Goin' Down Slow

Participants:

Also Featuring:

Scene Title	Goin' Down Slow
Synopsis	The convoy suffers a series of setbacks on its long journey from New Chicago.
Date	July 15—July 16, 2021

---

The wind is whipping hard across the Saskatchewan plains. The cold is not biting, but it is otherworldly cold for this time of year. In any other timeline it should be in the low 70s fahrenheit right now. Instead, the exterior thermostat hanging off the right side mirror on the Speedwagon struggles to pass 40 degrees fahrenheit in the late afternoon. Arctic wind is siphoned from the north by the jet streams changed with the emergence of the massive permanent hurricane off the east coast of America. The impact of the attempted atmokinetic solution to the flooding creating a cascading disaster that has long outlived the initial damage of the flood.

Taking her hands off the wheel just long enough to blow a warm breath onto them, Cat stays focused on the tail lights ahead of her. The sky is so darkly overcast that late afternoon is nearly night, and the dusty snow whipping across the plainslands reduces visibility enough to be hazardous.

The road ahead is barely distinguishable from the farmlands on either side. A dusty snow-swept flatland stretching to the edges of visibility.

---

Yellowhead Highway

Somewhere Between Highgate and Delmas
Saskatchewan
Canada

July 15th
4:37 pm

——

“Not looking forward to building a snowman soon,” Cat says to Robyn, wedged between her and Nadira. “Could be worse, though.” She slams a gloved fist on the heat vents that are barely pumping air out. “Could be sweating our assess off in a truck with no AC in the middle of—”

Speedwagon jostles violently, throwing Cat, Nadira, and Robyn to the right as the vehicle pitches so far that two wheels come off the ground. The engine roars and there is a gunshot-loud crack that accompanies the vehicle’s movement, followed by the Speedwagon coming back down again with a thunderous crash and a grinding roar in the undercarriage. The vehicle skids off the road and comes to a relatively harmless stop.

“Fuck—” Cat hisses, “Fuck!” She shifts the truck into reverse but there’s just a grinding metal-on-metal sound. She hits the gas and the engine roars but the vehicle goes nowhere.

“FUCK!” Cat shouts and, seeing the tail lights in the distance, slams on the horn three times. The emergency call for full-stop.

Robyn groans as the engine rings out to no effect, leaning for just a moment against Nadira as she collects her thoughts and lets out a heavy sigh. As she slowly sets herself up right and stares ahead out the window, she waits. Something is going to happen, right? She's braced for the worst. An explosion, a trap, anything.

But… nothing, even as Cat practically screams a curse in her ear. Instead, she stares there in silence for a long moment, eyes locked ahead as she sees red tailights flare brighter ahead of them.

"Cat, hon," she starts gently, still looking ahead. "No more driving for us. We're clearly cursed." The joke is the best she can manage in the face of losing another vehicle on this journey, so soon into the Canadian leg of the journey. There's panic in her eyes, but for the moment she's managing to avoid visibly freaking out about it, instead reaching down to retrieve her cane.

Nadira braces herself, equally as prepared for a conflict to be happening, but when the vehicle comes to a halt, she glances towards the road ahead of them before looking out the window to her right. "It is a temporary setback," she notes with a smile in Cat's direction. "Clearly the Speedwagon decided it is time for us all to have a break." She seems relieved that it seems likely that the problem is with the vehicle itself and not likely some sort of worse situation. She puts a hand on Robyn's arm.

"I will pop out and see if I can get a visual on whatever the problem is. I am no mechanic, but I can at least check and see if anything seems out of place."

She might not actually be entirely optimistic about the situation, but Nadira is trying to be the cool, calm-headed one in the face of another potential vehicle hiccup.

As Nadira climbs out of the Speedwagon, Cat slumps forward and firmly bounces her brow off the steering wheel. After a moment she mutters a defeated “Fuck.”

The vehicle next in line behind Speedwagon comes to a slow stop on the snow-slicked road. Inside the cab of Tinderbox, Jonathan flashes the headlights three times as a secondary warning to the vehicles ahead.

“I hope that’s not as bad as it looks.” Jonathan offers to Spades in the passenger seat as he puts the truck in park and turns off the engine. Tinderbox’s headlights reveal Nadira as she’s climbing out of Speedwagon, ducking under the vehicle and looking at the undercarriage. “You wanna draw straws for who has to get out of the warm truck?”

"It's definitely you," Spades answers as if that should be obvious. Regardless, he's pulling his coat zipped and peering out into the snows studiously, carefully observing the current snarl the Speedwagon is suffering only so much as observing what's surrounding it. Was the roadbump not just a bump, but a trap? His eyes narrow.

“I hate you so much.” Jonathan says with a crooked smile before he cracks open the driver’s side door, letting in a gust of cold air. With a grunt he hops down out of the truck and slams the door shut, ambling carefully across the road toward the Speedwagon, waving at Nadira as he does.

One vehicle back, the Wildcat—tail of the convoy—comes to a rolling stop as Edward eases on the brakes. Everyone had heard the three horns blasts for an emergency stop, and Edward casts a furtive look to Destiny as he shifts into park. Edward unbuckles his seatbelt and turns around to look at Zee in the sleeper compartment.

“Up and at ‘em,” Edward calls back to Zee. “Let’s go see what’s going on.” Then, leaning over to Destiny’s seat and putting a hand on her shoulder. “My handgun’s under your seat,” is his quietly issued warning to her. “If you want to stay in the car.”

"I don't wannaaaaaa," is a very drawn out and childish response, but despite that Zee is already sliding out from where she'd been lying down and to her feet. "I'm so glad I picked up a heavier jacket in Chicago," she muses as she turns back and starts to rummage through her bag. Hearing Edward's quiet remark to Destiny, she chooses to instead haul her entire bag on to her shoulder, just in case.

Moving to the back, she looks back to Edward. "If this turns out to, uh, be anything, do we have a plan?" After the ambush and Chicago, she's a little more on edge than she wants to let on.

Destiny startled to life in the passenger seat when the horns blared, but even with the convoy stopped, she hadn't been so worried. Her first thought was that maybe one of the vehicles slipped off the road or got stuck in a drive. She and Mateo made a game of shoveling the car out once for their dad. She'd felt like such a big girl, taking her turn with the shovel. (They'd insisted on helping.)

Edward's hand on her shoulder doesn't feel like calm reassurance. She starts to lean forward to reach below. “If I want to, or I should?” Des’ eyes dance back and forth between his, looking for instruction rather than reassurance in her whispered question. Does he think she's afraid? Is he afraid? Or does he need her to stand guard?

“I could go and report back,” she offers, feeling the cold metal and gingerly determining through touch that she's going to procure the gun safely. She trusts her ability to protect her better than bullets, but those can protect others.

Edward puts a hand on Destiny’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “It’s up to you.” It’s a small, honest vote of confidence. He doesn’t have to tell Destiny what to do, he trusts her to know what’s best, especially when she knows as much as he does about what’s happening.

Then, turning to Robyn, Edward says, “If it’s danger, hide.” A glance to Destiny. “That goes for you too.”

Then, Edward zips up his jacket and throws open the driver’s side door, letting in a howling gust of cold air. He quickly hops out onto the street, zipping up his jacket the rest of the way and lifting up the hood.

Tucking his hands into his pockets Edward makes trudging progress toward the sidelined vehicle. “How’re we doing?” He yells ahead.

Meanwhile, at the front of the convoy, a similar but differently-worded question is asked:

“What the fuck is going on?”

Taylor eases onto the brakes, glancing at Chess in the passenger seat before checking the rear view mirror again. “Three horns. God damnit.” It has already been a long day, and Tay has been on edge for hours since the snow started coming down steadier. Rather than take chances, he hauls his shotgun out of the center console and kicks the driver’s side door open, hopping out onto the street.

The interior of Scout was already cold. The thermostat blew days ago, leaving the hummer with no interior heat. The most it does is protect from the wind now, and as the temperature continues to drop the further north the team goes, the more uncomfortable the lead vehicle will become. But now, with Tay’s door wide open, the gusting wind fills the cabin.

Nathalie has been bundled up for days, but when the car stops, she still grabs a blanket to wrap around herself before she gets out. She doesn't bring a weapon, which is probably because Tay takes his and she assumes others will do likewise. And anyway, she's enough of a weapon herself if it comes to that.

"Hopefully someone just needs a pee," she says, but it sounds flat like she thinks someone should say something lighthearted, but isn't sold on it.

"Everyone okay?" she calls back toward the other cars. There's no bloodcurdling screams, so that's at least a good sign.

There’s often a pit in Castle’s stomach every time they stop. They didn’t really even remember getting shot, but it still lingers there in the background as a possibility. A fear. It takes everything not to just immediately raise the Castle as soon as they pull to a stop. They’ve been trying not to do anything that might alert people at a distance without— well, orders.

Even when orders were hard to expect when the people “in charge” aren’t around. Or couldn’t even be trusted in the first place.

“I could cut the wind a bit for us, but it won’t do anything if there’s damage already,” they offer in the feminine voice they’ve all come to know lately. Tense, too. The face of Saffron has always been more tense. They’re looking at Tay, because right now, as far as they’re concerned, they’re the boss. “I should be able to get the whole convoy even from up here, but we’ll get whatever is in front of us too.”

As soon as those horns blare, Chess swivels around to try to see back, which is an exercise in futility, given their position. Her blue-eyed gaze slides over to Tay as he looks to her, and she gives him a shake of her head to indicate she has no idea. She moves in tandem with him – as he reaches for his shotgun, she reaches for her bow, as well as a few rocks she keeps in the cup holder for charging and throwing.

Outside, she grits her teeth in the cold – the worn sweater beneath her leather jacket isn’t particularly effective. “Here’s hoping,” she says, looking back to see who will respond to Nat’s call, but then she nods to the road ahead of them, instead. “I’m going to make sure there’s nothing this way while you guys figure out what’s going on,” she says.

One ambush was plenty.

Slotting an arrow into her bow – just in case – she takes a few steps forward, to make sure the road in front of them is clear.

“Hold down the fort,” Tay calls back to Ryans in the Hummer. Then, nodding at Castle he adds, “Keep it on speed-dial, I don’t want to do anything too flashy if we don’t need to. Headlights draw enough attention, big fuck-off domes are another story.”

He finally considers what Nathalie said and scowls. “If somebody pulled the fuck over to pee they’re gonna be doing it in a bag in the future.” He’s just being cranky. It’s all a bluster which fades as Chess catches up. Tay glances at her with an approving nod as they make their way toward the second vehicle in the convoy.

Three horn blasts and flashing headlights were the call to halt. Hart, who had taken over driving duties for Elliot just an hour ago curses her timing and drums her hands anxiously on the wheel. Tay and Nathalie’s approach is visible through the headlights. Hart switches off the radio broadcast, and waits with a worried look in her eyes as she tries and fails to see what happened in the rear-view mirrors.

Elliot politely knocks on the minds of the plerosymbiotic prospect hosts who believe that they are linked into a telepathic network due to constantly lying about what their ability actually does. He's glad to see that everybody is okay, but whistles at the state of the vehicle that Robyn was riding in.

“Looks like we might have lost Speedwagon,” they inform Hart and Squeaks. “Should we politely tell Cat that she's cursed and can't drive anymore?” They're checking their pistol and not returning it to its holster as they open the passenger side door.

“If this is another ambush I'm not going to be stuck in the vehicle this time,” they add, hopping out and leaving it to the others whether or not they feel like standing in the cold. Their eyes are already focused on what they can see through the snow, alongside what can be seen from the perspectives of the prospects.

Squeaks’ attention is sluggish to answer the not-actual knocking. It’s reluctant, but not because she missed the horn blasts or Hart bringing the Katie-van to a stop — she really was going to ask about all of that in a minute, or maybe two minutes. She’s slow to adjust her awareness to what’s happening because it’s the best part of Jurassic Park where the t-rex throws the raptor aside like a ragdoll! Sure, okay, it’s the last five minutes of the movie and the teenager has already seen it twenty times at least, but it’s the principle of the thing!

She comes fully back to herself as Elliot says out loud what happened and makes short work of getting out of her seat and zippering up the drab goldenrod and orange winter jacket she found in Chicago. It’s a little too big, but all that space is filled with layers of clothing, like the navy blue snow pants with its red cuffs and thick yellow stripe around the shins and the ridiculous ski goggles hanging around her neck. “I could drive,” she points out for exactly the first time ever. “Definitely even without destroying the vehicle too.” She isn’t claiming she won’t crash it, just that she won’t make it not-drivable. Squeaks looks at Hart, maybe hoping for a vote of confidence from her, then makes an escape through the door behind Elliot.

Squeaks pulls a fleece periwinkle hat with a pair of abstractedly angled red-and-black-chevron stripes down onto her head as she jumps out of the van. Another find in Chicago, it hangs down her back and ends in a tasseled point. The goggles follow, raised into place and hiding her eyes behind a red mirrored lens. The teen marches around to the backside of the van, without pausing to consult with Elliot. They know what she’s planning. As she rounds the corner, she tugs a pair of unicorn Freezy Freakies onto her hands to keep her fingers warm when she climbs up onto the roof of the van.

With just a simple nod, Castle appears to go on standby, staying close to the group but not trying to draw attention to themselves in case it seems like an ambush. They don’t want to be the first one hit again.

They don’t want anyone hit, though.

So they keep a slight distance and stay back by one of the vehicles in the convoy in the middle, a hint of “cover”, while they wait for the event to go from yellow to red alert.

“I’m ready on standby at the first sign of trouble,” they whisper against the cold wind, to the radio that isn’t a radio.

"Well, maybe it was a pee emergency. Some of us can't just roll down a window and hum loudly." Nat can't help an amused smirk at his grumpiness. There's something comforting about it. It's the closest thing she's had to home in a long time. In either of her lives.

"Elliot," she calls, lifting a hand to get their attention. "Is everyone alright? What's the trouble?" If anyone of them would know, it is the one with the internal Netflix. "Does anyone need me?" For healing, she likely means, but could go either way, really.
Hart stays in the truck, watching Elliot and Squeaks leave. She, notably, doesn’t give a vote of confidence to Squeaks’ ability to drive beyond a clearly patronizing smile and nod, but then also an apologetic grimace.

“All clear up ahead,” Tay calls out as he closes in on Squeaks and Elliot. “No signals from the rear, looks like mechanical failure. God damnit.” He curses, not really out of frustration but more of an ever-suffering it had to happen eventually mindset.

Tay continues ahead, treading quickly past Katie toward Frizzel, his eyes locked past the bus to where Speedwagon is off the side of the road. Aboard Frizell, things are mostly calm. There’s no calls for alarm either via horn or those tapped into Elliot’s network, just a proverbial speedbump in the journey.

Glory has moved to the rear of the bus, kneeling on one of the back seats, looking out the back windows. “Fucker looks bad, I don’t think the tires are supposed t’be at that angle.” She says to those seated nearby. One of whom is Else Kjelstrom, who had been sleeping up until now. As she slowly opens her eyes, she looks confusedly at the ceiling, then sits up and looks not out the back of the bus, but a side window to the blackness beyond the road. Else is silent, calm, and disoriented.

“Is the Speedwagon gonna’ blow up?” Nate asks one of the adults nearby.

Nearby, outside, Cat curses to herself as she checks the underside of the vehicle. “I swear to God if this thing explodes…” Her flashlight sweeps from left to right under the vehicle. What she sees elicits a hiss of reaction as she steps back, turns to face the bus ahead, and blinks her flashlight in quick bursts of two-two, two-two. Mechanical failure.

Tay, seeing that flash, hunches his shoulders forward and hustles alongside Frizzel to close in on Speedwagon.

"We'd best hope not," is Silas's off-handed response to Nate as he works his way to the front of the bus, carefully filtered to sound something like calm. A mechanical failure is bad enough, an explosion would be… worse. A lot worse.

"I'm heading out," Silas says to Asi, his gaze shifting to her briefly before moving back to the outside of the bus. "Who knows, maybe it's not as bad as it looks," he mutters, though without much hope. Still, the only way to find out is to check… and it looks like Tay's had the same idea. Silas slips out of the bus to join him in heading towards Speedwagon.

Completely disappointed as much as resigned, Asi notes those flashes indicating the problem through her own eyes as much as with others' on the scene. She lets out a slow sigh, closing her eyes to rub the tips of her thumb and forefingers over them with one hand while with the other she shifts the Frizzel into park. She expects this will take a while.

And further, she knows they can't afford to waste gas by idling. "Heat's going off," she calls back into the bus. "The faster this gets fixed, the faster we can get rolling and get warm again." Or what passed for it, in this frigid weather and with the state of the bus being what it is.

“Off the bus it is, then,” Erin says brightly, taking some fleece-lined gloves out of her fleece-lined flannel pockets and hopping out after Silas. She has, after all, built weirder things in similarly inconvenient places, so maybe her mechanical abilities can extend beyond hydroponics enclosures – or at least make the jack a little tougher if they only need to change a tire. {—Hello?

“Explosion?” Kendall was dozing off but jerked awake at those words, and he touches the side of the bus. Deploy the forcefield! …Wait a minute. They weren't speaking literally. He blinks about, sees people getting off, and follows. Well, if there is an explosion, he'll be ready for it. Probably.

"You know you don't need that, right?" There's just the faintest of smirks on Robyn's face as she stands behind Cat as she pulls herself out from under the vehicle. The attempt at levity is dropped as Cat flashes her light up towards the bus in rhythm. Fuck. She places a hand on the other woman's shoulder, attention turning ahead to the several people making their way out of their vehicles and towards them.

She gives a squeeze of reassurance, before narrowing her attention on Tay. She doesn't offer a snide greeting or commentary on the car; she just stands vigilant, cane in one hand and the other on Cat's shoulder as she waits to hear what's up.

The cold air almost makes Destiny stay right where she is. Stuffing her hands into the pockets of her oversized coat is just as much to keep them warm as it is to hide the gun. But if people are getting out to take a look, then maybe Spades will, and she’d find his face reassuring at the moment. Taking a breath, she pushes open her door and closes it behind her as quickly as she can so as not to let too much more of the cold in.

Boots crunch over the snow as she pulls her stocking cap down over her ears further. She scans the grey of the should-be-green horizon, idly thinking about how she’d forgotten the way snow blindness feels, all the wavy shadow images across her vision as her eyes adjust. Des reaches back into her pocket and finds reassurance in feeling the weight of the gun in her small, gloved hand. The pace she sets for herself is a slow meander as she keeps her eyes on the beyond, rather than toward the others gathering to similarly investigate. She knows about the maintenance of ship motors and isn’t sure how confident she should feel about the translation to those on land vehicles.

Eve had been humming in the back of the bus, trying her damndest to roll a fifth joint (for the road). Yelping as the convoy comes to a halt she poofs into a cloud to stop herself from colliding into the seats in front of her. The weed and papers goes spilling on the floor sadly. THIS IS TARGETED. The seer thinks to herself before young Nate is inquiring about explosions, Eve's favorite thing.

As the cloud tries to seep out of the crack in a window she feels something strange and yanks herself back in, rematerializing with wide red eyes. "Too windy, blown to bits…" Else and Glory get a look as one stirs and the other speaks. "Maybe someone needed to stop to make tea, hm?" The pale woman clenches the seat, tilting her head at Else's demeanor before she stops herself and her head turns towards the darkness beyond the road.

A cold feeling starts to spread from deep within her, clutching her tattered black dress close to herself Eve kneels next to the dirty blonde, eyeing the side window.

"Siren, what do you hear?"

“Nothing.” Else murmurs, blinking a look away from the window. “Just regrets,” she adds, smiling in contrast to the statement as she looks back at Eve.

Elliot holsters their gun slowly as they trudge through the remains of the asphalt. They look over their shoulder to Nathalie and shakes their head. “Shouldn't need you for anything,” he calls, “unless Tay throttles someone for trashing another truck.”

“Where the fuck are we going to put all of the stuff,” they wonder helpfully.

Erin approaches the flashing light squad, giving an upward head-tilt of recognition and greeting to Robyn and crouching near the group inspecting the mechanical failure. “Hi. I, uh, don’t know if I can help, but I do have the superpower of – well, I shouldn’t joke about that, we all have powers. Anyway, I’m good with a socket wrench, if you need any help.”

"Well, I'll stay ready, because that's always likely," Nathalie says to Elliot, and she feels more free to smile there, since no one is bleeding to death. So far. "Also, we have a bus and several empty seats from the people who stayed in Chicago. We can move the supplies more easily than fix it if it's a major issue." She glances back toward her car and it's broken heating.

"Might be worth it to cannibalize the parts we can for the other cars." Cars, trucks, whatever. She looks over at Erin, her smile turning to a grin. "And look, we have a Wrenchomancer here and everything."

"If you've got experience working automotives, I'll keep out of your way," Silas offers to Erin, shaking his head and pulling his coat more tightly around himself. "Most of my repair work's been on boat engines, small appliances, and deathtraps, not things with actual wheels."

He glances to Nathalie and offers a nod. "The bus probably is the best place to stash most of the supplies," he agrees, before looking back to Speedwagon. "Assuming we can't get this thing running again," Silas adds, turning to eye Speedwagon with a critical eye.

By now a large group has gathered around the Speedwagon, which rests so far off the road that its rear wheels no longer touch pavement. The nose of the truck is down the embankment, some improperly-secured supplies scattered in the field around the rear of the truck off the road, some scattered in the road.

Edward has already started to quietly pick up the scattered supplies, bundling them in his arms for the time being. Jonathan is hunched near the exposed underbelly of the Speedwagon, using his flashlight to help the others see the damage. Cat, to her credit, has not fully collapsed under the weight of her kill two vehicles shame just yet.

“I didn’t hit anything.” Is the first, very innocent-person, thing Cat says to Tay as he arrives with the others. “The truck just—jerked off the road. Reverse and forward stopped working, no matter what gear.”

Tay hates that explanation.

“Smith, get me light on the drive shaft.” Tay calls out to Jonathan, who helpfully guides his flashlight along the length of the truck’s underside until—”Fuck.” The Speedwagon’s drive shaft is broken in two places. Once in the dead center of the driveshaft’s tube, another an impact fracture at the U-Joint bearing plate.

Tay scrubs a gloved hand over his mouth and looks around at everyone gathered by the truck. “A’ight,” he mumbles to himself. Then, louder. “Alright!” Tay shouts to the group. “Speedwagon’s fucked. Drive-shaft rusted through, probably pole-vaulted the truck when it dropped.” That’s what he assumes forced Cat off the road. “Ain’t gonna be able to fix this shit without Queen Scrap Heap with us!” Marlowe Terrel could fix anything, or at least fabricate the parts to. Now, it’s a different story.

“Nat’s right!” Tay calls out to the group. “We’ve got empty seats on the bus and empty bunks in Wildcat! Let’s unload as many supplies as we can! Edward—” he searches for the bespectacled face in the crowd, “—pull Wildcat up and open the back.” Edward, arms full of scattered supplies, nods sharply and turns back toward Wildcat.

“We gotta move! Provisions in Frizzel, mechanicals and munitions in Wildcat!” Tay shouts. “Anyone good with vehicles, let’s strip what we need from Speedwagon until the convoy is repacked! Wheels won’t fit anything we got, so leave ‘em! Drain the gas, drain the oil, whatever works, let’s go!”

Pale fingers twitch at the sound of Else's voice and the smile on her face. Eve's own lips uptick at the corners to beam a devilish grin towards the other seer. "Then allow me to add to your chorus of regrets sister seer."

A lot of the people on the convoy could salvage parts from the dead vehicle if any were to be gained but not many of them could fly based on a hunch. "Mind the adults, Flyboy hm?" Eve presses a hand to Nate's cheek as crimson eyes glittering in mischief. "But don't stray from chaos." The boy's pseudo-aunt backs aways and hops down out of the bus. Feeling the wind whip into her unruly midnight strands of hair she hoots in laughter, head held back and poofs into a cloud of glowing red energy.

The wind is indeed strong and Eve is not deterred from her destination, instead she is pushed along the currents with a disembodied "Wheeee," that echoes off behind her. The darkness that Else perceived outside of the road looms in her distorted sight, casting her field of vision around that area.

The side of the road beyond the convoy is barren. A cold, hard plain of snow-dusted grass. There is no life out here, just the cold ground and darkness beyond the headlights of the convoy. Whatever it was Else was looking for in the gloom, it may not have been something she saw with her eyes, but in her mind’s eye. Or, perhaps, just a figment of her imagination.

Robyn lets out a heavy sigh, shaking her head as she listens to Tay give out orders. "Come on," she says quietly to Cat, reaching down and pulling her gently by the hand. "Let's gather up our things and get moved to- Wildcat?" It's either there for Frizzle, and neither feel like great options to her, and either way she doesn't want to give Cat a chance to dwell on this too much.

As Edward passes by her, Zee watches him for a moment, before turning to look back at the wreck of Speedwagon. "Look at it this way," she announces with a faux cheeriness, "this was going to happen at some point. At least it's now, when we have a moment and are in control of things, right?" Her eyes shift over to Robyn and Cat and she frowns, but rather than comment, she immediately moves to gathering supplies so she can follow after Edward.

A sheen of light passes over Robyn's eyes for a moment, and another, shimmering iteration of herself appears next to her. "Mind giving them some more light?" she asks of the clone, who nods, holding up a hand and shedding more light to help anyone gathering supplies or figuring out what car parts they can salvage see better.

Keeping the clone in her periphery, she moves around Cat and looks up at Tay. "I think Zee's right, unfortunately. This just… happened. One minute we're talking, the next minute, all three of us are in a heap in the front seat." She shrugs, tightening her grip on her cane. "I'll get personal things moved, and then we'll figure out what's left for supplies."

“Yeah,” Cat says with a furrow of her brows. She still blames herself, will for a while. “You’re right,” she wants to believe. “I’ll uh—I’ll help. Least I can do after…” she gestures to the wreck, “all of this.”

Silas's primary area of focus was never cars, but forward and reverse stopped working sounds an awful lot like the transmission is completely fucked, which is the kind of thing that, back in the old days, used to make mechanics start drooling uncontrollably at the thought of the bills they were gonna get to write up. "Fuck," Silas mutters. Driveshaft failure would technically not be as bad… if they had actual resources for major repairs.

But they don't.

Silas looks over to Erin and lets out a heavy sigh. "RIP Speedwagon. Let's see what we can pull offa this thing 'fore we bury her," Silas says grimly. At least there's enough light to see what they're doing; Silas offers a nod of thanks to Robyn for that.

“Guess we're not getting it back on the road again.” Kendall comments with a deadpan expression as he follows the group, looking at the poor Speedwagon. “We'll just have to roll with the changes.” Why yes, at some point Kendall was bored and tried to think of all the songs by REO Speedwagon as soon as they christened it. He can't remember more than those two and can't fight this feeling anymore, but it's amazing he remembered those as it is. There's quite a few others that might fit the situation, but he doesn't know them, fortunately.

“More knowledge than me,” he adds to both Silas and Erin. “My only experience with taking things apart and building things was with Legos.”

Hart, bundled up against the cold, slowly turns toward Kendall and stares at him. “I hate you,” she states flatly, “but I deeply appreciate your commitment to the bit, too,” comes with a wry smile and a ruffle of a mitten-covered hand atop his head. “Nerd.”

"Fuck," Asi echoes the sentiments outside inside the truck as she watches and hears the proclamation through Elliot, her head going down to the wheel before she braces herself to stand and look back at the others. "It's about to get a lot more crowded in here," she warns them. "Speedwagon lost its drivetrain. We're pulling people and anything else we can over here, so we need to make room."

"Shit," Spades mutters from his perch still inside the Tinderbox, fingers pre-emptively frigid. Fuck this cold. They're moving supplies out there now, and he mutters invectives as he pulls the zipper more securedly closed on his coat before kicking the truck's door open to hop down into the cold and do his part. Sooner they got this over with, the better.

And hopefully it'd not befall them again.

Elliot draws the prospect’s attention to Asi’s mechanical knowledge just in case it helps them strip the thing for parts, and begins streaming it themself. “Lots of handy wire and the like,” they say. “Tires, filters, plugs, wipers. Don’t want to have to be overcharged at a Jiffy Lube for the basics.”

Perched on the roof of the Katie-Van like some kind of loomingly vigilant creature, Squeaks shifts her attention from the salvaging and the convoy as a whole unit to the road and world around them. Another set of hands down there might be useful, but someone has to keep an eye on their surroundings too. She adjusts her hat, tucking it more firmly over her ears and right up against the frame of her goggles. She rests sitting on her heels, as much like a fixture and part of the van as she can be without actually turning into a gargoyle herself.

Erin nods to Silas and mimes rolling up her sleeves (but does not, as it is too chilly to bother). “I’m going to be honest, I’m not super experienced with this kind of thing. I drove a Civic in Ithaca. But together, I think we can figure it out.”

She kneels by the bumper and tilts her head down to see what’s visible from below. “My favorite movie is Speed. Hopefully I don’t puncture the gas tank like Keanu did.”

Edward, on his way back to grab more supplies from the truck, stares flatly at Erin. “Don’t.” He says with a pump of his brows. “Just don’t.” If there’s any law the mainland obeys, it’s Murphy’s. Edward Ray knows that best.

Erin hangs a salute made of similarly stony stuff to Edward, and flings herself wholesale under the vehicle to search.

"Come along the cross country convoy, where the fun never starts," Nat says, mostly to herself and mostly in the tone of someone trying to keep their spirits up. She starts toward the supplies boxed up in Speedwagon, unloading and organizing based on which vehicle they're going to end up in.

"And fuses," she adds to Elliot's list, "if there's any that aren't blown, we should keep those." In another body, in World War I, she stripped any number of jeeps for everything they had. Or maybe that was in Wolfhound. Either way, she knows what to look for, but also seems to judge that there are enough hands for the mechanical work without adding another pair.

"Guess that means you're the gofer," Silas says to Kendall, giving a brief but sympathetic grin before becoming more serious. "Grabbing tools and carrying stuff, which means we can get outta here quicker."

Then he looks to where Erin's peering under the car. "I'll work from the top, you can have the bottom?" Silas offers. "Just, uh. Yeah, don't puncture the gas tank unless you want to see what color Tay turns after purple."

With that, he takes a moment to pop the hood and peer in; what he sees causes his mouth to curl into a frown. The good news is that Speedwagon's old enough that its guts are mostly mechanical, the bad news is that Speedwagon's old enough that its parts don't look to be designed to work with… well, most anything built in the last forty years or so. Still, there are a few promising bits and bobs. "Let's get crackin'," he murmurs.

“Sounds like a plan.” Kendall tilts his head for a moment, then comes up next to Silas rolling a wheelbarrow that totally didn't exist a few seconds ago. “Not sure if I'd be able to haul away anything too heavy, but you're not about to try and pull the whole engine out, right?” right?

When there's talk about puncturing the gas tank, or not, he looks thoughtful. “Although maybe we should puncture the gas tank and drain it out.” he frowns. “No need to leave all that behind, right? The oil and other fluids too. I might not know what does what in a car’s engine, but if you need containers, I gotcha covered. No worries about contamination either.”

“We should probably focus on using containers that aren't going to vanish if you forget,” Elliot says distantly as they look at the schematics of the vehicle in Wright’s repair manual.

“Shit’s fucked,” they confirm.

“Though if you could imagine us up a sealed hose,” they add, “you could theoretically siphon the gas for us if you keep the hose vacuum sealed until it's in the collection container.”

Tay, meanwhile, has taken a moment to watch everyone in the convoy leap into action—assessing the damage, preparing to strip parts, unloading the truck—and the cohesiveness of it all brings a reluctant smile to his face. He approaches Hart, putting a hand on her shoulder that gives her the briefest of startles.

“Hey,” Tay says with a nod up the line of parked vehicles, “do me a favor?”

Hart’s eyes widen, but she offers the smallest of nods of recognition to Tay.

“Get a couple jugs of water from Speedy,” Tay says with a nod to the now defunct truck, “and those old packets of cocoa we nabbed in Minneapolis.”

“Oh!” Hart smiles brightly. “Yeah I’ll hook the hotplate up to the cigarette lighter in the van. Little morale boost for the workers?” She adds with a smile.

“Yeah, we should have enough mugs and cups scattered around.” Tay motions to the convoy with a broad gesture. “I think everybody deserves something, y’know, not shit.”

Hart can’t possibly agree more.

---

Meanwhile

---

A cold wind howls across a lonesome stretch of freeway. Dusty snow is whipped up into flurries, and at the edge of all available light, the crunch of Francesca Lang’s boots across the icy freeway are the only sound the howling wind does not devour. There are no raiders waiting for the convoy ahead, no buildings for an ambush, no chokepoints to be caught in. Just a vast expanse of endless highway swallowed up by the night and the cold.

But there, beyond the reach of the headlights, lay a silhouette frosted in glittering shroud of ice. Straining against the dark, Chess can see it is a body. One that does not feel the way her companions do to her newly-accepted senses. Not alive.

As Chess approaches, bow drawn and eyes locked on the unmoving form, it comes into focus in the gloom. It isn’t roadkill. It was a person. The corpse is dressed in ice-crusted military surplus gear, hands zip tied behind the back, legs bent indicating they were kneeling when they died. The corpse’s face is gone, torn apart by a high-caliber exit wound. This person was executed. It doesn’t look recent, judging from the accumulation of ice and dusty snow on the body, but it also isn’t decayed enough to be more than a few months in this environment.

This is the edge of the map, the margins where an artist may scrawl a beast and warn:

Here Be Dragons.

---

The Next Day

Ruins of Rochefort Bridge Trading Post
Just Outside Edmonton
Ontario, Canada

July 16th
7:12 pm

---

Long ago the Rochefort Bridge Trading Post was a quaint restaurant on a lonesome stretch of highway northwest of Edmonton. A haven for long-haul truckers, road-trippers, and dedicated locals. The outside is a weather-beaten shell of what it once was, but bears no hallmarks of war or strife, just the neglect of everyone around up and migrating elsewhere. Its kitschy 1800’s trading post vibe is meant to evoke Ontario’s gold rush era, down to the old-timey saloon lettering on the roof. Now, the trading post is surrounded by an ever-shortening convoy of vehicles making a desperate trek across a dying world. The last long-haul truckers.

Inside, the trading post has been converted into a makeshift barracks and mess hall for the convoy. A still-functioning diesel generator out back has given the convoy the ability to have electric lights and power enough for their hot plates to cook a warm meal. The walls do the best to keep out the cold, and a couple of electric space heaters found in the kitchen take the worst of the cold out of the air.

All the tables inside the trading post have been pushed together to make a galley bench where the convoy residents have gathered for a communal dinner of whatever they’ve been able to scrape together from the reserves. Quarters have been tight since the Speedwagon’s demise and most everyone is sharing space with as many supplies as they are other bodies.

Down on one end of the table, Hart has looked distracted most of the night. She was the only one in the van when Elliot experienced an episode of some sort yesterday. She hasn’t left his side since, but also hasn’t worked up the nerve to talk about what it is she saw. Something she’s kept from the rest of the convoy, waiting for whatever time—if ever time—that Elliot himself wants to bring it up.

Edward Ray sits further down the table, examining a pair of dog tags that Chess retrieved from the frozen corpse in the road the day before. “Master sergeant Trent Daselles,” he reads aloud. The name means nothing to him. “Assuming these weren’t stolen, this wasn’t just some survivalist who ran afoul of raiders on the road. It’s someone who not only served in the US Army before the flood, but someone who kept looking the part long after.”

“Ain’t met any dyed-in-the-wool jarheads since things got real beachy here.” Tay says, shoveling a spoonful of black beans into his mouth from a can. “Getting done in the back of the head like that? That’s cold. That’s a message to whoever else saw it.” He doesn’t elaborate on why he thinks that way.

"Daselles?" Asi echoes as soon as the words finally process for her. Her chin slips off her hand from where she'd been staring down at her food, mixing it around, and her eyes dart down the table with a forward lean of her head so she can fix a look to Edward and Chess both. "That's a name that stands out. Ricky was…"

She trails off, brow beginning to knit together. "Trent was…" Searching back through her memory brings her gaze to go unfocused. A frown pairs with her knitted brow in short order. "He disappeared in the attack on the Pelago, I thought. When the Sentinel, when the Decatur and Crowley's men arrived." It takes a lot to hold back the instinct to spit at the very mention of them, but it's a necessary impulse to restrain given they're at dinner.

"Last I heard of Trent, he was workin' on Ricky's boat. Sold him some barbecue now and again, back in the day," Silas says, frowning. "Hell of a trip he's made, just to end up dead in Saskatchewan."

He glances to Tay, considering the man's words — a message. That worries Silas. "If it was a message, then most likely whoever it was to didn't get it, else they probably wouldn't have left him there. And he'd been there for awhile, right?" He shovels some mixed vegetables into his mouth from a can, his brow furrowed as he thinks.

Destiny looks up from the jar of canned peaches she’s been digging into. “He wasn’t left as a message for whoever found him,” she states with some kind of certainty. “His execution would have been a message to those around to witness it. Leaving him in the snow like that is just disrespect, like he was trash and not a person. They probably didn’t expect anyone to find him ever.”

Very intentionally, she does not so much as glance in Edward’s direction. Des shouldn’t understand so well that particular way to send a message, but here they are. Only so much of it can be explained by what she experienced herself in the Arcology under Don’s leadership. Her eyes close against flashes of memories that aren’t her own from a war she didn’t fight in. With an exhale, they’re gone again.

“How would he have ended up here?” she asks. Now she does look to Edward. They both know what’s waiting in Natazhat. “Everyone’s told us there’s nothing out here. Why would someone from the Pelago decide to…” She lets the query trail off to nothing. She can’t even explain it away as having heard something from when Gracie blew in. He was gone long before that.

How were these soldiers getting called up? Des does her very best to keep her expression simply curious, if saddened, rather than properly worried, hoping her eyes don’t provide windows to her internal screaming to anyone else.

"Not everyone believes what they're told," Nat says as a reply to Des. "For some people, 'Do Not Enter' reads more like an invitation. And if whoever killed him has someone who was important to him… well, for some people, that's even more than an invitation."

She looks over at Edward, or rather, at the dog tags. "And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming," she says, her head tilting as she regards them. "The real question," she continues as if she hadn't said anything at all, "is whether or not we have to worry about these people taking offense at us passing through. And how big their stores of ammunition are."

“It’s definitely a message,” Squeaks says over Edward’s shoulder, agreeing with Des with a matter-of-fact type tone. She’s been lurking, in her very quiet sneaking way and staying just enough inches away from him to be ignored but definitely easily close enough to get her own curious eyes on the tags. Now that she’s spoken up though, her eyes flicker to the old man and she slinks away.

Casually as she pleases, like a cat with all the ownership of the room and no concern that anyone would consider objecting, the teen hikes to the other far end of the table to take over some space near Hart and Elliot. “Could be… he tried for mutiny or… Like his captain did something he didn’t like and…” Her eyebrows raise up and her mouth twists to one side. No need to elaborate there. “Or…”

Squeaks presses her lips together and bites down on them. Her eyes touch on everyone at the table, thinking for a good whole second about the faces that aren’t with them anymore. Some people stayed behind and some people just up and left. She shrugs to dismiss the wondering. “Maybe it isn’t the message we think it is? Or it’s both? It could be both. I think… I wonder who… it’s from. And for, but mainly mostly from.”

"If we're unlucky, we'll find out who it's from," Silas says grimly. And if it wasn't for hard luck, I'd have no luck at all, he thinks, but does not say. That thought does manage to prompt a hint of maudlin amusement in Silas, at least; he'd thought the very same thing a long time ago, back at the Ark… where, coincidentally, at least a few of the same faces had been present. He looks to Nathalie. "Hopefully, they've got less in the way of ammo now than they did when they executed Trent, and are less inclined to take offense," he nods in agreement to her point. "A lot can happen in a few months. But…"

He falls silent for a moment, his expression souring. "But," he finishes sourly, tucking back into his vegetables.

“If we’re unlucky,” Chess echoes with a cynical huff, her brows lifting as she glances at Silas. “I’d ask if you’ve met me, but I think in this case, the question is, have you met any of us?”

She nods to the tags Edward holds. “Places like this, times like this, people get tribal and territorial. Could have simply eaten more than his share of rations. Hopefully whoever did it is long gone, but we’ll need to be on high alert. I’m guessing we’ll be more than they bargained for, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try something, if we cut through their territory.”

Her brow creases, and she lifts her mug, filled with tea that’s stale and not helped any by a lack of sugar and cream, to her mouth to drink. At least it’s warm.

Elliot chews thoughtfully, sparing Hart an uninformative smile. They appreciate her worry, and should address it, but certainly not at the dinner table. ‘Half of me got briefly removed from time by a parasitic dislocated consciousness in the body of Richard's formerly dead sister’ requires too much groundwork, they'll lie about it eventually.

Scooting a bit to make room for Squeaks, they nod. “Luck aside,” they say, “odds are decent that it's the remnant government we learned about in Chicago. We knew they were out here somewhere, and this has military despot execution written all over it. Saw this kind of shit enough during the war. We shouldn't expect to have the upper hand if we run into them, they're likely to have recruited Expressives.” It's an uncomfortable theory but the threat potential should be taken seriously.

“We're dangerous,” they admit, “but nobody we've encountered has had access to military hardware. For all we know, we could roll up on a convoy of functional tanks.”

All the talk of military types and what they might think or how they might think has Spades intent on his meal through most of the conversation. His ear turns at the thoughtful quotation from Nathalie, his head following to glance down the long table in her direction, brow furrowing. He reaches for his drink with a thoughtful 'hm' as he tries to place it.

After Elliot's comment, he can't help but repress a frown. "Well, now we've jinxed it, haven't we," he finally speaks up to say, not looking in the other man's direction. Maybe they'd not run into tanks, but running into this Remnant? After finding their droppings, the odds felt to be running higher.

"What was out this way, anyway? Before the war?" Asi interjects to not linger on their impending bad luck. "Anybody know? If there's a likely place that these people would be traveling to or from up here, we might want to reconfigure our path to avoid it."

Silas makes a wry grimace at Chess's rhetorical question, nodding ruefully to acknowledge her point about their luck, but it's Elliot's words that draw his attention the most.

"That was the other thing, yeah," Silas sighs, raising his can in Elliot's direction. "Personally, I'm still thinking this wasn't their handiwork. If someone's trying to claim to be a legitimate remnant of old Uncle Sam, and they decided that, for whatever reason, poor old Trent had to go… I feel like they'd have gone with a court martial and firing squad at… wherever they're headquartered, for all to see. Because if they're trying to claim legitimacy, despite everything that's happened? They'll be clinging to that image extra hard."

Aces' question sees him frown, though, a distant recollection coming back. "Nova mentioned some military types based around… Fort Wainwright, I think it was? Three or four hundred miles from the Anchor, I think she said. She also said they left the Anchor alone; 'live and let live, no problems', as I recall. Now that I think about it, that could probably be this remnant government. In which case…"

He pauses, considering. "Maybe old Trent was on his way up to join them, runs across some twitchy warlord type. They see Army greens, they think he's running recon for the remnant and kill him to send a message to any of his buddies poking around. But the joke's on them; he was alone, and nobody found him. Until us," Silas finishes grimly.

“Taking him all the way to where they’re gonna be stationed means having to provision him until they arrive,” Des offers up, again with more knowledge than the way Woods sheltered her through the war and beyond might suggest. She points her spoon at Silas as she continues. “The storyteller back in North Dakota — James?” Naturally she’d recall the name. “He said he’d seen uniformed soldiers come through, and it sounded recent to me.”

Although recent is a relative term out here in the wastes. When settlements don’t see people wander through often, every encounter with a traveler must be a notable event. “Judging from how long it sounds like he was left out there, we hopefully shouldn’t be gaining on them and set to collide.” That would be counter to her definition of fun. She glances across and down the table to Spades briefly before setting her attention back on Edward.

“Safety..?” Squeaks offers her answer to Asi, even though it sounds almost like more of a question than a real statement. “At least that's…” what she remembers it being, for half of a second forgetting it could be different in this timeline than the one she's a little bit more familiar with. “Sort of what I heard one time,” she finishes like it's inconsequential in spite of her small fib.

Leaning forward, once settled and squished into a space at the table, Squeaks rests her elbows on the table. “If it's a warning for us, then they probably already know we aren't tanks and bombs and big guns.” She's thinking out loud. “But that could give us an advantage, because we aren’t that. And if it isn't to warn us away…” She squints a little bit, then looks at Elliot then across to Tay. “What if it's from someone we know, to tell us that… to warn us about… problems? Ahead?”

Elliot smiles at Squeaks to reassure her, having witnessed her slide into memories of the Bad Place which is almost certainly what the others call the Wasteland.

“Nobody I know,” they surmise. Unless time is going full Rotini Effect and Richard happened to leave a months-old corpse only a couple of relative weeks ago. Fucking frame dragging. “We're still a way out from any of the settlements I've heard of. If anybody is expecting us they'd likely expect us from the sea, considering that was the way you folks got to them last time.” The last directed to Silas and Asi.

"Only if they wanted him healthy," Silas murmurs grimly to Des, but doesn't press the point further; one way or another, they'll find out what lies ahead soon enough.

Squeaks' interjection sees Silas frown thoughtfully; it takes him a moment to piece together her meaning. Right — she's from outta town too. The idea of safety in the west may not hold true here, just like a lot of other things… but it's interesting either way. The idea that Trent might be a warning to them takes him aback; on the surface it seems absurd to him, but the number of ludicrous improbabilities he's seen of late is enough for him to downgrade that to merely questionable.

"Right; we went by sea, further north. We saw some settlements further inland — a lot of windmills — but we didn't actually stop until Goodnews," Silas answers Elliot, frowning.

Tay has been quiet for a while, hunched over his spot on the table, elbows to either side of his dinner plate, hands folded over it and mouth pressed to his knuckles in thought. A lull in the conversation gives room for his voice to rise up.

“Whoever killed him, he’s dead, and they didn’t waste more than a single bullet getting the job done.” Tay says, eyes focused on an empty spot on the table. “Must’ve happened quick. Pull over, drop him down, bang, back in the truck. I dunno.” He wrings his hands together. “Wainwright’s pretty small, far as bases go. But it’s got an airstrip, hospital, housing. I could see it being remote enough, inconspicuous enough, to matter. To last.”

Getting up from his seat, Tay ambles over to his pack and pulls out the thick collection of old pre-flood road Atlases the convoy uses to navigate. He pulls the Alaskan atlas out and slaps it on the table, leafing through to a page. “So, Wainwright is here.” He taps two thick fingers on the map, then drags them southeast. “Drop point for some of you is here,” he says, tapping the mountain range Natazhat is in. “That’s…” he eyes the scale on the corner of the map, “four hundred klicks as the bird flies. We should be well out of their territory the whole trip.”

Tay straightens up and crosses his arms. “Now, if they’ve got more folks converging? That’s a different story. We’re gonna need to keep an eye out for highway traffic.”

“A group as large as ours will arouse suspicions.” Edward agrees. “Thankfully as of when Nova was last in the Anchor,” he gestures to her, “it sounds like they weren’t in the south in any appreciable number.”

“Mhey might uff—” Jonathan says with a mouthful of food. He pauses, swallows. “Sorry. Sorry. Um—they might have scouts, though. Y’know, plain-clothes people keeping an eye on things.” He glances at Elliot. “What were the people in Chicago up to? I only heard half of what went down there.” He smiles, awkwardly. “Maybe less.”

Glory is silent at the table, quietly eating, head down, brows furrowed. Her attention shifts, instead, to Else who is likewise staring at her food, swirling a fork around in instant mashed potatoes while whispering inaudibly to herself.

“I feel like this is a very dumb question,” Erin murmurs, handful of still-dehydrated Stove Top stuffing croutons halfway to her mouth, “but Edward’s right. We definitely arouse suspicions being so big. I know we can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, etc split the party, but is there any way to disguise or alter ourselves that we haven’t already tried yet, to attract less attention than we already have? I know Kendall can draw things to life, but…I dunno. It seems perhaps prescient to hide ourselves a little better than we already are, but I don’t know if there’s a way to do so. It’s not like deciding to walk through the desert at night under cover of darkness.”

She throws the very sad former bread, the remnants of what could have been, into her mouth, takes a sip of tepid water, and pretends it could be a decent Thanksgiving stuffing.

Asi took to standing to look over the atlas as it was traced, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. When Erin speaks up, she notes ruefully, "If it were possible for a gas tanker or a school bus to look inconspicuous on their own, I'd almost recommend splitting us, at this point." She shakes her head and reaches behind her to smooth the length of her coat down to her legs as she takes her seat again, reaching for her silverware. "That being said, though…"

"Despite being a bigger target, we're also stronger together," Spades interjects over her from several seats down, not looking up this time. He doesn't react when Asi turns his way and issues a tight nod of agreement, save but for to frown. He pushes back from the table, standing. "Refills?" he asks distractedly.

“Okay, but—” Destiny counters as she watches Spades get up from the table. She notably does not move to help him or to make a request of him. Not as yet, anyway. For now, she’s too absorbed in all of this. “That still doesn’t help answer how they were organizing.” Her head swivels this way and that as she looks around the table for someone with an inkling, gesticulating a shrug with her hands. It’s all more expansive than she might otherwise be known for. Sure, she’s enthusiastic about things she gets excited about, but this isn’t that. Trouble and danger usually have her shrinking in, becoming more introspective, reliving what she perceives as her previous mistakes. This is a manic kind of energy. Richard isn’t here to notice it, but Eve might.

“It doesn’t make any sense, does it? What could someone have said to Trent to get him to up and leave the Pelago like that? And how would none of us have heard about someone going around and drumming up that kind of interest?” Something Elliot said has her belatedly swiveling her head to look at him. “What did you hear in New Chicago? Someone had to know something, right?”

Elliot looks up from their meal, trying to finish chewing before answering the various comments and questions sent their way. “The local Elliot told me that there was remnant government activity out west,” they explain to Destiny and Jonathan once they’ve cleared the food impediment. “He also said they were heading north. No figures on numbers or leadership. He’d just learned of it that same day, so it’s not something that he and Wright learned through their own scouting.”

They turn back to Erin and Silas, adding, “There’s a possibility that, with enough volunteers, we could overclock Silas or Kendall’s abilities to hide the entire convoy for some amount of time. It would take practice to figure out our limits on what we could make work and in what situations.”

Silas follows the conversation with a frown. Jonathan's right about the scouts, though. If they're still running the Stars and Stripes after this long, they gotta be committed to the bit… and good enough at it that no wannabe warlord's been able to do them like whoever did Trent.

Aces and Spades agreeing on something without reservation is enough to make him blink… but then, he agrees too. "We all lift together," he says quietly, raising his can of food in a toast… but he shakes his head no on the refill. Des also raises a good question; Elliot's answer sees Silas frown thoughtfully, nodding as he mulls that over.

Silas's frown sours a bit at the suggestion of his ability being used… but he mulls it over for a bit regardless. "Not a bad idea," he admits, nodding.

"Okay but." The unsaid but not subtle 'what if' sits heavy in Squeaks' tone. She isn't against using abilities, even boldly and openly. Her eyes set hard on what was probably a cigarette burn near her little small square of table space. "But…"

Squeaks pushes her fingertips against the edge of the table and tilts her head to the side. "It could also maybe be more dangerous. Double-edged." She cuts through the air with her hand like a knife. "Somethings and people can already tell who some of us are, but if they…" — that knifing hand stabs in Silas' then Kendall's directions — "do their tricks like that then we might as well be shooting fireworks and search lights as we travel."

The teen's hand comes down again and she shrugs. "I do think hiding and sneaking is better, but I don't have any good ideas for doing it. Except maybe keeping the hiding smaller and… Being more ready and watching?" Squeaks shrugs again, nose scrunching as she squints a little bit. "I mean. I can sonar for things..?"

“Pulling a Houdini does sound cool.” Jonathan says with a broad smile.

“Magic Schoolbus.” Tay agrees in a moment of sudden but deadpan humor. “Yeah, that’s at least thematically fitting.” He cracks the slightest smile. “Elliot’s idea is solid. We’ve got a lot of miles before we need to deploy a plan like that, but maybe testing which of Silas or Kendall’s abilities is best to overclock is a good plan for the current stretch of road.”

“For what it’s worth,” Hart chimes in, dabbing at her mouth with a makeshift napkin, “I’ve taken to monitoring radio traffic from Katie. So far everything’s been quiet, but I can expand that to CB and other radio bands. Military’s gotta use comms, right?”

“Maybe.” Tay agrees. “It can’t hurt to keep our ears open.”

For all the tactical conversation, one among the convoy who could offer suggestions isn’t. Glory hasn’t said much of anything since settling in, other than what she’s been whispering at her instant mashed potatoes. Else has, since, stopped doing exactly what Glory is now doing, and is instead focused entirely on watching Glory. What’s being said can’t be understood, though. That’s because the conversation Glory is having is rather one-sided.

With Eve.

Or rather, the woman in a black veil standing directly behind where Eve is sitting. The woman only Glory can see. The woman who keeps asking her:

“Are you there yet?”

---

One Day Later

Aboard Frizzel
Somewhere in British Columbia
5:17 pm

---

A light snow is coming down in flurries outside, dusting the highway. A crooked sign on the roadside a quarter mile back indicated that the city of Dawson Creek was just up ahead. This, unfortunately, preceded several people aboard multiple vehicles to begin an impromptu chorus of I Don’t Wanna Wait by Paula Cole. Apparently the theme song to the old television show Dawson’s Creek is a shared point between two timelines.

In the middle of the bridge, folks who know the song better than the stripped down version on the show carry on with lyrics that didn’t fit a teenage drama.

He showed up all wet on the rainy front step
**Wearing shrapnel in his skin*

Amid the singing—full-throated, mumbling, humming, and all—there’s series of wet coughs from the back of the bus. At first missed among the good-spirited reverie, bleak lyrics aside.

And the war he saw lives inside him still
It's so hard to be gentle and warm

There’s something about this part of the song that sinks teeth into Nathalie, shakes her around like a tiny animal, pierces down with sharp teeth into her bones. Nostalgia enough to jostle loose the distant memories of too-many dead soldiers hiding in her ghost.

The years pass by and now he has granddaughters.

As the singing continues, something nags at the back of Nathalie’s senses. A familiar prickling sensation that—coupled with the cold radiating from the thin bus windows—reminds her of a drafty castle on a river in New York, of a small room filled with the sick and the dying.

I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over

It’s then that she meets blue eyes across the aisle from her. Chess, on a brief rotation from her shift on Scout to stretch her legs, whose senses are not yet as knife-honed. But she feels something, a sympathetic vibration from the echo of her newly-obtained conduit contained in Nathalie. Something is wrong.

I want to know right now, what will it be?

It’s reflexive for Nathalie to sift through the bodies on the bus, feeling the ebb and flow of life within each passenger, to find the needle in the haystack. Intuition has Chess’ eyes following Nathalie’s, honing in on someone seated in the back seat of the bus, bundled up in a hoodie and blankets, head tilted toward the window.

I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over

Cat. She’s sick. Neither woman can see the sweat beading on her brow at this distance, but they don’t need to.

Will it be yes or will it be?

They can feel it in their bones. Cat’s that sick.

The cough snaps Robyn out of quiet disassociation, looking over with a furrowed brow from her seat across the bus from Cat. She hadn't wanted to be on Frizzle, but there hadn't felt like much of a choice after last night.

With a sigh, she sits up a bit straighter in her seat, leaning across the aisle a bit towards Cat. "Welcome back to the world of the living, hon." She certainly doesn't seem to register the idea of her friend being sick, but there's still a small look of concern on her face despite that.

Leaning back, she sighs and turns her eyes back towards the front of the bus of the moment, fingers drumming against the worn seating. "You doin' okay over there? Or are you building a blanket fort, because I'm definitely not opposed to turning the back of the bus into our little fortress."

A hooded head pops up, from about midway to the front, and turns to face back. The flushed cheeks and red nose of the youngest Ryans observes quietly. JR is ever the curious sort and he had heard the coughing but also Robyn’s question. However, his young mind doesn’t register the potential illness like others do. There is no worry about a possible death, only personal inconvenience. He’s worried that if he gets sick, his dad won’t let him practice when they stop.

How did this sneak up on them is the question that fills Nat's thoughts as she stares out the front window of the bus. The familiarity of what she senses in Cat doesn't make her shiver— neither do the memories of a wet castle and the escape therefrom— it makes her sit still and expressionless.

Movement comes again in a flick of her attention away from the window and back toward Chess. Her eyebrow lifts questioningly. She mouths the question, since telepathy has yet to manifest to her, should we say something? She seems perfectly willing to say nothing, not jumping in to offer her services or rushing to do so without asking first, as she might have— as she has done in the past. What she does do is comb through the others again, more carefully, watching for signs that it's spreading. Before it gets out of hand here.

In the back of the bus, Cat blearily smiles at Robyn. “Sorry, I feel like shit,” she says with a raspy voice. She clears her throat a few times, then leans forward and reaches for her canteen, unscrewing the top before taking long, thirsting gulps of water. That only seems to make her nauseous, and Cat’s expression twists as she moves to set the water aside, but fumbles it. Her canteen falls into Robyn’s lap, splashing her with water, before it bounces to the floor and rolls under several seats. “Fuck,” Cat rasps, “sorry. Sorry.”

Further away, Nathalie’s focused sense of the others within the bus shows no sign of destabilized health. Even then, Cat’s physiological distress only manifests as a tremor in Nathalie’s senses, a subtle, textural incorrectness. The exact details of which remain unclear. But it’s profound enough to make her now familiar presence feel different.

The sound of the clattering canteen sends Asi's eyes flicking back into the rearview, momentarily leaving the road in favor of inspecting what's going on. She reviews the situation for only a moment before setting her eyes back on the road, murmuring what she's noticed after pulling the attention of others on the network. Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's something, she ends her advisement with. Keep on, for now.

When Nathalie looks her way, Chess’ brows lift and she glances over at Cat – she’s felt something, but her fledgling ability is one she’s still learning to understand, and this is the first confirmation that whatever she’s been feeling is something. Her brows crease together, and she leans closer to the other healer, to murmur something in Nathalie’s ear.

Once that’s done, she leans back to look at the younger woman, brows lifted with curiosity, which isn’t enough to take away the look of concern in her blue eyes.

Robyn watches Cat carefully, smiling wearily when the other woman speaks to her, but the clattering of the canteen into her lap finally makes her wince, looking back at the rest of the bus for a moment before she rises up and heads to pick up the canteen. She tries her best to hide the sour look on her face from Cat, but it's not hard for anyone else to catch as she bends down.

"No need to apologise, hon," she calls back to her as she rises to her feet, shaking the canteen a bit. She certainly seemed fine yesterday, for what little Robyn was paying attention. "How long have you been feeling like this?" she decides to ask point blank, furrowing her brow with worry as she makes her way back to the back of the bus.

Nathalie looks over at Chess, giving her a firm nod. And then, as if their quiet conversation made the decision, she stands up and turns toward Cat. She gestures for Chess to come along.

"It's detail work. If you can imagine a stab wound like a waterfall— big, violent, but basically in one spot— sickness is like… a fine mist, all spread out. Trying to collect all those little droplets, that's the job." Cat will be, apparently, a great object lesson. When she gets to the back of the bus, her hands move to her hips. "You're in a convoy with healers," she says to the sick woman, "speak up in the future. We cannot have an illness running through the group, not when we're on the road. Even one day with half of us out of commission would make us a weakened target." She waves a hand toward Chess, including her into the conversation. "Normally, I would ask you if you wanted us to try to heal you, but I think we're going to either way."

And true to her word, she reaches out to put a hand on Cat's shoulder. To get to work.

Cat grimaces at the hand on her shoulder. At first it feels rude, but Nathalie senses something rather immediate as Cat curls in on herself at the expression. It wasn’t a grimace at the touch, but in reaction to a feeling in her gut, churning and discomforted. “Hey, look—mom,” she says with a half-hearted sarcastic smile at Nat and Robyn, “I—I just felt tired and a little cold when I—when I went to sleep.”

Sickness is a tricky thing for Nathalie to heal, but it is also one of the first things she learned to heal as a child. In Bannerman’s Castle, several people had been stricken with H5N10 during that awful winter, and some would have died from lack of medicine had she not intervened. Back then she pushed herself too far, too hard, and put her own life at risk trying to tend to the lives of others. Now, she has the spiritual equivalent of having learned to lift with her legs and not her back.

The whole time Nathalie is starting to feel out the balance of Cat’s health, Cat is rubbing at her eyes like she has something in them she can’t quite clear out. It coincides with Nat’s discovery of damage to Cat’s nervous system, likely causing blurred vision.

“I don’t…” Cat mumbles, looking between Nat, Chess, and Robyn. “I don’t feel good.” Is a small, scared thing for Cat to say. As if she is only just now realizing just how bad she feels. Robyn—who has spent ostensibly more time with Cat in close quarters while driving than anyone else—notices that as she speaks one corner of her mouth isn’t moving, and her eyelid on that same side of her face is drooping.

Meanwhile, Nathalie is discovering how quickly her fine mist analogy is accurate. Like the spread pattern of buckshot, at the moment. Little pings all across Cat’s body, with the central cluster being in her gut.

Someone on the bus leans on the back of a seat next to where Chess is standing, creaking the old leather. In her periphery she doesn’t see anything odd. But when he speaks up, Chess doesn’t recognize his voice.

“Give you ten quid if you can diagnose it.” Comes a deep and smooth British man’s voice. It’s not directed at Chess, but rather Nathalie, who recognizes the voice of a phantom only she is used to hearing and seeing.

The snoring seer awakens to people crowding around Cat but Eve doesn't interfere. She watches silently, crimson eyes glittering beneath her hood. "Hm.." Softly and she licks her chapped lips, slender ghost white fingers dance around the material of her long trench coat.

Dawson's Creek has never exactly been Silas's speed; sing alongs hadn't either, come to that, which is at least part of the reason someone else had been handling the theatre end of the dinner theatre aboard the Nouvelle Vue. The combination of the two, combined with the (blessedly) monotonous nature of the journey today, has conspired to put Silas in a pensive state of mind; in another hour or so, he'd have more than likely pensived himself into a light doze.

But that hadn't happened yet, and while Cat's coughing doesn't draw his immediate attention, Chess and Nathalie both heading back and then hovering does. He unfolds himself out of his seat and moves towards the back. "Everything alright?" he asks quietly, his gaze wandering between Chess and Nathalie, slipping past Cat, then coming back for a moment before moving back to Chess.

"You don't have 10 quid," Nathalie says, apparently to no one, "you're a ghost." In a previous life, Nat would have been careful about how she acknowledged the others that hang around her, but in this new life, she seems to think that if someone is bothered by her talking to a dead man… well, that's their issue.

"Cat, there is something working your nerves," she says, more lightheartedly than she feels, "and I don't just mean Robyn here. Have you been exposed to something different? Ate something? Picked up a little souvenir off the street? Anything at all?" She looks over to Chess, ticking her head toward Cat. "You feel that?" She spares a glance toward Silas at his question, but her answer comes in a shrug. "Time will tell."

She looks back to Maes, finding some comfort in his presence that perhaps is odd when seeing a ghost. But she doesn't say more to him at the moment, just lifts her eyebrows in a silent question. Or perhaps, an invitation to add his thoughts.

The creak doesn’t draw Chess’ attention, which is focused on Cat and Nathalie; she’s just bending down into a crouch, to reach out a slightly shaky hand to touch Cat’s hand when that voice is heard, and she turns to look. Her eyes widen, and she looks back to Nathalie as the other healer answers Maes.

“What the actual fuck,” is probably not the best bedside manner, but hopefully Cat will forgive her. She’s very new to all of this.

Her hand shakes a little more just as she makes contact with Cat’s, and concentrates her senses to feel what Nathalie describes. The mist. The pings. “Is that normal?” she murmurs to Nathalie, but it’s with a jerk of her head to the ghost standing beside her, not to their mutual patient.

Robyn's eyes widen ever slow slightly as she observes Cat's sudden deterioration right before her eyes, only pulling them away from her to give Nat a vaguely cross expression. She still doesn't offer back comment or snipe back at her, recognising that it's not the time for it for once. Instead she slips by the otherers as best as she can, looming at Cat's side while trying her best to not be in the way. It's clear she wants to be closer to the other woman, but there's only so much space in the cramped bus.

She angles a worried glance back to Silas, then back to Cat. Concern in plain on her face, a hand almost shaking as anxiety begins to swim through like a cresting current. The slightest hint of light rises behind her cheeks and down her veins in response to the heightened state she finds herself in, hands beginning to wring over each other as she watches Nat and Chess.

She's never had much chance to see the conduit bearers she's known work, or she was too busy being bleary from being the one being healed to really process it, but she knows now that if nothing else they are absolutely miracle workers. Hopefully, this is in their wheelhouse.

There is a lot going on at the back of the bus and Jr has been watching quietly. His brows draw downward as his attention shifts from one person to another. After a few moments he reaches up and pushes the hood off his head.

“Is… is she going to be okay?” Jr can't help but ask out of concern.

While the bus becomes increasingly aware of Cat’s situation in the back, Maes—lingering like a polite phantom in an unoccupied seat—turns to look at Chess with one raised brow. He’s not accustomed to having a broader audience. “Huh, I guess some windows are doors.” He muses while making eye contact with Chess, before giving a little pay attention nod toward Cat as he shifts his focus that way.

It’s admittedly hard for Chess to focus with a literal fucking ghost distracting her, but tactile connection to Cat’s hand sends her a series of sensations that are largely autonomous and involuntary. This is a sense she needn’t always focus on, and even at a casual touch she can sense something that feels like a bad texture to Cat. Like putting your hand in something sticky and knowing whatever you touched shouldn’t feel like that.

Cat, grimacing, clutches her free hand at her stomach and looks up in both confusion and apology to Robyn. She turns her attention to Nathalie next, blinking and wiping at her eyes, clearly having trouble focusing. “Uh, I—I ate what everybody else ate. Found a—a harmonica a while back, ‘fore we went to Chicago.” She fumbles for it in her pocket and drops it. The harmonica falls somewhere on the bus floor with a “fuck” from Cat.

“Tetanus? From the harmonica?” Erin half-wonders, half-asks, and half-worries, barely within audible range of the rest and with a hand on Colin’s head. Colin relocates, sits next to Cat, and gingerly licks her hand.

“I don’t—” Cat starts to say, flexing the hand that dropped the harmonica open and closed. She makes a soft sound as Colin licks it, and she reaches out to gently pet his head, distracting her from her discomfort. “You—you ate the peaches too, right?” She asks Robyn, who has not seen peaches of any kind in a long while.

"It depends," Nathalie says to Chess at her question, "on what you mean by normal." For a moment, she leaves it at that, while she tries to wrangle all the bits of Cat that need her attention. "It's normal in that, it has been known to happen and doesn't mean that anything is particularly wrong. But also it isn't normal, as in, it doesn't happen all the time. At least not where they're visible. In my experience, it's a lot to do with how open you are to the whole conduit business. But" and of course there is a but, " Maes is something of a special case. He and I went through hell together."

She blinks, as the memories flutter through her mind. By her expression, they may have been the butterflies that cause all those hurricanes.

"More than one hell."

And then, she shuts up, because she gets down to healing Cat's affliction, apparently now not concerned about the particular diagnosis. Not more than curing it. Everyone nearby has a little bit of life force, as it were, syphoned away as she works, but it is hard to tell if she's aware that she's pulling from the crowd or not.

“Sure,” Chess murmurs to Maes at the quip, her eyes still wide as she addresses what looks like an empty space beside her to everyone besides herself and Nathalie. And Maes, for that matter. But her attention is pulled back by both the sensation of whatever is wrong with Cat, and by Nathalie’s words.

“The gift that keeps on giving,” she murmurs, though she offers a small waggle of her fingers in Maes’ direction, before focusing on the job at hand. Her brow knits together with concentration and she manages to keep her hand on Cat’s, despite the impulse to pull it away like she’d touched a microfiber cloth by accident.

She starts to ask how, lips forming around the round vowel but then she doesn’t ask it. She can sense what Nathalie’s doing, and somehow innately understands the task, and begins to work. Blue eyes flick up to Maes, and her brows lift. “Can you tell what it is?” she asks the ghost.

While the grown ups were busy doing… whatever it is that grownups do… Jr can hear the clatter of the harmonica and his head disappears below the back of the bus seat. Out of sight from the others, he turns and ducking down to look down the length of the bus.

Eve tilts her head at Cat and the others, listening as her eyes flick to and fro and an uneasy expression begins to settle on her skin. Something was wrong. Something was happening-

Was that Boomer talking to the air? What was Nathalie doing-

"Oh!"

The seer gasps as the harmonica Cat drops slides over to nudge her foot.

Shoving his backpack to the side, Jr spots the harmonica almost immediately. Lips press together while he silently debates his next move, before he quietly slides out of his seat to a spot just behind the others and drops to the ground. He crawls under the seat, just enough to where he can reach and retrieve the harmonica, doing so with the typical lack of care that kids have to filth and illness.

As far as he knows, Cat just has a really really bad cold. So without a word, he reaches through the bodies to offer the harmonica back to the sick woman. He doesn’t speak, just offers an awkward and uncertain smile to the instrument’s owner.

Exactly what Eve would’ve done. Good kid.

As Cat looks down at the harmonica in Jr’s hand and Eve’s attention on it, she realizes something. Her attention alights back to Robyn, then to Nathalie and Chess, then back to the harmonica.

“Nobody else ate the canned peaches.” Cat murmurs, brows knit together in a mix of frustration and discomfort as she feels something happening beneath her skin, inside her body, a shift from one side of a sharp precipice to another.

Chess’ question has an answer now, as does Maes’ bet. Canned peaches, pulled from the dusty stores of a roadside store, likely a decade past the expiration date. They probably looked fine, hidden under a sea of syrup, but the truth is an invisible killer was living within the sugars.

“Good guess,” Maes says, even though Nathalie never said anything aloud. By the time she glances at him, he’s gone, leaving only an empty bus seat where he was kneeling. Chess can feel the work Nathalie is doing in trying to alleviate the symptoms, tending to the harm done and eradicate the bacterial infection. The energy for that has to come from somewhere. If Chess were handling it, that energy would come only from herself. But Nathalie has more options, she can pluck a little bit of vitality from everyone around her, an imperceptible amount, enough to make Cat strong enough to fight it off all on her own with no one else the wiser of their donation. But there are other options, too. It all depends on what she wants to teach Chess.

Unaware of the full breadth of the psychic ministrations performed on her, Cat reaches down to take the harmonica back from Jr, offering him an award and apologetic smile. “Thanks, kid.” She looks back up to Robyn, equally apologetic. “I’d… say I’m sorry I didn’t share the peaches but uh,” she grimaces, “maybe for the best.”

"Cat. Honestly. I know they had preservatives in them, but it can only last so long." The sigh of a long suffering healer follows Nat's words, the sort of sound usually reserved for disappointed mothers.

Her attention flicks to where Maes was, a sad smile briefly showing before she turns to Chess. "Often, I like to come at a healing from the source and then sweep up the side effects. But this sort of thing, you just sort of have to grab it all and push it out. You can move carefully, but not so slowly that it has time to undo your work. It'll get easier with time." Trusting that Chess is paying attention to the internal mechanics of pushing Cat back to good health, she doesn't explain that part. And likely wouldn't know how to put it into words in any case. It isn't Chess' first ability, so that trust goes pretty far.

Once Nat has Cat healed, she sits back on her heels and lets out another sigh. "No more pre-flood food. And I can't believe I need to say that."

JR gives a small nod of acknowledgement, before turning back for his seat. Only when the adults behind him can’t see his face, does he grimace at being called a kid. He pulls his hoodie back over his head and down a little until it shadows his eyes, then he slumps down in his seat.. Ugh…. He wasn’t a kid. What an insult for a young teen to endure.

“If I’d seen them, I probably would have eaten them, too,” Chess says with a small smile for Cat, but she is otherwise quiet as she concentrates on the new task, this new lesson. It’s different than healing an injury, and she’s still working on mastering that, so her effort shows in the creased brown and the way she bites her lower lip. It won’t be long before she starts to get tired, with only herself as a battery of power.

Silas watches without reaction, remaining as unobtrusive as he can; there doesn't seem to be a lot going on, but Cat seems to be rapidly growing better, and Chess and Nathalie seem pretty focused in… occasional comments into the ether aside. Hmm.

No more pre-Flood food sees his brow furrow a bit, but he voices no objection; Cat's condition should serve as a pretty effective argument on that front. Until people get hungry enough, anyway. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, but if supplies get low enough people might decide a chance of botulism is a risk they're willing to take.

But that's a bridge that can be crossed if or when necessity compels it, and there's no point catastrophizing. For now, Cat's recovering, their healers are hard at work, and Silas slips back to his seat.

For Chess, there is a sensation of fatigue that falls over her like a heavy blanket as she follows Nathalie’s guidance. She can immediately feel the shift within her own body, her biological energy fueling a transformative change within Cat. The science of it is impossible to tell with any more granularity at this level, but the visible cues are enough. Cat’s skin color changes swiftly, regaining a rosy hue.

The shift in Cat’s expression from extreme discomfort to relief comes as Chess feels the true weight of the healing pressing down on her, and her stomach twists as hunger washes over her. It makes sense on the simplest of levels, energy for energy. It’s a solid lesson to learn, to feel in this way how wiping out an internal disease is significantly more work than mending flesh and bone. It reminds Chess of that pang of hunger after coming back in from a run, the body’s need for caloric intake after extreme physical exertion. Sweat forms on Chess’ brow, and as Cat looks revitalized to the others, Chess looks exhausted.

When Chess can no longer feel the disquiet imbalance in Cat’s health, she safely withdraws her hand and leaves all the onlookers at the back of the bus watching in wonder. No matter how many times a healing is performed, the act is never anything short of a miracle, even in an age of them. Cat looks down at her hands, as if expecting to see herself changed somehow, then turns an apologetic eye to both Nathalie and Chess.

“No more pre-flood food.” Cat affirms, looking as embarrassed as she is apologetic. To Robyn, seated next to her, it’s a firm reminder of the differences between worlds. In this one, where Cat was never a part of the Company’s plan to create synthetic expressives, where she never gained an eidetic memory, information falls through the cracks. This Cat makes different mistakes, forgives and forgets, and in this instance, serves as a reminder of how far from home everyone is.

Eve hums in the background. Rocking to and fro as she witnesses what she whispers aloud, "A miracle," The seer’s eyes alight with pride at Boomer and Nathalie's working together. She can only guess that's what has happened but the light within Cat remains strong. Her hums resonate through the bus and she gently rubs her hands over the fabric of her dress, picking at nothing but staring ahead.

At the front of the bus, when all seems to be resolved well in the end, Asi lets out a slow breath of relief. With the relief comes a ping for attention. "False alarm," she murmurs across the Network. "Looks like things will be okay here after all." Her eyes return to the road for only a moment, though, unable to stop herself from returning a glance back in the wide rearview mirror. She looks to Chess first, and then her eyes go to Nathalie afterward. Wondering.

Only the span of two heartbeats, and then her attention firmly returns to the drive. "Maybe we pit stop here, though. Who knows when there will be another town like this."

When Cat affirms her mistake, seemingly right as rain, Robyn lets out a breath she didn't realise she was holding. The smile she gives her friend is pensive but genuine in it's happiness, offering the smallest chuckle as she slings an arm across Cat's shoulders and knocks gently against the other woman's head with her knuckles.

"Let's make sure we never forget that one," is an intentional comment, one laced with subtext Cat herself may not understand. It's a moment that sits with her, smile faltering just a bit as she looks back at Chess and Natalie. Thank you is mouthed to the pair of them, finally able to lean back in her chair and relax again.
Nathalie observes those looks of wonder, her gaze drifting from face to face as her own expression turns stoney. She doesn't trust wonder. She has memories of those looks leading people to worship, and others to violence. Sometimes, the same person. As far as she's concerned, people who watch her rise in awe, will cheer on her fall as well.
She pushes her attention back to Cat, giving her a gentle smile. No harm done. Not in the long term. To Robyn, she gives a nod in reply to the thanks. But it isn't long before she takes hold of Chess' arm to support her if she needs it. "Now you'll need to rest. And I'll make sure no one bothers you for a while."
If anyone can tell how drained Chess is, it's Nat.
“I just need like ten Red Bulls. Anyone got any?” is Chess’ reply to Nat, who she knows will know she’s absolutely bluffing. Her hand squeezes Cat’s arm in a reply to the promise from the other woman, and then lets Nathalie help her to her feet so she can stumble those few steps to the bus bench she’d been on before.

Once there, she tips her head against the glass, looking out the window; a ghostly version of her now wan, tired face is reflected back to her, a reminder of the other ‘miracle’ of the last few minutes. Brow creasing, she glances back over at Nathalie, questions still crowding themselves in her eyes, on the tip of her tongue, but they can wait. Chess curls up again, as much as a person can on a bus meant for school children, and it doesn’t take long before her lids close, and she sleeps.

As Chess and Nathalie move away, Cat hangs her head and rakes one hand through her hair. “Sorry,” she mumbles to Robyn, looking up with an equally awkward and apologetic smile. “I—I kinda’ forgot the whole, uh, canned food—botulism—thing.”

She forgot.

Even if Cat’s eyes are familiar as a long-time friend’s, forgetting is the mask that falls off to reveal an unfamiliar face. Still a friend, but not the same one. And in many ways, perhaps that’s for the best. The baggage of history, of ruined buildings contained behind high concrete walls, and the interpersonal connections that died with them. As Cat takes Robyn’s hand and squeezes it with a thankful, hopeful smile that says this won’t happen again, all Robyn can see is a friend to stand by.

And at the end of the world, we should all be so thankful to have such good friends. Even forgetful ones.

---