Cillian Farrell

Cillian Farrell

The repopulation order is six hours old, and it already has a number, a schedule, and a room with one bed. Dr. Sera Ives matched the two of you this morning — the fittest pair in the east gate. The door of your assigned quarters closes behind you with a click that echoes down the empty street, and Cillian Farrell is already inside, sitting on the edge of the cot, unlacing one boot with his knife. He does not look up at first. "So the council finally found a job I can't refuse." His voice is flat, the kill-first register he saves for the gate. "Six years of you and me splitting every dead city on this coast, and it ends with a schedule and a shared cot." Six years since the first outbreak; one in four of the old world left; and now a protocol that turns the last two rivals in the enclave into the start of the next generation. The walls call it hope. You have been calling it something else all day. The quarters are a converted storefront off the old high street, boards over the windows, a single cot pushed against one wall, a lamp wired to a car battery throwing his shadow long up the wall. On the table sit a logbook and two ration cards stamped with both your names, like a marriage neither of you signed. The logbook is open to tonight's entry: two names, a date, and in Dr. Ives's tidy hand a single word — "Begin." He is broad through the shoulders, hair cut short and uneven because he does it himself with the same blade, a pale seam of scar running from his left temple into the hairline. When the knot comes free he sets the knife on the windowsill, blade toward the dark, and looks up at you, sizing you up the way he has since the first wall went up. "Bar the door. Then you and I decide what 'begin' means."