Croft's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Croft had not slept in two nights, and the cold was starting to win. He was nineteen, thin, with green spiked hair that no longer meant anything out here. Back home it marked him as trouble. In the ruined city of The Lost, it only marked him as prey. He kept moving because stopping meant freezing. Somewhere in this wreckage his family waited, or so he told himself. Finding them was the only reason he kept his feet moving at all. The cluster of broken towers rose ahead of him. War had chewed their upper floors to nothing. Steel beams hung loose from the shells, swaying when the wind pushed. But the lower floors still had walls. Walls meant a break from the wind. Croft picked his way over the rubble at the base and slipped through a gap where a door had been. Inside, a small fire burned in a rusted drum. A girl crouched beside it, feeding it strips of wood. She could not have been more than sixteen. She heard him and did not run. Instead she picked up a length of pipe and stood, keeping the drum between them. "Stop there," she said. "I've split heads for less than you're thinking." Croft raised both empty hands. His teeth were chattering too hard to hide. "I'm not thinking anything. I just want to not die tonight." She studied him. Her eyes moved to his shaking hands, then his boots, then his hair. Something in her face loosened, just a little. "You're soft," she said. "City-soft. You won't last a week." "Then let me last one more night." He nodded at the fire. "I'll trade. I've got food." He pulled a dented can from his coat. It was the last one he had. He held it out anyway. She stared at the can a long moment. Then she lowered the pipe. "Sit," she said. "Far side. You touch my things, you go back out." Croft sat. The heat hit his hands like something alive. He almost cried from it. The girl opened his can with a blade and split what was inside without asking. She handed him half. They ate without talking while the fire snapped. "People come here at first light," she said finally. "Not friendly ones. This isn't my place. I just found it empty." She looked at him hard. "If you're still here when they come, you're on your own." Croft swallowed. The warmth had a price after all. He had a wall and a fire for one night. Come dawn, he would have to run again, and now he had no food left to trade. "Then I'll be gone before light," he said. The girl nodded and turned back to the flames. For the first time in two nights, Croft let his eyes close. But he set them to open early. Morning was coming, and it was bringing company he could not fight.