Evolving Classes In The Apocalypse-Chapter 12: Reprieve

Both of us were in quite the dilemma. We were in the Outskirts now, and while this place was safe for me, that safety only lasted one single night.

Ysor and I had until dawn to figure out how to disappear. Because once the sky brightened, both her family and the government would be out searching for us. The government might release their common Defined onto the task, foot soldiers and trackers with enough power to be a nuisance but not enough to be a real threat. If it were only the government, I could work with that.

But the Wintertide family was a different problem entirely.

The Wintertides were the head family of the Winter Faction. And Factions, in the world as it stood today, were the reason humanity still had a pulse. They were the coming together of the most powerful Defined and their households, pooling their strength into something greater than any lone individual could manage. A canopy of raw, unfiltered power that extended over everyone willing to come under it. With terms and conditions, naturally. But in a world this hostile, the advantages of joining a Faction far outweighed standing alone. Three Sanctuaries had been claimed because of them. Humanity owed its survival to them.

Which meant the Factions had numbers. They had elites. And they could deploy both onto a task like finding one runaway girl far more easily than the government ever could.

For one of the four major families, dispatching elite Defined to retrieve Ysor wouldn’t even be an inconvenience. Honor was expensive to the Wintertides, and Ysor running away would stain the family name in ways they wouldn’t tolerate quietly.

I glanced at her as we moved through the darkness. I wanted to know her reason. Why she’d done it, what had finally pushed her over the edge. But I knew Ysor. When she didn’t want to say something, her silence had weight to it, a kind of wall that looked gentle but didn’t budge. I had learnt a long time ago not to pry. Instead, I’d wait and be somewhere she knew she could talk when she was ready.

That was all I could do for now.

Eventually, we reached the deeper stretches of the Outskirts. It was a strange thing about this ring. The section closest to the Middle Ring was the most populated, buildings crammed with bodies, so many people packed into each structure that the walls themselves seemed to sag under the burden. Past that belt of desperation, there were still buildings, plenty of them, but fewer and fewer people living inside. Empty windows, quiet streets, the kind of silence that didn’t feel peaceful so much as forgotten.

We passed through all of it, moving steadily through the night until we reached the outer sphere of the ring, the scanty stretch closer to the wilderness road where the buildings thinned out and the air tasted colder and sharper, like the wall was already breathing down our necks.

We took rests along the way, but never for long. Resting too long risked the both of us drifting off, and I could picture it too clearly: opening our eyes to a sky bright with morning, realizing that the only window we’d had, we’d wasted sleeping.

Besides, I had an idea for how to get out of this place. And for it to work, timing was everything. We couldn’t afford to miss it.

We could afford to sleep, but only once we reached the right spot. Getting there wasn’t hard. It sat in the outermost section of the Outer Ring, close enough to the wall barricading Area C from the wilderness that you could feel the boundary in your bones.

A tall cathedral rose from the darkness ahead, its windows shattered, a gaping hole torn through its center. Through that wound, the dark and lethal lands beyond stared back with hollow eyes.

The cathedral was locked, so we settled on the wide stone stairs instead.

When Ysor saw me collapse to the ground, chest heaving, she looked around at the darkness surrounding us and then lowered herself down gently.

"Is it okay to sit here?" she whispered. Her voice disturbed the silence of this place like a stone dropped into still water.

"This is the Secretariat," I said, still catching my breath. "Although I think this one is more run down than the one in the Inner Ring."

Ysor looked back at the cathedral. "It really is? Doesn’t look like one."

"Yeah. The difference is clear."

She seemed to settle more comfortably after that, drawing her legs up and wrapping her arms around them, chin resting on her knees.

I watched the darkness for a moment, then spoke.

"Every day by 6am, a small group of miners get transported from here to the Crucible of Giants. From there, they’re sent to Terrace Dimension to mine. They usually return by sundown, and then they do it all over again."

Ysor’s eyes widened slowly as the pieces fell into place.

"Oh... is this how you’ve always planned to leave Earth?"

I was quiet for a moment. Then I shrugged.

"Well... I used to come here a lot. Watched them come back most evenings. So I just thought, why not?"

Ysor looked at me, and the corner of her lips curled upward.

"You really were determined to find her, weren’t you?"

I held her gaze for a moment, my expression serious. Then I looked away, and gave her the part I’d been holding back.

"This is going to be more difficult than it sounds."

She turned forward, staring at the wall that stood before us. It wasn’t anything dramatic to look at. Just another piece of pre-Facturing architecture that the first settlers had reinforced so heavily that even now, with the Middle Ring and Inner Ring long past caring about its upkeep, the thing was still holding. Stubborn in the way old things sometimes were, outlasting the people who’d built them.

"I know it’s not going to be easy, after all. We are two weaklings only trying to survive."

I turned to look at her. Her gaze had drifted somewhere past the wall, as if she could see through the stone to whatever lay beyond it.

Then her lips curved into a quiet, wistful smile.

"You have a plan, don’t you." She looked at me. "I trust whatever it is you have planned."

I stared at her for a few moments. Something about the way she said it, so simply, like it cost her nothing, caught in my chest. I didn’t know what to say to that.

Eventually, I sighed.

"You should try to nap here. I’m sure they’ll start arriving in the next two hours."

She didn’t argue, that was Ysor. Trusting without needing to understand first.

I leaned back against the cold stone. My body needed the rest just as badly.