There was no longer a biological reason to rise.
They lay scattered across the concrete surface, a jagged slab of gray that offered no solace. There were no mattresses but the stone, no shrouds but the indifferent sky. Their bodies were crusted in filth, the original colors of their garments long since surrendered to the environment. The superficial hierarchies of the outside world had collapsed; expensive silks and tailored linens had dissolved under layers of silt and dried blood. There was no white, no tan, no olive—only the universal, monochromatic brown of the earth.
Adam's gaze flickered toward the perimeter. Fadi was hunched over, his silhouette sharp against the morning mist, obsessed with a singular object.
The plastic bottle.
Fadi had spent the dawn hours coaxing the meager dewdrops into its hollow frame.
"Don't drink it all," Adam rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "Leave me a little."
Fadi's response was a frantic, animalistic jerk. He tilted the bottle back, his throat working in a desperate swallow. The volume was trivial—barely enough to moisten the membranes of a single mouth, let alone sustain a group. In Fadi's fractured logic, sharing was a form of suicide.
Adam lunged, his fingers clawing at the plastic. He wrenched the bottle away, but it was weightless. Empty. Only a single, defiant drop remained, clinging to the interior base—the exact same drop he had encountered when he first found the vessel.
"A drop! One goddamn drop!" Adam screamed, his voice breaking into a jagged sob of fury.
It was as if he were being mocked by a mathematical constant. A drop he was condemned to find, yet never consume.
Rage, fueled by the hollow ache in his gut, overrode his exhaustion. Adam tackled Fadi, pinning him to the concrete. He wrapped his hands around Fadi's throat, squeezing with a strength born of pure adrenaline. Yet his depleted muscles betrayed him; the assault lacked the lethal force required to end a life, manifesting instead as a pathetic, desperate struggle.
"Stop! What are you doing?" Nour's voice pierced the air, sharp and panicked.
Adam didn't flinch. "I'll kill you, you selfish bastard! You parasite!"
The frenzy had consumed him. He was no longer a man; he was a symptom of the system's cruelty.
Saleem intervened. Usually a shadow in the group, quiet and introverted to the point of invisibility, he now threw his weight between the two men. He pried at Adam's locked fingers, but the man was in the grip of a hysterical seizure, his knuckles white.
"Tie him up," Saleem grunted, straining against Adam's erratic movements. "Before he causes a catastrophe."
Nour's eyes darted around the circle. Desperation guided her toward the corpse lying just outside the fire's reach. She knelt by the body, her hands trembling as she tore the laces from its boots. She returned, the leather cords trailing like dead veins.
The commotion finally drew Elias from the depths of a shallow sleep. He assessed the scene with a cold, panoramic gaze. No explanation was necessary; the narrative of scarcity always ended in violence.
He took the laces from Nour, his movements efficient and devoid of emotion. Together with Saleem, he forced Adam's wrists together, cinching the cords behind his back. Adam's screams began to fade into a rhythmic, guttural moaning.
"Quiet," Elias commanded.
He wasn't looking at Adam. He wasn't looking at any of them. His head was tilted, his senses focused on the tree line.
A branch snapped. A shift in the undergrowth—too heavy for the wind, too deliberate for a falling limb.
Elias stared into the dark architecture of the forest, his breath held tight in his chest.
"Wait..." he whispered, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade. "Did you hear that?"