Being down here with just Cassie and Corax is nice, as long as I don’t think about why we’re here, or what happened. We have plenty of space, Cassie has hot food and water, and Corax has a wide open area to fly in. Sure there’s very little light, but with both of them here? It’s manageable.

  It turns out the small turbine I made wasn’t quite enough to charge the car fully, but making a rger, non-portable version was doable. I even take out one of the car headlights and prop it up on top of a pole to give a little more light to the rest of the cavern.

  Even better, I’ve figured out how to make soup! Cooking is actually really fun, and the first time Cassie actually enjoyed something I made was incredible. The look on her face just somehow washed away every single worry in my mind.

  I knock on the back window of the car softly to wake Cassie up. She’s ended up ciming the back seats of the car, and Corax’s nest has been moved to the roof.

  Cassie wakes with a start, but doesn’t reach immediately for her weapon. I think the time down here has done her good as well.

  “Good morning.” I say softly and open the door.

  “Morning.” She sits up and stretches, her shirt riding up to reveal just an inch of her midriff. She’s healing well, and she even left bandages off some of the less damaged parts of her skin. It might be a little early for that, a lot of it still looks pink and fresh, but she knows best.

  “Tell me what you think of this bowl!” I say a little too excitedly.

  “What did you do to it?” She takes the bowl carefully, inspecting my work. I guess I was way too excited.

  “Just give it a try!” I try and fail to restrain my excitement.

  She puts the warm bowl on her legs, apparently my first few tries were more than a little too hot, and brings the spoon to her lips.

  As soon as the liquid hits her tongue, her eyes go wide in surprise.

  “Holy shit this is good! What did you do?”

  “I added salt!” At least I’m almost certain it’s salt. “There was some on the floor of the food store building. Separating it from the ash was a slow process, but I finally managed it.”

  A disbelieving noise escapes Cassie’s lips, and she goes back for a second bite.

  “That’s the secret project you’ve been working on?” She asks.

  “Yeah. I made a lot, do you think we can sell it?” Cassie is very nervous about Vegas, and I think it’s because of the money.

  “After the oceans drained, it left behind just so much salt.”

  “Oh, right.” Of course it did, I even knew that, Lucas and Ethan told me as much. The storms would blow that sand and salt mixture all across the pnet. It can’t be that hard to extract it from the ground. I need to get these hard drives fixed, I really don’t like things slipping my mind.

  “But maybe we can find someone who needs it!” Cassie adds quickly. “And if not, I appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I’m gd she likes it anyway, but I can’t help but be disappointed. I really thought I had a solution to our problems.

  “Did you have a good night?” Cassie asks, and I let her change the subject.

  “Yeah, we did.” My voice is far more ft than it was when I woke her up. “I left instructions on how to use the big turbine, added a transformer to let it power lights, and made a few more buildings livable.”

  I’ve been doing my best to fix up this pce. It just feels like the correct thing to do. Even if the people won’t be here to see it, maybe their legacy and town can live on without them.

  Even with the repaired houses, Cassie is still sleeping in the car for the AC. It gets a little hot in here with the constantly burning fire from the steam turbine.

  “Did you remember to credit us on the note?” Cassie asks. She had the idea to write a note, undeniable proof that we were the ones who fixed this pce. When we have to head back for Vince and Ivy, hopefully we can take credit for keeping this pce alive and sleep here for free.

  “I’m not sure it’s possible for me to forget right now.” No big earth shattering revetions are happening to distract me, and no stress to steal my focus away.

  “I’m gd?” Cassie sounds unsure. I guess it does sound like a sad statement, but I’m saying it with a different tone.

  “That’s a good thing.” I reassure her.

  “Ok, good.”

  “Did you sleep well?” Her missing arm has been bothering her pretty regurly.

  “Yeah, I’m alright, just anxious to get moving.”

  “The wind looked like it was weakening when I checked an hour ago.”

  “Hell yeah.” Cassie tries to seem excited, but just can’t summon her normal energy. In just a few days we’ll be in Vegas, and won’t be stopping for any detours if we can avoid it.

  “We won’t spend long in Vegas.” I reassure her. The pn is to ask Zero for help, and when he won’t, to somehow get into Eight’s network again and talk to whatever quantum AI lives there. I don’t know how we’re going to do that, and we haven’t discussed our pns if that doesn’t work either, so I just have to make sure I manage to make it work somehow.

  She gives me a side eye, a small smile, and a shake of her head.

  “What?” I ask. I’m not sure what she means by that.

  “Nothing, I’m just thinking.” She takes another bite to buy herself time to collect her words. “You’re just so different than when we met you.”

  “I don’t feel like I changed much.” Sure I’m a little more stable now, but that’s about it.

  A half-stifled snort sneaks out of Cassie’s nose.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “You can’t be serious.” Her words are colored by an underlying chuckle.

  “I am?” Maybe if I wanted to relive all my memories of the st few weeks I could figure out what she means, but I really don’t want to do that.

  She only shakes her head and focuses on her food.

  “Big difference.” Corax’s voice drifts out of his nest.

  “I’m gd you two think so.”

  I need to find something to do. I didn’t have anything to distract myself with one day, and just accidentally watched Cassie eat. I just wanted to watch her enjoying something I made, but apparently that’s pretty creepy. Instead, I spend my time once again checking the brace I installed on the car’s roof to safely hold the small generator. I’m already certain it won’t fall off from anything short of a storm, but at least it gives me something to concentrate on.

  The brace is a bit of a mess, I don’t exactly have a lot of tools. There were a few that survived the fire, but not many. It’s mostly just pieces of the water filter bolted to both the car roof and generator. We also collected as many intact watertight containers as possible, filled them with water, and piled them in the car. We’ll have plenty of water to get to Vegas even if we constantly use the generator, and extra to sell.

  I check everything thoroughly a handful of times while Cassie finishes eating, only stopping when she finally climbs out of the back seat. She checks a little gauge we’ve strapped to her wrist to see how much battery her legs have. Of course it’s full, her battery was plugged into the car the whole night, but she’s understandably paranoid about suddenly losing access to her legs again suddenly.

  “I’m going to go check on the storm.”

  “Alright.” She knows better than I do how weak the storm is and how long it will actually continue for. “Let me know what you think.”

  “Will do!” She grabs a light and takes off at full speed towards the entrance.

  She’s been doing a lot of running to pass the time, and I think she’s still adjusting to the new servos in her legs. She’s definitely slower than she used to be, but by less than I expected. Her entire style of running has slowly morphed to pull every bit of power possible out of them, and to account for the rge battery in her backpack.

  I might as well start packing, we’ve made a bit of a mess around here. Clothes, jars, scraps of cloth, and just general trash is everywhere. Even if the rest of the town is already a mess, I don’t want to make it any worse than I have to.

  Our car is packed with water and jugs of the same fmmable oil that was burning the water purifier. It’s so full it’s hard to fit everything inside. Despite that, I do my best to find gaps between the containers to stash our belongings.

  It turns out it’s not actually that hard to find space. Or rather, only finding a few open gaps is plenty of space to safely stash our small belongings. Cassie’s book and Kara’s letter have been safely stashed in the glove compartment this whole time, but I check anyway to make sure they’re still unharmed. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost either one of them.

  Everything is safely stowed away by the time Cassie returns.

  “We still have a few hours to kill.” She comes to a stop by the car, her foot unconsciously tapping rapidly against the ground.

  “Do you want to py cards then?” It’s the only thing I can think of to get her mind off things. She’s not going to want me to read to her right now, not this early in the day.

  “I guess.” She sits against the car tire.

  It takes a moment to dig out our deck, but I manage. I sit off to the side of her, and Corax comes down from his nest, completing the triangle.

  “What do you two want to py?” I ask.

  “Skat?” Cassie offers.

  “Sure.” I set aside the cards we don’t need, shuffle, and deal.

  “So about AI being able to shuffle cards exactly how they want it…” Cassie says slowly.

  “I said it’s possible, not that I could do it.” It’d take very specialized hands and fingers. “Plus I’m not tracking anything when I shuffle, I really don’t want to accidentally cheat.”

  “You better not be.”

  Hopefully this keeps her mind off things for a bit.

  JanePtinum