They made camp as the sun set, finding shelter in the ruins of a gas station that still had most of its roof. Elesa stood watch, her new vapor visor made it easier to scan for any approach while they ate a meal of preserved food and purified water.
"Tomorrow we'll be in territory we haven't explored," Xander said, studying the maps. "Past the safe zones, past where most scavengers go."
"Past where most scavengers return from," Elesa corrected.
"I am just an optimist," Xander accused.
"and I am just a Realist," she countered.
Jyn wasn't listening to their familiar banter. The shard was showing him something—not a vision exactly, but an impression. The Whispering Vault existed, he was certain of that. But it wasn't just a place. It was a wound in reality, a location where the boundaries between worlds had been deliberately weakened.
His parents had been there. They'd found something, learned something that had sent them racing back to their lab to conduct that final, fatal experiment.
The blade, the whispers said. They found the missing piece of the blade... the cost was everything.
"Jyn, what's wrong?" Elesa's voice brought him back.
"I'm okay, It's okay" he said automatically.
"No, you're not. None of us are. We're walking into something we don't understand, following guidance from a crystal that might be trying to help us or might be using us for its own purposes."
"Then why are you here?"
She was quiet for a moment, then: "Because you're my friend, I've know you my whole life. Because the world is ending slowly and this might be a chance to stop it. Because..." She paused, searching for words. "Because I'd rather die trying to make a difference than live safely making none."
"That's either very noble or very stupid," Xander observed.
"Both," Elesa agreed. "Definitely both."
They settled in for the night, taking turns on watch. The wasteland at night was a different world—sounds carried differently, shadows moved in ways that defied explanation, and sometimes lights appeared in the distance that had no source.
During his watch, Jyn pulled out the personal terminal his parents had left. Their message was brief, but he'd found other files—photos, mostly. His parents at their wedding, both of them young and hopeful. His mother pregnant with him, his father's hand on her belly. The three of them at his fifth birthday, before the research consumed their lives.
In every photo, they looked happy. Human. Nothing like the geometric light-beings that appeared in his dreams.
that next morning, the wasteland had a rhythm to it—not music, but something more primal. The crunch of boots on irradiated soil, the distant howl of wind through skeletal structures, the occasional skitter of mutated life fleeing from larger predators. Three days out from Aegis, and that rhythm had become the soundtrack of their existence.
Jyn shifted his pack, feeling the straps dig into his shoulders despite the padding. The weight wasn't just from supplies—water, food, ammunition, medical gear—but from the weight of the journey weighs down on them.
"Ridge coming up," Elesa called from her position on point. She'd been walking twenty meters ahead for the last hour, her modified blade loose in its sheath, eyes scanning for threats. The morning sun caught her Auburn hair where it escaped from beneath her hood, and when she turned to look back at them, checking their progress, her bright green eyes lingered on Jyn for just a moment longer than necessary.
"Same ridge that was coming up an hour ago?" Xander asked, adjusting his engineering bag for the hundredth time. The leather straps had worn raw spots on his shoulders despite the reinforcement he'd added. "Or a new ridge that just looks exactly like the last three?"
"Funny," Elesa said, though there was a hint of amusement in her tone. She turned back to the path, but not before Jyn caught the slight color in her cheeks. "It's the same ridge. We're making good time."
They were, despite everything. The route Greg had marked on his data pad showed a relatively clear path to the convergence point—seventeen days of travel if everything went perfectly. Of course, nothing ever went perfectly in the wasteland. They'd already had to detour twice around radiation zones that had shifted since the last survey, adding hours to their journey.
Jyn pulled out his radiation detector, checking the levels. The device clicked steadily, like an impatient insect. "We're at thirty rads," he reported. "Still in the yellow."
"Time for pills anyway," Xander said, already fishing the iodine tablets from his pack. They'd been taking them every six hours, the chalky taste becoming another part of the wasteland's rhythm. "Remember when we thought these things would protect us from everything?"
"I remember when we thought we'd never need them," Jyn replied, dry-swallowing his tablet. The iodine would help prevent their thyroids from absorbing radioactive isotopes, but it couldn't protect against everything. Nothing could.
They crested the ridge, and the landscape spread before them like a canvas painted by a mad artist. The ruins of the old world stretched to the horizon—skeletal buildings, twisted metal, and patches of glass where the sand had been fused by unimaginable heat. But there was life too, stubborn and strange. Crystalist growth dotted the landscape in patches, their bioluminescent glow visible even in daylight. Mutated plants pushed through concrete, their leaves the wrong color, their shapes defying botanical logic.
"There," Elesa pointed to a cluster of structures about three kilometers ahead. "Looks like an old rest stop. We can resupply water if the pumps are still functional."
"And if the water's not completely toxic," Xander added cheerfully. "Remember that well outside Scranton? The one that looked clean until we tested it?"
"The one that melted your testing strip?"
"That's the one."
They descended the ridge carefully. The soil here was loose, mixed with ash that had been accumulating for decades. Each step sent up small clouds of grey dust that clung to their suits and masks. Jyn found himself checking the seal on his mask obsessively—a habit that had saved his life more than once.
The shard pulsed against his chest, and with it came whispers. Not words exactly, but impressions, feelings, fragments of knowledge that didn't belong to him.
The vault remembers...