They followed the wall until, finally, they came across something that, if you squinted and used your imagination, might have been a way to the other side.

An old, crumbling bridge had once connected both halves of the city. Now all that remained were twisted steel supports, collapsed pillars, and a makeshift wooden scaffold someone had built to cross the water.


Whoever had done it clearly had more in common with a monkey than with a man.


“Seriously? This is what you call a path?”


Soldier slowed his pace, eyes sweeping across the improvised structure. The wood was rotting, the metal supports rusted, the incline dangerous. It looked like a trap. Like something that would hold just long enough, until someone too heavy stepped on it.


But Civilian was already halfway up. Climbing nimbly across the tilted beams, he moved as if balance didn’t matter at all. His feet landed with perfect confidence, his hands automatically finding the right grips.


“Oh yeah… great hike,” Soldier muttered, but he knew he didn’t really have a choice.


Behind the mask, Civilian smiled faintly and kept climbing. His fingers clutched the rough surface tightly, boots slipping now and then on patches of moss, but he didn’t slow down.


He paused halfway up, turned, and called down with a grin in his voice:

“What? I told you we’d have to go around.”


Soldier scowled.

“Around? This isn’t around. This is suicide.”


Civilian shrugged, pulled a rope from his backpack, secured it around a rusted beam, and tossed it down.

“Climb up. You’re gonna love it, I promise.”


Soldier clenched his jaw. He grabbed the rope and gave it a few firm tugs to test its strength. He wasn’t sure whether he distrusted the structure more—or Civilian’s insane determination to climb anything that stood in his way.


“If you're messing with me, I swear I’ll send you back down faster than you got up.”


Civilian chuckled behind the mask. Clearly, he wasn’t taking the threat seriously.


“You talk tough. But how’s your rope work? As good as your complaining?”


Soldier just growled in response. He braced his boots against a shaky beam and began the climb. Slowly, muscles already heavy from fatigue and the weight on his back.


Civilian didn’t wait. He scrambled ahead and soon disappeared into the web of steel girders.


Below them, the wind picked up again. It howled through the structure, sweeping across the flooded wreckage beneath the bridge.


Soldier paused. He gripped a steel beam tightly, his body tense, not because of the height, though he hated it. Not even the climb itself bothered him that much. It was something else.


Something he thought he might’ve seen for a split second, just at the edge of his vision.


A flicker of movement in one of the windows across the way.


Could’ve been a curtain, fluttering in the draft.


Or not.


He turned quickly, eyes scanning the building. But saw nothing.


Were they alone?


Maybe.


But maybe not.