Alexander spent the rest of the evening with his mother, simply staying by her side. It was both for the company her presence simply provided, and for the answers to questions he had been hesitant to ask Nicholas. Questions he knew the beast would take offense too, or punish him for.

Alexander’s mother was excited to see him, and though the way she had chewed him out didn’t outwardly show it, they both knew the two of them were happy to be back together. His mother had been worried for him the moment the sun began to sink above her head. Alexander and his father were known to stay out later than most, so it wasn’t a strange occurrence when they didn’t arrive with the other hunting parties. But she had simply never been able to completely get rid of the nagging feeling whenever evening began to colour the skies around her. Every time they had made it back safely she had inwardly admonished herself for worrying, but when only her husband entered the walls that night she had feared the worse.

Visions of her son’s corpse had danced across her vision, and it had only been the intervention of a neighbour and the screaming cry of her young daughter that had kept her within the walls that night. The passion that had consumed her didn’t fade, and for a short while a flurry of activity had centered on her. She had been the first to suggest the solution that they had settled on, though the doctor she had married quickly agreed.

Both of them were damaged individuals. The cracks on their psyches had been made in the long years since the bombs had fallen. Years ago they had made a set of promises to each other. Promises that were broken and shattered the instant their son was in danger.

Promises to stay away from the Others, promises to keep their family hidden and separate from their pasts. Promises to not value one child over another, promises to look forward to the future even if one of them passed. All of these promises had been made when the two had been calm and collected. Their minds understood the reasons and agreed to stick to them until the day they died. The promises were broken the moment one of the most fundamental human instincts entered the equation. As soon as their son was in danger, all the reason, all of the logic and thought that had been put into the promises they had kept for these long years was tossed away.

They had to save him, and they had succeeded. But now as Diana looked at her son all of the weight of those promises crashed onto her shoulders. Even as she had been berating him, she had taken note of the stump where his arm had once been, and the look in his eyes. She saw the community she had brought him into, as the price of saving him. She saw her own failure to protect him, to drill the lessons she had tried to teach him that much harder into his skull.

And now that he was berating her with questions she had no time to feel self-pity or remorse for her actions. Alexander simply annoyed those emotions out of her as she bent back to finish her work. Every word he spoke, every second he spent with her made her question her decisions less and less. Slowly a smile crept across her face, hidden from her son as she made sure to double her efforts to ignore him.

Alexander was used to this behaviour from his mother. He knew she was hard at work, and that this was par for the course even if the subject of his questions was a bit more important. He wanted to know what his father was doing, why the Others had bothered to save him, what Alexander was supposed to be doing. All he got from his mother was the occasional grunt, or if he was lucky, a muttered answer without any real substance. Once or twice she shot him a glare as he disturbed her, but both of them knew the game they were playing.

They had done it since he had been able to talk. To an outsider it would look like they were hardly interacting, or even that Diana was purposefully being rude towards him. In a way she was, but it was because she knew her son. If she gave him some tidbit of information he found interesting, he would latch onto it and would never leave her alone. His father was content to feed his curiosity whenever Alexander spoke to him, but his mother had a different philosophy towards such things. Namely to shut up and watch, and that some questions didn’t deserve or need answers. Her attitude was born from a world view that had been taken on early in her life. You didn’t survive long if you asked the wrong things, or got the wrong answers. It was much better to just find things out for yourself.

Alexander wasn’t a very talkative person, and with anyone else he would have been silent. But he and his mother had been playing this game for a very long time. It was normal and comforting for both of them, a ritual that helped center them as they both dealt with their own inner turmoil. They both missed the other members of their small family but by playing out this scenario they allowed themselves to relax. If the two of them had been reunited, it was only a matter of time before the other two joined them.

Soon her work with the machine in front of her was done, the hood closed the instant she was done inspecting the device. In the time that it had taken Diana to finish the rest of the garage had cleared out, her fellow workers filtering out when whatever task they had been assigned was done. Though some still struggled and the sounds of tools being used never quite faded from the air. The garage was ever busy, vehicle after vehicle brought in. Some damaged beyond repair, other scuffed and shined almost to the state they had been made in.

“Time to go home,” she grumbled gesturing towards the opened panel doors, and towards the dusty street where humans continued to scurry about.

Alexander had been observing the people around him as he and his mother had talked, and he had noticed a few things. Just as his mother had wanted, when she refused to give him answers he had fed his curiosity another way.

Alexander had learned a handful of things, and when he cross-referenced his observations to the rules Nicholas had given him earlier, the community he was now a part of became much clearer to him. Rules that he had ignored up until that point had become useful. Phrases and words were given context as he viewed what they were referencing.

Thralls were the people with the dead look in their eyes. They were by far the most numerous of those that walked about, and they did so with robotic efficiency he would struggle to match. Nicholas had told Alexander to not bother them, to allow them to do their work without interference, but Alexander wasn’t sure he’d be able to annoy them anyways. They seemed to ignore all others around them, going about whatever tasks they had been assigned without complaint or even a comment.

They were also incredibly stupid. Alexander had watched his mother interacting with a few as she had worked, asking for parts of tools, and the ordeal looked exhausting. Even common, easily recognized objects had to be directly pointed out. And as far as Alexander saw they couldn’t be taught any better. His mother had to continually point to the same part over and over, in order for them to bring it to her.

There had also been mention of Battle-Thralls but Alexander had yet to see them, or if he had he hadn’t taken notice of them. He couldn’t pick them out of a crowd, but Nicholas had explicitly told the boy to not interact with them.

The final group of people he had been told about, and what he assumed his own role to be, was freeman. These were the frightened eyes that had peered at him as he had walked the streets. These were the other mechanics that worked alongside his mother, the foremen who ran the construction sites, and the children who had watched him from above. These people had been spared whatever treatment would turn them into thralls, and Alexander could see only one reason why.

That they were useful in other ways, ways that required them to have some of their intelligence intact. Realizing this the anger flared in Alexander’s eyes once again, though this time his mother caught it. Reaching up she gripped her son’s shoulder harshly, digging her nails into the fabric and yanking him from the spiral he was descending into.

She gave him a look, her eyes digging into his as they left the garage behind them. She seemed to guess what he was thinking, and the thin line of her lips pressed tighter together as she shot him a glare.

Barely above a whisper her harsh voice broke the silence between them as they moved, catching the way he looked at every thrall that passed them by. Now that he truly understood what they were, and their status below that of even slaves, his disgust was written on his young face. They had bothered him even before he had realized their true status and nature, but now something about them seemed to churn his very soul.

“Don’t look at them like that,” his mother hissed almost immediately, redoubling her efforts to squeeze his shoulder, “Don’t be stupid.”

Alexander glanced at his mother, but kept his mouth shut. He didn’t understand why his mother cared. He was sure that she would agree with his assessment of the thralls. In fact he had caught glimpses of a look close to his, and the anger trapped within. They were abominations, perversions of what it meant to be human. Mindless husks that went through life at the behest of their masters. The more that Alexander thought about it the more he grew to detest their mere existence.

Diana knew what was going through her sons mind, for it had gone through hers as well. But where her son had problems hiding and quelling the flame that burned within him, she had no such issues. She knew why the thralls existed, what purpose they served the community they had now joined.

She also knew it was them or her. There was a reason behind all the fearful glances that had been sent her son’s way. Every human that lived under the thumb of her families new masters were in danger of becoming a thrall. It was in the very nature of those who they served to turn those who were no longer useful to them in one way, into something useful in another. Where one tool loses and edge, another could be gained. When a human grew too old, or was replaced by another, another source of nourishment could be created.

It was a vicious cycle, and one that her family had been put into. Alexander didn’t know it, but the very hate he had for the thralls around him could soon be levied against him. Pity was something that had not been instilled in the boy, and his mother now saw the mistake she had made.

Life in the wastes was about making hard choices. Pity often got in the way of that. You had to be selfish, and had to make sure your own survival was paramount. Pitying another was something that had gotten good people killed in the first days of the fall.

The more she looked at her son, the more she realized where the true root of what he was feeling came from. He didn’t recognize the emotion he was feeling. He didn’t recognize the pity he was now encountering. Diana and her husband had succeeded in making their child suited for life in the wastes, but now that they had joined something larger than themselves he was out of his element. The hate he was feeling, the anger that ripped at him, was directed to those above the thralls. As it should be, but he couldn’t distinguish between the evil before him, and those that had committed it. He simply wanted to rid the world of its taint. Much like how he saw the mutants as one looming behemoth that must be destroyed, he saw the thralls and the Others in the same light.

Diana just hoped it wasn’t too late to fix that. But as her son began to glower in the silence she had imposed over them, she began to fear for his place in society. She had saved him from the beasts he had known, and thrown him into a pit with creatures he had no experience with.