Hugo remained frozen for a few seconds on the landing, facing Evan.
In the hallway, doors were opening all at once. Voices rose from one floor to another. Someone was calling out a name. A woman was crying so hard that her sobs seemed to spread through the whole building.
But between the two of them, there was only silence.
Hugo had seen the marks on Evan's neck.
He understood.
So did Evan.
There was nothing to explain. Nothing that could make it any less heavy.
Then Hugo suddenly dropped his eyes to his phone.
As if he had just remembered that something else still existed beyond that question.
His fingers were trembling when he unlocked the screen.
"Wait…"
He dialed a number at once.
A second passed.
Then another.
Hugo's face tightened.
At last, his expression shifted slightly.
"Dad?"
His voice cracked, just a little.
He closed his eyes for a second.
"Yeah… yeah, me too."
He turned halfway into the hallway, not to move away, just to stay standing.
"You're at the apartment? … Okay. Don't move, I'm coming."
He listened for a few more words, nodded several times, then hung up.
When he looked back at Evan, his face did not show relief.
Only the temporary end of fear.
"He came back," he said.
Evan nodded slowly.
"That's good."
Hugo looked once more at the marks on his neck, then looked away.
A man was hurrying down the stairs a floor above them, repeating,
"Answer… answer…"
Someone lower down shouted that his wife had not come back. One door slammed. Another opened.
Hugo tightened his grip on his phone.
"I have to go."
"Yeah."
He hesitated for a second.
Then:
"Come by later, if you want."
Evan looked at him.
Hugo was not smiling.
But he was not fleeing either.
"Okay," Evan said.
Hugo nodded and disappeared into the stairwell.
Evan remained on the threshold for a few more seconds.
The hallway already felt emptier.
Not in an abstract sense.
Truly emptier.
A door farther down had been left open, but no one was coming out. In the apartment across the hall, where an old woman had lived alone, nothing moved.
The second duel had barely ended.
And the building had already lost more people.
***
Evan went downstairs a few minutes later.
His mother's phone was still in his pocket. His own phone was in his hand. His neck hurt every time he swallowed.
The lobby was crowded without really being full.
Some neighbors were speaking too fast. Others stood in silence near the mailboxes. Claire was still holding a pen, but she was not writing anything. The neighbor from the third floor was clearly trying to regain control of something that was already slipping away from him.
The survivors' sheet on the wall was drawing every eye.
There were more empty spaces than before.
Some names had been crossed out in haste.
Others circled.
Under several lines that had gone unanswered, someone had written:
didn't come back
Evan stared at the sheet for a second too long.
Beside him, a teenager asked in a hollow voice,
"How many of us are left now?"
No one answered.
Because no one wanted to put a number to what was becoming visible.
The building sounded hollow.
Several landings had no noise at all anymore.
Too many apartments had gone silent all at once.
Even so, the neighbor from the third floor finally spoke:
"Listen, we can't just stand here like this. We need to take stock again. See who's here. Who needs—"
"What's the point?" a woman cut in sharply.
All eyes turned toward her.
She was clutching her arms around herself as if she were afraid she might shatter all at once.
"What's the point of making lists? What's the point of locking the doors? If it happens again, what does any of it change?"
Silence fell immediately.
The neighbor from the third floor lowered his eyes for a moment, then answered more calmly,
"Maybe nothing. But for now, we're still here."
A man near the mailboxes said without looking directly at anyone,
"Yeah. Still here. But we don't know what some people had to do for that."
This time, the silence was even heavier.
Claire stiffened.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked the neighbor from the third floor.
The man shrugged.
"It means what it means."
His eyes slid briefly toward Evan.
Then toward two other neighbors.
Then elsewhere.
Not for long.
Just long enough.
Evan felt his stomach tighten.
There it was.
The moment when survivors were no longer just the ones who had been lucky.
The moment when the others started wondering what they had done in there to come back.
Claire reacted first.
"No one chooses what happens to them in there."
The man let out a dry laugh.
"Really?"
The tension rose all at once.
Not a fight yet.
Something worse, maybe.
That new way of looking at other people as if they might have become different. Dangerous. Unrecognizable.
A woman started crying against the wall.
Someone murmured,
"Not now…"
Evan waited no longer.
He turned away from the sheet and left the lobby.
***
Outside, night was almost fully falling.
In the building across the street, only a few windows were still lit.
The street was emptier than it had been at the same hour the week before.
Not deserted.
But too quiet.
Too few cars.
Too few lit windows.
And everywhere, that feeling that the city had lost more than just inhabitants.
As if it had lost part of its noise.
The ship was still up there.
Enormous.
Motionless.
Black against the evening sky.
People were still out on the sidewalks. Some were making calls. Others simply stood there, phone in hand, looking at the surrounding buildings as if someone might suddenly step out of a doorway.
Evan walked to Hugo's place without really thinking.
When he got there, the apartment door was half open.
He knocked anyway.
Hugo came to open it almost immediately.
No hello.
No pretense.
Just:
"Come in."
Evan stepped inside.
Hugo's father was in the kitchen. They could hear him opening a cupboard, closing it, moving a cup, then nothing. Like someone trying to keep making normal gestures so he would not collapse.
Hugo sat down in the living room without taking off his jacket. Evan did the same.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Hugo finally looked up.
"They did it again."
Evan nodded slowly.
"Yeah."
Hugo let out a short, empty laugh.
"I still can't believe that's a sentence that actually exists."
Evan looked at the floor.
"Neither can I."
The living room felt emptier than the last time.
Or maybe Evan was just looking more closely.
The little pair of sneakers was no longer by the door.
The school bag was gone too.
But their absence felt even more present than when they had been there.
Hugo ran a hand over his face.
A silence passed.
Then Hugo asked, very quietly,
"He attacked you right away?"
Evan lifted his eyes toward him.
Hugo did not look judgmental.
Only like he needed to understand.
Evan lowered his gaze to his hands.
"Yeah."
The word scraped at his throat.
"He said he wasn't going to wait this time."
Hugo stayed still.
"And you?"
Evan's fingers tightened against each other.
"I tried to push him off."
He stopped.
The rest stayed stuck somewhere between his throat and his stomach.
Hugo did not force him.
After a few seconds, Evan added anyway,
"At one point… I just understood that if I let go, it would be me."
Silence fell again.
Hugo's father passed through the doorway, his eyes red, an empty cup in his hand. He saw Evan, hesitated, then simply murmured,
"Good evening, Evan."
"Good evening, sir."
The man nodded, stood there a second too long as if he were about to say something, then went back into the kitchen.
Hugo watched him go.
"He's pretending," he said more quietly. "He puts things away, he cleans, he opens cupboards… like moving around keeps him from thinking."
Evan looked at the floor.
"I stare at walls."
Hugo let out air through his nose. Not really a laugh.
Then his face closed again.
"I'm scared of the next one."
It was not a surprise.
But hearing it said that way changed everything.
Not if it happens again.
Not if there is another one.
The next one.
Evan felt the phrase settle between them.
Heavy. Real. Inevitable.
He slowly raised his eyes.
"Me too."
Hugo looked at his hands.
"I don't even know how many times a person can live through this before becoming… something else."
Evan did not answer right away.
Because he had asked himself exactly the same question.
The second duel had not been like the first.
He had not entered the box the same way.
He had entered it with fear already waiting for him.
With the memory of the red beam.
With the certainty of what another human being could do to stay alive.
And now, he also knew what he himself could do.
Hugo finally looked up.
"We can't keep going like this."
Evan frowned slightly.
"Like this how?"
"Just waiting."
His voice was firmer than before.
"Hoping we get someone weaker. Or slower. Or that a fifty-fifty doesn't pick us. That's not a strategy."
Evan did not answer.
But something in his chest tightened differently this time.
Not only from fear.
Hugo went on:
"I don't know what we're supposed to do. I'm not saying I have a solution. But we can't just stay in our apartments staring at the sky."
Hugo's father dropped a spoon in the kitchen.
The small metallic sound echoed through the whole apartment.
Evan thought of his arms.
Of the other man's throat.
Of the fact that he had come back because, at one precise moment, he had not let go.
Then he thought of the next box.
And the one after that.
And all the others.
His gaze drifted toward the window.
The ship still cut across the dark sky beyond the buildings.
Motionless.
Patient.
As if it had all the time in the world.
And it probably did.
They didn't.
Evan lowered his eyes to his hands.
They were no longer shaking.
Not because he was better.
Because something else was beginning to take the place of shock.
Something harder.
He took a slow breath.
Then said, more to himself than to Hugo,
"I can't do the next one like this."
Hugo did not answer at once.
But his expression shifted slightly.
As if he had been waiting for that sentence from the beginning.
"Yeah," he said under his breath. "Me neither."
They remained sitting there a while longer without speaking.
Not because they had nothing left to say.
Because the sentence was already there between them.
They were going to have to prepare.
Not become heroes.
Not become invincible.
Just stop waiting like prey.
When Evan left, night had fully fallen.
The street felt even emptier than when he had come. Entire stretches of sidewalk without a single person. Dark windows. Silent building entrances.
He walked home, his mother's phone in his pocket, his hands shoved into his sweatshirt.
In the lobby, the survivors' sheet was still hanging beside the mailboxes.
Someone had written underneath it in nervous handwriting:
WE HAVE TO LEARN TO ENDURE
Farther down, someone else had added:
ENDURE OR KILL?
Evan stood motionless in front of the words.
Then he went upstairs.
Once home, he did not turn on the television.
He did not open the fridge.
He went straight to the bathroom.
Looked at himself in the mirror.
For a long time.
The marks on his neck.
The dark circles under his eyes.
The face more closed off than before.
Then he slowly raised both hands to chest height.
Looked at them.
The white box came back into his mind at once.
The floor.
The stolen breath.
The throat beneath his arms.
The voice.
"Death confirmed."
Evan abruptly shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was only the reflection.
The bathroom.
The silence.
And himself.
Alone.
But not quite the same as before.
He slowly pulled his mother's phone from his pocket.
Set it on the edge of the sink.
Then raised his eyes one last time to his reflection.
And for the first time since the ship had arrived, his fear took on a slightly more precise shape.
He could not stop what was happening.
He could not save the world.
He could not even protect the people he loved simply by hoping.
But he could at least stop standing still.
In the silence of the apartment, that thought did not feel like courage yet.
Only necessity.
And that was already enough.