Introduction
ZEKE
The planner. The storm before the calm.
The sirens didn’t scare me.
It was the silence between the bursts of static. The kind that always came before a shot, or a scream, or the wrong kind of freedom.
Liam was already bleeding when I found him in the hallway—smiling like this was some sick game. A shiv in one hand. Someone else’s blood on his face.
“You late or am I early?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. Just tossed him a shirt, kicked the body behind us, and kept moving.
We had 90 seconds before lockdown.
That was enough.
Because I’d been planning this for eight years.
Liam? He was just the kind of fucked up I needed to make it work.
SAKURA
The silence before the war. The girl who stops.
I saw him long before he saw me.
Standing on the side of the road, drenched in rain, one thumb stuck out like a punchline.
I should’ve kept driving.
I always kept driving.
But something about him made me press the brakes. Maybe it was the tilt of his head, the way he didn’t flinch when the lightning cracked above him. Maybe I was just bored. Or tired of playing safe.
Either way, I rolled the window down.
And that’s where everything started.
With silence. With a smile. With the wrong kind of mercy.
LIAM
The chaos. The ticking time bomb.
Ten years since I touched a woman. Since I smelled perfume.
Not like that prison bullshit.
I mean a real woman. Soft. Scared. Breathing air that doesn’t stink of bleach and blood. One who didn’t look at me like I was a monster—or worse, like I was nothing.
Ten years of metal beds, steel bars, and hands that only knew how to kill.
Zeke told me to keep it together.
Said we just needed a ride.
Just one car. One idiot dumb enough to stop.
In and out. No mess.
But he doesn’t hear what I hear.
The bones cracking in my head.
The clock that never ticks right.
The whisper that says: take it.
Just one.
One taste. One night. One woman who doesn’t flinch when I touch her.
He doesn’t know how loud the silence gets after a decade of nothing.
How a throat under your hand can feel like control.
How a scream—not yours—can sound like freedom.
Zeke thinks I’m just pissed off and tired.
But I know what this is.
It’s hunger.
It’s noise.
It’s me; one wrong breath away from losing it.
And when that Jeep pulled over, when I saw her through the rain; silver hair, long lashes, lips parted like she’d forgotten how to breathe?
The noise went quiet.
For just a second.
But it always comes back.
