A young man rushes through the steaming streets, masked in the shadows of the hive. Gangers and their like surround flaming barrels of trash for warmth, sitting on stoops of debris. How he longs to be near those fires. To hold that warmth close to his shivering person.
He knows he cannot. He and his ilk have had a poor relationship with that which burns.
He darts left into an alleyway, and before the Escher’s have the chance to draw their blades, he has stopped. Directly in front of the leader, holding out his hand. In his hand he holds a small bag. He had been dodging through ganger borders enough times to know what makes these gangers tick. To know what it was they wanted. He even knew some of them personally, their dreams, desires, their strengths.
The gangers slip their knives back into their belts. They tear at the package for its contents, and so he is gone. Dashing across makeshift bridges and ladders. Leaping over barricades, dodging every anything that even vaguely resembled an Arbite, or an Inquisitor.
His destination, no one could have guessed. More of a shed than a building, looking like it could hold no more than five men. The shed was a patchwork of metal scraps, found laying about after ganger hits, Arbite busts, and Inquisitorial investigations. The door, also a quilt of various metals, had a symbol etched with a knife into the frame. An ancient symbol of his people, carried on in secret.
He brushed his fingers against the engraving before entering the shed.
The inside was squalid. A solitary cot in the corner, a poorly made chair, a poorly made table, and a safe riveted to the ground. Sitting at the poorly made table was an old man, pouring over a book. His black coat covered in mud, and tattered like the parchment of his scriptures. He looked up at the young man.
“Ah, Jacob.” The old man smiled, filling the room with warmth and love. “You’ve made it just in time. As always.” Slowly he closed his book and began to open the safe.
Jacob closed the windows and covered them with tarps. No light draws no eyes at night, just like his mother had taught him.
“Of course Rebbe.” Jacob checked every corner to make sure nothing untoward had been placed in either of their absences. “You taught me well in punctuality.”
“Your mother was the one who drilled it into though,” The lock clicked into place, echoing in the shed. “Like a commissar with a soldier, she would drill in everything I taught you.”
“If she hadn’t, neither of us would be talking right now.” Jacob and the Rabbi laughed.
Out from the safe the Rabbi produced two things. An ancient book, and a weathered nine branched candlestick. Jacob produced matches and candles from his bag.
Together, for the nineteenth time in his life, Jacob celebrated the first night of Chanukkah with the Rabbi.
And in the grim darkness of the forty-first millennium, Jacob can only smile. For the gift of another year with his friend is the greatest gift he could receive.
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