The world blurred, tilted, and spun. Jenny floated somewhere between waking and darkness, her mind untethered and adrift, the pain in her arm burning like a brand but far away—just another jagged piece in the chaos of her thoughts.

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The hum of the generators was louder than she remembered. Or was that her heartbeat? Jenny stumbled down the polished metal corridor, her boots clanging against the floor as distant voices echoed around her.

“You’re reckless, Jenny. You don’t think things through,” her father’s voice said, disembodied and sharp. She didn’t see him, just heard the words, biting like frost.

She wasn’t in the corridor anymore. She was back at the shooting range, the rifle warm in her hands, the boys watching her with wide-eyed smirks. She could hear herself laugh—too loud, too confident—as she aimed down the scope.

“Oh, relax. I’ve done this a hundred times.”

The memory hit her like a slap. The recoil. The rifle’s kick. The way the butt of the stock had nudged the fragile control panel behind her.

The sparks. The sudden flicker of the screen. The momentary stutter in the generator’s hum.

“Jenny! That’s connected to the air filters!” Ethan’s voice echoed through her mind, sharp and panicked.

She froze, hearing herself stammer out the excuse. “It’s fine. It’s barely damaged. Right?”

The memory twisted, Ethan’s face fading into shadow as her father’s voice cut through again. “Do you even think about the consequences? Do you even care?”

Her chest tightened. She wanted to scream back at him, wanted to tell him it wasn’t a big deal, but the words stuck in her throat.

“I didn’t mean to...” she whispered, but no one was listening.

The room tilted, and the generator sparked, flaring white-hot before plunging into darkness. The lights flickered, and she heard herself saying, “Did I really break it? Did I—”

Her dad’s voice cut through again. “Do you even miss me, Jenny?”

Her chest tightened. Did she? She realized this was the first time since she’d left the bunker that she’d even thought about him.

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A screech echoed in her ears, sharp and guttural, cutting through the chaos in her mind. Jenny found herself back in the ruins of that hardware store, the rifle hot against her shoulder. The creature lay sprawled in the dirt where she’d dropped it, its body twisted and grotesque.

Dead. She knew it was dead.

But then it moved.

The creature’s limbs jerked, twitching unnaturally as if yanked by invisible strings. Its pale, slick skin gleamed in the dim light, and its head turned toward her, glowing eyes locking onto hers with a predatory glare.

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Her heart pounded as she raised the rifle, but her arms felt leaden, her movements sluggish. She squeezed the trigger, but no shot came—just a hollow, mechanical click. The creature lunged, its screech reverberating through her skull as its claws reached for her—

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The scene shifted, and she was on a rocky plain now, the sky wide and bruised with storm clouds. A man stood a few feet away, his back to her, leaning casually against a boulder.

“Reed,” she said, the word tumbling from her lips like it didn’t belong to her. “That’s a plant, isn’t it?”

The man chuckled without turning around. “Could be worse. Could be something like Daisy or Basil.”

Her mind latched onto it, like a child spinning a rhyme. “Kid, Reed. Kid—Reed. Oh, it rhymes.”

The figure shifted, and she could just barely make out his profile now—sharp jaw, shadowed eyes, a smirk that seemed to stay even when he wasn’t talking. “You’re a strange one, princess.”

Jenny stepped closer, or maybe the world moved instead of her. Suddenly she could smell him—sweat and alcohol, and something else she couldn’t name.

It wasn’t pleasant. It shouldn’t have been pleasant. And yet...

“Why does that smell nice?” she muttered. Her own voice echoed in her head, disjointed and strange. “Sweat and booze? Why?”

“Alcohol.” The word twisted in her brain, repeating itself over and over. She saw bottles—dirty, cracked bottles lined up on a metal shelf. “Humans always find booze, don’t they?” she murmured to the empty air.

The images shifted. Broken statues. Rusted guitars. A painting with half its canvas burned away. “Art? Music? Nah,” she heard herself say, her voice distant and slurred. “But they’ll always ferment something.”

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A flash.

The world splintered like glass, and every nerve in her body lit up at once. Pain, searing and raw, tore through her shoulder and down her spine. She didn’t hear her own screams—she only felt them, her throat vibrating, her chest heaving, her jaw clenched around something that tasted of leather.

It was chaos, noise, heat, and agony. Like a rave, she thought dimly, though she had no idea what a rave was. Pulses of color burst behind her eyes, each one timed to a new wave of torment.

And then it was gone.

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She was standing in the bunker’s common room now, but everything was wrong. The walls seemed smaller, closer, the familiar hum replaced by a suffocating silence.

Her father’s face hovered in the shadows, disapproving and distant. “A soldier doesn’t lose their weapon, Jenny.”

Her rifle.

Her pack.

Her map.

They were gone, scattered somewhere in the wasteland, in the hands of God-knows-who. She could almost hear the council’s voices, stern and final. “You’ve failed. You’re reckless. You’re a liability.”

“No,” she muttered, gripping her head. “No, no, no!”

She wasn’t supposed to come back like this. She wasn’t supposed to come back empty-handed, a failure, a joke.

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Her eyes fluttered open. The fire was the first thing she saw, its flickering light steady and hypnotic. The rest of the camp came into focus slowly—rough stones, a pack leaning against a rock, the faint smell of smoke and something metallic.

Her body felt heavy, like she was sinking into the bedroll beneath her. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here.

Reed. His name came back to her, along with a vague image of his face—sharp features, cocky smirk, dark eyes that seemed to see too much. He’d saved her. From what?

Jenny shifted, her hair falling into her face. She groaned softly, reaching up to push it back, her fingers brushing against the tangle of her braid. It was a mess, clumped with dirt and blood.

“Braid’s gotta go,” she muttered, her voice barely more than a whisper.

She tried to pull the rubber band free, her hand shaking as she fumbled with the knot. And then it hit her.

Her left hand worked fine. Her right didn’t move.

She stared at the stump in horror, her breath catching in her throat. The bandage was crude, stained with dried blood and firewater, the edges singed where Reed had sealed the wound.

Jenny’s chest tightened, and for a moment, the world seemed to tilt again. She closed her eyes, willing the nausea away, and when she opened them, her jaw set in grim determination.

“I’m not done yet,” she whispered, her voice hoarse but steady.