The first sign came from the kitchen.
The old refrigerator's motor clunked, ceased humming for three seconds, and buzzed back to life with a higher whine. In the living room, the television's sound changed: the static hiss gave way to a brief rural news jingle. It was four in the morning.
Maria snapped her eyes open instantly, sitting upright on the tiled floor before sleep could drag her back under.
Her mother always returned from the garment factory at five-thirty. The woman would step off the bus at the corner, slip through the side gate, and head straight to the laundry basin to shake the cotton lint off her heavy apron. If she walked in on bloodstained tiles and a boy wrapped in towels inside the storage shed, the screams would wake the entire block.
She stood up and tiptoed over to Dante.
The silver screen remained suspended over his chest, casting a faint glow that outlined his thin ribs beneath the taped dressing.
[Target: Dante Miller.]
[Health Points: 1/12.]
[Status: Stable (Unconscious).]
[Time remaining until next point regeneration: 42 minutes.]
The boy hadn't moved. His skin remained cold, with purplish shadows around his nose and mouth, but the towel folded beneath the tape stayed dry on top. The bleeding hadn't resumed.
He can't stay here.
Maria wiped her sleeve across her face to scrub away the lingering grogginess and stepped out into the laundry area.
In the narrow gap between the concrete basin and the back wall stood the wheelbarrow her father used to haul sand before vanishing four years ago. The iron tub was full of dead leaves, two empty plastic bottles, and thick cobwebs in the corners. The solid rubber tire was worn down, its axle coated in a crust of brown rust.
She pushed the wooden handles. The metal let out a shrill squeak, loud enough to make her hunch her shoulders.
Maria walked over to the shelf holding her brother's tools, grabbed a tin of bicycle chain lube, and squeezed three thick drops straight into the axle joint. She pushed again. The screech vanished, leaving only the muffled roll of rubber against concrete.
She scooped the leaves out of the tub by hand, grabbed two burlap sacks folded on the line, and lined the metal bed.
Getting back into the shed and loading Dante into the wheelbarrow took more technique than raw strength. She hauled the boy by his armpits to the doorframe, propped him seated against the wall, then tipped the wheelbarrow onto its side, resting the iron rim flush with the ground. She rolled his body into the bay and tucked his long legs in so they wouldn't drag against the wheel.
She bundled everything beneath the old cotton blanket and threw a sheet of black tarp over him, leaving only a slit near his nose for air.
Over the wall, the neighbor's rooster crowed its first raspy call of the dawn.
Maria unhooked the wire on the gate with extra care. She threw her weight behind the handles, lifted the iron legs off the ground, and wheeled it out onto the street.
The morning mist fell fine and cold, giving the asphalt an oily sheen beneath the streetlamps. The air smelled of woodsmoke drifting from distant bakeries and damp earth.
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She knew every yard of this neighborhood. She knew which sidewalks hid vicious dogs behind corrugated tin gates, and where potholes gathered deep pools of mud. Maria steered the wheelbarrow close to the walls, keeping the tire on the strip of packed dirt so no gravel crunched against rubber.
Her destination was three blocks away, at the end of the dead-end street that terminated at the chain-link fence of the old water utility.
In the middle of the overgrown lot, bordered by tall weeds and clumps of sawgrass, stood a pump house decommissioned over ten years ago. The structure was a block of raw concrete without windows, fitted with a sheet-iron door jammed halfway open, leaving a gap about two feet wide near the ground.
Nobody went in there. The neighborhood kids claimed the well was full of snakes and giant rats, and the adults had no reason to poke around a rubble-filled ruin.
Maria set the wheelbarrow handles down once she hit the dirt footpath through the grass. Her wrists trembled from the steady strain of balancing the load up the street's inclines. She drew three deep breaths through her mouth, wiped her sweaty palms on her dress, and pushed the wheelbarrow deeper into the brush until it bumped against the gray concrete wall.
The gap under the iron door was just as she remembered from the last time she had picked blackberries along the back wall.
She crouched down, pulled the black tarp off Dante, and pressed her hand to his neck. His skin was still ice cold, but his pulse beat steadily under her fingertips.
The silver screen materialized in the air the instant she touched him.
[Target: Dante Miller.]
[Health Points: 2/12.]
[Status: Stable. Natural recovery in progress.]
The number two had just taken the place of the one. The crimson line signaling critical danger had disappeared, replaced by a dull yellow tone.
"At least you didn't die on the way here. You're already doing better than my last pet fish..." Maria gave a small shudder at the memory. "Rest in peace, Reginaldo... anyway, let me see how things look."
Maria slipped through the gap in the iron door first, crawling on her knees across the dry dirt.
The interior of the pump house smelled of mildew, aged concrete, and decades of settled dust. There were no leaks in the thick concrete roof slab. In the corner opposite the entrance, resting on an elevated concrete platform where the pump motors once sat, lay a stack of collapsed cardboard boxes and two bags of sawdust the workers had left behind when the place was shut down.
The ground was littered with broken glass near the door and dried leaves blown in over the years, but the far corner of the platform remained dry and flat.
She scrambled back to the gap, reached her arms outside, and pulled Dante by his shoulders, hauling his body into the concrete box. The boy's back dragged through the dirt, kicking up a fine puff of dust that made Maria sneeze twice in a row.
Taking care not to bump his head against jagged iron rods jutting from the floor, she dragged him onto the raised platform and laid him out over the thick layers of cardboard. She covered his chest again with the blanket and propped a folded piece of burlap sack under the nape of his neck.
Dante let out a faint sound in his throat. His eyelashes fluttered, but his eyes did not open.
Maria sat on the edge of the concrete platform, legs dangling into empty space. The gray light of dawn was beginning to seep through the gap in the iron door, tracing a long beam through dust floating in the shelter's gloom.
She looked down at her hands. Grime from the wheelbarrow had mingled with the pump house dust, leaving her nails rimmed in black and her palms rough.
The screen before her flickered with a new message.
[Temporary safe environment established.]
[Target recovery rate normalized.]
[Quest [Protect the Light] Progress: 45%.]
[Notice: Target awakening imminent. Cognitive monitoring advised.]
Maria pulled her legs up onto the platform, wrapped her arms around her knees, and rested her chin against the red fabric of her dress.
Nobody would find them here. Her mother would be kicking off her shoes in the kitchen right about now, her brother would be turning over in bed while the television droned on, and she had a strange boy, one who dropped from the sky smelling like fire, sleeping on old cardboard mere inches from her feet.
Outside, the first trucks started rumbling along the main road, puncturing the morning silence with air brakes and distant horns.
On the platform, the boy took a deep breath. His chest rose sharply beneath the cotton blanket, the fingers of his right hand curling around a loose shred of cardboard, and his head rolled slowly toward the side where she sat.