... a couple of days later, and they've been treating the old subway system like the Deep Roads: camping in whatever recesses seem driest and least treacherous. The tunnels stretch for miles. No trains have run for ages, and there's been no maintenance to speak of. They might as well be in the Deep Roads.
They have a smallish supply of necessities, drawn from a cache Anders had made in a storage locker at the one subway station he first found — the only one he's ever visited before this informal two-person expedition. Apostate logic, stashing things in odd places you might need to find later, never quite trusting the place you've been calling home. It's nice to have a change of socks and smallclothes. Nice, too, to have these handy battery-powered torches, so Anders doesn't need to tap his mana continually for a spell wisp to light the way. Their water is bottled, supplemented by drinks they buy when they happen to find a station egress that isn't blocked and permits them to surface briefly. For food, they've got dried fruit and crackers and such, all of which (by sheer luck, with some help from Anders' hoarding tendencies) happened to be bought either outside the Initiative Hold or else well before the food supply's contamination had begun.
It's an odd little excursion, this, undertaken not quite on the spur of the moment, but certainly unplanned for this duration or this particular time. It should have lasted only a few hours. In those few hours, though, Anders started noticing some things that troubled him. Things Nathaniel would say, or the way he'd stare into empty air as if watching some very real tableau visible only to himself. When Anders asks questions about these wholly atypical behaviors, Nathaniel won't give him a straight answer. (Later he'll learn why, and he'll have to admit Nathaniel's misgivings aren't unfounded. Anders does not react well to anything that smacks of blood magic.)
Anders leaps to exactly the wrong conclusion: that the microchip glued to Nathaniel's spine is making him ill. But from this conclusion, he reasons out a course of treatment that turns out the best possible: keep Nathaniel underground, away from the vibrations that travel through the air and bounce off the microchip or whatever. (People have tried to explain the microchips and the wireless network and other such technology to Anders. It's safe to say that Anders is Unclear on the Concept.) Being underground means being away from home, which means not drinking or bathing in the water (though they don't yet know the water at home is contaminated) and not eating things in the Initiative Hold (though they don't yet know the food there is contaminated).
Thus the treatment works despite Anders' utter misapprehension of the disorder he's trying to treat. Once the last of the chemical has passed from Nathaniel's body, he stops acting so jumpy. He also stops praising the Initiative so much, which is good because they've had a couple of minor squabbles on the subject their first day underground.
[fast-forwarding to ...]
They have a smallish supply of necessities, drawn from a cache Anders had made in a storage locker at the one subway station he first found — the only one he's ever visited before this informal two-person expedition. Apostate logic, stashing things in odd places you might need to find later, never quite trusting the place you've been calling home. It's nice to have a change of socks and smallclothes. Nice, too, to have these handy battery-powered torches, so Anders doesn't need to tap his mana continually for a spell wisp to light the way. Their water is bottled, supplemented by drinks they buy when they happen to find a station egress that isn't blocked and permits them to surface briefly. For food, they've got dried fruit and crackers and such, all of which (by sheer luck, with some help from Anders' hoarding tendencies) happened to be bought either outside the Initiative Hold or else well before the food supply's contamination had begun.
It's an odd little excursion, this, undertaken not quite on the spur of the moment, but certainly unplanned for this duration or this particular time. It should have lasted only a few hours. In those few hours, though, Anders started noticing some things that troubled him. Things Nathaniel would say, or the way he'd stare into empty air as if watching some very real tableau visible only to himself. When Anders asks questions about these wholly atypical behaviors, Nathaniel won't give him a straight answer. (Later he'll learn why, and he'll have to admit Nathaniel's misgivings aren't unfounded. Anders does not react well to anything that smacks of blood magic.)
Anders leaps to exactly the wrong conclusion: that the microchip glued to Nathaniel's spine is making him ill. But from this conclusion, he reasons out a course of treatment that turns out the best possible: keep Nathaniel underground, away from the vibrations that travel through the air and bounce off the microchip or whatever. (People have tried to explain the microchips and the wireless network and other such technology to Anders. It's safe to say that Anders is Unclear on the Concept.) Being underground means being away from home, which means not drinking or bathing in the water (though they don't yet know the water at home is contaminated) and not eating things in the Initiative Hold (though they don't yet know the food there is contaminated).
Thus the treatment works despite Anders' utter misapprehension of the disorder he's trying to treat. Once the last of the chemical has passed from Nathaniel's body, he stops acting so jumpy. He also stops praising the Initiative so much, which is good because they've had a couple of minor squabbles on the subject their first day underground.