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[𝙴𝚙𝚒𝚜𝚘𝚍𝚎 𝟺] 𝙵𝚎𝚊𝚛

The sound of a motorized vehicle in the distance reaching my ears caught my breath in my throat.

Vehicles? That meant people!

Maybe not good people, but they were people. It meant it was possible, people could, and have been, surviving out here. There was hope. Hope that Mr. and Mrs. Travis were alive out there.

I locked eyes with Taylor as we watched the vehicle go past, seeming to have the same idea as him. The sparkle in his blue eyes was mesmerizingly beautiful. It made me happy and reminded me how lucky I was to see it.

The spark of hope. I missed it. It was always so bright in Taylor's eyes.

"We have to wake up Hayley and Boy and go check this out," I exclaimed, moving away from Taylor and down to the Jaegers hud opening. Taylor followed behind me, dropping down and racing past me once the door was open. Waking up Hayley while I took Boy.

The blond-haired girl had passed out right next to our new white-haired friend. Groggily, Hayley woke up, rubbing her eye and asking what was going on.

"People, in vehicles. If we hurry, we can get to them!" Taylor responded immediately, rushing through his words.

"Wait, people?" Hayley asked hesitantly, helping Boy up.

I fidgeted, leaning back and forth on my heels. Her response didn't sound like she agreed with going to find them.

"And you two wanna... I mean, we don't— We don't know anything about them," Hayley explained nervously.

"We don't know anything about anybody because, surprise, we hid from the world for five years!" Taylor shot back, getting progressively more antsy. I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

I inhaled before trying to mediate, "If it looks dangerous then we won't approach them. But, this could be our chance, Hayley!"

Hayley sighed before putting her hands on Boy's shoulders, she seemed to be convincing herself, "Okay, okay."

She looked down at Boy, smiling at him, "Hey there, uh, you wanna go on a little walk?"

He stared up blankly at her, and I wondered if he even understood what she was saying. Did he not speak English?

"No, no, no." Taylor shut her down instantly.

"We leave him here." He pointed down to the ground to emphasize his point.

Loa piped up, "That would be inadvisable. Babysitting is not a programmable skill set."

"Thanks, Loa, but I wasn't asking you." Taylor sassed back to the machine.

"I can stay here with him, you two can go and come back," I offered, trying to find the best, and quickest, solution.

Taylor looked down at me, it seemed like it took him a second to come up with a response. "You'd stay here?"

There were so many 'what if's' I'm sure we could both come up with, but I shrugged, "We can't just leave him here alone. Atlas' is going to run out of battery soon and when it does Loa won't be here anymore."

"(Y/n) has a point. I don't think any of us can stay here." Hayley pointed out.

I paused, remembering an old detail from a couple of years ago, "Actually, yeah. We can't stay here anyway. After they closed the first breach and people started stealing Jaegers and building their own they added an automatic locking mechanism to newer Jaegers so that people would have a harder time stealing them, didn't they?"

"So if we stay here, we'll be trapped?" Hayley asked, eyebrows raised along with her voice going up a pitch.

I averted my eyes, trying to remember, "Atlas Destroyer's an older model, but was still made after that. So it most likely has that mechanism. I don't know since I've never seen it lose power before, but probably..."