Chapter 299: Then Let It.
The CGI building sat inside a ring of infected soldiers.
They circled it at their own pace, slow, unhurried, uniforms still on, rifles still slung across chests that had stopped needing them. The late sun went down behind the district and made long shapes of all of them across the concrete—dark, stretched, repeating the same empty orbit without variation. The light was the colour of rust and old blood. Dust hung in it, unmoving.
Inside, nobody was working.
The building had gone into lockdown at midday and stayed there. Staff moved between floors with nothing to do and did it anyway, making themselves look busy with the knowledge that none of them were going home tonight, or tomorrow, or possibly at all.
The elevators ran on schedule. Doors opened and closed on empty purpose. The air conditioning hummed with the same indifferent efficiency it always had.
Pauline sat at her desk in reception with three or four others gathered near her, because the desk had become the place where people gathered without anyone deciding it should be. The polished surface held the usual clutter of a working day that had simply never ended. No one spoke above a murmur.
The only mercy was that the building had proper air conditioning and a full kitchen. Down there, the cooks were the only people in the whole structure doing genuine work, and they knew it. The smell of food still moved through the vents—ordinary, almost insulting in its normalcy.
Every office on the administrative floor stood closed.
Except Sinn’s.
***
Sinn and Melissa sat on chairs pulled out into the open floor of the room, away from the desk, side by side, facing nothing in particular. The wide window behind them showed the darkening sky. The glass was thick. The view was clear.
Two people watching an empire come apart from the best seats in the house.
"What do we do about this Bagins," Melissa said. Her voice was quiet, almost conversational. The light from the window laid a long pale stripe across the side of her face.
"Nothing." Sinn didn’t move. His posture was rigid in the chair, spine straight, hands resting on his knees as if the position itself were a kind of control. "We’ve done our part. We told them. The rest belongs to the people out there. If they want to walk into those streets and die, that is theirs to choose."
Melissa turned her head and looked at the side of his face while he said it. The muscle in his jaw was tight. The skin under his eyes carried the particular grey of a man who had stopped sleeping properly several days ago.
"Do you blame them?" she asked. "They’ve been locked in their houses for two days listening to a government tell them everything is under control. They just want hope. He’s the only person offering any."
"Hope." Sinn laughed once, without much in it. The sound was dry and short. "What does Monica say?"
"That you’ve handled it correctly."
He straightened in the chair. The movement was small and absolute.
"Correctly." The word came out flat. "The only thing I am thinking about now is saving the cities beyond this one. The capital is gone, Melissa. We aren’t taking it back. We’re deciding how much of the rest we keep."
Melissa nodded slowly. "That is what she meant. You’re in control of it."
Sinn stood up.
The chair scraped softly against the floor. He turned to face her properly. The late light caught the sharp line of his cheekbone and left the rest of his expression in shadow.
"Control." He gestured at the window and the ring of soldiers walking their circle beyond it. The infected moved in perfect, empty patience. "What control, exactly? A day back your family was arranging how to remove me from this chair. I know that. I’ve always known that." His hand stayed in the air a moment longer, then dropped. "And now that it’s a catastrophe, suddenly it’s mine. All of it. Handled correctly. Well done, General."
Melissa didn’t so much as shift her posture. Her hands remained folded in her lap. The stillness was deliberate.
"Who told you we want your seat?"
"Nobody had to tell me. I know what Monica wants."
Melissa looked up at him and said nothing, because there was nothing worth correcting.
None of the primordials wanted the seat. They had spent hundreds of years arranging things from rooms nobody knew about, and the whole point of a Sinn was that a Sinn could be pointed at.
He was standing in the middle of the room shouting about a throne nobody had ever tried to take from him. The microphone on the desk behind him sat small and unremarkable, capable of putting a voice into any city inside the walls. The late light turned the metal of it the colour of old coin.
His comms rang.
"One minute."
He tapped it and the connection went to the piece in his ear.
"Is this General Sinn?"
A man’s voice. And behind it, unmistakably, the groaning of infected somewhere close to wherever he was standing—low, continuous, the wet rhythm of lungs that no longer needed air the way the living did.
"This is he." Sinn looked at Melissa as he said it. Her eyes stayed on his face.
"My name is Max Donman." No hesitation at all in it. The voice was calm, almost pleasant. "And I have the solution to the infection. Because I’m the one responsible for it."
Sinn’s face changed.
The shift was small and complete—colour leaving the skin around the mouth, the eyes sharpening. He tapped the comms twice and the voice came out into the room, amplified, filling the space between the two chairs.
"Hello. Are you still there?"
"Yes." Sinn kept his eyes on Melissa. "Say again what you just told me."
"My name is Max Donman. I can end the infection."
Melissa leaned forward in her chair. The light from the window moved across her hands.
The two of them looked at each other and both arrived at the same place at the same moment. Nobody makes that call to give something away. This was a negotiation, and it had started before either of them knew there was one. The air in the room felt suddenly thinner.
"How do I verify any of that?" Sinn asked.
Max laughed, small and easy. The sound sat strangely against the background groan of the infected on his end.
"I’m not going to prove anything to you, General. Look out of your window and use your instincts."
Sinn looked at Melissa. She gave him a short nod. The movement was precise.
"All right, Mr Donman. What do you want in exchange?"
Max let it sit. The silence on the line was deliberate, measured.
Melissa sat back in her chair and waited with him. Outside, the sun had dropped further. The long shapes on the concrete had begun to merge.
"I want you to open the walls."
Sinn laughed out loud.
The sound was sharp and disbelieving. He shook his head at the ceiling. "Open the walls. Now. This week. With the capital in the state it’s in."
"You’re not listening."
"I am listening. You want me to open the gates and let the infection walk out into every city we have left."
"No." Max’s voice didn’t rise at all. The calm remained absolute. "I’m not asking you to open them for everyone. My people have trucks ready and waiting. The air in Goth is going toxic, we cannot stay there, and we need to move. You open the gates. We come through. The life layer keeps every infected out, exactly as it always has. That is what it’s for."
Sinn said nothing. The muscle in his jaw worked once.
"My people enter. You close the gates behind us. And there is no more infection inside your walls."
"I see." Sinn’s tone had gone completely flat. "And what an interesting coincidence, that the man responsible for the infection also has trucks ready and waiting at my gate."
"You see how simple it is, General." Max kept going as though he hadn’t heard it. "That is the whole of my request. Because I should be honest with you about one thing. This infection can move beyond the capital considerably faster than you think it can."
There it is.
Melissa met Sinn’s eyes across the space between their chairs. The recognition passed between them without a word—blackmail, laid out politely, by a man who had spent two days demonstrating exactly what he was capable of before making the call. The late light had turned the window almost opaque with reflection.
Sinn pressed the comms and took it back into his ear, cutting the room out of it. He wanted the man alone. The small red light on the device went dark.
"Let me be certain I’ve understood you." He said it slowly. Melissa watched his face while he did. The colour had not returned. "You are telling me that if I do not meet your demand, you will let this infection spread beyond the capital."
She caught the change in his voice before Max did—the particular quiet that lived underneath the words.
"Yes, please," Max said.
"Then let it."
Sinn hung up.
He stood in the middle of the floor with the comms in his hand. The device looked small against his palm.
Melissa opened her mouth.
He raised one finger without looking at her.
"Don’t. Not one word." His voice was perfectly level now. The control in it was complete and absolute. "I am the ruler of these walls. There is no power above me inside them."
Melissa closed her mouth and said nothing at all.