Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Danielle turns the screwdriver over in her hands, reading the marks scratched into the handle. One set of marks bears her old name, and the other bears her father’s. Both are the same name. She is still conflicted about how she feels about this.

She flips the screwdriver over, wrapping her shaking fingers over the engraved names. She rests the point on the battery compartment of a beaten old radio, turning the small tool over in her hands until the Phillips head seals tightly into its intended location.

Her grandmother taught her how to fix radios, a long time ago. She’d said that the world wasn’t always like this, locked away in a shining silver box in the desert. She said that the radio could tell her things, like a guardian angel.

Danielle is still conflicted about how she feels about this.

The battery casing fits back on the radio like it was always meant to be there. Danielle turns the small blue box over in her hands, rubbing a smudge of dirt off of the speaker. She doesn’t want to hold her breath, but she is. The antenna reaches out a long, long way, probably long enough to reach through the communications barrier and out into . . .

Into somewhere.

Into the Zones.

Danielle’s grandmother swore up and down that the radio told her things in her youth, told her where to go, where to run, where to hide, and when she was caught. Danielle’s grandmother swore that the radio could help them fight back the ever-pressing fist of BotCo. Danielle’s grandmother was dead now some three years.

She’d never made it out of the city.

Danielle had gone to the funeral, of course, a digital hologram that flickered in artificial rain. Her whole family had come along, dressed for mourning, but they hadn’t really been sad. Danielle was sure that she was the only one who’d actually mourned for her grandmother.

That was why she’d finally dug the radio out of her little storage box last night. It was her grandmother’s radio, the one that the guardian angel had spoken to her from. It was a rounded blue thing, with a big speaker in the middle and small dials along the bottom. A handle protruded from the top, a little leather strap that had been fixed many times. All the radio had needed was a good cleaning, even after the years it had lain in storage.

And now here it is, sitting in front of Danielle. On the desk of her studio apartment, nestled deep into the city. She’s alone here, or as alone as she can be when the city is constantly watching. She wonders if she should turn it on.

And then, unbidden, her hand reaches out. Flicks the switch on the side. Presses her thumb to the dial and turns it, tuning the signal, listening to the static that suddenly engulfs her.

From that static, there comes a voice.

And from that voice, there comes a story.

~

Olivier steps out of his assigned-vehicle-transport, a white sedan with dark tinting on the windows. He shades his eyes from the sun, taking in the desert.

It’s mostly sand here, he surmises. Sand, a little bit of scrubgrass, the last crumbling remainders of highway underfoot. He can see formations rising in the distance made of heavy sandstone. Heat waves shake around him.

He knows what he’s here to do, though, and he’s never liked sitting around and waiting for something to happen. Olivier pops open the trunk of the transport and retrieves his bags, quick shoulder-slung things that hang from him like sheet ghosts. His weapons are surprisingly light, both they and their chargers concealed within one satchel that resembles an old -fashioned rifle case. The other bags are for him—changes of clothing, study materials, bits and bobs from the city that he thinks he’ll need in the desert. In total, he is carrying two suitcases, a backpack, his weapons bag, and a small, easily-concealed satchel that fits both his personal Puritan blaster and an MRE. Olivier recognizes that if he and his new employer are captured, or if he needs to make a quick escape from a dangerous situation, the small satchel might come in useful. At the very least, he knows that he can subsist for three days on one MRE alone, provided he can also find a source of water.

Olivier hefts the second suitcase out of the transport and sets it on the broken pavement. Then he nods to the driver, who in return salutes him and starts the transport. In less than five minutes, Olivier is alone in the desert with nothing but the array of travel bags around him.

He squints out into the depths of the desert, trying to make something out other than the harsh brightness of the desert sun. In the distance, far off the road, there appears to be a ramshackle building, tin-roofed and reflective.

Olivier hefts his bags and sets off, rolling the suitcases in his wake. The sand is difficult to tread, and it keeps catching in the tires of his suitcases, but he treks out to where he can see the tin-roofed home. He knows that his employer will be waiting there, and there will be many rebels to subdue when he gets there.

The home drew closer and closer, and Olivier can make out a white-clad figure standing on the porch. He is an elderly man with a pointed beard and round, thick glasses. A rifle is slung over his shoulder, bulkier than any modern blaster but armed with a heavy black battery. Olivier has seen the type before, in his schooling. The rifle can vaporize a human head from fifty meters away.

Olivier throws up a  hand in greeting as he draws closer.

“Hello?” he calls to the man on the porch. “I’m Unit 894503. You can call me Olivier. I was sent by the board of selected students?”

“Good afternoon, Unit,” the man on the porch greets him. His glasses flash in the sun as he nods. “I’m glad you could make it. I’ve been having a terrible time with the rebels lately, you know.”

“I’ve heard,” Olivier says, close enough now to display a bright—if false—smile. “The board kept me well-informed of your plight. I’m more than happy to help with any exterminations you need.”

The man surveys Olivier, his eyes flickering up and down behind his bright lenses. He nods again. “Yes, you’ll do well. I’ve heard good things about your progress, Unit. Supervisor Blackletter said that you were one of her most promising students.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.” Olivier stands in front of the house at long last, able to see it in full. The building is small, with an attached garage. It looks like it might have survived the Helium wars—the siding sags off the exterior of the home, and the porch railing is beginning to slip away from the columns around it. Olivier’s employer himself stands tall and proud, one hand on the strap to his rifle and the other on a thin white cane. “If you would allow me to put away my things, I can be ready in less than an hour to begin our work.”

“That sounds wonderful, Unit,” the man on the porch says. “Please, please, come on up. I’ll help you get settled in. You’ll be taking my daughter’s bedroom—I hope you don’t mind. There aren’t too many of her things left in there, after all, and it’s one of three rooms in the house.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Olivier says mildly, dragging his suitcases up the stairs. “A bedroom is a bedroom, after all. I’m pleased you can accommodate me.”

“Of course, of course. After you get settled in, we can meet in the garage to discuss what steps might be taken to curb the growing threat. They took my daughter, you know. Whisked her away, just like that.”

Olivier rolls his suitcases to a stop as his employer opens first the screen door, then the interior door.

“She never could quite get the hang of living under BotCo, though,” Olivier’s employer sighs wistfully as he leads Olivier into his home.  “I tried to teach her many times that the only thing the rebels could offer her was death.”

The home is, genuinely, small, with the kitchen, dining room, and living room all taking up the same central space. What space isn’t taken up on the walls by the kitchen is filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves, hosting thousands of BotCo official reading guides alongside various family knick-knacks and a mandatory television.

Olivier’s employer leads him to one of three doors on the left wall, still talking. He swipes his hand in front of the door and it slides open on quiet hydraulics. Oliver’s employer stops and looks at him from behind his glasses again, leaning forwards on his cane so that the two are eye-level.

“I hope that in the end, my daughter saw the light—she saw what I was trying to teach her. It’s all I can hope for, really. That in the end, she truly became Better.” The man stares at Olivier for a long time before he finally blinks, takes his hand off his rifle strap, and holds it out to shake. “My callsign is the Instrumentalist,” he tells Olivier. “You may call me that, if you please. The people I knew in my former life—my city life—called me Solomon. I do not mind either title. I’m not sure I caught your callsign, though, Unit.”

Olivier hefts his bags nervously, feeling the weight on his shoulders all of a sudden. “I- I don’t have one yet,” he admits. “This is my first mission outside of the Academy.”

A smile spreads across Solomon’s face. He regards Olivier with that same strange intensity as before, and then the smile fades away.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to find one for you, won’t we?”

Chapter Text

Solomon’s garage is just as rickety as the rest of his home. His transport is parked in the yard, and a folding table has been set up with a large map of the Zones pinned to its surface. Small, spidery handwriting covers almost every inch of the map, marking notable locations and possible rebel hideouts.

Olivier edges into the room, avoiding an open can of white paint and creeping past a tarp covered in grenades. Solomon already stands at the other end of the room, his rifle leaning beside a swiveling desk chair, bent over the map of the desert.

“Hello, sir,” Olivier greets him, standing at attention before the table. Solomon looks up almost like he’d already forgotten that Olivier existed, and then waves him at ease.

“Hello, Unit,” he says. “I’ve found my map, I’ve found my pins, and I think we’re ready to begin today’s strategizing.”

“That’s good to hear,” Olivier replies, leaning over the map. The Zones are clearly and quickly demarcated, stretching circularly across the desert from the large, central dot of Battery City. Solomon had noted their location as on the Eastern side of Zone 6, almost all the way out into the wasteland. The map had been printed in black and white, but it isn’t quite that anymore; instead, Solomon had found a red pen to jot things down with, and the map is so covered in close, dense notes that it appears to be freckled in blood.

“As you may be able to tell, there’s a definite encampment of rebels to our direct North,” Solomon says, using the tip of a pushpin to illustrate a point on the map. “I believe there is at least two living at the location, and I have seen several different people coming and going. I have a small taskforce of Draculoids under my command, but I have feared that with only myself as commander, I may not have the full force necessary to defeat the rebels and bring them into custody. With you by my side, I think that we can take on at least twenty well-armed rebels with little to no repercussions or losses on our side of the battle. What do you think, Unit?”

Olivier realizes now that Solomon is looking at them, one eyebrow raised. He appears to be pleased with himself. “Uh- yeah. Sounds good,” Olivier stutters out, looking back at the spot on the map that Solomon had indicated. It wasn’t too far off, but something else was nagging at Olivier. “You said you had Draculoids?” he asks, meeting Solomon’s gaze again.

“Yes, of course,” Solomon replies. “Every good Exterminator has their platoon of Draculoids, Unit.”

“Where- where are they?” Olivier asks, his brows knitting together. “It’s just you and I in the house. Where do your Draculoids, like, live?”

Solomon scoffs at this, his smile never fading. “The wonders of the things that they don’t teach in the academy these days . . . honestly, boy, I thought Downing Hill, at least, would be above nitty-gritty things like this. Where do I keep the Draculoids? Really.”

“O-Of course, it’s a stupid question,” Olivier says. “When do you want to find this rebel hideout?”

Solomon’s smile, if possible, stretches wider. “I was thinking later today. There’s a ridge just here—and it overlooks their entrance point. If we storm the entrance, we’ll have the upper hand almost immediately. Does that sound amenable to you?”

“Of course,” Olivier says, leaning in to read the thin script above the dot. It doesn’t tell him much more than he already knows, but he can parse out two words- Stone Maiden.

Olivier pulls back. “Sir, is this rebel hideout the home of--”

“The real Stone Maiden?” Solomon asks proudly. “The woman who’s been a thorn in BotCo’s side for more than twenty years? The woman who twisted hundreds of youths away to her side and then left them to die in the desert? My dear Unit, it is one and the same.”

“Wow,” Olivier breathes. The Stone Maiden is almost like a legend amongst the Exterminator students—she is the rebel that has escaped capture so many times before, and hasn’t been seen in over twenty years. Some people say she died out in the desert. Others claim that she’s still there, amassing an army in the depths of the wasteland. Occasionally, the city will find a rebel still wearing her logo, an angel with the city in its clasped hands. The rebels refuse to say where they got the pins, but they all swear the Maiden is still alive in the wasteland.

Olivier can’t believe that he might be the one to finally bring her in. Him! Some new recruit in the Zones for his first time—and he’ll be able to bring in the Stone Maiden herself.

Solomon’s smile doesn’t fade as he rolls up the map and casts his eyes out to the transport parked beyond the garage. Olivier watches his face, trying to conceal his own excitement. The Stone Maiden! The actual Stone Maiden!

“Are you ready?” Solomon asks him. Olivier nods feverously. “That’s good. We’ll leave at 1400.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Olivier replies, saluting him. He turns on his heel and hurries back into the main house, almost giddy at the chance.

~

Riot! glances at the clock, half tempted to cuss it out. She doesn’t know that many swear words, of course, but she knows just enough to ensure that the clock will soon learn fear of the Witch.

Her mother stands over her, looking displeased. The Stone Maiden was not a woman to displease, most of the time, but right now, she just looks annoyed. Her angel mask is pushed up into her short gray hair, showcasing the deep lines carved into her face. She doesn’t look that old, not really, but she does look weathered. A woman who has spent her life in the harsh, irradiated reality of the Zones.

“Riot!,” the Maiden sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’s a math test. Really. How hard do you have to make this?”

“I dunno,” Riot! grumbles, sinking a little further in her chair. “I’m not good at math.”

“You’re fine at math,” the Maiden retorts. “You’re fine at mechanics. You’re a fine aim. You’re fine at everything you’ve applied yourself to so far. But you refuse to do any of it.”

“I’m not good at math,” Riot! responds, feeling her hackles rising almost unconsciously. She looks everywhere but at her mother, avoiding the gaze of the angel on her forehead. “I’m not good at mechanics. I’m not a good shot.”

“You’re fine,” her mother says again. “You just refuse to put any work into your studies.”

“Well, maybe I do!” Riot! shouts, slamming her pencil against the desk. “Maybe I don’t wanna spend my life learning about fucking derivatives!”

“That’s not a derivative!” her mother shouts back, gesturing wildly. “That’s long division! Riot!”

Riot! settles back into her chair, folding her arms. “I still need more time.”

“You’ve spent two hours on this,” the Maiden drawls, glaring at her. “You’ve answered three questions. There are five questions on this worksheet. It’s two p.m.. Get some work done.”

“Fine,” Riot! shoots at her, finally meeting her gaze.

“Fine,” the Maiden returns, crossing her arms to mimic her daughter. She turns on her heel, sliding her mask back over her face. “Learn long division. Then, maybe later, I’ll teach you a new chord on that guitar you’re always hanging off of. Happy?”

“Fine,” Riot! says again. The Maiden huffs and leaves, letting the quiet hydraulics of the door hiss behind her as it closes. Riot! leans back, tapping the pencil against the paper and simmering gently.

She’s lived with her mother, here in this underground compound, in this hidden rebel base, for her entire twenty years of life. She’s followed her mother’s rules, her mother’s idiosyncrasies, every little thing that was supposed to keep the city from sucking her brains out and vacuum-sealing them into some happy little dreaming life.

But Riot! is sick of sitting around and letting her mother try to parent her. She is an adult now, both in the original legal sense and in the sense that if she doesn’t  leave the compound soon, she has half a mind to blow it up.

She pushes back from the desk, tipping her chair onto the back legs and setting her boots on top of the math worksheet. She’s pleased that her mother had the sense, at least, to redecorate after she took this compound from BotCo—the walls are painted in bright, florid hues, and the lights are covered over with yellow tissue paper. It could be a small, white box full of empty bookshelves—but instead, it’s tagged in graffiti and evidence that the Maiden herself has inhabited the room many times over.

Riot! sighs, staring up at the lights. She’s going to get out of here eventually, long division be damned.

A shot rings out, somewhere in the compound. The Maiden must be taking out her frustrations at the shooting range, sick of her irritable daughter and sick of being cooped up inside all day. A lazy smile spreads across Riot!’s face as she hears more shots ring out, and a shout from her mother. From somewhere outside—maybe even distantly far-off—rings an explosion. A firefight, somewhere out in the Zones.

What she doesn’t expect to hear, though, is the sound of footsteps charging down the hallway. Many footsteps. Not just her mother’s footsteps, not just her mother’s shouts, not just her mother’s blaster in the range.

A blast shakes the compound, like a bomb set off from within. Riot! spills from the desk, scrambling to her feet, searching for the blaster that she knows is concealed somewhere in the room. Forget her math worksheet—she has to get out. She has to find her mother. She has to run, run, fight back.

The city is here.

Chapter Text

Olivier places the charges at the entrance of the compound with a steady hand, his hands flickering over the detonator. He glances back at Solomon and the horde of Draculoids, probably somewhere around twenty in total. He nods once, swiftly, and Solomon returns the gesture, holding his rifle at the ready.

Olivier arms the charge and counts under his breath. One, two, three . . .

A small explosion, probably muffled on the inside, shakes the door to the compound. It’s a heavy, vault-style door, painted over in red and oranges to blend it into the surrounding desert. Chips of paint flake from the new scorch mark in the side, just enough room peeled away from its surface to allow Olivier to unlock it properly.

He swings it open and steps inside, holding his blaster at the ready. Solomon and the Draculoids follow silently in his wake, keeping wary eyes all around.

The inside of the compound is dim, lit by colored lights along the wall and covered industrial ceiling fixtures. The walls are splotched in haphazard colors, with no regard for artistry or convention. Doors line the central hallway, leading into different—and abandoned—rooms.

“Are you sure she’s here?” Olivier hisses back to Solomon, peering into an untouched bunkroom. “It doesn’t look like they’ve used this place for anything but an art project.”

“It’s not a macaroni portrait, Unit,” Solomon growls, hefting his rifle. The Draculoids loom behind him, vaguely menacing in their utterly impenetrable expressions. “She’s in here somewhere. I’ve seen her. I’ve seen her come in, I’ve seen her go out. It’s infrequent. She’s here.”

“Great,” Olivier murmured, leaning back out of the bunkroom and peering into the rest of the hallway.

From somewhere further inside, a shot rings out. Solomon snaps to attention, but Olivier casts his eyes around. There was no light on the walls, no new color scorching its way through the floor. There was nowhere to hide above.

“She must be doing something,” he murmurs, pressing a hand to the wall. “A shooting range, maybe. She may be completely unaware that we’re here.”

“Surprise is key,” Solomon advises, advancing down the hallway. “The less she knows, the less likely she is to flee.”

“Of course,” Olivier agrees, pacing further into the compound. A kitchen looms, paint-stained and steel, just past a mess hall and a common area. He peers into each empty, open doorway, and flicks open those that have been closed. They’re getting closer to the sound of blaster fire.

Oliver leans in front of one door, ready to open. The blaster fire is loud and present here, meters away from them. Solomon backs him up, hefting his bulky rifle again. The Draculoids block the hallway to prevent escape.

Olivier waves his hand in front of the door, which slides open. Within stands a woman, leaned over her blue Puritan blaster, diligently working away at a target on the other side of the room. She is of average height and average build, utterly unremarkable if she was not precisely the woman they are looking for. Her gray hair is shorn short around her ears, streaked with loose shades of darker grays and blues. Her mask rests over her eyes, marked with the bright image of an electric angel.

The Stone Maiden holsters her blaster without looking towards the door, sighing.  “Riot, did you-” she asks, but her words are cut short when her eyes meet Olivier’s. She freezes, her hand still on her gun.

“Who the fuck are you,” she says, her voice measured and slow. As she spoke, it began to rise, until she was nearly shouting. “You should know that I’m not some old nobody. I’m the fucking Stone Maiden, and I’ll lay you down like a ‘Crow if you don’t back the FUCK up right now.”

“Hello, Miss Maidstone,” Olivier greets her, stepping into the room. “I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re famous.” Behind him, Solomon and the Draculoids follow like ghosts, filling up the room. 

“There are two options you can take here,” Olivier continues, gesturing magnanimously. “You can come peacefully with us, back to the city, where you will become another productive member of society. Or you can die, right here, right now, like a dog. The choice is yours.”

The Stone Maiden laughed at that, pulling her blaster from her holster and holding it up, as if to surrender. “You think I’m gonna bow to some first-time batt ratt? Or, even better, a baby batt herself? Fuck no, darling. I’m bulletproof!” She spun the blaster in her hand as Solomon held up his rifle, still smiling fiercely.

“You’re outnumbered, Lady Maidstone,” Solomon advises her.

“And I’m never gonna bow to Mom and Dad,” the Stone Maiden says, before her blaster goes off and the whole room erupts into a hail of gunfire.

Olivier ducks out of the way of the Draculoids, rushing in. The Stone Maiden shouts as someone lands a hit, but Olivier ducks behind her and sweeps out her legs. She lands heavily, rolling onto her back and aiming at Olivier.

“I think you’ll find that you’ll be much happier with BotCo, Miss Maidstone,” Olivier says, meeting her aim with his own weapon. “I’ll give you the choice again. You may either comply, or you may come with us.”

Instead of answering, the Maiden shoots, knocking Olivier off of her and shooting a furrow into his shoulder. He panics, rolling back and trying to cover the wound. She rises to her feet, still dodging Draculoid attacks, before Solomon rises from the chaos and cracks her across the back of the head with his rifle.

The Stone Maiden drops to the ground, bleeding at the temple.

“Destroya, did you just kill her?” Olivier shouted, clutching his scorched wound.

“No!” Solomon said defensively. “She’s not dead—she’s unconscious, I don’t think I could kill her with this.”

“She looks dead!”

“She’s not! See? She’s breathing!” Solomon gestures to the body on the ground, who is, in fact, visibly breathing. Olivier scowls, until he notices the fact that the woman on the ground isn’t quite unconscious either. Her hands are moving, stealthily, against her stomach.

“Solomon!” Olivier shouts, still holding his shoulder. He waves with his wounded arm, frantically. “She’s got- she has-“

And then the blast shocks the small room. Olivier feels himself go flying, his body a ragdoll in the blast. His head strikes the metal wall of the shooting range, and everything goes black.

~

Riot! finds the blaster hidden in a false book with a pink-spattered spine. She checks its charge, marvels at the way it fits in her grip. She aims it once, twice, carefully silent lest the city realize where she’s hiding.

She slips up to the edge of the door and waves it open, praying that the slight hiss doesn’t give away her location. Everything has gone quiet since the big explosion, even her mother’s cries. She might have finished off the Exterminators—or they could have taken her and left Riot! for dead. She’s not quite sure. The only thing she knows- she has to find the Stone Maiden.

Riot! steps out into the hallway, praying that her shuffling isn’t loud enough to alert anyone who might still be inside the compound. Her only hope now is silence, the quiet stillness of a place that’s still smoking in the aftermath of ignition. She stifles her breathing. Her hands sweat against the grip of her blaster.

She pulls herself through the doorway of her bedroom, throwing together a bag as quickly and quietly as she can. A change of clothes. A water bottle, half-empty. Charging packs for her blaster. Her own, personal blaster, painted bright red and covered in lightning bolts. Her mask, hung from a peg on the wall.

Riot throws her vest on and pulls her combat boots off the shelf. She dresses quickly, donning her mask last.

She’s ready to go. She steels herself in front of the door, readying herself for a firefight.

Riot! slips into the hallway like a shadow, keeping close to the walls lest anyone notice her presence. The hallway smells thicker now, a smog covering the light that streams in from the open door. It looks like it’s coming from the door to the shooting range. Riot! ducks her head in as she goes by, dreading what she’ll find.

A trail of dark blood leads out from the range’s door, heading towards the entrance to the compound. Her heart thrills with hope when she realizes that the Stone Maiden isn’t lying dead on the floor of the range—but it sinks again when she sees the rest of the room.

The painted walls are scorched black in places, scratched through to white in others. The Stone Maiden isn’t there, which might mean that she got out okay—but there are still bodies within. A boy in a white uniform, almost the same age as Riot!, lies crumpled against a dent in the back wall. Half a dozen Draculoids are sprawled out on the floor, their bodies decimated by the blast.

Riot! steps inside, keeping her gun close to her body. The boy groans, his hand twitching.

Riot! shoulders herself in front of him, squatting down so they’re closer to eye-level. She keeps the barrel of her blaster pointed squarely in his face and watches him as he begins to awaken.

He’s not bad-looking, she thinks, but he’s so bland. She’s never seen anyone without a speck of color to them, but the most interesting thing about this boy is the brown of his hair. It’s a nice brown, Riot! surmises.

The boy blinks, his pupils expanding and contracting erratically. Riot! tilts her head, watching as he brings her into focus.

“Afternoon,” she says, nodding.

The boy’s eyes widen and he scrambles back, trying to push himself into a sitting position. He scrabbles wildly around the floor, clearly looking for a blaster. Riot! stands, keeping her own trained carefully.

“Don’t try it,” she tells him. “I know why you’re here. I know you came for the Maiden. She’s gone now. And you’re just left with me. Now tell me—are you gonna stay quiet? Or am I gonna have to call in backup?”

The boy splutters, not even making coherent noises, wiping blood away from his nose. His eyes flicker across the room, taking in the tableau of bodies strewn about.

“Wh-Where- Where’s Solomon?” he asks, his eyes sliding off of Riot and bouncing around the room. “And the Maiden . . .”

“She’s not here,” Riot! says, stepping around him to cut off the rest of the room.

Wait.

Solomon?

Who the fuck was Solomon?

“I gotta- I gotta find him-” the boy murmurs, still out of it, still trying to pull himself across the room. Riot! noticed a nasty burn mark stretching across his shoulder, probably gained in the fight. She steps in front of him again.

“Solomon?” she asks. “Who’s Solomon?”

“My boooooossss,” the boy drawls, putting his head back down on the ground. “He’s gonna kill me- he’s gonna gimme a bad graaade-“

“Slow down,” Riot! says. If the boy had come with someone else—another Exterminator, maybe—then her mom might not have made it out okay. She might have still been taken by the city. Even worse, she could be dead somewhere. She could be en-route to the afterlife right. Damn. Now.

The boy, though, doesn’t slow down. Instead, he pushes off the wall, finally hauling himself to his feet. He stumbles a few steps before he crashes down to his knees again, holding his head in both hands. Riot! quickly chases after him, ignoring the fact that he just fell directly into the burned mush that used to be a Drac’s skull.

“Woah. Hey. You okay?” she asks, finally retracting her gun and holstering it.

“I don’t- I don’t think so,” the boy replies, looking at her through unfocused eyes. He braces his hands against the Drac’s chest, frowning. “There was- there was an explosion, and I hit the wall-”

“Don’t go running off anywhere, alright?” Fuck. This guy was definitely an Exterminator, but he was also injured. Riot! was torn between wanting to help him, and wanting to shoot him through the head right then and there.

The boy picks up his knee, examining the red-gray bits of brain matter now stuck to his slacks. His eyes widen, almost imperceptible at first but growing more and more clear as he begins to pant.

“Hey!” Riot says, squatting back down to his level again. She waves her hand in front of his face, praying that he’s not gonna start hurling everywhere. “Can you hear me?”

The boy is almost hyperventilating now, swiping his bloody hands through the brains on the floor. He swipes at his nose with the back of one hand, smearing Draculoid blood across his mouth. He pulls away, staring, horrified.

The boy bolts back up to his feet, swaying unsteadily. He looks at Riot! again, one clear moment of full lucidity, and then he bolts, faster than she even realizes that he’s leaving.

“Hey!” she shouts, chasing him through the compound’s central corridor. “Hey!”

He doesn’t stop moving. He just runs, and runs, blood streaked across his white clothes. The first real color on him. Riot! slows as he leaves the compound, panting slightly, backpack clanking.

Oh, fuck.

What’s she gonna do now?

Chapter Text

Olivier screws up his eyes, trying to bring the shooting range back into focus. It doubles and triples before him, targets spanning into walls that echo off into the floor a thousand times. He blinks, and blinks again, and tries to screw his head on straight. He’s having trouble piecing together how he got here, lying on the cold black floor of some kind of training room. This isn’t the city. This isn’t Downing Hill Academy. There are too many colors all around him, bright and nauseous and utterly alien. There are too many hulking white shadows spattered across the black floor tiles.

The ringing in his ears sounds like a tuning fork has been struck, and it won’t stop. He shakes his head, ever so slightly, but it doesn’t change tone. He twitches his hands, relieved to find that he still has full control over them, and tries to cover his ears.

Destroya, his head hurts so much. And his shoulder, too—what happened to his shoulder? Why isn’t he in the academy?

From the hallway, he hears footsteps. Good. Maybe it’s Solomon, headed back in. Maybe he’s taking the Stone Maiden away. Olivier’s head swims. It’s starting to come back to him now, how he ended up here in this strange training room that didn’t look like city tech. He’d come out here . . . job experience, training under an old S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W in the desert . . . they’d found the Stone Maiden . . .

She set off a bomb. She set off a bomb, and it had thrown Olivier into the wall, and he’d hit his head hard enough to bring blood from his ears and nose. And now he was on the floor here, seeing double, trying to piece it all back together.

But what were those white blobs? Why did his shoulder hurt so much? Why couldn’t he see straight?

Concussion, probably.

Olivier tries to take stock of what’s around him. He is here, he is mostly okay, he can’t see or feel his blaster so it probably got knocked away during the firefight. A person is coming into the room now- the boots don’t look like Solomon’s, but Olivier is hard-pressed to remember why they don’t look like Solomon’s. The laces are a bright, brilliant shade of lilac that stands out against the dark floor.

He groans, trying to reach out and feel if his blaster is nearby. The boots step closer, and a heavyset girl with a bright orange buzzcut kneels in front of him. He can’t make out her face, only the predominant colors of her outfit and the fact that she appear to have a red blaster trained on him.

Oh, fuck. This would be one of the Stone Maiden’s groupies, probably. Maybe. If his head didn’t hurt so bad, he might be able to think through it . . . If the ringing in his ears would simply stop for just a second . . .

The redheaded girl said something in a cordial tone. Olivier tried to focus on  her face, but his attention kept bouncing away. He pushes himself up, trying to get into a sitting position against the wall. If this is one of the Maiden’s girls, he’s probably done for. Even if Solomon came back for him, he’s guaranteed to get a hole in the head now. His hands twitch, searching for his blaster that he already knows isn’t anywhere nearby.

The girl says something else, still focused on him. She doubles, then triples, then condenses in his vision for a split second. All he can catch of her words are, “ . . . you’re here. I know you . . . just left with me . . . stay quiet? . . . back up.”

Olivier tries to respond to her, ask her what she means, but he finds that his tongue is mush in his mouth. He makes a few noises before giving up completely, shaking his head to try and clear it again. The ringing sound is beginning to abate, almost enough for him to think properly. He brings up a gloved hand to wipe some of the blood off his face, probably only smearing it.

He looks around the room again, looking for anything that could potentially be his blaster, but all he can see are the wild swirls of color and the general debris of the room. His stomach rolls and churns.

“Where’s Solomon?” he asks the girl as soon as he can make out the words, fighting to keep the nausea down. He’s sure his speech is slurred and stuttering, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t really want to die right now. “And- and the Maiden, she was here too . . .”

The girl says something again, and he catches a flash of her face. It’s cold and hard, freckled all over with deep-set eyes. She doesn’t look like she likes him very much, but before he can make out anything more, the ringing is back in full force and it doesn’t sound like it’s going away anytime soon.

He groans a little, drawing his legs under himself. Maybe if he crawls for it, Solomon will find him. Maybe one of the Draculoids can help him. He didn’t- he didn’t talk much to the Draculoids before the attack. He didn’t see much of them. He’d only been at Solomon’s for- for- for how long? Less than a day, Olivier was sure of it.

“I’ve got to find him,” Olivier murmurs, trying to pull himself across the room. His blaster was in here somewhere, he was sure of it. He just needed to look around . . . maybe the girl would help. Why was she here again? Maybe she could help him. He just needed to be able to think straight . . .

“Who’s Solomon?” the girl asks. She seems nice. Olivier is having trouble holding thoughts in his head for very long. Maybe- maybe if he sits here for a moment, it will clear up. Yeah. That will be nice.

“My boss,” he says, putting his forehead on the cool black tile of the training room. “If we don’t take the- the- the someone in, he’s going to kill me—I’m going to get a bad grade- I don’t know-”

The girl says something else, but Olivier can feel his head beginning to clear again and he looks around. He picks himself into a standing position and shakily surveys the room, wrapping his arms around his stomach. The inside of his mouth has that strange shivery feeling, like he’s about to vomit. He doesn’t want to vomit here. What if the girl sees?

He takes an unsteady step forward, happy to find the ground under him. He sways as he does so, but he pushes off the wall for balance and manages to take another step. The girl hovers behind him—when did she stand up?—and says words that he doesn’t listen to.

Olivier steps again, and then another step, and then something catches his shoe and he goes down to his knees. He shakes slightly, trying to keep his stomach down, and curls his hands around his mouth.

“ . . . You okay?” the girl asks, right behind him now.

“I don’t think so,” Olivier tells her. He realizes that the thing he tripped on was one of the white things on the floor, the things that don’t really have any contour to them so he was having trouble figuring out what it is. He braces his hands against the shape and finds it cold—but yielding—to the touch. It feels like fabric. Squishy fabric? “There was an explosion,” he gestures to the girl. “I hit- I hit the wall. I hit it hard.”

“Don’t move,” the girl says, her voice suddenly coming from far away. Olivier frowns at the white shape in front of him, rearranging his legs under him. There’s a sticky spot on the floor, and the dark red color spread to his pant leg. There’s something in the creases of his slacks.

Oliver picks at the little bits of something, trying to bring them into enough focus to remember why he was in the training room in the first place. He sticks his finger into a squishy substance right nearby his other knee, picking it up and rolling it around in his hands. It leaves behind a red residue.

Olivier squints at the substance.

Olivier squeezes the substance.

Olivier looks down at the white mass again. His vision resolves itself into one central, binocular view. He traces the lines of a well-cut blazer, up the buttons of the blouse underneath. The top three buttons are undone. The skin is pale and white, almost rivaling the rest of the outfit in color. It looks drained and dead.

Olivier’s stomach rocks again as he realizes what he’s looking at. What he’s sitting in. What’s in his hand.

The redheaded girl says something again but Olivier just isn’t listening now, not to her, not to the ringing in his head, not to anything. He drops the brains in his hand and presses his whole fist into the last remnants of the Draculoid’s jaw and neck. He comes away with a fistful of gore and a single unbroken molar clutched in his hand. He tries to wipe the blood away from his nose with his hand. All he can feel is the filthy red color of the Draculoid spilling all over the nice clean white of his uniform. He can feel the Draculoid’s blood on his hands, in his mouth, touching his jaw and just behind his ears and even his brows. He’s sure that his whole face is covered in the stuff, bright red and bleeding, a sight out of a nightmare even when all of your nightmares involve harsh fluorescent lighting and a quiet voice saying that she’s never believed that you really had what the program took. Oliver fights to keep the contents of his stomach down as he rocks back onto the balls of his feet and rises, unsteadily, still ignoring the girl’s shouts at him.

His hands rise to his mouth. He lets the fistful of gore slide out of his hand. It strikes him in the chest and leaves a smear down his front, dripping like a shot to the heart. He stumbles, feeling the back of his throat rise unpleasantly. He shivers and presses his hands hard against his lips, trying not to spill vomit on the training room floor. The girl says something but he’s not listening as he runs, flees, hides, chases himself down the long, dark corridor. The sunlight gleams bold and heavy, blinding at the end of the tunnel. When he finally reaches it, it’s all he can do not to collapse in the sand and start screaming, start burying himself underneath the hot shards.

Instead, he runs.

Chapter Text

Diggory Graves is well acquainted with solitude. If they did not know better, they might think they were the only thing in the desert, but they do. They have seen people, far away, colorful dots in the sand. But for all the time their circuits have recorded, they have been alone. They have never known anything but their own company.

Well. They had met one person, once, and they were still unsure of how to classify that person. He had appeared in the dead of night, just past the walls of the city, glowing and shedding feathers in the dim desert sky. He was the first thing that Diggory ever remembered seeing, a huge, feathered deer in the sand beyond the city wall.

He didn’t seem like a person, but that was the only words Diggory had for it. He seemed . . . bigger, than a person, somehow. More important. Older.

The deer had come down from the skies to sit in front of Diggory, both humanoid and utterly inhuman at the same time. He’d touched his nose to Diggory’s forehead and blessed the wires and code inside, breathing some sort of electricity into their stagnating form.

And Diggory, then a pile of scrap heap abandoned outside the city walls, made of half a dozen different malfunctioning droids, realized that they were turned on again—fully operational. They were functioning. They were sentient.

The deer had nodded to them, scuffed its hooves in the sand, and vanished without a word ever spoken.

And Diggory, for the first time in their life, was alone.

Now, though, Diggory may be a little less alone than they thought they were. The feathers arranged across the sand this morning had pointed north, and so Diggory had followed the unspoken message left by the Witch.

They’d walked North for a long time, until the sun was beginning to turn into blush hues on the horizon. Their circuits had jittered and whirred, complaining of the heat and the sand and the constant motion. Now, though, as Diggory crests a rise, they can see what the Witch had been pointing them to this morning.

In the side of a cliff face, carefully camouflaged, is a door. It’s blasted wide open, yawning and circular. A thin trail of smoke darkens the rocks above it.

Diggory has seen places like this before, hideouts for rebels that have been utterly decimated in a firefight. Oftentimes, though, there is more fire. More flames. More bodies littering the sand outside.

Here, there’s none of that. And that means that there might still be something happening inside.

They slide down the rise, and head inside.

~

Olivier does not know for how long she has been walking. All she knows is that the desert has reconciled itself into what is mostly one coherent picture, all sparkling sand and bright sunlight.

Her uniform chafes against her skin where the sweat has built up, both from the injuries she sustained during the fight with the Stone Maiden and from the heat of the desert itself. She’s already ripped the loose shreds of fabric away from the furrow carved into her shoulder, letting it breathe a little, but now she’s questioning if that was the right choice. She’s not trained in desert survival, and she doesn’t have a first aid kit with her. She doesn’t know the plants around her. She doesn’t want to wrap the wound because that may trap bacteria or sweat inside the gash. If she doesn’t wrap the wound, though, there’s going to be sand and any manner of bacteria crawling inside.

At least it’s cauterized, and she’s not bleeding out.

Ugh, bleeding out.

Olivier shakes for a second, stopping in her tracks as she remembers the aftermath of the fight. Sitting in a pool of Draculoid blood, squishing bloody brain matter between her hands as her addled mind had tried to figure out what it was. Her stomach squirms, and Olivier pauses to retch into the sand around her.

Nothing comes out. It hasn’t been coming out, not since she initially left the compound. She’s not sure there’s anything left in her stomach to come out.

As soon as she’s done and settled again, Olivier looks across the desert. It’s so empty here, all sand and loose scrub grass. She’s never seen anywhere quite like it. The city is always crowded, always moving, always going to the next place. It’s not like that here.

It’s dead silent.

Olivier’s never been in the dead silent before, either. There was always something happening in the city, or even at the academy. Nothing was ever silent, because there was always construction or trains or even just someone talking in the background.

This was the first true silence Olivier has ever heard, and it made her stomach churn. More than the head injury did, anyways.

She wonders what would happen if she tried to walk back to the city. Would she die on the way there, of thirst or dehydration? Would she be shot in the desert? If she did manage to make it back to the wall, would they even let her in? Olivier didn’t have any kind of identification to prove who she was, only her face and her uniform.

If she could find her way back to Solomon’s-- an unlikely task, given the size of the desert and the haze Olivier had been in when she started running away—would Solomon take her back? Would the city take her back? Or was she just going to be the girl who let the Stone Maiden slip away?

Did Solomon even know she was alive?

Was Solomon even alive?

The thought struck a little bit of cold terror into Olivier’s mind. If Solomon was dead, if all the Draculoids were dead, if the Stone Maiden had made it out . . .

Olivier couldn’t go home. She knew she’d never make it through the desert on her own, but this situation was much worse. More than just another Exterminator lost to the wasteland, if she made it back, she’d be a failure. She’d have tried and failed to capture the Stone Maiden.

Could she live with that?

Olivier grits her teeth. She stares out into the setting sun. She considers the fact that she has no supplies, no weapons, no way of calling back to the city. But she knows that he has no other choice.

She picks a direction. She puts one foot in front of the other.

And walks into the desert.

Chapter Text

Diggory slides down the rise, carefully avoiding getting sand in their metallic joints, and darts from scrub brush to scrub brush before they finally make it to the opening of the compound. From closer, it looks like old BotCo tech, maybe even from before the Helium Wars.  It’s too dark for normal people to see inside, so Diggory swaps over to night vision mode and proceeds inside.

The interior of the compound is just one long hallway, reaching back until even night vision green can’t parse the shadows. All of the doors are open and empty, most of the rooms looking like they’ve been untouched as long as the vault has stood open. Diggory slides through the hallway like a ghost, wandering around.

There’s no need to be quiet, so they aren’t. The place seems recently abandoned. As they reach further down the hallway, the reason it’s abandoned becomes more apparent. Three bodies lie in the hallway, all dressed in white suits. Each of them has a debilitating injury—one is missing the bulk of their torso, another missing their head, and the third’s legs have been severed in what looks to be an explosion. The legless body sits facing a doorway like it was thrown out of the room in a fight.

Diggory looks at the bodies for a second, considering them. They do not wear the masks typical of the desert, but then again, neither does Diggory. They look like BotCo agents, but every agent Diggory has seen has had a distinctive outfit. The old man who lives less than a mile from here, for example, wears a striking red coat that swishes as he walks. These people do not have any sort of signifier or iconography in their garb; instead, they look blank. Expendable.

Diggory turns, pressing their hand against the wall and carefully peering into the room the bodies came from. The room itself is a brightly-painted shooting range, covered now in blood and black scorch marks. Two more white-suited bodies lie here, one with the entire side of its body burned to a crisp, and the other one that appears to have been made into mincemeat. The bloodstains on the floor and walls show the signs of a scuffle.

On the floor, just beside the wall and clearly blown off in the explosion, lies a Draculoid mask. That’s strange—none of the other bodies have masks, and from the way the debris and bodies must have fallen, this one must have been overlooked in the aftermath.

Diggory kneels down and picks it up, flipping it over in their hands. This mask must have come from the burned body, because the edges of the torn rubber are a dark, stretchy brown.

Diggory slides it into their pocket. Maybe this was why the Witch had sent them here—to pick up the mask, to send it to the mailbox. Maybe there were more masks deeper inside.

They rise, glancing around again for anything they had missed. They cycle through several different modes of sight until finally settling back with night vision.

They turn around, back towards the hallway.

There is a boy in the hallway now, shorter than them and with messy hair. He leans against the wall, night vision illuminating him in profile. He side-eyes Diggory like gum on his shoe.

Diggory has never met another person before. They aren’t sure exactly what to say, but the boy fixes that before they can speak.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to mess with someone else’s mask?” he asks. He looks . . . unearthly, in Diggory’s night vision. Almost spectral. He wears the white uniform of a Draculoid, the top three buttons of his shirt undone and burn marks snaking across from the other side of his body. His skin is pale, almost bloodless. His hair doesn’t seem to match itself; the closer side is long, loose, and covers his ears, but on the other side, it looks shorter and possibly even synthetic. The boy has a splash of blood across his nose.

If Diggory had to guess, they’d assume he must have been caught in the explosion earlier, possibly even injured. Diggory didn’t know how to fix people when they got hurt. They hoped that the boy was stable enough to survive.

“I am . . . sorry?” Diggory responds, their hand tightening around the half-Draculoid mask in their pocket.  “I was unaware this mask was yours.”

“Yeah, well . . .” the boy trails off, giving Diggory a once-over. He scowls, and then turns to face Diggory full on.

The face is a wreck, one half almost-normal and the other half burned and congealed together. The white skin of a Draculoid mask digs into the skin of his face, melting and thick. The eyehole sags like a stroke. The fuzzy black hair stands on end, all smoking. The mouth has burned away, instead burrowing into the skin above his upper lip and hooking itself there.

“I don’t think I’m going to need it much longer,” the boy deadpans, meeting Diggory’s eyes. Every time his face moves, the mask stretches in a new grotesque way. If Diggory had a stomach, they might be sick; however, they don’t, so they’re just unsettled.

“You are not . . . alive,” Diggory says, sounding the words out slowly. “You are one of the bodies in that room.”

“I don’t know,” the boy says, giving them a tight, annoyed smile. “I think I died, but I don’t know. I don’t know how long I’ve been dead. All I know is-“

“You are here, and it is now,” Diggory says, finishing his sentence. They know how it feels to suddenly come to conscious thought in a world that they do not recognize, and they do not know how they appeared in.

The boy purses his lips, his eyes flickering to Diggory’s exposed metal hands. “Sure,” he says. “Let’s go with that.”

Diggory considers this for a moment, and then makes up their mind. This is the first time they have ever been presented with companionship before. They would like to learn more about other people.

“I am going to see if there is anyone else in this building,” they tell the boy. “But, if you would like, you can accompany me. I am travelling to the mailbox, to help the Witch find lost souls.”

The boy glances around the hallway, sticking his hands in his pockets. He’s still scowling. “Fine,” he says, shrugging. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do here.”

Diggory Graves is well acquainted with solitude. But, as they walk down the dark hallway with a semi-transparent ex-Draculoid following in their wake, they realize that they do not have to be alone.

~

Riot! had been bumming around the compound for awhile, but she swiftly realized that she wasn’t going to mess with those dead things, and she couldn’t live there her whole life all alone, and it was time to get the hell outta dodge.

So she had.

She’d taken the MREs out of the cabinets and stuffed them all into her backpack. She’d taken a few keepsakes, a few things that might be useful, and all of their weapons. She’d thrown it in the back of her mother’s old transport, a muscle-car-looking-thing that was painted all black and emblazoned with the image of an angel, and had left. The transport’s tires weren’t running so great in the sand, but it was serviceable, and when she finally found the road out of the city, she knew that hitting the pavement was going to be one of the best things that ever happened to her.

It ‘s not like she’s not upset about her mom, don’t get her wrong. But the feeling of the wind in . . . well, not her hair, exactly, but across her scalp, and the way the transport moves under her hands, and the feeling of ultimate, absolute freedom . . .

It’s easy to understand now why the Stone Maiden had left the city in the first place.

Riot’s on the road now, still heading straight out of the City. She’s not sure where she’s going, but she knows that she’s gonna reach it sooner or later. She’ll know it when she sees it. It will be the first place that catches her eye, the best place in the desert.

She’ll make a new name for herself. She’ll become her own person. She’ll bum around, playing bits of the guitar, maybe running some covers of her mom’s music. The Stone Maiden had used to be a pretty big personality, or so her mother had claimed.

Yeah, Riot!’s got it figured out for now. She’s fine. She’ll be fine.

She’s fine.

Chapter Text

Riot! has been able to see the tall barricades of her salvation in the distance for about three hours now.

She’d packed before she left, so it’s not like she’s going to run out of rations soon. The nearest settlement was never too far away, either, so she had always known it was going to turn out okay.

Yeah, right. Riot! knows this feeling in the pit of her stomach. It means that she’s going to turn over the destruction of her home for ages now. She knows that sometimes, shit happens in the desert, but that doesn’t mean that she likes it. Or even that she’ll stand for it.

Rebel Riot!, daughter of the Stone Maiden, is going to get her mother back. And there is no question to that statement—it’s a fact. She’s going to get her mother back, or die trying.

Riot! waves an arm to the rebel encampment, flagging down one of the people in a turret watchtower. The encampment stands tall against the rest of the desert, the outer wall plated in rusting corrugated metal and scrounged rocks. Barbed wire curls at the top of the walls, and the turrets are covered with simple roofs.

The person in the turret waves back, and then ducks down to tell someone of her arrival. Riot! completes the journey to the base of the outer wall, shading her eyes from the sun.

The door in the wall opens to reveal a stocky woman with short hair and a pink mask, her arms folded. She nods at Riot!.

“Hello, welcome, we don’t like strangers here, please state your name and business,” the woman says in a gruff voice.

“Um, hi,” Riot! responds, slinging her bag down into the sand. Damn, that thing was heavy. “Rebel Riot!. I’m just—I’m just kind of looking for help? My base got taken out.”

The woman gives her a sweeping look. It’s hard to tell expression underneath the mask, but Riot! feels the knot in her stomach twist a little more.

Finally, the woman nods. “What weapons ya have on ya,” she says, more of a statement than a question.

Riot! slides the blaster from the back of her pants, showing it to the woman, and then takes a few knives from her boots and a small multitool from her bra. She pulls an extra blaster from her luggage, but notes that the woman’s eyes widen when she sees the MREs tucked in Riot!’s backpack.

“Just these.”

“Okay, fine,” the woman says. “If you come in, you’ll need to share your rations with the group stockpile. Is that alright with you?”

Riot! thought about it for a second. On one hand, if she needed to make a quick run outta Dodge, she’d want the MREs by her side. But on the other hand . . . if this was all shiny, she wouldn’t need to have the MREs anyways.

“Yeah, sure,” she told the woman. A smile split the woman’s face, and she extended her hand for a shake.

“Pleased to have you on board,” she said. “HeartBern. C’mon in.”

The woman beckons her inside as Riot! shoulders bag again, lugging it and her weapons through the scrap-metal doorway into the ramshackle fort.

~

Diggory stands at the edge of the compound, the weight of the half-mask in his pocket feeling strange and alien. The ghost floats behind him, glowering into the sunlight.

“Where are you going?” he asks, barely above a whisper. Diggory hears, though, and glances back to look at him.

“I am sorry,” Diggory says, turning around to fully face the dark compound again. The ghost floats a full foot off the ground, meeting Diggory’s eye level. “I did not explain my purpose. My name is Diggory Graves. I am a messenger for the Phoenix Witch. It is my purpose to help him gather the lost souls of the desert.”

The boy considers this for a moment, his one visible eye casting down to the bloody floor. He folds his arms, considering.

“What are you going to do with my mask?” he asks, not meeting Diggory’s eyes.

“I am going to give it to the Witch,” they explain. “He is the boundary between life and death. He is the garden that new life blossoms from. He is the change, the end, and the heart of the desert.”

“And you’re not alive,” the boy says. “But you’re not dead either. So you’re the in-between? You work for him?”

“Yes,” Diggory agreed. “I am neither alive nor dead.”

“So where are you going?”

“The mailbox.”

“And you’ll hand me over to the Witch.”

“Yes. Every mask I find in the desert, he asks for, and so I place them in the mailbox for him to collect. It is the way the world works. It is the way the desert works. We are in his domain.”

The boy glowers at the ground. “And the mask is the only thing keeping me here.”

“I believe so,” Diggory says. “I have not encountered a spirit like you before. You are . . . especially clear. You are more firmly tied to the living world than the Garden of the End. I am not wholly sure what losing your mask would mean for you.”

The boy considers this for a moment, still standing in the darkness of the compound. He glows a bright blue against it, a vague aura leaching into the dimness. Diggory reflects, not for the first time since they met this boy, that he is beautiful.

“Where’s the mailbox?” the boy asks, still not looking at Diggory.

“It is about a day’s walk from here.”

“Okay.” The boy still doesn’t meet Diggory’s eyes. He glances to the right, to the left, everywhere but up. He fidgets with the collar of his shirt, smeared with soot and blood.

“I am going now,” Diggory tells him gently.

“Okay,” the boy replies.

Diggory looks at him one last time, and then looks back out into the fading rays of sunlight in the sky.

“Okay,” they agree, and then step out of the compound.

Chapter Text

Olivier has no idea how long he’s been walking. Everything looks the same to him, tall rock carvings and loose sand. His shoes slosh with small particles; whether it’s more of the glittering ground-grit or tangled weeds or thorns left from that pratfall into a ditch full of cacti, he can’t quite tell anymore. Either way, it hurts.

Everything hurts, frankly.

His shoulder sweats and burns in the heat of daylight. His head pounds from the residual concussion. His throat hitches with every breath he takes, probably a combination of inhaling the dust he kicks up and the total lack of water. Various scrapes and gashes coat his body from misadventures with the desert terrain, all stinging from overexertion and sunburn.

Olivier knows, at least, approximately how long he’s been walking.

Three days.

He’s been out here for three days.

He’d set out from the Stone Maiden’s with nothing except the clothes on his back and the injuries sustained from the battle. He’d been nearly incoherent, still reeling from the excessive violence and the threat of losing the Maiden altogether. He thinks . . . he thinks he may have set out to find her, maybe. But that was three days ago, and now he’s not sure how much farther he can make it.

He wonders how long a human has ever survived without water. He knows it isn’t long. Could he be setting a new record, right now, and nobody would ever know? Maybe that would be okay. Maybe they wouldn’t know him as some failed student who wandered out into the desert to die after his first mistake.

Maybe Olivier had done the right thing, going out here. Destroya forbid what would have happened if he had actually found the way back to Solomon’s home. He’d be the kid who failed to capture the Stone Maiden. He’d be the kid who got blown up by the Stone Maiden. He’d probably, frankly, be the kid who got his mentor captured AND killed by the Stone Maiden.

Olivier slumps against a rock, panting slightly. He squints out, taking in the landscape.

Oh, Destroya, he’s gonna die out here, isn’t he?

He starts to sob, but he’s not sure he has the water to cry anymore. He sprawls back across the rock he’s sitting on, stretching out his back and wincing as it pulls ever injury he’s sustained.

He’s gonna die out here, and that’s gonna be that.

He can feel it with an awful, destroying certainty. He’s going to die, and no one is ever going to find his body. It will just rot, here, in the desert, far away from the careful embrace of the city or even the watching eyes of the rebels.

And no one will ever see him again.

Olivier isn’t sure if that’s a blessing, or a curse.

~

Danielle swears as the radio fades into static again, frantically adjusting her little homemade receiver and praying to Destroya that she’d find the signal again. The signal was finicky; it didn’t like to stay put on the same story for long. Danielle could respect that, but she wanted to hear how this ended.

“Come on, come on . . .” she pleads. She is currently sitting on the edge of her building’s roof, her legs dangling out over an abyss of several hundred stories. Heights have never particularly bothered Danielle, and so she comes up to roof to get away from BotCo, or her parents, or her homework, or any of the other myriad struggles that seem to beset her life.

The radio crackles, and then comes back to life.

“Sorry, listeners,” the voice says, gentle as the night sky. “My frequency is stuttering tonight. BotCo has launched another round of broadcasts bent on choking out voices, hopes, dreams . . . even hearts. The hateful voice of the Lady herself fills the air tonight, and it’s all I can do to keep you away from it. I can cast my eye out to the rest of the desert, dreamers, and tell you what I see there . . . but I fear it will be no use. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep broadcasting tonight. You’re listening to WKIL, the voice of the desert . . . the voice of your dreams.”

The voice laughs gently, and then crackles into static. Danielle turns the dial, but nothing comes in.

She leans back, pulling the radio closer to her stomach.

She doesn’t know how to feel, anymore. Everything is strange. She has this radio now, and it tells her stories that shouldn’t exist. The city claims there is nothing in the wasteland, nothing but radiation waves that would cook your heart out and old fairytales of people coming back wrong. The city claims that if you ever set foot in the Zones, you’d be dead in minutes.

But Danielle is hearing voices on the radio, and nobody broadcasts but BotCo.

This host isn’t with BotCo. They keep complaining about BotCo, about BotCo hijacking their frequencies, about how BotCo had ‘strangled out the beating heart of the desert’. The host can’t be BotCo.

And they can’t be in the city, either.

Danielle sets the radio firmly on the roof and draws her knees up to her chest, perched precariously over a twenty-story drop. Maybe BotCo isn’t everything. Maybe there can be . . . something more.

Something better.

The static on the radio fades out, catching a few whispers of the host’s voice. Danielle swings over to solid ground to fiddle with the receiver, finding the last few lines of the broadcast.

“And remember, rebels,” the host says. “Keep your boots on, keep your gun close, and die with your mask on if you have to. This has been Nikignik, your loyal host, broadcasting from WKIL FM. I hope to hear from you again soon.”

And with that, the radio finally goes silent.

Danielle is alone.

Chapter Text

Danielle jolts from her sleep as the radio on her bedside beeps erratically. She swears, still half-groggy and squinting in the morning sunlight, but manages to dial into the station before the noise gets any worse.

The host—that Nikignik, with WKIL—is talking again. They wish her a good morning, and cordial how-are-you-doing pleasantries. Danielle can’t respond, of course, but the host acts like she did. They hum and muse about coffee, how they’ve never had it but people have always said it is the best way to start your morning. About music, too, and how they’ve come to like some of the strange vinyl discs their friends had picked up in the desert for them. They play a few tunes over the radio, some by older, pre-war bands, and some by newer Zone startups.

“Of course, the Stone Maiden can’t be beat by anyone,” Nikignik says at last. “I’ve never seen her in concert—she stopped playing almost twenty years ago, after all—but her music withstands the test of time. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Maiden before, but to those of you newcomers, batt ratts, or even trapped within the confines of BotCo itself, the Maiden is one of our most influential rebels. She’s a survivor from the Analog Wars, way back, the face that made BotCo quake in its patent-leather boots. Good stuff. Here’s her top hit from the album Lightning Strikes, all the way back in 2009.”

Nikignik hums again, and a few pops travel over the radio. Danielle pushes herself into a sitting position, listening to the heavy bass intro thud through the small speakers.

She likes the music. Who knew that Zone bands could be better than what got sanctioned by BotCo these days?

She likes the music, and when Nikignik comes back on, she likes their voice. She likes to hear about the Zones. Nikignik has lots of stories about the Zones—mostly the day-to-day news, but also anecdotes, cryptic warnings, and some pet project they’ve got. The pet project seems to center on telling a story, but Danielle is never sure if the people involved are real or if Nikignik made them up.

But either way, she listens on, through the better part of the morning.

~

Diggory knows their way around the desert.

It’s almost like some strange supernatural power of theirs; they never lose their way. They can always find their way back to Battery City, no matter where they are. They’re not sure—they’ve never been sure—if this is something the Witch had bestowed on them, or if it’s some innate talent. Maybe there’s a secret virus downloaded on their systems, running compass programs in the back of their head. Maybe it’s hardwired into their circuitry. Either way, the one thing Diggory knows best about themself is that they never get lost.

They never get lost.

Diggory squints at the map again, shading their eyes with sharp fingers. It’s the same map as always, with the Zones spreading circularly out from the central point of Battery City. Each color coded, each landmark and location penciled in by Diggory themself, each the same as they always have been before.

Diggory looks back up at the landscape around them, trying to place it on the map.

They never get lost.

The rocks rise red and bloody in front of them, patterned in cracks and scrub grass. It looks, in short, like every other location across the desert.

“What’s wrong?” the ghost behind them asks, peering over their shoulder.

Diggory clears their throat, going back to intently staring at their map. “Nothing,” they lie. They don’t want the boy to worry. They are going to the Witch, and the Witch will know what to do with this strangely strong spirit. Everything is going to be okay.

At least they still know that Battery City is to the West, burning like a small fire in the back of their mind. If all else fails, they can trace their way back to the wall and then find the mailbox from there.

“How long did you say it would take to get to the Witch, again?” the ghost asks from behind them.

Diggory grits their teeth. “I do not know,” they answer. “Not much longer, I do not think. He may be busy at the moment, and purposefully delaying our arrival at the mailbox.”

“He can do that?”

“I believe so.”

“Huh.”

The ghost behind them slunk back, losing a little of his radiance. Diggory looked at the map and picked a direction. If the Witch wanted them to wait, they could at least do something in the interim, even if that something was just walking aimlessly.

They begin to walk off, but then they realize that the ghost isn’t following. Instead, he’s floating close to the ground, almost where he would stand if he were solid. His arms are folded across his chest, and he’s looking at the ground intently.

Diggory cocks their head, but does not say anything. They and the boy just stand there for a moment, waiting for something to happen.

“ . . . You never even asked my name,” the boy says at long last, wincing as the words come out. “You didn’t ask what my name was.”

“I-” Diggory begins, but the boy cuts him off.

“You just come in and say that I’m dead and that I’m this- this ghost thing now, and that I’m dead and not alive and somehow still here at the same time!” the ghost boy cries out, flinging his arms out. “I don’t- You just came in, and then I was- I was-”

Faintly-glowing tears well in his visible eye, spilling down his face. Diggory freezes.

They do not know what they are supposed to do. In all their days working for the Witch—which are, admittedly, less than they would like—they have never had to comfort a spirit. They have never really even talked to a spirit before. The spirits they’d encountered before had been quiet and shadelike, barely even real anymore. This one . . . this boy is different.

The boy sobs audibly, drawing back in on himself. He looks everywhere except for Diggory, trying to avoid their dead metal gaze. Finally, he fixates on a rock just to his right.

“You just came in, and all of a sudden I was dead, and I was alone, and you told me that I was going to die again,” he says hollowly. “And I don’t- I don’t know how I got to that bunker place, and I don’t know why I’m like this, and I don’t-” his voice cuts off for a moment before he resumes, louder and more upset. “I don’t know what happened,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I don’t want to die.”

He makes sudden eye contact with Diggory, his remaining eye still full of thick silver tears.

“I don’t want to die. And- and I don’t know how I’m gonna get through you, how I’m gonna get away from this- this Witch person, but I’m not gonna die. Not like this.”

He stands in front of Diggory for a moment, still withdrawn in his posture but strong in his gaze.

Diggory stands, still unsure of what to do. The boy wasn’t crying much anymore, which was . . . probably a good thing? But he was angry, now, which Diggory also didn’t know how to deal with. They made the executive decision to stand there, silently, watching the boy.

“My name is Diggory Graves,” they said at long last, deciding that maybe it was best to just start over. “I am a messenger for the Phoenix Witch. I help guide lost souls to him. You are a lost soul, tethered more solidly to this earth than I have ever seen. I am sorry that I did not realize how present you were earlier.” They consider this phrasing for a second, and then continue. “I have never seen another spirit who was quite as strong as you are.”

The ghost’s expression turns to a scowl.

“What is your name?” Diggory asks, taking a step towards them.

“ . . . Percy,” the boy says. “I’m Percy.”

“I’m glad to meet you, Percy,” Diggory says. “I am sorry I did not say so earlier.”

Percy’s scowl deepens. “I’m not going with you.”

“I have a duty to fulfill,” Diggory says gently. “My destiny is tied to the Witch. I owe him my life. I cannot break this bond easily, or at all. But you do not owe him anything. Perhaps, when we reach the mailbox, you can appeal for your continued existence.”

Percy regards them with one cold eye.

“ .  . . I cannot just leave you in the desert,” Diggory says.

“Yes, you can.”

“You will be stuck here. Tied to a source of power that cannot move.”

“Maybe I’d like it better that way. Then I can just . . . I don’t know. Hang out here for a while.”

“It will be a lonely existence.”

Percy scoffs. “Like it wasn’t already.”

“You do not have to be alone.”

“Oh, yeah? And who’s gonna fill that? My parents? Dad’s zombie army? I think I’d rather be on my own.”

Wait. What?

“A . . . zombie army?” Diggory asks, stopping in their tracks. “Percy . . . where did you come from?”

Percy scoffs again. “Oh. So now you want to be friends.”

“No, this is important,” Diggory says, drawing closer to them. “Who is your father? Why is he raising a . . . ‘zombie army’?”

Percy raises his eyebrows. “You don’t- you haven’t seen them before?”

“Seen who?”

“The- the-” Percy looks around, picking at his face. He tugs free a strand of plastic from his face, making dark blood well up from the hole he leaves behind. His face curdles as he pulls his hand away, clearly distracted from the topic at hand. He looks at the blood under his nails. His form brightens for a moment as his frown deepens. He looks at Diggory, suddenly paler than before.

“What do I look like right now, Diggory Graves?”

“You are . . . a person in a white suit,” Diggory says, their brows knitting in confusion. They aren’t  entirely sure why Percy cared about his appearance. They’ve never cared about their appearance. They aren’t even sure they’ve seen their full body reflected at one time. It’s not like mirrors are common out in the wasteland.

“What do I look like.”

“You are a person in a white suit,” Diggory says again. “You . . . you have pale skin and dark hair. Part of your face is hidden by a mask. This- this mask,” they explain, fishing the mask out of their pocket and offering it to Percy.

Percy’s face drains, if that were even possible. He wipes at the smear of blood on his face, smudging it into the burnt plastic. His hands shake as he reaches out for the mask in Diggory’s hand, burned at the same places that Percy’s mask digs into his skin.

“This is . . . on my face?” he asks, his hand passing through the mask.

“Yes.”

“It’s—it’s on my face?” Percy says, his eyes widening in panic. He recoils from the mask, floating away from Diggory.

“Yes,” Diggory responds, following Percy. “What is wrong?”

Percy turns away from them, trying to tug the mask off of his own face. Fresh blood runs off of his face but passes through the intangible material of his collarbone.

“No, no, no, no . . .” Percy drones, trying to peel the plastic away from his face.

“Percy?” Diggory asks, stepping a little bit closer to the boy as he begins to hyperventilate.

Percy whirls around, both hands busy clawing at the bloody wreck of his own face. His visible eye is wild and scared, the pupil shrunk to a small dot.

“Get it off!” he cries out. “Get it off me!”

“I- I can’t,” Diggory says helplessly.

“I don’t- no!” Percy cries out, screaming as he manages to peel the vinyl off of his face. It comes away bloody on the other side, the cheek revealing white teeth and an empty nasal cavity. His image flickers like a bad television set as he pulls off the rest of the mask, revealing loose muscles and bone beneath. His eye is lidless in its socket, staring at Diggory as Percy reacts to the mask now in his hands.

He pants, staring at the blood that drips but never makes it to the sand below.

“I’m sorry,” Diggory offers.

“Destroya,” Percy breathes. “Oh, Destroya.”

After a long moment, he looks back up at Diggory.

“Is the Witch gonna kill me? Like, really and truly?”

“I do not know,” Diggory says.

Percy bites his lip.

“I’m dead,” he intones.

“Yes.”

“I got masked.”

“Presumably.”

“And then I died.”

“It seems to be that way.”

Percy considers this a little longer, and then glows bright again. “My dad fucking masked me.”

Diggory does not respond.

“He masked me!”

Percy rises in the air. The mask in his hands is already beginning to fade into smoke; as it does, it reforms over the bloody tears in his face.

“The Witch might not kill me, right?” he says, looking at Diggory with a mix of anger and desperation. “He- he might do something else, right? Something that- that doesn’t involve death?”

Diggory nods.

“Then- then I’ll come with you,” Percy says. “I’ll come with you. I’ve got information. I know what BotCo is doing, the kind of research my dad does. I can tell the Witch. He’ll want to know, I- I think.”

“Of course,” Diggory says.

“C’mon.” Percy pulls ahead of Diggory, towards the direction they’d been walking before. “C’mon. I can help. I can tell you things.”

“Of course.”

Percy floats forwards as Diggory follows, leading them towards the mailbox. They squint, and all of a sudden, there it is.

The mailbox, just over the horizon, sparkling blue and gold in the setting sun.

Chapter Text

Olivier is starting to see things out of the corner of his vision.

He’s not sure if it’s the heat playing tricks with his head, or the dehydration, or the concussion, or the host of other maladies that have taken root in his body, or even the residual radiation of the zones that’s making the . . . thing stand just on his periphery.

He can’t quite pin down what the thing is, either, because it moves with his periphery.

That’s acting like his periphery has moved much, though. Olivier still isn’t sure how long it’s been since he sat down on this rock, but he hasn’t moved since then, and the sun is still in the sky, so it can’t have been more than . . . five hours? Six?

Ugh, whatever.

Olivier twists his eyes around as much as he can without moving. His whole body aches more than he ever thought it would. He’s almost glad that he didn’t have any rations when he ran off, because the nausea comes in waves. His head swims. It’s all very clinical, almost detached.

And he still can’t zero in on that thing.

It’s green, he thinks. It’s green, and it glows softly. Does it move really fast? No, it’s on both sides of his periphery somehow. Like it’s surrounding him. Maybe it’s not green, actually . . . is it yellow? Blue? Maybe it’s not glowing. Maybe it’s not there at all. Maybe it’s just the radiation, giving him brain tumors or something.

Maybe it’s a bird? Some kind of bird thing? Olivier thinks that he sees feathers out of the corner of his eye. They’re iridescent, he thinks. Black? Maybe? Or maybe a very dark purple . . .

He coughs loosely, wishing that he’d just give up and die already. He’s seeing things. He’s almost gone anyways. He hasn’t moved in . . . well, however long it’s been.

The thing shifts slightly. Olivier isn’t sure it’s a bird anymore. It might be some kind of deer? It’s green again, he thinks, and glowing. A glowing green deer has decided to manifest itself on the edges of his deathbed. Great.

No, that thing’s not a deer. It’s a bug, some sort of ugly cyan beetle. Olivier can see its pincers. They snap twice.

No, those are a beak, maybe. Is it . . . a hockey mask? That doesn’t make any sense.

Olivier closes his eyes for a moment, savoring the quiet darkness. He just wants things to make sense. He wants to be home, in the academy, not out here in the desert.

The thing paws at the ground, the sand shifting audibly. Lovely. He can hear it now.

Olivier has given up trying to classify it already, trying to figure out what it is. It’s not a bird. It’s not a deer. It’s not a beetle. It’s not green or black or cyan or yellow or any forsaken color he’s ever heard of. It’s . . . it’s . . . indescribable.

Olivier opens his eyes again. He tries to focus on the sky above him, but it’s all tinged with a funny color now. And the stars are bigger than they were before, four of them staring straight down at him.

Oh. Not stars. Not stars.

Olivier jerks, his face colliding with the smooth . . . plastic? furry? surface of the thing that had been on the edge of his vision. His head slams back into the rock and he groans audibly.

“Shoulda known the grim reaper would be some freak,” he murmurs. His throat cracks, making the words little more than a rasp.

The thing tilts its head to look at him, blinking four eyes in tandem. It rises to a full height that Olivier can’t quite parse, standing on a variable amount of legs depending on how you looked at the creature. Like one of those elephantine optical illusions . . . if you look at it upside-down, like Olivier was doing, it stands on two legs, but if you try to follow its torso down to its legs, there are four hooves. No, wings. No, hooves.  The thing doesn’t speak. Olivier knows it isn’t speaking. It isn’t standing at all, but it is standing at the same time.

His head spins weakly.

The thing wants Olivier to call it the Witch. Olivier isn’t sure how he knows that.

The thing wants Olivier to stop calling it an it. It is a he. He is the Witch.

No, there isn’t any time for explanation about what the Witch is. He is just the Witch. He is the keeper of the Zones. He is the protection given to rebels, the barrier between life and death, the beating heart choked out beneath the city streets. He is the garden at the end of the world, a constant companion to change and renewal.

Olivier became aware that neither of them had blinked in a very long time.

The Witch looked at Olivier for a long time longer before Olivier realized anything else. The Witch hadn’t spoken this whole time, but Olivier understood him innately.

Olivier is going to die imminently. In mere seconds. Almost as soon as the Witch finishes speaking to him. But the Witch has another offer.

The Witch extends a limb. It looks like a hand, sometimes, but other times it is another hoof, and if Olivier looks at it cross-eyed, it becomes a beetle pincer again.

If Olivier takes the limb, shakes on the deal, he will one of the Witch’s emissaries. One person, blessed with powers currently beyond his capabilities. These powers will manifest differently for each person who takes the deal. With these powers, Olivier must free the beating heart of the Witch from the roots that strangle it out. He must carve out the poisons of BotCo, and wrest the city free of its corporatocratic, despotic control.

Then, and only then, will Olivier survive this next night in the desert.

Olivier stares into the four eyes of the Witch. He stares back, unblinking.

You either take this deal or don’t, Olivier Song.

Olivier grits his teeth. He tries to clear his throat, but it feels like there’s nothing to clear anymore. Olivier slowly, painfully, pushes himself into a sitting position on his rock. He turns to face the Witch, considering.

“Why are you choosing me?” he chokes out, trying to sit up as straight as possible. “Why. Me.”

Because Olivier is there. And Olivier is able to see the Witch. And Olivier, right now, is on the threshold between the real world and the Witch’s domain.

“And I’m just a pawn. For some stupid little grudge you have against BotCo.”

It’s not a little grudge. And Olivier has always been a pawn, even in the city. Why does changing sides matter so much, at the end of it all?

“I’m a person,” Olivier says, but he chokes before he can say anything else. He dry-coughs, more like retching into the sand beneath his rock.

BotCo has never cared about people. They only care about capital. Are you capital, Olivier Song? Or are you just another body in the desert? What purpose do you serve in your own life?

Olivier wipes his mouth, even though there’s nothing to wipe away. He regards the Witch warily. What purpose does he serve, especially now that he’s let the Stone Maiden slip through his fingertips? What purpose does he serve if he just dies out here in the desert?

Olivier eyes the Witch’s extended limb, somewhere between hand and hoof and pincer.

“Fine.”

He takes the limb in his own hand and shakes it. Once, twice. A deal, done. Brokered. Completed in a haze of colorless and colorful light.

Chapter Text

Diggory notices something irregular about the mailbox.

They’ve been here many times before, bearing many other masks that do not belong to the boy floating behind them. They know the layout of the land around the mailbox. They know the way it looks, far-off on the horizon. They know the way the candles and wreaths catch the light in the setting sun.

But now . . .

There’s too much blue, right at the base of the mailbox. Diggory keeps walking as the whole image comes into view, sparkling softly in the fast-fading light.

There’s a body lying in the dirt in front of the mailbox. Blue hair, ripped white clothes, clammy skin. The person is small, curled in on themself, tucked just between a rock and the mailbox. They aren’t moving.

Percy draws near, his spectral hands falling through Diggory’s shoulder. “What is that?” he asks, squinting.

“A rebel,” Diggory says. Their hand rests on the blaster at their hip; they’re not sure they will actually need it. “They will make pilgrimages here. They bring masks, much like I do. They bring letters and remembrance for the dead.”

Diggory lets the words hang in the air for a moment before Percy brushes past them, nothing more than a brisk breeze in the desert air.

“It doesn’t look like they’ve brought anything,” Percy says. He floats above the body, poking at the person with spectral fingers. The person shivers, but does not stir. Their hair flutters, caught in Percy’s wake.

“I have seen them hold vigils for the dead,” Diggory explains. “They will sit with the mailbox until their friends are returned to them. More often than not, though, they wish they had not.” Diggory almost wishes that they had not seen those rebels, too, abandoned to the wastelands after their crews had either died or run away. It was a sorry sight, a dark sight . . . and more often than not, a gory sight. Diggory hopes that this will not be one of those cases.

“I think they’re asleep,” Percy murmurs, floating face-to-face with the rebel. He lies on his side in the sand, part of his arm disappearing into the sand.

Diggory chews on their lip for a moment, considering the other reasons a rebel might wander out to the mailbox. “I have seen . . . suicides, here before, too. They believe it is the only way to reach the Witch, to appeal for his aid. They seek an audience. They often find it.”

Percy rolls over onto his back, suddenly crestfallen. “Oh.”

Diggory walks ahead of them. They hope that this rebel is not dead. They do not believe so. The dead often look different; they have a colder heat signature, they do not breathe, they leave spirits in their wake to be gathered and given to the Witch. This person has a fever. Their shoulders are, ever so slightly, rising and falling. There is no spirit sitting near the mailbox.

They finally reach the mailbox, kneeling in the dirt. They reach out and tap the person on the shoulder. The person flinches.

Percy is behind them now, taking cover and peering down. “Are they okay?” he asks, his voice trembling. Diggory glances back just in time for Percy to glance away.

“Are you afraid that they are not?” they ask.

“Maybe,” Percy defends.

Diggory pulls the person’s shoulder towards themself, unfurling their body. It looks like they’ve been out in the desert for some time; all of their exposed skin is blistered and red with sunburn. Blue stubble speckles their jawline. Their eyes are bruised and dark under the haze of messy blue hair.

As Diggory pulls, the person does not resist. They flop over and lean into Diggory’s knees, revealing a blaster furrow in their other shoulder and a smear of blood across their face.

Out of the corner of their eye, Diggory can see Percy wince. “Are they alive?” he asks.

“I think so,” Diggory says, checking for a pulse. It comes in thready and fast, but there all the same.

“Are you just going to leave them here?”

“I . . .”

Diggory trails off. They are not sure. They came here to deposit Percy’s mask, to speak to the Witch if need be—they did not come here to save lost rebels.

But, the Witch had waylaid them earlier. Perhaps he had needed more time with this blue-haired person. Perhaps he had wanted to ensure that Diggory, Percy, and this person had met.

“I do not know,” they tell Percy.

Percy sits on his knees at the head of the person, considering them. He glances back at Diggory. “You won’t just leave them here, right?”

“I . . .”

“You’re not going to leave them.” This time, it wasn’t a question.

Diggory doesn’t respond, though. Their shoulders straighten almost of their own accord. Their posture stiffens. Their body has picked up on something that their brain hasn’t noticed quite yet. A sound, somewhere nearby, like the quiet falling of sand.

Their eyes narrow. The sun has set and they are in full darkness now, just the green stars above and a sliver of waxing moon. Their vision slides into heat signatures, watching the cold spot that Percy fills and the burning warmth that is the person in their lap.

They carefully move their head, one hand creeping to the blaster at their waist. They can see heat echoing from behind them, waves of cold warmth that seeped from an unknown source.

It’s heartening to know that Diggory Graves is still on their toes. You know. It’s difficult to find them off their guard.

Diggory relaxes. The thoughts aren’t theirs, and the knowledge that the ideas carried doesn’t stay for long. This is a familiar sensation; it’s the voice of the Witch. Diggory slides the blue-haired person off their lap and turns to face the Witch. His carapace shines with an unreadable signature in the night, somewhere between freezing and burning. The signals sent from Diggory’s optical array don’t make any sense, but then again, they never do when looking at the Witch. He is simply what he is; Diggory recognizes that and tries to accept it without thinking about it too much.

“Good evening,” they greet him. “How may I help you?”

Next to them, Percy’s face has become nearly transparent. His one visible pupil has shrunken to a sliver, reflective in the night like a cat’s.

“That’s the Witch?” he hisses, his voice coming out strangled. “That’s the Witch?”

“Yes,” Diggory tells him. “Percy, I would like to introduce you to the Phoenix Witch, the Garden of the End, the beating heart of the desert.”

There is a task that must be completed.

“Of course,” Diggory says.

This person must be taken to the rebel encampment that is known as the Scoutpost. From there, they will know what to do.

“Of course,” Diggory repeats. The huge form of the Witch nods once, and begins to turn away.

“Wait,” Percy gasps, reaching out.

The Witch turns, their many-and-yet-none green eyes latching onto his misty figure.

“I don’t-“ Percy begins, but then he is cut off. He stares at the Witch for a moment, and then nods. “Yeah,” he says, quieter now. “Okay. Narratives. Okay.”

The Witch gives a subtle nod, and then is gone.