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Isle of Masks and Blood

BRIAN TRENT

The last time he was on a boat he had to kill six people.

It had been messy work. Dumping their bodies overboard had filled him with a strange anxiety that remained long after he’d cashed the assignment check. Silvio Cipriano didn’t usually remember his dreams, though in the years since he was haunted by a recurring nightmare: he was back on that private yacht, staring down into the Adriatic Sea. Beneath his reflection were the six corpses, gazing up from their watery grave. They were rotted, slimy, all skeletal grins and seaweed hair, pointing bony fingers and saying—

“Papa?” his daughter Caterina tugged at his sleeve, distracting him from his morbid reverie. “Look!”

Sitting beside him in the speeding vaporetto, she pressed her little hands to the window, eyes wide, and pointed.

“Do you see it, Papa?”

“I see it.” As their watercraft cut a foaming wake, the city of Venice loomed on the horizon. It was late in the day—just after six o’clock—and the dying sun painted their destination in hues of blood and fire.

Caterina hopped off her seat, scampering past the other passengers—the grim, hardened organizers of Italy’s Trade Road—to get a better view. Silvio started after her when a hand touched his knee and stayed him.

“She’ll be okay,” Anna said beside him. “She’s not going to fall overboard, Silvio.”

“This is her first experience with the ocean.”

“Then let her look.”

He sighed and settled back in the vaporetto’s seat. “Old habits,” he muttered.

“You wanted her to see the world beyond Tuscany.”

“Yes.”

“You said she needed to know the places on the Trade Road, because one day she’ll be overseeing it.”

“I know.”

Anna interlaced her fingers with his. Sunset kissed her face, making her seem a Botticelli statue from an abandoned museum, of which a few still existed on the mainland, overgrown and long-since raided of food and bottled water. “This isn’t about Caterina,” she guessed. “You’ve been anxious all day. Is it Venice? There can’t be any infected there. I’ll bet Venice was the first city in Europe to become infection-free.”

“It’s not that,” Silvio insisted.

“The old days, then?”

He said nothing, and she didn’t press him.

Anna was a remarkable woman. Since the fall of civilization, she’d consistently proven a resourceful and insightful partner—two qualities that were key in dealing with the survivor enclaves along the Trade Road. She’d seen ugly things since the Fall. She’d seen Silvio do ugly things to bad people who deserved it. Life was tough again, as it had been through most of human history, and people had become tougher as a result.

Yet she also understood that some of Silvio’s darkness preceded the Fall. Things haunted him from the past. He never spoke of it openly, and to her credit she never pried.

I can’t tell her, he thought. The world is grisly enough without her knowing what I used to be.

He hoisted a smile on his face and patted her hand. “It was a long time ago. Doesn’t matter now.”

Anna kissed his neck and rested her head on his chest. “It’s been two years. The zombies”—she used the English word—“are gone. The Trade Road is working. Italy is rebuilding. It’s all because of you.

He stared through the window to the floating city that awaited them. The other members of his group leaned forward, murmuring at the sight. They were as much responsible for the Trade Road as he was; he may have conceived of it, but they had trained as a tight-knit force to make it successful. Italy had fractured like a plate when the world ended. The infection overran the peninsula, with major cities burning in its wake. In the bitter aftermath, Silvio’s group strove to unite the survivor enclaves. The Trade Road became the lifeline through which commerce and communication renewed. Crops and meats, scavenged goods and medicines, tools old and newly forged . . . it all moved along a network of roads and safe stations stretching from Verona in the north to the southernmost tip of the boot at Reggio di Calabria. Silvio didn’t know what the rest of the world was up to, but here at least, a broken land was stitching itself back together.

Venice was the outlier.

No one had been there since the Fall. That wasn’t so surprising, really. Only a single road connected Venice to the mainland: when the plague hit, the Venetians demolished a portion of it with shaped charges. After that, the only possible access was by sea.

For that first year, Venice kept its head down. Then, slowly, boats began arriving at the Trade Road’s coastal communities on the Adriatic. Even then, the Venetians proved to be a strange, secretive bunch. Tight-lipped and suspicious. Kept to themselves, then fled back across the sea as soon as bartering concluded. Several times, Silvio inquired if his people could visit the floating city. The answer had always been no.

Until now.

“It’s been years since I’ve been to Venice,” Anna was saying. “I was in college. It’ll be nice to see it again.”

“You understand why we’re going here? You know what we have to do?”

“I do,” she whispered.

From the bow of the high-speed craft, Caterina squealed happily. “Papa! It’s so beautiful! Come see! Venice is so beautiful!”

He sighed and absently touched the SIG Sauer pistol in his pocket. “I’ve seen it before, my gumdrop. I’ve been to Venice.” He looked uncomfortably at the water racing by their vaporetto.

* * *

Venice was sinking.

That had been true for hundreds of years, but since the Fall there were fewer people, fewer resources, to hold back the sea. As Silvio disembarked the vaporetto, he marveled at the sight of Piazza San Marco—once a popular tourist destination—completely submerged. People moved about in ankle-deep water, pushing what seemed to be brooms or shovels. In fact, the entire plaza had been cordoned off with an elaborate network of sandbags. This resulted in hundreds of rectangular seawater pools. Each pool had a large bucket nearby, and . . . 

“We’re making salt,” a woman called to him from the pier.

Silvio turned to see a group approaching his disembarking retinue. Five people—four bodyguards in crimson cloaks, with Kalashnikov rifles slung at their sides. A woman at their center like a queen bee, dressed in an opulent blue gown with matching elbow-length gloves.

“Welcome to our fair city,” the woman said, smiling pleasantly. “My name is Katya.”

“Silvio.” He shook her hand. “Thank you for receiving us.”

She watched his compatriots emerging from the vaporetto. Compared with her spotless entourage, his own people formed a grim portrait. There was Old Man Matteo, the leathery veteran of the Italian Armed Forces, with his service rifle slung over one shoulder. Giuseppe, who towered at nearly six-feet-four and had the physique to match. Even young Salvatore had transformed over the past year from a wide-eyed innocent to a hardened man of the earth, studying the buildings and canals of Venice in steely-eyed appraisal. The only bright spot in the group was little Caterina, whose fascinated expression made Silvio feel a thousand years old.

Katya turned back to him. “I noticed you showing interest in our saltworks.”

“Seems an efficient operation,” he said, and meant it.

The Trade Road relied on a steady supply of goods. Pigeon meat came from mountaintop communities. High-nutrition crops arrived from country farms. Fresh fruits and vegetables were brought up from the south. Cheeses and meats came from a medieval monastery. Canned goods and paper products trickled in from warehouses in Bologna.

And salt came from Venice.

The electrical grids were dead. That meant no refrigeration. Salt was the new bedrock for achieving food surpluses again.

Katya pointed to the rectangular pools glowing red in the setting sun. “We pump in seawater and let it evaporate. Then our workers shovel out the crystals.”

“Your workers,” Silvio repeated, feeling his skin crawl as he noticed the laborers at the pools. Each of them wore identical black masks with birdlike beaks and eerie goggles. Each wore black robes that covered them from neck to feet. “Can’t be comfortable, working while dressed like that.”

“Comfort isn’t the point. The costumes help us identify them, in case one gets loose.”

The truth hit him like a bullet. “They’re infected?” he cried.

She laughed musically, showing bright teeth. “Technically speaking, no. The infected are all dead. These are what the Americans have been calling ‘betas.’ Victims of the virus who didn’t turn into rabid monsters. Neither dangerous nor contagious. Just hollowed-out husks of their former selves. Barely able to take care of themselves. So we put them to work.”

Put them to work. The comment visibly stung Anna, who looked up from the crate she was helping off-load onto the pier. “You’ve dressed them as medieval plague doctors,” she said. “Someone here has a vile sense of humor.”

Katya raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t meant to be humorous. It was my idea to assign those masks. It helps us distinguish them. They’re—”

“Slaves.”

“Resources. Let’s be honest. Italy was almost entirely depopulated by the plague. If we hope to recover, then everyone must contribute to that effort. Even the betas. Our first instinct was to mercy-kill them. I suggested a better use. There’s mutual benefit. They get to live, and our saltworks thrive.”

A gunshot rang out from a nearby roof. Caterina shrieked and Silvio nearly drew his concealed pistol, heart racing, but it was only a firework, launched over the Grand Canal by an overeager Venetian.

“Tonight,” explained Katya, “we will celebrate Carnival for the first time since the Fall. It will be beautiful! Then you must all join me for dinner. I wish to hear about your Trade Road.” Her eyes reflected the sunset and became fiery coins. “And I’m eager to learn more about you.

Silvio blinked. “Me?”

“Indeed! Even without the worldwide web, stories about Silvio Cipriano have reached our little island.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No? You aren’t the man who last year descended into the bowels of the Earth to kill terrible demons who were lurking there?”

“They weren’t demons,” he said. “They were wealthy Americans living in a posh survivalist bunker, and who were planning on raiding our storehouses and killing us.”

“Like I said, demons.” She laughed again, though there was a razor edge to the sound that suggested she wasn’t being playful. In fact, the longer she spoke, the more he detected an accent that hadn’t been immediately obvious. Italy was full of accents, including a distinctly Venetian one. Hers was different. There was a Slavic roughness to her words. Her stone-cut features seemed to match it.

Silvio’s eyes drifted to where her alabaster neck vanished into the blue gown. The edge of a tattooed bird-wing peeked up from there. Maybe an eagle, or falcon, or . . . 

Phoenix?

The word leapt unbidden to his mind.

Caterina tugged on his sleeve. “Papa? Do you see the bird masks? Can I have a mask, too?”

Katya crouched to the girl and said, “Of course you can! Venice is a city of masks! We can all pretend to be something else tonight.”

Another firework exploded like a gunshot.

* * *

For the next hour, Silvio assisted in unloading crates from the vaporetto, which attracted Venetian merchants as surely as flies to sugar for some good-natured haggling. Salt was the strongest bartering chip for Venice, but the mainland had brought something that leveled the playing field: toilet paper.

“How did you find so much?” a merchant asked.

“We have our sources,” Silvio said, not wishing to tip his hand. One of the Trade Road communities had set up camp in a foundered ocean liner on the beaches of Genova. Toilet paper, printer paper, paper towels, tissues and napkins were among the crates that hadn’t been swallowed by the Ligurian Sea.

By sunset, the haggling ended. All in all, a successful moot. Barrels of salt, and salted fish were placed aboard the vaporetto for the return journey.

“Enough for a few months,” he noted.

Anna stared at the salt-workers in their creepy bird-masks; with the onset of evening, they were rounded up by guards bearing heavy clubs, and steered down a narrow alley until they were out of sight. It was an ugly thing to behold.

“Like a goddam cattle drive,” Anna whispered to him. “Is this really acceptable? What’s next—another Roman Empire?”

“I doubt that.”

“Why?”

“There aren’t enough people around, Anna. You need armies to wage wars of aggression, and commerce is more profitable than conquest.”

But she shook her head. “It’s not always about what’s profitable. Some people wage war because they enjoy waging war. History’s full of examples. These goddam people have seen fit to reinstitute slavery, so who knows what they’re planning next—”

“We didn’t come here to pass ethical judgments. We came here to trade.”

She peered curiously at him. “We came for more than that. How are you going to investigate the—”

“Let’s go for a walk,” he interrupted, and motioned for the rest of their group to follow.

With evening, the rooftops came alive with lights. A costumed throng gathered, moving back and forth along an impressive network of jury-rigged planks and skyways letting the Venetians bypass the flooded square below.

Caterina stared in astonishment at the crowds, the assorted outfits and masks, and the electric lights festooning the rooftops. It was entirely unlike anything on the mainland. Her awe lifted Silvio’s heavy heart, even as he wondered at the power source. Batteries? Generators? It didn’t require a lot of juice to run decorative lights; nonetheless, it was a luxury he hadn’t seen in a long while, beyond the occasional flashlight.

They ascended a ramp to the nearest roof; Salvatore and Giuseppe carried a gift—a pine-box crate of vodka, rum, grappa, and schnapps—as an offering for the festival. The nexus of the activity was an especially large roof that had been converted into a restaurant, with tables and chairs, well-dressed waiters, and what must have been the costumed cream of Venetian society. Salvatore and Giuseppe brought their crate to the bar, glancing back only once to give Silvio a meaningful nod.

Silvio barely had time to soak in the details of his airy surroundings when he was accosted by a vendor pushing a cart. The fellow wore the jingling cap and checkered livery of a court jester. His cart was decorated with masks.

“A crime!” the vendor crooned. “A crime to have anyone here without a mask tonight! Tell me, what can I get you? Everyone must wear a mask on Carnival!”

You don’t have one,” Silvio observed.

The man’s smile burned on his face. “Don’t I?”

The two men regarded each other in silent recognition—the look of rivals reunited after an absence of years. Caterina flitted around the cart like a moth encircling a lamp; Anna trailed her, smiling in spite of herself.

“Mr. Cipriano,” the mask peddler whispered.

Silvio nodded. “Detective.”

“You received my letter?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Fireworks exploded in the sky, reflecting in the pools below. The rooftop crowd milled about, talking and laughing—laughing!—as if the world hadn’t been thrown into a new Dark Age. Of course, there was something to be said for not dwelling on tragedy, and more to be said for focusing on present circumstances. Nonetheless, Silvio detected a haughtiness about the Venetians. A decadence. An air of superiority so unlike the grounded attitudes on the mainland.

“Papa!” Caterina cried. “Aren’t the masks beautiful?” She’d pulled the hair stick from her golden curls and was using it like a wand, touching the masks as if sprinkling fairy dust on them.

“They are, my gumdrop. You pick any you like.”

The peddler said, “She’s gotten big.”

“It’s been two years,” Silvio reminded him.

Indeed, it had been more than two years since the peddler had seen Caterina. Back then, he hadn’t been a seller of masks. He had been Detective Gaetano Farina with the Polizia di Stato. And he’d made a career out of hunting the Sicilian and Croatian mobs . . . 

 . . . as surely as Silvio had made a career working for the Sicilian and Croatian mobs.

It was the secret he fervently kept from Anna. From everyone on the Trade Road. Before the world ended, he’d made his living in the grisly vocation of contract killer-for-hire.

It had been a quick way out of the slums. He did his morbid work and went home. Killed his targets efficiently. Used the money to build a life for his mother, his wife Maria, and his daughter. Silvio was a meticulous planner—a skill that would later serve him with the Trade Road—and so he’d executed more than three dozen assassinations across Europe without ever coming to the attention of law enforcement.

Until the morning of his wife’s murder.

Sitting at the kitchen table of their Milanese apartment. His wife Maria by the window, aglow in morning light. The kettle shrieking on the stove. She pours two cups of tea as she relates what she’s been hearing on the news: that a strange virus has broken out in America. She brings the teacups to the table. The window behind her cracks. A bullet blows out her skull.

Presumably it was the work of a rival syndicate exacting revenge. Maybe even a multinational corporation sending a message to the Cosa Nostra (conflicts between the two were part of a longtime invisible war). But there were problems with both hypotheses. Silvio didn’t hobnob with his employers. Didn’t hang at mob-owned clubs. He kept off the radar. Played the part of insurance salesman. Stayed far away from the neon and glitz, the drugs and flashy cars and whores. No one knew his real identity.

So who had put the hit out on him? And why bother killing his wife, when the sniper could have easily assassinated him at the kitchen table, instead of her. Silvio never learned the truth.

When Detective Farina showed up at the scene, the man made no effort to conceal his suspicion that Maria’s death was somehow tied to illegal business that involved Silvio. It was obvious that this had been a professional hit.

Yet the murder investigation came to nothing, as the “American pandemic” became a “global pandemic” and then an outright global collapse. The infected were everywhere. Cities burned, and society followed.

Then—two years later—a letter traveled along the Trade Road. It was addressed to him. It was unsigned. And it was worded in such a way that only he would know the scribe’s identity.


Silvio Cipriano,

We met under terrible circumstances some twenty months ago. The morning of your wife’s murder. As I did that day, I offer you my sympathies. Despite all that has happened, I still think back on the scene in your kitchen. The instincts of my profession run deep, I suppose. I don’t like unsolved mysteries.

Allow me to congratulate you on the success of the Trade Road. Word of it has reached me all the way here in Venice. People talk fondly of it, and of the person behind it. This is how I heard your name again after all this time.

I’ll come right to the point:

I know that your trade stations are being attacked. Your supplies are stolen, your people have gone missing. I know that you have struggled to learn who is responsible for these crimes.

Venice is responsible. My city is in the hands of criminals, and if I am correct, they are planning a far larger crime than ransacking your coastal outposts.

If you want proof, I have it. Come to Venice on the night of Carnival, and I will supply you all the proof you need. You remain a mystery to me, but I know at least that you are a man of action. Even in the apocalypse, criminals must not go unpunished. We must stand united on this. Lives depend on our cooperation.

Go to Piazza San Marco. I will keep watch.

I pray this letter finds you. We don’t have much time.


“Papa!” Caterina shouted, pointing with her hair stick “wand” to a particularly scintillating mask. “I like the gold one! Don’t you like the gold one, Papa?”

“I think it’s perfect for my little princess,” Silvio said, and to the detective, whispered, “Tell me what you know.”

Detective Farina glanced around worriedly, making sure there were no eavesdroppers. He’d certainly changed in the past couple years. He was grayer, thinner, and (like many men nowadays) wore a short beard, no doubt as the convenience of shaving equipment dried up with the rest of the supply chain. “Life has been hard here since the Fall,” he said.

Silvio indicated the plentiful food and wine circulating among the crowd of costumed revelers, and the fireworks blossoming in the sky. “Doesn’t seem so hard.”

“Appearances are deceiving.”

“Truer words have never been spoken.”

“For the first few months, this was a nightmare town,” the detective explained. “The plague hit us hard. Infected were eating people in the streets.”

“I thought you had been spared that,” Silvio said, genuinely surprised. “You demolished the only road to the mainland.”

“Not right away. When the plague hit Europe, lots of people flocked here, assuming it would be safe. It was a stampede, and the infection came with them. A bunch of engineers got together and blew up the road, but the disease already had a foothold. I’m sure you experienced something similar.”

Silvio nodded. When the plague hit Italy, he’d hightailed it out of Milan for the rural countryside. Lots of others had the same idea, and the infection chased them.

The detective was interrupted by a young man wanting a mask, and who paid for it with a nipper of rum—alcohol had become the default currency in many places, as its application ranged from medicinal to recreational. With the transaction done, Farina continued, “Six months into the plague, we received a new visitor.”

He pointed across the skyway to the rooftop bar. Amid the revelers, it was easy to single out Lady Katya in her blue gown and mask. She drank from a fluted glass, intently watching the celebration. Her retinue of crimson bodyguards surrounded her like protective hawks.

Silvio’s eyes narrowed. “Who is she?”

“No one knows for certain. Most of her people don’t even speak our tongue.”

“What do they speak?”

“With us? Simple words in English or Italian. Truth is that they keep mostly to themselves. Katya deputized a number of Venetians to serve as go-betweens. The rest of the population is kept at arm’s length.”

At this, Anna laughed coldly—she had remained in earshot. “Even in the apocalypse, there’s first-class and steerage,” she scoffed.

Silvio’s gaze swept along the neighboring rooftops, picking out other men in similar crimson attire. “The locals are okay with foreigners ruling their city?”

“Lady Katya arrived by boat with some fifty people. They were armed to the teeth. Fiercely loyal to each other. The Venetians were desperate, frightened, and running out of supplies. Katya directed her men to comb the streets and eliminate every hostile. She purged the city of infected. And from her boat, she off-loaded food and water for the locals. She was the savior of Venice. Is it any surprise that she’s in charge?”

He considered that. “How did you end up in Venice? You were operating out of Milan last we met.”

“I came to Milan to investigate you, Silvio,” Farina said. “But Venice was my main base of operations. I’d been working a case here for a year before your wife’s murder.”

Silvio glanced quickly to Anna. She was helping Caterina try on the gold mask, but at the detective’s words she stiffened. He felt a pang of fear.

God in Heaven, he thought. Let the past stay buried! Don’t let her know what I used to do. What I used to be.

“So I returned here,” the detective continued, “to my earlier investigation, when the plague hit.”

Silvio drew the man a distance away from the cart where they could talk in greater secrecy. “What were you investigating in Venice?”

“A smuggling operation.”

“What smuggling operation?”

“The Russian mob.”

Silvio felt a chill snap through his limbs. “You . . . you’re sure?”

The detective’s eyes burned. “I’m sure.”

Before the Fall, there’d been numerous crime syndicates with international aspirations. Unsurprisingly, lines of control were always in flux. Since the late ’90s, the Russian mob had rapidly expanded across Europe and the United States. Known popularly as the Bratva. Run by former KGB and FSB. Had their hands in everything—drugs, weapons, extortion, racketeering, prostitution, even human trafficking. As with any enterprise of global ambition, they’d set up regional hubs for distribution and enforcement. That included Venice.

“They made use of private boats to conduct their business,” Farina explained. “Smart, really. It made them difficult to track.”

Letting the pieces assemble in his mind, Silvio said, “So when the virus hit, they simply sailed off to where the infected couldn’t reach them. A year passes. Local military and law enforcement are destroyed. When the dust settles, they return and take possession of the city.” He shuddered. “Mother of God.”

“That’s only half the story. In the past six months, I’ve learned their ambitions are not confined to Venice.”

“You mean . . . ”

The detective nodded grimly.

Silvio looked to Anna; she was gazing directly at him. “I’ll need proof,” he said quietly.

“The proof is at my apartment.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s northeast of here. The only mask shop on C. de Mezzo.”

“Google Earth is off-line. How the hell do I find your place?”

Detective Farina led the way back to his cart. There, he rummaged in a cabinet, exhumed a skull mask, and handed it to him. “Here you are, sir! I think this one is appropriate for you, yes?”

Silvio inspected the mask and found a slip of paper taped to the interior—a hand-drawn map of nearby streets and canals. His route was outlined in red, zigzagging marker like a jagged scar.

* * *

Evening folded into the cloak of night, and stars hatched like twinkling diamonds. In response, the festival of Carnival increased to vertiginous levels of revelry and drunkenness. There was even a string quartet, though instead of Mozart and Beethoven they played music from the lost days of radio, mostly ’80s and ’90s pop songs. Silvio, Anna, and Caterina seated themselves and dined on fresh seafood—octopus, fish, and eel. Throughout, fireworks seared the heavens, and gondolas threaded the canals below.

Anna clinked her wineglass against his. “To new beginnings.”

Silvio indicated the incandescent sky. “You don’t find this all a little much?”

“People need to cut loose. It’s not enough to survive—life must have joy in it, too.”

He glanced to his daughter. She wore her new gold mask, lifting it only to take small bites of her food. Every once in a while, she put down the fork and took up her wand, running around the rooftop with the random energy that is the exclusive domain of young children. He’d never seen her so excited. It made him sad, actually. She’d been three years old when she saw her mother die. Barely a week later, Milan was overrun by zombies. Even when they fled to the Umbrian countryside, there were new traumas to contend with—a year into the Fall, she’d been kidnapped by a rich American family living underground in a survivalist bunker.

Now, she was getting to be a child at last. Giggling, twirling around in her mask. Scampering about with her fairy wand, as if she was the princess of a fabled Atlantis. This carefree spirit had seemingly transmitted to the rest of their group, too; at the bar, Salvatore had managed to become one of the bartenders, shaking mixers and pouring drinks with a skill that suggested he’d done his share of mixology in college. Even the famously sour-tempered Giuseppe had gone over to the fireworks station and was chatting happily with the crew. Old Man Matteo was slurping oysters with gusto.

“You were right to insist that we bring her,” Silvio conceded. “I’ve been so focused on protecting her . . . on training her to survive . . . I hadn’t thought about the need for . . . you know . . . ”

“Happiness,” Anna said, chuckling. “It’s not a difficult word to say.”

“It’s a difficult word to trust.”

“You’re a good father, Silvio.”

He stared into his wine. “I wasn’t always a good person. And now that you mention it, I’m not sure I’m even a good father.”

She touched his hand across the table. “Silvio, I’ve seen you with Caterina. You’re a wonderful father.”

“Am I? Do you know what I taught her last week?”

“Self-defense, wasn’t it?”

He shook his head. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Silvio—”

“I taught her how to use a knife. Not for whittling or dicing tomatoes. I showed her what to do if anyone put their hands on her. I taught her how to be brutal, Anna. How to inflict the kinds of injury that people don’t come back from. Is that the stuff good fathers are made of?”

Anna squeezed his hand. “Yes.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“What do you think ancient mammoth hunters taught their children? Or Spartan fathers taught theirs? Society isn’t a universal fixture, Silvio. It changes according to the needs of the time, and our time is—”

“Monstrous.” He finished his wine in one gulp, hoping it would suppress the cold revulsion in his stomach. Then he stood and said, “Keep an eye on Caterina.”

“Of course.”

“If things go bad . . . ”

“Maybe they won’t.” She stared at him with tenderness—their blossoming love had been a slow and tricky development. As Silvio struggled to nurture the Trade Road, he struggled equally with conflicted feelings. Maria had been dead only a couple of years. Every intimate moment with Anna felt like infidelity to the memory of his wife.

And how could a woman like her truly love a monster like me? At the end of the day, apocalypses and zombies aside, I’m a monster and always have been.

He cut across the rooftop, finding a stairwell that led down the building’s side. On the next landing, electric lights blinked around signs for lavatories. Silvio went there, ducking into a stall, where he donned his skull mask and shed his white shirt for the black one beneath. He didn’t know if his group was under surveillance, but he’d survived the years by always assuming so.

He exited the lavatory, descending quickly to the Venetian streets.

They were not the tourist-clogged paths he’d known before the Fall. The new Venice was a ghost town—the music and laughter from Carnival dissipated as he followed the zigzagging illustration the detective had given him. Almost immediately, he was alone. The alleys were deserted.

It set his instincts thrumming. What if he ran into infected hordes in these lonely streets? Detective Farina had insisted that Venice was purged of zombies, that Katya’s people had eliminated all threats. Yet was that true? The slave labor force he’d seen at the salt pools certainly qualified as a species of infected. The so-called “betas” weren’t dangerous. Hell, they supposedly weren’t even contagious. Silvio wasn’t a microbiologist. He only knew that they made his skin crawl, and honestly, who was to say that every beta specimen was harmless? What if the virus’s more cannibalistic effects had merely gone dormant? Chickenpox never truly disappeared from those it infected. What if that was true of the zombie plague? What if the bird-masked workers still had the virus in their cells, and one day it would reemerge as a more dreadful Gamma variant?

Silvio touched the SIG Sauer in his pocket. He thumbed the safety off.

It was a half hour before he found the detective’s apartment. Drawing open the door, he entered into a mask shop—no surprise there. Hollow-eyed faces leered from the walls. Costumes hung from hooks. He wondered if this had been a formalized police front during Farina’s pre-apocalypse investigations, or if the man had claimed the place in the aftermath. Neither option would have been surprising.

Society isn’t a universal fixture. It changes according to the needs of the time.

The shop was deserted. Silvio crept to the back of the shop, passing through a curtain, and finding a small office and staircase. Anxiety gnawing at him, he drew his pistol and advanced up the ancient wooden steps. They creaked and popped from his weight.

The stairs led to a second-floor landing with a single door. He pushed it open and considered the view.

A small, gloomy apartment. Kitchen, bed, bookcase and Detective Farina sitting at a desk by the window. A strange glowing object lay before him. It took Silvio a moment to realize what it was.

A smartphone.

He hadn’t seen one in more than a year. The cell towers were gone, after all. So were the power grids. CB radios had become the go-to replacement; they facilitated smooth operations along the Trade Road, allowing security to call ahead to the next station, explaining which trade caravan was en route, what they were bringing, and how many people comprised their group. Smartphones were a bygone marvel that newer generations like Caterina’s would never know.

“I know you’re not checking email,” Silvio said, approaching the detective. The phone was open to a picture in its camera roll. It showed a canal-side warehouse. A vaporetto was tied to the dock. Men armed with Kalashnikovs milled about.

Frowning, Silvio said, “Is this what you summoned me to Venice for? What does this prove?” When the man didn’t answer, he took the phone and scrolled to the next photo, and the next.

Apparently, the detective had been staking out the warehouse. He’d used the smartphone to create a kind of digital documentary. One picture showed naked men and women—the beta slaves, almost certainly—laboring to unload crates from the vaporetto. Another showed them opening those crates and sorting the contents. The detective had taken his pics from high above—presumably the warehouse rafters—so it was difficult to see precise details. Nonetheless, it was obvious that the crates contained things Venice couldn’t produce. Red meats. Paper products. Clothing. Grain. Vegetables. These were goods from the mainland, and there was a lot of them . . . a lot more than could be obtained from a trade moot.

“They’re raiding us,” Silvio said. “For six months we’ve had stations and caravans attacked . . . always in the dead of night. The attackers vanish without a trace. We figured it was the work of bandits . . . we’ve had unpleasant encounters with a few. But this? Venice is launching coordinated raids on the rest of Italy! This is war, Detective. This is . . . holy shit!”

He was scrolling through photos when a flash of understanding came to him. Something the photos were showing. Something his mind had refused to accept at first. It sent a chill of horror through him.

Outside the window, a firework burst in the sky. Silvio instinctively glanced there. Reflected on the glass, he saw himself, the detective, and . . . 

 . . . a stranger creeping out of the room behind him.

Silvio moved with reflexes honed from a lifetime of dealing with dangerous adversaries. Leaping aside, he narrowly avoided a swipe from a wooden club—a skull-cracker of a blow if it landed. Jerking his SIG Sauer, Silvio fired twice, center of mass.

His assailant went down hard. Another firework lit the room, revealing what the gloom had concealed: Detective Gaetano Farina was dead in his chair—had been dead. By the look of things, he’d had his neck broken while waiting for Silvio to arrive.

Jesus Christ.

We were being watched on the skyway, Silvio thought. Despite our precautions, we were being monitored and shadowed. They’d followed Farina home. Executed him. But why, dammit?

His question fled as he heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. A backup team, waiting in the street. Responding to the sound of his gunfire.

Shit.

The door kicked open, and two men—both clad in red cloaks—fanned into the apartment, Kalashnikovs raised in their hands. Silvio dove into the next room as the weapons chattered. Bullet holes stitched a macabre constellation in the wall.

With his free hand, Silvio peeled off his skull mask and flung it across the room. One of his attackers took the bait and fired wildly. Silvio peeked out from the wall, aimed at the muzzle flash, and fired four times. The man dropped.

His remaining opponent kicked over the kitchen table and sprayed bullets across the rim. It was undisciplined behavior—more than that, it was foolish. For one thing, a Kalashnikov had a standard clip of thirty rounds. Shoot recklessly and you’d empty the clip in seconds . . . which was exactly what his gung-ho attacker did.

Secondly, a kitchen table was not Kevlar.

As the man fumbled for a spare clip, Silvio rounded the corner and fired twice into the table. The bullets tore through like a hole-puncher through paper. His assailant slumped over, and Silvio rushed forward to make sure the fight was over.

It was over.

The man was dead—he just didn’t know it yet. One round had blown out half his skull. Bone gleamed through bloody tissue. A pool of dark fluid the same shade as his cloak spread out behind him. He blinked. His lips quivered.

Silvio held the smartphone to his face. “Do you see this photo? Where was it taken?”

“I . . . I . . . ”

“Is it on the Grand Canal?”

“I . . . ”

The man spasmed. His eyes rolled white, bearded mouth expelling a final breath.

Cursing, Silvio returned to the detective. Farina had been a good man. He could have kept his head down in these brutal days; instead, he’d risked his life to inform the mainland of a sinister plot. He deserved a better fate than this.

Silvio retrieved his skull mask and made for the door, concerned that the gunshots might have carried despite the fireworks. Pistol out, ready for more trouble, he stepped onto the stairs.

Then he heard the dead gunman speak behind him.

Is it done? What’s taking so long?

The words were in Russian. Whirling around, Silvio shone the smartphone’s light on the corpse. The man was dead—both gunmen were dead. Yet the voice came again even though his mouth didn’t move: “Vitaly? She wants to know if it’s done.

Silvio patted down the cloak and, discovering a walkie-talkie, he considered his options. He knew a smattering of Russian, as it was useful in his line of work. But he didn’t know enough to engage in a lengthy conversation.

Vitaly?

Silvio took a breath. Lifted the radio to his lips.

“Yes,” he grunted.

You captured him alive, right? The mask-seller can die, but the other guy—she wants him alive!

“He’s alive.”

Good,” the device crackled. “Bring him to the palace, and be quick about it. She’s got something interesting planned.

The palace could only refer to the doge’s palace, which overlooked the sea. For centuries it had been the seat of Venetian power. It was typically the first thing tourists saw when they visited. Not surprising that the Russian mafia had co-opted the place. Hell, there were actual dungeons beneath it.

Burying the smartphone in his pocket, Silvio fled down the stairs. The street appeared deserted. Fireworks stretched like bright spiders. Warily studying the windows and rooftops, he sprinted back the way he’d come. The air smelled of a pending storm.

He was placing his skull mask on his face when he rounded a corner and walked right into a rabid crowd of the infected.

* * *

They were on him with customary savagery. Clawing hands, pulling him into their midst. Faces set in a freakish rictus of hunger. Someone grabbed his arm. A mouth lunged for his neck. The sheer weight of so many attackers dragged him into their nexus.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been attacked by alphas. Six days after Maria’s death. The American virus had reached Europe and exploded across the continent. Silvio fled Milan with his only surviving family—his daughter and mother—and drove straight to his Umbrian safehouse.

It had been no scenic exodus, unless the scene was out of Dante or the lurid paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The roads were gridlocked. Everyone was trying to flee the cities, partly from the infected and partly from the fires that burned unchecked in their wake. Fighter jets streaked overhead.

It wasn’t long before a tide of alphas caught up to the traffic jam. People were dragged from their cars. Terrified, Silvio escaped into the hills with his mother and daughter. Several alphas caught up to them—he shot them until his clip was empty, and then used his trusty knife—his preferred means of assassination—to brain the ones who remained. It had been a raw, primal fight.

Now, in a Venetian street two years later, he found himself reliving that terror. His mask was torn away. He reached for his SIG; someone wrenched his arm backwards.

“Kiss me!” a woman cried, her mouth still questing for his neck.

“Dance with us!” another cried. “Everyone has to dance!”

Silvio twisted and pulled free. The crowd churned around him, laughing and clapping. His panic subsided, leaving only a bitter taste of adrenaline.

They’re not infected, he realized. They’re drunk.

Not just on wine, but on wild abandon. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in the seedier nightclubs of Europe. Silvio found himself in the midst of a barely clothed bacchanalia. Men and women, men and men, women and women . . . part dance, part copulation. A fellow in a domino mask stumbled towards him, lurched sideways, and vomited on the street.

Silvio retreated from them and climbed back to the rooftop. He spotted Anna at once. Caterina still zipped around like an errant moth, wand in hand.

Anna spotted him and saw immediately that something was wrong. Crossing to him, she said, “You okay?”

“Never better. Where is everyone else?”

“Right where you left them.”

He looked around for his troop. Salvatore was at the bar. Matteo was plowing through another plate of oysters and had added octopus to his feast. Giuseppe managed to ingratiate himself with the fireworks crew and was participating in the lighting of fuses.

“Silvio?” Anna prompted. “What’s wrong?”

“You were a tour director here, yes?”

“Years ago. Why?”

“I need you to look at some pictures and identify a location for me.”

“I’ll try.”

Mindful of eavesdroppers, he steered her toward the stairs. Caterina came running by, gleeful in her gold mask, and pointed with her wand to the sea. “Papa? There is a huge boat on the water!”

“That’s nice,” he said absently.

“Can I go watch the boat?”

“Sure, but stay where I can see you.”

“Yes, Papa!” She scurried away, and Silvio slung his arms around Anna’s waist and kissed her.

She was so shocked by the kiss that she gasped. He knew his anxiety must be evident—it hung around him like a cloud of electrically charged particles. She surely understood they were in trouble. Nonetheless, she kissed him back fiercely, indulging in the moment.

His lips went to her ear. “I just placed a phone in your pocket. Go into one of the bathroom stalls. Look at the pictures. I need to know the location of the building shown in the photos. It’s by a canal. A warehouse of some kind.”

“Of course,” she murmured, cheeks flush.

“It can prove that Venice is behind the attacks on the Trade Road.”

She stared into his eyes, fireworks crackling and sizzling in the sudden flurry of a grand finale. “I was hoping . . . ”

He touched her face. “So was I.”

The unsaid words hovered. They’d been hoping that the mysterious midnight raids were the work of random thieves and marauders. But the raids seemed too organized, too perfectly executed. Whoever was attacking them had an intimate knowledge of the Trade Road: how many people manned the stations, what the defenses were, where the best angle of attack could be achieved. They were inexplicably well-informed.

Silvio had concluded that there were only two possibilities. The first was that it was an inside job. He dismissed that notion immediately. The Trade Road was a close-knit community. All participants understood that survival depended on collaboration. There was nothing to be gained by betrayal.

The other possibility was that it was a rival community. Someone not immediately local. Someone who could strike fast, and disappear . . . 

 . . . by sea.

Even before the detective’s letter, Silvio’s suspicions gravitated to Venice. They participated in the Trade Road, sending merchants across the sea with salt and fish and potassium chloride (cooked down from seaweed). They traded for what they needed and departed over the sea when done. And yet . . . it wasn’t difficult to imagine they were conducting reconnaissance for darker purposes. That they were assessing local resistance. Noting the landmarks and topographical features. Memorizing the patrols. Counting the personnel. Reporting this intel to a hidden group of maritime raiders . . . 

Anna kissed him again. “If you’re right, what do we do?”

“Do you trust me?”

“With my life, Silvio.”

“Good, because what we do next is . . . is . . . ”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is . . . what?”

But he wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. He crossed the rooftop to where Caterina leaned at a guardrail. Out at sea, a massive yacht had glided into view. It was practically an island unto itself. Farina had told him that Venice’s ruling cabal had survived the plague by staying at sea; he hadn’t said that it had been aboard a mega-yacht. Hadn’t told him that the name of the boat was . . . 

Phoenix,” Silvio muttered, reading the hull’s black lettering. “God Almighty . . . ”

The memory possessed him.

Two years earlier.

The Venice job.

Sicily’s Cosa Nostra had tolerated a limited number of foreign mobs working in-country; after all, it could be good for business. The problem was that the Russians had crossed a line. They were running a human trafficking racket in Venice, and it was attracting Interpol’s attention. The Sicilians asked the Russians to halt their operations. The Russians had flatly refused, and so Silvio was hired to send a message.

You don’t have to be clean with this one, his handler said. Make it messy. We want those fucks in Moscow to understand they can’t do whatever the fuck they please.

I don’t do messy, Silvio replied.

Yet in the end, the job had been messy. The Russians were making bimonthly runs to neighboring Croatia in a luxury yacht—a forty-foot cabin cruiser. Silvio snuck aboard the ship. Strangled one Russian when the man went to use the bathroom and went to find the others.

Three of them were in the hold.

Amusing themselves.

With several bound women.

Silvio killed them, and it was messy indeed. He lost his temper. He’d never lost his temper before. By the time he was through, the hold was full of blood, brains and bullet casings. He set the women free and hunted the remaining Russians on the top deck.

It was then he discovered the ship was bearing down on a mega-yacht. The fucking thing dwarfed the forty-footer by an order of magnitude. Like a goddamn whale compared to a bluegill. And Silvio suddenly understood: the Russians had been handing off their abductees at sea, where prying eyes couldn’t see.

He managed to kill his remaining targets. Took control of the cabin cruiser. Swung the boat around and caught a glimpse of the mega-yacht’s name.

Phoenix.

The larger ship didn’t give chase, but they must have known something was wrong. Silvio was anxious during the return voyage. He dumped the bodies into the Adriatic. Killed the engine within view of Venice. Jumped overboard. Swam to safety. By morning he was on the train from Santa Lucia, while news of a “thwarted kidnapping” broke on social media; for a whole hour it was the top story, until bumped off by the bigger news of a Hollywood engagement and release of a new iPhone.

Now, Silvio gaped at the mega-yacht—the same goddam ship!—gliding offshore of the salt pools.

Should I be so surprised? he thought. They’d already been operating in the area when the plague hit. They just sat it out, and swooped in to conquer a desperate city.

Instinctively, he grabbed for his daughter’s hand. His fingers closed on empty air.

Silvio spun around. Caterina hadn’t gone far, but she now had company. The Lady Katya stood behind her, clutching the girl’s shoulders in a possessive threat. The woman wasn’t wearing her mask anymore, and she grinned coldly at him.

“You disappeared on me, Silvio Cipriano,” Katya chastised, eyes flashing a malefic gleam. “You’re supposed to be my guest of honor.”

“Sorry. I had to use the bathroom.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“I am, thank you. Caterina, leave the nice woman alone now. Come to Papa.”

The girl started forward. Katya drew her back.

“Now, now,” the woman chided, her gaze never leaving his. “You wanted to see the boat, yes? Look at it, Caterina!” She pointed to the Phoenix. “Do you know what’s onboard? I’ll tell you! It’s filled with my people. Men with lots of guns. Do you know why?

Caterina’s voice was tinny in her mask. She fidgeted with her wand. “I don’t know.”

“They’re going to visit your daddy’s precious Trade Road.”

Silvio glowered. “As if they haven’t been visiting it, right?”

Katya laughed wickedly. “Visiting it, yes. This time it’s different. We’re going to claim the outposts for ourselves. Put our people there. It’s been my plan for more than a year. Should have been easy! You know the plague killed off ninety percent of the population, yes? The Italian Army was obliterated. Conquering Italy should have been simple because who could possibly oppose us?”

We could.”

The rising crescendo of fireworks detonated over the salt pools, and it had the effect of transforming Piazza San Marco into a vision of hell. Molten light glimmered in the pools, glinted off windows, and shimmered in Katya’s eyes; in that ghastly moment, Silvio imagined that she was not human but an infernal demoness risen to torture Earth’s survivors.

“We started hearing the stories,” she hissed. “Armed outposts. Communication relays. Farmland and warehouses under protection. Instead of easy pickings, we discovered a well-oiled network of survivors. And that, my dear Silvio, is how I heard your name . . . the man I’d been hunting before the Fall!”

His fury melted into confusion. “We never met before the Fall.”

Katya hooked one hand around Caterina’s throat. Her bodyguards spread out like wings on either side of her. “That’s not true. We were never formally introduced, but we saw each other once, Silvio. During the last time you were in Venice.”

“I’ve never been to Venice.”

“Not even to kill my brother?”

He stiffened. Turned to see if Anna was still there, but she had disappeared.

Katya tried to smile—he could see that she’d rehearsed this moment in her head—but the expression wouldn’t come. Instead, a rictus of fury distorted her features. Her hand gripped Caterina’s throat hard enough to cause the girl to choke and sputter.

“You murdered my brother aboard his yacht!” Spit flew from her teeth.

“Your brother,” he muttered, the truth clicking into place with the precision of bullets loaded into a revolver.

The man behind the human trafficking ring. The strutting brigadier of the Bratva, who Silvio had executed aboard a luxury yacht, and dumped overboard with the rest of his crew.

“We knew the Italian mob was behind the hit,” she said. “And there was little we could do about it—no one wanted a war. But I wanted to know who the triggerman was. I put out feelers for you. Took me months. I burned through a lot of money in the effort. You’re good, Silvio—you kept your head down. But eventually I tracked you. To that apartment in Milan.”

Something cold burst in Silvio’s chest. He remembered his kitchen window cracking from the mysterious sniper shot. Maria’s head blowing apart. The blood gushing over his arms as he cradled her body.

“Your brother deserved to die,” Silvio hissed, and he looked directly at Caterina. “You know exactly what to do, don’t you?”

His daughter stiffened in the woman’s grip. For a moment, Silvio worried that she didn’t understand.

But it was only for a moment.

Moving with the speed and efficiency that he’d taught her, Caterina unsheathed the hidden blade from within her wand . . . a blade Silvio had given her, had trained her with. And as the steel emerged, the fear in her eyes dissipated. The muscles in her face went rigid. She didn’t look six years old anymore. In a flash, Silvio glimpsed the woman she’d one day become.

Katya opened her mouth to say something more, but the words were cut off as Caterina whirled about and plunged the knife into her throat.

* * *

Several things happened at once.

The Lady Katya recoiled from his daughter, the blade still protruding from her throat. Silvio saw immediately that it wasn’t the fatal blow he’d hoped for—Caterina had missed the jugular. Nonetheless, Katya didn’t know that. She choked, blood weeping around the hilt.

Her bodyguards were clearly unprepared for this unexpected turn of events; some attempted to help their leader, others stared in shocked fascination. Some reached for their Kalashnikovs. Then a stream of fireworks streaked into them like meteors. Men were hit in the face, chests, and legs; gunpowder flared and exploded in a hellish danse macabre. Silvio looked toward the nearby rooftop to see that Giuseppe had commandeered the evening’s entertainment and was aiming firework tubes at Katya’s gang. Caterina threw herself to the floor, screaming and covering her face.

The fireworks were followed by the staccato pop of handguns. Salvatore was using one; no longer mixing drinks but firing over the counter at Katya’s men. Old Man Matteo wielded the other one, having flipped his table of oysters and unloading with deadly accuracy.

A pair of Russian guards sitting at a nearby table leapt to their feet; Silvio rammed his body into the table, bowling them over. He drew his SIG and killed them both where they lay.

The crowd screamed and scattered. In a blink, Katya stood abandoned. Her bodyguards were wounded or dead around her. The Phoenix continued to glide away, its hidden soldiers too far off to realize anything was amiss.

Silvio moved his gunsight a few inches, aiming between Katya’s eyes.

If there was one thing he could say for her, it was that she had the feral instincts of a natural-born predator. She saw the danger and, without hesitation, vaulted over the rooftop rails to the salt pools below.

Caterina lay curled on the floor, eyes red and miserable. “Papa!”

“Stay down!” he shouted and rushed to peer over the side of the building. He expected to see his enemy’s broken body down there; instead, he was amazed to discover that his enemy had survived her suicidal leap. Katya was limping—she’d clearly broken her leg—yet that wasn’t stopping her. The salt pools sloshed as she hobbled toward the Phoenix’s retreating silhouette. “Zhdat!” she screamed. “Podozdhi menya!

Silvio aimed again at the woman, lining up the fatal shot.

For you, Maria. This is for you, and it’s far better than your murderer deserves . . . 

His fingers slackened from the trigger, however, when he heard a bizarre cacophony. It was so strange, so inexplicable, that he lowered the pistol and gazed at the far end of the plaza.

The last time Silvio had been in Venice, Piazza San Marco was its timeless portrait of tourist crowds. Now, it seemed as if he was reliving the past, because there was indeed a crowd surging across it. Men and women, dressed in black robes . . . and without the bird-masks they’d been forced to wear.

And he saw the awful truth for himself.

The truth he’d gleaned from the detective’s photos.

They weren’t beta zombies. Even in these postapocalyptic days, the Russian mob had continued its human trafficking. They’d abducted people from the Trade Road and elsewhere. Forced them into slavery. Told the Venetians a lie that no one had bothered questioning.

At the back of the crowd, Anna appeared. She looked triumphant.

Silvio called out to her, “I told you to look at the pictures!”

“You told me to find where the warehouse was,” she countered. “I found it and did something about it!”

The liberated crowd spotted the Lady Katya. They gave chase, a fearsome tide of vengeance closing the distance to her.

Katya saw them coming and went wild in terror. “No!” she shrieked, waving her arms wildly at the departing mega-yacht. “Podozdhi menya! Pozhaluysta!

Then the crowd was on her. They grabbed her, pulled her into their rabid fray. Katya vanished beneath fists and boots. Silvio had witnessed lots of death in his life. Never before had he seen someone literally torn limb from limb.

* * *

His group settled into the vaporetto, and he personally took the controls, speeding away from the Venetian pier. Moments later he zipped past the mega-yacht, not interested in boarding her as much as in beating it to the mainland.

To warn the Trade Road that an invasion was coming.

“Papa?” a small voice said behind him.

He glanced back to see his daughter in the cabin doorway. Anna stood with her. In the distance, the lights of Venice dwindled like a dream lost upon awakening.

Caterina Cipriano didn’t look like a princess anymore. Her mask was gone, her wand with it. She still wore the little dress he’d gotten her, though now it was blood-spattered, seared and torn.

She looked like a warrior.

“What is it, my gumdrop?” he asked, heart twisting at the lost innocence in her eyes.

She pointed to the mega-yacht they’d already left behind. “Those bad people want to hurt our friends?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to stop them.”

It was less a question than a statement of fact. He glanced to Giuseppe and Salvatore and Matteo. He stared at Anna, whose decisive action had changed the fate of Venice. He studied the crowd of abductees they’d freed from bondage and were bringing home.

Home, he thought, realizing suddenly that for all his devotion to the Trade Road, he’d never really thought of it as home. He’d begun it through necessity. Organized it for the sake of survival. Maintained it as a way of working through his grief. Yet it was home, and homes were to be defended for the sake of everyone and everything you loved.

“Yes,” he told his daughter, gazing into a horizon he couldn’t see but knew was there. “We’re going to stop them together.”


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Framed