DONE ✔️ (UNDER EDIT)

Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.
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None of us could sleep. Not really.

Maybe we closed our eyes. Maybe we lay there, still as corpses. But sleep? No. Not when every breath felt like it might be our last.

Tension hung over us, heavy and unmoving, pressing down with every hour that passed. We didn't speak. Not because we didn't want to—just because words felt useless after everything was discussed about the plan yesterday. Now, there was nothing left to say.

We left before sunrise, slipping out into the dark like ghosts with our eyes peeled, backpacks on, and one mission on our minds. The cabin—our makeshift home for a little too long—became a distant memory. None of us dared to turn back and look at it as we drove away. The truck we packed into, sitting in the back tray, only held us and our essentials. We were carrying hope and desperation more than supplies.

The night felt endless as we pushed through the empty roads, the only sounds our breathing and the rumble of the truck's engine. The trucks tires kicked up dust, but it didn't matter. We kept driving, pushing ourselves into the unknown. There was only one thing that kept us going: the promise that we weren't done yet. Not as long as we were still alive.

The city greeted us like a graveyard—cold, cracked, and overgrown. The moonlight barely cut through the clouds, which promised rain. The buildings stood like bones—broken, blackened—a ghost of a time that once mattered, a memory of a world that could afford to sleep.

Our plan was simple. In theory.

We'd gone over it a hundred times. Maybe more. I'd memorized it like a prayer—but even prayers don't work in hell.

The deeper we drove, the more the silence began to eat at us. It wasn't natural silence. It was waiting silence. The kind you only hear before something awful happens.

Eventually, the truck gave up on us, and we ditched it, moving on foot. Each step sent a fresh wave of pain through my knee, the ache burning with every uneven motion. My limp kept me at the back of the pack, dragging behind. River, without having to say a word, matched his pace to mine, walking beside me, steady and unwavering.

We moved in silence, every step calculated. The shoes we wore were picked with precision—no squeak, no scrape against the cracked pavement. Our jackets and coats, chosen for their quiet fabric, didn't make a sound as we shifted through the mist. Each dark layer of clothing concealed our skin, blending us into the shadows, making us ghosts in a forgotten world.

By the time we reached the edge of the compound—two hours later than we'd intended thanks to our pitstops—it felt like we'd already accomplished so much. But we hadn't.

Not yet.

We moved through the tree line like shadows with knives and guns, staying low, quiet, alert. The fence stretched alongside us, old chain-link patched in places, sagging in others. It wasn't electric, just tall and rusted and meant to delay, not stop.