The images of the sandstorm hitting just about right after Gary had returned to the settlement appeared before Marcus mental eye and how he just barely managed to survive by hiding inside the vent. If not for the delay with the raider, he would have been out in the open field at that time, with no cover to hide behind.

“A-are you saying that not only the weather machines actually exist, but the settlement has it?!” Marcus exclaimed, far louder than he had originally intended, however Ma doesn’t even twitch.
“That’s the way it looks like, doesn’t it?” she instead replies in a matter of fact voice.
“B-but why didn’t Ede tell me about that?”
“Because that old bucket of bolts doesn’t know. Besides, would you even have believed him if he had told you?”

Marcus already wanted to say ‘Of course’, but stopped himself. Would he have really? Because believing this would mean believing that his own father had tried to kill him. But that made no sense. For one, his father put himself in danger to come find him when he had run away the first time. And Gary also stepped out to protect him from the raiders. Why would they do any of that if they had wanted him dead?

“I can see the cogs in your little head turning, boy. What’s on your mind?”
“I...don’t think my father knows about the weather machine. I don’t think anyone does.”
Ma pulls out the flask again and takes a sip, wiping off her mouth with the sleeve of her ragged cloak and then says, “Keep going, boy.”
“But my father is the chief of the settlement. If he doesn’t know...then who…?”
“It wasn’t your grandpa I heard talking back then either. I don’t know their name either. I just knew that they were from maintenance from the yellow suits those guys were wearing.”
“Main—,” Marcus muttered, remembering his own questioning. Rufus. The man who tried to usurp his father. If the council knew about the weather machine, wouldn’t they use it to improve the crops? Yet there are almost regular weather hazards like sandstorms, which make ‘leaving the settlement’ a dangerous affair, reserved for only the brave.

As Marcus pondered all that, Ma kept watching her boys pulling out one after another. After a whole while, one of them waved over to Ma, indicating that they were done with the extraction.
She got up and shouted, “Well, get ye brothers back home already! And where’s that no-good daughter of mine?!”
Marcus startled from his thoughts and realized that the raiders were about to leave.
“One moment please, Miss...Baker?”
Ma turned around and said, “I’ma not ‘Miss’ Anything, ye twat! I’m Ma! Ye coming or ye staying?”
“Will...it really be alright if I came with you?” Marcus asked, unsure how to feel right now.
“Told ya once, tell ya twice, Imma not called ‘Ma’ cause I’m leaving kids out ta die! But ya come with us, ye gotta be one of us. Ye good with that?!”

A raider’s lifestyle. Hiding in the ruins of a lost city, scavenging and killing for the bare necessities to live. But what else was there? The settlement. His banishment was only temporary, so he could still go back there. But knowing that they had actively tried to kill him, that they were hiding such a terrifying secret didn’t make it easier. But then again, if he went with Ma now, they would never allow him back in. And if the raiders, if Ma ever learned that he lied about ‘having nowhere to go’, what would they do to him? And would the others even accept him after what happened?

Marcus sighed and said, “No, I think I’d rather stay with ‘him’ for a while longer.”
“Eh, suit yerself then. But don’t you dare come crying if he becomes fed up with ye and turns ye into a living doll, ya hear?!”
“As if I even could!”
Ma raised her hand in farewell and kept berating her boys as they disappeared towards the horizon. Marcus could not help but shake his head and smile at this unlikely ‘family’ he had never known about. It was a good feeling to know that he was not entirely alone out here. Nevertheless, his wish to ever see them again was not very strong. After all, he had seen what they are capable of. And who’s to say they won’t be as friendly the next time they meet?

After climbing back into the bunker, Marcus quickly realized that the boys had made quite a mess of the place during their extraction, but also left quite a few tools and supplies behind in their hurry. Most notably they had left the stash of food and water the first group had brought with them. It was remarkably little considering how many people had been in the first group, but it would certainly tide him over for at least a week. He sat down and quenched his immediate hunger and thirst before his new ‘friends’ remembered the resources they had left down here and came back to fetch them.

He then picked up one of the flashlights and walked over to the main chamber and lingered on the threshold for what felt like an eternity. The lights were still off and the room felt eerily empty. The whole compound now felt like a grave now more than ever before.
Marcus sighed, turned off the flashlight and walked into the darkness, shouting, “I have returned, Ede! Please talk to me.”

At first nothing happened and after multiple, unnerving minutes of waiting, the lights came back on, painting the room into the colors of a waking alien God. Moments later, Marcus found himself back in the library, where Ede was standing. He had a worried look on his face.
“I did not think you would return, to be honest,” he stated.
Marcus shrugged, took a seat and replied, “I have nowhere else to go, really. Besides, I have interesting news for you.”
“Interesting news you say?” Ede replies and takes a seat himself.
“Yes. You see, the raiders came down here and pulled the drones out.”
“Yes, I have noticed. That is hardly ‘interesting news’ though. That’s what happens when raiders stumbled down here. So...I take it you met Chris?”
“Chris? I...don’t think so?”
Ede chuckled and replied, “Crystal. Used to insist on calling her ‘Chris’ though and goes by the name of ‘Ma’ these days.”
“Oh! Oh, yes. She...told me a few things. Say, why didn’t you tell me about her? You said you didn’t have any visitors since the before times!”
“No, I said that it has been ‘far too long’ since I’ve had any guests. How is the old gal? She must be ancient by now.”
“She’s doing fine, I guess. Running a somewhat tight regiment with her boys.”
“You’ve got to be strict if you want to make it out there.”
“Yeah, I guess. Though she’s been...strangely friendly to me.”
“Well, she isn’t called ‘Ma’ because she goes around killing kids.”
“Funny, that’s what she’s been saying too!”
“I can imagine. Because that’s the task I’ve given her.”
“...wait, what?! Could you run that by me again?!”

Ede sighed and explained, “Chris was a bright young lady when I met her some 50 years ago. But she was also a troublemaker. Got separated from her scavenger group by a sudden storm, which left her wandering for a good while without any sense of direction or way to get back. When the Ma of the time found her, she was more dead than alive. Her Ma told her about me and how it was her sacred duty to watch over the lost children of this world.”
“You...have been doing this for a whole while, haven’t you?”
“Since the end of the before times. The first ‘Ma’ was called Maria, a stray child, who had lost her parents in the war and who believed that the mystic powers of Stonehenge would give her closure. In reality she was just looking for a place to die, but that’s besides the point. Ever since then, every Ma would appoint a successor and bring her before me, so I would give her my ‘blessing’.”
“But...but why have them live as raiders then? Why not as farmers?”
“I give them a purpose and the means to survive. What they do with that, I do not decide. They started out as ‘the lost children’, much like in the story of Peter Pan, but as things continued to worsen, they slowly became raiders, who would do anything to survive. Back then, I got a lot of visitors, children who wanted to know about the past or ‘how to do something’. Before I knew it, I had become the ‘father’ of the lost children. However after about a century or something, they stopped coming. I do not know what happened, but ever since then, my existence has been kept a secret from the children. Only Ma and her successor kept coming. It’s kinda become a customary, if not even religious practice. As such, you are the first male guest I’ve been having in a long time.”
“So...I guess ‘Sis’ will become the next ‘Ma’ then?”
“I don’t know. I think she was aiming for that, but after the recent disaster, I think Chris will rather choose someone else instead. As I said, I’m not exactly in the loop of things. But enough about that. You mentioned ‘interesting news’. What is that all about?”
Marcus’ thoughts ground to an abrupt halt and it took him a moment to sort them, before he got all excited, “Ah yes! Imagine that, Ma — Chris — whatever, she told me that my settlement has one of the weather machines you told me about! And that it’s actually working!”

Ede raised an eyebrow, got up, walked around for a moment, went to one of the bookshelves and pulled out one of the books from there. He browsed through the pages for a few moments, nodded and then returned to the table, laying the book in front of Marcus.
“What is that?” Marcus asked, after glancing over the contents. It did not seem like the stories he knew and in all honesty, he did not really understand a single word.
“A beginners course. I have less than a month to teach you everything you need to know.”
“Wait! I...have not agreed to help you shut it down.”
“Oh? Why would that be? Can’t you see that the machine is a danger to the entire world?”
“Yes, but...I have a question first. So they have this machine that can actually make the weather, however that works. What I don’t get is...why do we still have all these storms that make living outside of the settlement so very hard? By controlling the weather, they could turn this whole area into a Garden Eden, right?”
Ede smiled faintly and replied, “It’s not quite so easy, I’m afraid. ‘Weather’ is a highly complicated system and if you change one of the variables, you inevitably also cause changes that are way beyond human comprehension. If it was easy and straigthforward, we wouldn’t have needed Ede to do it in the first place, you see?”
“But...even if they can’t save the entire world with it, they could at least save this area?”
“That is a good point, really. There are really only three explanations that make sense.”
“Which are?”
“Well, the first one is: They simply have no idea what they are doing and the ‘weather machine’ that is the planet is not responding the way they are expecting it to.”
Marcus remembered the sudden sandstorm and shook his head. If that thing was really ‘summoned’, they knew exactly what they were doing.
“The second one is, there are multiple weather machines ‘fighting’ with each other. You cannot just ‘change the weather of an area’. It’s a huge closed system, with countless things influencing each other. If the machines are not in sync with each other, unpredictable things can happen. Droughts, storms, floods, you name it, we’ve got it.”
“...and the third one?” Marcus asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Ede closed his eyes briefly and then said, “Well, there’s also the option of ‘doing it on purpose’.”
“But why would anyone in their right mind do that?!”

Ede looked up to the ceiling as if trying to remember something.
When he looked back down, he simply said a single word: “Power.”