The watch on her wrist is telling her that it’s half past five in the afternoon, but, looking up at the sky, Maya can’t tell if that’s even true. 

She hasn’t seen the sun in months, not sure if it’s even still rising each morning, the sky is filled with so much smog that it’s a permanent, dusty red. It rains sometimes, streaking the streets with wet, tar-like puddles, but the smoke never clears.

Maya usually returns to base before it gets dark, because even though she can’t see the sun, it’s still there, and she’ll take whatever meager light she can get. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Today is different, because today she’d had to trek further away than she’d thought she would, the corner store listed on the map had already been wiped clean and she’d had to make a split second decision to leg it to the next one.

Supplies were low, they needed more, and she was the last patrol of the night. 

She knows she’s cutting it real close, so when she gets into the store, Maya blindly grabs whatever she thinks will be useful, some food that’s left over, medication from the pharmacy, things that she thinks can be re-purposed as weapons. She loads up her backpack, then takes off back toward base in a dead sprint, praying to whatever deities are still out there that she gets back in time.

It’s a close call, too close for comfort, darkness starts creeping in when she’s still a couple blocks away, and even though Maya can navigate well enough in the dark, she’d rather not be out here alone, especially not when the Creatures could be lurking about.

No one has any name for them, the malformed, quadruped beings that had shown up out of the blue and almost wiped out the entire city. Maya had been lucky, the school building is a lot more reinforced than she’d initially thought it would be, and with some extra precautions, it functions pretty well as a base of operations.

She sees it looming in the distance now, the clock tower, and almost slows down out of relief, but a screech sounds out from behind her, high-pitched and whining. 

It’s a wail of hunger. 

Maya runs faster.

The doors are being pulled open for her before she gets there, and she throws herself through the tiny gap, skidding to a halt and turning to help bolt it back up again. It’s Zay who’s on watch, and he shakes his head at her even as she rattles her full backpack.

“Go on, I’ll take this and organize everything.”

“Thanks, Zay.”

Maya makes it to the next hallway before Riley comes slamming into her, and they crash together so hard that they almost fall to the floor. 

“Peaches!”

“Hey, Riles, sorry I’m late, the store we planned for me was already raided so I had to go for the next one.”

And Maya knows that Riley knows this, knows that supplies are hard to come by, and even one missed patrol is a disaster they cannot afford, but in this moment she looks so shaken, and sad, and exhausted, Maya just wants to hug her tight and go back to the days when the only thing they’d had to worry about was homework.

“I was so scared, Maya, I thought- I thought they’d gotten you.”

“Not so easy, honey, I won’t go down without a fight, you know this.”

Riley nods tearfully, and Maya goes up on her tiptoes to kiss her on the forehead. “Hey, I’m okay, I’m fine, I made it back.”

It’s hard, sometimes, to remember that this hasn’t always been their lives, that they were kids once, and are still kids now, but are expected to live like every day will be their last. It is unfair, but it is real, and they’re just going to have to deal.

“Hey, Riles.” Maya leans back so she can look Riley directly in the eye. “I love you, okay? Always.”

Riley sighs, and her shoulders drop, as if all the tension has just drained out of her body. “I love you, too.”

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