Chapter 2
Chapter two
Robin: Victora
Asharp crack across my face drags me from darkness.
My eyes snap open. Pain shoots through my skull, a festering headache that won’t budge. Everything’s blurry—shapes moving in dim light, the taste of dust thick on my tongue. It’s dark now, an almost full moon providing the only illumination.
“About time.”
Though his wrists bear the same iron shackles as mine, the voice belongs to a stranger. A head full of dark curls, maybe thirty, with clothes I don’t recognize. Not the rough-spun wool we wear on Atrea. This fabric looks softer, dyed a deep red.
The world jolts beneath us. Metal groans and rattles. We’re moving—fast, in a way nothing on Atrea ever moved—the vibration running up through my spine from whatever hard surface I’m pressed against.
Another truck. That’s what the soldiers call them.
Different from the last one I woke in, the ripped canvas walls closer together, the ceiling lower.
How many days have we been in these things?
Five? Seven? Time blurs when you’re rattling around in a box that moves without horses, without sails, without anything I understand.
Bodies press against me on all sides, their breath horribly warm in the suffocatingly small space. A dozen or so other men, different ones from the last truck. All of us packed together like cattle. The air reeks of sweat and fear and something else. Blood, maybe. Or piss.
My throat feels like I’ve been swallowing sand for a week.
“What?” The word comes out as gravel.
The stranger nods toward the floor between my legs. A tiny metal canister rolls back and forth with each bump in the road, catching what little light filters through the tears in the canvas.
Water. When did they give us water?
Miraculously, my mouth floods with saliva at the sight. When did I last drink? Yesterday? The day before? The ship feels like a lifetime ago, and the days after that blur together—endless jolting, dirty faces, the sun beating down.
“If you don’t drink it, someone else will.”
The guy across from us—older, with hollow cheeks and desperate eyes—stares at the canister like it’s made of gold. His tongue darts across cracked lips. When I look directly at him, he turns away, fixing his gaze on the truck’s wall.
I force my tired body to snatch up the bottle. Not much inside. Maybe three swallows if I’m careful. The urge to drain it all at once burns through me, but I force myself to take small sips. The water tastes metallic, stale, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt sliding down my throat.
The truck hits a pothole, throwing us all sideways. Someone curses. Another man groans like he’s in pain.
Every mile takes me further from Atrea. Further from Esme.
Is she safe? Did they find her crammed under the floorboards and drag her out by her ankles?
Is she sitting in an identical truck, bound for Victora’s slave markets?
Or did they torch our house with her trapped inside, her screams lost in the crackling flames?
Is she wandering the burned ruins alone, calling my name to silence?
Did someone take her in, or is she starving in the rubble?
Is she already dead, her small body left to rot where no one will find her?
The questions circle in my skull like vultures. No answers. No way to know. Just the endless vibration of wheels on broken road.
Outside, through gaps in the canvas, the dim moonlight allows me to catch glimpses of wasteland rushing past. Dead earth.
Twisted metal. The skeletal remains of a world that died one hundred and fifty years ago.
Growing up, we were told the stories countless times.
How nations waged wars with fire and chemicals and poisons that seeped into blood and bone, twisting people and animals into something vicious.
Unthinking. Feral things that hunt anything that moves.
We were told again and again how lucky we were to live on Atrea.
Paradise, they would say, and we’d roll our eyes.
It's only now, seeing the wasteland for the first time, that I finally understand. At least with all these armed guards around me, the monsters outside are one less worry.
We’ve been traveling all day. The sun climbed high and brutal, turning the truck into an oven, then slowly faded into the gray light of evening.
I cap the canister and look at the stranger who woke me. “How long was I—”
“Hours.” His accent is different too. Flatter vowels. “Sun went down while you were out.”
The truck lurches again, and through the gap in the canvas, I catch sight of lights in the distance. Not stars. Too bright, too clustered.
A city.
The city.
Victora.
A rush of dizziness shoots through me. Whatever waits for us, whatever they plan to do with us—we’re almost there.
The lights grow brighter. Closer. My chest tightens with each passing mile, each turn of the wheels dragging me toward whatever hell lives in that city.
The thought hits me sudden and sharp: this stranger beside me… I’ll probably never see him again after this. Once we reach those lights, they’ll likely scatter us like seeds to the wind. He’ll become just another face I remember from the worst days of my life.
“What’s your name?”
He turns to look at me, eyebrows raised slightly. Like he’s surprised I bothered to ask. “Caspian.”
I nod. “Robin.”
The truck hits another pothole, throwing us against each other for a moment before we settle back into our cramped positions. Silence falls between us after that. Nothing else to say, really. What do you talk about when you’re heading toward slavery? The weather? How comfortable the shackles are?
But the quiet gets under my skin and the words tumble out before I can stop them. “What do you think’s going to happen to us?”
Shut up. I must sound like a scared kid asking his mother about the monster under the bed. Heat flushes up my neck.
Caspian’s lips twitch in amusement. He studies me carefully, taking in my face, my shoulders, the way I hold myself very still under his gaze.
“Well, with a face like that, I reckon they’ll find better use for you than scrubbing the shit off their toilets.”
My stomach drops. I turn away, staring hard at the floor. The lightness in his voice makes it worse somehow.
The truck shudders as we slow, then turns sharply left. The lights outside are close enough now that I can make out the tips of individual buildings beyond the wall. Tall ones. Structures that reach up into the night sky like fingers clawing at the stars.
Someone near the front of the truck starts praying under his breath. The desperate, whispered kind of prayer that comes when you’re out of options.
Caspian shifts beside me, the chains around his wrists clinking softly. When I glance back at him, that amused expression is gone.
The truck slams to a violent stop, throwing us all forward in a tangle of limbs and chains. Someone’s elbow drives into my ribs, and the water canister flies from my hand and clatters against the metal floor.
“What’s going on?” The hollow-cheeked man pushes himself upright, blinking in confusion. “We’re not at the wall yet.”
All my life, I’ve heard stories about Victora.
How the walls stretch higher than trees, thick enough for twenty men to walk side by side along the top.
How the buildings inside reach toward the sky like mountains made of stone and glass.
How the people live in luxury while the rest of us scrape by in the dust, how they feast while the wastelanders starve, how they take what they want from whoever’s too weak to stop them.
But no one on Atrea knew exactly where the city was. Just somewhere across the ocean, somewhere in the wasteland. A nightmare place that existed more in whispers than reality.
Now I’m about to see it with my own eyes.
The other captives are shifting and muttering around me, and confusion ripples through our cramped space. Maybe we’re not going to the city at all. Maybe they’re taking us somewhere else—the mines, or one of the farms that feed Victora from outside the walls.
The thought sends a spike of hope through me. I can farm. I’m young, fit and healthy, perfect for slaving in fields all day. And outside the city walls would mean escape routes. Fewer guards. Open ground to run across when the moment comes.
I could get home. I could get back to Esme.
The canvas at the back of the truck rips open with a sharp tearing sound.
“On your feet!”
The soldier’s voice cuts through our murmurs. Harsh light floods the truck bed—brighter than any I’ve ever seen, white and piercing, no flame. Electric. I squeeze my eyes shut against the glare, then force them open again.
We all start to move, but slowly. Too slowly. My legs feel wobbly after days of being cramped in the same position.
“Move it!” Another guard’s voice, sharper than the first. “Now!”
Then they’re inside the truck, grabbing whoever’s closest. One of them yanks the hollow-cheeked man up by his hair, dragging him toward the opening. Another grabs the chains around someone’s wrists and hauls them forward like a dog on a leash.
Caspian struggles to get his feet under him. His face is pale, lined with pain or exhaustion or both. I reach over and grab his arm, helping him stand before the guards notice.
“Thanks,” he says.
We shuffle toward the back of the truck together, chains clinking with every step. We’re herded out onto hard-packed earth that’s still warm from the day’s heat. Dust rises around our feet, coating my throat with grit.
The first thing that hits me is how enormous everything is.
The city walls stretch across the horizon. Even from this distance, they loom massive against the night sky, blocking out stars. Torches flicker along the top—tiny points of light that must be huge up close.
I’ve seen nothing so big. So impossible.