Christine's heart seemed to leap into her throat, instinctively stumbling forward in a run. Before she could get anywhere, however, a cold hand wrapped around her forearm, and a leg swung at her ankles from behind her, knocking her down to the ground. She landed on the floor with a grunt, her hands that had only just begun to scab from yesterday striking against the carpet with a burn. She found herself roughly rolled onto her back, and barely had the focus of mind to tug out the pistol from where it was tucked into the waistband of her jeans. To her horror, she found it deftly smacked from her hands, clattering off somewhere in the sea of chairs behind her, and looked up to see the muzzle of a rifle pointed right at her.

"Stay," her assailant huffed, "down."

Her chest rose and fell with fervent pants. "Please," she begged. "Please don't kill me. Please. Please."

"I won't need to if you would remain still," came that impossibly-deep voice. When her eyes focused enough to look up, she saw that the person looming above her was, A.) absurdly tall, and B.) wearing a fucking mask.

Another wave of panic began to rise in her throat and the man growled– actually growled!- at her.

"If you scream again," he said, "I will not hesitate to shoot. Now tell me. How did you get in here?"

Her hands shook from where she'd raised them by her face. "I– There was a window, by the entrance." she swallowed. "The board was broken and I went through. Please. I didn't know there was anyone else h-"

"Who are you with?"

"N-nobody? It's just me. I swear." She was running on pure adrenaline, now. "Look, whatever you want, you can take it. Honestly. I'm just traveling through and thought that this place looked pretty, I swear that's the only reason I came. Please just don't shoot me."

He stared at her long and hard for a few minutes. His eyes were… amber. Like a feline's, almost. And the mask on his face was a dark black, light from the distant windows above reflecting from its plastic surface. It almost looked like something a person would wear as a Halloween costume.

She couldn't deny that the entire ensemble, combined with the rifle to the face, gave off a deeply unnerving impression.

Meanwhile he seemed to be taking in her words, silent and still above her. Eventually he moved the rifle away from her face and took a few steps back. Warily, she shifted to a kneeling stance.

"You're not with the RF," he stated.

"...No."

Again he was silent. Those eyes were almost hypnotic in their intensity, and she'd never felt as scrutinized as she did in that moment. He stared at her like he could see right through her, read her thoughts. Whatever it was he thought of her, he must have made some sort of decision, for her made a beckoning nod with his head towards the door she'd entered through.

"I'll see you to the door," he said, tone dark, warning. "I do not expect to see you back here. If you do, I may not be as forgiving." And he waved his hand at her to stand.

Slowly she shifted to her feet. For a second he looked as though he bent to lift something from the ground, and then he swept past her towards the door, pausing for a second only to ensure she was following.

She did not dare disobey him. She still half-expected him to change his mind and shoot her like he'd threatened, but he didn't even seem to spare her a second glance as he led her back through the employee-only hallway. When they turned into the foyer, his eyes scanned the wall of windows until landing on the one she had entered in. His eyes narrowed. Instead of making her leave through the hole in the wood like she had assumed he would, he moved towards the front doors and withdrew a key from his pocket. He turned to look at her.

"You are going to get yourself killed if you are not careful where you go. You are lucky you did not run into someone more trigger-happy than I. In all honesty… it would be in your best interest to leave this city as quickly as possible," he said, inserting the key into one of the doors and moving a metal bar that had been propped within the handles to stop them from being opened. He held open the door for her in an absurdly polite manner. His other hand reached out towards her, holding something out– her gun. She had forgotten it had been knocked from her hands.

Christine took it from him and swallowed stiffly. Before she could open her mouth to respond, however, an earth-shattering boom broke through the air, sending the ground beneath them rumbling. Through the doorway, she could see a plume of smoke go up only a few blocks over from where they stood, and the sound of gunfire echoing towards her ears.

Christine immediately cringed and ducked back, eyes wide as she scanned the perimeter for signs of gripped the gun against her stomach as though it could somehow shield her from the outside world. Beside her, the man had tensed momentarily, and when her gaze flickered to him, he was watching her.

If she went out there, she thought, she was fucked.

Another blast rang out. The man was unmoved, though his long, claw-like hands tapped against the frame of the door. Whether it was in an impatient or contemplative manner, she had no clue.

She turned to him in a sudden burst of recklessness, or perhaps it was purely desperation. "I have food," she said, "They'll kill me out there. If you let me stay, just until the fighting is done I can promise I can pay you with something. Please."

"I do not need food." The voice said.

Her brain spiraled as the gunfire grew closer. "I'm heading to my father's old house. There's a safe in the basement with hospital-grade medical kits. Sutures, stitches, pain pills, you name it. It hasn't been touched in fifteen years, I can promise it's still there. If you let me stay here, I'll give you a cut."

His head tilted slightly, as though in thought.

Another sharp blast rang out, and just before she had given up hope that she wouldn't have to run out into the fight, he let his hand slip from the door. It closed shut with a clamor.

"Where is this house?" he asked.

"It's a few miles down," she said. "Across the highway. About a day's walk from here, I think."

"You 'think?'"

She glanced away. "I've never actually been."

"And how," he said after a long beat, "Am I to know if you're telling the truth about all this?"

"I am," she replied. "I promise. I came here with my father… he was killed. The man who shot him was with one of those guys out there. You yourself said you could tell I wasn't from around here. Why would you think I would be deep in this city if I didn't have a reason?"

Again, those cat-like yellow eyes leveled on her, analyzing her. She held her breath for a long moment, meeting his gaze. He did not say anything.

She tried another tactic. "There's safety in numbers, right? If you let me stay in here while they- while they fight, if they came in here I would be able to help you fight them off. You called them the what, the RF? I get the sense that you don't like them very much. You- you were gonna shoot me when you thought I was one of them."

He interrupted her with a sneer. "I have a hard time believing you would be any help in a fight."

"Okay– okay, fine, but if the RF are the people who are doing all that," she waved a hand towards the door, "Then I also want nothing to do with them. We have a common enemy."

Something about her words must have landed, or landed enough, at least, for his stance relaxed ever-so-slightly. He took a step away from the door. His head tilted towards the window she'd entered in through, and then his focus shifted back to her.

"Do you have a map of where this house is? A street name?" he asked.

She reached into her pocket to withdraw the paper, all wrinkled and creased from where it had been folded. She nibbled on her lip anxiously as she turned it towards him, pointing out where the small star was. His eyes flickered to the page, scanning its contents, before returning to her again.

"If you go there alone," he said, deep voice an almost melodic drawl, "You will undoubtedly be caught. For them to kill you would be a blessing. And they are not compassionate."

Goosebumps rippled up her arms. Did that mean he would help her? She held her breath. Again, his eyes seemed to bore into hers, as though searching for something– an ounce of weakness, of hesitation, of regret? Eventually he gave out an almost inaudible sigh, and turned the other direction, towards the employee-only door behind the desk.

"Follow me," was all he said.

Christine paused for only a moment before another blast rang out somewhere from the distance, muffled by the walls, yet sounding nevertheless, and she hurried to go after him. They entered the hall, and he only paused for a second to grasp the metal door that she hadn't even noticed having been there, and closed it firmly shut. He again took the metal key he'd used on the front doors, and stuck it into the keyhole until there was an audible click. It must've been some sort a master key to the place, she thought.

Then he continued on past her, turning past the shattered mirror and back into the auditorium. Instead of entering through any of the small side doors strewn here or there, he directly went towards the stage. His legs were much longer than hers, so she had to trot to catch up.

The man went to the stage and swept aside part of the giant curtains, he looked at her, and then pushed through it. She followed him through the darkened backstage, and then further through the labyrinth of seemingly-endless hallways, walls hung with photos of old productions, costumed people smiling and dancing before the camera, their movement locked in time. Further down they went, before arriving at a small, rather inconspicuous door. The masked man inserted the key into the lock, and swept the door open, pausing by the side to wait for her.

She stared between him and the door with brief uncertainty. If he truly wanted her dead, she supposed… he easily could have done it by then. And besides, what other choice did she have? Die outside, or die in here?

Christine stepped past him and through the door.

…

Inside the room was a… house. The space was decked with all the furnishings one would expect from a small apartment, couch against the far wall, plush rug underfoot. It looked as though it might have been a dressing room, once upon a time. Now, it was anything but.

She remained standing awkwardly by the entrance as he walked past her, setting the rifle down on a table towards the back of the room. There appeared to be a small kitchenette towards the back, a minifridge, microwave, and a few small coffee tables pushed together to form a sort of low counter. What truly amazed her, however, was the fact that the small electrical light on the ceiling was on.

"You have electricity here?" she asked. He looked at her like it was a stupid question, which, well, it kind of was. "How come none of the lights in the rest of the building are turned on?"

"To keep strays from coming in," came his reply.

She swallowed and looked down to her feet. The man went over to the bookshelf across from the couch, which she now noticed was filled with more guns and ammo than books. He removed the small black bag that she hadn't even noticed he'd been wearing and stored it on the shelf, before deftly slipping off the long, black coat he'd been clad in and hanging it on a hook set upon the wall. He wore a gray turtleneck and dark pants, and now she had a proper view of him in the light, she could see his hands were pale, almost vitamin-deficiency pale, and he had a thick crop of hair on his head slicked back.

And then there was the mask…

Now that she felt slightly less convinced that he was about to brutally murder her at any second, she found herself lingering on it more. The mask covered his entire face, save for the cutouts for his eyes and nostrils, and tied with a white ribbon around the back of his head. What reason would he have to keep his face hidden? To protect his identity? He did not want to be found within here, that much was for sure, and so was it simply another layer of protection… against the RF he'd mentioned?

The group that, in all likelihood, were the same ones that killed her father.

The man straightened and turned back towards her. She shrank slightly under his gaze. He was so tall. And intimidating.

"You do not have to remain standing by the door," he said, voice lower and… containing a more calm note than it had out in the auditorium and foyer. "You may sit, if you so desire. I give you my word that I will not harm you."

She shifted awkwardly but did not quite yet move to sit. He blinked at her. "If I truly wanted to kill you, I would have already done so."

Brutally honest, but it did succeed in relaxing her a slight amount. He was right. She took a few steps over to the couch and slowly lowered herself onto it, removing her backpack and holding it against her chest as she watched him.

"So," she began after the silence started to get to her. "What's the plan for the house? Are we going there later today? Tonight?"

"The RF are unlikely to finish fighting until tomorrow. We will leave in the morning."

"Oh… okay." Christine shifted. Where was she going to sleep? Not in here, she hoped. She didn't still think he was going to immediately kill her, but she certainly didn't trust him enough to sleep in the same room as him.

"You may spend the night in one of the other dressing rooms. I believe the one two doors down has a couch you could sleep on," he said, almost as though he were reading her mind. And then he turned away again. He had the map laid out on the table, it would seem, and his shoulders were hunched as he appeared to be examining it. After that, though, he did not speak to her again.

After a long, awkward minute she stood once more, holding her bag in her hands before her, before slinging it over her shoulder once more and heading towards the door. She opened it slightly and glanced back at him.

"I will… see you in the morning, then," she murmured.

The masked man gave no response.

Christine found the room two doors down, testing the knob to find it unlocked. Inside the space was dusty, and she coughed a little bit as she cleared off the small coffee table by the entranceway enough for her to set her things down. The room's layout resembled the other one a fair amount, although it was roughly half the size. Most importantly, like he'd said, there was a plush couch that she gave a cursory sweep before plopping herself down with a grunt. She tugged off her boots and rubbed at her feet. God. It felt like every single muscle in her body ached. She dropped her head against the wall and sighed, before leaning forward to rid herself of her coat and sweater. She'd been in the same pair of clothes for days, and she felt positively disgusting. She was half-desperate for a bath, and she knew that there must be some sort of bathroom setup around here somewhere if he lived here, but she also definitely wasn't going to return to the masked man's door to ask him where he kept his tub at.

Maybe after she reached the house she could find a river to throw herself in. Maybe Papa would know where the nearest–

Oh.

She pressed the pads of her fingers to her eyes. That familiar bubble of emotion rose to her throat again, but she smothered it down. She would not cry. Not here, in this large, vacant theater that Papa would've loved so much, where her only company was either his murderers or perhaps the most cold man she'd ever met, who very well might also kill her all the same. She wasn't sure.

No, she would not let herself cry. Crying was for children… she wasn't a child anymore. She was an adult, and she was alone.

Christine pulled her hands away from her face and stared down at them. Old blood was still encrusted beneath her fingernails. She tried fruitlessly to dig it out, before shoving her fists into her pockets and standing once more.

The window at the back of the wall was small, and it had darkened significantly since she had last been out, though it still wasn't fully night. Without a watch she had to guess there were still a few hours left until midnight. And she wasn't quite tired yet, nor ready to sleep. To keep the room lit, she gave the lightswitch an experimental flick. To her delight, it turned on. The fixture on the ceiling was dusty as all hell, so the light was left a little diluted– and of course she was far too short to reach to clear it off, but it did the job. It wasn't an awful space. She could see why the man would enjoy living here. And also why he would desire to keep it hidden.

Another bookshelf was set beside the window, same as with the other room, and she wandered closer to look at the covers that stuffed the shelves. There were few works that she recognized; The Count of Monte Cristo, an assortment of Shakespeare, yet the vast majority were unfamiliar to her. Quite a few had to do with practical information, weaponry upkeep and such, while others dealt more with sciences and medicine, a few very large textbooks on what appeared to be botany. Some weren't even in English. On the bottom shelf, the books were messier, some with post-it notes sticking from the pages, other with loose-leaf sheets stuffed in between the covers. She withdrew one book to find it full of compositions. All of them written in scratchy red ink, almost illegible. She flipped through the book. Almost none of the pages had titles, and the ones that did were minimalist, uncolorful. Sonata in E Minor. Most appeared to be for piano. They looked… complex. Who had written them all, she wondered?

She settled back on the couch, and slowly looked through the pages. At some point she pulled her sleeping bag out and draped it over the cushions, and she curled up there, holding the book up to the light as she read through the songs.

A page from the book slipped out from between the others, drifting into her lap. It had been tucked into the very back, and she must've loosened it when looking through all the others. It was a lovely piece, she thought as she looked it over. Something about it was so calm, almost like a lullaby, or a small tune that would play on a music box. The words were light, simple, a sharp contrast to the turmoil in her mind and in her heart… at the failing of the day… she had the whole world at her feet…

And for that moment, she found it the only comfort she could gain within that little room, and that small amount of peace was enough to allow herself to drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

…

It was with a discomforting uncertainty that she awoke the next morning, for a second not recognizing her surroundings before her memory began to return in full. A peek out the window showed it to still be fairly early in the morning, and she leaned back against the couch cushions with a huff. Later she would have to go back out and face the masked man again. Goodness, Christine. What have you gotten yourself into?

He hadn't specified an exact time as to when they would leave to find her old home, not to mention she had no actual way of tracking when that time would arrive, and so she tugged on a new pair of clothes and tied her hair back into a ponytail within a quick span of time, before repacking everything that she'd taken out of her bag the night before. She also had forgotten to eat dinner, she realized with a pang. She hadn't felt hungry whatsoever all of yesterday, the image of brutal violence still fresh on her mind, but apparently today her stomach decided otherwise.

She would eat after checking in with him on when their time frame for leaving was. Then, perhaps she could eat on the way. It's not as if her breakfast would consist of much. They'd found a half-open box of breakfast bars a few small towns back. They… she and her father.

She was all alone, now. No one to lean on, to joke with. The thought frightened Christine so badly that she pushed through the door without a second thought.

The hallway was silent when she ventured out, and she had to pause in front of the set of doors to try and remember which one he'd been staying in. She was fairly certain it was the one labeled five, but her knocking was light, hesitant, just in case she was wrong.

And then she thought to herself, damn, maybe she should have waited for him to fetch her. What if he was still sleeping? If she woke him up early, he might very well change his mind and kill her for real. She wasn't sure if she could quite blame him for that.

But then the door opened slowly, and the man was there, the same solemn, grimly dignified figure that he'd been the night before. He stared down at her emotionlessly, or as emotionlessly as he could seem with a mask covering 95% of his face. She looked up at him with slight apprehension for a second before he stepped to the side, bidding her to pass.

She did so.

The room looked much the same as it had the night before, although now the coffee table was piled with an assortment of ammo and combat knives of different shapes and sizes. He closed the door shut behind her.

"Are you all ready?" he asked, and she tore her gaze away from the knives to look back up at him. Goodness, she forgot how overwhelmingly tall he was. He had to be over six feet tall, easily.

"Oh. Yeah. I am," she swallowed.

He nodded in response but did not say anything more, eventually selecting a thick knife in a curved holster, attaching it to his belt. From that almost melodic voice, "Let us leave, then."

Outside the theater's protective walls, it was a frosty day out, cold enough that Christine almost reconsidered heading out at all for a second, before the man pushed past her and started walking. He still had the map– hadn't ever given it back to her, actually, and she could see it folded in his left hand. He seemed to walk with a silent, fluid sort of confidence, as if this destination were a place he'd traveled to millions of times.

Although, who knows? Maybe he had. Judging from his voice he seemed to be slightly older than her, so maybe he, too, was born in the city. Maybe unlike her he'd never left.

The sun made for a cautious figure above them as they truly began their venture in earnest, and their walk was almost entirely silent between them, staggered by the occasional explosion in the far distance, or howl of what she could only hope was an animal. This… man, for he had never told her his name (though she had not yet divulged hers, either, she realized) seemed perfectly complacent with walking without any sort of chatter, and it began to rub at Christine. They'd likely be stuck together for the rest of the day, bar any really awful interruptions, and as much as she was still anxious about him, she wasn't entirely against trying to become acquaintances with this man. Or something like that. Maybe if she got him to like her even the slightest bit, he would be less likely to blow off her face and make some sort of… luggage bag from her skin. She wasn't really sure what the current trend was with crazy people these days beyond blowing the shit up out of everything.

"I forgot to introduce myself the other day," she began, picking up her stride a little to match his walking speed. "I'm Christine. What about you?"

Zero response. She politely assumed he just hadn't heard her. Maybe the dude was hard of hearing, or something like that. "So… have you lived in the city long, then?"

His yellow eyes shifting towards her and then back onto the road was the only signal he'd heard at all. He gave zero response.

Undeterred, Christine clasped her hands together and tried again. "You seem to know this city pretty well. I grew up here until I was about eleven or so, so it's been awhile since I was here last." She tilted her head up at the ruined buildings, crumbling walls and burnt husks of cars. "Not much of it looks familiar anymore."

The masked man once again did a valiant job of pretending as though he did not hear her. She huffed under her breath. Fine. Be that way.

She was considering opening her mouth to speak again when a sudden noise sounded very close. Too close for comfort. Evidently he thought so as well, for he came to a sudden halt. Her heartbeat quickened in her chest. The masked man glanced back at her before quietly moving closer to the front corner of the building on their left, hidden slightly more from the open view that the street gave. Christine echoed his movements, doing her best to cause as little noise as possible as they pressed themselves to the plastic siding of what appeared to have once been a bar, now with the windows all smashed out. It was for this hard work in being absolutely inaudible that she was absolutely puzzled when he lifted what appeared to be a rock by his feet, and lobbed it towards an old parked car a few meters down from them. It clattered with a loud sound.

Christine peered around the corner with wide eyes as the masked man rested his hand on the pistol he had in a holster on his waist. She hadn't even noticed it before. Still, he didn't unclasp it, and the seconds passed long and slowly without any sight nor sound of another person.

Eventually he seemed to ease up after a while, hand lowering away from the holster. His gaze flitted back towards her briefly before he stepped around the corner and back onto the sidewalk. She hurried to catch up.

For the first time since they left the theater that morning, he spoke. "This area is often rife with idiots with guns. One of their outposts is nearby, and many times they have lookouts set up nearby here."

"They?" she asked. "The RF?"

"Yes."

She frowned at that, crossing her arms over her chest. She thought deeply for a few seconds, before turning towards him. "You said that they stood for… Resurrection Front, right? What is it exactly that they're trying to 'resurrect?'"

He sighed, and it felt acutely human to her in a way that she had not yet seen from him. "Their way of life from "before," I would guess. Add with it a healthy dose of American Nationalist-Supremacy, and you get a militia group determined to forcefully evict every person who doesn't wish to abide."

"So those people that they're fighting, they're just other people who live here?" she said. Or who are just passing through.

"Some of them have formed their own, smaller defensive groups. But, yes, their opponents are simply other people who live here."

Her brows furrowed as she digested this information in. Nervously she looked behind her to the way they'd heard the sound, the car long-passed by now, but she did not hear any other noise for the remainder that they stayed on that street. After that, all of the brief interest he seemed to have in holding conversation appeared to fizzle out entirety, and they spent another few hours walking in pure silence. At a little past mid-day she begged for a break so she could eat and relieve herself, and he obliged with an aloof ambivalence, standing aside and examining the knife he'd brought while she dropped her luggage down on the curb to dig out the jerky she'd buried in a bag within. She devoured it quickly, along with the small pack of crackers that she'd drawn with it, and doused the subsequent dryness in her throat with a swig of the canteen of water she had hooked to her bag.

At one point, out of sheer politeness as well as slight awkwardness for being the only one eating in the company of a stranger, she tried offering him a cracker. He simply glanced at it and didn't even bother to respond. She ate the cracker. It tasted just fine.

After that they took off again, and slowly their surroundings seemed to melt more and more into the look of suburban neighborhoods, with houses pushed far from the street until the long, overgrown grass seemed to swallow them up entirely.

She wasn't quite sure what it was that she recognized about the neighborhood first. Maybe it was the rusty old swing set in front of a drooping craftsman house. Or perhaps it was the metal bus-stop at the curb on her left, with the leaf-like arch that she'd always thought looked like a plant. Or perhaps it was the large manor that sat on the crest of the hill, with a winding driveway before it. Or perhaps it was…

The sight of that familiar street sign before her felt like a puzzle piece that she'd long thought lost being clicked into place. She was back. It all looked so different now, but she was back.

She must have noticeably stopped in her tracks, for the masked man finally paused walking in order to turn. He watched her, steadily. She thought about opening her mouth to speak, to say something, but no words seemed to come.

She was really going to be able to fulfill her father's wish to go back.

She could scarcely believe it.

Christine took the lead from that point forward, surpassing the masked man as they traversed the neighborhood. It was a weird sort of deja vu to be back; everywhere she turned was filled with memories of her early childhood, of a much more idyllic time. She had commonly rode her bike down to the fire hydrant on the left. Her and her father would go to cookouts at the house at the edge of the block. She had set up a lemonade stand, once, at the very same piece of sidewalk that she stood on.

And then there it was, directly in front of her. Her father's house. Her childhood home.

Her quiet companion stood silently behind her, yet she could feel his presence. He did not speak. Perhaps that was for the best.

The house looked so much like how she remembered it. The same bay windows on the door, the peeling green paint on the siding. The sidewalk was cracked from neglect, and nearly entirely covered by earth and plants, but when she pulled aside a few tufts of grass over at the corner that led to the front door, she could still see the little handprint that she had pressed into the drying cement when she was five. Christine was written beside it in large, scrawling letters.

A wave of emotion rising in her throat, she pushed through the weeds and tugged on the front door. It was locked, unsurprisingly. The keys were long gone. The only other entrance to the house was through the basement, and she had explicitly remembered that door being barred through the handles before they'd fled. It was then that she noticed one of the smaller windows on the side, one of the ones in the kitchen, with the glass crumbling from the frame. She returned around to the front where the masked man had been waiting the entire time.

"The doors are locked," she said, although he likely had figured that out already. "We'll have to go through the window. Sorry about that." It wasn't a very big window, and he, well, was definitely not as short as her.

His gaze drifted towards the window and then back towards her. "And what makes you so certain that the place hasn't been entirely ransacked?"

She glanced towards the broken window. From her view on the ground, the kitchen didn't seem ransacked, but that wasn't exactly saying a lot. She turned to look up at him again.

"Call it a gut feeling," she replied.

He tilted his head. "And if your 'gut feeling' proves wrong," came that velvety voice, chillier than ice, "What exactly do you think will happen?"

A cold pit began to pool in her stomach. Oh, she was tired of this man. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than for him to be gone and out of her hair.

"What do you think will happen?" she snapped, and then turned and climbed through the window. From the corner of her eye he stood still, gaze trailing her as if in deep thought, before he smoothly pulled himself through the window as well.

The inside of the house was very dark. A thick layer of dust carpeted every surface, and it stirred up with each step of her shoe. Cobwebs and dirt had overtaken the floor, and piles of rotten leaves swept in through the broken window were littered all over the floor. The beautiful hardwood, she thought, must be in awful shape if even just the linoleum of the kitchen looks this bad.

Behind her, the masked man swept in like a ghost, and she ignored him for the most part as she made her way through the cluttered house towards the basement door. The furniture was still intact, the couch across from the entertainment center that held a television, the generic portraits and paintings that hadn't been important enough to take with still hanging on the walls. He'd been wrong. The place hadn't been broken into. It looked as though it hadn't even been touched at all.

The basement door sat at the back of the hallway, built into the wall where the staircase ascended above it. She turned the knob and pushed, but the door only gave a little bit, stuck at the bottom. She shoved with her shoulder, but it still didn't budge. It was jammed good.

She had the distinct sense of someone coming close to her, the hairs on the back of her neck raising as she looked up to see the masked man standing directly behind her. He reached out a hand to push, hard, against the door. It opened up smoothly for him as though it had never had an issue at all. Behind it lay a narrow, white-painted stairwell that she vaguely recalled from her youth. When she chanced a glance up to his face, he beckoned her past with a hand, meaning clear. Her first.

Okay. She sucked in a breath, clicked her flashlight on, and descended.

…

The basement was as eerie as she remembered it to be. As a child, Papa hadn't ever wanted her down there, saying that the old owners had left lots of nails and rat poisons and who-knows-what hidden around that she could get into. She'd been down there a few times with him once she was older, but then they were forced to flee as soon after the asteroid first hit, when everyone was just beginning to reel from the losses and the fighting got dangerous, so she had never truly gained the chance to see what the space down there was like on her own.

Of course, back then the fighting had been different. It had been the feeble remains of the National Guard up against the terror and starvation of a city full of survivors.

Christine crept past the desk that she recognized to have been Papa's workstation, and though she'd thought the same up on the main floor, everything truly was untouched down here. An old broken lamp sat on the table, screwdriver resting right beside it as though her father had only just placed it down and was coming back any time now. Something about the sight of it made her heart ache.

And then she saw what the entire point of them leaving their safe home, miles away from here, had been. The closet door with a thick padlock on it, lying in the back of the dark room. The combination was burned into her memory, the result of many sleepless nights on the road when Papa had murmured the numbers over and over, as though with the exhales of his breath into the chilly air he could wipe their worries away. She entered the combination, and it was with both simultaneous sadness and relief that she heard the click as the lock came loose.

She pushed open the door to reveal the interior, the shelves stocked with cans of soup and non-perishables, boxes of noodles alongside small cardboard boxes marked with a white cross on them to signify their first aid use. Her throat bobbed at the site. It was all Papa's, and yet he wasn't there to see any of it.

The little boxes were what they were both there for, and so she pulled two off the shelf, before turning to where the masked man stood by the doorway. Each box held multiples of supplies, suture kits, bandages, painkillers. She only needed some to carry back, enough to last her and Antoinette and Meg for however long they needed them. With her father gone, there was no way she'd be able to fit more.

A hollow feeling rested in her stomach. "Take whatever you want," she said. "I don't need any of the rest."

She pushed past him and returned up the stairs, holding the boxes to her chest tightly. In the hallway, instead of moving back towards the kitchen, or even the living room, she turned and began to proceed up the flight of stairs that led to the second floor, each step creaking beneath her with a groan. Silently, mindlessly, she made her way towards the farthest door in the back, nudging the worn door open slightly to reveal a small bedroom, with brown drapes on the wide curtains that flanked each side of the bed. Its sheets were smoothed and folded neatly at the foot, and the mattress was soft as she set the boxes down on it.

Her parent's bedroom.

It was the item in the corner that Christine was truly drawn to, a small acoustic guitar with a cherry red finish, still just as bright and vibrant as she remembered it when she wiped away the dust. Her fingers reached to touch the strings– it was sorely out of tune, yet to her ears it felt perfect to her all the same.

She lifted her father's guitar off the stand, gently taking it into her hands the way one would cradle an infant. She moved to sit on the bed, feeling the mattress springs whine beneath her as she folded her feet, and delicately reached up to the tuning pegs until each string sounded good enough to her ears. It was missing the B string, and being left out to the cold had left the wood slightly warped, but she was beyond caring. Her fingers moved to make a chord, instinctive muscle memory, and she strummed. Even just that simple sound brought tears springing to her eyes.

Christine couldn't say what drew her to slowly pluck out the notes of the song that she'd found in the book the prior night. She could still envision the hand-written music sheet, the lyrics beneath it, and she let the words drift out beneath her breath. There was something so hauntingly beautiful to it, a calm breeze of a melody. At the failing of the day…

She couldn't quite remember all the words to the song, and eventually she simply began to hum, before letting the guitar fade out entirely.

She rested her chin on where her hand curled at the body of the guitar.

It was all too much, she thought. It was all too little. Nothing felt the same without him there. She stared around the room through blurry eyes and it did not even feel like a home at all, anymore. It was just a mausoleum.

A flicker of movement at the edge of her vision had her turning her head towards the door. The masked man stood there, and his gaze met hers steadily, although she could find no glimmer of disdain as she thought she had viewed earlier. When he spoke, his voice was soft.

"Erik," he said. "My name is Erik."