Mercury drove in silence for a while, the anger settling the way anger settles when it has said what it needed to say.

Then, without looking at me, she loosened her left hand from the steering wheel, reached across, took my right arm, and placed it across her left thigh. Then she put both hands back on the wheel.

The fabric of her skirt had ridden up again slightly from the movement. My palm rested on warm, bare skin just above her knee. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. The road stretched ahead, cracked and empty under the late light, and for a long stretch there was only the low rumble of the tires and the faint creak of the old suspension.

Her thigh was firm under my hand, the muscle shifting subtly as she worked the pedals. I let my fingers rest there at first, feeling the heat of her. Then, slowly, I moved them higher, tracing the smooth line of her leg. When I reached the hem of her skirt she made no move to stop me. I slid beneath it.

There was nothing underneath.

My breath caught. She was completely bare, her skin fever-hot and already slick. The realization hit me like a quiet shock, she had been like this the whole time we’d been driving, fighting, running, surviving.

"Told you," she whispered.

Older than me by maybe ten years, but carrying none of the hesitation I felt. Just steady, deliberate want.

Mercury’s breath deepened, but her eyes stayed on the road. Her hands tightened slightly on the wheel as my fingers explored further, parting her gently. She was wet, unmistakably so, the slick heat of her coating my fingertips as I traced slow circles over her. A small sound escaped her, not quite a moan, more like a release of air she’d been holding since the kiss back at the car.

"Keep going," she said quietly, voice low and rough. "Don’t stop."

I didn’t. I pressed one finger inside her, then two, moving with the rhythm of the car. She was tight, warmer than I expected, and she clenched around me in response. Her hips shifted once, pressing down against my hand, but she kept the car steady on the empty road. The older-woman confidence in how she took what she needed without apology made something tighten low in my stomach.

The plain blurred past us. In the back seat, Richard stayed wisely silent. Jenn might have been watching or not, I didn’t look. All I could focus on was the slick sound of my fingers moving in her, the way her thigh trembled under my forearm, and the faint, musky scent of her that mixed with the dust and old leather of the car.

She came quietly a few minutes later, no dramatic cry, just a sharp inhale, her whole body going rigid for a long second before the shudder rolled through her. Her inner walls pulsed around my fingers, hot and rhythmic. When it passed she exhaled slowly, shoulders dropping.

For a moment she drove in silence again, my hand still resting between her thighs, fingers wet with her. Then she reached down, gave my wrist a gentle squeeze, and guided my hand back to my own lap.

"Thank you," she said simply. No embarrassment. Just raw honesty. "I needed to feel something real."

I wiped my fingers discreetly on my pants, heart still pounding. She was older, steadier, and in that moment she felt like the only solid thing left in this broken world. I wanted more, wanted to pull the car over and bury myself in her completely, but the road demanded we keep moving.

"We’ll find a safe spot before full dark," I said, my voice lower than I intended.

She nodded once, a small, tired smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Yeah. Then you can have the rest of me."

I moved my hand back to her thigh, hungry for more of that wet heat. Her leg shifted, subtle but clear. Not now.

"Hey." Richard’s voice from the back. "Mercury."

She didn’t answer. My fingers still traced lazy circles on her sticky inner thigh while she kept the car steady, handling two things at once with that same calm focus.

"Bram." Richard tried me instead, apparently realizing in real time who was actually running this car. "We’re coming up on the Fallen City. I think we should eat before we get there. Aren’t you hungry?"

He had a point. Whatever came next in the Forsaken City was going to require a full tank and we had been running on Richard’s rice and whatever the cereals had given us since morning.

Mercury eased off the accelerator slightly.

""Wash your hands first," she said, deadpan, eyes never leaving the road.

I glanced at her. She offered nothing else. The silence was its own answer.

Behind us, Richard and Jenn were already working, reaching into the boot bags, pulling out what we had taken from the supermarket. A packet of cereals came through to the front between the seats. I took it, tore the packaging open.

Mercury slowed a little more, giving me room to sort it without making a mess of the dashboard.

I took a handful and turned toward her.

"No, thank you." she said. "I’ll feed myself."

Jenn made a sound in the back that she converted into a cough before it became a laugh. Richard had apparently decided this was not a conversation he was going to contribute to, which was the most self-aware he had been since we found him. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

I fed myself.

The car moved through the plain, the Fallen City appearing in the distance ahead of us, and we ate our cereals in the specific quiet of four people who had been through enough together that silence had become comfortable.

The Fallen City, I thought, looking at it from a far. A place where the infected had merged with the concrete and steel over decades.

And where Sinn and the team are somewhere ahead of us, with Owen still in the car and Code still walking around with clean blades and a smile.

I finished the cereals and looked at the road.

Let’s go finish this.