“OK. Ready for a break?”
Wren nodded again. He looked to Cass. “Can I play, Mama?”
“Sure, sweetheart,” Cass said.
As Three stood, Wren held out the little knife to him, but he waved it off.
“That’s for you. You hang on to it.”
“Would you mind keeping it for me? Just… for now?”
Three paused for a moment, but then smiled, and nodded.
“Sure, kiddo.”
Wren gave Three the knife, and then clambered over to a small table nearby. Three walked the few paces to Cass, as she watched her son pull the strobe out of his pocket and place it on the table. He laid his head down on one arm, and stared at the clear ball as he rolled it gently back and forth. She wondered what invisible thing he saw in it.
Three sat down next to Cass, and leaned against the wall with her.
“I know you don’t like it,” he said. “I hope you understand it.”
“I wish I didn’t,” she answered. “But I do.”
For a long while, they just sat together, watching Wren at the table. Cass wondered what Three was thinking, what he might say. Though as long as they’d been together, she couldn’t remember a time when he’d really started a conversation.
“I had a kid sister once,” he said abruptly.
Something stirred in Cass’s heart, some mix of surprise, confusion, and sudden compassion. She didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t. After a while, Three added.
“So… I don’t have much patience for their kind.”
Cass watched him, noticed he was carefully intent on Wren.
“I’m sorry.”
His head dipped forward, a hint of a nod. Another long silence followed, Three lost somewhere deep inside himself. Grim. And Cass wondered just how much loss Three had suffered in his lifetime. He resurfaced after a while, back to business. The brief window of emotion once again sealed off.
“We’ll hit Greenstone tomorrow,” he said as he stood. “You should both get some rest.”
He was sliding into his harness again.
“What about you?”
“Gonna take a quick look around. Back in a few.”
He moved to the door, activated the hatch above. Waited as the skeletal ladder extended itself to the floor. But before he left, Three looked back over his shoulder and caught Cass’s eye. Winked. And even after the hatch had sealed behind him, her heart remained warm.
It’d been three days since Cass had left with her son, and with the man Three. And though he hadn’t thought it possible, Jackson was starting to feel like the Vault had grown too big, too empty. Maybe he should’ve gone along with them after all. He trudged up the stairs, anxious. Today, he’d decided to walk the perimeter, for no reason other than to get out.
As he climbed, he noticed the air growing colder, a draft flowing in from the upper floors. When he reached the top, Jackson was aghast to find the gate already raised, the cold gray morning light spilling across the smooth concrete floor. And there, in the middle of the room, a man sat cross-legged.
He was short but stout with muscle, head shaved bald. His almond-shaped eyes were closed in quiet meditation, and he remained so still that had Jackson not known any better, he might’ve believed the man had always been there.
Jackson froze. He couldn’t see them, but he knew in his gut there were others. Travelers weren’t all that unusual. But they didn’t usually let themselves in.
“Jackson, isn’t it?”
The voice came from his left, and Jackson jumped at its sound, at how close it was. Jackson looked, saw him standing there, leaning against the wall. Jackson figured they were about the same age, though this guy was definitely the better dresser. He was tall, draped in a long black coat of some expensive fabric. Smiling. Seemed friendly enough.
“That’s a way to make friends, yeah?” Jackson said. “Might’ve tried knocking, yeah?”
“Sorry, we weren’t sure if anyone was still here to answer.”
“We met?”
“No, but we have some mutual friends.”
Two others appeared at the entrance. One a tall, pale man. The other the most impossibly beautiful woman Jackson had ever seen. The man sitting on the floor still hadn’t moved. Jackson’s chest went tight. Bad things were at play.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but there’s no one left here but me. Been a few weeks since…”
“Oh, our friends weren’t residents. They were just passing through. Past couple of days.”
Jackson tried his best to look thoughtful, then shook his head.
“That may be, but I don’t think I can be much help. I’ve been locked up in here the past week or so.”
The young man straightened up off the wall, smoothed the wrinkles out of his coat.
“You don’t think you can be much help?”
“I doubt it. Ever since the Vault got wrecked I haven’t been much for going out, yeah? But if you got questions, I’ll try to answer ’em. Ask away.”
The young man smiled. “That won’t be necessary.”
And with that, Jackson suddenly felt as though a great black cloud descended upon him, forced its way through his skull, enveloped his brain. A sudden stab of electric fire raced through his nerves, seared his mind, blinded his eyes. Someone screamed. Pain surged, as if all the blood in his veins had been displaced by boiling water. And as Jackson felt his mind ripping from its anchors, he realized the scream was his own.
Eighteen
Wren pulled the hood of his coat down more snugly over his head, hiding his face in the shadow it cast. Not against the cold. He was plenty warm even in the winds that swirled from seemingly every direction here among the tall buildings. But with his hood up, he felt stronger, ready for whatever came next. Mama was walking a few steps behind him. She said she was fine, but Wren knew she wasn’t. She wasn’t sick, exactly, but he knew she wasn’t well. She needed her medicine, and soon. And until he could find it for her, it was up to him and Three to keep her safe.
Ahead, Three’s face was hidden in the depths of the hood of his coat, but Wren could picture his expression; the same one he’d seen for the past three days. Focused, eyes slightly squinting as they actively searched out the paths ahead. Wren furrowed his brow, imitated Three’s hard stare. After a minute or two, it kind of gave him a headache. He crammed his hands deeper into his pockets. In his right pocket, his fingers dabbled between the strobe and the practice blade Three had made for him. The cord-wrapped grip of the knife was rough against his skin. He wrapped his hand around the cool, seamless sphere of the strobe light. Pictured the swirl of tiny galaxies he imagined it could contain. Like having a star in a cage.
They walked on in silence for some time, but it wasn’t long before Wren noticed a pressure, steadily growing, in the air, in his chest. And it just kept growing. The crush and churn of crowds. The silent hum, the motionless vibration of hundreds, if not thousands, of others, moving, thinking, being; broadcast across the invisible spectrum of signal that Wren felt without understanding. He squeezed the strobe. Dropped back, slipped his free hand into his mother’s.
“We’re close now, Mama.”
And as though by speaking he had summoned it forth, there in front of them the first towers of Greenstone loomed. Hidden briefly when Three weaved through an angled side alley, they reappeared in full view at the end of the narrow corridor, and Wren gasped involuntarily. At the end of the alley where the three travelers stood together, the asphalt and concrete fell away in a gentle slope down into a wide basin where Greenstone stood, strong as an island mountain. Its high walls were mounted by small guard towers at regular intervals, punctuated every so often by massive watchtowers bristling with powerful lights and mounted weapons. Wren could see movement along the top of the walclass="underline" men on patrol.