Wren woke at dawn and screamed for exactly four seconds.
Ethan knew because he'd been sitting nearby, waiting.
Nobody else had wanted to be the first face she saw.
He couldn't blame them.
He had no idea whether that was kindness or cowardice.
When the scream finally broke into a ragged breath, Ethan said the only thing he could think of.
"You're not going back on the pole."
Wren stopped screaming.
She stared at him instead.
Her eyes were hollow with exhaustion, her cheeks drawn tight from fear and too little sleep. She looked furious in the particular way of someone who had spent too long being more afraid than a person should ever have to be.
"They were going to burn me."
"I know."
Ethan held up his hands, empty and unthreatening.
"Someone tried to burn me too."
He nodded toward the room around them.
"It didn't take me. And it isn't going to take you either. Not here."
Wren's eyes moved past him.
Stone walls.
Shelves lined with jars.
Green-gold lamps casting their strange light across the room.
Her breathing slowed.
"What are you people?"
Her voice was quieter now.
"What is this place?"
"Honestly?"
Ethan glanced around.
"I've been here a week and I'm still working that out."
Wren stared at him, apparently unsure whether he was joking.
Ethan considered how much he should tell her.
He could give her the version that would calm her fastest.
Or the version that was true.
For reasons he didn't fully understand, he chose the truth.
"Something was inside you."
His hand drifted unconsciously toward his chest.
"Something like what's inside me."
Wren's expression tightened.
"It left you."
"I think so."
Ethan looked down at his hand.
"I don't know where it went."
That was the part nobody in the Vault had been able to explain.
Wren swallowed.
"Is it going to come back?"
"I don't know."
The answer seemed to frighten her more than anything else he'd said.
Ethan continued before she could fill the silence with her own imagination.
"But burning you wouldn't have stopped it."
His voice hardened.
"It would've killed you. Whatever happened after that would have been someone else's problem."
Wren stared at him.
"The people down here are trying to figure out what these things are."
He glanced toward the door.
"They don't know everything. Nobody does."
He looked back at her.
"But they're trying to understand how people survive them instead of pretending fire is an answer."
Wren's hand went to her chest.
She rubbed the spot absently.
"I feel strengthen somehow."
Her voice dropped.
"It's..."
She hesitated.
"It's kind of weird."
Ethan said nothing.
"Honestly, I feel relieved and hopeful for some unknown reasons."
"Yeah."
His answer came quieter than he intended.
"it's good to know."
For a while, neither of them said anything.
The Vault was unusually quiet at this hour.
Somewhere farther down the corridor, Ethan could hear the faint clink of glass and the distant murmur of voices.
But the room itself felt almost peaceful.
Wren eventually broke the silence.
"Is it always going to be like this?"
She looked down at her hands.
"Fighting to survive every day?"
Her fingers tightened.
"Forever?"
Ethan thought about the coal.
It was sullen this morning.
But it wasn't screaming.
It wasn't straining toward any door.
If anything, last night's failed reunion seemed to have taught it something about patience.
He thought about Idris's maps.
About Karrathess.
About the thing that had reached for him through Wren.
About how little he actually understood.
And about how little Alistair seemed to understand either, despite his coat, his confidence, and his irritating habit of acting as though he always knew three steps more than everyone else.
"if you want to survive then you must fight."
Ethan met her eyes.
"But I know it's better with people who aren't trying to burn you for it."
A small pause.
"That much I'm sure of."
Down the corridor, Alistair's voice suddenly carried through the Vault.
"Idris."
His voice was sharp.
Urgent.
"Get Marguerite. I need the eastern district map. Now."
Ethan glanced toward the doorway.
There was something in Alistair's tone that hadn't been there before.
Not irritation.
Not dry humor.
Urgency.
Wren heard it too.
A moment later, Idris's voice answered from somewhere deeper in the Vault.
"Why?"
"Because if there's a third door, I want to know about it before the street does."
Silence followed.
Ethan and Wren looked at each other.
Neither of them said anything.
They didn't need to.
The implications were obvious enough.
Another door.
Another possible host.
Another person who might already be standing on a pole somewhere in the city, waiting for someone to decide whether their life was worth saving.
Wren was the first to speak.
"Forever, then."
There was the faintest ghost of a smile on her face.
It didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Forever," Ethan agreed.
And, to his own surprise, he found that the word didn't scare him nearly as much as it should have.