The pharmacy looked the same from the outside. Rotting signage. Broken windows. Vines clawing through what was once a doorway. Familiar. Silent. Safe enough.
At least, it had been.
Warren knew something was wrong before he even crossed the threshold.
The air was disturbed. The dust inside had shifted. It even smelled different. Something had been moved recently. The stillness had been touched.
Someone had been here.
Things in the pharmacy didn't move unless he moved them. Wind didn't matter here. Nothing inside shifted unless he allowed it. Everything broken had already broken. What remained stayed because it earned its place, or because he hadn't needed it yet.
He crouched at the edge of the collapsed doorway and ran his good hand along the floor just past the threshold. Dust had been pushed, not blown. Weight, not air.
He rose slowly. Rain streamed off his coat in sheets. The fabric held the shape. Dry underneath. Slick outside.
He didn't enter right away.
Instead, he stepped to the side, past the doorway, to the old chain assembly bolted to the corner wall. His water wheel setup. He gave the pulley a half-turn. Felt the resistance. Heard the soft whir of the drive engaging beneath the flooring. The runoff kept the system alive. Far beyond what he ever used. It could run the whole shelter if he let it. Lights. Tools. Charge ports. Heating. Air purifiers. But he never drew that deep. Tonight, he just tested it. And it passed. That mattered.
He crouched again, running a finger along the pulley and catch. Still damp. Good.
He gave the axle a slow turn. The wooden spokes shifted reluctantly but evenly. No grind. No split.
Water pressure wasn't strong, but consistent. That meant the runoff hadn't been clogged by storm debris.
He reached into the crate beside his new water filtration system and lifted a capped flask from the catch trough. Filled halfway. Clean and clear. Good enough to ration.
He replaced it and moved toward the shelf he'd anchored over the frame.
A strip of cloth hung from a peg. His mark. If disturbed, it would've fallen.
Still hanging.
He adjusted it anyway.
Then he knelt. Pressed two fingers to the floor beside the rear bolt. A small impression marked the spot. Burned into memory. He traced the outline without looking.
It reminded him.
He moved to the corner where the emergency burner sat. He flipped the plate open. Dry. Still functional.
He didn't light it.
Instead, he opened the tin beneath it. Inside: a roll of sealed gauze. A small blade. A short scrap of yellow fabric. Folded. Untouched.
He closed the tin and re-latched it.
He opened the old case embedded in the wall.
Inside: a map. Ink-worn. Smudged. Mara's handwriting still barely legible in the corner.
He touched the edge. One breath. No longer.
He stood.
Finally, he turned toward the main hallway.
He entered without sound. Pipe in hand. The kit in his coat stirred once. Stilled. Watching.
To the untrained eye, it might have looked untouched. Shelves shattered years ago. Drawers half-hung or completely removed. But Warren's memory worked like a vault.
The third drawer on the west wall was out further than it should be.
The bandage tin beside the filter tray was nudged an inch left. Too clean. Someone had touched it. Maybe looking for drugs. Maybe something else.
They didn't take anything. That made it worse.
He kept moving. He didn't call out. Didn't clear his throat. Warning a stranger was wasted effort. If they were still inside, they had chosen to stay.
He passed his workbench. His tools were undisturbed. But the rag he used to clean his tools was folded. He hadn't folded it.
He tightened his grip on the pipe.
The silence wasn't comforting. It had a shape now. A posture. It was a held breath.
He moved to the hallway. Long. Cracked. Familiar.
Warren's boots hit the tarp-covered floor with a damp rustle. He placed each step where he always did, avoiding the soft points in the foundation.
The back hallway bent slightly from the pressure collapse. The lighting rig wasn't on. He never used it. The dark told him more than artificial glare ever could.
His trapwire near the base of the stairs had been reset.
Not tripped. Reset.
He bent down to check it. Inspected the anchor loop. The knot was clean. Tighter than his. Different hands. But smart ones.
He didn't like smart hands in his space.
There was only one set of damp footprints. Partially dried. Leading into the stairwell. Small. Light step. Deliberate.
They hadn't panicked. Hadn't run. Whoever it was, they felt safe enough to stay.
He could smell the faintest trace of sweat. Breath. Mint. Cutting faintly through the mildew like a clean note in rot. Someone was still here.
He crept down the stairs without pause. Quiet. Precise. His coat barely brushed the wall.
The basement walls were warped by time and water but intact. Support beams he'd braced years ago still held.
The door at the bottom was cracked open. Light came through. He could hear breathing. Shallow. Steady.
He adjusted his grip on the pipe again. Mara's voice surfaced, low and iron-steady. "Better safe, and make them sorry."
He didn't head straight to the stairwell.
Instead, he moved toward the far wall, behind a cracked cabinet. The paint had flaked off years ago. But the hinge still worked when coaxed right. Inside, he reached behind a sack of dead filters and pulled the latch that triggered the gear switch above.
A low click.
A faint hum under the floor.
He moved to the side panel where the runoff line was sealed. Opened the valve. Watched.
Water spilled slow but clean. No murk. No drag. The wheel outside was still turning. That meant the line hadn't frozen or jammed.
He crouched and placed one hand near the ground. Heat. Slight. But steady.
That was his first check.
Still working.
He closed the panel and re-latched the cabinet.
Then he turned toward the center beam. An old concrete support wrapped in scavver-marked rope. It wasn't structural anymore.
He stepped up. Drew his knife. Nicked his thumb.
Not deep. Just enough.
He touched the rope with his blood. Pressed it where the other markings had faded over time. Not words. Just motion. Just memory.
"Still standing," he muttered.
It wasn't for protection. It was for place. For claim.
He crossed to the far wall. To the scorched ceramic tile with the old chain-lock embedded in it. He tested the links. Still rusted. Still fused.
He tapped it three times with the back of his knife. A rhythm. His rhythm.
Then he checked the tin above the ceiling vent. Pulled it down. Inside: a sliver of charcoal. A folded square of cloth. Two dull buttons. A coin with a hole in it.
He didn't touch them.
He just looked.
Still there.
Still his.
He put the tin back and wiped the edge of the vent clean with his sleeve.
Dust there meant it hadn't been tampered with.
He walked the perimeter of the room. Hands at his sides. Fingers brushing each anchor point in the wall. A path he'd set. A pattern.
Each notch still sharp. Each pressure plate still slightly raised.
He checked the cord behind the water catch. Taut.
He tapped the plug to make sure the siphon wasn't backing up. Listened for the faint shift.
Still dry. Still sound.
He breathed out once through his nose.
Then he moved back toward the stairwell.
Grip steady.
Warren didn't believe in superstition. But he believed in pattern.
In stillness.
He didn't rush it.
The steps waited.
He kept his back to the wall beside the doorframe and waited. Just long enough to listen.
Soft shifting inside. Fabric. The scrape of something light. Possibly a blanket.
Still quiet.
He took one breath.
Then moved through.
She was sitting near the back wall, half-covered by a broken emergency blanket, feet tucked under her. Maybe his age. Maybe older. Hard to tell. She had the kind of face that could pass for young one day and a decade older the next, depending on the light and what you expected.
Her jaw was sharp. Nose broken once and healed wrong. A deep scar traced along her cheekbone, thin but deliberate, like someone meant to mark her and she'd kept it as a reply. Her mouth stayed set even in silence, lips closed like they were holding something in. Thought. Warning. History.
Dark eyes. Steady. Too steady. The kind that didn't search or scan. They waited. And if you looked long enough, they looked back harder.
She was pretty in the way knives were pretty. Nothing soft. Nothing spare. All edge and intent. Not the kind of pretty that pulled people in. The kind that made them think twice.
Her hair was black, pulled back with what looked like scavved wire and a salvaged pin. Not tidy. Not careless. Just chosen. Everything about her looked lived-in and deliberate. Nothing matched. Synthweave pants tucked into layered boots. A vest stitched from hazard-gear scraps. Gloves missing the fingers. Everything patched. Everything tested.
But more than the scar, more than the gear, it was how she sat that told the truth.
Upright. Still. Not like a thief caught mid-move. Like someone waiting to be acknowledged. Like someone who'd already made peace with what might happen.
Warren stayed just inside the door. Let her look at him.
"Didn't take anything," she said, voice even. "Didn't know it was claimed until I saw the mark. But I read it. So I brought something."
He didn't speak.
She reached slowly into her coat and pulled out a thin, folded strip of leather. She held it flat between two fingers. "I'm not stupid enough to come empty-handed."
He stepped forward, not taking it yet.
"It's not a trade," she added. "It's an offering. I saw the mark. How clean it was. How precise. You don't leave something like that unless you want it seen. By the right kind of person. I figured if I brought something worth your attention, you might hear me out. This is me respecting the space before I ask for anything in it."
Now he took the strip.
It was worn. Burned at one edge. A message band. Thin synth-layer wrapped in treated hide. Analog storage in a silent world. Used by high-tier scav crews in the Wilds to pass locked data without broadcasting. Coordinates. Vault codes. Kill-zones. Off-grid and untraceable. Rarer than the people who wore them.
"You knew where I was just from that mark?"
She shook her head. "No. I didn't know who you were. Not then. I was running from a Broken two nights ago. Made it past Sector F before I ducked into an old library, half-collapsed and full of rot. That was the first time I saw your mark. I didn't touch it. I didn't even know what it meant until the next morning.
"Later, I started piecing things together. Quiet routes. Empty paths. Places the Broken avoided like they knew better. They led back here. The way the dust lay. The way the traps were set. It wasn't random. It was clean.
"I came back because the mark stayed with me. Not just the shape. The intent. Someone left it with purpose. Not to scare off rats. To tell someone else there were still walkers of the Red.
"That's why I brought the offering. Not because I expected kindness. But because I recognized the work. And figured maybe whoever made it might respect someone who didn't pretend to miss the message."
He stared.
She met it without blinking.
"Figured if you were the kind of person that careful, you'd respect a clean approach."
"What do you want?"
"A guide."
"Through where?"
"The Red."
He didn't laugh. Didn't even smile. Just looked at her longer. Like she was a weapon someone had thrown at him point-first.
"Why?"
"Because I've got a map to a vault in a zone that shouldn't have collapsed. Four floors down, sealed tight under pressure faults and false walls. I need someone who can read the signs without guessing. Someone who doesn't trigger ghosts by accident."
"You think that's me?"
"I think you survived in the Red long enough to come out and still sleep in a place with a working lock. That's rare."
"What's in it for me?"
"Same thing that's in it for me. Maybe EMP tech buried deep. Maybe just sealed air and rust. I don't know. Just thought I'd ask."
"And after that?"
"You never see me again."
He weighed that. Looked down at the band.
"You've been in the Red before?"
"Once. Not by choice."
"What happened?"
"Bad call. Got separated. Ended up in a kill-zone with no map and nothing but instinct. I stayed low. Didn't light anything. Didn't eat. Just moved. Three days of silence and dead ends until I caught the scent of burn-metal and guessed right. Came up near a wrecked carrier station while the Broken were tearing through a scav team that hadn't moved quiet enough. Slipped past. Got lucky. Didn't die. Didn't go back."
She didn't look proud. Just honest. That earned a breath of respect, if nothing else.
"So you brought me a message band, a story, and a job."
"I brought you honesty."
Warren finally stepped fully into the room.
He didn't lower the pipe.
She watched him with sharp, wary eyes.
Her hands didn't go for a weapon. But she didn't flinch either.
"When would you want to do this?" he asked finally. The question came slow. Cautious. Still not lowering the pipe.
She raised an eyebrow. "Not tonight, if that's what you're asking. Maybe a month. Maybe two. I need supplies. Maybe better information."
He nodded once, but it was more reflex than agreement.
"You staying the night?" he asked.
"You're not going to throw me out?"
"No. You'd be dead by morning."
She snorted. "That sounds more like a warning than a rescue."
He closed the door behind him.
"That mean I can stay?"
"That means I'm not killing you."
"Comforting," she muttered, then smirked. "You've got that whole looming shadow thing nailed. Bet you're a real hit at bonfires."
"I don't deal with people."
"Yeah. You're about as welcoming as a spike trap in a sleeping bag."
Warren scanned the room. Some crates had been opened. The drawer with the sealed filters sat slightly askew. But nothing was missing. Nothing broken.
She hadn't taken anything, even though it was obvious someone lived here.
The traps had been reset. Tighter than he'd left them.
"You disarmed them?" he asked quietly.
"Reset them," she said. "Some of your wire was slack. Too easy to see. Someone less polite than me would've walked right through them."
He stared.
She hadn't just found them. She'd improved them.
That made her dangerous.
He wasn't like her. He was a predator. But she wasn't soft either.
A survivor.
Someone who didn't pick a fight unless there was no other option.
She sat calmly. Didn't try to run. Didn't beg. Just waited.
That meant she'd weighed the risk and still come in.
She wasn't just sharp. She knew how to move in this world. Knew how to read it.
He didn't speak. But something behind his eyes had shifted.
She leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing. "Not a stray. Not soft. twitchy, fast. Like instinct. Like it's always been that way, and anything else would feel wrong. Like a bug skittering across a surface...."
She tilted her head. "Think I'ma call you Wasp."
Warren blinked once.
He'd been called things before. Mara used to call him Rabbit, meant as a joke, because he never ran. Even when he should've. Even when it would've been smarter. But he would've run for her, if she'd told him to. That name was hers. This one was different. It came from someone seeing him here and now. And it felt like a name that might stick, whether he wanted it to or not.
He didn't argue.
"Fine. Then I'm calling you Wren. You're small. Watchful. You perch and wait. And you're better at noticing traps than most."
Her expression twitched.
Wren gave a dry snort. "Not my top pick, but better than 'Scavver Girl Number Three' or 'Tits O'Funbags.' so I'll take it."
He smirked, just barely. "It's not your real name?"
"No. And you're not getting that one."
"I know."
The kit crawled out from under his coat and curled against his side. Wren's eyebrows rose, curiosity flickering in her eyes.
"Yours?"
Warren gave a small nod. "Found her."
Wren tilted her head. "She's got that stare. Like she's building a file on me and already knows how it ends. I like her."
Warren said nothing.
"she got a name?"
"Styll."
Wren raised an eyebrow. "Because she doesn't move much?"
"Because when she does, it counts."
Wren crouched near them, slow. She reached out with two fingers. Styll blinked but didn't retreat.
"Doesn't trust me."
"She's cautious."
"Good. World's loud. Someone's gotta stay quiet."
"She staying?"
"Yes."
"Because she's got use?"
"Because she belongs."
Wren exhaled, soft through her nose. "Better reason than most get. Maybe that's why you let me speak instead of swinging that pipe."
"She's really, really fuckin' cute, though."
He just nodded.
Wren finally lay back down, pulling the blanket close. Her voice dropped, quieter but more deliberate. "Sleep well, and don't touch me. I'll cut your dick off if you try anything."
Warren didn't flinch. Just replied flat. "Not my intent. You'll wake up fine."
The rain above hammered at the broken ceiling. Cold air coiled through the room.
Warren didn't sleep. He never did, not right away.
But once Wren had turned to face the wall and Styll had nestled deep into the folds of his coat, he finally moved.
Carefully, quietly, he pulled back his sleeve and peeled off the tattered skin on his palm. Blood crusted the edges. The gash was deep, swollen from the impact and splintered with shards of metal.
He flexed the fingers: just enough to feel the sharp stab.
Then he reached into his med-supply crate and took out a med strip. Thin. Sealed. Humming faintly with chemical charge.
He didn't hesitate.
As he pressed it to the open wound, his mind surged System-ward.
[UNALLOCATED STAT POINTS: 2]
One into Intelligence. One into Perception. No ceremony. Just control. Just fast enough to disguise his reaction if she stirred.
The effect was instant.
Pain hit. Not just in his hand.
Something flared behind his eyes. Too fast. Too sharp. Like hot wire jammed behind his sockets. His ears popped without sound. His tongue itched. His nose burned as if something chemical had crawled up through the bridge.
His skin flushed, then tightened. A twisting bloom of fire crawled under the surface. Like something was mapping every nerve with a soldering iron. The nanites weren't healing. They were rewriting. Thread by thread.
The pain didn't build. It detonated. A hard flash through his spine, ricocheting upward into his neck and cracking through his jaw like a hammer.
His throat seized. No air moved. Every breath a dry gasp he had to force into motion.
It wasn't linear. It folded. Twisted. Punched through his perception of time. A second stretched. A breath took hours. Every nerve fired at once. Then again. Then again. Each wave sharper.
Something cracked in his temple, phantom or real, he couldn't tell. Felt like teeth dragging against the inside of his skull.
Pressure filled the space behind his eyes. Not pressure, weight. Movement. Something crawling just beneath the surface, dragging static behind it like a flare in the dark.
His gums throbbed. The roots of his teeth pulsed in sync with the fire under his skin. Like bone was swelling too fast for the flesh to keep up.
The tip of his tongue felt flayed. Each taste bud a raw socket. The roof of his mouth turned metallic, like old copper.
His left foot twitched involuntarily. Then his calf locked up. Not from damage, signal confusion. The body didn't know where to fire anymore.
Down his back, a nerve snapped. It didn't break. It flexed the wrong way and snapped back, vibrating like struck metal.
Heat licked across his chest. Not outside, within. Like being boiled from the inside out, layer by layer.
Then came the burn in his scalp. Like a thousand tiny pins pressing outward. Every follicle alive and screaming.
His teeth ached. Not just in the gums, but deep in the bone. Like the nerves were growing faster than the skull could keep them. Like they were pushing out through his jaw.
His skin flushed again. Then tightened. The waves pulsed. Each one more rhythmic. Like a signal. Like a countdown.
His knees screamed without bending. His joints felt liquefied. Pressurized fluid crawling through spaces not meant to hold it.
His ribs felt dislocated. His pulse behind them shifted. Not fast, hard.
His ears popped. Popped again. Then rang. A tone, low and endless, built at the edge of hearing. It scraped at his balance.
Heat prickled beneath the skin. Too deep to cool. Too shallow to ignore. A heartbeat made of chemical fire.
His face flushed with sweat. Eyes dry. Every blink scraped like sand across glass.
He didn't make a sound.
He felt the world tilt sideways. The room swam slightly. The ground wasn't flat anymore. He pushed his hand harder against the floor to anchor himself.
His skull felt like it was expanding. Breathing. The pain wasn't sharp now. It was deep. Pressurized.
A tingle built up behind his eyes. Then bloomed. A second sun igniting inside his head. Like static run through wet wire. Like light trying to claw out through bone.
Styll nestled closer under his arm, sensing the tremor through his chest. Her little body stiffened, then settled.
Wren didn't stir.
He fought to keep his jaw steady. The muscles locked tight. Twitching with restraint.
Behind his eyes, something threaded cold. A line of ice through fire. His vision doubled, then refocused.
He blinked slow. Deliberate. Just to reset the tracking.
The hand being treated throbbed. Red. Hot. Angry. But small. Contained.
Everything else felt worse.
His lungs fluttered against the force of discipline. Every inhale shallow. Measured.
It wasn't pain anymore. It was interference. Static layered over bone.
The strip itself sealed directly to his skin, chems working themself into the tissue. Drawing out embedded shards. Cleaning the wound. Accelerating clotting. Stimulating nerve response. Re-knitting layers of damage that would've taken weeks, maybe even months.
He leaned back against the wall. Eyes shut. Jaw clenched tight.
Most people avoided med strips unless they had no choice. The pain worse than most could handle. He held still through all of it.
Let it look like the right reaction.
Let it look like healing.
Let it hide the rest.
When it peaked, he ground his teeth once and let the worst pass.
Sweat clung to the inside of his collar. Cold and sour.
He pressed his free hand into the cold stone and stayed there. Not thinking. Not resisting. Just enduring.
Pain didn't matter.
Not to him.
He looked at his new status screen
Warren Smith — Level 3
Class: Unclassified
Alignment: Aberrant
Title: None
Unallocated Stat Points: 0
Attributes:
Strength: 7
Perception: 9
Intelligence: 11
Dexterity: 9
Endurance: 7
Resolve: 10
Skills
Examine (Active): Allows close, precise inspection of physical items. Identifies structural materials, mechanical condition, origin markers, manufacturing details, and utility potential. Does not reveal hidden properties.
Two more points stronger.
Two more points Safer.
He smiled tiredly and finally let him self succumb to sleep.