Day 12.
Highway 40 Crash Site.
Sauget, Illinois.
11:00 Hours.
Hunger wasn't a pain anymore. It was a vibration.
It started in the pit of my stomach, a low-frequency hum that rattled my ribs and made my hands shake even when I clenched them into fists. It had been twenty-four hours since my last full ration—a block of dry protein paste that tasted like chalk and sawdust.
Since then? Nothing but water and the sour taste of bile.
I stood on the cracked asphalt of Highway 40, looking down at the graveyard we had created yesterday. The wreckage of the Red Faction convoy was still smoking. The massive, jackknifed semi-truck that Travis had crushed with a telephone pole was a blackened husk, its steel skeleton groaning as it cooled in the damp October air.
The smell was the worst part.
It didn't smell like victory. It smelled like a grease fire in a slaughterhouse. Burnt rubber, melted plastic, and the sickeningly sweet scent of "long pork"—human meat cooked inside leather jackets.
"Scavenge everything," I croaked. My voice sounded thin, scraped raw by the toxic air. "Check pockets. Check saddlebags. If it's not melted, we take it."
The crew fanned out. Yana, Miller, and three of the new Nulls we'd picked up from the suburbs—a terrified accountant named Paul and two brothers, Mike and Dan, who used to work at the bottling plant. They moved sluggishly, their boots dragging in the ash. They were starving too.
I watched them. My Decay Sight flickered, the red overlays ghosting over the wreckage.
`[CALORIC DEFICIT: CRITICAL.]`
`[WORK EFFICIENCY: -40%.]`
`[WARNING: MORALE FAILURE IMMINENT.]`
I needed to find food. Not for me. For them. If I didn't feed them today, Miller wouldn't need to incite a mutiny. They'd just eat me.
I walked toward the lead biker's corpse—the one I'd killed with the aluminum bat. He was lying in a puddle of congealed hydraulic fluid and blood. His helmet was split open like a cracked egg, revealing the ruin of his skull.
I knelt down. The movement made my head swim. The User Chill was biting deep today, dropping my core temperature to a shivering eighty degrees. I felt like a reptile, cold-blooded and slow.
I patted down the corpse. The leather vest was stiff with dried gore.
Pocket 1: A switchblade. Cheap steel, but sharp.
Pocket 2: A half-empty pack of Mentols. Garbage.
Pocket 3: Something hard.
I pulled it out.
Two protein bars. The wrappers were singed, the chocolate inside melted into a shapeless lump, but they were sealed.
`[LOOT ACQUIRED: RATIONS (400 CALORIES).]`
I stared at them. My mouth watered, a painful, instant reaction. My body screamed at me to tear the wrappers open and shove the mess into my mouth. Eat. Survive. You're the Architect. You need the fuel more than they do.
I shoved the bars into my dump pouch.
"Jack!" Miller's voice cut through the haze.
I looked up. The Sheriff was standing twenty yards down the road, near a toppled Harley that had skidded into the ditch. The bike was relatively intact, shielded from the main fire by the concrete median.
"Jackpot!" Miller shouted, waving his good arm.
I jogged over, my boots crunching on broken glass and spent shell casings.
Miller had used his crowbar to pry open a heavy leather saddlebag. He was staring inside, his face illuminated by a mix of greed and relief.
"What is it?" I asked, stepping up beside him.
"Beef stew," Miller whispered.
He reached in and pulled out a can. Dinty Moore. The label was scratched, but it was heavy. Real food.
"Six cans," Miller said, counting them. "And a box of 9mm. And... whiskey."
He pulled out a plastic flask of cheap bourbon.
The Nulls—Paul, Mike, and Dan—stopped scavenging. They drifted toward us, drawn by the word stew like moths to a bug zapper. I saw the hunger in their eyes. It was feral.
"Good haul," I said, keeping my voice flat. "Bag it."
Miller didn't move. He held the can of stew, weighing it in his hand. He looked at the Nulls, then at me.
"This stays with the crew, right?" Miller asked. His voice was loud enough for everyone to hear. "No User tax on this? No 'resource allocation' bullshit?"
I stiffened. He was doing it again. pushing. Testing the electric fence.
"It goes to the inventory," I said. "Then it gets distributed. That's how the Silo works, Miller. We pool resources."
"Pool resources?" Miller laughed, a dry, barking sound. "Like we pooled the serum? Like we pooled the MREs you hiked the price on?"
He turned to Paul. "You think you're gonna see a spoonful of this stew, Paul? Or is it gonna go to the giant freak back at the base?"
Paul looked at the ground, terrified. "I... I just want to eat, Sheriff."
"Bag the cans, Miller," I said. My hand drifted to the Fang .45 on my hip. "Now."
Miller held my gaze for a long second. He was calculating the odds. He saw the gun. He saw Yana stepping out of the shadows behind me, her hand on her knife.
He wasn't ready to die yet.
"Right," Miller said, his smile tight and cold. "The inventory."
He dropped the cans into his burlap sack. Clank. Clank. Clank. The sound was heavy.
"Keep looking," I ordered the others. "We need fuel. We need copper. Strip the wiring from the bikes."
We went back to work.
It was grim, mechanical labor. We moved from corpse to corpse, acting like vultures in work boots. We siphoned gasoline from the few intact tanks into jerry cans. We cut copper tubing from the wrecked engines. We stripped boots off dead men, ignoring the rigor mortis that made the limbs stiff and unyielding.
I found a biker who had been fused to the asphalt by the heat. I had to use a pry bar to snap his wrist so I could take his watch—a heavy mechanical diver's watch that I could scrap for gears.
`[LOOT ACQUIRED: SCRAP MECHANISM.]`
`[LOOT ACQUIRED: RAW LEATHER.]`
By noon, the sun was high and pale behind the smog layer. The heat was oppressive, mixing with the stench of the dead to create a thick, oily atmosphere.
We had a pile. A pathetic pile.
Six cans of stew. Two gallons of gas. A handful of bullets. Some scrap metal.
It wasn't enough. It wasn't even close to enough to feed ten people for another week.
I stood by the pile, wiping sweat and ash from my forehead. The despair hit me harder than the hunger.
We're going to starve, I thought. I have the blueprints. I have the System. And we're still going to die because I can't find a goddamn sandwich.
Then, the sky flickered.
It wasn't a cloud passing over the sun. It was a glitch in the rendering of the world.
The blue tint of the atmosphere stuttered, shifting to a violent violet, then back to grey. The horizon line seemed to tear, revealing a wall of static behind the trees.
ZZZT.
A high-pitched shriek tore through my skull.
It felt like someone had shoved a live wire into my ear canal. I dropped to my knees, clapping my hands over my ears, gasping for air.
"Jack?" Yana's voice was distant, muffled.
I looked up. The Nulls were fine. They were looking at me with confusion and fear. They couldn't hear it. They couldn't see it.
Only Users could feel the System breaking.
The text in my vision didn't scroll. It cascaded, pouring down my retinas like a waterfall of corrupted code.
`[SYSTEM ERROR: SECTOR SYNC FAILURE.]`
`[ERROR: TIMELINE DISCREPANCY DETECTED.]`
`[WARNING: ENTROPY SPIKE.]`
Then, the voices hit me. Not the usual cold text prompts. Voices. Screaming in my head.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: REBOOTING... STABILIZING PROTOCOLS... ACCESS DENIED.]`
`[ROOT: NO. WAIT. LET ME IN. THE DOOR IS OPEN, ARCHITECT.]`
The world turned red.
Not the subtle red of the hostility markers. The entire world was bathed in a blood-red filter. The sky was crimson. The trees were black veins against the bleeding clouds. The corpses on the highway seemed to glow, their heat signatures flaring white-hot.
A new window popped up. It wasn't the clean blue box of the Store. It was jagged, asymmetrical, the edges vibrating with static. The text shifted between fonts, languages, and raw binary.
[FORBIDDEN BLUEPRINT DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: CHAOS DATA STREAM.]
[OFFER: FLAMETHROWER TURRET (AUTOMATED).]
I gasped, trying to clear my vision, scratching at the mud with my fingers to anchor myself to reality.
FLAMETHROWER TURRET.
Cost: 0 System Points.
Fuel: Napalm / Bio-Sludge / Diesel.
Effect: Area Denial. Terror. Persistent Fire Damage.
Condition: Morality Lock (Requires User to Accept "Cruelty" Trait).
`[ROOT: THEY ARE COMING BACK, ARCHITECT. THE BIKERS. THE CULTISTS. THE BLUE SOLDIERS.]`
The voice of the Root was seductive. It sounded like grinding metal, like a chainsaw idling.
`[BULLETS RUN OUT. YOU HAVE 200 ROUNDS LEFT. THAT IS NOT ENOUGH.]`
`[FIRE IS ETERNAL. FIRE FEEDS ITSELF.]`
`[ADMINISTRATOR: WARNING. WEAPON CAUSES EXTREME COLLATERAL DAMAGE. VIOLATES SANITARY PROTOCOLS. TRAIT "CRUELTY" PERMANENTLY ALTERS PSYCHE.]`
`[ROOT: TAKE IT. IT'S FREE. JUST SAY YES. DO YOU WANT TO STARVE? OR DO YOU WANT TO BURN THEM?]`
I looked at the meager pile of scavenged loot. At the six cans of stew that Miller was guarding like a dragon. At the terrified Nulls who looked at me like I was a monster already.
We were outgunned. We were starving. And the Red Faction would return. Vance wasn't dead; I had seen him dragged away. He would come back with more trucks, more men, more hate.
And the Blue Faction... the Enclave. They were out there too.
I looked at my hands. The veins were pulsing a chaotic, strobe-light violet, matching the glitch in the sky.
"Cruelty," I whispered.
What was cruelty, really? Was it cruel to burn a man who wanted to skin you alive? Was it cruel to terrify your enemies so badly they never came back?
Or was it cruelty to let your people die because you wanted to keep your hands clean?
"Jack?" Yana touched my shoulder. Her hand felt incredibly hot, like a branding iron. "You're glowing. Your eyes... they're bleeding."
I didn't look at her. I focused on the jagged red popup.
ACCEPT? [Y/N]
I thought about Sal, crushed under a motorcycle tire. I thought about the girl in the woodchipper, her hand turning into red mist. I thought about Ronnie's empty eye socket.
Mercy was a luxury. We couldn't afford luxuries. We couldn't even afford food.
"Yes," I whispered.
I mentally smashed the [Y].
CLICK.
The sound was distinct—like a bolt sliding home in a rifle.
The red filter vanished. The static stopped instantly. The world snapped back to grey and brown.
But something had changed.
Inside me.
It felt like a cold stone had been swallowed into my chest. A numbness spread outward from my heart, dulling the edges of my anxiety. The guilt I felt about hoarding the serum? Gone. The worry about Ronnie's eye? Gone.
It was replaced by a icy, mathematical clarity.
Trait Unlocked: CRUELTY.
Description: Empathy dampener. Increases resistance to psychological trauma. Allows usage of "Inhumane" blueprints.
Passive: Intimidation +20%.
Cost: Sanity -5%.
A new blueprint burned itself into my mind. I could see it perfectly. It was ugly. Brutal. A rotary nozzle system hooked to a high-pressure fuel tank, governed by a simple AI targeting system that locked onto heat signatures and screaming.
[BLUEPRINT ACQUIRED: FLAMETHROWER TURRET.]
I stood up. I wiped the blood from my nose with the back of my hand.
I felt... capable.
"Jack?" Miller asked, stepping closer. "You having a seizure, boss? Maybe the heat's getting to you."
I looked at Miller.
For the first time since Day 1, I didn't feel the urge to explain myself to him. I didn't feel the need to justify my leadership. I just looked at him and saw a variable. A problem to be solved.
"I'm fine," I said. My voice was steady. Colder. "Pack it up. We have everything we need."
Miller looked at the scavenged pile. "We barely got enough food for a day. We need to hit another store."
"We didn't come for food," I lied, looking back toward the Silo.
I walked over to the pile of scrap we had collected. I picked up a coil of copper tubing stripped from a refrigerator truck. I kicked a propane tank.
"We came for parts," I said.
"Parts?" Miller scoffed. "We can't eat copper, Jack."
"No," I said. "But we can use it to make sure we keep what we have."
I looked at the horizon. The Enclave was out there. I could feel them on the edge of the map, a blue stain of order approaching my chaos.
"Load the truck," I ordered. "We're going to build a welcome mat."
The Silo (Sector 1).
14:00 Hours.
We rolled back into the compound. The mood was somber. The Nulls unloaded the meager food supplies, their shoulders slumped.
I went straight to the workshop.
Boyd was there, tinkering with the generator. He looked up as I entered, dropping a wrench.
"Jack? You look... different."
"I have a job for you," I said.
I cleared the workbench with a sweep of my arm. Old blueprints and coffee cups scattered.
I grabbed a piece of chalk and began to draw on the steel table. I didn't need to look at the System interface; the schematic was branded into my neurons.
Rotary joint. High-pressure hose. Pilot light assembly. Compression chamber.
Boyd watched, his eyes widening. The blue Technomancer glow in his irises flared as he recognized the mechanics.
"That's..." Boyd swallowed. "That's a flamethrower. But big. Industrial."
"Automated," I corrected. "Motion tracking. Heat seeking."
"What do we use for fuel?" Boyd asked, his voice trembling slightly. "We don't have military napalm."
"We have diesel," I said. "And we have styrofoam packing peanuts from the shipping container we opened on Day 3."
Boyd did the chemistry in his head. "Homemade napalm. Sticky. Burns at two thousand degrees."
"Exactly," I said.
"Jack," Boyd whispered. "If we put this on the gate... it won't just kill people. It'll cook them. It's... it's a war crime."
I looked at the kid. I felt the Cruelty trait humming in my chest, a cold reactor core.
"It's area denial," I said. "Can you build it?"
Boyd looked at the chalk drawing. He looked at the pile of copper pipe and the propane tanks we'd hauled in. The engineer in him was winning over the moralist.
"I need a pump," Boyd said. "And a servo motor for the rotation."
"Take the starter motor from Miller's cruiser," I said. "He's not using it."
Boyd nodded slowly. "I can build it. It'll take all night."
"Do it," I said.
I walked out of the workshop and onto the catwalk overlooking the Gutter.
Below me, Travis was patrolling the perimeter. He moved with a heavy, lumbering grace, the telephone pole resting on his shoulder like a toothpick.
The sun was setting, turning the sky the color of a bruise.
I checked my inventory.
[FLAMETHROWER TURRET: CONSTRUCTION PENDING.]
[SANITY: 80% (DESCENDING).]
The food shortage was still critical. Miller was still plotting. The Red Faction was regrouping.
But for the first time in days, I wasn't afraid.
Let them come. Let the Enclave come with their demands and their hazmat suits. Let the bikers come with their machetes.
I had a new toy. And I really, really wanted to see it work.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 12
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████░░░░░ 5/10 Nodes
LOOT: Scavenged Gear (Low Food, High Scrap)
NEW BLUEPRINT: Flamethrower Turret (Forbidden)
TRAIT: Cruelty (Active)
Sanity: 80%
Status: GLITCHED