"Surely, the elevator shaft has got to be safer than… this…"

While Henry cautiously descended the knotted rope they'd rigged up to reach the semi-intact lower half of the fire escape, he did his best to tune out Robb's gripes coming from above. It wasn't that he didn't understand the sentiment. A potential drop of a few dozen stories demanded respect, even from someone as functionally immortal as himself. It's just that he'd much rather be able to wholly focus on not having that drop happen, rather than listen to complaints about the possibility.

"You're welcome to try," Henry eventually grunted in reply as he worked to anchor the swaying rope. "Remind me again… How much rubble have you tossed down into that hole now? Hopefully it's not broken anything on the way down."

Robb didn't really have a good response to that. "...I've made progress, you know…" he defended lamely.

Despite the initial protests, they both committed fully to climbing down the rope. First Henry, then Robb, alternating movements to keep the sturdy nylon cord from swaying too much at any given moment. Like a pendulum, Henry would hang tight, waiting for the motion to still itself, before moving on a step further down to repeat the process yet again.

It was slow going, though the frequent breaks made it at least a physically manageable task. Nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other and enjoy the view. So long as you forgot about the drop below you, there was a sort of solemn, peaceful quiet the aesthetic of the surrounding ruins gave.

Almost like… like the end to a band's last performance. One that might not have been your absolute favorite, exactly, but close enough that you followed their work regularly and showed up to the concert to see them off, at least. And now that it was over, there was some part of you that wished to see it back again. Wondering if there will ever be a reunion.

The glass and crystal pendant around his neck bounced against his chest as he swung in the wind.

Henry pressed on. Past the twisted metal, the smashed concrete and the broken glass, he followed the safe path down that wouldn't see him impaled on the jagged surfaces left in William's hasty ascent.

Slow going, but he never minded the climb.

< -|- -|- >

Aside from the gaping crater in the center of the car park, the entire structure was, ironically, in better shape than the office building adjoining it now.

It made sense, in some part. Most of the fighting had been taken inside once the wolves had decided to show up, and while those beasts were certainly capable of gratuitous violence and destruction, the Knight Commander's armor made for the exact kind of target they were wont to pursue. As such, the surrounding area was in much worse shape than it had been before… but again, the car park was only slightly worse for wear.

Henry and Robb approached the ugly-looking, poured concrete structure and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't perfect, but it had all the trappings of a functional temporary shelter. Concealed guards, Open sightlines, caches of essentials like supplies and functioning vehicles… more than enough to get their exodus on the road, once they all finished making the final touches.

As they rounded the corner and got a good look at the entrance, Martin was already waiting for them by what remained of the toll gate. He seemed a bit impatient, tapping his foot against the ground while he leaned against the attendant's booth, and once they were within the speaking distance Henry had mentally catalogued as 'safe indoor voice', it was made clear as to why.

"Hope you two are done inventorying that radio equipment up there," Martin began. "Cause now we're getting close to the point where we're pretty much exclusively waiting on you."

The two of them winced. For entirely different reasons.

"I got a little sidetracked."

"The stairway is still completely blocked up."

Martin gave them a flat, deadpan stare.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought bringing the radio along was your idea."

It was. Henry had brought it up with the two of them this morning, when they'd had some free time in between loading up the vans and stripping every stash the GC had as bare as possible. Robb had backed him up on the decision, hence the dangerous trip up to the roof in the first place. It was notably the first split decision of their little council.

That was another thing that felt weird to him. He held a leadership position now. Over the past few days, mostly by pure chance, things had shaken out in such a way that the three of them had ended up in charge. Martin was an obvious pick, since he'd taken up the role pretty much since day one, and Robb had thrown his lot in with the rest of them entirely, going so far as to point out several private caches hidden around the building that they never would have found otherwise.

As for Henry, he felt like he'd landed the position purely as a stand-in for Evelyn. And given his track record, perhaps not a very good one.

Martin cleared his throat. "So… do we know what we're packing up or not? I need to figure out something before the reports on those mystery supply drops come back, you know."

Ah. Right. That's what he'd come down here empty-handed for.

"About that," Henry cut in. "It's not actually a mystery. See, while we were up there…"

He dove straight in to the details of the radio call that had occurred. The more he talked, the more apparent it was that getting Martin up to speed would be the easy part.

Getting him to actually believe it took much more doing. Understandably so. Nobody had heard from the outside world in months, so why now all of a sudden? The only time governments ever moved quickly was during times of crisis. Surely they'd have done something drastic already if they were going to do anything.

In the end, it was pretty obvious the Fire mage wasn't fully convinced. But, at the very least, he seemed willing to entertain the possibility. If only due to the circumstantial evidence those crates falling from the sky provided.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"So, in short," he concluded, "At least one of us will need to come back here when they send word again."

Martin closed his eyes in contemplation, a troubled look on his face. The look of someone trying to juggle one more spinning plate in the middle of an already complicated pattern of spinning plates.

"Should be doable," he admitted, "But… what I'm more worried about is the state of the building in a month's time. It's holding for now, but that's only because we've been paying close attention to the load-bearing parts and shoring them up with Earth magic as needed."

"Think it can go all the way?"

"No way in hell. A week's a long time for something to go wrong, much less a full month. Either we'd need to delay our move long enough to finish an extended patch job, or we risk losing that equipment entirely. Are you sure we can't move any of it?"

"Well…" Robb answered, seeming a bit nervous. "If we knew which direction the signal was coming from, it might be possible for us to move it all down to the car park, but…"

"But?"

"We also run the risk of putting the building in between us and the signal if we do that," he finished. "I wouldn't recommend it until after we get in touch again, and at that point we might as well just tell them to redirect their focus to the new location next time."

The other two grunted in acknowledgment of the advice. Neither of the were radio experts, but the logic seemed sound enough to them.

"So, we might move it soon, or we might move it later, then. Either way, we're going to need that stairwell cleared so we can haul the bigger parts of it out of here. Are the Earth Domain mages busy with anything right now, Martin?"

"Busy? Yes, absolutely. Available, well… how much time do you think they'd need? A lot of them are tied down between maintaining what we have already and doing what they can to fix the road out of here, but every so often a set of hands frees up."

"I don't know… an hour for one of them, tops? More would make it go quicker."

"Right… I'll bring it up next chance I get, then."

"Thank you."

Henry was very glad that Martin was handling the organizational side of things around here. Truth be told, he'd have been entirely lost on where to start if he'd had to take up that role. Keeping track of a group of around 30 mages was no small feat, especially when the majority of them were in the process of adjusting to the talent boost provided to each of them by the 8-Ball artifact.

Everyone was excited to discover where their new limits were, to the point where it had become necessary to dedicate time specifically to that purpose so that people stayed on task while they worked to get everything ready for the move.

It was an entirely different skillset to the one he'd grown accustomed to, simply surviving in Greenwich. Idly, he wondered if Martin had been some kind of middle manager or team lead before the Shroud came down.

"Well, if there's nothing else to be done on that front just yet…" the former mage slave kicked off the wall, standing up straight as he beckoned the other two to follow him inside. "There's something else you should know about. That copy you sent out yesterday is back from Kensington."

"Wait, already?", he blurted.

Martin nodded in response. That was surprising. He'd have thought the motorbike his simulacrum had insisted on taking would have drawn more attention and forced a few detours. Apparently, sometimes fate decided to play gentle.

"Did he say anything?", Henry asked.

"Only that he had some stuff to pawn off to you next chance he had. Nothing high priority."

"Well…" Henry sighed. "Suppose I might as well get it taken care of, then."

"Suit yourself. Last I saw, he was helping load trucks up on the second floor."

The three of them exchanged polite goodbyes, then separated to handle their own respective issues. Henry made a beeline for the staircase in the middle of the car park, looking to intercept his clone before the chance to quick meet up with himself slipped away. With any luck, he'd get to hear some more detailed information on what was going on in the west side of Hallow London.

When he arrived, it turned out that the trucks had already been loaded up for the day. Heavily laden with various packages, crates, jerry cans and drums, a whole fleet of high-capacity vehicles was now ready to brave the foggy streets. Only a few empty vehicles remained, ones that were deliberately being kept that way for the possible radio equipment.

Tracking down where the workers went off to past that wasn't too hard, either; he just had to sneak a quick peek into the flower garden to find his answer.

Near a corner on the far side of the building, a small area had been cleared and filled with homemade planter boxes. Their resident Flora mage – who Henry still had yet to get the name of – had been almost constantly busy with her magic ever since she'd been given her turn with the artifact. The other survivors loved what she was putting her talent toward, and as her collection had steadily grown the area where the flowers were being kept became a bit of an informal meeting place for everyone at day's end.

There, he found his copy and a few others lounging about. As soon as they made eye contact with each other, the clone got to his feet, quickly excusing himself and hefting a heavy satchel over his shoulder.

Looks like he was able to bring back the goods, after all.

The two of them shook hands, and Henry started them off the only way he felt was proper to address himself.

"Well, I suppose this job was easy enough to manage, wasn't it?"

"Easy," the clone agreed, "But not simple. Which is weird, because normally it's the other way around."

"Really?", he asked. "Tell me what happened."

"In a minute. First…"

With a slight flourish, the copy unclasped the top flap of the satchel and started fishing around within. It sounded like there were a bunch of randomly assorted items rattling around within the bag as he rummaged, but as to what they might be he had no idea. Before long, a smooth plastic clamshell package with a flip phone inside was passed over to him.

"Fresh burner phone to replace the one we lost before. As well as-" another reach into the bag, and he pulled out a small engraved chip. "-the booster needed to actually get consistent signal around here."

"A Tech Domain booster?" The chip fell into his palm, and he held it up close to his eye to get a better look. Sure enough, the engravings looked pretty much the same as the one that he'd put in his old phone, down to the identical-looking lime green Domain crystal flush with the surface. "Lucky find," was all he could remark.

"All courtesy of Cecil, even down to the clamshell package. He's still a bit ticked at how much of his equipment we wasted over the months, but he's looking forward to the influx of supplies this convoy of ours will bring him."

"To be honest… I'm surprised he put up with it for as long as he did. What else is there?"

"A spare boosted phone… also clamshelled, but that's for me to wrestle with… some updated wolfpack sightings and dates, since we no longer have the Club to handle that for us…"

The clone paused from his idle search, staring Henry dead in the eyes.

"...And the contents of the East Hammersmith low priority stash."

His heart skipped a beat.

"...It was all still there, right?"

"Just the way we left it. Seems like the little guy might have gone inert, but that's just because it seems to have run out of power. Once I can get the Tech Domain mages to give it some juice, we should be fine."

"That… that's good…"

He'd been worried that it might have been lost forever. Call him sentimental, but the way he saw it, he'd made a mistake taking it away in the first place, and now the best he could do to correct it was to make sure it didn't lie buried behind that Premier Inn, abandoned and forgotten.

If only she were still here to get it back…

The clone let him have the somber moment, understanding what he was feeling perfectly.

"Hey, why don't you come have a seat with us in the garden?", the copy suggested. "Some company that isn't just you might help get your mind off things, you know."

He knew he was right. And yet, there was a part of him that was still apprehensive.

"It'll be fine," his clone insisted. "Come. Take a seat."

The duplicate nudged him along, walking alongside him as he approached the flower beds.

It really was a pretty arrangement. Most flowers before now had been long dead with no light bright enough to sustain them. Here, though, there was a rainbow of vibrant colors that provided a bright contrast against the dreary backdrop of the grey-green outdoors.

Tulips, roses, orchids… he wasn't the best with plant names, but he could pick out a few from the already extremely varied collection. Almost all of them looked to be nearly perfectly healthy, save for-

Henry stopped dead in his tracks. The rose he was examining from a distance began to shrivel and wilt. First slowly, then all at once. As it died, it's neighbors began to bear signs of a similar ailment, and before long the spread was too great to go unnoticed by the other gathered survivors.

Henry's hand immediately went to the knife at his belt. His duplicate, who had been loaned the revolver for his cross-city journey, now reached for it as everyone else tried to figure out what had suddenly gone wrong with the garden.

He already knew the answer.

"EVERYONE OUT NOW!", he shouted to the confused people in his midst. "You're not safe if you stay here. We'll handle this."

They all clearly had questions, but from the look in his eyes he made it abundantly clear they needed to trust his judgment on this one. Hurriedly, the mages were ushered out onto the floors below, a few of which were instructed to fetch Martin on the way down.

The last of them cleared the area just as the first sickly brambles emerged from the rotting mess.

Henry and his copy breathed a sigh of relief, glad that they were able to evacuate everyone in time to greet their visitor properly.

"Hello, Celine," he addressed the forming mass of thorny vines wearily. "What brings you here?"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.