by Tim Cody
Nightingale nodded and took the bottle. It was a bit smudged with dirt and it looked a little old, but the water inside looked clean enough. She twisted off the cap and chugged its entire contents while Elise was looking through her bag for something else.
“Hey!” Elise frowned when she noticed that Nightingale had drunk the entire bottle. “That was supposed to last me all day!”
“Sorry...” Nightingale handed the bottle back, and Elise handed her a couple dinner rolls in exchange.
“It's not dinner time yet, so I can only give you this. But it's been days since you've eaten, so it should be plenty for now. Eat too much, too quickly, and you'll get sick.”
Nightingale nodded and took her time eating the bread.
“Can we have the bandages yet?” Whisper asked. She had been waiting patiently, but now that Nightingale was properly tended to she thought it safe to ask.
“Be patient, Whisper!” Elise scolded, and Whisper folded her arms with a bit of a huff.
Nightingale almost instantly felt better after eating, as little food as it was. “Thank you,” she said, shifting to sit on her knees. “Let me see your leg.”
Elise sat in front of Nightingale and lifted her pant leg carefully, wincing slightly when the fabric brushed her scrape. She rotated her leg so she could see the wound and to give her better access. “How's it look, Doc?” she asked.
“It doesn't look too bad,” Nightingale answered as she opened up her kit and retrieved a few items. She breathed out a slightly jagged breath and shut her eyes when images of Michaela using the supplies to patch up the rest of Glitch squad rushed through her mind, and she couldn't help but smile.
“Do you know what you're doing?” Whisper asked, trying to peer into the bag to get a sense of exactly what it held. She squatted beside her to watch, holding on to the straps of her own backpack.
“Yeah, I do,” Nightingale answered. “I had a good teacher...” She removed a sterile pad from the kit and tore it open, and used it to wash the scrape and around it. After that it was as simple as wrapping some gauze around Elise's leg, and then taping it in place. She felt like she had seen Michaela repeat this same process hundreds of times.
“Perfect!” Elise said, and she smiled at Whisper. “See? Good as new.”
“Yeah!” Whisper said with a bit of a cheer. “Thanks—” she cut herself short and changed tracks, “—hey, what's your name?”
“Nightingale,” she answered as she piled the items back into the kit, and zipped it shut.
“Well thanks, Nightingale! I'm Whisper, and this is my sister, Elise!”
“You're sisters?” Nightingale asked slightly skeptically, looking between the two girls.
Elise's shoulder-length hair was amber in color, and her eyes matched. She wore an oversized black peacoat that looked particularly warm, and a recently torn pair of jeans.
Whisper's eyes, on the other hand, were bright blue, and nothing about this girl matched. In addition to her aforementioned black and purple hair, she wore a fitted denim jacket over a black-and-white striped T-shirt, and a baggy pair of red cargo shorts. Even her knee-high socks were mismatched: one was red- and black-striped, and the other sported a dark-blue and gray argyle pattern.
She couldn't see a resemblance between them, physically or personality-wise.
“Yeah, we're sisters!” Whisper suddenly shouted, lifting her fist in an empty threat. “You got a problem with that!?”
“Whisper,” Elise said firmly, and Whisper immediately backed down. She pulled her pant leg down, carefully over the gauze, and stood. “Thanks for patching me up,” she said next. “Come on, we've gotta find more food and water.”
Whisper sprung to her feet and grabbed Elise's hand, and Nightingale just stared up at them.
“We've gotta find you some new clothes, too; you look like you're covered in blood.” Elise didn't even consider the possibility that the red stains on Nightingale's white outfit were actually blood.
“Oh, yeah, I...” Nightingale said, looking down at her shirt, “I had a nose bleed...”
Elise chuckled, and after that, the girls just stared at each other for several moments in silence.
“Well?” Elise eventually said.
“Well...” Nightingale repeated a bit nervously, slowly clutching her fingers around her medical kit. She was suddenly worried that they were going to try to steal it.
“Come on, Nightingale!” Whisper said and grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet. “The pit's gonna be cleared out soon, we gotta get moving!”
“Oh, I'm coming with you!” Nightingale vocalized her realization.
“Of course you are!” Whisper helped her up and the three of them started toward the street. “We can help each other out, so we gotta stick together from now on!”
“A-are you sure?” Nightingale asked as she allowed Whisper to lead her.
“Totally! You've been asleep in this alley for days, you almost starved to death! You look like you're covered in blood, you're freezing cold, and you're walking around with a bag full of medical supplies—you were this close to having your dead body picked over by scavengers!”
Nightingale's eyes widened and she shot Elise a worried glance.
“That wasn't gonna happen!” Elise said, reaching her free hand over to tug one of Whisper's ponytails. “She's just got an active imagination, it's from all those comic books!”
“Ouch!” Whisper pulled her head away.
“But it can be tough sometimes,” Elise said. “When you're out on the streets, it can be easy to lose what little you have if you don't hold on to it. Not everyone plays by the rules, and there's strength in numbers.”
Nightingale nodded slowly, thinking about what Elise was saying as they walked down the street. The sidewalks were more crowded, foot traffic even spilling into the street. There were so few cars, though, it hardly mattered.
“So you're welcome to stay with us for as long as you'd like. We can help each other out,” Elise finished up her thought.
“What do you think?” Nightingale asked quietly, craning her neck to look at her bird. It had been mostly in her hair up until now, slowly creeping out into view as it began to trust the girls. Sticking with them didn't seem like such a bad idea—they appeared nice enough, and pretty eager to help... She didn't have any idea where to get food or water, or anything else for that matter, but they seemed to have it figured out...
“Is that a bird!?” Whisper interrupted her thoughts when she spotted it. “Oh man, I've never seen a real bird before!” She tugged Nightingale's hand to try and bring her lower, but Elise gave Whisper's hand a tug in response.
“You can look later, we're running out of time.” Elise hurried them along. “Our grocery list just grew pretty large—we need a whole new set of clothes, enough food for another person, a bag, a water bottle, sleeping things... All the stuff needed to get Nightingale started.”
“Get me started with what?” she asked.
“Started living!” Whisper answered.
Chapter 11
Lay of the Land
Nightingale looked all over as Elise and Whisper led her through the city. She couldn't help but look behind herself every several steps, worried that someone from the Lab was going to grab her. They never wanted her to leave, so she assumed they were going to be chasing her down. But they had their chance, right? She had apparently been asleep in an alley for two days straight—if they wanted to find her, wouldn't they have done so by now?
“Don't look so suspicious,” Whisper said.
Nightingale frowned and looked down at the girl. “Why do I look suspicious?”
“Because you're covered in blood and looking all around like a suspicious person!” She reached up to tug on the hemline of the stained shirt. “What is that, anyway? It looks like someone splashed paint all over you.”
“Quit bugging her, Whisper,” Elise chimed in next.
“Fiiiine,” Whisper whined with a sigh, and then went ba
ck to walking quietly.
Nightingale was back to looking all over after that, but instead of keeping an eye out for someone from ECHO, she was taking in her surroundings. Everywhere she looked she saw people huddled in alleyways; gathered around steel-drum fires, roasting some sort of unappetizing meat, or just sitting on the ground existing. The apartment buildings only looked a little better—they were run-down and boarded up, most likely filled to overcapacity, but at least those residents had a roof over their heads...
The local businesses didn't appear to be in much better shape than the apartment buildings. Many of their storefront windows were cracked and taped up, and none of the shops appeared to be particularly thriving.
“You actually live here?” Nightingale eventually asked.
“Yeah, we've got a pretty nice spot in an alley, it's not too far from here,” Elise answered.
“It doesn't look very safe.”
“Believe it or not, there are worse places we could be living,” she said. She proceeded to explain when Nightingale returned a quizzical expression. “Unofficially, White Rain Falls is divided into three rings: There's the inner, which is pretty nice because it's so close to the main tunnels. The cops still keep things under control over there, mainly to keep the riffraff like us outta the higher levels. But White Rain Falls is still pretty low on the totem pole, so even that area is kinda crummy...
“Next you have the middle ring, which is where we live—it's mostly safe, as long as you don't stray too close to the outer circle.”
“What's the outer circle like?” Nightingale hardly needed to ask to wager a pretty safe guess, but the chatting was helping to settle her nerves.
“It can be pretty nasty,” Elise said. “The cops hardly ever go out that far, so the people over there just kinda do whatever they want... But we're right at that perfect spot: close enough to the inner circle so there's order, but far enough from the tunnels so the cops don't hassle us.”
“The tunnels?”
“Yeah, the tunnels you ran through, right?” Elise stopped on the sidewalk and pointed up toward the center of the disc above them. A gigantic cylinder extended from its center, but Nightingale lost it in the rooftops as she followed it down with her gaze. It was pretty far away. “It's how people get up and down.” They started walking again.
“What's...what's up there?” Nightingale asked. She didn't suspect Elise knew anything about the Lab, but it couldn't hurt to ask, right? She seemed to know everything else about this place.
Instead, she was answered with a puzzled expression. “More cities...” she said quietly. “Are you messing with me?”
Nightingale shook her head in response. “No, I don't think so...”
“There are cities up there, Nightingale, and below us. Did you really not know that?”
“Yeah!” Whisper piped up next. “You said you came from up top, didn't you? You should know all about it up there! Like, what do rich people eat? What are your homes like? How big are your beds!?”
“I'm not rich,” Nightingale insisted. “And I don't know anything about this place... I just woke up in some building, I don't remember anything...” She stared at her feet as she walked, hardly realizing how honest she was being.
“Well, that's okay,” Elise said. “You don't have to tell us. Everyone who lives on the streets had some sad thing happen to them in the past that forced them out.”
“What matters now is that we're here, and that we keep moving forward!” Whisper exclaimed, having heard this speech before. “Right, Elise?”
“That's right!” Elise grabbed Whisper's waist and lifted her off the ground, heaving the smaller girl up and onto her shoulders.
Whisper squealed with laughter and held on to her sister's head for balance.
“Now come on, we're gonna be late!” She took off running, and Nightingale felt worried for Whisper. She didn't look particularly sturdy up there...
Chapter 12
Humble(?) Beginnings
Nightingale was surprised to learn that the pit was actually a garbage pit—nothing more than a giant hole packed to the brim with recently discarded items (mostly just random clutter). Aside from the expected over-stuffed black trash bags, everything from broken plates to busted furniture to torn clothes could be spotted from the edge, just waiting to be foraged.
“This is it?” Nightingale asked, nearly shouting over the sound of the giant ventilation fans that protected the city from the scent of garbage.
The ground surrounding the pit was paved, and painted with warnings such as Danger: Loose garbage, Keep out, and No foraging. Elise and Whisper paid the warnings no mind, though, walking right up to the edge of the pit and scoping out a safe route.
“Where's all this come from?” She was thankful for the ventilation, to say the least—the fans sucked the odor away with such power, Nightingale could hardly smell it despite being right beside it.
“Up top!” Whisper answered. “We're pretty far down, and we don't think too many people pick through it before it reaches us. So by the time it gets down here, we get the best stuff!”
“Over here, Whisper,” Elise called out and waved her sister over. “See the path? Right over the bureau and onto the mattress, just like earlier.”
Whisper nodded and took a few steps back from the edge to get a running start. She ran and let out a quiet shout when she jumped, clearing the three-foot gap easily enough, and then Elise followed. She waved Nightingale over next.
“Are we allowed to be doing this?” she asked, hesitant to dive headfirst into a hole full of trash. She stood at the edge and peered down the gap, but it was only several feet deep—naturally, ending in more garbage. She could see between some openings in the junk, but the actual bottom was too far down to spot.
“Sure!” Whisper answered. “Those people threw all this stuff out, what do they care if we look through it and take a few things?”
“I guess she's got a point, right?” She looked at the nightingale on her shoulder, but it just chirped and fluttered away. Nightingale sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “Yeah, I don't blame you.”
“Come on, Nightingale!” Elise urged. “We don't have a lot of time before the place is emptied!”
Nightingale rushed toward the gap and leapt over it, landing on the bureau with a bit of a huff. She still felt weak from hardly eating recently, and she grabbed her head when she became a little dizzy.
“Are you alright?” Elise asked as Whisper got to work, looking through the least offensively smelling bags and piles first.
“Yeah, just hungry,” she answered. “What are we looking for?” She still wasn't excited about foraging like this, but she didn't see many other options. She needed to learn how to do this—like Elise said, she needed to just keep moving forward.
“Whisper will help you find clothes. I'll take care of everything else.”
Nightingale nodded and walked past Elise, over to where Whisper was standing on an old mattress and poking at bags with a stick. “What, um...” she started, but then stopped herself to watch for a moment. “It looks like you've got a pretty technical process figured out...”
“Yeah, it's pretty scientific,” Whisper answered without looking up.
Nightingale cracked a smile. “Wanna show me what you're doing?”
“I'm looking for bags that feel like they have clothes in them. You'll know when you find one, so grab yourself a good stick!”
“A good stick?” Nightingale frowned thoughtfully and looked around. She spotted a three-foot long rusty piece of rebar laying atop some broken concrete, so she grabbed it to show Whisper. “How's this?”
Whisper glanced over her shoulder and nodded her approval, and Nightingale began poking at the many black bags around them.
Meanwhile, Elise had moved several yards away, climbing carefully over stacks of busted furniture. She found a solid desk to stand on at the top of a pile, and put her hands on her hips as she surveyed the area. There were sever
al trash bags a few feet beneath her, right in front of a plush office chair. She sat on the edge of the desk and then slid off, and landed seated right in the chair.
She retrieved a three-inch pocketknife from her pocket and flipped it open with a flick of her wrist. She jabbed the blade into the bag and tore it open, and then grinned wide at its contents. “Jackpot!” she shouted over the fans.
Whisper looked up when she heard Elise announce her good fortune, and then turned her attention to Nightingale when she announced the same.
“I found one!” she said, heaving a packed bag onto the mattress. “At least, I think. It feels like clothes, right?”
Whisper grabbed the bag with both hands and tore it open. As expected, it was full of clothes—pants, shirts, coats, even hats and gloves. “Wow, this is great!” she shouted. “Elise, we hit it big, too!”
“A lot of these look torn, though,” Nightingale said as she reached into the bag to inspect a few of the articles. She pulled out a black T-shirt with several crimson butterflies printed on its side, the design wrapping from the right hip around to its front and back. Her eyebrows lifted at seeing it—despite a tear nearly separating one of the short sleeves from the rest of the shirt, she immediately liked it.
“Aw, that's a pretty shirt!” Whisper said, looking up at it, her tone suddenly jealous. “It looks like the perfect size for you, too!”
“You think?” Nightingale asked, holding it up to her torso. It looked like it would fit just fine.
“And don't worry about any tears, I can stitch them up, no problem!” She pulled a pair of jeans out of the bag and held them up to Nightingale's hips. “People throw their clothes out without even trying to fix them. With some thread and a needle, though, an outfit can last forever!” The pants looked like they would fit, so she tossed them up and over Nightingale's shoulder for her to hold.
“Heads up!” Elise called, and tossed a black and red backpack to Nightingale.
