Chapter 6
I wake from an uneasy sleep. Someone’s watching me. Keeping my breathing as even as possible, I ease my eyes open. The shadows of the surrounding wreckage form dark shapes in the night. My right hand palms my small stiletto knife as I listen for movement.
After long minutes of silence, I rise. Despite my hope that being in a city rather than exposed to the wind would help me heal fully, my cough has mutated into a constant, sharp pain in my chest. Walking stick in one hand, knife in the other, I slink through the ruins. Atop piles of rubble and scree, my campsite is half a story off the ground, open enough that I can’t be blocked in but hidden enough I’m not exposed.
There’s nothing. Whoever it was is gone now and that’s it for sleep tonight.
I gather my belongings and head o
