novelraw Chapter 164: No Longer Alone
Chapter 164: No Longer Alone
The rifle stayed steady against Sera’s shoulder, scope pressed to her brow.
Beyond the barricaded window, the world stretched out as a white wasteland—flat in places, jagged in others, where half-buried buildings broke through the ice like the bones of something long dead.
Wind scoured thin lines across the surface, dragging pale dust into shapes that vanished as quickly as they formed.
The city was gone.
What remained lay beneath twenty feet of hard ice. And even then, nothing remained at the bottom of the ocean.
But not everything had been swallowed.
To the north, a tower leaned at an angle, half consumed, its lower stories hidden beneath the drift. It was in the complete opposite direction from where they normally did their recon, so it wasn’t surprising that they hadn’t seen it before.
However, they could no longer allow surprises like that to happen again.
From this distance, it looked more like a snow dune than an apartment block, the concrete scarred and the windows shattered.
Steel beams jutted from one side where the frame had twisted before freezing into place. It had the profile of something broken and unnatural, yet there was movement inside. Shadows shifted against the glare of the sky.
"Something there," Sera murmured.
Lachlan crouched beside her, squinting with naked eyes before reaching for the spare binoculars.
He adjusted the focus until the shape resolved. The glass trembled faintly in his hands. "Not drift. That’s someone walking inside the building."
Zubair gave a single sharp motion of his fingers—quiet.
Sera tracked the scope, careful and steady.
Another figure slid along a tilted frame of window two floors higher, stopping briefly before vanishing again. Too controlled for accident. Not wind. Not the sway of loose fabric. Intentional movement.
"Two, maybe three," she added. "Armed. Hard to tell what with."
Elias accepted the binoculars when Lachlan passed them over. He lowered them quickly, eyes tightening. "They’ve blocked out half the window with something heavy. That isn’t panic boarding. That’s structural."
"It’s in the direction of the old base," Alexei noted, leaning against the desk, voice edged with dry amusement. "Could be soldiers. Could be deserters with memory enough to act like them. But either way, the base was only five stories high, so the building wouldn’t be that."
The word soldiers weighed heavy in the room.
Sera adjusted the focus again. From one of the upper windows, a faint flicker of light cut across the tundra. She stilled, watching. A pause, then another flicker, angled sharp and deliberate.
"Reflection," she said. "Glass. Or polished metal."
Another flash followed—short, short, long.
Zubair leaned close enough to see through the edge of her scope. Recognition sharpened his eyes.
"That’s not random," Elias murmured. His voice was certain, almost reverent. "That’s infantry code. Old, but I know it."
The sequence repeated. Short. Short. Long. A pause. Another long. Then two shorts. The rhythm was too exact to mistake.
"Military," Zubair confirmed, his tone flat.
Hope sparked across Lachlan’s face, too quick to hide. "Then we should—"
"No." Sera didn’t move from the scope, her tone as cold as the ice outside.
He blinked, caught off guard by the edge. "They could be allies. Supplies. Information. We can’t keep acting like—"
"Or they’ll strip what we have and leave us dead in the snow," she cut in. "Uniforms don’t matter anymore."
Alexei gave a short laugh that held no humor. "She’s right. Hunger wears stripes just as well as rags."
"Hunger makes soldiers worse than civilians," Elias added, his voice steady, not cruel. "At least civilians wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later."
Lachlan’s jaw flexed. His hands opened and closed as though trying to work the restlessness out of his body. "We’ve been wondering for months if anyone else survived. Now we know. We can’t just..."
Sera lowered her cheek from the stock and turned enough to look at him fully. Her eyes were sharp, unyielding. "We can. And we will. If you want to walk across that ice, that’s your choice. But you won’t be coming back."
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was taut, like wire pulled until it hummed.
Zubair finally broke it, his tone iron. "She’s right. Crossing that ground kills. Even if you make it halfway, they’ll know exactly where we are. Then we lose more than one if they decide to kill us."
"Not what I meant," sighed Sera, closing her eyes. "If you go over there and think about coming back, you don’t have to worry about them killing you. I will do it myself."
No one argued after that.
Sera turned back to the scope. The flashes continued, bright and precise against the winter sun. Whoever was inside the leaning tower had chosen their window carefully, making sure the angle would carry light far across the frozen city.
"Repeat pattern," Elias muttered, listening to the rhythm she recited. "They’re calling for response."
"They won’t get one," Sera said.
For several minutes the tower glinted and fell silent, glinted again. The messages came in clean strokes, pauses exact, like the tick of a clock. Each flash was a word, each word an invitation.
Alexei accepted the binoculars for a turn and studied the tilted ruin. "They’re organized. That isn’t scavenger work. They’ve got lines, routines."
"Which makes them dangerous," Sera replied.
"They could be survivors from the base," Lachlan pressed, unwilling to let it go. "If anyone had resources—"
"If they had resources, they wouldn’t be flashing light into the snow hoping strangers answer back." Her voice cut sharp. "They’d already be here."
He stared at her, searching for a crack, but there was none.
Elias shifted the binoculars, slow and thoughtful. "The pattern is real. No scavenger would know it. Whoever they are, they’re trained."
"And if they’re trained, they know exactly what to do with anyone who has food or fire," Sera countered. "They’re baiting us. Waiting for someone desperate enough to crawl into their hands."
The pup stirred faintly on the table, reminding Sera that it was there. Needing the comfort, Sera swiped the pup off the table and tucked it into her jacket. She tightened her arm across it, steadying herself as much as the animal.
Another flash cut through the distance.
Then another. The code shifted into a longer phrase, too far and too broken by glare for Sera to fully trace, but Elias caught pieces. His lips moved silently as he counted.
"Coordinates," he realized. "They’re offering a meeting point."
"Let them offer," Sera said.
Lachlan’s hand flexed on the windowsill. "You don’t understand. This is the first—"
"I understand." Her tone silenced him before he could finish. "And we are not moving. If you want to try your luck, then go. But don’t come back through this door."
Alexei glanced sidelong at her, mouth quirking into something like approval. "Spoken like an Alpha. Keep the Alpha happy, the pack stays alive."
Zubair gave the smallest nod, agreement without ornament.
Lachlan looked between them all, frustration written across his face. But he said nothing more.
Outside, the leaning tower gleamed once more, a final flash catching on glass before the sun slid behind a bank of cloud. The light died, and the window became dark again.
The tundra returned to silence, but the weight of it was different now. They were no longer imagining if others had survived. They knew. And knowing felt heavier than ignorance.
The office seemed smaller, tighter, as if the walls had shifted closer the moment that glint reached them.
Sera lowered the rifle, rested it against her knee, and let her breath leave in a slow, steady stream. The pup nosed at her collar again, quiet, watchful.
Across the ice, the tower still leaned, its shadow stretching long under the dim sky. Somewhere inside, people had lit a fire, carved space from ruin, and signaled across the frozen city. People who were alive.
People who were trained. People who might be waiting for exactly this: an answer.
They would not get one.