The field tent had done what field tents were built to do—stabilize, assess, keep people alive long enough to move them somewhere better. When the medical team confirmed all twelve survivors were stable enough for transport, they packed the equipment and called for vehicles. Nobody argued about leaving. The Wildlands had earned its name and none of them needed a second invitation to put it behind them.
The drive to Northern Bastion took several hours. Zeph spent most of it awake, watching the city appear on the horizon as the vehicle cleared the Wildlands' tree line.
It started as a smudge of light and grew into buildings and streets and he watched with the specific satisfaction of someone who had not been certain they were going to see it again and was now seeing it and was not taking that lightly.
The Northern Bastion Medical Facility was everything the field tent wasn't—permanent, clean, equipped with the confidence of a building that had been doing this for a long time.
