“You OK?” He asked.
Wren couldn’t answer. He hugged his knees.
“Hey, you’re OK, little one. Nothing’s going to happen to you now.”
Wren heard Him approach, felt Him kneel down. A hand on his shoulder, gentle, soothing. Wren risked a peek.
The first thing that struck him was how young a face it was that stared back down at him. Not a boy, certainly, but maybe not quite old enough to be a man yet. He kind of reminded Wren of Asher, at least age-wise. His face was grubby and gaunt; greasy, dark hair hung in long curls to his shoulders. He didn’t seem mean, or even unkind. Mostly, he just needed a bath.
“My name was Jackson,” he said, then shook his head, corrected himself, “is Jackson. What’s yours?”
“I’m Wren.”
Jackson held out his hand: fingers tipped with long, dirty nails.
“Hi there, Wren.”
Wren took his hand and shook it timidly. Jackson smiled.
“Been a while since I’ve had company.”
Wren nodded. Jackson stood, and helped him to his feet. Wren glanced around, checked out what the so-called safe place looked like. No surprise, it was concrete: concrete floor, concrete ceiling. He guessed the walls were concrete too, though they were mostly obscured by rows and rows of dark pipes, stacked atop one another. That explained the dripping sound. Water pooled in a back corner, where the elbow joint of one pipe leaked slightly. The room was smaller than he’d expected, though when he thought about it he couldn’t figure out why he’d ever imagined it’d be larger. As far as he could tell, it was some kind of hub for the Vault’s water system, a miniaturized version of the storm water system Mister Three had hidden them in their first night outside.
“Can I see my mama now?” Wren asked. Jackson grimaced.
“I hope so. I can’t open the gate, though. Not yet. It isn’t safe.”
Wren felt the tears clawing their way up his throat. He was cold and tired and hungry and there was nothing he wanted more than just to sit in his mama’s lap and fall asleep knowing she was safe, and he was safe, and everything was going to be OK. Jackson moved alongside him, dropped an arm over his shoulders.
“Come on, kiddo. Let’s get you something to eat, and then we’ll find your mom, yeah?”
Wren wiped his eye with the back of his hand, and nodded, and let Jackson lead him out into the darkness of the Vault.
Cass felt sleep slipping away from her without being able to recall ever falling asleep. As always, her first instinct was to reach out and check on Wren. It took a moment for her brain to catch up, to replay the events of the night before, to remind her of their situation now. She thought back to his pim, wondered if he was still hiding somewhere, or scared, or hurt. She resisted the urge to pim him again, to tell him she was coming to get him right now.
Her eyes floated open. She was lying on something lumpy, still covered in Three’s coat. He was nowhere to be seen. Cass tried not to panic. She couldn’t imagine he’d go to all the trouble to get her through the night, only to leave her in the morning. Well, she could imagine it, which was the problem. She forced herself not to. Judging from the graying light, dawn wasn’t far off.
She sat up, tried to work the kinks out of her muscles. Twisting to one side brought a shooting pain that reminded her of her fall. She ran a hand under her shirt and gingerly checked the injury with her fingertips. Massive abrasion, deeply bruised, but as far as she could tell nothing was broken. A slow, careful, deep inhalation. Pain, but not broken-rib pain. She’d be alright.
Cass got to her feet, stood uneasily for a moment, letting the blood circulate. Back down the rail, she saw a form laid out on the tracks. Still as death. It had to be Three.
Her heart went cold. Surely she would’ve woken up if there’d been any trouble? And Three didn’t seem like the kind to get taken by surprise. Cass crept out of the repeater and moved down the line on legs that felt noticeably stronger than they had the night before. Sleep had done her good. She could probably push it out another day or so before she’d need another hit of the synth, assuming they didn’t have another thirty miles of ground to cover.
As she drew closer, Three’s silhouette shifted slightly; he glanced her way, then returned to his previous position. He was watching something down below the rail. Cass slid in next to him, lying across the track as he did. He pointed towards the Vault, near the gate. She looked that way, scanned for what he was seeing.
A Weir. A big one. Bigger than any Cass had seen before. And well-preserved too, from what she could tell. Though it was tough to see much detail in the weak light, across that distance, Cass almost could’ve mistaken it for a man, if not for the telltale blue-glow eyes. It just stood there, staring at the gate as if waiting for it to open. After a long moment, it turned slowly and walked a few paces away. Then, it swiveled right back around and returned to its original position, precisely the same spot, and stared at the gate again. The Weir cycled this behavior twice more before Cass spoke.
“What’s it doing?” she whispered.
“Stuck in a loop, I’d guess.”
“Looks like it wants to get in.”
“Probably does.”
“You think it knows Wren’s in there?”
“I think he wants to go home.”
Cass puzzled at that. She’d never thought of the Weir as having homes.
“What do you mean?”
Three didn’t answer. Just sat there, watching the Weir as it shuffled away, then back again.
“Three…?”
He inhaled deeply. Held it. Released slowly. Controlled.
“That’s my friend…” he finally said. “That’s Gev.”
As Jackson led him by the hand through the corridors and along the catwalks, Wren was in awe of the Vault. In the darkness of the previous night, he’d imagined it as a squalid urban cave. Now he was surprised to see it was not much different from most of the other places he’d been; just under the ground instead of above it. There were rows and rows of rooms, deep and wide, that the previous tenants had personalized the way one might expect a row of houses to have been.
They’d found food just a few rooms down from the safe place. And not just scraps, as Wren had expected. A huge storehouse, with rows and rows of shelves each piled with varieties of rations. After they’d eaten, Jackson took Wren through “the District”, which, he explained, was the residential area comprising the three lower levels of the Vault. Now, however, they were on their way to see what Jackson called the Treasure Room.
“Here we go,” Jackson said, flicking on another light and tugging on a thick steel door. It slid open with a deep rumbling groan, and Jackson let Wren go in first.
The room was the largest he’d seen yet, even larger than the food storehouse. And it was packed nearly wall-to-wall with what seemed to be long tables, deeply set. Wren approached one and laid his hand on it. He saw now it was more like a very shallow crate, maybe five inches deep, than a table. And on top of almost every table was a well-organized pile of just about anything you could hope to find in the outside world. Clothes, tools, old mattresses, scrap metal, chemlights; Wren understood why Jackson called it the Treasure Room.
“So yeah,” Jackson said, still in the doorway. “This is it. Pretty much my life’s work, I guess.”
“Where’d you get it all?” Wren asked in a quiet voice.