hbo © the last of us
prelude

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
LATE JULY ✷ 2023

━━ THE BEAR VALLEY Institute seemed more dilapidated than it had ten months before, at the start of the school year. The green on the gate was slowly peeling off at the corners, revealing a series of graffitied words — most of them cursing FEDRA and calling for a Firefly revolution — that had been poorly hidden with the paint.

Lena Spence pulled the black Toyota Hilux, the only car with a working battery she'd found for a good price on the black market back home, into an empty parking spot and inspected her face on the small mirror of the sun visor.

The purple splotches of color that ran from her left jaw to her temple had been masked under a layer of homemade cocoa powder foundation, but they were still fresh and soft to the touch. They were the product of a fight she'd gotten into with her next-block neighbor in Hartford, over a pair of waterproof boots she'd seen at the market three days before. The old fucker swore he had seen them first, but Lena was quicker to put her hand on them than him — and what ensued was a series of kicks and punches and slaps until the booth boys had come to separate the two.

If she were still back home, she would've displayed her bruises with pride, (and would probably say "You should see the other guy!" if asked by any of her workmates) but she needed to keep herself presentable on Cess' last day of school.

Lena unbuckled her weapons belt, hiding it in the stuffing of the backseats, then walked out of the car with her empty hands visible to the scopes of the military officers stationed at the watchtowers.

She told them her name — Mary Irving, the fake names she'd taken for her and Cess' privacy — and stated she was only there to pick up her child for summer vacation.

The soldiers looked at each other and one of them gripped his walkie-talkie, turning his back on Lena so he could keep the words shared with his superiors a secret from her. After a few seconds, he came back to the railing that overlooked the outskirts of the Institute and nodded to his partner.

━━━━━━━━━━

Lena felt stares burning on her back as she entered the Bear Valley Institute, the eyes of every child whose face was glued on their classroom window following every move of — what the woman assumed — was a strange sight for them.

The hallways of the school were dark and unwelcoming, smelling of dirty fabric and burnt paper. Every time Lena came back to her daughter's institute, she regretted the decision of placing Cess in a military boarding school more and more. After all, the only people the woman hated twice as much as she despised Marlene and her Fireflies were FEDRA. It seemed like whenever one of their soldiers was killed, another two sprouted in place.

But the reality of the outside world was much harsher than being forced to wake up at six sharp and running two miles every morning. People were cruel, and Cess was still a baby. As much as Lena wanted to keep her daughter close, Hartford QZ wasn't the place for a child to grow up in.

It didn't take her long to reach the principal's office. A small step of formality before going to look for Chelsea in her bedroom. In less than an hour, the two would be driving down Interstate 90, eating stale snacks, laughing over old fashion magazines, and readying themselves for the summer vacation.

Lena raised her hands and knocked on the wooden door, right below the metallic sign that read "Mr. Bale's Office — Please Keep Quiet." She stood there for a few seconds until she heard the raspy voice of the principal, instructing her to enter and close the door behind her.

The man sitting behind the desk was big and heavy, with bushy eyebrows and a neatly arranged hairstyle. He was a low-ranking army official, tasked with running a school full of orphans and delinquents instead of committing war crimes against the Fireflies with his peers. From what Lena had heard from her contacts in the school, his fall in position was due to a supply run in which he had pissed off the wrong army general.

Or maybe, Lena hoped, he was there because he was just good at dealing with children.

"Mrs. Irving." Richard Bale greeted her with a small nod, bending over the table and offering her his hand. She took it and allowed his strong grip to envelop her calloused palm. Even though he had a smile on his face, the principal kept a stern glint in his eye. Another reminder; he could and would crush Lena if she dared cross him.

"Mr. Bale," she replied in the same tone, keeping her head straight. The white-and-pink checkered fabric that covered the seat she'd been offered was almost rotting underneath her touch, and the soft prickle of loose springs was enough to keep her on edge, reminding her that she wasn't intent on staying longer than she needed to. "I am here for Chelsea. I know I am late by two days, but things got . . . complicated back home."

Mr. Bale didn't need to be bored with a story of how the Fireflies from Connecticut had tried to set a bomb in the military building inside the Hartford QZ, and how everyone was kept under strict surveillance for 48 hours. In times like those, any person who wasn't military was considered an enemy of the military.

She expected the man to make a snarky remark about her tardiness or dismiss her altogether, but when she raised her gaze and locked eyes with the principal, she was met with a compassionate expression.

"Ma'am, your daughter— she—" Mr. Bale began.

Lena was quick to notice the insecurity in his voice, and it was enough to make the weight on her chest sink deeper into her heart. She gripped the arms of the seat and leaned her body forward, twitching with anxiety.

"What did she do this time? Look, I know she can be a difficult kid sometimes, but I promise she's a good girl. Better than any other kid you'll find out there."

"Well, your daughter can be a handful, but she is, as you said, a brilliant student; a brilliant mind for someone so young." the man crossed his hairy knuckles and sighed before speaking his next words. "Ma'am, I'm sorry to inform you. Your daughter's missing."

The air left Lena's body as if someone had just punched her straight in the gut.

"What—" she laughed, unable to believe what she was hearing. She expected the principal to pull a clown nose from one of his pockets and tell her it was a belated birthday prank, but all Lena saw from the man was the regret stamped on his face.

Her daughter. Cess. Missing.

Lena's worst fear, come alive.

"The night you were supposed to pick her up, she just packed a few things into her school bag and . . . left. We know, because we found her bedroom window open, and footprints matching her shoesize all over the roof. She seems to have left through the West side of the building and dropped into the river." Mr. Bale did his best to explain everything, but every word he said only added to the growing pit in Lena's heart.

"Jesus Christ. Is this what I pay you people for? To smoke stale Marlboro, sitting on your asses all day while my kid is out there running away?"

The confusion and sadness in Lena were slowly being replaced by a raged that wished nothing more than to burn everything around her.

"Ma'am, I understand you're upset. And I promise you that FEDRA and the Institute are doing their uttermost best to trace your daughter."

"She is a fucking 15-year-old girl! How hard can it be to find her?!" Lena buried her elbows on the mahogany table and sunk her face into her hands, telling herself over and over that she could not afford to lose composure in front of a total stranger.

"Hard enough, if she's being kept away by the right people." the man's response came in a half-amused puff; quiet, but not quiet enough for Lena not to make out his words.

"Are you suggesting something, Mr. Bale?" the woman instantly raised her head from her hands and shot the man a daggering glare.

He looked surprised that she had heard him, but there was no trace of remorse on his face. "I am not suggesting anything, Mrs. Irving. But this—" he said, opening one of his desk drawers and fishing an iron pendant out of the mount of trinkets lost to time. "All that intelligence for a girl her age shouldn't be wasted. We found this hidden in her mattress."

He dropped the necklace into Lena's open palm and gave her a few seconds to inspect it.

She felt the need to throw up for the second time that day when she realized who the Firefly pendant belonged to.

PHILIP SMITH — 081537

"Two months ago, a group of Fireflies broke into our archive office and went through most of our students' records and their report cards." the principal explained. He mustn't have been able to discern the disgust on Lena's face upon reading the name and the case number carved onto the thin iron circle; and if he did, he didn't stop to ask the woman if she was alright.

"Ma'am, I'm trying to help you. It is my theory that your daughter might've been led astray by one of them," the venomous tone that the man used to talk about the Fireflies was always expected, but still somewhat surprising. "Possibly this . . . Philip Smith, and convinced her to join those terrorists. The girl has always had a talent for science. And those Fireflies, they must be running out of doctors, so they're kidnapping children for their own gain. Do you have any idea who this man might be?"

Lena shook her head. "No. I have never heard that name in my life." It was a lie, of course. It came easier to her than breathing, but the blood in her veins boiled at the mention of Chelsea's father.

He was to stay away from her, at least until she was old enough to decide what she wanted to do. Die a soldier's death with FEDRA, feed herself on Marlene's delusional lies, or go back to Hartford and become a drug smuggler alongside her mother. All of them were more dangerous than the other, but it would still be her choice — and Philip had just broken that pact.

Lena decided she had had enough of that conversation. She didn't wait for the principal to add anything, for she stood up and gathered her jacket and backpack in her arms.

"I— I—" she struggled for words, still shocked and scared and angry at what she'd just heard. "I think I might need a cigarette break, Mr. Bale. Five minutes, and I will be back."

━━━━━━━━━━

When Mr. Bale realized Lena had escaped and would not come back, it was too late. He called through the radio for an APB on a black pick-up truck, but all that came back was the crackling sound of static.

Though Lena, driving through the empty streets of Boston, had already made up her mind.

There was only one person who could tell her where Cess and Lip were — Marlene Ray, the Firefly queen. And she knew just where to find her.

hii everyone ♡ hope you're doing all right xx i just wanted to say that i am so excited to finally be writing this book (as i was waiting for the show to come out), and i hope you enjoy reading it too!!

word count: 1995 words

started: january fifteenth

finished: january eighteenth 

published: january eighteenth