Dorn found Mossback at dawn, sorting herbs on a flat stone outside her lean-to.

  The old badger worked with the patience of someone who had done the same thing for fifty years—claws separating dried leaves from stems, nose twitching as she checked each batch for potency. The morning light caught the silver in her fur, turned it to something almost luminous. She didn't look up when his shadow fell over her.

  "You're still here," she said. Not a question.

  "You knew I would be."

  "I knew you were stupid. Different things." She set aside a bundle of sage and reached for another—something dark and brittle that smelled of bitter earth. "What do you want?"

  Dorn settled onto his haunches beside her. The morning was cool, the cliff shadow still covering half the settlement. Somewhere behind them, a pot clanked and a voice called out—the slow waking of Broken Rock. For a moment, Dorn let himself pretend this was just another day. Just a wildcat watching a healer work.

  "You said I owe you," he said.

  Mossback's claws paused. Just for a heartbeat. Then they resumed their work. "I did."

  "What's the price?"

  She looked at him then—really looked, her ancient eyes traveling over his face, his shoulders, the still-tender skin on his paws. Measuring him. Calculating something. He'd seen that look before, on the faces of traders and hunters and things that knew the value of a life.

  "You're going after them," she said.

  Dorn didn't answer. Didn't need to.

  "The box canyon is three days north-east. Hard country. The Purists have the high ground and the rifles and a leader who can pull the fillings from your teeth without touching you." She went back to sorting herbs. "You'll die."

  "Probably."

  "And you're okay with that?"

  Dorn thought about it. Thought about the water skin exploding. The three days of crawling. The silver eyes watching from the rocks like he was already a corpse. Thought about Vex screaming while the magnet pulled at her harness, about Flint staring at a box that was probably the only thing keeping them alive.

  "No," he said. "But I'm going anyway."

  Mossback was quiet for a long moment. The only sounds were the rustle of herbs and the distant murmur of the settlement waking. Then she stood, her joints cracking like dry twigs, and disappeared into her lean-to.

  Dorn waited. The sun crept lower on the cliff face, the shadow line inching toward him.

  When Mossback came back, she carried a bundle wrapped in cured hide. She tossed it at his feet. It landed with a solid thump that spoke of weight.

  "Salt block," she said. "Pressed with the mark of the mountain herds. Trade goods, if you make it to the high country. Bribe, if you need to buy information. Last resort, if you get desperate enough to eat it straight." She settled back onto her haunches, her breath coming a little harder from the effort. "That's my price. You carry it. You use it if you have to. And when you come back—if you come back—you tell me what you found in that vault."

  Dorn looked at the bundle. Salt was currency. Good salt, pressed with a herd mark, could buy passage through almost any territory in the Frontier. It could buy food, water, weapons, lives. Mossback was giving him a fortune.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Because Jin's not the only one who hears whispers." Mossback's voice went flat—the tone of someone who'd spent decades burying things she wished she'd never learned. "I've been in Broken Rock for forty years. I've patched up survivors from a hundred settlements that don't exist anymore. And every time the Purists move, the stories get worse. Burned towns. Poisoned wells. Prisoners who disappear into the bunkers and never come out."

  She picked up a handful of herbs, let them trickle through her claws. The wind caught them, scattered them across the stone.

  "The Preacher wasn't always like this," she said. "I knew him, once."

  Dorn's ears twitched. He said nothing.

  "Salvage runner. Worked the ruins east of the salt flats, back when the flats were just flats and not a graveyard for fools. Good hunter. Quiet. Kept to himself." She shook her head slowly, and for the first time, Dorn saw something like grief in her ancient face. "He'd come through Broken Rock sometimes. Trade for supplies. Sit by the well and watch the sunset like he was trying to memorize it. Never said much. But his eyes were warm, then. You could see it."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Dorn thought of the silver eyes watching from the rocks. Cold. Reflecting. Giving nothing back.

  "What happened?"

  "He found something." Mossback's claws had gone still. "In a bunker, east of here. The same kind of bunker the Preacher's digging now. He went in alone—that was his way. Came out three days later with burns on his fur and a look in his eyes that wasn't his anymore." She looked at Dorn. "You've seen that look. The Silicon sickness. When the old world gets into your blood and never leaves."

  Dorn had seen it. On scavengers who'd stayed too long in the ruins. On hunters who'd drunk from the wrong water. On things that wandered out of the wastes with their eyes glowing faint blue and their minds already gone.

  "The magnet came later," Mossback continued. "He found it in the same bunker, I think. Or maybe it found him. Either way, it made him what he is. And now he's digging again. Looking for the Source-Prime. Looking for whatever changed him, so he can change everything else."

  Dorn looked toward the mountains. Toward the box canyon. Toward whatever waited in the dark.

  "What's in the vault?" he asked.

  "If I knew that, I'd be dead." Mossback stood, her bones protesting. "But I know this: the Old Ones didn't build those bunkers to keep things out. They built them to keep things in. And whatever it was, it's still there. Waiting."

  She turned to go, then stopped. Without looking back, she said: "The badgers chose you for a reason, Dorn. Maybe because you're good at surviving. Maybe because you're stupid enough to try. But maybe—just maybe—because you're the only one in the Frontier who doesn't want anything from that box."

  She disappeared into the lean-to. The flap fell closed behind her.

  Dorn sat alone with the salt block and the morning sun and the weight of a choice he'd already made.

  He spent the rest of the day preparing.

  His den was gone—he'd left it behind when he crawled out of the Fingers, and even if it was still there, the Purists would be watching it. Everything he needed had to come from Broken Rock, from the scraps and castoffs of a settlement that had nothing to spare.

  A water skin, traded for the last of the dried meat from his payment. Thin, patched in three places, the leather soft with age. He held it up to the light, saw pinprick gleams where the sun pierced through. It would leak. Not fast, but steady. He'd have to drink as he walked, keep the weight down, keep the loss manageable. Three days of water in a skin that would lose a day's worth to seepage.

  He took it anyway. There was no other.

  A length of cord, salvaged from an old snare, coiled and tucked into his pack. Good cord, the kind that came from the old world—synthetic, resistant to rot, strong enough to hold a wildcat's weight. You never knew when you'd need to tie something up or climb something down or lower yourself into a bunker that might not have stairs.

  A knife. Not his—he'd never owned one, never needed one. Claws had always been enough. But Mossback had pressed it into his paw without comment, and he hadn't refused. A blade of sharpened iron, its handle wrapped in worn leather. Old. Used. But the edge was true.

  "For the lock," she'd said. "If Flint's not there to open it."

  He didn't ask what she meant.

  He checked his paws. The pink skin was healing, the new fur coming in patchy but present. He'd be able to climb, to run, to fight if he had to. Not at full strength. But enough.

  Enough would have to do.

  By dusk, he was ready.

  He stood at the edge of the settlement, where the packed earth gave way to scrub and gravel and the first long slope toward the mountains. North-east. Three days. Box canyon. Bunker. Vault. Source-Prime.

  The names meant nothing. The distance meant everything.

  His pack held the water skin, the cord, the knife, the salt block, the bundle of herbs Mossback had given him. His stomach held the last meal he'd have for a while—thin stew, heavy on roots, light on meat. His muscles held the memory of three days crawling and six days healing.

  It would have to be enough.

  "You're really going."

  The voice came from behind him. Jin. She stood at the edge of the settlement's light, her bandaged flank gleaming white in the dusk. She looked better than she had at the well—still thin, still shaken, but upright. Walking. Alive.

  Dorn nodded.

  "Those badgers," Jin said. "They family?"

  "No."

  "Friends?"

  "No."

  "Then why?"

  Dorn looked at her. At the terror still hiding behind her eyes. At the way she held herself, ready to run even standing still. At the bullet graze that would scar and the memories that would never stop chasing her.

  "Silus shot my water," he said.

  Jin blinked. "That's... that's why?"

  "No." Dorn turned back toward the mountains. "That's where it started."

  He didn't explain further. Didn't owe her an explanation. Didn't owe anyone anything.

  But as he took his first step into the dark, he heard Mossback's voice in his head. The badgers chose you for a reason.

  Maybe they had. Or maybe they'd just been desperate, and he'd been there, and the Frontier didn't deal in reasons.

  The trail climbed steeply away from Broken Rock, switchbacking up the cliff face toward the high country. Dorn moved slowly, conserving his strength, letting his body remember what it felt like to walk without the weight of death on his shoulders.

  The stars came out. Cold and bright and indifferent.

  He thought about his mother. About the things she'd taught him—how to read the wind, how to find water in stone, how to survive in country that wanted you dead. She'd died alone, somewhere in the wastes, and Dorn had never found her body. Never said goodbye. Never knew if she'd thought of him at the end.

  Maybe that was why he was doing this. Not for the badgers. Not for the box. Not for Mossback's salt or Jin's terror or the Preacher's silver eyes.

  Maybe he just wanted to stop losing things.

  The trail leveled out onto a high mesa. Dorn stopped, looked back. Broken Rock was a scatter of lights below him, tiny and fragile against the dark. Somewhere down there, Mossback was sorting herbs. Jin was trying to sleep. The settlement was going about its business, oblivious to the thing walking away from it.

  He thought of the thin, patched water skin. The cord that might or might not hold. The knife he didn't know how to use.

  He thought of the Preacher's silver eyes, and the magnet that could pull the metal from his paws without touching him.

  He thought of Vex screaming, and Flint staring at a box that was probably the only thing keeping them alive.

  Then he turned and kept walking.

  The mountains waited. The bunker waited. The Source-Prime waited.

  And somewhere in the dark, a lock kept failing.