Isaac awoke hours later. He jumbled up, images of golden giants flickered across his mind, with crassus’s voice taunting him, calling out to him that he'd never find his brother. He steadied himself against the cold stone as he almost tipped over, and looked straight down into a steep fall into the overgrown courtyard of the church.

  His heart beating against his chest he gripped one hand against the pillar he had slept against. His broken arm seared pain up his shoulder. He cursed and bunched over. A half eaten biscuit tumbled down his chest and cracked on the floor of the bell tower.

  “How… How long have I been out?” he asked.

  “Six hours, give or take.”

  He furrowed his brow. “You look horrible.” She sat opposite him, leaning against a pillar, wrapped tight in several very shabby looking blankets. She reminded him of a beggar.

  “Can you keep watch for a moment? I need to take care of something.”

  “Of course, I mean, why didn’t you wake me? You look ten minutes away from death.” Her face was as gray as the stone she sat on.

  She didn’t answer, which was seeming to become something of a pattern with Aster. Isaac hated people who didn’t answer questions. With his job he had met far too many of those.

  Aster bent forward and brandished a knife. Isaac realised for the first time that she’d gathered up kindling and some pieces of wood, probably from some of the pews. The flames of a bonfire licked happily at the air. She stuck the knife inside the hot coals.

  “Wait! Hold on, what’re you doing?” Isaac held out his hands, gesticulating. “You can’t have a fire! People will see, Crassus will find us! How long has this been burning?”

  “Crassus is blind.”

  Isaac momentarily fumbled upon getting a response, he’d planned on continuing his monologue of whining. “What about those golden soldiers? They’ll find us! And they weren’t too friendly, were they?”

  “They’re busy,” she pointed.

  “What…” Isaac looked.

  She had pointed to the where the storm had been before he fell asleep, but now only the sun shone on the towers and heaps of scrap amidst the ruins in the Scrapyard. Isaac squinted as he tried to hone in on the miniature humanoid shapes far off in the distance. He could spot the golden giant easy enough, and the soldiers, as they stood out with their golden plates. But there were a lot more people now.

  The golden soldiers bunched up around a gathering of slow moving people. It seemed they were ushering the non-gold people into lines.

  “Who are they? The other people I mean.”

  “They’re the newcomers.”

  “The people from the train?” Isaac sat up straighter.

  The lines formed fully. Some golden soldier muddled about at the front and Isaac imagined the mustached buffoon parading back and forth. No doubt inflating from the self importance and hefting his ridiculous scabbard from catching on the ground.

  Something moved out there. Something long materialized from nothing, a thin pole of some sort? It flashed across several of the lines of people and they dropped out of view and melted into the ground. Isaac gasped.

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  “What happened?” he said.

  “He probably killed them.”

  Isaac’s eyes widened, “Killed them? Why? Isn’t this place hostile enough?”

  “For their keys, Isaac. It’s the only thing that matters here. You’ll come to learn that soon enough.”

  The remaining lines of survivors burst into chaos and the rest of the golden soldiers moved to apprehend them. The fire crackled and Isaac looked away from the carnage and was shocked to find Aster peeling off chunks of flesh from her hand with a red hot blade.

  He gaped at her as she brought the blade back to the fire to heat it back up again. Sweat poured down her face and in her wounded hand she held a stick marred with bite marks. She looked him in the eye, defiant, daring him to protest.

  “But… those are your fingers.” He pointed weakly with a slight bow of his head. Only three fingers gripped the stick she’d used to keep herself from screaming. The remaining two were missing almost down to the knuckles. The stump of her ring finger was slightly longer and bound up at the end in black rope, wound so tight Isaac felt second-hand pain just from looking at it.

  Her pinky ended in a large burn mark. The smell of bacon wafted across Isaac’s face. He belched several times over the edge of the bell tower.

  He knew why she had done it, of course. She was probably losing too much blood, at least if her skin color was anything to go by. Isaac had gone to a survival course once with his brother. He knew that’s how they’d done surgery in the field when there wasn’t a needle or thread to be found. Or rather the time to sew up a wound properly. Instead you took a piece of metal, heated it up and scorched the wound closed.

  Tears reflected the sunlight and blinked at Isaac from the edges of Aster’s eyes. She didn’t mention it and neither did he. Isaac just wiped his mouth with the edge of his coat.

  Aster started shaking. She held her scorched hand tight around the wrist and she turned over on her side. Isaac watched her convulse and shiver until her breathing slowed and she fell asleep. He wondered at what that young girl must’ve lived through to be so tough. He doubted anyone he knew back on earth would be willing to cut off their own fingers.

  Maybe she’d been right to look at him like she had. Weighing him, disregarding him, writing him off as a lost cause the minute she met him. But she wasn’t wrong. He’d set out to find Finn and bring him back. Isaac had known something beyond the explainable was going on. And what had he done since coming here? He’d done nothing but run and hide, whining and feeling sorry for himself. That would end now. The only thing he had to go on was his instinct and intuition, but for those to work he had to gather information. He could pretend this was another case to be solved.

  He sat guard over Aster’s sleeping body while watching the horizon for signs of Crassus. While the hours went by he relived the last day in mind and made a list of questions he needed the answer too.

  He looked back to make sure that Aster was still breathing and found her eyes wide open, weighing him again. Isaac felt the back his head prickle but ignore both it and her stare. Instead he reached inside the sack and handed her a piece of flatbread. She sat up and took it. Isaac contemplated his next words carefully. She sat silent and ate, still watching him.

  “How come you can grow feathers?” he said at last.

  She looked him over but didn’t react otherwise, like she’d known all along that it would eventually come to this. “The keys. It’s always about the keys.”

  Isaac looked sceptical. “How do they work?”

  “You find one that whispers to you and then you synchronize with it.”

  That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “No, I mean, what makes them tick?”

  “The keys don’t tick, I said the whisper. What, did Crassus rattle your mind?”

  Isaac gave an uncomfortable shrug at the mention of Crassus’s name. “No, I mean how do they work, like the physics of it?”

  “Physics?” Aster looked puzzled. She didn’t seem to like not knowing something.

  Isaac stared at her. “Alright, nevermind the physics, you said I had one… ehm… a key, is that true?”

  This it seemed she knew because she answered with confidence. “Yes, you do.”

  “Well, where is it?”

  “Hanging from your neck, I’d imagine, just like everyone else's.”

  Isaac reached into his coat, beneath his shirt, and to his astonishment drew out a chain hanging there. Hung around his neck, just like she’d said.

  “How the…” He looked at at Aster, “how did that get there?”

  Aster shrugged, then winced as something pained her. “We don’t really know, but everyone who arrives here gets one.”