Day 26.
The Roof (Sector 1).
Sauget, Illinois.
05:30 Hours.
The dawn didn't bring light. It brought an engine roar that shook the dust from the rafters.
I lay prone on the edge of the roof, the Barrett M82A1 bipod dug into the gravel. The scope was cold against my eye socket. The wind smelled of rain and unburnt hydrocarbons.
"They're early," Yana whispered into the comms. She was positioned in the ruins of the gatehouse, invisible in the shadows.
"Vance isn't here to siege," I said, adjusting the windage knob. "He's here to execute."
My Decay Sight painted the horizon in angry, jagged crimson.
`[THREAT DETECTED: THE RED FACTION.]`
`[UNIT COUNT: 60 BIKERS, 2 WAR TRUCKS.]`
`[LEADER: REAPER VANCE (TIER 3 CHAOS).]`
The convoy crested the hill on Highway 40.
It was a parade of nightmares. Sixty motorcycles, their exhausts spitting flames. Two heavy semi-trucks, armored with welded scrap metal and draped in flayed human skins that flapped like banners.
And leading them, riding a custom trike that looked like it was built from a jet engine, was Vance.
He had changed.
In Chapter 11, he was a man. Now, he was a monster.
He was shirtless, his torso a roadmap of scar tissue and fresh, weeping brands. His left leg—the one Travis had shattered—was gone. In its place was a crude hydraulic piston welded directly into his femur, leaking black oil.
But it was his veins that terrified me. They weren't red anymore. They were glowing white-hot, shining through his skin like he had swallowed a star.
Tier 3 Chaos User. He had been injecting raw, corrupted serum.
"Boyd," I said. "Status on the EMP?"
"Capacitors are at 98%," Boyd's metallic voice droned. "One shot, Jack. If I fire it, the coils melt. We won't get a second try."
"Hold," I said. "Let them get close. I want them in the kill box."
The convoy didn't slow down. They accelerated.
They hit the access road doing sixty. The war trucks flanked the bikes, acting as mobile shields.
"They aren't stopping!" Travis yelled from the courtyard. He was standing alone at the South Gate, the only thing between the trucks and the Silo. He held a new weapon—a girder rip-sawed from the factory ceiling.
"They're going to ram the gate!" I realized. "Boyd! Fire!"
"Discharging."
Below me, in the workshop, the bank of car batteries Boyd had wired together screamed.
ZR-R-R-ACK!
A pulse of invisible distortion rippled out from the Silo. It wasn't cinematic. There was no blue wave. Just a sudden, violent silence in the electromagnetic spectrum.
The lead war truck died instantly. Its ECU fried. The engine seized at 4,000 RPM. The truck jackknifed, skidding sideways into the drainage ditch with a sound like a bomb going off.
"Hit!" Boyd called.
But the bikes... the bikes were carbureted. Old school. Analog.
They didn't stop.
Fifty motorcycles roared past the wrecked truck, weaving through the mud.
"Contact!" I shouted. "Free fire!"
The battle for Sector 1 began.
The South Gate.
05:45 Hours.
Travis was the anvil.
The bikers hit the South Gate like a wave. They didn't bother opening it; they crashed their bikes into the chain-link, using the momentum to vault the fence.
Travis stepped forward.
The first biker, a guy swinging a length of chain, flew through the air. Travis caught him by the helmet.
CRUNCH.
He crushed the helmet like a soda can and threw the corpse at the next bike.
"Come on!" Travis roared, his orange veins pulsing. "Is that all you got?"
Three bikers swarmed him. They slashed at his legs with machetes. The blades sparked against his stone-grey skin, chipping the callus but failing to cut deep.
Travis swung the girder. It caught two bikers in the chest, sweeping them off their feet and shattering their ribcages.
But there were too many.
"Yana!" I yelled. "Flank them!"
Yana materialized from the shadows near the fuel tanks. She didn't fight; she danced. Her Shadow Step allowed her to flicker between enemies.
Slash. A throat opened.
Step.
Stab. A kidney punctured.
Step.
She was a blur of motion, leaving a trail of slumping bodies.
But Vance wasn't stopping.
He drove his trike straight at the breach. He didn't care about his men. He ran over a fallen biker, crushing the man's skull under his rear tires.
He aimed for the wall.
"Jack!" Vance screamed, his voice amplified by a Chaos mutation that made it sound like grinding gears. "Come down and die!"
I lined up the Barrett.
Distance: 400 meters. Wind: 5mph East.
I aimed for his chest.
BOOM.
The recoil kicked my shoulder hard.
Vance sensed it. Or the Root warned him. He jerked the handlebars.
The .50 caliber round missed his chest and hit the engine block of the trike.
The trike exploded.
A fireball engulfed the machine. Vance was thrown forty feet through the air. He hit the barbed wire fence, tangling in the razor coils.
"He's down!" I shouted.
But he wasn't.
Vance ripped himself free of the wire. His skin was sloughing off from the fire, revealing raw, white-glowing muscle underneath. He didn't bleed. He smoked.
He landed on his hydraulic leg. The piston hissed.
He roared—a sound that shattered glass in the guard shack.
`[BOSS ALERT: REAPER VANCE.]`
`[ABILITY: ADRENAL OVERLOAD.]`
He charged Travis.
Travis turned to meet him.
It was a clash of titans. Tank vs. Berserker.
Vance moved with unnatural speed. He ducked under Travis's girder swing. He produced a weapon—a jagged, rusted piece of truck spring sharpened to a razor edge.
He drove it into Travis's shoulder.
Travis bellowed. For the first time since the serum, he sounded in pain.
Vance twisted the blade. "Die, meatbag!"
Travis dropped the girder. He grabbed Vance's arm.
"No," Travis grunted.
Travis headbutted him. THWACK.
Vance stumbled back, his nose flattened.
But Vance was faster. He spun, his hydraulic leg extending. He kicked Travis in the elbow.
SNAP.
The sound was sickening. A dry, loud crack that echoed across the courtyard.
Travis's right arm bent the wrong way. The humerus bone shattered, jagged white shards piercing the grey skin.
Travis fell to his knees, clutching the ruined limb.
"Travis!" I screamed.
Vance raised the truck spring for a killing blow.
"Goodbye, wall," Vance hissed.
I couldn't get a shot. They were too close.
Then, a bottle spun through the air.
It hit Vance in the back.
SMASH.
Homemade napalm splashed over him.
Paige stood by the barracks door. She had thrown it. Her hands were shaking, but she held another bottle.
"Get away from him!" she shrieked.
Vance turned, distracted by the burning fuel on his back.
That was the second I needed.
I triggered Regression Echo.
Time slowed. My heart rate dropped to zero. I tracked the movement of Vance's head.
I squeezed the trigger.
BOOM.
The .50 caliber round hit Reaper Vance in the left temple.
It didn't make a hole. It removed the top half of his head.
Brain matter, skull fragments, and white-hot Chaos energy sprayed across the mud.
Vance's body stood for a second, the hydraulic leg locked. Then it toppled over like a felled tree.
`[TARGET ELIMINATED: REAPER VANCE.]`
`[FACTION DEFEATED: RED FACTION.]`
`[RANKING UPDATE: 234.]`
The remaining bikers froze. They looked at their headless leader. They looked at the burning trucks.
They broke.
"Run!" someone screamed.
They scrambled for their bikes. They peeled out, desperate to escape the slaughterhouse.
"Let them go," I said into the comms. "Secure the perimeter."
I dropped the rifle and ran for the ladder.
The Infirmary (Level 2).
07:00 Hours.
The victory tasted like copper and bile.
Three Nulls were dead. One of them was Pete, the welder Ronnie had befriended. He had been crushed under the wheels of the war truck before the EMP hit.
But Travis was the crisis.
He lay on the table. His right arm was a ruin. The bone was exposed, the muscle torn to ribbons. He wasn't healing. The Tank Class regeneration had stalled.
"His system is shocked," Helen said, her hands deep in the wound. "The bone is pulverized, Jack. I can't pin this. I have to amputate."
"No," I said.
"Jack, look at it! It's hamburger!"
"He needs that arm," I said. "He's the wall. A wall with one arm is a door."
"I can't fix it!" Helen screamed, throwing a blood-soaked rag on the floor. "I'm a vet, not a miracle worker!"
I walked to the safe. I spun the dial.
I took out a vial of Quintuple Serum.
The room went silent.
Paige was standing in the doorway, covered in soot. Yana was leaning against the wall, clutching her thigh where a piece of shrapnel had hit her.
"Jack," Yana whispered. "That's a Tier 3 upgrade. That's worth more than this entire factory."
"It's a resource," I said.
I walked over to Travis. He was conscious, staring at the ceiling. His eyes were dim.
"Boss," he wheezed. "Did we win?"
"We won," I said.
"Arm's gone, isn't it?"
"Not yet," I said.
I uncorked the vial.
"Jack, don't," Miller's ghost seemed to whisper in the room. Wasteful. Inefficient.
`[ADMINISTRATOR: WARNING. ASSET VALUE MISMATCH. SERUM VALUE > NULL LIFE.]`
`[ROOT: USE IT. MUTATE HIM FURTHER. MAKE HIM ASYMMETRICAL.]`
I poured the serum directly into the open wound.
The reaction was violent.
The liquid hissed as it touched the exposed bone. Smoke rose from the flesh.
Travis screamed.
It was a sound of absolute biological rewriting. The muscles writhed like snakes. The bone fragments pulled themselves together, grinding and snapping into place. The skin bubbled and stretched over the wound.
In thirty seconds, the arm was whole.
It wasn't pretty. The elbow was fused into a thick, armored knot of callus and bone. It looked less like an arm and more like a club.
`[ASSET REPAIRED.]`
`[STATUS: PERMANENT DISFIGUREMENT (DEXTERITY -30%).]`
`[LOYALTY: 100% (UNSHAKABLE).]`
Travis gasped, his chest heaving. He lifted the arm. He clenched his fist.
"It works," he whispered.
I capped the empty vial. One less trump card.
I turned to the crew. They were staring at me. Not with fear, this time. With something else. Confusion? Awe?
"Get the bodies to the Gutter," I said, my voice flat. "Check Vance's corpse. He had serums. Don't use them. They're corrupted."
I walked out of the infirmary.
Paige followed me into the hall.
"You saved him," she said. "You used the god-juice to fix a broken bone."
"I fixed a tool," I said. "Don't read into it."
"You saved him," she repeated. "You're a monster, Jack. But you take care of your monsters."
She touched my arm.
"Thank you."
I pulled away.
"Get back to work, Paige. The blood isn't going to scrub itself."
I climbed the stairs to the roof.
The sun was fully up now. The smoke from the burning war truck drifted across the highway.
We controlled the road. We controlled the factory. We had killed the Reaper.
Rank 234.
But down in the infirmary, I had just spent our ticket to the endgame.
I looked at my hand. The Cruelty trait was still there, a cold weight in my chest. But for a second, when I poured that serum... it had felt warm.
"Mistake," I whispered to the wind. "Sentimental mistake."
But as I looked down at Travis standing guard in the courtyard, flexing his new, monstrous arm... I knew it wasn't.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 26
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ███████░░░ 7/10 Nodes
RANK: 234 (Highway Warlord)
THREAT ELIMINATED: Red Faction
ASSETS:
Travis (Healed/Mutated)
Vance's Loot (Corrupted Serum x6)
Highway 40 Control
CASUALTIES: 3 Nulls
NEXT EVENT: The System's Whisper / Phase 2 Setup