Erick looked out over the setting sun east of his room as he stretched in front of the window. A cup of coffee rested on the sill, still releasing a wisp of steam as he closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. Then he released it in the most satisfied sigh he could manage.

Sure, he was waking up for the night shift on Tartarus, and he would need to go pick up Hans from school soon if he wanted to make it to work on time. However, no ghost whispered behind him this morning. No nightmares of white-masked monsters had kept him from sleep that night. He was finally getting used to life on the base. Even if nothing was perfect, that had to be enough.

He reached for his coffee, taking a sip from it before returning it to the window sill. He reached into his cabinet by his bed, pulled open the door, and procured his uniform from where he had hung it the night before. He began to dress in his black and red uniform, mentally suppressing the images that came to his mind. A swordsman and a massive muscly man had worn the same uniform on Cragg Hollow. A man, lying on the wooden deck of a ship, his neck slit as blood ran down the same uniform.

He dressed quickly, lacing up his boots before exiting his room and rushing out the door. He lived in a simple, small home on the base, outside the actual dome that made up Tartarus and closer to Aherlow, the town that the base guarded. Like all the nearby homes, his was built of stone and logs, both plentiful in supply in the forests north of Aherlow. Each house had the same three-room design, two bedrooms, one large and one small, with a single living area dominated by a fireplace for the cold nights.

They had no kitchens or baths; those were handled by the canteen at the center of the barracks, and the latrines were shared between houses. It was a mixture of civilian and military life that Erick hadn't been able to experience since he first signed on with the Military Police, and it was an upgrade from his life at Cragg Hollow.

Granted, anything without monsters was an upgrade from life at Cragg Hollow.

"Better not dally," he said, heading toward the door and out into the coming night. "They'll be mad if you don't get Hans back soon."

He set off across the barracks and towards the school on the north side, away from the massive stone dome to the south. He crossed the canteen, where soldiers were already lining up from their shift all the way out the door. Erick pursed his lips at that. He walked a little faster toward the school on top of the hill.

The school was a squat building with tiny windows and too little space. Several children were outside, playing metal bars that crossed the yard in front of the school. None of them were Klaus, though. Erick approached one of the teachers, an older man with a white beard and bald head, who watched the children from a chair he had dragged outside near the wall.

"Mister Landson." The man smiled. "Hans is around here somewhere."

"Like always." Erick smiled back, checking the corners of the building immediately to see if Hans was hiding there. "Any more trouble?"

"Not since he found a hiding spot. The boys try, but he's just too slippery. If I caught them again, I'd give them a good ringing around the ears, but they can't catch him."

"I hope they can learn to like him." Erick sighed.

"You know how it is with kids. They bully you, and then they're your best friend the next day. It just takes time."

Erick remembered his own schoolyard days at his own school near an outpost. While he would never say he enjoyed it, at the same time, it was hard to see life any other way. Kids would pick on kids and learn to get along from that. Some would learn to stand up, others back down. So long as Klaus wasn't seriously hurt, he could live with it.

Now, if they ever left a mark on the boy, then he might have more than words to exchange.

"Well, either way," Erick said, starting toward the entrance of the school, just around the corner. "I need to get him fed before I go to work, and we're burning daylight here."

"Aye." The man waved him away, going back to watching the children playing in the yard.

Erick had just made it to the corner when the man called out to him again though.

"Wait, here he is. Appeared out of nowhere."

Erick turned back, and Hans stood near the wall where he had talked to the old man as if he had been there all along. Erick frowned but approached the boy, dressed in a simple black shirt and pants, a small blonde kid with a young but distant face. The only thing that marked him was the dark bags under his eyes, unfit for a child as young as Hans. His dark blue eyes had seen too much, just as Erick had back on Cragg Hollow.

"How'd you get here, Hans?" Erick asked, picking him up quickly and turning to leave. "We need to get you to the canteen and out quick. I'll be late for my shift otherwise."

He said it without expecting a response because Hans hadn't said a word since he rescued the boy from Cragg Hollow. Hans wasn't his son in the normal way. The adoption papers Erick had signed weeks before were the only real proof of their bond. Convincing the record keeper to give him the papers had required a bribe, but it was worth the cost. So far as anyone on the base knew, Hans was his son and could live a normal life now that they had escaped the nightmare at Cragg Hollow.

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Which was why Erick understood his silence. Hans had seen something that no boy should ever have to see: a nightmare experiment from Doctor Livesay and his infection of the townspeople at Cragg Hollow and his brother taken from him by the hands of the villagers along with his parents. He had survived on the streets for months alone until Erick had found him—until those outlaws had intervened.

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind, not ready to see the images that haunted him again and focused on getting back to the canteen. He didn't have much time if he wanted to get to the shuttle before his shift started. He couldn't afford to be late again if he wanted to not have his pay docked.

Neither he nor Hans could afford that.

He waved at a few of the people he knew as he rushed to the line, but the eyes of others told him it was better to wait his turn than to risk a fight. So, he took his place at the back of the line, behind the other soldiers at the canteen, ready to sit in the queue until he had his own turn in line. The only good news was that the line moved every few seconds, so it wouldn't be long until it was his and Hans's turn with a plate down the cafeteria line.

"Private Landson, what a surprise to see you here!"

Erick froze as the deep voice of someone who shouldn't have been anywhere near the canteen skittered up his spine like a spiky-legged spider. There was no reason for him to be out in the base. He had his own officer's cafeteria inside Tartarus. Like all the higher-ups, he slept inside the base in his own private quarters. Commander Milton had no reason to come down to the barracks south of Aherlow.

Yet, when Erick turned around, Commander Milton stood behind him, hands in his pants pockets, his long black jacket draped over his shoulders. Erick gulped. Ahead of Erick, several of the soldiers in line noticed and saluted back toward him. Their eyes were wide, and Erick's stomach turned. Slowly, he brought his hand to his heart in a salute to his superior officer, the base's commander himself.

"Commander Milton, I didn't expect to see you at the canteen!" Erick yelled a little more than he wanted to, and his voice came out shrill in his own ears like a cornered rat.

He hadn't done anything wrong, but his experience at his prior outpost had drilled into his mind that he didn't need to do anything wrong to be picked out. There was a reason he avoided officers of any kind outside of when he first turned in his paperwork to start his job at the base.

"You know how it is." Commander Milton sighed, pulling at his beard as his eyes roved up and down the line. "We need to check on things all around the base on occasion. Inspections and the like. Every piece on the board has a role to play, but if you don't know where the pieces are, you can hardly say what they're doing!"

Commander Milton laughed, a hard, echoing laugh as he slapped his knee. Erick tried to laugh with the commander—he didn't want to mess up like he had with Captain Hawkins—but it was difficult to see what was so funny. Instead, he only chuckled and maintained his salute.

"Yes, sir," Erick said, gripping Klaus's hand tight with his free hand.

"Oh no." Commander Milton looked down, eyeing Klaus as tiny fingers dug into Erick's leg.

Klaus had moved to hide behind him. Erick did his best to sidle between the two. He didn't want the commander to focus on Klaus any more than necessary. The boy had already seen enough of what the higher-ups could do back on Cragg Hollow.

"Can I help you, sir?" Erick asked, doing his best to draw Commander Milton's attention back up to himself.

"I scared the poor boy." Commander Milton dropped down to a squat, resting his arms on his knees so he was at eye-level with Klaus. "I'm sorry if I scared you, boy. I sometimes forget proper manners when I'm cooped up in the base for too long."

He gestured with one hand back at the towering structure behind him. Tartarus was a massive dome structure and the bastion of defense between the First and Fourth Quadrants. The fortress's blue stone was nigh impenetrable, and even the inside of the dome had ships ready to fly out and respond to problems on the Fringes at a moment's notice.

"You just got out of school today, boy?" Commander Milton smiled at Klaus, tilting his head as he kept eye contact.

Klaus gripped Erick's legs tighter, hiding most of his face inside the clothes. One eye remained open to watch the commander, but Klaus said nothing. Erick tried to move further to his left to break the line of sight between them, but Klaus's grip was too strong.

"Well, this is no good." Commander Milton sighed, looking up at the sky. "You're a piece of Tartarus as much as anyone else, boy. If you want Private Landson to have a good time here, you can't hide behind his leg all night."

Erick looked back to the men behind him for support but only saw them holding their salutes and staring unmoved at Tartarus in the distance. No one was coming to save him or Klas. Erick took a deep breath, ready to find a way to mollify the commander, when another figure approached the line from the road.

Click. Tap.

"There you are, sir!"

A woman in a red and black uniform dress stepped over to the line, her boots clicking with every step. She pushed her round glasses up the bridge of her nose with one hand as she walked, her other hand holding a clipboard of neat papers. Her blonde hair was in a bun, crisply tied away like the rest of her uniform. Erick recognized her immediately. She was Secretary Eaton, the assistant to Commander Milton. He didn't budge in his salute as she stalked forward, grabbing hold of the commander's collar and unceremoniously yanking him off his feet and back onto his butt.

Thump.

"I wasn't done!" Commander Milton yelled, fishing a coin out of his pocket as Secretary Eaton tried to pull him away.

"You have a meeting with the two captains who arrived at the base this morning!" Secretary Eaton grunted as she dragged him away. "You should have been at your office hours ago!"

"Wait!" Commander Milton jumped loose of her grip, holding out the coin to Klaus as he fell onto his hands and knees. "Here, boy. I'm sorry for scaring you, but use this doler to buy something nice from the canteen."

"Do you don't!" Secretary Eaton reached around, pulling Commander Milton away.

To Erick's surprise, Klaus reached out and grabbed the coin before the commander was out of reach. It all happened faster than he could keep track of, and in the next moment, Secretary Eaton was already almost to the road, dragging the commander behind her.

"What in the abyss was that?" Erick asked as he looked down at Klaus.

Klaus still held onto his leg, one hand holding the golden doler out in front of him. Klaus's eyes sparkled as he looked over the coin, and Erick shook his head. Klaus didn't seem harmed by the exchange, and he still had to get him fed before he went to work. He only hoped that the distraction hadn't cost him too much time.

"Come on, Klaus," Erick said, turning around to see that the line had already moved inside. "I need to get to work."