Two weeks after settling into his new home, Xander felt more satisfied than he’d expected. He had built basic but sturdy furniture. His bed frame, constructed from the front door, supported a hole-pocked mattress he found under a beam about a mile out from Base. He learned how to make tools, hunt for food, and cook just about anything over an outdoor fire. Animal skins he sewed together himself with sinew kept him warm at night, along with the fire he built in his brick-lined fire pit.
Soon after putting his first piece of furniture in his new “apartment,” he met Bixby, the other inhabitant of his building, a reclusive fifteen-year-old who reminded Xander of a scarecrow, his golden hair stiff as straw, his body angular. With an icy-blue stare and adolescent whiskers, he was hardly Mr. Per
