The only sound was the deadly whisper of a gun being drawn, the audible click of safety being turned off as Christine took a step back, hands raising nearly immediately.

The man looked to be middle-aged, dark skin wrinkled, silver streaks in the black hair at his temples, neatly trimmed beard encompassing the lower half of his face. His eyes, a rich brown, were narrowed at her with distrust. He held a pistol in his hands, leveled directly at her. Her breath seemed to freeze in her throat.

"How did you find this place." He said. It was not phrased like a question.

Christine swallowed dryly, glancing from the mouth of the gun to his face once more. A million thoughts went through her head– who the hell was this guy? Was he gonna kill her? Rob her? Was he part of the RF? Erik had sounded so certain that no one would be able to enter here, so how had he found this place?

"I'm with someone," her voice wavered as she spoke. "If I scream, he'll come."

She had absolutely no idea if Erik was even within listening range– and though they had struck the bargain for him to protect her, with him nowhere in sight she wasn't sure how heavily she was willing to depend on that agreement to save her now.

The man seemed to see through her bluff, and he took another step closer, weapon not lowering an inch. In tandem she took another step back, and the edge of the countertop behind was solid against her back.

"How many people are you with?" He said, nudging with the gun. "Don't lie,"

"Just him and me. He-he's the one that led me here, I swear. I didn't know about this place until an hour ago."

The man's thick brows furrowed at that. "And how did he find this place?"

Even amid her terror she felt a wave of confusion. Why didn't he just rob her, shoot her, get it over with? Why did he care so much if it wasn't even his own?

Fortunately, Christine was saved from needing to respond as a dark figure deftly appeared from the floor entrance, straightening with impressive speed. Erik. His eyes only took a second to take in the situation, flickering from her to the man. She expected him to launch at the intruder, or even do something right away, but instead he… huffed.

"Drop the gun, Nadir," Erik said. "I brought her here. You've likely scared her half to death."

To the man's credit, he did lower the gun immediately. Nadir? Erik knew this guy?

"Who the hell is she?" this… Nadir breathed. His entire stance seemed to shift, and within only a matter of seconds he went from looking like a dangerous threat to someone not more than deeply, deeply tired.

Erik didn't answer his question. "What the hell are you doing in my apartment?" he echoed. "I thought you'd left town a week ago."

Nadir let out a sharp exhale and turned around to drop down onto the couch. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "That was the plan. Last time I tried to leave I nearly got stabbed. Fighting's been worse around here lately."

"We did not encounter anyone on our way in."

"Consider yourself lucky," Nadir replied. Then he straightened from where he sat on the couch and looked back towards Christine again. Her hands had lowered long ago, but she still remained standing against the kitchen counter, watching the conversation silently and warily.

"You didn't answer my question before," Nadir glanced back at Erik. "Who is she?"

Erik didn't even look at her as he responded. "I am assisting Christine in leaving the city alive."

Nadir almost seemed to balk at that, his brows raising imperceptibly. "I'm not sure the last time I ever saw you help someone else without a gun to your head. This is a new look on you, Erik."

If possible, Erik's gaze turned icy. "I'm not doing it out of the kindness of my heart. We have a deal," he snapped.

Beneath his beard Nadir frowned. He looked back to Christine after everyone fell silent for a few long seconds, and he stood from the couch to walk over to where she still stood. She watched him as he held out a hand.

"I'm sorry for pointing my gun at you," he said. His eyes crinkled at the corners. "I promise I wouldn't have shot you."

Hesitantly, she took his hand in hers. His handshake was warm, secure. "...Thanks," she replied.

Nadir stepped away to return once again to the living area, shucking the backpack she hadn't noticed him wearing and dropping it on the wooden coffee table before the couch. Erik still stood by the entranceway, though he had removed his own bag himself, suggesting that he had, in fact, not found anyone else in his survey of the building. Christine remained standing by the kitchen island, still trying to gauge the situation of the room. Clearly these two knew each other. Were they… friends?

Christine glanced at the tall, intimidating figure that was Erik. He didn't seem like the type to have buddies.

As though sensing some of her own questions, Erik spoke again. "You did not do a good job of concealing your presence here before I came in. You're lucky I recognized your grating voice before I entered. I might have shot you."

Nadir laughed. Christine raised her voice tentatively, quietly. "So you didn't find anyone else?"

Erik's eyes flickered to her. "No. The building is silent, as is the street, it seems."

"They've quieted up today," Nadir said. "Whatever branch they had stuck out here, they might have moved on."

"'They,' as in the RF?" she asked.

Nadir nodded.

Erik's gaze narrowed. "Yesterday's rain may have kept them away," he said, shifting forward. She watched as he moved past the two of them and down the hallway she'd ventured down before without another word, disappearing into one of the bedrooms. They both watched him for a second before Nadir turned his focus back to her.

"So, Christine," he said, "What's your story?"

"What?"

He waved a hand at her. "Your story, if you don't mind me asking, that is. Everyone out here has one. How you survived… how you're still alive."

An old statistic she'd once been told flashed through her mind. Over 50% of the human population gone in an instant… People who survived were few and far between. People who didn't immediately kill on sight were even fewer.

"I promise I don't bite," he said, voice lighthearted when she hadn't moved at all, gesturing a hand towards the recliner that sat opposite the couch in the small living room. "You can sit down. I truly am sorry about pointing my gun at you earlier."

She hesitated for only a second before walking around the kitchen island and slowly lowering herself onto the recliner. It squeaked beneath her, springs old and rusty.

"I get it," she said. "You didn't know who I was." He and Erik certainly shared that style of greeting. And Nadir really did seem apologetic. Then she paused in thought, glancing at the plain white walls that surrounded them, how odd it felt for there to be no windows, as if the entire outside world were just blocked off. "It can be hard knowing who to trust, nowadays."

There was something gentle and comforting in his responding smile.

Christine leaned back in her seat, letting out a long exhale. "My parents were Swedish immigrants. My dad was a musician, a really good violinist, actually. He and my mom moved here to raise me when I was a baby. I was just a kid when Bennu hit. My parents' entire families still lived in Europe, and they were all wiped out. Just like that. The first year was… really rough, but we managed to get out of the city before the state declared martial law and locked everything down. We had some friends in Nebraska– that's where I'm headed, actually - that we went to meet up with just so we wouldn't be all alone, and Mama got sick on the way out. She didn't make it, we ended up settling with our friends and making a… a settlement of sorts, if you can call it, out there."

She swallowed thickly. "This year's been another hard one, especially since spring is taking so long to settle in, and Papa remembered that we'd had to leave a bunch of supplies back at the house here in town that would really help everyone back home, so we decided to make a trip back to scavenge what we could. It was the first time since the asteroid that we'd returned, and we had no way to know how bad things had gotten here. Things… are so much quieter out in the country. We had no way to know." The walls of the room seemed to close in tighter. She glanced down at her scabbing hands, her chipped fingernails, as though she could still see the stains of blood beneath them. "We ended up getting caught up in crossfire just a few days into the city. They– the RF, killed Papa."

Nadir shifted in front of her. He was holding out a tissue box, she realized, that had been sitting on the coffee table. She hadn't even realized she was crying, or how badly her hands had begun to shake. Embarrassed, she took a few and wiped at her face with it, letting out a shuddering breath. "God. I'm so sorry, I don't mean to totally dump everything on you like this. We just met and I'm already crying in front of you."

"Do not apologize," he said. "I asked. I did not expect an easy answer. How long has it been?"

"Only a few days," she replied, and the walls grew smaller. Talking about Papa felt like a wound being ripped anew, and she pressed her hands against her face as though the pressure could cease the grief that welled within. She missed him. She missed him so bad it felt like she couldn't breathe. She let out a noise that was half laugh, half sob. "I just haven't… haven't really been able to talk about it with anyone."

Nadir let out a soft chuckle. "Erik isn't exactly the chattiest."

She laughed and wiped at her face again. "I mean, he's been… really helpful. I am grateful for that. And this entire week has been such a rollercoaster that I forget how recent everything is. I just feel so tired."

When she lowered her hands again to meet his gaze, there was something familiar in his eyes that had her falling silent once again.

"My son died," was all he said. "I understand how you feel. He would've turned twenty this year. I wish I could say that it gets easier, but the pain… it never fully goes away. It's always there, but you learn to live with it."

She sniffled. "How?"

The smile he gave her was sad. "You get by one day at a time."

She opened her mouth to reply, to ask him more about his own past (it felt as though she had been talking about herself for ages) when Erik reentered the room, a large box in his arms. He paused only for a moment when he beheld where she now sat across from Nadir, her eyes undoubtedly red and stuffy from crying, Nadir still holding the tissue box out in his hands. Erik's gaze flickered from his face to hers.

"We were bonding over how much life sucks," Nadir said, earning another laugh from Christine, a big, snorting one that she couldn't remember the last time that she'd had one like it. Goodness, when was the last time she had laughed? When she opened her eyes again, she saw that Erik was watching her, his eyes unreadable. Just as quickly as she'd noticed him, though, his gaze dropped away.

Erik set down the box on the coffee table, opening the cardboard flaps.

"I found the extra weaponry I had mentioned previously," he said to her. "As well as an excess of ammo. I know you have a small pistol, no?"

She glanced over to her backpack, where it lay wrapped up along with her other numerous belongings. Even just keeping it on her body felt weird, unnerving, like holding a grenade seconds from explosion.

"Yeah," she said.

"I'm sure you will find ammunition for it within here. Take what you need. I do not prefer to use pistols."

She nodded.

Erik then turned his attention to Nadir. "How long are you planning on staying?"

Nadir leaned back in his seat, scratching at his beard absently. "In such a hurry to get me out of your hair?"

Erik ignored his words as he continued speaking. "We only returned to gather some more supplies. As it is getting darker out, we will likely leave tomorrow."

"If all is quiet out there tomorrow, I guess I'll head out too," Nadir replied. "I'm not in any rush to stick around here. I've already been holed up far too long."

"Where are you headed?" she asked.

The corner of Nadir's lips upturned slightly at her question, and he let out a sigh. "I'm looking for my wife. We were separated during the floodings on the east coast– a little after everything went down, you know. I still have a few contacts that survived and remain in the area. They said they've seen a woman fitting her description nearby."

Amid everything that had occurred that afternoon, she had failed to notice the simple, plain wedding band that adorned his left ring finger. To Christine's surprise, Erik spoke softly– to her, she realized. "We thought Rokeya had not survived the storms. He is returning to see if that is not the case."

"I hope you find her," she said.

Nadir smiled. "I do too."

…

Later that evening (around seven, according to the watch on Nadir's wrist. Christine still mourned the one she'd forgotten with Papa) they decided it was time to have dinner– "they" as in her and Nadir, of course. Erik had given them a slightly disgusted look and left the room when Nadir had made the suggestion. It delighted Christine, as it had been so long since she'd been able to truly make a sort of meal, the nice, sit-down sort that a family would share. Her diet on the road consisted mainly of granola bars, jerky, and old cans of soup she would occasionally come across, which was fine, but it did get a little exhausting after a while.

Back at home, the settlement had a farmstead, with chickens and cows. Meat was typically reserved for special occasions or as a last resort, but the greenhouse that she and Meg had spent so many hours mulling over as teens provided a nice amount of fruits and vegetables, and truthfully it was those fresh foods that she missed the most.

Nadir led her to the kitchen where he began opening the cupboards overhead, withdrawing cans and foods– powdered milk, she saw among the mix, much to her delight. Most of what was in there was his, Nadir told her as she sorted through all that he had. He'd been in the apartment long enough that he thought it worth it to tidy up the place a little bit, make it feel more homey.

"Erik doesn't exactly have a penchant for interior design," he said. "The place felt so damn empty, like a showroom. Plus I knew it would piss him off if I made myself comfortable."

She laughed. It was… nice talking with someone again. Erik didn't talk much, and he seemed fairly determined to keep things as formal and distant as possible between the two of them, which was fine, but she did enjoy being able to simply chat with someone over something that wasn't life-or-death. Like cooking.

They'd settled on making a vegetable stir fry. Their ingredients were limited, but Nadir had stocked up on cans of vegetables, and Christine had managed to find a very, very old unopened box of rice crammed in the back of one of the cupboards, so they decided to make it work. There was no recipe to go off of, and any seasonings in the small apartment were scarce to say the least, so whether the meal would actually be good was a little up in the air. Nadir insisted it wasn't that big of a deal.

"We'll get by without much," he said. "There's salt, at least." He picked up a small shaker and squinted at the faded label. "And whatever 'italian seasoning' consists of."

Christine blinked around the place. "I'm guessing Erik doesn't cook here often?"

"That, and the fact his sense of taste is restricted. He doesn't really keep seasonings around because of it," Nadir replied.

At that her brows furrowed. "How so?"

Nadir was boiling water on the stove, doling out scoops of rice in a measuring cup, and at her question he paused as though in deep thought.

Eventually he gave her a brief smile and turned back to the food. "That is not a question for me to answer, unfortunately."

And so they moved on to other topics.

It was also a little interesting to see Erik through Nadir's eyes, how he spoke of him more as an annoying little brother, it seemed, rather than the masked danger that he had first appeared to her to be. Nadir joked about him as if he were any other normal person on earth, poking fun at Erik's little mannerisms whenever he would dare to enter the room. She asked him a little bit about their past out of pure curiosity, and Nadir, as it turned out, was quite the talker.

"I used to be a detective," he said. "Before everything went down. I didn't stay at that job long before I realized it wasn't for me. Too stressful! I knew there had to be something more fitting out there, and Rokeya suggested I return to university and receive my Master's since I was thinking about going into teaching. I met Erik there."

"You've known each other for a long time," she murmured.

He gave a small laugh. "We both refused to die. I suppose we had that in common."

They added the vegetables in with the rice, dumping a healthy (or unhealthy) amount of salt and Italian seasoning into the water as they did so. Christine searched through a couple of cupboards in the island that they hadn't yet looked within for plates, and in one of the shelves she found an overturned, forgotten and unopened bottle of soy sauce.

"Think it's still good?" She tilted it, reading the expiration date.

Nadir shrugged. "What's the worst that can happen?"

Eventually when all food was cooked sufficiently, heaps of steaming rice and veggies doled out onto plates, Christine and Nadir sat down on the living room cushions to eat. Erik had been gone for the majority of their meal-prep, yet he silently returned once things had quieted down.

She took a bite of her meal, eyes fluttering shut at the heat. It was a little bland even with the decade-old sauce, but it was hot, and mostly fresh, and that was all that mattered. "I've missed warm dinners," she said. "It feels like it's been too long."

She and Nadir ate in mostly silence for the next few minutes, punctuated by brief small talk over topics that didn't matter at all. Nadir had grown up in Iran, and immigrated to the US for college. His parents were long gone, and so it was just him now.

"And Erik, too," he nodded to the dark-clad figure. He sat a ways away from them, cleaning a gun. "Whenever I decide to bother him a visit."

Erik looked up at the mention of his name. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he did not say anything. Christine had invited him to help himself, but he had simply stood in silence for a moment before politely… and firmly declining.

Nadir's mention of his 'restricted' sense of taste aside, she wondered if his lack of desire to eat had to do with his mask as well. She'd offered him food before, she recalled, and he'd expressed disinterest then, too. Since she'd met him, the sharp black plastic hadn't left his face once. It even covered his mouth entirely, leaving him to breathe only through his nose. She'd wondered before if he wore it only to hide his face from her for whatever reason, but he hadn't seemed inclined to remove it in Nadir's presence, either, and so it seemed as though that were not the case.

She looked down at her bowl and stirred a piece of carrot around with her fork.

A couple more quiet minutes passed by slowly. She finished her bowl.

Erik was watching her when she glanced in his direction again. His hand was flat against his leg, fingers tapping in rhythm against the fabric of his pants as though in deep thought.

Eventually, he said, "I was considering departing directly out of the city from here," he said. "But now I am thinking we return to the theater one more time to offload the supplies. I do not wish to make a return trip out here." He glanced at Nadir. "Perhaps from there… one more lesson before we leave."

Nadir's brows rose slightly with those words, but he did not say anything, nor did either of them supply any sort of description. Though the idea of having another singing lesson with him sent a wave of trepidation through her body, Christine simply nodded. "Okay."

He seemed like he was going to add something else after that from the way his head tilted, but right then they were all interrupted by a loud boom rattling through the building, sending it shaking enough for dust to crumble down from the ceiling. It startled the bowl from her hands, sending it shattering to the wood floor below, and she cringed against the couch cushions as the whole world seemed to rock. Across from her, Nadir was clutching the arms of his chair with a pale look on his face.

And then it stopped.

She was left blinking down at her broken bowl as Erik stood up, launching himself across the room in a few quick steps. He vanished down the entrance in a matter of seconds, and Christine, with her heart still pounding, leaned down to gather up the shards left on the floor.

"Don't," Nadir said, finally standing from his chair, face still ashen with fear. "You might cut yourself. Let me get a dustpan."

He disappeared into one of the side rooms briefly, returning with a dustpan and broom. She stood back, wrapping her arms around herself to stop her hands from shaking as he swept up the mess, carrying it over to a trash can and dumping it in. Erik returned then, his eyes angry and focused.

Christine swallowed. "W-what was that?"

Nadir echoed her concern, "This whole building isn't about to come down on us, right, Erik?"

The three of them stood by the entrance. She had the distinct impression that he was seething as he replied, his voice curt, aggressive, almost reminiscent of that hissing anger she'd witnessed when they'd first met.

"RF, he said. They're attacking the area. I'd assumed this neighborhood was safe enough because of the independent families that live nearby. Apparently I was wrong." He glanced towards the small doors he had just entered in from. "Currently they have goons rampaging through the block. The building should be fine, for now. No one else lives here, they would have little reason to bring it down."

Nadir rubbed at his face with a hand. Distantly, sharp claps of gunfire echoed from far below.

"What does this mean for us?" she asked.

Erik exhaled sharply through the nose holes of his mask as he replied. "We… will not be moving until they are gone."

And the room fell to a hush as another blast distantly rang through.

…

There was little discussion about how the sleeping arrangements were to be configured that night. Erik had abruptly declared that he would take the couch in the living room before stalking out again, leaving Christine to place her things down in the remaining bedroom, as Nadir had already claimed the other as his own. It was late when she turned in, though the men remained awake when she decided to head to bed. Nadir wished her goodnight. Erik merely watched her silently as she left the room.

She struggled, sometimes, to know what he thought of her.

The bedroom she was to sleep in was fairly small, smaller than the dressing room back at the theater had been, and far smaller than her room back home. There was a small window against the far wall that she had failed to notice before, just out of view of the doorway, and the light outside was red and fading.

Boxes covered the bed's surface, and her muscles strained as she worked to lift them all up, stacking them politely in a corner. The comforter sent plumes of dust up into the air when she upturned it, leaving her sneezing and waving a hand in front of her face, and the room was cold and sterile. Not a bit of art hung on the walls, which were painted a distant and sober white. She changed into a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt– one of Papa's, and she curled up beneath the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Every so often, she could hear the murmur of voices as Erik and Nadir conversed. Their words were little more than muffled ghosts of words through the walls, something just slightly too obscured to be understood, and when Christine fell asleep, it was quickly and without dreams.

please let me know your thoughts :)