The silence in the basement had transformed. It was no longer the tense, brittle quiet of predator and prey, but a hushed, shared reverence. The chalk drawing of the Hound-Keeper sigil glowed stark white against the grimy concrete, a sacred text in a forgotten library.
Alastor remained kneeling before it, his broad shoulders slumped, the single tear he'd shed leaving a clean track through the battle grime on his face. The raw display of grief had disarmed them all, even Jax, who was now quietly salvaging the components from his broken sensor, shooting the ancient warrior occasional, wary glances.
Maya felt the shift like a change in barometric pressure. The fear was still there, a cold stone in her gut, but it was now layered with a fierce, protective empathy. This wasn't a weapon. This was a survivor. The last relic of a cataclysm, and they were his accidental, ill-equipped archivists.
Leo, ever the scholar, was the first to carefully approach the new dynamic. He didn't bring his tablet. Instead, he sat cross-legged a respectful distance away, and with a stick of chalk Chloe offered him, he began to draw on the floor beside the hound symbol. He drew a simple, stick-figure person. Then he pointed to himself. "Leo," he said clearly.
Alastor watched, his amber eyes tracking the movement of the chalk. He looked from the stick figure to Leo's face, his head tilting in that now-familiar gesture of confusion.
Leo then drew another stick figure, this one with longer lines for hair. He pointed to Maya. "Maya."
He continued, drawing a third figure with spiky hair for Jax, and a fourth with a triangular dress for Chloe, naming each one. He was building a Rosetta Stone out of chalk and patience.
Alastor's gaze followed each designation, his brow furrowed. He seemed to be grasping the concept of names. Then, slowly, he reached out and took the chalk from Leo's hand. His grip was awkward, the piece of calcium looking absurdly small and fragile in his gauntleted fingers.
He looked at the hound symbol, then at the four stick figures. The connection was being made in his mind: These are the people of this new, terrifying world.
He didn't draw a stick figure for himself. Instead, with a hand that trembled only slightly, he carefully drew a perfect, miniature replica of the three-headed hound symbol right next to Leo's row of people. Then he tapped his own chest plate, the metal emitting a soft thunk. The meaning was unmistakable. 'I am this.'
"Alastor," Maya said softly, the name feeling both strange and right on her tongue. It was a name she'd found in Leo's research, belonging to a ancient, mythological figure of vengeance. It fit.
He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. He pointed at the miniature hound symbol, then at her.
"Yes," she said, nodding. "Alastor."
He repeated the sound, a low, grinding rumble in his chest. "Ah-las-tor." The syllables were mangled, alien, but the intent was clear. He was claiming the name. It was the first word of theirs he had ever spoken.
A fragile, incredible hope bloomed in Maya's chest. They were communicating. It was crude, it was primitive, but it was a bridge across five thousand years.
The moment was broken by the frantic gurgling of Jax's stomach. He flushed, clutching his middle. "Sorry. Forgot to eat breakfast before becoming an international fugitive."
Maya's own stomach clenched in sympathy. They had nothing. The protein bar was a distant memory. She looked at Alastor, at the sheer, physical solidity of him. A man-or whatever he was-of that size and muscle mass would need real food, and a lot of it.
"We need supplies," she said, the practicalities of their new existence crashing down. "Food. Water. First-aid." She glanced at the dark, drying stain on Alastor's armoured shoulder. "Especially first-aid."
"I can't go out there," Jax said, his voice tight with panic. "My face is probably on a wanted poster by now."
"I'll go," Leo said, his voice resolute. "I look the most... normal. I'll just be a student on a coffee run. I'll stick to crowded places, use cash." He was already slipping off his distinctive jacket, trying to make himself more anonymous.
"It's too dangerous," Maya argued.
"Starvation and infection are more dangerous," Leo countered, his logic unassailable even now. "I'll be quick. In and out." He looked at Alastor, who was watching the exchange with intense, uncomprehending interest. "Just... keep him calm."
After Leo slipped out, the basement felt larger and more vulnerable. The silence stretched, punctuated by Jax's nervous typing as he tried to re-establish a secure connection, and the soft, rhythmic sound of Alastor's breathing.
He had retreated back to his spot by the Freud boxes, but his eyes were no longer vacant. They were watchful, studying his new companions with a keen, animal intelligence.
Maya followed his gaze as it swept the room, taking in the towering shelves of boxes, the rusty pipes snaking across the ceiling, the single, pathetic light bulb. He was cataloging his prison.
His eyes lingered on a high, grimy window near the ceiling-a horizontal slit of reinforced glass that offered a sliver of the outside world. A patch of bright, blue-white sky was visible, the color of a deep winter morning.
He pointed to the window, then looked at Maya, a question in his eyes.
"Window," she said, pointing. "Sky."
He repeated the words in his rough baritone. "Win-doh. Sky." He seemed to taste them, testing their shape.
He stood up, his movements still carrying a warrior's innate grace despite his weariness. He walked to the wall directly beneath the window and placed his palm flat against the cold concrete. He closed his eyes, as if listening for something. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the floor. Dust sifted down from the shelves.
"What's he doing?" Jax whispered, his fingers frozen over his keyboard.
"I don't know," Maya murmured, a fresh thread of unease winding through her.
Alastor opened his eyes, frustration etching his features. He looked at his own hand, then back at the window, as if willing his body to obey a command it could no longer fulfill. The power he'd unleashed in the trench was gone, banked, leaving behind only the man. A man trapped in a hole, looking at a sliver of sky.
He sank back to the floor, the brief flare of... whatever it was... extinguished. The weariness returned, deeper than before. He wrapped his arms around his knees, making himself smaller, and stared at that distant rectangle of blue.
Maya's heart ached for him. She thought of the vision she'd experienced-the memory of a golden city, of a sun that was his own. This grey, concrete world, with its unnatural lights and screaming metal, must be a form of torture. The window wasn't a view; it was a taunt.
She walked over and sat beside him, not too close, but close enough to share the space. She didn't try to speak. She just sat there, following his gaze up to the window. A single, wispy cloud drifted past the glass.
After a long moment, he spoke, his voice a low rumble. He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were still fixed on the sky.
"Ska-ee," he said, the word rough but recognizable.
"Yes," Maya whispered. "Sky."
He was silent for another minute, gathering his thoughts, wrestling with a language that had no words for what he felt. He made a slow, sweeping gesture with his hand, encompassing the room, the city, everything. Then he brought his clenched fist to his chest, over his heart, exactly as he had with the chalk symbol.
He looked at her, and the depth of loss in his amber eyes was a physical weight.
"No... sun," he rasped, each word a struggle pulled from the depths of his being.
The simple, devastating statement hung in the dusty air. It wasn't a complaint about the weather. It was a lament for a lost world. The sun of his memory, the light of his home, was gone. Extinguished. And this cold, alien sky was all that remained.
Maya had no words that could possibly answer that. No translation existed for that level of grief. So she did the only thing she could. She simply sat with him in the silence, two lost souls from different ends of time, sharing the view from a basement window, watching a cloud drift past in a sky that held no sun for him.
The bridge between them was no longer made of chalk or words, but of a shared, silent understanding of what it meant to be homesick for a world that no longer existed.