Walt drummed his fingers on the armrest of the taxi, which had a strange smell he couldn't quite identify. The dirty carpet under his worn tennis shoes matched the rest of the battered yellow car, which had probably been in use since at least the nineties. A stained bottle rolled around the floor, a nearly illegible label declaring its brand, not that he was paying attention to it for any other reason than to make sure it didn't touch his shoes.

Raising his view upward to the potbellied driver, a dark beard of brown bristles covering his chin and mouth, Walt asked, "How long until we get there?"

The driver glanced back at him with a grin, the taxi sliding sideways as he took his attention off the road. Walt instinctively grabbed onto the nearest object, which was, unfortunately, the gum-covered door handle. He extracted his hand with an unbridled expression of disgust, trying to peel the vestiges off with his other hand. The taxi driver hurriedly returned to making sure they didn't die and rested one arm on the headrest between the two front seats. "So, what are you gonna be doing all the way out here?"

Walt picked the last bit of yellow-green gum off his hand and dropped it in the stairwell. Looking up, he asked hesitantly, "Sorry, what?"

With a good-natured laugh, the driver repeated his question. Walt nodded contemplatively, then responded with a wide smile, "None of your business."

The driver wasn't affected in the slightest, his grin only growing wider in the rearview mirror. "Gotcha, you're that kinda kid. M'name's Kevin Foister, if yer curious."

Walt stared at him a little aggravatedly. "Dude. Take a hint."

Shrugging, Kevin faced forward, his hairy fingers tapping a strange rhythm on the headrest. Pulling out his phone, Walt flicked it open, typing in his password. 9-1-5-2. Completely random numbers, but he liked trying to find a pattern in them regardless. Pulling the quick menu down from the top of the screen, he frowned at the red blinking bars in the top corner. No service, apparently.

Looking outside, he wasn't sure why he was surprised. Endless meadows of green and yellow stretched out in front of him, eight-foot rows of corn blurring past the car as the taxi bumped along the asphalt road. Walt tried to pick a stalk to watch, keeping his eyes on it until it shot past the car and slid out of his view. Above the endless lines of corn, the clear blue sky was dotted by enormous mounds of puffy white clouds, creeping along and doing whatever business clouds got up to.

Walt was used to getting around. He'd been a foster kid for as long as he could remember, shuffled from house to house due to 'personality issues'. He hadn't run away from any - he'd convinced the foster parents quite thoroughly that they didn't want him without needing to run away. All he ever needed was a week. Just one.

He considered himself to be a cool kid, styling his black hair into a flip-up and keeping whatever facial hair he could grow, even though it was more than a little patchy. His sixteenth birthday had passed a few months ago, or at least the day he told everyone was his birthday. It hurt a bit that he didn't really know the real date, but he could squash pain mercilessly when it came to his feelings.

Kevin's tapping was getting a little annoying. Bum-ba-dum, pause, dum-dum-pa, pause, ba-dum. Over and over, an endless repetition of the same distinctive percussive sounds. Glaring at him in irritation, Walt hoped he'd get the message and look back at some point, but he just kept going.

Coughing loudly, Walt asked, "Can you stop?"

Kevin checked back on him, maintaining a perfectly straight line this time. In the back of his mind, Walt wondered if the earlier swerve had been intentional. "Stop what?"

Walt pointed at the offending hand. "The tapping thing. It's annoying."

Shrugging, Kevin went back to driving, his right hand going down to the seat. The drumming having ended, Walt returned his attention to the phone.

He didn't have many offline games, but his favorite was a codebreaker. It randomly generated a code that would be displayed in a simple digital text, along with a hint, and then it had to be decrypted. It'd started out pretty insanely difficult, but as he got the hang of it, he'd realized he enjoyed it a lot more than he had expected.

In this case, it was an oddly familiar string of gibberish. Kv'u pq rtqdngo. 'A phrase to indicate something being a nonissue.'

Putting a finger to his chin, Walt considered it. There was an apostrophe on an otherwise three-letter word, so if that was left consistent it was probably 'it's'. After that the rest was easy.

Fingers tapping rapidly on his screen, he input his answer and hit 'Submit'. The red indicator above the code, right next to the timer which had been counting down a moment before, turned green, and Walt smiled faintly. He'd been doing it on hard - was he getting better, or was he getting better?

Flicking to the next puzzle, Walt's smile froze.

Vzhb zh krv. A phrase used to indicate significant ease in an activity.

His brain stalled as the timer started counting down, and he ran through the list of basic codes in his head frantically. Ceaser cipher, substitution cipher, cryptographic cipher...

Pulling a notebook literally covered from top to bottom in a messy scrawl from the pocket inside his sweatshirt, he started flipping through it, checking through them for blank space and writing down a potential answer, comparing it with one of his codes. It didn't work, and he scratched a line through it.

Tapping his upper lip with the eraser at the tip of his pencil, he considered his options, trying to ignore the timer counting down above the question. Four two three. The number of letters could be a... no, that was wrong too. Why weren't any of his codes working!?

Kevin glanced back and saw a bead of sweat rolling down Walt's forehead. Raising an eyebrow, he asked gruffly, "You all right over there?"

Walt waved a hand distractedly, checking back on his phone. Twenty seconds.

Scribbling frantically, he tried almost every code he could think of, and Kevin squinted at his phone, then snorted in satisfaction. "Easy as pie."

Walt didn't even bother glaring at him. "You wanna try and solve it?"

Laughing quietly, Kevin looked back ahead, shaking his head in amusement.

Ten seconds left.

Scratching out the ninth attempt, Walt scrambled for a solution and seized his phone, typing, "Give it..." He trailed off, his mouth opening and closing silently as he strove to find a three-letter word that would fit the end of the statement.

Nothing came to mind, and the timer ran out.

The light blared red, a buzzer sound playing, and then displayed the correct code, not telling him what the phrase was.

Walt wasn't sure he was seeing it correctly at first, then facepalmed. "A reverse cipher? A freaking reverse cipher!?"

Kevin nodded agreeably. "Like I said, easy as pie."

"Shut up."

Kevin grinned.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Eyes on his phone, Walt wasn't really paying attention to much else. His thumbs were getting a little sore, and the time read three-thirty in the afternoon. In the back of his mind, he wondered just when-

"We're here!"

Snapping his head up, Walt got a crick in his neck and grunted in pain, gingerly raising a hand to it and rubbing irritably. Popping the joint in question, he looked around, details sinking into his mind as he observed the countryside he would call his neighborhood for... he wasn't sure. A week or two, maybe?

Four large hills stood at the corners of the town, trees atop each one. Walt had to squint to see the man sitting on a bench underneath one of them, but he was quickly distracted by the other details. A wrought-iron fence ran around the whole thing, whorls and spirals of decorative metal wrapping around every panel of it in a strange pattern. The houses were... weird. Just about every type of architecture he could think of was present, from a tall pink Victorian-era building to a white cubical modernistic house, full of right angles and polished wood. The road the taxi was driving down spun and twirled in an utterly nonsensical direction, going past the brightly colored shops and heading for the massive fifth hill looming over the town.

On top of the enormous hill, crags of gray stone jutting out of its front at strange angles, was a mansion. It was enormous, spreading sideways with a looping driveway and a fancy overhang above the imposing front doors. The entire construction was built from dark wood and gray stone, a full three stories of spreading architecture. Even though Walt knew next to nothing about the finer points of how to build a house, he could tell it was practically a piece of art. A narrow tower rose from the left side, a large circular window set in its center.

Kevin whistled as he drove the taxi up the driveway, double-checking the ornate mailbox to make sure he was at the right address. "Dang, kiddo. Thought this place would be, like, way in the boonies, but wow. That's, uh - you better tip good."

Walt's eyes were glued to the incredible sight, but he replied quietly, "I don't have any money. That's - that's his, not mine."

Kevin glanced back at him, his hands skillfully manipulating the steering wheel as he pulled around to the front doors, bronze lanterns hanging from rusting iron chains, genuine flames flickering inside each one. Coming to a stop as the tires ground against the gravel, Kevin put his elbow on the headrest and turned all the way around, unbuckling his seatbelt to do so.

"Just to clarify, you're staying here, right? You're not being forced into this?"

Walt nodded, swallowing as he appraised the mansion's entrance. However much of a cool guy he considered himself to be, it was a stunningly terrifying building in its entirety, and its owner could only be scarier. He briefly considered saying that this was the wrong address, but it matched the one he'd been texted four hours ago. The payment for the taxi had somehow already been arranged, and while that was a bit odd, Kevin didn't care so long as he got paid.

Turning his attention to the friendly cab driver, Walt told him, "Nah, I'm supposed to be here. Thanks for the drive. You're actually a pretty decent guy."

Kevin snorted with a good-natured grin. "Yeah, I know. Have a good one."

Nodding, Walt carefully opened the door, avoiding the gum on the handle, and stepped out onto the gravel. Still absently rubbing the back of his neck, he stared at the front doors. They were truly intimidating, built from two pieces of solid dark wood with golden trim and decorative curves, a pair of large copper hoops instead of door handles. Leaning his head out of the passenger side window, Kevin asked with some trepidation, "You all good?"

Walt nodded, unsure of himself. "Yeah, I think so."

Kevin agreed quietly, getting back into his seat and putting it in drive, heading down the driveway. Walt watched him leave, the battered yellow taxi trundling down the long road.

Returning his attention to the doors, Walt took a breath and raised one hand to knock.

The left door, the one he'd been about to knock, flew open. Startled, Walt jumped back, then belatedly raised his hands. A man stepped out from behind the door, and Walt automatically appraised him, trying to figure out what his motives might be, habits, tendencies, nothing he could really cement until he spent more time with him.

The man was old. Really old, based on his pure white hair and magnificent curly beard. Eyes like chips of blue ice judged Walt noncommittally, set in a square face like chiseled granite. Dressed in a three-piece blue and gray suit, the man leaned on his walking stick.

Walt's eyes were drawn to the walking stick. The sheer amount of detail on it was insane. The top was decorated in the style of a falcon's head, its predatorial eyes glaring outward with stunning realism. Carefully carved feathers spiraled around the heft of it, ending in four inward-facing claws at the base. It was by far the coolest cane Walt had ever seen in person.

"Are you going to stand there, or are you coming in?"

Walt blinked as he was yanked out of his reverie, looking into the man's face. "Wh-what?"

He jerked a thumb at the house behind him, responding crankily, "Are you coming in or not? And where's your baggage?" A thought occurred to him, and he frowned deeply. "You are Walt, are you not?"

His voice was British. Old British, like some of the people Walt had seen in some really old films. His question caught up to Walt's thought process and he snapped back to reality. "What? Oh, yeah, that's me. Are you gonna be my legal guardian?"

The man snorted, placing both hands on the head of the walking stick. "What a stiff method of referring to a parent. My name is Walter Hughes. You may address me as either Walter or Mr. Hughes, whichever you are most comfortable using. None of this 'legal guardian' nonsense, understand?"

Walt swallowed, his mouth dry. "Uh, yeah, okay." This man - Walter - was scary. Not in a psycho-killer scary, more of a principal-of-the-school scary, except multiplied a few times. It was a bit unnerving, to say the least.

Moving inside, Walter called back, "Do you have any luggage, or is it all to yourself? If nothing else you had to have brought a toothbrush, correct?"

Following him, Walt took a moment to appreciate the front room. Two wide doorways were left open to each side, one room featuring a dark grand piano with couches around it and the other with a long dining table, a shade of nearly perfect black. The chandelier above their heads was decorated with decadent amounts of precisely cut crystal, electric lights buzzing near-silently behind the transparency. A mahogany staircase led to the second floor, crawling up the right side of the wall and taking a left turn upward. Ahead, Walter strode through the narrow hallway to the staircase's left, moving past the small cupboards built into the staircase's frame.

Startled, Walt caught up to him, slowing his pace to match the older man's surprisingly steady gait. "Hey, what's going on? You just leave me out with no idea what I'm doing?"

Walter gave him the best withering stare Walt had ever seen. "I did not leave you out, Walt. I invited you in, which is more than you can presently do for me." Walt shrank back a bit as the words bit into him, reminding him of his nonexistent heritage. "As for what I am doing, I am getting an afternoon snack. And what you'll be doing is running some errands for me down in Junction."

Walt blinked. "Wh-Errands? Seriously!? I just got here!"

Walter gave him a frosty glare. "Yes, and now you can go. Here's the list." Handing Walt a small piece of paper, he headed further into the kitchen, turning a corner. Walt made a rude gesture and started to leave.

"Oh, and by the way? If you don't do the errands, I'll never tell you the password to the internet."

Swinging back around, Walt asked incredulously, "Are you freaking serious?"

He heard an amused laugh from the kitchen, and he realized that yes, Walter was a hundred percent serious.

This was going to be an interesting stay.