The armored convoy creaked to a stop on the edge of Sector Nine. Dust settled over the windshield like a curtain as the doors swung open. Didi stepped out, boots hitting the cracked dirt, her silk cloak fluttering behind her like a banner far too fine for the world she had just entered.
She had heard stories—vague, sanitized reports and second-hand accounts from officers. But nothing prepared her for the weight of it. The sky above was open and blue, but everything below felt strangled, suffocated.
Shacks of tin and scrap leaned against one another for balance. Smoke spiraled from open fires. Barefoot children crouched near puddles, faces hollow and eyes too old for their years. The scent in the air—dirt, smoke, sweat, and waste—clung to her skin like a second layer.
Jimi stood beside her, silent, a steady shadow in his Greenland uniform. He'd only been assigned to her two days earlier, on the direct order of her brother, Captain Tade. Unlike the other soldiers in the convoy, Jimi did not scan the rooftops or bark orders at the loitering crowd. His eyes remained steady on the people.
He didn't see enemies. He saw home.
"This is Sector Nine," he said quietly. "One of the better zones."
Didi's brows lifted in disbelief. "Better?"
He gave a grim nod. "Stable enough. No active rebellion here. Just hunger. Sickness."
She turned slowly, taking it in. A girl no older than six coughed as she carried a rusted bucket of water, the liquid inside the color of old moss. Nearby, a pregnant woman sat on a crate, one arm wrapped around her belly, the other fanning her sweat-drenched face with a piece of torn plastic.
"They drink that water?" Didi asked.
"When it's not dried up," Jimi replied.
"Is there no sanitation?"
"No systems left. Power grids collapsed two years ago. Pipes stopped flowing last winter."
"And schools?"
He didn't answer right away. A boy walked by with a bag of books—just torn covers stuffed with rags. "There were a few learning centers. Volunteers ran them. Most have shut down. Teachers either left… or starved."
Didi said nothing for a moment, heart sinking with every breath she took in this forgotten place. "How do they survive?"
"Some don't."
They walked together in silence through the streets. Children stared at her expensive boots. Some followed for a few steps, until a glance from a mother pulled them back. Didi noticed the quiet hostility in some faces—the way eyes narrowed, the way bodies stiffened at the sight of her uniformed escort.
And Jimi, though in the same uniform, was not one of them. He moved through the streets like a ghost who had once belonged, now reduced to something less than kin.
"Your family is from here?" she asked softly.
"Sector Twelve," he said. "Further west."
"Your mother?"
"She still lives there. Alone."
Didi slowed her steps. "Why did you leave her?"
"I joined the Greenland army," he said, eyes on the ground. "I thought if I served well, earned rank, I could provide something better. A house. Medicine. Rations."
"And did she… agree with your choice?"
Jimi hesitated. "She hasn't spoken to me in over a year. Says I turned on my people. Says I wear the enemy's colors."
Didi looked at him carefully. "Do you believe that?"
"Sometimes," he admitted. "Occasionally. In places like this—when I see what we've done, what we've let happen—I wonder."
She wanted to reach for his arm, to say something comforting, but what comfort could she offer? Her name alone made her complicit in this ruin.
"You're not like the other soldiers," she said instead.
"I know what it's like to go hungry," Jimi replied. "To boil grass for soup. To trade your last pair of shoes for a few tablets when your mother's coughing blood. Most of them… don't."
They stopped at what had once been a health center—a crumbling cement building now filled with nothing but cots and whispers. A small child moaned from a mattress in the corner while a volunteer, barely older than Didi herself, fanned her feverish body with a scrap of cardboard.
Didi stepped back from the doorway, breath shaky.
"This is what the occupation left behind," Jimi said, not accusing, not cruel. Just honest. "We patrol the borders. But we don't rebuild."
Didi closed her eyes, the weight of it all pressing down like lead in her chest. "They don't hate us because we're foreign. They hate us because we forgot them."
Jimi looked at her then, really looked—perhaps surprised she could see it.
She turned away from the clinic, blinking back a sudden sting in her eyes. "You joined for your mother. And she hates you for it."
"Yeah."
"But you're still here."
Jimi nodded. "Because I still hope it might matter. Even if she never forgives me."
For the first time since leaving the convoy, Didi's voice cracked. "I'm sorry, Jimi."
He didn't answer. He just walked beside her, through the wreckage of his homeland.