Cassian was trying to hook the torn edge of a tarp under a weighted beam, but it kept slipping from his grip. A gust hit at the wrong moment, and the whole sheet snapped loose, smacking him across the face.
"Right" he muttered, rubbing his cheek. "That's fine... I didn't need vision on that side anyway."
A small laugh came from behind him. Two children were crouched near an overturned storage box, watching him. One of them, a girl, maybe seven at most, stood and walked over, holding something small in her hands. It looked like a piece of glass or plastic with the edges worn and faintly green. She held it out without a word.
Cassian straightened, glanced at the object, then at her, and took it carefully with both hands.
"For me?" he asked. "What, are you giving out medals for tarp combat?"
The girl didn't answer, just burst into a quick laugh and took off running back to the others.
Riven passed behind them, slowing in for a moment. "I see you've been accepted by the local militia" he said almost laughing.
Cassian turned slightly, holding up the gift. "Of course I have, were you doubting my skills?"
Riven kept walking, passing the clearing and following the edge of the settlement where the soil turned harder underfoot. The wind was calmer out here. All he could hear was the tug of tarp and the faint buzz of a relay somewhere nearby.
He paused near a half-sunken structure at the base of the ridge. An old signal unit was embedded there, its casing dulled by heat exposure. Behind the upper screen, a faint light pulsed with four quick blinks, a pause, then one longer flash.
He stayed where he was, watching the pattern for a moment. Then he saw the girl. Anya.
She was seated maybe three meters away with her knees drawn in and her back slightly hunched. With two fingers, she moved through the dirt, tracing short lines.
Riven crouched, making sure he stayed outside her space so as not to scare her. He watched her hand moving in and out.
She drew four short lines, each one steady and evenly spaced. After a pause, she added a fifth, a longer stroke with a slight curve at the end. Her posture remained still, her focus fixed on the marks, not once glancing up for a reaction.
Riven looked toward the relay. Its light blinked in the same pattern: four quick flashes, a pause, then one longer. The match was exact.
He reached out and replicated her sequence beside her, matching the lengths with one finger pressed to the ground.
She noticed.
Her eyes moved to his hand, then to the pattern he'd drawn. She watched for a moment, then leaned forward and drew a new set of lines. The spacing was almost the same, but this time the last mark sat closer to the rest, no longer separate.
Riven looked back at the relay. The fifth blink came a little sooner this time, it was a small change, but clear enough to catch. She hadn't followed the pattern, she had changed it, and the system had followed her lead.
Then Cassian's voice suddenly came from behind them. "Are you two plotting something?"
Riven didn't answer, and Anya was already drawing another variation.
Riven unfastened the strap on the satchel, keeping one hand on the flap as he opened it just enough for light to reach the surface of the core. The casing was warm, and a faint buzz rose from inside it, just like it had at the substation.
Across from him, the girl's body tensed. Her back went rigid, arms pulling in as her breaths turned short and fast. Her fingers curled against her knees while her eyes locked on the ground.
Alongside her, the relay blinked again, but this time the rhythm was off. The pause came sooner, just ahead of the fifth pulse. Then it happened again, slightly shorter this time. One beat missing, the whole cycle hesitating for a moment before resuming.
He closed the satchel and secured the strap. The way her body reacted, right before the relay changed, was too precise to ignore. The only thing that had changed was the core being close, and she had picked up on it right away.
As soon as the satchel was secured, the girl's posture eased. Her shoulders dropped, and her breathing started to steady. The relay was back to blinking normally as well, back to its usual pattern.
Riven kept quiet, he didn't have a clear answer yet.
At some point during the exchange, Cassian had stepped closer. He was kneeling beside her with one hand near her elbow, careful not to make contact. He met Riven's eyes, saying nothing, but the look was enough. They'd both seen it.
Then a voice came from the slope behind them. "I knew you were up to something!"
Riven turned. The man from the shelter, the one who had raised a rifle a day earlier, was already halfway down the incline. His pace was fast, direct, with his hands clenched at his sides. His focus was on the girl.
"She was fine until that thing lit up, don't tell me that's a coincidence. Whatever's in that bag, it's messing with her!"
Cassian stepped between them, just cutting the line of approach. "You should stop and think about what you're saying."
He shoved past him. Cassian didn't react instead, he just turned to follow him. The man closed the distance to Riven and grabbed him by the elbow.
Before Riven could speak, a mechanical pulse came from inside the satchel. The relay's light shimmered, falling out of rhythm. Then, a few meters away, one of the buried pipes behind the ridge let out an unexpected creak as well.
The man stepped back half a pace with his eyes on the bag now.
"You brought something in" he said. "Something wrong. It's not just her, the relay's glitching and I heard the pipe move too... we all did!"
A few others had started to gather, keeping their distance but watching. The man looked around as if to confirm he wasn't the only one seeing it.
"You think this all just looks normal?" the man said, louder now. "Strangers show up with tech none of us recognize, and we let them walk in like it means nothing. You know what that kind of carelessness gets you out here?"
Cassian stepped forward again with his arms still at his sides. "We didn't sneak in, you all saw us coming. Talia saw us coming."
"That's the problem" the man snapped. "You came in too easy. No questions, no checks. What happens when word gets out? When gangs hear we've got active tech again?"
Riven stepped in. "The relay is adjusting to her patterns, doesn't that strike anyone here as unusual? That's what we saw. We're not hiding anything, and there's no agenda."
A few people in the group looked toward the relay, then back at the girl, who was still seated by the dust.
Riven unhooked the strap and opened the satchel. Inside, the core sat in its casing, matte black, a thin green line circling the surface. It wasn't glowing now, but even without light, it was clear this wasn't scavenged tech.
A murmur spread through the small crowd. Someone near the back whispered something Riven couldn't make out, but he let them look even with Cassian slightly growing uneasy of this entire new and unexpected unfolding of events.
"Stillwater core" one of the older villagers said under their breath. "It's real..."
Riven closed the flap again.
The man who shouted earlier looked ready to respond again, but the noise cut across the space before he could.
"Enough."
Talia's voice cut through, steady and clear. She stepped into the clearing without hurry, calm as ever.
"All of you... step back" she said, while her eyes stayed on the man. "Do it now."
He took a full step back, putting space between them and the rest of the group. The tension in the crowd began to ease back with him, one by one, without a word.
--------
They sat in the shade beyond the relay post, just outside the space where the others had gathered. Anya was settled near the base of the wall, knees pulled in, back upright. She looked very calm.
Talia crouched beside her, pushed a strand of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. The girl didn't react to the touch.
"She was found in one of the old nodes east of here" Talia said. "Two years after the collapse, maybe longer. No one knows how she got there. We think her family tried to shelter inside when the zone fell apart, but they didn't make it."
Cassian hung back, hands in his jacket pockets, saying nothing.
"She was the only one left when we found the chamber. There was no food, no name, no records, just her, sitting near a subpanel, covered in dust and somehow still breathing."
Talia's voice stayed steady.
"She couldn't speak and couldn't hold eye contact, but she remembered the timing of the node's light cycle. She copied it, we watched her do it three times before anyone else noticed it was a match."
Cassian exhaled slowly. "This is definitely not your average rescue story."
Talia kept her eyes on the girl. "We didn't know if she was damaged, but she started reacting to things we couldn't explain."
Riven watched the dust near the girl's hand. She was resting her fingers beside a fading line.
"We tried keeping her away from the old system" Talia said. "We thought maybe it was making her worse, but every time something in the grid changed, she changed with it. At some point, we started bringing her back to the node."
She nodded toward the hilltop ridge, towards the same structure they'd seen as they arrived.
"About a year ago, one of our teams got partial power running through the node. Most of it was unresponsive, but when she was there a message came through, it was part of an old log, buried deep in the relay stack."
Cassian raised an eyebrow. "You're telling me she decoded a signal?"
"She didn't do anything to the system" Talia said. "She just sat there and the system reacted to her presence. We got system logs, old error reports, you name it. Enough to tell us some of the Lady's old grid is still running."
She stood slowly, brushing the dust from her knees. "We kept it quiet, we didn't even tell the full crew, just a handful of us know."
Cassian gave a short breath. "Smart."
Talia didn't smile. "We kept tuning her against the node. The older devices you saw when you came in, the ones bolted to the walls… they're readers. Pulse sensors, old relay monitors. We didn't feed her anything, but we let her sit near them when they were live. We watched what changed, what pulsed differently when she entered the room."
She turned and walked toward Riven, her tone sharpening with each step.
"We've been straightforward with you. More than we have with anyone outside this place. Now it's your turn."
She stopped just in front of him. "Tell me about the core."