- You’re not scouting utopias. You’re scanning for the least dysfunctional ruin.

  - Assume disappointment. Anything better is a win.

  - Idealism gets you killed. Cynical curiosity? That gets you answers.

  ---

  We left just after dawn.

  Split the gang right down the middle. Tactical. Clean. Heart-wrenching.

  Jules, Alex, and Gail took the Peachmobile and made their way to Cincinnati to figure out if the government was still good for more than ID cards and control issues.

  Me? I got the luxury ticket. Boots-on-dirt with Harun as we hiked north toward static and hope: the collective signal. Faint, glitchy, just believable enough to make you think they weren’t serial killers.

  We called the operation “Double-Scam.” Because let’s be honest, no matter what they said on the radio, both factions were selling something.

  But if we had to buy in, might as well read the fine print first.

  Harun had a good stride. Dude didn’t complain once. Just hummed low tunes and occasionally offered up D&D trivia unprompted.

  “You know,” he said, pointing at a distant water tower, “if we were in a campaign, that’d be a good sniper perch or a mimic.”

  “A mimic?” I asked. “You mean like, the water tower stands up and eats us?”

  “Yup. Roll initiative.”

  “Hard pass,” I said. “Last time I rolled initiative, I threw a jellybean than a d20.”

  He laughed. Like, full laugh. The kind that sounded like it belonged somewhere better than here.

  I think we walked an hour just trading stories. No danger, no zombie ambush, no ‘Oh no, the bridge is out.’ Just… us.

  We argued about sci-fi ethics for fifteen straight minutes. He thought the Federation in Star Trek was dangerously na?ve. I said it was idealism we needed more of. He countered with The Expanse. I said The Expanse was great but everyone in it had therapy issues and guns.

  “You’re deflecting with humor,” he said.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Thank you, I’ve been perfecting that for years.”

  He smiled. “It shows.”

  We hiked along old highways that nature had reclaimed. Ivy-choked billboards. Cracked pavement. A rusted-out car graveyard with trees growing through the windows like nature finally won the war and was redecorating.

  Around noon, we stopped near a little hill and opened some vacuum-sealed snacks like kings feasting on the world’s saddest charcuterie board.

  Harun was the first to break the silence. “You think they’ll be… good?”

  “The collective?” I asked. “No. But maybe not awful.”

  He nodded. “Lower your expectations.”

  “Tip seventy-nine,” I muttered. “Tattoo it on my forehead.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Harun said. “Face tattoos are a bold commitment.”

  “Fair,” I said, looking out at the treeline. “But I mean it. I don’t think we’re going to find heaven. Just somewhere we can breathe.”

  “That’s good enough,” Harun said. Then, after a beat, “I hope they like pasta. I brought a whole notebook of new spaghetti recipes.”

  I stared at him.

  He shrugged. “Comfort food diplomacy.”

  And you know what?

  That might just work.

  ---

  We passed an abandoned gas station two hours after lunch.

  Its roof had collapsed inward like a giant had stomped on it mid-tantrum. The only thing left standing was a bent Slushie machine, still valiantly guarding the counter.

  Harun saluted it.

  I saluted too.

  “You ever think we’re NPCs in someone else’s story?” he asked, climbing over some rubble with his usual quiet energy.

  “All the time,” I said. “But I like to think I’m the weird, optional sidequest that gives rare loot if you put up with me long enough.”

  He laughed. “You’re that one quest where the player’s like, ‘Wait, he gave me a shovel and a kazoo. Is this important later?’”

  “It always is.”

  We kept walking. Wind kicked up dust. Somewhere in the distance, a bird cawed like it just discovered depression.

  After a while, I broke the silence. “Okay. If the Collective turns out to be a bunch of creepy cultists trying to recruit us into a quinoa-based society, what power would you pick to escape?”

  “Easy,” Harun said without hesitation. “Omnitrix. Access to a hundred different alien lifeforms? One of them has to be good at cult evasion.”

  I nodded. “Smart. Can’t argue with an interstellar transformation watch.”

  “You?”

  “Bag of holding,” I said.

  “Just… the bag?”

  “Two bags,” I clarified. “One inside the other. Boom. Portable portal to the Astral Plane. It’s not about escape, Harun. It’s about breaking the rules of reality itself.”

  He blinked at me. “You’re terrifying when you overthink.”

  “You knew that going in.”

  We wandered a while longer, sidestepping busted cars and the occasional sun-bleached skeleton. I tossed a can down the street just to see how far I could bounce it. It clanged off a lamppost and hit a stop sign that gave up and fell over.

  “A-tier combo,” Harun noted.

  “Low-tier execution. Frame data’s off.”

  “You’ve been watching too many fighting game videos.”

  “No such thing.”

  Another mile, and Harun pointed at a bus flipped on its side.

  “Ten bucks says it was caused by a fire-powered zombie.”

  “Twenty bucks says someone was trying to drift it like in Initial D and failed.”

  We passed a dead-end strip mall that used to be a gaming cafe. Faded posters still clung to the glass like ghosts. Harun pressed his face to the window.

  “Oof,” he said. “Forgot how much I missed sitting in a place like this. Playing for ten hours and getting yelled at for not buying enough snacks.”

  “I once faked my birthday to get free cake at one of these.”

  “You are a menace.”

  “I contain multitudes.”

  Harun chuckled and kept walking. We fell into silence again, but it wasn’t awkward. It was the kind of silence that only came with shared understanding—the kind you earned by swapping hypotheticals like Pokémon cards.

  After a bit, he spoke up.

  “What was your favorite TV show growing up?”

  I grinned. “Avatar: The Last Airbender. No contest. Sokka was my boy.”

  “I always saw you as a Zuko.”

  I pretended to wipe a tear. “You mean it?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Brooding. Funny. Has a redemption arc. Needs a haircut.”

  “You wound me.”

  “I speak truth.”

  We reached the top of a hill and stopped.

  Below us, nestled between trees and ruined streets, was a tiny blinking light. A makeshift antenna. Solar panels. Signs of life.

  The Collective.

  Or something pretending to be it.

  Harun let out a slow breath. “So. Final guesses. Good, bad, or murder-clown convention?”

  I looked down at the shoddy setup, then at him.

  “I’m gonna go with chaotic neutral. But with strong loot drops.”

  “Solid guess,” he said.

  “Ready to roll initiative?”

  Harun cracked his knuckles. “Always.”

  We descended together.

  Backpacks full.

  Expectations low.

  Hearts cautiously open.

  Just enough hope to hurt.