Yellow Jacket

They had left Bastard behind. The cat was still too weak to move fast, his side wrapped and paws unsteady. Car insisted he stay. Florence reinforced it with a grumble and a nod. Even the other cats seemed to understand. Whisper had given up her corner perch. Gunner abandoned the sunny crate by the heater. Wires circled Bastard three times, then curled protectively around him like a sentinel.

For now, the prince stayed home.

Most of the guards were outside, working in shifts to repair what the breach had shattered. Car stood at the center of it all, sleeves rolled, pointing out load-bearing walls and damage vectors like he'd built the house with his own hands. He hadn't. But he knew it better than anyone still breathing. His voice carried over the grind of power tools and the static snap of welders arcing. "Veric, that beam doesn't land square. Pull it, re-level it. Holt, you're short two anchors on the third bracket. Don't let it slide."

Holt directed the reinforcement grid for the west wall, shouting measurements and alignment orders over the clatter of impact drivers and the whine of angle grinders. He double-checked load-bearing calculations using a salvaged pressure gauge and made sure each anchoring plate was welded flush to the damaged frame. Car's house had multiple layers of composite armor beneath the siding, but several had sheared from the breach. Holt supervised the replacement of two structural crossbeams using a chain hoist and a support jack, both lashed to the exposed truss with climbing webbing and braced by manual rebar cages set into concrete bags.

Veric worked the southern corridor, cutting out cracked bracers with a reciprocating saw and bolting in steel lattice replacements taken from the old shuttle rack. He secured each with epoxy resin anchors and three-point bolt patterns. His hands were black with rust dust and sealant. He used a plumb bob and a torpedo level to verify alignment before tightening the locking plates.

Jonas and Tamsin were working on electrical recovery. The main breaker panel had suffered a thermal spike from the shorted turret line. Jonas stripped back the singed sheath from a high-gauge main and fed it through a flex conduit to reroute power through a bypass junction. Tamsin used a voltage tester and clip leads to balance the lines, then replaced a failed capacitor bank using parts from one of the courtyard's old defense pylons.

In the hallway upstairs, Johanna approached the den slowly. Bastard hadn't moved much. He had a blanket now, soft and worn, pulled from Florence's old supplies. It smelled like antiseptic and dusted cloth. He curled into it, eyes half-lidded, breathing slow but steady.

He didn't hiss when Johanna entered. That was new.

She paused at the doorway, holding a plate of stew she'd heated. She knelt and set it down gently in front of him.

"Didn't think you'd want it if I was hovering," she said.

He didn't growl. He watched her.

She turned to leave.

The sound of soft lapping stopped her.

Bastard had leaned forward, tongue flicking against the edge of the plate. He was eating.

She smiled. Then she leaned back against the wall, saying nothing more.

Whisper passed by with a piece of red thread. Gunner dropped onto the shelf nearby and stared at Johanna as if judging her worth. Then he turned and leapt off, uninterested. Wires gave Bastard a gentle headbutt, then returned to her usual patrol loop.

The world outside was still broken.

But inside, the little corner had warmth, light, and something like forgiveness.

The prince was home.

The path they moved on wasn't a road. Not anymore.

It had been, once, a tram line maybe, or a utility corridor erased from every map that mattered. The rails were long gone. The walls leaned like tired shoulders. Moss crawled up cracked concrete in ragged streaks, trying to claim what the city no longer wanted. No patrols came this far. No cameras blinked. It was too broken to be useful, too forgotten to be watched.

That was why Wren led them.

Not because she was a scout. Not because she was trained. But because she had lived this path once in reverse. Running. Wounded. Alone. This was the road she took to escape. The one thread of freedom she had gripped with shaking hands.

She wasn't the same girl now.

She hadn't spoken much since they left. But each step she took landed with quiet certainty. She knew this route by memory, not by skill. Not by instinct. By scars.

Stick hung across her back, untouched. She didn't expect trouble here. The ruins didn't hold malice. Just echoes. These streets didn't whisper like the Wilds. They didn't scream like the Warlord. They just watched. Silent. Still. Decayed.

Wren kept moving.

Warren followed behind her, silent, his coat brushing the edges of rusted scaffolds. Grix hovered nearby, tossing idle words into the quiet. Half-jokes about architecture, arguments with shadows, nonsense that filled the space like static. But Wren never looked back.

She wasn't afraid.

Not of this place.

She had walked it once with terror in her lungs. Starving. Trembling. Praying for one more hour alive. Back then, the city had been a cage. Now it was a corridor.

She wasn't retracing her steps.

She was rewriting them.

Not a shortcut. A mission route, even less.

This was the long way back to a promise she'd broken only to keep a greater one. A path into the shape of her old fear. But this time, she carried steel. And names. And fire.

The girl who escaped was gone. She'd been replaced by someone who could return. She wasn't here to reclaim ground. Vengeance meant nothing to her.

To prove that she had survived.

She had outlived the worst of it. And now she was walking into the wound, not to cauterize it. To stare it down and remind it who she had become.

Warren didn't ask where she was leading them. He didn't need to.

Grix didn't ask where they were going. Just how long the terrain would suck.

But Wren remembered every turn. Every shadow. Every corner that had once held breathless risk. None of it scared her now. Because this time, she was choosing to return.

Different.

Older.

Armed.

The ruins hadn't changed.

But she had.

And this time, she wasn't here to run.

She was here to take back what had been stolen, the part of herself she left behind the day she escaped.

She wasn't after territory. She didn't need power.

She had come back for the promise she made to herself: that if she ever had the strength, she would return. Not to survive. To end it.

She was walking with Warren to finish what the old world started. To break the Warlord's grip. To free the people still shackled under his rule.

And she wasn't leaving without that.

Warren walked behind her, coat hood low, truncheon secured at his hip. Styll rested inside the lining, nose twitching. He hadn't spoken in a while. Not since the night before, when the System refused to answer. When every word he offered to the nanites fell silent. No skill. No spark. Just that flicker of almost, again and again.

It wasn't anger that walked beside him. Not frustration. Something colder. Quieter. Like a wire pulled too tight, waiting to snap.

Then, without warning, Warren muttered, "Anchor burn. Altered echo. Echo's fire."

Grix slowed mid-step, staring at him like he'd just farted in a shrine. "What the actual hell was that?"

He kept walking. "Trying something."

"Trying what? To sound like a broken poetry generator? You're stringing together cool-sounding bullshit like it's gonna make your insides wake up."

He didn't respond. Instead: "Iron call. Shadow bloom. Ember trace."

She walked faster until she was pacing him, then planted a hand on his shoulder and shoved. "Okay, stop. You're doing it wrong."

Warren turned. "What does that even mean?"

"It means you look like someone trying to unlock a door with a spoon. It's not gonna work."

"So explain it."

Grix snorted. "You can't explain it. You just are it. That's the whole point. You don't download a Skill by yelling cool phrases into the air like you're reading graffiti off a toilet wall."

"Then how did yours happen?"

She tapped her chest. "Because I did something that was already me. That's the trick. You act like you're building a bomb and trying to get the wires just right. But it's not about the wires, smooth brain. It's about the explosion."

Wren looked back, curious but silent. Grix pointed at her.

"You think Wren said some secret chant? No. She didn't say it. She was it. That moment? It was her. The Skill didn't get created. It got recognized."

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Warren frowned. "Then why did I feel close when I said 'Forge fire'?"

Wren furrowed her brow. "Why would you say that? Is it because you like forging things?"

"No," Warren said. "The Harrow called me that. When we stayed with the Cult."

Grix raised her eyebrows. "See? That's something. Those cult freaks are insight factories. Once told me I couldn't eat a whole pot of stew. Guess what? I couldn't."

Wren cracked up. Warren stared.

"You're not wrong," he said. "They're insightful."

Grix grinned. "I'm never wrong. Just frequently misunderstood by dumbasses."

Warren squinted at her. "Who are you calling a dumbass?"

"You. Obviously. You're the one shouting 'shadow bloom' into the air like it owes you money."

Wren was still laughing. "She's got a point. I already have a Skill."

Warren muttered, sulking. "So what do you think I am then?"

Grix folded her arms, actually thinking. "Dunno yet. Haven't seen enough. Could be something badass. Splashy. Flashy. Bashy? One of those words. Point is-it's gonna hit hard."

Wren tilted her head. "I think it's going to be cats."

Warren blinked. "Excuse me?"

Grix looked almost impressed. "Oh shit. That would actually make way to much sense."

Wren paled. "That's what I fear the most."

Warren looked at them both, deadpan. "If my Skill is 'Cat Whisperer' I'm going to curse you both if its the last thing I do."

Grix smirked. "Too late. Bastard's already claimed you. It's destiny."

Wren whispered, mock-serious. "He is always following you like a shadow."

Grix pointed. "Exactly. It's written. You're bonded. Fuzzy doom god."

Warren groaned. "I hate this conversation."

Grix leaned in, wicked grin. "Good. Means it's working."

Then, more softly, and more real:

"Stop trying to name it before you live it. You keep looking for the label on the box, Warren, but you are the damn box. What you're gonna get, it's already written in how you breathe. Just pay attention."

Warren looked at her. "That was... surprisingly coherent."

Grix shrugged. "Even a loudmouth like me gets it right sometimes."

Wren blinked, then smirked. "I thought you said you were never wrong."

Grix scoffed. "Yeah, well. Never wrong, but sometimes right in the wrong way. Keep up."

Grix filled the space Warren wouldn't.

"So I was thinking," she said brightly, bouncing a stone off a collapsed pipe as she walked along the edge of the lane. "What if people were just born wrong, you know? Like some of us got regular bones, and some of us got bounce." She turned a sharp grin over her shoulder. "Guess which one I got."

"Definitely bounce," Wren said dryly. "With a side of broken physics."

Warren didn't comment.

Grix didn't seem to mind. She leapt over a broken drain cap, twirled mid-air, landed sideways on a slanted support beam, then jogged across it like a goat on a ledge. Her limbs moved like misfired math: all grace, no symmetry.

"I swear she's got springs in her ankles," Wren muttered.

"Or screws loose," Warren said.

"Hey!" Grix called, hanging upside-down now, knees hooked over a beam, arms dangling like a cat pretending not to care. "Pain is just the sound of my body applauding my choices."

"That is not how that works," Wren said.

"It is if you don't read the instructions," Grix fired back. "Also, technically speaking, if I limp with enough style, it counts as a strut."

Warren sighed. "You're going to twist something."

"Bold of you to assume I haven't already," she grinned. "I'm basically held together by spite and flex tape."

Wren snorted. "More like duct tape and denial."

Grix pointed dramatically. "See? This is why I keep you two around.

Warren finally spoke. "What level are you?"

Grix dropped, rolled, popped back upright. "What, now you care about my level now? I thought I was just the comic relief."

"You're not funny."

She clutched her chest in mock pain. "Wounded. Wounded in my soul. But fine. Since you asked so nicely, I'm twenty-four."

Wren blinked. "Seriously?"

"Mmhm."

Warren's gaze narrowed. "Your Skill?"

Grix gave him a sidelong glance. "You know, most of us don't go shouting our Skills in the street like we're selling soap. That's kind of the old-geezers thing. Makes most people paranoid if you ask."

Wren tilted her head. "Why?"

"'Cause if you know what I can do, you know how to break me."

"And yet," Warren said, "you haven't stopped talking since we left the house."

Grix grinned again. "Yeah, but that's cause you're my bestie."

He blinked. "What."

"My. Bestie. B-E-S-T-I-E. C'mon, you live in that coat, but you don't live under a rock."

Warren said nothing. Wren bit her lip, trying not to laugh.

"Anyway," Grix continued, waving a hand, "since you two are basically my trauma babies, I don't mind sharing. My Skill's called Ricochet."

Wren perked up. "That sounds fun."

"It's more than fun. Watch."

She darted forward before either of them could object. Ran two steps up a broken wall, flipped backwards, hit a pillar sideways, and launched herself off a rusted support bar, landing on the remains of a shattered service kiosk without making a sound.

Then she bounced again.

Metal to concrete. Concrete to pipe. Pipe to debris pile. Debris to low beam. Her motion didn't slow. It multiplied.

But this time, she kept going.

She hit the beam and turned mid-air, twisted off a ledge, hit a canted signpost, then double-jumped, not off anything, just kicked hard into open air, rebounding like gravity had flinched. She twisted through the open ribs of a crumbling scaffold like a pinball with a vendetta.

Her boots barely touched anything flat. She rebounded sideways off a streetlamp, curled around the rusted base of a stairwell, and launched herself up three levels by chaining walls like they owed her gravity.

"She's climbing like she's allergic to floors," Warren muttered.

Wren was wide-eyed. "That shouldn't even be possible."

Grix bounced off a cracked overhang, slammed into a vertical pipe, then sprang off it in a sharp arc and flipped backwards again, rebounding mid-air off a falling plank and twisting so hard her coat flared like a whip. She landed on a crooked railing, crouched like a feral cat, and grinned down at them.

"You see the double-hop? That's new. Added that after I slammed into a wall during a sewer run. Broke a rib for it, but worth it."

Wren called up, half-laughing. "You broke a rib for a double jump?"

"Yeah! Best trade I ever made! Whats a bit of pain when you've get style?"

Then she dropped again.

Faster this time.

She rebounded off the edge of a fallen billboard, skipped off a slanted tank tread, angled off a rebar spike, and burst back into a vertical line , up, twist, kick, double-jump, land. The sequence took four seconds. Her feet hit seven surfaces.

She landed beside Warren with a thud, perfectly still.

"That... wasn't even all of it," she said. "That's just the warm-up."

Warren raised an eyebrow. "So Ricochet isn't just about bouncing. It lets you chain it , stack speed, stack force."

She grinned. "Exactly. Chain reaction. Movement stacks. The more I move, the faster I get. The faster I move, the harder I hit. You ever seen a rock skip across water?"

"Sure."

"Now imagine that rock kicks you in the teeth."

Wren let out a low whistle. "You're terrifying."

"I try."

She stretched like she hadn't just turned the terrain into a parkour blender. "You get a rhythm for it. Learn what surfaces pop and what angles curve. It's like... plotting math with momentum. Geometry, velocity, timing. Nothing fancy. Just bounce and bite."

Warren said nothing.

He'd been watching more than the pattern. He was studying the logic behind it. And in his silence, something sharpened.

Grix smirked. "Don't overthink it, Bestie. I know that look. You're gonna try to systemize this, and you're gonna get a concussion."

"I'm just wondering what kind of Skill even lets you break physics."

She flicked his coat. "The kind that doesn't ask for permission. Skills don't really work on logic, anyway. The nanites let you do things that ain't normal, I mean, I basically solidify air when I jump with them, so that's cool, I guess. But now you made me talk science, so that's not cool."

Wren added, "Yeah, my Skill slows down people's heart rates. Their blood. That's not something people can do normally."

Grix pointed at her. "Exactly. It ain't the System handing you powers. It's the nanites. They're the ones doing the heavy lifting, shaping the Skill outta who you already are. The System just watches. Maybe names it. But it doesn't make anything. The nanites do. And they don't give a damn about logic. Just potential."

Warren said nothing. But his eyes stayed on the ground where Grix had rebounded. The angles. The flow. She didn't have any breaks in motion.

He wondered what it felt like.

To move like that. To be the thing the world couldn't pin down.

They kept walking. The shadows grew taller. Wren slowed at a fork in the corridor and pointed to a half-buried sign.

"This way. The old entrance is a few klicks beyond that building over there. Might still be open."

"Might?" Grix said.

"Well, it was blocked by a bunch of rubble and a half-collapsed sewer tunnel. But you know. Hope."

Warren adjusted his grip on the truncheon.

Then he stopped.

Movement.

Far off. Just beyond the third building on their left. A flicker. A shape.

Wren saw it too. She half-raised Stick, but the figure was already gone.

"Scout?" she asked.

Grix scanned the rooftops. "Maybe. Too far to tell."

Warren said nothing. His breath stayed even. But something behind his eyes shifted.

They weren't alone.

He looked at Wren. Then at the skyline.

"Let's keep moving."

They walked.

The tension lingered for half a block, but Grix broke it the way she broke everything: loudly.

"Okay," she declared, skipping up a slab of broken pavement like it was a stage. "New game. It's called 'Guess What I Stole.'"

Wren gave her a look. "Is this a real game or a Grix game?"

"Yes."

Warren didn't even glance over. "This is going to be stupid."

"It's already stupid. But it's tradition. So. I'm thinking of something I stole. First hint: it was shiny."

"That's every single thing you've ever taken," Wren said.

"Exactly," Grix grinned. "Second hint: it bit me."

Warren blinked. "You stole something that could bite you?"

"Several times. But this one drew blood."

"Was it mechanical?" Wren asked.

"Nope. Organic."

Warren glanced at her now. "You stole someone's pet, didn't you."

"No comment."

They kept walking. The terrain shifted. Buildings leaned closer. Rubble narrowed their path. But they moved more easily now, banter pushing back the weight of the ruins.

"Okay," Grix said. "Now you guess. What's the worst thing you ever traded for food?"

Wren rolled her eyes. "My left boot."

"Liar."

Wren hesitated. Then said, quieter this time, "Okay, my dignity."

Grix didn't laugh. She just nodded. "Acceptable. Warren?"

He didn't look up. "A kidney."

Grix stumbled. "Wait, your kidney?"

"No."

Wren groaned. "I hate this game."

Grix slowed her skip. She glanced over at Wren, reading more than just sarcasm. "Yeah... okay. Not your favorite. Game's over."

She pointed dramatically at a crumbling wall with vines growing in the shape of a face. "New game: Weirdest Ruin Wins. That one counts."

Wren blinked, then cracked a reluctant smile. "Okay. That one does count."

"Everyone love this game." Grix said. " No repeats. Winner gets bragging rights and a rock."

"A rock?" Warren asked.

"A really nice rock," Grix said.

Wren laughed. "You're on."

They played for the next hour. Wren spotted a showerhead mounted to a tree. Grix found a mural of a bird with six legs. Warren pointed out a mannequin stuck halfway through a second-story wall, dressed in a clown suit.

"That's not a ruin," Grix said. "That's a demon."

"Still counts," Warren replied.

"Fine. Bonus points for terrifying me."

They kept going. A staircase that led into a ceiling. A half-crushed food cart full of ceramic teeth. Someone's boot nailed to a door with a spoon.

Wren paused by an old mailbox entirely wrapped in yellow caution tape. "I vote we don't open that."

"Agreed," Warren said.

"Rock-worthy?" Grix asked.

"Maybe," Wren said. "But only if it explodes."

"I'll mark it pending."

The ruins gave them plenty to work with. And for once, they took everything the world threw at them and turned it into something ridiculous.

Something better.," Grix said. "Next round: Spot the Weirdest Ruin."

They pointed things out. A bench grown through with root-veins. A pre-collapse vending machine filled with nothing but handmade pottery. A set of stairs leading to nowhere.

"That one," Warren said, pointing at a perfectly intact swing set in the middle of a shattered plaza.

"Agreed," Wren said. "Creepy."

"Beautiful," Grix added. "Ten points to the playground of the gods."

They laughed more than they should have. But the ruins didn't seem quite so oppressive while they did.

Later, Grix invented a new game.

"It's called 'One Word Apocalypse.' I say a word. You say what it means. No context."

"Isn't that just lying?" Wren asked.

"Exactly. Warren, go. Word is 'pebble.'"

"Ammunition."

"Correct. Wren? 'Maggot.'"

"Lunch."

"Dark. I love it."

"My turn," Wren said, stepping over a rusted pipe. "Word is 'Signal.'"

"Mistake," Warren said.

"Family," Grix replied.

They paused.

Then Wren smiled. "Okay. Grix, your turn."

"'Brick.'"

Warren: "Weapon."

Wren: "Pillow."

"That's... somehow worse," Grix muttered. "Alright, final round. Warren, you pick."

He thought for a moment. "'Rain.'"

Grix: "Shower."

Wren: "Singing."

Warren just smiled.

It went on like that. They started making up rules to games that didn't exist. Grix invented one called 'Ruin Bingo' where they had to spot bizarre combinations like 'three walls and no roof,' or 'a bathtub in a hallway.' Warren called out a rusted coffee machine filled with nails and insisted that counted as a 'mechanical shrine.'

Wren joined in, pointing out anything pink and declaring it cursed. Grix agreed and added a bonus rule: any cursed object gets an imaginary sticker. Warren won that round with a child's plush toy soaked in dried mud and wedged in the mouth of a broken drone.

They started keeping score, but no one knew how the points worked. Grix was winning, apparently, because she said so and refused to elaborate.

Warren accused her of cheating.

"Absolutely," she said. "But I'm cheating consistently, so it's fair."

Wren snorted. "She's got you there."

Grix declared herself 'Champion of the Road' and demanded a trophy. Wren gave her a bent washer. Grix wore it like a medal.

They kept walking. The Wilds didn't get closer.

But for the first time in a long while, the path didn't feel like punishment.

It felt like something earned.