Episode 15: A Deal

The sky was the color of old bruises, and the buildings were just teeth the earth forgot to swallow.

Anya waited in the mouth of a collapsed parking garage, with one eye painted black and a necklace of vertebrae clinking like windchimes for ghosts.

The city was ash. The other Kings were busy burning maps and giving speeches to the dead. But Anya was waiting for a soldier who didn’t breathe.

He came on no horse. No roar. Just footsteps. Slow. Soft. Like he was afraid to wake something worse.

The Ghost Marine didn’t wear a name or a rank. Just armor the color of rot and a face like frostbite—a blur where a man used to be.

They said he died in the first month and kept moving anyway.

They said bullets passed through him.

They said if you looked too long, you remembered what it felt like to drown.

“Anya,” he said, his voice like radio static learning to whisper.

“Ghost,” she said back.

She didn’t rise. Didn’t kneel. Just sipped tea gone cold and watched him through the wrong eye.

He stood in silence. That was his weapon—waiting until you said something you meant.

So she did.

“Mateo thinks he can win,” she said.

Still silence.

“Brick wants to torch the American bunkers. Burn everything. He thinks that makes him king.”

The Ghost Marine’s armor creaked. Or maybe the world did.

“And you?” he asked.

Anya smiled.

It was not kind.

“I think kings are for fairy tales. And this is a world where children chew through their mothers.”

She stood, vertebrae rattling. Something crunched beneath her boots. It might’ve been glass. Might’ve been bone.

“I want immunity,” she said. “For my people. My part of the city. I’ll give you locations. Movements. Weaknesses.”

“And in return?” he said.

“I want to live,” she said. “Not survive. Live. After.”

“There is no after,” the Ghost Marine replied.

“Then I want the illusion,” she said. “And a warm place to die.”

A bird screamed overhead. Not song. Just warning.

“I’ll give you Mateo at dawn,” she said. “His base. His blind spot. The time he sleeps. I’ll even leave the door unlocked.”

He didn’t nod. Didn’t move. Just said:

“And the other king?”

Anya didn’t blink. Not with the painted eye. Not with the real one.

“Brick has a little sister,” she said. “Hiding in the tunnels. If he doesn’t come back, she starves. So you won’t have to kill him. Just wait.”

The silence between them grew teeth.

Finally, the Ghost Marine reached into his coat and dropped something at her feet.

A mask. Gas-filtered. Blood-stained. Small.

“For the girl,” he said. “If she makes it that far.”

And then he was gone. Like he’d been edited out of reality.

Anya picked up the mask. Held it to her face.

It didn’t fit.

She sat. Sipped what was left of the tea. It tasted like rust.

The city didn’t forgive. The sky didn’t change. The baby bones around her neck swung once in the wind, and stopped.