In which Zofia decides to give Aiden a toy.

Chapter 13

Off To The Races

It'd been a while since Aiden had dreamt of Mia. Properly dreamt of her at any rate. He didn't count the muddled nightmares or the countless times when he'd chased a faint, Mia-shaped-idea through an endless, dark hallway.

Right now, Aiden dreamt of that same hallway, though it looked different. Felt different. Bright light poured in around him. A carpet ran the length of it. Doors stood on the left and right, open, and he could hear voices from them. And Mia was there.

Right in front of him.

Not an idea. Not the fading memory of a voice.

Right. There.

Aiden reached for her.

Mia laughed. She whipped around, her long hair bouncing over her shoulders, and ran. She didn't need shoes. The carpet was soft. Spongy even. And she didn't need tears, because no one took him from her and no one took her from him.

Aiden gave chase. He'd come to be a child again. Careless. Happy.

Ahead of him, Mia spun in a circle, the gown she wore whipping around her knobby five-year-old's ankles. It was a long gown. White. It made him remember a sharp, chemical scent. He didn't want to think of that.

"Aiden," she taunted. "Aidenbabaiden! You're slow!"

Oh god. He'd forgotten she'd called him that.

Had forgotten so much—

"Aiden," A man's voice said. It crashed into his dream, unwanted and uninvited.

So. So much. Aiden did not want to wake.

"Yo. Kid. Up and at'em."

Someone kicked him. Twice. They weren't hard kicks, but momentarily stuck as he was between waking and scrambling to hold on to the dream, Aiden didn't much care whether he'd been lightly tapped or stepped on; a kick was a kick.

And unnecessary.

Groggy, he sat upright and rubbed his knuckles over his eyes; right before he threw Crane (the man who'd called him away from Mia and then kicked him) a scowl. One which he hoped wasn't a complete failure.

Crane met the scowl with a grin.

Okay. A failure then.

"Fi is waiting outside." Crane cocked his head towards the door and gave Aiden room to stand.

Reluctantly, Aiden did just that, his movements a bit stiff. So he stretched once he'd gotten his feet under him, until his spine popped and— Crane held something under his nose.

Blinking, Aiden froze mid-stretch, his arms all up in the air.

The machete. The same one he'd gotten to borrow back in the tunnel. Crane held it out to him, though this time it came with its scabbard, along with a belt that was currently wrapped loosely around the sheathed blade.

"You'll need this more than me tonight," Crane said.

Aiden's arms dropped and he made to scratch at the back of his neck. Halfway there, he remembered not to touch, which meant he got to play off the nervous gesture by grabbing for the weapon instead.

"You're turning down Hakon, but you're sending me with her and then you're trusting me with a weapon too?" he asked before he'd had a chance to turn the words over in his head. In hindsight, it'd been a bit of a dumb thing to say.

"What? No. I don't trust you." Crane's tone held a lively sort of threat. "But Spike took a shine to you, so I'm going to let you surprise me by living up to the old man's faith, alright?"

Aiden wanted to nod and pull something clever from his buzzing mind, but Crane didn't give him a chance to. He loomed closer. A lot closer. And Crane had plenty of inches on Aiden, he didn't need to try very hard. The end result was that Aiden became crucially aware that they were alone in the shack. And how the sling Crane wore on his arm only seemed to make him more intimidating, rather than taking some of that edge off.

How? Aiden had no clue. He swallowed and set his jaw.

"You're about to go out there with Fi. Just you. And her. And you know what that means?"

Aiden opened his mouth—

—and closed it again, since the question had been rhetorical. Crane kept talking.

"That means you're going to hang on to every word she says. No more thinking you're some untouchable hot shit. You listen to her."

Anger bit at Aiden's insides (fanned on by embarrassment, because he knew he'd fucked up back in the tunnel). He wanted to defend himself, but Crane cut him off before he'd gotten the first word out.

"'cause if you don't, she will leave you."

Once again, Aiden's mouth snapped shut. His brows furrowed. Then, when he was met with a level stare and a lot of silence, he cleared his throat and said, "Okay, I admit that wasn't what I expected to hear."

Crane's good shoulder gave a casual shrug. "The part where I tell you how I'll fold your spine down the middle if anything happens to her is implied."

Aiden's imagination promptly supplied him with material he could have lived without. "Spine. Folded. Got it."

"Great. Look—" Crane sighed and his eyes flicked to the side. Like he was struggling wrangling the right words together. It took a while. But once he'd found them all his attention turned back to Aiden. "—the shit Fi is trying to pull tonight needs two people. And she'll look out for you if you look out for her, but it's up to you to not give her a reason to come back alone. Capeesh?"

Aiden nodded. "Capeesh".

Outside, a late afternoon sun threatened to drop behind distant mountains and a not-so-distant wall. Aiden regarded that same sun briefly, wondering just how long they'd let him sleep. It'd been good for him though. He felt creaky and he ached, but no more than normal, really.

Even if normal was a thing of the past for him now, wasn't it?

He gave his shoulder— the one nearest to the bite —a quick roll and then tried very hard to think about something else.

"Finally," Hakon said, providing him with the distraction he'd been looking for. Namely the mission. His mission. The don't give her a reason to come back alone, mission as Crane had put it.

"I think she was just about to leave," Hakon continued from where he leaned with his back to the railing surrounding his shack. Zofia perched on that very same railing, though she'd put a good distance between them.

"Was she, huh?" Crane's question came with a raised brow.

"She was," Zofia said, her voice flat. Then she hopped off the railing, flipped her cap from her head, and gave her scalp a thorough scratch. The olive cloth covering her hair she kept on.

"Without this?" Crane held up the key that had gotten Hakon all worked up earlier.

Aiden still thought it didn't look anything like a, well, key, but what did he know?

Zofia shoved the cap back on (its bill pointing forward now, rather than riding low against her neck) and snatched the key from Crane's hand to stash it in her sparrow-tailed jacket.

"You'll stay in touch," Crane said. It was an expectation, rather than a question, and one that came with terms. "Every half hour—"

Zofia didn't let him finish the sentence. Her hand came up (the one which still had all its fingers) and she caught Crane's pinky finger with hers. Crane's words stopped short.

And Aiden? Well. Aiden kind of felt like that rock in someone's shoe again. The very same rock which had recently been flicked from said footwear and then immediately forgotten about. A rock which, currently, intruded on something sacred. On a ritual of sorts. On a promise shared wordlessly, tucked only into the fleeting touch of a pinky-swear and a glance that lasted maybe a moment too long.

He looked away.

Somewhere in his gut, an odd, squirming emotion pieced itself together from years upon years of neglect.

It was weighty.

Dense.

And painful.

Aiden didn't know how to label it, but he didn't need to slap a name on it to know he disliked it. So he distracted himself by belting the machete's sheath to his waist and chasing that dream he'd had. The one with Mia in it. The one that'd almost faded entirely. He had trouble putting it back together and wondered how much of it he imagined and how much of it he'd actually dreamt.

A tap on his shoulder had him come out of it. "You might wanna get jogging, kid."

Aiden's head snapped up to Crane. "What?"

Crane, his brows tilting at an amused angle, jabbed a thumb into the general direction of away from here.

Turned out Zofia had decided to get a headstart on the whole leaving him behind bit. While he'd stood around like a Biter on a hot summer's day— dumb and wilting —she'd run off without him.

"Ah, shit," Aiden blurted and went after her, all the while fumbling with the belt.

Aiden found himself outpaced.

"Could you—" he started, his hands finally free after he'd buckled the damn belt. Just in time, too. While Hakon's shack had been connected to the next roof over by a rickety bridge made of wooden planks and street signs, all held together by nylon rope, the roofs following that were a lot less traversal friendly. "—hey! Wait up!"

She didn't.

The next flat roof had grown weeds tall enough to whip at her knees as she darted across it and not once did she look back or break her stride. The weeds ghosted against Aiden's calves as he hurried after her, but it didn't matter how quick he liked to think himself to be, he couldn't gain on her. Especially once she reached the ledge and— without a moment's pause —leapt the gap to the next building. As if the distance between the buildings was no more than an inconvenient puddle, rather than a tall drop into a dark alley filled with gnashing teeth.

"Seriously?"

She landed quietly, her momentum never lost.

Aiden skidded to a halt at the ledge. He peered down. Yeah. There were plenty of gnashing teeth down there. Along with broken bones for those who didn't make the jump. Aiden liked his bones unbroken. He sighed, took a few steps back, and convinced his queasy stomach that this was going to be just fine.

It was, even if he landed with a lot less grace than her, stumbling as his feet hit the next roof over. But he didn't fall on his ass, so there was that, and Aiden caught himself, set his jaw, and ran a little harder.

After he'd nearly lost her twice between cinder chimneys and unevenly raised roofs, it occurred to Aiden that Zofia might have been trying to do just that: lose him.

"Hey. Listen," he called, right as she hopped down onto a lower hanging roof cosied up to the concrete block for a building they'd just crossed. They'd gradually climbed higher buildings as they'd moved away from Hakon's shack, which laid out more and more of the city around him. Theoretically, anyway. Zofia didn't exactly give him much time to look around.

"I'm sorry for the shit I pulled back at the tunnel, alright? I panicked."

He reached the edge she'd dropped from. The roof below was tipped, rather than flat, with small, red shingles that'd been mostly covered in various shades of green. Zofia had already balanced across half the narrow crest topping the roof by the time he considered joining her. She held one hand near her back, shoving down the bow so it wouldn't swing, and kept her other one slightly extended by her hip.

Aiden liked to think he had pretty great balance, so the crest didn't intimidate him much. He jumped after her. Landed. Swung his arms up — and began putting one foot in front of the other, his conviction that he'd catch up to her rising with every step.

"I said I'd help," he blurted between one step and the next. "So that's what I am going to do, okay? But I'd really, really, like it if you didn't try so hard to make a fucking liar out of me by ditching me."

She'd reached the other end. The house underneath them had been surrounded by two identical square blocks of concrete (shops, he figured) and that meant she had to climb up a taller ledge. Which she did. Quick as a squirrel went up trees.

And because chances were she'd be able to lose him for real if he lost sight of her for too long, Aiden rushed forward.

Unfortunately, it turned out his balance wasn't that great after all.

"Shit!"

Zofia had been ready to ignore Aiden. Entirely. All the way until she heard the soft pop of shingles coming loose, followed by the tink-tink-tink of them sliding against each other.

And not to forget that wee curse.

Zofia watched the young Pilgrim hit the sharply inclined roof. His feet kicked. His hands grasped upwards, but he'd slid down too far already, what with how the shingles had grown slick with moss and lichen.

The house was three stories high.

Zofia's feet carried her to the corner of the much taller roof. Aiden had gone halfway down by then. His slide picked up speed.

She twisted her bow free, an arrow already ready and her mind comfortably empty. One more step, and she stood right at the edge of the taller roof, the bowstring pulled back. Aiden noticed. His eyes went a little wide in that split second when he didn't realise she wasn't aiming at him. He deserved that, she thought.

Then the arrow hissed through the air and struck the roof with a dull thud. It wobbled happily.

"Grab it," she said and Aiden did, snatching at the arrow on his way down. It stopped his slide just before his feet would have gone over the ledge. Shingles went flying where he hadn't and landed in the street below. They shattered. Noisily. Somewhere nearby, curious howls rose from throats not meant for howling (they were screeches, really) and then echoed through the tight streets, drawing closer.

It was all the encouragement Aiden needed. He braced himself properly, with the arrow getting him started, and began a hurried sideways skitter up the roof. Once he'd made it, she met him at the ledge and offered him an arm.

Which begged the question: Why'd she had a change of heart? Why'd she decided she'd let him have a go at helping, when she could have just as well kept on going while he'd scaled the roof? He'd have been fine, she wagered. Even if something caught him. Coulda fought it all off with Crane's machete and then slunk back to Hakon's shack.

Aiden might have had the same thought when he eyed her arm, regarding it with the same distrust as when he'd eyeballed the roasted pigeon she'd offered him only a short day ago.

"Come on, before I change my mind," she said.

He nodded. Zofia hauled him up.

They'd put some distance between them and the spot of noise before Aiden came up next to her and cleared his throat.

"Quick thinking," he said. "With the arrow, I mean. Pretty sure I'd have gone over without it."

She shrugged. "Practice. You're not the first clumsy runner I got to deal with."

The Ah-ha-ha? Aiden spluttered up after that was squarely lodged between confusion and embarrassment. "You mean Crane?"

"Mhm. Some days he's got two left feet."

"I— okay, I see. So, you two've been traveling together since Harran?"

Zofia sucked in air through her nostrils and did her very best to accept that, sometimes, you just got unlucky and were left with company that liked to talk.

"Mhm," she confirmed, omitting every nuance to their situation as she did so.

Besides, she was busy getting them to their destination, so she ought to have been excused for being curt.

Aiden went on anyway. "Was it anything like this? Like Villedor?"

"It was hotter. And it stank loads more."

"Stank more?"

They reached a chasm of sorts between them and their goal, a wide, two-lane street flanked by mostly boarded-up shops. Whatever hadn't been boarded up stood staring at them with gaping holes where windows and doors used to be. Zofia had herself a quick think on how to best cross it while her memory returned with the stink of rotting ex-people, rubbish, fish, and dreams.

"Villedor is all scabbed over. Like an old wound. Sure, you've got people stink, but that's living stink and that's different than a city that's only just started rotting. Plus, Harran had all these fires. Plastic. Tires. You name it. They'd burn for days if no one put them out quick."

She'd found a path across and pointed at it: a row of sturdy, decorative street lamps with wide backs that lined up near-perfectly. It'd do.

"Bit like a fresh Biter will stink more than an old one," she added. "Now watch your step."

Aiden did watch his step. Though he looked a little winded by the time they'd reached the other side. His neck was an angry kind of red (the rope burn must have been smarting a lot, she figured) and his short hair stuck to his skull, sodden with sweat.

Zofia didn't slow on his behalf, and, exhausted or not, Aiden kept up with her, all the way until they'd reached their destination: a high-rise medical center with its facade decorated by gigantic GRE-sponsored messages about safety and health and we're the good guys, promise. The old canvas was still plenty readable and plenty infuriating, and Zofia wondered if it'd be acceptable for her to spend half the night cutting it down.

Out of principle alone, really.

She chewed on her bottom lip.

Back to business though. The center's bottom floors had been sealed by means of fixing thick, turquoise GRE branded tarp to everything, leaving only room for ventilation tubes that hung from it all like someone had pulled the building's entrails out. The entrance too had been wrapped up and its front door had been replaced by a GRE access gate.

QUARANTINE ZONE, read the sign above it.

Further up, the medical center's original sign had declared defeat about a decade ago. St. Joseph, MEDICAL CE TER the large letters spelled, with most of them hanging a bit askew. The N had come right off.

After watching the building in silence for a while, Zofia found them a roof with a decent view of the center's front, high as they could get and surrounded by someone's dream of a rooftop garden. Since that someone was nowhere to be seen, Zofia figured the "garden" could use the company of two Pilgrims. Least until nightfall. Then they'd move on.

A narrow shed leaned close to the edge, filled with empty buckets, sacks of what might or might not have been soil, and a small selection of gardening tools. Tools which Zofia thought would do well enough moonlighting as weapons. In a pinch, anyway. Weeds and veggies sprouted from wooden soil beds standing at the shed's base, and a small army of old clay pots hosted bushels of lavender, stalks of camomile, and even some mint (if her nose was to be trusted).

Bees buzzed about happily.

There was an upside to the end of the world she'd come to appreciate.

It could be a real peaceful thing.

Zofia grabbed two buckets from inside the shed, picked a corner near the "garden", turned both buckets upside down, and set them on the ground. One she claimed for herself and the remaining bucket attracted Aiden not a second later. He slumped down on it with a sigh, his legs stretched out and his head falling back into his neck.

While he remained like that for a while, his eyes turned to the sky, Zofia unlatched her bow harness, along with her quiver, and worked the pack off her shoulder, grateful when the pressure of all those extra straps on her eased up. Then she dug out her water bottle, had herself a drink, and thought about Aiden's question again.

Was it anything like this? Like Villedor?

Her eyes wandered to the wall.

Dear god.

She felt homesick.

Not in a I miss Harran and nearly dying every day kind of way, no. But, in some roundabout fashion, Harran had been simpler than anything that'd come afterwards. It'd been straightforward. Honest, nearly, in how it tried to kill her.

And it'd given her a family.

Villedor though? It'd given her nothing yet except one mediocre fright, a moping Crane, and a reasonably pretty cityscape to look at. That, and she'd never gotten along with how Villedor— its people —liked to think it was the only dot on the map that still mattered.

Aiden's mind refused to settle. It raced back and forth, first rushing to thoughts of finding Mia, and then speeding right back to that not-small matter of how he'd been infected. And how that had fundamentally changed… everything.

Yeah.

Everything.

Or had it?

His previously dashing thoughts piled to a halt. He glanced left, where Zofia had only just raised the radio to her ear.

"We're at the lab," she said. "I'll let you know when we'll go in." Her thumb eased off the transmit button and a pause followed. "What? I said we, Crane. Yes, he's still with me. No, I didn't—" Another pause. "Crane—" Her eyes darted towards Aiden. "—now why-ever would I try and shake him, hm?"

Aiden snorted.

"Yes. Yes, I'll be careful." She put the radio away — and chucked her water bottle at Aiden.

"Thanks. And now we do what? Wait?"

Zofia nodded.

He turned the bottle between his hands. "I can't say I'm thrilled about being out here at night. And ah— aren't you— don't you need UV light? Oh shit, I didn't think of that. Those inhibitors are supposed to help me for a while, right? But what about you? What if we don't find any?"

"I'll be fine."

"How will you be fine?"

"You ask a lot of questions," was her response. Though while the words were curt enough, her voice didn't carry any edge to it. If anything, Aiden thought she sounded faintly amused. "And you're a real chatty one, hm?"

Aiden's mouth ran with the first answer that popped into his head. "Yeah, well, you know what it's like being a Pilgrim. Most of us end up travelling alone, which means we don't get to be chatty often."

Zofia cocked her head to the side and eyed him for much longer than she had at any point before. "So you're having a go at catching up."

"Maybe."

She kept staring, once again reminding him of that hungry settlement cat looking to score herself a bird. Aiden, suddenly feeling like he'd sprouted feathers and that he had shrunk to about finch size, thought a quiet Gulp.

"And we're about to sit here," Zofia said, every word slow and deliberate. "For an hour. Maybe longer." And her stare? That did not let up. If anything it began to snare his insides like the rope had his neck earlier today.

Double gulp, but what the hell, right? "Yeah. Lots of time. For lots of questions. Like, how come you aren't wearing a Pilgrim's badge?"

Zofia finally looked away, and Aiden's lungs, relieved, remembered that they were supposed to be about twice their current size.

"I am wearing one," she said.

"Where?" Yeah. He'd committed himself now, there was no stopping. Something about hills and running downhill and whatnot.

"Right here." She tapped at a spot on her jacket barely an inch below her shoulder, but all he saw there were a bunch of colourful dots stitched into the fabric. They were arranged in a vague fishhook pattern.

By the time it clicked, Aiden felt a bit dumb. "Oh. The Scorpius constellation. I get it now. Can't believe I missed that."

"Most people do."

"Yeah, but most people aren't Pilgrims who use the night sky to figure out where to go. I should have seen it. Say, how does that work for you anyway?" Clever redirect, he thought to himself. Right back to the question he'd wanted answered earlier. Maybe this angle would work? "You and Crane, I mean. You're infected. Pilgrims don't last when they're infected, not typically. I figured once anyone gets bitten all they can do is hope to find a settlement with a decent supply of UV light and power to keep them running all year round. And how many of those are out there these days?" Aiden paused. Then, after he took a breath that'd gone down a lot shakier than he'd wanted it to, he continued with a quiet, "I figure if I don't find Mia here I'm out of luck."

"We make it work," she said, explaining absolutely zero once again and giving rise to a swell of irritation in Aiden's chest.

"How? How do you make it work?" He noticed his voice climbing, took one sharp inhale, and collected himself. "Look, I'm not trying to pry, okay? All I'm trying to do is figure out what's going to happen to me. Things like… is this it for me? Am I done? Am I going to be stuck here?" With the tail end of the sentence, Aiden flung a hand out, indicating Villedor at large.

She shrugged. "I'd wager Villedor isn't the worst of places you could put down roots in. If you can get over that whole hanging bit, anyway."

"I've never had roots. I don't know how to…" Frustrated, Aiden dropped his hands onto his knees, gripping them. "Root."

"Then consider this," she said, though when Aiden looked at her, she didn't as much as glance his way. Her eyes were set forward. "What if you find your sister? What if she's got a proper life here? If she's near your age she might even have a family of her own already. Maybe even a kid or two. What'd you plan on doing if you hadn't gotten bitten? Taker her away from here?"

Aiden blinked lamely. "I—"

Hadn't thought of that.

Zofia carried on. "Hakon said that a lot of people in Villedor are infected. Enough to fill entire holds, he called them. Like the Bazaar. And as long as they've got a biomarker, they're considered no different than anyone else. I mean, look at how he treated me. He didn't look at me sideways once, even after he saw my bite. You've got no idea how refreshing that was after how I always got to wear a bloody mask every time Crane and I walk into a settlement. So if you're about to be stuck anywhere, then what place better than with your sister in a city that's got a stable enough power grid to sustain a large pop of infected?"

Aiden's knees bounced under his hands. His racing mind kept... racing. Though at least it seemed to have stopped whipping back and forth from one disaster to the next and found some sort of end goal to race towards. Still racing though. He sighed.

"Yeah. Yeah, alright," he said.

"You're upset."

You think? Aiden nearly scoffed but settled for a nod instead.

"And scared."

Now he scoffed. If felt scoff-worthy. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

"Fair. I was bloody terrified when I got bit. Couldn't sleep for days, 'cause what if I woke up turned?"

"When… ah. When did you…?"

"Get bitten? In Harran."

"Harran?" he blurted and sat up straight. "But— that's before the Fall. That's before the virus mutated." And back then, daylight (or the manmade variety) would have done nothing to keep her from turning. She'd have needed Antizin. Constantly. There was hardly any of that left anymore. And yet here she sat; two decades later; still human. Aiden's mind went back to zipping frantically back and forth.

Zofia shrugged. "It's complicated. Maybe Crane'll tell you all about it one day."

"Why not you? Right now? You said it yourself. We got an hour to kill."

"Because I don't like talking about it." She flipped the pack she'd parked between her knees open and dug a hand in. "Or talking. In general."

For a moment, Aiden considered asking again anyway. Then he relearned his manners, and, instead, watched quietly as she pulled something from the pack.

He'd try again another day.

Or maybe he'd ask Crane.

Or maybe you don't live through the night and it doesn't matter anyway.

Idiot.

"What's that?" said idiot asked after a moment of staring at what Zofia had unpacked. First, he'd thought she'd brought the sidearm Crane had smuggled into Villedor, but... no. It was too large. Too bulky. Plus, guns didn't come with pronged arms and clamps — or with thick bands of rubber strapped to them. "Is that a slingshot?"

"It is," she said, pronouncing it more like 'tis." Then she traded him a look. "A hunting one. She's how I got the pigeon you ate."

"She," Aiden echoed, suddenly amused.

"Mhm. Ever used one?"

"One like that? Nah. Tried one made from sticks when I was a teen once though."

"Hit anything?" she asked, once again drawing something from her pack. A satchel, its top tied with string. She wiggled it open and plucked out a tarnished silver coin.

"Absolutely nothing," he admitted eventually, his curiosity waking as she rolled the coin between her thumb and index finger; on the one hand which only had those two left. The coin's edges were sharp. Way sharper than they should have been. Like someone had filed them down. Aiden shifted on the bucket, repositioning himself to face her.

"Fantastic." Zofia raised the slingshot, set the coin against the rubber band, and pivoted her torso to face a reedy, thin tree sapling that tried growing on the rooftop garden with all its artificial soil beds. The sapling stood off on the far end. She pulled the band back, sighted for not even a beat, and released.

The small, thin tree wobbled. The tarnished silver coin stuck to its bark, where it caught the evening sun with a playful glint.

"Now you've got an hour to learn how to land a hit on that," she said and tossed the slingshot at him.

Aiden caught it with both hands. The weapon was weighty. Solid.

And, hoo boy, did it turn out that an hour was nowhere near enough or what?