((To the loser who reported my book. I hope you never find your favorite drink, your phone never charges, and you get cheated on. And that if you have kids, none of them are yours.))
I didn't see the storm until it was too late. I'd barely made it ten feet from the last ridge when the storm crashed down like a fucking freight train, drowning the world in orange hell. I tried wrapping a scarf over the lower half of my face that I pulled from my system, but it didn't matter. The grains found every seam, every crack in my jacket, and started tearing at the exposed skin of my arms.
I dropped low and crab-crawled across a small basin filled with old rebar. Somewhere in the blur, I spotted a rusted pipe with faded hazard markings. It looked like it used to be connected to something industrial—or sewage—or maybe both. Didn't matter. It was cover.
I crawled for it. The last few meters were the worst. Sand stung so hard I couldn't breathe right, and my boots were dragging against the shifting ground. The outer lip of the tunnel was coated in grime and some dried, resin-looking gunk. I dove in and crawled further in. Then came the faint drip of water. Somewhere deep. Somewhere old.
My eyes adjusted slowly. The walls were coated in grime so thick it looked like they'd grown skin. Fungal patches clung to the ceiling in long, sinewy strands. I touched one with my glove. Wet. Fibrous. gross. I kept moving, doing my best not to make too much noise. The floor sloped down.
I moved slowly, knees bent, palm brushing the tunnel's curve to keep my balance. Pipes overhead rattled once, far ahead, something shifted. Not big. Could've been a rat. My boots squelched against something spongy. At one point I found what looked like a jawbone in the runoff channel.
The tunnel branched twice, one slope, one narrow crawlspace. I took the slope. Because I could still crouch. I could feel skin raw under my collar and the wind-burn spreading along my jaw where my scarf had slipped. The taste of iron coated my tongue.
I turned a corner and found a door. Old. It wasn't sealed all the way. A breeze moved through it, carrying a bitter, dry smell. I pressed a palm to the metal. Cold. I wedged my body through with a bit of effort. My HUD pinged a weak signal. Still too far for a proper map to adjust, but definitely within proximity.
And worse, another SUV. Same model. Same gloss-black corporate shell. Parked down here. Either way, they weren't scavs. This complicated thing's, I slid back into the shadows. The target was somewhere above. And from the file, they were being held captive, but that's their own fault for trying to make a deal with scavs.
I looked up and saw a vent shaft. Small. Narrow. Barely wide enough to fit. But it led up. Right where I needed to be, hopefully. I flexed my fingers and reached for the first rung of the rusted ladder.
I didn't even make it three steps up before my HUD crackled, glitched, then flashed. A hard spike of white slammed into both retinas like someone shoved hot nails into my skull. "Fuck!" I screamed, jerking back, boots skidding on rusted metal. I tumbled, hit the grating hard, shoulder-first. Pain flared up my spine, and the world jittered, collapsing into red pulses and error messages.
[ERROR: SYSTEM FEED INTERRUPTED.]
[NEURAL CACHE: UNSTABLE.]
This had to be a demon. Something had slipped past my firewall and lit my optic nerves up like a bonfire. My vision ghosted, frames lagging in black and red, then cutting back to gray. I barely had time to roll onto my stomach before someone kicked me square in the ribs hard. I coughed once, choked down bile, and spat blood onto the floor. Two more were on me in a blink, one boot in my back, the other wrenching my arm behind me hard enough to pop a tendon. My vision finally cleared enough for me to be able to see, kinda.
A third, tall, tan gloves, black pinstripes, slid in front of me, flicked something from his wrist. A sleek, spine-thin cable. And then, click. My neck jerked forward as he jammed it into my port. Cold static surged through my spine, followed by a tightening behind the eyes, like my brain just got shrink-wrapped in glass.
[CONNECTION STABILIZED.]
"State your name."
I said nothing. He said it again. Same calm voice. Same dead eyes. "State your objective." Nothing. He glanced sideways. One of the grunts lifted my head, then slammed it back into the grating. My teeth clacked loud enough to echo off the pipe walls. Blood dripped down my chin.
"Try again," the lead said, still fucking polite. My pulse spiked. I ground my fingers into fists. The other goon twisted my arm just a bit more, until I cried out in pain. My shoulder was going to tear if I flinched wrong.
"Lost," I croaked. Another impact. A fist, fast, right into my lower back. My implants absorbed some of the blow, but the pain was still there; these guys had some serious hardware.
"Falsehood detected," he said, eyes narrowing just slightly. "Who sent you?"
"Wrong turn." I hissed, spitting more blood on his shoes. He didn't flinch. Just wiped it off with a cloth he'd pulled from his pocket.
"Objective?"
"Scav job. Looking for scrap." My voice cracked, slurring the edges just enough as my face was pressed into the floor. The man frowned. He looked at one of the men holding me down, then back at me. He crouched.
"Last chance. Who are you working for?" I met his eyes. Smiled with red teeth.
"Your mother."
The next blow was the butt of his gun, snapping across my cheekbone, splitting skin. My head cracked to the side, blackness blooming around the edges. A second strike. Another. I heard the shotgun cock before it went off.
This blast came from somewhere up above. Echoed down the tunnel like thunder snapping in a steel drum, followed by shouting, two voices, no, three, all talking over each other, heated, fast, full of bite. Scavs and corpos. Of course, they were arguing.
Didn't take a genius to figure it out. The suits came down here thinking they could buy silence. Probably made promises, extraction, eddies, and clean IDs. But Scavs don't do graceful. They saw suits with sleek guns and armored cars and thought they had the upper hand.
Another voice shouted, clipped and desperate. And then another gun blast, closer this time. A scream cut off halfway. I'd have smirked if I could move my jaw. But I couldn't. Not really. Everything hurt. The ringing in my ears faded just enough to let me feel it all over again. My cheek was split, leaking warmth down my neck. My lips were swollen, my eye half-shut, vision was split and blurred. Every pulse in my face throbbed.
And then, pain like I'd never known.
**Boom**
My world went white-outed. I didn't even realize it at first. I heard the shot. But the pain didn't come right away; it was like my body paused, too shocked to process it. Then the nerves lit up all at once. My right leg. Gone.
The blast hit mid-thigh. The scream that tore out of me wasn't a sound I recognized. It sounded like someone else entirely. I thrashed, but the two holding me down slammed me back hard, one of them planting a knee directly on my spine. My breath came in short, choppy gasps. My vision blurred so badly I couldn't tell how many people were standing around me anymore.
Pain became a thing. Burning. Hot. Everywhere. Like I was melting from the inside out. My remaining leg kicked uselessly, flopping under the strain of another restraint pinning it. My chest heaved. I could barely think through it. Could barely breathe. Couldn't remember where the fuck I was.
And the man in the pinstripe suit? He hadn't moved. He kept watching me like a science exhibit. "You're bleeding too quickly," he said, almost like he was reading a weather report. "You'll be unconscious in four minutes. Dead in eight."
I blinked through the haze, jaw trembling. Snot dripped onto the floor. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to bite. But my fingers were twitching too hard to form fists. He didn't flinch. Just leaned forward. I was doing my best to remember his face.
"Let's try again. Who sent you?"
I whimpered. Not in fear, my body just didn't have anything else left to give. I swallowed blood. I shook, hard. I could hear my own heartbeat, too fast, too shallow. My mouth opened.
"I don't—"
And I barked a cough, spraying red across his clean white shirt. His partner moved like he was about to hit me again. The suit lifted a hand. "No."
His eyes never left mine. He tilted his head. "You're stupid."
I would've laughed if I could. Instead, I gurgled, air rasping in my throat. Pain kept pulling me back, wouldn't let me black out. Every breath made the wound scream louder. Above us, shouting again. Boots stomping on steel. Gunfire this time, real gunfire. Semi-auto, not scatter. A burst of five.
And then screaming. Not mine. Not yet. The man beside me turned his head, calmly checking the top of the tunnel. His expression didn't change. But the others—his two guards—they were on edge now. Looking back toward the hatch, fingers twitching on triggers.
"Extraction," the suit said into a comm. "Now." No reply. Static. His brow furrowed for the first time. I sucked in another breath, my body still spasming under the pain. Tears burned down both sides of my face. I couldn't stop crying. Couldn't think. I kept blinking, hoping the world would change when I opened my eyes again. The man leaned closer.
"Let me ask you one final time," he murmured. "Who sent you? Tell me, and I'll stop the bleeding." I clenched my jaw, blood sticking my teeth together.
I forced it out anyway. "Go… fuck… yourself."
He stared at me. Then stood. "I see."
Gunfire cracked above like thunder. Then another. Messier. Close. Too close. Screams folded into the noise, sharp and panicked. Furniture overturned. Something metal fell with a crash. Another body, maybe. The corpos stiffened.
The one holding my arm down yanked his wrist up to his comms. "Alpha team—report!"
Static. Then, a woman's voice, distant, shouting something I couldn't make out, cut off by a bang. Then another scream, short and raw, like someone's throat had been ripped open mid-word. The suit, the calm one, clicked his tongue. "Shit," he muttered. It was the first time I'd heard him sound off-script.
His two enforcers exchanged a glance. One started toward the tunnel entrance, gun drawn. "Leave her," the suit snapped, already turning. "She's as good as dead."
Their boots slapped the tunnel floor, one after the other. The wire popped free from my neck with a painful jerk, leaving a hot sting in its place. They didn't even glance back. I lay there, on cold concrete, blood and oil spilling from what used to be a leg.
I tried to breathe, shaky, shallow. The air burned going in. My body shook so bad I could barely focus. Black static crept into the corners of my vision. My heartbeat sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else. My brain screamed that I needed to move. Needed to stop the bleeding.
I grit my teeth and rolled. Pain exploded across every nerve as I reached into my storage system, fumbling, clumsy. My fingers were slick with blood, shaking so bad I could barely feel the interface blink to life in front of me.
Come on, come o,n come on—
HYPO. I jabbed it into the meat of my thigh. The hiss came a half-second later, the cool bite of chem-stim flooding my bloodstream, making my heart stutter then slam back into rhythm.
Didn't matter if it wasn't designed for catastrophic trauma. Didn't matter if it bought me seconds or minutes or just helped keep me awake. I gasped, eyes wide as the jolt of the stimulant surged through my chest.
Then came the MEDK2. I brought the mask to my face, shaking, and inhaled. Deep. It hissed like steam. Burned all the way down. Relief didn't come. Not really. But the edge dulled. Just barely. Just enough that I could blink and see again.
I looked down.
What was left of my leg was... nothing clean. Meat and shattered synth. The wound was.... I'd bleed out in less than three minutes, stim or not. I tried to lift my hand. It fell.