The wind didn't just blow in the Ferrous Wastes; it scoured. It was a physical weight, a wall of abrasive grit and ionized dust that screamed across the landscape, stripping paint from steel and hope from the soul. Julian Vance adjusted the seal of his respirator, wincing as the coarse sand found a way to sting the exposed skin of his neck. He was thirty-two, but the Wastes had aged him in dog years. His joints clicked in sympathy with the cooling metal of the ruins around him, and his hands, permanently stained with grease and grime, trembled slightly as he held the frequency scanner aloft.
"Come on," he whispered, his voice raspy and swallowed by the gale. "Don't ghost on me now."
The device, a cobbled-together brick of pre-war tech and salvage, emitted a rhythmic, low-frequency thrum. It was the heartbeat he had been chasing for three years. Ever since the night the sky turned green and the static in his radio coalesced into a pattern—not random noise, but a sequence. A call.
He was deep in the Dead Zone, a sector of the Wastes that even the desperate avoided. Here, the electromagnetic storms were volatile enough to fry the neural chips of the unwary, and the bio-mechanical beasts—twisted fusions of coyote DNA and servo-motors—hunted in packs. But Julian wasn't here for scrap. He was here for the source.
The scanner's display spiked, the green line jagged and frantic. Julian froze. He was standing on top of a mound of debris that looked like just another collapsed factory, but the reading was coming from directly beneath his boots. He dropped to his knees, digging frantically with a pry bar. The rusted rebar fought him, but adrenaline, sharp and metallic, flooded his system. He heaved a slab of concrete aside, revealing a heavy, circular airlock door. It bore the faded insignia of the old world: a shield and a sword.
"Jackpot," he breathed, the word fogging up his goggles.
It took him twenty minutes to bypass the locking mechanism, hot-wiring the hydraulic release with a spare battery pack he unclipped from his belt. With a groan that vibrated through the soles of his boots, the airlock hissed open, exhaling air that had been trapped for a century. It smelled of stale ozone and preservation fluid.
Julian descended into the dark, his shoulder-mounted flashlight cutting a cone through the gloom. The bunker was small, a maintenance bay rather than a habitat. And there, seated against the far wall, covered in a shroud of dust thick enough to look like gray velvet, was the giant.
Unit 734. The designation was stenciled on the chest plating in white paint that had barely yellowed. It was a heavy combat model, an 'Aegis' class. Bulky, broad-shouldered, designed to be a walking tank. Its head was bowed, chin resting on its chest, dormant.
Julian approached it slowly, the scanner in his hand screaming now. He muted the audio, his heart hammering against his ribs. He reached out, his gloved fingers brushing the cold metal of the android's arm. He found the manual interface port at the base of the unit's neck and plugged in his datapad.
Lines of code cascaded down his screen. Corrupted files. System failures. Power critical. But buried deep in the kernel, the signal was pulsing.
"It's you," Julian murmured, a mix of awe and confusion knitting his brow. "You're the broadcaster."
He began the sequence to unlock the chassis clamps, intending to pull the memory core. He didn't have the equipment to move a two-ton android. But as his fingers flew across the keypad, the android's internal gyros whirred to life. A low, resonant hum filled the small room. The dust on the floor began to vibrate.
Suddenly, the bunker was bathed in a harsh, crimson light.
Julian spun around. Hovering at the top of the airlock shaft was a sphere of chrome and glass—a scout drone. The eye of the Enforcers. It let out a high-pitched shriek, a data-burst transmission that pierced Julian's eardrums.
"No, no, no!" Julian scrambled back, tripping over a loose cable. The drone's laser grid swept over him, then locked onto the android.
*Target Acquired. Asset 734. Recovery Protocols Initiated.* The synthesized voice boomed from the drone's speakers.
Julian knew what that meant. The Enforcers didn't negotiate. They erased. And if they were recovering this asset, they wouldn't leave witnesses. But more importantly, if they took the android, Julian would lose the signal. He would lose the only clue to the mystery that had consumed his life.
"Not today," Julian gritted out, his jaw set. He grabbed his heavy wrench and hurled it with desperate precision. It struck the drone's rotor, shattering the stabilizer. The machine spiraled down, crashing into the concrete floor in a shower of sparks.
But the signal was sent. They were coming.
Julian looked back at the android. He couldn't strip it. He had to take the whole thing.
"Wake up, big guy. We're going for a ride."
He overrode the safety inhibitors on the android's mobility servos. It wouldn't be fully combat-ready, but it could walk—barely. Sparks showered from the android's neck as the systems rebooted. The head lifted. Optical sensors flickered, cycling from red to a confused amber.
"Movement... restricted," the android's voice was a deep, distorted bass, like grinding stones.
"Yeah, well, try harder!" Julian shouted, grabbing the android's massive arm and hauling. To his shock, the machine stood, the hydraulics hissing loudly. It towered over him, seven feet of rusted war machine.
Julian guided the stumbling giant toward the airlock. Getting it up the ramp was a nightmare of leverage and cursing. Outside, the wind had picked up. In the distance, cutting through the storm, he saw them—lights. A convoy. The jagged silhouettes of buggy frames and the roar of unrefined fuel engines. The cultists. Scavengers who worshipped the Enforcer tech, coming to pick the bones.
Julian sprinted to his tank, the 'Iron Mule', parked fifty yards away behind a dune. It was an ugly beast, a patchwork of welded steel plates and treads, but it had torque. He dropped the rear cargo ramp.
"Get in!" Julian screamed over the wind, waving his arms.
The android moved with agonizing slowness, its servos whining in protest against the sand. A bullet pinged off the android's shoulder plate, then another kicked up dirt at Julian's feet. The first buggy crested the ridge, a gunner hanging out the side, screaming a war cry.
Julian didn't wait. He scrambled into the cockpit of the Mule as the android collapsed into the cargo bay. He slammed the ramp close button and punched the ignition. The Mule roared, black smoke belching from its stacks.
He slammed the throttle forward. The tank lurched, treads biting into the earth. He checked the rear monitor. The android was sliding around in the back, unsecured, colliding with crates of spare parts.
"Hold on!" Julian yelled, though the machine couldn't hear him.
He swung the Mule around, crushing a rusted sedan beneath his treads, and gunned it toward the canyon pass. The cultist buggies were faster, swarming like angry hornets, but the Mule was heavier. Julian watched the rearview screen, his eyes wide, sweat stinging the corners. He had the signal. He had the source. Now he just had to survive long enough to ask it a question.