The secrets underground occupied most of Osiris' attention, but he didn't slack off on surface monitoring. A fresh sensor net and a bunch of patrolling servo-skulls picked up every little twitch the desert made.
A few days later, right around dusk, an alarm kicked off.
A sharp ping—"unauthorized movement on the perimeter"—cut through the workshop's hum.
Osiris looked up from the underground schematic to the main feed. Real-time visuals from a servo-skull showed three warm bodies creeping about two clicks east of town.
They rolled up in a beat-up sand buggy that looked like it'd been patched together a dozen times. Slow, careful, stopping every so often to scope the place out.
"Lifeform scan: baseline humans. Light cybermods. Weapons: junk-tier guns, makeshift explosives. Movement: twitchy. Recon pattern detected. Threat level: low," the servo-skull reported flatly.
Not Wraiths. Worse gear, more nerves. Just nomad scavvers hoping to score some scrap.
Normally, Osiris would've blasted them or let them wander in and get scrapped by his defenses.
But this time, he paused. Killing wasted ammo, made a mess, and sometimes drew unwanted eyes.
Besides, he'd been itching to test some of his new reverse-engineered neural intrusion code.
"Let's try something different," he muttered. "Scare them off instead of burning energy. Fear's cheap—and contagious."
He tapped out a quick command string, splicing local net protocols with cyberoptic overlay tech. "Buddy, fire up Phantom protocol. Slip into their visual feeds, rewrite what they see. Run the fear sim. Rest of you, throw in some creepy background noise and mild energy distortion."
"Copy that," the servo-skull replied, drifting off into the fading light. The imitation skulls moved too, spreading out along the edge of town, their emitters generating the faint grind of metal and a low, ghostly hum.
The scavvers had no clue.
"Old Cat, this place is givin' me the creeps," one of them muttered, a kid's voice shaking a little.
"Shut it, Mole," Old Cat grumbled, scanning through his cheap scope. "Creepy means loot. Look at those frames, could melt 'em down for a fortune."
"Dog Nose, what's your meter say?"
Dog Nose squinted at his janky detector. "Uh… weird readings. Small spikes… wait, what the hell? It's jumpin' all over the place!"
Above them, the servo-skull's data burst slipped into their optics. A spectral overlay loaded clean.
Old Cat blinked hard. "What the? Did you see that? Somethin' just floatin"
"Bro, I saw it too!" Mole's voice cracked. "A skull! Glowing eyes, man! It's, right behind YOU!"
In their feeds, a twisted skull with burning blue eyes flickered in and out of existence, floating closer every time they looked away.
"Stop messin' with me!" Old Cat barked, voice shaking. But his cyber-eye showed the same thing.
"The sensor's freakin' out!" Dog Nose yelped, his device beeping like mad, readings spinning out of control.
Then, a faint sound—like a woman sobbing—echoed through the dust, blending with the wind.
"Frag this! I'm out!" Mole bolted, dropping his iron bar.
"Fall back! Move your asses!" Old Cat bellowed, sprinting after him. Dog Nose scrambled close behind.
They piled into the buggy, fired it up, and tore off like hell itself was on their tail, sand spraying as they vanished into the horizon.
The servo-skull hovered in silence for a moment, then powered down its injectors. The illusions vanished. The desert went still.
"Test complete," the skull droned. "Low-tier cyberoptic infiltration: 96% success rate. Induced fear response confirmed. Minimal energy cost."
"Good," Osiris said, satisfied. "File Phantom as standard low-threat deterrent. Keep sniffing local comms for any chatter about what they 'saw.'"
Days later, Buddy played back snippets from intercepted nomad channels:
"I'm tellin' ya, Flint Town's haunted! You see things, man"
"Old Cat's crew barely made it out! Floating skulls, screaming ghosts—crazy shit"
"Stay the hell away from that desert, choom, it's cursed"
Rumors spread like wildfire through the wasteland: Ghost Town. Skull Land. Cursed Zone.
Osiris stood in his workshop, the reports flickering across the display. The corner of his lip—if he still had one—might've twitched in approval.
Fear was the best firewall. Kept out the idiots without drawing in the corps.
"Perfect," he murmured. "Let the myths guard the gates."
Outside, the desert wind howled. Inside, Osiris turned back to the underground schematics, metal fingers tapping softly, already planning his next move.
The ghosts outside were just the warm-up act.