Integration

The great hall smells like lentil soup and woodsmoke. Same as every evening. Same benches, same faces, same low murmur of conversation I still can't quite follow.

I find a spot near the wall. Back to the stone, facing the room. Old habit. Marcus nods at me from across the hall. I nod back. We don't talk much during meals. He doesn't seem to mind.

The soup is thin. Better than nothing. I eat because Hugh's voice is in my head telling me to, not because I taste it.

The bench shifts. Someone sitting down next to me.

I glance over. Anya. Bowl in hand, spoon already halfway to her mouth.

"Room for one more?"

She's already sitting. The question's a formality.

I shrug. Not a yes. Not a no.

She eats like someone who's spent time hungry. Fast, efficient, not savouring. When she finishes, she sets the bowl down and looks at the hall like she's cataloguing it. Eyes moving from face to face, group to group. Watching how people hold themselves. Who sits close. Who eats alone.

"You're Jamie, right?"

"I know you know my name."

She smiles. Warm, quick. "Fair enough."

We sit in silence for a minute. I go back to my soup. She goes back to watching the room.

"Where were you before this?" she asks. Not prying. Casual. Like asking about the weather.

"A cabin. North of here. Loch Lomond."

"Loch Lomond." She tilts her head. "That's what, fifteen miles? Through the snow?"

"Something like that."

Another pause. I expect her to fill it with another question. She doesn't. Just sits there, comfortable in the quiet.

She's not going to push.

"You're not from here either," I say. The words come out before I decide to say them.

"No." A half-smile. "Kansas City. Originally."

"Kansas City." I don't know what I expected. Something closer. "That's... America."

"Very good." The smile widens. "You know geography."

"Hard not to, after the frost. Every place that still exists feels important."

She nods. Something shifts in her expression. Less amused, more present. "Yeah. It does."

I notice it again. Her voice. The way certain vowels flatten out. The cadence doesn't fit Kansas. It's sharper, faster. East coast somewhere.

"Your accent."

"What about it?"

"It doesn't sound... midwestern."

She laughs. A real laugh, startled out of her. "God, no. I get that all the time." She sets her bowl down. "I grew up in Kansas City. Spent my whole childhood there. But I watched a lot of New York television. Movies, shows, everything. I absorbed it like a sponge." She shrugs. "By the time I was fourteen, I sounded like I'd grown up on Long Island. My mother hated it."

"You learned an accent from television."

"I learned an accent from television." She says it without embarrassment. Statement of fact. "Couldn't shake it. Tried, once. Sounded ridiculous. Gave up."

"So you're Russian by birth, Kansas by upbringing, New York by accent."

Her eyes widen slightly. "How did you know the Russian part?"

"Your face. The cheekbones. The eyes." I realise what I've said a beat too late. "I mean. I just. Noticed."

She doesn't flinch. Doesn't make it weird. Just nods. "Born outside Moscow. Moved when I was three. Don't remember much of it."

We sit with that for a moment. Two people from opposite ends of the same broken world, eating thin soup on a stone bench in a Scottish castle.

"What about you?" she asks. "Before the frost."

The question lands different than I expect. She's not digging. Just asking. Like she'd answer the same question about herself, which she just did.

"Army reserves. Then tech. Then nothing."

"Tech." She sounds interested, not suspicious. "What kind?"

"Systems. Networks. Nothing glamorous."

"Still. Useful." She picks up her bowl, stands. "I should go. Group session in ten minutes."

She pauses. Looks at me.

"You could come. Sit in the back again."

"I might."

She leaves. I watch her cross the hall, stopping to check on someone near the door. A brief word, a touch on the shoulder. Then she's gone.

I finish my soup. It tastes like something now.

---

A few days later, Hugh finds me in the warehouse.

"Got something different for you."

I set down the crate I'm counting. "Different how?"

"Meeting. Supply coordination. A few of the section leads want to talk about distribution for the eastern routes." He leans against the doorframe. "You don't have to say anything. Just listen. See how it works."

"Why me?"

"Because you notice things other people miss." He says it like it's obvious. "And you don't have history with any of them. Clean slate."

I think about it. A meeting. People arguing about supplies. Not a rifle in sight.

"Okay."

The meeting is in a small room off the main hall. Five people around a table, maps spread between them. Marcus is there. A woman with red hair and a scar across her chin whose name I don't catch. Two men who look like they've been arguing since before the frost.

Hugh introduces me. "Jamie. He'll be observing."

They nod. Nobody asks questions. I take a seat against the wall.

The argument is about routes. The eastern supply lines keep getting hit. Not raids exactly. More like harassment. Things go missing. Caches turn up empty. Nobody can agree on whether to reroute or reinforce.

The woman with the scar wants to send armed escorts with every run. Marcus thinks that's a waste of people they can't afford to lose. One of the men suggests they're being targeted deliberately, which starts a whole other argument about who might be behind it.

I don't say anything. Just watch.

They're talking around the problem.

The patterns are clear. The losses aren't random. They're concentrated along two specific stretches of road. Someone knows the routes. Someone is choosing when and where to hit.

After the meeting, Hugh walks with me back toward the warehouse.

"Well?"

"They're not random. The hits are too consistent. Two road sections, both within a day's walk of the same junction. Whoever's doing it knows our routes and our schedule."

Hugh nods slowly. "I had the same thought."

"You could change the schedule. Randomise the timing. Run some convoys at different intervals, see if the pattern holds."

"Could work."

"Or you could bait them. Send a convoy that looks normal but isn't alone."

He gives me a look. Measured. Not surprised. "That's the soldier talking."

"I know." I keep my voice even. "It's just a thought."

He doesn't respond for a long moment. Then: "It's a good one. We'll think about it."

We reach the warehouse. He claps me on the shoulder. The same simple gesture as before.

"You did good today, kid."

I go back to counting crates. My hands are steady.

---

Zoe finds me a week later. Not in the warehouse. Not in the hall. Outside, by the wall, where I go when I need air.

I hear her before I see her. The crunch of boots on frozen ground. She's stopped trying to be quiet around me. Maybe that means something.

"Hey."

"Hey."

She stands next to me. Not close. Enough distance that we could both pretend the other one isn't there.

We watch the courtyard for a while. Kids playing some kind of game with sticks. Two women arguing over a bucket. Normal things.

"I heard you went to a meeting."

Word travels fast in a place like this. "Yeah."

"Marcus told me. Said you had ideas about the supply routes."

"Just an observation."

She almost smiles. "Just an observation. Right."

The silence stretches. Comfortable. Not the charged silence of before.

"I don't know how to do this," she says finally.

"Neither do I."

"Okay." She breathes out. A cloud in the cold air. "At least we agree on that."

We stand there a bit longer. When she leaves, she doesn't say goodbye. Just walks back toward the hall. I watch her go.

Still here. Both of us.

---

Anya's group sessions happen twice a week. I keep going. Don't talk most of the time. Just listen.

Tonight is different.

She starts the session like always. Checks in with everyone, makes sure people feel heard. Then she pauses.

"I want to share something," she says. Not a question. An announcement. "Because I think some of you need to hear that the person leading this group has failed too."

The room goes quiet.

"I was at a settlement before this one. The Braes. Smaller than here. Maybe sixty people." She leans forward, elbows on her knees. "I tried to do what I'm doing here. Groups. One-on-one. Support. And for a while it worked. People talked. Trusted each other. Trusted me."

Her voice stays steady. Controlled. She's done this before. In her head, if not out loud.

"Then people started disappearing. Not taken. Just... leaving. Going out for supplies and not coming back. And the people who stayed started looking at each other differently. Asking questions. Who's taking more than their share. Who's working with outsiders."

She takes a breath.

"I told myself I could fix it. That if I just did more, was more available, ran more groups, people would stop being afraid." Her jaw tightens. "I was wrong. The fear fed on itself. By the end, people were accusing each other of sabotage. Of poisoning supplies. Of signalling raiders."

"Was any of it true?" someone asks.

"I don't know. Probably not. It didn't matter. The trust was gone. And once that goes..." She spreads her hands. "You can't lead a group that won't follow. You can't support people who think you might be the problem."

The room is still. People are looking at their hands. At the floor. Anywhere but at each other.

"I got most of them out," she says quietly. "Twelve of the sixty. The ones who still trusted each other enough to leave together. The rest... I don't know what happened to them."

She straightens. The softness returns to her face, a deliberate effort. "That's not a story about strength. It's a story about what happens when support systems fail. When fear wins. I carry that. And I tell you because if you're sitting here thinking you're the only one who's lost something, or that your worst moments define you... they don't. They're part of what happened. They're not all of who you are."

After the session, I hang back. Not on purpose. Just slow to leave.

Anya's putting the chairs back against the wall. I pick one up. Help her stack them.

"You didn't have to share that," I say.

"I know." She sets a chair on the stack. "Neither did you. With the group. That first time."

She's right. I didn't have to come. I didn't have to stay.

"Your settlement," I say. "The fear. It sounds like it started with something real. The disappearances."

"Maybe." She straightens the last chair. "Or maybe it started with the wrong person getting afraid first. Fear's contagious. Treatment helps. But it doesn't cure the conditions that create the fear."

We walk out of the hall together. The cold hits us both at the same time.

"Goodnight, Jamie."

"Goodnight."

I watch her walk toward the residential section. Hands in her pockets. Head up against the wind.

She knows what it costs to fail. And she's still doing this.

I go back to my room. Sleep comes easier than it has in weeks.