>>6328361
There aren’t any windows in the vault. The only indication of dawn is the sound of Harper’s watch, and your modem’s internal chronometer trumpeting an alarm. Both of you are stiff and sore, bodies craving sunlight you won’t get until you’re out of the PRC.

You stretch, brushing dust and grit from your arms, and make yourselves as decent as possible after a quick breakfast of protein bars. Harper mutters a few numbers under his breath, tallying weights and priority supplies for the next salvage run. The strip seems as abandoned as when you first entered.

Too quiet. Even for this part of the building.

Once the last items are secured on your dolly, you pop the vault doors and step outside into the atrium.

>>For sharing immuno-suppressants with the cyberpsycho...

That’s when it hits you.

The sharp tang of iron befouling the air.

Blood.

Time of death: less that twelve hours. No time for coagulation.

Bodies. Twelve men, maybe more, in ramshackle armor and filthy rags strewn across the commissary in bloodied heaps and piles. Their faces are frozen in terror and disbelief, locked in a rictus of screaming agony. Gore and viscera are splattered against the walls and ceiling. Some are even missing limbs...and organs.

Victim assessment: adult males, late teens to early forties. Inference: unsanctioned scavengers, unaffiliated with 111th. Extrapolation: bandits under Greaser’s command or opportunistic looters; would have killed you and Harper to acquire supplies.

Your hands fly to your mouth. Harper curses, drawing his pistol and charging it to full power.

Wounds inconsistent with firearms. Trauma morphology: mono-molecular incision patterns. Depth and precision indicate high-velocity strikes; keratin, soft tissue and bone consistently severed in single pass. Absence of projectile residue.

Then your gazes catch it. As the vault door swings shut behind you, a message has been left, painted in an uneven, looping crimson:

“tHAaaAaNnk yYyoOOoUuU”

You look to Harper. Tension is in every line of his body. Neither of you move for long moments, frantically scanning for any signs of life. Your gazes flicker from the latest corpses to be claimed by the PRC…and in the shadows above and around you.

Finding none, and sensing no lingering gazes weighing on your shoulders, Harper partner finally exhales. “…I hate that I’m impressed.”

Relief and revulsion mingle in your chest. “…yeah. Me too.”

The debt has been repaid.

But whether or not your paths cross again is something even your subconscious can't infer.

>>Line Break

According to the rules of scavenging, finders’ keepers only applies until the 111th starts asking question. Anything you and Harper pull out of the PRC within your weight allotment is yours to keep; anything beyond that gets traded to the unit for food vouchers or quartermaster tickets.

(cont.)