Day 66 Post-Impact - Morning
The reports started coming at dawn.
Jade had set up monitoring stations along every approach to the Safe Zone, salvaged cameras and motion sensors that fed data back to her war room displays. What those sensors showed now painted a picture of desperation on a scale they hadn't seen before.
"Three columns," she reported, her voice flat with the forced calm of someone delivering very bad news. "All heading north. Combined estimate: four hundred plus civilians."
Sarnav studied the feeds. The imagery was grainy, captured by cameras that had survived the apocalypse through luck rather than design, but the story they told was clear enough. People on foot, carrying whatever they could manage. Children on parents' backs. Elderly supported by the young. The wounded being dragged on improvised stretchers. A river of human misery flowing north, toward the only safety they knew existed.
"Where are they coming from?"
"Johor Bahru, primarily. Some from the surrounding areas." Jade pulled up a map overlay, red zones marking Ascendancy territory, blue marking the refugee routes. "The Ascendancy pushed hard two days ago. Burned through three survivor settlements we'd identified. These are the ones who got out."
"The ones who got out," Jiyeon repeated quietly. "Which means there were ones who didn't."
Jade didn't answer. She didn't need to.
Four hundred people, fleeing for their lives. Four hundred mouths to feed, bodies to shelter, souls to protect. The Safe Zone's population would nearly double overnight. Their supplies, carefully rationed, would need to stretch further than ever. Their defenses, already strained, would need to cover more ground with the same resources.
"They won't all make it," Chen Wei said quietly. "Not on foot. Not with the Ascendancy hunting them. The weakest will fall behind. The hunters will pick them off one by one."
"Then we help them make it." Sarnav turned to Ishani, who stood ready near the door, already anticipating the order. She'd been restless since the reconnaissance mission, that hunger he'd noticed growing more visible by the day. "Take a team. Fast movers only. Intercept the closest column and provide escort."
"Rules of engagement?"
"Protect the civilians. Eliminate any Ascendancy forces that interfere."
Something flickered in Ishani's eyes. Anticipation, perhaps. Eagerness. The expression of someone who'd been waiting for permission to do what they did best. "Understood."
"Minji, you're support. Illusions to cover their approach and confuse any enemies." He looked at his Korean wife, saw her nod of acknowledgment. "Chen Wei, start preparing intake protocols. We're about to get very crowded very quickly."
"We don't have the space," Chen Wei warned. "Or the supplies."
"Then we make space. And we find supplies." Sarnav's voice left no room for argument. "These people are coming to us because they have nowhere else to go. We don't turn them away."
The war room erupted into organized chaos as orders were distributed and teams assembled. Within twenty minutes, the rescue party was moving south.
They found the first column three hours later.
The highway had become a river of humanity, two hundred and thirty-seven people (Minji counted) trudging north with the desperate determination of those who had nowhere else to go. They moved in clusters: families sticking together, strangers bonded by shared trauma, the strong helping the weak.
Ishani's team materialized from the jungle flanking the road, and for a terrible moment, the refugees thought they were under attack again. Screams rose. Children were pulled behind parents. A few men with makeshift weapons stepped forward, ready to die protecting their people.
"We're from Harmony Safe Zone," Ishani announced, her voice carrying across the crowd. "We're here to help."
The relief that washed through the column was almost physical. People collapsed where they stood, the tension that had kept them moving finally releasing. Some cried. Others laughed with the hysteria of the nearly-saved.
A woman pushed through to the front, older than most, with the bearing of someone accustomed to leadership. "How far to safety?"
"Eight hours on foot. Less if we can find vehicles." Ishani was already assessing the column, identifying the wounded, the weak, those who might not make the journey. "We'll escort you the whole way."
"They're behind us." The woman's voice dropped. "Ascendancy. Raiding parties. They've been picking off stragglers since we left. Taking them alive."
"They won't take anyone else." The promise in Ishani's voice was absolute. "Not while I'm here."
The attack came two hours later.
They'd made good progress, the column moving faster now that hope had been restored. Ishani had positioned her team at key points: scouts ahead, guards on the flanks, herself at the rear where threats were most likely to emerge.
Her instincts proved correct.
The Ascendancy converts emerged from the treeline like shadows given form. Eighteen of them, moving with that terrible synchronization that marked the converted. No hesitation, no fear, no individual thought. Just purpose, directed toward the vulnerable humans fleeing north.
"CONTACT REAR!" one of the guards shouted.
Ishani was already moving.
Her ability flared, light bending around her form as she accelerated toward the threat. The first convert didn't see her coming. One moment he was advancing on a cluster of terrified refugees; the next, Ishani's blade had opened his throat in a spray of arterial red.
She didn't stop to watch him fall.
The second convert raised his weapon, a crude club fashioned from debris. Ishani could have disarmed him. Could have disabled him with a strike to the nerve cluster in his shoulder. Instead, she drove her blade through his eye socket, twisting as she withdrew, ensuring maximum damage.
The third tried to run.
Ishani caught him in three strides, her enhanced speed making the chase almost laughable. She could have hamstrung him, left him for interrogation later. Instead, she bore him to the ground and slit his throat with methodical precision, watching the light fade from his eyes with an expression that could almost be called peaceful.
"Ishani!" Minji's voice cut through the chaos. "On your left!"
She turned, finding two more converts flanking her position. Her blade was red to the hilt now, dripping, and something in her smiled at the sight.
These two, she took apart slowly.
The first lost his weapon hand before he could swing. Lost his weapon arm a moment later. Fell to his knees, staring at the stumps where his limbs had been, and Ishani let him stare for a long moment before ending him.
The second tried to surrender.
He dropped his weapon, raised his hands, made the universal gesture of submission that even converted minds remembered. Some fragment of his former self, perhaps, trying to survive.
"They don't get to surrender," Ishani said quietly.
Her blade found his heart.
The battle lasted seven minutes.
When it was over, eighteen Ascendancy converts lay dead on the jungle floor. No prisoners. No survivors. Ishani stood among the bodies, her armor splashed with blood, her breathing barely elevated despite the exertion.
She was smiling.
Not a large smile, not obvious to casual observation. But Sarnav, watching through the network connection that stretched thin but held, saw it clearly. That slight curve of her lips. That satisfaction in her eyes. The way her body hummed with something that felt disturbingly like contentment.
She enjoyed that, he realized. Not just the victory. The killing itself.
He'd felt it during the combat, waves of emotion bleeding across their connection despite the distance. The initial focus, tactical and precise. Then something else rising beneath it. Joy. Release. A primal satisfaction that went beyond duty or necessity.
Ishani had killed eighteen people in seven minutes, and some part of her had loved every second of it.
She turned toward the north, toward the Safe Zone, toward him. Through the network, she felt his attention, his observation, his growing understanding of what he'd witnessed.
She didn't look away.
They were going to hurt innocents, her emotions said, not in words but in the texture of her feelings. They were threats. I eliminated threats.
You enjoyed it, he sent back.
A pause. Then: Yes.
No shame. No denial. Just acknowledgment of a truth they both now recognized.
Does that bother you? she asked.
He considered the question carefully. Eighteen converts were dead. The refugees were safe. His wife had done what needed to be done, and done it with brutal efficiency.
Did it bother him that she'd enjoyed it?
I don't know, he admitted.
Fair enough. Her attention shifted back to the column, to the practical concerns of moving two hundred civilians through hostile territory. We should keep moving. More will come.
The moment passed. But like so many moments before it, it wasn't forgotten.
The column reached Harmony Safe Zone as the sun touched the horizon.
Two hundred and thirty-seven new residents, bringing their trauma and their hope and their desperate need for safety. The intake process was chaos barely controlled: medics treating wounds while administrators took names, security screening for converts while logistics scrambled to find space that didn't exist.
Nisha had organized the other wives into an efficient support system. Sana worked the medical tent, her healing abilities stretched thin across too many patients. Ananya moved among the children, her gentle presence calming fears that words couldn't reach. Jiyeon had commandeered the intake desk, her organizational skills turning chaos into merely frantic order.
Sarnav moved through the new arrivals, offering reassurance, directing resources, being the leader they needed to see. Every face carried a story of loss. Every pair of eyes held the haunted look of those who'd seen too much.
An old woman gripped his hand with surprising strength. "Bless you," she whispered. "Bless you for taking us in."
A father carried twin daughters, both asleep against his shoulders, their mother nowhere to be seen.
A teenager sat alone, staring at nothing, the blood on his clothes not entirely his own.
This was what they were fighting for. This was why the Safe Zone existed. Not just to survive, but to be a place where survival meant something.
Ishani stayed on the perimeter, standing guard despite having fought all day. She hadn't cleaned the blood from her armor yet. In the fading light, it looked almost black against the dark material.
"Excuse me."
The voice came from a middle-aged man, exhausted but alert, with the careful eyes of someone who'd survived by paying attention. He'd been one of the first to approach the rescue team, calm enough to provide useful information even while terrified.
"Thank you," he said. "For sending people. For risking your own. We wouldn't have made it otherwise."
"You're safe now. That's what matters."
"There are more." The man's voice dropped, as if afraid the wrong person might hear. "More columns. More people trying to get out. The Ascendancy is pushing hard, taking everyone they can catch. Converting them, from what we've heard."
"We know. We're monitoring the approaches. We'll send teams for as many as we can reach."
"There's a woman." He hesitated, as if uncertain whether this information mattered, whether anyone cared about individual stories when the whole world was burning. "In Johor Bahru. She's been organizing survivors. Keeping whole blocks alive, coordinating defenses, setting up rationing systems. Smart. Really smart. She's the reason a lot of us got out at all."
Sarnav's attention sharpened. "Who is she?"
"Calls herself Serena. I don't know if that's her real name." The man shrugged. "Singaporean, I think. Ended up on our side of the causeway when everything went wrong. She's been holding things together ever since. Runs a network of safe houses, coordinates supply runs, organizes evacuations."
"Why didn't she come with you?"
"Wouldn't leave. Said there were still people who needed her. Still communities that would fall apart without someone to hold them together." Admiration colored his voice, the kind that comes from witnessing genuine selflessness. "Some of us tried to convince her, but she just said someone had to stay. Someone had to give others time to run."
A woman organizing resistance in the heart of Ascendancy territory. Smart, determined, willing to sacrifice herself for others. The kind of person who built communities from chaos and held them together through sheer force of will.
The kind of person Harmony needed.
"Thank you for telling me," Sarnav said. "Get some rest. We'll talk more later."
The man nodded and shuffled toward the intake area, disappearing into the crowd of displaced souls seeking refuge.
Sarnav stood alone for a moment, processing. Serena. A name to remember. A potential ally, if she survived long enough for them to reach her. If the Ascendancy didn't find her first. If she was still alive when they finally pushed into Johor Bahru.
He added her to the growing list of problems to solve and moved on to the next crisis.
That night, the Safe Zone was stretched to its limits.
Every available space had been converted to housing. Families crowded into rooms meant for half their number. The mess hall served meals in shifts that ran from dusk until well past midnight. Supplies that had seemed adequate suddenly looked dangerously thin, rationing calculations being revised hourly.
But they'd done it. Two hundred and thirty-seven people who would have died on that road were now safe within Harmony's walls.
Sarnav found Ishani on the walls, keeping watch despite having fought all day.
"You should rest."
"I'm fine." Her eyes scanned the darkness beyond the perimeter, searching for threats that might not come until dawn. "Someone should watch."
"We have guards for that."
"I'm a better guard." No arrogance in the statement. Just fact, delivered with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what they were capable of.
He moved to stand beside her, looking out at the same darkness. The jungle beyond the walls seemed deeper at night, more primal. Full of things that might want to harm what they'd built.
For a while, neither spoke. The sounds of the Safe Zone settling behind them, hundreds of new voices joining the chorus of survivors.
"Today," he finally said. "The combat."
"What about it?"
"You killed a man who was trying to surrender."
"I killed a convert who had decided surrender was more useful than fighting." Her voice was calm, uninflected, as if discussing the weather. "They don't surrender because they've had a change of heart. They surrender to infiltrate, to gather intelligence, to find weaknesses. Showing mercy to converts is how you get your people killed."
"Is that the only reason?"
She turned to look at him, her expression unreadable in the darkness. Her eyes caught the faint light from the Safe Zone behind them, reflecting something that might have been challenge or confession.
"Does it matter?"
"It might."
Silence stretched between them, heavy with things unsaid. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, stripped of its usual confident edge.
"I've always been this way. Before you. Before the system. Before the apocalypse made killing necessary." She returned her gaze to the perimeter, as if the darkness was easier to face than his eyes. "I just... hid it better. Pretended to be normal. Pretended to feel the appropriate guilt and reluctance."
"And now?"
"Now I don't have to pretend." A ghost of a smile crossed her features. "I like combat. I like winning. I like removing threats permanently instead of hoping they'll stay removed. I like the way it feels when someone who threatened my people stops existing." A pause. "I like protecting what's mine. And I'm very, very good at it."
"The others are noticing."
"Let them notice." Something hard entered her voice, steel wrapped in warmth. "I would burn the world for this family, Sarnav. Everyone we've built, everyone we love, everyone who depends on us. I would burn it all to ash if that's what it took to keep us safe." She met his eyes again, unflinching. "Tell me you don't understand that."
He couldn't. Because he did understand. More than he wanted to admit. He'd built Harmony from nothing, defended it against threats that should have destroyed them. He'd killed for it. Would kill again.
Was he really so different from what Ishani was becoming?
"Just... be careful," he said finally. "The line between protection and something else is thinner than you think."
"I know exactly where the line is." She smiled, and in the darkness, it looked almost gentle. Almost loving. "I just don't care about crossing it."
She returned to her watch, and he returned to his duties, and neither mentioned the conversation again.
But they both remembered it.
And deep in the network that connected them, the other wives felt echoes of what had passed between them. Felt Ishani's certainty. Felt Sarnav's conflicted acceptance.
Felt the family shifting, growing, becoming something new.
[DAY 67 COMPLETE]
[WIFE COUNT: 7/32]
[ESSENCE: 696,300 / 1,000,000]
[POPULATION: 831 (237 new arrivals)]
[ASCENDANCY ETA: 9 DAYS]
[NEW INTEL: SERENA (JB SURVIVOR)]
[HARMONY SAFE ZONE STATUS][WESTERN EXPANSION: 85% COMPLETE][MYTHILI: COORDINATING REFUGEE PROCESSING]
[NEXT: ESCALATION]