Chapter 5: Nest

Summary: One minute, Jesse's chasing after a map in the wind, the next, he finds himself in a bird's next

“Are we sure he’s even alive? Maybe we should call Blake over…” 

Jesse shifted off of his stomach and opened his eyes. Immediately, he felt a twinge of  pain seeping into his head as he looked around. He found himself in someone’s bedroom, likely a child’s. Heavy blankets pressed onto his body while his head was engulfed in fluffy pillows. His eyes finally landed on the two figures across the room. They turned towards him, revealing themselves to be large birds wrapped in aprons and dresses.  One of them darted towards Jesse, causing him to yelp. It perched right on the edge of the bed, which he came to realize was a nest of sticks and leaves.

“I wish we’d get more of a heads up when passengers drop by here so  suddenly,” the bird tutted. “I barely managed to get the place ready after the last passenger that was here, and now two of you are here at the same time.”

“T… two of us? Where’s Lake?” Jesse tried to shift around to move his arms. The bird covered him with one of her wings, ruffling his hair. She crooned softly. 

“Your friend? They’re in the hallway. I’ll bring them over once you get changed into your new clothes,” The other bird said.

The two birds flew away and out of the room before Jesse could respond. He sighed and struggled to bring himself out of the pillows and blankets. He stumbled and landed out of the nest hard. Rolling onto his back, he lay there for a while until his head stopped spinning and his arms smarted a little less. His jacket and shoes were missing, leaving him in his white tank top, gray pants, and socks. He groaned and brought his hands to his face. Almost immediately, he jerked away at the sight of a bright green light beaming into his face and whipped his head around. The room looked as normal as it could be for a place like this, and he could not find the source of the light he’d been suddenly hit by.

He brought himself up completely and spotted a duffel bag with a pile of clothes folded neatly next to it. The dull colors filled him with a sense of dread. He decided to open the duffle bag and root around for something to help him make sense of this place. He pulled out a black tablet and turned it on. The screen switched on, revealing a white orb with a black stripe in the middle. The orb suddenly split into two, each one landing on a set of legs.

“Welcome aboard, passenger! My name is One-One!”

Jesse shut off the tablet and looked around. He blinked hard. He winced after he pinched himself a few times. It was then that he noticed his hand was glowing. A green number seemed to be etched onto the palm of his right hand. Shaking his hand didn’t get rid of the number. Neither did trying to scratch it off. Jesse opened and closed his fist repeatedly, watching the glowing number appear and disappear. The idea that he was having a strange dream ran through his mind. Legs crossed on the ground, he turned the tablet back on. The split orb remained on the screen. 

“Now, you may be asking questions like, ‘Where am I? Why am I here? Are snacks provided?’”

“Well, now that you mention it, I am a little hu–”

“For those of you talking to me like I’m there in real life, I’m not!” one orb-half in the video continued. “I’m a cold, steely pre-recorded video.”

Jesse stood up with the tablet in his hand. He opened a menu on the screen, leading him to different parts of the video. He decided to open the section titled, “Your Duffle and You” and turned the captions on. Jesse paced around the room as he watched.

Once the static disappeared, “One-One” was displayed rooting through a duffle bag that looked similar to the one that lay across from him. 

“Beside you is your train-sanctioned kit. I’m sure you’re already familiar with it since you’ve opened this tablet! Fun fact, people usually got a really long guide book to explain stuff to them. But it got too big and heavy, so people started to ditch them. What a massive waste of paper… so now everyone gets a constantly updating tablet with pre-recorded messages from your conductor, One-One! Don't worry about having to charge it! Unlike you, it’ll never die!” 

Jesse internally sighed in relief. Dream or not, he wasn’t too keen about lugging a large book around. The half-orb pulled out an even smaller orb with a small hook attached on the side.

“This is your earpiece! I will give a more in-depth explanation of the train and why you’re here. Those messages are also pre-recorded, so I can’t help you with specific contingencies. If you watched my pre-recorded videos in order instead of skipping around, you’d know you should’ve put that on already!”

He rolled his eyes and pulled the earpiece out of the bag to put on. 

“Have you put on your trainsuit already, like I said in the second video? You probably did if you hadn’t skipped it. Don’t forget about the thermal! It’s specifically engineered to match the climate of whatever train car you’re in, so you’ll never be too hot or too cold. Unless you take it off. Then you’ll probably die of frostbite or heatstroke, so just don’t take it off ever. Unless you’re showering!” 

He decided to finally change into the clothes presented before him as the video went on.

“Your boots can be used to stick to walls and certain surfaces.Your trainsuit has a force field belt used to ward off denizen attacks (or other passengers). This has to be manually activated every time it’s used, and needs to recharge every time. You don’t get another one, so be careful not to wear it out too quickly. You’re on your own when that happens.”

“Wait, what are deniz– That probably would’ve been explained… in the second video…” he deadpanned. He turned the tablet off and continued looking through the duffle bag. He found various supplies used for camping, a notebook, and a few pens. No food to be found. He stood up and walked out of the room with the bag in hand. 

He spotted Lake storming back and forth in what he assumed was the kitchen. Their face instantly softened upon spotting him and they rushed forward to embrace him. They pulled away slightly to look Jesse up and down. They pursued their lips together.

“You’re actually wearing that getup?” They asked. Jesse noticed they were still wearing the same clothes they were wearing on the school trip. “Lake… what… how long have we been here?”

“I’d be able to tell you but my phone’s dead and I can’t seem to find a place to charge it. Those bird ladies won’t tell me where I can charge it,” they said, holding up theirs and Jesse’s personal bags. “I’ve been looking all over for it. You see Tulip or Mikayla around here?”

“No… have you seen Ryan and Min-Gi?” Jesse asked. Lake shook their head. Lake tossed Jesse’s bag to him. He took out his own phone. It still had some power left in it, but the last messages he received were several hours ago, from his parents asking him to let them know when he returned to school. 

“Last time we saw those guys they were looking for the map… that we stole.”

“Maybe this is some weird prank they put together?” Jesse wondered. He barely believed the explanation himself, but after pinching his arms until he bruised for the third time since he woke up, he was running out of reason.

“I don’t really know that Min-Gi guy well, but do you honestly think Ryan could pull something like this off?” Lake asked, looking at him skeptically. Jesse tried to send off a text message  to his mom, but none of his attempts went through. He turned to Lake with a pensive expression.

“Does anything here make sense to you?” Jesse asked. “We wake up with nothing but a bag and new clothes in some sort of nest bed with some weird bird lady moms? And I’ve got a number on my hand! I… I don’t know what this means. Do you?”

Lake holds up their own hand, revealing a number on their palm as well.

“Those birds told us the numbers are supposed to help us on our journey or something. When I asked them what they meant, one of them just hit me on the head with her large wings and told me to get ready. I guess… neither of us are dreaming.”

As the two talked, the two large birds flew into the kitchen and perched on chairs opposite of each other on the table. Jesse jumped and shuffled closer to Lake.

“You’re both up, finally,” the first bird chirped. “And at least one of you is wearing the train uniform.”

Lake’s scowl deepened as they eyed the birds at the table.

“We’ve made breakfast for you two.”

“Breakfast? But it’s past noon?” Jesse said. “At least… that’s the last time I remember eating before we ended up here.”

The birds looked between each other.

“Dear, you’ve been asleep since last night. We found you and your friend passed out in the snow with your stuff. If we’d been any later you two would’ve probably frozen to death.”

“And where’s our friends and our chaperones?” Lake demanded, a hand on the table. 

“And we don’t know who your friends or chaperones are,” the second bird continued, her feathers ruffling a bit. “Now sit down and eat, your food is getting cold.”

“Not until you tell us how we got here,” Lake insisted.

“I told you. We found you two and brought you in. And frankly, I don’t appreciate being treated like this.”

“We don’t appreciate being lied to and tricked–”

“Listen, we don’t know how we got here,” Jesse cut in, stepping in between Lake and one of the birds. “We were on a field trip in the woods. Our map went into this trailer so me and Lake went to go get it. Next thing we know, we’re here with numbers on our hands. We just need to find a way outta here. I promise we won’t bother you guys any more than we already have.”

“Well you could at least have breakfast first.”

Jesse gave Lake a pleading look, and they groaned.

“Fine. But you guys have to show us the exit as soon as we’re done.”

The two sat at the table and ate breakfast in awkward silence. As soon as Lake finished, they pushed their plate away and stood up. Jesse followed soon after. The two birds scooped them and their belongings up and flew to the end of the hallway, where a red door awaited them. Jesse reached out to turn the yellow handle around and opened the door. He stumbled forward and the cool air hit his face.

He froze at the sight in front of him.

“We’re on a really big train…” he finally said. He looked back at the door behind him before turning back to Lake.

“There’s another door up ahead. We’ve just gotta cross the bridge. C’mon, Jess.” Lake started off ahead. Jesse continued to try and send texts from his phone. 

“Still… nothing.”

Lake opened the door of the next train car and ran inside.  What looked to be a huge grocery store awaited them inside.

“This place is so… big.”

“I’ve got some money from that time I was babysitting, we should buy some stuff in case we get hungry later.” Jesse walked through the aisles, picking up a red basket at the front of the store.

The two of them picked up various things from the aisles until their basket was full.

“Man, I haven't had  Dupé’s tomato chips in forever,” Lake said, glancing longingly at the sole bag in an aisle in front of them. “I thought they stopped selling these!”

“Well, let’s grab it. Who knows when we’ll see something like this again.” Jesse and Lake made their way over to the aisle. He reached out for the bag as another person's hand grabbed it at the same time as he. The other person’s grip tightened.

“Hey, we saw it first!” Lake also reached out to help Jesse snatch away the bag.  Jesse looked up. The person looked a quite a bit older than he or Lake, probably an older teen or an adult. Their face was unreadable, but their resolve to take the chip bag was as strong as the two younger teens. A bright face appeared before the group with a red basket of her own.

“I got the steak for Atticus and a first aid kit for,Morgan did you find the…” the young woman trailed off upon spotting them.

 Jesse noticed they were both wearing the same clothes from the train he’d put on. In his distraction, the first person snatched the box away from them both.

“Hey!” Lake reached out, but the person moved away before they could grab it. The first person handed the box to the newcomer and she smiled giddily.

“Sorry, I just really love these things. We’ve been coming and going from here so many times in case they restocked. Y’know, maybe they’ll be back next time.”

As the woman put her hand behind her head awkwardly, Jesse noticed a glowing light shining from her palm.

“You… have a number too?” Jesse pointed out.

“Hmm? Oh this? Yeah, we don’t know how to get it off. Sometimes the numbers change, and they like, go up and then down later. Sometimes they keep going up. I wonder what would happen if we ever broke past the triple digits. Would the numbers get smaller? Or maybe it’ll break the brackets! What do you think will happen then?”

“I…don’t know…” Jesse said. “We’re trying to figure our way out of here. We were on a field trip when our map blew away and we somehow ended up here? Do you know how we can get to the exit?”

The two people shared a glance. The newcomer frowned.”

“We’ve been trying for months. Every door leads to another car. I’ve lost track of how many cars we’ve been in.”

“Wait, MONTHS?” Lake exclaimed. “How long has this train been running?”

The newcomer shrugged. “It’s been like that since we got here.”

“Hey, maybe if we jumped from the train–”

“You’d break your legs and die alone in the wasteland,” she cut Lake off. “It’s too high of a jump. Plus, you’d probably get crushed by the wheels before you even hit the ground.”

Lake and Jesse simply stared blankly. The person who’d snatched their chip bag away handed them over to the young woman, resting their head on her shoulder. Jesse glanced between the two.

“Are you two…?”

“He’s the first person I met when I came on this train. We’ve been friends ever since,” she said with a grin. “He doesn’t talk much like the others, but he’s pretty fun to be around.”

“Others?”

“Yeah. There’s a group of us traveling together. We came here to get food for the group. Is it just you two out here?” she asked.

“We–”

“How do we know you aren’t planning to trick us?” Lake cut in. Jesse sighed and gently pulled them away from the two strangers.

“We need to find Ryan and Min… wherever they are,” Jesse said. “Maybe if we stick with them, they’ll eventually figure out a way to get off this train. Then we can call for help.”

Jesse looked back at his phone. None of his messages had gone through no matter how much he tried.

“Are we really gonna trust those guys?” Lake asked, their eyebrows furrowed.

“They look older than we do, plus they’ve been on this train longer than us so they have a better feel of how things are here.”

“Hmm…”

“Besides, who knows what else we could run into on this train? It’d be nice for some to have our backs here.”

The two turned back to the strangers, who were sharing the now opened bag of tomato chips.

“We’ll come with you,” Lake sighed. “But we’re leaving as soon as something doesn’t seem right.”

The strangers nodded and beckoned for the younger teens to follow along.  Lake remained close to Jesse. He quietly slipped an arm around them as they walked towards the exit.