Chapter 11: Steel from Silence
The machine didn't move. Not a twitch. Not a flinch. It just stood there — fists raised, feet light, weight balanced perfectly over the balls of its armored feet. Waiting. Watching. Like it knew the dance hadn't started yet. Like it wanted to see if we remembered the steps.
Sula shifted beside me, her breathing shallow but steady, axe half-raised. She was reading it the same way I was — not a mindless machine, but a fighter. One that understood distance, patience, pressure.
A Boxer.
I twitched my fingers against the Focus at my temple, sending a silent ping. A soft tone vibrated against my skull. Then the readout slid across my vision, crisp and brutal:
SIGNAL: ARES STRIKER [BOXER VARIANT]
CLASS: Anthropoid Combat Mimic – Common Pugilist Model
STATUS: ACTIVE
THREAT EVALUATION: HIGH (Learning Behavior Detected)
NOTES: Specializes in close-quarters precision striking. Common variant. Mid-tier adaptation speed.
TACTICAL ADVICE: Disrupt guard patterns. Avoid prolonged exchange.
My stomach tightened slightly. Common didn't mean weak. It just meant there were more of them. And this one was already studying us.
Then something else hit me. ARES. That wasn't a mistake. Ares — the Old World god of war. Not honor. Not strategy. Just bloodshed. If some rogue subfunction had chosen that name, it meant these things weren't built for peace. They were built for conflict. To adapt, to fight, to keep fighting even after reason stopped making sense. Machines that didn't just endure war — they embodied it.
The Boxer took a slow half-step forward. Measured. Testing range without committing. I tightened my grip on Terra's Gift, breathing slow through my nose.
'Please let it be built off amateurs,' I thought grimly. 'Fitness instructors. Backyard brawlers. Drunken Friday night fights caught on old cameras.' Not pros. Not the ones who turned punching into architecture. Not the ones who could crack ribs with a glance and end fights before they even started.
If it learned from them — if it really learned — this wasn't a machine. It was a weapon.
And if it dropped its left arm and started swinging it like Kaolan Wongsawat?
I was running.
I wasn't built for that. Not yet.
We had a plan if we ran into something like Hell's Angel — and it didn't involve me standing toe-to-toe with it.
We weren't throwing just anyone at that monster. We were throwing Jorta. Someone who would've been a Kengan fighter if the Old World had survived.
Big man. Big spear. Big enough fists to make even monsters second-guess stepping forward.
Without him?
I'd have about as much chance against a Kaolan-style machine as a rabbit has against a bear.
Then it moved. Fast. Tight. No wasted step. It rushed low, fists tucked against its jaw. A real boxer's lunge, smooth and fast. I tried to fire, but the Boxer deflected my arm mid-squeeze. Terra's Gift flew from my grip, spinning across the cracked floor.
I cursed, falling back two steps, hand already dropping to my belt. The Boxer stayed on me — close, hungry for the gap. Its footwork was too clean for junkyard brawling. This wasn't amateur garbage. I ripped the machete free just as the machine closed the distance.
It didn't hesitate.
Neither did I.
Steel met machine at elbow's length.
I swung wide, a rough, ugly arc meant more to scare than strike. The machete whistled through empty air, the Boxer sliding just outside the edge of the blow.
It didn't counter immediately. Didn't rush. It hesitated.
I caught it — that half-stutter in its footwork. That twitch of uncertainty in its stance.
It wasn't used to this.
Whatever databanks built it, whatever footage it learned from, they hadn't prepared it for someone fighting dirty with a blade.
Good.
Very good.
If it had learned from someone like Kaolan Wongsawat — the bodyguard to Rama XIII, the King of Thailand — it wouldn't have hesitated.
Kaolan wasn't just a boxer. He fought off real assassins — knives, swords, guns — and won. He turned live blades into missed angles and broken bones.
If this thing had Kaolan's data?
I wouldn't have made it past the first exchange.
But it didn't.
It fought like someone who only knew fists.
And that meant I had a chance.
I stepped in again, sloppy but fast, trying to drive the machete low toward its knee joint. The Boxer twisted, deflecting with its forearm, but the angle was wrong — it wasn't built to parry steel. It caught the flat of the blade on its gauntlet, skidding back a half-step.
We reset, both breathing hard even though only one of us needed to. My form was trash — too high, too tense, feet too close together. But it didn't matter. Because it was still trying to box. And you couldn't jab a machete.
I lunged again, another ugly sweep meant to force it off balance. The Boxer read it. Instead of dodging, it stepped inside the arc—tight, fast—and drove a short right straight into my jaw. I didn't even see it coming.
Pain exploded across the side of my face. My teeth clicked hard against each other, sharp enough to taste blood where my tongue caught the edge. The world blurred for half a second, the floor tilting under my boots.
I stumbled back a step, machete wobbling in my grip. The Boxer didn't press. It reset its stance instead—fists up, weight balanced, watching. Learning.
My jaw throbbed. Every breath tasted like copper. Good hit. Real good.
I spit to the side, clearing the blood from my mouth.
"Okay," I muttered, tightening my grip on the machete again. "You hit harder than you look."
The Boxer didn't react. Machines didn't gloat. But somehow, standing there in that perfect stance, it still managed to look ready to beat me bloody again.
It edged forward, tighter now, closing the gap the way a real fighter would. I shifted the machete higher, trying to force it to respect the reach. It didn't blink. It didn't even hesitate.
Another faint slip—a testing jab toward my face.
I barely got the blade between us, knocking it aside. The next punch was already cocking when I heard Sula's voice cut through the fight—sharp, urgent:
"Rion! Use the paint!"
I gritted my teeth, stumbling back another half-step. The Boxer kept stalking forward, unfazed.
Sula's voice rose again, raw and furious:
"Your markings! Your blade! Confuse it!"
It clicked.
The markings weren't just tribal. The Focus paint around my eyes. The black-and-white stripes scorched across my arms and legs. The symbols Sula had helped me add to the machete's flat—jagged, asymmetrical patterns. They weren't for tradition. They were to break machine pattern locks. To scramble target tracking.
The Boxer didn't have true eyes. It tracked angles, contrast points, frame readings—like a corrupted Watcher. And right now, I was fighting like a man. Predictable. Clean. Straight lines. Exactly what it could read.
I shifted my stance. Not just stepping. Letting the blade move with me. Flow with me.
The machete wasn't just something I swung now. It was an extension—riding the patterns painted across my arms and chest, twisting through the jagged breaks and black-white shatter lines that the Boxer's sensors couldn't cleanly track.
It hesitated. Only for a heartbeat—but it hesitated.
I used it.
I twisted my torso sharply, letting the machete blur over the jagged black strip painted across my ribs, then whipped it across the inside of my left forearm in a tight, rising arc. The blade moved like a living thing—rising, snapping forward.
The Boxer twitched to counter.
Too slow.
The machete ripped across the joint where its right shoulder met the chestplate. Sparks burst from the severed actuator cables, and the machine staggered a half-step, its guard breaking for the first time. A ragged hiss escaped from the damage—venting coolant—and for the first time, I saw it truly falter.
Not just learning anymore. Bleeding.
The Boxer's fists dropped lower, arms stiffening slightly as it tried to compensate for the severed shoulder. I exhaled, resetting my footing. Not winning yet. But for the first time since the fight started, I was fighting right.
The Boxer staggered, venting smoke from the damaged shoulder, but it wasn't out yet. It pivoted harder, tighter, coming at me with its good side—trying to trap the blade against the wall, pin me, cut down the angles.
I tightened my grip. Felt the strain through my right wrist—shaky, off-balance. Wrong. I had been fighting with my non-dominant hand because I was just mimicking people. But mimicking wasn't enough.
I shifted the machete into my left hand. It felt like snapping a bone back into place. Natural. I exhaled once through my nose, resetting my stance, blade low and ready.
The Boxer threw another tight jab, testing. This time, I saw the angle before it landed. I slipped it—just enough—and stepped forward, letting the machete carve upward from hip to shoulder. A deep gouge split the Boxer's torso plates, spilling more sparks and a sharp metallic screech as fiber bundles tore. The machine recoiled, frame jerking.
I didn't give it time to reset. I pressed forward, blade moving cleaner now, every swing tighter, every feint more dangerous.
Left-handed. The way it should have been from the start.
The Boxer twitched, adjusting its guard—still fast, still learning. But it was wrong. I saw it now, clear as the crack running up the center of Newton Medical's broken walls. It was reading me like I was right-handed.
All its counters, its foot placements, its angles—built off the dominant hand most fighters used. Not mine.
When I switched to my left, it kept trying to pivot against the wrong lead. Its blocks slid too far to its own right side. Its shoulder shifts left gaps where none should've been. It was like watching a machine try to fight a mirrored reflection—and losing.
The Boxer threw a fast jab, expecting me to step into it. Instead, I pivoted inside, bringing the machete up in a tight arc across its exposed ribs. The blade bit deep. Sparks burst from the gap in its side, coolant hissing like a snake. The Boxer staggered hard, balance breaking completely for the first time.
I didn't let it recover.
Left hand locked solid on the machete's hilt, I moved in, slashing again across the already-damaged shoulder. The second hit severed something important. The Boxer's right arm dropped limp at its side, servos sparking and whirring uselessly.
It tried to retreat.
Too slow.
The Boxer reeled, balance shattered, one arm dead at its side. I didn't give it a second chance.
I rushed, boots hammering cracked tile, shoulder low, machete drawn back. The Boxer tried to reset its stance, but it was too late—its predictive model still trying to solve the wrong equation. I slammed into it chest-to-chest, driving the machete up and forward with all the force I could muster.
The blade punched through its chin plate, carving deep into the blank faceplate and sinking into the core beneath.
For a split second, the machine spasmed—arms jerking in wild, broken motions.
Then it went still.
Dead weight collapsed against me.
I yanked the machete free with a wet screech of tearing metal, letting the body fall heavily to the floor. Sparks guttered from the ruined shell, fading fast. I staggered back a step, breathing hard, machete slick with synthetic coolant.
Sula was already moving, checking the hallway behind us, bow ready. No more Boxers coming. At least for now.
I wiped the blade off on the remains of my own tattered sleeve, jaw aching where the first hit had landed. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't clean. But it was dead. And that was all that mattered.
Sula approached cautiously, eyes flicking down at the Boxer's ruined body.
"Is it dead?" she asked, voice low.
I nodded, still catching my breath. "Yeah. It's not getting up again."
She circled it once, studying the clean puncture through the faceplate and the wrecked shoulder. Her nose wrinkled faintly at the smell of leaking coolant.
"You fought smarter," she said, nodding toward the blade still slick in my hand.
"Learned the hard way," I muttered, flexing my sore jaw.
I crouched beside the corpse, reaching down to my belt—to the slim black wrist module latched over my forearm. The Nanoboy 3000.
Sula watched as I pressed two fingers against a recessed panel and flicked it open, revealing a swirling field of microscopic blue motes barely visible in the hospital's murky light.
The nanobots surged forward, a thin mist coiling around the Boxer's broken frame. Within seconds, the body started coming apart—layer by layer, plate by plate—broken into shimmering threads of metal, fiber, and polymer strands. Each fragment folded inward, compacted, absorbed into the swirling field at my wrist.
Sula took a sharp half-step back, eyes wide.
"You're... eating it?" she demanded, half-whisper, half-accusation.
"Storing it," I corrected, not looking away. "Nanoscopic compression. It disassembles matter into stabilized matrices. Small stuff—weapons, armor, parts—normally takes priority." I tapped the module once. "But this?" I gestured toward the half-vanished Boxer. "Too rare to leave behind. We kill something this unique, we keep it."
Within moments, nothing remained but a faint scorch mark on the tile and a low hum from the module re-sealing itself. I stood, flexing my wrist once to test the weight. Slightly heavier. Manageable.
Sula stared at me—not afraid, not exactly. Just aware. More aware than before. Her hand tightened unconsciously around the haft of her axe.
"Old One magic," she muttered under her breath, almost like a prayer or a curse.
I gave a small, humorless smile as I latched the Nanoboy's panel shut. Old One magic. The phrase rattled in my head—not because it was wrong, but because it was right.
I remembered the quote, sharp and distant like a shard of glass buried in the past:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke. One of the few Old World names still floating in the back of my skull like a ghost.
Sula wasn't wrong. Not from where she stood.
I looked down at my wrist, the Nanoboy humming low and steady against my skin, and wondered if maybe—just maybe—we'd crossed the line so far back that even I couldn't see it anymore. I stood, flexing my wrist again. Slightly heavier. Manageable. But not invisible.
I could feel it now—the extra drag against my shoulder and spine. The Boxer's mass compressed down, folded into the matrix in the Nanoboy's field, but not erased. It was still there. Dead and broken, but carried all the same.
I shifted my stance, rolling my shoulders to redistribute the weight, and let out a slow breath. Good thing I didn't treat this like a game. If I'd picked up my old hoarding habits—every cracked blade, every half-eaten ration, every "might be useful someday" pile of junk—I'd be crawling by now.
Sula gave me a look—wary, silent—still watching the empty space where the Boxer had vanished.
I tapped the Nanoboy lightly with two fingers, more out of habit than anything else.
"Still better than leaving it behind," I muttered.
"You carry it with you?" she asked, voice low, suspicious.
"Not just the memory," I said, tapping the casing lightly. "The mass. Everything I store adds to my body weight. It compresses, but it doesn't erase."
She frowned, processing that. Then a slow smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth.
"If that's true..." she said, eyes narrowing slightly, "you might finally be carrying enough weight for Deathclaw Kenpo."
I blinked.
She tapped her own chest—solid, centered—then mimed a stomping movement with a short, sharp jerk of her leg.
"Deathclaws don't win because they're fast," she said. "They win because when they hit the ground, the ground loses."
She looked at me again—really looked—like weighing my stance, the slight extra pull in my steps, the way I adjusted unconsciously now.
"Maybe you're closer to a real fighter than you think, tourist."
I snorted once under my breath, shaking my head.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I muttered. "Right now, I'm just a mule carrying a dead Boxer in my pocket."
Sula chuckled once under her breath and moved ahead, boots crunching lightly over the cracked tile. I shook my head, adjusting the machete on my back, feeling the weight of the stored Boxer variant still dragging slightly at my arm.
"We were lucky," I said, pitching my voice low enough that only she could hear it. "It picked up basic boxing. Nothing deeper."
She glanced over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
"Basic?" she echoed.
I nodded, stepping around a fallen light fixture. "The common stuff. Gym sparring. Drills. Maybe some low-level fighters from back before the Fall."
I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my glove.
"If it had picked up someone like Kaolan Wongsawat..." I paused, shaking my head. "You wouldn't have seen me standing there. You would've seen me running."
Sula smirked slightly but tilted her head, genuine curiosity slipping through.
"Who was Kaolan?" she asked.
I adjusted the strap across my shoulder, glancing toward the long, broken hall ahead.
"Someone dangerous," I said simply. "Someone real."
She waited, expectant. I sighed, shifting my weight.
"He fought at the same level as Jun," I said. "Not the same way, but close. Same world. Same breath."
Sula's eyes sharpened a little at that.
"He wasn't just a fighter," I added. "He was the personal bodyguard to a king. Rama the Thirteenth. King of Thailand."
I caught the flicker in her eyes—not just understanding the title, but the weight behind it. King. Protector. Warrior bound by oath, not just arena pride.
"If anyone ever came after that king," I said quietly, "Kaolan was the wall they had to break through."
"And no one broke through," Sula said, matter-of-fact.
I smiled grimly.
"Not while he was breathing."
She nodded once, accepting that without question—the way only a Kansani could, where a life spent protecting something bigger than yourself wasn't just honorable. It was expected.
I tapped the side of my Focus, sending out a soft scan across the broken hallway. A faint ping lit up in my vision—maybe twenty paces back, half-buried under a cracked section of wall paneling.
Terra's Gift.
I exhaled through my nose, stepping carefully over fallen debris, following the ghost-trail the Focus painted in my HUD.
It took less than a minute to find it. The revolver lay half-buried under a collapsed light fixture, scuffed but intact, the black-and-gold etchings catching the dim emergency lighting. I crouched, pulling it free with one hand, checking the cylinder out of habit.
Still loaded.
I brushed off the worst of the dust, gave the barrel a short spin, then slid it back into the holster at my hip with a comforting click. Better.
We kept moving. The ruins of Newton Medical closed tighter around us—hallways buckled by old weight, paint peeling in wet curls from the ceiling. Room by room, we cleared the way. No rushing. No noise we didn't have to make.
I took point, scanning with the Focus. Sula watched the shadows, bow low but ready. Every room was a graveyard. Collapsed patient beds. Rusted surgical racks. Stacks of dust-fused medical monitors, dead and blind.
We looted what we could—salvaging wiring bundles, decent alloy clamps, a few intact medical injectors buried deep in wreckage. Every so often, we found the scattered remains of Mister Orderlies—broken frames twisted into useless heaps. We stripped them too. Servo cores. Focus-calibrated optical arrays. Anything still humming under the corrosion. Every shard mattered.
We were halfway down a half-collapsed maternity wing when I saw it.
Movement.
Thin.
Lanky.
Wrong.
A Striker—but not the Boxer. Not even close. It was one of the basic ones Sula had warned me about. Half-formed. Jerky. Its armor was patchy, its steps twitching like a newborn deer trying to walk. It locked eyes on us—or whatever it used for eyes—and started forward.
Sula didn't hesitate. Before I could even lift Terra's Gift, she was already moving—fast, tight steps closing the distance. One sharp pivot. One clean swing of her axe—low, rising through the torso. The Striker's frame split open like paper under a blade. It dropped without a sound, twitching once, then sagging into the broken tile.
Sula wiped the edge of her axe on a rag from her belt, calm as if she'd just split firewood.
I gave a low whistle.
"Efficient," I muttered.
She shrugged, voice dry.
"It's not the big ones you worry about."
I nodded once, glancing down at the broken Striker, its leaking core sputtering weakly. I crouched over the wreck as Sula scanned the hallway ahead. The Focus hummed quietly at my temple, tagging viable salvage points on the carcass—joint servos, cabling bundles, maybe a mid-grade battery cell tucked behind the exposed spine.
Good parts.
Nothing rare.
Nothing worth hauling whole.
I cracked the chestplate with a sharp jab of my machete, pried out what I could—stuffing wires, a partial optical sensor, and the better scrap metal into the side pouches of my belt. When I finished, I stood and gave the broken frame one last look.
It wasn't worth the space. The Boxer had been different—dangerous, advanced, too valuable to leave behind. This? This was a failed prototype someone forgot to finish.
I tapped the Nanoboy once—a light pulse, cancelling any attempt to store it—and moved on without a second thought. Behind me, the ruined Striker slumped further into the dust, forgotten.
The next few corridors were mercifully quiet. Just wreckage, mildew, and the soft hum of my Focus pinging occasional salvage points we didn't have time to grab. We pressed deeper into the hospital's bones—past collapsed nurses' stations, pediatric murals crumbling into moldy strips, rusted gurneys tangled with old vines.
Then, finally, we found it.
The stairwell.
The heavy metal doors had buckled outward at the hinges, leaving a twisted gap just wide enough to squeeze through. Beyond them, the stairs spiraled downward into darkness—slick with condensation, the air heavier and colder than above. A broken sign hung sideways over the entryway:
ACCESS – SUBLEVELS A1 / A2 – SURGICAL STORAGE / ISOLATION WARDS
Exactly what we needed. Exactly where we didn't want to go.
Sula shifted her axe across her back, rolling her shoulders once. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.
I flicked the small floodlight on my belt, casting a narrow beam into the void.
The stairs creaked under our weight as we started the descent—slow, deliberate steps echoing down into the dark. One floor below, the mist thickened again. Two floors down, the walls started to sweat. And somewhere far beneath us, the hospital exhaled—a low, distant groan of metal settling under the weight of centuries.
Sula shot me a look—wary, sharp—but kept moving.
Down we went.
The deeper we went, the worse it got. The stairs twisted downward through layers of collapse—broken rails, cracked walls, the smell of wet stone and rotting insulation growing thicker with every level we dropped.
And with it came the Strikers.
Not the heavy Boxer type.
The lanky ones.
Half-formed. Jerky.
We encountered the first just past a broken emergency exit—it lunged clumsily out of the mist, arms too long, movements too stiff. Sula dropped it with a clean two-swing combo—axe to the neck, axe to the spine. No time to scan.
The second came three flights lower, crawling over the railings like a spider with half its legs broken. I managed to snap off a quick shot with Terra's Gift—one round through the faceplate—before it could get close. It twitched once and sagged into a heap.
I tapped my Focus immediately, locking a scan on the crumpled frame. The HUD shimmered, then filled with harsh blue lines and sharp text:
SIGNAL: ARES STRIKER – INITIATE CLASS
CLASS: Anthropoid Combat Learner (Unrefined)
STATUS: ACTIVE (INCOMPLETE BEHAVIOR CORE)
THREAT EVALUATION: MODERATE (ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR UNDERDEVELOPED)
NOTES: Limited close-quarters replication. Incomplete combat algorithm set. Prioritizes mimicry of observed movements over structured technique.
TACTICAL ADVICE: Exploit unstable balance and slow reaction speed. Engage decisively. Eliminate before adaptation curve improves.
At the end of the hall, we finally found it.
A wide, heavy security door, battered by time but still intact, blocked access to what the half-rotted signage above labeled:
SURGICAL STORAGE – SUBLEVEL 2A
Exactly where we needed to go. Exactly where the gods of bad luck had put the last functioning lock in the building.
I stepped closer, running a gloved hand across the sealed seam. No power. No clearance overrides. Just a dead slab of metal bolted tight against the future.
Sula thumped her axe lightly against the doorframe, frowning.
"Any bright ideas, tourist?" she muttered.
I didn't answer right away. Instead, I shined my belt light upward, tracing the wall—and there it was. A vent. Half-collapsed, grill half-torn off its frame, leading deeper into the storage room beyond. Big enough for one person—barely.
I jerked my chin toward it. "That's our way in."
Sula followed my gaze, sizing it up with a skeptical grunt. I sheathed my machete and locked my fingers together at my knee.
"Boost," I said simply.
She sighed—the put-upon kind of sigh a big sister gives when she knows she's about to do something stupid—and planted one foot in my hands. I heaved her up. She caught the edge of the vent with both hands, swung herself up with a grunt, and wriggled inside, boots kicking once against the frame as she disappeared into the dark.
I waited.
The silence stretched—broken only by the soft rasp of her crawling forward.
Then, sharp and furious, her voice echoed back through the vent:
"Fucking eight-legged corpse-licker!"
There was a heavy thud—something getting slammed into metal. Sounded like she found a spider. I fought the urge to laugh—barely—and kept my focus on the hall.
Three minutes later, the big security door shuddered—then groaned open a few inches. Sula's face appeared, scowling, hair mussed, a streak of dust on her cheek.
"Door's open, tourist," she snapped. "And the spider's dead."
I nodded, stepping through the breach and into the room beyond.
The room wasn't like the ruins above. It was almost... intact. Rows of reinforced medical shelves stretched across the storage bay, sagging slightly under the weight of still-sealed containers. Packs of surgical gauze, trauma binders, blood stim canisters, emergency field kits—all crammed together in chaotic, desperate abundance.
Sula stepped through behind me, her bow low, turning in a slow circle. Her eyes widened slightly—the first real sign of awe I'd seen from her since Wichita.
"This place..." she muttered, voice low. "We could supply Ironwood Grove for a year with what's here."
I nodded, sweeping my Focus over the room, logging tags for future retrieval.
"More than that," I said. "And that's assuming it's the only storage wing. There might be more buried deeper."
Sula crouched by a shelf, running one gloved hand along a sealed stim crate, frowning thoughtfully.
"We'll have to send a caravan," she said. "Big one. Bring carts with bison to haul it, anything that can carry bulk."
I didn't argue. I was already moving. No hesitation.
I cracked open one of the lower secured cases, prying the seal with the machete's flat. Inside—rows of stimpaks. Old World design. Slim, hard injectors pre-filled with muscle stimulants, rapid clotting agents, nerve repair fluids. Pristine. Untouched.
I grabbed a field satchel off the nearest hook and started stuffing them inside—methodical, fast. Five. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. I didn't stop until I hit fifty. I cinched the satchel tight, slinging it across my back with a grunt at the added weight.
Sula raised an eyebrow at me from across the room.
"Little greedy, tourist," she said, but her voice was more approving than mocking.
I shrugged once.
"You don't walk away from miracles," I said simply. "Not in this world."
She nodded once—sharp and approving—and moved to start marking crates for the return caravan.
I swept the Focus back over the open crate out of habit, pulling a deeper scan this time—logging composition, chemical breakdowns, manufacturing tags. The scan flickered for a second—then locked on an embedded signature in the crate's core metadata.
I blinked.
PRIMARY DESIGN CREDIT: Dr. Hanafusa Hajime
Project ID: Rapid Onsite Trauma Stabilization Initiative
Year: 2052
I frowned, stepping back instinctively.
Dr. Hanafusa Hajime. That name wasn't one you forgot. He was from the Kengan series and he was a mad genius—a surgeon so obsessed with overcoming human frailty that he'd rebuilt his own body into something halfway between man and machine. Every nerve tuned, every muscle reinforced. Living proof that science could conquer biology—if you didn't care what you became.
I looked back at the stimpaks in the satchel with a new kind of respect. Of course he invented these. Of course the man who turned his own blood into a weapon would figure out how to jam life back into a dying body with a needle and a second's notice. It was insane. It was brilliant. So like him. He was a mad doctor—but still a doctor.
We moved through the aisles, sweeping our lights across the stacked shelves. I let the Focus do most of the work—tagging chemical signatures, flagging anything with high stabilization ratings. Trauma binders, sterilization units, dermal sealers. Good gear. Maybe not all useful immediately, but too valuable to leave for scavengers or rust.
Sula lagged half a step behind, eyes narrowing as she scanned the endless rows of Old World symbols and faded color codes.
"This looks like sorcery," she muttered finally, waving vaguely at a crate marked BIO-NEURAL PATCH KITS (GEN4-C).
I hid a small smile.
"It's medical," I said. "Mostly. Some of it's military-grade."
She grunted, not reassured.
We pressed deeper.
At the back of the room, tucked between two towering racks of sealed trauma supply pallets, we found it.
A Mister Handy. Half-collapsed against the wall.
Its triple-armed frame was coated in dust, metal joints dulled by centuries of corrosion, but the chassis was still intact. One optic flickered faintly—not hostile red. Just the dull, pulsing orange of standby mode.
Sula stiffened immediately, hand twitching toward her axe.
I lifted a hand, palm out.
"Wait."
I stepped closer carefully, watching for any sign of active threat. Nothing. The Mister Handy stayed slumped, arms limp, thruster modules hissing weakly with inert gas leaks.
I tapped the side of my Focus again, running a deeper diagnostic sweep on the dormant Mister Handy. The scan flickered—then locked:
UNIT: CVRIE – CONTAGIONS VULNERABILITY ROBOTIC INFIRMARY ENGINEER
MODEL ID: MRH-0192
STATUS: STANDBY / LOW-POWER MODE
LAST DIRECTIVE: MEDICAL RESEARCH SUPPORT & FIELD TRIAGE ASSISTANCE
PERSONA CORE: ACTIVE
LANGUAGE MODULES: ENGLISH / FRENCH / JAPANESE
I blinked.
"CVRIE," I muttered.
Sula shot me a wary glance.
"What is it?"
"Not just a Mister Handy," I said. "Something better."
I crouched beside the dormant frame, reaching out to the manual override port. A faint line of emergency reboot instructions flickered under the grime. Old code. Heavy redundancy. But intact.
I keyed the sequence.
For a second, nothing happened. Then the Handy's main optic flickered—first orange, then a clean, sharp white. The chassis shuddered once, arms twitching as compressed servos came back online.
A soft, polite voice crackled from its main speaker—female, French-tinged, light but clear:
"Diagnostic complete... all primary systems functional. Oh! A new patient, perhaps?"
Sula half-lifted her axe instinctively, but I raised a hand.
The robot floated up a few inches, stabilizing, her tri-claw arms twitching gently as she oriented toward us.
"I am designated CVRIE," she said warmly. "Contagions Vulnerability Robotic Infirmary Engineer. It is my pleasure—my duty—to assist in medical and scientific matters. How may I be of service?"
Sula stared at her like she was seeing a ghost.
I smiled faintly. "You're gonna help us find something," I said. "Something important."
Curie's optic brightened. "I exist to serve," she said brightly. Curie floated there patiently, tri-claw arms twitching slightly, waiting for instructions. Sula still hadn't lowered her axe completely.
I glanced at her. "Relax," I said, voice low and firm. "She's not corrupted. Not insane." Sula frowned, unconvinced. I jerked my chin toward Curie.
"She was in proper sleep mode. Standby. Locked away before everything went sideways. No drift. No madness." I tapped the side of my Focus lightly, showing the scan readout. "This isn't just any Old World bot," I said. "She's a medical specialist. State-of-the-art. Advanced enough to probably outthink most healers alive today."
Sula's fingers tightened on her weapon.
I kept going. "She can help us find what we're looking for," I said. "Maybe even heal Jorta herself if we can get her to him."
That last part made Sula's stance shift—just a little. Hope could do that. She lowered the axe halfway, studying Curie with new, sharper eyes.
"She better not turn on us," she muttered.
"If she does," I said, smiling thinly, "you get first swing."
Sula gave a grunt—almost a laugh—and finally let her arms relax. Curie hovered forward slightly, polite as ever.
"May I inquire," she said, "what task requires my humble assistance?"
I met her optic calmly.
"We're looking for a neural and muscular regeneration stimulator," I said. "Old World surgical tech. Probably locked in high-value medical storage."
Curie hummed lightly, as if considering.
"Locating and retrieving such equipment is well within my parameters," she said brightly. "Please—allow me to assist."
And with that, she floated past us, scanning the shelves with a precision that made my Focus look like a child's toy.
Curie floated forward, scanning the shelves with mechanical precision, her voice softly reciting catalog numbers and shelf codes as she worked. I moved behind her, Focus running in passive mode.
Something pinged—low and heavy—deeper than any normal scan.
It wasn't a part of the Focus. It was a part of my system:
DESIGNATION: CVRIE-0192 (Canon Variant)
Type: Medical Robotics Unit | Pre-Derangement Production
Status: Intact | Functional | Personality Core Unaltered
Notes:
– Built by Old World standards to assist in human medical care.
– Entered low-power hibernation properly before the collapse.
– Personality core development diverged naturally without outside corruption or anchor manipulation.
– Represents one of the few "faithful echoes" of pre-apocalyptic human endeavor.
🛡️ Perk Gained: Caretaker's Mark
Description: Through your encounter with a relic of the Old World's kindness, your instincts to heal and protect sharpen.
Effect:
+5% efficiency when healing allies (bandages, stims, medkits)
+5% success rate when repairing delicate Old World technology
Narrative Bonus:
Canon Variants like Curie instinctively trust Rion slightly faster than others might.
Flavor Text:
"The Old Ones built many things. Few of them were built with love. Curie was."
I shifted my stance slightly, feeling the quiet hum of the perk threading into my system—a faint sharpening of instincts, nothing flashy. Just a solid, grounding pull.
Caretaker's Mark. A gift, just for meeting her..
I exhaled slowly, clearing the noise from my head.
Curie floated ahead of us, scanning the shelves, humming softly to herself. Sula watched her with cautious distrust. And me?
I watched the future spinning out behind my eyes.
If a simple meeting with Curie gave me a static perk—a relic's blessing—then meeting Aloy…
The Child of Destiny.
That would be different.
Aloy wasn't a fragment. She was the thread everything was woven around. She didn't just survive the storm—she changed its direction.
If fate—and my system—were playing fair, meeting her wouldn't just grant a perk.
It would start something living.
Something that could grow as she grew.
Evolve as she fought.
I shook my head and pushed the thought aside for now. Later.
First, we had to find the neural and muscular regeneration unit. First, we had to save Jorta.
And then—maybe—I'd find out just how far a bond with the future could carry me.
As Curie floated ahead, cataloging shelves in that cheerful, meticulous way only she could, my mind wandered again. If meeting her—a Canon Variant—had given me a perk, what about the others?
Here origin had changed because she wasn't in a vault anymore, waiting around for centuries watching people live from the other side of the wall.
How about someone like Cait... I could almost see her now. If this new world wanted to keep their core character intact. She would most likely be a pit fighter among the Tenakth—scarred, bloodied, laughing through cracked teeth. Not chasing glory. Not seeking redemption. Just fighting because it was the only language the world still spoke to her.
Piper would be different. She'd be Carja, if anything—born in the dust markets and merchant courts. A truth-digger. A girl with ink-stained fingers and a voice sharp enough to crack the gilded lies of the Sundom's courts. No less stubborn. No less dangerous.
And Boone...
Someone like Boone would be Kansani. There was no other way. The only tribe still holding the line against the Legion's brutality. The only ones who understood that some wars were fought not for pride, but because the alternative was surrender. A Planeswalker, maybe his personality fits with what Sula told me about them. A bowman instead of a sniper—threading shots through Watcher optics, disappearing into the ruins before the machines or the Legion could even draw breath. Not a rifleman behind a scope. A ghost.
And Nick...
I frowned slightly. Nick wasn't just a man in his world. He was memory etched into steel. A soul built to survive when the flesh couldn't.
If he existed here, it would mean something darker.
The Institute.
Cryo pods. Backup networks. Fallback plans hidden under miles of rock.
If they survived, if even a shard of them still clawed at the edges of this world's bones, Nick might have survived too.
But if they hadn't...
If the Institute was just another ghost under the ash...
Then maybe, just maybe, I could make something new.
A Striker unit—blank, half-formed. I could upload an uncorrupted law enforcement AI—buried somewhere in the ruins. A threadbare memory of protection, stitched into a new body.
Not Nick Valentine.
Not exactly.
But maybe close enough to matter.
And then there was Cass. Or Rose of Sharon Cassidy.
If a version of her existed here, she wouldn't be a drifter in a leather duster selling broken dreams out west. No, she'd be Oseram—as natural as steel and whiskey. She'd fit right in among the forge-clans and salvage caravans, brawling over pressure valves and drinking rivals under the table with a smile that could cut glass.
No faith rituals. No polished armor. Just bruised knuckles and a cracked flask, ready to settle debts with fists or laughter, whichever came first.
This world didn't need to pull Cass from anywhere else. It built women like her naturally—the ones who broke through life's walls with stubbornness and spit.
And the mutants...
The thought crawled in next.
I hadn't run into any super mutants yet—no green monsters shouting about strength or meat—but that didn't mean they weren't out there.
Strong...
If a Strong Variant existed, he wouldn't have changed at all. Still roaring for battle. Still chasing strength like a hound on blood. The world wouldn't need to bend him. It would just need to hand him a club.
Fawkes would be different.
The real Fawkes had been a scholar trapped in a titan's frame. Here, the world would have burned the books away—but maybe not the mind. If a Fawkes Variant lived, he'd be sharper than the rest. A quiet giant, thinking deeper than the others could even imagine. I'd have to keep an eye out for one with a Focus.
Lily...
That was the trickiest one.
The real Lily had been old—a grandmother's voice inside a monster's body.
But here?
The mutants were barely a generation old. A result of the Derangement they are Fifteen years old at most. There wouldn't be a Lily yet—not the way I remembered. If her spirit existed at all, she'd be younger. Fiercer. Maybe still searching for the lullabies no one had taught her.
A berserker, not a caretaker.
I exhaled slowly, adjusting the satchel across my back.
My mind drifted again as we moved—sweeping the ruins, listening to Curie's quiet processing hum. Thinking about some of the other Companions and what their variants might be now what their origin would be. Specifically for Veronica and Paladin Dance because for them a key part of their origin was missing.
The Brotherhood of Steel.
If they existed here, I hadn't seen a whisper of them.
No knights stomping through the wilds in polished power armor.
No scribes hoarding data under banners of broken promises.
No.
It didn't fit.
Terra's stipulations—the ones that shaped this world's birth—would have smothered something like them before it ever took root. They would have changed too much. Seized too much. Turned the chaos toward order before the world had a chance to find its own balance.
Terra had wanted wildness.
Growth through struggle.
The Brotherhood would have broken that.
And that realization opened a deeper, colder hole in my gut.
Because if they didn't exist...a force was rising that would be left unchecked.
The Enclave.
I knew they survived— the Legion officer and confirmed it. They were crawling out of their bunkers, whispering about purity and restoration, clutching their dead gods like knives.
In my old world, the Brotherhood fought them. Pushed them back. Kept the wildfire from spreading.
But here?
There was no counterweight. No armored shield to stand between the Enclave and everything they hungered to claim.
They'd burn this world.
Burn it to cinders and ash—not by accident, but by design.
The thought gnawed at me as we moved deeper into the ruins.
The Kansani could fight.
The Oseram could build.
The Carja could scheme.
But none of them were ready for what the Enclave could unleash.
Not yet.
And if I didn't find a way to stop it...
There wouldn't be anything left to save.
I exhaled slowly, adjusting the satchel across my back. The realization didn't just sit in my chest—it spread. It burned. It filled the hollow space I hadn't even realized was there until now.
I had always known I would help Aloy. I had accepted it, almost without thinking. Rebuilding GAIA. Fighting against the collapse. Walking the road the Old Ones had left shattered behind them.
But that wasn't enough.
Not anymore.
Helping Aloy wasn't a purpose. It was loyalty.
It was faith in someone else's destiny.
What I had been missing—what I finally saw now—was my own path.
Forging the Brotherhood.
Not the old Brotherhood of Steel, twisted and hollow. Something better. Something similar to Lyons' pride..
A shield when the machines rose again. A hammer when tyrants tried to enslave the free.
An army not to rule, but to defend.
An oath not sworn to a flag, but to a future worth bleeding for.
It wouldn't happen overnight. It wouldn't be easy.
It didn't matter.
Because now I had something I hadn't had since the moment I woke up in this broken world:
A goal.
A purpose I could call my own.
🛡️ Quest Initiated: Forging the Brotherhood
Type: Legacy Quest
Objective: Forge a Brotherhood dedicated to protecting humanity and the restoration of the world. Build alliances. Train warriors. Recover lost technology. Stand ready for the storm to come. The forces rising from the ground and descending from the Stars.
Status: Dormant (Requires foundation building)
Reward: Legacy Creation. Resistance Against the End.
I tightened my grip on Terra's Gift, feeling its familiar weight anchor me to the ground.
I wasn't just a survivor anymore.
I was a builder.
A protector.
And when the fires rose again—when Aloy stood at the edge of the world and looked back—I would make sure there was an army standing behind her.
No more drifting.
No more waiting.
This was my road now.
And I would walk it until my last breath.
...…
Far below the broken surface, deep inside a shielded Enclave facility, three figures stood before a massive cryogenic pod.
Frost clung to the reinforced glass, blurring the figure inside—a hulking silhouette, bound by heavy restraint clamps and sensor lines. A low, steady hum filled the chamber—the heartbeat of something too powerful to leave asleep forever.
Colonel Autumn stood motionless, hands clasped behind his back. His coat was immaculate—dark blue, silver-trimmed, the golden eagle of the Enclave catching the faint light. His voice cut through the cold like a scalpel.
"What's the status report on Project Goliath."
The technician—young, precise, her fingers flickering over the console—answered immediately, eyes locked on the scrolling streams of vital data.
"All systems green, sir. Core temperature stable. Muscle density and neural integrity at peak thresholds. No sign of decay or drift."
Beside her, the medic—a grizzled man with the gaunt look of too many nights under sterile lights—nodded.
"Physiologically, he's perfect," the medic said. "Psychologically... unknown. We won't know stability until thawing completes."
Autumn stepped closer to the pod, the frost parting just enough to glimpse the titan within.
Flesh sculpted beyond natural limits.
Steel woven through bone.
Veins bulged across arms thick enough to snap a man's spine barehanded.
Muscles corded beneath scarred, pale skin—scars too clean to be battle wounds, too deliberate to be accidents.
A frame no natural human could have carried without shattering.
His voice remained even.
"Begin reanimation procedures."
The technician stiffened. "Sir? Full thaw? There could be—"
Autumn cut her off with a glance sharp enough to leave scars.
"Begin."
The medic hesitated only a heartbeat longer, then bent to his console, muttering low confirmations into the comms.
Warning lights pulsed across the pod's surface. Internal heaters groaned to life. Slow streams of mist bled from the seals as ancient cryofluid began to vaporize.
Inside, the titan's fingers twitched—small at first. Then stronger.
The air filled with the slow, grinding creak of metal-reinforced sinew waking after too long in ice.
Autumn watched without blinking. He didn't relish unleashing Goliath. He relished the future it might still buy.
Behind the thick glass, the giant man stirred as mind started stirring.
The frost cracked with a sharp, spider webbing report.
And as the mist coiled around the lower edge of the pod, a name etched in cold metal emerged:
F.HORRIGAN
The future shuddered.
And the monster woke up after dreaming of war.