Day 11.
Overwatch Position Alpha.
Overlooking U.S. Route 40.
06:30 Hours.
Four days of grinding. Four days of mixing bone meal into concrete and listening to the wet thwack of the Gutter pumps processing Shamblers into fuel.
It was too fucking quiet.
I lay prone on the rusted catwalk of a billboard overlooking Highway 40, the damp metal soaking through my canvas jacket. My joints ached with the User Chill. Even with two layers of thermal gear, my body temperature was sitting at a steady 82 degrees. I was a walking corpse, preserved in my own resentment.
"Movement," Yana whispered.
She was crouched beside me, sharpening her courier knife. She didn't use a whetstone anymore; she used a piece of a Shambler's femur. The sound—skritch, skritch, skritch—was setting my teeth on edge.
I looked through the scope of the hunting rifle we'd scavenged.
The highway was a graveyard of stalled cars and rotting bodies. But down the center lane, something was coming.
A convoy.
Not the disorganized scouting party we'd burned on Day 6. This was the war machine.
Three armored semi-trucks, their cabs welded shut with steel plates. A swarm of motorcycles buzzing around them like angry hornets.
"Red Faction," I spat. "The Road Hogs".
My Decay Sight flared, painting the convoy in jagged red hostility markers.
`[FACTION DETECTED: RED (CHAOS).]`
`[UNIT COUNT: 30+.]`
`[LEADER DETECTED: "REAPER" VANCE.]`
"That's him," I said, adjusting the focus.
Reaper Vance.
He was riding a custom chopper with handlebars that looked like human tibias. He was huge—a hulking User, shirtless despite the October chill. His skin was a tapestry of scars and fresh, weeping tattoos. The veins in his arms glowed a violent, angry crimson.
He wasn't suffering from System Sickness. He was getting off on it.
"He's Red-aligned," I muttered. "Full Chaos tree. Look at his skin. He's mutating himself on purpose."
On the hood of the lead truck, I saw why they were here.
They had a hood ornament.
It was a man. A Null. He was strapped to the engine block with barbed wire. He was alive, but barely. His skin had been flayed from his chest and arms, peeling back in bloody sheets that flapped in the wind.
"They skin them," Yana hissed, her hazel eyes narrowing. "They actually skin them."
"Leather seats," I said, reciting the intel from the first timeline. "They think it's funny."
The man on the hood screamed, a sound swallowed by the roar of the engines.
`[ROOT TEMPTATION: JOIN THE FUN. BLOOD FOR POWER. +50% STRENGTH FOR EVERY SACRIFICE.]`
"Shut the fuck up," I snarled at the voice in my head.
I keyed the radio. "Travis. You ready?"
"Ready," Travis's voice came back. It sounded like boulders grinding together. He was positioned in the drainage ditch below, hidden under a tarp covered in mud and trash.
"Boyd?"
"Turrets are hot," the kid squeaked from the tree line. "But I only have 200 rounds."
"Make them count," I said. "On my mark. We hit the lead truck. We block the road. Then we kill every single one of these sick pricks."
The convoy slowed. Vance raised a fist. The bikes swarmed forward, circling a stalled station wagon.
They weren't stopping to loot. They were stopping to feed.
Vance dismounted. He walked over to the flayed man on the truck hood. He placed a hand on the man's exposed muscle.
Red light flared.
`[SYSTEM ALERT: SACRIFICE DETECTED.]`
`[BUFF: ADRENAL SURGE (GROUP).]`
The man shrieked as his life force was ripped out. Vance roared, his veins turning from crimson to blinding white. The bikers around him revved their engines, their eyes glowing with the reflected madness.
`[OFFER: MUTATE PACK FOR SPEED BOOST. HEAR THEIR HOWLS.]`
"Now!" I screamed. "Travis! Block it!"
The drainage ditch exploded.
Travis erupted from the mud like a golem. He was holding a telephone pole—a literal, twenty-foot wooden pole he had ripped out of the ground earlier that morning.
He didn't speak. He didn't roar. He just swung.
CRUNCH.
The pole slammed into the grill of the lead semi-truck. The impact sounded like a bomb going off. The truck's engine block shattered. The cab crumpled. The massive vehicle jackknifed, sliding sideways across the highway and blocking the path.
"Ambush!" Vance screamed, drawing a sawed-off shotgun. "Gut them! Flay them alive!"
The bikers swarmed. They drove their motorcycles off the road, charging straight at Travis. They swung chains wrapped in barbed wire, machetes, and tire irons.
Travis didn't flinch. He dropped the pole and grabbed the first biker out of the air.
He didn't punch him. He squeezed.
The biker's ribcage collapsed with a wet snap-crackle-pop. Travis threw the corpse at the next motorcycle, knocking the rider off into the gravel.
"Turrets!" I yelled.
From the tree line, Boyd activated the perimeter defense. Two automated 9mm turrets—scavenged from the police station blueprints—whirred to life.
BRRT-BRRT-BRRT.
They sprayed bullets into the cluster of bikes, shredding tires and leather.
"Sal! Miller! Flank right!" I ordered into the headset.
Sal and Miller popped up from the jersey barriers. Miller fired his pistol one-handed. Sal raised a rusty hunting rifle.
A biker broke from the pack. He was big, wearing a helmet painted with a skull. He ignored Travis and gunned his engine straight for Sal.
"Sal! Move!" I shouted, lining up my shot.
I fired. I missed.
The biker didn't stop. He hit the barrier at sixty miles an hour, launching the bike into the air.
He landed on Sal.
SPLAT.
It wasn't a collision. It was an erasure. The front tire of the heavy Harley landed directly on Sal's head.
There was no scream. Just a wet explosion of red mist and grey matter spraying across the concrete. Sal was gone. Just a headless torso twitching in the mud.
"Sal!" Miller screamed, scrambling back, firing wildly.
"Kill them all!" Vance roared. He was glowing now, his skin rippling as the Root mutation took hold. He charged Travis, a machete in each hand.
I bolted from the catwalk, sliding down the ladder. I hit the ground running, the Fang .45 in my hand.
I triggered Regression Echo.
For ten seconds, the world turned grey. My speed spiked to Tier 3.
I closed the distance to the biker who had killed Sal. He was trying to lift his bike out of the mud.
I didn't shoot him. I wanted him to feel it.
I swung the Fang. The aluminum bat connected with his helmet.
CRACK.
The helmet split. The skull underneath caved in.
I spun. Vance was on Travis. The Reaper was fast—unnaturally fast. He slashed Travis across the chest, the machete sparking against Travis's dense, serum-hardened skin.
Travis didn't bleed. He just got angry.
"Little man," Travis grunted.
Travis grabbed Vance by the throat and the belt. He lifted the faction leader over his head.
"Put me down!" Vance shrieked, slashing at Travis's arms. "I am the Reaper! I am the chosen!"
"You're biomass," Travis said.
He threw Vance.
Vance hit the side of the jackknifed truck with a sickening metal thud. He slid down, leaving a smear of red grease.
He groaned, trying to stand, but his leg was twisted at a ninety-degree angle.
"Retreat!" Vance screamed, spitting blood. "Pull back!"
The remaining bikers panicked. Their leader was broken. Their tank was wrecked. The giant in the mud was ripping their friends in half.
They turned their bikes, tearing up the median, dragging their wounded. One biker grabbed Vance by his vest and hauled him onto the back of a chopper.
They fled back toward the city, engines screaming.
"Let them go," I panted, the Echo backlash hitting me like a fist to the gut. I fell to my knees, dry-heaving. The maggots in my wrists were itching like fire.
The highway was silent again, except for the crackle of the burning truck and the wet sound of fluids dripping on the asphalt.
I walked over to where Sal had been.
There wasn't much left to bury.
Miller was sitting in the mud, staring at the headless body of the man he'd been working with for a week. Miller looked up at me. His face was pale, his eyes hollow.
"He's gone," Miller whispered. "Just like that. Splattered like a bug."
"We held the line," I said, my voice cold.
"He had a kid," Miller said. "Sal had a kid in Chicago."
"Sal is dead," I said. "Get his rifle. We need the ammo."
Miller stared at me. The hatred in his eyes wasn't the hot anger of mutiny anymore. It was cold. It was deep.
`[MILLER LOYALTY: 4%.]`
`[MUTINY RISK: CRITICAL.]`
I looked at the carnage. We had stopped the convoy. We had protected the Silo.
But the cost was stamped in red on the pavement.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 11
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████░░░░░ 5/10 Nodes
STATUS: PERIMETER SECURED
Casualties: Sal (KIA)
Threat: Red Faction (Retreating/Hostile)
Losses: 200 Rounds Ammo, 1 Null.