Chapter 12: Priorities
Adam stood at the yawning mouth of the vault entrance, the dawn light spilling in like spilled fuel. The first rays caught flecks of rust on the steel ribs overhead, glinting orange, turning cold metal into molten gold. Behind him, the cavern of steel and concrete held promise—reactor coils intact, storage bays brimming with salvage—but here, on this threshold, promise meant nothing without the basics. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow; even before the sun rose fully, heat had seeped into everything: into the concrete walls, into his shirt, into his skin.
He let his gaze drift east, beyond dunes of ochre sand, past bleached bones of structures long collapsed, until it struck a thin ribbon of glassy blue—the ocean. Seven hundred meters away. A shimmering promise of something more. But temptation without discipline was dangerous.
Inside, the reactor core in the vault could flash‐purify water in seconds, if only the containment field were fully stable. One misfire, one overcurrent, one miscalibration—and the auxiliary grid might collapse, or worse: the field might rupture, sending bursts of radiation, sparking fires among volatile stores. His gauntlet, too, had energy; enough to power UV lamps, to run emergency circuits, possibly even drive a desalination rig—but the reserves were already stretched, drained from nights spent lighting, repairing, warming. No: their first priority had to be something sustainable and safe. Something they could rely on without risking everything.
Solar heat—abundant, free, and infinitely renewable—was the answer. But solar alone was slow, inconsistent. So they would combine it, augment it, protect it. But not at the cost of fragility.
Adam turned to Nia, who watched him from under the vault's rusted canopy. Her silhouette was sharp—muscles taut, eyes dark beneath the rim of her hood, shotgun laid across her lap. Doubt etched deep in her posture, but also a fierce readiness. She weighed decisions quickly; experience had taught her that hesitation often killed.
"Water," he said, his voice low but certain. "Without it, none of this matters. We'll build a solar still on the beach—seven hundred meters east. The sun does the work; we reserve the core and gauntlet for emergencies."
Nia's nod was slow, deliberate. Her jaw set. She understood instinctively what survival here demanded: discipline, restraint, ingenuity. No wasted energy. No unnecessary risk.
Adam gathered his tools—scrap metal panels with warped edges, shards of cracked plexiglass, lengths of charred wood harvested from last night's thermal coil burn, and looser charcoal bits. He hefted them, checking weight, checking sharpness. They stepped into the morning glare. The vault's steel door groaned behind them, sealing off shadow; sealing off yesterday. Everything new would begin now.
Together, they descended the ramp into the dunes. Each step stirred clouds of dry sand. The sky was a bruised purple at first, then bleeding light. Their silhouettes stretched long against the rising sun, casting spindly shadows that trembled on ridges. Every footfall cost another heartbeat of resolve, but with distance came clarity: here on the dunes, the horizon promised something real.
When they reached the tide-scrubbed rocks and felt the salt breeze on their faces, Adam's confidence steadied. Here, at the frontier of salt and sand, he would prove that even in a world broken by greed and decay, one clever design—and the untiring sun—could carve out hope. He inhaled the brine-infused air, tasted salt on his tongue, felt grit between his toes. He liked it: small details grounding them, reminding them that every victory had texture.
He set the basin in the sand, leveling it with a layer of ash and charcoal—ash cooled to gray, charcoal black as a burnt promise. He arranged it so that the sun's rays, climbing overhead, would strike the basin at an optimal angle. Nia gathered sand for insulation, piling it thick, shaping a lip around the edges so that heat couldn't escape sideways. Her movements precise despite the burning light drawing sweat down her spine. As Adam secured the reactor coil mount beneath the basin, he paused to look back at the vault's silent silhouette, a tether between past and future—vault of safety, vault of memory, vault of loss.
"Solar still first," he said to himself, though loud enough for Nia to hear. "Everything else can wait."
By midmorning, a thin line of silver quivered on the horizon—too uniform to be another expanse of salt flats. Adam shaded his eyes with a forearm, heart pounding as he realized what it was: the ocean. He traced the glint until waves were visible, cresting, foaming, pulling back in endless rhythm.
He'd pitched their camp inside the vault's entrance: sandbags, metal crates, old utility light fixtures. But the map, a crude topographical sketch salvaged from the crates, had noted water nearly seven hundred meters to the east. It seemed impossible—this monolith of concrete and rust buried amid dunes—yet here was proof: a distant ribbon of waves crashing on a shore.
He called to Nia, voice echoing lightly. "The map wasn't lying. There's seawater out there."
Nia looked up from unpacking their limited rations. Bread, dried meat, brittle fruit skins. Her eyes were sharp under her dust-cracked hood. "Sea water? You sure?" she asked, the word heavy with both hope and caution.
He nodded. "There's a tide pool right on the vault's edge. Could be dangerous at high tide, but… fresh water's the only thing we can't scavenge reliably out here."
She swallowed. She always did when the risk was more than theoretical. "Radiation's lower by the shore, but still—unless you can desalinate it, we drink salt and die quicker than if we stayed here." She stood, brushing sand from her knees. "So how do you plan to do that?"
Adam's mind shifted, calculation weighing options. In the vault's buried storage, he'd uncovered reactor coils—too precious to leave idle. The reactor fragment he carried could generate low-grade heat without burning through the auxiliary grid. If he combined solar concentration with a small plasma boost, he could boil seawater safely inside a closed chamber, trap the steam, and condense it back into drinkable form. The heat of the day, the focused sun through the plexiglass, the reactor only when darkness or clouds threatened—that was the plan.
He stood and stretched, joints stiff from crouching over consoles in the vault for too long. Muscle memory ached; bones creaked. "Let's stake out a clearing," he said, stepping toward the west-facing exit. "We need open sky, sunlight without too many obstructions."
Nia followed, shotgun slung high across her back, wary as ever. Her boots slipped occasionally in loose sand, salt on her lips as the wind picked up. But she kept company, always, leaning in when he looked to her for input, pushing back when she thought he might overreach.
Outside, the vault's massive steel door yawed open to admit the new day. The corridor beyond it, long and shadowed, ended at a sand-choked courtyard. Beyond, the granite desert gave way to rolling sand dunes, finally yielding to the restless edge of the sea.
A cool breeze fluttered loose sand across their boots—tiny abrasions of grit between toes. The smell of ozone lingered near the vault door where metal had warped from previous storms. They picked their way down the sand-filled ramp until the dunes parted, revealing a narrow strip of beach. Jagged rocks jutted into the surf; the tide was low now, but dark wet bands on the stones marked last night's high. Seaweed corpse-green and brown clung in damp crevices. Seagulls, thin and wary, cried overhead, first scavengers of the tide.
Adam knelt to scoop a handful of brine from a tide pool. The water glinted turquoise, alive in sunlight, yet heavy, cloying with salt, teeming with microscopic salt life. As the water dripped through his fingers—cold, heavy, and undrinkable—his plan crystallized. The water stung open skin, left white streaks across his knuckles. He grimaced.
He turned to Nia. "We build a solar still. But it'll need a boost when sunlight fades. I'll rig the reactor coil beneath the boiling chamber."
Nia tilted her head, studying him. Her lips curved briefly with skepticism. "You're sure it'll work? The reactor coil… it's touchy. Last time you fused a junction your wiring melted."
Adam met her gaze with slow confidence. "I know what I'm doing. We test carefully. We'll isolate the coil. I'll monitor the temperature. If it runs hot, we shut it off."
She nodded, unease flickering behind her eyes. She trusted him but the risk was real. "All right. Do it right." Her voice soft but firm.
They plunged into the work. Adam surveyed the land: driftwood buried in dunes, fragments of metal glinting in the sand, boards half-buried cast off from old shelters. He found the half-buried fuel drum they'd spied near the vault entrance—its seams still intact, though shell-rust had eaten at one side. He pried the lid free, gasping slightly as rust flakes fell; he washed out residual oil with brine—no good for fuel now, but the metal, the shape, the capacity mattered. The interior smelled of tar, of burned diesel, bitter.
Nia returned with lengths of plexiglass—salvaged from the vault's greenhouse bay, broken but mostly clear. She carried stained panels clipped together with lengths of scavenged wire. Their edges were jagged, small cracks spiderwebbing through the surfaces, but light still passed, magnified and diffused in places, enough.
Adam arranged the drum's lower half as a basin, sinking it slightly into the sand. He lined the bottom with a thick layer of sand and ash from their campfire; gray ash, temperature cold now, mixed with fine sand so heat wouldn't escape into the earth. Then he layered crushed charcoal—carried from the night's thermal coil burn—interspersed with bits of broken wood charcoal, for better heat retention. He explained as he worked: "Good insulation keeps heat focused on the water. If we lose heat into the ground, we lose efficiency; the drip slows, the losses climb."
Nia set up a scaffold of rebar stakes around the basin. She hammered them into the sand with rock fragments until they stood firm. "This'll hold the cover at the right angle?" she asked, voice cracking a little from the dry air.
Adam nodded. He held a scrap sheet-metal piece against the plexiglass, measuring with his eye the sun's angle. "Slope like this … see? Condensation runs down toward the front. Then I'll bend a strip of roofing tin into a gutter. Runs into catch basin." He nodded, satisfied. "Low edge here. High edge back, catching daylight."
Next, he uncoiled the vault's reactor coil fragment. It gleamed coppery, surprisingly pristine against the dull sand. Even under dust, its surface caught light and held it, as though remembering brilliance. With thick gloves to protect himself, he wrapped the coil snugly under the drum's hull, wiring it to a crude junction box he'd made earlier—salvaged interface cable from his gauntlet, insulated in rubber sheaths. Sparks threatened as he twisted; he checked every joint, every solder. Connections tight, leakage minimal.
"I'll pulse it when the sun's down," he explained. "Keeps the basin at eighty-plus degrees. Not boiling full time, but enough to keep evaporation going. Then condensation will still happen under plexiglass at cooler hours." He paused, a bead of sweat going down his spine. "Better for pathogens, too—heat kills bacteria, UV kills others."
Nia stood watch while he soldered with a scavenged torch—flame blue around the edges, hot enough to singe flesh. She shaded her eyes, heart thudding. Finally, Adam tested the circuit: the coil glowed faint blue, sand beneath it hissed, small pockets of air expanding. A thin steam line curled upward; the still exhaled life.
They filled the basin with seawater drawn from a battered can, water sloshing, spilling, salty droplets clinging to Adam's fingers. The sunlight intensified rapidly, climbing overhead until the basin's surface rippled with heat. Soon, water vapor fogged the plexiglass cover; condensation formed—tiny beads, then rivulets, then trickles into the gutter, dripping into a waiting cup.
Nia watched breathless, lips parted, eyes bright. "It's working," she breathed.
Adam smiled, feeling something inside him loosen—the tight coil of fear, perhaps. He checked his handheld UV meter—they'd scrubbed pathogens with heat and solar UV through the glazing. UV readings within safe tolerances; heat at threshold.
He lifted a cup and tasted: clear, cool, and impossibly sweet after days of brackish slop. The taste of hope.
As dusk approached, the sky dimmed: molten orange sinking behind dunes, shadows lengthening. The still slowed; sunlight failing, the condensation retreating. Adam stood and flipped a switch on the junction box. The coil hummed to life; steam plumes rose meekly at first, then more steadily. Under the crackling coil's low pulse—five seconds on, thirty off—the still eked out another liter of water. It wasn't perfect, but workable.
They filled a pair of canteens, each gulp of water heavy with relief. Nia's hand trembled slightly as she held hers; Adam felt his own pulse slow, the ache in his throat receding.
Later, under a crescent moon hanging low in a sky still warm from the sunset, Adam packed away the reactor controls, wires coiled, gaps sealed. Nia sat on a smooth boulder, sipping water. The still's cooling metal hissed softly in the night air; its plexiglass cover glowed faintly with residual heat. Her features softened by that glow—cheeks hollowed by hunger but lit from within by something else: pride, compassion, maybe even hope.
"You might just be a miracle worker," she said quietly, voice almost stolen by the wind.
He sat beside her, exhaustion pooling in his bones. Every muscle protested, every joint stiff, but his spirit felt lighter. "We're not safe yet," he said, watching his reflection in a drop of distilled water glinting by moonlight. "But water is the start." He let the words linger.
She handed him the half-empty canteen. "You've earned a little faith." Her thumb rubbed the metal rim. The sound was soft, steady: water sloshing, night humming in the distance.
Adam looked out to the churning sea. The waves hissed secrets under the moonlight. He thought of his mother's words—tend to the greatest engine: the mind. And here, at the edge of the world, that engine had sparked a new beginning. Instincts, memory, innovation, grit. The mind had made this still.
They rose together, carrying canteens and hope, their shadows long behind them, pushing back the darkness. Behind them, the still whispered in the desert night—a triumph of ingenuity born from despair.
At seven hundred meters from steel and stone, the ocean had yielded its lifeblood. For Adam and Nia, the wasteland's darkest threat was now an ally—liquid proof that even here, with scraps and grit, they could forge a future. Not comfortable, not secure, but theirs.
As the vault's entrance sealed behind them against the rising tide of sand, two companions walked forward under an uncertain sky—carrying clean water and the promise of what they could build, one brilliant invention at a time.