Chapter 91: Sweet, loving city I left behind

Isabella rested her head carefully against the edge of the hospital bed, right beside where her father lay.

Peter’s chest rose.

Fell.

Rose again.

Slow. Uneven. Mechanical in a way that didn’t feel human anymore.

She counted the seconds between each breath. She didn’t mean to. It just happened. One… two… three… pause. Then the next inhale.

Her red hair spilled across the white sheets, bright against the sterile fabric. She watched his lungs move like if she looked away, even for a second, his body might forget how to keep going.

It had been hours.

She hadn’t moved.

The scar on his throat had almost faded. A thin line, pink and tight, the skin still slightly swollen. It looked small now. Manageable. Like something that could be explained away.

But that wasn’t why he was here.

That wasn’t what left him pale and barely conscious, hooked to machines that hummed like background noise in a bad dream.

The room smelled like disinfectant.

And iron.

Underneath everything, there was always iron.

Isabella adjusted the blanket slightly over his chest. Her fingers were gentle. Careful. The way you’d touch something fragile that had already been broken once.

Dr. Josephine stepped closer, shoes quiet against the tile. She placed a hand on Isabella’s shoulder.

Isabella didn’t flinch.

“Did you give your father the medicine he needed?” Josephine asked softly.

Isabella nodded once.

“Yes.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Josephine smiled. The kind of smile adults use when they think they’re being comforting.

“I can tell you love your father very much,” she said. “This is quite noble of you.”

Isabella didn’t respond.

Her eyes never left Peter’s face.

Noble.

Josephine’s smile thinned.

“I’ve been talking to Jane,” she continued carefully. “Even if you may hate her… she’s still your mom too.”

The word mom felt wrong in the room.

Isabella’s jaw tightened.

Josephine leaned closer, lowering her voice like she was sharing something important.

“She needs you, Izzy. Even now.”

That did it.

Isabella finally turned her head.

Her expression wasn’t sad.

It wasn’t wounded.

It wasn’t confused.

It was sharp.

Measured.

Controlled.

Slowly, she lifted her hands between them.

Josephine frowned slightly, not understanding at first.

Then Isabella turned her wrists upward.

Thin scars crossed pale skin. Some faded into white lines. Others still pink. A few darker. Recent.

Neat lines.

Intentional.

Careful.

“She wasn’t just abusing Dad,” Isabella said quietly.

Her voice didn’t shake.

“She hit me too.”

Josephine’s face drained of color.

“She told me if I ever said anything, she’d finish what she started. She said no one would believe me anyway.”

Isabella lowered her hands.

“So stop acting like you know shit when you don’t.”

The room went completely still.

Machines hummed.

Peter breathed.

Josephine swallowed. “Isabella… I didn’t—”

But Isabella was already standing.

She leaned down and adjusted the blanket over her father one last time. Her fingers lingered on his chest. Just for a second.

Like she was memorizing the warmth.

“Let me know if you need me to go on any more runs for hypertension medicine,” she said flatly.

Professional.

Detached.

Like this was just logistics.

Josephine didn’t answer.

Isabella walked out of the room without looking back.

—

It wasn’t the first time I’d been so uncomfortable that I would’ve rather just been shot.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

I stared up at the black ceiling of the van. It was close enough that it felt like it was pressing down on me. My hands were bound in front of me with plastic restraints. Every time I shifted, they bit into my skin.

It had been hours.

What didn’t sit right wasn’t the restraints.

It wasn’t the silence.

It was this—

They let everyone else go.

Every soldier.

They disarmed them. Pushed them back. Let them retreat.

And kept me.

Like I was the only one they cared about.

Aubrey was probably losing her mind right now. Yelling at someone. Organizing search parties. Tracking tire marks.

The thought sent a cold line down my spine.

I rolled my wrists again, testing the restraints. Clicked my tongue against my teeth.

Over.

And over.

The van bumped over something in the road.

The woman driving—the one I spat on—exhaled sharply.

“Knock it off already, would you?” she snapped.

I turned my head slightly.

“Gonna say where you’re taking me?” I asked.

Her shoulders relaxed.

Then she smiled.

“I think you’ll find yourself quite familiar with this place,” she said. “Your precious city.”

My chest tightened.

“You’ll like what we did to it.”

I frowned.

“What are you talking about?”

The van slowed.

The smell hit before I saw anything.

Sweet.

Metallic.

Thick enough to taste.

Then orange light flickered through the windshield.

The van stopped.

My stomach twisted.

Chicago.

But not the Chicago I left.

The streets were cracked and split open. Cars abandoned mid-lane. Windows blown out. Storefronts gutted.

Fire burned in oil drums and dumpsters. Smoke hung low between buildings.

Graffiti covered everything. Warnings. Symbols. Crude drawings marked in orange.

They dragged me out

My boots hit pavement littered with broken glass and rusted metal.

The air felt heavy.

The smell of amber was everywhere now. Chemical and sweet, like syrup poured over blood.

The alleys were tight and deep, stretching between buildings like veins.

And they were alive.

Infected moved in layers.

Some perched on fire escapes, watching.

Some leaned against brick walls, arms folded, eyes glowing faint orange.

Others crouched in doorways, sharing syringes filled with thick amber liquid. Injecting. Moaning softly. Smiling in ways that made my stomach turn.

This wasn’t chaos.

It was a system.

A community.

A bald woman with dark eyeliner smeared under her eyes leaned against a wall. Her clothes barely covered anything. Amber dripped from her forearm.

She grinned at me.

“You’re a hot piece of ass,” she called out lazily. “Aren’t you?”

Laughter rippled nearby.

I wanted to vomit.

The woman beside me leaned close, her breath warm against my ear.

“Welcome to amber society.”

People moved around us without panic. Without urgency.

Some were scavenging.

Some were laughing.

Some were doing things I refused to look at for more than a second.

Every corner had someone watching.

Every shadow held eyes.

A car burned at the end of the block, flames reflecting off shattered glass and illuminating glowing orange veins beneath skin.

They pushed me forward.

The deeper we went, the worse the smell became. My head started to feel light. The sweetness clung to my throat.

I stumbled once.

Someone laughed.

We reached a building that used to be an apartment complex. Windows boarded up. Symbols carved into the door.

They shoved me inside.

The hallway was dim. Lit by hanging bulbs powered by something I didn’t want to think about.

Eyes followed me.

Not curious.

Assessing.

We stopped at a door at the end of a narrow hallway that smelled like rust and something sweet enough to make my head spin. The woman holding my arm gave me a small shove, almost playful, then reached past me and pushed it open.

For a second, I couldn’t breathe.

The room wasn’t large. One window. Boards nailed crooked across it, thin strips of light slipping through. Dust floated in the air. A mattress in the corner. A table with vials lined up neatly like trophies.

And her.

She stood near the window, half-lit by that thin gray light. Her back was to us at first. Her posture was relaxed, almost casual, like she had known I was coming and had grown bored of waiting.

My mind stalled. Refused to catch up.

“Lila…?”

My voice cracked in a way I hadn’t heard in months.

She turned slowly.

Not startled. Not confused.

Just slow.

Her hair was shorter now, cut just above her shoulders. The dirty blonde I remembered was still there, but it looked rougher, uneven, like she had done it herself. Dark eyeliner framed her eyes heavily. Black lipstick stained her mouth, making her skin look even paler.

She looked thinner.

Sharpened.

Like something had carved away the softness she used to have.

But it was her. There was no mistaking that. The shape of her face. The slight tilt of her chin. The way she held eye contact without blinking.

Her eyes locked onto mine.

They were molten orange.

Not blazing. Not glowing like the others outside.

But something burned beneath the surface. A slow, steady heat. It pulsed faintly, like embers buried under ash.

I felt my chest tighten.

There was something in her stare that made my skin prickle. I tried to read it, tried to grab onto anything familiar.

Was it hate?

Anger?

Relief?

Her gaze didn’t soften.

It didn’t harden either.

It assessed.

Like I was the one who had been dragged in for inspection.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t step toward me. She didn’t speak my name.

She just stood there and looked at me, as if weighing something invisible in her mind. As if calculating whether I was worth keeping alive.

I felt exposed in a way I hadn’t felt since the early days of the outbreak. Every mistake I had ever made seemed to sit between us. The last time I saw her. The decision I made. The way I walked away believing she wouldn’t survive.

I had imagined this moment a hundred different ways. I had pictured her running to me. Or screaming at me. Or breaking down.

I had prepared for tears. For rage. For accusations.

I hadn’t prepared for this.

For the calm.

For the distance.

For the possibility that she no longer felt anything at all.

Standing there, restrained and helpless, I realized something that made my stomach drop.

I didn’t know which version of her I wanted.

The girl I left behind, who trusted me and believed I would protect her.

Or this version, who survived without me.

And I didn’t know which one would hurt more.

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