by Tim Cody
“Do you like spaghetti?” Whisper asked Nightingale. “It's my favorite!”
Nightingale shrugged a little in response. “I'm not sure... I don't remember ever having it.” She still felt slightly awkward, though, and didn't want to be rude. “But I'm sure I'll like it.”
“Me too, it's so good!” Whisper's eyes went wide when she suddenly remembered something. “We found some sauce today, too, didn't we?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Nightingale removed her backpack and placed it on the ground, and knelt to open it up. She removed all the food items they had found and set them on the ground.
“Oh, yeah!” Whisper cheered and grabbed the jar of sauce. “This is gonna be a great first dinner with us, Nightingale!”
“That'll take some time to boil,” Elise said, “so I'm gonna change into my new pants. Keep an eye on things, alright?” She grabbed her bag and stepped into their hut.
“Hey, let me sew your shirt!” Whisper said once Elise had stepped inside.
“Right now?” Nightingale asked, looking between her torn sleeve and Whisper.
“Sure. You don't even gotta take it off, just sit still.” Whisper plopped her backpack onto the ground next, and retrieved a small sewing kit from one of the front pouches.
Nightingale nodded and sat on the ground, and crossed her legs. Her bird fluttered to her other shoulder so Whisper could work.
“It's just the seam that's torn, that'll be real easy to fix.” She threaded a needle with a long black string and stood behind Nightingale. She pinched the fabric together and began to work.
Nightingale was a little nervous about having her sleeve sewn while she was still wearing the shirt, but Whisper seemed to know what she was doing. She was careful to keep the needle away from her skin as she worked.
“So Elise told me that you picked the name Whisper for yourself,” Nightingale said, mostly just making conversation.
“Yeah. Why, you don't like it?” she asked.
“No, I do,” she answered. “I think it sounds cool... Though, don't you think you're a bit loud for it?” she joked, her lips curling in a bit of a smirk.
“Aw!” Whisper pouted. “I can still be real sneaky when I wanna be, you know!”
“Is that why you picked it?”
“Yeah,” she answered, continuing to thread the needle and string through the sleeve. “Elise used to say I'm as quiet as a whisper. It totally sounds like something you'd read in a comic book, like a superhero's secret identity, doesn't it?”
Nightingale nodded and smiled. “Yeah, it does. It's super cool. Nightingale isn't my real name, either, you know.”
“Really? Do you know what your real name is?”
“Nope.”
“Why'd you pick Nightingale as your name?” Whisper suddenly felt a bit closer to Nightingale at knowing they shared this bit of personal history.
And suddenly, Nightingale didn't feel so alone. “I didn't really pick it myself... Someone picked it for me. I think I was actually named after this bird.” Her nightingale chirped.
“Well it's a super pretty name,” Whisper said, and then leaned in close to tear the string with her teeth and tie it off. “All done!”
Nightingale looked down at her sleeve and gave it a gentle tug. It looked as good as new. “Wow, that's perfect! Thanks, Whisper!”
“Anytime!” Whisper smiled and packed her sewing kit away. “I've gotta keep it looking nice so I can wear it someday, right?”
Once Whisper was finished, Elise waved Mr. Coffin, Volume 3 in front of her face. “Any little homeless girls wanna read a comic book before dinner?”
Whisper gasped and her eyes shot open wide. “I do!” She bounced and tried to grab it, but Elise pulled it out of her grasp just in time.
Elise grinned and hid it behind her back. “Put the spaghetti in the pot, then we'll talk.”
Whisper grabbed the nearly full box and dumped its contents into the boiling water. She grabbed a fork from the box Elise had pulled out of the hut and stirred it, then practically bounced from excitement. “There, it's in, let's read!”
Elise nodded and sat against the wall across from the fire, and Whisper sat by her side. Elise draped her arm around her sister's shoulder and they huddled together, and Whisper took the comic. She opened it up excitedly and began reading.
“Pre—previ...ously, in Mi...Mister Coffin!” she began, sounding out the words.
Nightingale stayed by the fire. She shivered and hugged her legs to her chest when a chilly breeze picked up, and her bird chirped and took shelter in her hair. She watched the sisters read the comic together; Whisper did most of the reading, while Elise helped her out with the bigger words and turned the pages.
Elise looked up after a few minutes. “You can join us if you'd like, Nightingale,” she said, smiling. “But grab a coat first—it'll be dark soon, you don't wanna freeze. There's one in my bag, we found it earlier.”
Nightingale nodded and found the bag. It was packed with the clothes they had found, so she sifted through them until finding something that felt like a jacket. She grabbed its sleeve and worked it out of the backpack, then held it by the shoulders and fanned it out. The dark red leather jacket looked almost new—it was a little scuffed and the material was worn in a few spots, but it wasn't anywhere near unwearable.
“I can't believe someone threw this out,” she said to her bird, and it fluttered into the air so she could put it on. It was a perfect fit; it was fitted to her torso once she zipped it up, and she already felt warmer. After that she sat on the other side of Elise and looked down at the comic.
“I'll catch you up!” Whisper said as she began flipping through the pages. “This is Mister Coffin,” she pointed at a man with hulking muscles who swung a coffin around by two thick chains, “his wife was killed, so now he uses this coffin full of guns to fight the bad guys who killed her! He's right about to find one of the guys—hmm...” She flipped a few more pages to point him out. “Here, this guy!” She pointed to a man riddled with bullet holes and shouted, “Ahh, spoilers!” Her eyes went wide and she flipped back to the page she had left off on.
Chapter 14
Show and Tell
They finished reading just as dinner was finished cooking. Whisper ran into the hut to put the comic with her others, and then returned with plates and forks. Elise drained the water from the pot and grabbed the jar of sauce to mix it in as Whisper set their places on a large, flat piece of cardboard, which served as their dinner table. The sun had set completely, so the alleyway was only lit by a few steel-drum fires that dotted the pavement.
“That was the best Mister Coffin yet, don't you think, Nightingale?” Whisper said as she placed the dishes, forks, and water bottles.
Nightingale shrugged. “I'm not sure, I haven't read the others.”
“You've gotta!” Whisper replied. “I have them all, so you can borrow them sometime, okay?” Once she was finished setting their places, she jumped to her feet and began punching and kicking at the air. “The way he hands it to those bad guys!” She pretended to fire guns all over as she recited Mister Coffin's catchphrase, “It's a bad day to be a bad guy!”
Nightingale couldn't help but laugh quietly at how animated Whisper became when she got this excited. She shook her head and then looked down at her feet, thinking quietly for a moment, before looking back up at Whisper. “Hey, what makes the bad guys bad, but Mister Coffin good?” she asked curiously.
“Huh?” Whisper stopped mid-gunfight and looked over at Nightingale. “Well, because he fights the bad guys!”
“That's all it takes?” she asked.
“Sure, he's got awesome skills that he uses for good, he helps people! In volume two he stopped a bank robbery, and once he finds the rest of the guys who killed his wife, he'll have taken down an entire operation of bad guys!”
“The bad guys use their skills for bad, so the good guys stop them...” Nightingale said to herself.
“That's right! I'm a g
ood guy, because I use my skills for good.”
“What are your skills?”
“I'm sneaky—that's why I picked Whisper as my name, remember? I could sneak right into a store and steal all the food if I wanted to! I could even turn invisible! But I don't, because that would make me a bad guy. Right, Elise?” She turned to look up at her sister.
“That's right!” Elise answered. “And then I'd have to use my powers to stop you!”
“No way!” Whisper shouted, getting more and more excited. “What are your powers!?”
“Oh, you didn't know?” Elise reached down to pick Whisper up, heaving her up onto her shoulders. “I'm super strong!” Whisper squealed and laughed, and held on to her sister's head to keep her balance when Elise lifted her arms to flex her biceps. “And bullets bounce right off me, so not even Mister Coffin could defeat me!”
“No, he wouldn't wanna! We could team up with Mister Coffin since we're both good guys!” She looked down at Nightingale, then, who was laughing quietly at the display. “How about you, Nightingale? What are your powers?”
Nightingale suddenly stopped laughing. “M-my powers?” she asked, her face flushing red. She turned her eyes toward the fire, and considered her actual powers—the powers she was only just beginning to come to grips with. “Oh, um... I don't know, I don't have any...”
“Aw, sure you do!” Whisper said as Elise let her down. “Everyone's good at something.”
“Well, I can...” Her eyes drifted upward, and she watched the sky. Whisper was just pretending—she couldn't actually turn invisible, and Elise didn't have super strength... So Nightingale smiled and said, “I can move things without even touching them.”
“Wow, really!?” Whisper exclaimed.
“Sure!” Nightingale was getting a bit more into it. “All I have to do is think about something moving, and it will. And I can read your mind, too!”
“No way!” Whisper pointed at her sister. “Pick Elise up with your mind!”
Elise chuckled as she scooped spaghetti onto the three plates. “You'd better not! I like both my feet firmly on the ground, thank you very much.”
“Aw, you're no fun.” Whisper pouted and then looked back at Nightingale. “Well, then read my mind!”
“Read your mind?”
“Yeah, tell me what I'm thinking right now!” She sat on her legs on the cardboard and stared.
“Well...” Nightingale frowned thoughtfully and looked at Whisper. She narrowed her eyes slightly, and tried to figure out just how she would go about doing so intentionally for once... “I guess, you're thinking about...” Nightingale thought, What's she thinking? and then suddenly she grinned. “You're thinking about food! You're thinking about your favorite dinner: spaghetti.”
Whisper's eyes went wide as saucers. “Wow, you really are a psychic!”
“A psychic?” she asked, then nodded with a bit of a shrug. She couldn't think of a better way to describe herself, so she accepted Whisper's definition of her powers.
“Whisper's always thinking about food,” Elise said as she sat down on the cardboard with the others. “Tell us something we don't know. What's her favorite food?”
Nightingale looked at Whisper again. Was it really that easy? All she needed to do was want something, and it happened. In this instance, she wanted to know Whisper's favorite food—and suddenly, she just knew. “Ravioli,” she said, and Whisper's eyes opened even wider. “But you've only had it...twice in your entire life.”
“That's right!” Whisper shouted. “How'd you know!?”
“I told you, I'm psychic!” Nightingale grinned wide.
“Or just a really good guesser!” Elise said, but she was equally as impressed. “But hey, let's eat before dinner gets cold, alright?”
Nightingale looked down at the plate in front of her, and then it was her turn to be impressed. A particularly delicious looking spaghetti dinner had appeared, complete with sauce and a side of bread. “This looks amazing!”
“Yeah, Elise's second superpower is cooking!” Whisper said as she grabbed her fork and jabbed it into the big pile of spaghetti on her own plate.
“Whisper,” Elise said firmly, and Whisper pouted and put her fork down. “We need to give thanks, first.”
“Give thanks?” Nightingale asked.
Elise nodded. “For what we have. If we don't appreciate every little thing, we just might lose it—and we've got so little already.”
Nightingale nodded and frowned thoughtfully. She looked back up at Elise, about to speak, but stopped herself when she saw both girls with their eyes shut and their heads bowed. She followed suit, just taking a moment to think about her last few days.
She considered Glitch squad—Jonny, Theo, and Michaela... She thanked them silently for helping her get out of there, and then she smiled at the memory. She no longer felt sad, or weighed down by the thought of their sacrifices. They helped her escape, they gave up their lives, so she could continue living. And now that she met Whisper and Elise, she felt like she could do just that.
When she finally opened her eyes and looked back up, she smiled. Whisper opened her eyes next, and then Elise. Nightingale said, “Thank you. Thank you both for taking me in, for helping me find clothes, for sharing your food with me, and for giving me a place to live...”
Elise smiled. “You're welcome, Nightingale.”
“Yeah,” Whisper said next, “no problem! We've gotta look out for each other, right?”
Nightingale nodded, and the girls shared their first meal together.
Chapter 15
History Lesson
After they finished dinner, they reused the recently boiled water to clean their plates and forks. Nightingale was stuffed—she felt 100%, for the first time since waking up in that room.
“Hey, Mister Grant!” Whisper called to the front of the alley. “Is it gonna rain tomorrow?”
“Nope!” Mister Grant called back. “The next Arc Fall isn't for three weeks!”
“Think a shack will open up by then?” she asked Elise as she retrieved her comic books from the hut.
“Who knows,” Elise answered with a shrug. “We're not afraid of a little rain, though, are we?”
“No,” Whispered replied, “but last time it almost ruined my comics. It'll be nice to finally have a sturdy roof over our heads.” She laid on the pavement on her belly and opened Mister Coffin, Volume 1, reading by the light of the fire. She kicked her feet lazily as she flipped through the pages.
“What's Arc Fall?” Nightingale asked Elise. She sat with her legs folded on the cardboard beside her.
“Boy, you really did just wake up, huh?” Elise said. “Arc Fall is a drastic weather change, like when it starts raining or snowing.”
“So that's where the rain came from the other day?” Nightingale turned her gaze skyward, but couldn't see through the darkness to spot the disc miles above them.
“Yeah, they keep a regular weather pattern to make us feel like there's nothing strange going on—the same reason for controlling the temperature depending on the time of year... But at this point it's just a tradition, since anyone who would remember the miasma would have died so long ago.”
“The miasma?” Nightingale asked next.
“Nobody really remembers what happened or what caused it, but some sort of deadly gas rose out of the ground one day. It started killing everyone and everything, so people built up,” Elise explained.
“So we're above the ground? How high up are we?”
Elise shrugged. “I'm not sure. High enough to be above the miasma, I guess—the lowest level has gotta be higher than the clouds, right?”
“You're the smart one, you tell me.”
“I just read a lot, that's all.”
“Do you still have any of the books that explained this?”
Elise shook her head. “No. Books take up too much space, and they can be too heavy to keep with you. Whenever I finish reading one I find someone else who wants to read it, or
I'll sell it to the bookstore if they want it—I know the girl who works there, so it's usually good for a couple dollars.”
“That's pretty clever...” Nightingale said. She didn't even consider selling things found in the pit, she just assumed most of it was junk nobody would pay for. “Who controls the Arc Fall?”
“The Council controls all of it,” Elise answered.
Nightingale stiffened up at hearing that word. “They control all of it? What does that mean, how much do they control?”
“Well they control the Arc Falls, the police, the tunnels... If you wanna go up or down, you won't set foot in the tunnels without a passport—believe me, I've tried.” Elise shrugged. “They kinda just run everything, I guess. All of it.”
This information made Nightingale a bit nervous, but she tried to not let it bother her too much. As far as she knew, there wasn't anyone out looking for her... But maybe she should try to avoid the police just in case. “So,” she began, suddenly wanting to turn the conversation away from the Council, “does everyone live here? Everyone in the whole world moved up here?”
“I don't know. There are a lot of levels, so maybe...”
“Are there other places like this? Other—what do we even call it?”
Elise smirked and shook her head. “I wasn't expecting a pop quiz, Nightingale. You get curious with a full stomach, huh?”
Nightingale looked away. “Sorry, I just...wanna know, is all. I don't know anything about this place, I wanna be able to survive here.”
Elise shook her head to dismiss the apology—she didn't mind answering questions, but some of them required her to do a little more memory digging than others. “This place, the cities and everything, is called the Bastion. I don't know if there are others, but maybe... That's fun to think about, isn't it?”
“Is it?” Nightingale asked.
“Sure. Who knows how many Bastions there could be out there, all filled with all sorts of people... Bastion is the world, so the possibility of there being other worlds somewhere out there?” Her tone was almost dreamy at the idea. “Do you think their levels would be as divided as they are here?”