We ca out of the staff room together, and I pulled the door shut behind us.
I’ll be honest with myself, there was sothing really good and exciting about having sex outdoors definitely.
We stepped back into the main room of the optical center.
"Soone’s coming," Cindy said.
Three seconds later the front door burst open.
Daisy ca through it at sothing approaching a run, pulling the door shut behind her with both hands, pressing her back against it and breathing hard. Her eyes found us imdiately and she let out a long, shaky exhale that had a small amount of tearfulness sowhere in it.
"I just... I wanted to co quickly and there was sothing in the street behind and I didn’t know if—" She stopped herself, pressing a hand to her chest, composing. "Maribel and Doctor Shawn are still at the pharmacy. I just—"
"It’s fine," Cindy said, moving toward her with a smile. "You made it."
A slow, dragging sound ca from the other side of the glass door.
I was already moving. I pulled the door open, stepped out, handled the Infected with a clean swing of my axe and kicked the body clear of the threshold before stepping back inside and pulling the door shut again.
"Clear," I said.
"Thank you," Daisy said, smiling.
"Good timing anyway," I said. "We were just finishing up in here."
"Finishing up?" Daisy asked, tilting her head.
My brain produced an error ssage.
"Checking the space," I said, the recovery arriving approximately one beat later than ideal. "For infected. Structurally. Nothing in here, it’s clean and safe."
Daisy looked around the room and nodded. "Oh. Thank you for checking."
"Any ti," I said.
Cindy had already redirected, moving toward Daisy. She took Daisy by the arm and turned her gently toward the far wall. "Look, co and see this."
The wall Shawn had described was exactly as he’d said, a long counter lined with labeled bags and boxes, each tagged with a printed collection slip, undisturbed and complete. Prescriptions fulfilled by the lab and returned, waiting patiently for the patients who had stopped coming. Weeks of soone’s careful optical work, sitting in the quiet dark of an abandoned building.
Daisy approached it hopefully.
"The prescription details are on the slips," I said, falling into step beside her. "Full data... lens strength, axis, correction type, everything. Go through them carefully and find the closest match to what you actually need. Don’t approximate."
Daisy picked up the nearest bag. Turned the slip over. Read it. Her lips moved slightly as she compared the numbers internally against whatever she carried in her mory.
She set it down. Picked up the next one.
I moved to the drawers on the left side and started working through them systematically. Cindy took the other end of the counter. The three of us worked in quiet, the only sound the soft shifting of bags and the occasional rustle of a paper slip being turned over.
"This one."
Daisy said, holding a slim case in both hands, the slip pinched between her fingers, her eyes moving between the printed prescription details and the glasses folded inside.
"Close enough?" I asked.
She looked up.
"Very close," she said. "I think... yes. Yes, these would work."
"Put them on," Cindy said, materializing at her shoulder instantly.
Daisy set her broken pair down on the counter. She opened the new case. Lifted them out. Put them on.
She blinked.
Once. A slow, adjusting blink.
Then again.
Then she went very still for a mont blinking again.
"Well?" Cindy said softly.
Daisy turned and looked at . Both lenses intact, clear-eyed, focused, nothing between her and the world for the first ti in a long ti.
"Everything is very sharp," she said with a wide smile and happy.
"Good," I said. "Now go through the rest and take a couple of backup pairs as well. Different fras, sa prescription range. Glasses break, you know that better than anyone and we’re not going to find a setup like this again easily."
Daisy’s eyes went wide and nodded. "Y...You’re right!" She turned back to the counter imdiately and began working through the remaining bags with renewed urgency.
Cindy and I stepped back to give her room, drifting toward the display cases along the far wall, the retail section, untouched fras still arranged in neat rows behind the glass, price tags still attached.
"Ryan," Cindy called then.
I looked over just in ti to see her drive the poml of her knife into the glass case in a single clean strike. The panel caved inward with a muted crack, pieces falling cleanly.
"Nobody’s coming for them," she said simply, already reaching inside.
She pulled out a pair of oversized sunglasses, the kind with large rounded lenses and thin gold fras, the type that would have cost more than a reasonable person would spend on sothing that sat on their face. She held them up, considered them briefly, and put them on.
She turned to .
"How is it?" She asked.
The lenses caught the dim light from the doorway. The fras were slightly too large for her face, which sohow made the whole thing work better rather than worse.
"Do they have any correction in them?" I asked, smiling despite myself.
She looked around thoughtfully. "No, actually. Everything’s perfectly clear. Just tinted." She pushed them up slightly and grinned. "I’m keeping them."
"They look good," I said, honestly.
She reached back into the broken case and produced another pair, different style, dark rectangular fras.
"Try these," she said, holding them out.
I took them. Put them on.
"Well?" she asked.
"Fine," I said. "Clear. No correction."
She looked at for a mont with her head tilted slightly, and sothing in her expression went briefly, genuinely soft.
"They look good on you," she said. "But it’s a waste."
"Why?"
"Because your gray eyes are the best thing about your face and now I can’t see them properly," she said, very matter-of-factly, and turned back to look at the case.
I stood there for a mont before laughing.
I took the glasses off.
But I held onto them.
A few minutes later Daisy reappeared from the back of the optical center with her bag adjusted on her shoulder and the new glasses sitting clean and intact on her face, both lenses uncracked, both arms straight, doing exactly what glasses were supposed to do.
"Got what you needed?" I asked.
She nodded, patting the bag. "Three pairs. Sa prescription range, different fras. Just in case."
"Good," I said.
"Don’t go treating the ones you’re wearing like the last ones," Cindy said. "Those stay on your face and stay in one piece for as long as humanly possible."
"Yes," Daisy agreed laughing.
"Alright," I said, pulling the door open and holding it. "Let’s go find out what’s taking them so long."
"What is taking them so long?" Cindy asked as we stepped back onto the street, directing the question at no one in particular.
"Doctor Shawn wanted a lot of things," Daisy said.
She was not exaggerating.
We ca back around the corner to the pharmaceutical supply outlet and found the scene through the open door before we’d even fully arrived. Maribel was standing near the entrance with her arms folded and the expression of soone who had run out of patience approximately twenty minutes ago and was now simply existing in a state of resigned endurance. On the floor beside her sat two bags — the large, industrial kind, the type that usually held construction waste — both of them visibly straining at the sides, stuffed to a degree that suggested Shawn had approached this supply run with the philosophy of a man who did not intend to co back.
Shawn himself was still moving through the shelves.
"Are you attempting to develop a cure for the virus?" Cindy asked, leaning in the doorway and looking at the bags with genuine admiration. "Because that is the only use case I can think of for this volu of supplies."
"I am taking advantage of the situation," Shawn said, without looking up from the shelf he was reading. "Opportunity doesn’t announce itself twice. You are fast and capable and they rarely let out, and when they do I’m surrounded by people who flinch at shadows." He pulled sothing from the shelf, read the label, placed it carefully into a third bag he was working on. "I intend to leave here having never needed to co back."
Maribel let out a breath through her nose that communicated a complete sentence without using any words.
I leaned slightly toward Cindy. "Check in here while we’re at it," I said quietly. "You know what for."
She caught it imdiately and smiled.
"Cindy?" Daisy moved to follow her.
I caught Daisy’s arm gently. "Wait—"
She turned, looking at with mild surprise.
"You’ve already seen the inside, haven’t you?" I said, releasing her arm carefully. "No need to trail after her. She’s just...looking at sothing."
Daisy looked at .
Then at the door Cindy had disappeared through.
Then back at , with those newly clear eyes that, I was beginning to realize, missed considerably less than the cracked ones had.
"...Yes," she said quietly. "I’ve already seen the inside."
"Great," I said.
"So," Maribel said, turning to Daisy. "You found glasses that work?"
Daisy pushed them up slightly with one finger and smiled. "Yes."
Maribel looked at her for a mont. "You look less stupid like this," she said.
Daisy blinked. "Oh."
"That’s a complint," I said to Daisy quietly.
"I know," Daisy whispered back, the blush already arriving.
Another few minutes passed. Then Shawn stood upright, rolled his shoulders, and looked at his assembled haul with the satisfied expression of a craftsman reviewing finished work.
"That should cover everything," he said.
"Wonderful," Maribel said. "Good luck carrying it."
Shawn looked at the two, now three enormous bags sitting on the floor.
Then he looked at Maribel.
"You’ll help," he said.
"If I’m carrying bags, who’s watching for threats?" she asked.
"He can—" Shawn started, glancing at .
"He has two people to keep track of," Maribel said, before I could offer anything. "So no."
Shawn grumbled. He bent down, gathered the bags, redistributed the weight between both hands, and straightened up.
"Alright," he said. "Let’s move."
Cindy ca back through the interior door at almost exactly that mont. She fell in beside and I glanced down at her bag.
"Find what you were looking for?" I asked.
"Absolutely," she said, smiling wide and bright.
I made a point of not looking at what she was indicating in the bag. So things didn’t need to be communicated in front of an audience.
What a world we were living in, half the city overrun, ard criminals holding prisoners across the water, alien entities conducting their ancient war through our streets, and our main personal achievent of the afternoon was locating birth control pills in an abandoned pharmacy.
Priorities were what they were for and Cindy....
"I’m hungry and I’d like to go back before it gets dark," Maribel said, already turning toward the street. "Everyone moving?"
We fell in behind her.
We were about half a block along when I stopped.
It wasn’t a sound. It wasn’t movent. It was sothing underneath those things, sothing like a terrible sensation, like goosebumps.
The Dullahan Senses reacted.
I stopped walking.
A second later, Cindy stopped too.
I looked at her. "You felt that."
She nodded looking at nervously.
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