Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was another normal job.

Well, “normal” for someone trying to survive two hundred years after nuclear fire turned the world to ash. A salvage run. Scrounging the city for parts and data for an old bastard like Kline wasn’t exactly how Cora imagined her life would go. But it was hers.

Her parents had died in a raid when she was eight. No family left. No mercy, either. Since then, it had just been her, learning to survive, learning to move quietly, and how to carry a gun even when her hands shook.

Now she lived in an old auto carrier parked at the edge of what used to be part of St. Louis. Once it was called Lindenwood Yard, a freight hub. These days, people called it Linwood. At least the maps did, if you could find one. Most just called it the Yard, said with a drawl that stretched the word like rusted hinges swinging open.

Cora’s eyes lifted as she passed through the gates. The place had grown around an old railyard, torn up and built over with scrap and firelight. Tracks were gone. Buildings had collapsed or been scavenged to nothing. The rest—the train cars, the engines, the switch towers—had been turned into whatever people needed: homes, shops, barricades, bolt-holes.

It wasn’t much, but it had what mattered. Power, water, a bunk to sleep in, and a bar with something that might pass for booze if you squinted hard enough.

Cora didn’t touch the stuff. She’d stopped asking Old Lyle where he got it, and he’d stopped pretending he’d ever answer.

The Yard’s paths were busy, as usual. Folks moved where the rails used to be, ghost-trails still marked in the concrete by sun-bleached ties and rust stains. Scavvers, traders, drifters, kids, all sliding between shadows and scrap like ants through a dead hive.

Cora followed the groove of an old railbed until she reached her first stop—Kline, the fixer who posted the job.

His place was a repurposed coach car, jacked up on cracked stone blocks and rusted stairs. A curtain hung across the back entry, thin strings of tin cans clinking gently as she pushed through.

Inside, the air was close and metallic. Kline sat hunched at his desk, the ceiling low enough that even someone as short as him looked cramped.

He glanced up when she entered, eyes narrowing behind scratched lenses.

Cora dropped her pack with a thud and pulled out the object of the day. “Here,” she said flatly. “Got your drive.”

Kline took the drive from her hand without a word. He turned it over, inspecting the casing like he thought she might’ve cracked it just for spite.

“It’s intact,” Cora said, leaning against the frame of the doorway. “Didn’t even drop it once.”

Kline grunted, still inspecting it like it owed him money. Then he slipped it into a rust-stained satchel beside his desk and opened a drawer.

He pulled out a cloth pouch, heavy with caps, and tossed it onto the desk with a metallic clatter.

“Eighty,” he said. “Like we agreed.”

Cora raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t it supposed to be a hundred?”

“You get hazard pay when the hazards show up,” he replied, not looking at her. “This one was clean. Don’t push your luck.”

She considered pushing it anyway, but her stomach growled at just the wrong moment. Instead, she grabbed the pouch and tucked it into her coat.

“Fine,” she muttered. “Next job better be messier.”

Kline smirked but didn’t answer. He was already hunched back over a busted terminal, muttering to himself.

Cora stepped out into the cooling evening light. The sun dipped behind the ruined skyline of Linwood, casting long shadows across the Yard’s uneven streets.

The scent of cooking oil and smoke drifted in from a few rows down. Her feet took her there automatically.

Her next stop was Gristle’s Galley, a dining car turned food shack. It probably had the best smell on the line, though the bar was set very low. The front had been cut open and extended with sheet metal and old fencing, giving it a half-covered patio feel.

Gristle stood behind the counter, arms bare, apron soaked in grease. Ex-raider, ex-merc, and now a full-time cook, he’d never bothered to change his nickname.

He looked up when he saw her and gave a crooked grin.
“The usual?”

Cora smirked. “I don’t trust anything else you cook.”

“Ouch,” he said, mock-offended. “I’ll remember that when you bring me more protein.” He stirred a pot with something that smelled halfway edible. “Speaking of, you doing the run this week?”

“I want to,” she said, stepping up to the counter. “I need the caps.”

He nodded and turned back to his pot. “My stew it is.”

The bowl was chipped, the contents vaguely brown, but it was hot and didn’t bite back. And that was enough. They kept talking while he served and she ate, their conversation weaving in and out of quiet moments and clanking utensils.

When she finished, Cora handed the bowl back.

They exchanged a nod. Nothing more needed.

Then she stepped off the patio and back into the dust-blown walkways of the Yard.

After Gristle’s, Cora made her rounds through the Yard. She stopped by Brin’s to pick up a few mags of 9mm, a stim or two that hadn’t completely expired, and a fresh canister for her water rig. Prices were up again, but everything was, lately.

Supplies packed, stomach full, and job behind her, she finally made her way back to her bunk.

Her space was in the upper level of a shared coach car near the Yard’s edge. The hallway creaked when she climbed the steps, and the metal walls trapped the day’s heat like an oven. Inside, her little corner was separated by a curtain and a sheet of welded scrap.

A bedroll on a makeshift frame. An ammo crate for storage. A busted terminal that hadn't lit up in months. Her world, tucked into eight feet of steel and silence.

She sat down, pulled off her boots, and leaned back against the bulkhead with a long, quiet breath. The wind outside rattled faintly through the seams in the old car.

Cora let her head rest against the wall and stared up at the low ceiling.

She’d done okay today. Another job finished. She had enough caps to get by for a while. Enough food. Enough bullets. Enough.

But in the quiet, when no one was watching, she allowed herself to think of more.

A home, not just a bunk. A husband, maybe. A child. The kind of future people used to believe in. Before the sky burned and the world crumbled into dust and blood.

She closed her eyes. That kind of life wasn’t meant for people like her.

For now, being alive would have to be enough.

…

Cora woke to the sound of someone yelling at a busted water valve two cars down and the sharp clang of boots on steel. Another morning. Same as the last.

She sat up, rolled her shoulders, and stretched until her joints popped. Her bedroll was damp on one side, and the air inside the coach was already warming with the sun.

She dressed quickly: worn pants, scarred boots, her jacket with the reinforced shoulder panel. She holstered her sidearm, adjusted the strap across her chest, and gave a quick check of her supplies before pulling the curtain aside.

But before she stepped out, she paused.

The old terminal beside her ammo crate hadn’t worked in years, but the side casing still had a half-polished surface that caught the light.

She leaned in, just for a second.

Warm beige skin. Brown eyes. Hair black, shaved close on one side and long on the other, swept over her brow in a messy, deliberate way. Jawline lean, a little sharp, with the kind of softness that hadn’t yet been worn out by the world.

Cora didn’t spend long staring. Just enough to recognize herself. Then she stepped into the day.

The Yard was alive, already busy with morning trade. The market strip buzzed with hagglers, tinkers, and travelers passing through on the old railbed paths. Cora moved through it easily, familiar with the rhythm, nodding at a few faces she half-knew.

Her destination was the job board, bolted into a section of gutted engine and kept upright with a pair of stacked tires. It looked like it might fall over if someone sneezed too hard near it.

Most of the jobs were what she expected: escort duty for a caravan heading west, someone needing help clearing a nest of radroaches, a salvage crew down a pair of hands. Same shit, different day.

But one posting stood out.

Crisp white paper. Printed text. Too clean to be from the Yard.

FIELD ASSISTANCE REQUESTED

LOCATION: GATEWAY SETTLEMENT

CONTACT: DR. ELIAS HARROW, CENTRAL PLATFORM

DETAILS PROVIDED IN PERSON.

PAY: 750 CAPS

RELIABILITY AND DISCRETION REQUIRED.

Cora read it twice.

Gateway. That alone was enough to raise eyebrows. The largest, most fortified settlement in the region. Built into the shell of the old Gateway Arch, it was a city stacked in steel—part market, part fortress, part research hub.

Dr. Elias Harrow. She didn’t know the name, but a title like “Doctor” meant something in Gateway. Meant tech. Knowledge. Maybe even power .

She glanced around. No one else was looking at the posting.

Curious. The pay was high enough to get attention, but the clean font and precise wording made it feel too polished. Too... pre-War.

Still. She’d done worse for less.

Cora reached out, pulled the note free, and tucked it into her jacket. Her lips pressed into a thoughtful line as she turned back toward her bunk to gear up.

It wasn’t just the caps. It was the unknown.

And in the wasteland, unknown was either a gift. Or a death sentence.

The gate clanked shut behind her.

Cora stepped into Gateway and let her eyes adjust. The inside felt cleaner than the wasteland ever should. Concrete walkways had been patched with polished metal. The air was thick with the scent of oil, recycled water, and sterilized dust. She could hear the low buzz of power humming through cables that ran along the walls.

The settlement rose in tiers. Stairs and lifts climbed up the steel ribs of the old Arch, connecting levels made from shipping containers, metal platforms, and old walkways. Tarps stretched overhead like sails, catching the sun and casting pale light through faded fabric.

People moved with purpose. Traders pushed carts. Engineers yelled over malfunctioning consoles. Uniformed guards patrolled in pairs.

Cora kept her head down. She had been here before, but only long enough to trade for medicine or drop off scrap. She had never stayed. Gateway wasn’t built for people like her—it was for the connected, the protected, and the educated.

She passed a food stall selling something that smelled sharp and metallic. A cleaner bot rolled by on stubby wheels, scrubbing grime from the floor with mechanical urgency.

She pulled out the note again and re-read the name.

Dr. Elias Harrow.
Central Platform.

The central platform was a wide open space nestled between the arch supports, surrounded by multi-level walkways and shops that clung to the steel bones like barnacles. A few storage buildings lined the edges, most of them converted into labs, armories, or storage depots.

She found the one she was looking for near the back. The building was squat and narrow, with a worn keypad beside the door. Faded paint near the entrance read WAREHOUSE C-3 , and someone had scribbled a note on the wall in chalk: "Knock first. Seriously."

The interior of the warehouse was dim, the air thick with heat and antiseptic. Old-world lamps buzzed overhead, their flickering light casting uneven shadows across the walls.

Cora stepped in quietly. The door hadn’t squeaked, and her boots barely made a sound on the metal floor. No one noticed her.

In the middle of the room, under a swinging lamp, stood a makeshift examination bed. A woman lay on it, breathing slow and shallow, both arms braced behind her, supporting the full weight of her belly.

She was very pregnant. Her stomach was tight and high, the kind of swollen that looked painful just to carry.

Dr. Harrow stood beside her, adjusting a monitor cobbled together from scavenged tech. A grainy ultrasound flickered on the screen.

The woman winced as he pressed a hand gently to her side.

"Doc," she said, voice strained, "am I gonna die? Feels like I'm gonna die."

The doctor didn't hesitate. His tone was calm, clinical. "Don't worry. It probably feels like it's progressing faster than normal, but there doesn't seem to be any complications."

Cora raised an eyebrow and stopped mid-step.

The woman let out a shaky breath. "When I went to sleep last night, it was half this size. And I’m just… worried. And I have to say it’s starting to really hurt."

"Well," Harrow replied, "fast expansions like these are unusual, but not dangerous in any way. The pain is more likely stress and fear, not the calf."

Cora blinked.

Calf?

The woman didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah, so… how do I make the pain go away?”

“Aborting would probably be more dangerous than waiting it out,” Harrow said. “As for the pain, I recommend taking it easy. Frequent rubs on the abdomen help greatly. Others have reported it can be quite… stimulating.”

The woman laughed, short and awkward. “Stimulating, you say? So, in that sense, can me and my husband… you know?”

“Yes, of course. In fact, I’d recommend it. It’s a distraction from the discomfort and helps with the stress.”

“Well,” she said, starting to sit up, “I hope he can look past the belly.”

“From past experience,” Harrow said, “most men tend not to mind. Many, in my time, have come to like it.” He checked the monitor one last time, then tapped a few buttons. “Just a moment here… and it looks like you’re all set.”

The woman exhaled with relief. “Thanks, doctor. I suppose I’ll be off then.”

“Of course. If you have any questions or concerns, just come back here.”

She pulled her dress down over her belly, struggling slightly, then turned and waddled toward the door. As she passed, Cora stepped back to let her through.

The woman barely noticed her, eyes focused on the ground, a hand resting on the curve of her stomach like it weighed more than it should.

Cora couldn’t help but stare. The woman’s belly was enormous. She looked full term at least, maybe more. There was no way that was normal.

Cora’s thoughts were sharp, instinctive.

What the fuck did I just walk into?

She turned back toward the doctor, who had already begun wiping down the equipment, oblivious to her presence.

Cora cleared her throat.

Dr. Harrow looked up sharply, caught off guard. His eyes, pale and tired, flicked toward the door. For a second, he seemed confused, like he hadn’t expected anyone to be there at all.

“I’m here about the job,” Cora said, stepping into the light. She kept her posture relaxed, though her fingers still hovered near the grip of her pistol out of habit.

The doctor straightened slowly, brushing dust off his lab coat. Up close, the coat was clearly old Institute issue. White, pristine in a way nothing in the wasteland should be, though the cuffs were frayed and one sleeve had a small burn near the wrist.

“You’re earlier than I expected,” he said. “I’m Dr. Elias Harrow. And yes, before you ask, yes, the coat is real. I took it when I escaped the Institute.”

Cora’s brow lifted slightly, but she didn’t respond right away.

She’d heard the name before. The Institute. Mostly rumors, mostly out of Boston. Scientists living underground, kidnapping people, replacing them with machines, twisting human bodies into something else. She never cared much about faraway horror stories. Until now.

“Didn’t know the Institute was real,” she said quietly. “Just heard you liked stealing people and turning them into... things.”

Harrow’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Some of it’s true. Most of it’s worse.”

He walked to a terminal and tapped a few keys, the screen flickering to life with a soft hum. “I didn’t work on synths. I was part of the Bioscience division. The real monsters were a few floors up.”

Cora folded her arms. “So what’s this really about? What the hell did I just walk in on?”

The doctor didn’t flinch. Instead, he gestured toward the recently vacated exam bed, still marked by the weight of the woman who had just left.

“That,” he said, “is why I’m here. I’m studying GRACE.”

Cora frowned. “Grace?”

“It stands for Genetic Reproductive Acceleration and Containment Expression. It’s not an Institute project, though we - they - were interested. Very interested. The mutation showed up in the wild. No one’s sure how it started.”

He paused, then met her eyes. “But it changes everything. And the women affected... they’re more than just pregnant. Some can grow other things. Unnatural things. Animals, insects, even some food. And the Institute?” His face hardened. “They treated them like test subjects. Just another piece of tech to dissect. I left before I became part of that.”

Cora shifted, uncomfortable. “So you’re still doing experiments?”

“I’m helping,” he said, his tone sharper than before. “They come to me. Scared and confused. Some of them need to understand what’s happening to their bodies. I’m not forcing anything. I’m trying to give them answers.”

He moved around the table, grabbing a clipboard from the nearby desk. “Which brings me to the job.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You want me to find one of these breeders? You don’t need me to be one, right?”

“No. Not quite.” He looked up. “I need someone I can examine regularly. Someone who can work with me, long-term. I’d do it myself if I were a woman, but I’m not. And I can’t exactly keep patients here all day either.”

Cora let that hang in the air.

“And you need daily check-ins… why?” she asked, finally.

“There are many species of animals out there. I want to study how different forms of contact affect the body. Some of these cases change depending on exposure. Diet. Environment. Even emotional state. It’s that unpredictable.”

“You want someone who can get knocked up by every monster out there, then come back and take notes?” she said flatly.

Harrow didn’t flinch. “I want someone who can monitor and report. Someone with the discipline to observe, not panic. Someone strong.”

Cora ran a hand down her face. “Not my usual kind of job.”

“I understand. But I’m not asking you to do that. At least, not yet.”

He turned back to the terminal and pulled up a map, faint lines glowing across the screen.

“I’ve heard rumors,” he said. “There’s another doctor. A woman. She’s one of them - a breeder - and from what the traders say, she’s already begun her own study. Maybe even learned more than I have. Last I heard, she was in a settlement near the river, east of here.”

Cora leaned closer to look at the map. “And you want me to go find her.”

“I want you to talk to her. See if she’ll work with me. If she knows something, if she’s figured out more… I need to know. And I can’t leave Gateway.”

He looked at her. “You find her, and I’ll make it worth your time.”

Cora crossed her arms again, lips tight. Her eyes drifted to the empty exam bed.

Everything about this job felt off.

But it paid. And it was different.

Very different.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

Chapter Text

Cora leaned against a rust-stained wall in Gateway’s lower plaza, sipping from a dented tin cup filled with something pretending to be coffee. Around her, traders argued over broken radios, sealed boxes, and ammo lots with missing rounds.

She turned to the nearest vendor, a wiry man selling salvaged parts and clean water from a sheet-metal stall.

“You know how to get to St. Marrow?” she asked.

He looked up from a half-gutted terminal board and squinted. “The ghoul settlement? Yeah. Go south, down past Lesperance Yard. Stay on the east tracks if you want to avoid company. Cross at the old overpass. You’ll see the church before you smell it.”

“Thanks,” she said, finishing her drink and tossing the cup into a burn barrel nearby.

“Word of advice,” the vendor added. “Don’t get friendly with the locals.”

Cora didn’t answer. She’d been around ghouls before. If anything, they were more reliable than half the people she dealt with.

She left Gateway at mid-morning, cutting through the rear service gate with her gear packed tight and her pistol holstered at her hip.

The weapon was a compact sidearm chambered in 9mm. Short barrel, dark polymer frame, slide reinforced with scrap steel plating. She’d found it years ago, cleaned it, modded it, and trusted it more than most people. A scratched engraving near the trigger read "Brimstone", a name left by someone who probably didn’t live long after parting with it.

She kept to the east tracks like the vendor said. They were less traveled, winding away from the main roads and deeper into ruined industrial zones. The path was quiet, but not safe. An inexperienced adventurer might enjoy the silence too much, not realizing how many things watched from the dark between derailed boxcars and burnt-out trees.

Cora kept moving, eyes scanning, ears tuned.

A few miles out, the steel wind picked up, carrying the distant grind of gears. She crouched low and moved behind the rusted shell of a tank car.

The train came slow, loud, and heavy.

It rolled down the central rail with a dull roar, the locomotive blocky and dull green, smoke rising in thin lines from its rear turbines. It ran on a nuclear core, no doubt, but Cora didn’t know the specs and didn’t care. It was power. That was all that mattered.

Four sealed boxcars followed, their doors welded shut and painted a solid black. A flatcar brought up the rear, ringed in sandbags with two mounted guns and six guards in heavy gear riding high. No one smiled.

The train didn’t stop.

Cora stayed crouched until the last car rumbled past and the hum of the engine faded behind her. She understood why it was so heavily guarded. A train like that, full of supplies no one was allowed to see, was a flashing target for every desperate bastard in the region.

Once the tracks were clear, she slipped back into the open and kept going.

Lesperance Yard was a skeleton.

Twisted rails sprawled out in every direction. Piles of train parts, rusted cranes, and decaying engine blocks turned the landscape into a metal maze. Vines coiled through everything, weaving between gears and shattered windshields.

She didn’t stop.

The ferals came as she passed through. She caught the first one’s reflection in a broken signal light, spinning on instinct as it lunged.

One clean shot.

Her pistol barked once, the slide snapping back with a dry hiss. The feral dropped, its skull cracked from the impact.

Another one hissed nearby, shuffling fast. She moved through the debris, using broken cars as cover, ducking low, watching the shadows shift.

By the time she cleared the yard, three more lay dead behind her. She didn’t look back.

Past Lesperance, the land sloped downward. The tracks ran close to what used to be a road, though it had long since crumbled and cracked. Signs still hung limp on bent poles, rusted and unreadable.

The birds here were quiet.

She passed the old overpass, just like the vendor said. Faded graffiti clung to the side of the wall: old gang tags, warnings, a skull with sunken eyes.

The last stretch was flatter, lined with brittle trees and skeletal telephone poles. Near one, she saw the remnants of a fight: spent casings, drag marks, and a splash of dried blood near the gravel.

Cora stayed alert.

A wild dog came out of the brush a few minutes later, its ribs sharp beneath matted fur. It growled low.

She raised her weapon, waited. The dog stared, then backed off, limping into the trees.

She didn’t shoot. Not unless she had to.

By early afternoon, the spire of the old church appeared through the haze.

St. Marrow rose from the wreckage like a stubborn thought. Its steeple was mostly intact, tilted slightly, wrapped in wire and old netting. Makeshift scaffolding clung to its side like a second skeleton. The building was blackened from fire in places, cracked open in others.

A thin perimeter surrounded it: partly scrap, partly barricade. At the entrance, a ghoul stood guard, leaning on a rusted rifle. His skin hung in folds, face lined deep with age and ash, but his stance was steady. His eyes tracked her calmly.

Cora approached slowly, hands open at her sides.

She stopped just outside the barricade, taking in the quiet, the smoke curling from a barrel fire near the front, the scent of oil and damp earth.

The ghoul didn’t speak.

She looked up at the steeple, then at the entrance, then back at him.

So this was St. Marrow.

Now she had to find the doctor.

The ghoul at the barricade didn’t lift his rifle, but he tightened his grip on it when Cora approached. His face was a patchwork of cracked, leathery skin stretched thin over sharp cheekbones. His mouth was pulled into a permanent grimace, and his eyes were small, yellowed, and watchful.

When he spoke, his voice was the dry rasp of paper sliding over stone.
"Not many humans come to St. Marrow without a reason."

Cora kept her hands visible. "I’m here for the doctor. Mara Kelso. I heard she was staying here."

The ghoul squinted, as if weighing the truth of her words.

After a long moment, he gave a slow nod. "Come on, then. You can talk to Jonah."

He stepped back from the entrance, motioning with the barrel of his rifle. Cora followed him into the settlement.

Inside the old church grounds, St. Marrow stretched itself out in quiet industry.

The main building had been reinforced with sheet metal and concrete slabs scavenged from the ruins. Where the roof had collapsed, makeshift gardens grew: rows of hardy crops like maize, razorgrass, and tatos. Two brahmin grazed near the outer yard, their heads bobbing between tufts of brownish grass.

A few ghouls worked the fields, some tending to the crops, others hammering repairs into the sagging frame of an old side building. Their movements were slow but careful, deliberate in a way that spoke of long years spent conserving strength.

It wasn’t luxury. But it was life. Everything a remote settlement needed to survive.

And it was clear from the guarded looks she received that they didn’t welcome just anyone.

The guard led her across the cracked stone path to a shaded porch built onto what was once the rectory. Sitting there, polishing a battered hunting rifle, was a ghoul older than most Cora had seen. His skin hung in folds from his frame, mottled and rough as weathered leather. A wide-brimmed hat shaded his face, but when he looked up, his eyes were sharp and bright beneath the wreckage of skin.

He set the rifle aside carefully and stood.

"You’re not one of ours," he said. His voice was raspier than the guard’s, but carried a calm weight. "Name’s Jonah. I kind of look after things around here."

"Cora," she said simply. "I’m looking for Mara Kelso."

Jonah’s brow shifted, the closest thing to a frown his scarred face could manage.

"You just missed her," he said. "She was taken two nights ago."

Cora felt her jaw tighten. "Taken?"

He nodded and gestured to the low wall beside him. "You can sit, if you like. I will tell you what we know."

She stayed standing.

Jonah did not seem to mind. He leaned forward slightly, hands resting on his knees.

"She disappeared during the night," he said. "She slipped past the night watch. There were no screams, no gunshots, and no signs of a struggle worth mentioning. When we woke up, she was just gone."

"Got any idea of who took her?" Cora asked, voice low.

"Yeah, we have an idea. Guy named Ravik," Jonah said. He spat to the side, a dry, tired sound. "He passed through here a few weeks ago. Claimed he was a trader, looking to swap medical supplies. Talked up Mara a lot when he was here."

Jonah shook his head slowly. "We thought he was just another desperate scavver looking for supplies. We should’ve chased him off when we had the chance."

Cora narrowed her eyes. "Where is he now?"

Jonah pointed east, past the edge of the settlement.

"From what I hear, he holed up in the old parish house," he said. "It’s not far from here. Used to be where the Sisters lived, back before the bombs. Place has been empty for years, or so we thought."

Cora followed his gesture with her eyes, seeing only the broken silhouettes of abandoned houses and scrubland.

"You want me to deal with him," she said.

Jonah gave a slow, weary smile.

"We aren't sending anyone after him," he said. "We can’t afford the risk. But if you are willing to go, and if you manage to put Ravik down, it would make things a hell of a lot safer for us. Easier to trade, too."

He picked up his rifle again, resting it across his knees.

"You came all this way looking for Mara," he added. "That counts for something here."

Cora shifted the weight of her pack across her shoulder and checked her pistol again. The old familiar weight of it grounded her.

"Point me in the right direction," she said.

Jonah gave a slight nod.

"You are already facing it."

…

Cora adjusted the strap on her pack and headed east, past the last of St. Marrow’s patched-up walls.

The land beyond the settlement was broken and overgrown. Cracked roads ran like veins through patches of dead brush and scattered rubble. What had once been neat suburban streets had long since crumbled into a twisting maze of ruins and half-sunken houses.

Cora kept her pistol loose in its holster, thumb resting lightly on the snap. There was a reason she avoided old neighborhoods when she could. You never knew what you were going to find in them. Wild dogs, feral ghouls, scavvers desperate enough to kill for a water bottle, or raiders looking for something meaner to do.

Once in a while, there were Brotherhood patrols too, though they rarely came this deep into St. Louis anymore. They stayed closer to Mardin, keeping tight control over what was left of Vault 0 and the tech they scraped from it. If she saw them, it usually meant trouble she didn’t want.

Today, at least, the streets seemed empty.

The parish house wasn’t far. Jonah had been right about that. Cora kept her pace steady, following the broken road past sagging houses and rusted-out sedans that had long since become part of the landscape.

About forty minutes later, she spotted it.

The parish house sat alone on a small rise, backed by a crumbling stone wall and the remains of a garden choked with dead vines. The building was old, squat, and heavy with time. The stained glass windows were shattered, leaving jagged teeth in their frames. Most of the roof had collapsed, but a few sections still clung stubbornly to the walls.

It might have been a sanctuary once. Now it just looked like a trap waiting to be sprung.

Cora crouched behind the wreck of an old bus and watched.

There were a few shapes moving near the entrance.

Ferals.

Poor bastards, half-clothed and howling low under their breath. Their skin hung in strips, faces twisted with hunger and confusion. They shuffled around the broken steps like moths banging against a dead light.

Cora drew her pistol slowly, bringing the iron sights level with her eye.

The weapon felt good in her hands. Steady, familiar. She had named it Brimstone years ago, half as a joke. It had never let her down.

She exhaled, squeezed the trigger once.

The lead feral dropped instantly, a clean shot between the eyes. The others jerked at the sound, but their reaction was slow and clumsy.

Cora moved from cover to cover, firing with quick, practiced precision. Another one staggered and fell, its legs giving out as the shot hit low in the chest. The last tried to lunge at her, mouth stretched wide in a wet screech.

She sidestepped, firing a round through its temple at close range.

Silence fell heavy over the ruins again.

She reloaded carefully, scanning the shadows. The parish house stood ahead, its doorway gaping like a wound in the stone.

Cora holstered her pistol and moved forward.

Whatever Ravik was doing in there, it wasn’t going to be good.

And she intended to find out.

The front entrance to the parish house yawned open, a splintered door half-hanging off its hinges.

Cora crouched low behind a crumbled section of wall and listened.

No shouting. No footsteps. Just the low, wet breathing of something inside.

She checked her pistol, then slid it back into its holster. Pulling it now would mean noise. A lot of it. One shot might bring every feral in earshot down on her. And worse, if Ravik was here, it would tell him exactly where she was.

Quiet was better.

She drew her knife instead.

It was a simple thing: short, black-bladed, with a handle wrapped in worn leather. Nothing fancy, but it was sharp and reliable. She adjusted her grip, wiped her palms on her jacket, and moved forward.

Inside, the air was thick with rot. Old incense and mold fought for dominance in her nose. Shafts of light cut through holes in the roof, illuminating floating dust motes.

The interior had once been clean, solemn, orderly. Now it was wreckage and decay.

Broken pews lay in jagged piles. Water stains crept down the cracked plaster walls. Faded murals of saints and angels watched her from above, their faces peeling and distorted.

Ahead, near the pulpit, a figure twitched.

Cora froze.

It was a feral, hunched and swaying. Its skin was gray and waxy, patches of hair still clinging to its scalp. Torn scraps of a priest's robe clung to its body like a bad memory.

It hadn't seen her yet.

Cora moved carefully, shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet. She circled wide, using the wreckage for cover, stepping over broken hymnals and shattered glass without a sound.

When she got close enough, she struck.

The knife slid cleanly into the base of the feral’s skull. It shuddered once, limbs jerking, then sagged to the floor with a soft thud.

Cora wiped the blade on what remained of the creature's robes.

She paused, listening again.

No alarms. No shouts.

But she could feel the tension in the air. She wasn’t alone.

She moved deeper into the parish house, stepping through fallen beams and rubble. Every nerve in her body stayed sharp, every movement controlled.

Something scratched faintly in the distance. Wood creaked under weight not her own.

There were more of them here. Maybe not many. Maybe too many.

Cora pressed her back to a cracked pillar, breathing slow, shallow breaths.

Ahead, through the broken arch of a doorway, she saw stairs leading downward into the parish basement.

The air spilling up from that stairwell was colder, damp and wrong in a way that set her instincts flaring.

If Ravik was here, he was down there.

Cora tightened her grip on the knife.

This was going to get messy.

Cora crept deeper into the parish house, knife in one hand, her free hand brushing lightly over the ruined furniture and cracked walls.

The place was a graveyard. Dust choked the air. Sunlight fell in broken beams through shattered windows. Old hymnals, some torn and blackened by fire, littered the floor around toppled pews.

She moved carefully, scanning as she went.

An old filing cabinet lay against the wall, its drawers half-ripped out. She knelt by it, pried one open with her knife, and found a small, dented box buried inside.

Bullets. 9mm, and still clean.

Cora pocketed them without hesitation.

She kept moving, stepping over a collapsed confessional booth. Inside, where the priest’s seat had been, she spotted a battered first-aid kit tucked behind the wooden lattice.

Most of it was junk. Splintered gauze, shattered glass, but she pulled out two usable stimpaks and a small roll of surgical tape. That went into her pack too.

Every salvageable find made the risk a little more worth it.

She passed under a warped archway into what might have been the parish offices once. The walls here were stripped to the studs in places. Rotten papers clung to the floor like wet leaves.

Cora froze as a sound drifted through the still air.

Voices.

She edged closer to the source, keeping to the shadowed edges of the room.

It was coming from beyond a half-collapsed door at the far end of the hall. The wood was splintered, just barely hanging onto its hinges. Through the gap, she could hear low conversation.

She couldn't make out the words. The voices were too muffled. But she caught the rhythm of them.

One was a woman’s voice. Calm. Measured. No panic in it.

The other was rougher. A ghoul's voice, low and sharp with agitation.

They were arguing. Or negotiating. It was hard to tell.

Cora narrowed her eyes, adjusting her grip on the knife. She stayed low, easing forward along the wall until she could peer through a sliver of the broken frame.

She could not see them yet.

But they were close.

Closer than she liked.

She backed away slightly, crouching behind an overturned desk. Her mind raced through the options.

She could charge in, guns blazing, and hope she got the drop on them.
Or she could wait. Listen. Try to piece together what the hell was going on before she made her move.

Either way, she had found Ravik.

And, if the woman’s voice belonged to Mara, she was still alive.

For now.

The last feral went down with a grunt and a wet crunch as Cora’s knife plunged into the base of its skull. She let the body slide down the wall, wiped the blade clean on her coat, and took a steady breath.

The hallway ahead was narrow and dim, lit by a dying wall sconce barely hanging from its mount.

At the end of the corridor, a heavy wooden door stood slightly ajar.

Cora pushed it open with care, knife still ready.

Inside was a large room. Likely a gathering space, once. Maybe a classroom or dormitory. Now it had been gutted and reworked into something else.

The far end of the room had been boxed in with wired fencing, floor to ceiling, crudely bolted into the concrete. A cage, homemade and haphazard but secure enough. Inside it stood a woman in a dirt-smudged lab coat, her long black hair tied back loosely, her skin a warm ivory in the low light.

She looked young. Late twenties, maybe early thirties.

And she was unmistakably pregnant. Her belly was full and round, the front of her coat straining slightly at the buttons.

Next to her, inside the cage, stood a feral ghoul.

But it wasn’t attacking. It wasn’t even moving much. Just standing there, still, like it was waiting for instructions.

On the outside of the wire stood a non-feral ghoul, pacing back and forth. His skin was cracked and sun-darkened, but unlike most, he still had a mess of greasy hair hanging over one side of his face. His armor was better than most wastelanders: scrap-plated, reinforced, and covered in pouches. Someone had clearly invested time into building it.

And he was angry.

His voice snapped across the room.

“Come on, you bitch! Fuck the thing already!”

The woman didn’t flinch. Instead, she leaned casually against the mesh, one brow arched.

“Oh, come on. Not even some music? Some dinner? Scented candles?” She gestured to the feral beside her with a tired shrug. “Maybe some lingerie would help. I don’t know. I’m not feeling inspired.”

The ghoul snarled and slammed a fist against the cage.

“I’m not joking! Get down on your fucking knees and let the guy fuck you!”

She blinked, as if sincerely offended. “No wonder you’re single. Seriously, what happened to romance these days?” Then she gave him a slow, wicked grin. “Unless... you’re jealous. I mean, we’ve got time. Could always make this a threesome.”

He reeled back. “What the fuck!?”

Cora stood just inside the doorway, frozen for half a second.

She stared at the scene in front of her. At the caged scientist, at the docile feral, at the pissed-off ghoul pacing like he had something to prove.

And without meaning to, her mind whispered a thought she regretted instantly.

Do ferals still have dicks?

That was when the ghoul finally noticed her.

His eyes snapped toward the door, narrowing fast.

Cora didn’t move. Not yet.

The woman inside the cage turned her head slightly and locked eyes with her.

Then she smiled.

“Well,” she said dryly, “about time.”

The ghoul stared at Cora for a long, tense moment. His fingers twitched near the grip of a battered handgun strapped to his thigh.

Inside the cage, the woman leaned lazily against the mesh, as if this were all just a minor inconvenience.

“Careful,” she said, voice light but edged with something sharper. “That’s Ravik. He gets cranky when someone interrupts his weird sex parties.”

Ravik snapped his head toward her, snarling. "Shut up!"

Cora took a slow step into the room, hands loose at her sides.

"I guess I missed the invitation," she said coolly.

Ravik’s eyes darted between her and the woman, suspicion flickering across his wrecked face.

"This ain’t your business," he said. His voice cracked low, almost a growl. "Turn around, walk away, and no one gets hurt."

Cora tilted her head slightly, pretending to consider it.

"Yeah," she said. "I don’t think that’s gonna happen."

She took another step closer.

Ravik’s hand twitched toward his pistol.

That was all she needed.

Cora moved first, fast and direct.

She closed the distance in three long strides. Her boot slammed into his knee with a sharp, brutal crunch. Ravik howled, staggering sideways, his draw thrown off.

Before he could recover, Cora grabbed his wrist, twisted hard, and slammed his hand against the wall. The pistol clattered to the ground.

He swung at her with his free hand, but she ducked low, driving her shoulder into his ribs. The impact knocked him back into the mesh cage, rattling the metal so hard the feral inside gave a confused grunt.

Ravik tried to lunge at her again, but Cora was already moving.

She drew her knife in a smooth, practiced motion and drove it into the soft, exposed flesh just under his ribcage. The blade slid in clean.

Ravik gasped, the fight draining out of him all at once.

He sagged against the fence, coughing weakly.

Cora stepped back, yanking her knife free, and let him collapse onto the cracked concrete floor.

He didn’t move again.

Silence filled the room, heavy and ringing.

Cora wiped the blood from her blade on Ravik’s coat and straightened.

Inside the cage, the woman clapped slowly, the sound muffled by the wire and dust.

“Well,” she said, grinning. “You sure know how to make an entrance.”

Cora holstered her knife and gave her a flat look.

"Let's get you out of there," she said.

Cora knelt beside Ravik’s body and searched quickly. She found a ring of keys on his belt, still warm, slicked with blood. One of them had to fit the lock.

She crossed the room to the cage and jammed the largest key into the rusted padlock. It took some jiggling, but the lock finally snapped open with a sharp clunk.

The woman inside stepped back, giving Cora room to swing the wired door open.

That was when the feral stirred.

Its head snapped toward the sudden movement, and it let out a low, wet hiss.

Cora reacted instantly.

She drew her pistol one-handed, firing a quick double tap into its skull. The feral dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

The woman didn’t even flinch.

Cora holstered the pistol, keeping one eye on the dead feral, then turned to the woman.

"Dr. Kelso, I presume?"

The woman gave a tired smile. "In the flesh. Thanks for the save, by the way."

Cora glanced her over. She was moving carefully, a hand resting instinctively on her swollen stomach.

"You alright?" Cora asked. "Did Ravik hurt you?"

Dr. Kelso shook her head, easing herself out of the wired cage with slow, deliberate steps.

"No. He had other plans." She looked at the dead feral and wrinkled her nose. "He was trying to set me up with his buddy here. Wanted me to... breed an army of ferals for him."

Cora’s eyes widened. "What the fuck?"

"Yeah," Kelso said, brushing dust off her lab coat like it was no big deal. "Real visionary, that one."

Cora watched her for a second, still wrapping her head around how casually Kelso was handling all of this. The doctor moved gingerly, favoring one side, but there was no sign of panic or weakness. Just a woman who had been through too much to bother getting scared anymore.

"You’re taking this... really well," Cora said.

Kelso smiled, amused. "It’s an occupational hazard. Wasteland biology doesn’t exactly come with warning labels."

Cora shook her head, then refocused. "There’s a scientist back at Gateway who’s interested in working with you. He said he’s studying GRACE. Thought you might want to compare notes."

Kelso’s expression shifted slightly, thoughtful.

"I’ll need to talk to the ghouls at St. Marrow first," she said. "Especially the father." She patted her belly lightly. "They’ve been good to me, and I’m not leaving without my notes either."

"Fair enough," Cora said.

She looked around the room one last time.

"Give me a second," she added.

Cora knelt by Ravik’s corpse again and started picking through what was left. His armor was dirty and bloodstained but solid underneath all the grime. With some polish and repair, it might even be worth wearing. She slung it over her shoulder with a grunt.

His sidearm was a beat-up .32 caliber revolver, more rust than steel in places. Not something she would trust her life to, but it would fetch a decent price at a trading post. She stripped it, along with a handful of rounds, stuffing them into her pack.

Business done, she stood up, rolling her shoulders.

"Ready?" she asked.

Kelso nodded. "Ready as I’ll ever be."

They slipped back into the ruined halls of the parish house, moving carefully but with more confidence now.

It was time to go home.

Chapter Text

The path back to St. Marrow wound through the ruins like a dried-up riverbed. Broken asphalt crumbled underfoot, and long-dead trees leaned in from either side, their twisted limbs clawing at the sky.

Cora kept her pistol out, just in case. Mara followed a few paces behind, moving slower than her, one hand always resting against her swollen stomach.

They didn’t speak at first. Just the sound of boots on dirt and the wind pushing through broken fences and half-collapsed walls.

After a few minutes, Cora glanced over her shoulder. “You alright back there, Dr. Kelso?”

Mara gave a short laugh. “You can call me Mara, you know.”

“You sure?”

“You did kill a guy for me,” Mara said. “Feels like we’re past the formalities.”

Cora turned her eyes forward again. “Alright. Mara.”

Another quiet beat passed. Cora’s brow furrowed slightly.

“So... why didn’t that feral attack you?”

Mara didn’t answer right away. She stepped over a patch of rubble, exhaling slowly as she moved.

“My guess?” she said finally. “Because I’ve got a ghoul inside me.”

Cora stopped walking for half a second. “Come again?”

“It makes sense, if you think about it,” Mara said, catching up. “Ferals don’t attack other ghouls. Something in their brain still recognizes their own kind. And GRACE... doesn’t exactly follow the old rules when it comes to pregnancy.”

Cora narrowed her eyes. “So you’re saying the thing in your belly is already setting off some kind of... ghoul signal?”

Mara shrugged. “Probably. GRACE accelerates everything. Might be that whatever’s forming in me already feels like one of them. That feral in the cage just treated me like I wasn’t even there.”

“That’s not disturbing at all,” Cora muttered.

Mara smiled, unbothered. “Welcome to science, sweetheart.”

They kept walking. The shadows grew shorter as the afternoon sun shifted overhead, casting light through the holes in the clouds.

By the time Cora and Mara reached the edge of St. Marrow, the sun was starting to dip behind the ruins. Golden light filtered through the broken trees and tangled wires above the old train line. The sky had taken on that hazy orange cast, signaling the end of a long day.

The ghoul guard from earlier stood at the gate, rifle across his lap. He sat up straighter when he saw the two women approaching.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “You made it back.”

He rose to his feet and pushed the gate open with a creaking groan.

“Glad you’re alright, Doc,” he said to Mara as she passed. “We were starting to worry.”

“Thanks, Mark,” she said with a tired smile. “Miss me?”

He snorted. “Don’t push it.”

Jonah was waiting near the center of the settlement, his wide-brimmed hat casting a long shadow across the church wall behind him. When he saw Mara walking beside Cora, his eyes brightened.

“Welcome back,” he said. His gaze lingered on Mara with quiet relief. “Glad you’re both in one piece.”

Cora stopped in front of him, her voice even.

“Ravik’s dead. He was planning to use Mara to breed a feral army.”

Jonah’s face didn’t change much, but something hard behind his eyes finally let go.

“Then he’s better off dead,” he said. “Man like that would’ve burned us all eventually.”

He looked around the yard, watching a few of the other ghouls glance their way.

“Traders’ll be more willing to pass through now,” he added. “Word gets around. You’ve done us a real favor.”

He turned back to Cora, his voice low and genuine.

“We appreciate what you’ve done for us. There’s a spare bed in the rectory if you need it. And I’ll make sure everyone knows you’re a friend.”

Cora nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

The rest of the evening passed in a slow, warm rhythm.

Cora ate with the others - grilled radstag, slightly overcooked, but good. She sat at one of the old picnic tables outside the church, listening to stories about the early days of St. Marrow. One ghoul told a tale about getting kicked out of Gateway for "being too wrinkled." Another talked about losing a caravan to radroaches the size of dogs.

Cora didn’t say much, but she listened. She scraped her plate clean, wiped her hands, and set about cleaning her gear.

She laid out Brimstone first, disassembling the old 9mm with practiced hands. Then her knife. Then Ravik’s armor, piece by piece. She scraped away dried blood, polished the plates, and set them out to dry in the firelight.

Elsewhere, Mara sat under the awning behind the church, surrounded by a few of the settlement’s older ghouls and the man who was, unmistakably, the father.

Their conversation was quiet but intense. There were frowns, long pauses, and nods of reluctant understanding.

The ghouls didn’t like Gateway. Several of them had been kicked out, branded as threats or refused access to the clinic. But they didn’t blame Mara. Not fully.

“You do what you have to,” one said, voice brittle with age. “Just don’t forget who didn’t throw you out.”

Mara rested a hand on her belly and gave a tired smile. “Never.”

She promised to visit. Promised to send updates. Promised, above all, to remember who helped her survive.

Later that night, the two women shared a room in the rectory. Dusty but clean, with a pair of cots and a cracked window overlooking the ruins.

Cora leaned back against her bedroll, hands behind her head, eyes on the ceiling.

Outside, the wind moved gently through the broken eaves. Somewhere far off, a scavenger’s engine growled, then faded into silence.

Inside St. Marrow, it was quiet.

Safe. For now.

They left St. Marrow just after sunrise, moving slow along the cracked rails that threaded through the outskirts. The early light burned the mist off the fields, turning broken buildings into silhouettes and setting the rusted track lines aglow like they still remembered fire.

It was the same route Cora had taken before—north along the old rails, through the decayed bones of Lesperance Yard, and back toward Gateway. The same ruined neighborhoods, the same overgrown fences, the same sharp quiet that filled the air when the world wasn’t trying to kill you.

Only this time, she wasn’t alone.

Mara waddled beside her, a little behind but stubbornly keeping pace. She wore her coat open now, too warm and too tired to pretend she wasn’t carrying around the weight of a whole other person. Every few steps, she rubbed her side or adjusted her belt, breath coming out in short, sharp huffs.

Cora slowed her pace without saying anything. It wasn’t a time-sensitive job, and the caps Harrow had offered were more than enough to make her patient. Enough for a few hundred rounds, a fresh stock of stims, maybe even a new rifle if she played her cards right.

Still, the long walk was wearing on Mara.

They made it past the ruined homes and over the cracked overpass before the first rest stop.

Mara sat on a chunk of concrete, one hand bracing her lower back, the other pressed to her belly. Her eyes were shut tight for a moment, jaw clenched.

“You good?” Cora asked, standing guard nearby.

Mara nodded, then grimaced. “Yeah. Just a hard kick.”

She pressed her palm firmly to the left side of her stomach. “Kid’s got a mean right foot. Or claw. Hard to tell sometimes.”

Cora didn’t smile, but her eyebrows rose slightly. “Claw?”

“A joke,” Mara said, though her face stayed serious. “Mostly.”

They rested for ten minutes, then got moving again.

Lesperance Yard came into view by early afternoon, the rust-colored horizon stretching out like a dead forest. Train cars loomed on every side, twisted and sunken into place like they’d grown there.

Cora moved with confidence, following the central rail she knew would guide them out. Mara did her best to stay close, but she moved like someone trying to carry a water barrel inside her gut.

Twice, they had to duck behind wreckage when they heard ferals wailing in the distance. Once, a lone scavver with a rifle passed nearby. Cora motioned Mara off the tracks, pulling her behind a burnt-out passenger car and waiting with her knife drawn.

The scavver never saw them. They waited until the crunch of boots faded.

Afterward, Mara winced and leaned back against the metal, sucking in a breath.

“Another kick,” she muttered. “This one might’ve cracked a rib.”

“You sure you’re not going into labor?” Cora asked, more serious than sarcastic.

“If I was, you’d already know,” Mara said. “I scream like a fucking banshee.”

Cora didn’t comment. Just offered a hand and helped her back up.

The sun had begun to dip when they reached the final stretch toward Gateway. The train tracks straightened out, cutting through the last few miles of ruined suburbia. No sign of the Gateway supply train today. The rails were still warm from the afternoon heat, the silence thick and strangely calm.

Mara stopped one more time before the last rise.

She stood with both hands on her belly, face twisted into a tight grimace.

“Kid’s really active today,” she said through clenched teeth. “Feels like it’s doing gymnastics.”

Cora stood nearby, watching the shadows for movement. “Want me to carry you?”

Mara gave her a look.

“Right,” Cora said. “Stupid question.”

They reached the outskirts of Gateway as the first lights came on along the security fences. From a distance, the city shimmered in dull steel and flickering LEDs, wrapped around the bones of the Arch like armor.

Mara adjusted her coat and pulled her hair back as they approached the checkpoint.

Cora kept her hand near her holster, just in case. You never knew what kind of mood Gateway’s guards would be in. But for now, they walked in silence, side by side, the long road behind them and whatever came next just up ahead.

The gates of Gateway loomed ahead, lit by the pale flicker of mounted lights and the dull hum of power lines overhead. The guards at the checkpoint waved Cora and Mara through with barely a glance, more interested in keeping things running than questioning two dusty travelers.

The city’s marketplace was in full swing as they passed through. Vendors hawked stripped weapons, gluey street food, busted terminals, and brahmin hides. Somewhere, a kid played with a crushed soda can and a stick. Music drifted from a jury-rigged speaker, barely audible over the noise of bargaining.

Mara walked slower now. She held her belly with one hand, eyes scanning the cluttered street but not really seeing it. Cora kept a few steps ahead, occasionally glancing over her shoulder to make sure the doctor hadn’t fallen behind.

They climbed the stairs to the old warehouse that served as Dr. Harrow’s lab. The same creaky door. The same rust-lined frame. Cora didn’t bother knocking. She pushed it open and stepped inside.

Harrow was already in the middle of a consultation.

It was the same woman Cora had seen days ago, the one who had been nervous and twitchy on the exam table. Only now her belly had grown significantly larger. Round, high, and taut beneath a stretched patchwork tunic, she looked like she was carrying a small barrel.

Cora didn’t have a great reference for what “very pregnant” looked like—pregnant women in the wastes were rare. Even when someone did decide to have a kid, it was usually one, and hidden away from danger.

This woman? She was the most pregnant person Cora had ever seen.

The woman let out a breathy sigh. “I have to say... the pain is mostly gone. It actually feels... good. And you were right about my husband.”

Dr. Harrow’s hands rested on the sides of her belly, examining her with practiced calm. “Glad to hear it.”

The woman gave an awkward laugh, then gestured vaguely around her chest. “Though now my... you know. Breasts are starting to get sore. And I’m really scared about the whole giving birth thing. I mean... brahmin are pretty big.”

Cora blinked. That confirmed it. She had said "calf" last time.

Yep. She was pregnant with a brahmin.

What the fuck.

Before Cora could process it further, Mara stepped forward, tilting her head curiously. “So I’m guessing you’re starting to lactate. First time?”

The woman nodded, surprised. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“When your body starts to adjust to the changes, most of the pain converts into something more... pleasant. That includes breast tissue,” Mara said matter-of-factly.

Dr. Harrow cleared his throat. “Excuse me. This is a private consultation.”

He looked up and spotted Cora and Mara fully for the first time.

“Oh. You’re back,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really need to put up a sign that says knock first.”

Mara gave a casual shrug. “Sorry. I overheard and thought I’d toss in my two caps.”

The woman waved her off. “It’s alright. That sounded like good advice. I’ll take help wherever I can get it.”

Dr. Harrow gave a small nod. “It does sound accurate. Who are you, by the way?”

Mara stepped closer, resting both hands on her belly with a faint grin. “I heard you were looking for me, and you sent this one…” she nodded toward Cora “...to come find me. I’m Mara.”

Harrow straightened. “Glad to finally meet you. Elias. Or Dr. Harrow, if you prefer.”

“First names are fine,” Mara said. “Let’s take care of your patient, shall we?”

“Of course. From what I hear, you’re something of an expert.”

Mara chuckled. “Mostly firsthand experience. I lost track of how many things have been in here.” She patted her stomach gently, like it was a conversation piece.

Cora stood off to the side, arms crossed, watching the whole exchange unfold. She didn’t pretend to understand it. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

The two doctors finished the exam together.

Mara adjusted the woman’s tunic, speaking softly. “Brahmin usually cause a lot of lactation. You’ll want to express some of it, otherwise it’ll leak through everything.”

The woman gave a weak laugh. “What about the birth? I mean... I’ve seen brahmin calves. They’re not exactly small.”

“Hard to say for the first time,” Mara said. “It might be unpleasant. But bigger animals tend to feel more... pleasurable as they grow. You’ll probably be well lubricated by the time labor hits.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “So the size of the calf won’t... you know. Tear me apart?”

Mara shook her head. “Back where I came from, we had these creatures called bighorners. Their calves were about twice the size of a brahmin. Never had a problem. Actually kind of miss the damn things.”

She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully.

“The only possible issue with brahmin is the two heads. But if you prepare properly, having the calf scraping along your walls can be... ecstatic. For lack of a better word.”

The woman blinked, stunned. “That’s... actually a relief. Alright. I guess I’ll wait and see.”

“Don’t worry,” Mara said, smiling faintly. “The second time is always easier.”

The woman laughed nervously. “I’m not sure I want a second time.”

Mara chuckled, brushing her hair behind her ear. “That’s what they always say.”

It took both doctors to help her up. She groaned as she stood, one hand pressing against her back while the other supported her stomach.

She waddled slowly toward the exit, murmuring thanks as she went. Her footsteps were heavy, and Cora couldn’t help but notice how massive she really was. Out in the wastes, she’d be a walking target.

I hope she never leaves Gateway , Cora thought.

Once the door clicked shut behind her, Cora exhaled.

She wasn’t even going to try and make sense of what just happened.

She was just glad it wasn’t her.

Dr. Harrow moved to his supply cabinet and rummaged through a stack of old med kits, then pulled out a bundle wrapped in a stained cloth. He held it out to Cora.

"You have my thanks," he said. "I wasn't actually expecting you'd find her."

Cora raised an eyebrow. "I get that a lot."

He gave a faint smile and set the bundle down on the counter.

"I have some spare stims and medical equipment. Take them. You earned it. And your payment. The reward was seven hundred fifty caps, correct? Here."

He opened a tin box and counted them out, placing a few extra chips on top. "I’ll add a bonus for being timely…and for actually finding her."

Cora took the caps and supplies with a nod. "Appreciate it."

She started to turn for the door when Mara stepped forward, rubbing the side of her belly lightly as she shifted her weight.

"Hey. Before you go, I just wanted to say thanks," she said. "I feel right at home here. Being a roaming doctor was fun, but I’m ready to step back into a lab again."

She glanced at the table where her notes were already half-spread open.

"I am curious how I’ll do without all the equipment the Followers provided me."

Cora paused. "Followers?"

"Followers of the Apocalypse," Mara said, smiling faintly. "They’re based out near Vegas. Did a lot of good. Taught me most of what I know."

"Well," Cora said, adjusting the strap on her pack, "I’m glad it worked out, at least."

"You are an angel, you know that?" Mara said, her smile turning sly. "Though... there is something else I wanted to discuss."

Cora narrowed her eyes. "I’m listening."

"I’ve been seeing strange lights in the sky," Mara said, her voice dropping just slightly. "And I have to ask... do you believe in aliens?"

Cora blinked. "Sure. I also believe in world peace."

Mara laughed. "Fair enough. Though, I’ve seen enough to know they’ve visited Earth. I’m convinced they’re connected to GRACE, though I doubt they call it that."

She leaned back against the counter, thoughtful.

"I want to know their reasoning. Why choose humans? Why those design choices? Is GRACE perfected? Are we just part of a larger experiment?"

Cora folded her arms. "I’m guessing you’re not just telling me this for fun."

"Of course not," Mara said, her tone light but eyes serious. "There’s a rumor floating around. Something people are calling the Belle Wraith . That’s the kind of word I’d use to describe an alien."

Cora gave her a long look. "You think this thing is an alien?"

"The way it kills... it’s too fast. Too precise. Some say it doesn’t leave tracks. Others say it whispers before it strikes. I don’t think it’s coincidence. I think it’s one of them."

Cora exhaled slowly. "You want me to go find this Belle Wraith ?"

Mara nodded. "I’d hate to ask more of you, but yes. I want you to track it. See if it’s willing to cooperate. If it is, this could lead to a dozen breakthroughs. Maybe more."

"And where exactly am I supposed to start looking for... an alien?"

Mara smiled. "Don’t worry. I can put you on a trail."

She stepped over to the desk and pulled a small scrap of paper from her notes, scribbling something down.

"There’s a man in Rivet Row. Name’s Garren Locke. Supposedly rough around the edges, but he’s just a merc at the end of the day. He’s been looking for this Wraith too."

Cora took the paper, reading the name. "Guess extra caps can’t hurt."

"Excellent," Mara said. "I hope you find him. And whatever else is out there."

Dr. Harrow offered a nod. "Good luck out there. Keep your weapon close and your curiosity closer."

Cora smirked faintly. With a last glance between the two doctors, she opened the door and stepped back into the rust-colored light of Gateway’s afternoon, her next job already forming in her head.

Aliens.

Right.

Cora stepped out of Harrow’s warehouse into the rust-stained light of late afternoon. The shattered curve of the Gateway Arch loomed behind her, casting a long, skeletal shadow across the cracked walkways and patchwork buildings below. The arch had become the backbone of the settlement that shared its name, its massive bones repurposed with scaffolding, hanging lights, and antenna arrays that blinked quietly in the haze.

Her fingers brushed the heavy pouch on her belt. Nearly a thousand caps. She’d never earned that much on a single job. Most of her runs barely covered food and ammo. This time, she had enough to breathe, maybe even enjoy it.

She followed the old street past a row of market stalls where hawkers shouted about wire, fuel cells, and what might have been tanned hide or moldy canvas. A boy called out about squirrel jerky and fried roach legs. She kept moving.

She found food near the old tram station, where smoke drifted from a barrel grill and real stew simmered in a dented pot. The woman running the stand eyed her armor, gave her a nod, and ladled out a helping of thick brown broth with chunks of something that at least looked like meat. There were potatoes in it, soft and pale. Real ones. Maybe. Cora paid without haggling. She added a shot of decent-looking liquor and carried her tray to a bench under a sun-bleached tarp that flapped in the wind.

She ate slow, watching the movement around her. Merchants unloaded boxes from a Brotherhood transport. A pair of guards argued over drink tokens. Someone had set up a radio, and faint music drifted over the clatter and voices, something old with brass and rhythm.

The food was good. Too salty, but warm and filling. The liquor was sharp and clean, not the usual gut rot. Her shoulders eased a little. She caught herself enjoying it.

After she scraped the bowl clean, she headed toward the gear quarter near an old firehouse that had been converted into a repair shop. The armor she’d taken from Ravik was dented, scorched, and torn along one seam, but it had good bones. She handed it over to the quartermaster, a woman with a prosthetic eye and a thick scar down her jaw. The woman grunted at the damage and quoted her a price. Sixty caps to patch it. More if she wanted reinforcement. Cora paid without blinking. She watched them start the work with welding torches and a lot of muttering.

While she waited, she browsed the racks. Her eyes fell on a retooled service rifle. Wood stock, clean receiver, decent scope. The bore looked good. She tested the weight, clicked the action, and felt something settle in her gut. Solid. Dependable. It would do. It cost her more than half what she had left, but she handed over the caps.

She slung the rifle over her back and checked her thigh holster. Brimstone sat snug in the leather. The old 9mm looked worn, but the slide still moved like silk. She thought about trading it for something newer, maybe something with more kick, but let the thought pass. Brimstone had history.

She stopped at an ammo stall and stocked up. Rifle rounds. 9mm. A box of shells in case things got close. She picked up a few grenades and three stimpaks, two sealed and one a little cloudy. She added water tabs, some dried meat, a couple power cells, and a tarp for sleeping gear. She packed everything tight, checked the straps, and finally exhaled.

For the first time in weeks, she felt almost whole. She even still had enough caps left over for a room.

The boarding house near the east ramp of the Arch was run out of a pre-War office building that leaned slightly to one side. She rented a cot in a private room, the kind with a door that locked and a window that mostly closed. It wasn’t clean, but it was dry and quiet. The mattress creaked but didn’t collapse under her weight. That was enough.

She dropped her gear in the corner, took off her boots, and stretched out on the bed.

For a long time, she stared at the ceiling and let her body remember what not hurting felt like.

Sleep didn’t come right away. Her mind kept drifting.

GRACE. Mutations that turned pregnancy into a question mark. Women giving birth to creatures that didn’t belong inside them. Mara had talked about it like it was just another medical puzzle, something to understand and maybe cure. But Cora had seen Ravik’s ferals. Seen what desperation looked like in something barely still human.

And now Mara wanted her to chase whispers.

The Belle Wraith. A shadow that killed without sound. Lights in the sky. Aliens.

Cora shifted, turning onto her side.

She didn’t believe in clean answers. Maybe there was something out there. Maybe there wasn’t. She wasn’t in it for the philosophy. But if Mara was right - if there was a connection between GRACE and something not of this Earth - then this was bigger than a job. It was bigger than any of them.

That didn’t mean she believed it.

It just meant she was willing to look.

She closed her eyes and let her breathing slow.

Rivet Row was about an hour southwest. Close enough to reach by midmorning if she left early and didn’t run into trouble. The roads between weren’t the worst, but trouble didn’t care about convenience.

She’d go at first light.

For now, she had a door, a bed, and no one trying to kill her.

That would do.

The sun was barely up when Cora rolled off the cot. The air in the room was cool, still clinging to the last quiet hours before Gateway came fully alive. Outside the cracked window, the sky had gone from ash to pale orange. She sat up, pulled on her shirt, then started buckling her gear.

After checking her pack and strapping on Brimstone, she made a quick stop at the bathhouse tucked between two collapsed storefronts. The water ran warm, not clean exactly, but warmer than she’d had in weeks. She scrubbed the dust and blood from her skin, wincing as she worked over the bruises from her fight with Ravik. The soap was thin and sharp-smelling, but it did the job.

Afterward, she changed into fresh clothes: dark shirt, gray cargo pants, and the newly patched armor. Ravik’s set had cleaned up surprisingly well. The plating was burnished, the seams reinforced, and the shoulder finally sealed where something feral had tried to rip her apart. It fit better than expected, a little snug across the ribs, but solid. Reliable.

She slung the rifle over her shoulder, holstered Brimstone at her hip, and stepped out into Gateway’s morning.

The air was crisp. A few stalls were just starting to open, merchants yawning as they rolled back tarps and counted caps. Somewhere in the distance, a brahmin lowed. The city always woke slow.

She didn’t stop to eat. She still had dried meat and water in her pack, and her appetite hadn’t come back yet anyway. Too much on her mind.

The Old 44 picked up just past the south gate, its cracked concrete sloping through the ruins like a scar. The highway had buckled in places, overpasses long since collapsed, but enough of it held to walk. She kept her pace steady, boots thudding softly on the sun-warmed road. Traffic was light. Just a pair of traders on foot and a Brotherhood scout moving fast in the opposite direction. No sign of raiders or ferals yet.

It was early. That helped.

The quiet gave her space to think.

She didn’t know what she expected to find in Rivet Row. Mara’s contact, Garren Locke, sounded like the type who didn’t come cheap and didn’t trust anyone. Probably had good reasons for both. Anyone tracking something like the Belle Wraith would be either half-crazy or ten steps ahead of everyone else. Either way, she’d have to find someone who knew where he holed up. And the bar was always the best place to start. Talk spilled easier with liquor in it.

She kept walking, and her thoughts drifted, uninvited, back to the woman in Harrow’s lab. The one carrying a brahmin calf.

Cora tried to picture it again, tried to understand how anyone could walk around like that, all stretched and slow, waiting for something with hooves and horns to start kicking from inside. The belly had looked grotesque, massive, hanging low and wide like it might split at any moment. Cora imagined being in the middle of a gunfight and feeling that thing thrash. One solid kick and you'd be down, bleeding, screaming, unable to move or shoot or breathe.

And after that came the part no one wanted to talk about.

Getting it out.

Two heads. Four hooves. God knew what else.

Cora clenched her jaw and shook her head.

She had to stop thinking about it.

Focus.

Rivet Row wasn’t a good place to be distracted. It didn’t have Gateway’s walls or guards. It was leaner, meaner, more desperate. But it had what she needed—a place to sleep, a few shops, and most importantly, a bar.

As she came up over a rise in the road, the edge of the district came into view. Low buildings clustered tight together, their roofs patched with tarps and corrugated metal. Faded paint on a half-toppled sign read: WELCOME TO RIVET ROW. Someone had drawn a skull over the "O."

Cora slowed her steps and took one last look back the way she came. The Arch was a faint silhouette on the northern horizon, just a curve of steel rising out of the haze.

Then she faced forward again.

Time to find Garren Locke.

Cora had barely stepped through the outer ring of Rivet Row when a man peeled away from a wall and fell into step beside her.

He looked like a walking warning sign. Leather scraps stitched into a vest, half-burned boots, goggles pushed up onto a forehead smeared with ash. A crooked machete hung from one hip, and his grin was too wide, like it had been carved there by something sharp. His breath smelled faintly of jet and something sourer.

"Hey there," he said. "New to the Row?"

Cora didn’t stop walking. “Depends on who’s asking.”

“Oh, just a friendly face,” he said, still grinning. “Name’s Tag. And around here, it’s kind of a custom to offer protection to new folks. First-timers don’t always know what’s safe.”

She slowed, turning to face him fully. “Hmm. Is that what you call it? The only ‘protection’ I need is to keep annoying old men who try to rob me away from me.”

Tag clutched his chest in mock offense. “Aw, that hurt my feelings. I’ll tell you what, sweetheart. You hand over what you’ve got in those pockets, or accidents start happenin’ to you. Messy, bloody accidents.”

Before Cora could answer, a voice called out from the balcony of a nearby building.

“Seriously, Tag? You’re still trying to rob every new face that walks through the gate? I’ve seen raiders with better tactics.”

A figure leaned over the rail, then started down a crooked metal staircase attached to the side of what looked like a gutted apartment block. He moved with slow confidence, wrapped in a long coat stained with oil and blood in equal measure. A belt of knives hung across his chest, and a modified hunting rifle was slung carelessly over his back. His beard was short and clean, his expression relaxed.

Cora watched him approach, eyes narrowed.

Tag didn’t back down. “The fuck do you care, Keene? She ain’t one of us.”

Keene gave a mock-wounded look. “Aw, I’m hurt. No love for the mayor?”

He stepped onto the street, casual, hands open at his sides.

“Now come on, let her go.”

Tag scowled. “You’re weak, Keene. Keep letting outsiders stroll in here, and one day they’re gonna be holding you at gunpoint from your cute little balcony.”

Keene chuckled softly, stepping in close. “That’s funny. I like that. I really do.”

He opened his arms like he was going for a hug.

“For that, I forgive you. Come here. Let’s hug it out, huh?”

Tag sneered, confused just long enough for Keene to move. The knife came from under the coat, low and fast, sliding up under Tag’s ribs. Keene held him there, close like a brother, before twisting and stepping away.

Tag dropped like a sack of wet meat. Didn’t even twitch.

Keene looked down at the body, then let out a long sigh.

“Aww. You see what you made me do?” He wiped the blade on Tag’s coat. “You know how hard it is to get blood out of these damn streets?”

He looked at Cora. “You okay?”

Cora stared at the corpse for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Fine. Not the first asshole that tried that shit.”

“Good.” Keene sheathed the knife and stepped around the body. “Now don’t let this taint your view of the place. The Row’s open to anyone. Even him.”

He gave the body a light kick.

Cora glanced around. People were already going back to their business. One vendor swept a few drops of blood off his stall like it happened every Tuesday.

“Good to know,” she said. “But I’m not scraping the next body off the street.”

Keene laughed under his breath. “As long as you’re not the one making them, we’ll get along just fine.”

He turned and started walking back toward the stairs.

“Make yourself at home. Just don’t forget who’s in charge.”

Cora looked down at Tag’s body one last time, then up at the row of buildings ahead. Smoke curled from chimneys, music buzzed from a half-broken radio, and someone was already shouting about chems and spare parts.

Welcome to Rivet Row.

Cora stepped past the body without a second glance and moved deeper into Rivet Row.

The old Soulard Market district had been hollowed out by time and war, but it still clung to something like life. Cracked pavement stretched under her boots, lined with makeshift stalls built from old fencing, scaffolding, and anything else someone could hammer together. Brick buildings leaned into each other like tired drunks, patched with scrap metal and faded tarps that flapped gently in the breeze. The light filtering through the gaps came in dusty stripes, tinting everything with a copper haze.

Vendors lined the walkway, some calling out with weathered voices, others sitting quietly behind tables piled with salvage. She passed stalls selling rusted tools, cracked power cells, a battered Protectron torso, and a bucket of bullets that were probably half duds. The air smelled like sweat, meat, and engine grease. Somewhere close, someone was burning Brahmin fat over a drum fire, and the sizzle mixed with the sharp tang of gun oil.

Cora kept her pace slow but steady, her posture relaxed. She didn’t scan too fast or hold eye contact too long. People who didn’t know how to walk through a place like this usually didn’t walk back out.

At the corner of the square, she stopped at a stall where bundles of herbs, dried meat, and powder-filled sachets hung from twine. A woman sat behind the table, lean and gray-eyed, with a weathered face and a stitched leather shawl draped over her shoulders. She was organizing a tray of dried mushrooms with deliberate care.

Cora nodded once and kept her voice calm. “I’m looking for the bar. Someone said it’s called the Market Tap.”

The woman glanced up, her expression unreadable. After a short pause, she answered with a slow nod.

“Two-story building with green paint, though most of it’s peeled off by now. You’ll pass the well on your left. The Tap’s just beyond it. Look for the old brewery sign.”

Cora’s eyes shifted to a small bundle of dried mutfruit on the table. “I’ll take one of those.”

The woman wrapped it in thin paper and slid it forward. “Five caps for three pieces. They’re not sweet, but they’ll keep you moving.”

Cora handed her ten. “Consider the rest payment for pointing me the right way.”

That earned her a brief but genuine smile. “You’re polite. That’s rare around here.”

“I try not to be a problem,” Cora said as she tucked the bundle into her coat. “Doesn’t always work.”

She left the stall and continued on, her eyes scanning ahead as the heart of the market opened up around her.

Despite the rough edges and the occasional pile of bones, Rivet Row worked. People traded. Children darted through narrow alleys, laughing and shouting. A man sat on the corner tuning a broken banjo, and across from him, a merchant repainted a faded sign with careful, practiced strokes. Guards watched from balconies and rooftops, not wearing uniforms but clearly recognized by the rest.

There was structure here. There were rules. And someone was enforcing them.

Cora passed the well the woman had mentioned. It was ringed with old bricks and reinforced with rusted iron. Bits of bone were tied to string and hung from the nearby poles like charms. Whether it was for luck or intimidation, she didn’t stop to ask.

Just beyond it, she spotted the bar.

The building was squat and square, its green paint faded and chipped to near nothing. An old brewery sign hung crookedly from rusted chains, repainted by hand to read The Market Tap. One window had been patched with scavenged plywood, while the other was filled with colored bottles that caught the morning light in reds and greens. Music drifted out through the cracked door, something low and stringed, just loud enough to draw attention without inviting trouble.

Cora paused outside, gave the street behind her one last glance, then stepped forward and pushed the door open.

The inside of the Market Tap was dim and heavy with the smell of liquor, sweat, and fried meat. Bottles lined the windows like makeshift stained glass, casting streaks of red and green light across the warped floorboards. A low hum of conversation filled the air, punctuated by the occasional laugh or the dull clatter of a glass being set down too hard.

Cora moved through the space with care. She kept her shoulders loose, her hands away from her weapons, and her eyes working without looking like they were. No need to draw attention. The place was more than just a bar—she could tell that the moment she stepped inside.

Voices carried from every corner. Some folks were making trades, names and caps exchanged under breath. Others talked about people who were probably still bleeding out somewhere in the alleys. A couple in the far booth whispered with their foreheads nearly touching, their tone intimate but tense.

This was the kind of place where information lived and died between drinks. Cora didn’t like it. But the payday waiting at the end of this job made it worth the discomfort.

She worked her way around a group of gamblers clustered near the back wall and spotted the man she was looking for.

He matched Mara’s description exactly. Bald head, skin the color of old cedar, brown goatee with thick matching eyebrows. A long scar traced from the side of his left eye down toward the edge of his nose. His clothes were classic wasteland mercenary: layered armor plates stitched onto a longcoat, holster strapped across his chest, boots laced tight. He sat with one leg up on a chair, a drink in his hand, and the look of someone who knew exactly how much attention he could get away with.

Cora approached, steady and without hesitation.

As she neared, the man looked up and grinned.

“Well, hey there, sweetheart. I usually don’t let strangers come this close, but for a cute thing like you, I’ll make an exception.”

Gross.

Cora didn’t rise to the bait. She let her hand rest lightly on her hip, her fingers near Brimstone.

“You Garren Locke?” she asked. “I heard you were chasing the Belle Wraith.”

His grin sharpened just slightly.

“Maybe I am. You looking to tag along, or just here to flirt back?”

“I’m here because I was told you might know where to find it.”

Garren leaned forward and set his drink on the table. His eyes flicked over her once, quick and assessing.

“Alright. Fair enough. I’ve been tracking this Wraith for a while now. Or trying to, anyway. Every time I get close, it disappears again. Whoever it is, they’re good at slipping the net. But I think I’ve got a fix on them now.”

He paused long enough to make sure she was listening.

“And just so we’re clear, this isn’t charity. The Crimson Fangs have a bounty out on this thing. A real one. Enough to get half the Midwest moving.”

Cora’s brow lifted slightly. “Why are the Crimson Fangs after the Wraith?”

“Because, according to rumors, this Wraith is responsible for the highest number of Crimson Fang deaths in the past two years. That includes active contracts, officers, and at least two convoys. They’ve lost a lot of good people. They’re not happy about it.”

He took a sip of his drink, then looked back at her with a smirk.

“They’ve put a twelve thousand cap bounty on its head. Dead or confirmed dead. No questions asked.”

Cora held her expression, but her stomach did a slow, stunned turn. Twelve thousand.

Even a cut of that would make her year. Maybe two.

She kept her voice level. “That’s a lot of caps for one ghost story.”

“Maybe. But that’s what makes it fun, right?” Garren sat back and let out a low breath. “Some people say this Wraith isn’t even human. I say it’s smoke and mirrors. Smart ones, sure, but nothing supernatural. If people think you’re a ghost, they don’t chase you. They stay scared. It makes hiding easier.”

Cora nodded once. “So what makes you think you’ve found it?”

“Someone’s been holing up in the old Central West End  in an apartment complex, mostly intact. It’s real quiet, then suddenly people go missing. The locals say they’ve seen something move through the halls, fast and silent. Sounds like our guy to me.”

Then he smiled again. That smile again.

“It’s a bit of a walk from here. But I don’t mind the company. Especially if it’s just you and me.”

Cora sighed, slow and quiet. She already knew he was going to be a pain.

Still, twelve thousand caps.

She met his gaze. “Alright. West End it is. Two bodies are better than one.”

Chapter Text

The walk from the Market Tap to the edge of Rivet Row was uneventful, if a little tense. The locals gave Garren a wide berth, some out of recognition, others out of something closer to disdain. No one bothered them as they passed through the marketplace and out through the same gate Cora had entered that morning.

Once they were past the barricades, they kept to the old streets. When the pavement broke apart or dipped into flooded ruins, they climbed up to the highways where the overpasses were still intact. The city stretched out in long, jagged scars of asphalt and rubble. Smoke coiled from a few distant rooftops, but the skies stayed clear enough.

Garren talked too much.

“So,” he said, glancing sideways at her, “you always this quiet on long walks, or are you just playing hard to get?”

Cora didn’t bother answering. She kept her rifle resting on her shoulder and her eyes forward.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. Mysterious is hot. But a guy starts to wonder what kind of company he’s keeping when his partner acts like a mute.”

She rolled her eyes and picked up the pace. If he noticed, he didn’t comment.

The quiet didn’t last.

They crossed into the edge of Soulard and spotted movement near a collapsed gas station. A pair of raiders, one with a bloody tire iron and the other in scavenged football pads, were shaking down a group of travelers—two older men and a girl barely out of her teens. The girl clutched a small pack to her chest while one of the raiders barked demands.

Cora didn’t wait for a plan. She brought the rifle up and fired once. The shot punched clean through the football pad’s shoulder. He screamed, spinning off balance.

Garren shouted something she didn’t catch and rushed forward, firing wild.

His first shot hit the ground. The second one might have grazed the other raider’s leg, but it was hard to tell through the spray of panic.

Cora dropped her rifle and pulled Brimstone free, clean and smooth. The second raider charged, swinging the tire iron. Cora stepped inside the arc, ducked low, and put two rounds through his gut. He folded without a word.

Behind her, Garren shouted, “That’s right, run, you fuckers!” and fired again, missing completely.

The last raider, the one with the bleeding shoulder, was already limping off into the ruins.

The travelers stared in shock for a beat, then the older man closest to Cora stepped forward.

“Thank you,” he said. “We didn’t have anything left to give them.”

Cora gave a small nod. “Just keep off the roads for a while. And don’t trust anyone who smiles too fast.”

The group hurried off without another word.

Back on the move, Garren holstered his weapon with a smug grin.

“Hell of a shot, huh?” he said.

Cora glanced at him. “You missed every shot.”

He laughed like she was joking. “Yeah, but I kept the pressure on. They didn’t know where to run.”

Cora didn’t respond. Her focus shifted back to the road.

The highways were quiet for a while after that. Just wind and cracked concrete and the occasional rusted-out vehicle long since picked clean. Every now and then, they passed the bones of something human. No one mentioned them.

When the next threat came, it was a pack of ferals dragging themselves out of the wreckage of an overturned box truck. Their skin hung loose and wet, and their jaws snapped mindlessly as they lunged.

Cora moved without hesitation. Her rifle cracked from medium distance, dropping the first two before they reached the grass. The third got too close. Brimstone barked, and its skull burst apart in a slick mist.

Garren tried to flank. He sprinted wide, fired twice, then tripped over a broken signpost. He landed hard and barely scrambled out of the way before a feral swiped at his leg. His next shot went into the dirt.

Cora dropped that one too.

When the last of them stopped twitching, she walked over and offered Garren a hand.

He grinned up at her. “I had it under control.”

“You were on your back,” Cora said.

“It was a strategic retreat. Keeps them guessing.”

She holstered Brimstone and shook her head. He was a talker, not a shooter. For a guy chasing something as dangerous as the Belle Wraith was supposed to be, he lacked just about everything you’d want in a hunting partner. His aim was inconsistent, his stance was lazy, and he reloaded like it was his first time holding a gun. He probably got by on bluff and brownnosing, slipping under the radar while better mercs did the hard work.

Cora didn’t like relying on maybes. And right now, Garren Locke was a maybe wearing too much cologne and just enough armor to look the part.

She didn’t say any of that. Not yet. She just adjusted her rifle strap and kept walking.

If the Wraith was as dangerous as the stories claimed, then she needed this guy to hold it together when shit went sideways.

She just hoped he was better under pressure.

The rest of the walk along the old Interstate 64 was, thankfully, uneventful. The elevated road had long since crumbled in some parts, but the sections that remained were sturdy enough to walk without worrying about sudden collapse. Rusted-out cars sat frozen where the world had ended, their paint faded to bone-white or scorched black. Weeds pushed up through the cracks in the asphalt, and vines had begun to take over entire vehicles. The silence up here wasn’t peaceful. It was hollow. A reminder of what had been lost and what was never coming back.

Garren, unfortunately, was still talking.

“You know, when this job’s done, maybe we celebrate. I know a place in Jefferson with clean beds, decent booze, and clean bathhouse. You and me could—”

Cora kept walking.

“Alright, fine,” he said with a smirk. “Silent type. That’s cool. Mystery’s hot too.”

She didn’t answer. She just kept her eyes ahead, wishing for the fifth time that hour that they would reach the apartments already.

Eventually, they came off the highway and descended a series of broken ramps and staircases into the Central West End. The neighborhood had once been upscale—back when that word meant anything. Now it was a hollowed-out shell. Street signs lay rusted on the ground. Trees had split sidewalks apart. Elegant stone buildings stood half-collapsed or boarded shut, their windows long since shattered or covered in years of grime.

Garren led the way through a narrow side street, then stopped at the corner of a block that looked a little more intact than the rest.

“There,” he said, pointing across the cracked street.

Cora followed his gaze.

The building ahead stood three stories tall, made of worn red brick. Some of the windows were broken. Others were covered with makeshift shutters. Ivy crawled up one side, thick and dark. The front door hung slightly ajar. A few feral ghouls wandered around outside, slow-moving and unaware of them for the moment. No sound came from inside the building. Not even the wind.

It was too quiet.

Garren dropped into a crouch behind a broken planter and checked his weapon. His tone was low now, more focused.

“Alright. Based on what I’ve heard, this should be the place. Doesn't look like much, but the stories line up. Strange sounds. Missing scavvers. No one's come out since last week. I didn’t think the Wraith would hole up in an apartment complex, but here we are.”

He looked back at her.

“Ready to go?”

Cora adjusted the strap on her rifle and nodded once.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

She didn’t say anything more, but in her head, all she could think was that if they found the Wraith quickly and walked out of here in one piece, she could be done with Garren Locke for good.

Inside the apartment complex, the silence pressed down like a weight.

It wasn’t just quiet. It was dead. The kind of silence that made your teeth clench without realizing it. The kind that crawled up the back of your neck and whispered that you weren’t alone, even if you couldn’t prove it yet.

The lobby was wide and open, dust blanketing everything in a soft gray film. Rotting couches sat against the walls, their cushions sunken and torn. A shattered light fixture hung from the ceiling by exposed wiring, swaying slightly even though there was no breeze. One of the doors had been clawed open, long gouges scratched into the wood.

Maybe no one was here. Maybe the stories were just that—stories.

Cora didn’t believe it.

Then, a sound.

A faint thud. It could have been something falling. It could have been a footstep. It came from deeper inside, still on the first floor, muffled by distance and walls.

Garren stiffened and raised his weapon, looking toward the far hallway.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, his voice low but urgent. “Sounded like it’s coming from the back. I’ll go this way. You circle around. Let’s take this bastard down.”

Finally. At least he’d be off breathing somewhere else for a minute.

Garren disappeared down a side hall, boots creaking on the warped floorboards.

Cora moved in the opposite direction, staying light on her feet. Her steps were careful, controlled. She didn’t make a sound as she eased along the edge of the lobby, her fingers hovering near the grip of Brimstone.

She scanned every shadow. Every doorway. Every dark gap that could hide movement.

She had been in places like this before. Buildings where the quiet wasn’t just silence. It was anticipation. It was the calm that came before something bad. Something that didn’t leave the walls the same after it passed through.

Whatever was here, she would find it. And she’d make damn sure she walked out alive.

Cora moved silently through the apartment’s side hall, her boots skimming across dust-caked tile. The deeper she went, the more the silence started to breathe. Not with sound, but with signs. A lit cigarette smoldered in an ashtray perched on a broken table beside a doorway. The burn line was fresh—still curling smoke into the air.

Someone had just been here.

Further down, she spotted a crude tension-trigger trap wired to a cracked doorframe. A tripwire connected to a bent steel rod and what looked like a modified frag mine. Sloppy but effective. She stepped wide and kept moving.

In a corner alcove, a crate of unopened alcohol sat untouched, bottles gleaming faintly in the dim light that filtered through a boarded window. Either someone didn’t care for the taste, or they had other priorities. Hard to say. In the wasteland, unopened booze was just as likely to be bait as it was storage.

Cora continued circling back toward the lobby, every footstep slow and controlled.

Then she heard it.

A quick ruffling sound, followed by a low, muffled groan. It came from behind one of the half-open doors in the hallway just ahead. She froze, back against the wall. The noise stopped, but the tension didn’t.

Shit. Someone was here. And it didn’t sound good.

She approached slowly, hand wrapping tightly around Brimstone. Her other hand reached for the door handle. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat and counted down in her head.

Three.

Two.

One.

She turned the handle, pushed the door wide, and swept in, Brimstone raised and ready.

What she saw wasn’t what she expected.

The room had once been a laundry facility. The machines were mostly gone now, stripped out long ago and probably sold for scrap. The walls were stained, cracked, and stripped bare, leaving the space wide open.

And in the center of that open space, a woman stood with a pistol drawn. The barrel of her sidearm, a sleek 10mm, was aimed directly at Garren Locke, who knelt on the floor with his hands behind his head, facing away from her.

He wasn’t wounded. Just humiliated.

Cora kept her weapon raised but didn’t speak yet.

The woman turned her head slightly, aware of Cora’s presence but not looking away from Garren. She was around Cora’s age, maybe a little older. Her skin was warm ivory, her dark auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid that had begun to unravel. Her eyes were a sharp, vivid green. She had the kind of build that spoke to long days moving and fighting—lean, strong, with a hint of softness at the belly. Her chest strained slightly against the tight fit of her tank top, the jacket open over it. Cargo pants and dark boots completed the look, the kind of outfit that didn’t care what people thought as long as it held up in a fight.

There was no utility belt, but a pistol holster rode her hip, and a rifle hung on her back.

The stance, the readiness, the control. This wasn’t someone who had just stumbled in.

This was someone who lived ready.

Garren didn’t speak. He just stayed on his knees, hands on his head, clearly caught.

Cora kept her gun up, eyes locked on the woman.

Before Cora could say a word, the woman with the pistol beat her to it.

“Aww, you clearly don’t know me very well, do you?”

Her tone was dry, almost amused, but her eyes didn’t move from Garren.

It was obvious what had happened. Garren must have tried one of his sleazy pickup lines. It hadn’t gone over well.

“Next time, at least use a mint,” the woman said. “Or a shower. Oh wait. That reminds me: there isn’t going to be a next time.”

Garren let out a short, bitter laugh. “Well played, miss. Well played.”

“Flattery isn’t saving you.”

The shot cracked through the room like a whip.

Garren collapsed to the floor with a dull thud, his body crumpling in a lifeless heap. The silence that followed felt heavier than the gunshot.

Cora lowered her weapon slightly but didn’t holster it.

“You greet all your guests that way,” she asked, “or was he special?”

The woman didn’t answer right away. She finally looked at Cora, eyes sharp but not hostile.

“I knew he was coming for the bounty,” she said. “And he tried a sleazeball line on me.”

Her gaze lingered for a moment, assessing Cora, then softened just slightly.

“Well, you’re too pretty to be a Fang. Wanna tell me why you’re here? Based on the look on your face, I’m guessing you had something very different in mind when you heard about the Belle Wraith.”

Cora kept her posture relaxed, though her heart was still racing from the shot.

“You could say that,” she replied.

The woman chuckled, quiet and dry.

“Not surprised. People always expect something else.”

She stepped around Garren’s body, holstering her pistol.

“So,” she continued, “wanna tell me if you’re actually here for me, or something else? Who sent you?”

“Dr. Mara Kelso,” Cora said. “She told me about a Wraith. She made it sound like it was… an alien.”

The woman’s eyebrow lifted.

“Mara’s in the area? Huh. Haven’t seen her since that thing in Ohio. Good woman. Smart. Dedicated. A little intense, but who isn’t these days?”

She gave a small nod to herself, as if something had clicked into place.

“Well, knowing her, it’s not me she’s after. She’s probably chasing the real deal. A bona fide alien. So yeah, she was actually on the right track.”

Cora blinked. “Wait. You mean to tell me—”

“Yes,” the woman said, cutting her off with a faint smirk. “Aliens are real. I’ve been captured by them, slept with them, and killed them. In that order. It wasn’t a fun experience.”

She waved one hand casually, as if brushing off a bad memory.

“But that’s a story for another time. Right now, I could use a second pair of hands. Turns out this apartment complex used to belong to someone named Silas Grange. Old scavver. Bit of a nutcase. Everyone thought he was crazy, said he hunted aliens. Turns out he wasn’t so crazy after all.”

Cora stayed quiet, listening.

“Before he died,” the woman continued, “he built a device that can track alien signals. I know the one I’m after is out there, broadcasting something, but without that tracker, I can’t pin down where the signal’s coming from.”

She looked over at the far end of the room, toward a rusted-out metal door marked Basement Access in faded letters.

“I need help getting the basement open. That’s where he kept the tracker.”

There was a pause, then she gave Cora a look that was both wry and vaguely apologetic.

“Oh. Where are my manners? Names first. I’m Isabella. You can call me Bella if you want. Some folks just call me the Belle Wraith.”

Cora gave her a nod, holstering Brimstone at last.

“Cora.”

Isabella smiled.

“Well, Cora, we’re going to need the key to the office. I’m pretty sure it’s in one of the rooms upstairs. Let’s find it before the Fangs show up. They’re not going to be happy when they realize someone else got here first.”

They left Garren’s body where it dropped.

No ceremony, no second glance. He had come for the bounty and thought he could charm his way to it. Now he was cooling on the laundry room floor, and Cora didn’t feel bad about it. There wasn’t much room for sympathy in the wasteland, especially for people like him.

Isabella led the way upstairs. The stairwell creaked under their boots, dust hanging in the air like old memories. The apartment above had been partially gutted—walls stripped for wiring, doors missing, floors warped from years of water damage. They moved through the wreckage with quiet purpose, checking each room until they found the one with the name “S. Grange” still scratched into the mail slot of the door.

Inside, the office was cramped but mostly intact. The desk sat in the corner under a boarded-up window, a battered RobCo terminal resting on its surface, humming faintly to life as Bella tapped a few keys.

Cora glanced around while she waited, checking through drawers and broken cabinets. Most of it was junk or long looted, but she did manage to scavenge a half-used stimpack, two boxes of .308 ammo, and a sealed pouch of pre-War trail rations tucked into the back of a closet behind a fallen shelf. She pocketed it all quickly.

“This guy wasn’t kidding,” Bella said, eyes flicking over the green-glowing terminal screen. “Every other entry is just him ranting about abductions, implants, sightings. Charts, coordinates, theories. Guy was obsessed.”

Cora leaned in as Bella scrolled further. One entry caught her eye.

SECURE ACCESS BASEMENT KEYPAD CODE: 9827

“There we go,” Bella said. “Let’s go meet the man behind the madness.”

They headed back downstairs, passing the hallway where Garren still lay slumped. The building creaked and groaned around them, its bones aching with time. They stopped at a rust-stained steel door marked with a faded keypad set into the wall.

Bella entered the code.

The lock clicked, followed by a heavy metallic thunk. The door wheezed open on reluctant hinges.

The basement smelled like rust and damp concrete. The walls were tiled in pale green, the kind found in pre-War maintenance rooms, though most of the tiles were cracked or missing. The overhead lights were long dead, but someone—Silas, probably—had set up old lanterns and jury-rigged bulbs that still glowed faintly from salvaged power. The space was wide and cluttered, with workbenches along the sides, each one covered in spare parts, notes, and old tools. Filing cabinets sat half-open, paper yellowed and curling at the edges. Empty crates, stripped electronics, and a smashed generator lined the walls. It had been picked through, no doubt, but not entirely cleaned out.

Cora moved through the room, her boots crunching against scattered glass. She found a couple of fusion cells and a box of nails that could probably be bartered. Not much, but better than nothing.

At the far end of the room, a chair sat beneath a wall of maps and scribbled notes. In it slumped a skeleton, long dead. A faded military coat still clung to the bones, and a pair of broken glasses lay in its lap.

“Ah, Silas, you old bastard,” Bella muttered, stepping closer. “The years have not been kind on you.”

She leaned over and picked up a strange-looking device resting on the desk beside the skeleton. It resembled a long-range transmitter but shaped more like a hybrid between a tuning fork and a small radar dish. Copper wires ran along its spine, feeding into a set of narrow tubes and a cracked signal screen. Lights blinked weakly at the base.

“Here it is,” Bella said. “This little beauty can scan for alien signal frequencies. Silas actually pulled it off.”

Cora stepped closer to look, but before either of them could speak again, the sound of rustling boots echoed from upstairs. A door slammed. Voices, low and sharp, carried down the stairwell.

Bella froze.

“Oh, shit. The Fangs must have followed you and that creepy guy,” she hissed. “Goddamn it. They must have trailed him here after all. We’ve got company, and they’re not here to negotiate.”

She pulled her rifle off her back and checked the mag.

“I hope you know how to fight.”

Cora drew in a breath, steady and slow. She did know how to fight. She had fought ferals, raiders, even a pack of starving dogs once. But she didn’t like killing people, not even people who might deserve it. The idea of pulling the trigger on someone who talked, walked, and begged like anyone else always left her stomach tight.

Still, if it was kill or be killed, she wasn’t about to end up in a Fang body bag.

She readied her rifle, resting her finger against the trigger guard.

“Yeah,” she said. “I know how to fight.”

She just didn’t have to enjoy it.

But she didn’t have a choice.

They moved like shadows.

Bella led the way, staying just inside the flickering edge of light. Every footstep she took was soundless. Her silhouette melted into the shadows between busted walls and broken furniture. When she moved, it was with purpose. No wasted motion. No hesitation.

Cora had thought she was quiet. Careful. She was —but Bella made her feel like she was stomping through the building in steel boots.

One of the Fangs passed near the basement stairwell, rifle at the ready. He scanned the hallway, completely unaware of the woman crouched just behind a shattered doorframe.

Bella stepped out and drew her suppressed pistol, two quick shots into the back of the man’s helmet. He dropped like someone cut his strings.

Cora barely heard the gunfire. The pistol’s suppressor reduced it to a dull thup-thup that barely echoed.

They advanced through the ground floor in silence, weaving through debris and broken drywall. The Fangs moved in pairs or small clusters, but they hadn’t secured the building well. They were confident, maybe too confident, with their superior tech and numbers.

That made them sloppy.

Twice, they came across two-man patrols. Bella would signal with a flick of her hand—two fingers raised, a nod left or right. Then she would vanish toward her target.

Cora took the first one down quick and quiet, catching him near a collapsed doorway. She clamped a hand over his mouth and buried her knife in his neck, dragging him down behind cover before he could scream. When she looked up, the second body was already on the ground with a smoking hole in the side of his helmet.

Bella gave her a nod, then moved on like nothing happened.

The fight wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a firefight. It was a culling.

They kept moving, and the building kept giving. On the second floor, Cora passed the body of another Crimson Fang, slumped near the wall. A dark scorch mark had blackened his armor, and beside him lay a laser pistol that hadn’t even been fired.

Cora crouched and picked it up.

It was sleek and angular, coated in black matte paint with the Crimson Fangs’ insignia etched into the grip—two blood-red fangs wrapped around a stylized plasma burst. The weapon was compact, lightweight, with a short-barrel emitter and a power mod slot along the side. Clean. Well-maintained. High-end pre-War tech, no doubt scavenged and modified.

Fusion cells were still clipped into the battery chamber. She pulled a few more from the dead man’s pouch.

Cora had never used a laser weapon before. Brimstone had been with her for years—clunky, loud, old-world dependable. This thing was quiet, deadly, and far more advanced than anything she usually carried.

She held it for a moment, feeling its balance.

Maybe not a replacement. Not yet.

But it would be useful if she learned how to use it right.

She holstered it on the side opposite Brimstone, giving herself options. A second later, Bella waved her forward again.

More footsteps echoed from the north stairwell. Three sets, maybe more. The Fangs were regrouping.

Bella crouched beside a jagged hole in the wall, motioned for Cora to hold. She whispered just loud enough to hear.

“We’ll lose the element of surprise if they get any closer. We hit them now, before they get their bearings.”

Cora nodded once and gripped her knife tighter. Her pulse had picked up, but her hands were steady.

…

The last of the Crimson Fangs hit the floor without a sound.

Bella signaled Cora to hold, then scanned the hall one final time. No movement. No more boots stomping through drywall. No more radios crackling with clipped commands. Just the echo of their breathing and the faint hum of Cora’s new laser pistol cooling in its holster.

They slipped through a side exit, stepping out into the golden dusk bleeding over the broken rooftops. The sky glowed with the last of the daylight, casting the Central West End in long, rust-colored shadows.

Outside, the silence meant they’d made it.

Bella exhaled and leaned back against the side of the building, running a hand through her hair as she took in the quiet.

“Whew,” she said, voice low and full of spent adrenaline. “Gotta say, I didn’t think working with a stranger would actually work out.”

She looked at Cora and gave a lopsided smirk.

“You’ve gotta work on your steps, though. You’re just heavy enough that if I didn’t know you were behind me, I’d be real worried.”

Cora gave her a flat look, but Bella just laughed softly and waved it off.

“Kidding. Mostly. You did well enough. I’ve worked with worse, and most of them aren’t breathing anymore. We’ll celebrate with a drink later, yeah?”

Cora shrugged, still catching her breath. “As long as it’s not swill made from brahmin piss.”

“No promises,” Bella said, grinning.

She reached into her coat and pulled out the alien-tracking device, wiping some bloodstains off the casing with her sleeve.

“Anyway, we’ve bought ourselves some time. It’ll be a while before the Fangs realize their team’s not checking in. So now we’ve got to keep moving. This thing’s not a tracker by itself—it’s more like a signal booster. We need to find a relay tower to link it through. Once we plug in, the device can start sniffing out the alien’s signal.”

Cora nodded, thinking back.

“I think there might’ve been a tower a few miles east of here. Looked like it was still standing.”

Bella’s eyes lit up.

“Perfect. I think I passed it on my way into town. Big rusted skeleton off the highway? I literally walked past it and thought, ‘Huh. That would be perfect if I ever got the device.’”

She looked down at the clunky tool in her hands, then back at Cora.

“Well. Here we are.”

She slung her rifle back over her shoulder, adjusted her jacket, and looked off toward the skyline.

“You ready to move?”

Cora tightened the strap on her gear, glanced once behind them at the building they’d just cleared, and nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

The road to the tower was rough in places, but not terrible by wasteland standards.

They passed through shattered neighborhoods and overgrown stretches of old highway. The cracked asphalt was littered with dead vehicles, some still bearing the burn marks of plasma fire from battles long since over. Here and there, they ran into trouble—feral ghouls clawing their way out of sewer grates, a mutated mongrel pack snarling from the shadows—but nothing they couldn’t handle.

Bella didn’t talk much during the walk. She moved with a quiet confidence, always a few steps ahead, rifle slung low across her back, eyes scanning the path like she’d walked it a dozen times. Even when she wasn’t speaking, she was calculating.

Cora, though, found her mind wandering.

She let her gaze drift to Bella. The woman’s gait was smooth, practiced. She had a slight sway to her hips, a side effect of the tight fit of her gear and the natural strength in her legs. Her chest was... noticeable. Larger than Cora would’ve expected for someone so lean. Her jacket didn’t quite hide it, nor did the snug tank top clinging to her frame. And her stomach—flat by most standards—still had the faintest puff to it, a barely-there curve that didn’t quite match the rest of her athletic build.

Cora glanced away, then looked again a few moments later.

She wondered—quietly, privately—if Bella had kids. Maybe once. Maybe not anymore. It wasn’t the sort of question you asked someone out here. Not unless you wanted a gun in your face or a long, empty silence.

But the thought stuck with her anyway.

The silence of the road didn’t help. It gave her space to think, and thinking wasn’t always her friend.

An alien hunt. That was what this job had turned into. Actual aliens. Not just rumors or hallucinations. Not just scavvers seeing stars after too much rad exposure. Bella believed in it—lived by it. And if Mara was chasing the same thread, then it had to be real.

Then came the image. The one that had been stuck in her mind since Gateway.

Cora imagined herself walking this same road, but waddling instead of striding. Her belly was huge—swollen past reason, tight with something she didn’t understand and didn’t want to. Sweat rolled down her back, her arms straining to hold the weight. Each step came with a kick from inside, brutal enough to force an “oof” from her lips. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t focus. Pain lanced through her abdomen, sudden and sharp. Something popped. Warm fluid trickled down her legs.

She stopped in the middle of the road, eyes wide. Another wave of pain rolled through her—so intense it felt like her skin might split open.

She almost screamed.

But when she blinked, it was gone.

Her belly was flat again. Her breath returned. Her boots still crunched on broken concrete, and Bella was still walking just ahead.

Cora swallowed hard.

God. She hoped she didn’t have GRACE.

“Hey,” Bella said suddenly, glancing over her shoulder. “You okay?”

Cora blinked again and nodded, clearing her throat.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Just… mind thinking too much.”

Bella gave her a small smile but didn’t push.

“Try not to let it get too far ahead of you. Out here, it’s usually the quiet that kills people.”

And with that, she turned back to the path.

Cora adjusted the rifle strap on her shoulder and kept walking.

The relay tower wasn’t far now.

The relay tower stood crooked and rust-stained beneath a long-abandoned overpass, just south of what had once been Forest Park. Its lattice frame reached into the sky like the ribs of some dead metal beast, patchworked with mismatched plates and old repair jobs that looked more like scaffolding than structural work. Half the dish was bent out of shape, but the core relays were intact. The ground around it was cracked pavement overrun with tufts of ash-blasted grass and crumbling signage.

A half-buried marker near the base of the tower read: KX-B7-91 in fading white paint.

“Alright,” Bella said, slinging the tracking device off her shoulder and walking toward a narrow utility panel near the tower’s base. “We’re here. I’ll hook this thing up to the relay.”

She turned and gave Cora a sharp look.

“You think you can be lookout for a minute?”

Cora adjusted her grip on her rifle and nodded. “Sure, I guess. How long do you need?”

“Not very long. Two minutes, max. I don’t imagine—”

Her sentence cut short.

Bella’s eyes snapped past Cora, pupils narrowing.

“Oh shit. Fangs incoming.”

Cora spun around in time to see them crest the ridge beside the overpass—five of them, all in matching red armor, plasma rifles and laser pistols drawn. They were yelling as they sprinted, spreading out in a practiced wedge formation.

“They don’t know when to stop, do they?” Bella muttered, drawing her rifle and crouching beside the tower’s base. “Of fucking course.”

Cora took position behind a collapsed support beam, bracing her rifle against it. She didn’t wait for the Fangs to reach optimal range. She fired a clean shot that clipped the lead soldier in the shoulder, spinning him backward with a bark of pain.

That was when the shooting really started.

Plasma bolts hissed past their cover, scorching the pavement and blasting chunks out of the tower’s supports. Cora ducked low and adjusted her aim, firing a short burst and dropping one Fang who had tried to flank left.

Bella, now fully exposed, dropped all pretense of stealth. She fired with surgical precision, every shot from her rifle ringing clean. She downed one, then two more, moving between pieces of broken concrete to keep them guessing.

But it wasn’t clean.

One of the Fangs managed to lob a grenade toward the tower. It bounced once and exploded with a gut-punch crack , sending shrapnel through the air. Cora ducked in time, but Bella caught some of the blast—her jacket torn, a gash bleeding down her left thigh.

“Shit!” she grunted, falling back behind a rusted barricade.

Cora popped up and returned fire, putting a shot clean through a Fang’s visor. He dropped face-first onto the pavement. That left one still moving—until Bella, wincing through the pain, fired a last round into the woman’s side. The final Fang staggered and crumpled in a heap.

The street went quiet again, just the buzzing static of the relay tower coming online.

Cora moved toward Bella.

“You good?”

Bella pulled a stimpack from her belt, jammed it into her leg, and hissed through her teeth as the chemicals surged through her system. The bleeding slowed. The swelling began to ease.

“I’ve been better,” she muttered, flexing her leg. “But I’ll live.”

Cora checked her own shoulder, where a shot had grazed her earlier in the fight. She hissed, rolled her arm, and stabbed herself with her own stimpack.

Both women leaned against what cover was left, catching their breath in the burned-out silence.

Bella gave a dry laugh, rubbing her brow with the back of her hand.

“Well. That’s one way to connect a tracking device.”

The device let out a low hum as Bella hooked it into the terminal near the relay tower’s base. She worked quickly, fingers dancing over rusted ports and jury-rigged cables, pulling power from a backup cell she’d tucked into her coat. The tracker’s lights blinked in sequence, one by one, until the central screen lit up with a static-filled green glow.

Cora kept her rifle ready, scanning the rooftops and shadows while the tower continued its low drone. The silence stretched on. Every broken window, every overturned car felt like a threat waiting to happen.

But no more Crimson Fangs came. No gunfire. No shouting.

Just the wind whispering over cracked pavement and the distant hum of post-War power trying to claw itself back to life.

After two long minutes, Bella straightened with a satisfied grunt, wiping grime off her palms onto her pants.

“Okay,” she muttered, peering into the device’s display. “Come on… show me something…”

Cora stepped closer, rifle lowered but still in hand.

Bella’s eyes narrowed as the screen cleared, forming a blip on a crude digital map. The signal was faint but steady, a pulsing dot northeast of their location.

Bella let out a short, humorless laugh.

“Well. Looks like the signal is coming from… a place called Calvary Cemetery .” She glanced at Cora with a raised brow. “Heh. Fitting, huh?”

Cora frowned. “That’s a hell of a place to be hiding.”

“Cemeteries are quiet,” Bella said as she powered the device down and packed it up. “Nobody thinks to look for the living among the dead.”

She stood up, adjusting the strap on her rifle, her green eyes sharp and focused.

“It’s about a three-hour walk from here, if we keep steady and don’t run into more of those asshole mercs. But if this thing is working—and it looks like it is—then we’ll find him there.”

She smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I can’t wait to see that bastard.”

Cora watched her for a second longer, something uneasy twisting in her gut. The way Bella said it didn’t sound like someone who was planning to have a conversation. It sounded like someone loading the last bullet in a long-held grudge.

But she didn’t press. Not yet.

She just slung her rifle over her shoulder and gave a small nod.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The tower grew smaller behind them as they followed the cracked remnants of what had once been Kingshighway. Wind rustled through dead trees and distant fences, the city’s bones creaking under years of abandonment.

Cora walked a few paces ahead, quiet, eyes alert.

Bella kept pace, but her mind wandered.

It always did when she got too close to the signal.

Too close to him .

…

It had smelled sterile.

Like copper and plastic and something worse. Something synthetic pretending to be clean.

Bella’s eyes snapped open to a ceiling that pulsed faintly with pale blue light. She tried to move. She couldn’t. Her arms and legs were splayed out, restrained by bands that looked like glass but hummed faintly with static when she strained against them.

Her mouth was dry. Her head pounded.

She wasn’t on Earth anymore.

The walls of the room were curved and seamless, grown rather than built. A low vibration thrummed under her back. Mechanical, alive.

And then, they arrived.

Three of them. Slender. Towering.

Their skin looked like moss left to rot underwater: wet, wrinkled, a deep swamp green. Each one had a head too large for its neck, swollen and creased, as if their skulls had grown to hold too many thoughts. Their fingers were long and tendril-like, trailing slightly as they moved, and their joints bent wrong in that slow, patient way predators move when there’s no reason to rush.

They all wore identical suits: clean white, high-collared, with blood-red trim down the sides and matching crimson boots that clicked softly on the floor.

Their faces were hideous. Each one seemed to squint permanently, a narrow sliver of obsidian glinting from behind their drooping lids. No noses. No lips. Just the faintest outline of a jaw—and when one of them turned slightly, Bella caught a glimpse of teeth.

Sharp. Serrated. Far too many.

She struggled against her restraints, muscles screaming.

One of them turned toward her and tilted its head like a curious bird. From the front of its collar, a red stalk extended, a smooth, polished mouthpiece, fitted to the curve of its throat. A flicker of static. Then, it spoke.

“Subject appears to be awake,” the translator buzzed in a voice that was flat and artificial, like someone trying to sound polite and missing the mark completely. “Vital signs elevated. Hormone response: aggressive. Breeding stress response confirmed.”

“Fuck you,” Bella snapped, her voice hoarse.

The alien didn’t react.

The second one stepped closer, fingers flexing in the air as if tasting her.

“Subject 13-A shows exceptional pelvic structure. Muscular density within desired range. Reproductive profile: high potential. Uterine elasticity: test group 9-verified.”

Bella thrashed, teeth clenched.

“I swear to God, I’m going to kill every one of you.”

The third one finally leaned down, closer to her face. She smelled it—like ozone and rot. Its eyes opened just a little wider, black slits watching her closely.

“Defiance is useful,” it said. “Hormonal spikes during gestation lead to higher adaptability in offspring. Emotional stress… optimizes development.”

Bella spat in its face.

The spit landed just short of its chin. It didn’t even blink.

Instead, its translator buzzed again.

“Begin preparation.”

The second alien raised its arm. A panel opened from the wall beside them, unfolding like the petals of a metal flower. A mechanical limb emerged: long, thin, and tipped with a humming probe.

Bella’s stomach dropped.

“No! Get the fuck away from me! Do you hear me? Don’t touch me!”

The room didn’t answer.

The probe began to glow.

Bella brought her eyes back into focus. The memory still clung to the edges of her mind like smoke after a fire. She remembered that day too well. Every light. Every sound. Every word they spoke while cutting her open with science.

She glanced at the road ahead, scanning the path as it wound around broken signs and patches of overgrowth. Cora walked a few paces ahead, unaware of the storm swirling behind Bella’s eyes. This stranger who had been more helpful than most. Steady. Capable. Quiet.

Bella looked down at herself.

Her shirt clung to the faint pudge at her stomach. It was barely noticeable, but she felt it. She always felt it. Her breasts remained full even now, heavy from what GRACE had done to her. Her hand touched the soft curve over her ribs. There was still a hollow feeling inside her, even after all this time. A vacuum where something used to live.

The most recent birth had been voluntary. A brahmin calf, of all things. Healthy. Strong. And it had felt good. There were worse things to carry, she told herself. At least that one hadn’t come with the screams.

If there was one true benefit to the mutation, it was that birth no longer hurt. Quite the opposite. GRACE had changed all the rules.

She hoped Cora wouldn’t start asking questions once she learned the truth. Once she learned the one behind it all was real. The alien. Xarnu-Vel.

Just Vel, to her.

She hoped Cora would understand her reason for hunting him. For wanting to end him. Even if it sounded like vengeance. Even if it sounded personal.

Because it was.

But still, her mind wandered.

…

Bella lay on her side in a softly glowing chamber, cradling the sheer weight of her own body. The floor beneath her felt warm, almost alive, pulsing faintly with each of her breaths.

Her belly was enormous.

It rose from her middle like a boulder, round and tight, skin stretched paper-thin and shining with sweat. The shirt they had given her - thin, sleeveless, off-white - barely covered her now. It rode up above her navel, leaving the wide swell of her abdomen exposed. Every breath made it shift. Every twitch from the thing inside made her heart skip.

She wasn’t supposed to be this far along. It hadn’t even been a week.

Her back ached. Her thighs trembled from trying to shift the weight. Even the effort of rolling from one side to the other made her groan. She tried to sit up, but the bulk pulled her back down with a helpless grunt.

Something kicked.

Hard.

She gasped, her whole body tensing. A foot, or maybe a head, dragged against the inside of her belly, slow and deliberate. She could see the movement beneath her skin. It made her want to scream.

But her body didn’t react with fear.

Instead, heat surged low in her spine, coiling in her gut. Her nipples stiffened beneath the shirt, painfully sensitive. Her thighs clenched without her meaning to. Her mouth parted in a quiet, involuntary gasp.

No. No no no. She didn’t want this. Didn’t want to feel anything but disgust. But GRACE didn’t care what she wanted.

It made everything feel good.

Her belly pulsed again, low and tight, like a lover’s hand sliding across her skin. Another kick. A slow stretch from inside.

Bella bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to moan. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of hearing her beg for relief.

The lights overhead dimmed slightly. They always did that when the growth accelerated.

“Subject displays appropriate tactile response,” a voice buzzed from the wall. “Hormonal stimulation remains elevated. Continue gestation monitoring.”

She turned her head away from the sound, squeezing her eyes shut. Her hands trembled as she cupped the underside of her belly, just trying to hold it up. It felt like it might rip from her at any second.

It shifted again, curling deeper inside her, and a wave of warmth spread through her hips.

She couldn’t stop the sound that slipped from her lips.

A soft, choked noise. Not quite pain. Not quite pleasure.

“Fuck you,” she whispered to no one. “I’m not yours.”

The ceiling gave no answer.

And the thing inside her kicked again.

…

The trees lining the road had grown denser now, leaning over the crumbled sidewalk like silent watchers. The sun was low behind the clouds, painting everything in a dull yellow light. The air had that stillness that came before rain or something worse.

Bella kept walking, steps steady, but her thoughts refused to settle.

Her hands had curled into fists again without her noticing.

Cora was just ahead, saying something about spotting the cemetery gates soon. Bella nodded vaguely. She didn’t trust her voice.

The memory of that weight, of her skin pulled tight, of her thighs trembling under the swell of her body, still clung to her like a second skin. But that hadn’t been the worst of it.

Not even close.

The worst part came when the pressure finally broke.

…

Bella lay back in something that cradled her like a lover. The surface pulsed faintly beneath her, warm and alive, like skin stretched over steel. Everything around her was dim and quiet. A low thrum filled the chamber, like the sound of a heartbeat slowed to half speed.

Her body was massive.

Her belly rose like a mountain from the center of her frame, smooth and round and impossibly swollen. The skin was flushed and stretched, gleaming with oil the aliens had rubbed into her earlier. She couldn’t see her legs. She couldn’t move. The weight pinned her in place, limbs limp at her sides, thighs parted on instinct.

She could feel it inside her.

The movement was constant now. Rolling. Stretching. The shape inside shifted from side to side, dragging across the inner walls of her body with slow, pulsing pressure. It was low. Heavy. Ready.

And every movement lit up her nerves like lightning.

Her hips rocked without permission. Her breathing came shallow and fast, chest rising and falling as her body trembled with building need. Her breasts ached. The tips throbbed with every heartbeat. Her belly tightened suddenly, and a low sound escaped her lips.

Not a scream. Not even a cry.

A moan. "Ohhhh, fuck."

She clamped her teeth together, furious with herself, but it didn’t stop the heat crawling up her spine. The contractions weren’t painful. They were soft. Sweet. They came like waves, each one pressing deeper into the fire blooming in her core.

She wanted to fight it. She wanted to scream at the walls, at the machines watching in silence, at the aliens she could not see.

Instead, her legs parted wider.

The pressure shifted again. Lower. Her entire body clenched around it like a reflex. Her hands grasped the edge of the bedding, white-knuckled. A tremor shot through her hips.

And then it began.

That first unbearable urge.

The need to push.

Her body heaved with the effort, and instead of pain, she was hit with a pleasure so sharp and overwhelming she couldn’t breathe. Her mouth opened and a sound tore out of her. Raw. Shaking. Wild.

She screamed.

Not in pain.

In pleasure.

In fear.

In helpless, horrifying release.

"Oh fuck...I'm gonna...Huh, huh, AAAHHHHH!"

Tears blurred her vision. Her back arched. The thing inside her slid lower, slow and perfect, and her body welcomed it without her consent.

She wanted to die.

She wanted it to end.

And somewhere deep inside, her body wanted more.

…

Her thoughts were broken by the sound of Cora’s voice up ahead.

"Hey. I think I see the cemetery coming up."

Bella blinked. Her feet kept moving, but she hadn’t realized where they were. She had been following, eyes glazed, her focus turned inward. Cora had taken the lead somewhere along the road, consulting a worn map of the region she kept folded in her back pocket. They hadn’t said much since the tower. Just the crunch of gravel and the low moan of wind between broken buildings.

Now, the road sloped downward toward a rusted iron gate.

Beyond it stood Calvary Cemetery.

The place was quiet. Not the kind of quiet that felt peaceful. This was the kind that pressed against your skin. The kind that carried the weight of secrets and bones too old to be remembered. Rows of crooked stones jutted up from the ground in irregular lines. The mausoleums stood like gray teeth beneath the sky, stained with moss and cracked with age.

Bella exhaled slowly, pulling herself back into the moment.

Her thoughts dulled. The memories receded to where she kept them locked.

She had mostly made peace with it all by now. GRACE wasn’t going anywhere. There was no serum, no reversal, no cure. Her body had changed permanently, and she had learned to live with it.

Pregnancy no longer hurt. That was something. It felt too good, if anything. And being visibly pregnant had its perks. People offered food. Shelter. Help. Some did it out of kindness, some out of instinct, like she was some rare, sacred thing. Resources came easier when you walked with swollen steps.

And then there were the curves.

She glanced down at herself.

Even not carrying, the changes lingered. Full breasts. Wide hips. An ass that filled out pants better than she liked to admit. She looked like the after of some pre-War pin-up ad. It was strange to say, but she liked how she looked now. That was part of the trap, wasn't it? GRACE gave you what you didn't ask for, and left you to decide if you hated yourself for liking it.

But it didn’t change what had been done.

This was all because an alien - Vel - had treated her, and so many others, like test subjects. Like toys. Like incubators.

Bella couldn’t undo what happened to her. She couldn’t unbirth the creatures, or unlive the pleasure she never wanted. She couldn't get her old body back, or the shame out of her bones.

But she could end him.

She could take everything he did and bury it in the dirt where it belonged.

Her jaw tightened.

She looked at the cemetery again, hand brushing the hilt of her pistol, the tracker device secured in the side of her coat.

One thought burned bright in her chest.

Time to end this motherfucker.

Chapter Text

Calvary had once been the resting place for saints and sinners alike, its rolling hills lined with granite angels and family crypts slowly losing their names to moss and acid rain. Now, it was quiet in the way only old death could be. Trees grew wild through cracked marble. Headstones leaned at wrong angles. Statues wept with streaks of rust. The wrought iron gates still stood, half-eaten by time, their hinges sagging in silence.

The road in had broken down to gravel and ash. Cora walked beside Bella, her rifle slung and boots crunching dead leaves. The tracker in Bella’s hand pulsed with slow, steady light, growing brighter as they approached a sunken mausoleum near the back of the cemetery.

It didn’t look like much. Just a collapsed roof and a rusted steel door, half-sunken into the earth and swallowed by ivy. The name carved above the entrance had worn smooth over time.

Bella stopped in front of it, glanced at Cora, and pushed the door open.

The hinges groaned. The sound echoed down into a stairwell slick with moss and shadow. The air smelled of damp stone and rust, with something else beneath it. Something electric.

They descended in silence, lantern light catching on water-stained walls and broken tiles.

At the bottom, they stepped into what had once been a crypt. The burial alcoves were empty now, hollowed out long ago. A lantern hung above, flickering weakly. Its light fell on something standing in the center of the room.

Cora froze.

It wasn’t human.

It stood just taller than her, its posture slightly hunched. Its skin was a sickly yellow-green, wrinkled and damp-looking. The head was massive and smooth, shaped like an overgrown bulb. No nose. No ears. Just folds of skin where those features should have been. The mouth was a thin seam. The eyes were pitch-black, narrow, and angled up like it was always squinting.

The body was shaped like a man’s, though thinner. The arms were short, but the fingers were long and tapered, more like tendrils than anything else. They twitched and flexed slowly, as if responding to the air itself.

Its legs were surprisingly human. Strong, steady. It wore a white suit fitted to its strange proportions, seams stitched with black piping and unreadable glyphs. On its feet were black boots. Actual boots.

Cora stared. She couldn’t help it.

Aliens wore shoes?

She hadn’t even known aliens were real. Up until now, the idea had been as far away as the sky. Too distant to matter. She had spent her life thinking about bullets, water, and keeping out of sight. There had never been room for anything like this.

Bella stepped forward.

She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t blink. She just smiled like she’d been waiting for this moment for years.

“Guess who’s back, motherfucker.”

The alien turned its head toward them. Slowly. Smoothly. Like it didn’t weigh what it should. Its black eyes locked onto Bella first, then slid toward Cora with a kind of quiet calculation that felt far too human.

Then it spoke.

"Yes, well, chasing you for about five solar cycles is not my typical surroundings. How did you find me?"

The voice was clear. Perfect English. No accent. No mechanical distortion. Just words, shaped cleanly by a mouth that barely moved.

Cora blinked. It didn’t even have lips. How the hell was it speaking?

Bella crossed her arms, cool as ever.

"I'm smarter than you give me credit for."

The alien’s head tilted.

"Apparently so. But you seem to be forgetting you can't hurt me."

"I remember," Bella said. Her tone sharpened. "That's why I brought a friend. Someone without a fucking chip in her head."

The alien’s gaze shifted to Cora. It paused.

"That's... her? Your mate from the desert?"

Bella scoffed.

"No. This one's different."

Cora’s mouth felt dry. Her hand hadn’t left the grip of her rifle, but she wasn’t aiming. Not yet.

What the fuck did I just get myself into?

The alien took a step forward. Not threatening. Just... present. His strange boots scuffed softly against the floor.

"I suspect you want answers," he said to her. "I have those answers. Technology. More than this female could ever offer you. I know she wants you to kill me for her. I want you to walk out. No bloodshed."

Cora’s heart thudded against her ribs. She didn’t have a horse in this race. She’d only just met Bella, and now she was standing between her and an alien she apparently wanted dead. None of this made sense.

"I’d prefer no bloodshed too," Cora said, "but what the fuck is going on?"

Bella stepped forward, jaw tight.

"A while ago, I got captured by Vel. Well, it’s Xarnu-Vel, but I just call him Vel. He experimented on me. And other women. On his ship. He’s the asshole responsible for the breeder mutation."

Cora's brow furrowed.

"I’ve heard people call it GRACE," Bella continued. "To him, it’s just another experiment. Just another phase in his study of humans."

Her voice dropped. The heat in her words sharpened to something cold.

"I endured for so long. And now I want to be sure that this motherfucker never takes another woman again."

The words hit Cora like a rampaging brahmin.

The air in the crypt felt heavier. Not just damp and cold, but weighted, like the walls were holding their breath.

She looked at the alien. Then at Bella. Then back again.

She was in it now.

Like it or not.

Cora kept her rifle lowered but ready, her eyes flicking between the two of them. She could feel the tension, sharp as wire, humming through the air.

She looked at Bella.

“Look, I get why you want him dead. I do. But I don’t even know what the fuck this GRACE thing really is. All I know is that it can make people carry a ghoul and a damn brahmin. And that he,” she nodded toward Vel, “made it.”

Bella’s mouth was a hard line.

Cora kept going.

“If he’s the one who made it, then maybe it makes sense to use him. You know, figure out what the hell it even is before we kill the only…err, person who knows what it is.”

Bella’s grip tightened, but it wasn’t anger this time. Just tension that didn’t have anywhere to go.

“He experimented on me,” she said. “Treated me and other women like fucking lab rats, and you really expect me to let him live?”

Cora took a breath, slow and careful.

“I’m not saying that’s okay. I’m saying I’m not the one who can fix that. But if we kill him now, nobody’s going to learn anything. Not Dr. Harrow. Not Mara. Not anyone.”

Bella looked at her, then at Vel.

“You think putting him in a lab is going to make it better?”

“I don’t know what’s going to make anything better,” Cora said. “But it seems dumb to kill the one person who actually knows what this thing is.”

The silence stretched for a moment.

Vel tilted his head, watching them like someone observing ants argue over a crumb.

Bella finally sighed.

Long and heavy.

“I hate that you’re making sense.”

Cora gave the faintest shrug. “It happens sometimes.”

Bella looked at Vel again. There was no fear in her face anymore. Just that edge of frustration, like someone being forced to talk to a cousin they couldn’t stand at a reunion.

“You can thank the chip in my skull. If it weren’t there, you’d be a smear on the wall by now.”

Vel didn’t respond.

Bella turned back to Cora, her expression cooling.

“Fine. Do it before I change my mind.”

She lowered her weapon, slow and deliberate.

Cora finally turned to Vel.

“You’re going to Gateway. The lab’s under what’s left of a giant metal arch. Big, broken, hard to miss. You don’t talk to anyone unless they work there. You don’t leave. Not until the doctors say otherwise.”

Vel gave a faint nod.

“Understood.”

He raised one long hand, and light flickered along his suit in a strange, pulsing rhythm.

Before Cora could say anything, Bella cut in.

"Wait," Bella said suddenly. "I want to stop at my place first."

Cora glanced at her.

"You have a place?"

"In Gateway. Near the comms tower. Third level. If those bastards threw my stuff out, someone’s going to pay."

She looked at Vel again.

"You can jump us there, right?"

"Yes," Vel replied. "I have your previous residence coordinates. Stand by."

"Wait. What do you mean, jump?" Cora asked. She took a step back, suddenly unsure.

But it was too late.

Light snapped inward like the air itself had clenched. Cora felt heat on her skin, a strange pulling in her bones, and a moment where her body felt like it wasn’t exactly there anymore.

…

They landed in dirt.

Cora blinked hard, her stomach rolling. Her boots had sunk slightly into loose soil, not rubble or tile like she'd expected. The air was humid and earthy, thick with the smell of compost and old metal.

They were indoors. Kind of.

The room around them was wide and open, walls pieced together from mismatched steel plates and weathered glass. Half the ceiling had been patched with translucent tarp, letting a dull light spill in across the space. Rows of messy garden plots ran across the floor in no real pattern. Just wherever there had been room for dirt.

Mutfruit vines twisted around exposed pipework. Tatoes poked out of cracked planters. Everything looked half-grown and overwatered.

Cora turned, confused. It looked like someone had tried to build a greenhouse inside a bunkhouse.

Bella stared. Her hands dropped to her sides, fingers curling into fists.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered. "Six weeks. I was gone six weeks."

Vel tilted his head slowly, scanning the interior like it was a specimen on a tray.

"Interesting choice of interior. How would you describe it? Continental? Temporal?"

"Shut it, green bag," Bella snapped. She kicked aside a bucket overflowing with wet soil. "They trashed my house. Why do they trash my house every time I'm out for a bit?"

"Given your odds of returning..."

"Shut up. You still owe me for when Rivet City trashed my room."

"A sacrifice for scientific progress."

Vel turned his black eyes toward Cora.

"Speaking of which, I believe I have doctors to meet."

Cora stepped carefully between a pair of cracked pots. One of them had some kind of sprouting fungus in it. She didn’t want to know.

Bella motioned vaguely toward the door.

"Yeah, take this green slob to the doc, please. I gotta clean this shit up."

Cora nodded, then looked back at her.

"You gonna be alright here?"

"I’ve had worse roommates than rogue gardeners. Just don’t let Harrow get weird about Vel’s face."

Vel raised his hand again.

Cora felt the air pull tight around her chest.

She still didn’t understand what teleportation was. She wasn’t sure anyone did. It didn’t feel like moving. It felt like being unmade, like every bone and breath had been turned into dust and scattered sideways through a hole in the world.

Her stomach turned as the light closed in.

Just before they vanished, she caught one last look at Bella, standing barefoot in her ruined greenhouse, hands on her hips, muttering something too low to hear.

And then Bella was gone.

So was the dirt.

And the plants.

And the light.

…

Cora blinked through the static haze and stumbled as her boots hit solid ground again. The air here was cooler. Drier. Smelled faintly of sterilizer and soldered copper.

They were back in the lab.

Warehouse C-3 was exactly as she remembered it. A squat, repurposed storage unit tucked into Gateway’s central platform, cluttered with jury-rigged medical gear, cobbled-together monitoring equipment, and a single bed shoved against the far wall.

Mara was inside. She turned fast at the sound, clutching her swollen belly with both hands.

“Ah! Oh god. I think I just peed a little,” she said, breath catching. “What on earth is that?”

Cora raised a hand, as if that would help.

“I found your Wraith, Mara,” she said. “And also a woman named Bella.”

Mara’s expression twisted in confusion, then surprise.

“Bella’s in the area? Wait... the Belle Wraith? How did I not know that was her?”

“She was holed up in the Central West End apartments,” Cora said. “Wanted Vel here dead.”

Mara let out a sigh.

“Ah, that temper of hers. She was keen on being a breeder when I last saw her.”

From behind the monitor, Dr. Harrow stood slowly, eyes wide and fixed on the alien.

“And this... I knew GRACE had alien origins, but I never imagined I’d actually meet one.”

Vel stepped forward with the slow, deliberate motion of someone entering a zoo enclosure.

“Yes. My name is Xarnu-Vel. Some humans have shortened it to just Vel. I understand that there are doctors studying the mutation. And that you’ve taken to calling it... GRACE.”

Harrow nodded.

“Yes. That’s correct. It stands for Genetic Reproductive Acceleration and Containment Expression. I’m Elias Harrow, and this is Dr. Mara Kelso. I’ve been researching it for around ten years.”

“I’m in the same boat,” Mara said. “Though I have... firsthand experience.”

Vel turned his head toward her, expression unreadable.

“I see. I’ve been working on it ever since the humans destroyed your planet two hundred years ago.”

Cora blinked. That piece landed heavy.

Mara blinked too, but kept her voice steady.

“It’s been around that long? Well... I was hoping you could give us some answers.”

She paused, then turned to Cora with a small smile.

“But first... I can’t believe you found it. I know payment wasn’t officially on the table when you went after him, but I figured you earned a reward.”

She reached beneath the cluttered table and pulled out a heavy pouch, then handed it to Cora.

“I believe this is a thousand. Oh, and take some stimpaks too. I’ve got plenty of those. Please.”

Cora took the bag and the supplies, trying not to look as surprised as she felt.

“I don’t know what to say. Thanks.”

“You’re an angel,” Mara said. “You probably saved us years of work.”

Cora looked down at the caps, then back at Vel.

Cora leaned against the wall near the entrance as Vel and the doctors moved deeper into the lab. The conversation was already turning technical. Something about chromosomal destabilization and metabolic acceleration curves. She caught the words “womb adaptation” and “nutrient modulation” before her brain politely checked out.

She didn’t care how it worked.

She just knew it did.

Her hand drifted to the pouch on her belt. Heavy. Probably a full thousand caps, just like Mara said. Enough for ammo, supplies, maybe even a proper rifle upgrade if she was smart about where she shopped.

She slipped out quietly as the others kept talking, the door hissing shut behind her.

The walk back through the central platform felt familiar now. The buzz of generators. The clang of lifts echoing down the steel supports. The smell of fried meat and old engine grease.

And still, in the back of her mind, a thought stuck like a sliver.

Twelve thousand caps.

That had been the bounty on Bella’s head. Big enough to raise eyebrows even in Gateway. And now… maybe it didn’t matter. They’d probably killed every Crimson Fang who cared about collecting it. If anyone was still looking, they’d think twice after what happened in that apartment building.

Still.

Cora knew better than to count on luck.

She turned toward the upper levels, boots tapping lightly on the stairs. Bella had looked furious when they left her place. Rightfully so. Cora figured she should check in. Just to make sure the woman wasn’t knee-deep in scrap with a flamethrower.

And maybe, just maybe, because she wanted to.

Bella was strange. Intense. A little dangerous.

But in a world like this, that made her feel oddly familiar.

Cora adjusted the strap across her shoulder and kept walking.

Time to see how the Wraith was doing.

Cora pushed open the door to Bella’s greenhouse apartment and stepped inside. The place still smelled like wet soil and recycled air, but the chaos had been trimmed back. Bella was down on one knee near the far wall, surrounded by tangled tubing and overturned planters. A bundle of half-sprouted mutfruit sat beside her, dirt still clinging to the roots.

Bella looked up, sweat dampening the ends of her hair.

“Hey. Look who’s back.” She grinned faintly. “Here to help clear out twenty bundles of mutfruit, or just enjoying the show?”

Cora leaned against the frame and gave a small shrug.

“Maybe a little of both,” she said. “I didn’t really stick around for the science-y stuff.”

“Can’t blame you,” Bella muttered, reaching for a wrench. “You should’ve been on Vel’s ship when they had me. I heard so many words I’d never heard before. Might as well have been another language.”

She twisted the wrench once, then paused, glancing up again.

“You know, I wanted to thank you.”

Cora stepped inside, her boots crunching faintly on stray soil. “For what?”

“For helping me find Vel. And for... not killing him.”

Cora raised an eyebrow. “You seemed pretty dead set on killing him.”

“I know,” Bella said quietly. She set the wrench down beside her and sat back on her heels. “But after thinking about it... you were right. You could’ve shot him dead right there in that basement. And then what? I would’ve walked out, sure, but I’d still feel hollow inside.”

Cora crossed her arms. “Well, at least his brain’s being used for not kidnapping women now.”

Bella snorted. “Yeah, I guess. Small victories.”

A pause settled between them, quiet and not uncomfortable.

“So listen,” Bella said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Can I admit something?”

Cora nodded. “Sure.”

“I’ve been... alone for a long while,” Bella said. Her voice lost a little of its usual sharpness. “And you look like you can handle yourself. You helped me, and I feel like it’s only right for me to help you. So... if you’re up for it, I can tag along. Watch your back out there.”

Cora gave her a long look, weighing it for a moment.

“I wouldn’t mind the company,” she said finally. “You retiring this ‘Wraith’ thing you’ve got going on?”

Bella chuckled under her breath. “To be fair, it was the Fangs and locals who gave me that nickname. I guess I just live up to it.”

“Well, sure,” Cora said. “I wouldn’t mind having someone at my back. But wouldn’t people still come after you if that bounty’s still up?”

Bella stood and wiped her hands on a rag.

“Besides the Fangs, no one really knows both my face and name. And I think we killed most of the ones who put the bounty up in the first place. So no, I don’t think anyone’s coming.”

Cora nodded. “Good enough for me.”

Bella grinned. “Sweet. You mind sticking around for a bit? I’ve got this pipe that needs two people to lift, and you just volunteered.”

Cora sighed and stepped closer.

“And you were doing so well,” she muttered.

Bella laughed and handed her the end of the pipe.

For the first time in a long while, Cora didn’t mind the weight.

By the time the women decided to call it quits, Bella’s greenhouse apartment looked... almost livable.

Most of the trash was cleared, the soil sorted, and the busted irrigation lines mostly patched. Some of the mutfruit even stood upright again. But it still smelled like mildew and unwashed tarp, and there was a weird stain under the cot that neither of them had volunteered to investigate.

Bella stepped back and dusted off her hands.

“Well,” she said, “that was good work. I’d say we deserve a good meal. The good shit.”

Cora raised an eyebrow. “Such as...?”

Bella only grinned and jerked her head toward the door. “Come on.”

They wound through Gateway’s back alleys and bypassed the main strip of the market, taking a few side stairs until the noise dulled behind them. Eventually, they ended up at a squat little food stand tucked beside a rusted-out building, barely more than a steel plate on a frame with a canopy overhead.

A man stood behind a grill fashioned from a cleaned-out trash can, the lid propped open and the fire inside giving off just enough smoke to smell like real wood. The grill looked... clean-ish. Cleaner than it had any right to be, given what it was.

The guy manning it nodded in greeting. Weathered face, kind eyes, big hands used to work. He didn’t ask questions.

Bella ordered for both of them, pulled out a few crumpled caps from a pouch on her hip, and paid without blinking.

Two plates. Real brahmin steak. Potatoes, even. Grilled. Salted. Cooked until they had a crust.

They sat at one of the folding tables nearby, legs uneven and rocking on the concrete, and started eating.

“I have to admit,” Bella said, halfway through a bite. “It’s been a while since I just sat and ate. I spent so much time eating absolute shit. Cram. Way-spoiled Sugar Bombs. And don’t get me started on MREs. You ever had one of the chili mac ones? Might as well chew on rubber with regret.”

Cora snorted, chewing on a chunk of steak that was surprisingly tender. “Sounds about right.”

Bella continued, her tone softening. “I had to eat quick. Keep moving. Stay low. Couldn’t risk lighting a fire or cracking a can too loud in the wrong place. But now... with most of the Fangs who were after me gone, I finally feel like I can fucking relax.”

“Fair,” Cora said, taking a swig of water cut with something a little stronger. “I just eat what I can carry most days. When I’m in Linwood, I help hunt once a week. Whole town’s gotta pitch in to stay fed.”

“Linwood,” Bella said, nodding. “That the trainyard settlement?”

“Yeah,” Cora replied. “Kind of held together with stubbornness and barbed wire. But it’s home.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, the sounds of the alley softening around them. The air was warm. The steak was greasy in the right ways. The potatoes were barely salted but hot enough to count as luxury.

Eventually, as the grill fire died down and the vendor packed up his things, Bella leaned back and stretched.

“We should probably call it,” she said. “I know a place. There’s a motel near the upper platforms. The one with the busted neon sign.”

“I stayed there before heading to St. Marrow,” Cora said. “Sheets were clean and the water was... almost clear.”

“Sounds like a five-star review to me,” Bella said with a smirk.

They stood, plates empty, heads a little lighter. Two women who had spent most of their lives eating on the run and sleeping with weapons in hand, now full for the first time in a while.

…

Cora woke up lighter than she usually did.

No sharp panic. No stiffness from sleeping half-upright in a cramped train car bunk. No frantic scan of the room for danger.

Just stillness. Warmth. The quiet hum of an old ventilation fan struggling to do its job.

She let out a slow breath and gave a small smile.

She had caps, a job well done behind her, and a new traveling partner.

Things were... good. Or close enough.

She sat up slowly, sheets pooling at her waist, her body wrapped in just her underclothes: a loose, sun-faded shirt that doubled as a bra and a pair of briefs that had seen better stitching. Her armor and usual gear were scattered in the room: shirt draped over the back of a chair, coat folded over the end of the bed, pants and belt lying in a lazy heap near the wall. Holsters still full.

The room wasn’t much. One bed. One nightstand. A basin in the corner. Stains on the wall and a single bulb overhead that flickered if you looked at it too long. But it was safe. It felt safe. At least for now.

Her weapons were where she’d left them, lined up near the bed. Her laser pistol, sleek, unfamiliar, and heavier than it looked. She still hadn’t figured out how to shoot it properly. It might be worth learning, now that she wasn’t being shot at.

Next to it sat the rifle she’d bought the last time she passed through Gateway. Serviceable. Clean. Reliable enough.

And finally, her Brimstone.

The 9mm had been with her longer than anything else. Scratched up, grips worn smooth, but it shot straight. It had saved her life too many times to count. She reached over and ran her fingers along the slide out of habit.

She leaned back, letting her head rest against the wall.

Bella.

That part still felt strange. Not bad. Just... new.

Cora had never had a partner. Not one who stuck. People passed through. Hunters. Couriers. The occasional scavs. Maybe they’d share a fire, a job, a fight. But by dawn, most were gone. And that was fine, expected.

The closest thing she’d had to a crew were the other hunters in Linwood. Same folks out every week, same patrols, same arguments. Familiar, but not... this.

Bella had gone through hell. And still wanted to help. Wanted to come with her.

It meant something.

Cora didn’t know what that was yet. But she could try to pay it back.

Even if it was just watching Bella’s back in return.

She pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged on the bed, listening to the hum of the old pipes and the distant clang of someone working outside. For the first time in a long while, she wasn’t in a rush to get moving.

She had time.

And someone to spend it with.

Cora dressed slow, the motel room dim and still holding the warmth from the night. She strapped on her gear: shirt, pants, coat, belt, holsters. She’d cleaned her Brimstone before bed, and the pistol slid back into place on her thigh like it belonged there. It did.

She wasn’t in a rush, but her feet took her to Bella’s room anyway.

Old habits. Check your people. Make sure they’re still breathing.

She knocked lightly. A rusted squeak came from the hinges as the door cracked open a few seconds later.

Bella stood there, eyes half-closed, hair a wild, tangled mess that looked like she’d gone three rounds with a deathclaw in her sleep. She was still in her underclothes: an actual bra and matching panties, faded black and stubbornly intact.

Cora blinked and, just for a second, wondered where she’d gotten them. The Wasteland didn’t usually allow for stylish underthings.

Bella rubbed at one eye with the back of her hand and groaned.

“Urrghhh... Cor, it’s super early. What’s the hurry?”

Cora raised an eyebrow and leaned against the doorframe.

“Umm, nothing. I just thought the almighty Wraith might be up... and, you know, not naked right now.”

Bella cracked one eye open, too tired to smirk.

“Well, don’t stare too hard. I still like my beauty sleep... shhh...”

Cora chuckled. “I figured we should eat before the stands fill up.”

Bella made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a death threat.

“It usually dies down in a few hours,” she mumbled. “I’m up by then.”

Cora didn’t move.

She stood there. Patient. Calm. Weapon-loaded stare without a word.

Bella squinted at her like she could set her on fire by willpower alone, then finally groaned louder.

“Fineee... give me ten minutes.”

Cora gave a small, satisfied nod.

“Take your time.”

Ten minutes passed. Or thereabouts. It wasn’t like there were clocks.

Bella’s door creaked open again. This time, she was dressed, gear slung across her back, coat half-buttoned, knife strapped to her boot, and her suppressed pistol holstered tight to her hip. The shadows under her eyes had faded a little.

She looked like herself again.

“Hope you’re not going off and taking more jobs this early,” she muttered.

Cora shrugged. “You never know.”

Bella squinted at her. “Ugh. You’re worse than my ex.”

Cora smiled as she fell into step beside her.

Gateway was beginning to stir as Cora and Bella made their way through the upper levels toward the market. Lights flickered on above stalls, vendors shuffled crates into position, and the smell of rehydrated eggs and pan-fried meat began to drift through the metal walkways. Morning in the Wasteland.

Their path took them past Dr. Harrow’s lab, Warehouse C-3. Quiet at first glance, the same squat steel box it had always been.

Then they heard it.

A groan, followed by a sharp, breathless moan.

“Oh! Ohh! Fuck!”

Cora stopped mid-step. Bella turned slowly, eyebrows raised.

“Uhh...” Bella said, tilting her head. “Is someone fucking this early? You do realize these warehouses have paper-thin walls. Ugh. It better be good if she’s making that much noise.”

They paused.

Another long moan rang out, followed by a muffled shout.

“Yes! Oh, it’s so big! Ohhhh fuck, it’s coming!”

Cora’s stomach did a slow, weird flip.

“Wait a minute,” she said, blinking. “I think I know who that is.”

Bella gave her a sidelong look.

“There’s been a woman seeing Dr. Harrow,” Cora continued. “One of his patients. Mara said she was carrying a brahmin. And she mentioned GRACE pregnancies can be... ecstatic.”

Bella blinked, then grinned like someone recalling an old memory.

“Ah, I should’ve known. Brahmin do feel pretty good coming out.”

Cora made a face. “Please don’t make me lose my appetite before breakfast.”

Bella leaned a little closer to the wall, her grin widening.

“You wanna watch?”

Cora turned to her, horrified. “Wait, what? Bella, we can’t just barge in and—”

“It’ll be fine,” Bella said casually. “I bet the doctors won’t mind us doing a... scientific observation.”

Cora stared at her, caught between protest and morbid curiosity. The sounds from inside were louder now: wet, rhythmic, raw. There was no mistaking what was happening.

She hesitated.

Hard.

One: she was about to walk in on someone giving birth. Two: that someone was giving birth to a fucking brahmin. But... some strange part of her did want to see it. Not for the spectacle. Well, not entirely, but because she didn’t understand any of this, and maybe seeing it would make it feel more real.

“Fuck it,” she muttered. “Fine. But you’re buying breakfast.”

Bella smirked, already reaching for the door.

“That’s fine with me.”

The door creaked open, and Cora stepped into a room that looked nothing like it had yesterday.

Much of the lab equipment had been cleared. Monitors unplugged, tables pushed aside. What remained had been clustered to the bedside: IVs rigged from scavenged med-lines, clean towels folded with military precision, and a few strange instruments Cora didn’t recognize at all.

Dr. Harrow stood at the woman’s side, his sleeves rolled up, voice low and calm. Mara, visibly pregnant herself, sat just beyond the edge of the bed, one hand resting on her own belly, the other gripping a clipboard. Vel watched from a distance, his long fingers folded, his expression unreadable.

And there, propped up by a nest of old pillows, lay the blonde woman Cora had seen before, always in Dr. Harrow’s care, always quiet.

Now she was far from quiet.

Her pre-war dress, somehow still white and laundered, was hiked up to just cover her breasts. Below it, her belly surged outward. Huge, trembling, and almost impossible to believe. It rose high on her torso, lifting her breasts slightly, and curved down so far it nearly touched her thighs.

Cora had seen mutated bodies in the Wastes. She’d seen bloating, distension, sickness, but never like this. Never someone so full who looked this... blissful.

The woman let out another moan, low and heavy.

“Ohhh... oh fuck... oh it’s moving…still kicking…ohhh... yesss...”

Bella, beside her, was already smirking.

Cora, on the other hand, hovered in the doorway, half-frozen, not quite horrified, not quite curious. Both.

Dr. Harrow glanced up briefly, nodding at their arrival.

Mara turned and offered a tired smile. “Hey. You two can watch. But she’s about to start pushing. Unless you want to help, Bella?”

Bella stepped forward without hesitation, already rolling her sleeves.

“Sure. You helped with some of mine.” She crouched beside the bed, gently placing her hand on the swollen curve of the woman’s stomach. “It’s going to be alright, sweet thing. Feels good, huh?”

The woman arched slightly, her hands gripping the sheets.

“Ohhh yes... yes, I feel it right there... every contraction is…Oh fuck! Another one!”

Cora winced at the sound. The noises weren’t screams. They were intense. Erotic. Euphoric. Each breathy gasp came soaked in pleasure, layered with instinct.

Bella nodded, feeling the taut skin flex and ripple under her palm.

“Perfect, darling,” she said, voice low, coaxing. “You’re stretching beautifully. I think it’s about time to start pushing. Don’t you think, Mara?”

Mara nodded, checking the woman’s vitals. “Her dilation looks ideal. She’s ready.”

Another long moan filled the room. It started high and tapered off into a whimper.

Cora swallowed hard, still rooted in place. Her hand brushed the grip of her Brimstone out of habit. There was no threat here, but the sheer alienness of the moment pressed in around her.

She didn’t understand this.

But part of her didn’t want to look away.

Bella crouched lower beside the bed, her eyes narrowing with focus. She glanced down between the woman’s legs, watching the tension build beneath the slick stretch of skin. It was wet. Soaked, really, not just from the broken water, but from something else, something thicker. Fluid glistened on Bonnie’s inner thighs, streaking down across the blanket.

Cora tried not to stare, but she couldn't help it. The human body wasn’t supposed to do this. Not like this.

“Ohhh fuck,” the blonde moaned, arching her back slightly, her arms gripping the bedding tight. “It’s... right... there! I gotta push!”

Mara leaned in beside Bella, her hand resting gently on the woman’s thigh as she checked the dilation again.

“You’re right there, Bonnie,” Mara said calmly. “On the next contraction, you push. Hard, you hear me?”

Bonnie nodded, sweat clinging to her brow, her hair sticking in golden strands to her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow gasps.

Bella looked up, her voice suddenly soft, almost teasing.

“Here comes the best part.”

Bonnie whimpered, eyes glassy. “Ohh fuck... am I gonna tear?”

Dr. Harrow, still positioned near the table, gave a small, reassuring nod.

“You’ve been... well-lubricated down there since the last time I examined you. It should slide right out.”

Bella’s tone turned soothing again, coaxing her forward.

“You’ve been doing great, hon. Just like that. Now let go. Push.”

Bonnie grit her teeth, then lifted her legs, tucked her knees toward her belly and bore down with a long, guttural cry that spilled from her throat like a wave.

Cora felt her heart race.

Not from fear.

But from sheer awe.

Cora stood near the corner of the lab, half-shadowed by the open shelving where a tray of unused instruments sat untouched. From here, she couldn’t see everything. Bella’s crouched figure blocked most of the view, but she saw enough.

Bonnie's body writhed in the nest of blankets and pillows, her massive belly rising and falling with each breath, glistening with sweat and something thicker. Her legs were spread, knees drawn up, arms gripping the bedding like she might tear through it.

Then came the next wave.

“ARGHHH! Fuck! YES! YES!” Bonnie cried out, the sound so full it echoed off the steel walls.

Cora flinched, just slightly. It wasn’t pain. That wasn’t what she was hearing. It was something far more complicated. More raw.

Mara leaned in, her voice calm but alert.

“Yes, Bon, perfect. You’re doing perfectly. Let the head stretch you open steadily... oh! I think I’m starting to see it!”

Bonnie collapsed back into the pillows with a gasp. Her hands slid to her belly, trembling.

“Fuck... it feels so... good.”

Cora shifted her weight, gripping the strap across her chest. This was the weirdest damn thing she’d ever witnessed. But she couldn’t look away.

Mara nodded, one hand on Bonnie’s belly.

“I did tell you brahmin births felt ecstatic,” she said. “Now, on the next contraction. Push again.”

There was a pause, just a breath in the middle of the storm, then Mara’s hand stiffened.

“Oh, your belly’s gone rock hard. Now, on three, you give me a hard push. One, two, three... PUSH!”

Bonnie braced herself and pushed again, her face twisting with the sheer effort and sensation.

Cora saw her body ripple. Heard the grunt and the wet stretch of something moving.

But then Mara’s tone shifted, surprised.

“Wait…”

Whatever was emerging slipped back inward with a slow, obscene wetness.

Bonnie gasped and nearly sobbed. Not from pain, but from pleasure.

“Ohhh fuck! Do it again... please…again!”

The pushing turned into a rhythm. A cycle. Bonnie would bear down, the head slipping forward, only for it to slide back just a little as she relaxed. Again. Again.

It was driving her wild.

Cora’s face burned hot. She didn’t know whether to be amazed or appalled. Bonnie looked... rapturous. Gone. She was riding this wave like it was sex and salvation rolled into one.

“Bon,” Mara said firmly, setting a hand on her thigh, “I know it feels good, but we need to let the head stretch you naturally. You still have another head and a whole body to come out. Another hard push on the next contraction, okay?”

Bonnie moaned and nodded, dazed and flushed, her chest rising with short, panting breaths.

“Breathe, Bon,” Mara reminded her gently. “You're doing so well.”

The room held its breath.

Bonnie’s didn’t. Not for long. Her belly clenched again, visibly tightening beneath the slick sheen of fluid and sweat.

“Ohh…oh fuck, it’s starting again! Ahhh, yes, it’s happening!”

Her voice hitched on the last word, her back arching as the next contraction took hold. Her hands curled into fists, and she pushed, her entire body folding in on itself with effort and need.

The sound that followed was unlike anything Cora had heard before.

A wet slrrrp, a gush of fluid as something finally gave.

Bonnie cried out. Loud, wild, her moans soaked in sensation.

“Ahhh! Fuuuuck! YES! It’s coming, it’s coming. Oh god I’m coming!” Her voice cracked. “It’s so big! Oh fuck it’s right there…YESSSS!”

Something thick and round pushed free between her legs in a slow, straining slide. A pale shape, slick and bulbous, emerged into the open beneath Bella’s hands.

Cora couldn’t see all of it, but she saw enough. A curve of bone. Rounded, glistening flesh. No horns, thank god.

Bella’s eyes lit up with something between reverence and amusement.

“Well, hello there, big guy,” she murmured, brushing a bit of fluid away with practiced care.

Bonnie fell back against the pillows, gasping. Her chest heaved, breasts rising high on her belly, nipples taut and flushed. Her thighs trembled with aftershocks, still wet and shaking.

“Ohh god...” she moaned, lips barely forming the words. “It feels so good... so full...”

Mara nodded, steady as ever. “You’re doing beautifully, Bon. The first head is out. That’s the hardest part.”

Bonnie shivered, her hips still twitching. “I want to... keep going. I want more...”

“Not yet,” Mara said firmly, placing a calming hand on her belly. “Let your body rest for a moment. You’ll need your strength. There’s still the second head. And the body.”

Bonnie’s breathing slowed, at least for a moment. Her chest rose and fell in deep, heaving waves, sweat shining across her skin. Her hands rested on her belly, fingers splayed across the swollen curve that had shifted slightly now, as though the massive shape inside her had realigned.

Cora could see just enough past Bella’s shoulder to spot the first head, crowned between Bonnie’s thighs, wet and motionless, pressed against her like some unholy secret half-whispered.

And still, Bonnie moaned.

Low. Needy. Almost disappointed the contractions had dulled.

Then Mara’s voice cut through gently. “Alright, Bonnie. That break’s over. I can feel the next head shifting down. It’s time.”

Bonnie whimpered. “Yes... yes, I can feel it... oh fuck, it’s bigger... it’s pushing dooown…”

Her words broke as another contraction slammed through her, and her voice turned into a guttural scream laced with something very much like bliss.

“AHH FUCK! YESSS! It’s coming again!”

She pushed hard, her hips pressing down into the soaked bedding, thighs quaking, whole body shaking. Cora could hear the tension in every tendon.

Bella glanced back briefly, amused and utterly unsurprised. “That’s it, sweet thing. I know that stretch anywhere.”

Then Cora saw it.

The second head.

Wider. Heavier. The bulge beneath Bonnie’s belly rolled forward visibly before it began its descent.

Bonnie’s scream cracked into a moan.

“Oh god oh god I’m—ohhh FUCK I’M COMING!”

Cora flinched as the moan broke into a full-body cry, half sob, half orgasm, Bonnie shuddering under the force of it. The head slid forward, followed by another gush of warm, milky fluid that soaked the bed beneath her.

It was obscene.

It was... beautiful?

Cora didn’t know what to think anymore.

She stood still in the corner of the room, arms crossed so tightly across her chest she felt her nails pressing into her skin.

This was wrong.

And yet...

Bonnie looked radiant. Flushed, ecstatic, her voice cracked and breathless, her body still locked in the middle of a contraction that brought her both release and labor.

Cora swallowed hard.

She’d always figured births were bloody and loud and painful. She never imagined they’d sound like this. Like sex, like euphoria, like surrender.

And somewhere inside her, something small asked:

Would it feel like that for me, too?

She shut her eyes, just for a second.

Bonnie collapsed back again, gasping, her belly deflating slightly between the two massive rounded heads now nestled between her legs.

Mara wiped Bonnie’s brow with a clean cloth and whispered, “You’re almost there. Just the body now.”

Bonnie giggled, dazed and wild-eyed. “I think I just saw stars.”

Bella chuckled. “Second head always does it.”

Cora said nothing.

She didn’t trust her voice.

Bonnie writhed in the bedding, her legs trembling, the second head still nestled between them, motionless for the moment. Her hands clutched the edges of the bed. The air in the lab felt thick, too quiet between moans, the silence held in anticipation.

Mara leaned forward again, her voice low and steady. “Bon, body’s coming next. You’re almost there. It’s big, but your body’s should handle it. You’re doing great.”

Bonnie moaned in response. “Oh god... I can feel it... so big... so full...”

Cora swallowed. Her heart was pounding. She wasn’t even sure why. Maybe it was the pressure of the room. Or the tension in the woman's voice. Or the surreal sight in front of her, where no part of this made sense but none of it felt wrong to anyone else.

Mara gently guided her. “On the next contraction, push. It's long. It's heavy. You’ll need to go hard.”

Bonnie took a few shallow breaths. Then came the squeeze.

“AHHHH! FUCK IT’S TOO MUCH! IT’S TOO BIG!”

She pushed hard, crying out as her entire body flexed. The front hooves began to appear, slick and dark, emerging slowly past her stretched entrance. They were sharp at the tips, heavy with the weight behind them.

Cora’s stomach turned for a moment. The image of hooves, hard hooves, coming from a human woman felt impossible. Like it should tear her apart. But it didn’t. It just slid. Slowly. Heavily. As if her body had been built to handle it.

Bonnie screamed again.

“OH FUCK I CAN FEEL IT MOVING THROUGH ME! IT'S STILL COMING! OH GOD!”

The long barrel of the body followed, each inch a slow strain. She shuddered, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Her belly visibly collapsed as the bulk inside her slid forward.

Then came the udder.

Thick. Dense. Almost bulbous. It hit resistance the moment it reached the edge of her body, forcing Bonnie to arch her back and cry out.

“FUCK! IT’S STUCK! OH FUCK IT’S STUCK I CAN FEEL IT STRETCHING ME!”

Bella was by her side again, calm and experienced.

“You’re doing so good, sweet thing. That’s the udder. You’ll feel it stretch. You’ll feel it pop. Breathe through it, then give one more hard push.”

Bonnie whimpered, wild-eyed. “I want it out…I want it out. I’m so fucking close…”

Mara checked her again. “You’ve got this. Push. Everything you’ve got.”

Bonnie screamed again, louder this time, and bore down with everything she had.

The udder slid forward with a thick, slurping resistance that made Cora’s stomach flip. The size of it was obscene. Wide, soft, like it shouldn't fit. But it did. Inch by trembling inch.

Then with one final push…

“YESSSSS! OH FUCK I’M CUMMING AGAIN! YESSSSS! OH! HAH, HAHH, AAAAHHH”

…it slipped free.

Bonnie collapsed back, shaking, legs still wide, sobbing and laughing and gasping for breath. The rear hooves slid out after, a final, wet slide that left the bedding soaked and sagging.

Cora could finally see it now.

The calf.

Whole. Wet. Real.

Half of it still attached to Bonnie by a thick umbilical cord, pulsing faintly between her and the calf. For a moment, it didn’t move.

Then the tiny creature let out a soft, sputtering breath.

Bonnie looked down through tears and haze, a slow, breathless laugh escaping her.

“Oh god... oh god I did it... he’s beautiful...”

Cora didn’t move.

She didn’t blink. Didn’t speak. She just stood there, eyes fixed on the bed, watching as Bonnie lay back, still gasping, legs slack and trembling. The brahmin calf lay between her knees, slick and warm and alive, its umbilical cord still pulsing faintly.

It was real.

A real calf. Born from a real woman.

Born with joy. Born with screaming, yes, but not from pain. From something else: Pure, raw, and sheer ecstasy. 

Dr. Harrow stepped forward, gloves slick and glistening, his face calm but flushed with focus.

“Well,” he said, wiping his hands with a cloth. “Congratulations, Bonnie. It’s a healthy brahmin calf.”

Bonnie let out a breathless laugh, her head lolling to one side, her body still twitching from aftershocks. Her voice came slow and slurred, still dreamy with the high.

“I still... I still can’t believe I did that.”

“You did beautifully,” Mara said, reaching over to adjust a towel beneath her. “Just breathe. Let your body come down slowly.”

Bonnie nodded, eyes fluttering half-shut. Her legs still hung apart, too weak to close. Her chest rose and fell in deep, heavy waves, and between the shifting fabric of her dress, Cora could see milk beginning to bead at her nipples.

Her chest was massive. Swollen. Ready.

And she still looked pregnant.

Cora felt like her feet were cemented to the floor.

A brahmin. A whole damn brahmin had just come out of a woman. And she had loved it. All of it.

Not tolerated. Not endured.

Loved.

Vel watched from the corner, his large eyes narrowed thoughtfully, his long fingers folded behind his back. He murmured something in his language, then jotted notes onto a small slate.

“Once the calf is cleaned,” Dr. Harrow said, “we’ll introduce it to the pen. One of the adult females should accept it easily. We’ve done this a few times before. It should integrate without issue.”

Bonnie let out another half-laugh, half-sigh.

“I don’t know if I want to do that again,” she mumbled, voice hoarse. “But... holy shit, did it feel good.”

Bella chuckled from her crouch beside the bed.

“That’s what they always say.”

Bonnie didn’t respond right away. Her head lolled back. Her body sagged into the bedding. Her eyes closed.

Her chest continued to leak.

The room was filled with the smell of heat and milk and afterbirth.

Cora finally took a step back. Her fingers were tight around the strap of her rifle. She looked at Bella, who just smiled and wiped her hands on a towel.

None of this was normal.

But somehow, in this strange little lab tucked under the bones of a fallen world, it was.

Cora didn’t know what the hell she had just walked into.

But she had the sense that her life wasn’t going to feel normal again for a long, long time.