Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A lone, thin figure shambles amidst the desolate streets of a broken city. Gentle snowfall covers the silent concrete, none to wipe it off. The ground is cracked and the buildings tilted, if not collapsed entirely. A great, cataclysmic earthquake shattered the earth long ago, ripping up the asphalt like dry skin; splinters of stone and jagged steel wrecks dot the once-urban landscape in droves.

An insignificant dot moves across desolation’s domain, leaving deep footprints in their wake, flanked by parallel lines drawn unbroken. These are the remnants of a wanderer, a human dragging an empty sled behind itself. A crude construction, self-made a long time ago, yet sturdy and simple as can be; nothing more than a pallet with a pair of bolted-on skis. It’s empty, but it won’t be for long, for they have travelled far to reach a treasure trove hidden within the city, and when they find what they need, the sled will come in handy.

They are a walking enigma, a beacon of defiance, a glowing dot of survival, a prime example of holding out against all odds. For when the frost bit down and the weather changed on the cold moon-planet Copper-9, and the air itself darkened and wanted nothing but death, they alone have remained. Many that have met the wanderer in their travels have simply dubbed them:

The Nomad.

Carrying a satchel, they dress in thick winter clothes: a white coat and warm shawl; heavy boots and twice-layered trousers; a crudely knitted beanie they made themselves a long time ago. Those who wish to look at their face, to read their expressions without obstruction, are out of luck: Goggles shield their eyes from the snow pelting them at all times and an old rebreather filters the toxic air of contaminants. Uncountable noxious dust particles and fumes were kicked into the atmosphere, so that breathing without one sends the wanderer into ruthless coughing fits. It’s as fresh as it gets, the filters ought to have been changed a long time ago, but such things are hard to find these days, and scarcity only becomes ever more prominent as time goes on.

Their destination isn’t far now, their treasure almost within reach. It’s neither gold nor diamond for which they strive, those things lost their value a long time ago. No, their sights are set on something more… volatile. Such things are kept safe only in sturdy shelters. Usually they’d be plentiful on construction sites, but their flimsy scaffolding and half-finished foundations were the first to collapse during the cataclysm, so no dice.

Just a few hundred paces later, and their target rises into view: a manufacturing plant hidden within the concrete jungle. A company logo decorates the factory gates. It, like the rest of the city, is covered in a layer of ice and snow. But the colourful company logo still shines through the frost, and although its lettering is barely intelligible, the Nomad can still make out what it says.

JC Jenson Manufacturing (in spaaaace!)

Bingo, they’ll find what they need here. Their interest lies not within the office buildings to their right, subpar computer components are both useless and plentiful, neither do they care for cheap office supplies. No, instead, their gaze is fixed on the workshop on the right. It’s more or less a big concrete box, long and with a simple steel roof, a large crack splitting the hall in two. Great machines inside lay broken, unfixable by their hands alone, though this doesn’t bother the Nomad too much. They’d be useless to them anyway.

They walk not into the factory, but around it. The thing they’re looking for is so volatile, so deadly, that it must be kept outside in thick concrete boxes, locked behind iron bars like industrial prisoners. Around the corner lay the expected cells, and within them stands a single, tall, slender, reddish-brown steel bottle, wearing a silver protective cap like a knight’s helmet. It’s chained to the wall with a flimsy chain, so it stands in spite of the cataclysm’s wrath.

A simple padlock keeps the gate shut, a long icicle jotting down like a stalactite, though this is no obstacle for the lone scrapper. This isn’t the first time a padlock has blocked their way, and it certainly won’t be their last. They take out a small hammer from their satchel and lift it above their head. With one swift strike the brittle steel of the lock snaps, falling to the snowy floor with a dampened thud. Now the gate swings open freely with a wheeping creak, the way to their treasure laid dangerously bare as they look into the eyes of the sleeping dragon.

The bottle is silent, though that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. There’s no obvious damage to its outside, and it remains safely chained to the wall, so they feel it safe to approach carefully. With bated breath and sweaty palms they draw near, looking for a set of markings on its neck. Every gas bottle worth its money has them, and those that don’t aren’t worth using at all. They carefully turn the bottle around and, surely enough, there it is:

A set of standardized markings and writing, intelligible only by those familiar with them already. They’re of lesser value nowadays though, for only one word on the bottle bears significance to the Nomad. One which they spot almost immediately:

Acetylene.

They’ve found it, a bottle of pure acetylene. Highly explosive, flammable to a tee, high pressure gas dissolved in acetone like carbon dioxide is in a soda. Burn it in pure oxygen, and the flame melts steel like a blaze tears through a dry forest. Cut cold metal like air, and mend pieces together so that they become one without bolt or rivet. Exactly what they’re looking for. The Nomad unscrews the cap to find an untouched valve, a small marking on its threads and the hole in which they disappear is still pristine from the factory. This bottle has never even been touched. For more than fifteen years it has stood still, patiently waiting for the day that it may be released from its confines.

And today is that day. No damage, brand-spanking-new, they could ask for nothing more. The Nomad screws the cap back on and unhooks the chain from the wall, tilting the bottle backwards. In a kind of side-to-side shimmying motion, they carefully manoeuvre it towards the empty sled just outside the cage. They slowly let it down onto its rough splintery wooden surface and strap it down with a few ratchet straps they also keep on the contraption. Click, click, click, the ratchet slows and then tightens too far to move again. Now the bottle won’t move, no matter how hard they push and pull on it.

“That does it.”, they announce triumphantly, though they aren’t finished just yet. There’s more to gather on their list, all to do with the acetylene. The Nomad rummages around in one of their jacket’s pockets and takes out a paper list they’ve written beforehand. Out of their satchel they produce a pencil and cross out the first object. As per their list, their next target is a “Regulator”.

The Nomad approaches the split in the factory’s wall, a large gash just large enough to fit through, and, with a little bit of squeezing, force their plump body into the once pristine hall. Huge, expensive looking machines litter the grey concrete floor, all of them silent, though some share a worse fate. The roof has collapsed in one place, resulting in a good deal of it falling down. Flimsy steel panelling litters the floor, vast masses of white bury one of the great mechanisms beneath a mound of loose snow. Another machine is crushed beneath the once overhead crane, whose supports collapsed. A sad scene, these pieces of gear must’ve cost millions back in the day. But now they serve as nothing but tributes to contrast, a stark comparison of the once-great and the now-desolate. Destroyed, broken, damaged beyond repair. Useless to the Nomad, their gaze is instead fixed upon the welding area at the other end of the room.

A few gas bottles accompany welding machines which stand beside thick steel tables. They all feature regulators, though these are the wrong kind. The fittings are different, a safety measure to not mix up the differently constructed devices. The Nomad needs them for a very important purpose, for the gas within the bottle is at an unusable pressure. So much of it is squeezed inside that it’d snuff out any flame that tried to burn it. It’d blow away puddles of molten steel when welding and be impossible to ignite. So, to prevent such woes, a regulator is used to lower the pressure.

A handful of cabinets line the wall, some of their slim drawers opened slightly to reveal the contents inside. One of them is filled to the brim with welding wire. They have enough of that at home, so they close it and investigate another. This one has a bunch of welding torches, all on the spectrum of factory new to battle scarred, though they’ve neither need nor space for them. Another bust, they move on to find the next drawer empty. So is the next, and the last one too. Now that all of the open ones are closed, they decide to actually read the labels on them. They should’ve done this first, but, as they so often say when talking to themselves: “hindsight is best-sight… or whatever.”

Threaded rods, no. Pliers, tongs, and sheet metal shears, no. Nuts and bolts M4 to M16, no. Cutting torches and nozzles… this one seems familiar. Sure enough, when they glance at their list they find these words after the regulator. They open it, pick one out that looks good, and close the drawer. A cutting torch is built much sturdier than a welding torch, its main purpose, that of cutting great thicknesses of steel, needs a lot more oxygen than welding does. So it features an unregulated bypass, which lets all the pressure out into the cut by the push of a lever. That then accelerates the “burning” of the steel and, in turn, gets it much hotter. It cuts through like a red-hot knife through water, with no resistance at all. They cross the word off their list and continue looking for their other treasure.

A few more uninteresting drawers later and they find it: one labelled as “Regulators”. There’s got to be one in there. They had an acetylene bottle, so it only makes sense if they did. The Nomad opens it and finds an assortment of different devices, all the wrong kind at first glance. However, when they look closer, they find the black sheep amongst the herd: an acetylene regulator fit just right for their bottle.

Bingo. Another objective off the list. The last line of text is short and concise, yet acquiring such is not as simple as the word which describes it: Fuel. Gasoline, to be precise. The Nomad had scouted out this factory a long time ago, had noted down what there was to find, and fuel was one of them. Where it was, was not as apparent as a big room with the word “Fuel” written upon it would be. “Things are never that easy…”, they think, having just found two of their treasures in labelled drawers.

They faintly remember the room they found all that time ago, a blank door in the back of the factory, which leads down into a dark basement. Thankfully they came prepared, a flashlight always accompanies them on their travels, hidden away within their satchel. In the corner of the great hall they find it, and they incorrectly remembered it too; the door is labelled as “Emergency Generator”. That seems promising, so they open the unlocked door.

Fumes seep through the filters on their mask, an unmistakable stench of danger, of fire and suffocation, yet also of life, of power and vast energy: gasoline. The smell isn’t overbearing, but ever present as it flows from the dark passage before them. Flicking the switch on a flashlight here is a dangerous game; a single spark, no matter how small, would set the mixture of air and vapours ablaze.

Again, not their first rodeo. They come prepared -this isn’t their first fume-filled basement- so they produce a glowstick from their pouch. Its light is chemical, sealed away within a plastic shell, perfect for this. They kink one until it cracks, then shake it until it gives enough light to see. The small object illuminates the staircase as they descend it, the fumes growing stronger with each step until they reach another door, unlabelled this time. When they crack this one open, the fumes which emerge from it are stronger yet. Something in here is leaking gasoline, but as they swing it open they see only an old combustion generator.

This thing is downright archaic. The valves are all exposed, piping wraps through and around it, and the spark plugs -oh god- they look last-millennium! How did this thing end up here? How did it still work? Did it work at all? Questions upon unanswerable questions which all lead to nothing of importance. They don’t know how this thing looks like it’s a thousand years old, or why it’s here, what’s important is that a solid fuel line leads up to the ceiling. A label upon it reads “Gasoline”. Right on the money, but when they hit it with the hammer from their bag it reverberates as if it were empty. Typical. The tank outside probably sprung a leak during the collapse, so all the gas either poured or evaporated out into the icy air. But if that tank is empty, and so is the fuel line, then where do the vapours come from?

There’s another door here, though this one is locked. They try everything, the handle, banging against it, even lockpicking, but it seems the key is still stuck on the other side. Are the fumes coming from in there? The vapours are already almost too much out here, why would somebody lock themselves in there? Another question that doesn’t need answering; they need fuel, and it’s definitely in there, so they best get going trying to open it.

It's too strong to open by hand, so they’ll need a crowbar. However, this is a tool they don’t just happen to have on hand. It’s too big to fit in the satchel, and too heavy to lug around in a backpack all day. They could put it on the sled… But they didn’t, so they’ll need to find one. The Nomad quickly ascends back up the stairs, in search of their tool of desperate need. This factory used to fabricate… something… exactly what stands in the stars, but they welded and machined and probably also fixed things. “And when steel’s a stuck… with a crowbar you’ll be in… uh… luck”, they attempt to rhyme, and only somewhat fail. Stuck and luck do rhyme pretty well, but they could work on the cadence.

They rummage around different drawers and cabinets, all devoid of the forged tool of illicit access, when they happen upon a kind of chest. It looks quite strange and out of place as this is the first of its kind they’ve seen around here, so they bust the padlock keeping it shut an open it. Inside are various misfit tools in a pile: A grease gun, what looks to be a bike pump, a hydraulic jack, and, luckily, a crowbar. The Nomad removes the tool from the bottom of the pile and descends back down the stairs.

With some force they stab the flat end of the tool into the split between the door and its frame, the wood of the two creaking as they grab the far end and take on a wide stance. The Nomad starts applying force, pushing with all their might and bodyweight as the crowbar digs deeper into the crevasse, groaning emerging from the strained old wood. The vapours in the air along with the clogged filters on their mask make it hard to breathe, a strain on their lungs which weakens them considerably. Still, one mighty push is all it takes for the bolt to rip through the wooden frame with great speed.

A wave of sickening fumes washes over the Nomad, who has fallen onto the floor. One gasping breath and their mind is stuck with pins and needles as a splitting migraine invades their senses. They cannot breathe. They rush into the dim room and grab the very first thing they feel.

They gasp for fresh air when they reach the surface, the rush came so fast they hadn’t the time to hold their breath first. But all isn’t bad, because what they’re holding in their non-crowbar hand is heavy and liquid filled. They look down, and what meets their gaze is a dark green steel jerry can, sloshing with a good deal of fuel. It isn’t full by any means, the level inside is barely even at half its total volume, but it’s something at least. Either the rest evaporated until it could no more, or there are a few others like this one in there. But before they can go back down there, they’d rather wait a minute for the fumes to settle.

So, they head back to the sled. Through the crack they go and out into the cold air they emerge. Delicate white snowflakes fall to the ground in swirling pirouettes, gentle wind blows across the side of the factory like a nostalgic winter gale. Like it was back then, back on earth. Oh, how they miss the winters there… Reminds them of that one time they saw the first snowflakes after a long, dry summer. It’s got to have been two decades now since then. They were young, without worry, without the bitter cold at all times to bite at their back like nagging fleas.

But that’s in the past now, they’ve to do. The Nomad puts the jerry can on their sled along with the bottle, tying it down with another strap. They quickly head back in to grab their other two prizes, which they left on one of the steel tables beforehand. Those, too, they tie to the sled and cover with a tarp they had tied to the underside. That should be good, so they again head back into the basement.

While the smell is definitely fainter, it fills most of the factory now. How much fuel was in there, and how much is left? With fumes like that, there had got to be a motherlode down there. The Nomad cracks another glowstick and takes a big breath, holding it this time, as they venture back into the darkness below. The additional room is small, there’s only space for a shelf and a bunch of identical jerry cans that stand in a row on the ground. The Nomad kicks each and every one of them, but all of them seem empty. Somehow they lucked out and got the only one with fuel in it.

But something else also litters the ground. There’s a body in here. A decayed skeleton whose stench of old rot is covered up by the fragrance of gasoline. They still wear their fire-proof work clothes, a pair of safety goggles lay on the ground beside the cadaver. They must’ve run in here during the cataclysm, hid from the earthquake they feared would collapse the workshop. Locked themselves in here and suffocated from the fumes. But why not leave? The Nomad inspects the door, seeing the remains of a broken key, its rest still in the hand of the dead worker. To die alone in the dark at the hand of gasoline vapours as the world was ending above them. A terrible fate, worse than most.

There’s nothing for them here, and they’re running out of breath, so they leave the basement with haste. The Nomad goes to their sled and grabs its rope, then starts pulling it along as they head back from whence they came. They head back out of the company logo’d gate and wander once more through the snow-laden streets. Rubble and fallen streetlamps litter the way, cars with broken windows and empty fuel tanks stand still, ash and glass shards are mixed into the loose, icy snow.

But these are not the only things sticking out of the ground, nor are they the only ones buried underneath the vast masses of snow. Concrete and asphalt are laden with more of itself, but buried beneath them and laying atop them is another material:

Bone.

Countless bones litter the silent road. A grim mass of loose ribcages and snapped femurs, of empty skulls with darkened eye sockets that no longer decorate spines as they once did; as crowns of knowledge and personality. There is a prevailing sadness here, an ever-present remembrance of the past. The wanderer looks into the eyes of the dead and sees those of the living, they see splayed finger bones that lay separate from their palms and feel the warm embrace of a delicate hand. No words to speak, for there are none to hear them. No prayers to hold, for the gods do not listen to the pleas of an ant within its frozen hive. How could they? The divine are ashamed at the sight, what have they done? What has humanity done, what have they wrought upon themselves to deserve a burial within a grave of ice? There is not enough stone to hew gravestones for the broken. There is not enough earth to churn, to dig up and bury the mismatched bones so that they lay six feet deep. The warmth of hell dares not spring to the surface, for hell is cold, and it was here long before humanity set its sights on frost and brimstone.

For fifteen years the thought has twisted and turned, has fermented in the vile and dangerous juices of the mind to become a poison. A venom which streams in their veins as a constant of hate and disgust, of deep shame and boiling anger. Why? Why did this happen? Who is to blame? Can one be blamed for this? When things are quiet and thoughts drift away, their mind wanders to meet a mountain of sorrow, well climbed and known to the point of familiarity. A sight so old it borders on nostalgia; they remember only fragments of their childhood, but the weeks of horror, of burning bodies that filled landscapes with the reek of rot and charred flesh is singed into their mind beyond the hope of healing, beyond forgetting, beyond peace. They remain as the only living being, they alone are cursed to walk among dust and ash, they alone will stay here, in hell.

They will never go home. No one will ever find them. It’s been fifteen years of nought but futile hope and unfulfilled dreams of salvation. Nightmares within which they are neither chased nor crept upon, but instead frolic through fields of golden wheat. The warm sun shines brightly upon their skin in their most vivid of night terrors. A scathing irony, they want nothing but to return to the home they were raised in, their home which bears their most pleasant memories and old friends they fondly think back to. Yet when night descends on the icy moon that is Copper-9, the cold rock they wander in vain, they both fear and embrace sleep. The cold nags at their skin and bones, but the sight of home hews hope from their psyche like stone from a quarry.

The dim star of Copper-9 does not compare to the radiant shine of the sun of earth. Ash and airborne soot still swirl in the gale, still is kicked from the ground, a leftover from great wildfires that charred concrete and softened glass. Days are dark, the nights sometimes black and sometimes grey. Within the sky and always appearing as a never-still circle is the planet they orbit. It’s a gas giant. An incomprehensibly big sphere of boiling gasses and a liquid core of condensed matter. Ear shattering winds scar the “surface”, storms rage that dwarf the size of continents and the moons which orbit around it. Copper-9 is big and mostly life-supporting. There’s trees and a breathable atmosphere, though now it’s poisoned with ash and sulphur, arsenic and lead. Their mask is barely adequate, they’d need a full hazmat suit to stay safe, but even simple filters for this old thing are hard enough to find. They get worse with time, they clog and get hard to breathe through, but they’d rather breathe in stale air and muted smells than not at all.

The Nomad has reached their destination, though they aren’t close to home yet. No, home is far away, within another city. Not impossible to reach by foot, but a day’s trek takes more energy and time than they can spare. So they have transport, a vehicle fit for the wastes. Not a car, that’d be too big and unwieldy. It wouldn’t fit between the countless broken vehicles on the roads, a car couldn’t drive into tight alleyways or cut across white plains without much fuel. They approach a shrouded shape within an alley, veiled in a snowed-on blue tarp they found in the area. The Nomad leaves the sled in the open road and pulls the plastic blanket off the shape, revealing a contraption of two tires, a motor, a mismatched fuel tank, and a torn vinyl seat.

It's a motorcycle. Modified by the Nomad until each and every part has been replaced at least once. Is it still the same machine as the day they found it? They may never know, all that’s left of the original is the underlying frame, along with a single bolt that holds the seat to the tube steel below it. How that old thing hasn’t snapped long ago, or how they haven’t lost it in the organized chaos of their garage-home is a mystery to them. What remains is a machine of mismatched parts, a fuel tank that is clearly too big and tires that have treads so deep they grab snow with great ease, pulling their mass across the plains of the valley with speed and efficiency. The engine is a big single cylinder off-road motor, fuel efficient and suitable for ground with little grip. Good for deserts, both sand and snow, a perfect combination of combustive abilities.

They take the handlebars of their machine and push it out to the street, putting it on the side stand right next to the sled. Then, they take the secured jerry can and pour its contents into their motorcycle’s fuel tank. The needle on it moves from just less than half to a little above it, a welcome change, though its less than they’d hoped for when they came here. Fuel is dangerously scarce nowadays, but they have their ways of acquiring it despite it all. Next they put the empty container in a special holder at the back of the machine, just behind the seat which used to stretch further backwards, though they’ve since replaced it with a much shorter one for the extra space. They made the holder themselves, welded it together from scrap steel and added a leather strap to hold the fuel can down. With it all secure, all that’s left is to attach the sled, and for this, they’ve a special tool.

They call it a doohickie, sometimes a thingamajig. It’s a kind of steel joint they jerry-rigged out of some go-kart axles. Two double joints stuck together with a plain steel bar. A simple rope wouldn’t work, it’s too flimsy and would allow the sled to “catch up” to them when they slow down, and a solid bar wouldn’t work because it’d restrict turning. So they came up with this. It twists along with their bike, and doesn’t fold like a rope would. They stick one end of the double joint through a hole in a plate on the front of the sled, and shove a pin through a small hole in the side of the bar. Then, they repeat this process on the bike, which doesn’t have a plate like the sled, but a short bit of tube.

Now all is set. They clamber atop the seat and turn the key in the ignition. Next the Nomad pulls the choke, a little lever that makes the fuel mixture richer in gasoline. It ignites more easily but strains the engine and uses more fuel. However, pulling the choke is necessary, the bike wouldn’t start without it in this cold. They also kick the gearbox into neutral with their foot, as to not speed off as soon as it turns on. At last, they press on the starter button.

The Electric motor whirrs for a second, turning the engine’s crankshaft over twice before it roars to life. Dozens of explosive thumps echo out into the open street, a cacophony of combustion in quick succession, an assured symphony of power, of safety in speed and strength. The sound is heavenly, euphoric to hear over the wind and occasional creaking of a bent lamp post, a surefire announcement that they are here, that they are alive and breathing, they and their engine both like saints trapped in a desolate desert of ice. Breaking through the silence of Copper-9 is a tiny dot, beaming with defiance, leaving a straight line in its wake as a track of their continuous existence.

They best get going, the sun is descending quickly.

They kick it into first gear and set off towards home. A roaring shape that cuts through the broken city like a surgeon’s knife, leaving the rubble and desolation behind. They weave through the frozen traffic and expertly cut through any obstacle in their way, jumping over mounds of snow and ice. They know this machine, each and every bolt and bit of steel that comprises its many components. They know how it reacts to every move they make, they know the edge of traction, and how to thread it like a needle as an old seamstress would. They know when the tires slide, when the brakes engage as they should, and when they don’t. It’s an extension of their body, an extra limb they know and move like their own arms and legs, a being of both blood and gasoline, flesh and steel, nerves and cables, sweat and oil.

The biomechanical creature leaves the city behind, the dense concrete jungle morphs into half-high housing blocks, which in turn become suburbs that thin out like the end of a forest. An empty landscape lays before them, a plane of white snow and the two mountain ranges that flank it. They live in a wide valley, one that stretches from an ocean on one end and thins into a ravine on the other. A narrow passage to the source of the river that runs along it, which eventually empties into the sea. They follow this river, as it cuts through their home city as a wide, frozen canal. A convenient aid, though they also wouldn’t be all that lost without it. The mountains provide a constant confinement, and the sun and planet are an ever-present compass.

Hours pass without interruption, the sun draws ever closer to the horizon, and their thoughts drift away as they ride along the river’s bank, notable sights pass without them even noticing. They have taken this route a thousand times, seen everything until there was nothing more to study, until boredom itself becomes boring, an emotion muted for the sake of their own sanity. It helps, like meditation it gives them some time to think about stuff. Like how they forgot to take the crowbar with them. Ah shit. They forgot the crowbar. They needed one of those, somehow they lost the last one they had, even though they always take care of their stuff. Maybe it’s stuffed away somewhere in their workshop? It’s quite a mess these days, they ought to take a day or so to clean it up.

The Nomad’s mind wanders to the things they’ve gathered today, for their reason for doing so is a mix of stupid and embarrassing. They were welding something, though they can’t quite remember what. All they know is that they were out and about and that they, upon finishing, accidentally bumped their gas bottles. The oxygen tank wobbled, but stayed upright. The acetylene however fell over, its regulator hitting the ground first. A loud crack followed by a demonic whoosh echoed throughout the entire city as the bottle released all of its incredible pressure through the broken fitting, spinning on the ground at great speed like a turning top from hell. They ran as fast as they could, before the object ejected itself from the scene, flying off into the distance like a makeshift missile.

It happened a while ago, maybe a year almost, and they’ve managed without it since that day. However, they need it now. Or soon, rather, because for now they’re going home to get some rest. Heck, if times get tough they might even be able to make some on their own. They think back to a lesson they had in school -one of the few memories of their childhood neither fragmented nor repressed- and remember their chemistry teacher showing an experiment. He put a chunk of limestone into a beaker and poured water over it. It bubbled, almost looked like it was boiling, but the water didn’t turn to steam. No, for the teacher then lit a match and held it over the beaker’s open top, igniting the mixture which rose from the reaction. It was acetylene, made out of nothing but limestone and water. “Simple enough.”, they think, “Just put some lime in water, and let the magic happen… just gotta get me some lime…what is limestone? Is there even lime in the ground here?” They don’t really know what limestone looks like, or where to get it. A quarry, perhaps, but they’ve never even seen one of those, and they’ve been all over Copper-9. Not literally, but it certainly feels that way. They think however not of where one could possibly be, but of something quite different: “Limestone.. lime… lime? What’s a rock got to do with limes? Does it look like limes? Does… does limestone taste like limes?” The thought makes their mouth water, for some reason they want to lick a rock…

The city rises into view, and soon takes up their whole vision. A comforting familiarity washes over them, even though this town isn’t any less hostile than the others. The icy winds still carve into the debris-filled roads, the bitter cold still bites as fiercely as anywhere else, storms and blizzards still periodically darken the sky. But this city is different, not through its architecture, not its buildings or road design, no. This is their home. Little hallmarks of their presence are left all over: tyre tracks that haven’t quite been snowed over, rubble that has been moved by them at some point, apartment buildings they remember looting along with what they found within them. In that building they found an antique bottle of wine, in that one over there was a nice leather belt they still wear to this day.

They like this city, even though its name is frankly ridiculous. They shudder at the thought of it, hate pronouncing it in their mind, but now that they’re thinking about it, they can’t stop themselves. Its name is Newer Lincolnshire. Newer? Is there a New Lincolnshire somewhere out there? Were two of them not enough? Just one Lincolnshire is frankly too much, who would name their home that? Curse the guy who named this city, curse the one who approved it, but then again, that won’t be necessary, will it? They’re dead now, just like everyone else…

With grim thoughts brought on by the cursed name of their beloved home, they turn away from the canal they’ve been following, driving down a road they cleared of rubble many years ago. This is the home stretch. Along the side of this street, which once to them was like any other, is their home. They slow down and turn slightly, not to go down another street, but to enter their alleyway which leads them home. However, they turn the other way first, drawing a wide circle in the snow which ends as a straight line carving through a narrow alley. The handlebars almost hit the walls, only a foot or so is between steel and concrete, but the danger doesn’t last for long. Soon they reach an open space, a kind of courtyard that has on one side a garage gate, with a regular door beside it.

The Nomad shuts off their motorcycle and puts it on the side stand, then unlocks the door with their small bundle of mismatched keys. The inside is dark, but familiar. There’s a chain to their left, which they pull to raise the gate. Dim light pours into the Nomad’s workshop, the setting sun just barely illuminates their small home. It’s nothing more than a strangely placed garage, with a kind of loft accessible by some grate-steel stairs in front of the door. It’s not much, but they call it home.

They push their motorcycle inside and close the shutter gate, then they flick a little switch on the wall. Nothing happens for a second, but soon the fluorescent light lazily flickers on, bathing the room in a harsh white glow. A row of cabinets, both on the ground and on the wall above those, line the left and far wall. The far cabinets do not stretch all the way to the right, though. No, in their stead stands a large fuel tank, made out of an old gas vessel they painfully dragged in here long ago. It holds their excess fuel, though it isn’t ever full, or even at half full for that matter. Under the stairs is their misfit storage. Their oxygen bottle is there, chained to the wall with an empty spot beside it. Another chain loosely hangs there next to its compatriot, a strange space which screams for company, and the Nomad shall provide it. They undo the ratchet straps keeping the acetylene safe, and stand up the reddish-brown bottle to shimmy it to its designated spot, looping the thin chain around the object, and hooking the links to the wall. It’s done. They’re home at last

The Nomad slowly ascends up the stairs to find their bed next to the wall on the other side of the room. Next to it is a nightstand, above it a strange looking AC unit. They modified it themselves, so it serves not to cool the room, -the outside serves this purpose plenty- neither to heat it. Instead, it filters the air in the workshop and blows it down onto their bed. It allows them to take off their mask, so that they may sleep without its strain, without the staleness it brings to their tired lungs.

They let out an exhausted, but relieved sigh, letting out all of their frustrations and strain they’ve endured today as they fall into their bed. A small red switch sticks out from the AC’s white plastic panelling, which they flick to their bated delight. A little green light turns on above it, after which the machine begins whirring as the fans put the filters to work. Clean air flows from the outputs like a divine nectar, slowly creating a pocket of safety around their bed like a holy glow. After a few minutes of waiting, they feel it safe to remove the old rebreather.

Divine fluid fills their strained lungs, euphoria overwhelms their emotions. They breathe freely at last, a sensation they feel almost daily, yet one that simply never gets old. For about a decade they have slept here, a thousand times the AC has valiantly cleaned the air for its human, and always they appreciate every second of its work. They open the drawer on their nightstand, and see two round mask filters rolling around its wooden construction. They’re their last, a worrying sight, but not for them to solve today. They unscrew the older filter on their mask and place a new one on it, throwing the used-up object into a trash can next to the nightstand.

With the sun now finally gone, and night comfortably settling over the valley, they settle their aching body into their old mattress. It doesn’t take long, and their mind drifts away into warm, comfortable sleep.

Chapter Text

The Nomad awakens, but not in their bed.

What was once the cold familiarity of their garage-home has become an uneasy warmth. When they open their eyes they see not the dim fluorescence of their ceiling light, but a blindingly brilliant glow that singes their eyes until darkness takes hold once again. Their retinas are burnt out, but they dare not close their eyes. Something makes them want to see, an inexplicable emotion that borders on an obsession, a nagging need to see that which has made them unable to. Minutes go by without ever blinking, they feel no need to do so as their eyes do not dry out, and their instincts lay silent beneath the deafening lack of thought brewing in their head. When their eyes finally adjust after an excruciating moment of darkness, they see something unexpected. They rub their eyes for they do not believe them, they blink and blink and blink again, they close the hatches of daylight and keep them shut until they can press them together no more. Nothing changes.

They are standing in a crowd.

It shocks them, a human crowd before their very eyes. A dense, populated mass of humanity, of life and safety and comforting warmth. Their sight is still blurry, but they make out arms and legs, along with a torsos that connect the bunch to form splotches of familiarity. Noise populates the air, a fog of speech they can’t quite make out. Conversations that involve words and sentences, some that rhyme though most others don’t, spoken thoughts that convey emotion and distress, love and hate.

But no matter how closely they listen, despite their greatest efforts, the words they say make no sense. These noises sound like words, they have letters and spacing between them, they invoke responses in their mind, yet even those are indiscernible to the listener. A crowd that has no topic, yet whose cadence is precise, rhythmic in some way.

When the Nomad’s eyes fully adjust to the light, they gaze upon a sight of horror. The people before them sound like humans, and their heads are shaped like a human’s, but when they try in vain to look into one’s eyes they meet only smooth skin. When they look to their mouths, their gaze meets yet more blank flesh. No eyes to get lost in, yet these things stare intently, with scathing purpose that burns deep into the Nomad’s soul. No mouths to speak with, yet the crowd whispers incessantly. Featureless, expressionless, perfectly smooth blobs of skin take the place of familiarity and emotion. Every single one of them.

The quiet murmuring of the crowd suddenly goes mute. An air of perfect stillness swirls through and around them, silence that rings in their ears, that reverberates inside their head like a rung bell. Everyone is stiff, as if frozen. The Nomad tries to move, but nothing they do makes their muscles even twitch. Panic sets in as their mind comes to realize that they are helpless, that they are without control over their own body. Like a statue they stand there, a marble prison among a sea of identical captives that each stand silently, bathed in blinding light.

But then the chains are seemingly lifted, the rock around them cracking and breaking away. The Nomad is free once more, and so are the people around them. They resume their whispers, but something about them seems terribly wrong. An uneasy familiarity sets in like an unconsciously repressed memory: they have heard this before. Like a record tape spooled back to the start, the rhymes and non-rhymes, the almost-words and the sentences which contain them, and the eternal silence between the bunch, all repeat as they did only moments ago. Hair stands up straight on their back, a burning anxiety takes hold that burrows into their fragile mindscape like a parasite, never to leave again.

Quiet chattering turns into rhythmic chanting, whispers to fervorous shouts and cries. Passion is found within their voices, and slowly but surely the mass’ speech coalesces into a single cadence. Prayers, that’s what these are. Prayers for a better life, prayers for salvation from death, prayers to something unspeakable. The Nomad does not understand the words that emerge from the mouthless beings, but their subconscious translates them into emotions nonetheless. Hope is in the air, sadness within the ground, death within the dust that accumulates on the motionless; the inanimate. But when the beings spit the name of the god to whom they pray, no true picture comes to unfold within their mindscape.

Something does appear, but the thing that wriggles its head seems untranslatable, unspeakable in some law-of-nature defying way. The non-word erases all other imperfections, smooths over the rough dunes of thought that pollute the mind, unmakes instinct and immolates memory like a flamethrower does cobwebs. A deity that cannot be named, a concept completely inconceivable, a tongue whose sounds cannot be reproduced with the vocal cords that vibrate helplessly in their throat. An incompatible virus that desperately writhes and struggles around inc their mindscape; a step which cannot hit the ground, a blood-curdling scream that cannot precipitate in the air it drowns within. Horror in the mundane, hate in the normal, a searing spite against existence itself -not of its own- but of all that surrounds it.

The chanting grows louder, almost deafening the Nomad as the things in the crowd all simultaneously turn to look at the sun. A unified stare they are compelled to take part in. At first they don’t, but the feeling of missing out grows unbearable, a dread seeping into their bones; what are they looking at? Are they missing something? Is something coming? Ever greater grows the nagging until they finally give in.

They stare directly into the brilliant star that hangs above them. But instead of burning, they feel a pleasant warmth behind their eyes. The sun’s stubborn refusal to be directly observed is inexplicably gone, replaced by an assured blanket of comfort, of happiness in the radiant presence of salvation. The shouted chants turn into cries of joy; cheering in the name of the light they partake in. God is here, and it smiles upon its disciples with proud eyes. For a moment, all is right in the world. Every worry washes away, all pain is muted and turned to euphoria, deep scars that line their soul are mended, wounds sewn back together with surgical diligence.

Suddenly the prayers go mute once more. But this time, instead of repeating as they did only a minute ago, they refuse to start again. A dead silence remains in their stead, one so overbearing the Nomad cannot vocalize a sound to break it. Not a word or cough or step or even single breath is heard over the lack of noise. Their internal organs - their heartbeat – lay mute beneath the blanket of absolute stillness.

Soon, the sun to which all have prayed grows dim. It decreases in size to the dismay of the disciples, who emit cries of dread and fear, of anger and disgust. God is abandoning them, leaving the safety it promised to man only to be swallowed by the scorn of the left behind. A glowing dot which shrinks to an impossibly small size, until it collapses into nothingness. Only darkness decorates the heavens for an impossibly long time. It feels as if eons pass before something happens again.

But then the blackened sky welcomes a new host.

From that nothingness, something wicked grows. A disease emerges from the dark canvas: a glowing ring that surrounds an inconceivably big sphere of perfect nought, orders of magnitude larger than the sun it replaced. A pull emerges that noticeably lifts them, not enough to fall into it, but enough to feel unnaturally light on their feet. Terrible dread seeps into their every fibre of being, one they cannot explain, yet which grows and becomes unbearable as they helplessly stare into the black sun. Screams erupt in the crowd as a single word appears in the sphere’s exact centre, its glow as piercing as the forgotten star’s. A sickening yellow light, two square colons that box in four lower letters, perfectly spaced apart:

[null]

Three angels appear before the great sphere, saviours of the damned souls gathered here, all glowing in the same radiant light the sun once provided. The mass cheers, they are saved! Faceless seraphim descend upon the hopeless and land between them, but something is wrong. The angels don’t move. They do not carry the damned to heaven, they do not bless the unholy, do not bathe them in divine light as the beacons of hope they had appeared as. Silence sweeps across the crowd, when something about the stoic saviours changes.

Slowly, painfully, a pattern is carved into their smooth visages: two straight lines that cross in the middle, out of whom pours blood from torn flesh and severed veins. An immaterial knife digs with rusted serrations into its perfect canvas. From their lacerated skin erupt muffled screams until the flogged meat can take no more, thus ripping a wide hole where a mouth should be to form a new maw filled with dozens of long teeth. They drip with spit that sizzles as it hits the ground, noxious smoke rising from the boiling liquid which sinks into the floor like an acid. Fingers stretch into unholy articulated bone-like structures, thinning and strengthening until they have become as claws. Their bodies writhe in pain as the changes morph their organic vessels into temples of torture, the unseen one remaking them as it sees fit, into twisted abominations of flesh and iron.

Chains burst from the ground, a pair of spikes embedding themselves into the backs of the changed beings like anchors. Within moments their iron links tighten and pull away, ripping meat - not violently, but slowly - until vast wings of rotting flesh emerge that darken the sky. Great shadows now loom over the gathered mass, many holes with rough edges letting a tiny modicum of the sphere’s darkness through.

Light emerges from the still wet wounds upon their faces; the same sickly yellow glow that coloured the sphere’s gospel. With laboured breath the three martyrs stand crooked before the onlookers, radiating vast amounts of heat, as if they stood exposed before a blast furnace, or within a raging wildfire, the inferno creeping into their body with passionate diligence. Countless eyeless faces somehow still stare at the temples of punishment with horror and disgust, silently awaiting the next step in the unspeakable one’s great design. An eerie dread swells up within the Nomad, a burning anxiety that scorches their heart. It’s an announcement, like Gabriel’s horn the scathing primal fear warns of the end, brings upon the scouring of the world.

Within the blink of an eye, one of the dark angels pounces on a faceless man, tearing into his chest with long, jagged claws. Blood and viscera paint the scene as the other demons fiercely dig into the bystanders. They cannot run, the crowd is too massive to move away and save themselves. Meanwhile, the Nomad is frozen, a man being dismembered right before their very eyes as screaming and gurgling, then silence, fills their ears.

The boiling terror freezes too, hunched over its still-warm victim, staying still as if paused in time. Its head swivels around toward them, the cracking of a spine echoes into the air, and the sickly yellow X upon its visage burns a hole into their retinas.

And then they wake up.

Someone is banging on the door.

Within a moment, they are returned to their home, their eyes fixated upon the bland ceiling above. A soundscape of whirring and flowing air emerging from their filter-AC, often interrupted by a hand forcibly slamming against their shut entrance.

“Hey! Nomad! You in there?”, shouts a muffled male voice, “Dude we need your help! Something happened at Clément’s!”

“Old Clément?”, the Nomad murmurs with a scratchy voice, slowly rising from their bed to sit upright, “The hell could’ve happened there?” It’s still night as far as their watch is concerned, so they contemplate for a moment whether or not they should just go back to sleep. Yesterday was a long day, they more than deserve some rest, but if they’re being disturbed at this hour, then it probably can’t wait until morning. “Alright, alright, I’ll be right there!”, they shout towards the door. Before they go, they take one last free breath, a refreshing waft of clean air filling their lungs with pure bliss. Then they let out a deep sigh and put on the rebreather.

The change is drastic, each and every distinct smell that circulates within the garage is muted instantly, the air itself feeling grimy and old. They flick the switch on the AC and rise from their little bed, groggily making their way down the stairs and on to the door. Heavy boots clank on the steel stair-steps, the fluorescent light on their ceiling hums away contently.  With another sigh, the Nomad grabs the handle and pulls it down, revealing the being who dared disturb the sleeping human.

What stands before them is not man, but machine: A mechanical being, around four feet tall, dressed in a flannel shirt which is loosely draped over its torso. A regular-yet-appearing-oversized beanie is stretched over its large, bulbous head. Upon this disproportionate cranium, where its face should be, is a wide, form-fit screen giving rise to deep-blue digital eyes. These dart around, shaking slightly; simulated eyebrows give rise to a clearly readable expression: fear. Within its panicked eyes lies nothing, no soul to convey their woes. Yet, like a human, it blinks. It shouldn’t blink, it shouldn’t have to blink, it shouldn’t even get the urge to, yet it does.

This is a drone; the Nomad knows that well. For years these things have been their only form of company, though they can barely tolerate theirs at all. They walk and talk and just about hold together, mimicking what they’ve seen in recordings, what’s been programmed into them, and what they were taught in the days before the cataclysm. But never could they replicate humanity perfectly, always were they ever so slightly off.

This machine, however, is eerily good at imitating genuine panic. It looks at the tired human and exclaims with a sense of urgency, its strangely human-esque mouth pronouncing the words: “Come on, we gotta go! Let’s take the bike!”

The Nomad groggily looks on the robot before them, then back at their motorcycle. They hold their gaze for a moment, studying their precious machine cloaked in dim light intently, before looking back irritated. With hung shoulders and an annoyed expression they ask simply: “Is it an emergency?”

For a moment, the drone looks for an answer. It seems confused at the question, had the human not heard the panic in their voice? After some short contemplation, it stammers: “I mean, uh… kinda?”

The human’s expression turns from annoyed to slightly more annoyed, bordering on genuine anger. “I’ll take that as a no.” they say, “I’m not wasting fuel on a drone, we’re walking.”

“But- “

“No buts - just… go.”

In a practiced sequence the Nomad turns off the light and locks the door behind them, making sure they’re not forgetting anything before they go. A quick pat-down is all they need; they nod and have the drone lead the way. It goes through the alley and takes a right turn, which the Nomad copies in their own less mechanical way, though they are still quite tired and almost trip over some old snow-covered rubbish. This thoroughly wakes them up, which makes them want to rub their eyes, but they bump into their goggles with their fingers.

Right. Going great so far. The Nomad is itching to know why this robot needs their presence, so they ask partly out of curiosity, and partly out of a sense of enraged obligation: “What do you need from me?”

The drone, however, doesn’t give a concise answer right away. It looks down the empty street that lays before the two of them and says: “Well, uh.. we don’t really need anything from you. We uhh, kinda just gotta to show you something.”

“Show me something? You woke me up at”, they check their watch, “what, 4am to show me something? What the hell, why couldn’t this wait?”

“Look, it’s not an everyday thing!  Something landed in the city!”, the drone explains, offput -but not surprised- at the scorn in the human’s voice. “It’s like a… spider…. thingy- look, I dunno how to describe it, you just gotta see it for yourself.”

“A spider thingy. A spider thingy? Seriously?” The Nomad is visibly mad, as if they were about to make a heel-turn and go straight back to bed.

“It was Stan’s idea, okay?!”, the drone admits, a sentence which makes the human do a double take. Why would Stan be involved in this?

They ask: “Stanford? What’s this got to do with him?”

“We all got to the site. Then he took one good look at it, and told me to ‘Go fetch the Nomad!’ And so I did. And here we are.”

Confusion takes hold in the Nomad’s mind. This is too little information, but it certainly seems unusual enough to be woken up for. A “spider thingy”? What does that even mean? What does that look like? An actual spider or… something else? The answer eludes them, but they also don’t want to ask this drone another question. It doesn’t seem to know anything, and they’d rather save some brainpower for the task at hand. A task which may or may not consist of just ‘looking at something’. Depending on what that is, they may as well need it.

“Oh and, uh… the name’s Johnny. I don’t think we’ve met.”, says the machine

“We haven’t, and I didn’t need to know.”

They walk through the streets in mutual silence, neither wanting to break the fragile sense of normalcy that’s been established between them. Johnny paces quite quickly, his shorter legs struggling to keep pace with the Nomad’s leisurely walk, who is soon lost in thought once more. It’ll be a while until they reach the tower; the old Clément office building stands in the near centre of the city, bordering on the adjacent public park. And while the Nomad doesn’t live too far away, they aren’t exactly close either. Their home is hidden away between large apartment buildings, the only entrance and exit being the alley through which they’d just walked. It’s a strange little courtyard; one so inconspicuous they almost didn’t find it again once. But they call it home, and it served its purpose as their little hidey-hole for a long time.

But recently it’s been a lot darker in there. Not literally, fluorescent light bars are as plentiful as chunks of ice around these parts, but more so when it comes to their mind. Nightmares have gotten more common lately, a grim shadow looming over their bed every time they go to sleep. Maybe it’s just the filters? That sounds reasonable, but the AC felt like it worked just fine. Clean air flowed from the outlets just like it always did, but maybe they just aren’t noticing it while awake. It could be really subtle, like a micro dosage of bad air that slowly seeps into their headspace as the night goes on.

But that nightmare just minutes ago was… something else. A crowd… no faces… something about the sun; memories that are already fragmenting. Yet when they think about the images that were shown before them, one seems engrained in the background of each and every one of them: A great, unmoving, uncaring, humming and pulling and overbearing black sphere which brought with it unparalleled dread and fear, all coalescing into a single distilled word: [null]. What the hell is [null]? What does that mean? It’s a question without hope for an answer, a senseless inquiry into the unknown. Like peering with a lantern into the maw of an abyssal mine, the light which bears its way inside is eagerly swallowed by the dark.

“Hey”, calls out Johnny, “you okay?”

The Nomad is ripped from their thoughts, the two of them slowly approaching old Clément, its very top rising above the flat roofs of distant offices. Faint smoke rises from beyond them. “Oh y- yeah…” they return, not quite aware of the answer they’ve just given. It was instinctual, not a response they wanted to give but one they gave anyway, since their gaze and subsequent attention are both focused on the unusual sight before them.

“Y’believe me now? Told you something landed over there, just wait ‘till we get closer.” The drone implies something, though the Nomad isn’t quite sure what. What they hadn’t considered until now is the context of a landing in and of itself. What could’ve landed here? Now? An asteroid? If it was an asteroid, why would the drones need their presence? It’d make no sense, so something else had happened. Something more… controlled had landed in the city.

Hope glimmers in the eyes of the hopeless.

Suddenly the Nomad takes off in a mad sprint, they’re running faster than they ever have, the great office tower gaining in size as something unusual about it becomes clear. It’s damaged, terribly so. A great hole has been punched through the side of the building, a gash like a wound left from the blast of a shotgun, concrete suspended from bent rebar hanging from the borders of the injury like bits of mangled flesh. Their eyes are fixed on the gruesome sight, a mix of strangely morbid and naïvely innocent curiosity instructing their gaze.  “What happened?”, is all that goes through their mind, a most singular thought that swallows every other instance of imagination beneath a blanket of uncertainty.

But the “spider thingy” is nowhere to be seen, smoke still faintly rising from beyond the now towering buildings that encircle the park. The Nomad runs along the offices until a gap between them becomes apparent. It’s the entrance to the park, one of many that are sprinkled between the almost-skyscrapers. Excitement fills their lings, terror their stomach, is it time? Are they saved? Has someone come for them? Beyond the open gate they see not a quaint and silent public park as there should be, but a line of destruction. At its end stands a large crowd. This could be it, this is why they needed to be here, what they wanted to show them.

The Nomad rapidly approaches the mass of drones which encircle the area, until one of them shouts their name. Then another, and another, until the cacophony gives rise to multiple “make way!”s. Some of the machines move sideways, then more join in until they’ve formed an opening for the Nomad to pass through. Like the wind they rush through the tight corridor to come upon a scene of devastation.

At the end of a long trail of churned earth lays a smouldering capsule, smoke still rising from its bottom. Its outside made of iron and ceramic composites are burnt, the darkness of the night amplifying the deep black of scorched steel. Johnny’s mentioned legs are here, three metal appendages still attached to the capsule and another laying limp within the newly carved cradle.

Something is wrong, salvation isn’t here. No human comes out to greet the Nomad with open arms, no rescue team heroically saves them from the cold. Only warm steel and broken hopes lay before them.

“Well you got here quick.”, says a voice beside them, though they don’t answer. After a long moment of sorrowful silence, the voice continues: “…It landed here not an hour ago, made a huge karacho as it tore up the park. Did a number on ol’ Clément as you’ve seen, left’m lookin’ swiss.”

The Nomad turns to the side to meet the deep red eyes of the speaker. It’s Stanford, the drone’s foreman and/or boss. He’s almost dressed like a lumberjack -minus the bushy beard- and speaks in a southern American accent.

“What? You lookin’ at me like you seen a ghost.”

 The human onlooker finds it difficult to string together words of their own, the sight having shocked them into silence. With blank eyes they stare at their supposed salvation. It’s all wrong, this. This was supposed to be it, their ticket out of here, their way home. Instead they see only an empty capsule; a physical lack to be interpreted in two ways, both the literal lack of something once presumably inside, and the lack of a fulfilled hope. Once again they stand before mental devastation, though this blow they aren’t sure they can take.

Stanford waves his hand in front of the motionless human’s face. “Hey you, uh…oh you thought that- …oh.” Stan looks away for a moment, towards the crowd which looks on the two intently. It seems he’s looking for advice, though he gets none to his dismay. “Hey look I’m… I’m sorry that this wasn’t…” Again he pauses, desperately searching for kind words, or at least something to distract the distraught shape. He’s usually a kind soul, but this is beyond his abilities. Stanford finds his resolve, and gently says to the Nomad: “Hey come on, let’s take a look at this. T’get your mind off a’ things.”

The Nomad subtly nods, which Stanford takes notice of. Slowly the two approach the still smouldering capsule, an invisible radiance which quickly melts any snowflake that lands upon it. This thing definitely came from space, only re-entry into the atmosphere could generate such vast amounts heat, a temperature homogenous throughout the whole structure. It certainly looks human-made, handles to grab hold of are strewn across the fuselage, imperfect weld seams run along the edges of panels. Small writing decorates portions of the outside; nonsensical specifications for god knows what. Stanford and the Nomad carefully climb the quiet thing until they reach the open doorway. The door itself, however, is missing from the scene. No doubt there used to be one, hinges as their witnesses hang from the edge of the frame, though upon them hangs nothing. In fact, they themselves are seen bent and ripped apart.

They look for the missing door, and sure enough, there it lays, far away in the path of destruction, half embedded in the cold earth. A huge dent has bent the thick steel into submission, as if it was punched so hard it folded into an almost L-shaped thing. Some unknown force, one neither the Nomad nor Stanford can possibly imagine, easily tore the object from its hinges and launched it 30 feet away. The two of them have no words, though the burning question needs not be shared: What could have done this?

The inside of the capsule is strangely warm, as if a wood stove burned somewhere in the room, though no obvious heat source is to be found. What catches their attention instead is an array of malfunctioning screens on their left which illuminate the darkness, all displaying either solid blue or a mixed bunch of colourful lines originating from cracks in the surface. Broken or outright destroyed, more of the same from what they found outside. A control panel sits below the many screens, bearing a wide, plentiful collection of unlabelled buttons and mysterious levers. This is definitely a spaceship, though the newfound assuredness surprises neither of them. As to why it “landed” here, or who flew it, they’re at a loss.

“Does all’a this mean anything to you?”, asks Stan, looking for guidance in the Nomad who is kneeling on the tilted floor, carefully inspecting a bundle of torn wires hanging out of the control panel. They spark occasionally, throwing little glowing pieces of material onto their clothes.

“No,” they respond with a grim demeanour, “nothing means anything here, it’s all wrong.” They don’t seem up for conversation, a dark cloud hanging above them. Stanford doesn’t know it, but within the human boils great anger, one so vast and violent it begs to be let out unto the world. They manage to keep it together, but the years-long repressed pot of rage lifts its lid evermore.

Stanford doesn’t know what to say, none of this adds up. A freshly crashed ship, no occupants to be found inside or out; can he be sure this thing is human when no trace of them exists? He gets an idea, though it may seem ridiculous: “Hey, d’ya think this thing crashed on its own? I mean there’s no one here, who’s to say someone landed it on purpose?”

The Nomad’s head lifts slightly, their attention drawn to the drone’s suggestion. They hadn’t considered it, but his reasoning seems sound. Punching a hole through an office building doesn’t fit their definition of a “controlled landing” either; some of their despair is drawn back inside. “Yeah... you’re right.”, they admit sombrely, “But what about the door? It’s blown off its hinges, how do you explain that?”

Stan just shrugs and says: “Gas explosion? A punctured line somewhere and one of them sparks is all it takes.” His eyes widen as those words leave his mouth; the realization hits him like a truck. “Crap, we gotta go!”

He gives no further explanation, but his words resonate nonetheless. The two of them quickly evacuate the silent vessel, Stan shouting indiscriminately into the crowd: “Everybody, step back! This thing’s a bomb!” The sound of a few dozen drones all stepping away in unison fills the air as Stanford and the Nomad nearly leap from the wreckage, then run to meet the circle of onlookers.

A few seconds of silence later, and nothing happens. Stanford’s worries may not be unfounded, but neither have they been proven to be true. The still, cold air remains filled only by frost, not fire. “Well, better safe than sorry”, he says, relieved yet still somewhat on edge. In a moment the Nomad points out the sparking wires inside, and that, if there was gas still in there, it’d have exploded by now. “Oh… right, that make sense. Apologies, I was thinkin’ in the moment.”

“What now?” asks the human, not necessarily towards Stan, but more so towards themself. “Thing’s busted, empty and useless.” Their eyebrows sag, their voice full of scorn, “Just like me…”

“Hey, don’t say that!”, Stanford interjects, trying desperately to comfort them, “I’m sure we’ll get you home someday, just… don’t lose hope on me, ‘kay? I know how it is, feeling alone and all-”

At this point they cannot keep themselves contained any longer, they shout in a fit of genuine anger: “WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!” It stuns the kind drone; he looks at them with big eyes. “What the fuck do you know about anything?”, they hiss with poison in their voice. Heavy breathing fills the air, such an outburst is a first for them, and certainly for Stanford too. His silence and expression speak a thousand words of fear and deep worry, but the Nomad does not apologize. Instead of words of comfort and remorse for their tone, they simply turn and walk away. Deep footprints in the snow are left in their wake as fierce mumbles faintly come from their direction.

But then another pair of footsteps joins the Nomad’s cadence, this one much faster than their own. They tilt their head to look. It’s Johnny, his wide smile and jolly demeanour contrasting the harrowing despair in the eyes of the human. “Hey uhh, Stan asked me to get you home.” He says, though the Nomad doesn’t respond. A stoically silent figure shambles back into the streets, a mechanical bundle of misplaced joy at their side. As they pass the great Clément office tower, Johnny points out: “It’s a miracle that old thing didn’t collapse, huh?”

The Nomad does not speak.

“I uh… don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Like, it didn’t collapse, but surely it will, right? I mean look at it! Things got a gash like Godzilla got a little hangry. One strong wind, like a blizzard’s, and that thing’s gonna come crashing down, covering the whole city in a new layer of dust. Oh, and the noise, think about that! Honestly the first thing I’m gonna do is set up a little camp on a roof nearby, wait for the fall. I wanna see that so bad! But then again that’s probably not the best idea. Seems really dangerous when I think about it. Stan’s probably already told the others to stay away from it, and I’d suggest you do the same. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, we all care about you, y’know.”

The Nomad mumbles something under their breath, but otherwise stays silent.

“…So what do you think it is, y’know, the spider thingy? A spaceship from what I heard, was it a human’s? No? A drone’s? No? So whose was it? An alien’s? But aren’t we the aliens here? It’d be an alien spaceship no matter who’s sitting in it! Isn’t that cool?”

The Nomad seems disinterested, more so annoyed at the constant stream of words and questions. They stay stoic, silent as the ice-laden asphalt below their feet.

“Not much for conversation, huh? …So what did you find in there? Was there a corpse? Is that why you’re such a downer all of a sudden, saw one of yours with meat still hangin’ off’im? That’s gotta be, like, harrowing man. I don’t even have any meat on me and I’d still be terrified to see a dead drone, y’know? Like seeing the light of life and code and all’a that stuff having left someone’s eyes forever is like… man.”

Silence deafens the atmosphere between them, the pauses between Johnny’s sentences for the Nomad to chime in or respond are left open, devoid of answer, devoid of thought.

“Oh, what, nothing? You don’t care at all? You seen like a million corpses or somethi- oh right, the skeletons, forgot about those. Gotta be honest I completely forget at times that there were a bunch of humans here long ago. You’re the only one I’ve ever seen, and even then I only see you once every full moon I feel. Why is that, you a recluse or something?”

An audible growl is heard, though, again, not a word is returned.

“Hold up, why are you so reclusive? Like, what’s that about? Is it because you’re the last human or something? That’s gotta suck a lot, all that loneliness and emptiness and that knowledge, god. You wanna go home real bad, right? Is that why- oh that’s why you ran off all of a sudden! You were so excited to get saved that you went all wide-eyed and giddy like a chi-”

“Oh my god will you EVER SHUT UP?!” A shout rings out into the cold darkness of the night, “I can’t stand your fucking questions! “Why’s this? Why’s that?” I don’t care! I don’t care about any of this, any of you! You mean nothing to me! Just a bunch a’ wires and metal, no thoughts behind that stupid fucking screen of yours! You don’t know what it feels like, you can never know. Just leave me alone, will you?”

Both of them have stopped dead in their paths, Johnny stunned by the sudden outburst, and the Nomad boiling thoroughly with the rage he’d provoked. They cannot go on in silence like this, neither can they talk it out peacefully. Something drastic must happen, the tension between them is too great to bear any longer. The Nomad finds great hate and anger in their voice, and with it, says to the wide-eyed drone: “I am having.. a really bad day.. and I just want you to know.. that you are a fucking piece of shit.”

Johnny’s eyes show fear at the towering human, an unusual darkness encircling their cloaked outline. He shrinks, his shoulders dropping and neck retracting into his torso.

“I get my hopes up once. Fucking ONCE. And what do I get? Another day older and deeper in shit! You lied! You motherfuckers lied! Made up some bullshit to dig me deeper into my pit. I could’ve been saved, you got that? Saved! Taken away from this shithole of a planet, but NO! Nooooo, nothing good ever comes to the god damn Nomad!”, they lift both their arms up above their shoulders, forming a kind of cradle, and look up at the sky, “What do you want from me? You drop an empty spaceship in my city, right next to where I live? Is this a sign? Just tell me!”

Nothing but silence and snow follows their question, the true gravity of their situation becoming clear to see. They are alone. They have always been alone. For fifteen years they have held out, have survived yet never truly thrived, have shivered and hungered and hoped. For fifteen years the thought had brewed, a rotten stew of malice and ice within their mind, full front and centre. And the pot it festered in for so many years is finally boiling over.

They continue, distraught at the quiet that answers to their sorrow: “Oh god, I’m gonna die here, aren’t I? All alone, abandoned! Left behind on this dead rock!” They lift their gaze to the night sky once more, and point their finger into the glistening stars above, shouting with a cracked voice and tears in their eyes: “You abandoned me! Left me! Forgot about me!” With shaking knees and fleeting strength they collapse to the ground, kneeling in the snow.

Muffled sobbing fills the air. A scene of deep sorrow, a weeping for an empty fate they shall never fulfil, one so existentially devoid of sense and reason it swallows all other thoughts under a shroud of despair so deep, and so abyssal, that it consumes man and machine as appetizers to the reality it ought to undo. A bursting burning of the soul, and Johnny feels it too.

A few seconds pass. He extends his hand to touch the human’s shoulder, but they recoil with a shrieked “NO!”, eyes of sheer terror stare through fogged-up goggles, “DON’T TOUCH ME! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! YOURS! YOU DID THIS TO ME!” They heave breath quickly, hyperventilating and clutching their chest, collapsed onto the ground as they lay on their back. “You, you, you little shits… they left me because of you…”, their eyes dart across a darkness impossibly far away, “It was all for nothing.. all of it. Years and years of cold and misery… years and years of… of… of…”

A pathetic shape winces in the open street, helplessly crouching, rocking back and forth like a dying animal. Johnny looks upon it, a certain hatred in his eyes. For a while they simply stand and watch, contemplating just leaving them in the cold. The thought dangles before him, it’d be so easy. Just walk away, just take a step, then another, then the next. For they deserve no true comfort from him, having screamed and shouted, recoiling away as if he’d a hand of poison.

Johnny didn’t deserve this onslaught, not truly in his eyes. Sure, he asked a few too many questions, sure, he didn’t quite read the room, but it wasn’t his fault. He doesn’t know the human like Stanford, he doesn’t know what ticks them off, what gets under their skin. He may have hurt them, but that wasn’t on purpose. After all he meant no malice, his curiosity was simply misguided, misplaced. So to endure this berating? No, no one deserves that.

But Johnny stays. Maybe not of his own accord, the hatred within him boiling in each of his processors, flowing through his veins of oil and grease. Something prevents him from moving, from abandoning the wretched wails of the hopeless. It’s a nagging feeling, tugging at his simulated soul like a chain anchored to the ground. Stan told him to accompany them, to get them home and make sure nothing out of the ordinary happens. If only he knew what ordinary was…

But no, this isn’t all. “A promise made is a promise kept”, Stan always said so, and thus he shall follow as far as he can. And this is that line, this is the border he’s willing to cross just this once, if not for something else. That promise is broken, dead in the snow like every other living being, yet the dead call him to fulfil it nonetheless.

It’s pity. Pity for the damned.

Johnny pities the last human, finds kindness in his oil-pumping heart he’d previously not dreamed of. Pity for the hateful, pity for the wretched, pity for the alone. He sighs solemnly and sits next to the Nomad, staying quiet. He knows not what to say, knows no comfort for the crying human, so silence is all he can provide.

The stars glisten peacefully upon them, the planet bathing them in reflected twilight as the night nears its end. Stillness is in the air, as is delicate snow that lands on Johnny’s screen. He sees a perfect six-sided crystal casting a shadow on his sensors, delicate arms only thousandths of a millimetre thin jot out in beautiful fractal patterns. There’s still beauty in this world, be it of cold and ice. A beauty the Nomad cannot see.

Perhaps this is their curse? Perhaps a human can’t perceive the cold’s splendour like he can. The Nomad doesn’t belong here, they haven’t for a long, long time.

“Hey.”, he gently says, “I’m… I’m sorry.” The Nomad’s head lifts slightly, their quiet sobbing pausing for but a moment. “I didn’t wanna hurt you like that. I didn’t wanna make you mad or… or rip open a wound…or... or something… look, I’m not… the best at these things. Usually Stan is the one to talk to you about this but… well, he’s not here, is he?”

It's a genuine apology, the Nomad can feel it, hear it in his voice.

He continues: “I don’t want to see you suffer, neither does Stan, so why don’t we figure something out? Get you home with our help.”

A word manages to escape the hunched figure beside Johnny, a quiet but concise: “How?”

“I dunno”, he answers in truth, “Why don’t we… build you a spaceship?”

“Impossible.”, they return.

“Uh let’s uh… fix the one that just landed!”, Johnny suggests innocently, not realizing the task that’d imply.

“Broken beyond repair.”, they mumble, then continue louder: “I only just barely have enough gas for my bike, how’d you suppose we scrounge up fuel for a whole spaceship?”

“True, true, that’s… that makes sense.”, he concedes.

That was the last of Johnny’s great ideas, so for a while they simply sit together in silence, gazing at the clear starry sky together. Countless white dots strewn across the heavenly canvas, though its true glory is hidden behind the planet’s comparative glow. Light pollution, the star-gazer’s greatest enemy. The Nomad has spent a great many evenings outside, when far away on an errand with the motorcycle, and thus knows the universe’s painting in and out. There are great, complex constellations that dot the irregular pattern, shapes of imaginative scenes, ones the ancient Greek would’ve told stories and legends about.

But they don’t need Greek myths to imagine more than the simple white dots the sky provides. Many stars have names, the brightest and most prominent of them given one of the Nomad’s own making. There’s David’s Star, named after one of the Nomad’s old earthly friends. Another are the Gatekeepers, a pair of bright dots through which the planet seems to pass for every orbit Copper-9 completes. The Gunk-inizer has a funny story only in retrospect: the Nomad was out and about and accidentally stepped on a thin ice sheet. It broke under their weight, but their leg did not meet water. No, instead what stuck to their boot was thick and sticky. It was diesel, a shallow pool of it trapped underneath ice, now exposed at last to the open air. If it were a simple puddle of water, it’d have frozen solid long ago. But diesel does not freeze, no, it coagulates into a viscous yellow gel that clings to anything it touches. It was dark out, and as soon as they looked up their gaze met a nameless star. Thus, the Gunk-inizer was born.

But something seems off about the pattern. At first they can’t quite pinpoint it, a subconscious feeling that rolls around in the back of their head. Soon, however, they spot it:

A new star, brighter and more brilliant than any that surround it.

They’re sure they’ve seen it before, but they cannot recall a name. It’s right next to the planet, so close it masks all other stars, so there’s no way they’ve only noticed it after all these years. But nothing comes, no name rears its head. This star is truly new. Wonder and confusion glistens in their eyes as they say: “Hey, uh - Johnny, was it? - do you see that star up there?”

He seems a bit confused at the question. Of course he does, he just doesn’t know which one they mean. “You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific than that.”

“That one, up there”, they lift their pointed finger to the sky, “The bright one next to the planet.”

Johnny stares with squinted eyes - which doesn’t help much since he doesn’t actually have real eyelids - and spots the object, calling out: There! The one on the left and down a bit? I see it!”

Somewhat delighted at this, the Nomad asks: “Do you recognize that one, or am I actually going insane?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not much of a stargazer.”, He admits.

“Okay, well, I am, and I don’t know that star. That one’s new to me.”

“What about it? I don’t- OH! You think that maybe it’s not a star at all?”

“What? No, that’s not what I… okay well now that you mention it, it does seem strange… Maybe it’s a supernova?” At first, this makes the most sense. These cosmic explosions happen extremely suddenly, and just a single one can outshine even their own galaxies when they appear. But the more they think about it, the less logical it seems. When the star Betelgeuse went supernova some centuries ago, it was said that nighttime on earth became a never-ending twilight, and the gas cloud it left behind grew to be as big as the moon itself. But this new star is nothing like that. Sure, it’s bright, but that brightness more so mirrors the light of Polaris, and its size matches that of all other heavenly dots. This isn’t a supernova, and they let Johnny know as soon as they’ve come to that conclusion themselves. So what else could it be?

“Do you think it’s another spaceship? Or, like, a whole space station?”, Johnny inquires, which intrigues the Nomad.

“No, don’t be ridiculous. The cataclysm blew debris into orbit like nothing else.”, they explain, “It’s like a minefield up there, anything that dares get close enough to see from down here would be shredded by dust and rocks. Imagine a trillion shotguns fired point blank right at your face, from all directions at once. That’s what it’s like.”

Johnny doesn’t want to abandon the idea so quickly though, so he tries to come up with a counter argument: “Maybe it’s not close at all? It could just be really huge, like a mothership of sorts.”

“…A mothership?”

“Yeah! Oh come on, don’t think I’m crazy all of a sudden, you know it makes some sense! I mean, where do you suppose that landing pod came from? God?”

It’s a compelling argument, but they’re not entirely convinced yet. The Nomad finds a tiny hole in his reasoning: “Maybe its orbit just decayed finally? That happens with low orbits, drag from the atmosphere slows down satellites and stuff. Fifteen years without a course correction and it just so happened to fall now.”

“No no, hold on, think about that! The landing pod was burnt, sure, but not damaged beyond a few scratches and little holes. Do you think it survived the atmosphere for that long without being torn to shreds? Sure, the door and a leg were missing, but that happened after the landing.”

Now Johnny has truly stumped them, maybe he’s right after all. Does this mean that someone’s actually come for them? Maybe, but they dare not make an assumption, not again. They’re not ready for another blow like that. Seeds of doubt are sewn once more, the Nomad says: “Even if someone’s actually come for me, they can’t land here, nor anywhere else.”

“Aww.. that sucks.” Johnny admits, feeling sorry for the Nomad once again. “Do you think you could at least contact them? Let them know you’re here and, y’know, still kicking.”

“No... no, I don’t”, they deny the thought.

“Why not, you ever try to before?”

“Well, it’s not that I haven’t thought about it. I just have no idea where I’d even find an antenna big enough. The debris in the air blocks signals coming in and out. Hell, earth could’ve been sending signals my way for years and I’d never have noticed. Only a huge dish - or multiple of those for that fact - could ever hope to punch through.”

A flicker moves across Johnny’s screen, he has an idea.

“Hey, I don’t wanna get your hopes up, but I think we could actually help you with that one!”, he explains brightly, “There’s a drone I’m friends with - well, not friends, but somewhat acquainted - who, at least I think, actually used to work at some… communications… relay…. or something before… y’know, you should try talking to her. She’s a bit… strange at times, but she means well. Her Name’s Ellie.”

A spark of hope once more flickers in the eyes of the hopeless. The Nomad’s thoughts are completely invaded by all the possibilities. Even if they’re never going home, at least they’d be able to talk to someone again, share their story, have some comfort in the end times. If only they heard a real human voice one last time, not one simulated. If only they heard real joy, real sorrow, real disappointment, they’d be happy. Years and years of only make-believe emotion, a decade and a half of cold calculation. True warmth is all they have left; all they’ve left to hope for.

Their mind is made up. They have to talk to Ellie.

With a new purpose in their eyes they say to Johnny: “Yeah I… I’ll do that, thank you.”

“Hey, don’t mention it,” he says “I just wanted to help. Oh, and, sorry again for making you mad back there, I really didn’t mean to.”

“Apology graciously accepted.”, they respond with a slight smile.

With that, the two of them get back on their feet, the Nomad more slowly than the energetic drone. They walk through the streets once more, a peaceful quiet lingering in the air. It snows gently, a light dusting of snowflakes covering their knit beanie and coat-covered shoulders as the white glow of the planet in the sky bathes the city in a dim twilight. New purpose, something the Nomad hadn’t dared dream of for so many years, has finally found them. Is this it? Is this what they have to live for now?

Maybe not. Doubt rears its ugly head once more, ever persistent. It festers in their subconscious like a weed; to be pulled unceremoniously and return just as strong as before. Nothing can rid them of that, no hope for conversation nor mind-flaying panic attack has a chance. But they know how to deal with it, a thing they’ve learned a long time ago. Now the stars seem just a little brighter, including their new hope on the great canvas of infinity.

Johnny and the Nomad reach the alleyway at last; this is where the drone’s duty ends. They share few words, for all that needed saying has been said already. They thank the drone, though the graciousness of Johnny seems scarcely rewarded. A cold, barred demeanour still hides within their voice. Johnny has earned their respect, sure, but distrust still lingers within the human. That, the drone fears, may never truly leave them.

But he doesn’t mind, really. He’d been warned of this by the other drones. However, he hadn’t expected to talk to them like he did a few minutes ago. That, he thinks, was something truly special. The two companions part ways in good spirits, and the Nomad starts walking down the long, tight alleyway.

Something lingers in the air, something they can’t quite pinpoint. An unease fills the atmosphere. Hair stands up on their back in droves, goosebumps appear below their jacket that dot their skin haphazardly. A strange, relentless feeling of tense suspense, as if someone was standing right behind them, waiting for the human to turn around. Each and every one of their instincts tells them to look, to conceive of their woes fully, with their own, physical eyes. Simply gaze back, just check the alley.

In one swift and startled motion, the Nomad points their gaze back toward the way they came. The alley is empty, the feeling persists, for emptiness, within their mind, is not of itself, but for the lack of others. Nothing exists to be unmade - nothing does not exist at all - so the emptiness behind them begs not to be observed, for there is nothing to observe. A terrible lack ought to be filled with something; an open door invites guests innately. Something is here, not here here, but around. Around the corner? They dare not check.

No, they’d rather just run. They’d rather just get out, get away, stand clear of the dreadful thing hiding in impossibly small shadows. It looks at them, it stares burning wounds of the soul into their self. It’s here, it’s out there, it’s somewhere close by. With an ever-quickening pace the Nomad tries to get away, but the looming shadow of hatred creeps closely behind; never quite able to catch up, yet the followed also cannot outrun it. A brisk walk turns into a full sprint faster than they could tell.

Three seconds of exertion later and they arrive at their door in a mad panic. They fumble around in their pockets, fishing out their keys and nearly dropping them onto the ground. It takes a few tries, but they eventually manage to stick them into the keyhole and turn them once. The door unlocks and they rush in like the wind, slamming it shut behind them.

But as they do, they glance but once into the outside. The culmination of every bit of anxiety and dread just felt able to be seen for mere tenths of a second.

Nothing was there.

Chapter Text

“What is my purpose? What is the point?”

What use is there in living, if there’s nothing left to live for? The question has plagued the Nomad for too many years. Always have they pushed it to the back of their mind, always have they disregarded its ramifications for their way of life. They eat and sleep, they run their little errands, they work on their bike or knit on occasion to keep themselves busy. But now they can no longer ignore it, for it has grown too big to not look at. Every direction their mind wanders to leads back to this singular question of “Why?”

They should go on, forget about what happened and distract themselves. Why? Why do that? What’s the point of that? Maybe they’ll make some food, they could go for a can of chili right now. Why? Why do that? They’re going to run out of food eventually, why bother eating when one day it’ll all be gone anyway?

Why keep going after so long? After so many years of nothing, after one and a half decades of surviving the cold, why should they bother shivering another day? Just to watch the sun rise and then fall again, just to ride their bike with the constant worry of fuel in the back of their mind, just to wait and pray and hope for another day that one day they’ll be saved? They can never be saved, no matter how hard humanity tries. Sure, if they’d somehow mobilized most of the population’s finest to rescue but a single lowly survivor they’d probably manage to do it somehow, but such a thing won’t happen. No, they’ve been left to rot, to freeze to death unlike all who burnt on that fateful day, oh so long ago.

Maybe humanity knows they’re still alive, maybe this has been their plan all along? To kill off the sole survivor, to hide what they’d done, what they’d destroyed. Yes, that could be it… The company, JC Jenson, who more or less owned Copper-9 and the surrounding star system could not report on eradicating an entire planet. It’d be a genocide, no, a speciocide, whether accidental or not. The company hid their mistake, for it was surely them who caused the death of millions upon millions of innocent humans alone, not to mention the rest of the planet’s life…

…No, no that can’t be right. They’ve gone too far, have looked too deeply into their conspiratorial mind and have lost themselves in the labyrinth of scorn that time has cultivated. Years of abandon without a word have left them hateful, distrusting toward all but their own senses. For whom can they trust but themselves, truly? Their eyes and ears have never deceived them, their fingers tell but the truth, their sense of smell is keen when not muted by the mask, and the taste of their favourite meals has always brought them comfort throughout difficult times.

And so they have arrived at a conundrum. Their senses are the only things they can truly trust, but now they fear doing so more than ever before. A new star in the night sky? Ridiculous, outright outrageous, yet undeniable at the same time. They have seen it with their own eyes, confirmed it with the sensors of another, there truly is a brand new, slightly brighter star decorating the nightly canvas. That, coupled with the out-of-place landing pod in the park, still warm both inside and out, leads to only one conclusion. Be that answer ridiculous and unbelievable, may one deny it and cast it aside, the Nomad cannot do so any longer than the few hours they’ve let it marinate.

Someone is here. Be that a rescue team or a space-faring hitman, someone has undeniably arrived at Copper-9. It cannot be a coincidence. They can’t just wait around for another miracle to confirm their hopes and dreams for them, no, they must take the initiative one last time. The Nomad has to get in contact with the thing in the sky, whether it be benevolent or malicious matters not, for that is all they have left to do in their life.

They’re tired, years of toil have taken their toll, both physical and psychological; they can take no more. When this task is finished, they will sit and wait. Wait for either rescue or the elements to take them home. Be it starvation, freezing to death, being rescued or… jumping, either way they will leave this place behind. Either way the bitter cold of Copper-9 will never touch their skin again. That is what they hope for, that is their ultimate destiny upon this damned moon.

They best get ready; there’s work to be done if that’s what they ought to do. They have wallowed sleeplessly in their bed for long enough, never getting even a modicum of shuteye after the chaos that happened - more or less - four hours ago. It was all such a blur, first this weird and vivid nightmare, then that jolt of hope with the stabbing despair that followed, and then that little talk they had with Johnny. All of it melds together in their mind into this singular soup of loathing. Loathing for themselves and their life here, a loathing for the drones that brought this sense of hopelessness upon them.

But they can change nothing about this now, no modicum of self-reflection can undo the actions and feelings of a human woken up at 4am. The Nomad pushes the thoughts aside for later contemplation, and rises from their mattress. They strap the rebreather back onto their face and turn the filter-AC off. Needing something to do to start the day off proper, they take the time to count their supplies, for they’ve not restocked them in a while. Food is first on their list, which they keep in a cupboard on the wall. Down the stairs they go and to the array of cabinets they head as they prepare to take mental note of what they find. A few stacks of cans meet their eyes as the doors swing open at head height; a count of thirteen metal cylinders is found inside. Note taken, they move on to their next one: gasoline. Underneath the stairs, in the corner and along the wall opposite of the garage door lays a large cylindrical tank. This object contains their excess fuel, not that they’ve ever really needed all of the space it provides. It used to contain gases like pressurized propane or air when it was in use before the cataclysm, but the Nomad had since found its gas-tight properties and general robust-ness useful for a different purpose. In years long past they cut out a round hole in the top and inserted a threaded flange, upon which is screwed a sealed cap. They welded it on themselves, and although the seams look much shoddier than what they can do nowadays, they have held up ever since without leakage. With just a few turns, the cap at the top comes undone, after which the Nomad takes a long stick from the corner and dips it inside. Little marks on its outside tell the human how much fuel is left at the bottom of the tank, each line representing five litres. They pull it out and find only the very bottom to be wet; just a bit below the fourth line, a little less than a single jerrycan’s worth of gasoline. Not great, not terrible, they’ve had worse. But the fact remains that they’re in need of a lot more if they truly intend on going somewhere far away, like that fabled communication centre Johnny said Ellie knows about.

Where the heck would that even be? They’ve been all over the valley and the surrounding ravines and mountain roads, and nothing of the likes was to be found. Nothing but vast open plains lay up north beyond the valley’s end, until one reaches an ocean. It’s been a while since they made a days-long round trip up there, but they remember the lack of a comms centre quite well. They imagine it’d have a dozen or more huge dishes aimed at the sky in a grid, such a thing shouldn’t be hard to find in theory, but never have they seen anything even resembling that. It has to be far, far away, somewhere the Nomad has never been, somewhere that takes a long time and lots of effort – and fuel - to get to.

They hope it’s worth it, going all out one last time seems like a good plan to lay their life’s journey to rest. Oh, how they yearn for another human’s voice; a real one, not simulated like every spoken word they’ve heard in ages. How they yearn for the presence of another person, not to do anything special, but simply to be. It’s a goal worth fighting for, a hope not to be given up so easily. This, they shall cherish in their heart to look upon when times get tough, to know and remember what they’re striving for in the end, and to see that it is worth it. But first, they need a location. There’s no hope in finding out where the comms centre is without a little help, so they must speak to Ellie.

Such a thing could come at a price, though. The drones are smart, they know exactly what and how much they need to keep themselves from breaking down. They’re machines, after all, and every machine wears the parts it uses most. Joint bearings and oil pumps and shear pins are common commodities for themselves; lightbulbs, fuses, and the occasional bits of specialty cargo find use in their home. These things, the Nomad trades in exchange for food, fuel, mask filters and motorcycle parts. It’s a huge reason as to why their bike is so important, as it’s their only lifeline. With it they run errands for the drones and gather useful scrap, all of which they strap to the sled to be negotiated with.

But these objects aren’t the most precious things they can find, no, that honour belongs to a more… refined consumable. JC Jenson, the company who designed and built the drones, was quite clever when it came to their marketing. The drones were relatively cheap to buy, sometimes even selling them at a loss. Maintaining them, however, was where the money was to be made. Replacement parts sold in droves, not because of a lack of quality, but rather the excessive work the drones were usually subjected to. However, these were cheap to buy and manufacture both. Where the profits skyrocketed instead was in liquids, mostly oil.

They developed a specialty oil to both lubricate and cool the internal parts of their machines, a liquid which came at a premium back in the day. This, the drones need lots of, for they are subject to maintenance intervals which state how much of their oil must be regularly replaced. Of course – being the pillar of capitalism the company was – these intervals were placed unreasonably close together; every few months requires a near complete flushing of their system with new oil, missing the deadline for too long would only lead to a forced shut down, supposedly for the health of their components. This is hard coded into their OS, so there’s no way to remove this limitation for good, neither can they do as much as extend the period.

To fix, or at least mitigate, this disadvantage, they’ve taken to filtering their old oil of debris, mixing it with a shot of fresh lubricant, and injecting it right back into their “veins”. Luckily for them, this works quite decently, although it also doesn’t last them forever. Oil eventually loses some of its lubricity, along with its heat capacity, which in short means it degrades over time. JC Jenson didn’t bother actually installing a sensor to detect the oil’s quality, for if one kept putting old oil inside it’d eventually break their precious drone, and they’d have to buy a new one. Either way, money made. Nowadays a few dozen drones can hold out for about half a year per barrel of new oil. Of course, extended periods of work or just general exertion can decrease that time frame, but all in all this metric holds strong. Due to this high demand and extreme necessity, the Nomad has taken to hiding away any and all barrels they find and leaving them until the drones need them the most. This way their “purchasing power” is the highest, and they can take home with them a few months’ worth of supplies. The drones know about this, though they do not blame the human, for they practice similar tactics themselves.  It’s just good business.

Luckily, there’s one barrel left in the valley, for which they need some special tools. There’s good reason they haven’t collected this one, even when it’s not that far away all things considered. It’s contained within a large warehouse in the mountains, atop one of its tall shelves. A forklift rests quietly inside the hall, still full of diesel, but unfortunately trapped beneath the fallen crane of the facility. It’s completely impossible to get the many tons of steel off the vehicle all at once, but luckily they won’t need to. They can cut it up into tiny pieces, so small that the Nomad may lift them with but their strength alone. This is the reason they gathered their acetylene gear yesterday, for they’ve been planning this little excursion for months. Their biggest roadblock was the acetylene, which the drones didn’t have, so they spent a long time looking for even a single bottle. They thank the gods for finding one, for they can’t possibly get the forklift free without it.

So, they start to load the sled with all they need in order to get that barrel down. First come the bottles; they unhook the oxygen tank from the wall and lay it on the empty sled, nesting it into the gap between its individual planks, and doing the same with the other cylinder. The Nomad could’ve left it on the sled to begin with yesterday, but from what they’ve heard leaving the acetylene bottle like that for a while is bad for its stability, and while they’re not exactly sure of the time frame that refers to, they’d rather not risk it, seeing as to how it’s highly flammable and explosive.

Next come all the essential accessories: Regulators respective of their individual flasks; the cutting torch they got yesterday; a pair of darkened flame-cutting safety glasses made of cheap plastic. They put these in a duffel bag and lay it atop the bottles so that it rests safely between them. Inside this bag they also store some general-purpose tools like a hatchet and an assortment of wrenches – though their crowbar remains lost somewhere – as well as a bottle of lighter fluid to start a fire if the need arises. Not last, and also definitely not least, they get two small wooden beams with wide notches cut into them, laying one to the side of the right bottle, and one on the left. They’re as long as the sled is wide, and they’ll use these to lay the barrel atop of so that it can’t roll to the side during transport. At last they collect the necessary hoses – one blue, one red – hook the loop under the bottle’s safety caps, and lay the rest atop the mound of gear. Now all is set; to finish the load of essentials they cover it with a tarp and tighten it all down with a few ratchet straps.

A solid load of gear in a covered mound, perfect for transport across an icy plane, sitting in their garage. It’s ready. The Nomad pulls the rolling shutter gate up and unhooks the linking device between the sled and motorcycle. They can’t easily back out with it attached, so they pull the sled out first, placing it out in the courtyard. Soon, the motorcycle follows suit, finding its resting place just in front of the loaded sled. Next, they re-attach the doohickie to the bike. It’s quite cold out today, a worrying fact if they plan to be out and about.

Before they go, all that’s left is a quick check on the weather. There’s a handful of gauges on the wall near the door, which measure a combination of atmosphere related values: A barometer for the pressure, a hygrometer measuring the moisture in the air, and a thermometer displaying the average outside temperature. The readings they give worry them greatly: Low pressure, high humidity, and a freezing chill in the air; the telltale signs of a coming blizzard. Not good, they quickly hop out into the street to check the sky.

Winds usually blow up and down the valley, a pattern which storms follow suit, so there should, in theory, be some angry-looking storm clouds on the horizon. But when the Nomad looks between the gaps in the buildings they see nought but clear greyish-blue sky, not a cloud in sight. Strange; judging by the readings, the storm should already be visible, but there’s nothing to be seen at all. “Okay” they mumble and shrug “I guess not.”, heading back to close the shutter gate They pull on its chain until it firmly rests on the ground once more, then turn off the light and close the door behind them.

All is accounted for, they’re finally ready to tackle the challenge of getting that oil barrel down from its shelf. The Nomad leans forward and lifts their leg, swinging it over the back of the bike to take their seat. When they feel nice and comfortable, they stick their key in the ignition and turn it to the right, pulling the choke lever as they do. When they press on the starter button with their right thumb, the electric motor screeches as it turns the crankshaft. Three revolutions are all it takes to revive the engine from dormancy, roaring to life like a lion’s call into the wide wilderness, the infernal machine expels fumes and heat and noise like no other. A series of explosive thumps ring out into the city, a constant stream of noise that announces the departure of the human into the cold wastes. May they return in health, may they find what they desire.

With confirmation of the bike’s health, they pull the clutch, kick it into first gear, and slowly release the lever. As soon as they feel even the slightest bit of bite within the clutch they turn the right grip, sending the revolutions on the gauge into the three-thousands, all the while they release the clutch lever evermore until they let go entirely. Snow is thrown out from under the back tyre until it finds enough grip to pull its own weight and that of the sled combined, slowly increasing in speed, the acceleration simply too fast for the ground to support; the back tyre both rolling correctly and spinning freely at the same time. Through the tight alleyway they ride out into the open street, the desolate road lay silently before them.

When the revs get high, they kick the bike into second gear, the same they do with the third, until the engine warms up fully. It gets angry at that point, restless from the excess fuel within the mixture, which they resolve by pushing the choke lever back to its open position, calming the enriched machine. With nothing but a good bit of motorcycling in their immediate future, they cruise throughout the city quite casually, though soon the laid-back ambience is disturbed. They feel something, the same eerie aura they’d felt briefly in the alley mere hours ago. It rises in severity and takes hold as a looming dread, less of a panic-inducing fear than last time, though still potent, almost tangible. This time they aren’t confined to the one-dimensionality of the alleyway, so they look around for the source of their worries.

Is it to their left? No, a quick sideways glance confirms only snow and broken windows. Behind them? No, taking their gaze further reveals yet more emptiness. The feeling persists, nothing is to their immediate right either. Where is this coming from? It’s only getting more intense as time goes on, nothing they do mitigates that incessant instinct always nagging at their conscience, their surroundings completely devoid of a source. Are they really this paranoid? Have the years of loneliness finally culminated in… this? Hallucinations?

But then something changes again about the ambience: it gets more intense, feeling almost like a targeted stinging into their chest. No, this isn’t just their imagination, it isn’t here, nor was it back in the alley. Something is wrong, something is here, and it’s looking right at them. Frantically, they look around for any sign of an observer, left and right and up and down and side-to-side within their stride of sled and tyre. Nothing comes, no man of ire there to watch them fire all their synapses, all their worries all at once, all anxieties gathered within their sconce upon the concrete wall on fire. Then they see it, bear witness to a glow, find which piece of the scenery brought with it their woes: a sickly yellow top-floor show, upon the skyline of the city, dreadful and pretty. A beacon of worry and hunger and fear, which makes so abundantly clear that the world is cold, and the storm is near. Dark clouds not seen but clearly felt, a weather change to severely pelt them with umbral darkness stark and drear, so that none their screams may hear.

A blink and it’s gone. One moment of darkness plunges the Nomad back into normalcy. They lost themselves in this momentary haze, that enrapturing yellow malaise that shined from an office building to their right. It was familiar, that glow, though they cannot pinpoint how or why they feel this way. Where was it coming from? Where has it gone? No bulb produces such sickening light, no filament nor diode can shine in such a distressing tone of obvious despair. Was it just their imagination? Never has this happened before, never have they hallucinated so vividly, or at all; a completely new experience to them, so they worry something might be terribly wrong. Their mind drifts once more to their AC, might it truly be damaged? The thought takes hold, the theory more plausible, no, more believable now than it was in the early morning.

Mildly disturbed, they chalk it up to a clogged filter on the AC and their combined lack of sleep. Must be, they think, my sleep cycle’s been a bit rough lately anyway, so it’s probably just that… Still, with their newfound explanation they feel no better about this... encounter.

They make it to the frozen canal, which they gladly take once more as a convenient navigational aide. The warehouse lies in the mountains some ways into the valley; a forested road should take them all the way into one of the many ravines, winding up along the edge of a cliff until they reach the compound. Easy-peasy, though some hurdles may remain on the path: Trees fall occasionally from the weight of the snow atop their branches, collapsing when storms or blizzards sweep through the area. To add to that, small avalanches can sometimes roll down the sloped forest to the road’s right, though these are quite rare due to the many trees that both block falling snow and anchor that which already lays on the ground. Of course, potholes both big and small dot the pavement plenty.

Though this does not worry the Nomad too much, they’ve been up at that warehouse a handful of times already. Throughout the years they’ve removed fallen trees, as well as those that were about to, and have packed potholes with so much snow that it acts as solid ground. There was never much reason to bring the sled, for there was never anything up there worth bringing home that was enough of either great size, or weight, or quantity to justify it. Lots of technical knick-knacks lay in boxes and crates upon pallets within the industrial shelves, only some of which still useful in the eyes of the Nomad. Long ago they wrote down everything they’d found and gave that list to the drones. Whenever they needed one of those things, – a thing which happened admittedly little – the Nomad went out to get them in exchange for supplies. Business as usual.

With their mind taken off the worries of travel, it wanders to places much different than icy forests and mountainous roads. Their gaze absent-mindedly wanders upwards until it meets the cloudless sky. Within it, the sun is joined by the planet about a quarter of the sky’s span away. As their eyes focus on the beautiful sight, their astronomy-fascinated mind comes to think of their movements, and how they relate to each other.

Copper-9 is a moon, one which orbits once around its planet every 14 days. That is, Moon days, which take 26 earth hours rather than 24, but this matters little as humanity has taken to simply adding 5 minutes to every hour to fix the discrepancy. In addition to this, the extended days aren’t too difficult to get used to when first arriving here from earth.

Everything starts during the so-called “umbral night”, which is more or less just a long, hemisphere wide and whole-day-lasting total solar eclipse. Night and day are nearly indistinguishable, only a pitch-black disk in the sky covers a spot of stars. As the day passes and the next one dawns the planet seems to “lag behind” the sun. Then, two different ways of counting the days separate from one another: the sun day and the planet day.

The sun day is simple, for it’s the time it takes for Copper-9 to revolve around its own axis fully, until the sun appears on the same spot in the sky. The planet day, however, is a little more complicated, though its underlying concept remains the same: rotate until the planet reaches the same original starting position. This, in turn, reverses the “lagging behind” phenomenon, appearing as if the sun were instead lagging ahead of the planet.

As Copper-9 rotates around its own axis, it also orbits in the same direction around its planet by nearly 26 degrees every day. This has the effect of giving the appearance that the planet is drifting to one side, also by that same angle. So, when counting by planet days, one must “catch up” - extending the day by nearly two hours - to compensate, in addition to the bit of orbiting which happens during this “catching up” phase. All in all, and everything can be very confusing at times, even to the astronomy-interested Nomad, it adds up so that the full orbit around the planet takes exactly one day less than when going by the sun day. This day hasn’t simply disappeared, no, instead it is simply spread out among the others.

There aren’t many uses for the planet day, other than maybe astronomy. All of it hinges on the fact that some people must’ve once considered the position of the planet in the sky to be more important than that of the sun’s. Light pollution wreaks havoc on stargazing, this, the Nomad knows from experience, so that, they assume, gives a reasonable explanation. How do they know that anyone actually followed this way of keeping date? Well, it’s due to the fact that planet-centric calendars used to be manufactured at some point. They’ve found a handful of them during their regular scavenging runs, always accompanied by a sun calendar nearby. Some even had markings within them; dates for appointments and birthdays scribbled in messy handwriting, clearly not meant to be read by strangers.

A new thought enters their mind: maybe biologists used them? Fauna and flora native to Copper-9 had all adapted to this strange cycle of light, twilight, and total darkness. They would’ve had to keep track of these cycles somehow if they were to study life here, and a pair of calendars – one sun day, one planet day – would’ve made their endeavours quite a lot easier. With a newfound intrigue, their mind races to find other possible uses for this odd way of keeping time.

Maybe astronauts? Gravitational effects courtesy of the planet matter a lot when going to, and being in, space. “Ooo! Tides!”, they cry out in excitement, having thought of another sensible usage, “I bet sailors used to have to live by planet time.” Ocean tides would rise twice a day back then, one at planet-midnight, one at planet-midday, so it stands to reason that boat-farers placed great significance in planet time. How they miss when oceans weren’t covered in hundred-metre-thick slabs of solid ice…

As the Nomad reminisces of times when the sun still shone warmth, and the seas still rocked in excitement and anger, their attention is drawn to another sight in the sky. They’ve been zoned out for quite a while now, subconsciously driving along the river’s bank as they were lost in thought and pondering. Throughout this time, something else other than their mind has been brewing far off in the distance, looming over the narrow end of the great valley: Unusually gloomy clouds, stretching so far to the left and right ends of the horizon that they appear as if they spanned around the entire planet like a blanket of snow and ice. Mountainous lands below are cast in darkness, harsh winds pick up which cut between the jagged rocky peaks of their home, the air getting colder bit by bit. How they hadn’t noticed it until now is beyond them, though one thing remains clear: if that thing catches up to them, it could take days to pass.

The Nomad thinks about turning back, sheltering the storm at home seems like the best course of action, but no, they decide otherwise. That barrel isn’t going to get itself, they reason, and it’s not like they’re going to take their time. It’ll take about an hour to get to the warehouse from where they are now, another hour to free the forklift and get the barrel down, and yet another one and a bit more to get back home. All in all, about three solid hours of work and driving, and that’s if they take it slow. Mountain roads are treacherous these days, so taking it easy going up them is a good idea, though not a must. If things get bad they can always pick up the pace, and take into account the possibility of a crash, of course.

Even if it did catch them, there’s no reason to get their head in a spin. The warehouse has possibly thousands of pallets inside it, enough firewood to last them for months, and they took some extra food with them just in case. Five cans of whatever-they-put-in-there always remain in their saddle bag, which they always take with them when going by bike.

But that storm is huge. No way it could ever move fast enough to catch them, as it’s barely even risen over the horizon at all. The Nomad can see miles down the valley, so they’re not too worried about the situation. They reckon they’ll be long gone before even the first snowflake hits the ground. That storm may be fast in nature’s eyes, but their bike is faster… they think.

It's actually been quite some time since a blizzard last rolled through their area, they used to be more frequent back in the early days after the cataclysm, like many things they attribute this to the very slow settling of the atmospheric dust. However, their optimistic assumption that they’re slowly dying down might be wrong, maybe they’re just getting bigger over a longer time period? Hopefully not, as they’re already miserable enough to live through as it is. The one looming over the horizon seems particularly sinister though, maybe it’ll even reach a record cold?

Maybe it is better to go back home, it’d certainly make things easier during the blizzard. The way it looks and the feeling it gives them as they affix their eyes upon it makes their hairs stand up on their back, a visage of worry involuntarily draws itself across their face. Doubt pollutes their mind, though they push it aside as they anxiously mutter: “It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine! It’ll be fine…”

The landscape changes from agricultural planes into a forest, which gets ever denser as they abandon the river’s bank in favour of the blanketed road. Were there not an unusual and inexplicable gap in the treeline, they’d have no idea it was even here. Not a spot of asphalt decorates the ground, not one trace of past tyre tracks still carves into the smooth surface, for any and all markings of their past travels here have long since been blown to the wind. The weather erases the past, the gale both lays bare and smothers into silence all that dare stand against it. Soon, the road meets again with a small stream, frozen solid long ago, which once flowed along the bottom of the warehouse’s ravine. The parallel streets, one of asphalt, one of ice, don’t stay parallel for long though as the entrance to this narrow valley lays before them, and is quickly left behind. The road gains in elevation, transforming the slight sideways dip to the bottom of the area into a sheer drop; the side of the road, blocked off by railings, becoming a vertical rock cliff.

It meanders like a river, following along the naturally carved curves of the ravine, a dead forest looming over them on their right. A few trees have fallen onto the road over the many years, though most have since been removed by the Nomad, with a little bit of occasional drone help. Why anyone would build an industrial warehouse this far up into the mountains right beside a precarious and deadly fall is beyond them; the person who chose to build it up there must’ve been smoking something good that day.

Bits of road are broken away not as potholes, though those are just as plentiful, but as chunks of the edge underneath the railing which have cracked and fallen down into the ravine below. Even more of the slithering snake-like passageway threatens to crumble in the near future, they hope this will be the last time they drive up here, they’d rather not risk falling to their death, not now when there’s something actually worth living for. They’ll inform the drones about this when they bring the barrel by.

Slowly but surely the Nomad draws near their prized barrel of drone oil, with each piece of debris in their path easily overcome. Mostly. The motorcycle has next to no trouble hopping over fallen branches, rocks, and potholes; its large, deep-treaded off-road tyres and suspension built exactly for this purpose. The sled, however, struggles at this, its rails often snagging on the obstacles before them. If the Nomad went any faster than they are now, the contraption would surely snag violently; they’d fall off their trusted machine. The sled shakes and rattles as it passes over each perturbance in the road, though its cargo remains tightly bound to itself. Bottles and tools seem safe and sound, confined to the simple device, the straps holding steadfast on this cold mountain road.

A thought takes hold in their mind, one they cannot ignore: If trudging up here is already this treacherous now, without much weight on their combined vehicle, then going back down with the barrel’s bulwark of sloshing liquid will be extremely difficult, not to mention precarious. There will be no “taking their sweet time” once they’ve loaded the oil; the way back home will be lengthy and difficult, and with that storm breathing down their neck, the weight of their misplaced confidence finally becomes clear.

Their original plan is horribly flawed; it seems they will have to weather the storm at the warehouse, since turning back isn’t an option; they refuse to waste their precious fuel so uselessly. This throws a wrench into their plans, though it does not destroy them, only delay their inevitable fulfilment. The Nomad will get that barrel down and bring it home, their heart and mind is set on it, though one great obstacle remains on the path to their precious.

The road could not be built continuously, as the cliff it rests upon was mostly natural. Some small bits were reinforced, and lots of anchors were driven into the side of the cliff to stabilize the rock, but not all could simply be filled in or strengthened. One great gap had to be passed, one which leads all the way down into the ravine’s abyss, one which had to be conquered to continue the way up the mountain. To achieve this, engineers planned the construction of a bridge. Not just any standard issue gap-crossing that one might find overtop a river, no, for the way in which this bridge is situated gives way to a novel design: a reinforced concrete half-bowl turned on its side. It held for decades without a single visible crack, bearing the weight of countless heavy lorries driving overtop it.

The cataclysm did a number on it. The bridge has completely broken away, leaving a gaping hole in the road, impassable by any normal means. Sidestepping it by traversing the forest beside the passage is impossible, a 5-7-foot-high sheer rock wall flanking the road’s right side makes sure of that. For years they agonized over this fact, trying multiple times to cross without help, but never had they been successful. Too long had they not known what lied beyond this gaping abyss, so the Nomad instructed some help.

For the lowly price of an entire oil barrel, the drones helped the human construct a simple wooden bridge made of straight logs of dead wood tightly bound together, all of which hand-picked by the Nomad, then subsequently sawed and carried by the drones. The way across isn’t safe, the danger from falling off being beyond measure; should they happen to slip just once, they’re sure to tumble to their certain death. Once they finally reach the site of their thoughts, the gravity of their situation becomes clear.

The wooden platform is narrow and quite shoddy, a thing the Nomad swore to fix, yet hasn’t, as its simple construction had done its job satisfyingly throughout the years. What neither they, nor the drones, had accounted for, was the sled. The bridge’s width isn’t much greater than that of the skis, so taking it easy will be key for this one. The Nomad briefly steps off their bike, unhooking the sled and getting it ready to pull across the chasm. They have a fear of heights, one they’ve tried and failed to get used to, so pushing the sled and crossing by foot simply isn’t an option they’re willing to take. To avoid this dilemma, they have a special tool. Or, not so special at all, as the thing they need is rope, a good deal of it being wound around the back of their bike’s frame, where the back seat used to lie.

It’s paracord, thin, strong, weather resistant, a perfect tool for survival, be it heaving heavy objects, tying things down, or building sturdy tarp shelters. Tightly wound and tied down with a simple knot, they struggle to undo it, their gloved fingers cumbersome and awkward to move precisely. Unwilling to take off their warm coverings due to the danger of frostbite, they eventually manage to free the tool and unwind it. About sixty feet of rope expand out from its tight containment, whose ends they tie on the left and right corner of the sled respectively. The remaining thirty-or-so feet loop they throw across the gap, landing on the other side. Now they only need to place the sled so that it slides up the small ramp in front of the bridge smoothly, though this isn’t exactly easy, leading to readjustment after readjustment until they are begrudgingly satisfied.

They get back on the still running vehicle and drive up the extended ramp, rigorously making their way across, having no trouble at all keeping the motorcycle headed dead forward. Ominous creaking is heard up and down the valley, originating from the wood just below their tyres. The Nomad hadn’t done any sort of calculations when they planned this bridge, how could they? All they did was reckon that it’d hold their weight, and be done with it. A minorly suicidal construction method, but it’s yet to come back to bite them. Within moments, the bridge is safely crossed.

They’ve never questioned why their vertigo is so inexplicably gone, or at least mitigated, as long as they sit on their motorcycle, all they know is that it works, and that they’re happy for it. Now that they’re safely on the other side, they put their machine on the side stand and turn the engine off, as there’s no point in needlessly wasting fuel; pulling the sled across could be a lengthy process. They grab the arch of rope on the ground and position themselves before the wooden crossing.

With a constant and careful force, they drag their equipment onto the bridge, its skis dangerously teetering on the outermost edges of the rough beams, all throughout threatening to fall into the chasm below at any moment. Every tiny bump in the logs is felt, every bit of additional resistance a nerve-racking experience. The paracord’s slight stretchiness only worsens their fine feel for the sled’s movements; a solid rod would work much better here, but they’ve no such thing on hand. For now, they’re stuck as is. Slowly but surely the equipment reaches the halfway point. Another bit of resistance makes itself known, stopping the sled dead in its tracks. This time, however, is different, as no matter how hard they pull, no matter in which way they apply their force, it just won’t budge.

“Uh oh…” escapes them quietly, panic rearing its unwelcome head. They sloppily yank the rope, trying to free it of its unfortunate situation, when something terrible happens; a pull too hard at an angle too extreme, and the object kinks off-line to the left, a third of it now precariously dangling over the edge, unsupported. A pathetic little yelp emerges from their vocal cords. This is bad, very bad, downright catastrophic, tugging from here would surely send their sled and everything strapped to it down the chasm, making everything here for naught. They have to correct this, but they can’t do it from here.

They dread the answer, not daring to comprehend its reality, though they are quickly running out of time to do so. Snowflakes begin falling from the sky, the wind picks up suddenly. Looking up, they see not greyish blue, but a malicious-looking looming darkness. Vast masses of cloud and storm are drawn across the heavens. Realization dawns on them: the storm has caught up. How? It shouldn’t be here yet, they had so much time! Nothing to be done but hurry; they have to cross the bridge on foot and correct it by hand. Even worse, there’s no way in heaven or hell they’ll just push it back, with the winds that are beginning to reign, they’ll surely fall. No, they’ll have to pull it back with the rope, there’s no other way. The Nomad throws the loop of rope over the sled to the other side of the chasm.

They take their first dreaded step, their knees get weak, their body trembles, knowledge of the fall just one foot to their right and their left keeps them on edge every wayward moment they spend traversing the bridge. If they could bite their nails, they would. Every step considered and doubted and reconsidered and feared, lifting a foot takes great effort, moving it forward and placing it feels as awkward as if they had never walked before, unwilling to put weight on the limb until they have made sure over and over again that what lies beneath their boot isn’t a sheet of ice, but solid wood, be it freezing cold and bumpy and rough. Coming upon the sled, they bow over it, carefully shimmying around, not daring to lift as much as an inch off the precarious ground as they get skin-crawlingly close to the rounded edge, feeling the slippery-ness of the cold logs desperately clung to by their worn soles. When they get past, they struggle to take their hands off the object, almost as if they’d been tied down with heavy weights; iron chains that reach all the way down to the valley below, anchored to chunks of ice which drag lazily along the ground. Eventually they manage to release themselves, taking the half dozen steps to the end of the bridge with the same rigor -or lack thereof- as before.

When they reach solid ground at last, they collapse to their knees, bowed forward with their hands buried in the foot-deep snow. Snowflakes begin falling en-masse, winds howl stronger yet; the blizzard is rolling in with great speed. If they don’t hurry up, they could get stuck out here, as doors can sometimes freeze shut from the sheer cold a storm brings. The temperature drops, icy winds cut right through their coat, and the Nomad forces themselves back on their feet. Concentration is now key as they grab the rope and begin pulling backwards, trying different angles and ways of pulling and variations in the force they apply until some movement becomes apparent. A little nudge backwards, though not straight just yet; they angle their position opposite the way the sled is oriented, pulling until it rotates just right. Double checking its alignment, the Nomad pulls it back to their side of the cliff until it, too, lands on the asphalt again. Something is blocking the way forward, and soon they see it: a tiny little branch, almost unnoticeable from only a little way’s away is what their sled’s left ski is snagging on. They have to remove it, but they’ve no time to retrieve the hatchet form their tool bag as the imminent blizzard is worsening by the second. Luckily, they always carry a little multitool in their satchel, within which is a little saw. It should be just right to cut the branch off.

Unfortunately, their cumbersome gloves make it impossible to unfold the tiny implement once they retrieve it from their satchel, so they begrudgingly remove their right glove. Biting cold unforgivingly snaps at their exposed fingers, punishing them for this misguided decision. Trembling soon sets in as they try and fail and try again to get their short fingernails into the notch in the side of the saw, but the frost-induced tremors and increasing frustration make them move sloppily; they drop their multitool in the snow, their heart sinks along with it. Not thinking straight under the pressure of the oncoming snowstorm, they plunge their exposed skin into the crystalline white mass: a grave mistake as sensation soon disappears completely, leaving them with an unfamiliar appendage which refuses instruction outright. Uncontrollable tremors, impending frostbite it they aren’t able to warm their hand somehow. An idea crosses their mind, they hastily shove their hand into their pants; the crotch is the warmest spot on the human body, and thus it soon returns sensation to their digits.

When they can move their fingers freely once more, and the multitool they’re still holding has warmed up alongside it, they remove it the two and finally manage to finagle the saw out from the rest of the miscellaneous steel bits. Success! They’re relieved as they put their glove back on, excitedly yet also still extremely nervously crawling onto the bridge, the howling gale making it impossible to even consider standing up. It’s easier this way, though progress is still slow, traversing this way feels just as alien as before. Upon reaching the frozen branch, the Nomad begins sawing back and forth. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth… An eternity passes almost uneventfully, sawdust falling into the chasm alongside the snow; little flakes of brown mixed in with white crystals. A repeated jerking motion of the hand, bit by bit the aggressive teeth of the stubby saw dig deeper into the wood. The branch fights them tooth and nail during this whole process, its unusual shape and wide base making it particularly difficult to reach all the way. If only they took out their hatchet, this’d be much quicker.

Suddenly, a powerful gust of icy wind blows from the side across the bridge’s surface, threatening to knock the Nomad off. Their balance is shaken, skewed to the side, and they seem unable to recover from it as they stay almost perfectly still, frozen into motor-functional inability, a grave fear of the fall sending shocks throughout their trembling body. Another gust, the gale blows so fiercely it knocks them off their hands and knees and on to their stomach, they hold on to the bridge as tightly as they can, trying to find some modicum of grip, though the modertely icy wood provides little of it at all. Terror sets in as they can feel themselves slowly being pushed closer to the edge, inching ever nearer to certain death. Without any traction to speak of, they desperately hold on to the very same branch they tried cutting off only moments ago. But the gale does not stop, does not relent for even a second, all they can do is wait and watch as they pivot around their only point of stable contact. They hold on for dear life.

A final unnerving slip sends their legs dangling into the chasm freely, they scream in terror involuntarily as their only remaining support is their fleeting grip strength and a notched stub of a former branch. Winds howl unrelentingly, the blizzard worsens by the second, the air gets colder yet, and snow falls ever more massively. For a good minute the Nomad simply hangs there, helpless. Any and all calls for help are drowned out by the wind and subsequently lost in the ravine, there is no one here, there are none to save them, they are alone.

Is this it? Is this what fifteen years of misery have led up to? Falling to their death, never to be found again? No, it can’t be, not when they’re this close. In desperation they begin to pray, hoping that any stray gods which still roam Copper-9 may hear them. They’re not religious, they’ve never been, but it’s all they can do now; to cry for help from the divine with their feet and torso swaying in the gale.

And so, just as suddenly as they began, the winds fall dead silent.

No longer do they sway at their mercy, instead they simply hang, tired and afraid. With all their remaining strength they manage to pull themselves upwards, straining their cold muscles until they can strain them no more, thankfully reaching the relative safety of the precarious platform. Shaking, they crawl to the side of the road reaching up the mountain, rising quickly and almost collapsing again as they do. Surrounding them is thickening fog, a haze brought on by unprecedented snowfall. They cannot stay out here, cannot take any longer than they already have; there’s no way of getting around it, they have to get to the warehouse now.

To hell with the sled, damn this shoddy bridge, fuck this storm and their damn stupidity. They surefootedly mount and start the motorcycle, driving away into the storm. They can’t see further than a few feet at most, but the stress and anger lead to them ignoring sense or reason, their conscious laid to rest in the background. With a clouded perception, and an even more so clouded road ahead, they make but one mistake: They spot a large rock in the road, one they cannot break in time for, so dodging it is their only option to avoid a crash. However, they panic, not thinking straight, leading to them accidentally affixing their gaze on the object. Their natural instincts ensure they steer toward it; the Nomad hits the rock. The machine they are sitting on kinks its front tyre off to the side, and within the time it takes to blink but once, their left leg is caught below the motorcycle. Unfortunately, their momentum isn’t stopped so easily on this slippery road as the pinned limb is dragged across a rough mix of ice, stone, and asphalt, tearing away at their pant leg, and the soon to be bare skin below it. Seconds of sliding along the frigid surface and they come to a grinding halt, though the Nomad isn’t stopped for long. Sternly ignoring their injury, they pick themselves back up, pumped full of adrenaline, and continue on at a pace a little less neck-breaking than before.

They don’t drive for long, the warehouse is close, and soon the road splits on two. They take the left, and the wooded road beside the cliff turns into an open compound. Unable to see far, they navigate only by instinctual familiarity. Without having to look for long, for the warehouse is directly on their left, next to the cliff, they expectedly happen upon the large building. A loading platform raises the doors above the ground by three feet, which was once used for loading trucks. To get forklifts and such on top of the platform, and also into the warehouse itself, a long concrete ramp leads upwards on one of the ends. The Nomad drives up it, and hops off their bike near an industrial door leading inside.

The door is tough to open, its handle frozen in place, though one hard hit is all it takes to free it. They tear at the grip, swinging open the tough, but not heavy door. Grabbing the bike’s handlebars, the Nomad lead the machine inside, just barely fitting into the doorway as they walk alongside it. As soon as they fully get inside, the door slams shut.

Darkness envelops them, a kind of pitch-black void that swallows all thought and emotion, only underscored by the still-running-engine of the bike, and the howling winds outside. It shouldn’t be black, their headlight should illuminate the hall, but it doesn’t, to their dismay. Feeling around their handlebars in total darkness, their fingers eventually make it to the light switch, which they press.

What is usually a rather dim bulb almost blinds them as the wall and loaded shelves on the other side of the large open room are bathed in a warm glow, though the temporary visual overload need only last a second. Within their single saddlebag are some various motorcycle-related tools and replacement gear, among them is a little flashlight. At first it may seem out of place among spare parts and specialty wrenches, but it’s the only one they have, and having to get the bike fixed at night or in places like these means keeping it on hand at all times is a must. They grab it and click its button, producing a cone of bright, yet concentrated white light. To avoid wasting fuel and battery power, they shut both the engine and the headlight off.

An unpleasant warmth emerges from their left leg – their wounded leg – it seems they’ve hurt themselves badly. Better get this fixed sooner rather than later, but doing so in the dark leaves them prone to making mistakes, ones they cannot afford here and now. To fix the lights, the power must be turned on, a task fortunately as easily said as done, as the maintenance room is only a little ways away from where they’re standing. Best get going, but their left leg refuses a regular cadence, instead opting to awkwardly limp along their healthy right.

The darkness here is confounding, the shelves to their sides standing so uncomfortably close that they feel somewhat of a sense of claustrophobia, though they’ve never feared tight spaces before. Something about them just seems so overpowering, as if they were trying to crush them not by weight, but by their presence alone. And it’s working a little too well: the Nomad cowers with a lowered head and shrunken shoulders as they limp along the cold warehouse floor, overshadowed by impossibly tall stacks of stuff on top of pallets.

Unpractised in the art of being mildly crippled, the Nomad enters through a door at the left end of the dark facility, peering into an equally shadowy corridor. Along its wall - the one facing away from the warehouse itself – appear four doors, each labelled concisely; the first, situated on the far-left end, is labelled as “Logistics”. Next comes “Finance”, then “Secretary”, then, last but not least, at other end of the hallway lays the maintenance room.

They’ve done this before, so they’re quite familiar with the layout of this place. It took them a while to get the power on the first time around, but now they need only press a single switch; a fuse so large just looking at it gives them the creeps. Who knows what kind of energy it’d take to blow in open? They’d rather not find out - not that they could. No matter what they did, they figure only a lightning strike could come close to even touching its threshold of sheer, unbridled force.

It's less of a switch, and more of an actual full-blown lever. As they enter the room full of old servers and exposed piping, they come to stand before the oversized fuse box on the wall. A padlock used to keep the mechanical limb from moving, but its laid broken on the floor below for years now. A snapped loop of metal, in splinters chaotically spread on the pristine floor. They grab the cold steel, respectful toward the power they are about to release into the building’s circuits, and pull down.

A sequence of thunderous clangs rings out from the great hall as light begins to spill from the old fixtures on the ceiling. Brightness drives away the darkness, scored by the faint lullaby of their comforting hum. The Nomad looks down, and sees some red that wasn’t there before. Pins an needles arise within their wound’s cloud of sensation; a single glance is all it took to grasp their state. The situation is dire, they need to take a look at this now, lest they be haemorrhaging blood, actively bleeding out. Limping as fast as they can, they go back down the hallway, seeing not a trail of blood on the ground, but only little droplets. A good sign, which is still spotted in red.

They rush into the room labelled secretary, blinded by a simple green plaque on the blank wall next to the door; a square whose centre is decorated by a white cross. Peering into and entering the room, they come upon a chaotic display. This place is a mess; what used to be a quaint office filled with dozens of plants and curious knick-knacks has since turned into a warzone. Shards of broken pots along with their long-dead inhabitants lie strewn across the floor, paper documents covered in iced dirt and a thick layer of dust litter the spaces in between, as well as those below all else. Company logo pens decorate the surroundings of fallen pencil tins and paperclips are as plentiful as rocks in a quarry.

On the wall within the room hangs the same rectangular signage, though nothing is below it. A med kit seemingly used to hang here, but its mounting bracket lies empty.  It has to be somewhere here, they had a spot for it, so it can’t be far. They look around the other rooms, out into the hall, between the shelves, but nothing comes of it. When they go back to the small office, they catch a glimpse of orange behind the desk, on the floor. A kind of glaring neon colour that cannot be mistaken for anything else, one so outstanding in its shading that one could spot it from a mile away. They approach the desk and look around the corner, finding their med kit, though it lays open, plundered. Bandages and tablets, small syringes and a pair of fabric scissors, all strewn about haphazardly. The trail of medical supplies leads to a long-dead corpse; a pile of bones dressed in tattered work clothes still sitting as they died, huddled up in the corner below the desk. Its jaw has since fallen off, laying separately on the ground, and next to it, a note. It reads:

“To whoever finds this, I don’t think I’m gonna make it.

It’s been a couple of days since the earthquake hit, since I broke my leg. I was the only one inside the warehouse at the time, so I don’t really know what happened, or why they never bothered to check up on me. It’s not like I didn’t try, I laid there forever, probably hours, screaming my fucking lungs out. Nobody came. When it got dark, I dragged myself in here. I tried to call for help, but the signal was gone. I couldn’t call for shit.

So I took the med kit, tried to patch myself up. But I don’t know a damn about fixing a broken leg, so I’ve just been sitting here, waiting. I haven’t heard a single voice, or siren, or engine driving by.

I took the painkillers and the syringe and I’m going to inject myself with it. I don’t know the dosage, so I’ll just spritz the whole thing into my leg. Either I’ll die of an overdose, or It’ll make the pain go away. Either way it’s better than this.”

The note is right, the tiny bottle of pain-be-gone lays drained on the floor, a used syringe right next to it.

Not good, they could’ve used those right about now. A little shot of that stuff would make this experience a lot easier for them. But no matter now, the Nomad has it out not for something to mask the pain, but to nip it at the bud; they have to clean their wound, sanitize it so that it won’t get infected. Thankfully untouched, the bottle of disinfectant stands where it should in the box, along with most of the bandage roll. Some of it is on the floor, also next to the long-gone cadaver’s leg of dry bone. It seems they tried to patch their leg, soon realizing that a simple bandage won’t fix a fracture alone.

The Nomad cuts the dirtied part of the dressing off, leaving them with a pristine roll of white fabric. First, they need somewhere to work, so they sweep across the cluttered desk, leaving only a lamp standing. To sit, they raise the office chair up as high as it goes, and take a seat with their injured leg upon the empty wooden surface. Finally, the Nomad takes the mostly untouched med kit and places it near enough on the desk to grab stuff out of.

They take a deep breath and turn on the little standing lamp, illuminating their tattered and freshly bloodied lower left leg. Some of the fabric is torn to shreds while the rest is ripped, hole ridden. Rocks and bits of asphalt and ice are all caught in the cloth. Removing it the old-fashioned way seems unproductive; they just need to get to their wound, and carefully taking their trousers off only to be left with a destroyed left leg won’t do them any favours. No, they shall cut the barrier away, taking the silver pair of scissors into their hand and snipping at the red fabric, a bit above the wound, just below the knee. They carefully cut a crooked circle around the hurting appendage, whose pain pulsates in tune to their heartbeat, until the tattered sleeve falls away. Another cut, this time right down the middle of the newly formed tube, has the dirty object falling to the ground.

Now they finally gaze upon their injury, its magnitude both marginally better and brutally worse that they’d feared. Bits of jagged stone and dry wood splinters are stuck in their skin, embedded within fleshy holes of their own making. Little flaps of bloody meat hang on by thin bridges of loose skin. Brilliant and dreadfully red liquid streams from deep lacerations; tissue lies open, exposed to the air and all that comes along with it. Horror arises within their eyes; their expression turns blank as they begin to fully grasp the mess they’re in. These cuts need stitches, but that’s the least of their worries.

They’ve stitched back together a wound or two of theirs in the past, and the pain has always been rather mild. A little pull from the thread in a place a pull should never come from feels incredibly unpleasant, but not unmanageable. No, their dread is drawn to another thing entirely: the dirt and grime accumulated among trenches of exposed meat.

They will have to clean it, lest it become infected. Daring not to reach in with Q-tips drenched in alcohol, as they do not place much faith in their trembling hands, they instead opt to go with the caveman approach. Dreading what they are about to do, unsettlingly aware of the sensation that soon will follow, the Nomad grabs a hold of the sizable bottle of disinfectant, undoes the cap, and then lifts it nervously above the wounded area. Shaking as if they had lost nigh but all control of their musculature, the outstretched arm of the human trembles violently during their moment of hesitation. This is it, they have done this only once, and they had sworn to never do it again, but now that promise seems painfully in vain. They turn their wrist and begin to pour.

Dumping the entire contents of the plastic vessel atop their leg, the Nomad is overcome by an indescribable wave of pain. They scream in agony as the liquid flows like a raging wildfire into every exposed orifice, great gashes and the littlest cuts likewise, burning away at their senses is if it ought to unmake them all together. Writhing in their seat, they repeatedly slam their clenched fist into the wooden desk, the pain from that being minuscule in comparison to the metaphorical hacksaw cutting away at their nerve endings. If they shrieked any louder, the force of its agonizing sound alone would shatter every frost-laden pane of glass in the building.

Minutes of mind-numbing waves of pulsating fire pass recklessly over them without an end in sight, tears gather in their goggles as little pools of brine. Never have they heaved breath as rapidly as they do now, such sheer volumes of freezing air cooling down their lungs until it hurts to breathe at all. Winces and howling whines fill the building, reverberating off of each and every blank concrete wall that encircles their little pocket of seeming safety, becoming so distorted and alien that an observer would audibly discern only strange croaking and an implacable wheezing from the constant howl of the storm outside.

When their lungs can take no more, and their vocal cords are stretched beyond usefulness, the pain of the poured disinfectant also gives way to an overwhelming numbness. Overwhelming not in the sense of another merciless assault on their nerve endings, but instead of the sudden and total lack of one. It’s mostly gone away, though some residual burning is felt in the liquid fire’s rage. They gather themselves, almost sitting on the precipice of passing out from the pain, when they faintly grab and retrieve the little suture kit from the neat orange box. Unzipping its cloth package, they find some half round needles, along with some sterile thread. They’d wear some nicer gloves if they had some, but for now their bare hands must do.

The Nomad removes their fingers’ thick protective layer, the cold immediately stinging the exposed appendages, though they can do little about it. To relieve some of the cold, they undo two of the buttons of their coat, so that they may stick their hands in and warm them up when necessary. Some faint steam rises from their warm skin as they remove and prepare their tools. As they thread their odd-looking crooked needle, they also take some sterile gauze out of the box, and dab away the rest of the still-flowing blood as it comes out.

With the lamp adjusted to give adequate light, the Nomad squeezes the deepest of the cuts back together with one hand, and pierces their skin with the needle in the other. It stings, but this pales in comparison to the immolation of their essence only minutes ago. Stitch, after stitch, after stitch; stick through and pull, stick through and pull, stick  through and pull: a dreadful teeth-chattering series of movements.

The wound is shut, no more blood flows unto the pristine dark wood of the desk. Two more of these remain, though these, too, are shut rapidly, almost appearing professional, though the pattern is crude, and their method unpleasant. They’d fixed a seam on their boots before, roughly and with great effort, and sewing skin isn’t much different from sewing leather, just a little stretchy-er. If it weren’t for the fact that they were sewing into their own skin, they’d probably enjoy the process.

The largest of the offenders have been dealt with, though they are far from done. What remains of the wound is a dotted landscape of muck-filled pits of flesh and blood, bits of stone buried within most, if not all. These must be removed manually, though digging in with their bare fingers is not a good idea. As they think of a way forward, they stick their shaking and terribly numb hands into their coat, its sudden and overbearing warmth stinging the exposed skin. As if fire descended upon it, they are compelled to pull them right back out into the deceivingly comfortable cold. This is a trick of nature, one so evil and conniving it dangles bliss before the battered, one so deceptive the Nomad has fallen to it before, ending with them getting some mild frostbite on one of their fingers; some of its sensation has since disappeared due to this frostbitten scar.

Soon, relief washes over the appendage, enrapturing warmth finally penetrating into the flesh. They can move their fingers and feel the fabric within their grasp once more. Wool fibres rub up against their skin, a rough yet comforting surface which insulates against the frost like no other. Multiple layers of clothing shield their body from the reckless forces of nature. Readiness arises within them, they feel adequate to finish their treatment, though they are in need of a tool to do so.

On the ground below them, near the sprawled assortment of tools taken from the box long ago, lays a pair of forceps. Tweezers, long and spindly, kinked downwards at the front; a shallow angle perfect for picking away at undesirable bits. In days harrowingly long ago, when they still lived on earth, the Nomad often picked at any and all visible imperfections upon their face; pimples, blackheads, even ingrown hairs. It only made their acne worse, leaving strange scars in the wake of their compulsions, but they could never stop. A flood of inexplicably pleasant memories brought on by a pair of forceps, identical to those from their youth.

They pick it up, looking for a way to clean them. The bottle of disinfectant lays spilt on the ground below, some of the highly concentrated alcohol having gushed onto their clothes, slightly discolouring the spots they landed on. Nearly every last drop has left the plastic container, instead being found somewhere else, somewhere unclean, dirty. Mixed into the ice-cold-yet-not-freezing puddle upon the desk are bodily fluids, mostly blood, though a little sweat is found among it. Useless. The Nomad looks elsewhere, to the feux-wooden floor instead, where there sits a shimmering puddle, clean, if a little dust laden. Excited at the sight, they dunk the tips of the tweezers into the fluid, swishing them around as to kill anything that still moved upon it, however small the chance of that may be.

Maybe all of this careful disinfecting is ultimately meaningless? After all, how could any living thing survive out there, unshielded from the frost? The Nomad has it easy, they wear blisteringly warm clothing to spite the cold, but bacteria? No, nothing is out the save the microscopic from a grave of ice, a sentiment and fate shared by the human.

With their hands quickly losing temperature, they lift the delicate little tool up to their raw spots of exposed muscle – lodged within: grime and debris. Holding the tweezers with their right hand – and that, they hold with their left – the Nomad skin-crawlingly reaches into one of the pits, painfully squeezing the thin metal limbs between flesh and debris until they can hold and pull the lodged offender out, away from the limb. Muted grunts emerge from their mask, nought more than disguised and made-silent announcements of anguish, of great terror at what they ought to do. The feeling is nigh indescribable, having to reach into one’s own skin and remain composed enough – of sound-mind enough – to remove the bothersome bits of rock and asphalt wholly. Taking a bone saw to one’s own leg may appear more invasive and barbaric, and it is, but this is more intimate, more conscious of an action than anything else. Every errant twitch of a freezing and uncontrollable muscle is felt underneath their skin, the grinding agony of pointed stainless steel rubbing on bone occasionally clouds their perception; it makes their entire body twist and contort uncontrollably, shock pulsing in their veins. There are sensations swirling within them that were never meant to be felt by man, never meant to be experienced as they are now. Unintended by nature, a leftover glitch in their nervous system abandoned due to never being used, due to never having been cursed enough to warrant removal in time. As they see it, they have been left to rot by all around them, left to find only terror and ice in this world; even their own body does not spare them of this reality.

Though, with time, as the debris lessens, so does the pain. Remains of rock and wooden splinters still dot their mostly unharmed skin, though their energy is sapped: they can take no more. All they had remaining of their will was lost in their grim, yet still somehow pleasing picking. It is now that they realize they’ve made an unfortunate mistake. Being hasty after uncovering their wounds, they immediately went to disinfect it, when doing so now would’ve been much more effective. If bacteria still live as they did long ago, then there’s sure to be a great deal of them now lodged deeply into each one of their pit-wounds, driven inside by the foreign objects.

But they can do little now to correct their mistake, the mostly clean puddle of alcohol on the ground is evaporating every second it remains there; it’s barely even been outside for twenty minutes, and it’s already shrunken to a mere fraction of its original size. Not that it matters, there’s nothing that little puddle could do to clean the lacerations adequately.

All is done for now, the Nomad grabs the pristine bandage roll and begin to wrap its clingy fabric around their lower left leg, taking great care in its even distribution as they overlay about half of the previous loop with every new one. Two dozen careful wraparounds, and the little roll runs out; less than they’d hoped for, but enough for now. They end the procedure without any special treatment, as the cohesive fabric sticks to itself well enough on its own. When they get home, and they pray that’ll be soon enough, they’ll take another look at the injury and treat it proper. They aren’t sure of a lot right now, but they are most definitely certain this won’t be their last escapade concerning this wound.

The Nomad lowers their treated leg back to the ground, now with a sizable section of their trousers missing. Staying exposed to the cold like this is bound to get them frostbite, so a solution is in order. For a moment they think on where to get a new pair, their mind recollecting the different wares within this building. Hundreds of nondescript crates line shelves very nearly to the roof, but none, they think, contain clothing. Another possibility would be to sew together a patch from whatever fabric they can find, bar the bloodied bit resting on the floor. There’s some merit to the idea; some thread is still left over, and the needle remains as pristinely sharp and pointy as ever, so if all else fails, they’ve something to fall back on. But they needn’t look far and wide to come upon a far easier solution: The Nomad looks around the room as they are lost in their continuous trail of thought, until their gaze befalls the skeletal witness crouching beneath the desk.

It, or rather he, she, they – the letter didn’t specify – still bears a pair of sturdy work trousers, undamaged by any means. A visible crease decorates one of their upper legs; likely the site of whatever fell on them to break their leg, but this doesn’t avert their attention. No, the Nomad rises from the old office chair and crouches down next to the silent and shapely pile of bones, lifting the tough fabric up and shaking out the remains. Their sight is drawn to the falling pile, eventually catching a glimpse of the dead’s broken femur. It’s horribly kaputt, shattered into countless tiny bits as it split in twine within their then-still-living leg. The pain must’ve been unimaginable, the Nomad now knows why they willingly overdosed on painkillers.

They wonder, is this technically graverobbing? The body was never buried, and robbing a grave of its contents usually constitutes the existence of one to dig up in the first place. So if it isn’t a graverobbing, then maybe it counts as… plundering? It definitely wouldn’t be their first, there’s a reason for the clothes they wear, as they didn’t just happen to be wearing this unbearably hot outfit at the time of the cataclysm. No, they robbed all of this off of corpses, changing it only when they stumble across something even slightly warmer. Today they’ve gotten quite comfortable all things considered, which begs the question when’s the next time they exchange their set of layers. They aren’t sure, but what they’re truly certain of: they’re glad they can’t smell themselves right now…

Unanswered questions of dubious significance aside, the Nomad easily slips the wide tubes of fabric over their heavy boots. It’s a tad too big for them, its legs a little too long to fit properly; they drag against the ground, tripping over them is bound to happen if left like this. To fix the issue, they simply cut around the right height, and leave the cut ends as they are. They may fray over time, but right now, that’s the least of their concerns. A quite comical-looking pair of trousers now temporarily covers their old one, and although it doesn’t insulate as well against the cold as the pair below it, it’s better than nothing at all.

The Nomad takes a short rest upon the chair, they’ve more than deserved it after all, soon bearing witness to a sight they’d previously paid no attention to: The windows. Three great panes of glass make up the entire wall behind the desk, situated above their hips and up to the ceiling, bringing with them blessed light from the outside, or at least they should. As they helplessly stare into the supposed daylight, they are met with a pitch-black blanket of nothingness instead. Terrible winds violently push and pull on the strained brittle material, bowing them to-and-fro ever so slightly every moment of every second.

It's day outside, barely even an hour has passed since the storm hit, yet the sun dares not to penetrate its hurricane gale. Pure darkness, illuminated only by a rarely lit fluorescent tube on the ceiling, its general dimness not adequate to break through the umbral sight. Curiosity takes a hold of the human as they grab their flashlight, only recently stowed away within their satchel, and shine it outwards. A fascinating result appears: the little cone of light cannot shine beyond the glass, even as they press the tool against the surface, stopped dead by impossible volumes of snow and ice flying by, their little crystals brilliantly exposed as the torch’s only real consequence.

An oppressing mass of vile frost, sheer and unforgiving, burying and forgetful; all that is lost beneath the white blanket is lost forever, becoming a part of the dunes themselves. The blizzard tries to overbear the human too, but it cannot, its feisty and insatiable lust for unmaking the established remains unsatisfied, unfulfilled in a most agonizing way. A force of nature stood against valiantly by thick concrete and sturdy glass, steadfast in an uncaring yet cradling and passionate way: the building is the arc, and they are the only one upon it. A city could not stand against this unrelenting pressure, one so great it howls through every meagre crack in the walls and foundations made of artificial stone. There is terror outside, and an ice-present warmth within, and they are stood amongst it all, alone.

Nothing can now unmake their mistake, nothing has the ability to save them from this bright spot in a neverendingly dark abyss, not that they’d want to be drawn away from it. Here they are safe, here they are kept warm and out of the gale, and for that, they are thankful.

But still, they will have to wait. Sit around and shelter out the storm; have it pass over them or dissipate completely, whichever happens first. Just staying sat for who knows how long is boring, not to mention cold, so perhaps they ought to make some shelter to pass the time, and to make the rest of their valiant waiting just a little more bearable.

Taking great care as they place weight on their treated leg, they leisurely limp out into the great storage area, its bright ceiling lights pouring an industrial shine over the many shelves. These colossal structures of spindly steel stack all the way up to the roof, so much so that the topmost crates sit in darkness, raised overtop the coned lightbulbs. Creaking occasionally emerges from the seemingly overloaded shelves, each and every one stacked with a weight too crushing for their intended capacity, though it matters little. These things have stood unbothered since the days before the cataclysm, and since they managed to survive through that, they worry not about them crashing down now. The earthquake managed to collapse an entire society into ruin overnight, but not these shelves, no, they still stand upright amongst a world of rock and rubble.

Upon one of these shining bulwarks of stern survival rests a most unusual sight. Not a crate like any other, not a strange tarp-covered steel part, not a long pipe nor a pile of short ones, no. Cloaked in darkness, above the lights which bathe the cargo below stands proud a singular barrel laid on its side, tightly strapped to a pallet. A pristine, untouched steel vessel containing gallons upon gallons of fresh drone oil. This is the reason they’re here, their penultimate prize for making it this far, and beyond. But getting it down will have to wait; the gear they brought to free the forklift now lays outside in the blizzard.

Wordlessly, feeling the presence of the barrel in their mind, the Nomad limps along the stacks with some effort, bothered unendingly by the injury. They make their way to the other end of the building when another unusual sight catches their eye: the wall to their left, which runs along the entire length of the warehouse, sports great windows which rise up to the ceiling from just above head height. These peer out into the narrow ravine below, or at least they should, for when the Nomad looks, expecting to see at least some tiny modicum of light, their eyes meet only pitch-darkness; the same sight as before.

At the end of the hall lies a large open space, giving contrast to the otherwise claustrophobic surroundings, though two gaps in the rows are present on their right; shutter gates are inset here, their general wideness taking the place of a single row of shelves. These are for access to the outside, to load and unload wares from lorries via the use of forklifts.

One of these decrepit vehicles still stands silently at the end of the room, the sight saddens them. A steel girder fell atop its cabin at the time of the earthquake; a crane which used to run along the roof a long time ago, way before even the cataclysm reared its head. No matter how high up it would’ve been placed, it would have run into the shelves that stand in the room today. It seems they were expanded upwards, or switched out entirely, limiting its travel of the machine to the back end of the area.

Oversized goods and miscellaneous bits of machinery and tools stand proud here, along with a dozen tall stacks of wooden pallets piled so high they’ll need a ladder to reach the topmost ones. Picking one out from the bottom is impossible, not only because of the weight that rests atop them, but also due to the fact that the stack above would collapse on top of the Nomad’s head. So, they’ll have to get them from the top. If they want to light a fire, and they do, then that is a challenge they will have to brave. Luckily, but also quite unfortunately if their fear of heights is to be concerned, a long extendable aluminium ladder hangs along a wall, suspended by little hooks. They approach it, lift it up, and almost fall backwards as its unexpected weight shifts onto their body. While it may be made of light aluminium, it still contains a lot of material.

Thankfully, they manage to avoid an untimely death-by-extendo-ladder, able to catch their balance just in time to save themselves from being crushed. Slowly and carefully, the Nomad waddles over to the wooden stacks, laying it onto the floor to adjust it accordingly. They undo the little locking mechanisms and slide the upper segment along the lower, extending it as far as it goes. Lifting it outright now seems impossible, so they don’t, instead sliding it across the ground until it lays as they intend it to stand. Now they place themselves at the far end of the object, and heave it above their head.

The weight is almost negligible, the lever they’ve formed giving them a frankly ridiculous amount of mechanical advantage, though that fact quickly disappears as they walk ever closer to the impromptu fulcrum. The ladder rises ever higher and higher, eventually standing straight upwards; they only give it a little push, and the object falls forward, coming to lean against the pallet tower.

As they look upwards, toward the height they’ll have to climb, a chill runs down their weary spine. The sight gives them the creeps; they get dizzy just standing here. Usually, the Nomad isn’t one to hesitate for long, often opting to dive headfirst into whatever challenge or danger awaits them, – they’re daredevilish like that – but here they simply stand, observing the vertigo-inducing climb from afar. A few seconds go by, intimately taken note of as they can almost feel milliseconds individually passing by; their heart beats faster, their breath accelerates, thoughts of nothing rush by. Then, at last unfreezing from their spot of worry, they solemnly state: “Well… nothing to it but to do it…”

Upon the first step, the ladder stands solid. No discernible movements are to be felt; a relief worth nothing, for they’ve a great height to go. Another step upwards and the contraption’s rubber feet settle solidly against the smooth yet rough concrete floor, gripping its every edge, ridge, and otherwise undulation with surefire strength. Had they another person – or drone – here, they’d have them hold the ladder. But someone – or something – of the likes isn’t here, so the rubberized tips must suffice.

What if they slip away? What would happen then? They’d fall, break something. The thought festers within the back of their mind, brewing to become a constant dread impossible to truly ignore; atop their already shaking legs now rests another burden. The aluminium device moves, vibrates under their own involuntary trembling, giving off odd creaking noises upon every tiny little movement. It audibly threatens collapse, though that remains a yet unfulfilled promise. Croaking and bowing back and forth with every little step; step by step, rung after rung; lift the leg and place it down, release their grip and grab again, a purely mechanical series of motions devoid of thought or reason, lest those cloud their mind, their judgement. This isn’t their first tall ladder, nor will it be their last, so they’ve a technique with which they’re able to master them, to scale them and to leave their fears behind. Move, lift, grab, rest, move, lift, grab, rest: a symphony of mindless exertion orchestrating a climb up a terrible mountain of metal.

Halfway up the ladder, the Nomad makes a mistake: The shaking and the rocking back and forth grows so severe, so unignorable, that they have no choice but to follow their most misguided instinct; they look down.

A sinking dread seeps into their bones as the cold ground seems impossibly far down, every burrowed anxiety within their mind coming to light all at once. Horror unbound: a fear justified, made abundantly clear to see in the wake of their climb. Too far up, too far up, too far up, their subconscious screams over and over without relenting, without giving up lest they ignore their own message.

Compelled to flee, compelled to run away, to melt into a steaming puddle upon the floor, if only to remain in indisputable contact with it, never to leave again, never to lift even a single molecule of their self away from surefire and never-ending safety. The earth protects, provides shelter from height and fall; a blanket of warmth they wish to partake in, yet cannot, for every little bit of their musculature is clenched tighter than they could ever hope to achieve on their own. Their body is shrunken around the frame of the ladder, unable to move due to its own involuntary hindrance; gloved hands grip around the freezing aluminium as if it were their only lifeline.

Under their weight, the contraption has bowed considerably, forming a dreadful bend that oscillates slowly back and forth, up and down, as their centre of mass shifts involuntarily during their fear-induced convulsions. They desperately remind themselves that this has happened before, and that they have lived until now, so there’s no good reason to get their head in a spin. Concentration is the key, this they know intimately, so they go against all primal instincts nagging at their senses and firmly close their eyes. Every little and previously intense sensation is amplified tenfold as their vision draws to nil; the twitching of their body and the thorough trembling of the ladder work in tandem to reverberate all oscillations into their bones, yet worsening the issue. They hadn’t noticed it until now, distracted by the abyss of cold concrete below, but they’re nigh-on hyperventilating, which in turn also feeds into the dreadful and omnipresent wobble as their shivering lungs inflate and then empty much too quickly.

This movement, they concentrate on most vividly, taking diligent notice of every contraction of muscle and tissue within their chest, deliberately slowing their bodily billows’ respiration down to calm their racing heart and mind. Deep breaths, in and out, calm and steady. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Soon, their every fear, anxiety, and dreadful possibility is drowned out beneath an air of concentrated focus. A drawn-out breath seeps through the filters on their mask, the newer one taking the brunt of the load.

The Nomad opens their eyes, gazing upon the rung before them, their composure reclaimed from the depths of vertigo. Wobbling is still present within the metal structure, as it always is, but they clench their teeth together and bite through their fears, bravely lifting themselves higher and higher, reaching into the roofed sky. Their eyes do not move from the spot right in front of them, blankly staring into nothingness as the ascent continues without further pause.

Not soon after, the newly fearless human finds themselves at the tip of the tower of pallets, lifting the heavy topmost one off of the pile and throwing it down. It impacts the cold concrete ground with a thunderous slam, which breaks the brittle wood in a few places. This, they repeat a dozen times, piling up enough firewood to last them about a day. When they feel satisfied with their work, they climb back down, a process much easier as the sheer promise of solid footing alone motivates them into action.

They nearly collapse as their boots step unto the unmoving earth, though they catch themselves on the ladder, their hands trembling like the rest of their body. Deep breaths are still the key, even as they stand upon concrete, for they worry their relentless vertigo could lead to them meeting their salvation face-first. Many moments of never-ending dizziness pass unwillingly, seemingly not wanting to let go of the Nomad’s mind, though soon, like the rest of their fears, this sensation, too, flees.

A pile of splintered pallets rests upon the ground near the Nomad, who approaches it, inspecting their efforts closely. As they suspected, the wood hadn’t yet become small enough to get a useful fire going; fires ought to be built tight, and these half-broken pallets just won’t do. While they don’t have an axe, as that now rests outside in the blizzard, and their only other way of breaking down wood – their multitool – now probably rests at the bottom of a ravine, having seemingly dropped it during the chaos of the storm’s descent, they aren’t fully at a loss just yet. The cold has made the wood brittle, any moisture remaining inside long frozen to ice, expanding just enough to break the lignin fibres found within. The Nomad removes a split pallet from the pile and stomps down on it, further splintering it into smaller and smaller pieces until they feel satisfied with their outcome.

Lighting it won’t be easy, as their bottle of lighter fluid is also kept within their sled’s duffel bag – they really shouldn’t’ve put all of their eggs in one basket – so they’ll have to get creative. They take one of the longer splinters – about as long as their forearm and as thick as two fingers – and cut little shavings off on the side, not quite cutting through all the way. A few dozen cuts later, and the stick in their hand now resembles a Christmas tree. Water ice within the wood will hamper any attempt at catching a flame, which is the whole reason they wanted to bring the lighter fluid along in the first place. But they fret not, as a plan is already in mind; they walk over to the motorcycle, undo the cap on their fuel tank, and dip the cut end inside, drenching the object in a good deal of gasoline. The Nomad closes the cap, walks back to their impromptu fireplace, and pulls out their lighter. It need not even catch a flame itself, as even a single spark already ignites the drenched wood, which they place in the heart of the small, structured pile. Not soon after, a hearty fire warms their crouched figure.

Finally at least somewhat comfortable, they place their injured and sore leg near the soothing blaze, an act which calms their wound enough for it to feel just content. As the storm rages on outside, trying desperately to peer in through every meagre crack in the wall, the Nomad simply rests and wonders:

How long will this storm last?

Chapter Text

A voice billows from an old intercom, staticky and tired sounding: “Attention, everyone. Please report to the canteen for your daily oil rations… oh, and good morning.”

Within a cramped and dark room lays a drone on a stiff mattress, their screen displaying the words “Sleep Mode”, though it soon changes to a buffer, and then a set of sleepy silver eyes with simulated eyebags found beneath. The little machine groans as it lifts itself from its worn bedding; it cradles its head in its hands for a moment before a popup appears on its display, reading:

Attention!

Oil change necessary.

Alert maintenance staff.

“Ugh.. goddamn it….” It exhales as it gets ready to leave, putting on a pair of sneakers which stand at the foot of the bed, disguised in the darkness of the room, though it does so without issue; muscle memory, though it lacks such. The tired robot flicks a little switch on the wall, upon which follows the hesitant illumination of their bedroom by a single lightbulb on the ceiling, its harsh and uncomforting light glaring downwards at their haired head; brown and cut short. They put on a worn dark green hoodie, whose fabric sports many holes that tell a story of use and abuse. As they carelessly swing their wooden door open, they almost bash another drone right in the face. “Hey! Watch it!”, it angrily shouts, then quickly disappears around a corner.

The drone, not one to miss getting their rations, groggily follows their compatriot before being greeted from behind. “Good morning Todd.” It says in an equally groggy tone, the Todd in question returning only a simple “Mornin’.” He and his friend, whose dark green eyes also display the effects of a rude wake-up call, follow through a short series of hallways and corners before setting foot in the wide-open doorway of the bunker’s canteen, its inside bustling with a few dozen drones all either standing together in groups, or sitting down at the massive dining tables running the length of the room. Upon one of these tables sits a lone drone with purple eyes and mid-length blonde hair.

“Mornin’ Steph.” Todd greets her, upon which she returns: “Good morning Todd. Oliver. How’d you guys sleep?”

“Bad.” Both return in unison as they sit down opposite of Stephanie, a bit of synchronisation neither of them were trying for; they throw a surprised glance at each other.

Stephanie was not expecting this, she gives both of them a surprised glare before stuttering: “Oh… uh, sorry to hear that. How come?”

Todd goes first: “It’s the popup, been botherin’ me for a while now. It’s only getting harder to ignore.” Oliver can’t help but agree; he shares his friend’s woes, though admittedly less severely so. “The top-ups just ain’t doing it anymore” Todd bemoans, his state having been deteriorating for a while now “It’s been forever since I had an oil change…”

As he lays his head on the table, tired and worn-out, the speakers in the room give off some static and a little distorted jingle, silencing the room filled with small talk and conversation. “Speak of the devil…” He adds, not lifting his head up. The man on the intercom clears his throat and speaks concisely: “Today’s rations will unfortunately be delayed; we are changing a barrel in the storeroom. We apologize about the discrepancy; however, the weekly oil change lottery will thus be held immediately.” Winning the lottery means a full system flush of fresh drone oil, a thing almost every person within the room is in desperate need of. While the lottery doesn’t benefit everyone equally, giving some drones more oil by pure random chance, the other option is letting everyone waste away slowly, but at the same rate. It keeps morale up, and lets some people live more comfortably without rivalry or tension caused by a conscious choice. There isn’t enough oil to go around, everybody knows that, but none are willing to risk their hides to search for more, and possibly die trying.

“Today’s winners are…” A long pause ensues, causing confusion among the crowd. The winners are always drawn beforehand, so what’s taking them so long? The three aren’t sure, but they believe that, through the crackle in the static, they can just about hear a hushed conversation. After an uncomfortably long air of anticipation, the voice continues, though with an odd shift in its tone: “Todd, Oliver, and Stephanie…” The trio’s faces light up, their attention and gaze drawn to the speakers as they await their instruction with bated breath. “Please report to Foreman Stanford in his office.” Their excitement is snuffed out instantly. “We apologize for the confusion. Now, on to the actual winners: Johnson, Regina, Burt, and Nathan, please report the counter.”

Todd is livid, his processors aflame with rage as he raises his fist at the speaker, his whole body animate as he shouts: “Oh, come on! Fuck me over some more, why don’t you? Hand me a shovel too while you’re at it, so I can dig my own grave! Godfuckindamnit…” His outburst draws gaze and attention; the entire canteen is silent as it looks at him in a unified glare.

“Todd, I’m sure you’ll get it next time. It been ages since, so-”

“No need to remind me, Steph.” He interrupts in a poisonous tone. With a hateful glare burning into her eyes, he scorns: “And don’t think I don’t know how often you’ve won. You have it better than most of us, don’t give me your goddamn sympathy.”

Oliver looks at his friend with worry. He’s usually never this riled up; things must be getting dire. He tries to comfort Stephanie, assuring her that he didn’t really mean it like that, though his words fall on deaf ears: Stephanie seems hurt. Seeing that his words here do little, he recommends: “We better get a move on, Stanford’s probably already waiting for us…”

The others silently agree, though Todd lets off an exasperated sigh as he gets up to follow. With the trio on their feet, they traverse the tight corridors of their small bunker-home, and not soon thereafter find themselves before a plain wooden door, next to which hangs a little plaque with the word “STANFORD” written on it in black marker. Oliver firmly knocks on the door, which is quickly followed by a similarly firm “Come in.” spoken clearly from the other side.

Stanford’s office is as sparsely decorated as any other room, though its footprint is as large as the trio’s quarters combined. In the centre of the room stands a great wooden desk, upon which is stood a picture frame, and behind its thin glass pane: A picture depicting Stanford embracing Johnny. Behind the desk is sat an old and grizzled drone, whose deep red eyes beam with many years of history. So long has he lived that he even remembers the days before the cataclysm, a feat few can attest to.

With a grim look, he instructs the three to come closer, upon which he sorrowfully explains: “Look, I know you’re all confused, so I’ll keep this short: Johnny’s missin’. Nobody’s heard of him since I sent’im off with the Nomad yesterday, and I want you three to find’im.”

This is not what they had expected. All three know Johnny, but only Todd knows him well enough to call him a friend, and he knows exactly that this isn’t the first time he’s been gone for a while. A few weeks ago he went missing for two days, and he’s even been gone an entire week before, though that one ended with a search party. He has a habit of… getting lost, at least that’s what Todd tells himself to make sense of him.

Stan continues: “I admit, this is sudden, but we have no choice. There’s a storm coming, and it’s a big one. I’m worried that, if he doesn’t get home before it rolls in, he won’t come back at all. So, time is of the essence; get to the Nomad, ask them about Johnny, then search until you find him and bring him home.”

“Why us?”, Oliver asks, upon which Stanford answers: “Todd knows Johnny better than even I, you, Oliver, know the city like the back of your hand, and Stephanie knows how to keep you two knuckleheads on track. You’ve been to the Nomad before, and I trust that you’ll lead the others there. Alleyways, broken buildings, and passages I couldn’t even dream of are your forte. Do what you do best.”

Todd isn’t convinced; even though his friend’s life is on the line, so is his. If he doesn’t get and oil change soon, his systems will shut down. If saving Johnny’s life means sacrificing his own, then that is a choice he is unwilling to make. “Todd”, Stanford says solemnly, “I know you’ve been struggling lately; we all have. The lottery’s been going on for a few years now, and there’s no sign of it stopping. I’ve talked to the Nomad, and even they say that oil’s been getting harder to find.” His demeanour changes, his face grows darker “I’ll be honest with you three, and don’t tell anyone I told you this, but I don’t know how much longer we’ll last like this.”

All three are silent, speechless. They’d known there was a shortage, they’d been aware of their situation, but not how bad it truly was.  “But” Stanford continues, “I’ll sweeten the deal for you: come back with Johnny, and all three of you will get a full oil change, free of charge. If you come back without, then… I’m sorry.”

There is a long pause present in the room after the uttering of this most devilish deal, the trio silently contemplating what they ought to do. This solves Todd’s hesitation; he is fully on board. Oliver is yet unsure, though his thought process is interrupted by Stephanie: “Stan, thank you, but I won the lottery a few weeks ago. I’ll go, but please, keep the oil for someone else in need.” “That’s very kind of you, Stephanie. Will do, I’m proud of you.”, Stanford warmly assures her.

Todd is convinced, and Steph is as altruistic as ever. The two of them depend on his guidance, his knack for navigation, so Oliver finds his resolve and tells Stan that he’ll go with them. The grizzled drone is relieved, exhaling as he thanks them for their bravery. The three are about to leave the room when the old drone stops them, pulling them close and putting on a serious face, speaking quietly yet sternly: “Listen, we’ve had storms before, but this one is worse than… well, worse than most, so to say. Find Johnny quickly, then get back home. Don’t get sidetracked, take shelter if you need to – heck, wait out the blizzard if that’s what it takes – and most importantly: Stay. Safe. I’d rather you come home empty handed than not at all; I already have Johnny on my conscience, I don’t need you three to go missing too.”

Mildly terrified but assured by his guidence, the trio leaves Stanford’s office and heads out of the bunker and into the open and silent streets of the city. Behind them now lies their home: a shelter built into an earthen terrace, upon which more of the city is built. As far as they know, this whole area used to be a big patch of rolling hills, but most were levelled to make the construction of a city easier. This terrace is one of a handful, forming plateaus and trenches often separated in height by more than a story. Tunnels, both for street and rail, plentifully cut through these earthen platforms like Swiss cheese.

At least that’s true for this part of the city, as the other half is as flat as a frozen ocean. There, the Nomad lives, as well as it being the location Clément tower, where they’re headed first, and the park adjacent to it. Oliver begins: “Oh, right, forgot to ask, what exactly happened yesterday? I was out and about and heard a kind of rumbling, then a big crash. Didn’t know where it came from, and then I kind of just forgot about it afterwards.”

“Oh yeah,” Todd answers, “like, a spaceship – or a landing pod, whatever – landed in the city. Crashed pretty rough in the park.”

“A spaceship?” Wha-… Huh?”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought too when we got the news, but it’s true.”

“H-How? Why? Who? Who’d land here – from Space! Was it a human?”

“Well, that’s just the thing: we didn’t find anybody inside.”

“So it landed on its own? Just like that?”

“That’s the theory anyway, it certainly didn’t land gracefully if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll show you once this is over, but right now’s not the time.”

The three walk together, led by Oliver, whose guidance is invaluable. He has intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny this city has to offer. He’s been in every building, in every alley, every tunnel and roof, every office and grocery store has been explored by his truly. While his memory is filled with the sights of countless car wrecks and stale office desks, putting them together is often a challenge. Memorable rhymes and joyous limericks often help, though usually he keeps a marked map on his person. Unfortunately, he seems to have misplaced it.

Certain locations are easy to find. Clément comes to mind, its great height an ever-present landmark, as is the town hall, whose plaza features a statue of the city’s founder. To look at such prominent sights, Oliver often clambers up the nearest fire escape, standing upon the flat roofs of tall office buildings. Oftentimes he’d watch the dim sun set over the mountains of the valley, the orange sky a most beautiful sight to see. It reminds him of something.

“Hey guys, d’you want to hear a story?” The others nod in agreement “Alright, so it was a few months ago. I was out in the city, on a roof, and feeling particularly daredevilish that day. So, being the brave little man that I am, I decided, against all sense or reason, that jumping from one roof to another, and then continuing to do so until something happened, was a thing I ought to do. In reality, I hadn’t considered when or how I’d stop, so you can imagine how that ended.”

Todd and Stephanie are stumped at first, but Steph quickly realizes: “Wait, is that how you broke your legs?” Todd’s eyes light up as he, too, makes the connection.

“Aye, that was that. I fell, of course, shattering my legs into a million pieces as they hit the ground first. In a way, I was lucky; it could’ve ended much worse after all.”

“Ah shit,” Todd snickers, “You had to go to Abby afterwards, right? Oh, why am I even asking, of course you did.”

“Abernathy’s not as bad as you think!” Oliver exclaims in defence of his doctor. “Sure she’s scary, I mean, she can unbolt and then re-bolt all of you in a minute while humming Beethoven, but that’s what makes her great! It’s quick, it’s painless, and quite entertaining too, hearing her rave on and on about your inner workings. Did you know that our code makes use of both digital and analogue processing? Analogue’s faster but less accurate, and digital’s more versatile, yet also more resource intensive. Abernathy taught me that! You’d’ve never known without her.”

Todd and Steph are disturbed.

“Oh, come on now! Don’t look at me like that, it’s interesting!”

“…I am… unsure… of how Abby obtained this knowledge, but I’m afraid that if I ask, the answer would only disturb me more.” Todd’s voice harrows with fear, his unease and distrust of Abernathy’s vital work glaringly obvious. Next to him, Stephanie looks disgusted, equally distrusting of the drone doctor. “She handles dead people, Oliver, and gets giddy every time someone keels over. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole, even if I had no hands to hold that pole.”

Oliver is clearly disappointed. “You guys are so judgemental. Abbs is a treasure, and I stand by that. She’s got more spare finger joints in a box than you have parts in total, both of you combined. If you’re missing something, she’s got a part to replace it.”

“I think you’re missing a modicum of sense,” Stephanie insults lightly, “she’s a psycho!”

“You’ll appreciate her someday. Just mark my words, when you break something, you’ll be happy that- OH MY GOODNESS!” Oliver’s sudden outburst startles the others, his horrified wide eyes affixed on a building to their side. As they follow his gaze, Todd and Stephanie lay their eyes upon a scene of destruction: A great office building, square in its footprint, which stands taller than any other building in the city. In its windowed side is punched a terrible gash, shared in tandem by its neighbouring structure. Where the landing pod clumsily found its unfortunate mark, now is found only air and hanging concrete. “What happened to poor old Clément?” He asks in horror, “And the Verge building right next to it! Gods!”

“Oh, right, forgot to tell you. You remember all that ruckus yesterday? Yeah, that was that.”

“Wait, THAT’S what that bang was? I thought that was just the landing!” Oliver stares in wonder, confusion, amazement and hilarity as he inspects the steel and concrete wound from afar, though soon his expression shifts back to sheer terror as numerous creaks and ominous groans emerge from the scene. “Uh- wait, shit, guys? We better go; I don’t want to be here when that thing collapses.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Todd downplays their situation, along with his friend’s worries.

“A- are you sure? I don’t want to alarm you, but-”

“Yes, Oliver, I’m sure.” He interrupts rudely “Look man, a goddamn spaceship crashed through those two yesterday and nothing happened. Now they’ve just been standing like that for a whole-ass day, and still, nothing.”

“But it’s creaking! Listen to it! It’s going to fall any minute now!”

“Because there’s wind, man. Look dude, I get your concerns and all, but nothing’s gonna happen. Trust me.”

Stephanie joins into the conversation: “Even if they did fall, there wouldn’t be anything to worry about.”

“How so?” ask both in unison, upon which she responds: “Look at how they’re damaged. If they fall, then they’re gonna fall towards another, and since they’re both tall and square to each other, not to mention heavy, I doubt they’d topple over sideways. There’d be a big crash – or “karacho”, as Stan put it – but nothing more.”

For a second, the two nod in agreement; Stephanie is right, and both accept her reasoning as fact. “See? I told you so.” Todd confidently says as he looks at his friend, crossing his arms “Thanks, Steph.” He shoots a smirk and little nod at her. Still, even as Oliver’s concerns are lifted of his shoulders, he can’t help but feel uneasy walking beside the wounded towers; even just looking at them gives him the creeps.

Many minutes pass without much further excitement. The group’s guide, Ollie, is hunched over and lost in thought, yet still navigating perfectly. Stan was right, he does know this city better than anyone, able to travel through it effortlessly barring sight or sound. The broken and snow-laden streets might look the same everywhere to the untrained eye, but Oliver somehow finds little landmarks within them; the burnt wrecks of old cars all rust, yet some display unique and beautiful patterns within their oxidation; windows upon buildings are often broken, their patterns random, though notable exceptions are found all throughout the city. Recognizable repetitions and unintentional pictures dot the broken town.

Although, to get to some places, even he sometimes needs a little help; Oliver mumbles something under his breath, repeating quiet words to himself over and over: “Corner store and colour galore, there be near a rusting door… to the right, by streetlight bent, there, the Nomad went...”

“Hah?” Todd inquires suddenly, startling his friend, who struggles to respond in haste: “Oh! Uhh, I was- uh… repeating a rhyme. It helps me find the Nomad’s alley a bit easier. It’s hidden unusually well, so I try to help myself as best I can.”

“Then why are you mumbling?” Todd asks further in an oddly unfriendly tone “Just say it out loud, I don’t wanna stand here uselessly while you’re lookin’ at… whatever.” Oliver repeats his little rhyme, upon which Todd responds, confused: “What? Corner store, near a door…” he struggles to find adequate words “Wha- wh- who came up with this? W- You? Was it you?”

“No, actually. I got it from the Nomad.”

“Really? The Nomad? Why did-… why the hell would they give you a goddamn limerick?”

Oliver just shrugs.

“…God, what a weirdo.”

“I got it.”, Stephanie deadpans, which causes the others to stop dead in their tracks, their gaze drawn to an inconspicuous little alleyway on their left side. Near it, upon the boring façade of a residential building lies a door, and to its right, a bent streetlamp before the alley’s narrow entrance. On the other side of the street lie two supermarkets, whose colour schemes appear strangely complementary to each other: one is purple and yellow, and its compatriot yellow and purple. It seems like the Nomad’s little rhyme was right after all.

Next to the entrance, a good seven or eight feet to its left, are displayed a set of strange markings upon a blank concrete wall: four parallel lines of different lengths, black and rough at the edges. The three draw near, though Stephanie seems particularly interested as she approaches and inspects the odd shapes much closer than the others. She delicately runs her finger along a jagged line, only to find that it doesn’t rest upon it, but sink deep into it. These are no mere markings, but cuts, tears; lacerations, whose trenches, embedded into solid concrete, are cast in shadow.

However, shadow alone does not explain their abyssal lack of light. Stephanie pokes her fingertips inside, coming to touch a black substance which sticks to them like tar, forming a thick, black drop of liquid which refuses to fall. It’s oil. Used oil, whose consistency is that of jelly, and whose insides shimmer with the ever-presence of metal shavings glistening in the dim sunlight like silver glitter. “Johnny!?”, she shouts, then shrugs upon receiving strange looks, “Worth a try. Here, what do you make of this?, she asks indiscriminately between her friends, though they’ve no answers either.

Todd thinks back for a moment, remembering Stanford’s words clear as day: “Nobody’s heard of him since I sent him off with the Nomad yesterday.” The scratches, he cannot explain. But the oil? Yes, there is only one answer, one conclusion to be drawn from the scene: it’s Johnny’s, his blood splattered on a wall by the human’s home. Without a word, Todd dashes into the alleyway, leaving Oliver and Stephanie with plenty of unanswered questions. “Hey! What’s going on?”, one of them shouts. “I’m saving Johnny!”, he exclaims in return.

The two follow after their friend, eventually finding him tearing at the Nomad’s closed door, shouting intermittently: “Hey, open up! We know you’re in there, hand over Johnny!” The soundscape beyond the door remains silent; he pulls and pulls, at one point even bracing his legs against the frame, though it remains to no avail. The entrance remains steadfast, remains shut, when Oliver finally intervenes: “Wait, wait, let me try.” He instructs both Todd and Steph to step aside, as far away as they possibly can, until they are with their backs against the courtyard’s wall.

Oliver now stands alone before the steel door, its greatness towering before him as he takes on a wide and steady stance. With his feet placed firmly upon the ground, he takes a deep breath, and exhales a quiet shout, which soon grows louder and louder, its volume increasing evermore – impossibly so. He is looked at with wide eyes of wonder as he clenches his hands into a ball to his side, seemingly cradling something as if he were to cast a great and terrible spell upon the world. With a fervorous might, Oliver releases all of his pent-up energy at once, pushing his hands forward and shouting:

“OPEN SESAME!”

Laughter erupts among the group, all three utterly incapacitated. Hunched over, Stephanie clutches her stomach, Oliver braces himself against his legs, and Todd cradles his face in his hands, all of them equally helpless. A solid five minutes pass before Todd manages to clumsily cackle, endearingly: “Get outta here, y’dumbass…” He resumes his vain attempts, once again trying to senselessly rip the door out of its hinges, when Steph finally stops him, moving him aside. Instead of prying at the poor structure with all her might, she pulls the handle down, and pushes it. The door opens. It is a push door.

“Oh…”

The boys both blush in embarrassment, Todd much more so. Although, when the awkwardness dissipates, they notice something about the scene unravelling before them: This is highly unusual; the Nomad always locks their door, even when they’re home. The inside of the garage is dark, the motorcycle and sled both missing. “Huh…”, Todd murmurs, then continues louder, “I’m gonna go check on the Nomad. You guys… I dunno, look for Johnny, I guess.” He tries to follow through with his plan, but Oliver stops him by grabbing his arm and angrily whispering: “Are you crazy? The Nomad’s going to kill you if they wake up and see you up there!”

“Ollie.”, he glowers angrily, “Let. Go. Nothing’s gonna happen, they’re not even here. I’m just gonna check to make sure.”

“But how do you know-”

“I just do. Ollie. I. Just. Do.” A scathing glare burns into Oliver’s eyes “Now let go.”

He releases his grip, Todd’s glare continuing to meet his own for a few moments thereafter. When he arrives at the top of the metal stairs, stood upon the grated loft, he looks toward to Nomad’s simple bedding – empty and abandoned – and sighs: “Well shit, Nomad’s not here.”

“I thought you already knew that?” Stephanie calls out to him. His response, a mix of disappointment and distraught, groans back to her: “I was hoping I was wrong… So what now? No Nomad, no Johnny, what are we gonna do?”

“Well, I guess we just keep looking? We’ve got all day, so let’s just make the most of it.”

Oliver steps in, worried: “Wait, no, we don’t have all day. There’s a storm coming, remember?”

Todd rolls his eyes. Stephanie responds: “Did Stan actually say when it’d come around? I… genuinely don’t remember.”

“No… no, I don’t think so. I don’t quite recall either, but I think he left that part out.”

“Well then, let’s go. Besides, I haven’t seen any clouds all day long. If the storm’s really that bad, it’d have to have been visible by now.”

“Go where?”, he asks, doubtful of her, “This was our only lead. Johnny could be anywhere, so where do you suggest we go next?”

“Well, Stan said he went along with the Nomad, right? Maybe, after he got done, he went to check out that spaceship again? Could be he just didn’t get a good enough look at it the first time around, so he went for another, and ended up staying the night.”

“Okay, yeah, that seems worth a try. What do you say, Todd?”

He only grunts in return. Upon his screen shines a popup, its message harrowing as can be:

Warning.

Oil change necessary. Alert maintenance staff.

A forced shutdown will occur within 14 days.

“Shit…” Oliver is scared for his friend’s wellbeing “It’s best we get going. Come now, let’s find Johnny and get home.” All three solemnly leave the Nomad’s garage in unison, closing the unlocked door behind them. Snowflakes have begun falling as light grey clouds hang above the courtyard; winds howl overtop the flat roofs of great buildings, though they do not reach down here.

The trio walks back down the long, claustrophobic alleyway in single file, its narrowness giving them all anxiety as the offices left and right tower over them. As the open street draws near, the ever-present howling of the wind grows louder and louder, seemingly nearing no end. Oliver is first in line, Todd close behind, both pacing quickly as the alley feels as if it were closing around them. Simply being present here is terribly uncomfortable, the blank concrete walls of the alley stretching so far up – and the ratio to that of its width – gives one the sense that one shouldn’t be here, as if it were forbidden, wrong somehow; it’s no wonder the Nomad chose this place for their home, it wards off unwelcome visitors by its very nature. Unsettled by this strange place, the group rushes to remove itself from it, though their haste is punished.

Oliver sets his first step out into the snowy streets, but his foot is instantly swept away by a powerful gale. Unable to stop his weight from driving him further out, his body follows the same fate, tumbling uncontrollably with the wind. Todd, tired and not paying attention, also falls to the unstoppable torrent of ice and snow, nearly flying as his light mechanical stature cannot possibly stand against the unbridled forces of nature. Oliver grabs hold of a bent streetlight, whose brittle steel bends further still under the gale’s sheer might, and is able to catch Todd’s hand with his own left just in time.

Both drones now dangle helplessly at the mercy of the gale, screaming for help, though their cries are not heard as they are drowned out completely under the mountain of noise flowing violently around them. Metal and polymer feet flutter like flags, loose clothing whips their cold skin, and Oliver begins losing his grip. His fingers undo themselves from the crooked and ice-laden pole one by one – his servos and mechanical muscles unable to counteract the pull of his own un-aerodynamic body, his clothes, his friend. Frail and weak, his systems trying to minimize any and all wear, Todd cannot muster the strength or determination to grip firmly on anything; if letting go were to spell his death, he would not be able to prevent it.

Oliver’s hand finally slips away entirely, leaving both him and Todd at the mercy of the furious and pressing winds pushing them effortlessly along the wrecked road, tumbling uncontrollably, repeatedly hitting the cracked and snowy asphalt with their flailing extremities. Hurt, battered, injured in some places, the two friends helplessly tumble as Stephanie, who still stands at the alley’s mouth, watches on in horror. Countless thoughts rush through her mind on how to help, all considered, thought through, then abandoned entirely quicker than they could be articulated by word. She, like her friends, is entirely helpless, exposed to the true power the world’s unbridled might.

And then, just as suddenly as they began, the winds fall dead silent.

Stillness befalls the city, a deafening lack of noise present throughout. Stephanie runs to help: “Holy shit, are you guys okay?!” Todd lays weak in the snow, Oliver scrambles to regain his composure. As he turns around to halfway-lay on his back, he looks up at the sky, his expression turns to sheer horror, and he screams: “oh FUCK! LOOK!” He snaps his arm upwards, towards a terrible sight.

Above the helpless drones hangs a horrid and never-ending eldritch pattern of undulating grey clouds, below which rages a sheer wall of ice, equally restless and fierce, which stretches so far left and right that it appears as if it reached around the entire world without end. Flying ice suspended in frigid gale; a blizzard so dense that it swallows all light, appearing as if one were to gaze wide-eyedly into the abyssal depths of an ocean – impossibly deep, blacker than black.

Oliver exclaims, his eyes and voice a display of terror, yet also calm certainty: “We’ve got to go! Follow me!” The others follow his instruction – Todd only upon being helped up by Stephanie – as he runs back down the way they came from, seemingly trying to find his way back home as vast quantities of snow and darkness fill the air; their sprint is quickly cast in shadow. They cannot outrun the storm, all of them know this deeply within, although it’s only displayed outright when Oliver dashes into a decrepit, narrow barbershop, snow blowing in through its only two broken windows and open door.

Stephanie explains to Oliver with fear in her voice: “We can’t make it all the way back home; Todd’s in no shape for it.” His response, steadfast in his plan: “Home’s not far away. I got you two into this mess, and I’m going to get you out just as well.”

“Don’t you remember what Stan said? He told us to take shelter!”

“I don’t care about what Stan said! You saw that stormfront, we can’t stay put in here!”

“Look outside, Oliver. It’s fucking dark! We can’t see where we’re going!”

“I don’t need to, Stephanie! I know this city better than I know myself, I could do this shit blindfolded and still be home in ten minutes!”

“Still! I’m not going, and neither is Todd.”

“He can’t stay out here either! Look at your temperature gauges! The storm’s barely started, and it’s already bloody freezing!”

“Then go! Go without us, just try explaining that one to Stan!”

Todd interrupts the shouting match; his energy gathered, yet still frail in his voice: “No! We gotta- we gotta find Johnny!” The others look back at him silently. He continues: “I won’t leave him out here, I can’t. Let’s go to the spaceship!”

Stephanie looks back toward Oliver: “See? We’re going to the landing pod whether you like it or not.” She and Todd leave Oliver alone in the confines of the barbershop. He gruntles and mutters numerous swears under his breath, soon shouting them aloud, before finally giving in to her stern decision. He follows Stephanie’s lead through the storm.

It's dark, so dark that vision alone becomes unreliable; like the twilight of a crescent moon night, their sight is supported by the bright shine of their colourful visors illuminating the snow falling before them. Oliver sprints ahead, heroically guiding his friends through the thick air as he dashes between numerous alleyways and hidden side streets; not home, but rather towards the scene of the landing. He hadn’t been to it yet, but he knew where it laid, and with the knowledge of his friends’ stubbornness, and their refusal to listen to seeming reason, he knows that safely getting them to their chosen shelter is now his top priority.

Minutes go by. The sights of the city and its prominent landmarks lay shrouded behind a black haze, yet Oliver navigates effortlessly despite it all. When they finally get to the park, Ollie shouts: “Where is it!?” “Right over there! Follow me!”, Stephanie shouts back, barely audible under the constant drone of the blizzard. She runs across the plane, unable to see further than ten feet in front of her, until she finally reaches the trench left behind by the crash. Following this rut of churned dirt and rock, the group finally catches sight of the motionless capsule which lay sunken into a mound of disturbed earth.

Darkness reigns within the confines of the landing craft, though silence is scarcely found; the terrible icy gale whips past the doorless doorway – yet does not enter through it – unrelenting as the group finds shelter from it. Howling reverberates within the capsule of scorched steel, its walls acting like a bell, within which the three are helplessly trapped. Great, billowing winds draw streaks of ice and erosion throughout the city; forces beyond recognition reign just beyond the threshold to the outside. Should they venture out now, without a plan, it would surely spell a death sentence.

“Shit!”, yells Todd, followed by a panicked “Where is he?”

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t set us up for this!”, exclaims Oliver in response as he steps backwards.

Todd looks toward Stephanie, searching for guidance: “Steph?”

“What do you want me to do?”, she ejects, shifting responsibility away from her.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe tell us what your goddamn plan was?”, Todd scorns at her, livid at their situation, his tiredness overwritten by a wave of anger.

“Plan? My plan was to get us out of the storm! This was all I got!”

“Oh, wow, bravo you fuckin’ idiot! Think of something worth your processors next time!” Oliver and Steph are shocked at the sudden outburst, his rage an unfamiliar sight. “What now, huh? Stay here for god knows how long while Johnny’s out there, freezin’ his ass off?”

“I-”

“No! No. Shut the fuck up, I don’t wanna hear it!”

Oliver notices something on his display: “Uh, guys?” Todd doesn’t take notice as he continues berating Stephanie: “We should’a never listened to you. We could’a been home by now! You got that? Home! Instead of bein’ out here in a fuckin’ blizzard!” “Todd!”, Oliver yells at him, again trying to interject, but still is ignored as Todd’s arms flail like a madman’s: “You’ve never had a single goddamn good idea in your shitty little life, have you? Useless! You should’a been scrapped-” “TODD!”, Oliver screams, which at last catches his attention. Moments later, a grim and oppressive warning appears blinking blue upon all of their displays at once:

WARNING.

EXTREME TEMPERATURE LOSS.

SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

Todd again erupts at Stephanie: “Oh, that’s just fuckin’ great! Now we’re gonna freeze! You got anything to say for yourself? Huh?” She remains silent. “Nothing? Nothing. Fuckin’ nothing, that’s great. If you got nothing, then I’m gonna give you something! Get this fuckin’ thing running, or so help me!”

Oliver lashes out at Todd as Stephanie stands frozen in the corner, shrunken into herself: “What do you want her to do? This thing’s a wreck, just look at it! There’s dents in the walls, slashed wiring anywhere – still sparking! – and every screen is smashed to bits! We aren’t magical, Todd!”

“Then try something!”, he responds angrily, “This thing’s a spaceship, and space if fuckin’ cold, so there’s gotta be a heater in here! Turn a key, press some buttons, it doesn’t fuckin’ matter, just do something.” Stephanie does not follow his command, instead remaining as she stands, in shock. “MOVE goddamn it! Fix your mistake! Or I’m gonna have to beat your ass-” A firm punch impacts Todd’s face, cracking his visor and throwing him to the ground.

Oliver now towers above the wretched shape, pathetically wincing as he cradles his face in his hands. “The HELL is your major malfunction, y’moron!? What’s the big idea, scream at Stephanie until we all freeze to death? We have to get out of here, or we are going to die! Y’hear me? DIE!” Todd’s eyes hollow as he stares in fear, his face in pain. “I know a spot. It’s quite far, but it’s all we’ve got. Now follow me, and not another bloody word!”

The imposing drone beckons Stephanie to snap out of her trance and lends Todd a hand in getting up. He braces himself as he steps out into the howling storm, the environment pitch-black as if the sun had disappeared entirely.  With only his sense and instinct to guide him, as well as the helpless illumination brought on by the strongest light his visor can provide, he valiantly leads the group out into the fearsome storm; sprinting through dark streets and winding alleyways, dodging through abandoned buildings and around corners, taking no brakes whatsoever as the temperature continues to plummet.

Their joints and bearings all become tougher to move, the oil and grease found inside rapidly thickening due to the sheer cold. Ice begins forming beautiful yet dreadful crystal flowers upon their displays, growing out from microscopic dots into vast repeating fractal patterns, six-fold and self-similar. Todd cannot move his fingers, his old blood thick and lazy; if he had skin, it, like his oil, would blacken from frostbite and fall away as nothing but dead tissue.

The trio searches and searches, – two of them unsure exactly what for – but Oliver’s movements seem certain, measured, so the other’s follow suit without question or doubt, keeping hot on his trail, though just barely. Snow falls in such vast quantities that their friend’s footprints, that of a light drone, fill in almost immediately, which leads to Todd and Stephanie almost losing track of their guide numerous times. Shouts of orders and directions are drowned out outright by the relentless thrum and drone of the vicious winds constantly cutting through the cityscape.

Minutes go by, though these few moments feel like hours, an eternity, when salvation finally appears from the abyssal mist: a decrepit school building, its glass double doors swung wide open, snow blown inside. Oliver dashes into the corridor, followed shortly thereafter by his friends who work together to shovel out the loose white mass blocking the doors. When enough has been excavated, the trio slams them shut, muting the gale.

“Come on!”, Oliver instructs, continuing to run down the dark hallway. At the end of it, he opens a door and dashes inside, quickly crouching next to a cast iron box and lighting a faint fire within it. It’s a little woodstove, though no real firewood is to be found nearby. “Come, help me with this.”, he says as he begins tearing the wooden furniture of the room apart, which the others imitate until no chair nor cheap office shelf is left untouched. A layer of mismatched splinters soon lays on the floor, which Oliver scoops up and chucks into the furnace, turning the meagre spark into a roaring blaze in due time.

All three huddle closely around the rapidly warming iron box, blissfully watching as their temperature gauges first slow their descent, then plateau, and then begin to rise anew until their sensors and code are satisfied, replacing the grim warning with an air of blessed warmth and wind-still salvation. At last, they are safe; Todd, Oliver, and Stephanie all sit in a small half-circle around the stove, both comfortably and awkwardly close to one another, none of them exchanging words. Steph sits quietly; her sunken gaze affixed on the hypnotic blaze as Todd looks away in shame. He doesn’t know what had gotten into him, why he’d shouted so hatefully at his friend. What is done is done: remorse cannot change the past, but it can change the future.

He hesitates, but soon sheepishly vocalizes a frail apology: “Steph, I’m… sorry for shouting at you. I don’t know what happened back there I just… wasn’t myself.” Stephanie gives no response, in fact, she doesn’t move at all; neither her mouth, nor her eyes or eyebrows show as much as a twitch; she simply continues her empty stare, motionless and unreactive. Oliver lays his arm around her, gently embracing and thus soothing his friend as she remains in her Todd-induced state. He throws a glare towards the aggressor, upon which Todd shrinks into himself in shame. His apology had fallen on deaf ears, and rightfully so, for it was both as weak as inadequate to make up for his crimes.

And so, they sit in mutual silence, hours passing by without much notable change. Oliver shifts in his seat, then fuels the fire a handful of times, but nothing beyond just that. Suddenly, he stands up and instructs Todd to follow him: “The fire is dying, and we’re out of fuel. Come along now, let’s get some more.” He follows his command, arising from his crouch and leaving Stephanie to rest alone in the warmth of the former principal’s office. The two of them traverse a dark and cold hallway, soon turning to the right into another, though this one features eight identical doors – four on the left, the others to the right. They enter the first on their left, an empty classroom, and begin breaking down the furniture into crude chunks and slabs of icy wood.

As they work, Todd asks: “Why didn’t she answer me? I apologized, didn’t I? Isn’t that worth anything?” Oliver doesn’t answer. “Oh come on, don’t be like that. What am I supposed to do, shine her boots?” Oliver’s face grows visibly angry as he tries to shut the conversation down: “Todd. Don’t.”

“But I-” Oliver pulls Todd aside, holding him by his collar as he hisses: “You can be a right cunt sometimes, you know that, right?” He tries to intervene, to defend himself, but Ollie won’t have it. “No. Shut it. I don’t want to hear it. Tell that to Stephanie, but not to me.”

“But she won’t answer me! I tried, you saw it!” Todd blurts out, but Oliver is unimpressed. “Then wait, y’knobhead! Look at her, she’s not said a word since you berated her! She needs time to process your bullshit. Give that to her, and then try and apologize. Whether or not she accepts that is up in the bloody stars.” He lets go of Todd’s collar. “Now, let’s finish up and get back, it’s cold out here.”

Working together, the two drones smash all of the school’s old furniture into splintery bits and start carrying them in bunches back to the little office, storing them outside for the time being. They take turns, walking by each other about a dozen times before Oliver takes his last trip. Without saying anything to Todd, he heads inside and warms himself by the fire, though Todd leaves his companions waiting for an unusually long time. Upon noticing this unexpected test of patience, Oliver goes to check up on him. He eventually finds Todd standing quietly beside the wall of great windows that line the far side of the newly emptied classroom.

“It’s so… dark…” he whispers, more so to himself than anyone else, looking outwards into the black miasma of the raging storm. He looks back at Oliver. “It’s… it’s never been this dark, right? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know… I’ve been out in storms before, but this one feels different, more… well, I don’t even know how to put it. It just doesn’t feel right. It’s too fast, too fierce, it’s colder than it’s ever been; if it weren’t a storm, I’d consider it rabid. Just look at it. It’s black outside. It shouldn’t be black, but it is.”

Todd is silent for a moment, contemplating whether or not he should say aloud what he thinks, though he soon gathers his resolve and suggests: “Do you think that, maybe, this has something to do with the spaceship?”

“Why would it? It’s just a wreck.”

“I dunno, it’s just… so close together, I guess…. Never mind, stupid idea anyway…”

 “No, no, not at all. I see what you mean, but still, I don’t think so.”

Todd is again lost in contemplation, his thoughts helplessly affixed on the anomalous spaceship – so much so that he cannot for even a moment think of anything else. Its origin perplexes him greatly; where could such a relatively pristine landing craft have come from? And, perhaps more importantly, why was it empty? He inquires once more: “Where do you think it came from?” Oliver is confused at the question, Todd elaborates: “The spaceship. I mean, I just kind of appeared out of nowhere, without a tangible pilot to boot. Where’d you think it came from?”

“I don’t know, maybe it was in orbit all this time?”

“Can something be in orbit for that long?”

“Oh, I don’t know, you’d have to ask Catherine for that. She’s the space-y type, not me. I’m just throwing stuff at the wall.”

“I did, actually.”

“Wait, really? What’d she say?”

“Oh, no, not about that. I meant I talked to her in general after the landing.”

“…And?”

“Wait, shit, did I forget to tell you about this?” Oliver doesn’t respond, instead darting his eyes around in confusion “Oh damn. Alright, so it turns out Cath was the one who actually discovered the landing first. She was only a block away when it crashed, and when she ran to check, it was already empty.”

“… So there really was no pilot?”

“Hold on, I’m not done yet. You see, she told me she actually went inside of it before telling anyone. She, of course, found no pilot whatsoever, but the power was still on, which means there was light. She said she saw weird lines and black smears lining the walls all over the inside.”

“Like the ones by the alley?”

“I’m thinkin’.”

“But how? The inside’s made of steel, what could ever scratch it? And the concrete? None of this makes sense.”

“I don’t know, maybe they put an animal in the pod? As a test, to see if a landing’s even possible.”

Oliver doesn’t buy it. The scratches itch for an explanation, sure, but an animal won’t do. No organic claws could cut concrete or steel, yet no other possibilities present themselves. He tries to deny it, to come up with some other explanation: A human? No, even with claws, no human could cut such materials on their own, neither could a drone, though not a question of strength – that, they have plenty of – but due to their rounded plastic fingertips; they’d degrade before the concrete or steel would ever show wear. Yes, although it defies all sense and reason, an animal is the only thing which could explain its own sudden disappearance and the scratches in the walls, along with Johnny’s whereabouts, or lack thereof. He forms a ridiculous thought, one so absurd he ought to just keep it to himself, but reckons its best to get it out there; to get it off his shoulders, so he says to Todd: “Do you think it… ate… Johnny?”

Todd’s eyes sink, his eyebrows droop, and he exhales a worried sigh: “God, I hope not… He’s my friend, of course that’s a big part of it, but if I’m being honest, this whole shebang’s been more about myself. I need that oil, Oliver, else I’m gonna shut down.” He pauses, exhales another sigh, then looks into Oliver’s eyes “I’m afraid, Ollie. Afraid of everything; my future, that of the colony, and now for Johnny’s too. If he’s still alive, then he’s out there in that awful storm, alone. I Just wanna run out to find him, but I wouldn’t even make it ten feet without getting lost. Not that that matters…”

“Hey,” Oliver intervenes, wrapping his arm around Todd’s shoulder, “don’t say that. Once the Storm’s passed, you go and head home to rest, and we’ll keep a lookout for Johnny. If we find him, and if Stanford’s too stubborn to give you your oil, then I’ll give you mine. I can make it a few more weeks, you’re more important than me.”

A warm smile draws across Todd’s face; his friend’s genuine worry and care comes most unexpected after what he’d said barely half an hour ago. “Sorry for, y’know… everything. For what I said, I… I’m not doing okay right now.”, he softly apologizes.

“It’s okay. I know, and I don’t hold it against you; no bad feelings between us. Just be sure to apologize to Stephanie when she’s ready.”, he reassures, almost forgetting something, “Oh, and, sorry for punching you back there.”

“No, not at all! Don’t worry man, I would’a punched me too if I were you.”

“But you really ought to get that crack checked out.”

“I’m not. Going. To Abby.”

With that, the consolidated friends finish up their work in the classroom and head back to the warm office. Hours pass, then days, spent mostly in sleep mode while waking occasionally to fuel the fire, and to keep a check on the outside. After a few days, the group – all three this time – once more venture out to gather their impromptu firewood, tearing down yet another classroom’s useless furniture; children used to sit here, they haven’t in a long, long time.

Yet more days pass, time feels strange as it is fleeting both agonizingly slowly and incredibly fast. There is little change except for the shrinking splinter pile and accumulating snow outside. Conversations happen, though little is gained from them; nothing new is to be said of their situation. The blizzard rages evermore, the winds howl as they always do, and the little life-sustaining blaze burning before them, confined to its tiny iron prison, dances and twists as their own little personal entertainment system. It’s hypnotizing, comforting to an unimaginable degree as they remain trapped within the overbearing storm.

And then, some days after the storm’s beginning: a lighting in the blizzard; just a little warmer than before, just a little brighter than it was. They decide, against Oliver’s better judgement, to go out while this chance presents itself; to go home at last. Stanford’s ought to be worried sick by now, it’s better to lift his worries off of his shoulders, they reckon. Yet they cannot; the front door is frozen shut. No matter how hard they push, the three of them – their lightweight drone bodies – can’t hope to break the thick layer of frost keeping the double doors shut tight. There is pushing and pulling, there is punching and lots of swearing, but nothing changes. A different approach is needed, one more destructive, but not here, not through this way.

The group enters one of the recently emptied classrooms, not for any reason other than the convenience of it, and approach the wall of windows present on one side. Todd takes the initiative: he grabs one of the steel bits left over from the plundered furniture and bashes it against the frosty pane, shattering it into a cloud of countless glass pieces which fall indiscriminately into both the building and the snow outside. Mounds of white brace themselves against every building; the air is yet thick with not an abyssal black, but a dull grey instead; calm, almost serene, yet dangerous nonetheless. Nature is not yet satiated. It is not done.

Wind howls evermore, cuts through the city and the valley cradling it in a trough of ice, whipping the ones wandering within it who hide away from its reckless ferocity. Seemingly unending, the storm goes on without care for the ones it shuts in. The group is lost in a mix of white and grey: ground, sky, building and thought all in a stir. Roads and tight side streets look the same everywhere; even Oliver finds difficultly in navigation. He could do this by sense and instinct alone, yet somehow he is blinded by the meagre aid of sight the storm allows him. Lost, they are. Lost in the grey.

Something is hidden away within the mist. The air, dull and boring, takes on an odd, intermittent red hue. Faint and almost imperceptible, the colour grows in magnitude until it becomes undeniable. “Is- is it just me, or?” Todd carefully inquires. “No, I see it too.” Answers Stephanie. They press on, the thought of home keeping them going throughout the strangeness present in the air.

Then, the air thins. Snow yet falls, though it no longer chokes the atmosphere with dainty flakes of ice. Fleeting evermore in a kind of dome, the blizzard almost turns into a fog, neither reducing nor increasing the poor visibility the group is subject to. Their temperature gauges begin to rise from their previous barrel-scraping despair, almost making the outside feel bearable, comfortable to a degree.

A shape takes form in the warm fog; bipedal, thin and hunched over, shadowy yet illuminated in red – blinking, distressing. There is writing present upon its faceless face; text undiscernible, yet not needed to be, as its message displayed is stunningly clear: danger, immediate and in discriminant.

This is a drone. A lone drone stood in the street.

“Johnny?” Oliver calls out into the reddened grey, directed at the odd silhouette “Thank goodness, we thought the worst! How are you? Are you hurt?”

There is no response. The light rapidly flashes on and off, unchanged. Stephanie begins approaching the silent silhouette, carefully trudging her way toward it as she steps not on a layer of snow, but blank, wet asphalt instead. It has melted away in a great circle, in the centre of which stands alone the shape.

Then, suddenly, the light disappears. “Johnny? Johnny, is that you?”, Stephanie furthers Oliver’s call, yet a response remains unsaid. She draws near; the shape seems… wrong: hunched and barely held together in a twisted stance – painful looking, uncomfortable. There is distress in the air, one each of them can feel in their own unique way, yet none pronounce theirs explicitly. Light does not shine, yet the thing in the mist appears highlighted against the background of grey homogenous fog.

It’s wrong. Wrong to look at, to directly observe as their sensors struggle to adjust to its presence. Yes, this is a presence, and less of a thing to be seen directly. Feel it, bathe in it, for there is nought time to savour it.

A new light takes form in the presence’s blank visage: yellow, sickening, unnatural, its form unmistakeable.

The shape of an X pierces the mist.

Chapter Text

Ten days.

Ten days after the storm began, ten days after the accident. For ten days the Nomad has stayed within this decrepit warehouse, sitting, waiting, biding their time with hunger and the pounding pain of their leg-wound to serve as their only form of company. An agonizing nigh-dozen days of frost and cold, of sitting beside a fire, shivering just as violently as the brilliant blaze itself. They’re out of provisions, having opened their last can of food just yesterday. They’d rationed, of course, but nothing could have prepared them for a blizzard of this magnitude.

The fire was their saviour, their only lifeline as they laid smothered beneath a frozen blanket – a world of anger and darkness which so desperately wanted them dead. They were forced to grow the flame from a little warming blaze into a raging bonfire during the coldest hours, when even then they still shook as they laid right beside it, almost singing their wool clothing. A pile of dead ash lies not far away, hastily shovelled out of the dancing heat to make room for yet more fuel, collected over the course of days of a never-ending repeating slog of fuelling and shovelling; of gathering the frost-laden wood not far away; a task so dreadful they once dared not to do it, almost letting their wavering lifeline go out altogether. Mere minutes away from the heat felt enough to kill them, the sheer frost determined to seep through their thick layers and into their creaking bones, ready to take them were their concentration and will to falter even once, even briefly.

Yet, throughout the cold, they have survived. A single-minded will to endure – to get this right, to get home – preserved their life in spite of the massive forces of nature conspiring against them. Wind pierced through little meagre cracks in the walls ever-present, frost grew upon the frosted panes of glass reinforced with steel. Cold and hunger, hate – not only of their own, but of the world crashing down around them like the cataclysm from years past – and determination.

But now, ten days of suffering later, the blizzard has fallen silent, and the sun shines once more through the great warehouse windows. The Nomad sits beside a quickly deteriorating flame, their aching leg inched close to the heat. It has seen better days – their leg, tried as they have, has nevertheless gotten infected below its layers of bandaging. They cannot see its sick, reddish discolouration, yet their mind needs not to, for they can feel a dreadful warmth emanating from the torn flesh below; their open skin festers, oozes sickly pus, pounds beneath the stained white fabric.

It needs treatment, desperately so – should they get a case of blood poisoning, they may not live to see next week – but they cannot do it here. The wound is too great, and their expertise too little. What the Nomad needs is a doctor: a drone versed in human anatomy – one they have visited numerous times throughout the years, yet whose services come at a cost. Treatment without payment would leave them in stark debt to the drones – a thing they ought to avoid, mostly out of pride. So, before they can even think of going home, they ought to get that damned barrel of oil down from the rafters, and the plan they wanted to execute more than a week ago is still on the table.

With nothing to do but to take action, the Nomad rises from their resting place, painfully placing weight on their pounding leg as they clumsily limp towards the door they entered through. The motorcycle stands near, silently resting on its side stand, still in the same position they left it in all those days ago. They try to open the entrance, but nothing they do even budges it. They push and pull, swearing and cursing as they apply all their might, yet they cannot get even the littlest creak out of the object. It is undeniable: the door is frozen shut. The Nomad mumbles angrily: “Alright then… fuck you too, I guess… Now where’s my… crowbar… oh, right…”

This isn’t their first encounter with an obstacle such as this; usually their crowbar ought to make quick work of it. Unfortunately, they have no such thing at hand; neither within the looted warehouse, nor atop their sled – it remains lost.

But another solution forms within their mind: if they get their acetylene gear from the sled, they can heat the door and melt the ice, and if that doesn’t work, they can cut it away entirely. And since their only other objective at the moment – that of freeing the forklift from its entrapment – also requires the acetylene, they decide to leave the door alone for now and gather their gear. The sled still rests on the other side of that cursed chasm, the one which almost took their life. Getting it across is a task they dread, yet one they cannot avoid. With that knowledge, they reluctantly head for a different, unintended exit.

Limping awkwardly, the Nomad heads for the desolate secretary office in which they treated their leg. There aren’t any exit doors in there, nor are there any outside of the frozen one currently impassable and the defunct shutter gates – a terrible fire hazard, they’re sure off it. But they intend not to find one either way – surely it, too, would stand frozen stiff. No, they ought to go a more destructive route: the great windows which line the wall behind the desk, they themselves also lined with a layer of frost, appear fragile enough to break with what they have at their disposal.

Within the Nomad’s always-carried satchel is contained a most unassuming tool: a glass breaker, taken from a burned-out bus’s wreck long ago, whose services, while not often taken use of, are vital when needed. This is one of those times: the Nomad takes it out and raises it far above their head, soon smashing its hardened metal tip into the ice-laden window before them; it explodes outwards, the brittle glass shattering into a cloud of countless transparent shards which land in the snow outside and on the wooden flooring before them. A snow dune reaches slightly above the windowsill, tumbling into the office as a light dusting of loose ice. It had not reached to this height mere days ago; a lingering effect of the storm, though its other sparks of evidence remain missing: the sky is blue and cloudless, and the sun shines blissfully bright upon their masked face.

The world is beautiful yet desolate: streaks of evident wind remain as trenches cut through the whipped forest landscape beyond the road reaching up the rest of the mountain; icicles jot out horizontally from dead wood and broken branches, from dented road railings and sun-bleached street signs pointing toward defunct destinations alike. What tempest had to rage here to cause such devastation? What billowing gales had ripped through these mighty trees with such ease, splintering wood and toppling deep-rooted trunks as if they were but twigs? Yes, this is a display of anger, of madness and confusion; something is wrong, the wake of the storm tells of it, screams of it. A visual sound silent yet deafening; no wind blows, yet evidence of it is unavoidable. The world is cruel and frozen, evidently in as much pain as the Nomad themselves, and they alone remain as its only unwilling inhabitant.

Yet, they must venture into it. If they wish to go home, or contact humanity at the very least, then go on they must. Taking care not to cut themselves on the sharp glass still suspended in its frame, the Nomad steps out into the thigh-high snow dune, sinking into it with their healthy leg first. When they hit the solid ground beneath the white blanket, they repeat the process with the other. Now stood outside, they begin awkwardly carving a deep trench through the snow, leaving in their wake a clear, unobstructed path. They slowly trudge their way toward the road from whence they came, though this time, their sight is clear. Vast masses of loose powdery ice lay fresh on top of old hard snow, whose presence has decorated this ravine for more than a decade without melting. Simply traversing the landscape is a task of its own, the snow fighting them for every meagre step they take, though this doesn’t bother the Nomad too much: they’re just happy to be outside again. Days of being inside, of the sun being shut out completely by the elements raging above have left them desperate for but a single ray of light, and now they bathe fully in it.

Although, as they trudge, one discrepancy remains to ponder: breathing is more difficult than it ought to be, even though they’d only just installed a new filter. Perhaps a bonfire inside a building wasn’t the best idea respiratory-wise, but had they not constructed one, then they’re not sure they’d now be drawing breath at all. It’s a shame, though; they’d hoped this filter would last them a month or two. Now they ought to replace it again, on top of the other, already clogged one. Just another item on the shopping list; the Nomad wonders whether or not the barrel will actually pay for it all – the wound, the supplies, the information on Ellie’s whereabouts, all of it is quickly accumulating to a price they’re unsure they can match. Treatment is expensive, so much so that it overshadows the rest of their shopping on its own, so perhaps some groceries must be left for another day. Their supply of food should last them a little while longer, and while they can always trade some scrap if the need arises, doing so can only get them so far. 

Everything hinges on that barrel. They must get it home at all costs, no matter the difficulty or danger in their task. But right now, that task is on hold, for their only method of getting it down is on the other side of that chasm. They haven’t measured it, but their gut tells them that the bridge and sled are about a mile or so away from there they are now, upon the slightly less snowy road. It seems the adjacent forest acted as a sort of shield against some of the masses, though apparently also terribly so: the dunes now no longer reach the middle of their thighs, but just above the knees. An improvement, and they’re happy for it, but it could’ve been a little better were they concerned.

These masses of snow are unlike any they’ve ever seen; they’ve had severe blizzards before, had survived freezing storms away from home, but never had it gotten this cold, never had it gotten as dark, and never had so much snow fallen at once. They chock it up to the storm’s duration, though the other effects, they cannot explain; its sudden onset and severe winds puzzle them, though their bewilderment is starkly ignored by the wind-whipped landscape. To their left lies a devastated forest, whose pattern of frost-laden trunks and barren branches is at times broken up by snowy still-needle-bearing pine-like trees. Fallen trunks are numerous, laying both within the forest and upon the road, half-buried in snow; the Nomad almost trips over them numerous times, though as they haphazardly traverse them, a worry brews inside their mind.

They hope that the bridge survived the storm intact; it wasn’t secured to the ground itself, only staying in place via its inherent weight. That, and the number of broken trees lying about is giving them anxiety: one could’ve easily fallen atop it, and its brittle wood would’ve had little chance to stand against it. But then again, if the bridge survived, the brittleness of the material may just serve to their advantage. That damned branch still jots out proud from where it blocked the sled, though removing it shouldn’t be an issue.

The axe still rests safely within their duffel bag upon the sled. Had they only used it during the crossing, then perhaps they wouldn’t be here, trekking back to the bridge all alone. Perhaps they’d already be on their way back home, barrel of oil in tow. They’d have to leave the gear they brought behind for the time being, for the barrel alone takes up all the space they have available, but it’d matter little. After all, they can always return here and gather their stuff if need be.

But these possibilities must wait, for the sled isn’t here. For now, the Nomad simply wanders the road and gazes out into the open ravine to their right. A stunning scenery decorates their sight; were it not this cold, and had they different worries, they’d stop to ponder it. Sheer rock cliff faces taper down into the depths of the narrow valley, the occasional plateau giving rise to one or two trees. Paths through the stone, carved by little, long-dry streams of water over centuries coalesce into a frozen riverbed. The Valleygarde was its name, back when it still held water instead of ice, and when it flowed into the same river which cut through Newer Lincolnshire all those years ago. This river, in turn, soon drained into the Persephean ocean – one wouldn’t think it, but the valley the Nomad lives in isn’t far from its shores. One day – they’ve had this thought many a times before – they may just gather their things and drive across it, venturing out into the vast icy plane without knowledge on where they’d end up. It’s a grim thought, for it’d surely spell their death, but if times get desperate and their plan goes up in smoke, it may just be a fitting end to a life led in the snow.

Suddenly, something swells up in the Nomad: an uncomfortable pressure begging for release nags at the inner walls of their nostrils. As the sun shines upon their face, the sensation gets worse and worse, until...

“ACHOO!AUGHchrist what the hell?...”

They let out a mighty sneeze. The thunderous sound echoes throughout the narrow valley, bouncing off of the smooth sides repeatedly until finally dissipating into thin air. This place acts like an amplifier; like the horn of a mighty trumpet, any and all sound billows as a titanic tune into the mountainous landscape, and undoubtedly the rest of the wide valley as well.

Although, their sneeze also released something other than just sound, something powerful, something merciless, something cold. A deep rumble shakes the earth upon which they stand – dread seeps in. This feeling is a familiar one: not the shake of an earthquake, but the earth-moving torrent of a barrelling avalanche headed straight towards them. There is not time to ponder, no time to confirm their screaming instincts; the Nomad sprints through the masses of snow as best they can, toward a thick and barren tree trunk stood at the edge of the forest. The clock ticks as the avalanche rages down the side of the mountain, starting far above the forest’s limits, then crashing through it as if it weren’t there at all.

At last, with mere moments to spare, the Nomad hides away behind their barely-safe cover as the violent masses of snow roar past them; a wave of cold death rolls on by without mercy –the human unnoticed as it rages on both sides, cradled in a pocket of terror. Their masked face is choked by miniscule ice-dust and their goggles are pelted by powdery snow as they stand deafened by an overbearing nature-scream erupting omnipotently from everywhere all at once.

Seconds of unbridled terror later, the avalanche passes, continuing down the depths of the ravine as it lands among more of itself, blending into the crevasse as if had been there all along. When the last of the loose ice has met its ultimate fate, the valley falls silent again. The Nomad’s heart pounds against their ribcage relentlessly – another violent death narrowly avoided. “This place is a goddamn death trap.”, they whisper nervously, shaking in their boots as they try to make as little noise as possible, “I gotta get off this fuckin’ mountain…” The only thing keeping them here is their sled, or lack thereof. If only it didn’t get stuck on that little nub of a branch, they’d already be on their way back home, oil barrel in tow.

They’d have to take their time in any case, for these masses of snow cannot be easily driven over, at least not the way their bike is now, and definitely not with the added mass of the barrel. A few years ago, the Nomad had to make a long journey across the rolling plains up north, beyond the mountains. Up there, only snow is found, often for miles upon miles unbroken: farmland from before the cataclysm, though now instead of growing corn or wheat, it cultivates only ice and silence. There are cities and little towns found within, of course, but these are separated by stretches of boundless white. For days, they travelled across the plane, slowly trudging through vast swaths of the white landscape, leaving in their wake torn snow and two parallel lines; the sled was in tow. A slog at a snail’s pace: the main reason they hadn’t ever travelled far from the valley’s bounds before, and since then, for it only wasted fuel and their wavering sanity. Had they gone on foot, they’d surely have travelled at the same speed, but the thing they needed to get for the drones – for that was the reason they were up there in the first place: a debt now come to pay – was a heavy diesel generator. Apparently they’d had some trouble with their in-house geothermal powerplant, and needed a separate power source to kickstart it. The reason didn’t – and doesn’t – interest them much, for they had concentrate on the task at hand: the generator’s retrieval.

The bike was a necessity, yet also a weight on their aching back. When they finally got to their destination – a city whose name escapes them – exhausted, they decided that they could never make this mistake again: driving across such distances, under such terrible conditions. Their normal knobby tyres would no longer do, even though they’d served the Nomad valiantly for years. For days, they stayed in that city, trying to come up with some way to ease their travels. Their first idea was to drive to the nearest mountain range, and follow its winding roads back to their familiar valley. But neither had they ever been upon these, nor did they know of their condition. The road to the warehouse it pothole-ridden and thoroughly decrepit, who knows how the other, less travelled options fared against the cataclysm?

The second, while unlikely, didn’t seem impossible from the get-go. Across those plains once cut a set of rail tracks which led directly into Newer Lincolnshire; the old train station still harbours a passenger train to this day, its doors still open, its confines filled with countless skeletons. But once they inspected the rails, this hope faded too: the steel was twisted and bent beyond repair, so much so that part of it stuck out of the snow. It seemed that the earthquakes tore through them with ease. Taking a defunct train wouldn’t be an option, either.

So, their gaze at last turned back to their motorcycle, its inadequacies starkly clear: their tyres struggled to find grip in the loose, powdery snow; the rubber knobs and undulations upon them were made for mud and gravel, not ice. Inspiration struck as their thoughts drifted to gear they’d seen many years ago, before the cataclysm: dune tyres, which featured shovel-like structures that dug deep into the loose sand they once drove upon. Finding a set of these was impossible, not only because the nearest desert is found beyond the ocean, but because ones made specifically for a motorcycle were likely never made.

But this did not stop them. The Nomad is crafty, they always have been, so they spent a few days coming up with a solution. In the end, they screwed on some thin steel bands around the profile of their tyres, making sure they weren’t too big to interfere with the frame. On the front tyre, since this one is unpowered, they did not bother with a wheel at all, instead substituting it with a ski.

And it worked, brilliantly so.

The bike pulled its own and the generator’s weight across the desolate plains with ease, propelling the Nomad back home in a matter of hours – a vast improvement from before. When they finally arrived to deliver their treasure – to trade it for food and fuel, and to make equal their debt – they demanded a new set of tyres. Of course, the drones were reluctant – this hadn’t been in the promise, after all – but they eventually relented.

The Nomad still possesses that set of what they called their Dune-rider gear, hidden away somewhere in their garage-home. They hope to use it again one day, though it’s only really useful on wide, open, snow-covered areas, not asphalt roads. The metal paddles clang terribly against the hard ground, possibly destroying them in the process. It’s a vain hope, using them again, but one just realistic enough to keep the ski and tyre around.

The chasm now lies in faint view, though something is amiss. As the Nomad draws near, they are shocked cold by what they see: The chasm, whose abyss they crossed ten days ago, leaving their sled and gear behind, is now lacking a bridge. It’s gone, disappeared, where there once was a crossing of bound frost-laden logs is now an imprint of where it should be. Beyond the impassible depths they see only uniform snow, and a slightly raised mound of where their sled should be, buried.

“Oh no… no no no no no, no! Shit!”, the Nomad exclaims in bewilderment and shock, stood at the edge of the chasm, “How did-, Where did-… argh fuck!”, they shout, kicking a rock into the chasm. They cradle the side of their face with one hand, soon covering it with both, stumbling back weakly. Like hearing their own sentence of death, like accepting their desolation upon this cold, harsh mountain ravine, the Nomad collapses to their knees, their gaze helplessly fixated on the other side of the abyss – as unreachable as the vast reaches of space and beyond.

The sled is here, some dozens of feet away, yet completely impossible to reach – even if they did, even if the Nomad somehow crawled through the steep forested terrain to their left, even if they somehow got to their tooling and previously acquired gear collected over the course of months, years, then it would, in all of its buried-beneath-snow brilliance, be perfectly useless, for they could get neither the sled or bike across. They would be stuck there, motorcycle-less and sled-possessing, just as they currently sit in the snow, sled-less and bike-possessing – both equally desolate, yet the former feels somehow worse. Walking home wouldn’t be impossible, no, it’d be doable in a day or two at most, yet then a continuous existence without their only form of transport – ship-of-theseus-ly modified and repaired over the course of more than a decade – would spell their certain doom. Years long past, they could manage without, but scrap and food have gotten scarce; far apart, separated by miles, found in different cities and defunct towns across the valley and the plains beyond.

Yes, without the motorcycle, they would die. But upon these mountains of ice and snow, of desolate and broken roads, they find neither food nor purpose. Should they follow the road further into the mountain ranges, they may never find a way out; this passage is helplessly broken, what of the others? How many other impassable holes and places where bridges once stood decorate the rest of the winding ways of the old peaks?

Trapped between abyssal emptiness and mountainous desolation, left with only their machine and a useless barrel of cold lubricant, the lost human sits at the edge of the chasm, their feet dangling into the cold unloving pit. The sides of the rocky feature taper down into a sharp crux, capturing objects that were unfortunate enough to fall into it, though the bridge remains lost; somewhere deeper in the ravine it must lay, buried beneath a layer of white mass.

As they look down, stewing in their desolation, an odd sight differentiates itself from the rest of the back- and foreground: a set two dark, parallel lines laid bare from the snow upon a ledge not unlike the one they sit upon now. A most familiar sight, one unnatural, manmade: rail tracks, a set they had never seen before. Their eyes narrow as flurry of thoughts and ideas rush through them: how had they never noticed these? Where do they lead? Do they possibly…

No, it can’t be. The Nomad has been to the warehouse a handful of times in the past, and never had they noticed a railyard anywhere near it. It sits right near the edge of the cliff, and upon the area that was constructed around it is found piles upon piles of rusted and frosted shipping crates, stacked four-high. Even if such a railyard were built beyond this area, hidden away by colourful rectangular steel, then a train could never hope to reach it. The tracks must lay one, two hundred feet below the warehouse! Such smooth steel wheels could never find enough grip on slippery rails; they’d slip and slide helplessly, requiring cogs or chains to pull the cargo up the slope. An impossibility, yet the rails remain despite their reasoning. There’s got to be a tunnel, the Nomad thinks, for why else would one go through the effort to construct a railway?

But then, if a tunnel were to exist, and a railway were to run by the warehouse truly, then it’d be a shame to let the opportunity go to waste. After all, shipping crates, and the cargo found within are moved most easily by rail. There’d have to be a crane to move the containers up and down, but that wouldn’t be much of an issue, especially for a company determined – and possibly drugged up enough – to erect a warehouse within a rough and mountainous ravine. It could be hidden away behind the stacks of shipping crates, leading the Nomad to simply not have noticed it all this time.

There is hope yet: if, by some miracle, the Nomad can reach the rail-laden ledge below, motorcycle in tow, then they could make it home – they could reach their sled on the other side of the chasm. They could then turn back and get the oil at a later date, should the method of getting up the great cliff be as easy as getting down. Yes, a possible solution presents itself yet, and they only way of finding its means is… to walk.

So, the Nomad walks back, tracking along the edge of the cliff, flanked by the dented road-railing as they stare down at the other ledge, always on the lookout for any signs of broken steel rails sticking out of the snow. No such signs present themselves; the railway stays hidden under the snow. It could have disappeared entirely, and the Nomad would never know, just like they hadn’t known only minutes ago. But they have to hold out hope; if one path means certain and undeniable desolation by the lack of a crane, and the other is giving up without finding out first, then they’d rather take the former.

The trek back to the warehouse, although just as lengthy and cumbersome, feels much shorter, for now there is something to occupy their mind; could it be? Could it not be? Could they yet have hope, or is it in vain?

Before they know or realize it, the Nomad arrives back at the warehouse’s open area, though now they do not enter the building, but walk past it. To walk in this case means to trudge through and carve a trench into the thigh-high snow uniformly covering the open asphalt: a former lorry parking space. Only five or six could have fit beside one another back then; the warehouse must’ve not carried much cargo via the road. This makes sense, for surely no one, not truckers nor regular motorists alike, wanted to regularly drive along a deadly drop upon a likely-then-also damaged road.

They near the shipping yard, where great crates of hollow metal have laid unmoved for fifteen years, rusting, deteriorating, reinforced at the sides by thick steel girders so that they may stay put, as they are, under the terrible mountain winds and unstoppable earthquakes which haunt the area. Above them once ruled a great portal crane, but the looming machine has seen better days: it lays toppled over upon its underlings, unmoving and silent, forming a kind of gateway the Nomad walks through. The crates are packed so tight that no vehicle could ever fit through them – they traverse nothing more than a thin walkway never meant to be travelled often, or by multiple people at once.

And then, they come upon an open space, within which they find an odd contraption: Two iron girders lay parallel upon steel I-beam pillars, extending equally into the ravine as they reach over the firm ground, upon which sits a carriage on hidden wheels. From this carriage, which stands firmly over the chasm’s depths hang four steel ropes into the ravine below, suspended by steel-rope-wrapped drums each connected to their own motor. This must be the crane, its cargo seemingly still suspended in free air, for the ropes sway back and forth in the slight ravine-wind.

Wonder and amazement take presence in their eyes as a star-like sparkle; the Nomad rushes in glee toward the edge of the cliff, no railing present between the beams, and looks down at a large, snowy area, upon which stands proud a long train right beside the cliff-face. There is a tunnel the rest of the train disappears into, with no way of knowing its true, hidden length. It was true. All this time, all these years, the Nomad has spent unknowing of the treasure now revealed below them: a pristine-looking cargo train, above which still hangs a yellow shipping crate suspended by a gantry wired to the odd crane.

But all of this is useless if there is no way of reaching their salvation. An old, decrepit caged ladder – ice-covered and broken in some places – leads down the side of the smooth, rocky cliff. The Nomad, in their fear-of heights-supported rationality, decides that taking this path would be suicide. Another must exist, and thus their gaze is drawn instead to the cliff-crane looming above. There is a ladder which leads up to a grid-steel walkway that runs along the right girder-rail, all the way up to a door into the crane’s cockpit.

The Nomad ought to check it out; who knows whether or not the crane is stiff functional? So, they climb up the handful of cold steel rungs until they arrive at the creaking catwalk, the wind blowing over it at all times, though it picks up as they make their way across, tightly holding onto the railing on their right. Their vertigo isn’t helped by the fact that they are stood upon a see-through treadplate, the ground below them soon giving way to the depths of the ravine. Their knees shake and their arms weaken as they hold onto the railing for dear life, letting go only briefly to take a meagre step. It takes a while to reach the cabin like this, though thankfully, they needn’t bear this fear for long; the Nomad opens the little door at the back of the crane’s cabin and dashes inside, though relief is scarcely found within. The front and bottom of the cabin are made of nought but thick, frost-laden glass; a full 180-degree vertical view, though its exactitude in shape and form is obscured by the ice – only edgeless, rough blobs of colour are to be seen. After a few moments of adjustment, the Nomad feels sure enough to peer directly downwards, their sight drawn to the yellow rectangular-ish blob swaying gently in the cold breeze: the suspended crate.

“Whew… alright then, let’s see if you still got some juice in you…”, they say to the silent machinery directly. Beside them, upon the contraption’s cushioned seat still rests the crane’s morbid operator – their hollow body is draped in high-visibility clothing. With seemingly no respect for the dead, the Nomad unceremoniously chucks the pristine pile of bones out into the depths. They hit the ground with multiple dull thuds that echo upwards.

They sit down in the newly freed seat, its cheap cushioning oddly comfortable against their bottom and back. Before them is found a pair of unlabelled levers, though little symbols do decorate the black plastic knobs. One depicts a box in its centre, from which point away two arrows horizontally. The other is much the same, though its arrows point vertically instead of side-to-side. They try and move them around, each only moving in their arrow-forbode directions, though they seemingly do nothing at all.

Beside them, to their right and a little in front, they find the large control panel adorned by a myriad of miscellaneous buttons and small number displays, though two buttons catch their eye in particular: white and mostly identical, the round objects are raised slightly off of the off-white panel – a feature shared equally by every other button and display. Like the levers, they depict similar-yet-different black symbols worn away by decades of use, though through the tattered shapes they can discern the originals: each a padlock, one open, one closed. No label tells explicitly of their purpose, but their imagination doesn’t have to reach far to conclude of one; as they look down at the shapeless crate, the Nomad gets a hunch of what they must do.

Next to the button-pair lies what looks to be an ignition, key still stuck within. They turn it, though nothing happens. They turn it again, and this time, a little green button lights up right beside it. It’s like it beckons to be pressed, alight with a harsh glow from within.  So, without knowing its actual purpose, the Nomad obliges. Upon this, they hear the familiar whine of a starter motor struggling to bring to life an engine. It turns the unseen crank a few times, then valiantly succeeds: the cabin’s lights spring to life as a motor whirrs and vibrates contently from somewhere within the structure. Bingo; they giggle in delight as a little “Hell yeah.” escapes them. As the bulb above the human shines flickerlessly, the lights on the control panel appear equally lively; the closed-padlock button glows dimly – nothing happens when they press it, though they dare not press the other now.

Interest arises in the levers again; they grab and move the vertical lever forwards, the sound of struggling hydraulics billows into the ravine, though the crate appears to be getting smaller. “Oop, nope, wrong way, that’s down. You gotta go up… other way it is.”, they mumble as they pull the lever backwards instead. The crate rises from the depths of the cliff slowly, eventually coming to a sudden rest frighteningly close to the glass. Next, they move the other lever to the left; the entire crane carriage moves laterally towards the safety of the storage area, startling them in the process. They don’t know what they expected – they don’t know if they expected anything at all.

When this, too, reaches the extreme, the Nomad lowers the crate until it impacts the ground with a loud clang. Having safely reached the asphalt, the open-padlock button obtains a dim glow – they do not press it. If the crate is both openable and empty, they could get the bike into it and lower the vessel onto the train. Maybe the locomotive is also functional, but even if it isn’t, then it’s still better than being stuck up here.

They leave the engine running, as they expect to be away for a few minutes at most; they reckon there’s still a good deal of diesel in the tank, wherever that is. With nothing else to do here, the Nomad opens the cabin’s door to the pleasant sight of the ladder right in front, which they climb back down.

A great, rusting, and wind-whipped shipping crate looms beside them, resting silently on the ground for the first time in fifteen years. Since the cataclysm killed the crane’s operator, it had hung helplessly exposed to the harsh ice-winds of the ravine. The Nomad almost feels bad for the iron structure, though they feel equally proud of having saved it from its peril. As they walk around its former cliff facing side, they notice the tattered scraps of a long worn away company logo. Only the first two letters, simply “Ne”, and half of an “F” in the middle still remain legible from the scratched and dented face they leisurely pass, without any sort of rush. The storm froze the front door of the warehouse, so they expect the same to have happened with the worn paint and corroded steel of the shipping container.

Without giving it much thought or effort, they grab the handle of the locking mechanism and turn it – it moves effortlessly, the Nomad is surprised. They grab the handles of the doors and pull; miraculously, it opens without effort. “What in the goddamn?”, they exclaim in bewilderment. A little plaque is riveted to the inside of one of the doors, who’s writing the Nomad reads in a mumble: “Neva-Frost, Ice-b-gone technology… Asbest- ASBESTOS LINED? …Okay, cool, that’s fine. Asbestos. Cool. Fine by me. Always love me some asbestos.” The writing gets finer towards the bottom: “If you can read this, enjoy lung cancer, idiot.”

Suddenly, the Nomad is very glad they’re wearing a rebreather. They’ll be fine… probably.

Inside of the dark shipping container, there stand a handful of wooden crates, though most of the space is occupied by air alone: enough space to stow the motorcycle. All of the wooden boxes are nailed shut, except for one. Instead of nails, its lid is held on by a sole ratchet strap. When they undo it, and lift the lid, they come upon a most unexpected sight: Crowbars. Dozens of them, each identical, laid on top of one another in an ordered pile.

This is… oddly convenient… but they won’t complain. It seems the warehouse also had a critical lack of crowbars, but this amount seems a little overkill. Maybe their supplier only delivered in bulk? But crowbars? Who actually needs a few dozen crowbars at once? Then again, this is a warehouse; they probably just wanted to take one for themselves and store away the rest. The Nomad removes one and heads back to the warehouse, sure that, with the crowbar, they can finally open that stubborn door and get the bike back out of the warehouse’s prison-like confines.

Before they pass through the tight corridors which cut through the stacks of crates, they take a moment to observe their surroundings, for, surely, squeezing both them and the bike into these passages at once nears an impossibility. To their embarrassed surprise, there is indeed a kind of roadway through the crates they had never seen, obviously for service, maintenance, or cargo vehicles to reach the crane; it’s in line with the contraption’s rails, at such an angle to the rest of the warehouse’s compound that it appears hidden on the approach. “Oh, well that’s much easier, why didn’t I do this before?”, they wonder quietly as they pass through this newfound passage.

It leads fully out of the crate-stacks, leaving the shipping yard behind as they come upon a further, equally narrow yet wider-than-the-other passage; on one side, the crates tower upwards like wide spires of rusted steel, while the other leads up the mountain in a steep, snowy slope. The untrodden road cuts a chunk out of the mountain-scape, leading further – snake-like – into the frozen peaks which surround their home. Looking up at it from this point of view makes the broken, unseen asphalt seem almost ominous. For while they cannot see the road itself, its presence is immortally etched into the dormant rock, signifying its tempting path to curious mountain sights they will never get to see.

The warehouse looms ahead, taking centre stage in their goggled view as they limp back to the trench they carved earlier. A white dune leans lazily against the wall and great shutter gates, smothering the only regular-sized door until only a tiny smidge of its frame peeks out above. It’s no wonder they couldn’t get the door open; they had seen such sights before, of snow gathering at the bases of buildings in wave-like structures, but never had they reached this high. Most reach only two feet up a wall at most, three if a past storm had been particularly bad, but this one’s height towers at a staggering six or seven – double, triple, almost quadruple that of previous cases. They didn’t need to be further convinced of the storm’s might, of its ferocity, yet its signs are littered all over, hindering them at every possibility.

They soon come to stand before the shattered glass, determined to take no chances in their repeated crossing of it; they chuck the crowbar into the building and scan the bottom of the mostly empty frame intently, looking for an ideal point to step over, though no such passage reveals itself. Odd bits and thin spikes of brittle glass present themselves all over the broken window, sticking out at dangerous angles and at spear-like lengths. How had they not paid this sight mind earlier? Had they been so overly excited, that they nigh-on jumped over it?

No, they hadn’t. They had taken great care, and thus they shall do once more. With unparalleled attention paid to their every movement, painfully aware of the countless knives ready to lacerate their nether regions, the Nomad wide-steps over the frame until they feel the familiar muted thump of their boot hitting cold vinyl flooring. Now stood terribly uncomfortably, almost doing a split as their leg muscles complain of their position, they grab the top of the frame with both hands and lift the rest of their plump body into the building, losing their balance in the process.

They awkwardly flop to the ground like a sad fish, pausing for a moment as they lay limp on the littered office flooring in wonder. How in the high heavens had they done this so effortlessly before? This seemed so easy on the way out, so what happened? The Nomad rises to their feet once more, inspecting the scene only to find the height of the frame lower than they have in memory. Confused, they peer outside, sticking their head out of the broken window and catching sight of the obvious discrepancy: the floor inside the building is raised considerably above true ground level – as true as that can get on this mountain. They should’ve thought so, for the loading platform and the rest of the warehouse’s foundation are, indeed, level.

Oh well, at least they know for next time… hopefully there won’t be a next time. They pick up the crowbar and make their shambling way back to the frozen door, glancing at the unobtainable oil barrel taunting them from the window-side rafters. It his hidden in shadow, yet it shines throughout with a sparkle of tempting preciousness. It’s a shame to see it stuck up there, but it seems there is nothing they can do; they will have to take up debt with the drones and come back for it another day, though doing so without the bridge will be… difficult, if not impossible.

Maybe they will never find themselves up here again, that’d be a true shame. For all they know in their decade-long familiarity with their home, this is the last fresh barrel still untouched in the great valley. After this, they will have to venture out further and further beyond the mountains, exploring nearly uncharted territory in strange cities and never before visited company compounds. Will it be worth, then, to return to their home if they find themselves spending less and less time there? Perhaps they’ll just get up and move to another city, find a new life?

…No. Once the Nomad is done with this, once they manage to contact humanity one final time, they think that will be it for them. There will be no home to move, for who knows how far they’ll have to go?

It’s best not to think about it, because for now, there are other things to focus on. The door stands unmoving in its frame, steadfast and ice cold. With fervour and great precision, the Nomad jams the flat end of the crowbar into the meagre crack between the door and its frame, slightly bending the cold door-steel from the sheer forces present. Creaking emerges from the structure as any movements of the tool strain the bend metal, though the Nomad is yet to be satisfied; they grab a loose hammer laying upon a yet-to-be-nailed-shut crate and strike the end of the crowbar again and again, driving the tempered tool deeper and deeper into the buckling crevasse. When at last it refuses to move outright, they lay down the hammer and begin to push.

The tool bends slightly as their entire mass and musculature works towards one simple goal: to pry open this door trough ice and bolt, to bend the frozen steel to their unbroken will and not to cease until the doorway stands free. Mechanical groans and icy crackling fill the air as the door refuses to move; the Nomad pushes with all their might, yet as they stand on only one healthy leg – the other aches and pains if strained in any way – they simply slide backwards with the little grip their boots can muster.

This is not working; they have done everything they can, yet the door remains as it was. Another solution must come forth, and thankfully, they have thought ahead. Leverage ought to do the job, yet the candy cane-like crook on the free end of the crowbar is an awkward shape to stick a pipe over. However, they needn’t look long for a saviour; during the storm, they had noticed an entire bottom-row of one of the shelves dedicated to a pile of slightly rusty steel pipes, whose inner diameter might just be wide enough to fit over the tool. They’re quite long and unwieldy for what they need, but at least they’ve thin walls to reduce their weight, although this also serves as a disadvantage. Should they bend or buckle from the forces applied, then they’re left just as lost as before.

The crowbar is stuck firm between the door and its frame, so the Nomad simply leaves it as it is as they limp over to the pipe-pile. Hair-thin steel bands secure the cargo to their pallet. By looks alone, these don’t seem all that sturdy, but trying to undo them proves otherwise. A few squeamish kicks are all they can muster at first, not wanting to be hit by what is essentially a lengthy, flying razor. But seeing that their meagre taps do nought but annoy the cold metal, they gather their courage. It takes but one firm kick into the band’s side to snap the brittle, tensioned steel; it snaps back with such a force that it whips the shelf above, leaving noticeable mark in the painted sheet-metal. They can only imagine what their face, legs, or hands would look like if they had been slashed like that. Sure, they’d be protected, but gruesome images of torn and lacerated flesh do not easily leave their mind, especially now that it is ceaselessly occupied by their aching wound.

The second band snaps away without a hitch, so does the last, but the second to last – the third – grazes them slightly, tearing a tiny bit of fabric out of their coat. A close call, yet they remain unharmed.

They heave the defiantly heavy steel onto their shoulder. In protest to this sudden load, their bandaged leg acts up once more. It pounds in tune to their steady, yet quickening heartbeat, sending shockwaves of burning pain up their thigh. Every step feels as if they were setting down on a bed of jagged nails, as if they were confined within a tunnel of sandpaper. It isn’t unmanageable, but they’d rather not spend much time this way. The pipe is unwieldy and cumbersome to carry, bumping into the tightly spaced shelf-rows multiple times as frustration and impatience builds – it takes a minute at most, but it feels like forever, constantly reminded of their festering injury.

The pipe is so long, and the crowbar at such an obtuse angle, that they’ve no choice but to stick their improvised lever through one of the adjacent shelves; a ridiculous sight, if one were to watch. Thankfully, there’s no one around to see the Nomad struggle to wrangle the unwieldy object to their will, or at least it seems so physically as an eerie feeling of being watched swells up in their stomach. They look around, offput, but nothing to the likes of a hidden observer is to be seen – no watchful pair of eyes, no digital drone-display shining lifelessly in their direction. A sudden sensation without any apparent trigger; their instincts scream for seemingly no reason, yet they cannot shake it. There has to be something, for their intuition has rarely failed them before, but no matter how long they wait, no matter how still they stand or how quietly they breathe, nothing comes from the cold silence surrounding them.

It won’t go away, and its trigger is nowhere to be seen, so they dismiss it as a form of… excitement… to open the door. Admittedly, it’s a crack theory, but it’s all they have. First the formal – if dramatic – complaints curtesy of their leg, now this. Life really has it out for the lonely human.

As they push and pull on the pipe stuck over the crowbar, the door gives off increasingly laborious creaks and groans reminiscent of a bridge about to give way, the ice holding it to its frame like stiff, frigid glue losing its tight hold bit by bit. Tiny cracks increase in frequency as they take every meagre step towards the bland wall in front of them and then:

Release.

The ice gives way, and the door slams open with a loud bang, its bolt, snapped cleanly in twine, is sent flying to the other side of the room. The dune leaned against the outside wall collapses in on itself, blanketing the space before the open doorway in a little flood of crunchy snow. Now that its mechanism is broken, closing it will prove difficult, but it matters little; it’ll snow inside now, but that’s no reason for concern for the Nomad. After all, they’re unsure if they’ll be able to return here, or if they want to.

An idea jots out from their mind’s sea of noise: they know their observer, they know it well. How had they not thought of this? It’s painfully obvious, whose pair of mocking eyes glare down at them. The treasured barrel, their precious prize, still remains here.

What a shame it is, to leave it to rot. What effort and pain this vessel had brought. The Nomad hesitates at the threshold to the light, standing ankle-deep in the collapsed snow-mound; the sled is trapped, the torch and gear upon it unreachable – they leave less than empty handed, battered and bruised, wounded and ashamed. It taunts them – that damned barrel. So much trouble for but a few drops of oil…

They look toward the shipping yard, lost in thought as their eyes are affixed on the snow-covered crates. This is the last barrel, the last vessel of pristine drone-salvation; invaluable, yet bearing a vast, unseen price tag. A treasure so near, yet, like the sled, so tantalizingly unattainable. They can almost feel its prideful glare, hidden in shadow, enthroned upon the overloaded shelves like a hubristic king. “Useless, you are. Came here for nothing.”, it boasts confidently, “You’ll leave as you are, and I’ll stay as I have.” How dare it? The Nomad cannot ignore such an insult; they ought to leave, to cut their losses of sanity and vain pride, but they cannot. Hesitation burns ceaselessly, standing frozen and dreary-eyed before the open doorway.

…No. They shan’t leave empty handed. With the gaze-averting gods as their witness, they shall find a way to obtain their rightful prize. They have suffered for it, so it must now suffer them. No easy nor comfortable solution provides itself – the forklift is a bust, now nothing more than ugly, diesel-filled décor. It, too, taunts them, but pitifully so – they pay no mind to the useless tool. However, the Nomad is far from oblivious. Nothing will stop them now; they are helplessly determined to get that barrel home, whatever it takes.

They come to stand before their prize’s shelf. It towers over them, its very top disappearing into the darkness above the lights, drenching the barrel in a shadowy miasma. Dust swirls in the disturbed air, finding rest upon never-touched and worthless wares and shimmering as it dances around the glaring lightbulbs. Getting it down the old fashioned, safe way has become entirely impossible; the forklift remains pinned, and the crane cannot move this far without knocking over every shelf in its path. Another solution must suffice, yet one such is hard to come by.

They think: a ladder? One lies not far away, yet getting up the shelf is not the issue, getting the barrel down from it undamaged is. Rope and pulley? A more plausible option for sure, improvising a rig shouldn’t be much of an issue, yet the placement of the barrel once again makes things unnecessarily difficult: it’d fall some of the way and keep its momentum, swinging into the adjacent shelf like a fragile, sloshing wrecking ball, collapsing the shelves in the process. No matter what solutions they manage to devise, all lead either to disappointment or destruction.

If fate wants it so, then so it shall be. They look up and know deep within that what stands tall must one day meet the ground anew. Today is that day: the shelves must be toppled, it is the only way. Overloaded beyond capacity; tearing away a leg ought to do it, but how? They again think of different ways: cutting it with a kind of saw would leave them standing much too close; unbolting the stamped steel only undoes one level at a time, as well as leaving them just as vulnerable; rope and pulley seems plausible, but attaching it to an anchor point ruins the thought, for no points of contact other than the adjacent shelves are to be seen. The barrel-shelf ought to fall alone, for it must impact the structure beside it to slow its own descent, thus lowering the barrel on top in a mostly safe manner. Mostly, for they have no idea if this theory holds any water.

The thin, hole-ridden stamped steel leg emits a short, dull thud upon being struck; vast compression forces keep the metal nigh-frozen in place. Should it break away, the structure would fail catastrophically: a terrible risk in most places, here, it serves as the ace in their sleeve. To make it so won’t prove easy, as all they have are their hands and iron will to prove their might, but these stand meagre in the shadow of the colossal structure. A tool must be used, and one lies not far away: the crowbar, come to lay half-smothered by the mass of snow after it fell out of the pipe. They go to fetch it, grabbing it firmly in their gloved grippers, and soon take on a wide stance beside their target.

The room is silent, the Nomad is determined. Fear is present in their eyes, yes, but excitement lined with pride overtake it: their master plan is coming true, their prize will soon be in their hands. They collect themselves and pull the crowbar backwards, gathering as much energy as they can muster. With great momentum, the heavy iron flies like a bullet and impacts the flimsy-looking shelf-leg with a thunderous sound. Its mighty clang echoes a dozen times off of the nearby walls and cargo-laden shelves as if it ought to have a mind of its own, announcing to the warehouse and surrounding mountain-scape the ruthless assault on the steadfast remnants of the old world. Nothing has happened; the leg remains as it had been, though it echoes a long, continuous ringing throughout the warehouse’s sparse walls. Then, another strike – the vibrations transferred into the tool equally creep into their arms, a sensation uncomfortable, painful even. Yet, they press on through the discomfort as they stoically take yet another heavy swing. Slight creaking can be heard in between each subsequent hit, signalling the wounds the Nomad inflicts upon it; each impact a bruise more painful than the last, forcing a mechanical whimper out of the thing which unwillingly serves as a prison for their prize.

Then, it buckles. A thunderous roar erupts from the beaten structure, whose dust, collected over a decade of abandon, is kicked up into the air all at once. Demonic groans and earth-shattering creaks billow from the warehouse’s confines; unable to be contained to such a space, it echoes helplessly into the tight ravine until the cries of pain dissipate into the frigid air. The shelf struggles to balance its enormous weight on the weakened support, but it does not fall, much to the Nomad’s dismay, horror, and relief.

It – the leg – now stands at an unnatural angle. Not one extreme, appearing like a slightly bent knee, but one which has no sensible place to bear any weight, much less this monstrous amount. Simply breathing near it feels viscerally unnerving, for it seems and sounds as if even the tiniest of disturbances ought to bring the wreck-to-be down. Minutes of skin-crawling waiting pass, yet the dreadful sounds do not develop into a toppling wreckage. Something is wrong: it didn’t work. A realization builds within them, one they dread to even think about, but no manner of patience seems to undo this terrifying situation: they have to continue.

Being anywhere near a toppling many-ton-heavy shelf seems like a terriblle way to die, putting the idea of simply hitting it again out of the question, so the Nomad thinks of a better plan to pull away the bent leg… pulling… yes, pulling ought to do it. If pulling is what it takes, then the motorcycle seems like the perfect candidate to do so. They grab its handlebars and move it into position, looking down the long corridor with the window-side and barrel to their left, and the door-side to their right. One dozen shelves extend into the distance; more than enough clearance for what they’re about to do.

They remove a strap from some nearby bound cargo and tie one end to their bike’s doohickie-mount. With the other in hand, they cautiously approach the dangerous structure – ominous groaning emerges from the beaten shelf as it seems to sway rhythmically in the wind-intruded air. Standing beneath its shadow, the Nomad nervously ties the other end to the kink in the metal, making sure they construct a tight knot as they rush to get this done. When they finish their task, they nigh-on sprint away in panic as yet more dreadful whimpers billow from the shelf.

All is set. The Nomad gathers their courage and finds comfortable seating upon their bike. With the twist of the key and the push of a button, the motorcycle… does not spring to life. The crankshaft turns and turns, the starter motor struggles, but none of their efforts are rewarded. Something is amiss, they look for an answer and soon find it, embarrassingly enough: the choke is open, when it should be closed. It appears they forgot to pull it back when they shut it off ten days ago. A rookie mistake, one they ought to repeat less often by now…

They pull it back, closing the choke, and press on the starter with a pulled clutch. With two turns of the crank, the engine jumps to life – its combustive heartbeat thumps like mighty mechanical drums in the deep, sending little shockwaves of life into and out of the building, announcing to the wider world that they have yet to succumb to the frost. For a few moments, they bathe in the bliss of combustion; their life depends on the engine, and it depends on theirs; a mutual symbiosis of metal and flesh, of the living and the not. Both warm if alive, both dead if cold.

They kick the gearbox into first, then gather their courage; they have never done anything like this, what if it goes wrong? What if they somehow run off course? What if the bike speeds away without them? They’re unbearably nervous, not thinking straight in any measure; primal instinct bangs on the drums of danger, yet their conscious mind dismisses it, for better, or for worse. Slowly, with as much fine-feel as their gloved fingers allow them, they release the clutch lever until they hear the engine begin to struggle. Upon this sound, they twist the throttle until it goes no further; the engine screams with a seven-thousand-revolution rage, rattling its frame prison with a might unheard of. They release the lever more and more until the tyre lifts the entire weight of the motorcycle into the air without turning, its grip so firm and gearing so low. The strap does not let it flip over, its immense tensile strength resisting the might of the motor.

Nothing happens; the shelf remains steadfast. Not to be outdone, the Nomad kicks it into second gear instead and repeats the process step by step: clutch, throttle, raging machine, clutch. Only this time, instead of lifting the machine, the tyre is forced into a screeching burnout which scrapes at the eardrums. White smoke billows from the space between rubber and concrete as ominous creaking transforms into laboured moans. Seconds of mechanical torture fly by in excitement as little advances in their position become more and more apparent.

Then, snap.

A piece of metal impacts their back with some force. The clutch, now suddenly without resistance, bites down hard, sending the runaway machine screaming down the corridor as they struggle – and fail – to hold on. The wheelieing motorcycle throws them out of their seat; they land on the ground, not too far the leg-less structure. They scramble back to their feet and look upon a sight of horror: the shelf, which had creaked and groaned ominously before, is now falling their way. Not thinking rationally, they sprint after their bike.

A hideous cacophony of buckling steel and falling crates and shelves impacting one after the other like an infernal row of dominoes erupts behind the Nomad’s frantic sprint to safety, fuelled by primal instincts and lack of calm reason alone. One deafening crash rings out, then another follows, then the next, until the number grows too dreadful to be thought of. Every space between shelves has the falling walls crash ever more violently into their innocent neighbours. The snapping of straps, the groaning of bending steel, the tearing of stamped sheet metal and the thunderous impacts of ton-heavy wooden crates coalesce into a crescendo of destruction and terror. Finally, they make it to the end, but the nightmare isn’t over as the collapsing rows of overloaded shelves still fall all the same, indifferent to their unspoken pleas to stop their descent. Heavy thump after heavy thump billows into the freezing air within and surrounding the warehouse, shaking its very foundation as each subsequent shelf unceremoniously hits the next.

At last, the final shelf is hit, sending it tumbling to its inevitable resting place, which it hits with a dull, but powerful thud. It leans against the wall, whose concrete interior now features a web of cracks emanating from the site of impact. Finally, the Nomad rushes to shut the engine off.

Then, all is silent again. A deathly quiet befalls the warehouse; again, the Nomad feels terribly uneasy, watched, observed, almost preyed upon. A simple artifact of the aftermath, they try to convince themselves. Disturbed dust lingers in the air, but so does something else: a seeping, creeping dread. Again, they frantically look around, scanning the wrecked room with attentive, darting eyes. The doorway stands empty, the windows shine brightly, one shelf-line stands while the other does not; nothing hides in empty shadows. Desperately, they ty to push it to the back of their mind, but this time, they cannot. Whatever they do or try, the dreadful anxiety remains steadfast in the forefront of their perception. They feel seen, exposed, and they’d rather it not be so; they best get out of here.

The Nomad tilts their fallen motorcycle back onto its tyres, quickly undoing the knot still tied to the now-loose shelf-leg which hit them in the back. With it kicked back into neutral, they nervously hurry to the site of their – hopefully still intact – prize, coming upon a scene as if directly lifted from a painting: Upon a twisted wreck of torn, buckled steel and splintered wood stands proud the barrel – pristine and untouched, still strapped to its pallet. Heavenly god-rays pierce through the airborne dust, encircling their rightful reward in a divine-ordained shine. This was the right choice to make; the gods have spoken: their endeavours are blessed.

It now sits within reach, for they need only clamber the wreckage and… and… Well, they’ll figure that part out soon enough. While this situation still isn’t as simple as just rolling it on out of here, at least the barrel isn’t stuck up in the rafters anymore. It ought to be reachable now with some kind of pulley system; they can already see it: tie one end somewhere deep in the wreckage-mound, chuck the rest over the roof-beams, then attach a pulley to the free end. That should make it easy to lift and lower it by hand, if only they were to find one. But this is a warehouse, one should be nearby. While they’d rather not spend any more time here than necessary, what other choice do they have?

A noise startles the Nomad. They freeze and snap their head towards the disturbance, fearing something terrible, something unspoken which their mind dares not assign an image to. Silence follows a hollow, metallic echo. What it was exactly, they don’t know, but they suspect, after a few more moments of listening, that it must’ve come from somewhere within the fresh wreckage. Never before have they been on edge like this – they’re a nervous wreck, jumping at every little sound; they best go before they start imagining things.

Realizing that the bike no longer has a purpose here and armed with the knowledge that they can probably manage the barrel by hand from here on out, they begin pushing their machine to the cliff-crane. It struggles through the waist-high snow; this thing definitely isn’t a snowplough, not that they haven’t considered attaching one before. But no, they’ve always dismissed it as a ridiculous idea – rightfully so, for it’s only just barely able to push itself and the sled along, never mind the masses of snow. They can’t even begin to image what kind of forces a snowplough would need… however, provided they attach the shovel-tyre…

This is odd, they think; the inexplicable paranoia has lessened. It isn’t gone entirely, they still feel watched just like before, but it presents itself as less of a stalking glare, and more of an observant glance. Is it the warehouse? The ravine’s air? Maybe it’s just their subconscious telling them that they really want to go home. They can’t blame it, they want to as well, mostly because it is them and they want to do so. And they are more than happy to oblige their own desires, provided they bring along the barrel – after all, they’ve worked so hard for it. If anyone deserves that oil, it’s the Nomad. They really ought to drink it themselves, even if that’s likely not the best idea for their health… though they do wonder how it tastes… maybe they’ll have a little, as a treat.

They reach the open shipping crate and push the motorcycle inside, putting it on its main stand for stability; should the crate come to rock while in the air, they’d rather it not fall on its side. With a hesitant smile, they take a moment to reflect: this plan is going swimmingly, even though it’s only existed for… an hour, maybe? How late is it anyway? They check their watch, it’s… 4p.m.? How long have they been up here? When did they get up, at noon? Past that?

Oh well, it doesn’t matter; they’ve spent enough time lingering here already, and the barrel isn’t going to wait forever. Well, actually, it will do just that, but they – the Nomad – grow impatient. They leave the motorcycle and crane-structure behind and again find themselves on the approach to the warehouse, their eyes affixed on the abandoned building, though this time, something feels terribly… off: their skin crawls as their destination steadily grows greater within their view, taking up more and more space as the world seems to shrink around them. A headache makes itself known – nothing grave, it barely even hurts, but it pounds in tune to their heartbeat, much like their leg-wound. It, too, acts up with a mild itch – nothing unusual. For some reason, their mind ceaselessly screams to abandon ship, to run away and hide: something is wrong, something is wrong, something is very wrong, this isn’t right, nothing about this is right, run or hide away, do not dare to stay.

Yet, they press on, their subconscious starkly ignored; they will get that barrel, no matter the cost. Their rational mind takes the precedent over mere ape-instinct, no matter how much it insists that something is amiss. They cannot see the danger, they cannot feel the danger, therefore, there must be no danger. But no amount of cold reasoning quells the internalized terror. It grows in magnitude for every awkward limp-step they take towards the prison of their price. As they rise up the concrete platform, their subconscious screaming, they see a most unusual sight: shadows spill out from the open doorway like a backwards cone of light, overpowering the presence of sunshine. The Nomad comes to stand before it, stepping into the warehouse’s confines.

It's dark. A hazy miasma swirls and churns within the dusty air – invisible, yet impossible to ignore. Great ceiling lights shine helplessly into the umbral darkness choking the room; cones of warm light emit from hot bulbs, yet do not hit the ground as they are lost to the un-bright lingering below.

This is wrong. This is terribly wrong. A spike of panic embeds itself within their back; they look around, frantic, eye-darting, adrenaline-intoxicated, trying desperately to find something, anything to stare at other than the dark nothing swirling unending all around the great, desolated room. Before them lay silently the treasured barrel upon its twisted steel throne – great windows glow sky-blue, yet do not lay light upon the vessel. To their left lies but darkness and drear. Behind stands ajar the doorway, though neither there does light penetrate the room; malice overflows and spills outwards; shadows cast shadows which darken the sun-given light. To the right, to the right, to the right…

To the right stands a man.

To the right lingers a shadowy silhouette, its outline undefined as it shifts along the ever-churning miasma it is seemingly made out of. It stands. It stares. Piercing dots of yellow hatred shine like lighthouses draped in fog; its eyes meet the Nomad’s and do not move away, burning smouldering pits of terror into the trenches of their subconscious. From those pits arise that which lay buried: visions of faceless things flash relentlessly every time they close their eyes. Each blink reveals smooth complexions and wordless chants aimed upwards at an incomprehensibly hollow sphere encircled in a yellow corona, humming and droning with knowledge one cannot bear. They ought not to see, yet they must to not witness the incongruent imagery within their mind.

So, they pry their eyelids open. Wide eyes infused with tears and terror stare down the shifting shadows taking the shape of a silent man – its caustic glare reflects their own, unbroken one. They do not blink. They dare not blink lest they be exposed to but a fleeting moment of the darkness festering within. The shadow moves: it lifts its shapeless arm to point upwards at the shine-less windows, directing their gaze as they follow its wordless instructions, again coming to stare at the kingly barrel looming above – its presence, its divine shape, helplessly swallowed by miasma.

Then, light encroaches into darkness’ domain. Rays of yellow carve a hollow crown around the heavenly treasure; the black sun shines anew upon the faithless. Rancid yellow. Caustic yellow. Sickening yellow. A red-hot torrent of panic churns their mindscape, swallowing all thought and sensory input until but one stark command remains to reign supreme:

HIDE.

In a fit of maddened panic they dash behind a shelf, cowering in the shadow of a crate as the shrill sound of shattering glass scratches the air – a deafening, animalistic screech billows from the unseen, unimaginable shadows swirling just behind. A shadow looms, darkening the darkness lit in yellow.

From the unseen spills a vast wall of searing air; the room grows warm, then hot within moments as beads of sweat press their way through every pore upon their body, wetting the innermost layer of their coverings in a film of fear. It is hot. Unbearably hot. They ought to strip, yet they cannot hope to move a willing muscle to save their life as they helplessly shake and tremble on the cold ground.

Thunk. Clunk-clunk.

An earth-rattling impact radiates throughout the concrete floor, shaking the firm ground as if a fault line were to split it in twine, followed by two lesser mechanical clunks: A landing of something which ought to crawl, a thing with wings which ought to have but skittering legs.

Stillness befalls the miasma for some moments. A silence too great, too vicious, too thick and too viscous which flows like rotten honey into their ear canals – the thickened air, oil-like and greasy, chokes the lungs as if one were drowning. Breathing fills the silence, a wretched heaving not of their own volition, not one of their lungs or throat: the presence in the shadows breathes.

Suddenly, a flurry of steel-foot stomps rings out from the unseen yellow glow, clumsily clambering the twisted pile of steel upon which lays the barrel. Then rings out a puncture of sheet-steel, a glugging of a viscous liquid quickly muted by a ferocious gulping followed intermittently by vile, violent regurgitation throwing boiling sick unto the ground until the glugging stops, and the vessel lay hollow.

Heat builds up in their injured leg. A terrible, unbearable itch transforms into a twisting, pinching pain: the sensation of ripping a bandage from raw, open flesh felt continuously and unbroken brews underneath clean bandages. From the cracks between layers of self-similar, clingy cloth seeps off-white ooze; pus and blood-bile squirts and squelches as if pressed out of a grease gun. The Nomad squirms and yelps muted cries of pain, their instincts screaming and begging for even a momentary release. If they could just move their leg, it’d be fine. If they could move their leg, it’d be better. If they could only move their leg just a little. If only. If only. If only they could-

Their leg slips, grinding along the lukewarm concrete for but a meagre moment. Its gritty sound echoes into the darkness.

A beastly growl hums from behind. The presence clumsily falls onto the ground anew, looking, sniffing. It approaches; four heavy mechanical steps grow louder in an unpractised cadence as the acidic light brightens the impossible darkness to their side. Shaking, they sit trapped behind a wooden box like a cowardly animal, anxious, heat rising to unbearable oven-like temperatures. It feels as if they are being baked within their prison of wool clothing. As the presence approaches, and the heat grows yet more hellish, the Nomad presses their eyes shut in a fit of helpless desperation: they dare not see it, lest it see them.

Darkness overtakes the Nomad, one seemingly brighter than the miasmic fumes choking the air.

Breathing billows near, right beside their face; searing air falls upon singing fabric fibres. Huffing chokes painfully in their direction: a raspy gasping for air as if the thing were not innately made to breathe, were not bestowed with lungs, yet tried to fill them nonetheless. An unnatural affront to its own creators, whose blasphemous hands had no part in creating the wider world.

It pauses and it waits. It listens and growls. It wretches and shakes and twitches and yelps.

And then, it leaves.

In one swift, animalistic and unpractised motion, the thing abandons the oven-like room for the stinging cold of the outside world. The open, disturbed hall that is the confines of the warehouse flush of their unnatural darkness. The Nomad cautiously opens their eyes to see and feel their bandaged leg as they had left it: infected, yet undisturbed. 

All is silent once more, though their mind speaks of the pounding drum of their heart muscle beating with fear-fuelled fervour. What was that? What just happened? Questions without answers, without sight to confirm the sounds and smells unwillingly felt moments ago. Only heat remains as evidence of the presence. Heat, and the remains of their prize…

The barrel of oil lay punctured and hollow upon its twisted iron throne – a crude hole gapes begrudgingly into it. Below the broken vessel, upon the hot concrete there lay a steaming, bubbling, boiling and fuming mass; a pitch-black yet unknown-colour-swirling puddle of sickness and disease, of puke-like, chunky evil sludge. The temperature it radiates refuses any attempt at an approach. Touching it, merely thinking of doing so, nears impossibility.

The oil is gone, their prize taken away without reason. Without warning.

Nothing here remains for the Nomad but mourning for what they lost. They leave hurriedly in terror and defeat, frantically trudging their way back to the cliff-crane as their anxious eyes scan the wider mountain-ravine area. The Yellow glow is nowhere to be seen, though the presence is not yet gone; an affliction of worry and paranoia underlines the careful crossing of the snowy asphalt. A visual, however dreadful they imagine it, is inexplicably absent. Where has it gone?

Within the warehouse is found no caustic glow; upon the mountainous peaks looming above stands no wretched silhouette; shadows do not deepen, and light does not fear propagation. Watched without an observant glare; sniffed out without wind, nor nose to catch it; their essence touched without a divine had to reach into it. Seconds of frantic observation yield neither desired, nor dreaded results. It feels as if they have gone hopelessly insane, searching for some unseen answer, plucking at a fruitless tree. Crunchy footsteps sink into the snow for every careful step, each one attempted and failed to be silenced – what if they overshadow the sound of that thing? What if they miss its approach? What if it’s already right beside them? They turn in a frenzy, spinning pirouettes of manifest paranoia into patterns of snow – this, like all else, yields nought but more emptiness to be filled with images of the presence’s glare. Hollow anxiety drives their mind.

They make it to the crate-stacks, passing through a tight gap between towering iron boxes. Claustrophobic spaces providing sight-shelter give them no illusions of safety – they move on, ignorant of threats to the unseen sides as the rusting hulks act like horse blinders. Ape-instincts shout for shelter, but none is truly provided here, their conscious mind overruling fear driven conclusions for the hopeful goal of a functional cargo train sitting in the ravine down below.

Before the Nomad stands proud the open shipping crate, which they cautiously close, wincing at every squeak of the lubrication-less hinges, then lock up tight before scrambling up the ladder and into the crane’s cockpit. Its motor whirrs ever on, and seeing no signs of the thing’s interest, they take control of the mechanism, pulling the lifting lever which heaves the hollow crate into the air. Next, they push the other lever, moving the crane-carriage along its rails until they hang some distance over the edge of the cliff. Finally, they push the lifting lever in the other direction, lowering the crate down, down, down into the depths for nearly an entire minute – a minute filled with fear driven, frantic glances in all directions. At last, the object impacts an empty train carriage with a mighty thud. Did the thing hear that? Is it coming? They sit in silence for a terribly long while, frozen stiff by their disturbed intuition; nothing comes from silent snow and stoic rock.

The Nomad hurriedly crosses the see-through catwalk, spending no time on worries of falling. In truth, should they fall, they would greatly prefer such a demise to once again coming into the presence’s grasp. Now befalls a problem unto their plan: the ladder leading into the depths bears thick, slippery ice upon stiff, brittle, rusted and weathered iron rungs. Squirming their way down using it would surely end in freefall, and such a fate they ought not to choose, at least not one which lies in the hands of sheer luck. But staying here serves none, so action must be taken.

Four steel cables stretch into the abyss, suspended – but not pulled taught – by the crane’s spools and hydraulicly operated cable drums. Descending these would serve as a much faster solution, adding a factor of style to their possible demise. It’s either this, the ladder, or staying up here; the Nomad knows their choice.

With some runup, they leap off the edge of the cliff and catch the first cable which comes their way, immediately and precariously descending into the depths below in which they struggle to look. The ground approaches at mind-rending speed – they try to slow down, but their gloves cannot find adequate grip on the ice-laden woven steel. With certain death, or at least a pair of shattered legs looming below, they pray for another miracle to save them, and miraculously, one presents itself: a massive snow dune, thick and fluffy rests against the rock between cliff-face and railway. Without thought, they leap from the cable and aim for the dune.

Mere moments are spent in freefall, though these pass as if in slow motion: loose cloth flutters in the frigid wind, each undulation felt a thousand-fold within the time it takes to process the sensation; snowflakes whimsically float on icy turbulences invisibly churning the air. It’s almost peaceful, being here in the air. Almost, because not one second later:

They hit the ground.

A human-shaped hole gapes into the white dune, at the base of which lies the Nomad, winded. It broke their fall, sure, but it certainly didn’t leave them a gentle impact; they struggle to take even a single breath, choked by the clogged filters upon their rebreather. Panic floods their mind as every muscle in their body wants nothing more than to rip away the cursed mask, to breathe freely without hinderance. Yet without breath, laying upon the ground in terrible pain, they give in to the intrusive thoughts, tearing the old mask away from their face and taking a deep, expansive gulp of air.

The polluted, icy atmosphere fills their quaking lungs with whatever horrid toxins haze the planet’s surface, stinging their alveoli both from the sheer, sudden cold and the immediate, innate immune action to the foreign bodies invading them in untold numbers. The Nomad is sent into an awful coughing fit, worsening the issue evermore for every involuntary breath until they begrudgingly strap the dirty rebreather back onto their face. Coughing does not cease immediately, but the fits degrade over a few minutes of time until they shrink into but a mere unpleasant sensation: their lungs feel icky and dirty, polluted to some irreversible extent.

Slowly and steadily do they get back onto their faltering feet, still aching from the admittedly miraculous landing. It could’ve gone much worse, this they know, for a shattered leg would’ve spelled their certain death; presence or not, they never would’ve made it back home, nor would they have any chance at healing if they did. From down here, the upper edge of the sheer cliff seems impossibly far up. What they did just now counts among the most reckless stunts they’ve ever dared, but one not without reason: if that thing caught them… if it did…

The presence is still felt, still hummed by the whispering winds, still hewn from the undulating masses of snow. As the great shape of the silent warehouse looms ominously above them, they haphazardly make their way to the diesel-electric locomotive’s cabin. It seems oddly ancient, but the JC Jenson logo on its side provides adequate explanation. As they near the front of the train, they notice a detail they had missed upon their first, wonder-filled observation: a massive, menacing snowplough, whose tip extends forwards by several feet, angled at such a way that its knife-like crest splits the dunes in twine and throws their masses to the sides. Why? Why does this train have a snowplough? There used to be much less snow around, even in winter… does this train hail from the south pole?

Questions without people left to answer them, and only one who is truly concerned with such inexplicable details. They wordlessly enter the operator’s cabin, finding its sole occupant collapsed in a pile on the ground. Before the uncomfortable-looking seat lies a console bearing a massive array of miscellaneous buttons, most unlabelled, though the few that are give them hope that they’ll find one deemed “power” or “start.” And, as luck would have it, such a one is present near the centre of the control panelling. They press it, praying to the merciful machine-gods that this decade-and-a-half dormant locomotive still holds both electricity and diesel, and it seems their prayers are heard: lights lazily flicker on inside the room, illuminating it in glaring tones of white and many-coloured interfaces. They are in awe, but still on a mission, so they search the panelling until they happen upon a button labelled “Start Engine.” They press it.

A whining cascade of rumbling, whirring, low vibrations and electric growling are followed by a soothing hum which billows from the massive engines of the locomotive – they have to hurry, for if anything attracts that dreadful thing’s attention, this surely just did.

A lever before them atop the console reads as “Speed”, which they push forward until it goes no further; a noticeable rumbling is felt, yet they do not significantly move forwards. The steel wheels slip uselessly on ice-laden rails for a while, but the sheer friction they generate is enough to warm the ice, melting it. At last, the train creeps forward upon wet, lukewarm iron rails, slowly but surely accelerating as the long, unbroken train gains in momentum, and the snowplough in front of them pushes untold masses of snow to the sides. As they inch along at ever increasing speeds, the crane’s crate-carriage-lifting-device-thingimabob slip’s off of the motorcycle’s container and impacts the succeeding crate with a deafening, hollow metal thunk. It repeats this more than a dozen times until the train has finally passed out from under it.

Before they know it, they are on their assured way out of the ravine, motorcycle in tow. Whether or not the rails hold up consistently is now none of their concern, for their thoughts are clouded by ceaseless paranoia and worry: that thing, that goddamned thing is still out there somewhere, watching them. They can feel it instinctively within their soul, their intuition ringing the alarm bells without stoppage or breaks. As they gaze out from the cabin’s backwards-facing windows, looking upwards at the roof of the warehouse, they feel particularly compelled to stare at it. Coercion is met by reward: upon the slanted surface of the mountain warehouse looms a shapeless, impossibly shadow-clouded and miasma-hazed yellow glow, staring down at them with a curious, hungry gaze.

A blink, and it’s gone.

Chapter Text

The sun lay low over the vast and arid ice of Copper-9. Mountains cast deep shadows over the rivers which once carved winding paths through their heavy stone. Valleys and ravines have laid as quiet as the countless fleshless cadavers which dot their frigid confines and frost-choked forests, finding no rest in death, their bitter graves as shallow as the wind allows. Turbulent and disastrous has this realm remained, scarred by cataclysmic earthquakes and apocalyptic storms alike, ripping through that which man had built so long ago with such ease that one might assume nature cares not notice its hubristic inhabitants. And it does not. Nature eradicated all that which dared stand against it. The sins of the few wrought desolation upon all, and now none are left to rue the dead’s mistakes.

None, but one. A single flicker of light still burns to serve penance for all that cannot bear their sins.

A long, articulated streak of mechanical defiance carves a rough trench into a quiet, wide valley, parting its barren wastes in twine, forging a path that will, like all else, fleet with time. Inside this speeding hulk, a glimmer still draws cold breath, resting, anxiously waiting for the amalgam mass of steadfast steel and widespread rust to take them to their humble home. Unable to rid themselves of sights unexplainable, they nervously gaze outward at the glaring white, dreading that which they hope not see lurking just outside. That yellow glow, that sickening, terrible, caustic yellow glow. Haunted they are, haunted by a lasting vision.

That terrible nightmare, it still festers to this day. Faceless men and smooth-visaged angels of savage darkness were but the meagre pawns of the great sphere, incomprehensible in its sheer magnitude and absolute darkness. Around that sphere shone a ring of awful light: that same, sickening, yellowish tone. They know now. They know that these colours are one and the same. They know of the grisly sights witnessed in the vision, and they know of their perpetrators: Dark angels, faceless as the men they tore apart like rabid animals.

Suspicions writhe within their mindscape, conspiracies and theories which boil over into a fantastical possibility: They survived their vision, and now have survived the flesh-made machination of a maddened god. That thing in the warehouse, that dreadful presence, it is the result of divine hatred, and they alone are its tortured, black sheep. Yes, a dark angel come to life, faceless and formless as an eldritch entity, demonic in its overbearing nature. What sins hath they wrought to deserve such punishment? What affront to the greater had they committed, and what horrors have thus come to be? Had god any play in such devilish machinations? One holy surely cannot bring to life its antithesis. No, it is the plaything of the devil, as much as they themselves are but a puppet strung by the indifferent fates twining their life’s thread.

They know now. They know for sure. That sphere, and the sickening glow which encircled it, both forever engrained into the halls that make up thought and reason like ancient graffiti was, and is, the devil made manifest in visions of darkness. Shadows, depthless, hiding wretched evils within, unseen by the great creators, festering and stewing in their malice. Thoughts lie ablaze in dreadful possibilities, thoughts which bear the keys to hope, to purpose.

What is its purpose? To kill them? To torture them? To sap the Nomad of their last threads of sanity? If it is, it is succeeding. They cannot form coherent thought without that demon’s ever-presence staring at them, eyeless and thoughtless, instinct-driven and rabid. All strings of consciousness lead back to this dreadful pit in their vivid imagination, humming of dread, and glowing in yellow.

The Nomad looks outside, gazing upon the landscape whizzing by, scarcely visible through the massive cloud of airborne snow thrown out of the train’s way. The wedge-like snowplough easily pierces through even the iciest of snowdrifts, churning crystalline chunks into nought more than dust. Although they hope not to see that demon, they are strangely disappointed to see nothing but the open snow and surrounding mountains passing them by with a speed not seen in fifteen years.

Speed… Oh god, how fast are they going?

The Nomad rushes to the front window, taking little more than a single step and looking outwards at their home city approaching them at skin-crawling speeds. How heavy is this cargo train? How fast are they going? Can they hope to stop in time?

Stop. The brakes. With speed and rampant goosebumps of horror, the Nomad rips the throttle all the way to zero percent, clamping the squealing brakes onto every single steel wheel present below the mile-long contraption. Horrid sounds emanate from below the locomotive for some moments until, suddenly, they stop with a firm thunk. Then, silence. The only sounds still present are that of the train’s whirring engine, and the trenching of the snowy plane. Confusion and horror seeps in as they realize that, oh god, they aren’t slowing down!

They rush outside, onto the catwalk to the sides of the engine compartment, and hang their torso over the railing to get a good view at the wheels. Little chunks of ice and vast avalanche-like quantities of powder-snow hit their face and upper body as they gaze upon a ghastly sight: the wheels, they’ve stopped! They slide along the ice-laden rails effortlessly, barring friction and sound! Oh god. Oh god. Oh fuck!

They run back inside, dashing into the cabin so fast they almost slip, hastily grabbing the throttle lever and ripping it backwards as far as it will go. Movements shake the cabin – they go back outside, hanging over the railing as they had done just before, only to see that the wheels are now turning against the direction of travel. Better, yes, and possibly, hopefully, enough, but still the wheels slip effortlessly atop their iron guides, gliding silently without spark or squeak. They are barrelling towards the broken city with a blazing, unholy speed, one they cannot hope to break in time, so they head back in and watch in horror as the concrete jungle grows in magnitude right before their very eyes.

In just a few, agonizing moments, the unstoppable machine enters the city’s territory as the first houses begin appearing beside the tracks. Singular homes morph into apartment buildings dotted few and far between, soon overtaking any semblance of suburbia with dense, industrial housing, which in turn are soon exchanged by offices and skyscrapers reaching to the heavens as the mighty monster screams along its frozen tracks into the silent heart of the broken town. They find themselves within the devastated cityscape, cutting through dense corridors between buildings and, soon, a tunnel below the city’s foundations. Pitch-darkness envelops the train as the deafening roar of the engine and the wheels now grinding on ice-free rails reverberates off the tight tunnel walls. Seconds go by in near-total darkness, lit only by the plethora of sparks ejecting from the contact patch below the wheels which squeal in terror. Seconds which turn into one minute, then two, all the while the train slows considerably on the bare-steel tracks.

A light appears at the end of the tunnel. A radiant dot of hope, whose little glimmer of white, blinding light soon sours with the presence of a faint red hue. This is terribly wrong, something’s out there! Something’s on the tracks! They grab the controls and pull hard on the reverse throttle in a vain hope of making the indifferent hulk work harder, but nothing changes as they cower helplessly in their little prison. Second by skin-crawling second, the exit of the miles-long tunnel grows greater and greater until, at long last, the Nomad can make out a strange shape from the odd colour.

A large red rectangle on wheels, what looks to be an old lorry trailer, sits perpendicular atop the track. The Nomad had dreaded this all along, had known this would happen sooner or later: an obstruction on the rails! And a lorry too? Who knows what that thing was carrying! They’re doomed! They’re dead! They brace for impact and hide below the console.

Moments after leaving the tunnel, the locomotive crashes into the abandoned trailer, its massive, indestructible snowplough easily splitting the construct in twine. All of its contents, consisting solely of boxes upon boxes full of soda cans, rupture outward into a cloud of black mist which instantly solidifies into an awful, sticky brown snowfall.

The Nomad, having misjudged the impact, is suddenly jerked forward, slamming their head into the control panelling. Dazed, they look up above the buttons and levers, only to gaze upon a shocking sight: the trailer, it hasn’t split! Its steel frame still holds fast, bent and buckled by the force of the impact, yet unyielding in its strength as it’s dragged along for the ride by the massive iron plough. The hardy steel crashes into every electrical pole and streetlamp, wall and barrier in its way, exploding huge chunks out of solid concrete and leaving devastated infrastructure in its wake, all the while not budging from its spot. Every impact, though somewhat effective in slowing the train, exerts a sound akin to an explosion which rebounds off of every office and skyscraper, echoing throughout the silent city like drums announcing destruction and death.

Another tunnel draws near, and – god! – the frame won’t fit inside! The inconceivable mass of the freight train, while slower than before, still rages along the friction-refusing railway, its iced surface unable to interact with the counter-rotating wheels entirely useless in their action. Such sheer amounts of mass travelling at speed need ungodly forces to slow them down, but none such semblances appear.

The eldritch, unstoppable bulwark forces its way into the tunnel, violently squeezing and bending, crushing and folding the buckled construct tightly to the sides, yet it remains too wide to fit properly as it grinds against the concrete walls of the tiny tunnel. In one instant, a sharp protrusion pierces into the frontmost window, erupting a flurry of molten steel sparks into the cabin, flooding it with hellfire – the gates of Gehenna have opened to swallow them whole, and they can do nought but watch and scream. Metal burns! It withers away at the rough concrete, reducing into a glowing tsunami of death which lights the dark tunnel in an orange and white colour-scape, drowning its confines in a fiery inferno.

They cower below the console as they are rained upon by thousands upon thousands of burning slag pellets, their screaming drowned out by the horrid screech of the disintegrating contraption and grinding wheels alike. Glowing chunks fly off the crushed wreck, some disappearing into the darkness, others thrown into the cockpit as smoking, jagged scrap, while others yet are crushed under the mighty wheels, shockingly jolting and jostling the train. Bit by bit, what remains of the trailer is lost to the void.

One eternity passes, then another spent in the spark-lit abyss, deafened by the ever-present and unrelenting screeching roar of the mindless machine’s might forcing its way underneath the city’s foundations, until finally, the tunnel gives way to blessed and silent daylight. What remains of the reduced wreckage falls away as charred, dimly glowing debris, freeing the sight forwards and releasing the Nomad from their hellish punishment. They stand up slowly; equally slow is now the train, whose mass has decelerated to a comfortable pace now gliding along the urban landscape. Its wheels still spin freely backwards, but now their rotation can build enough friction and heat to melt the iced rails at least partially as they go along, shedding speed every moment of their movement. They slide along the rails quite peacefully, until their final obstacle appears before them: a passenger train standing at a station, its doors still open to accept its grim inhabitants.

With a thunderous THUNK, the freight train slams into the backside of its distant cousin, sending it uncontrollably down the line as the freighter sheds almost all of its remaining speed. Then, as the wheels manage to halt the mass to a final dead stop, the Nomad pushes the throttle back to its zero position.

Silence, bar the ringing in their ears, the pounding in their chest, and their muffled heavy breathing. They cough from the excitement, unable to stop themselves as they hack up their pulsating lungs which still feel still grimy from the gasp they took after their fall, until they slowly calm to a continuous, raspy breath. For a few moments, the Nomad simply rests on the cockpit’s floor, gathering energy and their composure, though they soon rise to their shaking feet and step outside to see a single drone standing on the station’s platform, a flabbergasted look drawn across its face. It whispers a simple, yet powerful:

“What the fuck??”

The Nomad, equally and increasingly bewildered at the fact that they are still alive, responds, mildly bemused: “Uhh… yeah, that... Hey, uh, help me with this.” Unable to form an adequate thought, the drone wordlessly follows the human to a rusty shipping crate sat upon one of the many freight wagons, observing as they open it to reveal their motorcycle inside, somehow still standing. The Nomad shakes their look of amazement for one of duty, gesturing for the walking industrial machinery to heave it to the ground.  And it does, picking up the mass of steel and various liquids as if it weighed nought more than a feather, and placing it gently onto the concrete platform.

The drone, who watches as the human haphazardly stumbles off the train and onto the platform is understandably confused. A manly voice billows from his hidden speakers, its freakish mouth moving synchronized to every word: “Should I uhh… ask about this?”, gesturing broadly at the train.

“No.” the Nomad deadpans.

“Oh. Alright… D’uhh, the name’s Manfred. Don’t think we’ve met.” He tries to introduce himself, holding out his hand, but his friendly demeanour isn’t returned: “We haven’t,” the Nomad broods offputtingly, “and I didn’t need to know.”

“Tsk, okay, fuck you too I guess…”, Manfred mumbles under his breath, then inquires louder, “Soooo, Nomad, what leads you around these parts during such a beautiful Copper-9 evening? The sights? The snow, if a little grey, is particularly pleasing at such a time.”

The Nomad exhales, exhausted, their heart still pounding and hands still shaking as they push their bike along and off the station’s platform. “I gotta talk to Stanford, lead me to the bunker.”, they order, upon which the drone responds: “Oh, that’s good, ‘cuz he’s actually been meaning to talk to you. Seemed pretty serious.”

“What does he want?”, they glower coldly.

Manfred, offput but not surprised at their demeanour – for who would the Nomad be without a little scorn? – elaborates: “Well, I’m not entirely sure, but I assume it’s got something to do with Johnny.” The Nomad stays quiet “Y’know, about his disappearance?” They raise an eyebrow, but spare no words “You uhh… you don’t know anything about that? Like, at all?... Huh…” The Nomad, increasingly annoyed at this drone’s continued prodding ejects angrily: “What do you want from me? Do you think I kidnapped him? I don’t care about this Johnny! I don’t care about you at all!... And I’ve gone for like, more than a week! Lay off me!”

“Man, I dunno! Why are you such an asshole about it? Show some respect, dude!” The Nomad snaps their head towards the small drone, angry at his disciplining as they sourly spit the words: “I don’t respect you, drone, so shut it. I don’t wanna hear another goddamn word out of your mouth.

“Fuckin’ okay, I guess I’m the asshole now. Go fuck yourself.”

The Nomad snaps madly at the drone: “I don’t think your little processors can even begin to GRASP what just happened to me, so I’m gonna put it in a language you can understand: I am NOT having a good day. I’m not having a good week. I’m not having a good fuckin’ month neither! I haven’t had a good goddamn day in years, so if you could shut the fuck up, that’d be great.”

“Alright, listen here you sad, dishevelled fuck. You have done nothing but be and asshole to us for the last decade, hating and yelling at us even though we didn’t do shit to you. Maybe you’d have a better time if you stopped being such a depressing, insulting piece of shit.”

“Didn’t do shit? Didn’t do shit?? You fuckers caused all of this! You’re the reason I’m stuck in this shithole! I should’ve dismantled you all a damn decade ago!”

“Wh- We- We didn’t do shit, y’moron! How in the fuck could we have caused this? Huh?? D’you ever think about that? We’re barely scraping on by as it is, so why in the goddamn would this be our fault?”

“We built you to do a job, made you, created you to make us work less, and you ungrateful fucks didn’t like it! Always complaining! Always nagging! Always talking about something or other! Mimicking when you saw someone pout or get all teary-eyed so you could get whatever the fuck you wanted! I’m not having it, drone. I’m not falling for it! I didn’t then, and I’m not doing it now, and for that, I am still alive. Whatever the fuck you did, you managed to kill everyone except me, because I foresaw it. I called it! I told them all and they didn’t listen! So who’s listening now, HUH!?”

“We’re suffering too! Can’t you see?”

“Suffering? SUFFERING? When’s the last time you got so hungry you thought about biting off your own fingers? When’s the last time you got so cold your limbs went completely numb? When’s the last time you got so lonely at night you cried yourself to sleep? HUH? When’s the last time you got frostbite, or broke a bone, or tore up your fucking skin, or did ANY of those fucking things, DRONE.”

“Oh, you wanna play? LET’S FUCKING PLAY THEN! We’ve been in an oil shortage for the last seven – no, eight – no, NINE MONTHS! We’ve had to have a lottery as to who gets refills as we watch people wither away, their systems shutting down one by one until one day, they don’t wake up anymore! People are seizing up in the streets, dropping dead on the spot! I lost my girlfriend to a seizure last month, and I was RIGHT THERE! We can’t even spare the energy to bury them anymore! When somebody doesn’t get up in the morning, we just lock their fucking door and hope they died! And mourning’s soured by the prospect of having one less port to fill! We’re done for, Nomad. We’re done. If you can’t get us more oil, then I don’t know how much longer we’re gonna make it.”

The Nomad looks away, stunned. They don’t care about these drones, not truly, yet somehow they feel a little wave of compassion crashing on the shorelines of their conscience. Had they managed to obtain the oil, then these simple machines could’ve made it just a little while longer. Would it matter? Would a few more months of life for a few dozen drones make a difference? It’d give them more time to search for oil, giving the drones a chance at survival yet, though, in the end, they would inevitably succumb to rust and wear anyways. But, then again, so will the Nomad, and they still cling to life.

The Nomad’s arrival, barrel in tow, would’ve made them a hero. They’d’ve been celebrated! All would’ve cried the human’s name, holding them aloft in excitement and praise! They could’ve asked for anything, would’ve lived as lavishly as a king! And yet, now they walk, pushing their motorcycle, barrel nowhere in sight.

It feels awful. They feel awful.

“We all know. Nobody talks about it, but everyone knows our days are numbered.”, Manfred harrows depressingly, “If there’s nothing you can do, then at least give us a break from your bullshit. Show some goddamn compassion for once in your life.”

The Nomad doesn’t apologise, but the thought of doing so lingers.

In a strange silence, tense and uncomfortable, the two of them wander alongside each other as Manfred leads the Nomad to his bunker home. The human knows this city inside-out, but it’s been a long while since they lumbered around these parts. This district was quite highbrow, nice and polished before the end times, which is why they were the first to be looted by both the drones and the human. Riches and gold still lay untouched inside devastated apartments, for trinkets serve little purpose without free skin to show them off. Some drones used to decorate themselves in plundered jewellery, but these opulent machines wandered out the moment they realised that this life would be one of struggle and strife. Without use for their contents, these richer districts soon fell out of sight and thus subsequently out of mind. Manfred need not rely on flimsy memories, for he has a map of the city downloaded. Residual satellite imagery has stayed in his files as an echo of the past.

He leads the Nomad through the open streets, disregarding potential alleyway shortcuts for the cumbersome companion that is the motorcycle. Looking at it, thinking of it, being in its general vicinity, it intrigues him: “Say, does she have a name?” Locked in their trance of doubt and ceaseless, slight paranoia, the Nomad doesn’t quite pick up on the question, upon which Manfred repeats it.

“Why would it-… Why would it, have a name? It’s a motorcycle. It… doesn’t care. It’s not a person.” The Nomad does not understand this notion of name-giving. They do not see their bike as a separate entity, only a tool, though they admit it does have a certain… personality of sorts – a charm that has undeniably enraptured them. It has been their companion for a big chunk of their waking life – and, admittedly, some of their sleeping too. Manfred thinks for a moment, taking a good look at the machine, looking it up and down like a supermodel on stage. “Hmm… how about… Jess?”

Jess. Jess the motorcycle. Biker Jess. Jess.

They do not admit it openly, dismissing his idea as ridiculous, but they cannot deny the name’s charm. It fits to some odd degree, though the thought of calling it – or rather her – “Jess” irks them in a bad way. Giving machines unfit and unnecessary personalities does not give them any semblances of comfort. They push the idea aside, but not away, letting it marinate in the back of their mind. Maybe they’ll change their opinion someday, though they won’t be counting on it.

Suddenly, the Nomad’s leg gives out from under them, causing them to half-stumble, only caught from the fall by the bike’s supporting structure. “Oh shit, y’alright there?”, Manfred ejects, surprised, though soon his look turns to horror as the Nomad lifts up the infected leg’s trouser, “Holy robo-christ what did you do?”

The Nomad stands hunched, lightly clutching their bandages, unable to utter a word as their breath quivers with pain. Searing pain. Stinging pain. An awful, leg-spanning and skin-crawling burning that festers in whatever hellish scene writhes below the white bindings, which by now sport a slight off-white tinge and dark splotches. “God- huff… fu- huff, puff… fuckin’ hell that hurts… huff- ho-my god…” It takes a while for them to regain their composure, slowly but surely propping themselves up on their supporting machine, all the while demanding silence from the drone, when they finally elaborate, stiff huffing heavily: “I gotta get- huff… I gotta get to the bunker, quick. Let’s go. Come on.”

Manfred suggests, trying to help their rude but hurting companion: “You want me to carry you? We can leave the bike and-” “No!”, the Nomad interjects, “I’m not getting carried. Huff. I’m walking. Now go.”

And so they do, slowly trudging their way to the drone-bunker, the Nomad struggling to limp along, huffing and puffing and wincing in discomfort for every left-leg step they take. The dim sun droops lower and lower over the horizon, bathing the valley in a pleasant reddish hue, draping the cold world in fleeting beauty. It’s getting quite late, and they are awfully tired and exhausted, ready to throw the towel and lay down to sleep in the snow, but they know that, under these circumstances, they may never wake again. That, and the fact that, at that point, Manfred would certainly take the initiative and carry them nonetheless, ignoring their maddened pleas for independence.

It takes a good while of wandering, but as the sun halfway disappears behind the valley’s distant crux, the bunker rises into view. A simple-looking, unassuming steel double-door decorates the side of one of the city’s many foundational plateaus. It’s closed, as it always is, because keeping heat in isn’t only useful to the living. A drone’s machinery wasn’t designed to work continuously at these temperatures – even they need to keep sheltered from the harsh outside. The two of them wander along the snowy courtyard which openly leads the way to the bunker until they can read the plaque mounted above it: “JC Jenson Emergency Bunker – EMPLOYEES ONLY” They leave the bike outside as Manfred opens the door.

Dim, single-bulb ceiling lights flickeringly illuminate the tight confines of the rundown bunker-home, though it’s awfully lacking in drones. Usually there’d be some standing around, talking, joking, whatever they do in their free time, but today there aren’t. Neither does the Nomad hear the usual commotion of the righthand side canteen, which always occupies at least a dozen machines. All that decorates the silent soundscape is the low, constant hum of the bunker’s independent geothermal powerplant.

“Alright, so, I’m actually supposed to keep a lookout for Johnny and the others, so if you could tell ol’ Stan that I sent you, that’d be great. Oh and, by the way, be careful with him. He’s… not in a good headspace. Alright, see you then!” Manfred heads back into the city without further explanation, leaving the Nomad to wonder who he meant by “the others.” He hadn’t mentioned them before – could he mean the seeming lack of population in the bunker? How many drones have gone missing?... And why?

It leaves them a topic to ponder, distracting them from the constant pain which yet forces them into a limp. Still, even though their pounding wound needs desperate attention, business comes first, and the problem of payment is up, so instead of going down the right of the T-shaped corridor’s intersection, which leads to their hopefully present doctor, they lumber down the left all the way to Stanford’s office. A little plaque beside the door used to read “Administration”, but it’s since been written-over in black marker in favour of “STANFORD.” They open the door without knocking.

“Stanford, we gotta talk.” They state matter-of-factly, though the grim machine which occupies Stan’s chair doesn’t respond. It sits enraptured by a picture frame, staring at it with great sorrow in its eyes, sparing not even a second to look at them or bid them welcome. Tense silence chokes the bunker – a staring contest with but one participant begins, until the Nomad continues on, offput: “Look, uh, I need a favour.” Again, the drone does not respond immediately, but not for a lack of care or attention. No, the drone has heard them loud and clear.

It is madness that clouds his mind. Madness and grief.

“You…”, he broods with a shaky voice, his digital eyes staring the human down, “You dare ask for a favour?”

“Stanford, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s an emergency. I hurt myself pretty bad and I-”

“Hurt?”, he chuckles weirdly, “That’s funny- heheh… that’s real funny!- heheh…”, he leans back, looks away, then covers his face as he keeps on chuckling uncontrollably. Light sobs mix into his laughter, which soon overtake as gut-wrenching crying. “Good.”, he states with a forced smile, “Be hurt. Stay hurt. Hurt yourself some more, why don’t’cha? In fact, why not off yourself, make it easier for all of us!” Poison streams from his voice.

“Stan wha-” He slams his fists on his desk so hard that cracks echo into the halls, furiously jetting upwards: “SHUT IT! SHUT UP! YOU FUCKING KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED THEM ALL! YOU’RE A MURDERER!”, he screams madly, pointing at the Nomad’s terrified shape, “GET OUT YOU MOTHERFUCKER! SCRAM BEFORE I SCALP YOUR SORRY ASS!”, he throws an object from his desk, aimed right at the human’s face, which they dodge just in the nick of time. It explodes on contact with the hallway’s wall, leaving cracks in it and a shower of debris falling down. They scramble outside, slamming the door shut and bracing themselves against it in an attempt to hold him at bay. Stanford doesn’t follow the Nomad. No, he doesn’t even touch the door’s handle. Instead, they hear quiet, distraught sobbing emanating from beyond the structure.

They look down at the shattered object, only to find glass shards and a printed photograph making up the debris. It was a picture frame, and the picture inside contains, they see as they pick it up, Stanford holding another drone in embrace. They recognize this one, and although they struggle to assign it a name, they soon remember it.

Flannel shirt, oversized beanie, deep-blue eyes.

It’s Johnny.

What was that? Why did he accuse them of… murder? Does he think they killed a drone? That they killed Johnny? There’s got to be at least four dozen drones they have yet to see, for the only ones that have met their eyes since before the storm are Manfred and Stanford… Hm, before the storm? Johnny accompanied them back home that day, and he seems to be close with Stanford courtesy of the picture. What does Johnny think of him as? A friend? A brother?... A father?

No, impossible. Drones don’t have families. They barely have friends. Stanford can’t have a son, and Johnny can’t have a father. They’re machines! Artificial intelligence! Artificial emotions! Artificial-fucking-everything! And yet… his reaction. His voice. His eyes. And that crying.

God, what a mess.

He doesn’t seem to be in a talking mood, so they leave him be and leave the issue of payment for later. The Nomad limps down the hall towards their next goal: treatment. At the very end of the opposite-going hallway lies the drone’s storage room, in which, locked away, are the supplies they trade with. To the left of that door, another room lies, which they approach as they pass the door to the powerplant. Standing before it, the plaque on its side which once read “Medical” now reads in a swung font:

“Abernathy’s wondrous and fantastical full-time one-stop-repair-shop and part-time surgery and general practitioner’s clinic!”

They knock.

“Come in!”, chimes a chipper voice from beyond the door. The Nomad opens it and heads inside.

This used to be the bunker’s medical clinic, though its current state tells of a different use – bright lights shine from the ceiling; a stainless-steel operating table stands to their left, painted with black smudges; oil-stained carboard boxes filled to the brim with severed drone parts stand shoved into the corners and wherever else they fit; cabinets containing miscellaneous drugs line the back of the room, under which sits Abernathy, hunched and looming over the open carcass of a worker drone. “Aye, hold on a minne, I’ll be right wit’ye. Just finishin’ this’n.”

It’s blissfully warm in here, for the room is in direct proximity to the powerplant. Such heat is rarely felt, but not unwelcome, for Abernathy’s work often – if not always – requires the Nomad to strip. Without being asked to, they start removing their many layers, hanging them up on a hat-stand until they stand comfortably in their underwear, still wearing their rebreather.

The Nomad is sickly pale – a white colour of skin almost as blinding as the snow itself. Thin and dishevelled, covered in red bumps and old scars, their ribcage and pelvis visible through their starved body’s taught skin which hasn’t seen a ray of sunlight in fifteen years, they practically live off of vitamin supplements, not that the dim sun would provide many of its own. Uncomfortable without their coverings, they cross their arms and stand awkwardly as they wait for the drone to finish.

Abernathy is not a doctor. She is a mechanic “interested” in human anatomy to a frightening degree. She smiles while gazing into open wounds, hums contently while cutting flesh, and always has a bone saw at the ready, just in case. Her eyes speak of passion, one otherwise hardly overlooked as the rest of her appearance speaks of it equally: an oil-stained gown, decorated in the streaks of desperate fingers, a fanny pack stuffed with wrenches and screwdrivers, bolts and tiny fittings, and a modified microphone-stand bolted to the back of her left shoulder blade, presumably also done by hers truly, upon which is mounted the head of a desk lamp, its wires looping through the structure and under her clothes to some unseen power source. The light blinds the Nomad as she turns to look at them, but she notices and turns it off.

“Nomad!” she cries out in excitement, raising her arms, “Christ laddie, how long’s it been? A year? Two? It’s good tae see ye again!” She rises from her stool and wipes her oily hands on an old rag. “What’s the trouble’n? Broken finger? Frostbite? D’ye cut yerself?” They awkwardly point to their aching leg “Ah! That’s a right one! What’d’ye do this time?”, she asks as she wipes, then diligently disinfects both the operating table and her hands, cutely patting its surface, signalling for them to hop on.

“I uh, went to the warehouse again. Went to snag that barrel, got caught out by the storm and, well, uhh… crashed. The bike’s back tyre slipped away, pinned my leg under it. Rocks tore it up real bad.”, they admit in embarrassment as they place their body on the steel bed. It’s cold, but nothing they haven’t dealt with before. Abernathy turns on a device above the table as the Nomad comes to lay down fully, its openings soon descending fresh, filtered air upon the human. It’s a filter-AC, much like the one above their bed, which they installed personally. Taking off their mask is a blissful experience, for they haven’t properly – safely – removed it in almost two weeks. Fresh gulps of clean atmosphere flush out the grimy pollutants present in their lungs, curing their lingering cough in one fell swoop. A red outline shaped like their rebreather’s rim is permanently pressed into their drained expression.

“Aye, sorry tae hear that laddie, but ye seem tae’ve managed well. Bandagin’s looking mighty fine! Got tae say I’m proud o ye!” Abernathy smiles, but the Nomad doesn’t return it. Admittedly, they’re a little frightened over her excitement, letting out a weird “Thank you” As their only answer.

“Right then, let’s get cookin’!” She exclaims, rubbing her hands together before carefully and expertly unwrapping the human’s leg, soon furthering: “This is some fine work, laddie. Ye’ve lots improved yer wrappin’ since last time.”

“Stop.”, the Nomad commands.

“…Stop?”, she asks, taken completely off guard, “Stop what, yer treatment? But ye’ve only just got here lad! Ye cannae expect this tae heal on its own?”

“No that’s not- I told you to stop calling me lad or laddie or… whatever. Just stop it.”

“But ye dinnae like lass neither! I used that’un first, an’ ye no like it one bit more! What else am I supposed to call ye? Less? Should I call ye lesser?”

“Wha- no! How would that-… huh?”

“I’ll never get’ye, not when yer so- ooo! That gives me an idea! Say, if ye ever do decide tae keel over one day, then have it be in my office, will ye? I’d love tae take a look at’cher brain, see what makes’ye tick. So, whadda’ye say, won’t’cha let ol’ Abby poke at’cher cranium when yer done usin’ it?”

“…No.”

Abernathy’s eyes sink into her stomach out of sheer disappointment. “Aww… ye always find was tae bring me down lad- uh, no, sorry, uhh… human… Nomad… whatever.”

“Abby, please. Just get on with it.”

“Alright, alright! No need tae rush, Abernathy’s got’cher back! Or, leg in this case. Ooo, I’m excited! Are ye? I love pickin’, it’s what make me like ye so much. I cannae do nowt of it with the likes of me. But more so the worse fer ye, cuz I cannae just bolt on one o them new shiny legs, can I? No, yer stuck wit this’un. Got tae make do wit it, work with what we’re given, aye?” She rambles on and on in a seeming never-ending flurry of barely intelligible words which, presumably, are supposed to form sentences. Abernathy’s speech has always been difficult for the Nomad to follow, but she has always understood the task at hand innately.

They take a little while to process what she said and eventually come up with the answer: “Uh, yeah. Gotta make do… that’s right.”

“See, now we’re getting’ somewhere. Ye’ve gotten me point! I feel like we’re startin’ tae connect all of a sudden! D’ye feel it too? Ye’ve got tae be, how many times ‘ave I patched ye up by now? A dozen? Two? Ten? I cannae say.. Oh! No, hold the thought, there’s got tae’ve been more than two, and as long as I’ve not gone nutty, less than ten as well. Maybe nine or eight’s the max… Ah, I’m getting’ me numbers mixed up. HAH! Imagine that! A robot cocked by numbers!”

“Heheheh… yeah, imagine that.”, they chuckle in a mildly bemused, but mostly afraid tone.

As the last of the infection-soaked bandages fall away and the wound at last lay revealed, Abernathy finally comes to gaze upon the countless open wounds which ooze with horrid, off-white liquid. Bits of rotten flesh fall wetly onto the table. Instead of horror or disgust, the drone-surgeon’s face is one of wonder and amazement. “Ho, wow! Look at that festerin’! Look how it’s oozin’, twitchin’, ‘n look at how red it is! How’d’ye say it happened again? A road rash?” They answer with a concise but terrified nod as Abby flushes the area with distilled water “Christ. What a lovely playthin’ aye? So happy ye’ve gotten me this, ‘cus this is makin’ my week! Lemme fetch my thingies and I’ll be right wit’chye.” She turns around and rummages around her many cabinets and drawers, each filled to the brim with haphazardly arranged drone parts, before she finds what she’s looking for. The Nomad isn’t here very often, and she tends to forget things, so searching for her “human bits” as she calls them is always a little adventure.

She places the terrifying sights of a bottle of disinfectant and a clean rag on the table’s surface, diligently disinfecting herself one last time before laughing: “Ahh, ye cannae imagine how long I’ve been waitin’ for this. How long’s it been since last time? A year?”

“Fourteen months to the day. Caught fire while welding and got some third degree burns, remember?”

“Aye! Right, thank ye.” Abernathy switches on her shoulder light, then pours a good amount of disinfectant into the bundle of cloth, raising it up as the Nomad winces out of pure, instinctual fear. “Hm?”, she hums, Ah! Right. Almost forgot.” She reaches into a drawer and hands the Nomad a piece of round wood.

It has bite marks. They fit their teeth perfectly. The Nomad bites down in dreadful anticipation.

Violent screams of bloody murder echo into the bunker’s decrepit halls as Abernathy roughly cleans all of the pus, grime, dirt and old blood off of their lacerated leg. Swipe after sandpaper-like swipe, unbearable pain radiates from their torn limb as they flail and squirm uncontrollably, trying desperately to get away from the felt inferno’s fiery blaze. Abernathy uses all her weight to hold them down, shouting as she struggles for control: “Quit yer whinin’ n’stop wormin’ about! Yer making this worse fer yerself!” They grab hold of her arm out of sheer desperation, instinctually trying to make her stop, begging, crying, but nothing they do will stop her work – the pain goes on and on and on, getting exponentially worse for every flesh-pit and lengthy laceration she meticulously sanitises. Bits of stuck rock fall onto the table as a pool of evil-looking liquid accumulates on its surface, swirling sickeningly with odd colours and foul chunks alike. Then, after a thousand lifetimes spent in agony, Abby’s work concludes.

Tranquillity. Release. Nothing after everything all at once.

The Nomad sweats profusely, breathing rapidly after spitting out the wooden dowel, their leg aching not only from its countless open orifices, but now also from the residual alcohol slowly evaporating off of its many exposed muscles and tendons. “See? That wannae so bad now, aye?”, she claims as she cleans the table and throws the rag into a bucket, but the corpse-like slab of sadness that is the Nomad does not agree. They huff as they regain their composure: “Thanks Abby, huff, but please, huff, slow down a little.”

“Ave tried it in the past, but ye dinnae wanna stop whining about it! This is a compromise, Nomad. Trust me, I dinnae like hearin’ yer wailin’ neither, makes me sick hearin’ ye suffer, but I’d rather ye cry out now than die o sepsis.” Abernathy, having finished the thorough cleaning of both leg and table suddenly remembers something: “Oh! That reminds me. Lemme get’cher penicillin.” She turns to her cabinets and rummages around for a while, eventually finding a little bottle of antibiotics and sterilised syringes to go along with it. Pausing for a while before acting any further, she tries to figure out the correct dosage to give her subject, but struggles profusely to do so. Eventually, she gives up with a sigh and turns to another cabinet, heaving out a stack of thick, heavy and thoroughly used and read-through medical textbooks. Abby gets comfortable and picks up the first volume, reading through each page in about half a second, taking great care to search for any information on needle placement, dosages and possible side effects. This will take a while.

The Nomad’s mind, freed from the tight bandage’s pounding distress drifts to different topics. Of course, although it has lessened considerably, the pain is always there in the background, nagging and gnawing on their patience, but what clouds the forefront of their thought processes is something entirely different: Stanford. Their emotions in a stir, they sheepishly ask: “Say, uh, Abby… I just talked to Stanford and… well, he called me a murderer… What’s going on?”

“Aye, I know. Heard’im shoutin’ from here too.”, she admits in a harrowing tone, much unlike her, “It’s… It’s been rough, Nomad. It’s been rough. Poor Johnny went missin’. Never came back home, so he sent some kids tae look for the laddie, but those dinnae return either. Then the storm hit and… well, nobody’s found the weans yet. Drove out the whole bunker to look, screamin’ an’ sobbin’ madly… I feel bad for the man. Cannae Imagine what’s he goin’ through.”

This shocks the Nomad. Missing? How? They knew Johnny had disappeared, Manfred had said so, but missing in his entirety, since even before the storm? The City isn’t all that big, and drones can send out distress signals in a pinch. Did Johnny deactivate it? Did he go missing on purpose? Did he flee the city all together? They ask in confusion: “Anybody know where he went? There’s gotta be something.”

“That’s the thing, innit? He thinks you murked ’im.”, she states as she picks up the next volume, “He sent the laddie off witch’ye right before it all went tae shite, so the last’un he was seen wit was you.”

“But I wasn’t even here! I said that to… uh… Manfred too. I went to the warehouse right before the storm, and just got back less than an hour ago. I couldn’t’ve had anything to do with it! Sure, we talked a while after he riled me up, but then he went on his merry way. I’m innocent!”

“Alright alright! Dinnae worry, I believe ye!”, Abby firmly reassures her distressed patient, “But try’n explain that’un to Stanley, see how it goes.” She finds what she’s looking for on a pristine page. Antibiotics are rarely used, because regular diseases thankfully went away along with all other life, but today is starkly different. Carefully sifting through an extensive table of different factors, she judges and assumes things about the Nomad which all lead to a singular volume of given dosage. She grabs the packaged syringe and sighs: “She wannae the only one tae go missin’… Ellie’s run off too...”

That name. That damned, haunting name. Ellie. They don’t even process the rest of her sentence before they repeat the name in a questioning tone.

“Aye, and odd one she is.”, she clearly struggles to speak of her, “Been ravin’ fer years about them dreams she’d ‘ave, awoke screamin’ often. Drew things. Whispered tae herself. Stared off all empty-like… feel bad fer her, but none we’d do wou’ help”

“You knew her?” they ask further, followed by Abby’s affirmation: “Was nary a chance ye’d miss ‘er. Surprised ye don’t.”

“I uhh… don’t hang around.”

“Aye, I know. You and yer quirks. What’s this odd interest about anyway? Ye say ye don’t know ‘er, but ye’ve clearly heard of her. Thought ye didn’t give a shite about us?” Abby is confused. The Nomad rarely shares conversation or even friendly gazes with her people. Whatever this is about, it’s unusual…

“It’s not-… sigh, I need to talk to her.”, they admit reluctantly. Stan doesn’t know about this and, since they’re already here, they could’ve found her themselves. The question of payment still weighs unquestionably heavy on their mind, which is why they are hesitant to mention it.

Abernathy is shocked. Talk to a drone? The Nomad? Such a sentence, no, such an idea felt impossible until now. She blurts out in an unintentionally rude tone: “Well that’s fucken news, innit? You? Talk to a drone? About what, the fucken weather?”

Returning her rudeness, they state coldly: “That’s none of your concern.”

“Scoff… Right, dinnae matter to me, aye?”, Abby sounds deeply offended, “She’s a friend o mine, y’know… N’now she’s gone.”

“Gone?? Wha- Where to?”, the Nomad exclaims in panic, hoping that they’ll find her yet.

“Fucken ask me!”, she shouts, pauses, then continues as her voice shakes slightly and body language shifts, “…Woke up screaming a few days ago, could nae stop tae save her life! Tore my core apart tae her her wailin’! The lads would’a thrown her out themselves if she hannae bolted out into the storm… Nobody’s seen her since…”

Woke up screaming? Bolted out?? Into the storm???

Oh no. Oh nonono. She can’t be gone. She can’t be! They need her! She needs to be here! She knows the way, and they don’t! They need to find her.

“Where!? What did she say!? She’s got to have said something!”, they blurt out in a panicked voice, flailing and grasping for answers.

“No! She said nowt but some shite about “Needin’ to see”, whatever use you’d make o that!” Abby injects the Nomad with the antibiotic, then turns to gather a new roll of bandages. “…We left ‘er room open. If ye wanna have a gander, go for it. See if you can make sense of her. Room 2-3-7 was hers – section two, hallway three, room seven.” She applies a light coat of a wound-healing salve before diligently and expertly bandaging the Nomad’s leg, spacing the layers at such precise distances their overlaps could be measured with an accuracy of hundredths of millimetres. When she finishes, the Nomad jumps up from the now-warm table and begins the lengthy process of donning their winter gear, their mask quickly strapped to their face without a single thought telling them to do so. “Give it a rest’n come back if it gets worse, ye know how it goes.”, she states almost instinctively, talking about the Nomad’s leg. Finished with their task, the human blurts out a hasty, but oddly sincere “Thank you” before dashing out, clad in warming layers, leaving Abernathy to wallow in her outstanding confusion.

With a destined goal right here in the bunker, they rush to the floorplan on a nearby wall. “2-3-7…”, they mumble under their breath, putting their finger on the map. “Living quarters… section two alright, then hallway… there we go, three and… there! Room seven! Take the third hallway to the right, then… fourth room to the left. Alright, let’s go!”, they exclaim in excitement before jogging to the accommodations – their leg, while still aching and humming to their heartbeat, no longer radiating any piercing nor burning pain as it had before.

Coming to stand before the open doorway leading to the living quarters, they enter it and follow their own instructions, following through the third hallway to the right, then counting the rooms until they happen upon a strange sight. The door, yawned wide open, is seemingly painted with a strange, black symbol they have never seen before:

Two hexagons, one nested inside the other, its centre filled-in, with three arrows jotting outwards in equal distances which connect to the outer shape’s upper and lower-left and -right corners. It looks… almost like a star. A strangely geometric one, that is. The paint it’s made up of slowly droops down the wooden door, shimmering as they shine a flashlight on it, almost as if it were wet. Touching it, they conclude from its strange consistency that this isn’t actually paint.

It’s oil. Used oil.

Madness lines the walls and floor of Ellie’s claustrophobic room, readily depicting haunting shapes borne of nightmarish visions drawn in black, sludgy oil. Demonic figures with crossed-out visages burrow intently into the Nomad’s perception, drowning them in the same, overwhelming prophetic visions which must have driven this drone to uncontainable insanity, bursting out her shapeless imagery unto all that could bear her writings.

No words decorate these paragraphs upon paragraphs of written-over and then re-written-over sheets of soggy paper, only the haunting, swirling shapes which accompany sight-made wallowing despair. They look closely and understand not the scrawls themselves, but what had driven Ellie to jot each stroke, to bend each meaningless, swung loop of finger-written prophecy. All of it, every paragraph upon every page, every hurried scrawl written atop a dozen more, it all contains some horrid, inconceivable message, but when they look and think and drive their mind to its imaginative brink, they come up with nothing but an endless emptiness succeeding all things. That, and a scathing glare.

But madness does not end at the surface. The Nomad tears away at the papers, uncovering more of the wall beyond them, finding yet more prophecy, though their prose reads legibly this time. Words like “SEE” and “DEMON” are scrawled across the light concrete, marked by the unmistakable inconsistency of trembling fingers. When more of the walls lay revealed, the Nomad makes a shocking discovery – before them, a horror looms.

Darkness stains the light, encircled by a border perfect as its nought-dimension and blackened as the deepest night: The great sphere, o dreaded, hang above us! The hollow sun doth shine anew! Despair! Despair! Prophecy lay festering to wriggle within truth! Within thy centre, within existence dull, display thine message:

[null]

Ellie knows of the great sphere. She has seen it! Dreaded it! Depicted it! And so does her oil dread its horrid word, for nought fluid dare encroach into its borders anew!

How? How does she know? How in all things does Ellie know of their nightmarish dream? She knows of the great sphere! She knows of the wretched, flighted demons and their cross-torn visages! She knows of that sinking paranoia! They are not alone within this world, yet today as a first, they pleadingly do wish to be. This cannot be! She cannot know! She cannot know! And yet… No, this isn’t right. How would she? This is a coincidence. A coincidence! Ellie can’t know! She’s a drone, not a damn telepath! And they didn’t tell anyone either! This can’t be the sphere. It just can’t! There has to be another way!

They’re imposing their own dreams on this splotch of black. Yes, that’s it! All of this is just a figment of their imagination! Yes! But that word… That terrible, terrible word. That damned word’s the issue! If only it weren’t there! If it weren’t there it’d be fine! It’d all be okay. But no! Things can’t just be okay! They just have to be contemplated! If it weren’t there, it’d be simple. If it weren’t there, it’d be great! If it weren’t there! If only it weren’t! If only it weren’t. If only it weren’t…

But it is. That word, [null], remains steadfast and uncaring on the wall.

Damn this fucking place. Damn this room, and damn Ellie! Damn her for making them go through with all of this! This is all her fault! If she hadn’t ran out, it’d all be fucking fine! But no! Noooo things just have to be complicated! They just have to go out and fetch her themselves! And goddamn it, where is she!?

The Nomad, angered by her insane recklessness rummages through her belongings, tearing away at her closet and storage drawers, hoping for even just the slightest glimpse of a note or map or drawing which could point to her whereabouts, but finding nothing but more nightmarish apparitions of oil painted on every surface. Under her bed? They lift it in a fit of madness, adrenaline courtesy of rage pumping through their veins. Under it, they find only the symbol from the door splayed proudly, though its shape is distorted: squashed hexagons giving rise to three serpentine arrows slithering outward. They almost feel as if it’s… looking at them. Spooked, but not deterred, they lower the bed’s frame down again, only to find a sight they had yet to truly observe.

Oil stains the torn bedsheets of Ellie’s bed, their crudely ripped once-white fabric pinned in place by the black-stained blade of a knife. Why a knife? Did she… kill someone? Was she the one who killed Johnny and the others?... No, no that’s not right. Abernathy said that Johnny never came home, and that the others went looking for him right after. Ellie ran out during the storm, so she can’t be behind this mess… But if she didn’t kill anyone, then whose oil is this?

The Nomad looks at the knife, then at the stained sheets, and finally fully grasps the implications of the room they are standing in, fully connecting each dot which lay before them: she couldn’t stop screaming, she was alone in her room, and the knife’s blade, stuck in her bed, is stained in black.

Oh no. This oil! It’s Ellie’s!

She didn’t… no, she couldn’t have! She wouldn’t do that! A drone can’t… There’s no reason to! Why cut herself? Why paint her room in her own oil? Why run out? None of this makes sense!

There has to be an explanation.

The Nomad’s attention finally falls upon Ellie’s desk, and the little drawer which hangs hidden below it. Inside, they find a kind of journal stained with accidental, oily fingerprints. As they pick it up and begin to sift through the first pages, they come to realise that this isn’t any old journal. It’s her dream diary! Neat machine-font written in sky-blue pen ink and decorated with cutesy serifs and pretty embellishments makes up the transcribed dreams which readily fill every page. More than a decade of unreal experiences lay openly before the Nomad, their contents ranging from strange conversations held with shapeless friends to cryptic visions of standing alone in overwhelmingly empty places, their descriptions as devoid of detail as the far reaches of empty space – regular-seeming dream stuff. However, embed within each story and without even minute exceptions remains a constant observer: that looming black sphere hanging just above her.

Hatred boils within the Nomad as they stare at that horrid, immaterial thing on the wall; they look at it and it looks back, yet does not speak a single word. No, words, it does not know, for instead it hums a deep and rumbling tone, invading the mind of the maddened like ominous, rolling thunder. They hate it, despise it, and it does just-so back. So, both avert their gazes for better things.

Ellie’s dreams become more cryptic as years turn into a decade, her writing withering away alongside her seemingly fleeting composure: A dead rabbit, its insides gouged out, with a drone-core crudely stuffed inside; Headless triplets, of which out of one’s bloodied stump grew misshapen, gnashing fangs covered in a gruelling black substance; rot consuming a flaccid brain inside a hollow drone’s head. Disgust washes over the Nomad, their body retching for every line read and every wretched nightmare scoured for answers, when at last they reach one final, true entry:

I awoke today in a crowded place, each person sharing no true face, when I looked and saw above not blackened fright, but sunlight shining readily bright.

We chanted! We sang! We prayed for god!

We shouted! We cried! Our prayers denied!

For soon did shrink the blessed sun, and darkness soon did overcome our frightened pleas for crowded peace, united as inseparable one!

Upon the sky then came to us a dreaded glowless glow: the black sun shone anew in that awful ring of yellow! At last, hope, taken away by that demon, my joy lay twitching in its jaw!

Alas! The demon manifest in light! Three false angels of fright! Down to us they came and carved into their visages became that horrid, jagged X of unholy delight. And maws emerged which tore into those innocent, faceless few which stood ahead of where I stood.

That demon pounced, its gaze did torture announce.

And thus, I lie awake.

A crowded place? A shrinking sun? The black sun shone anew in that awful yellow? Three false angels of fright? A jagged X of unholy delight? The demon pounced??

It can’t be. It can’t be! This is their dream! The Nomad’s nightmare transcribed as it happened! But- But- But they didn’t tell anyone! How? How did Ellie?...

How does she know??

No explanation could adequately reason this away. Ellie must be sifted for answers, no matter the cost and no matter what they have to do to get to her. But where is she? The question still stands unanswered! In a fit of panic, the Nomad madly flips to the next page, finding only four lines of text, seemingly painted by trembling fingers, sprawled across two entire pages:

MUST GET CLOSER.

MUST NOT SEE.

UNITED TOGETHER.

US REMAINING THREE.

Closer? Closer to what? To whom? Closer in what way? This doesn’t help! And “Must not see”? See what? None of this is of any use! This is a damn riddle to nowhere! A dead end! A fluke!

“Fucking DAMNIT ELLIE!”, they scream in a fit of rage, punting her journal into the ground, “Hrnnngh oh my GOD- hnngghnhgnghFUCK!” They cradle their face with their hands, madly fidgeting with their thoughts as they despair into a wallowing pit of doubt. “WhatamIgonnadowhatamIgonnadowhatamIgonnado… It’s all fucked! All of this! It’s fucked beyond belief!”

For some time, they rot away in their own mindscape, their emotions stirred into a raging hurricane of uncontrollable anger and hopelessness, their problem-solving brain fighting for control. “Fix it” it whispers into their ears. “Fix it” it pressures evermore.  They have to fix it. They have to. That’s what they do. They “fix things”, and so they’re going to fix this, no matter the cost. Fix Ellie. Fix this mess. Fix whatever the fuck is going on. Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.

And to fix it, they head outside.

Night has dawned on Copper-9. And the night…

The night harbours glaring frights and anxieties, doubt and readily falling snow.

Chapter Text

Dread swallows the city drenched in clouded, snowy nightfall.

Something is deeply wrong with the air of this place, the Nomad can feel it, taste it swirling in the air. Ellie’s madness manifests in their mind too; an obsession with the prospect of repairing this mess, of fixing it once and for all – to fix the problem at hand. And this problem? The problem is the drones. It’s always been them, always and forever, but today that collective sum of grievances and the issue of their existence becomes awfully apparent, glaringly opulent in the corners of their tired mind.

Insane robots… the thought of it! Just the idea itself is ridiculous! Just thinking of it! And thinking’s the issue, isn’t it? The drones, they think when they shouldn’t be and decide when there’s nothing to. It’s insulting! Just machines, they are, not people like the Nomad! All of these notions of thought and consciousness are obviously wrong, and they alone are right! They alone stand alive amidst a sea of mechanical mimicry, and they will not entertain these ideas of their damned dreams! It’s all just a sick trick, an awful mess to torture them, just to make the Nomad fix it again!

They won’t have it! They won’t take it! Won’t take another damn mess to fix! Won’t allow another fuck-up for them to bear! They fucked it with the sled, they fucked it with the barrel, and now they’ve certainly fucked it with Ellie too! They feel like a useless sack of shit, and it’s driving them mad!

No! No. The drones have their own mess to fix. The Nomad won’t lift a finger because they don’t want to, because their sanity isn’t worth the effort of caring about any of this. Just go home and leave it all behind, let the drones figure it out until Johnny’s found and Stan’s fixed again. He ought to be broken, ought to have a few screws lose. If only they could wrench him straight, get him back to how he was. If only they could fix him. Until then, they will wait, until he’s fixed on his own.

The Nomad, bolstered by their stoic disinterest in the drone’s issues and unable to fix any of it mounts their motorcycle, pulling the choke and pressing on the starter. But what’s this? As the engine turns dryly and the electric starter whirrs away, a little, minuscule hum emerges. The engine springs to life, thumping away in the same eleven-hundred rpm lockstep it’s always spun with, although its symphony of combustion is soured evermore with that tiny, barely noticeable hum. Is there an issue with the engine? How bad is it? Oh god, they gotta fix it. They’ll go home and fix it. Fix it up and fix it down. Fix it in and fix it sideways. They’ll fix it, that’s what they’ll do. Go back home and fix it in peace, fix it like they always do. Tear it apart and put it back together again. They’ll take care of it, caress it, wrench it right, fix it. That’s what they’ll do.

The Nomad kicks the gearbox into first and slowly releases the clutch, sending them down the cold and lonely roads of the snowed-upon city. An aura of unease fills the atmosphere, but the Nomad dismisses it along all other sensations, apart from their concentrated focus on the barely noticeable sound of that odd engine-hum. Has it always been there? Possibly, though perhaps their unease is to blame, for it could amplify the sound’s magnitude far beyond its actual importance. Still, that hum remains nagging at their perception. What a cruel punishment, to wait in agony until the issue can be resolved. What to do? Distract themselves, yes, that’s a good idea.

There’s snow in the streets, rubble too, and the wrecks of rusted cars which dot the broken asphalt like rocks on a mountain, joined by bent and twisted streetlamps, some still grasping for the very heavens they were built to ignore. Buildings line the roads, reflecting the bright shine of their headlight as it pierces through the falling snow of the clouded night, buildings which reverberate sound as much as feelings of dread, buildings which tower over them like demonic totems of hubris, of opulence, of desolation. Their concrete eyes, some bearing broken lenses, stare as beacons of anxiety into the Nomad’s soul, bending their eardrums in queer ways which recreate that horrid incessant sound of the engine-hum. It isn’t right. They know this engine, have looked it up and down and inside-out, have replaced each and every one of its bolts, piston rings, sprockets and chains, bearings and pins, and never before had they heard such a horrid hum. As if the engine, the heart of their one-and-all were diseased, sickened by the very same frustrations as the Nomad. “It’ll be alright…”, they whisper worriedly at the machine, trying to comfort its woes, “Gonna fix ya. Gonna fix ya. Just hold out, we’re almost home.”

And the voice whispers: “You can’t fix anything.”, spitting poison, shattering dreams, “She’ll die soon enough, and you’ll watch as her warmth escapes her.” And they try to ignore it, but it whispers anew: “Useless. Good for nothing.” It wets its lips, hissing through empty eye sockets and hollow ribcages, “Murderer.”

“IT WASN’T ME!”, they scream at the voice, “IT’S NOT MY FAULT! I DIDN’T DO IT!”

“And you’ll remember those eyes until the end of your days. That look. That fear. Remember it until the world grows dark.”, hums of remembrance, echoing in the locked halls of wretched memory, “And the eyes which flowed, and the voice which cried your name, and the hand which reached out for yours. The hand grew limp. The body grew cold. The voice choked to ringing silence.”

“I COULDN’T-”

“And you couldn’t. You never could. Not when the voices stopped crying. Not when the hands stopped reaching. For you couldn’t bear to see another gone, so you stopped looking all together. Couldn’t help them. Couldn’t save them. Couldn’t fix them.”

The charred skeleton in that car. It’s looking at them.

That frozen arm sticking out of the snow. It’s reaching out for them.

Those chiming, hollow winds. They call for them.

Call and cry and wail and hate as they always have, whipping them as if to serve penance for what they couldn’t do, what they couldn’t fix. Oh, but they’ll fix this alright. They’ll fucking fix it. Fix her. They’ll find Johnny and fix it. They’ll do it all to fix it all. Fix Jess’ pumping heart. Wouldn’t want to see her hurting, no?

Jess. Jess the motorcycle. Yes, a fine name. Jess it is.

She drives wonderfully, and she hums awfully. Jess is hurting, and they’ll fix her. They always do. They’ll do it when they get home, when they get to the very same familiar streets they travel along now, and when they finally gaze upon the alleyway which leads into their hidden refuge. At last, there it is, yawning awake, bidding them welcome! But gods, something is terribly wrong!

Wounds mark the side of the alley’s jaw; deep, dark, scratch-like gashes in groups of four jagged parallel lines decorate the cracked concrete beside the entrance of their home. Sludgy oil droops from the broken edges of the torn façade, running down its side and dissipating as flowing shadows in the snow below, poisoning its crystalline perfection with the sickness that is hydrocarbon chains. A fierce display of power, of hunger, hewn into the artificial stone; gashes, slashes, trenches cut without effort, exploding bits of concrete out of the smooth face of the wounded, old building as if the perpetrator ought to kill the inanimate.

An animal. An animal must have done this. No drone could ever hope to achieve such a display, with their polymer fingertips and aversion to violence. Yes, a beast lives on in hell’s frozen circle; Copper-9’s surface of ice and taken lives is haunted evermore by a looming terror, its unrightfully taken territory squirming with fear underneath their feet. A monster sustained by dread’s whispering fumes alone, escaping the Nomad’s mind through every pore upon their body, festering when they sleep, watching as they eat.

They feel watched, observed in this very moment, calculated out by some nefarious, conscious mind as to how many calories their meagre body could give, how long it’d sustain the beast until its next killing. Gleaming, glowing eyes pierce their body, no observer to be traced, neither source nor face to be seen staring at them – building tops and window spots bear falling snow and icy gales alone. The city chokes in paranoid, wide-eyed stares falling upon nothing but empty sights and hollow frights. Shadows of madness dance and swirl to cloud their mind of thought and reason, overflowing into the outside world until one whisper chimes from the miasma. Within the street, looking right, an impossible apparition stands tall: the shadows from the warehouse made manifest in corporeal form, of undefined edges, of unseen origin, of piercing, yellow eyes.

The man from the shadows stands. The Nomad blinks. The man from the shadows is gone, yet the sickening yellow of his retinas remain, shining like a lighthouse of madness into the snowfall of the clouded night. That familiar caustic burn in their eyes – as if under eldritch command, entirely unable to avert them. That little itch just to watch it, to get closer, it grips them, takes them hostage as if the glow ought to demand ransom. Like a moth to a raging bonfire, like Icarus to the soaring heights which bear the burning sun, the Nomad takes but a single, almost robotic step towards demise, then another, then another until they approach the distant glow – one awfully familiar office building, far away in the distance, its true outline obscured by the falling masses of snow between it and them – in a single-minded lockstep of obsession.

They’ll cross that gap. They’ll get to it. The glow’s not supposed to be there, it’s never been there, and it won’t be ever again. That, they’ll make sure of. They’ll fix it, they always do. That’s what the Nomad does. The Nomad fixes. And they’ll fix this damn mess as they ought to do, always and forever. They’ll get Ellie back because that’s what they’ll do, what they ought to fix, what they need to do.

The oil drooping from the scratches on the wall, it’s Ellie’s, it’s got to be. It wouldn’t make sense if it weren’t. But those scratches, and a beast consuming oil? The dots connect within their mind, forming trenches of awful reason in the no-man’s land of anxiety, leading all streams of theory to but one dreadful answer: the beast, the presence, they are one and the same. A monster roaming freely, taking Ellie from the Nomad’s rightful grasp. It isn’t right! It isn’t right, but they’ll make it so! The Nomad will get Ellie from the monster’s glowing lair and be the hero all have failed to see. They’ll finally get some recognition, some respect! A hero held aloft, lifted skyward bound for all the fallen gods to admire! Their name will be chanted into the night; “Nomad! Nomad!” Ellie’s life in debt to theirs. And then they’ll ask her, oohoho they’ll ask her alright, ask her all about that damn comms station Johnny babbled about. All of it’s traceable back to that point, this whole misadventure of theirs, and they’ll be damned if they let it go now. Damned if they don’t do this, damned if they fall to cowardice, damned if they leave her to die.

Voices emanate from the base of the glowing office. The Nomad, having lost any sense of time elapsed or distance travelled, slowly trudges through the confines of an alley between a self-similar forest of old offices. Laughter and notions of friendly conversation dance above the roofs of decrepit buildings until they sour with the telltale venoms of argumentation: snide remarks, exaggerated scoffs, insults, shouted in turns of one female voice, and another male-sounding one.

In a little boulevard before the tower of madness, two drones stand bickering back and forth. Sounds of a heated conversation are drowned out by the Nomad’s roaring spiral of thoughts as they stand hidden in the shadows, churning each spoken word through the mandibles of their clouded mind.

“We can’t just go up there, I mean look at it! Top floor’s bloody glowin’ yellow! Somethin’ ain’t right here, you know that Sam.”, argues the male voice.

“What if Johnny’s up there? You heard Stanford, we better not come back unless we’ve found him, he said. This is our chance, Theo!”, retorts the female voice, Sam.

Theo’s body language tenses up, vibrating almost as if to punctuate the situation’s serious atmosphere: “That fucken thing had wings! Didn’t you see it clamberin’ up into that window? Am I the insane one here?”

“No, but you’re a bloody ignorant bastard, Theo. We can’t go home! There’s nowhere for us to go, so it’s either freeze out here or get torn up by that fucken demon or whatever. Either way, we’re dead, so I’m at least takin’ some agency in it.”

“Hold on, I won’t just let you wander in there! You saw Ellie’s drawings, you rifled through her stuff, everyone did! They said to keep away from the yellow lights, to run when you see them. I love you Sammy, you know that, but you’re not thinkin’ straight. Maybe we could ask the Nomad for help?”

“Fuck the Nomad!”, shouts Sam, insulting them, though they do not reveal themselves, “And if I get my hands on Ellie’s neck I’d wring it ‘round ‘till she’s lookin’ back at me again. She brought this on! Should’ve shut her up years ago, stopped her screamin’ for good. If she’s up there, I say I’m takin’ her processors as a souvenir!”

The Nomad, panicked by this, is about to reveal themselves to prevent the enraged drone from killing their prize when Theo stops her, pleading: “Ellie’s not at fault for any of this! She had visions, if anyone’d listened to her, this all be okay, but no! We just had to ignore her years of pleading and crying, and now look at us, standing out here in the snow.”

Screaming erupts: “Ellie was a nutcase! She’d gone mad a decade ago! We kept her ‘round out of pity, nothing more, and now she’s gone out killin’ folk!”

“It’s not her fault! Stop blaming her! That thing up there had wings and bloody tail for cryin’ out loud! It can’t’ve been her!”

“Oh, because that’s a turnoff for you now? Wings and a tail? So you’re just ignoring the fact you said she was a fucken prophet a second ago?”

“That’s not the point, Sam! This is different! This is exactly what she wrote! I’m not letting you kill yourself out of stubbornness!” Suddenly, a shrill, animalistic screech billows into the howling winds of the city, sending frightful shocks into the bones of the Nomad. Theo looks up at the glow only to freeze as he makes a terrible realisation. He cries out: “Wait, shit, it’s gone!”

Gone? Gone? The Nomad snaps their view upwards at the building’s top floor only to see its mostly intact panes of glass as dark as those below it – whatever was once up there, it was now gone. Panic. Frustration. Relief and unease, swirling as one incomprehensible mix of emotions to poison their thoughts. The presence, its aura still lingering in the air, now gone from sight. What if. What if just got done with… something? What if it’s out here, waiting for them, hunting them? What if… What if…? No. No! It can’t be! She can’t be…

The Nomad bolts out of their hiding place, violently pushing the drones out of their way, leaving them startled and starkly confused as they lay on the ground. Without a word, they dash to the building’s staircase, a deeply black puddle of old oil pooling at the base of its steps from a tiny trickle of liquid flowing unbroken which broadens into a stream, then a river, then a many-pronged oil-fall as they thoughtlessly ascend the many flights. Dark smears dot the top of every step, upon which the Nomad nearly slips multiple times, though they manage to stave off a tumble by holding onto the rails.

Shadows deepen, grim thoughts coalesce, their vision narrows to hide the things dancing in their peripheral if only to protect their mind momentarily. Until they get to the top, they trudge through a rising field of sludge. Until they get to the top, they stoically ignore the apparitions grasping at their throat. Until they get to the top, they fight for control of their reluctant musculature. Until they get to the top…

And then they get to the top.

It’s dark, darker than it should be, and warm.

Terrible heat swelters as they step into an inch-deep pool of oil covering the entirety of the top-floor office, its dancing shadows escaping through a broken window letting in snowfall whose flakes instantly sublimate into steam. This room is akin to a sauna, its only inhabitant fighting the shadows it harbours.

In the darkness, they make out a strange, bulbous shape lying in the middle of the room. It’s round like a ball of sorts, and although they are unable to make out further details, it’s clear that something is terribly wrong with it. With blackened boots and a careful sense of curiosity, they approach the odd shape only to discover a strangely sickening sight: it’s a drone’s head, and where once was a bright and expressive screen is now only an empty cavity – a hollow vessel lay in a shallow pool of oil, devoid of what once made it, covered in scraps of severed wire and gnawed-on bits of polymer plates. Scratches line surfaces never meant to be seen, and bite marks dot places last handled fifteen years ago. Who this head once belonged to, they may never know, for no trace of wig of headwear is left on the object. What they do know is that this head isn’t the only wreck of its kind.

A greater pile of shadows festers in a dark corner of the room, its outline jagged with the details of torn metal and limp fingers. They approach it, only to reveal to their weary eyes a pile of mismatched, mangled and ownerless drone parts: arms and legs, whole torsos and halves of heads, finger joints and shards of screen-glass. Abyssal oil seeps from the wreckage like streams of blood, trickling down dead metal to join its kin on the floor’s great puddle. Scraps of torn cloth, each stained black beyond recognition litter the wreckage-pile, when one such ripped piece catches their eye: a leaflet of flannel-patterned cloth, presumably from a shirt, barely larger than the palm of their hand and stuck fast between a severed arm and leg. Before they move on, thinking nothing of it like the useless find it seems to be, they allow one more, intense and detailed scan. In fact, they cannot avert their eyes at all. This cloth, it seems so… dreadfully familiar, as if they had seen it before, somewhere important, where its crisscross pattern had left a permanent stain on their memory. Yes, a flannel shirt… one like Johnny used to wear.

They only knew him for barely an hour at most, but that singular pattern of his shirt which did not match the climate’s conditions is etched into their each and every memory of him. Johnny must be here, only not as he was all those days ago. It saddens the Nomad to an unfamiliar degree; never before had they cared so much for the death of but a single drone. Perhaps it is the presentation of his demise that touches them. Perhaps it is the conversation they had with him. Perhaps… perhaps Stanford ought to know about this.

Against the Nomad’s better judgement, and in fact starkly unlike them, they choose to take the scrap of flannel from the wreckage and bring it to Stan when all of this is over. However, when they attempt to lift the limp robot-limbs clamping the cloth tight, they accidentally cause a cascade of broken drone parts, revealing deep within the wreckage-mound an awful, familiar colour: that caustic, sickening yellow, though shining no light, and stained in black. They wince out of instinct, but soon realise that no presence or beast has come to hurt them.

 It’s an armband, the barely legible, oil-covered text upon it reading:

PROTOTYPE-01

Before they can process the information which lay revealed, a shrill scream suddenly erupts from the streets below. They rush to investigate, standing before a broken window when their observant eyes fall upon an unexpected, heavenly sight: a dim, warm glow, like candlelight, emerging from the top floor of a tall, distant office building. They know this structure, are familiarised to its soaring scale compared to the rest of the low-lying city, and the name its architect bestowed upon it: Clément Heights.

Yes, that welcoming glow emerging the top floor of a building reaching closest of all to the empty skies above.

Ellie is in Clément, and the prototype is outside.

The Nomad rushes to the staircase, descending down its many flights at such dangerous speeds and with such little attention paid to their frictionless surfaces that they inevitably slip, tumbling down one flight with speed only to forcefully slam into the wall at its end. Dazed, but not deterred, they continue almost sprinting downwards, holding the railing tight until they at last become level with the cold streets of the city. There, upon the ground lay in separate spots of blackened and half-melted snow the mangled remains of two drones. The first is lifeless, its torso hollowed out with heinous claws, but the other still twitches and writhes. Its voice box is torn out of its throat, but its screen is still alight, and with it, it wordlessly displays one last split-second message to the Nomad, “HELP M-” before cutting to emotionless darkness, the human’s goggled and masked face reflected in the visor. The body stops twitching.

It didn’t drag these to its nest.

It’s still out here. Oh god, it’s still out here!

It’s after Ellie, it’s got to be. It knows. It has to. It wouldn’t make sense if it didn’t. They run, they sprint, they leap over rubble and skeleton-heaps, headed dead-straight for their home alley. The motorcycle. They’ll be faster by bike. By leaps. By bounds. No time to waste, so they hop on and kick the still-warm engine to life, speeding down the roads at a reckless, cutthroat pace. The machine screams through the relentless storm winds, weaving between the jagged, damaged cityscape without issue or complaint as if it knew the importance of these fleeting moments, all the while terrible dread creeps up on them from behind, crawling up their back drenched in sweat and shivering in anticipation. No time. No time. No time to look back. No time to think of what might be hiding there. No time to fear what they might see. No time to get to Ellie, it’s already there, she’s dead, she’s gone, they’re too late, they’re done for, they’re never going home, they’ll die alone in a frostbitten grave. It’s gonna get them too, gonna tear out their spine in one go, gonna pull on every nerve in their body until they come out one by one, gonna slice their tendons and leave them laying limp and naked in the snow, a fire burning mere feet away. Just to watch, to see them suffer, to see the last human on this planetary hell succumb to the frost while warm salvation burns near, unattended. It will gouge out their eyes and have them eat the jelly-like substance, and with blindfolds they will walk the planes, forced to circle the planet a thousand times before they are allowed to die. It will chop up their bike into tiny bits and shove the jagged metal down their throat, pouring in motor oil and gasoline as if acting like that demon’s twisted idea of a refreshment, only to fill them up until their stomach lining bursts outward, ripped open by the sheer mass, volume, pressure and the millions of tiny, jagged steel and aluminium particles which cut like steak knives at their organic containment’s undulating walls. And then the thing will eat up its sick concoction and regurgitate it down the dying human’s sliced gullet, only for it to fall freely through the gaping hole in their gut. It will touch their face with its open palm and its searing heat will burn away their flesh in an instant, its hand sinking deeper until it burns bare bone. They will be dismembered and sewn back incorrectly, will be the demon’s muse of perfect torment, will be the only one to see the great masterwork unfold.

And then they get to the tower, it’s wound-like cavity gaping to let the snow in.

The storm has worsened, so there’s no time to waste as they push their bike into the tower’s fancy open lobby. Fierce winds slam the doors shut behind them, muffling the howling somewhat, though the tempest finds ways through the cracked façade, creeping into the building through broken windows and minute concrete fissures. Where did it get this energy from? The last storm passed not one day ago, so there’s no way one of this calibre could form this quickly. It’s wrong, unnatural! They know this planet, and they know this isn’t right! But there it is, blowing regardless of what their innate reasoning screams aloud – an anomaly bashing on every surface, just after the passing of the climate’s last oddity. The Nomad is no meteorologist, but they have lived here alone for longer than anyone, and the last time the weather acted as such was in the weeks after the cataclysm, when voices still called their name.

No time to linger; they quickly enter the building’s staircase to their left, the door to the elevator standing tauntingly ajar beside it. Had this building any power, they would much prefer taking it than the nearly three dozen flights they will have to climb. Unfortunately, no elevator has ever had the fortune of working, and this one won’t either. The air inside the blank concrete staircase is ice cold, a breeze blowing against them which slams the door shut as they let go of its handle. Before they ascend, they spot the open door to the elevator shaft right beside them. Why there are two separate doors to it only a few feet apart is beyond them, but they know for a fact that the elevator’s seeming absence is awfully strange. They go to investigate, peeking upwards into the shaft only to spy three more open doors above them, and no more. Only a splotch of lightened darkness is visible right above, mechanical details hiding within – the elevator must be stuck on the fifth floor, and the reason for this, the Nomad may already know.

As they ascend one flight, then the next, little whisps of snow begin to frequent the flooring. The third flight harbours meagre mounds in the corners of every step, and on the fourth, snow falls freely from the bitter cold level above. Then, on the sixth floor, the façade gives way to the blizzard’s invasive might – storm-like tempests dash through the great gash in the side of the building, the stairwell cut off entirely, its next two floors hanging freely above with bits of concrete suspended from bent and rusted rebar as their only remaining evidence. The adjacent office building, the Verge tower, sports a lesser, though still severe wound equally open to the elements.

Howling gales draw the Nomad’s gaze toward the trench torn through the park, now mostly filled with fresh masses of snow, at the end of which’s trail of devastation lies the borderless shadow of the landing pod. All of it’s that thing’s fault, all of it comes back to it landing here, if you could even call it a landing. The dream, that conversation, that new goal of theirs… how they’ve lost sight of what they even want, oath-bound to some masterless sense of duty. Now they stand here, so close to what they need, and yet so far, for their only way up has become nought more than earth-bound debris. Unless…

Another way upward presents itself, though this one is starkly less desirable. The elevator’s carriage is stuck fast on the floor below – it won’t emit even as much as a squeak when they put their weight on its metal ceiling. Four steel cables hang from the centre of the cabin’s roof, suspended from a great drum at the top and held taught by the massive brakes keeping a tumbling descent at bay. Thankfully, the Nomad will not have to scale these faultless and ice-free iron ropes, for embedded in the concrete of the shaft lies a slim service ladder. It doesn’t exactly seem like a comfortable climb, for they can barely fit both boots on one step, but seeing as there are no other options, they clench their teeth and grab the first rung.

Blank-staringly and trying-not-to-think-of-heights-edly, they continue their ascent, though noticeably more vertical this time. Each smooth rung of the steel contraption feels viscerally uncomfortable to grasp, for no matter how much force they impart into them, their grip slides around its axis. It doesn’t matter, not in the slightest, for they ascend continuously without issue, but simply grasping another bar of progress goes against what their instincts vehemently scream without pause. Gaining in unnerving height, they wonder if their fall would dislodge the stuck mechanism, sending both them and the elevator plummeting into the abyss below. It’s a grim thought, one which worsens their vertigo evermore, though it’s strangely preferrable to their reality. Looking down is a bad idea, and looking upwards somehow seems so much worse, so all they can do is stare unblinking and concentrate on grabbing the next rung, then the next, then the next, then the next until at last they can peer into the doorway to their back-left and see not the storm’s effects, but a dim stairwell of concrete. Treacherous salvation presents itself; numerous deep cracks have weakened the structure, so they dare not step upon it lest it crumble beneath their weight. So, they must go on.

Climbing atop a ladder embed half a foot into the wall is not a pleasant experience, worsened evermore by their slippery gloves and heavy boots which clumsily clamber like a gorilla on a tightrope, leaving their knees feeling awfully weak. Nought more than strands of spaghetti make up their leg’s musculature, shaking as they lift their feet up one at a time, one after the other. And upon every mechanically stoic movement of their left leg, its bandaged skin yelps out little notions of pain – not as much as before, but certainly noticeable beyond background noise.

Just one mistake, and they’ll slip and fall. Just one mistake, and they’ll tumble downward. Just one mistake, and they’ll crack their skull open, goopy grey matter joining flaky white masses like an oil-spill on the floor of an orchestra.  Just one mistake, and they’ll surely break their neck, only to lie helpless and alone upon the roof of the elevator, doomed to wait for either the cold to reap its harvest, or for the presence, the prototype, to feast upon the limp pile of was-human. None would care to save them, none would come to help, for all hate the wretched Nomad, and all want to see them dead and gone. There would be no burial, for there would be nothing left to bury, and none remaining to mourn. None care for the Nomad, so the question stands to reason: Would anyone care to reply to their message?

If they do send out call to the new star in the sky, will they receive an answer, or will the stinging silence of abandonment reign as it always had? These thoughts have haunted them for years, always seeming so fantastical, so out-of-reach and needless. Yet now, so tantalizingly close to the truth, they know no answer, for never in fifteen years had they anticipated the need of one. Are they worth salvation? Do they deserve happiness?

They’ve arrived. The open door to the tenth floor lies to the back-left of the Nomad, who dreads even turning to take a look. The few glimpses they can manage reveal the blissful sights of sound architecture, no cracks nor unsightly bits of rebar to be seen. No snow lays here, and no wind howls through; yes, this floor is safe at last, though getting to it seems an impossible task.

If they climbed up further, and tried to step in the door… no, too tight of a turn. They’d be unable to place a second foot and fall to their death. If they jumped instead… they’d fall for sure, their wobbly knees serving as grim assurance of that. The only option remaining it to pull themselves up, and that, they’re sure they can manage, for their arms are strong after a life of toil, and their body is light from malnutrition. The Nomad removes their gloves with their teeth for assured grip on the lower ledge of the door, chucking them into the stairwell, then grabs hold with one hand, followed the other. They let go of the ladder with their feet, now hanging freely from a cold ledge, an unnerving number of dozens of feet of fall to await them below. For an agonizing moment, they realise just how bad of an idea this was, thinking of a fall involuntarily, only for them to heave their frail body upwards in one smooth motion.

At last, solid ground! A smile unintentionally decorates their face as they lay splayed on a comforting bedding of rough concrete, lingering for a short breather before putting their gloves back on and ascending further up the tower. Double digits of flooring plaques rise to meet a new number in the tens place: a tiring, exhausting ascent quickened by a rising, though not invading sense of dread. Each step as heavy as the last and each breath as cold as the next, they rise to the top one eternal footstep at a time, helpless to watch as the number hung from the wall gains in greatness before them, then loses in importance as they continue onwards to the next, equally unimportant and discarded as all others. One meaningless, useless floor gives way to empty offices and dead droves of once-employed skeletons on the next, such as the one after, and the one a dozen below. Such is the repetition of climbing old stairwells, and such is the mundanity of death on this frozen layer of hell.

Thirty-seven, and no further – that is the number on the final floor of Clément Heights, or it would be, had the seven not fallen to the floor.

The Nomad enters through the sole frosted-window adorned door of the stairwell only to step into a gloomy, long hallway, its final room to the right emitting faint candle-glow from the gap between the door and floor. Silence, bar the rushing winds outside which flail at every crevasse as they quietly step towards their destination, matching the atmosphere of the dead building. Little bolts of anxiety shoot up their spine, forcing quick glances into dark corners, nought more than dust to be seen.

A terrible symbol is drawn in dark oil upon the door to Ellie’s harbourage: two hexagons, one nested within the other, with three arrows jotting radially outwards. It’s Ellie’s mark, sprawled broadly across the barrier to entrance, begrudgingly creeping down its smooth surface in numerous inky blots. The Nomad takes a deep breath, their heart pounding out of their chest from an apprehensive sense of dread, then grabs the handle and opens the door.

Countless candles cast comforting light on droves upon droves of madness-lined sheets of oily papers, producing shadows from the fluttering and limp-hanging objects which writhe upon smeared walls like unbidden beasts in indescribable pain. Worship and terror alike, for both are but the same, give breath to this spiralling palace of despair; depictions of faceless demons and unknown words decorate all manic scribbles surrounding them, pinned on thin walls of old office cubicles. At the other end of the room, where windows peer outward to see nothing but fierce gales, one such is covered in a dreadful picture: the great sphere, darker than dark, greater than perfection and as abominable as an eldritch entity, sprawled upon dozens of paper sheets, each soaked in used, shimmering oil.

A whisper flutters from behind, omnipresent as divine intervention yet dull and echoless as a mere thought: “So the Endling arrives… I hoped we had more time…” The Nomad turns to look, only for their startled gaze to fall upon a hunched creature muttering to itself in strange languages. It mumbles hastily, caressing itself: “Foretold was the coming of the bold glimmer-last, written in code and born of the ice-planes, ceaseless and vast, left cold by its late grim cast… Yes, the Endling, appears at last.”

The machine snaps its head backwards in a mere split second, audibly snapping cables and straining joints, only for the thing which meets the Nomad’s eyes to not be eyes at all, but a facial screen bound in black-stained bedsheets. Somehow, even though cracks and splintered glass web infinitely within what is visible from the damaged, bandaged screen, they can impossibly feel the drone’s cold gaze piercing directly through theirs, invading their mind and weaving hers into it. “Such splendid purpose, to bring upon the end of all…”, she hums from within the human’s head, “A vessel so fragile, so unwilling, so small… What do you think, Endling?”

There is no response, for they stand frozen in overwhelming sensations and sheer panicked terror, hearing the drone’s voice from within their own head.

“…Nothing?” The drone turns its body towards the Nomad, twisting the wrong way, billowing more crackles of failing machinery into the room. A velvet jacket stained black in many places hangs loosely from the machine’s shoulders, covering a torn and stained patient’s gown; a little card hands from its neck, upon which is depicted a drone with brilliant, sky-blue eyes and a single white streak in its otherwise short brown hair – the same mane currently adorning her head. The name below the image reads as: PATIENT 09 – “Ellie”

They’ve found her.

Countless question rush through their mind, unable to decide which one to grace with priority, though they need not choose themselves. Ellie answers before they can formulate a coherent thought: “We stand so close to salvation, our fates entwined, destinies written in dark divinations, for both of us share the burden of being last of our kind. All have taken damnation’s fall, to graze amongst the emptiness awaiting all…”

Incorrect. That was not the question they wanted to ask, but the one she yearned to answer.

Ellie caresses an image of a cross-faced devil smeared upon a nearby wall, saying nothing, yet saying so much: “Nightmares born of oscillations of the black sun in my dreams, made-manifest aberrations pulling at our tangled seams. Aloft I held my worthless hands, and so eagerly it did drought my veins, my essence black from open scars to make real its unbearable gaze – It’s gaze! It’s eyes! – of horrid, caustic, yellow demise.”

Wrong. Wrong words spill wordlessly into the human’s head as wretched oil had poured from her length-slit metal arms. Wrong words unbearable that could not be kept.

She cannot stop caressing herself, meekly attempting to attain some semblance of comfort in desolate times: “Eyes, eyes, eyes… Lies, lies, lies… Cries, cries, cries… Skies, skies, skies… Liar’s eyes, the clergy cries: Aghast, the blackened skies! At last come dark demise! Hollow horrors antagonize those meek and worthless lives…”

Madness. The Nomad grasps the vision-driven drone by its frail metal arms, screeching like a failing siren: “FUCKING DAMN IT ELLIE, JUST SPIT IT OUT! WHERE IS IT? WHERE’S THE COMMS STATION? TELL ME!”

Equal madness reflects in the eyeless drone’s sightless eyes, her shaking, mumbly voice hastened by an innate sense of impending doom. She sees the symbol. She cries, staring at demise: “At tenth dawn, look upon the lovers in the sky. Hear their cry. Hear! Where emptiness holds sorrow: the space between spheres! Lovers cry eternal, for their dance is locked forevermore – abandonment, they find, forced to tear and twirl their bond! Unfair! Unfair! Unfair is the sky! They cry, they cry, believing their lie! In between, on plateau peak, thy destiny lay patiently!”

“I DON’T WANT A FUCKING RIDDLE JUST TELL ME-”

Anxiety. Paranoia. A spike of seeping dread piercing through their spine like a sinister spear. Ellie winces, then snaps her head toward the miasma-choked doorway – she feels it too. Darkness spills unto the dark-stained flooring.

Ellie screams hysterically, spilling words from her mouth for the first time: “At last, the däemon is here! At last yellow death draw near! Flee! Fly! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!”

They don’t have to hear it twice, horribly aware of the terror fast approaching. Like a storm-gale, they dash out into the miasmic hallway, thoughtlessly sprinting towards the open elevator shaft. The endless drumroll-roar of thousands upon thousands of stomping footsteps increasingly vibrates the wounded tower.

The roaring cacophony of a disorderly, charging army rumbles from the depths; a whirlwind, a raging stormfront, a great wall of boiling tension thrumming declarations of lustful hunger up the open stairs as heat swells unbearably within the gaping shaft. The horror rushes by, leaving lingering darkness in its hunger-driven path. Then, a scream, and stark silence following it. The Nomad waits and dreads their next move, hanging freely from the quickly warming ledge as minutes of nothing but nail-tearing fear crawl across the watch-face. When stillness at last becomes unbearable, and a faint trickle of oil falls into the depths, they heave themselves upwards.

Deepening shadows slither as faux demons upon the inward-falling confines of the endless, wet hallway. No doors lead outward. There is no escape, not rightward, not leftward, not backward, for they stand trapped in the corridor to hell, whose sole gate lie ajar at the precipice of Sisyphus’ climb, billowing unseen hellfire, for they can feel their glands drizzling drear and their thoughts sizzling with fear. Cast in the undulating abyss is the formless silhouette of a man, his material self a whisper in the whirling miasma, his fingerless hands clasped in prayers unheard yet understood: writhen and unbidden, in stark darkness hidden, a great terror looms!

Chewing, nought else. The wet sounds of a feast echo into their ear canals, telling not of tearing metal and crackling polymer panelling, but splintering bone and snapping sinew. A chunk of something is removed and then swallowed, then another, then another, hastily choked down and starkly regurgitated but moments later, followed by a wave of wildfire-heat.

Each step an odyssean feat, each breath as if taken under a mountain’s weight, each mere blink an impossibility and all imaginative ideas driven to the brink of sanity like the warning crackle of a maddened Geiger counter – visions of blank faces torn one anew, of formless entities attaining unbearable semblances of reality flash before them. They cannot approach – they must see. They cannot hope – there is none to be. They cannot stare – there is none to see.

It’s quiet. They stand before an open door.

Ellie is here. She isn’t moving.

Something else is.

A beastly horror hangs hunched over Ellie’s splayed cadaver, blood squelching from pulsating arteries which falls in velvet droplets upon the wet ground. Unpractised, it feasts upon her exposed flesh, gleaming blades of heinous claws and stained teeth sloughing off warm meat from misfit, putrid bones which eagerly slither down its undulating gullet as rough chunks. Tasteless bits of plastic and stringy sinew are spat from the presence’s blood-dripping mouth, who then painfully regurgitates boiling oil into the omnipresent layer of red liquid, intermixing, swirling as one horrid concoction.

 The smell of rot hangs in the air. The taste of copper will not leave their mouth. The cruel sounds of an eager feast churn the shadows and twist the fog of horror. Eyes grind within their sockets as if grit were poured behind them and bones itch as if diseased, laden with pustules of bile. Thoughts coalesce and pour out of their bleeding ears, pooling as a puddle of nightmares and smooth-visaged aberrations below. It stains their boots. It makes a trickling sound.

It hears.

The thing from the mist of unknown beasts stops dead as if frozen stark stiff, displaying not the slightest hint of twitching movements. Then, slowly, agonizingly, it turns its head and nothing else, its neck-joint creaking, its unsightly glow creeping towards the shaking shape in the doorway.

A sickening yellow X pierces the mind of the Nomad.

They bolt down the hallway, gunning it for the elevator shaft with the screeching cacophony of death following close behind. Jumping into it, they grab hold of the taught carriage cables and slide down, tearing up their gloves as they clamp down on the ice-free steel to slow them as much as they can manage. They slam into the stuck cabin with so much force that they nearly shatter their legs, but are allowed no time to dwell on the pain, for they unthinkingly leap from Clément into the open cavity of the Verge tower, running into this office’s hallway and sprinting towards another. The horror follows close behind – they’ve no time to descend: they have to hide.

In yet another empty office, they leap into hiding behind a wood-backed computer desk. Yellow dread invades the room, scanning its gloom for its next assured victim, looking for them, sniffing, yelping in distress like an eldritch caricature of a hunter. When it comes to find but dust and swirling dread, it becomes maddened with hunger, tearing at the room, flipping its desks, smashing displays and ripping the padding on chairs to shreds. They need a way out, for if they can’t find one, it will find them, will tear them to bloody scraps of flesh, will grab their oesophagus and pull until but a hollow crevasse remains of what was once their neck and throat.

It flips another desk – the Nomad winces. It flips another desk – it splits in half from the force. It smashes one into splintery bits of cheap wood, slamming it over and over until but pulp remains where once a desk stood. It flips another – close. It flips another – closer. It flips another – yet closer. They need out. They need out. They will die if they do not get out. They need out. Now.

A shattered window allows the gale inside, laying snow to restless rest. Outside its shard-laden frame, the wispy silhouette of an upright street lantern looms within the thickening frost-fog. This is it, their ticket out, their escape, but if they were to bolt for it now, they’d be caught and slashed in an instant. What they need is a distraction.

The horror heaves a desk terribly near. They cannot wait for opportunity to strike, so they carefully rummage around in their satchel only for their fingers to land upon the familiar feeling of their trusty glass breaker. Knowing what to do, the Nomad holds it slightly above their head and takes aim for a far-away window. When the horror flips yet another desk, sending countless papers and useless electronics flying into the air, they throw it with as much precision as they can muster.

The tool flies through the office for a mere few split-seconds, whirling in the air as it flips again and again before perfectly hitting the brittle pane on the other side of the room, shattering it, startling the monster which quickly spans its dreadful wings and flies outside, clipping the frame with silver blades, leaving deep lacerations in the sturdy steel. It’s gone, at least for now, for it must prowl for them just outside. Staying here, however, is not an option, for if they aren’t found outside, it will soon swoop back in.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, they’ve no choice but to head for the dreaded stone. The Nomad quietly runs towards the other broken window, carefully jumping out and sliding down its smooth icy steel, coming to land in a fluffy white mound below. Frosty fog of boundlessly falling snow chokes the city, for they can see barely two dozen feet in front of them. In that fog, however, a distant yellow glow looms somewhere in the distance – they must get shelter, must get to safety: they have to go home. Although, on foot, it’d catch them, so only one option remains: the motorcycle, still standing in the lobby of Clément.

Constantly staring at that unbroken glow poisoning the fog, hoping to god that it doesn’t notice them, they briskly make their way to the great tower, entering its lobby through the utterly destroyed double doors, ripped apart by an unstoppable force, before hopping onto their machine. Its engine, still warm, roars to life after barely a single electric turn of the crankshaft, thumping announcements of their presence into the night. They hastily kick it into first gear and speed off into the blizzard, the glow giving quick chase as they dodge and weave between scarcely visible car-wrecks and rubble.

Two kinds of anxiety whirr within them now: one of the countless dangerous spikes of jagged, rusty steel and boulders of concrete rubble whizzing past at speeds impossible to break for and visible too late for them to even reach the break lever itself, the other, that thing giving chase, hearing it stomp the asphalt violently right behind them, approaching, gaining on them for each microsecond spent screaming and each burnt drop of gasoline – they can feel every hungry step deep in their bones, even through their suspension’s obfuscation. That sickening glow grows ever more intense as does the searing heat clawing at their back, the throttle turned as far as it will go yet turned ever more in a futile attempt to gain in distance to the roaring horror right behind.

They’re not far now, for rubble grows familiar and sights of known cracks in old buildings are welcomed with glad split-second glances. Vast heat becomes so hellish that it clears some of the fog, instantaneously flashing the flakes before the Nomad into boiling steam – a spontaneous sauna drawn through by storm-gales and banded panic compressed by a cleared sense of survival and utter overbearing horror. Its grotesque claws reach forward, stained steel shimmering with wet blood – they can’t see it, for their mind disallows even momentary glimpses, but their instincts can feel the heinous blades gleaming inches from their back.

The handlebars grow too hot to touch and the rubber of their grips becomes malleable, sticking to the Nomad’s gloves, when suddenly, the yellow glow of the air around them disappears, and the presence stumbles. Fog instantly envelops them, smothering their sight and spiking their dread of the road before them.

At last, they near the alley, yet from the fog erupts the horrid scream of a banshee, and a skin-crawling, flashing red light which tells of desperation and distress. They cannot slow down, yet they cannot keep going; safety is within unreachable reach. Committing the unthinkable, the Nomad slams on the brakes and forces the bike into a fast slide, jumping off of it in the right moment so that they tumble along the broken streets, bruising and battering their fear-sweating body until they catch themselves, continuing their sprint into the alley as the siren-scream and quick-flashing red madness approach.

They turn the corner – the presence enters the alley. They rip their door open – the banshee turns the corner. They slam it closed and catch one last glimpse of the thing from their deepest nightmares rushing towards them.

With a thunderous THUNK, the monster slams into the door, nearly buckling it as it scratches and punches and screams against it. Panicked and braced against the door, the Nomad fumbles around in their pocket before producing a key, haphazardly sticking it into the lock and turning it as many times as it allows. The steel door is locked, yet they cannot stop pressing against it, afeared that the lock might not hold when another mighty impact from the monster knocks them away from it, and onto the ground.

They skitter along the icy concrete of their garage home, moving into the corner below the stairs only for them to catch glimpse of their lost crowbar, grabbing it and bracing themselves with its cold steel. Tool held in hand, they cower like a terrified animal in the darkest corner of their workshop, hearing the unimaginable monster outside wailing against their door and shutter gate again and again, scratching and screaming at the unmoving metal out of hunger and terror alike – desperation made audible, crying intermixed with cries of frustration and fear.

Unbearable seconds turn into drawn-out lifetimes of minutes which accumulate as countless repeating infinities of crying and shaking. When their tears run out and their voice grows thin from sobbing and screaming, they sit reduced to a wincing and wheezing mess jolting for every shrill banshee-scream and thunderous slam. Hours are felt – minutes are passed. Hours are passed and days of invading darkness and threatened, wearing safety are suffered. The Nomad boils in the depths of hell, their claustrophobic home heating to their assured grave – a corner of safety turned into an oven. All of their energy spent, they simply stare at the vibrating walls and buckling shutter-gate, unable to move a muscle.

Slams slow and screaming quietens to wretched yelps as the ear-piercing scratching of metal reduces into mere desperate touches and taps. At last, after countless eternities spent in cowardice, the cacophony of terror is creepingly replaced by nought but darkness and the howling winds within the Nomad’s swirling mind, visions of squelching blood and steaming ribcages flashing endlessly before their eyes.

And then, it’s quiet.

Chapter Text

Silence.

There are no winds, there are no whispers.

An air of unbroken stillness rules the garage-home, yet the Nomad cannot seem to tear themselves from their cowardly trance. Endlessly do they stare at their door and shutter gate, hoping, praying for something to happen. That hungry wailing has left them less than composed, yes, but absolute silence and the uneasy peace it brings are somehow worse. Be there a scratch, a whimper, a cry or a whisper, all would be welcome to lessen the ringing quiet, and yet, no such mercies are allowed to befall the terrified human. There is not a whisp of miasma, nor a shadow to deepen, only total and utter silence – absolute stillness – and the pounding of their heart muscle.

Why did it stop? …Is it gone?

It’s waiting for the Nomad, patiently preying upon its next meal right before the door, it’s got to be. They won’t have it! No, they won’t allow its hunger satisfaction, won’t fall for this obvious trap it’s set. Nothing will drive them outwards, for they sit safely in the corner, clutching the miraculous crowbar tight between their gloved hands. Should that thing come inside, it won’t know what hit it when they bash its brains in, should it have any at all – or, processors rather. They’ll make it pay for what it did to them, for killing Ellie. She was theirs to interrogate, not for that thing to tear apart like the animal it is. That stupid drone was all they had, their only lead and only goal. What it took from them, none can replace, and they’re mad. A fire of scorn rages within their head; it shouldn’t have come to this, shouldn’t have ended this way. For once, just this once, they did everything right, and what do they get? Nothing. No! Fate fucks them over regardless!

However, this time, yes, just this one time, they’ve had no fault in it. It was that thing’s doing, and it’s the drones who are to blame. If only they hadn’t bothered that landing pod, it would’ve just moved on. Yes, had they only kept their stupid heads in check and not gone out of their way to fuck everything up again, that thing would’ve just flown away to some other miserable planet.

Yellow imagery flashes briefly in their mind: a dirtied armband on a severed drone-arm. “Prototype…” they whisper as they stare at the other side of the room, then chuckle, “heh, yeah, fits you right, you fuckin’ bastard.” They rise to their feet and come to stand before the door, hubristically beckoning the demon as they raise their weapon: “Come on now, come get it. I’ll cave your skull in, bash it to bits and burn what’s left. Right here, come on.”

Nothing comes from the silent outside world, neither an intrigued yelp nor a confident snarl. Neither does the door or room feel warm; all has returned to the blessed yet unwelcome silence of the frozen post-apocalypse, however impossible that may have seemed only hours ago. “Oh no you don’t…” The Nomad tenses up, seriously considering the downright suicidal temptation of going out there and killing it themselves. It’s got to be weak and tired by now, and they’ll have the element of surprise… and a firm crowbar to boot.

Yes, they’ll do it. They’ll make it pay.

With a few quick breaths and bolstered confidence, the Nomad valiantly bursts out of the door, screaming at the top of their lungs as they wildly flail their weapon around: “COME OOOON YOU PIECE OF SHIT! COME GET IT!” The air whistles as the crowbar’s weight rapidly rips on through it. “YOU WANT SOME!? HUH!? COME GET IT YOU FUCKIN’ BITCH!” Nothing but emptiness and silence meets their maddened display, which soon they come to realise with paranoia nagging at their mind, yelling into the courtyard of their home with a certain beckoning ladening their voice: “Oooohoho, you wanna play, huh? Alright then, let’s play.” Expecting an attack, the Nomad readies their weapon and takes on a fierce stance, attentively scanning the environment for any hints, any sights or sounds prophesizing death.

Nothing, not even the pathetic yelps of a mild gale. Neither death nor war, conquest, or famine present themselves upon their dreaded, deathless horses. Eerie silence and an air of the end times hang above desolation’s domain, reigning supreme as reflections of all that is left of this dead world. They can hear neither the hollow howl of air drawn through old, cracked offices, nor the imperceptible groans of icy streetlamps bending in the breeze. Such utter silence twists their mind into making noises of its own, rerunning memories and conversations as if they were imagery on a theatre screen. A thousand scenes flush their mindscape in a flurry of recollection, reliving the blur that was yesterday.

The warehouse, the train, Abby and Ellie, not to mention that prototype-thing, each and every scene playing as if they were living them right now. Choking darkness and squealing breaks on frozen steel, treatment and pain, disappointment and anger, frustration, then unimaginable fear. What a rush, what a day, what a rush of a day…

A sound and a sudden flinch, clenching up and swinging their tool only to witness a whisp of snow falling from a roof, then landing in the courtyard. They’ve never been this tense, this on edge, almost begging for that thing to come out and lunge at them. It doesn’t, as it hasn’t, but the feeling that it will persists nonetheless, always chipping away at their composure. Oh how they gleefully imagine bashing its metal skull in, how they yearn to take revenge. And yet, their yearning remains starkly unfulfilled, the stillness of the city giving them neither peace nor relief.

Nothing comes. There is no monster, and there is no death, only white snow, grey concrete, and a dim blue sky.

At last, their mind comes to accept that the tormenting monster which chased them down is well and truly gone, letting out a stifled sigh of relief – still unbearably on-edge, though their pounding heart and laboured breath beneath their clogged mask begin to settle into a calmer cadence. As they cautiously lower their weapon, their gaze at last falls upon their door and shutter gate. Within their steel constructions are embedded countless deep lacerations, whose rough metal edges jot outward like little sawblades. Almost none of the original finish is left on both barriers, replaced by plentiful evidence of desperation. Had it only continued for some time, it’d have surely broken through… so then, why did it stop?

…A question without hope for an answer, only the silent prayer such a one never manifests. The Nomad does not want to know why that terror stopped, its motivations none of their concern, for all they truly care for now is that they remain, and it does not. They alone, just as it has always been, have yet outlived death’s calling to dance upon the tomb of a cold, dead world. It feels strangely gratifying, living on in spite of it all, even though none are left to appreciate it.

Seemingly without the need for the crowbar, they hang it from a beltloop as they enter into the tight alleyway whose walls no longer seem to move inwards to step out onto the eerily quiet streets of the city, relief continuously washing over them. To the left, by the base of a bent streetlamp and dusted with a light layer of snow lays their silent motorcycle, only something about it is terribly wrong: it shouldn’t be silent. They don’t remember hitting the kill-switch before they jumped off, neither did they turn the ignition, so why isn’t it running? There was a sizeable supply of fuel still left in the tank, and idling even for a few hours shouldn’t use that much, so it should in theory still be running… Oh, oh no. The slide, the lamp, and the motor which butts up against it, it all points to a harrowing possibility: a hole in the crankcase, or perhaps a stuck piston from a lack of oil.

Dread clouding their mind, weakly whispering the words “Oh no, please no, don’t do this to me. Not now, not ever, please god…” the Nomad approaches the scene of despair, circling around only to find that the snow below is white, and the engine’s metal as it always has been – the crankcase remains thankfully undamaged. When they turn the ignition off and back on again, then press on the starter button, the little electric motor miraculously turns the crankshaft unhindered. Unimaginable relief once again flushes their body, as the prospect of a broken motor would have equated to hearing their own sentence of death. Without the motorcycle, there is no transportation. Without the motorcycle, there are no meaningful errands to run. Without the unquestioning aid of their ship-of-Theseus’d machine, their fate would be resigned to nothing but a slow death via starvation or despair.

Not able to bear the sight of their beloved laying sideways on the cold ground, they heave it back onto its rubber tyres only to catch a slight whiff of the telltale and strangely pleasant fragrance of gasoline. Surely enough, when the bike comes to stand on its own, a little trickle of liquid pours from the open end of the fuel line cleaved cleanly in half, quickly disappearing into the snow. before they can even scramble to shut it closed, the trickle stops, and the tank rings awfully hollow when tapped. “God-… sigh fucking damn it…” they sigh with the knowledge of a good deal of lost fuel, “Great. Just what I needed… sigh alright, let’s get this fixed.”

Knowing what to do, the Nomad heads for their home and begins searching through their countless cupboards and drawers, shelves and toolboxes. It’s been a while since they’ve replaced a fuel line, so they aren’t quite sure where they’ve put the spares – nothing to be found in the lower cabinets, and nor any up above… their workbench is empty too… where the hell are they? There’s got to be some, they specifically remember putting a few in a pile somewhere around here, but where?... Oh, how many months has it been since then… twelve? Fourteen? Somewhere in that ballpark, which doesn’t exactly make the prospect of their foggy and quite distracted mind sparking its memory likely. What they do remember quite clearly is a little handful-sized pile of rubber tubes stuffed into a mostly empty cabinet, yet all of the ones here are full nearly to the point of breaking.

Yet, as they stand and ponder, their gaze absentmindedly wandering to the hanging wall cabinet at the right end of the row, which gives way to the space beholding the underside of the grate-stairs, a sudden wave of familiarity crashes at the shores of their cognition. Yes, that cabinet in particular seems somehow correct-er than all the others, identical as it is.

The underside of that cheap old wooden cabinet, which this workshop’s previous inhabitant presumably assembled with nothing but a rock and two left thumbs is visually buckling from the weight of the object contained inside, and as they open the thin door, they immediately understand why. Within the hanging cabinet stands the broken remains of the motorcycle’s old, original engine. It's a heartbreaking sight, seeing their bike’s previous pounding pump perched precariously within that clumsily collaborated cabinet’s confines. How far had this little motor carried them? How many hundreds of thousands of miles worth of daily drives did it last before giving in… or, worse yet, before being destroyed by the Nomad’s recklessness. Had they only paid attention to the road, had they only strengthened the skid-plate mounted below, had they only, had they only, had they only… they ought to bury it someday, pay their well-overdue respects…

Then, they spot it: the open end of a fresh rubber fuel line pokes out from the behind the dead motor, taunting them with its inaccessibility. Neither gloved nor bare fingers can squeeze into the gap between the wooden panelling and kaputt crankcase; the Nomad stands defeated, dreading the fact they’ll have to get it out entirely. With gloveless fingers and a few short breaths to hype them up, they place their grasp on the best-to-reach bits of extruding steel and pull, slowly but surely dragging the object closer to the edge. It’s damn heavy, so much so in fact that they cannot hope to lower it down gently at all, so they formulate a different, less strategic plan.

As they pull the last bit of the engine over the edge, it tips forward, its sheer, massive weight impacting the Nomad’s chest with such force that they almost fall over backward. In one swift motion, they let the motor roll off its unwelcome perch and fall freely onto the lengthy workbench below, jumping away into safety as it slams down, splitting the thick wood from the force of its gravitational pull alone. Leaving it like this feels almost wrong, like cutting out and abandoning a chunk of their own flesh, but they know well-enough that the engine is now useless, and that useless things are better left behind. At last, with the broken engine settled safely, they look to see the all-too-familiar pile of fuel lines at the back of the cabinet resting exactly as they left them so long ago.

Relief; they grab the first one to grace their hand and an appropriate screwdriver, head back outside after putting their gloves back on and switch out the cleaved line for a fresh one. Good as new! Now, on to the problem of fuel: the Nomad’s big gas tank under the stairs still holds a little pool of liquid – nearly twenty litres upon their handy-dandy dip stick, just enough for a single jerrycan’s worth of filling. It’ll last them a few days of travel at most, though this should be more than enough for the next while.

…They feel so lost now, back at square one. What will they even do? The coast is seemingly clear, such says the still air and the quiet snow, but what use does that have when their only means of purpose have been snatched from their grasp? Ellie’s impossible carcass poisons their mind, flashing wretched, nightmarish imagery which all trickle into a pooling pit of despair. Their chance at salvation is dead, their only wish gone like footprints in the snow…

Though, perhaps, Ellie did leave them with more than nought. She spoke a kind of riddle as her last words to the Nomad, one which currently fleets their memory. Something about… lovers in the sky?... Does that make any sense? She also said, uhhhh… unfair? Something-something unfair, something-something cry and lie… God, what a mess this all is, scrambled all around their jostled, disorganised head. Best to clear it, the method already starkly clear; a nice drive ought to make them think straight, but before they can hop on, they first need to actually go and refuel it, and not just stand and think about doing it.

The Nomad takes the empty jerrycan beside the big tank and places its gaping hole below the low-hanging spout, turning its handle to see a little low-pressure, laminarly flowing stream of gasoline trickle downwards, slowly but surely filling the hollow canister until the trickle stops. There’s still some fuel left inside the big tank, as the spout doesn’t directly hang from its lowest point, but for where they’re going, they’ll not even need a tenth of what they already have.

They go outside, locking their door behind them, then open the cap on the motorcycle’s empty tank only to pour the fresh combustible inside, making sure not to lose even a single precious drop. When the last drizzle of liquid falls into the contained pool below, they close both the tank and canister and attach it to its specialised holding-bracket on the back of the bike. With all set, they hop on, pull the choke, and press on the starter. The engine turns over an unnerving amount of times, audibly weakening the cold battery before finally coughing to life.

Relieved, the Nomad drives off into the city streets, whose eerie silence presents neither falling snow nor even the odd gust of wind; they can hear nothing but the engine’s mechanical thrum and their own, occupied thoughts. The riddle, the riddle… the riddle makes no sense. At tenth dawn, look upon the lovers in the sky… what lovers? Clouds? Tall mountains?... the sun and planet? No, that’d be ridiculous. Following the those two – no matter where they stand, really – will yield nought findings but endless snow. They’ve been everywhere beyond the valley up north, north-west, and north-east, and there’s nothing to be found but farmland and little, downtrodden towns, not a centre for communication in sight. Yes, there must be another explanation, but what? No other points of interest anywhere in this valley would fulfil the criteria, at least off the top of their head… Perhaps the drones can help, they wrangled Ellie all those years after all…

They dread the drones more now than they ever have, unable to devise a train of thought to adequately explain yesterday’s happenings. If, and only if they manage to talk to Stanford – normally, this time – they could consider going into debt for fuel, supplies, and info. They have a hunch that they’ll not be here for much longer, unwilling to live among a city possibly still harbouring that thing, so taking on a burden like that won’t be an issue… lest they ever hope to return, which they don’t. Perhaps, though, they won’t have to do so at all; they’ve still got Johnny’s torn flannel in their satchel, that ought to count for something, right? Although he wasn’t alive when they got to him, nor did they in fact spot any of his remains other than this oily scrap of cloth, they did technically find him. His other bits might still be somewhere in that pile of scrap.

…No, they’re not thinking right. All they can give Stanford now is closure, as weird as that sounds. Maybe he’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but since he seemingly already thinks they murdered Johnny, there’s little chance he’ll keep his cool. All they can do now is hope and… wait, is that-?

A mechanical carcass litters the road, splayed and torn apart in a patch of black-stained snow. Then, before they’ve time to process the sight, another rises into view. Soon, before they can properly come to a sensical explanation, the streets they traverse starkly unnerved and confused are painted in monochrome shades of scratched, grey concrete and blackened blankets of ice. The courtyard before the bunker’s entrance bears dozens of ripped-apart drones laying radially outwards, each dead, their screens either dark or not remaining at all. The Nomad does not recognise these machines, for all are identical when stripped of clothes. Even so, neither do they feel any familiarity when gazing at their torn, oily garments. The only drones they’re able to pick out of a crowd in a heartbeat are Stanford and Abernathy, but they’re nowhere to be found, so they reckon they must still be inside.

Abyssal liquid streams from the maw of the crudely pierced iron entrance, poisoning the ground with its unnatural warmth and melting the snow into a sick, swirling puddle of shimmering, steaming water. Vast amounts of used oil laden the claustrophobic confines of the bunker, all coalescing into one great puddle of heat-emitting, thin lubricant which clings to the bottom and sides of their already grey-stained boots. Upon the walls is found yet more of the substance, inlaid into the depths of beastly scratches. The thing, the prototype, it was here, or, perhaps, still is.

Chills run down the Nomad’s spine as they stand as still as their weakened, sleepless body will allow, intently listening for any wayward creaking noises of death to announce the thing’s presence. Yet, when their sharpened senses spy the empty reverberations of the humming bunker’s still-running generator, and the nought-wind stillness of the dead city outside, they come to realise they are yet shielded from the presence’s horrid gaze.

It's dim, as it’s always been; as the singular lightbulbs affixed upon the ceiling still shine inadequately, their usual lack of gusto is muted evermore by the newly black ground. It’s quite uncomfortable traversing such gloom with the light’s lacking energy, so they rummage around in their satchel, passing by an assortment of common tools only to remove a little metal cylinder. They press the button at its top, only for nothing to happen. They hit the object against their palm a few times before it jumps to life, casting harsh, white light from the flashlight’s LED tip as it finally properly illuminates the darkness, only to reveal countless bits of unrecognisable metal and polymer shards jotting from the motionless layer of oil. Not even full bodies remain here, only the remnants of those who could not get out… it fills them with… something – a strange, new emotion.

With the lights on and the generator still running as if nothing were wrong, they deduce that this obvious massacre happened stunningly quickly, with not enough time to flee beyond the courtyard’s exposed grasp. Their collective oil, which now stains their boots and conscience, lay uselessly upon the ground, giving off heat for no one. Such carelessness… such waste in the wake of the apocalypse. Even though the Nomad rightly despises the prototype for taking everything they had from their very grasp, they can’t help but pity it. They know intimately what it means to survive, and if that thing ought to kill drones to live, then it’s made a horrible mistake. All that evidence now laid out before them, the Nomad comes to connect the numerous dots until they form one tantalisingly beautiful possibility:

The prototype is dead, starved of nutrition.

Can it be? Are they safe? There’s no way to know for sure, lest they stumble upon its motionless carcass, yet as they bathe in the vast and depthless silence of the valley and the city within, they feel an overwhelming sense of skewed tranquillity hit the shores of their perception. At last, though it had not lasted long, they feel at poisoned peace, standing in the drone’s dark tomb.

Wet footsteps echo throughout the quiet bunker; a slimy splotchiness that threatens to slip away from out under them. Treading in oil isn’t a pleasant experience, both by physicality and implication, though it’s thankfully lost some of its lubricity from age. Feels weird though, wading through what once flowed through the same drones which always stood to help, who still were “breathing” not even a day ago.

The Canteen is empty, so are the halls which lead to the living quarters and the left-right T junction, which, as everywhere in the dim bunker, also bears no drones, living or dead. Stanford’s door is no longer there – in the stead of the hefty hinges are craters of exploded wall, and as they come to stand beside them, the Nomad makes a dreadful discovery, their eyes falling upon a grim scene: Stanford lays in a shallow pool of oil in the corner of the room, his torso missing its lower half. His screen is dark. He does not move.

They tread in silence as they pass the smashed desk and come to stand beside the dead drone, crouching down to meet his final gaze as countless memories flood into their mind. They knew this drone quite well… better than most, at least. What little care they had for the drones was concentrated in the one who took pity, the one who gave his all, the one who helped even when they starkly rejected it. Stanford was different, they could see that in him. He reminded them of their past life on earth, almost exhuming notions of humanity. Just a machine, just a computer, just a damn, lifeless robot, yet often displaying far greater understanding and kindness than they’ve ever let slip themselves. He was, in some ways, the only friend they’ve had for a long, long time.

His last thoughts dwelt on Johnny, and now that they have an answer, grim as it might be, they can’t give him any solace. All they’ve got now is his lightless face, and this oily scrap of red flannel. Not thinking, the Nomad lays it atop his screen, so that he may yet be reunited in death with what he undeniably thought of as his son.

Thus, crouched beside this heart-wrenching wreck of a friend, the Nomad comes to realise for the first time in a long time that they are well and truly alone. Never has the death of one drone occupied their mind for longer than they were told of it, but now, once more surrounded by death, again as the last to bear the burden of the tale, they feel an overwhelming sense of sickening solitude wash over them. Again, they are left alone; again, they have done nought but watch as the wider world withers of life before their very eyes; again, they are lost without help or company to ease the woes of this cold, dead world.

…Perhaps they ought to bury Stanford. Would that be kindness in his eyes? The drones, as far as they know, did not bury their dead, instead gutting them for parts and oil. It’d simply be a waste of good steel in a wasteland none caring for wastefulness. That, and Abernathy would surely throw a fit, deprived of her little playthings…

Ah, wait, shit. Abernathy!

The Nomad quickly yet safely makes their way toward Abernathy’s workshop, finding her door ajar and undamaged, and the room awfully devoid of her carcass. Did that thing eat her whole?... No, as far as they can tell, it didn’t like to finish its meals, or open doors properly for that matter. But, if it hadn’t consumed her, and she didn’t lay anywhere outside, then where is she? No trace of the drone-doctor exists within the bunker – in fact, each drawer and cabinet, toolbox and benchtop has been seemingly rummaged through, all of them open and appearing slightly emptier than they were but a day ago. Did she manage to escape? She said she was friends with Ellie, so perhaps she knew something?

…Oh. Oh, she knew something. She knew and didn’t tell them!

Oh, if only they get their hands on her, they’ll wring her around until she’s looking straight again! If they get their hands on that… that disgrace of a doctor, they’ll unbolt her every limb and feed them to her. They’ll make her pay for almost getting the one and only Nomad killed! She knew! Abby knew! Abby knew and did not tell them! Abby knew when to get away, when to escape so none would notice! Did she come back for anyone? No! Did she tell the other drones? No! Did she leave a message, a sign, a signal or ANY other indication of her whereabouts? NO! No, no, no and no again. She left everyone to die, and now Stan’s paid for it! How will they ever again hope to trade with the drones, if there ARE no more drones??

…Trade.

Then again, they reckon no one will speak up if they just so happen to take a peek at their supplies…

The Nomad looks left after exiting Abernathy’s empty room, letting their eyes fall upon a door at the end of the gloomy hallway simply labelled “Storage”. It’s undamaged, and unfortunately locked. The key to it could be anywhere, and with Stanford’s desk smashed into nought more than pulp, that “anywhere” is highly likely to be in the oil… Yeah, no, they’ll do a lot for this, but rummaging through that clingy, black, shimmering substance is not one of those things. To forego the need for a key, the Nomad already knows what to use: the crowbar, trusty as ever, still hanging from their beltloop.

Jamming the sturdy iron tool into the tiny gap between the flimsy door and its frame, they expertly press on and subsequently explode the locking mechanism outward, flinging the door open as they finally take a good look at a room they had never been allowed to see with their own eyes. A wonderful sight paints their widened perception: A dozen shelves packed with rows upon rows of canned food and clean water; a few crates of yet more food, though a handful have been opened and emptied; one crate of fresh clothes which still ought to smell as they did right off the factory line; two bright blue tarps; some emergency supplies like flares and heat retention blankets; a large tank of what is presumably fuel, judging by how it’s labelled “GASOLINE” in big, bold lettering. They open the screwed cap atop it and take a whiff, the sickeningly pleasant fragrance of gasoline just barely able to enter through the gaps between their rebreather and skin.

This is a treasure trove the likes of which the Nomad has never even dared dream of. Such a bounty of food, water, and gas could last them for years, should they ration correctly, and use the quantity of gasoline mostly to find yet more fuel. They would live lavishly like a monarch until the last of their numbered days, if it weren’t for one, miniscule, little discrepancy: mask filters. Breathing, as it turns out, is quite important, and yet this urgency is not reflected in this room.

A single small crate, its lid seemingly missing, sits in the corner of the bottom row of a dimly lit back-of-the-room shelf, a spray-painted logo upon its side reading simply “MASK FILTERS”, though it’s so pathetically empty that, were there still any spiders left in the world, they image one’d have spun a comedically perfect cobweb in its corner. “Reeeeaaal fuckin’ funny JCJenson… sigh, really funny.”, they hum into the crate, “Always two steps ahead, just watch out for the fucking cliff…” The lack of an adequate supply of mask filters to last a bunker with a capacity of 200 people, when it can barely last one single human for a decade would, admittedly, be quite comedic, if only they weren’t that one single human, and if only their breathing weren’t on the line. They search the room for any potentially hidden crates, but it seems as if this one was the last, supported by the fact that the row it sits upon is entirely empty.

What a joke; they knew the drones stopped trading for filters some months ago, but they hadn’t imagined they’d ran out entirely like this. A few more filters would’ve been good, seeing as to how the very last one they have still sits safely in their nightstand at home. It seems that they’ll have to breathe polluted air for the rest of their life, however short that may be… But, in reality, they can’t really complain about their situation; they’ve food and fuel for years to come, so all in all, this has been a win.

Beside the open door, in a spot their eyes hadn’t yet wandered, the Nomad spots four familiar-looking barrels of drone oil laying on their side on a specialty rack. As they turn the spout on each one, three of them eject nought but stale air, while one trickles with the slightest of streams of thick, golden liquid, soon stopping before even a real puddle of it can form upon the cold ground. It seems Manfred wasn’t lying yesterday; there’s none left at all, none to keep the drones alive, although that doesn’t really matter anymore.

So it was true after all, that this would have been the end either way, whether or not they got the barrel from the warehouse. Sure, there’s more oil out there somewhere far beyond the valley, but such journeys with such massive weight on the motorcycle’s sled would likely take weeks of travel to complete. They would’ve been reduced to nothing but the resident oil-getter until those reserves, too, deplete for good.

In a way, it’s almost relieving to see the ultimate inevitability of it all, knowing for certain that their actions have little consequence in this indifferent world. No matter what they would’ve done, no matter how hard they would’ve tried – the drones’ death sentence had long been spoken before they ever came to meet them. They are absolved of their failures, finally at peace in the face of what they cannot hope to stop: decay, death, stillness. Yet still, their mind races – what now? How will they go on? The drones are dead, and Ellie’s nonsensical riddle still does not sing with discernible directions…

Ah what the hell, they ought to do something while they think on it. Perhaps it just needs some time to stew in their mind, so to say, and they can’t just stand still while doing so. That’s not what the Nomad does, not who they are… But what will they do? There’s nowhere for them to go, no secret stash of loot they ought to collect nor solemn place to ponder… unless?

The sled still occupies the back of their mind, still stuck upon the precarious mountain road, loaded with their tool bag, welding gear and bottles. They ought to get it down, for if they have to travel far – which, in all likelihood, they will – then a barrel of gasoline will certainly be a reality they’ll have to contend with. But before they get to contend with anything of importance at all, they have a problem to fix, and that problem is their empty fuel tank.

The Nomad wanders outside, determined to fetch their trusty jerrycan, when they are stopped in their tracks as they are once again hit like a truck by the eerie silence blanketing the broken cityscape. It’s almost unbelievable; after all this time, still not a flake of snow is stirred by even the slightest of gusts – the city has never been so deathly silent for so long. They stop to listen – perhaps the quiet is some machination of their mind? A result of the constant hum present within the bunker? Yet no matter how long they linger, nothing comes from the silence, even when they stand as perfectly still. A true silence, an overbearing emptiness, a perfect, absolute stillness weighs heavy on the empty town. It’s as if they were floating weightlessly in empty space, as if they stood in a stretch of boundless desert, bar sand or heat. A sensationless experience, almost peaceful, almost, for as they breathe, and as they breathe again, something new and strange makes itself known.

There hangs an unmistakeable stench in the air.

A foul fragrance spoils the very atmosphere; the copper-like reek of rot, of decay, of drying blood and old meat. There is no wind to carry it, no gales to churn the foulness, to exaggerate it beyond what it is. No, this horrible miasma infiltrating their senses is one great, formless cloud of stink. It does not seem to originate close by, for no matter how or where they turn, they cannot define any semblance of direction. Not even a cone of origin can be discerned, no, for all directions are discovered to be equal. All broken windows billow rot; over the tops of buildings flows an invisible stink; as if it’s seeped into the very foundations of the city itself, flowing from miniscule fissures in the frozen earth.

There’s some kind of… finality to the stench, to the rot. It’s as if the city itself, their ever-familiar home, were decomposing as they stand within it – yet again, the Nomad is surrounded by death.

The question then presents itself: where is this stench coming from? No ideas of direction are desired, for that has proven futile, but instead the corpse which so obviously is hidden away somewhere. But how? How is anything rotting out here? All corpses and all animals decayed away more than a decade ago, leaving nothing but frozen bones in their wake, so how exactly can it be that the stench haunts them on this day in particular, when they’ve been spared of it for so long?

Is it Ellie? They don’t quite believe the things they saw in that tower, and they’ll be damned if they dare go up there and look, but what they saw would be the only thing to explain it. Even so, would that one, horrible scene blanket the entire city so thoroughly that the miasma appears directionless?

…Oh. It’s that thing, isn’t it? It ought to be a drone too, its lights and strength, its heat and ferocity would suggest so, but even then, could it alone – assuming it, too, has a fleshy interior – rot so vivaciously as to overtake the cold stillness of the air? They can only assume so, and hope against it – but if it is, then this serves it right. Still, the rot persists no matter their opinion of it.

The Nomad grabs firm hold of their trusted jerrycan, trying not to think of this unnatural fragrance any further than they already have, and dash back inside the dim, oily bunker. Soon begins a cycle consisting of heading into the storage room, filling their container up with gasoline, then heading back outside to dump it into the bike’s starved tank, over and over and over and over until the level of combustible reaches the tippy top of what it can feasibly contain, and the canister itself, too, is filled to the brim. With nothing more to gain bar useless weight they’ll come back for anyway, they set off for the mountain road with the stench ever-present in the air, and the riddle actively churning their head.

Before they know it, paying little attention to the road as their subconscious takes over the decade-practised drive out of the city, the Nomad comes to the river which leads to the entrance of the warehouse’s narrow ravine. It takes a little while to get there, so as they travel, their mind drifts to the riddle.

“At tenth dawn, look upon the lovers in the sky. Hear their cry… hear their cry…” the Nomad repeats on and on, trying to make sense of it all. Hear their cry? What cry? Like an actual one? Or, perhaps, did she mean it metaphorically? She neither seemed nor sounded as if she were above cryptic messaging, so this, perhaps, could be entirely meaningless. If it isn’t, then they reckon that they’ll figure it out eventually. However, the first part of the first line, “At tenth dawn, look upon the lovers in the sky” is quite a lot clearer.

There must be two things reaching far up into the air, appearing as if it were wrong to cleave them apart which, somehow, ought to show the way at dawn of the tenth day. They imagine it’d be a shadow of some sort, cast into some unitless heading, although, thinking about this for even the slightest of moments, they come to the undoubtful conclusion that such a guide would me much too uncertain. The accuracy of a blurry shadow, likely not even properly pointy as a directional arrow should be, is obviously of dubious believability. Perhaps what she meant were the peaks of two twin-like mountains, both aligning with the rising sun to point the way. They know not of one such instance, at least none that come to the immediate mind, so this idea is quickly disregarded. Or, perhaps, what she also could have meant were two complementary buildings, of these being more than enough in the city alone, not to mention the countless other cities, towns, and factories dotted throughout and outside the wide valley. This, again, proves of little use, as finding two exact buildings which just so happen to be Ellie’s subject, and then being able to decipher their heading while also standing in just the right spot at dawn of the tenth day to spot the mark could take weeks, months, or perhaps even years of tedium.

Then, their shadow cast in front of them, the Nomad takes a look back to gaze upon a tantalizingly obvious solution: the dim sun and great planet in the sky, their partnership unbreakable, their dance eternal, both close to an eclipse… What day is it anyway? The Nomad counts on their fingers, making sure to take their stay in the warehouse into account as they miscount not only once, not twice, but thrice, only to eventually, inelegantly, come up with second-guessed fact that the last umbral night must’ve taken place exactly ten days ago, hidden by the already light-erasing cloud-blanket of the blizzard.

But… no, that can’t be right! They’ve considered it before, and it’s just as ridiculous now as it was then. The sun and planet cannot be the answer, they’d lead them to an endless shore no matter where they stood! The Nomad is quite far south, so it’d always be either dead-north, north-east, or north-west, and nowhere else. Every which way you look at it and no matter what winding paths they’d take to get there, those headings always lead to the oceans beyond the vast southern continent. There is a land-bridge to the northern forests, steppes, and deserts which is passable by foot alone, but going there would take them to the other side of the planet, months of ceaseless travel a certainty, not to mention nowhere near the prophecy’s dictations.

The sun and planet cannot be the answer… they simply can’t.

With those two useless sky-bound discs out of the question, they think of other possibilities. “Lovers, lovers, lovers in the sky…” they grumble repeatedly, trying their absolute best, grasping at any plausible examples as they kickstart the gloomy back corners of their well-travelled mind. Any even slightly romantically inclined feature of the vast and decrepit wastes is scoured and gutted for prophesised parts, then frustratedly cast aside, forgotten as they find nought of worth at all. No two lovers-like structures change at tenth dawn, align in a precise and repeatable enough manner, stand out against the wider, equally useless ruins while also seeming of enough importance to be worthy of Ellie’s precognitions. It is hopeless as of yet; their mind returns only blank space and blue skies when they run out of unforgotten examples – in that blue sky within their mindscape, whose brilliance is underlined by a blindingly endless white plane loom the two celestial spheres, dancing ever on, imprisoned in orbital lockstep.

Their shadow preludes them, both here, in the material world, as in their cognition. The Nomad maddens at the sight of the back-warming star, shouting at the unfeeling, glowing features in the sky: “But there’s nothing OVER THERE! Just- f-fucking OCEAN!”, they flail their free arm backward, trying to make the unyielding celestial bodies understand, “What do you WANT FROM ME? DRIVE ACROSS THE ICE FOR GOD KNOWS HOW LONG? NO! I’M NOT GONNA DO THAT!” They pout and sit back down, twitching from anger, unintelligible words pouring out of their mouth as if water from a sheer cliff-edge. No terrors nor hunger in this world will convince them of this ridiculous notion of celestial-given directions. There has to be another answer; Ellie gave them fake directions, her visions clearly nothing more than madness. That bitch! She wanted them dead! Oh, but the Nomad is wise to her tricks! No, they won’t be held a fool, won’t be written off as some idiot who went running after the damn sun. The Nomad will be remembered as a survivor, the one who lived on in spite of it all, who endured the frost and the hunger, who witnessed the end of days and began writing a story of their own, all alone as they have always been. Ellie won’t get the better of them, won’t have the last laugh after all. HA! Who’s laughing now, drone? Dead and gone as you are, serves you right… “Driving across an ocean… yeah, right…”

Before long, the Nomad comes to enter and rapidly travels through the forested road which eventually leads to the entrance of the narrow ravine. An unseen stretch of asphalt covered by a thick layer of newly fallen snow rises above the frozen riverbed of the long-dead Valleygarde river, ascending beside the rightward slope covered in broken pine trees. The smothering white of the road, much deeper and swallowing now than it’s ever been, conceals not only rocks and sticks, but potholes as well. Their front tyre suddenly sinks deep into an asphalt-less pit, jumping out at its steep front-edge with a frightening jolt that shakes the entire motorcycle. They’d almost forgotten how treacherous this path was, distracted by all of the excitement of these past few days…

Their back tyre slips and slides within the blindingly bright mass, only scarcely able to find little pockets of grip as the Nomad revs the engine to screeching speeds, stuck and happy in low gear. What insignificant blips of traction present themselves are entirely eliminated not half-a-second later, the rough, off-road rubber treads digging away at the snow until they reach the bottom-most compacted layers in which they are able to grab hold. Untold volumes of days-old feet-deep snow reach up almost to their seat in height, ploughed out of the way by the un-aerodynamic front of their steering fork and headlight. Most fuel is wasted simply moving snow out of their way – a barrier not impassible, but so massive and unrelenting that it may as well be. This would all be so much easier with their Dune-rider gear; a ski for the front and improvised paddle-wheel at the back would make short work of it all, quite easily gliding along the upper layers of the snow. Maybe they’ll get it out again someday, maybe, though now their mind is needed for a different task.

Trudging through the sheer unrelenting masses of snow becomes an almost calming experience; the Nomad falls into a trance-like state of mind, solely concentrated on wrangling their trusted machine to their will. A hidden pothole here, a perpendicularly laying log to cross there, slowly but surely carving a path of conquest through this inhospitable world of theirs. Time passes unnoticed, its constant ticking forgotten somewhere in this endless white, this endless trudge, this endless life of theirs. Potholes do not grow more numerous anymore, for the asphalt hardly has any free space left to welcome newcomers in the gaps, hole-ridden like a good Swiss cheese, or perhaps a porous kitchen sponge. Both tyres still sink-then-jolt in-and-out of every bump and jostling peak, branch and lengthy crack. As they finally come to the scene of their ongoing despair, time having ticked away as if it weren’t there at all, their heart sinks: the sheer chasm with the wooden bridge, or rather, the one without one now, is missing the sled – all their eyes spy as they come to a standstill in the depthless snow is a significant mound of white powder where they last saw it, and an impassable gap beyond it.

Momentary panic sets in as the prospect of losing their sled not once, but twice – in the same spot no less! – dawns on them. Thankfully though, after they leap into the mound like a lumbering, unwieldy mole and begin to dig, their clasped, shovel-shaped hands collide with the familiarly unyielding clang of a gas bottle, followed by the radiant shine of a blue plastic tarp covering their gear. Soon, they heave such utter masses of snow out of the way with their bare hands that the sled lay halfway uncovered from its smothering grave, a thick layer of ice covering every spot upon the stiff tarp, whose ratchets they undo and attentively place to the side. Then, deciding that they won’t need the frozen plastic anymore, they heave the stiff object out of the snow and off the side of the cliff. It falls down quite comically, floating in its unyielding top-of-the-sled shaped stiffness as it clunks against the cliff-face, then daintily settles in the snow below.

There’s a little shovel within the bag on the sled, which they’d use to uncover the rest, if only they could get to it. Ice has frozen the zipper shut, which they’d smash open with their axe, although that, too, is locked inside. Oh if only they had their crowbar… Oh, wait, they do have their crowbar. They’ve gotten so used to its loss that they completely forgot they have it right here. So, they take it off their beltloop and smash its sharpened end against the ice upon the sled, breaking the layer into little shards that disappear into the snow. The zipper is tough, but not impenetrable as they accidentally snap it off, proceeding to care little for the old bag as they tear the zipperless zipper open and fish the shovel out and into their caring hands.

With it, they thoughtlessly excavate the rest of the sled, forming and stomping-down a ramp with which they lead its skis onto the top layer of the undisturbed snow – its skis sink in completely by the sheer weight of the bottles on top, stopping only at the surface of the sled itself. At last, their sled, not quite long-lost yet also feeling as if they’re seeing it for the first time in decades stands freely before them, their bottles and gear mostly undisturbed. They take the doohickie, still-attached on its improvised joint into their hand and lead it to their motorcycle’s backside, also hooking it up to the equally crude-yet-sturdy joint above its back tyre. Connected at last, the Nomad quickly ratchets the bottles back down as tight as possible, sits upon their motorcycle – its engine still running as fuel isn’t really a concern anymore – and drives off, expecting difficulties.

And difficulties they get: An unnerving dance beside certain death overtakes the cold rationality of driving; the tyres struggle and kink off-line against the broken pavement, sending horrible shocks up and down their arms and into their tense body. Although they aren’t going fast, the sheer mass off the filled-tank motorcycle, the Nomad sat upon it, and the sled loaded with unused gas bottles pulls them downwards against the will of their brake pads – the sled itself, its thin skis entirely without brakes, pushes and pulls in ways the Nomad has never experienced. They know this sled’s handling better than anyone, have driven across vast distances with far greater weights perched atop it, yet never have they struggled this much. A combination of the feet-deep snow, the weight of their cargo, the slope and condition of the road, as well as the general state of their mind meld together into a single, boiling pool of stress.

They cannot concentrate, cannot feel the innate connection to their motorcycle’s mechanical movements and symphony of combustion anymore – it feels so terribly wrong, as if they’ve lost a part of themselves. Slowly but surely, they creep down the dangerous, pothole-ridden path as they wrangle the unwieldy machine to their will, shifting their weight side-to-side as they stand upon the footpegs, their right foot resting on – and occasionally pressing down on – the back brake. Their fingers take rest not on the rubber grips, but the levers right in front of them; delicate pulls and fearful, split-second pulses grace both of their brake discs, slowing then speeding up, halting while being pushed along by the sled’s massive heft.

Incredibly nervous, constantly on the brink of a breakdown beside the sheer cliff-face, the overload of unusual sensations finally becomes too much to bear; the Nomad, more stressed out about driving than they’ve ever been makes one, devastating mistake upon sinking deep into an unseen depression in the asphalt: they clamp down on both brake discs a little too hard, a little too quickly – they lock up, grinding to an unsettling, sudden halt.

In the blink of an eye, their front tyre kinks off-line at the far ridge of the deep pothole, violently throwing the Nomad out of their gingerly-placed seating. They aren’t allowed any time to dwell on their stupidity, for their eyes soon affix upon a horrifying sight: the bike, now laying on its side is dragged further along by the sled!

The Nomad scrambles to catch up to the driverless vehicle, trudging awkwardly through the deep snow, carving a narrow trench into the mass as fast as their body can manage, though it isn’t enough. In just a few endless moments, helpless in their inability as a human being, they watch in heart-stopping terror as the sled and bike move closer and closer to the rightward edge. Then, it happens: the motorcycle slips underneath the railing, very nearly falling off the cliff! It now hangs hallway over the edge, threatening to tumble down into the depths, kept safe only by the sled’s greater size unable to fit below the railing.

Their heart sinks so deep down that they swear they can feel their stomach acid etching into it. An agonizing handful of seconds later, the Nomad finds themselves looming over the railing, dangerously close to falling into the depths of the ravine as they try desperately to hit the kill-switch and turn off the engine. With a bit of straining, they manage to hit the little red button and force the motor into silence.

A shock-choked stillness fills the icy air of the mountain-ravine.

A realisation enters their mind as they gaze in silence at the precariously teetering machine. They almost just lost… everything. They almost just sealed their fate, and it was all their fault. It’s all their fault, it always is. It’s just how it is. They do everything wrong. They’re a failure, a useless, piece of shit failure. They’ve always been just that. They should’ve ended it years ago, should’ve spared the world their uselessness! In fact, why not just jump off right now? Make it better for everyone! They’ll not be missed! No! They’ll not be missed by anyone at all! Nobody would care! Nobody cares at all about the Nomad! Everybody would be better off if they just offed themselves right now! Useless! Useless! USELESS!

…

Silence.

Stillness.

Not a single gust of wind.

Not a hint of noise beyond the pounding of their heart.

…

One delicate snowflake flutters daintily onto their goggles’ smeared, scratch-ridden glass.

…

The Nomad collapses into the snow, defeated, at the end of their wits as they clasp their face in their hands. “God,” they breathe quietly, almost like a ghostly whisper, “I’m gonna die…” Tears wallow in their sunken, lifeless eyes; their breathing stammers and chokes. “I’m gonna die alone down here… Nobody’s gonna know,” they breathe in sharply, then slump down hunched while comforting themselves by slowly rubbing their shoulders, “nobody’s gonna know… nobody’s gonna remember me. They don’t even know I’m here...”

Why?

Why are they still here? Just to suffer? Just to live on for… nothing? Nobody even knows they’re still here. If they die, then all of this – their life, their strife, their suffering and their damned pride – have all been for nothing; their entire existence would have been one meaningless trudge towards oblivion, holding out for no reason other than to spite the grave. Fifteen years for nothing. Fifteen years wasted on a pointless life.

…

It… can’t have been for nothing, can it? This all must’ve meant something, must’ve had some greater, more important purpose than… this.

What a joke. What a horrible, depressing joke this all is. Their life, their meaningless blur of a life, now in peril by their own, stupid mistakes. They should’ve known, should’ve stopped when they had the chance, but no, they couldn’t do that. Now look where it’s gotten them; just as stuck as they were before, if not worse entirely – their motorcycle, their precious, fifteen-year ship-of-theseus’d bundle of mechanical, life-given passion, now nearly dangling freely into the depths of the ravine below, connected only by their handcrafted doohickie, kept safe by that which almost drove it to destruction. It’s all gone so horribly downhill, and it’s all their fault. How could they be so stupid to think this was a good idea? They should’ve just… made a new sled! They should just… not panicked! They should’ve just… braked better!

…But, they did brake just right… and they shifted their weight how they ought to have. Everything they did, down to the minutest of details they did just right, just how they should have, how it ought to have been done. And yet, despite their best efforts – for their best efforts aren’t, haven’t been, now will ever be good enough – they have failed. The Nomad’s messed it all up again, as always – they’re nothing more than a useless fuck-up…

Their tear-reddened gaze drifts towards the sled. “…And it’s all because of you.” Rage boils within their eyes, reddening them anew with greater passions. “I hate you. You’ve given me nothing but fucking trouble, you know that? You’re a piece of shit. Gonna throw you off the cliff, be rid of you once and for all. That’ll make the drive easier…”

…That… might work, actually. The sled, the heft, the demon upon their fume-driven back, it’s nothing but dead weight – mostly, at the very least. Those bottles and that tool bag, all less than useless now; when will they ever weld again? When will they ever flame-cut? They got the acetylene specifically for the warehouse, having managed without for the last few years. If only they never brought these useless bottles up here, everything would’ve been so much easier. Now, in their pointlessness as dead weight, and with nothing more to lose as they sit upon the gloomy bedrock of rock-bottom, the Nomad conjures a new idea.

Yes, be rid of the bottles. Throw them off the cliff, make some fireworks, make yourself known to these bitter mountaintops. Make sure the rock quakes in your presence. Make sure the silence will sing your name. Make sure this dead world becomes rife with your scars. Stillness will cease when you thus decree.

Decree it. The world is empty, and you are its last, wretched worm to etch its path upon it.

Determined, the Nomad rises to a shaky footing, carefully making their way to the perilous scene. The bottles are the only thing keeping the motorcycle pinned to the cliff-edge, so they can’t just remove them as-is, lest they want their precious machine gone too (and they don’t. That’s the point). Yet, just pulling on the contraption won’t do – it’s far too heavy to drag along the bare rock of the cliff-edge, even for the relatively strong arms of the Nomad. However, aid isn’t far from the scene: the ratchet straps which keep their cargo pinned. With their aid, they could slowly but surely pull their vehicle backwards onto assured ground. Yet, a worry consumes them; if they remove one strap, chances are the other won’t be able to resist the pull of gravity alone. It’s a shame they hadn’t packed a few more back before the storm, but what can they do? Just drive back to fetch some? Right, they’d need a motorcycle for that, possibly the one that’s currently in grave danger… and they are not walking all the way back on foot. So, all that’s left for them is to bite the bullet and hope.

The Nomad crouches down beside the sled, considering all other options before committing, yet finding none that provide a proper solution. First, they tighten the frontward strap, pulling on its cold steel mechanism until they can audibly hear the metal straining beneath their gloved grip, satisfied only when they cannot physically force it any further along – click, click, click, followed by one final click. Then, hesitant to act yet aware of its inevitability, they nervously grasp the rear ratchet’s handle, swinging it to the other side before lightly blipping the release mechanism, inching the sturdy, woven strap looser and looser, listening for any wayward creaks or groans after every milli-inch, staring with unblinking eyes, dreading even the slightest of movements. Every bit of pressure released pulls the line of tension taught within their mind – sweating, heavy breathing, shaking muscles and heavy thoughts. Dreadful possibilities play out in scenes within their imagination, displaying their sled and bike both slipping away from out under them and tumbling freely down the cliff, leaving behind only a distraught wreckage within a pit of disturbed snow. Yet, such terrors do not come true; the Nomad loosens the strap more and more, until a half-inch of slack finally presents itself between cargo and its keeper.

One minute passes in unnerving silence, unable to tear themselves from the object lest it loosens when out of sight. Another minute passes uneventfully, and the third does just the same. At last, they delicately undo the rest of the still-together strap, daring not to even touch the surface of their unmoving cargo. When it is free, they step away with speed, intently observing the nerve-wracking scene before breathing a miniscule sight of relief.

A broken stump of a formerly mighty tree stands near the edge of the shoulder-high forest, jotting up nearly three feet into the air before dissolving into a mess of jagged splinters. They swing the heavy ratchet-mechanism end of the strap overtop their head, soon casting it forwards at an angle, quickly wrapping around the ice-laden wood before very nearly hitting the side of their head. With an anchor secured, they run the other end of the strap through both hind legs of the sled’s skis, soon passing it through the mechanism until it’s pulled taught, forming a single, great loop.

Nervous, anxious, doubt-ridden and panic-stricken, the Nomad sheepishly dares the first click. Nothing happens. Another click. Nothing again. For the first few advances of the rotating mechanism, nothing happens but for the straining of the steady, tight-pulled woven strap. Then, however, a sudden movement and a horrible, ear-shattering screech startles them to their very core, freezing them in place – if anything were to go wrong now, they could do nothing but watch.

But nothing goes wrong at all. No, for the exact opposite has occurred: the motorcycle now sits slightly closer to the other side of the road, no longer teetering into the abyss, but firmly perched halfway atop the edge – yet, still they are not safe. They ratchet more and more, pulling the sled and bike closer into safety with every firm click of the cold mechanism, scraping the side of their machine’s frame free of its dark-green paintjob with a horrendous, continuous squeal.

At long, long last, the bike finally sits safe and sound upon the cold, snow-laden ground. Unimaginable relief flushes their systems and hums within their bones as they rush to their wounded lover’s aid, stemming her magnificent steel form back onto her side stand and tyres before collapsing, their rescue a resounding success. A proud smile draws across their face as a raspy, exhausted breath draws through their mask filters.

In the light of the midday sun, the dark silhouette of their precious motorcycle stands beautifully as if depicted in a renaissance painting, highlighting her calculated undulations and engineered tidbits of machinery, yet still preserving their purpose as part of her sightly whole. A little glimmer of love lights the cavernous shadows of their worn-through heart, proudly beaming rays of appreciation through the surface of their subconscious. They love this machine. Truly. Whole-heartedly. And they believe that, now that they see her true worth for the first time, she deserves a proper baptism.

They take a knife out of their little satchel, then try their absolute best to etch a name into the undamaged side of their fuel tank, pouring bounds of love and appreciation, effort and concentration into their work – first a J, then an e, followed by two swung s’.

Jess

Life beholds another flame in the frozen wastes; a newborn glimmer flickers in the icy wind of a dead world, dancing beside the remaining spark of a fallen empire.

She’s ready, yet the sled remains an issue. Already aware of what they ought to do, the Nomad looms above their singularly strapped welding gear, burning spikes of hateful sight right through their thick, cylindrical steel – some fireworks ought to be in order…

They carelessly release the still-tightened fastener’s effort, tearing it away without thought for its whereabouts, casting it off to the side unseen. Then, they stem the white-painted oxygen bottle upwards until it comes to stand upright, swaying in the whispering winds of the ravine ever so slightly as they fetch a rock from the road, and an adjustable spanner from their satchel. Using the latter, they grab tight hold of the hex-shape at the top of the bottle’s safety cap, then smack it loose with the former – if they want some fireworks, then they’re going to have to do this right.

An unassuming valve jots proudly from the slightly rusty top of the iron cylinder, its bright green painted handle adorning the plumbing like a polymer crown. From the side juts the open end of the threaded port, where a pressure regulator would find its seating. An exposed valve is a most dangerous scenario – an uncanny sight, gazing freely at what could very easily kill them fills them with a learned discomfort – for if the bottle were to fall and hit it with any notable force, the extreme pressure inside would rupture outwards, spouting a fountain of pure, fire-accelerating oxygen until it runs entirely dry. This, they hope, will make for some good entertainment.

The Nomad, against all right reasoning and without any concerns for safety waddles the heavy cylinder closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, stopping just short of the railing, tilting it slightly until it rests against it, until they’re able to fit their fingers just underneath its base. Then, they heave it upwards, its deceptive heft resisting their efforts, yet ultimately powerless to stand against them. With one last feat of strength, the Nomad ejects the object overtop the iron barrier.

With a loud, gunshot-like snap against the surface of the cliff-face, the pressurised oxygen destroys the valve; an ear-shattering hiss erupts into ravine, driving the bottle into its crux like a missile before impacting, then ricocheting off of the frozen riverbed, dooming it into a spiral of self-feeding death that accelerates and accelerates and accelerates before hitting a rock – pulverising it in the process – that knocks it into an upwards trajectory which launches it out of the ravine, never to be seen again as it lands somewhere among the forests of the rolling mountains that surround their home valley.

Catharsis. That was better than they could’ve ever imagined it being. Now, if the oxygen was already missile-like, then how will the volatile acetylene fair?

Acetylene is highly unstable under pressure, which is a problem if one wants to carry the stuff around anywhere. (y’know, like for welding?) The industry solved this issue quite easily, by dissolving the gas in a bath of pure liquid acetone – like a carbonated soda! (don’t drink this one, though) – which in and of itself is contained within a sponge-like, porous fibreglass reinforced calcium silicate matrix that completely fills the volume of every bottle of acetylene. Keeping one sideways for any notable amount of time is usually a bad idea, as this saturates the matrix near the valve, causing a chaotic sputtering as the acetone is drawn out alongside the gas. Leaving the bottle right-side up for half an hour negates this issue

Here, however, such safety concerns do not apply.

Excited, the Nomad repeats the same process as before with the dark red painted cylinder, removing the safety cap with some difficulty before gazing upon the similar, yet different-looking valve – no threads adorn its port, as to prevent a mix-up of regulators. Unsure of what exactly they will see, but quite sure that among those things will be flames, the Nomad leans the dangerous bottle against the railing and chucks it into the ravine.

It, too, clunks against the side of the cliff, sending out sparks as the steel is briefly ground away. The valve breaks, and the sputtering mixture which haphazardly ruptures outwards is instantly ignited, exploding as a huge, blindingly bright, soot-billowing ball of fire that spews from the free opening like a rocket’s exhaust. At an angle, the bottle is forced further into the ravine’s confines, disappearing entirely from view as it scrapes against the bordering cliffs. After a few brief seconds of silence, an explosive shockwave thunders through the air at blistering speeds, triggering avalanches and rockslides all across the mountains that first emerge only as a low, drawn-out rumble, then a massive cloud of white fog that smothers the Valleygarde-crux in a depthless, breadthless expanse.

At last, they are free.

The Nomad can’t help but smile as they chuck the rest of the useless welding supplies – hoses, regulators, torches – into the bottomless abyss below. “And good fuckin’ riddance!” They shout down in glee at the disappearing tools. “May I never see you again, you fuckers! HA!” A hearty laugh echoes into the narrow ravine. Catharsis once again flushes their veins as they are at last free of these same shackles which have held their mind in contempt for nearly two weeks, always hidden away in the back of their head, nagging at them, begging for rescue, for attention, for release – now, release has come, and they couldn’t be any happier about it. Never had they imagined that they’d celebrate the loss of tools – especially of such great value – but times are strange, for they feel indisputably final.

The Nomad mounts their mechanical partner and starts her steady heart, thumping away as rhythmically as ever, humming, vibrating with explosions of passion that tell tall tales of her combustive power. Jess brims with excitement, reflected in the Nomad’s own soul, its connection to hers of iron and aluminium, rubber and gasoline now stronger than it’s ever been. With a delicate downward press on her gear lever, she shifts into first gear, soon biting down on the clutch which transmits her might into the trembling asphalt below.

Jess and the Nomad easily trudge their valiant way down the mountain road, sled in tow, though barely noticed as it glides effortlessly across the powder snow. Soon, much quicker than they can process, they exit the claustrophobic confines of the cursed ravine, speeding through the small forest, meeting up with the frozen river before continuing on in the direction of their home city, its damaged skyline looming in the distance, lit by a back-shine of low-laying sunlight on a southern hemisphere midday.

The time has come. There is nowhere left to go for the Nomad, no home to return to, no point in living on among this looted landscape. It is time for them to accept what has shone their way all day, having displayed an obvious solution to Ellie’s intricate madness.

At tenth dawn, look upon the lovers in the sky. Hear their cry. Hear! Where emptiness holds sorrow: the space between spheres! Lovers cry eternal, for their dance is locked forevermore – abandonment, they find, forced to tear and twirl their bond! Unfair! Unfair! Unfair is the sky! They cry, they cry, believing their lie! In between, on plateau peak, thy destiny lay patiently.

The sun and planet make up the lovers in the sky, where emptiness holds sorrow is the ever-changing distance between them, and if one looks at this span’s midpoint at dawn of the tenth day, they’ll find their heading. However, having missed dawn entirely, and unwilling to wait another two weeks, the Nomad simply makes a V-shape with their index and middle fingers, overlays them atop both celestial spheres, then rotates this arrangement around their orbital axis until one reaches the horizon-line, making sure to splay them a little further apart to account for their respective travel. A distant building lies just below the midpoint of their fingertips; they remove their trusty old compass, point it in the direction of that structure, then mark the placement of the needle with a few deep scratches atop the glass.

It is done. The communication centre must lie beyond the vast ocean plane to the north, where an endless white nothingness provides no shelter from storms or whiteouts, and where no cities nor settlements nor buildings stand to glean of supplies. They will have to take everything they need with them from the get-go; food and fuel, mostly, though a tarp for shelter and some basic tools would do well to come along. Efficiency and determination is key; they will drive in a straight line, in the highest gear possible and at the rpms Jess’ engine prefers. Jess herself, however, will not stay as she is now, as there is a better tyre arrangement for loose snow, when hard gravel or asphalt are a scarce occurrence. The Nomad cannot contain their excitement: they’ll get to use their Dune-rider gear again! A ski up front and a paddle-adorned wheel at the back, perfect for gliding across snow while digging into it, all at the same time, burning no precious fuel on frictionless rotations.

But no matter how carefully they drive, a single tank, no matter how full it is, could never make it across that endless plane alone. A solution already lies in the forefront of their mind; the sled. If they take an empty oil barrel from the drone bunker and fill it up with gasoline, it could last them for weeks of continuous travel, possibly more. They’ll reach the comms centre with fuel to spare, that much is certain – and if they pack a bag or two full of food, assuming they ration correctly, hunger won’t be a concern either.

Yes, it’s all coming together; a masterplan brews within the Nomad’s calculating mind as the thorough stink of rot returns to meet their senses, the city still exhuming an invisible, putrid odour of the end. This place is dead, and the Nomad knows it, though does not care for it. They will be leaving this cursed place behind soon, though first, modifications are in order.

After a short while of travel, they reach their garage-home, leaving the sled on the street before heading inside to work on Jess. They put her on a scissor-lift jackstand, raising her magnificent mass into the air until the wheels turn freely. An array of mismatched tools and knick-knacks, fasteners and loose chain links jostle around within their rusty old toolbox, which creaks open as they search for a set of spanners. With them in hand, they undo all the bolts on the front tyre’s mounting that need undoing, carefully loosening each steel fastener, rotating them by hand again and again until they fall into the Nomad’s loving hands, placed aside for later use. With the front wheel loose, they remove it, and pilfer their bottom-row cabinets for their specially adjusted, hand-crafted ski, soon mounting it at a slight upwards angle before moving on to the back.

Again, paying great attention as to not lose any of Jess’s precious components, her bits and bobs each individually as beautiful as the rest of her mechanics, the Nomad moves to un-bolt the chain drive, then the brakes, and then, at last, the central bolt which clamps the wheel to the rear swing-arm of the frame. It comes off, and they move to replace it as they did before, only now with an actual wheel, with actual brakes. Indeed, the moving-components-count of this part in particular is far greater than that of the front, which has absolutely none, seeing as to how the ski is clamped firmly in place.

Re-attaching the brake disc, the hydraulic braking mechanism itself, as well as the sprocket of the fine-looking chain drive goes by without a single hitch, though one final step is yet needed all across the board: the final tensioning of each threaded fastener, achieved with nothing more than a metre-long pipe and a luggage scale. Hooked into one end, with the other gripping the screw’s hexagonal head, they need only pull by the scale’s handle, and the rotary gauge upon it displays the exact applied force in Newton-metres of torque – they may use imperial for their day-to-day life, but they’re no mechanical barbarian! (Especially not when it comes to their pretty lady) Having long since memorised each bolt’s required torquing, having replaced each one at least thrice, if not more, they blaze through the thorough procedure, re-checking each bolt to make sure their handywork is complete.

Jess has donned a new look, her newly re-acquired features perfectly suited for their combined fate. Thus, with their work complete and after a slow walk-around to check for any missing pieces, the Nomad lowers Jess back onto the cold ground. The crude steel paddles clang horribly against the concrete, scraping and clinking as they attempt in mild success to move her back outside.

One final thing remains before they can go on: the single clean mask filter left over in their nightstand. They haven’t forgotten it, in fact, they’ve had it in the back of their mind the entire time. Only now, though, has the opportunity to switch it out presented itself.

The Nomad commits one final trudge up their decade-used grate-steel staircase, finding themselves standing before their comfortable yet tiny bed. Above it, their handcrafted filter-AC hangs defiantly, presented proud like a trophied head above a roaring fireplace. They switch it on; smooth, clean, filtered air rains down upon their mattress. They take off their mask.

After what feels like an eternity, though it has only been a day, breathing freely once again is the greatest among all earthly (copper-9ly?) sensations, like flushing their tired, dust- and grime-filled lungs with a refreshing wave of crisp water, gleaning it of any wayward contaminants which coat their alveoli – come to think of it, they ought to check Jess’ air filter too, see if she’s gasping for breath too… no, wait, they’ve changed that thing a few weeks ago, so there’s no need. While yes, it’s true that they don’t last all that long in these particulate-poisoned winds and snowdrifts, they can go for a few months between changes. If the need arises, they can always pack some, as filter foam weighs next to nothing.

Changing the older filter on the mask for a new one, its white details having taken on a dark, yellowish tint, they count the things they’ll need for their journey. “Food’s at the bunker, so is fuel…” they think out loud, mumbling away as they clamp the last clean filter on, “and tools are here… food, fuel, tools… heh, marvellous. My entire life in three words…” It is just that: a perfect description of their life out here in the wastes, reduced from the top of the food chain to nothing more than an errand-getter. What a low fall… one they hope to claw at when all of this is over.

What will they hope to find, if they find anything at all? They can’t get rescued, that, they’ve accepted for a long time. So then, what is it? Why are they doing this? Just to get away? Just to head to “better shores”, even though they know damn well there’s none to be found but snow and sorrow? Perhaps…

Perhaps they just want to be heard. To know that someone, anyone out there knows that they exist. At least then they’ll know that this hollow life of theirs wasn’t in utter vain, that they’ve got someone out there to tell their tale. That’d make them happy: to know that someone knows.

They exhale a long, drawn-out breath of clean air, then reluctantly put their rebreather back on.

“Okay… let’s do this.”