Day 56, 06:00 Hours
The Mess Hall (Sector 1)
Sauget, Illinois
The water in the cup wasn't clear. It was brown. And for the first time since the apocalypse began, it had a thin, jagged crust of ice floating on top.
I sat at the long metal table in the center of the Mess Hall, watching the sediment settle at the bottom of my plastic cup. The air in the room was usually hot, humid, and smelled of unwashed bodies—the inevitable result of nine hundred people crammed into a space built for fifty.
Today, however, the air was sharp. It bit at the inside of my nose. People were huddled in their coats, eating their rations quickly, shoulders hunched against a draft that shouldn't exist in July.
"The aquifer is kicked," Ronnie said, sitting down across from me. He looked tired, his eye patch soaked with sweat from exertion, but his breath was misting in the air. "The pumps are sucking mud, Jack. And the reserve tanks? I checked them an hour ago. There's frost on the intake valves."
I looked at the cup. I poked the ice with my finger. It didn't melt immediately.
"Frost?" I asked. "It's supposed to be summer, Ronnie. The ambient temperature should be eighty degrees."
"Tell that to the thermometer," Ronnie said grimly. "It reads forty-eight and dropping. We have maybe two days of potable water left. After that... we drink the river. If it doesn't freeze solid first."
I pushed the cup away. The brown slush sloshed over the rim.
`[RESOURCE CRISIS: WATER SCARCITY.]`
`[POPULATION: 942.]`
`[CONSUMPTION RATE: CRITICAL.]`
`[ENVIRONMENTAL WARNING: ABNORMAL ENTROPY DETECTED.]`
"We don't filter it here," I said. "We don't have the capacity. And if the Silo freezes, the pipes burst. We lose the plumbing, we lose sanitation. We lose sanitation, we get dysentery. Then we die."
I stood up. I walked to the map pinned to the wall. It was a chaotic mess of red markers (Enclave) and purple spirals (Zealots).
My HUD flickered.
For a microsecond, a faint, golden line traced the path of the Mississippi River, heading North, past our sector. It pulsed like a vein of gold in the rock, then vanished.
"Did you see that?" I asked.
"See what?" Ronnie asked, shivering.
"Nothing," I muttered. "System glitch."
I tapped a location three miles east, right on the bank of the Mississippi.
"The Water Treatment Plant," I said. "Industrial filtration. Massive intake valves. But more importantly—it has heaters. Industrial boilers designed to keep the water flowing in winter. If we take it, we get the water, and we get the heat."
"It's Zealot territory," Ronnie warned. "Prophet Eclipse holds that ground. They use the intake pools for their... rituals."
"Good," I said, checking the magazine of my Fang .45. "Then the plumbing is already working. Get the tanker trucks. And insulate the tanks, Ronnie. If we bring back ten thousand gallons, I don't want it turning into a forty-ton ice cube on the drive home."
I turned to the door.
"Get the team," I ordered. "Yana. Boyd. And get Travis."
"Travis?" Ronnie hesitated. "Jack, the guy is strapped to a generator. He can barely walk without the hydraulics firing."
"The generator produces heat," I said. "He's the only one of us who won't freeze out there. And I need him to break a wall."
08:00 Hours
The Perimeter (Zealot Territory)
The Treatment Plant looked like a castle made of pipes.
Concrete holding tanks stretched out toward the river, filled with stagnant, green water. Patches of slush floated on the surface, grey and unappealing. The main building was a brutalist block of grey stone, covered in purple graffiti—the spiral symbols of the Zealot faction.
We crouched in the tall grass on the ridge overlooking the facility.
The wind coming off the river was brutal. It wasn't just wind; it felt like a physical drain on my stamina bar. My breath puffed out in heavy white clouds.
Travis was kneeling next to me. The Iron Lung on his back was idling with a low, rhythmic chug.
PUT-PUT-PUT.
Blue smoke curled from the exhaust pipe near his ear. But more importantly, waves of heat radiated from the gasoline engine block. I moved closer to him, soaking up the warmth like a moth to a flame.
"Status?" I asked.
Travis took a breath. The machine revved, pumping filtered blood into his veins.
"Engine temp is green," Travis rasped. His skin was grey, his eyes sunken into bruised sockets. "Outside temp is... critical. My skin feels tight, Jack. Like it wants to crack."
Yana was scanning the perimeter with a pair of binoculars. She was shivering violently, her shadow-cloak fluttering in the wind. The cold seemed to effect her shadow-form more than us, making her edges blurry and indistinct.
"Sentries are sleeping," she whispered. "Look at them. They're huddled together."
I took the glasses.
The Zealot guards weren't patrolling. They were piled against the intake vents, twitching. Their veins were glowing with a faint, violet light.
"They're high," I said. "Corruption bind."
"Eclipse doses them at dawn," Yana said. "They drink the baptism water. It raises their body temperature, but it burns out their higher brain functions. They are dreaming of the Void because the real world is too cold to bear."
"Then we go in quiet," I said. "Yana, take the roof. Boyd, hack the gate. Travis... you're the hammer. If anything wakes up, you put it down."
Travis nodded. The piston on his leg hissed.
"Hammer," he repeated.
08:30 Hours
The Intake Room
We moved through the facility like ghosts.
Yana was a blur of shadows. She moved ahead of us, silencing the sleeping Zealots before they could scream. She didn't use her knife; she used the Shadow Stitch, sewing their mouths shut with darkness before snapping their necks.
It was efficient. It was terrifying.
We reached the main Intake Room.
It was a cavernous space, dominated by three massive pools of water. The air here was warm, heated by the industrial boilers churning in the basement. It felt like stepping into a sauna after being in a freezer.
The liquid in the pools wasn't water. It was black. Viscous. It bubbled sluggishly, releasing a sweet, rotting scent.
In the center of the room, standing on a metal grate over the central pool, was a man.
He was huge—easily seven feet tall. But he wasn't wearing armor. The armor was inside him.
Riot gear—kevlar plates, plastic knee guards, steel pauldrons—had been fused into his flesh. His skin had grown over the equipment, stretching and tearing to accommodate the bulk. His face was a mask of scar tissue, his lips cut away to reveal teeth filed into points.
`[BOSS DETECTED.]`
`[TARGET: APOSTLE CAIN.]`
`[CLASS: JUGGERNAUT (VARIANT).]`
`[MUTATION: FUSED CARAPACE.]`
Cain was holding a bucket. He dipped it into the black water, then lifted it to his lips. He drank deep, the corrupt fluid spilling down his fused chest. Steam rose from his skin as the liquid hit his system.
He stopped. He sniffed the air.
He turned.
"Diesel," Cain grunted. His voice sounded like wet gravel. "And... cold. You bring the winter inside?"
He looked right at Travis.
"The Unclean," Cain roared. "You bring machines into the Temple?"
"Travis," I said. "Engage."
Travis stepped out of the shadows. The engine on his back roared as he spiked the throttle.
VRRR-RUM-RUM!
"I bring the fire," Travis growled.
Cain charged.
It was like watching two freight trains collide.
Cain hit Travis with a shoulder tackle that would have flipped a car. Travis took the hit, his hydraulic leg locking into the concrete floor. Sparks flew as his metal boot skidded backward, carving a groove in the stone.
CRUNCH.
Travis didn't fall. He grabbed Cain by the throat with his massive hand.
"Burn," Travis shouted.
He slammed his club-arm—the fused bone and steel—into Cain's ribs. The heat from Travis's engine transferred on impact, sizzling Cain's wet flesh.
The sound was sickening. Wet snapping.
Cain howled. He drove a fist into Travis's chest, right over the heart.
Travis coughed blood, but the machine on his back compensated. The pumps whined, forcing oxygenated blood through his system faster than his failing organs could handle.
Travis headbutted Cain.
Bone met bone. Cain staggered back, stunned.
Travis didn't let up. He grabbed Cain's head with both hands. The engine screamed, red-lining.
"DIE!"
Travis twisted.
SNAP.
Cain's neck broke with the sound of a tree branch snapping in a storm. The Apostle went limp, his massive body hitting the grate with a thud.
Travis stood there, panting. Blue smoke billowed around him.
"Target... down," Travis wheezed.
Then the engine sputtered.
PUT-PUT... CLANK.
The heat died. The silence rushed back in.
Travis's eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed forward, landing on top of the corpse he had just made.
"Travis!" Helen screamed over the comms. "His heart! It stopped!"
09:00 Hours
The Resuscitation
"Clear!" Helen shouted.
We were on the floor of the Intake Room. Helen was straddling Travis's chest, performing CPR.
"Boyd! Crank the flow rate! Max pressure!"
Boyd was kneeling by the machine, twisting valves. "The lines are going to burst, Helen!"
"Do it!"
Helen slammed a syringe of adrenaline into Travis's neck.
"Come on, you stubborn bastard," she wept. "Don't you quit on me. Not now. It's too cold to sleep!"
I stood back, watching.
Travis was grey. Not the grey of stone-skin, but the grey of death. There was no rise and fall of his chest.
The machine on his back roared. It forced the blood through his veins. It was manually circulating his system.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The engine was beating for him.
"I got a pulse!" Helen gasped. "It's weak... thready... but it's there."
She slumped back, wiping blood from her face.
"He's alive?" I asked.
Helen looked at me. Her eyes were haunted.
"His body is alive," she said softly. "The machine is keeping the tissue oxygenated. But his brain... he was down for four minutes, Jack. The hypoxia..."
She touched Travis's face. He didn't react. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes blank, unblinking.
"He's gone," Helen whispered. "The lights are on, but nobody's home. He's a vegetable strapped to a diesel engine."
I looked at Travis. The Tank. The man who had carried the line since Day 1.
Now he was just a biological chassis. A machine meant to endure the cold.
"Keep him running," I said. My voice felt cold, distant. "Load him onto the truck. We take him home."
"Jack," Boyd said, standing near the black pool. "You need to see this."
I walked over to the pool.
I dipped a test strip into the black liquid.
`[ITEM: CONCENTRATED CORRUPTION (BAPTISM WATER).]`
`[TIER: 4.]`
`[EFFECT: INDUCES RAPID MUTATION / HEAT GENERATION.]`
`[WARNING: HIGH TOXICITY.]`
I filled a glass vial with the black slime.
When I screwed the cap on, my fingers tingled. A low, scratching sound filled my ears. It wasn't the wind. It was coming from the bottle. Voices. Hundreds of them, overlapping in a language that sounded like tearing meat.
"This isn't just runoff," I said, suppressing a shudder. "Eclipse is brewing this. He's farming the corruption. He's making fuel. Fuel for the soul."
I looked at the vats. Thousands of gallons of it.
"Drain the pools," I ordered. "Flush it into the river. But keep a sample. Forty liters."
"For what?" Yana asked, stepping out of the shadows. She looked at the black water with disgust.
"Research," I said. I looked at Travis's comatose body being lifted onto a stretcher. "And insurance. Against the dark."
12:00 Hours
The Return
We drove back to Sector 1 in silence.
The water tanker trailed behind us, filled with clean, filtered water from the plant's reserve tanks. We had solved the thirst. We had secured the river.
But the cab of the lead truck was suffocatingly quiet.
I drove. Ronnie sat in the passenger seat. Travis was strapped into the back, his massive head lolling against the window, the machine chugging softly between the seats.
Ronnie kept looking in the rearview mirror.
"Rough one, huh Trav?" Ronnie said, his voice cheerful but cracking at the edges. "You really smashed that guy. Total wrecking ball."
Silence. The only sound was the wind howling against the armored glass and the rhythmic thumping of the engine on Travis's back.
"He's just tired," Ronnie said to the windshield. "Engine took a lot out of him. He's just sleeping."
"Ronnie," I said softly.
"He's fine, Jack!" Ronnie snapped, turning to me. His eye was wet. "He's warm! Look, the engine is running! He's right there!"
"I know," I lied. "He just needs rest."
I looked in the mirror. I focused my [Analysis] on the figure in the back seat.
Usually, the System gave me a name, a class, a health bar.
This time, the text flickered red.
`[TARGET: TRAVIS.]`
`[STATUS: CRITICAL FAILURE.]`
`[ERROR: PILOT NOT FOUND.]`
`[DESIGNATION: BIOLOGICAL CHASSIS (ACTIVE).]`
I looked away.
The Apostle Cain had fused armor. Travis had a fused engine.
The line between User and Monster was getting thinner every day. And as I watched the frost creep across the windshield, narrowing our view of the road ahead, I realized that to survive what was coming, we might all have to become monsters.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 56
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) ██████████ Rank 15
STATUS: WATER SECURED
CASUALTIES: TRAVIS (Vegetative State)
ASSETS: BAPTISM WATER (40L)
NEXT EVENT: The Forge