“We’ll go to the safe place… it’s too late for the others. But you can live. If you are quiet.”
It shifted again, and Wren was glad when the hand slipped off his mouth. But in the next instant a strong grip seized him, and then he was being lifted up, awkwardly but not unkindly swung onto his captor’s back, and held securely in place by Its wiry arms.
“Quiet,” It reminded him.
It carried him away at the same unchanging pace as It had approached. Pat… pat… pat… Its bare feet following practiced steps across the concrete floor. Wren saw the yellow-green glow of the lost chemlight grow and then recede as they passed by and moved into some chamber beyond the entrance.
It stopped briefly, Its head swiveling slightly, Its rank whisper washing over him.
“I’m… we need to… I can’t always remember…”
It stopped Itself, exhaled in frustration, seemed to shake Its head as if to clear it.
“Safe first, then we’ll see. Then we’ll see.”
With that jumble of thoughts hanging in the air, It proceeded onwards. Whatever was carrying him walked differently than anyone else Wren had ever known. And he had gotten a lot of piggyback rides before. This one didn’t bounce very much. He almost felt like they were gliding, even when they started going down the stairs. His mama’s calls became muffled and duller, and drifted above him, and finally stopped altogether.
Without his mother’s voice, without that connection to her, Wren felt completely lost. He started sobbing, a silent, shaking cry, frightened of making any noise, but terrified of what might happen to him, and to his mama, and to Mister Three. He jammed his fist in his mouth, tried biting his fingers. Sometimes that worked.
“Don’t cry, little one,” It whispered. “I have a safe place.”
It was pitch-black, and the air was thick with the sickly odor that Wren had first smelled back in the vent, though it was much stronger here. Wren squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He bit his hand a little harder. Somewhere far above him, three rolling booms thundered.
“Too much noise,” It murmured. “That won’t do. It isn’t safe.”
Its arms released and Wren felt himself sliding slowly from Its back. When his feet touched the ground, he just stood there, hand in his mouth, crying and missing his mom.
“Lie down, little one, yeah? Sleep is quiet, and we stay quiet until morning. No noise and no stream, because they hear both. OK? Then we’ll see. I think maybe… maybe it will be the same again… the way it used to be. Maybe, in the morning. We’ll see.”
Wren heard It shuffle not far away and make noises he could only guess meant It was taking Its own advice and lying down. Without knowing what else to do, Wren curled into a ball on the cold concrete floor and bit into his knuckles, fighting desperately the urge to scream.
Cass stared up at the maglev line towering over her, at the twisted scaffolding, the flexing support structure, the tangled mass of metal… and the man perched like a hawk in the midst of it all, twenty feet from the ground. Three was up there, unnaturally nimble, a four-limbed spider in his web of steel, barely visible as the final traces of the day faded into night. He swore it’d be safe but he was checking it out nonetheless, having left her alone on the ground, cloaked in the night air with nothing more for protection. She couldn’t ignore the fact that he hadn’t left the pistol with her this time.
Even standing, it was hard to resist sleep. Cass’s body was near collapse, threatening to shut down without regard to her wishes if she didn’t willingly rest soon. The ache was back. The hunger, the thirst. The dull, glowing heat in the pit of her stomach and at the back of her throat that cried out for quint. Whatever synth Three had crafted, he’d said it’d last her a few days. It’d been less than two. And it was gone, already used up by her ever-accelerating burn rate. Her arms and legs shivered, though not from cold. She just had to endure, had to let him think the worry was getting to her, which was true enough. Worry for Wren made her head swim. But it was fear that kept her from telling Three the truth, fear that knowing she’d lied about her burn rate would lead him to question how else she may have misled him. And as much as Cass hated it, she needed Three now, needed him to get them through. She knew whatever it took to keep him on their side, she’d do without question or regret.
Three had been right, of course. In her heart, Cass knew Wren was alive. Frightened, certainly. Hurt, maybe. But alive. As a mother, it just wasn’t enough. She yearned for contact, for a touch, a glimpse of him, even a word. Just a word.
Cass glanced up at Three, thirty feet above her, all but invisible now. Far enough away. Even if he was monitoring her signal by proximity, he was too high to trace anything simple, and from the look of it, he was focused more on his climbing than on anything she was doing. She’d expressly forbidden Wren from pimming her, knowing that opening those channels carried too great a risk of exposing them both to Asher’s ever-watchful eye. It’d seemed like a smart rule before, when they were never apart even for a moment. But now, in the cold, in the dark, cut off from one another by some unknowable distance and who knew what else, the danger didn’t seem so great or so relevant. Not compared to the hope offered by the simple act of reaching out across that distanceless space where Wren was separated by no more than a thought.
In less than a breath, it was done.
“Wren.”
A heartbeat. Another. And another. Long enough for her son to have responded, if he was alright. Fear grew in her with each passing moment, every second of silence conjuring new nightmares that might have befallen her child.
And then—
“Not now.”
His message came through, clear, simple, like a thought of her own spoken in his voice. Reassuring and baffling at the same time. Somewhere in the distance, a crackling wail sounded.
Above her, Three hissed, calling Cass’s attention. Straining her eyes she could just make him out motioning to her, an urgent, forceful wave beckoning her to climb. She drew a deep breath, tried to steady herself. Worked her hands to ease the trembling. And started to climb.
The metal of the scaffolding was warmer than she’d expected, which was a welcome surprise. But after the first step up, with her full weight off the ground, she knew it was going to be a tough climb. Forty feet, maybe. It wouldn’t have been hard if she’d had her chems. Without them though, everything was hard: climbing, walking, breathing, thinking. Cass hoped sleep would fix some of her brokenness. Assuming sleep would come.
Five feet up. Thirty-five to go. She glanced up to the underside of the maglev line, but it was too dark now to locate Three. Maybe he was already on the top. She wondered what climbing would do for them out here. Maybe the Weir wouldn’t think to look for them up so high, though she doubted that. To her, it seemed that the Weir were led by something other than their eyes. She thought back to the night they’d spent in the cavernous storm water system outside the Enclave. When the Weir had passed her by once. Of course, it had come back. And so had others.
Hand up. Hold. Then foot. Reach. Stretch. Ignore the burning. Fifteen feet up. Still no sign of Three. Up here, she realized some of what she’d thought were support beams were actually just thick cables. Round, they were easy to grip, but their odd angles made her footing unsure. She did her best, forced herself to take her time despite the searing in her forearms, her back, her thighs. Even so, she never really felt completely in control.
Twenty-five feet above the ground now. Just twelve or fifteen more to go. Cass thought briefly about how they’d get down, then shoved the idea out of her mind. The thought of doing this again, not to mention backwards, was too much to process. And maybe too optimistic. Coming back down assumed they’d survive the night.