Seedling – Part 1

There’s not supposed to be any people out here. At least, that’s what the official statement is. 

Most of the buildings are gutted, burnt out husks still standing from willpower alone. It’s not even worth it to guard it, so no one does. There’s nothing valuable left, nothing worth salvaging, unless you know where to look. Just a bunch of bad memories that everyone’s trying to choke down and bury.

But that just makes it the perfect place to hide out.

It used to be terrible, the air still thick with smoke, but now it’s just as good as the city. The fires are still burning in some places, left to just run their course after everyone who could get out did.

It’s easy to get in and out of the old city, especially since the roads still run. They’re just built high up off the ground like everything else is now. All he has to do is pay the person at the toll booth a little extra to get out of having to answer too many questions or prove he doesn’t have contraband, pull off to the side and hope his car’s still there when he gets back, and then repel down below the roadway.

Yarrow’s got plenty of reasons to want to hide out. He’s not very good friends with the law, he scavenged a dead man’s ID number for his own, he’s got nothing worthwhile waiting for him in the city. 

But, the reason he’s out here currently doesn’t actually have much to do with him at all.

A couple days back, he was out here looking for anything to strip from the rubble and bring back to sell. Bits and pieces of old tech always go for a good price, wiring and piping, too. Books and magazines especially because hardly any paper survived the initial fires.

Instead, he found them.

Naked, walking through the rubble with a glassy-eyed stare. There weren’t any cuts or bruises on them, just a layer of dirt and grime. They had short, messy hair on their head, but nothing anywhere else. They looked about his age, too. Not a man or a woman, angular and strange and featureless aside from a belly button.

But there was something beautiful about them… Something magnetic…

He left them tucked away in one of the buildings he’s already cleared out. He had to drag them along just to get them out of sight. At first, it was like they couldn’t hear him or see him, like they couldn’t do anything other than slowly walking along, drawn on an invisible path.

Now, he’s climbing back up the scaffolding on the building where he hid them. The stairs inside aren’t very stable and he’s faster at climbing, considering he’s got electro-magnets to help. Each time he needs to get higher, he deactivates one so he can swing his arm up before sticking it back to the metal skeleton of the building. Then, he just has to pull himself up.

When he’s almost to the floor he left them on, he tosses his backpack up and over through one of the rooms that doesn’t have an outside wall. It lands with a thud, doesn’t fall all the way down to the bottom which is a good sign. Then, he pulls himself up after it. He’s pretty strong, now that he’s been doing this for a while, but he’s still panting by the time he’s done. Just lies on the dusty floor for a little bit, trying to catch his breath.

After a couple minutes, he sits back up and scrambles around, looking for his bag. He heard it land, so it should be pretty close by. Except it isn’t.

Probably because, after he scans the room he realizes, the weird, well, person, he guesses, he found is holding it.

“You’re still here,” Yarrow says, “Good!”

“Good,” they echo back.

It’s the first thing he’s heard them say at all, and he can’t help himself from gasping.

“So you can talk!”

“Good,” they say again.

“Can you understand me?” Yarrow gets up and tries to dust off his pants a little, “I brought you some clothes, I bet you’re the same size as me.”

They cock their head to the side, looking at him with a little frown. So, he figures, they don’t understand him. At least not all the way.

“Clothes,” he repeats, pulling on his shirt for emphasis.

They stare at him blankly, and he feels more than a little embarrassed about it. He isn’t sure why. It’s not like he has any better ideas for communicating with this weirdo he found wandering through the old city.

Then, all of a sudden, they drop his bag to the floor.

“Hey!” He blurts out, throwing his arms up.

They cross the room in a few determined strides and stop just inches from him, tangling their fingers in his shirt with an intense look in their eye.

“Woah there,” he laughs, nervous, an edge to it, “You can’t have the clothes I’m wearing.”

They’re warm, radiating this soothing heat, almost nose to nose with him. Mindlessly, Yarrow reaches out, resting a gloved palm against their shoulder.

Maybe he should’ve taken off more of his scavenging kit, so they know that he’s something similar to them underneath it all. He took off his ventilation mask when he got up here, since there isn’t much smoke around this part of the old city, but he’s still covered almost head to toe. 

It’s a weird contrast to the person standing in front of him. It almost makes him feel like he’s the strange one here.

But, they let go of his shirt in an instant, and their hands both find their way up to his face, fingertips tracing over it like they’ve never seen something like him before.

It’s strange. It’s gentle and feather-light.

He almost leans into it. Almost lets his guard down.

It’s an awful, lonely life working salvage, and it doesn’t give him much time to get close to anyone.  Especially not other scavengers; there’s no honor among them and he’s gotta keep his haunts a secret so he can keep making money. Besides, half of them would sell anyone out if it meant they’d get off with a lighter sentence.

But, he doesn’t know a thing about this person, doesn’t even know what they are, since they can’t be from the city. He should be a little more careful.

“Come on,” he whispers, “Let’s get you dressed.”

They’re beyond streaked with soot and dust, it’s bad enough that he can’t tell what color their hair is. It makes them look washed out, half dead now that they’re out of what passes for daylight in the old city, but there’s only so much he can do to get them cleaned up right now. That is, if they’ll even let him do it.

Before coming here, he got his hands on another ID number. It cost him more than the one he lifted, because it’s gotten harder to get them the past few years. But, he knew he’d need one for them to get into the city, which is his grand plan, as stupid as it might be.

It’s a selfish plan, too. Yarrow’s lonely, that’s the real reason he got involved at all.

But it’s too late to back out now. He’s already got clothes for them, already bought them a cracked ID number. So, he just digs in his backpack and pulls out the shirt he brought along and starts trying to wrestle it over their head.

They let out a piercing whine, like they’re being attacked and keep grabbing at his arms until he manages to get their head through the neck hole. Then, they stop and just stare at him, wide-eyed.

“That wasn’t so bad, see?”

But they growl, low, in the back of their throat, and echo back, “Bad.” 

“You have to wear something until we get to my apartment,” he sighs.

It won’t be easy getting them there, he’s sure of that. He’ll have to get them all the way down to the ground floor and then back up onto the roadway and that isn’t saying anything about trying to get them into his car. But he has to take it one step at a time. 

And right now, that means trying to get them to at least put on a pair of underwear, even if they won’t wear pants.

---

Yarrow ends up taking them down the staircase, as structurally unsound as it is. And he never could’ve expected that they’d reach out for him, grab on tight to his hand while he led the two of them downstairs. 

But they did, like they were holding onto him for dear life.

And it isn’t as hard as he thought it’d be to get them to the road. They seem to go wherever he leads, even after how hard it was to get them dressed. 

The rope he repelled down with is still there, hooked up to the overpass, and he clips it back to his harness. There’s a maintenance ladder on the support beam, which leads back up to the top, but it’s faster to get down with the harness. When he’s climbing back up, he keeps himself attached to the rope just in case he loses his footing. It’s different now with another person, though.

“I’m gonna start climbing,” Yarrow says, “And I need you to follow me, okay?”

“Follow,” they tug at the hem of his shirt, reaching down to the middle of their bare thighs.

“Yeah, follow me. This is the worst part, but once we’re up, it’s almost over.”

Then, he starts to climb.

It’s a long way to the top. The people who built the new city wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be too close to the flames of the old city. At least, that’s what they say. It just seems like they’re trying to get as far away from the old city and the fires as they can.

The ladder is thin, the rungs are rusted over and cold as hell. And that just makes it harder to look back over his shoulder and make sure they’re still following him. 

Guess he’ll just have to trust them.

By now, Yarrow’s so used to not trusting anyone that it’s hard to talk himself into it. But when he pauses to catch his breath, he can hear them climbing behind him. Barefoot, which can’t be comfortable, but he couldn’t get them into any socks or shoes.

And, after ten agonizing minutes, they’re both up on the road into the new city.

His car is still there, parked on the shoulder of the massive overpass. It’s probably gonna be painful to get them inside the car, so he pauses for a moment to dig out the ID bracelet he bought for them. 

They’ll start one step at a time. He slips it over their wrist even as they whine in protest.

“You need to keep that on until we’re back in the city, okay?”

They twist it around on their wrist, looking annoyed, “City?”

“Yeah, it’s just up ahead,” he isn’t sure why, but he smiles at them, “It’s nothing like that burnt out shell you were wandering around in. But you need to wear that to get in.”

It doesn’t matter if they won’t answer to the name tied to the ID bracelet. The guard at the tollbooth he uses never asks too many questions and they’ve got rapport. 

Besides, he doesn’t even answer to the name tied to his ID number. It’s not like he can expect them to do it when he won’t.

They shake their hand emphatically, rattling around the bracelet for a few tense seconds. 

Then, they give up and let their arm drop by their side.

He opens the door on the passenger side and starts tossing the bits and pieces of old tech and trinkets he’s gathered up the past week into the back seat. It’s strange, but he almost thinks he trusts them enough to leave his back turned to them. It’s not like they have anywhere they could go except back down, but they seem content to stay with him.

“You’ll sit here,” Yarrow talks aimlessly while he cleans off the seat, “And then it’s only, like, fifteen minutes to get back to the city. You’re gonna come home with me, to my apartment.”

Honestly, he’s not sure how well that’ll work out. The place is cramped as it is, barely more than a single room with a miniscule kitchen and a bathroom. But it’s the best he can get under the circumstances, even if he’s a hundred or so floors up and the wind makes the building sway like it’s about to topple over.

It’s a proud city, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

He circles around to the driver’s side and gets in. It seems like a better thing to do than try to force them into the car. They’re clever, and they pick up on things quickly. He can tell that much just from the few hours they’ve been together.

They stare at the empty passenger seat, head cocked slightly to the side. So, he leans over and pats the seat, kind of gestures for them to sit down.

He knows they understand him, even if they might not understand his words. 

But, something tells him they probably do. They just can’t–or won’t–talk back.

They look at him like they don’t quite trust the car. But, they finally take their seat. Yarrow has to lean across them to pull the door shut and they curl up almost instantly, holding their knees to their chest. 

When he starts the car, they go white as a sheet, tensing up with their eyes wild. It doesn’t get any better when he pulls back onto the road into the city. But, this has to be the first time they’ve ever been in a car.

He wonders, maybe, if somehow they’ve just been out here since the fires started. Some poor little kid that got missed when the rest of the children were evacuated.

There’s no way. They don’t even look completely human. 

But it’d explain why he’s so drawn to them, why he needs to bring them home to the city.

“I’m Yarrow,” he says, flicking a quick glance their way, “What’s your name?”

Nothing. Not even one of their weird little echoes.

“Do you have a name?”

He pauses, giving them space to answer.

But, they’re still silent.

Whatever. They can deal with names later. He’s mostly trying to distract them until they’re back at the checkpoint into the city.

“Where did you come from?”

They hum, low and… well, thoughtful.

Then, they say, “Under.”

“Under what? The city?”

“Under,” they repeat, more urgent, and he looks at them long enough to see them grasping at the air like that explains something.

And it all just clicks.

The dirt and dust covering them head to toe. 

The frantic grabbing at the air. 

They dug themself out.

“Underground?” He asks, like he almost doesn’t want to believe it.

“Underground.”

There’s so much rubble out in the old city from the fires, it’s possible they were buried under some of that, but he gets the feeling that’s not what they mean. Yarrow would’ve found them long before now if they were just out in the ruins and if they were near the parts of the old city that were still burning, they wouldn’t be so unscathed.

“After we get back to my apartment and get you cleaned up, I’m taking you to a doctor,” he says, sternly.

Not a licensed one. He doesn’t have the funds for that. But he’s got an underground medic, one that oversees his meds and treats his injuries and makes sure all the ash and smoke out in the old city isn’t killing him.

They make a questioning little sound at that, with their eyes narrowed and their teeth bared. They’ll probably put up some kind of fight, like they did when he tried to dress them.

Maybe they’ll be a lot more of a handful than he thought, but he still feels this pressing need to help them.

Neither of them have much to say in the last few minutes before they reach the toll-booth at the city gate. 

The woman on duty presses the intercom button, “Identification?”

Yarrow holds up his wrist with the ID bracelet and his strange passenger follows suit, copying him like they always seem to.

“And you don’t have any contraband on you?”

It’s a formality, he’s got an agreement with the people posted at this checkpoint. Half the things in his trunk and his back seat are classed as contraband, just because no one’s really sure about the long term effects of the fires yet. There’s some reason why they’re still burning, chemicals or radiation or something.

“No ma’am!”

“Alright,” she flicks a switch and the gate creaks to life, “You can enter.”

Some people go out. Scavengers like him, or scalpers who go to the other towns nearby and buy up things to resell in the city. But they always end up coming back.

And nobody new ever comes into the city. It’s all just whoever was left over after the fires started. There’s not any rules about outsiders coming in, at least not ones that are written down, but everyone knows it. No one chooses to live here.

Here he is, dragging another person into this miserable lot in life.

Although, as bad as the city can be, it’s better than living out there. At least he can take them home, give them a roof over their head and warm food instead of whatever they had out in the ruins.

As they actually get into the city, his strange passenger gasps, face squished against the window. It isn’t much to look at, as far as Yarrow’s concerned, but it’s a whole lot more than the ruins.

The streets aren’t too full as they drive through, since most people are still at work doing their respectable, legal jobs. The buildings tower over them, built on stilts above the old city and growing ever higher.

Yarrow lives in the heart of the city. The farther you get from it, the nicer things get.

But it’s fitting, since he was one of the kids found right after the fires finally began to settle down. He’s been here since the very beginning, growing up beside the tangled mess of buildings and roadways.

“We’ll be back home before you know it,” he says, just because it’s nice to have someone to talk to.

“Home?”

“Yeah, my apartment. Well, our apartment now.”

They make a satisfied little sound, like that’s enough of an explanation.

He’ll have to worry about fencing all the stuff he gathered up before bringing home this unexpected house guest, but that’s something he can deal with after he gets them settled. They’re dirty, probably hungry too.

And more than that, he wants to figure them out. Something tells him that he needs to.

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