The heavy wooden door of the tenement apartment didn’t just close; it was a physical rejection, a final punctuation mark on eight years of silence.
Derek Faulkner stood in the dimly lit hallway of the underclass apartment complex, his hand still frozen in mid-air. The scent of damp concrete and the faint, metallic tang of rust filled his nostrils. He had faced down the most terrifying warlords of the Deadlands, but the sight of Patricia Hartwell’s tear-streaked, furious face had left him more paralyzed than a hundred-man ambush.
Inside, he could hear the muffled sounds of a home that had learned to survive without him. The scraping of a chair. The soft, rhythmic coughing of a child.
"Ma!" Derek called out, his voice barely a whisper, pressing his palm against the rough wood. "I just wan
