The rain had let up. It dripped from broken gutters and rusted railings, pooled in fractures along the concrete, slid across Warren's hood in soft rivulets. The morning air was thin and grey, thick with the sour scent of old oil and the alkaline tang of rot. All around him, the remnants of civilization slouched into ruin. Towers that had once stood proud now hunched under the weight of centuries. Glassless windows gaped like broken mouths. Ivy clung to rebar and sagging walls. Metal twisted out from collapsed beams like snapped tendons.
The floor beneath his boots was pitted linoleum, shattered in some places, bubbled in others, with streaks of black mold creeping up through the seams. Each step came with the soft crunch of debris and the faint squish of waterlogged decay. Old signs still hung on the walls, faded to the point of unreadability,directional arrows pointing nowhere, emergency procedure charts half-torn and flaking. The air stank of old wiring, mildew, and the unmistakable tang of something organic gone long past dead.
Wren followed a few paces behind, Styll curled around her neck like a strange living scarf. They weren't scavenging for basics anymore. Not this time. The map, projected in flickering holography from the message band she wore on her wrist, had pulsed faintly the night before, revealing an encoded marker buried beneath legacy overlays. It wasn't System-bound,it was old-world, part of the pre-collapse civic network architecture, likely embedded in backup civic data that had survived by chance and climate. The signal pointed here: a collapsed municipal node flagged as a civil transit relay long before the collapse. If the data hadn't rotted, there could still be something, infrastructure schematics, substructure layouts, vault keys, and anything else the server might still hold. Not connected. But preserved.
Luck, like anything else in the city, had to be earned.
Warren stopped beside an overturned desk. The lines of rot and corrosion across the surface stood out sharper to him than they should have,his vision tracking material density and decay pattern without conscious thought. The faint flicker of system-filtered contrast ran along the edge of a water-warped drawer.
Scavenger's Eye, always active, filtered everything he saw. Not just objects, but usability. But lately, he'd been trying to push it further,like he had with Examine. Force a deeper resolution. Trigger a second layer. But nothing changed. No new clarity. No subtle flickers of hidden design or embedded logic. Just the same dim overlays he'd had since the skill ignited. It irritated him more than he let on. This was supposed to help.
And then,
A wall seam, no different from a dozen others, flickered faintly in his peripheral. Not bright. Not urgent. Just a slight shift in contrast most eyes wouldn't notice. He paused, turned toward it, and ran his palm along the edge.
There. Just inside the broken paneling, a cache plate barely the size of his hand. Hardened resin casing, nearly camouflaged to the wall. Old-world. Intact. He'd have missed it without the skill. No question.
He pried it free with his knife and twisted the seal gently. Inside: a data rod, sleek and dustless, wrapped in what looked like thermal mesh. Not modern, definitely old-world. No markings. No obvious port. A storage format meant for something bigger something older. Not useful on its own. Not here. But valuable. Maybe priceless, if he could trace what terminal type it belonged to.
He brushed aside soggy papers, centuries old and long-decayed to mush, and lifted the tile. Nothing but dead wire stubs and dust. He kept moving.
Wren crouched beside a vending unit, pried the panel with a thin prybar, and smiled faintly when two intact rations tumbled free. She tossed one to Warren.
They didn't speak. The silence between them wasn't empty, it was familiar.
The building they were moving through had been an old municipal office once. The kind with cracked linoleum floors, plastic furniture now melted into useless lumps, and walls stained by smoke and time. Office chairs lay on their sides. Desks were bolted in place, covered in rot. Ceiling tiles hung like dead skin.
A few side rooms looked promising. Archive closets, storage annexes, old server enclosures with wiring still threaded through wall conduits. But someone had been here. Not long ago. Boot prints marked the dust, clear and unblurred, heavy-soled, staggered, and only lightly softened by time. A day old. Maybe two. No recent blood. No bent flechettes. Just a passage. One room had been cleared out completely, shelves stripped, floor scraped.
Warren crouched at the edge of one threshold, touched the edge of a disturbed track with two fingers, then stood.
"I don't like this," he muttered.
Wren gave him a glance. Said nothing.
Warren found an old comms terminal and powered it briefly with a portable cell. The screen flickered, lines of corrupted data stuttering across the display, brief pulses of map overlays, civic zoning files, fragments of access codes. His message band pinged once, twice, then went silent. Most of the files were unreadable. Damaged. Either time-rotted or locked behind security layers the collapse had left unreachable. He tapped twice to attempt a sync, but the band threw a red transfer error.
Only a sliver made it through: a partial sector schematic and one truncated string of vault coordinates. Everything else threw checksum failures or timed out on contact. He stared at the flickering terminal for a few seconds longer, then let it die.
"Corrupted," he muttered.
He didn't bother saying more.
In the next room, they hit a better pocket, metal storage lockers, mostly intact. Inside one, Wren found a bundle of chem-bandages and a half-melted power regulator. She tucked both into her pack.
"East stairwell's passable," she said.
Warren gave a nod and moved on.
They made their way toward the far side of the building. The stairwell they found was rusted but stable. Styll scrambled ahead, ears twitching, nose flaring at the scent of water and mold. Then, she stopped. No sound. No motion. Not a twitch.
Warren froze instantly. That stillness meant one thing.
Styll only went quiet when something was wrong.
He reached out, one hand halting Wren mid-step. She felt the shift too, her weight sinking into silence.
As they climbed to the third floor, the air changed. Stillness gave way to tension.
Warren paused.
Something felt wrong. Not just Styll's alert, he'd felt it earlier. A subtle pattern. Too many cleared-out rooms. Not every one, but the ones that had mattered. Every terminal they found had been either gutted, shattered, or melted from long decay. But a few looked wrong. Broken, yes, but not weather-wrecked. Not natural. Purposeful damage. Terminals with their ports ripped, cores scorched. Most scavs would've traded them whole for parts, or hauled them off for burn wire and interface boards. But these had been ruined in place. Someone had wanted the data gone, or had already gotten what they came for and didn't want anyone else finding what was left behind.
Movement. Distant. Ground-level. Wrong cadence. Not Broken. Maybe scavengers.
Wren noticed too. Her posture shifted subtly. She dropped lower, pressed herself against the wall.
"Two groups," she whispered. "Moving together, but different cadence. Like they weren't used to moving as one."
Warren didn't speak. Just moved.
He ran a mental map of the building. Not perfect. Not floor plans. But every step burned into memory, what rooms had collapsed, where the support beams held, where the air shifted. He remembered a balcony three floors up. Semi-collapsed, but defensible. Only two approach points. Higher ground. A narrow support ledge that would force anyone with a lance to funnel through single file if they wanted a shot.
There were other options too, if they need something closer. A maintenance junction two corridors west, tight, low-ceilinged, but with a fuse box cluster thick enough to catch a scatter lance blast. A half-fallen conference room closer, useless for battle but easy to choke up if they only needed seconds to think. None of them perfect. But enough.
Warren weighed it fast. They didn't have time to test them all. The balcony was risk, but it was control.
It wasn't escape, but it was better than being boxed in here.
He jerked his chin toward the west stairwell.
"This way," he said.
They made it to a hallway overlooking the city edge. Rain began falling in a silver curtain, blotting out anything past fifty meters. But even the weather couldn't hide the sound of footsteps now, six, maybe more. Coordinated. Confident. Armed.
Warren's hand slid toward the truncheon. He didn't draw it yet.
They kept moving, angling toward the broken skylight and the scaffolding outside. If they timed it right, they could slip away without contact. Or at least get the confrontation somewhere on his terms.
That's when the voice rang out.
"Well now… isn't this cute."
Warren turned slowly.
They were already inside. Four people, dressed in scav-patched armor and modified riot gear. The leader stood a step ahead, smaller than the rest, with a grey coat reinforced at the seams and a polymer underlay that hinted at old-world protection. Her face was hard, lined by a lifetime of survival. Her eyes were smug.
"You're a hard pair to track," she said. "But not impossible."
Wren froze beside Warren. Her eyes didn't show fear. Just calculation.
The woman stepped closer, pulling a makeshift hand lance with a sneer. "We want the map, girl. The Warlord said you have it. He doesn't like things that belong to him leaving without his permission."
Wren froze again. Her fingers twitched near her belt, but she didn't reach for anything.
"You're going to come back and hand it over," the woman continued. "Or the Warlord sends more than just us. He knows you took it. And he wants it back, along with you."
Her tone wasn't angry. It was cold. Practiced. Like someone repeating an order they didn't dare question.
"You think you're clever, Azolde? Think you got away clean? You didn't leave anything behind. You stole from him and the Warlord doesn't forget thieves."
She stepped forward again.
"So here's the deal. You give us the map, or we drag you back and let him pull it out of you. Piece by piece."
Warren's fingers tightened around the truncheon's grip.
He still hadn't drawn it.
"She doesn't belong to anyone," he said. His voice was flat.
The woman smiled slowly. "That so? You her protector? What are you, fourteen? Fifteen? You look barely out of your diapers."
One of the others laughed.
"Look at him. Little kid playing with a toy."
Warren didn't blink.
"You know what he said?" she continued. "The Warlord. Said if we found the girl, we bring her home. But if she was with anyone, especially some mouthy brat, we leave them in pieces."
"Try it," Warren said.
The laughter stopped.
Wren stepped forward. "You don't want to do this."
"No, bitch! You don't want to make this harder than it needs to be. You think you got out clean? You think he'd just forget?"
"Everything I have, I earned," Wren said coldly.
"You stole it, Azolde," the woman snapped. Her voice rose, not just with anger, but something sharp and splintered. "You ran. You left me there with him. You know what he did. You know what he likes. You know what he fucking made me do."
Wren's hands trembled at her sides. Her voice stayed flat. "I didn't know they'd keep you."
"Oh, don't lie. You knew what you were to him. What we all were. His girls. His property. You smiled at him when the rest of us bled. You got the clean collar. You got the good food. The rest of us got bones and bruises."
"Calra," Wren said softly.
Calra stepped closer, rain matting her hair to her face. "But you were the one he favored. The clever one, clever Azolde. He loved you, and you betrayed him."
"I escaped. I survived."
"You abandoned me," Calra spat. "You left me in that place, and you knew what would happen. You think I got out clean? You think I just waited for him to stop hurting me? No. He turned me into something. He used me until I stopped screaming. Then he made me do the same to others. You know what I became? His lesson. His proof that even the clever ones break."
"I didn't know," Wren whispered. Her voice cracked.
Calra shook her head slowly. "He made me smile while I hurt people, Azolde. And when I cried, he told me you were the reason. That you made me this. That if I was strong, you'd come back. So I stayed strong. I stayed ready. And now here you are."
Styll hissed. Her fur bristled.
Wren's voice softened. "Calra, you don't want to do this. You're making a terrible mistake."
Calra's eyes blazed. "I very fucking much want to do this."
Wren turned to Warren " Please go easy on them"
Calra gave a sharp gesture.
Two of the men stepped forward, drawing blades. Another half dozen emerged from deeper shadow, flanking corridors, stairwells, even the half-collapsed ceiling. Ten in total, maybe twelve. Warren scanned them instantly. Three hand lances, short-range, barely stabilized. Two scatter lances, homemade, brutal, unstable. Blades, cudgels, one man with a chain rigged to a concrete block.
Wren's fingers tensed beside him. Styll bristled. Her body went still, low, tight, ready.
Warren moved.
No sound announced it. No grunt or breath. He just wasn't there.
Then he was.
The one with the machete didn't even get to raise it. The truncheon hit his knee like a falling wall. Bone shattered. His scream hadn't finished before Warren pivoted up, chin, jaw, temple. The man's head snapped sideways and he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
The second attacker hesitated. It wasn't much, just a half-step of doubt, a pause in weight transfer, but it was enough. Warren surged forward, low and sudden, as if his body had trained itself to live in that gap between thought and action. His left ankle hooked around the man's heel while his shoulder drove hard into the attacker's hip. A twist, a pull, off balance became airborne, airborne became collapse.
The man hit the floor hard, ribs exposed for half a breath.
Warren didn't hesitate. He rose with his full weight behind the truncheon, spike locked out. The first strike drove into the man's chest with a sound like snapping timber, jarring up Warren's arms and echoing through the narrow corridor. The second came before the scream could crest, driving deeper, splintering cartilage and caving the sternum inward, each inch forcing the man's lungs to implode. The third rose like an executioner's swing, but didn't land. It didn't have to. The body had already gone slack, limp and silent, eyes wide but unseeing. There was no breath left to carry a cry. Only the wet stutter of a collapsed ribcage, the rattle of dying lungs, and the soft gush of blood spilling into fabric already soaked with ruin.
His ribs hadn't just broken. They'd folded inward, like a box kicked closed.
Another came in swinging a wrench. Warren slid sideways, caught the weapon mid-air with one hand and used the man's momentum to drag him forward, shoulder-first into concrete. Then the truncheon fell. Once, twice, three times. The skull caved.
One of the scatter lances fired.
Too late.
Warren moved through it. Not around. Through. The blast grazed his coat, burned part of the sleeve, but his trajectory never shifted. He stepped into the shooter's space like a stormfront hitting land. The truncheon slammed into the man's jaw, then across his collarbone, and finally down on the hand still gripping the weapon. The bones shattered in wet snaps.
Warren took the lance mid-drop, turned, and hurled it like a spear. It caught a second shooter in the side, embedding deep enough that he screamed and dropped without firing a shot.
The one with the chain made a mistake. He swung before Warren reached him.
Warren caught the chain with his free hand, fingers locking around the links like a vice. He yanked the man forward off balance. The scavenger barely had time to stumble before Warren stepped into him like a hammer through rotted wood. The truncheon didn't strike. It consumed.
First into the throat, crushing cartilage with a wet, caving crack that turned the scream to a gargle. Then lower, right into the solar plexus. The breath fled the man's lungs in a single, sharp cough, his whole frame folding forward. The last blow came sideways, the spike catching the curve of the skull just behind the ear. The sound it made was a short, thick crunch, like boots on frozen marrow.
Blood sprayed the wall. Not in arcs, just a heavy splatter, sudden and ugly, like a rupture beneath the skin of the world.
Warren let the body fall. The chain clattered beside it, forgotten.
Warren let the body fall. The chain clattered beside it, forgotten.A woman rushed from the flank with a knife in each hand, her face a snarl of rage and fear. Warren didn't flinch. He pivoted cleanly, let her pass him by inches, then turned inside her arc with frightening speed. One hand snapped out to grab her wrist. He didn't just twist it, he folded it backwards until the first knife clattered to the floor with a shriek of metal on tile. Before she could recover, he slammed his shoulder into her chest and drove her backwards.
The wall caught her spine with a dull, sickening thud. Plaster exploded around her back, fragments raining down. Her second knife was still raised, until Warren's truncheon came around like a club and shattered her forearm.
She screamed, high and sharp. Then again, lower, rawer, as his foot hooked behind her knees and yanked her down.
She dropped hard, both knees hitting the ground, hands splayed out. One reached for her weapon again.
Warren stepped forward. Not with force. Just weight. Precision.
His heel landed on her outstretched hand.
Bones cracked beneath his boot, followed by a stifled, shaking sob. She writhed, trying to twist free, but Warren didn't let up. He held her there, silent, until she stopped moving entirely.
He didn't even look at her when he moved on.
A scream tried to rise behind him. He turned into it.
A boy, younger, desperate, rushing with a pipe. Warren didn't kill him. He knocked the weapon away, broke his wrist cleanly, and dropped him with a blow to the side that would bruise a lung and keep him gasping long enough to regret it.
Two more lunged at once.
Warren stepped between them. No wasted movement. Elbow into the side of one's head, truncheon up into the second's jaw. The first one reeled. The second fell twitching. Warren spun, took the reeling one's leg out, and let gravity finish the job. He didn't look back.
Another lance fired. The scatter this time. He dove sideways, boots skidding, shoulder rolling. One shard nicked his arm. It didn't slow him.
He came up running. One hand caught the muzzle of the lance and drove it upward while his foot slammed into the wielder's shin. The man fell backward, Warren atop him. The truncheon struck once. That was all it needed.
Wren had backed into a broken wall, blade drawn, breathing hard, but untouched.
Three remained.
One ran.
The other two raised weapons, then lowered them.
Warren didn't chase. He stood in the middle of the ruin, blood dripping from his coat, his truncheon blackened and cracked.
He wasn't breathing heavy.
He wasn't panting or shouting.
He was still.
That stillness was worse.
It felt like waiting for lightning to strike again.
The ruin was silent, but for the moans of the wounded and the wet patter of rain.
Bodies twitched. A few groaned. One crawled.
She had crawled through the wreckage, half-hidden by bodies and blood. One eye swollen shut, arm shaking, lip split wide and leaking. She reached for a fallen lance, one of the ones Warren had dropped mid-fight.
Her hand touched it.
Then stopped.
Warren's boot came down on it. Hard. Flat. Not rushed. His weight made the metal groan.
The truncheon in his hand still dripped. The spike extended. Blood, not his, slid along its edge and dripped in slow taps beside her cheek. Rain hissed when it touched the iron.
Calra didn't look up right away. She was breathing hard through her teeth. Her fingers stayed on the lance, but didn't push forward. She knew.
When she finally looked up, Warren was staring straight through her.
He looked like a god of death. Not because of the blood, or the weapon, or the stillness. But because he hadn't spoken. Because he hadn't made a sound since the last body dropped. Because there was no triumph in his eyes, only inevitability.
Calra tried to speak. No words came.
She opened her mouth again, hoarse. "He told me you'd come. That you were waiting for the right moment. That I'd bring you to him. But he was wrong."
Warren didn't blink.
She coughed. There was blood in her mouth. "I don't even know if I hate you. I think I was just hoping you'd kill me."
Wren stepped beside him. Her voice was quiet. "Don't."
Warren didn't move.
"She's finished," Wren said. "That's enough."
A long beat passed.
Then Warren stepped back.
Calra collapsed beside the lance, weeping silently into the broken tile.
She didn't run. Not right away.
But she would.
Warren raised the truncheon.
"Stop."
Wren's voice cut the air like a wire.
Warren froze. Calra was on the ground now, crawling backward, blood on her face, panic in her voice. She was reaching for a sidearm when Warren kicked it away.
"Stop," Wren said again. "Please."
Warren didn't look at her.
"Why?"
"Because she's my cousin."
The words hit harder than a strike.
Warren's head tilted slightly. The truncheon didn't lower.
"She should've known better," Warren said.
"She's still family."
"No such thing."
"Warren." Her voice was steady, but firm. "We need to go."
He looked at Calra groaning at his feet. Looked at Wren.
"This is a mistake," he said.
"I know."
He stepped back. Slowly.
Calra didn't wait. She scrambled to her feet and ran, but before she turned away, her gaze landed on Warren, wide-eyed and horrified. She had just watched him dismantle a dozen well-armed, full-grown fighters like they were little more than target dummies. No wasted motion. No mercy. Brutal. Nothing human in how efficient it had been.
Her eyes locked briefly with his.
She shuddered, tears mixing with blood as she whispered, "You're not a man. You're a monster. A monster in a yellow jacket."
Then she turned and fled, the echo of her boots drowned by the storm.
"Run, Calra," Wren muttered under her breath. "I hope doesn't he finds you before I do."
She didn't say it loud. But her cousin heard it.
And that was enough.
They left through the scaffolding, down the fire escape, into the cold embrace of the ruined city. The storm swallowed them whole.
The silence stretched long after the confrontation.
Warren didn't speak. He walked ahead, his coat dragging slightly from the wet. Wren kept pace, her eyes on the rain, her thoughts unreadable.
Styll moved between them, sometimes hopping to Warren's shoulder, sometimes vanishing into the folds of Wren's jacket.
When they reached a burned-out parking garage, Warren finally stopped.
"You shouldn't have stopped me."
"I know."
"He'll send more."
"I know."
He turned to her. "Then why?"
She hesitated. "Because if I let you kill her, that part of me dies with her."
Warren said nothing.
"I'm not like you," Wren added, more quietly. "Not yet atleast."
He nodded. Just once. Then turned back to the rain.
"Then we move fast. We're not far from the Cult of Iron. We hole up there for the night."
"And after?"
He looked down at the truncheon, still wet with blood.
"After," he said, "Show me the map."
Wren didn't respond immediately. Her gaze stayed fixed on the rain.
She reached into her coat, pulled out her messenger band, and flared it between them. "And after we talk about that map," she murmured, "we make a plan for whatever the hell you just unleashed on us."