Chapter 8: Everything is Broken, Pt. 1

All was lost.

Mummified plants jutted from the powdery earth, crumbling to dust under Lily’s clumsy fingers. Even here at the top of the world the poison remained.

The swelling in her arm and calf lessened. The punctures closed. The pain faded, and in its wake silence grew to swallow everything as her guilt sprouted into anger and a variety of aches.

This time he did not come back.

You liked it, a dead man’s voice whispered, and she felt the nauseating echo of hands gripping her waist. You know you did.

So she shut herself down until there was nothing left but a machine that knew what direction west was.

Twice she imagined she saw him ahead of her, a dark spot against the gray snow and grayer stone, a trick of starvation and grief. The day after the water ran out she started to ask him a question before she remembered.

Lily trudged steadily forward. Like the skeletons down in that metro she would die reaching for freedom.

On the third morning without water her luck ran out.

She'd been digging around the roots of an almost-living plant, hoping for moisture, when she heard a shuffling behind her and turned to find herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Wearily, she raised her hands. There were five of them, identical in gas masks and biosuits covered in chalky dust. Armed with identical rifles.

The leader gestured with his. “How did you get out?”

“Out?” It was the first word Lily had said in days. Weeks? She coughed into her shoulder.

"Uncover your face," he barked, voice muffled.

Still kneeling, Lily pulled down her dust cloth. The newcomers recoiled and clutched their weapons tighter, but all she cared about was the heavy canteens at their belts.

The leader slung his rifle. He tugged off his mask, revealing a weathered face and graying hair. He closed his eyes, took a cautious breath, and doubled over coughing on a lungful of dust.

His allies lunged forward; he waved them back.

"It is safe," he said in amazement. To Lily, he added, “My name is Ishmael. Are you the envoy?”

“Could I have some water?” They had to be from somewhere close, they weren't carrying enough for more than a day. Black spots danced in front of Lily's eyes. How did they drink with the masks on?

Ishmael held out a canteen and Lily snatched it from his hands, closing her eyes and draining it dry. The water tasted flat and metallic. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d drank anything so wonderful.

“Are you the envoy,” Ishmael repeated.

Lily weighed her options. They had speech, and he looked human. Nothing she could do if they were cannibals; she was unarmed, spent, and alone.

“No,” she said, finally. Her head spun. “I’m nobody.”

Their rifles pointed down at a gesture from this Ishmael, but Lily was still outnumbered five to one.

“I don’t want trouble,” she continued, chancing a look around. Just in case. “Do you have…barter? Trade?”

“We’ll take you back with us,” Ishmael said, quelling the unease of his companions. “It’s not far.”

They had to lift her bodily and set her on her feet. She swayed, head throbbing. The horizon wavered and blurred.

Ishmael donned his mask. Someone handed her another canteen as they walked in a ragged single file, northwest-ish. No one talked. Lily fell twice.

After a thousand years they passed through a cut with rocky walls on either side vanishing up into the haze, stepping over a fallen chain-link fence festooned with ancient signage.

Wind whistled through the bones of a guard shack and the empty windows of rusted old vehicles lined up like soldiers. An array of metal spikes like lightning rods protruded from the surrounding rocks. Below these, bolted into the side of the mountain like a limpet, was a door.

Lily missed her gun fiercely. “Is your camp much farther?”

“We’re here,” Ishmael said.

He waved up at something, and the door shrieked open. It was at least two feet thick, all steel. Yellow lights blinked on inside the mountain, illuminating the top of a staircase that disappeared into darkness.

When they were all in the door shut again, and the thud of its closing echoed through the chamber.

"Welcome to Quebec Station.”

—

Adrenaline sliced through the fog of exhaustion and deprivation as Lily gripped the handrail, feeling the air change with their descent. It tasted thin and cold.

The Coalition had a place like this under Delphi. Alpha Base sat in the middle of a broad plaza like an eye or a cancerous growth. That door was massive, guarded by guns longer than Lily was tall. And Operatives. And worse things, probably.

The stairs ended in a wide bay facing a pair of doors lined with stripes of black and yellow, with large, bold letters stenciled across their face. A light shone red above a keypad. Rubber masks hung from pegs.

"Decon chamber. Put one of those on.” Ishmael waved again, this time at a small camera. Something clicked. The light turned green, the doors hissed open, and he herded them all in.

Lily's borrowed mask pressed tight against her forehead. A warning siren blared. Her skin prickled, hot and cold by turns, and after a slow count of ten a green light flashed and a machine voice announced that the chamber was clear.

The others were removing their gear. They looked disturbingly normal. Underneath the biosuits they all wore identical red coveralls with no markings, no insignia.

The door on the other side of the chamber groaned open. They marched her down a sloping hallway into a small, claustrophobic room.

"Wait here." Ishmael left Lily on a bench and stepped through a second door without knocking.

Silence pressed down like a wet rag and Lily's heart thumped erratically in her throat. This was the second biggest mistake she'd made in recent memory. She tucked her hands under her thighs and waited.

Ishmael came back. "Naomi will see you.”

A petite, whip-thin woman waited behind a desk of polished wood, her greying hair scraped back into a tight bun, her red shirt crisply pressed. The hairline creases edging her mouth and eyes had not come from smiling.

"How did you get out of the Station," she demanded, without introduction.

“I’m not from the station.” Lily gestured at a visibly uncomfortable Ishmael. “I asked him about trade. For food and water.”

Silence.

Naomi stared through her. She felt like those sharp eyes had sliced through her skin to look for a lie in the way her bones fit together.

“Where are you from, then,” she said grudgingly, with a dismissive motion at Ishmael. “What Station? Lima?”

"I walked east across the Wasteland,” Lily repeated, grotesquely aware of the people with guns behind her, of the steel door and the endless stairs and the concrete dome. She was very alone in this echoing tomb of a place.

“Are you the envoy? Were you sent by the USDC?” Naomi pronounced it neutrally, but there was a steel glint in her eye. Was the USDC her ally, her enemy, her god…impossible to tell, but there was an undisguised hunger on Ishmael's lean face.

Lily ventured the truth. “I wasn’t sent by anyone, I just came.”

Naomi said nothing for a long time, studying her hands. Then her searchlight eyes locked onto Lily again. "What are you?”

A lifetime of self-preservation kicked in, and Lily made herself useful.

“I’m a healer," she blurted, scrambling for the older word. "Doctor. That's what I do."

Both of them stared now, but she held her ground, pinning back her shoulders and lifting her chin.

Naomi's pencil scratched again. Lily gawked at the fresh, clean pad of paper on her desk. “I'll need a few details before you go to holding.”

"Wait -- wait, you don't need to send me to holding. I just want to resupply and go," Lily said. “Or I can just go. Please.”

"You'll remain here until I can verify your story,” Naomi said, crisply. "At that time your case will be reviewed--"

"My case?"

“—and we will proceed as I see fit. Now. Your name, age, and…origin, I suppose.” Naomi's pencil stayed poised over the paper. Ishmael stayed poised in front of the door. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Maybe they'd have food and water in holding.

"My name is Lily. I'm twenty-five, I think. I don’t know. I was born on Omaha Base. It was one of the Union city-states."

It occurred to her that none of this meant anything to them. Her age was also a fantasy; she'd stopped counting after seventeen. She wasn't sure how long she'd spent in Delphi or how long exactly since she’d left, but it was as good an answer as any.

Naomi wrote it all down, then dropped her pencil neatly into a jar. "That will be all.”

Lily braced for violence, but Ishmael didn't touch her. He held the door open and followed her out.

"I'm sorry," he said, and Lily believed him. The man's every thought was painted across his well-meaning face, and what she saw there now was pure regret. "You'll be treated well. I swear it."

"For how long," Lily demanded, as he escorted her down a narrow hallway and unlocked the door to a tiny cell.

Ishmael just shook his head and closed her in.

Quiet followed, and fear soured in Lily's stomach. The silence was overwhelming. She trembled with exhaustion but couldn't rest. The room was exactly four paces long by four paces wide.

Footsteps.

She sat down and clasped her shaking hands in her lap.

Ishmael had returned with a covered tray. It smelled so good that Lily forgot to be afraid for the seconds it took her to wolf down the boiled potatoes and green vegetables. No meat.

“Sorry.” Ishmael wearily produced a notepad and a gnawed pencil. “I’ll be quick.”

"If you're so sorry then let me go,” Lily said, wiping the tray clean and licking her fingers.

"You don't understand what you mean for us.”

"I don't mean anything." Now that the food was gone, anxiety rushed in to fill the gap previously occupied by hunger. "Just let me go on my way."

"On your way where?"

He was a more pleasant interrogator than 86 had been, but Lily didn't feel like answering. "West."

“They have schools, in the east?" He tapped his pencil against the pad. It was a terrible wealth of paper, half as thick as her finger.

"What?"

"You said you were a doctor. So there are still schools? Universities?” He pronounced the the word carefully, like it was foreign.

"Sure," Lily sidestepped. "There's lots of stuff."

“What about the government." The obvious hope burning behind his words was painful to hear. "The United States."

Lily almost liked Ishmael, with his tired politeness and misplaced hope. She wanted to lie. "It's gone."

He swallowed hard, nodded, and flipped to a new page in his notepad. Paper, everywhere. This place was rich. “Do you have any siblings? Any children of your own?”

"No.” Her mother had wept over the last one, stillborn when Lily was seven— tears of relief, not sadness. She remembered that. They'd buried it with the others.

“No to both questions?”

She nodded.

"Where you come from," Ishmael began, wetting his lips. “People really live on the surface? In cities? It’s…everything is normal?”

This time Lily did lie. "Yeah,” she said, lead in her stomach. “We put it all back together.”

He sighed deeply, dragging a hand over his face. “That’s all for now. You’ll be fed, and no one will harm you.”

“How long do I have to stay here,” Lily pressed.

“Until she says you can leave.” Ishmael’s face twisted in a not-smile, and he was gone.