Chloe generates a defensive ward just in time to keep the shrink wrap bullet from impacting upon her chest.
“Sleep!” she commands, casting the quell fluidly as she continues to run, the guard slumping where he stands.
Cosmo stops and picks up the gun and then rejoins Chloe.
“What do you want that for?” she asks curiously, “Souvenir?”
Cosmo gives her a disbelieving look and says, “Defense.”
Chloe raises her eyebrows, impressed because she was unfamiliar with the weapon and would never have thought to pick it up and attempt to use it. Perhaps Emrys would teach her such things in the future.
“Good idea!” she replies enthusiastically.
They round another corner where two guards are standing by a water cooler. One raises his weapon to shoot them, but Cosmo shrink wraps them both with his weapon before their enemies have a chance to get a shot off. The guards fall to the ground wrapped so tightly in plastic that Chloe can hear their ribs crack with the force of the polymer restraint.
“Oh! Look at you all sharp shooting at the bad guys! I should take you to a circus sometime and you can win me one of those giant stuffed animals.”
Cosmo looks at Chloe as if she’s gone mad. He’s never heard of a circus or a stuffed animal. And now is certainly not the time for asking questions.
They make their way through the building and are almost out the doors when a metal gate slams down and a cacophony of alarms begin ringing all around them.
Cosmo looks around desperately. Chloe looks up as if waiting for something useful to fall from the sky. Suddenly the boy grabs her wrist and yanks her over to a wall, pulling down the handle on a silver bin large enough to dispose of a body or two.
“Come on, get in,” he pants as he helps the fairy into the shoot, “They shouldn’t have lit the fire yet so we should be able to escape through here.”
“Uh, fire?” Chloe asks with surprise. She didn’t need a whole lot of experience in the Waking World to know that fire was dangerous. Fire even had power in Dreams if it was empowered enough.
He slides in behind her and pulls the door shut behind them tilting them down a steep slope. Chloe squeals in delight as they race down the slide, ignoring the stench and instead reveling in the thrill of the experience. Less than a minute later they land in a giant iron dumpster filled with ash.
Chloe struggles up to the top of the filth, her eyes and teeth flashing brightly as she laughs joyously. Cosmo does not seem to be enjoying himself quite as much and he is quickly looking for a way out. Finally he finds a series of bolts along a seam that are sticking out enough that with the care the two are able to clamor out. Chloe has a much harder time of it given her injuries, but to Cosmo’s credit he still does not abandon her.
Chloe takes her shirt off and turns it inside out wiping her face with it before passing it over to Cosmo to do the same. The boy just stares at the fairy in awe, despite her obvious filth and mumbles, “I am in heaven. It is a mighty strange place to be, but I don’t think I ever want to leave.”
Chloe laughs and wonders what the boy would think if she hadn’t been wearing a bra.
A moment or two later, the two flee down a labyrinthine passageway that winds beneath the city, trying to put as much distance between them and the orphanage as possible before they emerge on the surface.
They have run perhaps two miles when Cosmo pulls up, sliding to the ground as he catches his breath in whooping gasps, the sweat trickling down his body making rivulets in the cinder he is coated with.
“So,” he pants, “What are my new parents like?”
Chloe shifts uneasily. This is the part where things would be out of her hands. Cosmo was tagged as property of the institution she was rescuing him from, so staying in the city itself was out of the question as he would be picked up and returned to his captors before the day’s end. Thus she had been forced to search within the rural district for someone that might be willing to take the boy in, but it had been difficult to find anyone who even had a dream of such a thing, much less a willingness to make it their reality. Orphans had a bad reputation deliberately cultivated by institutions that wanted their actions to seem altruistic rather than self serving. That was in large part why so few of them were ever adopted in the first place.
Eventually she had come upon a widow, living in the Outlands, beyond the reach of the Satellite that controlled all of the technology and comings and goings of the sprawling metropolis that made up most of this world. The woman had lost her husband and son in a gang shooting in the Stricktly District and afterward had retreated into the wilds. She missed them dearly and between her broken heart and her lack of knowledge of how to survive without everything being prepackaged, prearranged, and pre-everything, she was failing to thrive. Chloe was hoping that the resourceful Cosmo would be able to save her as much as the widow might save Cosmo. The trick would be in Cosmo finding his way to the woman without being captured…and he would have to do so without Chloe’s help, because if she was gone much longer, her absence would be noticed and then finding Cosmo a new home would be the least of her worries because her father would be sure to keep her Tethered to Hypnos until she was Eternally Bonded.
She sits down beside him and begins describing the woman who with the blessing of luck and fate might come to be his mother. Cosmo looks both disheartened and hopeful, his world more complicated and fraught with imminent danger than ever before and yet with a horizon of newfound promise that he had never known up until now.
Together they plan out the best way for Cosmo to leave the city and find his way to the woman. A woman who without even realizing it is waiting with hope in her heart for Cosmo’s arrival thanks to the Dreams Chloe has planted in her subconscious. Cosmo guesses they are about a mile from the river that he is supposed to head toward and then follow all the way to the Outlands. It will be a four day hike at least and Cosmo will have to hide in sewage pipes during the day, proceeding only at night when the Satellite scans in unpopulated areas are only sporadic at best. Neither of them know if he will make it, but they both know Chloe has given the boy more than false hope in the opportunity she has bestowed upon him. It is real hope. But the possibility of failure is even more real and Chloe has tears in her eyes as she hugs him with her good arm.
“Oh, Cosmo, I wish I could go with you. I am so worried for you.”
“I’ll be alright,” he says cheekily, flashing dimples at her that she hadn’t even known he’d had because she had so rarely seen him smile before.
He looks at the ladder in front of them that ascends up to the surface of the city.
“You gonna be alright to climb up?”
“Sure. You go first and I’ll follow along behind. That way you can pull me up if I need help,” she suggests.
Cosmo nods and the two embrace tightly before heading up to the world above that is beginning to come alive with wakefulness.
Cosmo looks down at her and says hopefully, “See you in my Dreams?”
“If I’m round and about you know I‘ll stop by,” Chloe says cautiously, knowing she has already visited the young boy far more times than she should have.
Cosmo nods stoically, not really having expected an answer other than the one he received even if he might have wished for her to promise she would meet him every night from now until eternity.
Cosmo flicks the latch, carefully slides down the manhole cover and looks around to make sure it is safe to slip out of the tunnels. He does so quickly, hoping that everyone is too busy with their morning commute to notice two dirty individuals climbing out of the street. He reaches down and offers Chloe his hand, pulling the fairy out of the tunnel.
“Thanks,” Chloe says gratefully, and then all hell and Noctos breaks loose around them.
