Chapter 17 The Third Pillar
Four years, 359 days until Aloy's Proving
POV: Rion
The door groaned open like it was trying not to scream, and what greeted me wasn't a room.
It was a grave.
The hallway just beyond the blast doors was choked with skeletons—maybe fifty, maybe more. Not stacked, not neatly arranged—piled. Like a tide of bodies had surged against the exit and never made it out.
Most were nothing but bone wrapped in faded cloth. Scrubs. Security gear. Civilian jackets marked with logos from corporations that didn't exist anymore. Some still wore ID badges fused to melted plastic. A few had cracked riot helmets. One had nothing left but a wedding ring hanging from the wire bones of their hand.
They hadn't died fighting.
They died waiting.
Slumped in corners. Curled under rusted benches. Spread across the floor like they'd tried to shield each other from something that came without mercy.
The shoulder-lamp on my coat caught something on the far wall. Letters—huge, ragged, furious—scrawled in blood across the concrete. The lines had long since dried, flaked in places, but the words were still loud:
"FUCK YOU, FARO."
Below it, a second line.
"You did this. You let it happen."
The last sentence was smeared, half-dragged downward as if the writer had collapsed mid-stroke.
"We were people. Not numbers."
I stood there for a long second, just letting it sink in.
No wind. No sound. Just the weight of what used to be hope, now dried into accusation. These people had trusted someone. And that trust got them buried alive.
I stepped around the closest corpse—a child-sized frame cradled in the arms of a skeleton wearing a medical badge—and kept moving, jaw tight, eyes hard.
The air in the sublevel bunker was wrong—too damp to be dust, too cold to be decay. It clung to my skin like static off an old blanket, metallic and stale, with a smell that wasn't blood but felt like memory trying to bleed. Each step echoed down the metal catwalk like a dare, louder than it should have been, but I didn't stop. I'd already descended past two sealed levels. Whatever was left alive down here wasn't going to be friendly.
The Focus was flickering. Scan range kept collapsing in bursts. EM interference in the walls? Maybe. But more likely, it was the dead tech stacked in every room like rusted tombstones. This place had once been a medical wing. Now it was a grave.
I passed a collapsed corridor. Cots were overturned, IV lines hardened into brittle webs. Cabinets lined the walls, still bolted shut, as if the medicine inside could outlast the end of the world. My shoulder-lamp caught the faded stencil above a sealed blast door—SUB-LEVEL C—barely visible through corrosion. If the map I'd found upstairs was even half-right, this was the bottom. The place where everything got buried.
Then the whispering started.
It wasn't voices. Not words. Just sound—off-rhythm breathing, wet feet dragging across tile. I stopped, breath held. Nothing visible. But I knew what I was hearing.
The Focus didn't chirp. No alert. No red ping. Not even a shimmer of movement on the HUD. Just silence.
I moved cautiously, sweeping my shoulder lamp across the corridor, but nothing registered. The signal had already collapsed once near the elevator—maybe interference from the walls, maybe just dead tech radiating static—but I still expected something. Anything.
Then I heard it. A wet, dragging shuffle. Not loud. Just close.
I turned—and the first feral was already on me.
It came from behind a tipped-over med cart, lunging in total silence. I caught a flash of blistered gray skin, torn lips, and hollow eyes before it slammed into me with both arms out. We hit the ground hard. It clawed at my shoulder, nails raking against the Softsteel vest, teeth snapping at my face. I shoved my forearm under its jaw and gritted my teeth as I fought for leverage. Then I twisted my hips and drove a boot into its chest, launching it off me.
The ghoul flew across the hall and smashed into a wall with a sickening crack. It didn't get back up.
The second one came fast—no scream, just a head-down charge like it remembered being human once and had decided that was offensive. I didn't hesitate. I raised the Railwhistle and fired. The spike tore through its chest and drove it back into the concrete like someone had stapled it to the wall. The whistle's scream echoed off the walls, sharp and final.
Movement to my side—too close. The third one surged out of a doorway I hadn't cleared, mouth gaping, arms flailing. No time to fire. I pivoted, using the Railwhistle like a war club, and smashed the butt of the rifle into its face. The first hit knocked it sideways. The second crushed the side of its skull. It collapsed in a heap, limbs twitching.
I stood there, breathing hard, the Railwhistle hissing low steam as the pressure cycled.
Three down.
None of them had shown on the Focus.
Not one.
I stared at the bodies, trying to understand. They weren't giving off heat. They weren't alive the way the Focus recognized. As far as my tech was concerned, they didn't even exist.
That's why the Faro Robot didn't dig deeper, as far as they were concerned they had gotten all they could to eat.
"Good to know," I muttered, reloading the Railwhistle. The hallway ahead was dark and quiet, but I knew better than to trust it.
I advanced slowly, boots quiet on the tile, eyes scanning every shadow. The air down here was cold enough to bite. My shoulder lamp swept across old signage—crooked, rust-streaked, some barely clinging to the wall. Most had faded into illegibility, but the ones that hadn't… they didn't offer directions.
They told a story.
The first message came into view on the left wall. Scrawled in something that had long since turned dark and dry, just below a cracked junction box:
LET ME DIE.
The words were uneven—like the writer's hands were shaking, or broken. Dried streaks ran down the wall beneath them. I didn't speak. Just kept moving.
A few steps later, across a shattered window frame, I found another.
THEY LEFT US TO ROT.
This one was carved in, gouged through layers of old paint and polymer wall coating like they used fingernails, or a shard of bone.
Then came the third. Just before the hall split.
IF YOU SEE THIS MESSAGE, KILL ME.
I stopped.
Not because I was scared. Not even because I was surprised.
Because of what it meant.
These weren't threats. They weren't curses or desperate last pleas for rescue. They were instructions. Commands from people who already knew what they were becoming. The kind of messages you leave when you're still just human enough to be horrified by what comes next.
I looked around. At the flickering lights. The claw marks in the walls. The dried stains in the corners where someone had probably curled up and waited.
And I realized something else.
The Focus hadn't picked up any of them. Not the ones I'd fought. Not the ones still waiting.
As far as my system was concerned, this place was empty.
I tapped the side of my Focus. Nothing. No pings. No motion alerts. Just silence.
It wasn't glitching.
It just didn't see them.
The ghouls weren't warm. Weren't alive in any way my HUD could track. Whatever kept them moving wasn't something the Old World could measure. Which meant every corner I turned might be a fight waiting to happen. And I'd have no warning until it was already chewing on my face.
More than that—it meant I couldn't loot. Not safely.
Not yet.
Whatever this place used to be, it had become a mausoleum. A cage full of corpses waiting to be freed. Until every last one of them was put down, I wasn't pulling anything from this place but the weight of unfinished mercy.
The corpses weren't mine to rob.
Not until they stopped screaming.
I took a breath, exhaled slow, and stepped past the bloodstained message. The darkness ahead welcomed me like it already knew I wasn't leaving until the last door was opened—and the last monster was still.
The next hallway narrowed, walls closing in like the place was collapsing inward on itself. My shoulder lamp painted the dark in short, tense arcs. Up ahead, something shifted—low to the ground, close to a row of rusted lockers. I slowed and brought the Railwhistle up, moving smooth, controlled. As I rounded the corner, the shape turned toward me. It was small. Human-small.
It had been a child once. Now it was something else. The body was twisted, sunken in on itself. The skin hung in sagging gray patches over bones that barely held together. One arm dragged uselessly behind it. The jaw hung open, twitching like it wanted to scream but couldn't remember how. No sound came out. Just a silent step forward.
I moved faster. One step, then a full-force kick to the chest.
The thing hit the lockers with a hollow bang and crumpled into a heap. It twitched—reflex, not life. I stepped in without slowing down and brought my boot down on its skull. Once. Clean. The crack of bone echoed down the corridor. Then it was quiet again.
I stood over it for a second, watching. Not with pity. Not with guilt. Just making sure it stopped moving. Then I stepped over the body and kept going. No hesitation. No reflection. Just forward. These things weren't children anymore. They weren't people. They were corpses waiting for release. Some people would have frozen. Seen the size. Let mercy slow them down. But mercy gets you killed in places like this.
"Sometimes," I muttered, "having a few sociopathic tendencies really pays off."
The hallway leveled out into a wider corridor, and the air changed again—thicker, almost chemical. My lamp caught flashes of yellow on the walls. Warning stripes. Radiation symbols. The kind of signs that used to mean something, back when people still believed they could control disasters by labeling them. Most of the signs were half-peeled and water-streaked, but the message was clear enough. This had been a sealed zone.
The door was half-twisted off its hinges. The observation glass was shattered inward, scattering jagged edges across the threshold like broken teeth. I stepped through slowly, Railwhistle raised. The interior was quiet. Still.
Three figures were slumped along the far wall.
At first glance, they looked like corpses in hazmat suits. Gear was old but intact—sealed at the seams, heat-scored, lead-lined. One of them even had their helmet on straight. I scanned them from across the room, waiting for movement. None came.
Then the one closest to me twitched.
Not a reflex. A full-body jerk—wrong and sudden, like someone yanked a marionette string hard enough to crack bone. I stepped left as it began to rise, and I caught a glimpse through the fractured visor. The face inside was shriveled, blackened, half-melted against the inside of the mask. The jaw moved, but no sound came out. Just teeth gnashing behind fogged glass.
I fired. The spike punched through the suit and pinned it to the wall. The body jerked once, then slumped. No scream. No collapse. Just stillness.
The second one was slower, heavier. It moved like it was still dragging the weight of its own death. I circled wide and swung the Tooth of the Roar in a rising arc. The first hit cracked the shoulder plate. The second came in low and shattered the helmet. The body crumpled, leaking smoke and rot.
The third didn't move.
It sat propped against the far corner, helmet intact but fogged over from the inside. I approached with my blade ready, but the figure never stirred. Through the broken faceplate, I saw the eyes—open, dried out, staring at nothing. It had died sitting up. Probably never even turned.
They'd done everything right. Suited up. Sealed the door. Waited for the danger to pass.
It hadn't.
I didn't touch her. Didn't search the body. Just gave a small nod and turned away.
No looting. Not until the dead stopped walking.
I stepped back into the hallway. The door creaked behind me, the last gasp of people who tried to follow the rules and still died waiting.
The corridor widened ahead, just enough to feel unnatural after the tight, corpse-choked halls I'd been walking. My light swept across the room—an old rec space, maybe. A break lounge back when this place wasn't a death trap. Vending machines lined the walls, their glass shattered and contents long turned to dust. Tables were flipped, chairs rusted into place like they'd died trying to resist being moved. It looked like a killing ground. And it was.
The first shriek came from the far corner.
Then two more answered.
Then the rest.
By the time I recognized the sound for what it was, it was too late to pull back. Ten of them—maybe more—poured out from behind broken equipment, overturned desks, and every corner that wasn't already in plain sight. Some crawled. Some sprinted. All of them came with teeth bared and bone gleaming, their bodies moving like meat that still remembered how to chase.
I raised the Railwhistle and fired. The spike blasted through one feral and buried itself in a second behind it. The scream of the shot echoed off the tile like a warning shot that came too late. Two dropped. The rest didn't stop.
I fumbled the reload—tight space, bad angle. I got the next spike in just as the closest ghoul closed the gap. I didn't aim. Just fired at point-blank range. The blast took the thing's head clean off, spattering the vending machine behind it with black-red pulp and bone chips.
That left five of them right on top of me.
I dropped the rifle.
No time to sling it. No space to fire it safely.
The machete came out in a blur. The first slash caught one across the chest—bone cracked but didn't stop it. I pivoted into the next strike and buried the blade into another's collarbone, yanked it out in time to kick one off my leg. It went down hard. I turned with the momentum and dragged the blade through another's skull, splitting it halfway before my boot crushed the jaw of the one trying to crawl up from the floor.
It was chaos. Dirty, wet, screaming chaos.
One of them got close enough to rake its claws across my shoulder. The armor held, but the force jarred me hard enough to spin. I drove my elbow into its face and finished it with a downward chop that cracked the skull wide.
The last one came in fast, shrieking. I met it with three hits—first into the ribs, second across the neck, third driving it into the wall with a boot and the full weight of my body. Its head popped on the stone like rotten fruit.
Silence returned, but not peace.
I stood there, breathing like a furnace, covered in blood that wasn't mine. The machete shook faintly in my grip from adrenaline or exhaustion—maybe both.
I looked down at the Railwhistle, still hissing quietly on the floor.
"I should've given her the idea for a shotgun," I muttered.
I wiped the blade on what was left of my pants and crouched to pick up the rifle. "Next time, it's scattershot. I don't care if it whistles. I want it to scream wide. Hell. I'll name it the Screamshot."
The room was quiet now. Not safe—just quiet. My pulse had slowed, but I wasn't ready to move forward yet. Not until I checked the corners and counted what was left of my options. I scanned the break room again—old vending machines, shattered tables, collapsed chairs.
And metal.
A lot of it.
My eyes drifted to one of the overturned chairs, still mostly intact. The frame was old-world steel—thin, hollow, but solid. Lightweight. Just under two feet long. And narrow enough to feed into the Railwhistle's chamber.
I walked over and gave it a solid kick. The frame creaked but didn't collapse. That was good. I knelt beside it, drew my machete, and wedged the blade under one of the chair legs. A few quick twists and the bolt popped loose with a sharp metallic snap.
I held the leg up to the light. It was slightly bent, but hollow, straight enough to fly, and just heavy enough to hurt. It wouldn't be accurate. Wouldn't be elegant. But at the velocity the Railwhistle fired? That wouldn't matter.
"Perfect," I muttered.
I broke off three more legs from nearby chairs, testing each one for weight and width. Two were good enough to use. One was warped too far and got tossed aside. I kept going. Cafeteria stools, old cots, even the base of a broken serving cart—all of it was fair game. If it had legs, I tested it. If it passed, I took it.
Within minutes, I had a growing pile of makeshift ammo on the floor next to me. Most were metal—square tubing, light steel, a few aluminum rods with just enough spine to hold up. Nothing was uniform. Nothing matched.
Didn't matter.
At this range, fired at these speeds, uniformity was a luxury. I was going for lethality.
I hit fifty pieces and called it.
I tapped the Nanoboy. The wrist unit hissed as the panel slid open, blue light spilling out in a low pulse. One by one, I fed the chair legs and scrap bars into the compression field. Each one vanished into the mist with a satisfying shimmer. The weight on my wrist shifted slightly as the module accounted for the mass. Still manageable.
"Store all of it," I said. "We're not dying down here because I ran out of spikes."
When the last leg vanished into the field and the panel sealed shut, I stepped back and gave the Railwhistle a firm pat. It hissed in response, like it agreed.
This wasn't how the weapon was meant to be used. But then again, this wasn't a war the Old World prepared for.
"They built this place for coffee breaks," I muttered, glancing at the collapsed chairs and scattered magazines. "I'll use it for war."
Rion didn't stop with just the one chair.
He started checking everything.
Cafeteria stools. Office chairs. Folding cots. If it had metal legs under two feet long and narrow enough to feed into the Railwhistle's chamber, it got hacked apart. He moved fast and methodically—blade out, chopping low, prying bolts loose with the toe of his boot when needed.
Half the furniture in the common area was junk, but enough of it still had viable scrap. He tested each leg by weight and shape. If it was hollow but sturdy, it went into the pile. If it was too warped or too wide, he tossed it aside.
Within minutes, he had a growing collection of makeshift ammo on the ground in front of him. Most of them were square steel or rounded aluminum. None were precision-forged, but at the speeds the Railwhistle fired, it wouldn't matter much.
He hit fifty on the count and stopped. That was enough.
He tapped the Nanoboy on his wrist. The panel slid open, a pulse of blue light spilling out as the compression field activated.
"Store all of it," he said.
One by one, the chair legs shimmered and vanished into the swirling mist. The weight shifted slightly on his wrist as the mass registered. Not too bad. Manageable.
He sealed the unit with a final tap.
"That'll keep me going for a while."
Rion gave the Railwhistle a pat and stepped back toward the hallway. His ammo wasn't elegant. It wasn't balanced. But it would punch a hole through anything too stupid or too dead to duck.
That was all he needed.
Rion pushed deeper into the lower levels. The halls grew narrower, the walls closer. Lights were dead, but the glow from his shoulder lamp caught movement ahead—shadows spilling through a side corridor like water breaching a dam.
The hallway sloped downward again, and the air got colder. Not by degrees—by weight. My breath started to show in the lamp beam. The walls narrowed, and I could hear it before I saw anything.
Scraping. Dozens of them. Maybe more.
Feet dragging across tile, hands clawing at the walls, that low, wet gurgle that had become a soundtrack for this place. I rounded a corner just enough to peek without stepping in, and there they were—packed into the corridor like a flood waiting to break. Some were pressed against the walls. Others climbed over the backs of the ones ahead. There were too many to count, and they were moving toward me with purpose.
I didn't wait.
I turned and ran.
Not in fear. In control. I needed terrain—something I could use. A bottleneck. A place where their numbers meant nothing.
The first door I saw was already half open. I shouldered it the rest of the way and slipped inside, boots hitting tile just as the gurgling cries rose behind me. It was an old office. Small. No exits. Filing cabinets fused to the walls by rust and time.
Perfect.
I turned, grabbed the nearest cabinet, and hauled it across the floor. The thing screamed as it scraped tile, but I didn't care. I dragged it toward the doorway and tipped it sideways, jamming it into the frame at an angle. Not a wall—but enough to slow them. Force them to crawl. To climb. To choke the entry one by one.
Let them come. I'd stacked the odds.
I backed behind the desk and yanked the Railwhistle from my shoulder. One of the scavenged chair legs went into the chamber with a hiss as the pressure gauge clicked green.
The first impact hit the cabinet like a battering ram. Then another. Then a third.
They were already at the door.
I stayed behind the desk, waited for the first head to crest the barricade.
Then I fired.
The makeshift spike blasted through the first ghoul's face and sent it toppling backward into the ones behind it. Steam hissed from the vent with a shriek, echoing through the small room.
I reloaded. Another spike into the chamber. Another shriek. Another skull pulped.
The third was already climbing.
But I could feel it—too slow. The Railwhistle hit like a sledgehammer, but the cycle time was killing me. I needed rhythm. Precision. Flow.
I dropped the rifle. No time to sheath it.
My hand went to the bow.
Windspine slid free with one practiced motion. My fingers nocked an arrow before I was fully upright. The string drew back smooth and familiar. I loosed.
The shot hit center mass and dropped the ghoul halfway through the crawl. Another followed right after—clean to the temple. Two bodies slumped into the frame and slowed the next one behind them.
They kept coming. I kept shooting.
They crawled over the dead. I planted arrows in their eyes, throats, skulls. One jammed halfway through the barricade, shrieking and clawing—I pinned it to the cabinet with a shot through the spine.
Every shot landed. Every movement tightened. No wasted breath. No room for failure.
This wasn't a fight anymore. It was maintenance.
The pile at the door grew. Flesh slumped into flesh. Limbs twitched and fell still.
Eventually, the space went quiet again.
I waited a moment longer, arrow drawn, just in case.
Then I exhaled and lowered the bow.
One last arrow, slow and deliberate, aimed low. I loosed it into the pile. Just to be sure.
No movement.
Only the Railwhistle on the ground, still hissing beside me like it was proud of what we'd done.
The silence held longer this time. Not the kind that creeps in after a fight—this one settled like judgment. I stayed behind the desk for a few more seconds, watching the pile of corpses in the doorway. They weren't twitching. Nothing stirred. Not even a hiss of breath from the hallway.
The Focus blinked once in the corner of my vision, and a soft tone vibrated behind my ear. Not an alert. A system flag.
[SYSTEM EVENT: LEVEL GAINED]
The HUD slid in smooth—white glyphs across black glass, clean and mechanical like it had never seen a corpse in its life.
Combat Threshold Exceeded – Hostile Density Cleared
+13 Stat Points Awarded
+1 Perk Slot Unlocked
I sat back against the cabinet, heartbeat still evening out. The numbers were comforting. Orderly. Predictable. Even here.
"Five to melee," I muttered, navigating the interface with a flick of my thoughts. "Eight to guns."
My arms felt lighter. The ache in my shoulders started to fade. Next reload would be cleaner. The swing of my machete, faster. My focus, tighter. I wasn't just stronger—I was getting better.
Then the screen shifted.
[PERK UNLOCKED – SELECT ONE]
I skimmed past the flashy combat perks and loud names—Overdrive, Juggernaut, Sharpshot Surge. Tempting, but not what I needed. Then my eyes caught one quiet line nestled among the rest, like it had been waiting.
> Bone Collector
Effect: Fallen enemies may yield personal artifacts, historical data, or archived media.
"What's dead isn't always silent."
I selected it without hesitation.
The Focus pulsed once.
Then something flickered at the edge of my vision.
A faint outline shimmered around one of the bodies near the barricade. It was slumped against the wall, mostly intact. No visible weapon. No armor. But something glinted near its chest.
I stepped over, crouched, and brushed aside the half-melted remains of a hospital gown. There—pressed against the ribcage, half-embedded in scorched cloth—was a disk-shaped pendant. Bronze or copper, feather pattern etched into the surface. It was too heavy to be decorative. I tapped the side and felt the internal architecture hum faintly beneath my fingers.
[Embedded Media Detected]
Type: Audio Archive | Format: AutoSync Encode – Legacy Codec 2021.7
File Size: 11.4MB – Partial Recovery
Category: Literature | Title Fragment: "Mockingbird" – Author: H. Lee
Status: Playable (No visual component)
I stared at it for a moment. To Kill a Mockingbird. I remembered the name. School assignment. Required reading. I hadn't thought about it in years.
I tapped the prompt.
A voice filtered into my ear—soft, female, slow. A gentle accent I couldn't quite place. Each word was clear, measured. Like someone reading to a child who didn't need to be calmed, just reminded that the world still held stories.
"...People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for."
I let it run for a few more lines, then paused it.
The pendant was still warm in my hand. Someone had carried this. Maybe they used it to fall asleep. Maybe they listened to it during the blackout, when the lights failed and the screams started. Maybe they clutched it when they realized the doors weren't opening.
Now it was mine.
I wrapped it in cloth and slid it into the Nanoboy's storage field. Not as salvage. As memory.
Bone Collector was going to pair well with Keen Eye. I could feel it already. One let me see what others missed. The other let me understand it. I wasn't just scavenging anymore—I was reclaiming the pieces that still whispered in the dark.
The world down here hadn't been quiet because it was dead.
It had just been waiting for someone who could listen.
I stood up, hands still a little shaky but steadying with each breath. The quiet felt thicker now—earned, not given. My eyes swept the room again, slower this time, less for threats and more for echoes. The Focus pulsed once. Not a warning. Something else.
A flicker.
Then a signal.
Tucked beneath a half-melted jacket near the edge of the barricade, something glinted. I crouched and pulled it loose—flat, polymer, data-etched. Hardened storage shard. The kind used for secure backups in the final years before the world went sideways. I thumbed the surface clean.
[MEDIA SHARD DETECTED]
Format: AuralStream V3 | Legacy Codec Match: 96%
Stored Content: Music Archive – Band: Hollywood Undead
Files: 141 Tracks
Status: Fully Intact
For a moment, the whole room fell away.
Hollywood Undead.
I hadn't thought that I would see that name again after I woke up in a world that didn't remember mine.
I was sixteen the first time I heard them. In fact I saw them live at a venue just before I'd died a week later, shoulder to shoulder with strangers screaming the same lyrics. Smoke machines, bass like thunder, sweat in the air. It was loud. Crude. Perfect.
I stared at the shard, thumb hovering over the activation prompt.
Then I tapped it.
Track 6 – "Young" – Hollywood Undead
Playing…
The guitars hit like they never left me—fast, dirty, unapologetic. Then the drums, raw and pounding like a heartbeat trying to claw its way out of my chest. And then the chorus—scream-sung and full of every ounce of teenage rage the Old World ever buried:
"We are young! We have heart!
Born in this world as it all falls apart!"
I didn't smile.
I grinned.
A wide, blood-slicked, wolfish thing that didn't belong in a room full of corpses—but there it was. I leaned back against the wall, boots planted, hands still stained from killing ten ghouls in under five minutes. The music didn't care. It didn't ask. It just was.
Loud. Angry. Alive.
The way I used to be.
"We won't fall 'til gravity's gone,
We've been gone for way too long…"
I let it play all the way through. No skips. No interruptions. Just me and a voice screaming into the void with the same fury I carried every day.
When the last chord faded, I closed my eyes for a second. Then I slid the shard into the Nanoboy with slow, deliberate care—not like I was storing ammo. Like I was putting away a relic. A reminder.
[Archive Folder Created: "Undead Playlist"]
File 1 of 141 Stored
The world hadn't forgotten me.
It had buried pieces of me in its ruins, waiting to be dug out by blood and luck and fire.
I reloaded the Railwhistle.
Not because I had to.
Because the beat hadn't dropped yet.
And the next room?
It was going to hear what defiance sounded like.
The last note of the song faded, and I let the silence settle again.
It didn't feel heavy this time.
Just calm.
For the first time since I stepped onto this floor, I didn't feel like something was about to rip its way out of the dark. The barricade had held. The hallway behind me was blocked. No motion on the Focus—still blind, still untrustworthy, but paired with my instincts, it was enough.
This room was mine now.
I stood up and scanned it like I was seeing it for the first time. Rusted filing cabinets. Half-melted desks. A ruined terminal covered in burn scars and dust. Junk, mostly. But even junk had value if you knew who to sell it to.
Kardin back in Ironwood Grove paid well for anything weird enough to hang from his wagon or toss into a bin labeled Mystery Tech—Do Not Lick. So I got to work.
Pens, coins, a few cracked touchscreens, a sealed dental hygiene kit that somehow still had mint-flavored floss. Into the satchel they went. I pried the casing off the old terminal—wires intact, two unburned capacitors still clinging to the frame. Worth something. I checked drawers, desk corners, underneath a collapsed shelf. Found a half-melted stapler and what looked like a pocket calculator that someone had engraved Susan's Property – Thieves Get Bitten into the back. I took that too.
Once the room was stripped clean of hardware, I turned to the real work: the bodies.
I approached each one carefully—not out of fear, but out of respect. They weren't threats anymore. Just echoes. I crouched by the first and started checking for anything sealed, anything personal, anything that might have been carried out of hope instead of habit.
Bone Collector did the rest.
The Focus pinged softly each time I got near something worth more than scrap—but not for Shards. Not for barter.
The first had a media chip wedged inside a cracked wallet. No name. Just a few short stories saved on it, including one marked "horror" with a title screen that had glitched into red and black static. I slid it into the Nanoboy. Junk to anyone else. Gold to me.
The next had a book—laminated, battered, but whole. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen. Classic. Untouched. Unopened. The kind of thing that used to sit on high school desks and library shelves. Here, it felt like an heirloom.
Another had a necklace with a pendant that held a full romantic comedy. Cheap, mid-tier film by the look of it. Predictable plot. Probably bad jokes. And still? I took it. Not because it was valuable—but because I wanted to know what passed for comfort when the lights first started to flicker out.
Then came the last body.
Sealed pouch. Cloth wrapping. Weight just heavy enough to matter. When I unwrapped it, the Focus blinked hard.
[MEDIA SHARD DETECTED]
Type: Visual Archive – Format: Public Broadcast Educational Archive
Source: LearnTV | Sub-Channel: History & Domestic Sciences
Episode: "Fizz & Pop – The Story of Soda"
Runtime: 47 minutes
Contents: Manufacturing process of carbonated beverages, historical timeline, DIY chemistry sets
I stared at the shard for a second.
Then I laughed. Not loud. Not deranged. Just a short breath through the nose—the kind that says, "Of course it's this."
I slipped it into the Nanoboy's storage like it was a relic. Because it was. Not just a file. A blueprint. A chance. In a world with no refrigeration, no carbonation, and no flavor that didn't taste like burned root or sun-dried moss?
This was treasure.
Not for Kardin. Not for Sula. Not for trade.
Just for me.
Ten files in total—books, movies, fragments of memory—and not a single one of them worth a damn to a merchant. But to me? They were a map back to the person I used to be. To a world I could barely remember, but still missed with everything I had.
The Focus logged the entries.
[ARCHIVES UPDATED]
Media Files: +10
Books: +3
Entertainment: +2
Education: +1
Unknown: +4
I closed the interface and reloaded the Railwhistle. The pressure chamber hissed, locking around a fresh spike. My satchel was heavier now—not with loot, not with weapons. With memory.
But this wasn't done.
I stepped to the center of the room, planted my feet shoulder-width apart, and brought my heel down.
Once.
The stomp echoed like a thundercrack through the halls. Loud. Deliberate. Not a mistake. A message.
If anything was still hiding in this floor—if something was still watching from a dark vent or behind a half-sealed bulkhead—I wanted it to come now.
No more surprises. No more corner ambushes. Just me. Steel. And the sound of something too stubborn to die calling out into the dark like it owned the place.
I gave it a second stomp. Louder. Sharper.
Then I waited.
I stood in the center of the room, listening to the echo fade into nothing. The stomp had been loud. Sharp. Impossible to ignore. But the silence that followed was real. Not hiding. Just empty.
No footsteps. No dragging limbs. No answer.
The ghouls were gone. Or at least, the ones still moving.
I exhaled, not in relief—just release. Then I moved on.
The corridor ahead sloped again, deeper into the sublevel, where the rust was thicker and the lights gave up trying. A few turns later, I found another sealed room wedged open by a broken door panel. Looked like a records room, once. Server racks stood in rows like headstones, most of them charred or blackened, others half-melted down the spine. Dust coated everything.
The Focus gave a weak ping near the far corner.
Not a trap.
A log.
I stepped over shattered glass and crouched by a scorched terminal with a burnt-out reader slotted into the front panel. One green diode still flickered, barely alive. The shard plugged into it was heat-warped, but the core was intact.
[AUDIO LOG DETECTED]
Codec: Legacy Decode | File Status: Corrupted (Playable)
I tapped the prompt.
The voice that came through wasn't clean. It crackled. Warped by time and damage. But there was still a rhythm to it—still something human clinging to the edges of the distortion.
It was a man's voice, deep and broken. Like it had once been calm and steady but had long since been scraped raw.
"I don't know if anyone will hear this. Don't know if it matters. But I'm leaving it anyway. Not for justice. Just so someone knows."
He coughed. Wet. Labored. The sound of lungs trying to forget they were still attached to something pretending to live.
"There was something wrong with the reactor leak. Not just the way it happened—but the timing. That's what sticks. Still sticks, even now. It happened right after the data wipes."
The voice paused. Then resumed, slower.
"I was in the media archive when it happened. Half the drives had already gone dark. Wiped clean. Not corrupted—erased. Like someone pulled the plug with a purpose. Half an hour later, the reactor vented."
Another pause. Then a bitter laugh—dry and ragged.
"Funny, isn't it? The only files that survived were the ones we kept in our pockets. Necklaces. Pendants. Personal shards. Everything else? Gone."
The tone shifted.
"I've had a hundred years to think about it. Maybe more. Hard to tell anymore. But I know what happened. Someone didn't want us remembered. Didn't want our stories. Our songs. Our voices. And the leak? That was the cleanup. The end of the audit."
The audio warped hard here—static dragging like claws across tape—but it cleared just long enough for one last line.
"Somebody did this on purpose. And I hope to God they burned with the rest of us."
The log ended.
I sat there a moment longer, staring at the dark terminal.
Not because I doubted him.
Because I didn't.
The man's voice had eroded with time, warped by mutation and age, but not his intent. Not the pattern. Media banks wiped. A reactor vented an hour later. And the only things that survived were what they carried on their bodies—pendants, backup shards, the human instinct to hoard what mattered.
That wasn't coincidence.
That was a cover-up.
And I knew exactly who did it.
Ted Faro.
Faro created the Chariot Line, the self-replicating swarm that devoured the world.
And when he realized the end was coming, he panicked. He funded Project Zero Dawn. Gave it just enough rope to function. Then, at the last minute, when the Alphas tried to preserve the truth—when they tried to embed knowledge into GAIA—he slaughtered them. Deleted APOLLO. Erased humanity's inheritance.
But the more I thought about it, the more the logic twisted tighter.
That couldn't have been the only place.
GAIA Prime was just the core node. There had to be mirrors. Backups. Outposts.
He would've known that.
And if Faro's goal wasn't just to reset humanity, but to rewrite it, then leaving any other archive intact—any—would've been a threat.
This place proved it.
This wasn't just reactor decay. This was a purge. A controlled wipe, followed by engineered destruction. Not by some enemy. Not by time.
By design.
Faro didn't just want to stop people from knowing what he did.
He wanted to make sure no one could ever find out.
That's why this room was ash. Why the drives were slag. Why the media logs were gone and the backup cores had been fused into decorative deathtraps.
He wanted to be the last chapter in the book—and then burn the library.
That was Ted's pattern, wasn't it?
Burn what you fear. Kill what remembers. Call it salvation, then walk away while the rest of the world drowns in your silence.
But he didn't vanish.
That part I knew better than anyone.
Because in my world, I'd seen what happened next. I'd played the sequel. I remembered the expedition west, the discovery in San Francisco, the sealed sanctum beneath the ruins of what had once been the tech capital of the world.
Ted Faro didn't die with the Alphas.
He sealed himself away—in his own private Eden. A tomb built for one. Isolation chambers, life extension protocols, an arrogance so massive it had its own filtration system.
In the game? He'd mutated. Turned into something grotesque. A flesh mass that barely spoke.
But this wasn't that version of the world.
Not exactly.
Here, the Chaos Filter warped things. Time moved differently. Biology responded in ways it wasn't supposed to. Maybe the FEV helped. Maybe the bunker had better systems. Or maybe Faro had been just smart enough to keep his body intact while his soul rotted.
He was probably a ghoul now.
A thinking one.
A talking one.
And if he was still alive—and I was sure he was—then I wasn't going to kill him.
That would be mercy.
I was going to find him.
And I was going to make him watch.
Watch as the world remembered everything he tried to erase.
The truth about the Chariot Line. The Alphas. APOLLO. The reactor wipes. The sealed data caches. The erased children's libraries. All of it.
I was going to dig it up piece by piece, voice by voice, until the tribes had their story back.
Then I'd show it to the man who thought he could delete history.
And I'd make him listen.
Because Faro didn't fear death.
He feared legacy.
And that was exactly what I planned to give him..
[LONG-TERM QUEST UNLOCKED]
🗂 Dragged Into the Light
Type: Personal | Investigative | Delayed Payoff
Objective:
Locate the sealed vault in the ruins of San Francisco where Ted Faro is believed to have survived in isolation. Confirm his condition. Do not kill him. Force him to bear witness as the truth of his crimes is unearthed and shared with the world.
Optional Objectives:
– Recover and compile pre-Zero Dawn records of Faro's sabotage
– Find corroborating logs from other wiped facilities
– Construct a broadcast archive or secure release system
– Preserve cultural files Faro attempted to destroy
Narrative Effect:
Unlocks unique dialogue with GAIA-aligned characters and world historians. Impacts future tribal perception of Old World legacies.
Final Goal:
Expose Ted Faro's truth. In full view. In full clarity. While he's still alive to choke on it.
I should have stayed quiet. Kept the weight of it buried like everything else this world wasn't ready to face. But the second it all came together—the wiped archives, the reactor that just happened to fail after the data was gone, the pattern I'd seen once before—it hit like a steel spike behind the ribs. Ted Faro hadn't just murdered the world. He tried to erase its memory. And someone needed to say that out loud.
I turned down the next corridor, boots hammering against concrete. The bunker creaked around me—old walls, rusted pipes, dead cables strung like veins through a body long past death. My light cut through the dark and caught nothing but dust. No movement. No watchers. No ferals. Just a silence that had forgotten how to fight back.
I didn't care.
I stopped in the middle of the hall, planted my feet, and drew a breath deep enough to drag heat from my chest. Then I screamed into the dark.
"GET READY, TEDDY BOY! YOU CAN'T RUN! YOU CAN'T HIDE! BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE!"
The sound ripped through the hallway like a thundercrack. It bounced off the steel and tile, echoing into corners that hadn't heard a voice in a hundred years. For a moment, it felt like the whole sublevel was listening. Like it was waiting for someone to say it. To name the monster that built this grave.
I hoped it carried. Hoped it punched its way across whatever miles of rock and silence still separated me from that shriveled bastard's tomb.
Not because I wanted him afraid.
Because I wanted him awake.
No more isolation. No more gods behind glass. I wasn't here to kill him. I was here to bury the lie.
I checked my grip on the Railwhistle, felt the weight settle back into place, and pushed deeper into the dark.
He tried to silence the past.
Now I was dragging it to his doorstep.
The echoes of my shout were still bouncing off the walls when I heard the growl.
Not a scream. Not a whisper. A low, wet rumble—like something dredged up from a throat that hadn't seen breath in decades. It came from below. Deeper into the bunker. Somewhere past the next stairwell. I stopped walking and turned toward the sound, narrowing my eyes.
Then I heard the footsteps.
Heavy. Measured. Not dragging like the others. This one didn't stumble. It stomped.
I moved fast, shoulder-lamp cutting across the stairwell's edge. Just past the railing, something stepped into view—bigger than the others, broader. It wore armor—cracked, rusted, fused to the body like it had been part of it for years. Scrap plates. Security gear. Whatever it could drag onto itself before its mind finally snapped. The skin beneath the plating was dark and leathery, stretched tight over unnatural bulk. And its face—what was left of it—was half-covered by a melted riot mask. One eye socket hollow. The other filled with a gleam of something wrong.
A Reaver.
The bruiser class of ferals. Stronger. Meaner. Designed by suffering.
I didn't flinch.
Didn't hesitate.
My blood was already running hot from the shout. I wanted this.
I backed up three steps, gave myself just enough space, and jumped.
I sailed off the landing, boots first, and hit the Reaver square in the chest with the force of a freight engine. Armor cracked. The thing staggered back with a grunt that sounded like it had once been language, and we both hit the ground hard. I landed in a crouch and sprang up before it finished falling.
I didn't draw a weapon.
Not yet.
Reavers could take hits. That was the point. Blades didn't end them fast. Bullets just made them angrier. This wasn't about the clean kill.
This was about pressure.
I cracked my knuckles and rolled my neck once.
"Come on," I muttered, stepping forward, "let's see what you've got left."
The Reaver didn't scream. It didn't lunge blindly like the others.
It stood up.
Slow. Heavy. Controlled.
The impact of my dropkick had staggered it, cracked the armor plating across its chest, but it hadn't broken anything vital. As it rose, I caught the shift in its stance—the bend in its knees, the way its right foot angled back, anchoring. That wasn't animal instinct.
That was training.
The fucker remembered.
The next second, it was on me.
It threw a heavy hook that I barely dodged—caught the edge of my coat and spun me half a step. I countered with a body blow, driving my elbow into its side. Felt something give. It responded by hammering a forearm into my ribs, knocking the wind halfway out of my lungs.
I stumbled back. Not far. Just enough to regain footing. Then I surged forward again with a low strike—swept the leg, felt the bone shift under the armor.
The Reaver grunted—grunted—and caught itself on the railing before I could follow up.
Then it shifted stances.
Left leg forward, hands loose, shoulders hunched just enough to bait. That was a boxer's stance. Not perfect. Not clean. But enough to tell me this one had fought before.
And now it was fighting again.
It came in hard. Fast. The first punch went wide, but the second caught my jaw—just enough to rattle me. I tasted blood. My feet slid, but I didn't go down.
I pivoted, ducked low, and drove a knee into its midsection. Armor cracked. The Reaver didn't slow. It wrapped one arm around my neck and tried to drag me into a grapple.
I twisted out, slammed my elbow into its collar, then threw a wild punch into its face. The riot mask cracked. The thing blinked.
We both stepped back.
Breathing hard.
Sweat in my eyes. Blood on my tongue.
It wasn't just strong.
It remembered how to fight.
And I wasn't walking out of this without paying for it.
The Reaver didn't roar. It didn't posture. It just moved—with purpose.
Its hand dropped low, fingers curling around a half-rusted pipe left wedged between a collapsed stair rail and the floor. The kind of thing most ghouls wouldn't even notice. But this one picked it up like it remembered what it was for.
Then it swung.
The first hit caught me across the jaw—side-on, steel ringing against bone. My vision went white for half a second. The world tilted. The taste of copper exploded in my mouth. My cheek went numb, then throbbed like something inside had cracked.
I stumbled sideways and barely got an arm up before the second blow came down. It crashed into my ribs like it wanted to fold me in half. Something gave. Not the armor. Not all of it. Something inside.
I dropped to one knee with a grunt that wasn't pain—it was rage trying to hold itself together.
The Reaver didn't let up.
It brought the pipe down again and again. Hammering at me like it had a badge and a license to break. Not wild. Not sloppy. Deliberate. It knew what it was doing. This wasn't a normal feral.
Another hit slammed into my shoulder. I felt the joint shift wrong. I rolled with it, using the motion to slip under the next swing. Came up low. Head swimming. One eye already swelling. Breath ragged and ribs screaming with every twitch.
The pipe crashed into the wall beside my head, tearing loose a chunk of concrete and sending a spray of powdered plaster into the air. I stumbled back, breath sharp and uneven, my ribs grinding against each other with every movement. My cheek throbbed, swelling hard, and the blur in my left eye told me something had broken under the skin. The Reaver stepped forward again, pipe in hand, moving with purpose, not madness. It wasn't lunging wildly. It was clearing space.
That's when I saw it. The way it shifted its stance. The grip on the pipe. The discipline behind the power. This wasn't just some mutant brute who'd clawed its way out of a pile of bones. This thing had training. It moved like someone who'd worn a uniform. Who'd been told to hold the line when the world started screaming. When the evacuations failed. When the riots spread faster than the fires.
This guy had been a cop. Not the kind that got remembered fondly. The kind who didn't stop swinging, even when the orders did. This was a bruiser who used to clear crowds for a living. Someone who'd been let off the leash more than once—and liked it.
He hadn't died confused.
He died doing his job.
And then he kept doing it.
But I wasn't some scared protester yelling through tear gas and hoping to be spared.
I was armed.
I took a shallow breath and let the pain fade to the edges. My body hurt, but my mind cleared. I didn't think. I acted. The Focus clicked in, and time slowed. Not to a crawl, but just enough. My arm moved, and the revolver was already in my hand.
Terra's Gift.
It settled into my grip like it had been waiting.
The Reaver raised the pipe again, shoulders rolling forward in a perfect riot stance.
I didn't let him finish.
The barrel aligned. My finger squeezed. The revolver barked once.
The bullet struck dead-center—just above the eye.
His head snapped back, and for a second, he just stood there. Like his body hadn't realized yet. Then his knees buckled. The pipe slipped from his hand and clanged against the tile.
He dropped. No scream. No twitch. Just silence.
I lowered the revolver, panting through clenched teeth. My ribs ached like they'd folded under the pressure. My cheek throbbed with every beat of my heart. But I was still upright. Still walking.
Not a victim. Not a riot casualty.
Just one more ghost with a gun and a reason to keep going
I stood over the body for a while, letting the sound of the shot fade into memory. My side burned like fire under the ribs. Every breath scraped like rusted steel. My cheek was pulsing hard now, probably swelling shut. But I didn't look away from the Reaver. Not yet.
Up close, the details were clearer.
The armor was old, but not random. Security-grade, pre-collapse. Parts of it were stitched together from riot control gear—wrist guards, thigh plates, impact-dispersing pads fused into place. A faded patch was still clinging to the chest rig, mostly unreadable. Just enough left to make out a single word.
"Metro."
This guy had been a cop. City force. Probably deployed during the collapse to hold the line at a riot or an evacuation checkpoint. And when it all went to hell, he didn't run. He didn't quit. He followed orders. Until there were no more orders to follow.
I hadn't heard anything since his body dropped. My legs were shaky, but my perimeter was solid. For now, the bunker was mine.
I crouched beside him, scanning for anything intact. The Focus pulsed once, slow and soft. I reached under the chest plate and pulled out a half-melted audio shard tucked into a compartment behind the badge plate. Still warm from body heat that hadn't been real in a century.
[AUDIO LOG DETECTED]
Source: Officer Grant Keller | Status: Corrupted – Partial Recovery
Timestamp: [UNKNOWN]
Play?
I tapped the prompt.
The voice that came through was tired. No, not just tired—worn. The kind of voice that had been yelling for days and finally broke into gravel.
"This is Officer Keller… second watch. Sector seventeen. Still holding."
There was a pause. Breathing. Wet and uneven.
"I don't know how long we've been down here. Feels like days. Maybe more. They keep pushing—the civvies, the evacuees, looters. Doesn't matter. We hold the line, but…"
Another breath. Slower now. He was fighting to stay clear.
"My mind's been slipping. I… I know that. Tried to hold on, tried to keep the ID tags sorted, but… the eyes start looking the same. Friend. Foe. Screaming. Always screaming."
A soft, bitter laugh crackled through the feed.
"Captain, I need to ask you something. One more time, real clear."
There was a long pause. Then the words came slow.
"How many shells did you load into my shotgun this morning?"
Silence followed.
Then the file ended.
I sat back against the wall, eyes locked on the floor.
He hadn't just gone mad.
He'd known it was happening.
And he'd been afraid enough to beg his CO for a count—not because he forgot, but because he didn't trust his own hands anymore.
He wanted to know if the last round would be for him.
The silence after the log was heavier than the ones before. Not haunted. Just honest. A man like Keller didn't deserve what he became—but that didn't mean I could've spared him. He would've beaten me to death with that pipe if I'd hesitated a second longer. I let the Focus archive the audio file, then leaned back against the wall and finally let myself feel how bad I was shaking.
My side felt like someone had taken a crowbar to it. Every breath lit up a different nerve. I'd been in fights before—machines, humans, worse—but this? This was going to lay me out if I didn't deal with it. Now.
I slid a hand under my coat and opened one of the side pouches on my belt. Inside, nestled between rations, were a few Stimpaks for quick access. The others were in the nano storage I'd been carrying them since Newton. Salvaged from the ruins. Pre-collapse tech. Sterile. Reliable. Expensive.
Never used one.
Until now.
I pulled one out, checked the plunger, and felt the weight of it settle in my palm. The injector was sleek, old-world precision. Bronze canister. Clear tubing. A pressure-locked stim needle capped at the base. The serum inside shimmered faintly with the color of painkillers, antibiotics, and nanofiber catalysts.
I didn't overthink it.
I twisted, found the gap just above the damaged armor plate, and stabbed it into the meat of my torso near the worst of the damage. The hiss came first—a low, angry burn as the serum injected.
Then the snap.
I shouted without meaning to. A raw, guttural roar ripped out of my throat as the bones in my side jerked and twisted. It wasn't gradual. It was a reset—brutal and direct. I could feel the ribs shifting under the skin, sliding back into alignment like someone inside was pulling puppet strings with pliers.
"Oh fuck—ohhh fuck—" I gasped, teeth grinding as the last joint locked into place.
Sweat poured down my back. My vision blurred for a second. Then cleared.
I was still breathing.
The fire in my side had dulled into something bearable. The swelling in my cheek was still there, but the pressure had eased. No nausea. No short breath. Just pain… but healing pain. Focused. Directed.
I slumped back against the wall, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and exhaled slow.
"Okay," I muttered hoarsely. "Did not know that was going to hurt."
I rolled my shoulder. Winced. But it moved.
It was working.
I looked down at the now-empty Stimpak in my hand and let out a shaky breath.
And just as I started to stand, the pain in my face reminded me I was only halfway done
Slow. Steady. Bones knitting. Muscles still aching, but at least they were mine again
I took a few steps forward, testing the weight in my legs. My ribs still ached like hell, but they were holding. The pain was deep now—bruised, not broken. The kind of pain you could work through.
But my face was another story.
Every time I blinked, my left eye pulsed with heat. My cheek felt tight, swollen. I reached up and touched it gently. Even that light contact sent a jolt through my skull. The bone beneath was misaligned—sunken slightly, pressing against the orbital ridge. I knew what a broken cheekbone felt like. And this was worse.
If I left it as-is, I'd be half-blind by the time I got out of here. One more solid hit and it wouldn't just be cosmetic—it'd collapse inward.
I sighed and reached for a second Stimpak.
Pulled it from the pouch. Checked the needle. Still clean. Still sealed.
"Really didn't want to use two in one day," I muttered.
I positioned the tip just below the ridge of the bone, near the worst of the swelling. There wasn't much room to work with, but it didn't need much. I braced myself, drew in a breath through my teeth, and pressed the injector in.
The serum hissed. Cool at first.
Then came the fire.
I gritted my teeth and clutched the edge of a doorway to stay upright as the bone beneath my skin shifted. It felt like someone had jammed a jackhammer into my face and was realigning it with brute force. I didn't scream this time, but I came damn close. A low growl worked its way out of my throat, half-muffled by clenched jaw and sheer will.
My vision doubled for a second. Then cleared.
I blinked hard, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and slowly reached up to press the side of my face again. The swelling had started to go down. The bone felt solid. Still sore—but whole.
I spit blood onto the floor, rolled my jaw once, and nodded to no one.
"Next time I see Ubba," I muttered, "I'm asking her to build me a face brace."
Two Stimpaks down.
But I could breathe again.
I could see again.
And that meant I could keep going.
The stims were still settling in my blood, bones aching in that tight, rebuilding way that felt more like welding than healing. But I couldn't stop. Not now. Whatever was down here—whatever was left—it had a shape now. A pattern. And I was almost at the center of it.
The next hallway bled into combat almost instantly. No whispers. No shuffling. Just the shriek of teeth and bone as another pack rushed me from a side corridor. A dozen more—ferals in worse shape than the last, some barely held together, one dragging itself forward on its ribs like it had forgotten what legs were for.
I didn't hesitate.
The Railwhistle screamed, one spike after another hammering ghouls into the walls. When it got too close, I switched to Windspine—fast shots, tight kills, keeping them at range. When they surged anyway, I answered with the Tooth of the Roar, cleaving through shoulders, jaws, and anything else dumb enough to close the gap.
When the last one dropped, the floor was painted in flesh and noise.
And ahead?
A door.
Thick. Steel. Reinforced with faded yellow hazard stripes and burn marks like someone had tried to cut through it—and failed.
Above the frame, stenciled in paint flaked by age and heat, were seven sharp letters:
ARMORY.
I stepped closer, breathing hard, and swept the area with the Focus. No radiation. No ambient leaks. The zone was clean.
But the scan didn't stop there.
It caught something else.
Footsteps.
Heavy.
Measured.
Not like a ghoul. Not like a human, even.
Power armor.
I froze, every muscle tensing, and scrolled back through the last audio log in my head. Keller's voice. "Captain, I need to ask you something…" He'd been talking to someone. Reporting in. And that someone had never responded.
Because he was still here. Still waiting. Still guarding.
Of course he was.
This wasn't just a bunker. It was a secure zone. And the armory? That wasn't a prize. That was a trigger.
I tightened my grip on the Railwhistle, feeling the pressure cycle hum through the chamber like a second heartbeat.
The Captain hadn't abandoned post.
And I was about to find out what it took to pry him out of it.
"Boss fight," I muttered under my breath.
I didn't move right away. Just stood there at the edge of the final hall, staring at the steel door like it was breathing. The word ARMORY stretched across the top in chipped paint, but it might as well have said PROBLEM. The Focus was still pinging. Still tracking the footsteps. They were deep. Measured. No shuffle, no hesitation. The kind of steps that only came from reinforced servos and triple-density hydraulics. Power armor. Old-world. Heavy-class.
And it wasn't wandering.
It was pacing.
Waiting.
I stepped back behind the closest intact wall panel and crouched. My ribs still ached, but the stims had done their job. My face hurt like hell, but I could see straight. I needed to be sharp now. No room for heroics. No second chances.
First, I checked the Railwhistle. Pressure gauge was in the green. The chamber was clean, the last scavenged spike still seated right. I pulled it, swapped it for a straighter one from the Nanoboy, and cycled the bolt until I felt the click settle. Then I tested the vent—quick hiss, solid resistance. It was holding.
Next, I slung the rifle and pulled Windspine. Three arrows nocked in the side sheath. Still usable. I tugged gently on the string, checking tension. Good. Not perfect, but good.
The Tooth of the Roar came last. I drew the blade, turned it in the light. The edge was dulled from the earlier fight, but it would still cut through armor gaps if I found the right angle. I ran a thumb down the spine. Still sharp enough to matter.
Then I holstered everything and pulled Terra's Gift.
Six rounds. All of them loaded.
The revolver felt heavier now—not just in weight, but in purpose. The last time I used it, I put a Reaver in the dirt. The time before that, I'd made a clean shot at a machine and watched it fold. This time, I'd be aiming at something wearing a badge that never expired.
I let out a slow breath and leaned against the wall.
If Keller had been second watch, this guy had been first. The Captain.
He wasn't guarding an armory. He was burying a history. Probably thought he was still protecting the last good thing on this floor. Keeping it safe from looters, ghouls, me. Didn't matter what the logic was.
I checked the Focus one last time. Footsteps still steady. Still pacing behind the door.
This wasn't going to be a fight.
It was going to be a reckoning.
The door was sealed tight, reinforced with layered alloy plating and rusted mag-locks that hadn't disengaged in over a century. No keypad. No handle. Just a dead interface and the whine of pressure seals still clinging to the frame like it mattered.
I stepped closer and raised my Focus.
The overlay flickered, struggling to penetrate the scrambled EM field that saturated the sublevel. Then the lines snapped into shape—a lattice of rusted security architecture still running on borrowed time. It wasn't elegant. It didn't have to be. Just old enough to still believe in the chain of command.
I pushed a command through the interface.
The lock chirped once.
Then hissed.
Then exploded outward with the grinding noise of dead machinery remembering how to move. The door cracked open six inches—enough to see the red of a HUD lens flicker in the dark beyond.
Then the shotgun fired.
I dove hard to the right. Pellets slammed into the wall where my head had been, shattering concrete and filling the air with smoke and dust. I hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled, and came up behind the nearest support strut with my revolver drawn.
Through the haze, I heard the voice.
Not a shout. Not a roar. Just loud enough to command.
"Unauthorized personnel are not permitted in the armory," the thing said.
The voice was human—but wrong. Dry. Warped. Like a man trying to speak through his own bones.
"Lethal force has been authorized to maintain order."
Then came the sound of boots. Heavy ones.
Power-assisted.
He was coming.