YAN

  NESTLED IN THE CROOK OF THE VALLEY was a structure. Not of wood or stone, but of that strange pale stuff the place where Yanick and Luc were both kept once. The same smooth, bone-coloured walls as the place where they’d kept him caged and questioned. Not quite white. Not quite silver.

  A large circle lay at its heart, flat and empty, its surface cracked in places, faded lines still whispering of movement and purpose long gone. Around the circle stood large curved plates, once humming with unnatural life, he remembered them buzzing in the cold corridors, pulsing like breath, like thought. Now they loomed silent. Dust-choked. Dead.

  He narrowed his eyes, heart heavy with a strange hope. He wished this was the same place. Wished he had returned to that prison, that beginning, because then perhaps he would understand what to do next. After he took his revenge.

  But this wan not the place. This place was long dead, like those lights that weren’t lights anymore.

  He began the descent. No vodka, no healing balms, no herbs, only pain.

  The slope was treacherous. Jagged rocks and loose gravel slid beneath his boots with every step. He leaned forward, hands scraping cold stone, legs trembling from strain and cold. Once he slipped, catching himself just in time, the throb in his bad hand sharp enough to draw stars across his vision. The air thinned with each breath, burning his chest. Still, he pressed on, teeth clenched, eyes locked on the dead place below like it might vanish if he looked away.

  It didn’t. Everything stood there waiting for him.

  Yanick looked back up the mountain. A small shape was making its slow, careful way down. Nemeth. Bent and dragging one leg behind like a wounded animal.

  “Don’t move,” a voice said from behind.

  So he didn’t. The other mind didn’t either. No flicker of alarm, no need to fight. There was no danger. Even though something hard and cold pressed against his back. He could guess what it was. One of the lightning-bolt batons.

  “My name is Yanick Erickson,” he said before the voice could ask. “I’ve been led here by the man that’s descending from the mountain right now. He is wounded. He needs help.”

  There was silence, taut like a drawn bow. Then shuffling. A signal.

  Two figures sprinted from the strange pale building and dashed toward the rocks.

  Yanick turned his head slightly, just enough to watch them. No uniforms, no masks, no white gloves. Just people. Dressed like villagers. Boots worn through. Clothes that had seen winters. Real. Familiar.

  They reached Nemeth, each taking an arm. Nemeth didn’t resist. He let them guide him.

  Yanick exhaled. Not relief exactly. Just confirmation that this was the place Nemeth wanted him to see.

  No more guesses. No more doubt. He had reached the end of this stretch.

  This part of the mission was complete. He could rest now.

  And he did.

  His legs gave out, sudden and complete, like someone had blown the flame from the candle that powered them. No warning, no resistance. Just darkness rushing up from the knees.

  But he didn’t hit the ground. Pairs of hands caught him. Firm, human hands, rough with work. Not gloves, not gauntlets.

  *

  Yanick woke with a gasp, lungs seizing, heart galloping like a wild colt. The walls around smooth, pale. That strange bone-coloured material. He bolted upright, eyes wide with the terror of memory. It was the prison again. It was the cold place. The questions. The lights.

  He screamed.

  A hand touched his chest. Not hard. Gentle. Steady.

  “It’s alright,” a voice said, low and soothing. “You are safe.”

  He turned, panting, sweat beading on his skin.

  The speaker was an old woman. So old he thought she might crumble if the wind blew too hard. Wrinkled and slight, her white hair braided and pinned in coils.

  Yanick stared. He didn’t think people could live that long.

  He blinked, looking around. The walls were still wrong, but the room wasn’t. There were no blinking lights, no furniture made from that strange substance. Just a wooden bed. A clay bowl on a table. A thick wool blanket covering his legs. Everything here was… normal.

  He breathed again. Shaky. Confused.

  “This place,” he said, eyes twitching across the smooth walls. “What is it?”

  The woman smiled with lips closed.

  “From your reaction,” she said, “I’m guessing that you have seen a place similar to this one before. Also, Nemeth told me.”Yanick sat up too fast. The room tilted sideways, then back.

  “Nemeth. How is he?”

  “He is alright,” She laid a hand on his shoulder. Dry. Paper-thin. “Little more fatigued than you, but nothing serious.”

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  “It looked like he broke his leg.”

  “No, no.” She shook her head slowly. “Just a twisted ankle, some heavy bruising though, but that’s all. The only thing broken is your wrist.”

  Yanick followed her eyes, looked at his hand. It was wrapped neatly and covered in some kind of plaster, greyish in colour.

  “Where’s my gauntlet?”

  “It’s there,” woman pointed at a box in the corner. “With rest of your things. Don’t worry.”

  He nodded once. A flicker. Then looked at his hand again.

  “Thank you,” he said, tapping his fingers against the cast. “For this.”

  “I regret we are left with no power,” the woman said with a sigh. “In the old days, we’d have scanned you, sliced your pain into data, fixed you clean. But now?”

  She leaned closer.

  “Now we can only pray. To the gods that don’t exist.”

  Yanick didn’t answer. He just stared at the cast, then flexed his fingers. They twitched like worms in sleep.

  “You won’t get full use of it back,” the woman added, quiet now. “There’s damage deep inside. Places we can’t reach. Not without the technology we no longer can access.”

  “Then I’ll learn to use the other hand,” he said. Simple. Final. Like saying he’d learn to walk without feet.

  She looked at him differently after that. Not kinder. Just sharper. Like someone seeing a blade hidden in a boy’s smile.

  “Good,” she said. “I like your spirit.”

  She stood. Slow. Bones grinding. A quiet storm of effort behind her every movement.

  “Get dressed. Eat something. The kitchen’s on your left. They’ll fix you a plate. Then come find me outside.”

  She turned, leaning into the crane of a walking stick that looked like it had survived its own war. No farewell. No soft words. She walked out, one slow step at a time.

  *

  He couldn’t call it breakfast, but it was something. Warm, soft, salty. Enough to keep the bones upright. Hunger was a voice he’d learned to ignore, like the throbbing in his wrist, like the howling in his dreams.

  Water was easier, cold and clean, in a bottle made of that strange, almost-bone material. It felt too light in his hand, but didn’t break when he dropped it once by accident. He took slow sips as he walked towards the exit of the compound.

  The people in the kitchen called this place this name. Not home. Not camp. Not even a name. Just the compound. Like it had been something once, and they were only its shadows now.

  They told him the old woman’s name was Ellie. No last name. No titles. And no, she wasn’t their leader. They didn’t have one, they said. Just people doing what needed to be done.

  He found her where they said she’d be. Out in the middle of that wide, faded circle. The old platform. Landing pad, they said it was. Long ago.

  Ellie stood dead-centre, wind tugging her coat, one hand resting on the cane like it was a part of her body.

  She didn’t speak when he approached. Just looked at him. That same way again. Like measuring the distance between what he was and what he could become.

  “You said you wanted answers,” she said at last.

  Yanick nodded.

  “Then listen, but don’t ask for it twice. My bones don’t have the strength to repeat.”

  She shifted, cracked her back, and the story poured out.

  “A long time ago, the world you know burned. It burned not from fire of gods or demons, but from the stupidity of men. Big kings. Bigger weapons. They called it nuclear war. Bright light, hotter than the sun, sweeping across the land, eating cities whole.”

  He didn’t understand the word, but the tone made sense.

  “Before that fire, a group of rich men—people who had more gold than sense—built a ship. A giant floating house in the sky. Not sails and ropes. A place that swallowed stars and rode the void. They left the world behind. Left the rest to die.”

  “You mean... they escaped?” Yanick asked.

  “Yes”. She nodded. “And when they saw the Earth turned to ash, they didn’t return. They landed on the Moon instead. Built a home from the junk they brought along. Called themselves the Overmen, because they thought they were better than the rest.”

  Yanick narrowed his eyes.

  “Like gods?”

  Ellie snorted.

  “Like cowards with long plans.”

  She gestured to the bones of the station around them.

  “They watched the Earth for generations. Spied on your ancestors. Sent machines to hover above and see. No electricity. No roads. People forgot everything. Became tribes. Feral. But not dead. Survivors.”

  Yanick sat. Slowly. This was a dream or madness. But it had the smell of truth.

  “They wanted the Earth back,” she continued. “Not for kindness. For oil. Gold. Water. Things they couldn’t make here forever. So they made a plan. To shape you all. To rebuild the world, but better. Not as it was. As they wanted it.”

  His fingers tightened on the bottle.

  “They created gods,” Ellie said. “False ones. Mixed all the old religions into one and gave it to a prophet. Said the Moon was watching. That one god ruled from there. Made him a king of belief.”

  “The Faithful,” Yanick whispered.

  “Yes. The Faithful. That symbol they wear? That’s ours. They think it’s holy. It’s just branding.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “But that wasn’t enough. People clung to old scraps. So they sent us. Engineers, scientists. We built tribes. Spread fake gods. Fuelled wars. Pushed history forward like a cart in mud.”

  “Why?” he rasped. “Why do all that?”

  Ellie’s face didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just hardened like old leather left too long in the sun.

  “To keep people obedient,” she said. “We needed… They needed order. Not peace. Not freedom. Order.”

  She tapped the ground with her cane, like punctuation.

  “They controlled the population through faith and fire. Wars to trim the numbers. Gods to keep minds leashed. The Earth is a farm, Yanick. The tribes are cattle. You grow too many, they eat too much, fight too much. So they burned fields, poisoned wells, reset the clock every few decades.”

  He stared at her.

  “They mine your land. Strip your rivers. Send it all back to the Moon, so the gods in the sky can keep floating in their little kingdom. That station up there?” She pointed, though the sky offered nothing but light. “That’s where you were kept.”

  Yanick took a step back.

  “No.”

  “You were on the Moon,” she said again.

  “You’re lying.” His voice cracked. “That’s not possible. Moon’s just… just a thing in the sky.”

  Ellie looked past him. Toward the mountains. Toward whatever ghosts still limped behind them.

  “They wanted to use Nemeth again,” she said. “Reshape him. Make him the enemy once more. Another villain to rally the world against. Something to unite the tribes through fear. Works every time. Has for centuries.”

  Yanick didn’t turn. Didn’t blink.

  “But you,” she went on, “you brought Luc down with you.”

  His eyes darkened. Jaw clenched like it wanted to snap bone.

  “What does it change?” he said. “One leader or the other?”

  “Everything,” Ellie said. “Because Luc doesn’t know. He thinks he’s burning their house down, but he doesn’t see the blueprint still smouldering beneath the ash. He’s not a villain. Not a hero. Just another tool. A sharper one, maybe. But a tool still.”

  Yanick scratched the side of his neck. “He’s not one of them?”

  “He’s worse.” Ellie said. “He’s free. And angry. And he remembers.”

  Yanick’s stomach turned. He knew that kind of man. Had followed that kind of man.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked. “Why tell me all this?”

  Ellie turned to him then. Whole face lit by the dying light like an omen carved in clay.

  “Because you’re not a tool, Yanick.”

  She took a shaky step closer. Grip tight on the cane. Her voice dropped to a hush, dry as parchment.

  “We can’t stop the plan. Not fully. The gears are too deep now. But we can throw a bone in the cogs. Nemeth knows what to do, but he’s to old, to weak now.”

  “He’s stronger that you think,” Yanick scoffed. “And me? I’m a cripple.”

  “That woman you kept naming in your sleep…”

  “Amaia?”

  “No. Rayla,” Ellie said. “I know her mission. I know her. Bring her here, with her people. We might still have a chance.”

  “Rayla?” His jaw clenched. Bit of blood in his mouth. Rage in his throat. Rage at himself for saying her name. Rage at the idea of needing her.

  “She knows things. About the movements. About the ones still loyal. Bring her, and we use that.”

  “But where do I even find her?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Ellie said. “For that we don’t need much power.”