Read Chapter 22: The Bargain

The engineer’s hand hovered over the chip, not quite surrendering it. His face, half-lit by the fading dusk bleeding through the boarded windows of the abandoned garage, was a map of hard lines and older scars. He looked at Julien first, then at Camille, weighing something behind his pale eyes.

“This is not charity,” he said. His voice was a low rasp, the kind that had barked orders across parade grounds decades ago. “This chip contains the full schematic of the European grid’s secondary fail-safes. The ones they didn’t disable. With it, someone with the right tools could restore regional power, perhaps even isolate the source of the attack. It’s worth more than your lives.”

“We gathered that,” Julien said, his arm still protectively in front of Camille. “What do you want?”

The engineer allowed himself a thin smile. “I’m old. My knees are gone, and I’ve been living off lentils and rainwater for three weeks. My hideout is compromised—I saw a patrol sweep the next street over this morning. I want a place in your building. A room, a share of the resources, and the guarantee that I won’t be turned out to die in the gutter.” He pointed at the chip. “That is my admission fee.”

Camille’s jaw tightened. She thought of the building in the 12th arrondissement—the cramped corridors, the rationed water, the way the residents had started looking at Léa with distrust and at her with a desperate, exhausting hope. Every new mouth was a new drain on a system already refusing to breathe.

“We can’t just bring a stranger into our home,” she said. “People are scared. They’re already hoarding and eyeing each other. Another body—another set of hands that doesn’t contribute—will cause panic.”

The engineer raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a freeloader, pharmacist. I’m a systems analyst, specifically cyber-infrastructure. I also did two tours as a field medic in Djibouti. I can fix radios, rig water purification, and I can hold a scalpel steady. You need me more than I need you, but I’m offering a fair trade.” He looked at Léa, who was leaning against the wall, her hand pressed to her side, watching the exchange with sharp, hostile eyes. “Both of you are wounded in ways you don’t yet see. I can help with that, too.”

“How do we know you won’t gut us in our sleep and take the building for yourself?” Léa asked, her voice carrying a thin blade of exhaustion.

“You don’t. But you know the convoy is coming from the west. That broadcast was a siren, not a warning. They’re herding people, and whatever they’re herding us toward is not a shelter.” He tapped the chip. “This is your only chance to fight back. And I’m your only chance to read it. Decide. Now.”

Julien exchanged a glance with Camille. She saw the calculation in his eyes—the same one forming in her own mind. They had no time to debate, no secure location to interrogate this man further. The convoy was a steady, creeping glow on the horizon. And at Saint-Vincent, Sylvie was waiting.

“Fine,” Camille said. “You get a place on the third floor, near René’s old apartment. You contribute, you share what you know, and you help us get the hospital online if this chip does what you say.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to iron. “But if you betray us, I will personally ensure you don’t see sunrise. We’ve buried enough people.”

The engineer’s smile widened, and for a moment, Camille saw a flicker of grim respect in his eyes. He handed over the chip, a small black rectangle no bigger than her thumbnail. “Marcel—though I prefer Victor now, a name from a simpler past—pleased to formally meet you all.”

They left the garage under a bruised purple sky, the engine of their salvaged Peugeot coughing to life. Victor settled into the back seat with Léa, who eyed him with open suspicion but was too tired to argue. Camille folded the chip into her innermost pocket, pressing it against her chest as if it might generate warmth.

The return route was slower, threading through back alleys and side streets to avoid the broad avenues where the headlights of the convoy had already begun to pool against the dark. Twenty minutes out, Julien took a shortcut through a narrow industrial cut-through, a corridor of shuttered warehouses and rusted containers that loomed in the twilight.

The first shot hit the windshield. It spiderwebbed into a million pale cracks, and Julien swore, wrenching the wheel hard to the left. The Peugeot skidded, tires screaming on rubble, as the second shot punctured the rear window and buried itself in the seatback inches from Camille’s head.

“Ambush!” Victor barked, already flattening himself against the floor. “Drive, drive!”

Julien floored the accelerator, but the road ahead was blocked—a stolen Renault, jacked up on cinderblocks, its lights off, and three figures with rifles emerging from the shadows.

“Hold on,” Julien muttered, and he did not brake. He drove into the gap between the Renault and the wall, the side mirror shearing off with a sickening shriek of metal. The Peugeot bucked over a debris pile, nearly rolling, before slamming back onto the road beyond.

A fourth shooter appeared from behind a dumpster, rising too late. The bullet raked the back quarter panel, and Camille heard Léa cry out, a sharp, guttural sound of pain that cut through the ringing in her ears.

“Léa!” Camille twisted in her seat. Léa was slumped against the door, her hand clamped over her left shoulder, blood seeping between her fingers in thick, black ribbons.

“I’m fine,” Léa hissed through clenched teeth. “Just grazed. Keep driving.”

The Peugeot tore through the industrial zone and onto a residential street, the pursuing gunmen fading into the dark. Julien kept driving until the headlights no longer reflected in his rearview mirror, pulling into the hidden courtyard of a collapsed apartment complex.

“We need to move,” Victor said, already out of the car, scanning the perimeter. “We’re still in the open.”

Julien got out and came around to Léa’s door, his face gray. He crouched and looked at the wound, blood welling between his fingers. “Can you stand?”

Léa’s face was pale, sweat beginning to bead on her forehead. “I said I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine”—Camille knelt beside her, inspecting the wound with the clinical detachment she’d forced herself to develop over the past weeks—“it’s not arterial, but it’s deep. We need to get her back to the building now.”

Julien didn’t wait for permission. He slid his arms under Léa, one behind her knees and one around her back, careful to avoid her shoulder, and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. She grunted, a small protest, but didn’t fight him.

“Two kilometers,” Victor said quietly. “I know a back path, but it’ll be on foot. And it’ll be fast.”

Camille looked at the chip in her pocket, then at the wound on Léa’s shoulder, then at the distant glow on the horizon that was growing, always growing, closer. She nodded once.

“Go.”

Julien began to move, Léa’s blood dripping a dark trail behind them. Victor took point, a shadow slipping ahead. Camille ran behind them, her lungs burning, her mind running on a loop: the chip, the convoy, the antibiotics she’d left in the communal stash—enough for only one more emergency. She had a feeling she was about to spend it.