Read Chapter 12: Uneasy Truce

The courtyard gate rattled before they reached it. Camille heard the scrape of a chair dragged across stone, the low murmur of voices that cut off the instant Julien’s boots hit the cobbles.

Two men stood in the flickering light of a single candle lantern. One held a crowbar. The other, a man named Petit who lived on the fourth floor and had never spoken to her before tonight, held a butcher’s knife.

“You’re back,” Petit said. He didn’t sound relieved.

Julien stopped. Léa slid behind him, her hand drifting toward her belt. Camille stepped to the side, putting herself half between them and the door to the foyer, where the pharmacy stash sat locked in the old concierge’s office.

“We found nothing,” Julien said. “Marc’s not in the nearby streets. We need to regroup and plan the next move before—“

“We’re not here about Marc.” Petit’s voice was flat. “We’re here about the insulin.”

Camille’s blood went cold. She kept her face still.

“We know you have it,” Petit continued. “Half the building saw you carrying those bags from your apartment the night the sirens went off. The pharmacist with the dead father’s hoard.” He spat the words like they tasted of rust. “We’ve got diabetics in this building. Two of them. And you’ve been distributing it like a fuckin’ priest doling out communion.”

“I’ve been distributing it as needed, at appropriate dosages, to patients I’ve assessed.” Camille’s voice came out sharper than she intended. “If I hand over the entire supply, it’ll be gone in three days. No refrigeration. No way to stretch it. And then everyone dies, not just the ones I hadn’t gotten to yet.”

Petit stepped forward. The crowbar came up off his shoulder. “We’re not asking.”

Behind them, the courtyard filled with shapes. Camille counted six more bodies emerging from the ground-floor doorways, from the shadows by the stairwell. All of them from the building. All of them armed with something—a wrench, a shard of metal, a kitchen knife.

Julien raised both hands, slow, palms open. “Let’s talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Petit said. “Open the door, Laurent, or we open it for you.”

Camille felt her pulse in her throat. Her hands were trembling—she pressed them flat against her thighs. The stash held the last of her father’s supply. His death in the last blackout had taught her one lesson above all others: hoarding meant survival. Sharing meant death. But she’d been sharing anyway, because that was what he would have done, and because the alternative was watching elderly neighbors slip into ketoacidosis in the dark.

Now she watched Julien’s face as he made a calculation she could see happening in real time.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. Here’s the deal.”

Petit’s eyes narrowed. “No deals.”

“Yes deals.” Julien’s voice hardened. He gestured back toward the gate. “You want to fight over medicine while soldiers roll through this quarter before dawn? We just saw gunfire behind the substation. The fire station’s abandoned. There’s no help coming. The only thing that protects this building is us—all of us, together.”

“Pretty words from a man who was gonna disappear with the pharmacist in two hours.”

“We’re still going,” Julien said. “But we’re going to find Marc, and if we find him, we find answers about the grid. In the meantime, you want access to the medication? Then you help hold the perimeter. You guard the block. You work with us instead of against us.”

Petit stared at him. The crowbar lowered an inch.

“We share supplies,” Julien pressed. “Evenly. Under Camille’s control—she’s the only one here who knows what she’s doing. You get a schedule. You get a rotation for guard duty. In exchange, when we go out, this building stays protected.”

Camille whirled on him. “You can’t—“

“Camille.” Julien’s eyes met hers. There was no apology in them. “It’s the only way anyone gets through the night.”

She understood then. He wasn’t surrendering her stash. He was buying them time. But the cost was his authority, and hers. She would answer to Petit now, or at least be seen to negotiate with him, and that meant the fragile trust she’d built as the building’s healer had just been traded for a truce.

“Fine,” she said, the word tasting like ash. “But I control the distribution. No exceptions.”

Petit grunted. He lowered the crowbar fully, and the shapes behind him faded back into the shadows.

The truce was sealed.

Camille unlocked the storeroom door, and as she did, she heard the first gunshot from the direction of the substation—closer now than before.