They found the chapel an hour after midnight, a skeletal ruin hunched against a sky veiled by a permanent shroud of fallout. The structure was a casualty of physics, its roof torn open like a burst ribcage, its walls pocked and crumbling. Concrete dust, fine as powdered bone, coated every surface. They slipped through a collapsed doorway, two ghosts seeking refuge in a house of forgotten faith, the only sound the low moan of wind through shattered arches. For a time, they simply existed in the shared silence, catching their breath in the sudden stillness, the adrenaline of the escape slowly leaching away into the cold stone.
Rhys leaned against a broken pillar, the rough concrete biting into his back. His wrist-comm, its screen a spiderweb of cracks, emitted a faint, erratic noise. A single, intermittent Geiger click, a ghost of the system he had served, a tiny, insistent reminder of the poison that was the world. He tried to ignore it. Nysa stood in the center of the nave, a tall, gaunt silhouette against a gaping hole that looked out onto the grey wastes. The moonlight, thin and sterile, caught the translucent quality of her skin.
— This is what your Matter builds, — she said, her voice a low whisper that carried in the dead air. It was not a question. It was a verdict. — Cages. Even your houses of worship are just boxes of stone waiting to break. A system designed for its own failure.
Rhys pushed himself off the pillar, a flare of anger cutting through his exhaustion. The clicking from his wrist seemed to mock him.
— Better than a ghost story to keep you warm while you die of radiation poisoning, — he retorted, his voice a raw rasp. — At least the stone was real. At least it stood for something before it fell. What does your Spirit build? Glowing craters and an empty sky.
The tension, held at bay by the physical shock of their flight, snapped taut between them. It was a palpable thing, a pressure in the air that was more than just the coming of a storm. They were enemies again, the brief, desperate truce of the ravine forgotten.
— The Spirit builds freedom from the flesh, — Nysa said, turning to face him fully. Her milky eyes, which seemed to see through him, narrowed. — Freedom from the decay you wallow in. Your machines, your towers, your body… it is all just rust, waiting to happen. You are a prisoner, and you call your cell a fortress.
He took a step toward her, his hand instinctively going to the sidearm holstered on his thigh.
— And you’re a delusion. A beautiful, deadly lie the dying tell themselves so they don’t have to face the silence.
The word hung in the air. Silence. The same profound, absolute quiet that had fallen over the ravine after the last Geiger click had died. He saw her flinch, a subtle tightening around her eyes, and knew the word had struck a nerve deeper than he intended. He had won the point, but the victory felt as hollow as the building around them.
Then the strength went out of his legs. A wave of dizziness washed over him, the world tilting on its axis. The sharp, burning pain in his side, a dull throb during the run, sharpened into a blade of pure agony. He staggered, his hand flying to the wound, and when he pulled it away, his fingers were slick and dark. The grey fabric of his utility jumpsuit was soaked with blood, a stain spreading from a deep gash just below his ribs where a piece of shrapnel from his own cockpit had torn through.
He braced himself against the pillar again, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The floor seemed to rush up to meet him. The stamina that had carried him through the firefight and the flight was gone, spent completely. He was running on fumes, and the tank was empty. The world narrowed to the thumping in his ears and the cold sweat beading on his forehead.
Nysa watched him, her expression unreadable. The anger in her posture dissolved, replaced by a clinical assessment. She saw the spreading stain, the sudden pallor of his skin, the way his cybernetic leg locked to keep him upright while his biological one trembled. He was dying. Her enemy, the man of Matter, the pilot who would have killed her without a second thought an hour ago, was bleeding out on the floor of this ruin.
She could walk away. Leave him to the silence he so readily threw in her face. It would be the logical thing to do, the correct thing, according to the doctrine of the Chorus. One less heretic to poison the world with his machines and his disbelief. It was a choice, and the price of inaction was his life, a cost she had been trained to see as a net gain for the world.
The erratic clicking from his wrist-comm faltered. As she took a step closer, drawn by a purpose she did not yet understand, the sound died completely. A sudden, perfect quiet from the broken machine.
She moved toward him, her bare feet making no sound on the dusty stone. Rhys saw her approach and tried to raise his sidearm, but his arm felt impossibly heavy. He was a component in a broken system, a weapon with no energy to fire. He could only watch as she knelt beside him.
For a long moment, she did nothing, her strange, luminous eyes studying the wound. Then, with a decisive, fluid motion, she reached down and tore a long, clean strip from the hem of her simple, colourless robe. The sound of the ripping fabric was loud in the chapel’s silence. She had made her choice. The price was a piece of herself, a part of the simple vestments that marked her as Chorus, now offered to staunch the bleeding of a man of Matter. It was an act of profound heresy, a decision to value his life, here and now, over the abstract doctrines of her faith. She had to overcome a lifetime of revulsion, the ingrained belief that his flesh was a corruption, just to touch him.
Her fingers were cool against his skin as she pressed the makeshift bandage against the gash. The touch was professional, impersonal, yet it was the most profound connection he had ever felt. It was an act of care that transcended ideology, a simple, physical truth in a world of lies. He gritted his teeth against the pain as she worked, her movements efficient and sure, binding the wound tightly to slow the bleeding.
When she was done, she sat back on her heels. The silence stretched between them, no longer hostile, but filled with the weight of what had just passed. Rhys fumbled at his belt with his good hand, his movements clumsy. He unclipped a small, foil-wrapped packet. A purified water pack. Standard Compact issue. He held it out to her.
It was a bitter joke, an acknowledgment of the impossible exchange that had just occurred. He was offering her a piece of his world, a product of the very technology she despised, manufactured in the sterile heart of a Babylon Tower.
Nysa looked at the packet, then at his face. She saw no trickery in his eyes, only a deep, weary sincerity. She took the water pack. Her fingers brushed his, one hand of glowing, translucent flesh, the other of pale skin and bone. She tore it open with her teeth and drank, the clean, pure water a foreign taste after so long in the Wastes. The act was a pact, sealed without a single word of agreement. It was a shared resource, a shared moment of vulnerability. Their trust was a fragile, newborn thing, but it was real.
He watched her drink, and for the first time since the shells began to fall, he felt something other than the grinding gears of betrayal and survival. It was not hope. It was something smaller, harder. It was the simple, undeniable fact of another person in the dark.
The wind howled through the broken walls, a long, mournful cry.
