"Do you got me?" The tiny voice rung across the cliffside, shivering like its owner in the icy air.
"Yeah. I got you." The other girl called from further up the rock face. The vibrant nylon groaned as its passenger hung in the wind. Ropes of muscles, wound as they were by countless trips up to the abandoned outpost worked in tandem, the rhythm articulated by lungs used to the cold, moist air, that wheezed in protest all the same. "Come on, Alex," she grunted. "I can't pull you up myself."
The other girl, Alex, was new at the compound. Her family was from the cities, and while she hid it well, the recency of compound living showed through in the roughness of the skills most chemkids picked up shortly after walking. Bringing the rope was technically always required if you thought you would be climbing, but these days Mia and her peers, those old enough for ranging, but young enough to survive it, typically went hunting alone, and didn’t climb nearly often enough to warrant the extra weight. Still, burdened as she was by the gloves and the helmet, the city girl was ascending rapidly, and Mia found herself smiling as she belayed her new companion.
“Shit,” Alex gasped between breaths. “I didn’t think I’d make it.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Mia responded, only partially hiding her own panting. “You really think we can get this thing running?”
“Certainly!” Alex seemed to light up with that one. The redness in her cheeks was no longer due to the hours spent in the abrasive fog, rather, the upturned smile that spread across her otherwise pale face. “All of the outposts have purifiers, and that spool is certainly a utility level line.” She pointed to the structure above them, its cylindrical form clearly visible now.
The “utility line” or whatever the strange girl had called it was lounging over the edge of the steel wall of the outpost. It no longer was a dark rectangle in the sodden sky, but now looked like a very large spool of thread, neatly coiled in rows that would make her granny’s yarns green with envy. Mia squinted as she focused on it. It didn’t seem to have a beginning, but it did need to be supported by two enormous A-frames. How many times has it been let down? Mia thought to herself. And why bother bringing it back up just to abandon it?
Live wires were nothing to be joked about, but everything in the compound had the glass lights and humming heaters that the cities did, they just slept. The power that ran through them often caused illnesses in the people that lived there, so high ranking officials fleeing into the underground or the deserts weren’t unusual, even if the penalty for being caught was death. What was unusual was one of those officials fleeing to a safety compound. They were a bad choice for every reason. Too close to the cities and their arbiters, too far from the supply lines and their trade routes, and too averse to traditional power generation to keep up a lofty lifestyle of constant light and stimulants that they usually became accustomed to. Actually, there was one more reason that Mia hadn’t considered. The safety compounds were legally distinct from the cities, and a few punishments were far worse than a diminished exile. She watched her new friend climb the rocks and tried to picture it. Her parents seemed well enough, evidently the missus had grown up in a safety compound, and her father had been working closely with the head judge in some agricultural effort. And most convincingly, the skinny redheaded girl, so eager to bring water down to the sleeping fortress, she couldn’t be a murderer either.
The two of them pulled up the top of the outpost’s guard wall simultaneously. It had proven challenging, but Mia had finally convinced the smaller girl to not tie off in the steel, and they were able to scurry up along the cracks and bullet holes without needing to pause to try and drive pitons into the various vertical terrain.
“We need to find the generator,” Alex breathed, “It’s either in the barracks or the guard tower. Where should we look first?”
“We both have flashlights,” the larger girl offered. “If we want to get back down before nightfall, we’re going to need to make up some time.”
The redheaded girl looked like she had just been told the food stores were compromised. “But I thought we could stick together. Safety in numbers, you know?”
“I know. But it’s been abandoned for a year, and we really can’t afford to waste any time.” With that, Alex nodded and headed towards the lopsided spire of the guard tower, leaving Mia with the stout sleeping quarters of once devout protectors of the land.
Inside, the building was stuffy and dark. Her flashlight illuminated various bed frames and a snowy dust that hung in the air like it was stuck to spiderwebs. Some of it probably was. If only she had asked Alex what to do if and when she found the generator. Oh well, it probably wasn’t that hard to figure out. Just hit the ON button and run. She pushed through rooms full of footlockers and tables, cooking ware and what seemed to be chairs in a temple, from the olden days. She must have gotten turned around at some point because she found herself following her own footprints into the kitchen again.
Only, this was a different kitchen, the first one she had come across definitely didn’t have a stove. And it definitely wasn’t on. She picked up her foot and looked down at the footprint she left, nearly twice the size of the tracks she had been following. She looked up just as she heard a terrible, metal scream. The engine had started, and she was deep in the bowels of the outpost.
Mia jumped, and so did whatever was in the kitchen. She looked into the dark, cloudy eyes for a fraction of a second. Whether it recognized her or not, Mia didn’t care to find out. She could hear it lurching behind her as she barreled down the hallway, throwing down the footlockers and worship chairs behind her. The cadence of whatever was behind her was deafening as it thudded down the maze behind her, the footfalls not betraying the number of footsteps or whether she was slowing it down. Her flashlight slipped out of her clammy palms, bathing the room in a shallow dust stained light, throwing the shadows of the skeletons of beds around the room, their brittle bones snapping with every roll, as she moved further into the darkness. One tiny square of light was her hope, as she moved towards the exit.
Cold seeped into her right shoulder blade as icy fingers pushed impossibly hard into her flesh. She felt cold rivulets of blood trickle down her back before they were greedily drunk by the wool of her tunic. Acting on instinct, her body spun and drove the two into a pile of springs and tube steel, and she spun away from the shrieking monstrosity. Immobilized, she was able to get a clearer look. It looked like her. It had too many arms and too many eyes, but it was the same face she had seen whenever she snuck off to use a judge’s mirror in the dead of night. The thing lurched at her, and she felt herself running again before she realized it.
The tower was lit up when she exited the nightmare assigned to a single room, and she saw the redheaded girl at a control panel of some sort. The screaming of the machine heart was almost deafening so she only looked when the other girl pointed at the giant spool. It was distended and swollen in the last pipe, it looked almost ready to -
Burst. An impossible amount of freezing water geysered out of the ancient machine. It flowed through the courtyard and over the walls. It knocked over trees and towers like a child playing with blocks. It washed away the ascension trail and all the pitons and rope waiting for her and her companion. It slammed into Mia’s chest like a boulder made of ice, and it pushed her back, hard. Back into the barracks. Back into the arms of the girl that looked just like her.
