Arnold had not run this much in his entire life.

He was fit, well trained, First Class standard, and he had done more combat preparation before entering the Badlands than most people would do in a lifetime. But running flat out through the streets of a large city with organised security personnel fanning out across every route available was a different kind of demand, and by the time he had been going for fifteen minutes his lungs were making their position on the matter very clear.

He went right at the junction where Roman had gone left, and the two guards that split to follow him were closer than he would have liked.

The right road took him through a stretch of what appeared to be a service district, wide flat buildings with large doors and the kind of machinery and equipment sitting outside that said these were storage or maintenance facilities rather than residential. It was less crowded than the areas they had come through before, which meant less cover but also fewer people to slow him down.

He pushed through a gap between two of the large buildings and came out on the other side onto a road he did not recognise.

More guards were immediately spotted ahead. Three of them.

And Arnold had to turn around.

The two from behind were already coming through the gap.

He went left, which was the only option left, and ran.

The left road was longer than it looked and it curved slightly downward, which helped his speed but also meant he was committing to distance before he could see where it ended.

He was getting tired. Not done, but getting there, and the guards behind him were not getting tired in the same way because there were enough of them that they could rotate pressure while he could not.

He tried a right turn. It brought him into a narrower street that ended at a junction, and he went straight through it, and the next street was narrower still.

He kept going.

At some point he realised the nature of the streets had changed again. He was in an older part of the city, the buildings here were denser and closer together, the walls between them thick and tall, and at the end of the street he was on now there was no junction.

There was a wall.

Not a door. Not a gate. A wall...

Solid, running the full width of the street and rising well above anything he could reasonably climb without equipment or time, and he had neither.

Arnold stood at the base of it and looked up and then looked behind him.

The guards were coming around the far end of the street, not running now but walking, the particular walk of people who know their target has run out of road.

He turned back to the wall and discovered that he had absolutely nothing that can get him over it.

He looked up at the top of it, at the sky visible above it, at the outside of Strength City that was right there on the other side and completely unreachable.

He was going back into custody. That was the only realistic outcome available to him in this moment and he knew it, and the thing that made it worse was knowing that Roman was still somewhere in the city and had no idea.

At that point, Arnold had lost all hope and was already feeling the most painful feeling in his chest, knowing that this time he might never get a chance to escape again.

But then, just in the next moment, a certain long, fat shadow appeared from behind, and when Arnold turned, it appeared to be a rope!

It came over the top of the wall fast and dropped down in a thick, heavy coil that unrolled as it fell, a ladder made of dense braided rope with wide wooden rungs spaced evenly along it, and it hit the base of the wall right in front of him with a solid thump.

Arnold stared at it for a full second.

Then he grabbed it and climbed.

The guards behind him shouted and broke into a run the moment they saw him moving, and Arnold heard them reaching the base of the wall below him as he was halfway up, felt the rope move as one of them grabbed the bottom rung, and then felt it move differently, pulling upward, fast and steady, as though something on the other side had decided it was time to stop waiting.

The guard below lost his grip as the ladder pulled up with more force than he was ready for, and Arnold cleared the top of the wall and swung over and down the other side as the rope continued moving, lowering him at a speed that was controlled enough not to drop him but fast enough that he hit the ground on the outside before he had fully prepared for it.

He landed, stumbled, steadied himself, and straightened up.

Two people stood in front of him.

A boy and a girl, roughly his age, both of them half clothed in the particular way of people who had been somewhere warm and physical before this moment. They were lean and sharp-eyed, and on the left side of each of their chests, visible clearly, was a black tattoo.

The same one on both of them, a mark that Arnold did not recognise but felt immediately like something with meaning behind it.

They were both looking at him with expressions that were not quite smiling but were not neutral either.

Arnold looked at them.

Then he looked at the wall behind him.

Then he looked at them again.

"Thank you," he said, and his voice came out slightly more unsteady than he would have preferred. "Thank you for saving me."

The girl shook her head once. "Do not thank us."

"We did not save you for free," the boy said.

Arnold straightened up properly and tried to look less like someone who had just been running for his life.

"Then what did you save me for?"

The girl took one step forward.

"To join us," she said simply.

"Join you?"

"The Wanderers," she spoke.

Arnold looked at the tattoo on her chest, then at the matching one on the boy, then back at her face.

"Join you," he repeated slowly. "I do not know who you are. I already have my own community. And my friend is still in there right now being chased by those same men."

"Your friend can save himself," the boy said. "If he cannot, we will pull him out the same way we pulled you. But that is a separate matter."

"Come with us," the girl said. "The Wanderers do not belong to any one city or refuge or empire. We move through the Badlands the way it was meant to be moved through. Free. Unbounded." She paused. "We are going to conquer this world, and we want people worth conquering it with."

Arnold was quiet for a moment, completely speechless.

He looked at the wall. He thought about the caravan and the chains and the days of travel and missing Privilege Day and his family sitting at home not knowing.

He thought about Blood Trail Outpost and the ranking board and everything he had been building toward since the Red Zenith.

He thought about Roman telling him to go right and disappearing to the left without a second thought.

And in the end, he shook his head slowly.

"I am sorry," he said. "I cannot."

The two of them looked at each other.

Then they both started laughing.

Not mean laughter. Just easy, unbothered, like his answer was the funniest and most predictable thing they had heard all morning.

Before Arnold had time to ask what was funny, the girl stepped forward, grabbed him by the collar, and threw him against the ladder.

They pushed him back to the other side, and made sure he had gone quite far before jerking the rope and Roman cleared the top, came down on the inside of Strength City, and hit the ground rolling, coming to a stop near the high wall he had just escaped from, flat on his back, staring up at the sky.

The guards who had already been walking away from the wall noticed tbe the scene and turned, and they spotted him. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

They looked at him, and Arnold looked up at them.

"Holy crap! Guess I would have to become a Wanderer then!" He cursed.