The Secrets of Martinaise - Chapter 2 - meteorecho (2024)

Chapter Text

You drop down into the basem*nt's gaping maw, landing on your feet. Broken glass crunches under the soles of your boots. The space is dark and empty, full of ancient dust and cobwebs. Its corners are crowded with overturned tables and shelves, some riddled with bullet holes.

MINDSTREAM - bullet holes empty eyes trained on you like sniper sights, lingering hopes and gunpowder seeds, planted into those who shall never rise by the ones who dreamed of paradise until the ground itself bleeds

"Hey, is everything alright?" Potache's voice echoes from above, startling you out of your thoughts, back into the room. You raise your head; he's trying to peek into the basem*nt, but of course it's too dark for him to see. After all, he's not like you - not used to the pitch-black of the coal room or lightless shacks.

You step aside and yell up, "Yeah! Jump right here, just don't touch the floor or you'll cut your hands to sh*t!" The boy awkwardly slides halfway into the small window, then leaps down with a disgruntled noise, clutching his duffel bag under one arm. Luckily, he regains balance just in time to avoid resting his palms on the cement, leaning against the cracked wall instead. He looks around, wide-eyed, at the scant remains of the abandoned workspace, muttering "Whoa, ça a l'air effrayant comme de la merde..." You chuckle. "What, scared already?" Pretty Boy rolls his eyes, slinging the bag over his shoulder in an effortlessly cool gesture. The tiny earring he so constantly messes with catches a flitting spark of light. "I don't know about you, ma chérie, but I've never been to a public execution spot before. It's completely different from hearing about this stuff in history class... really weird how they used to develop groundbreaking technology here, then it was burned down by people who thought they could do better - and got shot up just a few years later." It's almost like he tuned to the same sine as yourself. But then again, what else is there to think about when you're in a building full of ghosts?

A brief search reveals that the numerous table drawers are all empty, save for a few yellowed leaflets that turn to dust between your fingers. You scour for hidden table compartments, but nothing - not even a p*rn stash taped to the underside of a drawer, or a cubby in the wall. The whole room is drab cement, sterile like a doctor's glove. You suppose that the Moralintern scum ripped any decorations left by the defeated right off. Maybe they even had a f*cking bonfire and danced around it.

MINDSTREAM - banners burned by the winning side swallowed whole like a coming tide, and so it goes, swings like a pendulum, history written over and over again until the truth is drowned way under and no-one even remembers

The heavy wooden door is locked, but one glance is enough to see that it won't be a problem. Potache watches with fascination as you pull a lockpick out of your pocket and slide it into the keyhole; you fish around until you feel the first obstruction and coerce it to give way. "They used a warded lock here, probably because there was nothin' important in this room. These are f*ckin' easy, see - this is the kind of mechanism that has a bunch of little quarter-plates in it, so all you gotta do is to poke it until you line the plates up and give your key a pivot point to turn around on. You can actually make something called a skeleton key that will open most of them, too!"

You hear a chain reaction of metal bits clicking into place; with a loud screech, the door cracks open. The boy smiles at you - a charming grin that makes him look teen-aged - and murmurs, "Beautiful. Quelle compétence!" With a smirk of your own, you light an Astra, reveling in a lungful of clove-scented smoke. He does the same, eyes closed as the smoke curls into thin ribbons as it exits through his nostrils. Feels nice to be praised.

Outside the door, a long passageway loops, slithering like a snake. The two of you soon discover several more rooms, unlocked and completely forsaken, bar for hoards of ancient clutter. There are a few hidey-holes inside the walls, but they've all been emptied - one recently, the others long ago, judging by the cobwebs.

"Well, this is anticlimactic", the boy remarks, perching on a scuffed table. You snort. "What did you expect, fanfares and confetti? All hail the explorers from the Isola of Martinaise, discoverers of mysterious crypts!" He nods sideways, pointing his chin at the two sets of footprints in the dust - one bigger, steps wide, the other smaller and more evenly paced. "Technically, we would be the settlers, seeing as how the crypts have been already explored before us."

You frown, staring closely at the floor. "You know what bugs me? There are no rats here at all. Little f*ckers usually love dark, abandoned places like this one, but I don't see any tracks or sh*t anywhere. What's up with that?" Pretty Boy shrugs, "Ma chérie, I'm afraid you're the rat expert here." You pretend to smack him on the arm, and he fake-flinches.

It's actually fun, bantering back and forth like this.

A crumbling staircase leads to the roof, or whatever remains of the second floor. The view is fantastic, though: the sky opens up above, feathery clouds stippling the pale blue like surreal waves, a make-believe sea above the real one.

MINDSTREAM - a neverending sea as far as the eye can see, infinity like mirrors posed across one another; if you jump into the sky will it be a freefall until the Pale claims you and the stars go by, or just a final dive until nothing really matters and it's all the same anyway, so why even bother

"... it's really quite sad, isn't it?"

sh*t, it appears you've missed a chunk of conversation there - f*ckin' mind-voice loves flooding your brain at the worst time possible. Potache leans next to you against the remnants of a wall, leisurely draping an arm over the edge; a cigarette is breathing its last in his fingers. "Endless blue, just like in my dreams," he sighs wistfully. "I can see why you're fascinated with it. Either way, I was saying that they probably used to conduct most of their research on this floor, back in the day. Apparently, FELD came up with some new type of radiocomputer that was supposed to work on... j'sais pas, ferromagnetic tapes? Not that our retro-tech course was very clear about it, but it appears that the only prototype in existence was either burned or dismantled, and no blueprints survived. Must have been incredible..."

You wonder too, even if you don't understand a thing about radiocomputers - you've only seen pictures in books, but never a real one. What was it like, to create complicated machinery that had a life of its own? The building remains quiet; outside, seagulls squawk at each other as they fight for small fish. There's nowhere to go from here but down.

A small, dusty door is concealed beneath the stairs, right next to the ground floor hallway. You try the handle; it's unlocked. Inside is a row of toilet cubicles, several chipped porcelain sinks and what seems to be a shower stall. Experimentally, you turn the hot water knob on the nearest sink. The tap gurgles, but nothing comes out. The cold one, however, spews a stream of rust-coloured sludge, rattling up a storm. In a few seconds, the water clears up, coursing freely down the drain.

"Holy sh*t, look, it still works!" you call out to your accomplice. He pokes his head through the door, startled as he notices your discovery. "Now that's something! Why don't we check the rest of these?" he exclaims, already poking and prodding at any knob and spigot within reach.

Sadly, only one sink seems to be operational. Nothing comes out of the other two, aside from pitiful groaning. The closest toilets don't flush anymore - but the furthest two still do, to your delight. "Hey, look, look!" you yell, pressing the button over and over again. "Now let's see if the shower is any good." "Don't push your luck," he grins, but obligingly tries the "COLD" valve. Immediately, a spray of water hits the floor; the boy yelps "f*ck!" and recoils just in time not to get drenched from head to toe. Your jaw drops; soon, both of you are cracking up like damn fools. "Oh Dei, that f*cking face you just made, I can't!" He laughs even harder, thin arms folded across his chest. The shower hisses like an agitated snake.

***

The two of you walk down the corridor, following a tangle of pipes. On one side, a tiny storage room hides a tall mounted shelf holding dozens of isosilicate glass panes, stacked together like pages of a fantastic encyclopedia. The boy shines a flashlight at them, and the whole display lights up, casting rainbow glimmers across the mold-stained walls. "Qu'est-ce que c'est? I've never seen anything like this!" he exclaims, handing you the flashlight in order to crank up as he picks a slide out, turning it this way and that, inspecting it up close. You notice hairline fractures in the glass, scattered deep within the surface like blood vessels, and point them out. "Careful, it's cracked. Put it back, 'kay?"

Potache leans closer, bringing the rectangular panel directly towards the source of light, and scrapes his neatly trimmed nail along a scintillating line. "No, see, it's not cracks, it's wires!" You squint at them just so - and yes, those are metal filaments finer than hairs, encased deeply inside a centimeter-thick sheet. The boy muses, frowning. "I suppose they're some sort of equipment or record stacks for the radiocomputer vein-work they had running through the building. It's such a pity that we can't see this in action." He smiles dolefully, probably imagining electricity running though those lines and lighting them up like roads and highways. "Ça a dû être un spectacle à voir..."

You gesture for him to put it back. "Yeah, and now these babies are gatherin' dust in a basem*nt. Think we could sell 'em?" He raises a brow, clearly unimpressed with your suggestion. "Chérie, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't retail for much even as collectors' items - Roy might be interested in a slide or two, but frankly, these are altogether useless without the machinery that would run them. Everything of value got burned down a long, long time ago. Besides..." He glances down quickly, looking pained. "...I don't like the thought of pilfering this. It's like... "

MINDSTREAM - pouring gasoline on a flower field and burning it down for the sake of greed, turning precious grain into pig feed, casting library books down a grinder and watching knowledge disappear from this world, page by page word by word, some things are better untouched and left as a reminder

"...Either way, I don't think it's a good idea. Laissons-les tranquilles." You nod. Might be better to let the sleeping ghosts lie.

The boy slots the glass panel back into place, patting it down with reverence - like a priest handling an ancient relic, which, in a sense, it is. Once the bright beam moves away, the caleidoscope of colours turns back into ordinary glass, falling asleep.

As you walk out of the storage space, a gust of cold wind blows across your face, startling you. There must be a room on the other side of the corridor, right behind the wall.

Sure enough, your hand stumbles upon the wooden side of a weirdly narrow door frame, obscured from view by a jutting slab of broken cement. Both of you peek inside, squeezed against each other; Pretty Boy winces as you accidentally step on his foot. The corner of his bag is poking you right between the ribs, but you barely even notice.

Through the doorway, you see a room that looks a bit more lived-in than any of the previous ones. There's a double-decker bunk bed in a corner - with an actual mattress! - a writing desk, a chair and what looks like a small storage box. From across, a badly printed linograph of Kras Mazov is staring you right in the eye with unwarranted judgment. How rude.

It takes you all of two minutes to cram yourselves in and start digging around. "Holy sh*t, we're finally in a Communard bunker, aren't we?" you laugh, digging through the knick-knacks on the table. There's nothing of interest - some plates and bowls, an old shaving kit, several cheap ball-point pens with long-dried ink, a brittle notepad that's filled with the most illegible chicken-scratch you've ever seen (including your own) and covered in antique cigarette burns. "Wow, this is all useless garbage," the boy huffs as he pulls the storage box out from underneath the table, prying the lid open with a small, sharp-looking pocket-knife - probably a lock-blade, by the look of it. "Behold, the Revolutionary riches!" he motions at the empty bullet shells and a single ripped sock at the bottom of the coffer. "That's it, we're moving to Ozonne and buying ourselves a villa," you deadpan right back.

From the wall, Mazov observes your antics, clearly unamused. "What say you, Comrade? Any valuables that you know of?" you quip, snatching the linograph and waving it around. The damned thing is backed with cardboard; no inscriptions there whatsoever. Annoyed, you shake the portrait, then slam it against the table.

Something small rattles dryly inside the frame. Your ears perk up; Potache turns around to check the odd little noise as well. "Did you hear that? There's something inside, under the backing!" you exclaim as he rummages around in his duffel bag. Out comes the knife again. The boy motions you to hold the lino down in place, while he swiftly pries the flimsy clasps away, pulling the framed piece apart. You lean closer to look inside.

Beneath the cardboard, you find a dry wisp of maybell flowers, fragile to the touch and almost completely see-through. The flower stalk snaps in half when you attempt to handle it, disintegrating faster than a poor man's paycheck. On the back of the portrait, a single line is scrawled in shaky lead pencil, barely there - "I HOPE THEY NEVER FIND THIS". The other object inside is a pendant of some sort, attached to a red string. You pick it up; Potache catches the shiny thing between two fingers and tilts it against the lantern light.

STERLING SILVER 0.5✤ COIN

+1 Empathy: Ultima memoria

-1 Composure: You thrust your fist against the posts and still insist you see the ghosts

It's not a pendant, but a silver coin, cloudy with grey patina. On one side, a pattern of stars and lines - a map of constellations - rises slightly above the scuffed surface. On the other, a barely visible crowned woman's profile, with "50 CENTIMES" engraved below. You inspect the coin for a release date, but find nothing on either side. The boy squints, mumbling, "It must be from at least 200 years ago! Didn't they stop minting silver centimes sometime around the middle of the Filippian reign... no, wait, the Oranjese map on the back is pretty new since they still use it on notable date issues... Either way, this coin is definitely at least a century and a half old! You know, I think you found a treasure after all."

Carefully, you lower it onto the palm of your hand, rubbing your thumb against the crest of quatrefoils. "Guess it used to be a lucky charm? Some kid's momma probably put it around his neck - before he got taken out and shot in the head in front of the building. Or a keepsake from a lover, maybe." Your friend nods thoughtfully. "Looks like nothing's been lucky around here for a long, long time, n'est-ce pas vrai? But maybe it can spare a little bit of magic just for you." With that, he picks the coin up by the string and loops it around your neck. The little silver piece gleams like an old medal.

***

Further down, the corridor splits, both passageways looping away from each other in the dim light. The cement crackles under your feet; the structure is still strong, but the salty air has taken toll on it. Far away, you can hear the rustle of the waves, lapping at the remnants of that collapsed wall you've seen from outside. The noise is actually soothing, like a steady whoosh-whoosh of a huge broom, sweeping up the clutter of old away into the ocean.

An array of footprints streaks the left passage, running back and forth like a trail of large ants. Dust has already begun to settle on top of them; soon, nothing will be left at all. Out of curiosity, you pick the turn to the right - it seems to be the one that the cops left alone, somehow. What's the point having an adventure when you only choose the paths that others have walked before you?

The boy totters ahead, shining a bright circle of light on ancient walls. There's only dust and cobwebs as far as you can see; it's honestly beginning to feel suffocating.

MINDSTREAM - packed in tight deep within a mine, neverending corridors in the corners of your mind, leading down like the catacombs of Le Royaume to the realm of nightmares where old shadows roam, aimlessly twisting and coiling like a hangman's noose you better shake it off if you want to let loose-

You're interrupted by a loud crack, sharp as a gunshot, followed by a gasp. The distraction is so sudden that you startle, baring your teeth like an angry animal; your heart thumps inside your ribs like a well-oiled train engine, echoing deeply inside your head.

It's just a rotten board, snapped in half by the heavy sole of Potache's track-and-field boot. Ahead, the sun grows brighter as the corridor slopes gently to the left. The floor is oddly tilted, as if the artillery cannonade had damaged something deep in the foundation. The boy props his hand against the wall, steadying himself as he passes the turn - then stops and stares at the vast expanse of cement, frowning. "There's air blowing out of here!" You press an ear to the spot that he's pointed out and hear a faint whooshing; a thin, vertical crack spans from ceiling to floor.

"Do you think there's a hidden room?" he asks, running the flashlight's beam back and forth across the corridor's curve. "Might be!" you nod. "If it's an actual secret room, there must be a button to open it somewhere 'by."

Up on the wall, above head height, a small rectangular piece of cement stands out against the smooth surface - just a little, almost unnoticeable unless you know where to look. Your friend pushes at it; the switch clicks, and you hear a dull, ominous roar of ancient mechanisms coming to life. A whole section of the wall reluctantly sinks in, as if whatever's powering it has been asleep for ages, then stops, gears screeching, and begins to slide sideward. A gust of stale, moldy air rushes into your faces, and you pick up something disturbing as you recoil - a faint, sweet stench that you hate above all others. It's the smell of flesh that's decomposed a long time ago. The boy winces, "Ough!", covering his nose with a sleeve.

It's dark inside. Faint glow comes in through a fissure in the outer wall of the building, close to the ground. The room is narrow and tall, made to fit the curve of the nearby corridor. You grope around blindly, but only feel the outline of a shelf, and then a ray of bright light swings into the room, spilling over the dusty walls.

When you see what's on the floor, your breath stops short in your lungs.

In the corner of a near-empty room, a withered corpse, barely more than a skeleton, sits upright, its legs sprawled wide. It's still wearing the tattered and moth-eaten remains of a white laboratory coat. Potache makes a pitiful little noise, as if he's about to hurl; you lay a hand on his arm in an attempt to ground him. In the harsh spotlight, the dead man glares at both of you with gap-toothed mockery, bottom jaw unhinged all the way down to his chest. You shudder. Some Skull you are, scared of a guy who's been dead for half a century.

Something is clutched in the corpse's skeletal hand, pressed close to his chest. You hunker down, trying not to look into the hollow eye-sockets, and carefully wrestle the item from his grasp.

FINAL NOTE

+1 Self-Conscience: The first death is in the heart, the last one's in the memory

-1 Pain Threshold: Abyssus abyssum invocat

It's a sheet of mottled paper, covered in neat lines of cursive, and surprisingly well-preserved. As you carefully pull it from the man's fingers, you notice a small round hole on the side of his coat. The rusty, faded stain around it is unmistakable.

"Must've gotten himself shot and hid in here so he could die in peace, poor fellow." The boy crouches next to you, looking sadly at the researcher's corpse, then places a hand on the desiccated ribcage. Stations of Breath, you realise. "How horrible, knowing that you'd never get out of here alive..." His voice trails off, choked up.

The two of you huddle together on the dusty floor in the middle of the room, shining a light on the dead man's letter. Your friend takes it from you, examining it up close, then exclaims, puzzled, "This is papier d'archive!" "Huh?" He rubs the edge of the sheet between his fingertips. "It's treated with chemicals for durability. See how it hasn't yellowed after all this time? You use this sort of stuff if you want your records to last a long while - usually to preserve the most important notes, but papier d'archive is really expensive and hard to get." Reflections flicker back and forth in his eyes, tired and wan. "I think he hoped someone might find him... mais pas après si longtemps."

He squints a little, getting used to the old-fashioned, curly handwriting, then begins reading out the message in a quiet, monotonous voice.

"My love,

If you're reading this, I'm probably already gone. I'm so, so sorry that I couldn't keep my promise and return to you... Right now, I would give anything to see your smile again.

As I sit here, these barbarians are burning the research that I've poured half of my lifetime into. The prototype, the blueprints - they've rounded it all up under the pretense of "confiscating technology for the betterment of people", but I can smell the smoke coming from the top floor. My precious baby, they've destroyed it... Those f*ckers shot Jerome, and Mathieu, and Etiennette. I heard the screams but couldn't do anything to help. Instead, I played dead, only to hide in the safe-room. Please forgive me for being such a coward.

The only thing I got to salvage is my footnote journal, the one I told you about, with the last month's logs. Once I die, it will be the only memory left of my life's work.

I know you won't ever read this, love. Run to the aerodrome, save yourself and be happy, wherever you are.

Après la mort, l'espoir encore.

Yours, ---"

The handwriting becomes shaky towards the end; the last few sentences are barely understandable. A fat smudge of dried blood covers the writer's name, a ghost obscured by another ghost.

Quickly, you turn around so that nobody can see you blink away the tears. The boy is quiet; you sneak a look only to see the corners of his mouth distort into a bitter scowl, so unlike his usual self. It takes him a moment to regain composure - a shudder, and he rearranges his features into a neutral expression, then carefully folds the letter away and tucks it into the chest pocket of his windbreaker.

Both of you sit in silence for a little while.

MINDSTREAM - wherever you go, ruin and decay, everyone dead or turning on one another like rabid animals, divided and conquered so thoroughly that only bits of skin and fur remain, run, run from this room, run like you ran from your old home and your old pain and never come back again unless you want to meet your doom

You shrug off the thought. Sometimes the little voice in your head gets a little too personal; truth is, you do want to run away, but won't. You wanted an adventure in a Communard bunker and now you have to chew through whatever you ended up biting off.

Bright light bounces off the walls, illuminating old spiderwebs covering a row of warehouse-type shelves. They're all empty, except for one.

FELD RESEARCH LOG

+2 Encyclopedia: a compendium of lost knowledge

+1 Logic: a scientist died for this

The dead man's last gift to you is a thick, leather-bound journal. In the bottom corner, you notice an embossed logo of a running cat with "SCHNELLER" printed underneath. The cover is scuffed and stained, but the tiny button-lock is still shiny after half a century of disuse. Inside, rows and rows of angular symbols and lines dot the pages. It's clear they're supposed to mean something important, but you have no idea how to read any of it. The only thing you can understand are the numbers at the beginning of each entry: the first one is dated with 07/02/'02. If it's the day when it was written, that means... about a month's time before the Revolution struck, you think. Checks out with the note, doesn't it.

Here and there, the wall of text is broken up by drawings. One is a quick sketch of something like a tape spool, attached to some type of automatic roller. Another looks a bit like a splayed ribcage, with more spools disappearing into the machine's innards. The piece of tech is fragile and intricate - something you wouldn't really dare to mess with. There's one more drawing, of a room with the same mechanism taking up at least a third of the space, a few people in lab coats standing around it. The journal is three-quarters full; the last of the blank pages has been ripped out.

"I guess that's what he used to write his final note," the boy comments, examining the blotchy, thick paper up close. "This is some kind of cipher, I'm sure of it, but for the lungs of Dei, I doubt I could solve it. For all I know, this was important enough to write down on long-lasting paper and hide away before he died."

You peek at the dead man's ghastly face. "Let's try to figure out what the f*ck it's all about, then."

The boy scoffs wryly. "Oh, I'm sure we might be able to crack it - the real issue is doing so without gaining the attention of all the wrong sorts of people. In my experience, our friends of the forget-me-not persuasion can take on la responsabilité real quick if you find something that interests them, and my life plan does not include getting suddenly dropped off the face of the isola."

Now that you think of it, he's right. The only two people you know who are even remotely knowledgeable about this sort of stuff are the two fools in the room next to yours, and you're not even sure they could help. Way too chatty and pretentious, and besides, the man went to great lengths to hide this piece of -

MINDSTREAM - information so priceless that it turned the world upside down, so dangerous that there's no-one to turn to, nobody to trust, better tread carefully if you must because in the wrong hands it will cause war once over, aerial bombings of such scale that might blow the whole archipelago into the Pale, no-one to turn to, no-one to-

A thin hand shakes you very, very gently. You snap out of it, feeling stupid; the boy stashes the journal away into his bag, zipping it up. "N'y pense pas trop, d'accord? Let's deal with this some other day... and get out of here while we're at it. Very impolite of me, but this room gives me the fantods." You smirk. "Sure does. We're pretty much grave-robbing, huh." "Let's hope it doesn't come with some sort of death-curse, then."

You stand in a vast open space, gawking at the ocean through the collapsed side of the building. After the dark passageways, the sunlight is blinding - so bright that everything blurs together at first. As your eyes get used to it, you look around in awe. "Holy f*ck. What happened here?" Potache squints, shielding his face from the glint on the water's surface. "A shootout, by the looks of it." He goes on ahead, carefully observing the tangle of tracks scattered across the floor. "I believe our gendarme friends found someone in hiding, had a brief struggle with the person, who then ran. See this third set of tracks that goes back into the other fork of the corridor? The one with the odd sole, here. I suppose they lived in that-"

The rest of his words you don't even hear. In the corner there's a tent, and you dive straight into it, mentally thanking whoever used to own the damn thing. Inside you find a portable stove, a sleeping bag (practically new), a nice pillow, several pots and pans, some cutlery, a bunch of radio-bino mags and a whole sh*tload of - inexplicably - unopened hair dye boxes. You dig through them. The colours are too bright for you: green, fuel red, neon blue, magenta, but you do see a few labeled 'black' and pocket them greedily. Beats having to paw through Frittte shelves and risk being punched out by an armed guard.

"Whoever this was, I'm pretty sure they were hiding from someone really dangerous. Maybe Padre Madre... or Mazda's hommes de main. Not a wise choice, to dye your hair that bright - if you want a good disguise, you have to draw attention away from your head, not to it." You turn around, grinning. "I don't even care - dibs on the whole tent!" Potache blinks, puzzled, then explodes into laughter. "Chérie, never change! Go ahead, help yourself to the spoils of our adventure!" He slicks back his hair, still chuckling, then totters over to the remains of a broken device on the other side of the room. "This looks like a custom-bashed wave transmitter to me, not that I'm any good at radio-science. I'd bet a reál that you could tap into a lot of interesting conversations with this."

The cement slabs are warm where the sun lingers, and the two of you take a seat right by the edge of the broken wall. Your foot catches on a bowl left by the stowaway, and the boy winces in disgust as you check it out - it's full of rotten porridge. You snicker at that. "Gross, huh? Ate worse." The horrified response is priceless. You dump the slop into the sea, rinse the bowl off and throw it into the tent. "See? No big deal, buddy."

Waves lap at your boots, washing off the road grime. Far away, tankers honk at each other as they haul cargo to places you've never been to. The water is so clear that you can see tiny fish pecking at the seaweed growing between submerged rocks. Potache rummages around in his bag, pulling out paper-wrapped sandwiches, a large thermos flask and two metallic cups. "Careful, these do heat up quickly." He pours dark, fragrant coffee into your cup with a graceful gesture, then offers you a sandwich to go with it. You mumble thanks, feeling as awkward as ever. Not only is being offered help - or even food - something you're unused to, it feels... fundamentally wrong in a way. Smokes you can and will take, same for Pyrholidon, but that's just... getting f*cked up together with someone else, not being fed.

Flavour bursts in your mouth with each bite. Oh, this is so, so good. You do your best to eat slowly instead of scarfing everything down in two bites... but you haven't had fresh bread in a long time, maybe weeks, and it's really hard to mind your manners. You can't help but make a delighted noise as the lettuce crunches on your teeth.

The coffee is just as nice - the right mix of bittersweet, hot but not scalding. Smells like life itself.

"Glad you're enjoying it, chérie. I did my best with what I dug out of my fridge, and it was already of dubious quality to begin with." The boy stretches out his legs, looking into the distance, then takes a tiny sip of coffee and exhales happily. "Ahh, ça fait du bien!" He looks so effortlessly cool that you can't even envy him. Some people are just born that way; there's nothing you can do about it but remember that you're not one of them and never will be.

For a while, you just sit in silence, enjoying your lunch. The tiny fish are now fighting for the wasted porridge you chucked into the sea. Guess your trash is their treasure now.

MINDSTREAM - treasure being stuck in this moment here and now nothing that could hurt you no fear no hunger no pain only pleasure of floating in your head coasting along a nameless friend and his little song

The voice in your head is right - the boy is humming a tune in some unknown language.

"Geldiğim yerde aşk çok zordu

Aşk sadece filmlerde olurdu

Çok izledim, öyle öğrendim

En iyi aşkları taklit ettim

Yavaş yavaş yaklaş bana

Sözlerim seni korkuttu mu?

Rüya gibi sevsek şimdi

Aşk bu kadar zor mu?"

The words are melodic in a way you can't really explain. "Damn, have I told you that you're really good? Ever thought about signing up for Sad FM?" He raises a brow. "Chérie, turning a hobby into a job will suck all the enjoyment out of it. Trust me, I know. Besides, I do perform better when I know my audience." He actually winks at you, then lights up a cig, glancing at the horizon. You do the same. Clove-flavoured smoke floats up to the cracked ceiling, curling up like a tangle of snakes.

"So, I know it's kinda sh*tty of me, but I never asked your name." Potache turns to you, surprised, cracking a sly grin. "You haven't, have you now? Mais ça ne fait rien, I should've introduced myself earlier - it's just a bit of an... affaire compliquée, really. See, I have a rather odd relationship with my given name, so I never really use it." You hum. "Too foreign?" "More like, too fraught with bad memories. The only people who know it are the secretaries from l'Académie, and only because the paperwork is, pardon me, a bitch. Otherwise, I'd rather go by Martin Martinaise. Makes me feel a bit less unwelcome, tu sais?" He takes a drag of his cigarette, then huffs twin ribbons of vapour from his nose.

You can definitely understand that. There's a good reason why everyone knows you as the Skull instead of the last name your sh*tty f*cking father saddled you with. Might as well tell 'im though. "I'm Cindy Baker. Cindy the Skull is better though, 'kay?" He turns to you, reaching his hand out. "Nice to meet you, Cindy." The grip is deceptively strong for those bony fingers. You suddenly feel self-conscious about your own sooty, nails-chewed-to-the-quick hands, but your friend looks like he doesn't care at all. "Same to you, Martin." The name suits him. Makes you think of a fancy drink for some reason.

Thankfully, the voice in your head is quiet for now. Out comes another sandwich, just as delicious as the first one. You manage to blurt out with your mouth still full of bread, "What was that song? I don't think I ever heard it before." Hitting a smoke between bites feels wonderful. "That's Kedran, from an old adventure milieu back..." You feel like he wants to say "home", but can't bring himself to do it. Instead you ask, "So, how did you end up here in Martinaise?"

Martin sighs thoughtfully. You scramble for an apology, but he shakes his head. "No, no, that's alright. It's a long story, really. In short, my family thought that the Old Old World wasn't good for business anymore, so we moved to Revachol East, but it turned out that migrants with a very basic knowledge of Suresne aren't all that welcome in the rich people districts, plus interisolary travel eats up cash faster than a posh MC guzzles up fuel. We had to move to Jamrock, and then they found out about me and, well, threw me out. Fun times."

You cringe - a rich kid alone in Jamrock sounds like a murder waiting to happen. The boy notices and shrugs, dropping ash on his pant leg. "Ah, it is what it is. Besides, I'd never crawl back to them and give them the satisfaction - haven't seen them in almost a decade and not planning to. What about you?"

MINDSTREAM - don't go there nononono no-

You concentrate on shaking the voice off. Sometimes, if you try hard enough, you can stop it from putting your thoughts into a chokehold. It's kinda worse - and better at the same time - when you're on Pyrholidon and your brain floats like a balloon. Honestly, you wish you had some on you. Martin shoots you an alarmed look. "Listen, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, okay? C'était stupide de ma part de demander-" "Nah, it's not that. See, my brain's a little f*cked up - sometimes I get really lost in thought and tune everything else out and it takes me a little while to, like, come back up?" He hums, dragging on his Astra. "Must be a lot on your mind, n'est-ce pas?"

You shrug.

"Anyway, it's a trivial little story, boring as f*ck. Used to live in an absolute sh*thole of a place with my parents and sister, it was hell, dad was a f*cking drunk, blah-blah-blah. Then, when I was thirteen or so, the pox came. Mom caught it first, then my sister, and we didn't have a doctor around..." You shift uncomfortably. "Dunno why dad and I never got sick, though. We buried them and dad's drinkin' got even worse." The boy looks at you sadly - must be a story that he's heard many times before.

"So yeah, guess I had enough of the place when he started noticing that I was growing tit*. Left that motherf*cker to drink himself to death in his shack and never looked back, baby." Your friend looks mortified; you wave him off. "Nah, it's alright - told ya, it's the kind of sh*t that just happens everywhere. Then I lived in Central Jamrock for a little while - now that was fun!" You smile, remembering the sh*t you used to get up to a few years ago - all the joyriding, lock-picking and purse-cutting. Too bad the folks you were with were too dumb and got caught eventually, as they often are, sooner or later.

Wind blows through the barebone steel beams of the second floor's structure, keening like a ghost. It's actually peaceful in here. You wonder if you could move into the tent - the weather's finally getting warm enough to stay out overnight.

Maybe you'll finally get rid of the stench on your clothing. It just seems to cling to you wherever you go - you can take a girl out of Coal City, but not the mine dust out of her lungs.

You stub the Astra out on the floor, cramming the butt into an empty can. "Sooooo, Art Cop. What exactly got you so rah-rah about 'im? I mean, there's a ton of decently looking guys working in the harbour, so why not get hung up on one of them?" Martin scrunches his nose in pure disgust - not at you, at the idea. "I'd rather drink turpentine than cavort with unsophisticated men who work for Evrart." You... hadn't considered that. The thought of dealing with that slimeball - both of the brothers, actually - gives you the f*cking creeps. "What about your... weekday friends? All those rich men you got and you decide to latch onto this bum?"

Martin looks at you, nonplussed. "Chérie, I wouldn't have touched any of them with a maypole if they didn't pay me... Alright, maybe one or two I would, but it's not that I like them, tu comprends?" You do understand. Sometimes he seems to be a person of an entirely different standing than you, and then you remember that he has to depend on favours from rich assholes to afford the fancy clothes he wears, or the food he eats. He's-

MINDSTREAM - trapped in the same cage as you, only his is gilded, and he knows, and it fills him with rage but his hands are bound just like yours, and it burns, burns

You jab him with an elbow; he dodges. "Yeah, and instead you want to get into the pants of a dude who went on a copocalyptic mega-bender. Seriously?"

He pokes your boot with the toes of his fancy track shoe. For a minute, you just foot-scuffle around, giggling like a pair of idiots. Then he leans over to your ear, cupping his mouth with a hand, and whispers. "In all fairness, I never said I like them totally sane. Besides, have you seen his ass in those disco pants?" Now it's your turn to whisper. "Eww, no, he's like fifty!"

The boy grins coyly. "Just like fine wine - much better when it's aged." You wiggle your fingers next to your temple - did you go into the Pale and come back wrong? - and he pokes his tongue out back at you. You wonder if any of his friends ever saw him like that... no, if he actually has anyone close enough to talk to frankly. Must be hard to pretend day in, day out - one persona for the men he screws, another for classmates or neighbours, but nothing real. How does that feel?

***

Turns out you missed the proper way to enter after all - there's an unlocked maintenance door right under the boardwalk, overgrown with tall weeds. You study footprints in the sand, dress shoes and field boots, and wonder how long it'll take for them to disappear. The critter in the pipe is either gone or silent. The only things you hear are the rustling of sand, birds' cries and the roar of a motorboat somewhere in the distance. Must be Lilienne casting her nets. She's one tough broad, sword and all. Maybe you could get a weapon for yourself as well, if only to scare the f*ck out of people... then again, who's there to impress? Old Baptistine, or f*ckin' Cuno?

From inside the church, music is still blaring. Not exactly your jam, but catchy, the sort of beat to get stuck in your head for days. There's another noise mixed in as well - a handsaw? Kinda unusual to be repairing sh*t around here instead of breaking it. Nobody really even bothers with old buildings anymore.

As you're crossing the bridge again, Martin waves cheerfully at the old man perched by the junk shop in a rickety fold-out chair. The man waves right back, then returns to the book that he was reading. "I should probably talk to Roy about the journal. Not a hundred percent sure he can help with deciphering, but he actually knows a lot about Revolutionary history, of all things. Besides, he's not a narc, so I think we can trust him on this." You pause. "Huh... you know him well, don't you? Never been to his shop - he looks creepy with those glasses and besides, I don't think he, like, ever sleeps."

The boy smiles at that. "Trust me, he's better than he seems, especially since I don't sleep all that much either. Just make sure to stay away from his coffee if you don't want to feel like you drank a flaming cup of paint retardant."

Suddenly, an electronic melody chimes from your friend's wrist; he startles, muttering something like "Ohsh*tohf*ckIgottarunclassesbye!", then hugs you - briefly but fiercely - before taking off towards his apartment.

You light another smoke, cackling. Are all students fools? Or are all fools students?

The sunglasses-wearing peddler hollers from his stack of looted Humanox crates, "What a nice friend you have, Miss! Really cool!" You whip around, ready to tell the nosy f*ck where to shove it, but he smiles at you disarmingly. "It's good to have friends in a place like this, right? No offense intended, Miss. How about some rations, at a low low cost of only fifty centimes apiece? You buy a whole box, I'll knock it down to forty!" You can't stand the way he always talks at you, but the pressed bars are still better than fried rats, even if they taste like dry cardboard.

"Not now, man." The peddler's grin becomes wider. "Thirty centimes per ration, alright? Now or never!"

You stretch, blowing a cloud of vapour into the warm spring air. Somewhere nearby, children are playing tag, screaming happily in a mixture of Suresne and Mesque. As you start walking up Rue de St. Ghislaine, something possesses you to turn around and yell, "Looks like I'm moving out today!"

The peddler smiles and waves. You cross the plaza, passing by the old conifer tree, turn right, and the graffito on the wall comes into your field of view.

Looks like Art Cop was right.

It's time to get out of the coal room for good.