Deception
Chapter 1
*Three and a half weeks after the outbreak.*
Freezing. That was the first thing about the underground lot at Atlas Mall this early — cold that got into concrete and stayed there, crawled up through your shoes no matter how many pairs of socks you had on. Kaito breathed out and watched it fog in front of him, thin and gone before it even reached the flickering lights overhead. Half of them still worked, somehow. Atlas Mall used to be the pride of Dune City, glass everywhere, marble floors people took pictures on. Now the only part of it that mattered was down here, underground, where two hundred people were packed in trying to stay alive.
They stood shoulder to shoulder between the pillars, shifting, murmuring to each other. Somebody near the back said this had to be against the rules, too many people crammed into one spot, too easy a target if something got in. Kaito had heard some version of that complaint three times already and it wasn't even sunrise yet.
Finally somebody said it loud enough that the crowd actually went quiet to hear it. "Isn't this against the rules?"
Kaito looked over all of them, or tried to, made sure he wasn't skipping anybody. Every face mattered right now. That wouldn't be true for much longer, but right now it was.
"Indeed it is," he said. "But today's special."
"How so?"
He let it sit a second before answering. "There's twenty-five trucks parked outside the mall right now. All of you helped gather them up last night, so you remember that part at least." A few nods — of course they remembered, they'd spent six hours hot-wiring engines and siphoning gas out of dead cars, thinking every single one of those trucks was going to become part of a wall, something to keep the dead out for good.
"I told you we were building a blockade," Kaito said. "That wasn't exactly true."
The murmuring changed pitch.
"I'm telling you now because I have to. Those trucks aren't for a wall. They're for anybody who wants to leave. You've got about two and a half hours before sunrise, and honestly I'd take it if I were you — you don't want to be caught outside once the sun's up and the heat starts cooking things that used to be people."
Nobody understood him at first. *What. Why. No—* he watched it ripple through two hundred faces, watched a handful of people just bolt for the stairs without waiting to hear the rest, like if they left fast enough this wouldn't have happened. The rest stood there frozen, waiting for him to take it back.
He didn't take it back. Said it again, slower, so there was no room left to misunderstand — anyone who wanted to leave could go, and could take a truck with them.
More than half the crowd was gone within ten minutes.
That left maybe eighty people still standing in the cold, watching him the way you watch someone right after you've figured out they lied to you but before you've decided what you're going to do about it.
They decided fast.
"You planned this." Brad. Broad-shouldered guy who'd spent most of last night barking orders at people twice Kaito's age about how to load truck beds properly. He pushed through what was left of the crowd, jaw set. "You told us we were building a blockade. Had us break our backs all night hauling fuel cans and hot-wiring cars for a *lie*."
"Yeah," Kaito said. Didn't hedge it, didn't dress it up.
"You *used* us."
"I did."
Saying it flat like that was somehow worse than if he'd argued. Brad's hands closed into fists. "Say something," he barked at the crowd behind him. "We really gonna stand here and let some *kid* play us like that?"
That did it. The murmuring turned into something with teeth — *he lied to us, who put him in charge, why should we trust a word out of his mouth now* — and for a second the whole underground lot was just noise, eighty people working themselves up toward something Kaito really couldn't afford to let happen.
He let it run for a beat longer than felt comfortable. Then he put both hands up.
"You're right," he said, loud enough to cut through it, and that alone shut a few people up because nobody expected him to just agree. "I lied to you. Not gonna pretend otherwise and I'm not gonna pretend I had some good reason for it either. I needed twenty-five trucks moved and fueled and staged before sunrise, and I knew if I stood down here last night and told a room full of adults twice my age that a nineteen-year-old freshman had a plan worth following, nobody would've lifted a finger. So I gave you a reason you'd actually act on. That's on me. I'm sorry."
Brad opened his mouth to come back at him but Kaito kept talking before he got the chance.
"Since I've got you all listening anyway — there's a supply depot two blocks north nobody's touched. Not looters, not the other groups working this district. I found the manifest three days ago in the back office and sat on it, because I wasn't going to move on it without people I actually trusted to help clear it out. Water, canned food, a generator that still runs, enough medical supplies to matter. That's what the trucks are actually for. If enough of you stay."
The noise didn't stop all at once, but it thinned out, piece by piece, while people did the math on what he'd just handed them — an apology that didn't try to excuse itself, and information nobody else in that lot had. Brad didn't say anything else. His hands unclenched though.
Kaito looked around one more time. "Anybody who still wants to leave, now's the last chance. No hard feelings."
Nobody moved.
"Guess we're all in the same boat then," he said. "Let's build a new world."
