Yellow Jacket

Warren returned to camp with three new fragments and a limp in his step. Blood dried across the side of his coat, the pain dulled but persistent. He didn’t speak as he crossed the room, just collapsed to the floor beside the emergency stash, pipe still in one hand.

Wren didn’t flinch. She didn’t back away. She watched.

Styll slinked from his coat and circled once before settling again in the corner, unbothered.

Wren studied the blood, the stiff way Warren moved, and the battered edge of the rusted pipe.

"You survived, " she said quietly.

Warren didn’t smile.

"That’s the point, " he replied.

He didn’t expect her to come closer. But she did.

"Wasp." She said his name like it had always belonged to him. "Do you want help?"

He said nothing. Just stared.

"I’ve got some medi-salvage. Nothing great. Better than bleeding out on the floor."

Styll watched them both.

Warren hesitated. He didn’t protest. He was hurt worse than he’d let on, and she was already reaching into her pack.

She worked quickly, with surprising precision. The salvaged strips stuck and peeled like they didn’t want to do their job. Her frown said everything about their poor quality.

"You’ve done this before, " he muttered.

"Too many times, " she said, pressing down hard enough to make him wince.

"Thanks, Wren."

She didn’t look at him. "That’s not my name."

"It is now."

A pause. Then, quieter, "You picked it. Not me."

He didn’t argue.

"But you like calling me Wasp?"

She gave the faintest shrug. "That one fits."

She looked at the pipe still in his hand. "What happened out there?"

He didn’t answer right away. He just stared at it.

"Things went wrong. I got excited. Played too fast and loose."

She nodded like she understood, but didn’t pretend to know more than she did.

"That pipe saved you?"

"It held. That’s more than I can say for anything else."

"You name it yet?"

Warren raised an eyebrow. "It’s a pipe."

"It’s yours now. Might as well mean something."

"It’s a pipe."

"Come on, just something simple. Old Iron. Or Bruiser. Maybe Spite."

"It’s a pipe."

"What about 'Whisper'? Like, ironic. Because it’s loud."

"Still a pipe."

She leaned forward. "Naming it makes it yours."

"It’s mine because I own it. That’s enough."

"What if we both named it? Compromise."

"It’s a pipe."

"I could call it Stick. Just Stick. Like, ironically weak."

Warren gave her a deadpan look. "You do that and I swear I’ll hit you with it."

She grinned. "See? That’s the spirit."

"Pipe, " he muttered again, turning away. "It’s just a gods damn pipe."

She laughed, light and sharp, like the tinkle of bells

"You always come back like this?"

"No. Sometimes I don’t come back at all."

She gave him a flat look, then went back to cleaning a strip of cloth. "You make a lot of jokes for someone who doesn’t smile."

"I don’t joke."

"That makes it worse."

They sat for a while without speaking. Then she asked, "Why Wren?"

"You move fast. You strike when you have to. You don’t need to be big to be dangerous."

"That’s a lot to read from a name you made up."

"It wasn’t just that. It’s how you move. How you read a room. How you treated my wound like it mattered more than the blood. Calculated. No waste."

She looked at him for a long time. "You’ve been watching me."

"You stayed in my shelter. Of course I watched."

She nodded slowly. "Fair."

"Why’d you patch me up?"

"You looked worse than me. And I do kinda sorta maybe still need a guide."

He gave a dry, almost-smile at that. "Pragmatism. Good motive."

"And you let me. That surprised me more."

"I was tired."

"No, you made a decision. You’re not the type to do anything by accident."

He didn’t reply. Just watched her wrap another strip and set it aside.

She offered him one. "For next time."

"Planning ahead?"

"Call it a habit."

"Good one."

They shared a cold bite of synth-grain and a slice of vacuum-sealed root meat. The grain was stale, slightly sour, and the root meat had the strange rubbery texture of old protein reconstituted one too many times. Still, they ate like it meant something. Wren tore small bites with her fingers. Warren cut his portions with a jagged fragment of scrap.

Styll circled the edge of their sitting space, sniffing each morsel, occasionally nosing Wren’s hand for approval. She smirked.

“You gonna feed her or make her beg?” Warren asked.

“She’s working for it.”

She held up a corner of root meat and tapped twice on the ground. Styll paused, ears flicking. Then he mimicked the tap with one paw.

“Smart little thing, ” she said, handing it over.

Warren blinked. “You taught her that just now?”

“Kind of. She’s picking it up.”

Warren pulled another shred from his portion, held it between two fingers. “Let’s see if she can learn the old relay sign.” He twisted his hand twice, a quick flick and curl.

Styll tilted her head. Then, slowly, she mirrored it with her forelimb more flail than form, but close enough.

Wren laughed softly. “That’s cheating.”

“Improvising, ” Warren corrected.

They sat like that for a while, feeding Styll in pieces. She rolled onto her side and made a slow half-turn when Wren told her to “play dead, ” then tried it again for Warren, flopping in a spiral that looked almost smug.

“You’re gonna spoil her, ” Warren said.

“She’s already spoiled. She picked her own survivor.”

Warren didn’t answer that.

They didn’t talk about themselves. Instead, they traded stories. Fragments of memory and myth.

“Someone told me there’s a house up in the northwest sector. From the outside it looks like nothing: sagging roof, caved porch. But every night at the same time, the upstairs window glows blue. No one ever goes in. No one ever comes out.”

Warren tilted his head. “Could be a really old gen. Could be bait. Could be someone watching.”

“Exactly.”

Warren offered one: “Saw a sign once. Said REST STOP. But the R was missing. Just EST STOP. Place was full of mannequins. Clean ones.”

“Creepy.”

“They were all facing the same direction. Like they’d been moved.”

Wren shivered. “That’s worse than the glass ocean.”

Warren narrowed his eyes slightly. “What the hell are the glass ocean?”

Wren looked at him like she wasn’t sure if he was joking. “You’ve never heard?”

“I’ve heard the name. Never the story.”

“They say it used to be a suburbs. Whole stretches of it. Then something hit it, maybe a pressure wave, maybe something else. Whatever it was, it flattened everything. Fused the ground into one sheet of reflective glass. Like someone poured a mirror over the earth.”

Warren didn’t respond right away.

“They say the glass hums when you walk on it, ” she continued. “Like it remembers.”

He stared at her, skeptical. “That’s not how glass works.”

Wren shrugged. “Still. No one builds there. No one scavenges. People go quiet talking about it.”

Warren filed the name deeper into memory. “I’ll go see it myself.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Of course you will. Hate it when things are too clean.”

He nodded. “Clean means polished.”

“I heard about an outpost built entirely underground. They never came up. Fed on hydroponics and hope. Someone said they went blind from lack of sun. Grew gills.”

“Probably a lie.”

“Probably. But a good one.”

Wren leaned back, chewing slower now. “It’s strange. Sitting like this. Like it’s not survival. Just... normal.”

“It won’t last, ” Warren said.

“I know. Doesn’t mean I won’t take it.”

"I heard once there was a dome out west, " Wren said. "Still had weather. Still had light. Probably a lie."

"Probably, " Warren agreed.

She turned to him.

"You get what you needed while you were out there?"

He paused. "Yeah."

He stood slowly, carefully, and walked to the far wall. His hand moved to a loose panel, pried it free, and exposed a hidden terminal beneath. A small, cracked interface barely holding a charge.

Wren leaned forward, expression tightening.

Warren retrieved the six fragments from their separate cloth wraps and placed them one by one into the system’s recessed ports.

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She inhaled sharply.

"You have six, " she said. "Why do you have six of them?"

Warren didn’t look at her. "I’ve been planning this for a while. I’m making a class."

She blinked. "Why? You hit level five. The System gives you one automatically."

"That’s the problem, " he said. "Most people wait to be assigned. I want to craft mine. True to myself. Something chosen."

His tone was quiet. There was steel in it. "Every choice matters."”

The screen flickered, old code spooling up like a heartbeat rediscovering its rhythm.

CLASS INTERFACE UNLOCKED

AUTHORIZED FRAGMENT INPUT DETECTED

CLASS CHIP CONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS

Wren knelt beside him, more curious than cautious now.

The class selection menu bloomed across the screen. Six glowing icons. Basic, but powerful.

Warren scrolled slowly. One by one, the descriptions unfolded across the screen in clean, flickering code.