Chapter 5: Everyone's got that something.
About two years into the apocalypse, Kyle had stopped saying Goodbye.
See ya.
So long.
Auf wiedersehen.
He'd herded them all together, handed them a juice box each, and sent them packing. There were better words to part ways with, he'd determined. Words which didn't feel like you'd wasted your last moment with someone; as he'd wasted his with Meghan Downey. She'd been that one Goodbye too many.
Kyle pulled Spike into another hug. "Look after the bike, yeah?" He slapped Spike's back. "No joy rides. No new scratches."
"And you keep an eye on the kid," Spike said as they parted, his head leaning into said kid's direction.
Aiden side-eyed them from over where he'd gravitated near Fi. The same Fi who'd turned down all of the kid's attempts at helping her pack their shit up before they set out. It'd been tragic. All those polite gestures past the salt-sharing (which Kyle was totally not sore over) had smashed themselves to pieces against Fi's quiet scowls. By now she looked ready to chuck the hot water she'd just bottled into the over-eager kid's face if he as much as hinted at being helpful.
"Anything else you want to tell me about him?"
Spike shrugged. "You're all caught up. But, Crane, he's alright. I wouldn't send him with you if he wasn't."
"Fair. I'll make an effort."
One more fist-rap later, and Kyle slunk off. Which stank, because here came the good-ole pre-mission jitters. They folded his insides into neat layers and, Christ, were made so much worse by that unique flavouring of existential dread over how he wasn't only parting ways with a friend (again), but also leaving behind about 90% of his and Fi's gear.
That shit had taken forever to put together, okay?
And to add insult to injury, Fi got to bring her bow, which hung snug against her lower back, held in place by its sling, while Kyle had to abandon not only his crossbow, but the shotgun, too.
A tragedy.
But the crossbow was unwieldy, as Fi had put it. And Villedor was allergic to firearms. BS, Kyle thought, moping, but it wasn't like he could hide the shotty up his ass.
Not all was lost though. Kyle (being a rebel since the day he'd been born upside down), brought the Glock. It sat out of sight and mostly out of mind, hidden under his jacket in its shoulder holster.
No one could ever say that Kyle Crane was an unreasonable man. His vocabulary did, in fact, include the word compromise.
Kyle turned to his class of two.
Seriously. Look at them. Fi, with her attention fixed on their destination and a route already mapped out, was already going for that extra credit. And Aiden, his eyes constantly drifting, reminded Kyle how being the new kid was hella awkward. Always. Didn't matter if you'd just transferred in because your dad had lost the game of hot-potato after a divorce or because you were a drifter in a post-Fall world pawned off to a pair of grouchy vets.
Though at least he was alert. Kyle approved.
But did he approve of Aiden?
Eehhh, his filter supplied, being about as useful as windshield wipers on a goat's ass. Too many variables. Too little to go by. Feed me more, it moaned. I need intel.
Young, twenty at most. Pilgrim-fit. Driven, if the whole sister thing was something to go by, and an apocalypse-amount of shabbily put together. None of which was important. What bugged Kyle was the Waltz connection.
The injection marks.
So, yeah, he'd keep an eye on him; in case he'd pop open like a freaky Jack-In-A-Box.
. . .
He shuddered. Kyle had always hated those things.
"We all set?" he asked as he rolled his jacket's sleeves up, catching the evening's chill on his skin. And a mosquito. They buzzed about like clouds of golden specks where the setting sun caught on their wings. He flicked it away.
Class acknowledged him with two nods and then Fi was off, taking point and vaulting her perky ass over the edge of the balcony on the far left. Aiden followed and Kyle went last.
He landed harder than he'd have liked to, the impact reminding his joints of how the Antizin was still in his blood and how it kept shitting all over his day. And would for a while longer, leaving him craving for a cold, dark cave and a long nap.
Kyle winced.
Nope. Don't go there.
Up ahead, Zofia picked up the pace, her light-footed steps carrying her up to a people-sized gate at the back of the villa. She nudged it open, its double-winged doors cracking apart wide enough for her to slip on through, but not leaving anywhere near enough room for anyone who wasn't five scraggy cats in a trench coat.
Her sideways dip through the gap had the Aiden-kid temporarily stumped. Was he allowed to go after her? No? Yes? Maybe?
Mildly amused, Kyle shoved the gate open the rest of the way.
"So," he said, presently grabbing Aiden's attention even as they both stepped out from the villa's relatively secure walls. Kyle closed the gate behind them. Would be a shame if squatters moved in, the place was nice. "You've known Spike for, what, six years? How old were you when you met?"
Aiden's brow furrowed.
"Ten?" Kyle teased.
Ten?
Really?
Up until now, Aiden's mind had played host to his very own haunting; full of ghosts for memories that'd kept him preoccupied. There'd been cold hallways with tall, white walls, some of which had sported clumsy crayon drawings. And there'd been children. Dozens of them, huddled on a rough carpet, their heads shaved and fear in their eyes.
And then there'd been the pain; a memory of searing agony squirming under his skin.
Plus, Waltz.
Mia.
But— ten. Seriously? The ghosts scattered.
"Fifteen," Aiden corrected Crane, which earned him an odd, collected smile that he couldn't place. Almost as if he'd told Crane something that went beyond age.
"And you've been drifting since?" was the follow-up question.
"On and off." He paused. "Mostly on."
"Impressive."
Uncertain how to respond (It'd sounded sincere enough but how was he supposed to know?) Aiden fixed his gaze up ahead. first on Zofia as she steadily gained ground on them, and then at Villedor's walls rising over the ridge up ahead. The same ridge with Zofia vanished behind a moment later.
When Aiden caught up, he didn't immediately follow her down the left, where she picked a path between rocky outcropping and thick vegetation. Instead, he stopped short at the ridge's edge, right above where the land fell away at a steep angle to dip into a wide lake. The lake, its surface covered in lily pads and its shore swaying with thick reeds, looked like it'd caught fire where the setting sun touched it. A house squatted near it— some sort of boat rental if the faded letters on its facade were anything to go by —and it even had a pier. With, well, boats. Small, wooden ones. Not all of them had sunk.
And looming over it all stood the massive Villedor walls, their bulk suddenly very real and very near. So near, Aiden had himself gripped by a singular thought looping in his mind: Mia. Mia is in there.
Shit, what was he doing? This was ridiculous. Aiden pumped his hands into fists. His heart hammered in his throat. She may be in there. May. Get real, he chided himself, and, still, his heart wouldn't quit hammering and his chest only grew tighter.
The ground next to Aiden crunched.
Ah, yes. He wasn't alone. And he'd been staring at the Villedor walls for an approximate of far too long, he realized with a pinch of shame.
"Take your time," Crane said, his arms folded and his eyes turned to Aiden. Zofia had already made it halfway to the lake, judging by the rustle down below. "Not like we're burning daylight or anything," he added and indicated the sinking sun with an upwards twitch of his brows.
Yeah. That.
"Sorry." Aiden cleared his throat. "It's just—" He sighed and gestured to the walls. "This is the first time, the first time, I've heard something other than Waltz, who? or Mia, who? Don't you know looking for people you haven't seen for more than ten years is pointless?." Frustration squeezed his chest even tighter. He could barely keep it down. Though what was far, far, worse was the irrational tinge of heat on his cheeks. He was blushing? Why on Earth was he blushing? "I've been told the same thing over and over from day one: Forget it. It's not worth it. Make something out of your life. Don't throw it away out there. Or, you know, Pull your weight." Aiden let his arms drop and sighed.
"Fuck 'em," was what Crane had to say to all of that.
Aiden's brow knitted and his eyes snapped up.
"You want to look for your sister? Then you go and look for your sister and don't let some jackass tell you otherwise." Crane cocked his head sideways, indicating the slope. When he started walking, Aiden fell in step with him. "But don't get mad at the jackass either. Hope and an ambition to live for something else than the day by day are, like, I dunno, the kind of things most everyone had scared out of them by now. They've tried it, it didn't work out one too many times, and now all they want is to keep breathing."
Aiden chewed on his cheek.
He'd expected a They're not wrong. You're an idiot. Anything but a pep talk, at any rate. Even Spike— who'd otherwise been nothing but open-minded about all kinds of shit a teenage him had gotten up to —had tried to talk him out of the chase at first.
A detail Aiden occasionally reminded Spike of when he went on and on about the girlfriend he'd misplaced.
"Plus, you know, everyone needs that something that keeps them going," Crane added. Incidentally, that was the moment the lake came back into view, and, along with it, Zofia.
Hm.
Aiden latched on to another thought. Something other than his chase for Mia.
What were they? Crane and her. Friends? More than that? The way Crane stared at her after he'd dropped the everyone needs that something line gave Aiden the impression it might be the latter, though he'd never been particularly good at picking up on that kind of thing.
No. He was shit at it. Embarrassingly so.
It kinda sucked. Got really awkward. Frequently.
"Spike never mentioned either of you," Aiden said after a few more steps, eager to keep the silence at bay. Not that he minded silence, usually. Not at all. He and silence were pretty thick friends, but, right now, with Mia waiting to be front and centre on his mind again, he preferred to keep himself occupied. "Or that there was someone other than me looking for Waltz." He hesitated. "Why are you looking for him anyway?"
"That's a very long story and, hey, will you look at that? A Fi-shaped squirrel."
Aiden's thoughts jumbled up. A what? It took him a second before he caught on to what Crane had meant.
There was no literal squirrel. Just Zofia, and a friendly That's none of your business, which Aiden accepted, if a little reluctantly. Maybe he'd ask again. Maybe he wouldn't. Or maybe it wouldn't matter because this was a dead-end and neither Waltz nor Mia were in there and so on and so forth.
Sighing, he turned his eyes forward, where said Fi-shaped squirrel stood by the lake's overgrown shore. She'd scooped up a flat stone in her left hand— the one that missed most of its fingers —and, with a sharp flick of her wrist, skipped the stone over the water's flat surface.
The stone bounced trice before it sunk with a mellow PLOP. Curious fish swarmed the ripples on the water. Their scales glinted in the evening sun, a mirror to the bugs dancing across its surface.
"Biters," she said without looking back and flung an arm up to point towards the boathouse. "And we got to go past them."
Three of them, Aiden counted. One was busy eating whatever had been too slow to stay out of its way, another slouched near the reeds, and the third— uh— tumbled out of a window. Or, rather, it flopped. There wasn't much momentum in how it dragged itself over the window's lip and then crashed head-first into the dirt.
Crane and Aiden drew their weapons and moved towards the run-down wooden house — while Zofia picked up another rock to skip, which left two Biters for Crane and one for Aiden.
Apparently.
So maybe she wasn't the fighting type?
Crane's machete— a wicked-sharp looking blade all around —made short work of two necks, while Aiden's hatchet dealt with a brittle skull. It was over quick; one minute there'd been three Biters eager for a meal, the next they were laid out twitching on the ground.
And Zofia? She'd vanished.
Aiden turned in a circle, his hatchet held by his side.
"Where'd she—" he started, when Crane strolled past him, an arm flung up and pointing forward.
"Keep up," he called over his shoulder.
Aiden, huffing, sheathed his hatchet and jogged after him.
He'd just about rounded the boathouse when he heard Zofia exclaim an irritated "Bother," which she directed at a collapsed bridge hanging over another body of water. If there'd been an access ramp at some point, that'd gone, too.
Aiden felt inclined to agree with her assessment.
Zofia stood with her hands shoved into the pockets of her vest and wove on her feet, her head going left, then right, then left again, though most of her attention was fixed on where the bridge had sheered off on the right. A bus hung from it. Its nose looked like it'd caught on the jagged rubble up top, while its tail was wedged against a rocky outcropping. Underneath it stood a mostly submerged truck, its roof a crusty kind of blue.
Mouldy suitcases bobbed in the water.
"I'm tired of blown bridges," she said.
Over from the water, where he'd squatted to clean his machete, Crane gave a grunt in agreement.
"You can't walk a straight line," she went, "because everyplace got someone who's gone Oh, I've got it! there's no way Biters'll find a way 'round if we blow this bit here. And this bit. And that bit. Biters don't got cars, for crying out loud."
With his machete eventually cleaned, Crane rose to join her, landing a hand on her shoulder mid-rant. The hand gave a little squeeze. And Aiden got a good look at just how odd of a pair they were. Distinctly so. He was tall. Broad-shouldered. Built for this, for the wild territories and their dangers, Aiden figured. In contrast, she just about reached Crane's collarbone and looked about as meaty as an arrow.
"Want me to go first?" Crane asked.
She scoffed. "And have the whole thing come down? No, Crane. You're last."
"Hey," Kyle whined and swiped his hand up so he could give her neck a gentle (and very loving) wring. Fi slipped his grip, regarded him with a quiet smile, and left him standing with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops and his eyes tracking her as she started her balancing routine on the craggy rock to the right.
That was when Aiden decided to ask one of those questions you never as much as uttered around a woman.
(No, that was a joke, you should totally ask that question. Your life may depend on it.)
"She's—" A beat. Two. And then: "She's bitten, right?"
Kyle cocked his head to the side and threw Aiden a quick glance, who looked a touch apprehensive after he'd given his curiosity wings. Or, words, rather. Across the water, Fi landed lightly on the sunken truck, ducked under the bus, and vanished up into it.
"Mhm," Kyle confirmed.
Technically not a lie. More of a creative application of reality by means of omission, because Used to be, then got, air quotes, cured, air quotes, and later re-infected because fuck us, I guess was more likely to raise more questions, rather than answer any. Plus, it was none of the kid's business.
Kyle stuck his left arm out and rotated it, baring the faded indents a set of human teeth had left on it.
The kid's brows furrowed.
To Aiden's credit, he didn't look near as spooked as your garden variety settler. Or Pilgrim, for that matter. People tended to lose their shit soon as they caught even a fleeting glance at Fi's scar. So she masked up. Usually. But Aiden kept his cool. Come to think of it, he hadn't kept a mile-and-then-some between him and her either. The opposite, in fact.
. . .
Okay, maybe we like him, Kyle's filter declared. Yeah. Maybe. Anyone who didn't shun his Paper Tiger the moment they laid eyes on her was, honestly, approaching alright.
"You're pretty chill about it," Kyle admitted. "There's usually a lot of, you know, Fuck off or I shank you, when folks figure it out."
The bus creaked. Kyle's eyes cut to it. From inside of it came a muted "Bollocks," followed by something dropping out from the bottom, ricocheting off the truck's roof, and then plopping into the water.
"I'm fine," Fi called a beat later, even as Kyle opened his mouth to ask, well, yeah. That. He snapped said mouth shut again. His heart— which had gotten mildly worked up —settled back down.
Aiden bounced one of his shoulders up in a tentative shrug. "They're old scars, right?"
"Yeah," he said at length.
"Then I'm going to keep thinking you're either crazy good at staying alive, or just mad lucky. And I'm fine with both, long as it gets me to Waltz."
Kyle allowed himself a grin.
"It's good to pass," Fi called down then, and when he looked up, she'd gotten down on her haunches on the bridge's jagged ledge. Her toes poked out into thin air. "Kid 's up next."
"You heard her. Chop-chop."
A few long minutes later and Kyle was the one sticking his head up the bus's ass.
It was slippery in here. Dank. Mouldy. He'd made it about halfway when he started sneezing — and about three quarters to the top when a handrail he used to pull himself up had enough. It snapped. Or the bolt doing the bolting to the bus's wall gave up on life, how was he supposed to fucking know. Kyle, suddenly untethered, fell backwards and down, cracking into the side of the bus with a loud thump.
"Crane?" Fi. Up there. Worried.
"I'm good. I'm great," he muttered and rubbed at the back of his head.
No, you're not, the bus decided then. It crunched. It— tilted? Oh fuck, it tilted. A quick sag backwards, accompanied by the screech of metal bending ways it did not approve of.
"Shit. Shit. Shit."
"Crane."
Kyle clambered upwards, his legs pushing, his arms pulling, until the bus was one large rattling can of noise and Kyle was pretty sure he'd be getting wet in about one— two— three— He made it to the top, shoved himself out through the busted front window, and fell down the other end just as the whole damn bus went toppled over and went for a dive.
He'd landed on his shoulder and now he sat with his legs stretched out, wheezing and staring up at the dusky sky. "If," he said, sharply, and raised an arm, "I hear one I told you so, then I swear to fucking God—"
A hand snapped around his wrist. Not Fi's, he noted. Fi's was a tiny, bony thing, with scarily strong fingers. This one was larger and came with a scorpion latch on a thick leather bracelet. Kyle accepted the help anyway and let Aiden haul him to his feet.
"Mad luck, huh?" Aiden said. He wore a small smile that, while genuine, carried sufficient nerve to be called cheeky.
"Bit of both, kid." Kyle swiped his hands over his pants. His icky, sludgy hands. "Bit of bo—"
"Crane," Fi cut in. "We got to go. Now."
"Hm?" He raised his eyes and found Fi pointing down along the stretch of derelict road. It led to a tunnel badly plugged by a sideways parked truck. Vines covered the tunnel's entrance, top to bottom, and when he squinted at them, they boiled open. Biters. A group of them— he stopped counting at five —bumbled through the vines like drunk extras tripping through the curtains on stage.
"Oh. Yeah. Right. Noise."
Fi jerked her chin towards the tunnel and headed right for it.
Knowing better than to question his GPS, Kyle followed.
The Biters were passably dumb, slow, and hungry. They kept staggering from the tunnel, their bald heads raised to the evening sun, and stumbled into the general direction of where the noise had come from. Which gave their merry pack of three Pilgrim a narrow window to slip by on the left and scale the truck that'd stoppered the tunnel.
Narrow, yeah. But doable.
After that, it was a game of Fi-led The Floor Is Lava (or, zombies, rather), her steps sure-footed as she found a path across fallen air ducts doing Their Best(tm) at impersonating makeshift bridges and long-abandoned vehicles.
Now, if only Kyle didn't miss the tunnel's darkness so damn much once they'd made it to the other side, that'd have been great.
Past the tunnel, Fi took them hiking. Literally. An old, picturesque trail wrapped around the mountainside, its path made treacherous by the passage of time. Was stunning though, Kyle had to admit, between how the setting sun slapped colours up against it, and how the sky dipped deeper into all those rich pinks and purples.
Early stars glinted on the firmament. Crickets sang their evening songs. Birds… birded. And slap went Aiden as a mosquito had a go at his neck.
"Admit it," Kyle told Fi once they'd reached the mountain's crest, up where the air tasted of nothing but wild space, damp earth, and sweaty Pilgrims. "I take you to the nicest of places, don't I?"
She acknowledged him with a quiet hum but didn't stop, her feet ever marching on and on and on until they carried her back downwards on the peak's other side. By then, the sun had given in.
Which meant darkness.
Which, ultimately, meant his lungs seemed to finally open up properly and his eyes stopped feeling scratchy all the damn while. Not to mention how his legs felt… lighter. His steps longer.
Bottom line: Kyle abso-fucking-lutely hated how night was when he felt like he was twenty. And how day was when he landed anywhere between forty and a fucking hundred and ten.
Boo-hoo, he thought. Suck it up. And went straight to the little garage, slash, shack sitting next to the waystation. Oh. Yeah. They'd arrived. Somewhere between Kyle feeling like a million and having anxiety over that gnaw at his insides, the waystation had kind of popped out of nowhere. It was two stories high. Had a set of open double-wing front doors, and UV lights mounted on its walls.
Probably been a B&B once. Now it was dead and quiet and dark.
Anyway.
Shack.
A thick jumble of electrical writing ran from the main house to the shack's roof, and so Kyle bet himself a useless dollar that he'd find the generator in there. Thankfully, the metal shutters hadn't been entirely closed, and so he got down on his haunches, stuck his fingers under it, and heaved.
And since things were contractually not allowed to go smooth with him around, Fi called out a warning before he'd gotten it open all the way.
Aiden had been watching the dark path they'd come down from, every twitch of a branch a potential threat now that it was dark. So when Zofia called "Company," he snapped his head around — and watched the waystation's occupants stumble out through the front doors.
Four Biters came first, followed by a sudden, shrill scream bouncing down from the topmost window. He looked up. Something small— or smallish, anyway —leapt into the night air, its body thin like a reed. It arched through the night, way too far up to be reasonable, and trailed a smear of yellow light, like a firefly. And it was way too quick for Aiden to make out any detail before it dove into the underbrush, where it wheezed and growled from behind a large boulder.
The Biters kept ambling. They'd seen them.
Aiden— his hatchet at the ready —backed himself closer to Zofia. He figured that was probably what he was supposed to be doing, right? Stay close and keep things off Crane's back while he found the generator? Not like anyone was telling him what the plan was—
Or, well—
"What the hell was that?" he blurted.
"Crane calls them Witches," Zofia said. "Stay clear, they're quick."
As if to prove a point, the Witch-thing jumped out of the bushes and, deftly, landed on a Biter's back.
Aiden stared. Wha—
It had long, thin legs, equally long, thin arms, and elongated, claw-tipped fingers. Oh and it glowed. An honest to god yellow glow leaked from not only its veins, but from thick, bulbous nodes pushing through its ruined skin. The Witch balanced on the Biter's back before it coiled its legs and hopped from the first Biter over to another, perching on that one's shoulders instead, the toes on its naked feet curling like claws. It'd been a woman once, Aiden figured and it still wore the remnants of a dress, the front of it torn downwards to bare more glowing veins. It even still had hair. And a set of eerie, yellow eyes that set on Aiden with a cunning kind of hunger.
Then, with a screech so unnatural it made Aiden's insides twist up, the Witch pushed off the Biter with enough force to shove it to the ground. As it sailed up high, its arms flung out wide and claws extended, Aiden realized it was going to come down right on top of him.
He'd just about figured he ought to dive sideways when the Witch jerked mid-air and hit the ground in an uncoordinated tangle of dead limbs. An arrow jutted from its head. The fletching of the arrow— a plume of bright red tape —wobbled.
Next to him, Zofia lowered her bow, threw him a quick look, and then darted back to trade places with Crane, who'd abandoned the shack and gotten his machete out instead.
"Wanna help?" Crane called over his shoulder as he got right up to the first Biter. He kicked its knee out and swung the blade at its exposed neck when it fell. "I mean, it's alright if you need a minute. Those things are pretty freaky."
. . .
Aiden rolled his eyes— rolled his hatchet too —and went to help.
When the UV lights came on with a snap and the Biters had been dealt with, Aiden realised he'd made it another day. Grateful— and more than a little tired, now that he gave it some thought —he followed Crane and Zofia into the waystation, which had come to life with music the moment the generator had pumped electricity back into it.
The music, a cheerful tune that danced off Aiden's nerves with how loud it was, led them upstairs. The stairs themselves were creaky and the hallway up top pleasantly deserted. No more Biters. No more Witches. Just a lot of dust, dirt, lopsided paintings on the walls, and three doors. Two on the left— wood —and one on the right. Metal; the sort of door that came with bolts on the outside so that you could still get in, while Biters were ultimately locked out since they'd long forgotten how to work the bolts.
They definitely had the right house.
Beyond the metal door was a large room. Long tables with benches occupied most of it, along with a counter, a few bar stools up against a wall-mounted bar. It'd fit a lot of people once. Hikers, maybe?
Bit like us, he mused.
"See if you can find the broadcasting station," Crane said, and it took Aiden a second to realise he'd meant him. "There'll be radio equipment in there so it should be hard to miss."
Aiden nodded. He looked around, decided that in here was a bust, and left Crane and Zofia to... talk, as it turned out. Or whisper, rather. He'd barely left the room when Crane found where the music came from and began to cycle through one cheerful song to the next. Zofia tucked herself under his arm. The words they traded were exchanged in a soft hush.
With the music playing, Aiden had no hope of eavesdropping.
Not like he'd considered it.
Alright, maybe he had.
For a second.
Rather than listening in, he found himself in an office space, complete with a dusty couch, a desk — and a wardrobe? He squinted at the bulky thing. That did not belong here, and neither did the grooves that'd been scratched into the floor by its feet.
"Found it!" he called and then added, quieter, "I think," before he leaned his shoulder against the wardrobe's side to give it a push.
And, yep, he'd been right. Concealed behind the wardrobe was a Pilgrim's nest— plus the broadcasting station —its walls stacked with shelves and not an inch wasted to empty space. A UV light stood ramrod straight on the desk pushed against the far side of the room, where barred windows gave Aiden a glimpse of the moon peeking over the tops of trees. The UV light was good, he figured. Since, well. Them. They needed that.
He threw a look over his shoulder and tried to imagine what it must be like. To hope you found electricity and a working UV light at the end of every day. Night after night, week after week, month after month. Year after year?
Must have been a lot of luck, he thought.
The music cut out. Footsteps thumped around the corner. And when Crane stepped into the office, with Zofia trailing him, Aiden greeted them by jabbing a thumb into the nest.
"Right in here."
"Good job," Crane said. Then he clapped Aiden on the shoulder on the way past.
Aiden, not having been prepared for that, froze up stiffly and sorted his spine into a straight line.
The nest itself was roomy enough for the three of them at least, though it only had one mattress. Great. Were they going to fight over it? Or was it going to be a vote, which he'd obviously lose? Or was no one going to mention it at all, since Zofia busied herself with hanging her bow on a hook near the nest's entrance before she moved on to inspect the shelves, and Crane had already claimed the desk's chair. He'd swung the thing around and now sat hunched over the backrest, a set of headphones squashed against the side of his head and his fingers harassing the radio equipment's many dials.
Weary, Aiden folded down on the mattress, stretched his legs out, and stared at Crane's back. What was he picking up? on the radio? Should Aiden be asking him? Or just sit here, quietly— and get a water bottle shoved under his nose?
"We've been walking a lot," Zofia said. "Drink up."
"Thanks. But I got my own—"
"It's not ours. They've left a bunch." She raised an identical see-through bottle to point at a row of them standing on a shelf. "And since no one else is coming through here anymore..." She shrugged, turned away from him, and then sat down on the floor with her back to the wall.
Not next to him, he noted. Even though he'd made sure to leave plenty of room.
But that was fair.
Aiden turned the bottle between his hands, nodded his thanks again, and then near drank the whole damn thing in one go. If it hadn't been for Crane turning his chair around and fixing Aiden in a stare, he'd have probably emptied it.
Instead, Aiden lowered the bottle from his lips.
"Alright," Crane said. "Time for ground rules." The way his voice dropped to a near-threat and how his eyes were solidly focused on Aiden, compelled Aiden to sit straighter.
"We want Waltz. You want your sister. And, look, I'm okay with that arrangement. I really am. But I don't know you. We don't know you. So. If shit hits the fan tomorrow when we're crossing into Villedor, I expect you to do as we say. There'll be no questions asked. No hesitation. If one of us tells you to hide, you hide. If we say run, you run. If we tell you to fucking bark, you better bark. Got it?"
Aiden's teeth clicked together briefly. "I can handle myself."
"I don't doubt it. But there isn't going to be a yourself tomorrow." Crane motioned to Zofia, then at himself, and finally at Aiden. "This isn't going to be just about you and we need to know you're not about to fuck us over because you think you know better."
Aiden exhaled slowly, irritation gnawing at the base of his throat. But he bit back on the I'm not a dumbass (with great effort, no less), and nodded. "I get it."
"Great." And just like that, Crane's voice bounced back up, the threat dropped aside. "Now get some shuteye. We'll be up at first light."