearly missing. Probably lost soti around the first week of the zombie invasion."
"You are the single last person in any geographical location I want to receive comntary about common sense from," I said flatly. "You got yourself bitten by an infected because you wanted superpowers."
Sydney’s expression did not register even a flicker of remorse at this reminder.
"Who," she said slowly, "would not want superpowers? Given the specific option? Be honest."
"You are now a target for an alien civilization that has been hunting Symbiote hosts across the galaxy for thousand years," I pointed out. "How does that factor into the equation?"
She shrugged off. "Then I’ll beat their asses. I already got a look at Kunta, and honestly? She seems pretty manageable."
"Are you bullying her?" I asked, my expression doing sothing involuntary at the corners.
"Define bullying," Sydney said.
"Sydney—"
"Or," she continued, sliding smoothly past my objection, "are you planning to add her to the harem? Because if so, we really do need so kind of advance notification system. A group announcent, maybe. Sothing with reasonable lead ti."
I moved before she finished the sentence—shifting my weight and bringing her down onto the mattress in one motion, her arms still looped around my neck so she ca willingly, landing against the pillow with a sound of surprised amusent as I held myself above her.
"You talk too much," I said.
"You need soone who talks too much," she replied without missing a beat and grinned. "Otherwise your entire life would be unbearably grim. I am performing a vital morale function."
"Is that what we’re calling it."
"I am genuinely indispensable," she confird.
"You might not be entirely wrong about that," I admitted, and kissed her.
She kissed back—her hands moving from my neck to my shoulders and pulling in slightly. It lasted several comfortable seconds before we both eased back.
"Hm," Sydney said thoughtfully, staring at the ceiling past my shoulder with the expression of soone who has just detected sothing.
"What?"
"I have a very finely tuned instinct," she said, "and that instinct is currently telling that this mattress has been subjected to so fairly rigorous recent use." She turned her eyes toward .
"So translation?"
"A good and hard sex," she said looking at . "Am I wrong?"
I looked at her for a long, flat mont.
She was genuinely surpassing herself today.
"No," I said honestly. "You aren’t wrong."
"Interesting," Sydney said, drawing the word out with enormous satisfaction. "Rachel or Cindy? My money is on Rachel—there’s sothing very Rachel about the energy in here—though I suppose I can’t entirely rule out a newer developnt. Who knows what woman you might have bagged when we weren’t around—"
"That is enough," I said, pushing off her and sitting up. "You have successfully destroyed whatever mont we had. Congratulations. Impressive work."
"Oh, co on..." Sydney sulked.
I ignored her and reached for my shirt, pulling it on and beginning to button it. The morning light was doing its job of making the room’s accumulated dust extrely visible.
I retrieved the half-empty water bottle from my bag and drank several long swallows, then poured a small amount into my palm and scrubbed it over my face, feeling the cold of it sharpen my edges back into sothing functional.
The exhaustion from yesterday was still present but had receded to a manageable level. So of it, I suspected, was the residue of the dream conversation—speaking with the white lady always left so quality of tiredness behind, as if the interaction cost sothing that sleep alone couldn’t fully replenish. The rest was simply the accumulated weight of the longest day I’d had in recent mory, finally collecting its debt.
Or maybe that last day in Jackson Township was the longest...
"Co on," Sydney’s voice arrived behind , accompanied by the sensation of her arms wrapping around my back from behind, her chin finding a perch on my shoulder. "Just a little a bit, so quick sex!"
"It’s bright morning," I said, moving forward, which had the effect of pulling her along since she showed no sign of releasing her grip.
"Even better!" she began, her feet sliding along the floor as she was towed forward. "Your balls must be overfilled since it’s the morning!
"You are hopeless."
"Just a little bit!"
I pulled the door open and stepped out into the corridor.
I should have put the chain lock on last night, I thought, stepping out into the corridor with Sydney still attached to my back like a particularly determined barnacle. I should absolutely have put the chain lock on.
"What exactly is happening here?"
Cindy’s voice arrived from the direction of the stairwell, and I turned to find her stepping into the corridor with a cup of sothing steaming in her hands and an expression that shifted from neutral to pained the mont she registered the full picture—Sydney draped across my back, feet still sliding uselessly along the floor, arms locked around my torso with the commitnt of soone who had decided this was where she lived now.
"Sydney is happening," I replied. "If you have any influence over her whatsoever, now would be an excellent ti to deploy it."
Cindy closed her eyes briefly sighing.
"Sydney," she said, setting her cup on a nearby windowsill and reaching for her. "Co on. Let go."
"I had a perfectly reasonable request," Sydney said, finally releasing and straightening up. "A brief morning sex."
"A...Are you stupid?!" Cindy blushed and glanced rapidly in both directions along the corridor.
"Hm," Sydney continued, pivoting smoothly, her thoughtful gaze moving between and Cindy? "Actually, judging from Cindy’s reaction, I’m going to go ahead and confirm my hypothesis. Rachel was the one."
"Do you want a dal?" I asked her.
"I want—"
"Sydney," Cindy said, and closed her hand over Sydney’s mouth before the sentence could complete itself.
Sydney’s eyes curved upward with a smile. She reached up, took Cindy’s wrist with both hands, and leaned close enough to drop her voice to a whisper.
"What do you think," she said to Cindy with obvious relish, "about a threeso? The three of us. This morning. Ryan clearly needs the company."
Cindy’s face went scarlet.
I decided that my contribution to this mont was to simply not be present for it.
I turned, walked to the staircase, and descended.
Behind I heard Cindy make a sound that was not quite a word, and Sydney laugh with genuine delight.
The hotel had co alive in the hours I’d been asleep.
Each floor I passed through showed evidence of the morning’s work already underway—doors propped open, the sounds of sweeping and furniture being repositioned. Well, we have to take advantage of the daylight and not everything had been cleaned yesterday night.
I ca out through the lobby and into the morning.
The air outside was cool and bright.
People were moving around the exterior as well. Small groups stood in conversation near the vehicles forming the outer barricade, gesturing at various structural points.
Others had fanned out into the surrounding block, moving through the cleared streets—checking storefronts, peering through windows, assessing what might be worth salvaging.
The infected had been cleared from the imdiate vicinity so everyone should be safe there.
"Morning, Ryan—did you just wake up?"
Clara appeared from my left with a warm smile.
"Just," I said. "How’s the shoulder?"
"Still complaining," she said. "Uncomfortable and sore, if I’m being honest. But Ivy’s been good about changing the dressings and keeping an eye on it. She hasn’t said anything alarming, which I’m choosing to take as a positive sign."
"Good," I said, and ant it. Clara had taken that bullet in circumstances that still sat badly with when I let myself think about them. "Make sure you keep letting her look at it. And don’t overwork."
"Yes, yes," Clara said, laughing.
I looked out across the street looking for soone and...found him.
Mark was standing beside one of the vehicles near the outer periter—not working on it exactly, not in conversation with anyone. Just standing adjacent to it, one hand resting on the hood. A cigarette burned slowly between his fingers, trailing a thin line of smoke into the still morning air.
He was looking at nothing in particular. Or rather, at everything and nothing.
"Did you finally decide to go talk to him?" Clara asked quietly beside , following my gaze.
"I’ve been trying to figure out what to say," I said.
"There might not be a right thing," Clara said after a mont. "Sotis there just isn’t. Sotis you just show up and let the person know they aren’t invisible."
I looked at her briefly.
She gave a small, knowing shrug in return.
"Jackson Township," I said, more to myself than to her. "He was born there. Built there. Everything he put into that place—"
"Everything," Clara confird softly. "And watched it end. And then kept moving anyway, because what else do you do."
I was quiet for a mont.
"Right," I said. And then I pushed off from where I was standing and walked toward him.
We needed Mark now more than we ever had—for the Nexon Battery, for the electrical infrastructure, for much more in the future.
I won’t let that old smoker fall this easily.
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