Chapter 371: The Donmans Are In.

Max walked out across the hard concrete in the night with Ingrid beside him.

The top of the walls ran a hundred kilometres wide and the concrete carried all the way across under their boots, unbroken, cold, and at the far end stood the glass houses, one after another, curving away with the wall until they went past anything her eyes could hold.

A soldier in each one. Black uniform, and the same words across every back in white block letters.

GUARDIANS OF THE WALLS.

"I didn’t know they were this big," Ingrid said. The wind took the last word and thinned it.

"Neither did I."

Max’s blond hair lifted clean off his forehead. The wind came at them head-on and pressed their clothes flat against their bodies, dragged at everything behind them.

He turned to face her, and the same wind took hold of the back of his shirt, ballooning it once before it flattened again.

"Goth has the walls now," Ingrid said. "So what’s the plan?"

"The plan."

He was looking at her chest. The wind had made the point of her nipple clear through the thin wrap — a single hard peak pushing the fabric outward.

"The plan," he said again.

Two fingers found it and pinched. Firm. Deliberate. Then his palm took the whole breast and squeezed once, unhurried, the way you’d test fruit at a stall — weighing it, feeling the give.

She didn’t move.

That was the thing she’d learned earliest and best. You don’t move. The wind kept pushing the wrap against his hand.

"We’re going to see," he said.

His hand left her. The cold air rushed back in where his palm had been. He turned away.

"Do you want to see the view from up here?"

He was already walking toward the far edge, away from the watch houses, boots loud on the concrete.

She stayed exactly where she was.

I controlled a thousand of them in that city. Me. Not him.

He doesn’t think there’s anything in me to ask about.

"Come on, Ingrid."

She went after him with her jaw set, the wind flattening the wrap to her body again, every step measured.

He reached the balcony wall and laid his fingers along the top of it.

You’ve already paid your debt.

Abram’s voice, arriving out of a stairwell hours ago, uninvited and refusing to leave.

She came up beside him and put both hands on the concrete.

This was the inside face. The city side.

The walls were considerably higher from up here than they’d looked from underneath. Her eyes went out and out until they found the capital, and the CGI building sat in the middle of it, small and lit, one shape among thousands of others under the grid of street lights.

"It’s beautiful," she said.

The street lights were on all across the city.

And under every single one of them stood an infected. Not moving. One to a lamp, the length of every road, a whole city marked out in still bodies from here to the horizon.

Hers. Every one of them placed there by her order.

"I’ve always wanted to throw someone off something like this," Max said. "Genuinely. Since I was a boy."

Ingrid turned to look at him.

He leaned in and kissed the top of her bald head. Soft. Almost gentle.

"I’ll see it happen."

Then he turned and walked away toward the far side, hair lifting again in the wind. The wind took the heat of his mouth the moment he pulled away.

She stayed at the wall.

And looked down.

Her eyes went the full drop — the sheer vertical face of the concrete, the black air, the concrete apron at the base and the road beyond it. Her mind did the arithmetic before she’d asked it to. The height. The time in the air. The impact.

Nothing survives that. Not one. Not her.

He said it while he was touching me.

He said the thing and then he put his mouth on my head like a brother.

He’ll do it. Not tonight. But he’ll do it, and it’ll be a day when I’ve stopped being useful.

She took her hands off the concrete. Then she turned and followed him, because that was what they’d come up here for.

The wind pushed harder at her back for a second, then eased.

He was moving quickly now.

The concrete started to vibrate under her boots as she walked. Low, continuous, through the soles, up into her knees and the bones of her legs.

The gates were opening.

I need to start making my own decisions.

The Donmans took me off a street and gave me a life. That’s true. It’ll be true when I’m dead.

And the Donmans made me into something that carries out instructions.

"I’ll repay my debt," she said to herself, and reached him as the shaking underfoot came to a stop.

She looked out.

And the smile came onto her face before she’d decided anything about it.

Two dim lights coming in close. Three pairs of stronger ones sitting further back.

They made it. All of them.

She watched the life layer give and close again as the first small car went through. It came in straight and kept going and disappeared under the wall where her eyes couldn’t follow. The concrete started up again under their boots as the rest came on.

Then the lights stopped moving.

She waited for them to come forward.

They didn’t.

"What’s happening?" She turned. "Max. What’s happening, they’ve stopped—"

"I told them to close the walls."

"There are still people out there." Her voice came up and the wind took most of it, tore it thin. "There are trucks out there. Max, there are still people from Goth on the other side of that layer—"

"The Donmans are in."

He said it the way you’d read a number off a page. Flat. Final.

Ingrid stood on top of a wall and looked at three sets of headlights sitting still in the dark on the wrong side of it. The beams cut the night and went nowhere. No movement. No second attempt.

I was nine years old on a street in that city.

Every person in those trucks was on a street in that city.

The Donmans are in.

"Max."

He was already walking.

She went after him and matched his pace, boots hard on the concrete, the wind pushing her wrap flat again.

"Max, those are our—"

"INGRID."

She stopped.

And watched him go on toward the stairs alone, hair lifting, the black of his coat cutting a clean shape against the night. The concrete settled under her feet and went still. No more vibration. The gates were closed.

I can’t work with him anymore.

She started walking.

I need a plan.

And a boy in a basement had asked her whether she’d ever been in love, and told her she’d given them everything she had.

"Abram," she said.