Chapter 267: Anxious Ryan

I pushed through the door and stepped out into the street, and whatever composure I’d been holding together inside that room came apart the moment the outside air hit me.

"Breaking people is how they pass the time."

Lucy’s words were sitting in my chest like something with teeth. I couldn’t shake them loose. Couldn’t find the angle that made them hurt less or mean something different from what they plainly meant.

Mei was in there.

In Brigantine.

And I didn’t even know what she was going through.

I pressed the heel of my hand hard against my forehead and stood very still in the middle of the street.

"Ryan."

Cindy came out behind me, moving fast, and her hand found my arm immediately. She looked at my face and her expression did what it always did when she was worried—softened and sharpened at the same time.

"She’ll be okay," she said. "I’m sure of it."

"You heard what Lucy said," I replied. My voice came out rougher than I intended.

Cindy bit her lip. "Yeah. I heard her." She didn’t try to talk around it. "But we don’t know anything for certain yet. We can’t."

"I have to get to her," I said, already turning.

"Ryan—wait!"

Christopher stepped out from the doorway and planted himself directly in front of me, arms crossed, blocking the path calmly.

"Think about what you’re about to do," he said. Not aggressive—just straight. Level. The voice he used when he was being serious and wanted me to actually hear it. "You go in there alone—or even with backup—before we have any kind of real plan? You get yourself killed. Or worse, you get caught. And then what?"

"Christopher—"

"And if you get caught or killed before you reach her," he continued, not letting me interrupt, "then Mei loses the one person most likely to actually get her out. We lose our best shot. Everything falls apart." He held my gaze without blinking. "You know I’m right."

I did know. That was the part that made it so hard to stand still.

"So what then?" I asked, the frustration coming out raw. "We just sit here and plan*while she’s in there going through—"

"Of course not," Christopher said. And then the corner of his mouth moved—just slightly. "But I also know you well enough to know you’re not actually about to do something stupid. You’ve already got something in your head. I can see it from here." He tilted his chin up slightly. "So what is it?"

I held his gaze for a moment.

Then I exhaled, pushing the hot edge of it out with the breath.

"Ryan." Cindy’s fingers tightened around my arm. "Come on. Talk to us. Anger’s not going to move this forward right now."

I looked at her. At the steadiness in her eyes. I unclenched my fists, one finger at a time.

"Marlon," I said. "I need to speak to Marlon. And I need to go to the Boardwalk today—there’s information there and connections I need to use." I glanced between them. "That’s the next move."

"Then we do that," Cindy said simply. No hesitation.

"You’re not going alone," Christopher said. "Right? We are all doing this together."

"I wasn’t planning to," I said. "But I need you here, Christopher."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Lucy," I said. "She’s former military—she told us herself. She’s dangerous and she’s smart and she’s got motivation to cause problems if the right opportunity presents itself. I need someone watching her who she actually respects enough to not test." I paused. "And the fact that she absolutely cannot stand you makes you the best option."

Christopher stared at me for a second. Then he exhaled through his nose and raked a hand back through his hair.

"So I’m the one who stays behind while you get to go do something interesting," he said flatly. "Again."

"I’ll bring you a souvenir."

"I don’t want a souvenir, I want to—" He stopped. Made a face. "Fine. Fine. But I’m not going easy on her."

"I’m not asking you to," I said. "Just don’t kill her."

"Low bar," he muttered.

I felt something loosen slightly in my chest—the specific relief of having something concrete to move toward.

"I’m coming with you," Cindy said, already at my side.

"Yeah," I nodded. I thought for a second. "Get Daisy too."

"Daisy?" Cindy blinked. "Why Daisy?"

"Those glasses," I said. "She’s been squinting through cracked lenses for days now. There’s a doctor at the Boardwalk—I’m going to ask him if he knows of any optical store nearby, somewhere we can find her a proper pair." I glanced at Cindy. "She’s done enough. Least we can do."

Cindy’s expression did that thing where something genuinely warm moved through it before she had time to manage it.

"Okay," she said quietly, and turned to go find her.

Christopher watched her go and then looked back at me.

"See?" he said. "That wasn’t even complicated. You just had to breathe for ten seconds."

"Yeah," I admitted. I let another breath go. "Thanks. I mean it. I’ve been—" I stopped, trying to find the right word for whatever had been happening to me lately. "I’ve been on edge constantly. Hair trigger. I lose it faster than I used to and I don’t always catch it in time."

"I noticed," Christopher said, without making it an accusation. He put a hand on my shoulder and left it there. "But listen—you’re not carrying this alone. You’ve got Rachel, Cindy, Sydney. And me. You’ve got all of us." He paused and then, because he was Christopher and couldn’t leave it completely serious: "Though you lean on the women enough in other ways, so."

"Get your hand off my shoulder," I said.

He laughed—genuinely, the tension in the air cracking cleanly apart—and stepped back, already turning toward the call shop.

"Hey," I called after him.

He glanced back.

"Maybe it’s time you found some lovely woman for yourself," I said. "Might do you some good."

"Not happening," he said, waving me off without turning around.

"Right," I said. "Because you’re already dealing with one currently."

Christopher stopped walking.

He turned around slowly and looked at me with an expression that was trying very hard to be a glare and not quite managing it.

"You’ve lost your mind," he said.

I smiled, turned, and walked away.

I headed back to the hotel, took the stairs back up to the sixth floor, and pulled my room door open.

I moved quickly, pulling together what I needed—handaxe secured at my hip, knife in its sheath, water, the basics. Nothing heavy. We were going to the Boardwalk, not a raid. The point was conversation, not combat.

Sydney was probably still up on the top floor with Margaret, Martin and Clara—working through the explanation about Kunta, hopefully with enough patience to not turn the whole thing into a performance. Those three were solid people. Reasonable. They’d seen enough by now to not completely fall apart at the idea of an alien girl living ten floors above their heads. And with Mark sitting in the same room with the same aloof look, the conversation would probably stay on track whether Sydney kept it there or not.

It would be fine.

I shouldered my bag and went back down.

The lobby had transformed since yesterday’s chaos of settling in. People had found their rhythm already—small groups moving with, voices low and organized rather than the overwhelmed murmur of the night before. Someone had dragged the front desk back against the wall and cleared the center space entirely, and in that cleared space, supplies were being sorted and catalogued with impressive efficiency. Canned goods in rows. Medical supplies separated and set aside. Water bottles counted and stacked.

Margaret’s community worked the way people work when they’ve finally found solid ground under their feet after a long time without it. Focused. Almost hungry for the normalcy of a task.

Among them, I spotted Linda.

Martin’s wife was crouched beside a low stack of supply boxes, working through the contents with the methodical patience she seemed to apply to everything. She had a quiet kind of competence about her—the sort that didn’t announce itself but kept everything around it running smoothly. You noticed it most when it wasn’t there.

"Working hard already?" I said as I approached.

Linda looked up and her face opened into a warm smile.

"Ryan," she said, pushing up to standing and brushing dust from her knees. "You finally surfaced. Rough night? You slept halfway through the morning."

"It was a long day," I said, which was truthful enough.

"A long day," she repeated, her smile sharpening very slightly at the corners. "Sure."

"What?" I asked carefully.

"Well—which one is it?" She asked pleasantly.

My heart raced for a moment.

"Which one is—what?" I managed.

She laughed at whatever my face was doing, pressing her hand over her mouth to muffle it slightly.

"Your girlfriend," she said, once she’d recovered. "You’re close with all those girls you travel with and it’s genuinely impossible to tell from the outside who’s actually with who. I’ve been trying to work it out for days." She tilted her head, still smiling. "So?"

I relaxed by approximately ten percent.

"Who do you think it is?" I asked, buying myself time.

She considered this with exaggerated seriousness for a moment.

"Sydney," she said. "Final answer. The way that woman orbits you—it’s like she’s been married to you for ten years and is deciding whether she’s still happy about it."

I kept my expression carefully neutral.

She wasn’t wrong. She was also very wrong. The situation was too complicated to explain in a hotel lobby on the way to the Boardwalk.

"What about your love life?" I asked, pivoting. "New mattress, luxury hotel, proper room for the first time in months. I hope Martin actually made use of it."

Linda’s expression shifted into something that was fond and exasperated in equal measure.

"That man did not sleep," she said. "Not a single hour. He was up all night working—organizing, checking the perimeter, talking to people, doing everything except lying down for five minutes." She exhaled softly. "Every time I woke up he was gone again."

"I’ll send him to you tonight," I said. "Personally."

She laughed amused. "I’ll hold you to that."

I smiled and meant it.

Martin and Linda were, in every way I could identify, a genuinely good example of what two people could be together. Stable. Steady. The kind of quiet, solid partnership that didn’t need to announce itself. They’d been through enough that nothing between them felt performative anymore—just real and durable and worn smooth by time.

The only thing that sat wrong about it, the thing I always felt when I watched them together, was that they didn’t have children. Both of them in their forties, both of them with more than enough love and steadiness to give—and no one to give it to. I knew they wanted it. You could see it sometimes in the way Linda watched the younger kids in the group, or in the way Martin’s expression softened when a child spoke to him directly. They deserved that. They deserved it more than most people I could think of.

Whatever the world looked like on the other side of all this—I hoped they still got the chance.

"Ryan! We’re ready—let’s go!"

Cindy’s voice came from the staircase, and I turned to find her descending with Daisy a step behind her.

My expression warped seeing them.

They were both wearing knee-length skirts—light fabric, summer cut showing their legs—with simple tops that had no business being described as practical apocalypse clothing. Cindy carried the whole thing with the complete ease of someone who had made a decision and fully committed to it, her hair loose and her expression already pre-loaded with a response to whatever I was about to say.

Daisy, by contrast, was a different story. She was blushing before she’d even reached the bottom of the stairs, one hand pinching the edge of her skirt and pulling it slightly downward as if another inch of fabric might appear through effort, her legs crossed slightly at the ankle as she stood there. The self-consciousness made the whole thing more endearing than it probably should have. She still had the broken glasses perched on her nose, one lens cracked clean across the middle, which completed the picture in a way that was absurd and somehow perfect.

"Are you two going to the Boardwalk or to an amusement park?" I asked.

"Hilarious," Cindy said. "It’s summer, Ryan. August. The sun outside is genuinely aggressive and we are walking a few streets to have a conversation—we are not gearing up for a raid." She crossed her arms. "We are allowed to wear something that isn’t tactical."

She had a point. Objectively she had a point. I just wasn’t entirely sure the Boardwalk crowd was the right audience for it.

Or maybe I just acting like a overbearing boyfriend...

Oh God not, I am not like that at all, maybe just overprotective.

"You’re already acting like somebody’s father," Linda said from behind me, cheerfully unhelpful.

"Right?!" Cindy pointed at her with immediate vindication. "Thank you, Linda." She crossed toward her with a bright smile. "Can I get a water bottle?"

"Catch," Linda said, and tossed one.

Cindy caught it one-handed without breaking stride.

I stood there for a moment looking at the three of them—Daisy still quietly wrestling with the hem of her skirt, Cindy already halfway to the door, Linda watching me with an expression of settled amusement.

"Fine," I sighed. "Let’s go."