The next day, Evan ached all over.
Not just in his arms or legs.
A deeper exhaustion had settled into his body, as if his bones themselves had held on to the effort from the day before.
He got up slowly, ran a hand over the back of his neck, then over the still-sensitive skin of his throat. The pain was no longer the same as the one left by the box. This one came from the square. From clumsy laps. Badly executed movements. Muscles that had never really been pushed before.
It was almost reassuring.
Almost.
In the kitchen, he drank a glass of water standing up, in silence.
His mother's phone was resting on the table.
He looked at it for a few seconds.
Then took it with him, as usual.
Outside, the sky was overcast. A gray light fell over the buildings, dirty and cold.
His phone vibrated just as he was putting on his shoes.
Hugo: i found a lead
Evan stared at the message for a second.
Then replied:
on my way
***
They met in front of the square, but did not stop there.
Hugo looked almost as sore as he was.
There was a slight pull in his walk, and he barely hid a grimace as he stepped down from the curb.
"You found a lead," Evan repeated.
"The municipal gym."
"The thing from the posters?"
"Yeah."
They started walking side by side.
"My dad heard about it again this morning," Hugo said. "Apparently it's not just some neighborhood rumor. There really are people gathering there."
"To do what?"
Hugo shrugged.
"Survive, I guess. Organize. Maybe train."
Evan looked straight ahead.
The word lingered between them for a moment.
Train.
Said like that, it almost sounded normal.
Like a club.
A hobby.
Something from before.
But all it took was one glance at the sky for everything to turn false again.
The ship was still there.
Motionless.
Crushing.
Hugo went on:
"I don't know if it's going to help."
"But we're going anyway."
"Yeah."
***
The walk took them a good half hour.
Not because the gym was far.
Because they were walking more slowly than before without even realizing it. The fatigue from the day before weighed heavily in their legs.
After the second duel, the city had changed again.
The wider streets looked too large.
The traffic lights still worked, the road signs too, some digital billboards were still scrolling above nearly empty sidewalks, but all of it felt useless now. As if the old world kept its mechanisms running for people who were no longer numerous enough to fill them.
A gas station was closed.
A fast-food place too.
A convenience store had reopened, but through the window they could only see two customers and a cashier standing alone behind her counter.
On some streets, building entrances had been barricaded with furniture or makeshift metal grates.
On others, sheets of paper taped to the walls read:
SURVIVORS IN THE BUILDING — REPORT YOURSELF
WATER AVAILABLE ON THE 4TH FLOOR
NIGHT WATCH STARTS AT 9 P.M.
Farther on, an entire wall was covered with contradictory posters.
STAY TOGETHER
LEAVE THE CITY
THEY WILL COME BACK
JOIN US TO PRAY
LEARN TO DEFEND YOURSELF
Hugo slowed down at the last one.
"See?" he said.
Evan followed his gaze.
A white poster, cleaner than the others, carried only a few words written in black marker:
IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO FIGHT, YOU'RE ALREADY LATE
Evan looked away.
"Cheerful."
"At least it's honest."
They kept walking.
A few streets later, they passed a small group of four people hauling grocery bags and water jugs on a flat dolly. Farther ahead, two men were loading a half-filled van with mattresses, blankets, and cardboard boxes.
No one was wandering.
No one was outside without a reason.
Even the people who were out looked as though they were obeying necessity.
The city was no longer a place you passed through.
It had become a place where you tried to take whatever resources remained before everything emptied out completely.
After a while, Hugo said quietly,
"Have you noticed we don't hear sirens the way we did at the beginning?"
"Yeah."
"It's worse."
Evan turned his head slightly toward him.
"Why?"
Hugo shrugged.
"At first, everything was screaming, everything was moving, it felt like the whole world was exploding. Now… it feels like no one even has enough energy left to panic properly."
Evan did not answer.
Because he understood.
The world was not healing.
It was sinking.
More slowly.
More deeply.
***
The municipal gym appeared at the end of an almost empty avenue.
From the outside, the building was nothing impressive. A rectangular concrete structure, high windows, a half-empty parking lot, an open gate.
But there were people there.
Not a crowd. A concentration.
Groups of two or three people were going in, coming out, waiting near the gate. Some carried bags. Others had rolled-up blankets. Others still had nothing but visible exhaustion.
It was not an official place.
Not in the old sense of the word.
It was something else.
A survival point.
Hugo slowed down.
"Well."
"Yeah."
They kept moving forward.
As they got closer, a certain logic became visible.
Two men were screening people at the parking lot entrance. Not soldiers. Not police officers. Just survivors who had already decided to behave like guards. They spoke to newcomers, looked at what they were carrying, asked short questions.
Farther on, near the gym steps, several people were carrying water, food, and bags.
Evan noticed a girl standing a little apart near the entrance.
She looked about their age.
She was not speaking. She was simply watching the movement around the gym with a strange calm.
Hugo slowed slightly.
"I wouldn't want to end up against her in a box," he muttered. "She looks like a killer."
Evan kept his eyes on her for one second longer, then answered,
"Yeah."
At that moment, the girl turned her head toward them.
Both of them looked away almost at once and kept walking toward the entrance.
When they reached the gate, one of the two men screening people stopped them.
He was in his forties. Short beard. Tired eyes, but still steady.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
Not aggressive. Not polite either.
Just direct.
Hugo answered before Evan could.
"We heard there was a gathering here."
"There is."
"We wanted some information."
"About what?"
This time, Hugo hesitated.
Evan took over.
"About how things work here."
The man raised an eyebrow slightly.
"It works because we keep the place running. Water, food, shifts, cleaning, watch duty. Same as anywhere people don't want to die alone."
There was nothing hostile in his tone.
Only weariness.
Behind him, another group was already arriving. A woman with a sports bag, an older couple, a teenager with a backpack.
Hugo asked,
"Can we come in?"
The man looked at them again.
Then lowered his gaze to their empty hands.
"What are you bringing?"
Silence fell at once.
Nothing.
They were bringing nothing.
No food.
No water.
No blankets.
No tools.
Nothing.
Just themselves.
And in this world, that was no longer necessarily enough.
Hugo cleared his throat.
"We mostly came to look."
The man let out a breath through his nose, not really mocking.
"Everybody comes to 'look.'"
He turned halfway and gestured toward the gym behind him.
"In there, some people are already sleeping on the floor, others are guarding the entrances, others are trying to organize lists. If all you want is to take a look around, you're mostly just going to get in the way."
Evan felt the embarrassment rise in his stomach.
Not because the man was unfair.
Because he wasn't.
Hugo tried again.
"We might want to join a group. Or learn a few things."
This time, the man studied them differently.
As if weighing the sincerity of their words.
"What have you two actually done since the second fight?"
Neither Evan nor Hugo answered right away.
Their silence was probably answer enough.
The man sighed.
"Look. If you're serious, come back with something useful. Or with a real reason. Not just curiosity."
Hugo tightened his jaw, but nodded.
"Okay."
The man seemed about to move on.
Then he added anyway,
"And if you want to learn, look for the ones who train. Not here, at the gate."
"Where?" Evan asked.
The man gave a vague motion toward the back of the building.
"In the back courtyard, sometimes. When they have time. But no one's going to hold your hand."
They stepped out of the way.
The group behind them took their place.
The woman with the sports bag immediately showed what she had brought. The older couple were already talking about a relative inside. The teenager kept his eyes down.
Evan and Hugo stayed by the fence for a while, not really knowing whether they should leave or wait.
Beyond a side door left slightly open, they could see the back of the building and several figures.
Survivors.
Two men were awkwardly shoving each other. An older woman was demonstrating something with her arm. Another person was catching his breath against a wall.
So it was true.
People were already training.
Not like in a gym class.
Like their lives depended on it.
Because they did.
Hugo followed his gaze.
"You want to go look?"
Evan hesitated.
"No."
Hugo nodded.
"Yeah. We've got no business being there right now."
They stepped back a few paces.
Before leaving, Evan cast one last glance toward the courtyard.
The survivors who were training were nothing impressive in any heroic sense.
They were tired, awkward, sometimes injured.
But they were already doing something that he and Hugo were only just beginning to imagine.
And that difference weighed on him more than he would have liked.
***
They walked away from the gym in silence for several minutes.
Neither of them spoke right away.
When they finally turned onto a quieter street, Hugo let out,
"Well."
"Yeah."
"We got turned away like kids."
Evan exhaled shortly.
"We showed up empty-handed just to 'look.'"
"Put like that, yeah, it sounds stupid."
They kept walking.
Then Hugo went on:
"He wasn't completely wrong."
"No."
"We're not wrong either for looking."
Evan nodded slowly.
"You saw the back?" Hugo asked.
"The courtyard?"
"Yeah. People were really training."
"Yeah."
Hugo ran a hand over the back of his neck.
"We're starting from too far behind."
Evan did not answer.
Because he knew.
Their square. Their broken breath. Their awkward movements. Their inability to hold out for more than a few minutes. All of it was already coming back to him.
They reached an intersection where they had to split up.
Just before going their separate ways, Hugo asked,
"You think there are other places like that?"
Evan thought of the gym.
Of the screening at the entrance.
Of the back courtyard.
Of the new way people held themselves there, as if surviving had already become a full-time job.
"Yes," he said. "And I think there are going to be more and more of them."
Hugo looked at the sky for a second.
The ship still loomed over the city.
"We need to figure out where we fit before everything closes up," he said.
Evan felt the sentence sink into him.
Yes.
That was exactly it.
The world was no longer only collapsing.
It was rebuilding itself into something else.
"We keep going tomorrow," he said.
Hugo nodded.
"With something to bring this time."
"Yeah."
They parted.
Evan walked home alone.
In streets that felt emptier and emptier, the trip back seemed longer than the walk there.
Not because he was tired.
Because now he knew that something truly existed on the other side of their hesitation.
Not a miracle solution.
Not a perfect refuge.
But another stage of survival.
And he was not there yet.
When he got home, he set his keys on the table, his phone beside them, then stood in the middle of the living room for a while without moving.
His mother's phone still weighed in his pocket.
He took it out, looked at it for a second, then placed it gently on the coffee table.
In the living room window, his reflection mixed with the gray sky and the black mass of the ship.
He thought of the square.
Of how ridiculously out of breath they had been.
Then of the gym.
Of the back courtyard.
Of the survivors who were already farther along than they were.
Evan slowly lowered his eyes.
He was not ready.
Not yet.
But for the first time, he was beginning to see what the gap looked like between surviving by chance… and surviving on purpose.
And that was a gap he was going to have to close.