To See the Whole Picture

The night that followed Boss's announcement was the calmest we'd had in weeks. Maybe months. No distant screeches, no rooftop watchers shifting at the edge of our vision. Just wind. Just silence. For once, it didn't feel like a warning. It felt like permission.

Kaela curled beside me in our corner of the library. Her breath was slow and steady; her hand still tucked into mine. The camp dimmed down around us—whispers fading into snores, footsteps turning to soft rustles, even the static hum of the jury-rigged lights ebbing low. It was a rare peace, and my body finally gave in.

Sleep took me like a wave—quiet, heavy, and whole.

----

The following morning, sunlight filtered in through the slats in the western wall, drawing long golden lines across the cracked floorboards. It was the kind of light that used to mean warmth, safety. Now, it was just a countdown.

Jace was already up.

He had his tools sprawled out on the large reading table—screwdrivers, soldering rods, twisted spools of copper thread. The two drones sat like skeletal birds, stripped and reassembled over the last few days. Compact, silent, and agile. Designed for surveillance, not combat. They wore the scars of old-world tech—marks of their creators, whose names had long since faded from stickers on their frames.

"You sleep at all?" I asked him.

"Not enough to matter," he muttered, tweaking the left rotor of the smaller drone. "But this one purrs now. And that one—"

He pointed at the second drone. "That one's got eyes sharper than a sniper's scope. Kaela calibrated it yesterday."

Kaela nodded from the corner, sipping boiled tea from a metal flask. "It'll map six blocks at a time. Real-time video. Minor latency on turns. But better than anything we've had."

Over the next three days, the camp shifted gears.

While Jace fine-tuned the drones—tightening gears, reinforcing sensors, patching battery circuits—Kaela and I worked on the comms grid. Every hallway in the camp now had wired relays we could patch into. If I made it far enough outside, we'd be able to bounce signals off repeater coils hidden in rooftops and broken satellites we'd repurposed.

It was a delicate system, but it was ours.

Kaela and I tested the comms repeatedly—one on the rooftop, one near the base stairwell—trading silent gestures and whispered confirmations. Sometimes, she'd ask for a status. Sometimes, she just asked, "You still good?"

Always, the answer was yes.

----

Once testing was complete, Boss gathered us in the central hall again. Jace placed both drones on a flat surface and powered one up. It lifted with a gentle whir, barely audible. A soft blue light blinked beneath its belly, indicating live feed.

"Let's map the grid," Boss said. "Full sweep. Outward spiral."

The drone zipped through the broken skylight.

A second later, the video feed blinked to life across the main screen—an old salvaged monitor patched into a portable battery. The image was shaky at first, then stabilized.

We watched from above as Camp 17 revealed itself—a patchwork of ruins, rusted rooftops, makeshift solar panels, tarp-covered corridors. The library's broken dome glinted in the sun. Beyond it, the jagged skyline unfolded like a wound.

Kaela leaned in. "This is the first time we've really seen it... all of it."

Jace nodded. "We've been half-blind this whole time. No wonder we keep getting caught off guard."

The drone swept westward.

We passed the remains of the shopping district—rooftops collapsed like sunken bones, streets clogged with moss-covered vehicles, their windows shattered and vines curling through dashboards like veins. Signs dangled precariously by rusted bolts, their once-bright letters now faded ghosts of long-forgotten stores. An old cinema still stood defiantly, though its front had crumbled inward and half the screen peeled like burnt skin from a wall, revealing steel ribs beneath.

Down below, Hollowed moved—not in swarms, but in staggered isolation. One limped through the cracked remains of a beauty salon, dragging its left foot with an eerie rhythm. Another crouched beside a long-dead fountain, unmoving, as if waiting for something to arrive. A third paced slowly beneath a bus shelter, clawed hands dragging across the graffiti-streaked glass.

On the rooftops, it was no better.

We caught glimpses of them—stationary figures cloaked in shadow, still as statues, perched like gargoyles overlooking the desolation. Some faced the streets. Others stared at nothing at all. One had its head cocked at a strange angle, as if listening to signals only it could hear. Another seemed fused to the rooftop itself, cables or roots trailing from its spine into a crack in the building.

Further west, the landscape changed.

The ground widened into a concrete sprawl, and the buildings grew taller and more industrial. The haze thinned just enough for the drone to catch wider glimpses: loading docks buried in debris, shattered skylights revealing dark interiors, chain-link fences folded under pressure from unknown force.

"Industrial zone coming into view," I muttered.

"That's our target," Boss confirmed.

The buildings here were different. Taller. Boxy. Reinforced. Warehouses, likely. Machinery plants. Their rooftops were broad, some still bearing remnants of solar rigs and water collectors. One structure had a fallen radio tower leaning against its frame.

"These," Kaela pointed at three clustered rooftops, "look intact. And that one—see the ventilation vents? Still connected. That's power. Maybe even internal servers."

"Could be where the old tech was built," I said. "Or at least maintained."

"And here—" Jace highlighted a curved pathway along one wall—"that's a loading ramp. If you take that from the east, you'll have cover from both sides. Roof access through the far side stairwell."

Boss studied the screen. "Alright. That's your route. You stick to the upper levels. Don't touch the ground. If you fall, we lose you."

"Understood," I said.

The drone continued its sweep. Suddenly, Kaela stiffened, her eyes narrowing on the monitor.

"Wait. Stop."

Jace froze the feed mid-motion and zoomed in, enhancing the grainy image pixel by pixel.

There.

A Hollowed.

It perched on the crumbling roof of an old auto-repair garage, its emaciated frame hunched low in a crouch that looked almost… strategic. One arm dangled loosely, but the other rested on its bent knee, as if it were conserving energy, not slumped in mindless decay. Its body was half-shrouded in the garage's shadow, and the soft glow of its ocular socket flickered faint blue—dim, yet undeniably aware.

"It's... crouching," Kaela said, voice barely above a whisper.

"Like it's waiting," Jace added, brows furrowed.

The drone's camera swept sideways.

Two more Hollowed revealed themselves—one balanced atop a twisted ventilation shaft, the other flat against the broken façade of a collapsed billboard. Each faced the same direction.

West.

Not toward Camp 17. Not toward us.

But toward the industrial zone.

"Are they... guarding it?" Nile asked, stepping forward into the light cast by the screen.

"Or drawn to it," Boss said. His voice was tight, thoughtful. "But they're not random."

Jace enhanced the thermal overlay. The Hollowed were motionless, but the ambient heat signatures from their cores pulsed steadily. Active. Alert. One even shifted—just slightly—tilting its head as though reacting to the drone's distant whir. But it didn't move further. It simply returned to stillness. Watching.

"They never used to group like this," Kaela murmured. "Not unless they were told to. Not in years."

I stared at the screen, taking in their eerie coordination, the triangulated positions, the uniformity of their crouches.

Something had changed.

Not just adaptation. Not just instinct.

Structure.

Boss looked at me. "You still want to go?"

I met his gaze, jaw tight. "More than ever."

He gave a single nod. "Then we plan every step. We do this right. And we don't leave anything to chance."

The next hours passed in a blur of chalk markings and table-top maps. We detailed rooftops, sightlines, elevation. I memorized every pivot, every potential fallback path. Kaela adjusted the signal repeater's output, so I'd get alerts if I strayed too far.

Jace double-checked the drone's flight paths. "It'll follow you overhead. Five-second loops. If something moves behind you, it'll buzz twice in your earpiece."

Kaela handed me a patched headset. "Battery's weak. Keep transmissions short. Code phrases only. If comms go dark, double back immediately."

Boss laid a hand on my shoulder. "No unnecessary risks. Get in, map the site, bring back what you can. Nothing more."

"Understood."

Afterwards, we all sent the drones out multiple times until we were sure the Hollowed were not changing their locations and once, we were sure, we moved into the final stage of waiting to put our plan into motion.

----

Night fell again. Quiet. Cold.

I lay awake, fully geared, listening to Kaela breathe beside me. She didn't sleep much. I could tell by the way her fingers twitched against mine. But neither of us spoke. The emotions were high that night as I was going to walk out of the camp tomorrow into a duel between memory and instinct, where every rooftop could be a path—or a trap—and silence might be the only thing standing between life and death.

Just before dawn, I rose.

I moved to the edge of the roof, the library's ancient tiles damp underfoot. Below, the city held its breath.

Behind me, Kaela approached. She didn't say anything—just adjusted the strap on my satchel, checked the latches on my boots.

"You come back," she said finally. "Or I swear I'll find you out there and drag you home myself."

I leaned my forehead to hers. "I know."

Then I turned.

The drone rose beside me with a soft hum, casting a pale blue glow.

Boss's voice crackled softly through the comms, clear in my earpiece. "Are you ready?"

I replied into the comms, my voice low but steady. "Born ready."

The first rays of morning light kissed the rooftops ahead, painting the way forward.

And I took the final leap of faith.