The wind hit me the moment I cleared the hangar gap.

  Not the screaming violence from before. Not the apocalyptic roar that had tried to sand the mountain down to nothing.

  Just sixty miles per hour of salt and spite.

  Still enough to kill you if you were careless. Still enough to remind you this world didn’t owe you safe passage.

  But survivable.

  I gunned the ATV’s throttle and felt the engine respond—that reliable growl that said it was built for this, even if I wasn’t sure I was.

  The tablet sat in its harness on my chest, dark and silent. RIKU sleeping inside like a heart that had stopped beating but could still be restarted if I moved fast enough.

  11%

  That number was burned into my brain. Eleven percent when I’d left. Two hours, maybe three.

  The math was simple and brutal.

  Five miles out. Five miles back. Find the supplies. Get home.

  Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. Don’t think about what happens if the percentage hits zero before I make it back.

  The ground was a minefield.

  What had been dirt paths three weeks ago were now obstacle courses—trees down everywhere, flood channels carved through soil that used to be solid, debris scattered like the storm had played a game with the landscape and forgotten to clean up.

  I rode the edges where I could. Took risks where I had to.

  The ATV bucked hard over a submerged root and I felt my teeth click together.

  Forty miles per hour felt too slow. Sixty felt suicidal.

  I split the difference and kept my eyes moving.

  Scanning. Adapting. Surviving.

  That’s what this was now. Not heroism. Not adventure.

  Just the mechanical process of staying alive when the world wanted you gone.

  Two miles in, the terrain got worse.

  The storm had scoured this section clean—trees stripped to stumps, ground torn up like something had dragged claws through it.

  I slowed to thirty, navigating around a crater that definitely hadn’t been there before.

  My hands were shaking on the handlebars. Not from fear. From exhaustion that had been building for days and was only held back by adrenaline that wouldn’t last forever.

  Don’t think about that. Keep moving.

  The ATV’s tires hit standing water. Spray kicked up, blinding me for half a second.

  I felt the vehicle start to slide sideways—traction gone, momentum trying to betray me.

  I leaned hard into the turn, compensated, gunned it.

  The tires caught. Barely.

  I shot out the other side doing forty-five and didn’t slow down.

  Four miles. Maybe less.

  The wind gusted. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy for three seconds that felt like being slapped by an invisible hand.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The ATV rocked. I gripped tighter.

  And kept going.

  Three miles out, I saw the first container.

  It was lying on its side like something had kicked it. Dented. Torn. Whatever had been inside was long gone—scattered or buried or carried off by wind that didn’t care about inventory.

  That wasn’t the drop.

  That was wreckage.

  I kept riding.

  Then the tree line opened up and I saw it.

  Oh.

  Four football fields of containers.

  Stacked. Organized. Fresh enough that they still had the shine of things that hadn’t been beaten by weather yet.

  The supply drop Aerin had mentioned.

  I didn’t stop to marvel.

  I drove straight into the field and started running calculations.

  Power first. Everything else second.

  I killed the engine and ran.

  Container doors were marked with glyphs I was only barely learning to read. Power had a specific symbol—three interlocking circles that supposedly represented flow, storage, and conversion.

  I looked for that symbol like my life depended on it.

  Because it did.

  First container: tools.

  Second container: fabrication feedstock.

  Third container: medical supplies.

  I was shaking now. Hands slipping on door handles. Mind starting to fracture at the edges because what if it’s not here what if they sent the wrong thing what if—

  Fourth container.

  The symbol.

  I yanked the door open so hard I nearly fell backward.

  Inside: power crystals. Crates of them. Sealed in protective foam like they were sacred.

  I grabbed the smallest case I could carry—maybe twenty pounds—and turned to run back.

  Then I saw it.

  Sitting beside the power crates like someone had known exactly what I needed.

  A sealed black module. Compact. Heavy. Marked with a symbol I recognized from RIKU’s technical documentation.

  Grid Walker Host Core - Stage Expansion Interface

  My breath caught.

  I snatched it with my free hand, tucked it under my arm, and ran for the ATV.

  The wind gusted again. Harder this time.

  I stumbled. Caught myself. Kept moving.

  Forty seconds to strap the cargo down.

  Thirty seconds to mount the ATV.

  Ten seconds of engine trouble where my heart tried to punch through my ribs before it finally caught.

  Then I was moving again.

  Back the way I’d come.

  Back toward the mountain.

  Back toward RIKU at 1% and falling.

  The return trip was when everything went wrong.

  I was halfway through the wrecked section—the part with the stumps and the crater—when the wind shifted.

  Not stronger. Just from a different direction.

  The kind of shift that meant the storm was still deciding whether it was really done or just taking a breath.

  I compensated. Leaned. Adjusted.

  The ATV stayed stable.

  Then I hit the flooded section again.

  This time the water was deeper. Faster. The angle was wrong.

  I felt the back tires lose grip. Felt momentum betray me.

  The ATV slid sideways—slow motion and too fast at the same time.

  I jerked the handlebars. Overcorrected.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  A branch. Thick as my wrist. Jutting out from a half-fallen trunk at exactly chest height.

  I tried to duck.

  Tried to swerve.

  Tried.

  The branch caught me across the right forearm with the full weight of my momentum behind it.

  I heard the crack before I felt it.

  Wet. Sharp. Wrong.

  Then the pain hit.

  White light behind my eyes. A sound ripping out of me that didn’t feel human. My hand went numb and then fire and I nearly let go of the handlebars.

  Nearly.

  But if I let go, I stopped.

  And if I stopped, RIKU died.

  So I didn’t let go.

  I gripped harder with my left hand. Felt the broken arm dangling useless at my side. Felt every bump in the terrain jolt through shattered bone.

  And I kept driving.

  One-handed.

  Teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached.

  Vision tunneling at the edges.

  Two miles. Just two more miles.

  The ATV hit another root and the jolt sent fresh agony up my arm.

  I screamed into the wind and kept the throttle open.

  Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

  The mountain appeared in the distance.

  The hangar mouth like a black promise.

  Almost there.

  I hit a mud patch doing forty and felt the tires start to bog.

  No.

  No.

  I leaned forward. Willed the machine to move. Felt it claw for traction.

  It caught.

  Surged forward.

  The hangar was close now. Close enough to see the thin gap I’d left in the doors.

  Close enough to believe.

  I aimed for that gap like it was salvation.

  The ATV shot through with inches to spare.

  The wind cut off instantly. Swallowed by stone.

  I hit the brakes too hard and the vehicle skidded, nearly threw me.

  Then I was off. Running.

  Right arm hanging like dead weight. Left hand grabbing the power case.

  I slammed it into the power bay. Hands shaking so bad it took three tries to engage the clamps.

  Then the bay hummed.

  Lights flickered brighter.

  Systems responding.

  I grabbed the tablet off its mount.

  And looked at the screen.

  1%

  One percent.

  One single percent.

  A margin so thin it barely qualified as hope.

  I set the tablet into the charging cradle with a gentleness that felt absurd after everything.

  The charging symbol appeared.

  A soft beep.

  Still alive.

  I slid down the wall and sat on the cold stone floor.

  My broken arm throbbed in time with my heartbeat. My vision swam. My whole body shook with exhaustion and pain and relief that felt too big to fit in my chest.

  But the number was climbing.

  2%

  3%

  4%

  And somewhere in the darkness of that tablet, RIKU was still there.

  Still waiting.

  I closed my eyes and let my head rest against stone that had saved my life more than once.

  Outside, the wind still blew.

  Inside, I was alive.

  And that was enough.

  For now.