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[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 2 Sequence 1

The chasms at the base of the Barrier Wall stretched down and down into an abyssal black chasm. But the Wall itself towered into the air. A horizontal forest of thick support beams criss-crossed over a canyon-like interior. Air vents cast beams of light through the dusty air, and where their lights couldn’t reach, walls of regularly spaced flood lights illuminated the chasm.

A flight of stairs ran up the Wall from the South Gate Bridge. Raven scaled it, going higher and higher, each flight up taking him deeper into that metal forest. The Barrier Wall was shot through with work platforms and catwalks, forming an unofficial highway around the city. The route Raven was taking lead directly to the Third Precinct. He passed through along the bridges and paths, seeing swarms of Engineers working on the countless pipes and powerlines, scrambling through the beams and along the inner walls of the massive structure. Had the storm really caused such damage, even within the Wall?

Raven’s thoughts were interrupted as an Engineer dropped down from somewhere above and landed onto the catwalk directly in front of him.

“Sorry, mate. Have to see that you take the detour through to the next level,” the engineer said calmly, a cigarette hanging from his lips. He was orange furred with darker orange stripes. A Bestal Nameless with a round cat face and sharp triangular ears on top of his head. His tail swayed slowly left to right, its end occasionally twitching.

“Detour?” Raven asked. “Why, what’s going on?”

“Pipes gone quiggly, ain’t they?” he said, taking a drag on the cigarette. Smoke flowed on his breath as the words escaped. “Big ol knot where the damn things gone and wrapped themselves round the cat. Got the jack lines and some power and maybe a gas line all rooted round one ‘nother. Anyweh, we’re busy tracing the damn things to find the nearest cutoffs so’s we can get it sorted without blowing a hole in the Wall. So ya can’t go this way. I ‘spect you’re on your way to the Third?” Raven had caught most of that, he thought. The Engineer had dark circles under his eyes, visible through his fur, and a half lidded, flat expression. How long had he been working today?

Raven leaned to the side to look past the Engineer. Sure enough there was a huge knot of lines and pipes stretching across the interior of the wall and blocking the path across the catwalk like a spider’s web. Sparks from the power lines, - or were they the jack lines? - crisscrossed and sent small showers of sparks cascading over the knot that seemed as tall as him. He hoped that there were not gas lines in the mix.

Is that why the lines to the outer rim had been down?

“But how -” Raven began, pointing at the mess of lines.

“Some surge from the storm is our best guess. Big ones come through and the knots form faster and get denser.” The Engineer finished his cigarette and flicked it into the chasm below. “On your way then. Can’t be talking to wayward Sweepers all day can I?” He stepped lightly to stand on the catwalk railing, and leapt across the chasm to the nearest beam before ascending higher in a series of leaps. Raven marveled at the agility of city Engineers. He thought back to the pair he had narrowly escaped in the deeps the previous morning and shuddered.

Raven doubled back to the nearest stair and climbed upward to the next catwalk up. He was thankful for the breadth of the platforms over the looming dark. Even in the beams of sunlight and the incandescent glow of the hundreds of floodlights, there was no escaping the blackness below. How high had he climbed? How far down was the ground, and where did the deep shafts begin? He could no longer see the bridge across the South Gate. He thought about what the Engineer had said about the knots in the lines. He knew that they grew wild enough in his neighborhood, but he had never thought about what drove their twisting growth. Did Abby know? He had never asked her. He thought of Carlos, and had the dawning realization of how little he knew about his own city. How much had he taken for granted?

“Raven!” The shout came from somewhere overhead, joyous and piercing. Raven recognized the voice immediately. He looked up searchingly into the mess of support structure and wires and whatever else made the Barrier Wall work. “Raven,” Abby shouted again and then Raven saw her, clambering down a succession of auxiliary beams that Raven wouldn’t have trusted to hold his sword, but which Abby scaled like she knew the weight-bearing capabilities of each inch of metal. (She probably did.) She was short but incredibly strong; it served her well as an engineer. And it was a strength that stretched to her personality as well. Raven had never heard Abby sound so concerned about anything. Maybe she’d be willing to buy him waffles after all?

Her ranting became audible as she descended, the words running together in an unstoppable flow that was as familiar to Raven as his own reflection. “They said you were dead! They said you were dead but I KNEW you were still out there, I KNEW it! I went to meet you after your shift and they said you were gone on a mission and that your team came back without you and Oh Gods they said you were dead! RAVEN!!!”

Abby was only a few feet above him now and Raven felt a smile stretch across his whole face. He was so happy to see her! And she’d been worried! She leapt towards him, arms outstretched, and Raven automatically mirrored her, ready to catch her. He was going to get a hug!

He was mistaken. Abby caught the railing and vaulted forward, drop kicking him square in the gut. The impact sent him stumbling back several steps, winding him. Before he could regain his breath, Abby dismounted and followed up the kick with a punch to the same spot. Somehow, Raven found enough air to groan.

“You absolute IDIOT! You dummy! You colossal doof!” Abby was still shouting and throwing precise, devastating punches to his torso. He was on the ground now. “I should have known you’d do something stupid! I can’t believe I expected a safe first shift from the same fool who can’t do a simple taco run without stopping a shoplifter, interfering with a pub brawl, and rescuing Old Woman Gigi’s cat!”

Indignation gave Raven enough breath to try interrupt, “-those were separate incidents!”

Abby glared with electric blue eyes. Her pointed ears twitched. “Did they or did they not all happen when you were supposed to get tacos?”

“One time it was falafels!” he shouted quickly as he curled into a ball, bracing for another round of her relentless assault.

“FALAFELS!?” she exclaimed. Shifting her shoulders and drawing her massive wrench, she swung it over her head and leveled it at Raven’s. She swung. Raven winced, bracing for the impact. There was none. The wrench, easily as tall as Abby, hovered inches above his head.

“Where’s your helmet?” She asked with a trifle of incredulity.

“  … It … Broke?” He winced again, readying himself.  

“Ugh,” she groaned, long and awful, letting the wrench lightly drop onto his head, and then returning it to the holster on her back.  “I can’t even count on you to protect your big fat empty head. It’s all just hair with you, isn’t it?” She loomed over his hunched form, her nearly five-foot frame feeling as big as the Wall when she glowered. But she’d put the wrench away for now, so he was, tentatively, safe. Raven patted his long, blue-black hair self-consciously.

Abigail Ratchet was half Nameless on her father’s side. A Gobbish mechanic, Ignatius had married her mother Ursa, who was an Old World Turk and a former Sweeper turned welder. Abby was a foot taller than her father and a foot and a half shorter than her mother, with wild black dread-locked hair that jutted out in jagged kinks and angles. Her mahogany skin glistened with sweat and oil from her work in the beams above. Her white tank top was soaked through and the oil stains and scorch marks from welding patterned her coveralls, the top half of which she had tied around her waist. Her electric blue eyes were bright, alert, manic. How long had she been awake?

“How did you know to find me here?” Raven asked as he struggled against the railing to get to his feet.

“Ugh! Just like you to change the subject. Don’t think you’re getting out of this!” She threw her head back to look at Raven as he stood over her. “I’ve been working top of the Wall. Yesterday morning when I went to pick you up for lunch, they told me you didn’t come back. Your captain was super upset. She said you went like an idiot and locked yourself. in. with. WALKERS!”  Her voice echoed through the canyon sides of the Wall interior. She struck him again, hard.

“Well Meri is gonna tear you a new one when you get back, let me tell you. I just knew you would do something stupid like that the first chance you got!” Another blow. Raven barely got his arms up in time to prevent another strike to his stomach. “And since I just KNEW you were too stupid to even DIE properly, I’ve been listening to the ASEC channel to see when you got back. And there you were this morning on the dispatch, all stuttering like the idiot you are and saying you were reporting in through the South Gate, and I knew you’d have to come this way, so I’ve been keeping an eye to see when you’d show up. Then I see Sanza and he’s talking about a Sweeper needing directions and I just KNEW it was you!” She leapt back onto the railing and stood triumphantly over Raven, looking down with bright eyes and a toothy grin.

“Um. Thanks?” Raven stood warily, rubbing his tender stomach. “I tried to call but I was in Southport and we couldn’t get through.”

“Hmph.” Abby snorted. “Well I guess I can’t be mad at that. Radio’s no good through the Wall and all the lines to the Outer Rim went sideways with the storm. We’ll be sorting that out for a few days at least.” Abby wrinkled her nose as she looked downward at the knot of cables that wrapped around the catwalk and surrounding beams below. “So. You’re gonna be heading back to ASEC now?”

“Yeah, I gotta -” Raven was cut off.

A loud bang split the air, followed by a screech and groan of straining metal. Abby and Raven turned to look above them. Another catwalk up from them, Raven could see a pair of strangely dressed figures holding open a large sack, while a third stood with arms outstretched. They wore welding masks, tattered ponchos and baggy rough canvas pants like Engineers. A heavy metal object dropped from above and the Engineer caught it, staggering back with some difficulty, and placed it in the bag. Looking higher, Raven saw another pair with the same strange, tattered garb higher up in the beams on a large crossbeam that supported a massive strut that attached to a gigantic fan above them.

“Wreckers.” Abby said under her breath.

“What -” Raven began to ask.

“WRECKERS!” Abby bellowed. In a moment there came a series of klaxon alarms sounding from below them, filling the great chasm with their blaring wail. Abby grabbed Raven by the wrist and took off at a run up the stair to the catwalk above. Raven stumbled but found his stride, rushing to keep up.

“What’s going -” he started.

“WRECKERS! Abby shouted back without turning. Her voice carried over the klaxons wail. “Those scrap happy donuts are gonna pop the shock absorbers and drop the fan! Help!” she yelled, shooting a glare back over her shoulder at Raven.

“How?” Raven managed to get out without interruption.

Abby stopped as she reached the catwalk, turning down the wide platform to the three Wreckers in their tattered ponchos and masks. She again grabbed Raven and shoved him ahead of her. “See those guys? They’re bad. Those jerks are stealing parts and breaking everything to get ‘em!” Raven looked closer and saw two more sacks apart from the one that was being loaded. “Stop them and get those bags back!” Abby snapped as she mounted the railing and took off at a run.

“What are you doing?” Raven shouted as he drew his axe and started at a sprint towards the trio of Wreckers.

“I gotta make sure those jerks at the strut don’t unfasten any more nuts!”

Abby leapt from the railing to the outer side of the Wall, running up the exterior wall and kicking off into another long leap to a nearby beam. She caught one of the smaller pipes running along the crossbeams and swung upward into a somersault onto a beam above. She made a quick turn and dashed along it, upward at the slant and then jumping to another. She stepped off the beam in a swift movement and dashed along a narrow hanging pipeline until she was within one last leap to the beam supporting the massive strut.

The Barrier Wall was lined with fans at various intervals. Massive, hundred ton behemoths, cycling air into and out of the inner ring. Each fan was held in place by similarly colossal struts, built to absorb their constant vibrations and support the fans against the powerful winds that battered the upper heights of the Wall. The Wreckers had been at work removing the large nuts that held together the fastening bolts, which in turn connected the beam that supported one of those struts. Now, the beam was beginning to split. The fan was going to fall.

Abby stood on another beam, observing, while the wind whipped around her. The massive fan was slow but powerful, and the crosswind blew cold through the Wall. Abby, a skilled Engineer, only noticed it so much as it affected her footing. She unholstered her wrench and hefted it, deftly balancing in the cool wind. The Wreckers on the beam remained focused on undoing the bolts, and had not yet noticed her or the klaxon. She scowled.

With a mad dash, she leapt forward to the next beam, dropping her wrench back into an overhead swing. At last, one of the Wreckers caught sight of her and ducked. The other wasn’t so quick, and took the full blow to their mask. The flimsy covering crumpled and the Wrecker tumbled backwards and fell into the chasm. Abby didn’t spare a moment’s thought to them. She swung again, narrowly missing the second Wrecker as they dodged and leapt back. Cornered, the wrecker drew a blowtorch and waved it frantically, flames narrowly missing Abby’s face. Abby ducked low and threw her weight into a sharp sweep of her leg at the Wrecker’s footing, but they leapt in a forward somersault over her and scrambled away down the beam, leaping onto the fan strut and taking the long jump to the vent to the outside of the wall. It would be suicide for anyone else, but Abby knew that the Wreckers were as agile as Engineers, and would be prepared to safely make their way down the outside of the Wall. Hells, scaling the Wall was almost certainly how they had infiltrated in the first place. Her attention snapped back to the loosened nuts on the remaining bolts.

She scanned the beam and surrounding supports. All but the most essential fastenings to keep the struts and Fan in place were loosened, or stripped of the nuts and bolts that held the strut supports in place. Just how long had the Wrecker crew been at work unchecked that morning? She rushed to tighten the bolt they had been working on, quickly calibrating her wrench and slamming it into place. She put her weight into the torque on the large wrench, ratcheting the bolt quickly. She could feel the beam groaning beneath her feet. The nuts and bolts that the Wreckers had stolen would need to be returned as soon as possible. She looked down and hoped that Raven would succeed.

Down below the beam that supported the fan strut, Raven swung wide with the back of his blade. He had distracted the Wreckers and chased them away from their bounty, but they danced around him easily, deftly evading the swings of his axe.

“RAVEN!” Abby yelled. “Quit screwing around down there and get the bags!”

His brow furrowed with irritation. What did she think he was doing? He charged again and brought his axe down hard where one of the Wreckers had landed on the platform railing before once again leaping away out of the reach of the axe. Raven heard the groaning of the beam above and felt a desperate urgency. There was no time. And then he remembered something. What was it Marie had said? Good guys are not always nice guys? He thought of Carlos and the Griefer destroyer. Pops hadn’t fought fair. But their enemy had brought guns against a town full of civilians recovering from a ruinstorm. Where did a fair fight fit into any of that? Was that what Marie had been trying to tell him?

He pulled a flare from his belt and, before he could second guess himself, drew the flat of his axe up to his face to shield his eyes and set off the flare in the midst of the Wreckers. Raven heard them cry out in surprise. With his eyes closed tight against the light, he swung out and swept them off their feet. He heard the clank of the bag falling to the platform, heard the swish of clothing slipping over the platform rail. He missed his helmet.

Squinting in the blinding white light, Raven saw the masked Wreckers, two remaining, struggling to get to their feet. Raven again was conscious of the slow groan of the metal above him and he looked up for a moment to see the massive fan overhead. These Wreckers didn’t care if it fell. They were going to get people hurt. And that was all he needed to know. He rushed at the two of them and flipped his axe to swing hard with the blunt back of the blade. He felt it connect with a crack and a crunch as he knocked against the heads of the two Wreckers. One fell backwards over the railing, the other, not hit by the full force of the blow, staggered back and braced themselves against the railing. Raven could see a glaring eye looking back at him through a broken mask.

It took only a moment of hesitation on Raven’s par for the Wrecker to flip backwards onto the railing and take a leap to the beam above. Raven watched with a mixture of awe and irritation as the acrobatic saboteur took a series of leaps upward and slipped away though the fan vent that led to the outside of the Wall.

Raven was feeling a lot of things. But there was no time to focus on them; Abby was yelling again, and not in a nice way. He turned back to the abandoned bags and began rooting through them. A stack of nuts emerged and he went to work. He grabbed the one on top and tossed it up, trusting Abby to catch it. She did with an ease and grace he was quietly amazed by. He watched her spin it back into place, then grabbed the next. The fan and surrounding platforms began to shake.

Abby was just about to start panicking. Then Sanza was there, grabbing the next nut from Raven. Someone else picked up the other abandoned bags. The surrounding beams started to fill with Engineers. The klaxon had done its work, at least. More hands joined Abby, grabbing the nuts Raven threw up to them and rushing to the weakened struts. The metal still groaned unhappily, but it was quieting and the shaking had begun to still.

It took nearly a half hour before things were set to right. After the arrival of the rest of the Engineering Corp, Raven had been sidelined. There really wasn’t much for him to do, but he felt like leaving without at least letting Abby know would be impolite. Plus, someone might need him to, to lift something really heavy. In the meanwhile, he tried to keep out of the way.

He saw Abby a little ways away. She was talking to a group of people who looked very official. Probably debriefing, something he needed to be ready to do soon. He wondered if the Engineering Corps would need a statement from him.

Soon, Abby was stomping towards him, cursing up a ruinstorm.

“What’s wrong? Did they not believe it was Wreckers? Do you need me to talk to them? I’m a Sweeper, my word’s gotta count for something, right?”

Abby looked at him like she was thinking of hitting him again but couldn’t find the energy. “It’s fine, dummy. I’m pissed because those garbage chomping, rust munching, thieves got away! I hope their mothers drown in battery acid.”

“Well, it was only the two who escaped,” Raven said, trying to console her.

“That’s three too many!” she countered, and ignored his murmured that doesn’t even make sense, Abby. “They’re getting bolder, too. I hate that!”

“Bolder?” Raven asked. A shiver of intuition made him perk up. “You mean this is, what, an escalation?”

Abby grunted a vague affirmation, her attention focused on her coworkers as they scaled the interior of the Wall. There were Engineers everywhere, checking every point of connection and testing the integrity of the surrounding beams. “We’re going to be at this forever,” she groaned dismally.

“Abby, what did you mean the Wreckers are getting bolder?”

“Just what I said! I mean, they’re always causing trouble along the Wall, grabbing whatever isn’t welded down when no one’s looking. Sometimes we’d even let them! Easier than just chucking all of the lines and pipes that we have to cut out when they get squiggly. It’s irritating, but part of the job. Lately, though…. I dunno, it’s like they have a shopping list or something. They’re going after bigger pieces of metal. Specific pieces of metal. Used to be, they’d just grab any old thing that might be lying around…” she trailed off.

“Huh,” Raven said eloquently. This felt like something...big. And he’d already seen a lot of big things. Had the world always been like this? He thought of Pops again.

Kid. The whole city is always in danger.

But he had said something else too. There were several hundred Sweepers taking care of things. He now saw that there were far more than that, counting the Engineering Corps and who knows how many others. Carlos, Marie, and seemingly the entire town of Southport. The City held together because of how many people stepped up to protect it.

He had to report in.

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 2 Sequence 0

Oh you Nameless!

 You, children of the world outside of time. You, forgotten subjects of Kings long gone. 

Stay but a while, and be welcome. 

No mere beasts of land or sea or air are you. No mere sprites of elemental chaos! 

You are our brothers! 

You who toil here alongside us. You who sweat and burn under the same sun, the same sky! 

Are you not also children of the Great Storm? 

Stand with us! Let us make our stand upon this cast off, forgotten isle. 

Let us make a New World!

Attributed to Shakeer Matumla, at the ceremony of ground-breaking of the temple of the Four Kings.

Year 0, of the New Common Era.

****

To the reader,

It may be to your further benefit, to provide you with some grounding in the social fabric of the city beyond this archive. A vital point of clarification that may be helpful to you, is that in Artisan, humanity may not be as you know it. Phenotypes within the same human genus remain within a single classification. Ergo, the Oruk, Gobbish, Dwarphen, Elvan, Bestal, Iowan, and other peoples, are merely ethnic subgroups of humans that have mixed among one another for generations in the city.

****

The dawning sun rose into a clear sky, shining over city and glinting off the Barrier Wall like a blinding beacon across the far horizon. The Wall towered over the city, its bronzed, coppery surface rising a thousand feet towards the sky, and casting a long shadow over the inner ring. In the early morning mist, the curved, circling wall filled like a colander, vents slowly steaming as the fans pushed the cloudy air from the inner ring to the outer rim and the sky beyond. 

For three hundred years since its emergence, the wall has shielded the inner ring from the wind and waves of hurricanes and ruinstorms. Its emergence yet another of the city’s mysteries. Three centuries past, the founders of the city of Artisan prepared for the worst as a grand wave appeared from the south, poised to wipe the city clear of its people. As all gathered inland, scrambling and in panicked distress, a deafening klaxon sounded from the citadel, and the earth shook as the wall, once thought a highway around the city, pushed up through the piled jetsam and arose, roaring into the air. The wave broke hard against the wall, flowing swiftly around the shielded inner ring.

Generations hence, the Wall still shields the city proper. Piled against it are mountains of scrap, pushed from across the island into three massive Yards that encircle the inner ring. Only the Three Ports persist outside its protective embrace, gambling against the mercurial odds of another great wave.

Within the Wall itself are the domains of the protectors and stewards of Artisan. The precincts of the Artisan Sanitation Enforcement Corps (A.S.E.C) and the Artisan Mechanical Engineering Corps (A.M.E.C). Each corps with its own vital contribution to the maintaining of a city in constant need. Artisan is alive, in a thousand different ways; the vibrant colors of its people and their crafts, the lush gardens of its high towers, the surging life of its waterways. But the city is dangerous; the beasts of the lower Undercity, the behemoths of the Deep-Down, and the shifting lifelines of the city itself.

If the Department of Sanitation acts as a bulwark against the monstrous terrors below, then the Engineering Corps are the stewards of the precocious landscape above. Artisan has power, water, and natural gas for a thousand years and more, but none of it given freely. The city as it stands, its towers and streets, were grafted by the founders onto the Citadel and shifting plates of the floor of the inner ring. An entire grid of utilities, built atop, around, and spreading from a powerful beating heart of unknown providence. 

Perhaps then it is fitting that the price paid for this plentiful bounty, is that the lines of water and power and fuel, like wild vines, must be carefully pruned and realigned whenever they shift or grow outside their bounds.These departments of Sanitation and Engineering are the glue that holds Artisan together, the soul of the Barrier Wall.

****

The main street of Southport was broad. Wide enough for a pair of Heavy Sweepers to pass through with their attendant squads at full spread. It shot like a ray from the Barrier Wall, meeting the base at the massive South Gate, and continuing through Southport to the harbor. The morning mist was thick, cascading down the Wall, and billowing over and through the Port and the surrounding Yards. The gate had opened before dawn, time for fishmongers and merchants to pass through on their way to the markets of the Inner Ring. Squads of Trashmen and Engineers from the nearby precincts had passed through the gate and begun to assess damages in the dark hours, taking statements about both the storm, and the artillery damage. The streets were still marred by  craters from the previous day’s attack, and the Heavy Sweepers and repair teams of the Engineering Corps would not arrive until after the assessments were complete. 

Raven stood in the morning mist, the colossal South Gate towering before him. He could still smell the sea air and feel the winds of Southport at his back, he felt the rising sun burning away the lingering fog and heating up the day.

He was going home. It was a relief, but also strangely sad; like he’d come to the end of some adventure. Like nothing was going to be the same…. What was he getting so mushy about? It had only been a day! A long, busy day, sure, but a day nonetheless. He turned back to look down the road to the harbor, just a mile away. The sea was still there, blue green and vast beyond reckoning. Looking up from it he saw the open sky, uncluttered by the towering buildings of his home borough, or the long, deep shadow of the Barrier Wall. He felt the slightest of pulls, somewhere deep in his gut. Thinking of the people who had bought him drinks and cheered him, the people who had worked and fought so hard for their homes… he would have to come back. And it was not even that far? Now that he thought of it, he had never ventured beyond the Southwest Quarter where he and Abby had grown up. Never crossed the Southern Spoke. It had never occurred to him. And was it that unusual? There were plenty of people in the Old Quarter who never left it. But was that going to be him? 

“Kid. You awake there?” Carlos’ question stirred Raven back to the world like a prod in the ribs. That’s right. He had to get back to the Third Precinct and report on the old man and the Walkers. He had to see if Cortez was alright. His thoughts again veered to reflection as he stepped forward. Beyond the wall was so different. How had he never heard of the Griefers? And he still did not understand why Marie had talked about them the way that she had. He would ask the Chief about it once things were settled, he decided as he strode towards the massive gate.

Raven had been woken that morning by Carlos, who had shushed him as they had navigated through the unconscious patrons and towards the door. Some ways down the road they had been joined by Marie, who had appeared at their side on a motorcycle drawn rickshaw with “Fortuna’s” painted on the side. How had she managed to appear so abruptly riding something so loud? How half awake had he been to have missed that engine? 

She dismounted and began walking the bike alongside them. Raven moved to help but Marie grinned like his Captain again, like she was going to bite part of him off. “Gotta restock after a party like that!” She had said with a smile. And that was that.

The three of them approached the Gate. They passed several Trashmen as they entered the dark of the Barrier Wall. The Trashmen had been surprised to say the least to see Raven in his battered Sweeper Armor coming in from the Outer Rim. One had begun to open his mouth when Raven interrupted, frantically asking to use their radio. They obliged.

Raven was fit to burst with anxiety. With his heart in his throat, he called in. “Ahem, this is Sweeper Raven Daniels. Squad 13 Trash Panda. I,hm, I’ve been separated from my Squad. Has anyone from Trash Panda made it back to the Precinct?... Over?”

Static. And then…

“Daniels?” asked an incredulous voice. “You- you’re listed MIA, presumed deceased! Good to hear that isn’t the case! Over.”

“Yes, um, thank you? I washed up in the Outer Rim. I’m just now getting in through the South Gate and am enroute to Precinct 3 to report. Is Commander Hobbs going to be available at all, today?” Raven choked down his excitement; Carlos had at least taught him that it wouldn’t do to go off like he’d been drinking with the merpeople in the canals. A little restraint would be wise. A little less panic. Even if he was panicking. Just a little. “Some of my report, well, it’s better if he hears it sooner rather than later. Over.” 

“We’ll pass along the request asap, Sweeper Daniels. For now, just get back to your precinct. Over.”

“Thank you, … um,over.” Raven breathed. He’d just have to hope Hobbs would see him today. He didn’t know how much longer his news could wait. He thanked the Trashmen for their radio, then returned to Carlos and Marie. They’d stayed with him, standing a few feet away to give him privacy, but they were watching him and Raven could tell by their glower and smile respectively that they’d been talking about him.

“Got that squared away?” Carlos asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That was very nicely put. I’m sure if you keep your cool just like that, they will take you very seriously when you give your report.” Marie nodded with apparent satisfaction. Raven felt comforted… but also patronized? Like she was about to offer him a sticker for keeping his bunk tidy.

Nevertheless, he felt a measurable decrease in his tension. His message delivered, Raven resumed walking. The South Gate passed through the Barrier Wall, across the bridge that spanned the seemingly bottomless chasm below the wall. He spared a glance for the abyss. Only a day before, he had stood on a platform, being lowered into the Deep-Down. Even that deep, he still hadn’t seen the bottom. And then, with a few more steps, they were in the Inner Ring. 

All at once, Raven could smell the rich, sweet air of the Inner Ring. Its many blended scents of food and worship and industry came together to form a smoky, fragrant musk, that was altogether different from the salt air of Southport. He had never noticed before just how thick the air was in the city he had always called home. Raven had missed it. But, he realised with a twinge of regret, he’d miss the sea air as well. He would visit. He had to.

Carlos and Marie were being awfully quiet, he realized suddenly. He spun swiftly to look at them. Marie was smiling benignly at him. Carlos was very pointedly looking at the road. He noticed Raven’s narrowed gaze and acknowledged it with a mild eye roll. “You’re certainly set on chasing down this guy, aren’t you?”

“Of course!” Raven struggled to understand why this was even a question. “I know what I saw was unbelievable, but it’s true. It’s happening right now, and even if I don’t understand...most of it, I can recognize that this has the potential to put everyone in danger. I have a responsibility to, to at least tell people about that danger. Even if that lands up being all I can do.”

“And if they don’t believe you,” Carlos asked leadingly.

“I’ll make them,” Raven said.

“And when that fails,” Carlos said.

“Then I’ll go down there and stop him myself if I have to!” … Raven stopped, considering his own words. He caught himself looking away for just a moment, but quickly returned his gaze to Carlos, who seemed to be regarding him carefully.

Finally, Carlos said, “you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“This is my home. It’s in danger. I’m probably gonna die from it anyway and I’d rather do so on my feet, helping.”

Carlos considered him, then threw his head back and groaned. “Four Kings, Kid. You’re something else.” The older man seemed to shift through a series of emotions as he looked down, shaking his head, scowled at Raven, then looked away to hide a half smile. “You, Kid, had better hope you didn’t use up all your luck getting washed down the right storm drain.”

They had come to a stop in the middle of the road. Raven was vaguely aware of traffic moving around them, the influx of morning merchants and refugees making their way into the city, but he was waiting for the old man. Somehow, he knew, this was important. 

Carlos looked Raven squarely in the eye. “You’re set on this.” It was not a question. “May the Great, the Strong, the Wise, and the Just watch your back, Kid.”

Raven stood agape for a moment, then smiled toothily. “You take care of yourself too, .. Pops” 

“Pops?!” Who are you calling ‘Pops?’” Carlos snorted.

“Would you rather I called you ‘Old Man’?” Raven laughed.

“Hey, HEY! I’m 37, dammit,” Carlos snapped. Marie chortled behind him. “I’m not old,” he said in a smaller voice, scowling. Marie exploded in laughter.

“Thanks for everything, Miss Fortuna. Bye, Pops!” Raven smiled as he waved, then turned towards the municipal entrance to the engineer’s stair and began his ascent into the heights of the Barrier Wall.

“You okay with letting him go like this, Carl?” Marie said quietly as they watched Raven make his way up the stairway and out of their sight.

Carlos’ face was somber. Contemplative. “Kid has to do his own growing up.” He said flatly. “You alright with your inquiries today?”

“We shall see!” She grinned. Her smile faded. “If a Mercer Consortium foreman has been making new friends inside the ring, then they’ll be outside the normal movements. I just need to find out who’s been breaking routine, and we can go from there.” 

Carlos nodded. “Just you -”

“I’ll be discreet!” She smiled again. “Honestly, that boy has you worrying all over, hasn’t he?”

“I always worry.” Carlos growled. Then he looked back over his shoulder after Raven. The young sweeper had vanished into the heights. “Seems these days I just have more urgent things to worry about. I have a stop to make, then I have to go see Henrie. Meet you at the Tower when you’re done?”

Marie nodded. “You mentioned that last night. You said it could be related to Raven’s story about the man controlling walkers?” She looked worried. “Then you be careful too.”

Carlos nodded and started walking. He could hear Marie’s engine as it faded into the distance. She was right. He was worried. He had a lot to worry about right now. And it was already looking to be a long day ahead.

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Rosie and Squad Trash Panda in the Deep Down.

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 1 Sequence 5

Night had fallen and Raven found himself back at Fortuna’s, sitting at the counter while Marie and her girls tended to the masses of customers at the packed tavern. The morning crowd had been weary but with a kind of focused determination. Now the mood was downright festive, and a haze of revelry seemed to spill out of the tavern into the streets. The last of the Griefers had fled shortly after he and Carlos had blown the gunnery ship. No other ships had come. The rest of the day had been spent cleaning up, and now, with the work day behind them and victory coursing through them, the locals of Southport were ready to celebrate.

Raven wished he could share the enthusiasm. Instead, he watched Marie work. She juggled and twirled a series of bottles, pouring and mixing into a large, elaborate sundae glass. Sparks and streams of tiny lightning bolts crackled around her hands as she went, and, when Raven thought the drink looked finished, Marie set both hands straight on either side of the glass. A bolt of something like lightning but not shot through the glass. Whatever was inside changed color, from amber to electric blue. 

She stuck in two sparklers and placed it in front of Raven. 

“This one’s from the master of the fishmongers’ guild. Be sure to drink up; he’ll notice if you don’t.” She nodded across the tavern and Raven turned to see a portly man in a battered hat raise a glass in his direction. Raven waved back with an uncertain smile before looking back to Marie. She was all smiles and nameless menace. Raven struggled to imagine her almost single handedly taking out an invading land force, but also had no doubt that she’d done so, as easily as Carlos had suggested. The effort to reconcile the two Maries made his head hurt.

He considered the drink. It was the latest in a series of drinks and dishes the locals kept ordering for him. Helping Carlos sink the Griefer ship had earned him no small amount of good-will from the people of Southport. Details had been lost in the telling and retelling. According to the chatter in the bar, he had stormed the destroyer, single handedly taking on the crew and giving Carlos the time needed to sabotage the guns. Carlos had told him succinctly to not correct them. He wondered why. He took a sip and felt something buzz along his tongue. The static around the pancakes, he thought. He wanted to ask how she did that. Instead he asked, “Are the sparklers really necessary?”

Marie winked at him. “I’ve got half a master’s in elemental-mancery, and a minor in mixology. The sparklers are absolutely essential.” She emptied her hands and placed herself directly in front of Raven, giving him the full force of her attention. “Now tell me what’s eating at you, hon. You’re a hero tonight, you should enjoy it.”

“I guess so. What will happen to the Griefers who didn’t get away?” Raven asked. In the wake of the attack and subsequent retreat, some forty odd surviving raiders had been captured. Raven had seen the Griefer bodies being loaded onto a palette by some of the Southport denizens, but he had no idea what would become of any of them.

“Hmm.” Marie paused for a moment. “Once we make sure that none of them are in immediate danger of dying, we’ll pile them onto a barge, along with their dead and tow them out to the edge of their territory. After that they’ll be on their own.”

“So you just leave them?” Raven asked, a twinge of defeat in his voice. 

“Hon, you gotta understand,” She said with a look of pity. “Griefers are something else. You can’t just put them to work in the yards under supervision like you would with your basic troublemakers. They hurt people. They kill people. If they think they can’t get away, they hurt as many people as they can and then kill themselves. The safest way to deal with them short of killing them, is to send them back where they came from and trust their fellow assholes to come pick them up.”

Anxiety squirmed under his skin. “I guess I just don’t get it. Things seem so… harsh out here.” Raven sulked into his manically cheerful drink.

“That what’s got you down, hon?” Marie smiled and raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Like, Carlos. I don’t know… I don’t understand. I don’t feel like much of a hero. Carlos did most of the work after all. And I guess I thought Carlos was a good guy. Like we were fighting to save the town! But he just wanted the money? Maybe? And also, he fights dirty. Not like a hero at all.” Raven sank into his stool. 

Marie laughed, a full bodied sound that, near the end, leaned a bit towards cackling. “I’m trying, but I don’t think I can imagine Carlos’ face if he heard you accuse him of being a hero!” Marie looked down for a moment as she got herself under control. Still smiling, she looked at Raven. “Was this your first fight?” 

“No way,” he said, determinedly. He wasn’t that much of a rookie. “I’ve fought Shamblers, and Rollers, and Mechs… I fought a Doom Rat and a bunch of Walkers just this morning!”

“I mean against people, dummy.” She smiled. “I’m guessing this was your first time fighting the kind of monsters who choose to be monsters?”

“But, they’re still people though!” Raven nearly jumped out of his seat.  “I can’t just cut them down like, like Shamblers!”

The smile slid from her face. Marie looked somber. “Shamblers used to be people too, you know.” 

Raven paused, his brow furrowed. It was easy to forget that the undead had lived, were people once. Did Marie and Carlos think of Griefers like Shamblers? What did she mean that they chose to be monsters? That they too, used to be people?

Marie smiled. “Look, babe. I think the world needs more people who want to be heroes. But the world is messy, and the good guys aren’t always nice guys. Don’t mind Carlos. He just thinks he has an image to keep up so folks leave him alone. Where do you think the money to fix the damage to the town is coming from? Or the tab for this party?”

Raven suddenly was struck with realization. “...You mean when Carlos talked about salvaging or selling the ship we sank?” 

Marie’s smile was back and broad as the horizon. “You worked hard today, babe. Take the night off and try to have fun.” Then she slid out from behind the bar and disappeared into the crowd. Raven looked down and found a sandwich under his nose.

Marie drifted through the assemblage of friends, neighbors, and patrons. She let the current pull her leisurely to the ‘Grown Up’s’ Table in the back corner. It was a private joke, Marie had with herself. Carlos and Poliviralos could sit at any table or counter in the bar individually, but when the two of them were together, they invariably huddled together at the table in the elevated corner of the tavern, like a couple smugglers discussing a deal. Always so serious. Marie enjoyed laughing at them. Just a little.

Tonight, as the two conspirators conversed they looked especially intent. Marie would allow it; this had been one hell of a day. And it wasn’t as if she had good news.

The table was covered in papers. As she drew closer, Marie saw they were charts and maps of the outer ring. Carlos had found something, then.

She pulled up a chair. “I’ve left your boy at the bar, Carl. I’m afraid we’ve caused him to have something of a crisis of morality; he thought you were a hero, you know.” Carlos pulled a face. Something between a wince, a smile, and a glare. Marie carefully filed it away among her happy memories. “Don’t worry!” she grinned, “My girls have him well in hand.”

“Hopefully they’ll leave enough of him for me to send back to the city tomorrow,” Carlos grumbled. He had been until a moment ago engaged in serious discussion with Poli, the Southport Librarian, and local sage.

“He’s had a long day. We all have.”  She paused, looking down for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. She leveled a bright smile and hawk-like gaze at the two men at the table. 

“So. Did any of that seem strange to you?”

Carlos and Poliviralos each raised an eyebrow. The old librarian quipped, “You mean their bringing a destroyer all the way up to the harbor, or your deciding to jump into the fray and bring a ruinstorm to a knife fight?”

Poliviralos was a short, dark skinned older man who had looked to be in his early 70s for the last four decades. He wore a purple paisley waistcoat, small round reading glasses, and short, wiry, white dreadlocks that flared in all directions from around a balding crown.

Marie shrugged. “What can I say? They knocked on my door and I came out to greet them.”

It was true that Marie rarely took such a personal interest in the town’s Griefer misadventures. Their raids tended to be smaller affairs, carried out in the dark of night. Griefers invariably came  to steal food, medicine, or other supplies from dockyard warehouses. Night shift workers, sailors, and fishmongers were usually more than enough to drive them away and finish mopping up long before they came within sight of her bar.

Carlos coughed. “Circling back to the matter at hand. Our xenophobic friends are trying something new, and that may mean that we could soon have bigger issues than a charred pier to concern ourselves with.” He gestured towards the stack of papers unrolled on the table.

Poliviralos nodded. “It’s not unusual for them to raid in the wake of a storm, but considering that they brought cannons into the harbor proper this time, it is strange that their artillery didn’t make more of a mess.” 

“Because they weren’t aiming for the town.” Carlos stood over the table and shifted the charts, bringing the map of Southport to the top of the pile. “Look here. Their targets are marked, and each mark has a corresponding line to the barrier wall. They didn’t shell the entire town because they were there to check trajectories. Every spot they hit was a target along one of these arc lines. They were aiming for the vent shutters on the wall, and testing arcs to go over it.”

Marie scrutinized the lines on the map, comparing them to another page showing elevation drawings with dotted line firing arcs into and over the Barrier Wall. “So they’re looking to shell the inner ring? Those cannons didn’t seem to pack enough punch to do more than scuff the lower Wall. Let alone hit the vents or arc over it.”

“Well I suppose it makes sense.” Poliviralos leaned back in his chair. “They can’t take back the city so they want to destroy it. They’ve been salty about their exile for a hundred years. I expect they’ll be salty at the municipal offices forever, but those guns aren’t going to breach the wall, even if they could reach the vents.”

“Unless they get bigger guns.” Carlos said matter of factly. “Which begs the question of where they plan to get those guns, and their munitions, and a platform large enough to hold steady when they fire cannons that big. Does anyone believe that the bastards have had those kinds of resources at their disposal, and just haven’t used them until now?”

“I have an idea about that.” Marie interjected somberly. She had been holding onto her discovery since she had watched the Griefer forces scurrying away to their boats. She thought of their ultimate cowardice, and the face of their commander. He had stood proud even as his men beat their craven retreat, as if knowing some haughty secret, shared nonchalantly within a circle of wretches and profiteers.

Marie leaned forward, low over the table, bidding the two conspiratorial grown ups closer and lowering her voice. “Whatever the Griefers are up to, Mercer has a hand in it. I saw the foreman from their shipyards talking to the Commander of their ground forces, and someone dressed all in black. Hood, robe, mask, whole package. Now, the attack was nowhere near their yards, so it’s no surprise that they didn’t come to help, but did you notice how many of their ships were docked when the Griefer’s hit? None. All their ships being out of the harbor, and a foreman talking with a Griefer right in the open is brazen even for them. I can’t figure what they would get out of it though. Mercer is all about the bottom line. Maybe it could just be protection money, but what if Mercer is supplying the Griefers?” 

“Hrm” Carlos grunted. “Not as if Griefers take cash for payment. Whatever their deal is though it involves an artillery barrage over our town and the Griefers getting their hands on some big damn guns. So it is decidedly our business.”

Poliviralos scowled down at the table. “As much as most everybody around here would love an excuse to tear down the Mercer Yards and run the jackals off the island, one witness is weak tea, even if that witness is you, Marie. It’s enough to stir up a mob maybe, but not enough to hold up in arbitration.” He shook his head, casting off his dire musings. “You said there was a third party?” 

“Yeah. Generic hooded weirdo.” Marie said, her voice tinged with tired frustration.

Carlos put his thumb to his temple, leaning back with similar fatigue. “Not like there’s ever a shortage of new cults, but not many that ever show up in the outer ring.” 

Marie nodded. “So you agree that our mysterious third party hails from inside the wall?”

“Well, Wreckers are certainly big enough assholes to be a part of something like this,” Carlos said contemplatively, slumping in his chair. “But besides them, I can’t think of anyone else on the outer ring. Wreckers might leave the yards sometimes to sell their scrap, but their fashion sense doesn’t include robes or hoods. So yeah, I figure that our well dressed third party is from inside the wall.”

Poliviralos looked thoughtful. His eyes cast down at the maps and charts on the table. He smiled a wry grin.  “We should at least consider the possibility that it is just some sort of trade for protection. Or that the foreman could be working with the Griefers independent of the rest of the consortium for his own gain.” Marie and Carlos looked at him skeptically. “The ships being out to sea during the raid could be a coincidence, or one man’s meddling with shipping schedules.”

Carlos sneered and chuckled to himself, considering. “Could well be. But I doubt it. I could see Mercer paying off the Griefers to leave them alone, but an individual foreman taking on that sort of deal in service to the entire company doesn’t make sense except as a fall guy.”

“Buuuut,” Marie rolled her eyes to the side, “it does give us a place to start!” She smiled. Her face then turned to a scowl as she thought about the damage wrought by the day’s events. “And after today, I know I’d love to have a word with that foreman.”

Piloviralos laughed. “That might be a worthwhile conversation indeed. Particularly given your delicate touch. But better if we can link him to his new friends in the inner ring, and find out more without alerting the Consortium via a deep fried underling.”

“Speaking of the inner ring,” Carlos nodded across the tavern at Raven, still swarmed by celebrating patrons and being teased by hostesses. The Kid was otherwise oblivious to the adults talking in the corner of the room.

“Yes, his story,” Poliviralos mused, considering. “It’s not as if we ever have a shortage of megalomaniacal sorcerers or damn fool mad scientists either. But this one could be real trouble if he has power over the Walkers.”

“Oh really?” Said Marie, her eyes widening and eyebrow raising. “Seems like I missed a beat in this story!”

“It’s not a short one.” Carlos sighed. “Ask the Kid about it and he’ll talk your ear off about it, I’m sure.” He looked weary, his gaze seemed far away. “ But the short version is that there’s a new weirdo in the deeps, and he might be a whole new flavor of pain in the ass. I managed to get through to Henrie earlier, and there’s some trouble at the Tower that they want some help with tomorrow. That could be related now I think about it”

Marie closed her eyes with a slight nod. “Well,” she pushed herself back away from the table and stood. “I should make sure that the girls don’t scar him too badly. But it looks like you and I are going to be chaperoning him to the gates tomorrow with this much business in the city proper. I’ll let you read me all the way into our Raven’s story once things die down.”

Marie turned with a slight smile, and sauntered down the steps and away from the Grown Up’s table, leaving Carlos and Poliviralos to their brooding and scheming. Quiet settled over the corner table in the dim light. The two men sat with eyes cast down, each contemplating the ramifications of the day’s discoveries. 

Carlos rapped his fingers on the table, his brow furrowed. He was glad of the Kid being there. Not just for his help in the afternoon’s adventure, but for his being there to draw the crowd, and shape the narrative. It minimized Carlos’ involvement and made it easier to slip away. Away from the attention and adulation that came from simply doing what needed to be done. 

It had been fun when he was younger, and lighter. But now it tired him. He thought about what Marie had said: the Kid had thought him a hero. What did that even mean; being a hero? Did the Kid even know? Had he given it any real thought? Carlos couldn’t remember thinking much about it before, but he did now.

To Carlos, it had always been an easy thing. The Job needed doing, the Job got done. Simple as that. Heroism was something that came after the fact;  the mythologizing that came with making the facts of the events into a story. The Job wasn’t pretty, and supposed nobility seemed irrelevant. People needed someone to do the Job, and he was good at it, from a long time back. 

Long ago, it seemed there had been someone to do the Job for him when he needed help. Then the time came for it to be his turn. He had been doing the Job long since, and now it seemed that more work had come to him.

Poliviralos interrupted his thoughts. “What about you Carlos? That boy washed up right at your doorstep, and you saved his life. How deep are you planning to go this time?” 

Carlos was silent for a moment. The kid was young. Too young, too naive, and too eager. He hadn’t yet gotten his scars or gained the hard fought understanding that the Job required. Carlos feared that the boy would get himself killed before he could. “I said I’d get him back to the inner ring where he belongs. Leave the whole thing to ASEC after that.” 

Poliviralos hummed noncommittally and, Carlos thought sourly, with some skepticism. “Well. It seems like you have things to think about, but I don’t plan to sit out a good party.” Poliviralos smiled as he rose from his chair. He picked up the staff that he had rested against his chair, and stepped with a hitch down the steps towards the celebration, leaving Carlos alone at the table.

Carlos looked out on the gathering from the corner table. A pretty picture of people celebrating their survival. A picture he stood apart from. That hadn’t bothered him for a long time. Tonight, though. Tonight something itched. It was a small itch, in a corner of his mind that he had not thought of for years. 

If Carlos could be said to have people, then these would be them. Marie at least made certain that no matter how much he might distance himself, he could not fully escape. And Raven, well, Carlos had saved his life; the Kid would be his people too now, wouldn't he? Carlos couldn't say how he felt about that. And now all of them were caught up in the middle of a gathering storm.

With any luck, they'd be able to get the Kid back to the city in the morning. That, at least, would would be one less. Gods, the Kid wanted to be a hero. If Carlos didn't deliver him back to the Sweepers pronto, he'd be looking out for the boy for the rest of his life. 

-----

<Last chapter | Next chapter>

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Griefer ship gun.

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Griefer ship

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 1 Sequence 4

The glass of the tavern windows rattled as a series of explosions rocked the building and tore through the street outside. Marie and Carlos were up and on their feet before the dust had settled.

“Griefers?” Marie asked, a touch wearily.

“Nice of them to come after breakfast,” Carlos said, standing and brushing the dust from his shoulders. “It figures that they’d come in the wake of a storm like last night’s. I should be surprised we didn’t hear from ‘em sooner.”

“Bit louder than usual I’d say.” Marie stepped lightly to the window, pressing her back to the wall and looking out at the craters in the street.

Carlos looked out at the rubble in the street and nodded. “Raiders’ll be landing soon if they haven’t already. You feel like playing hostess while I go file a noise complaint?”

Marie raised an eyebrow and shot Carlos a bemused, if somewhat scathing glance.

“I’m just saying.” Carlos shrugged. “I have a houseguest to entertain. And you can’t tell me you aren’t up for it after a cloudburster like this last one.”

Marie’s eyes narrowed, her hawklike gaze leveled at Carlos like a beam, but her grin was wide. “Ass,” she said to him smiling. “You’ll make better time to the docks going out the back door. I’ll head out and round up the welcoming committee. You boys have fun now.”

Raven sat on the floor where he had fallen out of his chair, agape at the exchange. He stumbled as he rose to his feet. Carlos was already striding up to him and patted him heavily on the shoulder.

“What -” He began.

“C’mon Kid. Time to go to work.”  Carlos barked.

Raven looked back at Marie, who gave him a sly wink as he clumsily followed Carlos around the bar and through the kitchen to the back of the tavern.

Marie smiled wryly as she watched Carlos and the young Sweeper disappear into the kitchen, heading towards the exit to the alleyway. The thought of Carlos fishing the young man from the storm waters felt nostalgic. A side of the old junker that she had not seen in years. It was a pity that the town was under attack before the boy - Raven? - had finished eating. But that too was reminiscent of days long past. 

She turned her attention back to the road outside. Another round of cannonfire from the harbor, followed by the whistle of incoming artillery, and a deafening volley of explosions further up the road. She took a breath, turning to look at the patrons and servers hunkered down around the bar. The tension was thick as they all looked to her.

“Ladies,” she shouted. “Make sure nobody skips their check! Everybody else? Finish your drinks and hit the streets! Don’t keep the party waiting!”

The tavern roared in reply. There rose a din of plates clattering as sailors and engineers clamored to pay for their food and drinks. Servers bustled hurriedly, cashing out patrons. Marie took a deep breath and stepped outside.

Out on the street, it was chaos. The damage of the storm was nothing to what the Griefers had already done, let alone what they intended. Further inland, she could smell the acrid scent of the artillery, hear the crack of buildings falling in on themselves. Down at the harbor, she could she a small flotilla of landing craft begin crashing through the piers. Marie closed her eyes and exhaled. She let the tension drain from her shoulders. She quieted her nerves. She opened herself to the storm.

Immediately, the air around her crackled and her hair lifted as static discharge enveloped her body. With every breath, she could feel the electricity gathering, growing, nipping at her heels and jumping at her fingertips. It wanted in. It wanted her to tell it what to do. It had been waiting for hours now. Marie turned to face the harbor. Carlos had a point: she had needed this.

Down the road a ways, the raiders began to swarm up from their landing craft. They wore the ragged uniforms of the old Artisan City Guard, and carried their sabers. Lost cause fighters, she thought. A hundred years and still nursing their grudge against the city that had cast them out. The Griefers raided periodically, usually at night. Marie thought of the contradiction they lived: the proud exiled fascists, surviving by stealing food and supplies from those whom they dared to suppose themselves superior. They disgusted her.

The artillery shelling continued behind her, hitting further inland. With their raiding party at the harbor, the waterfront would be safe from their cannonfire for the moment. It was rare for the bastards to bring artillery to the coast. She knew from Carlos’ dealings with them on the open water, where their ship to ship fire exchanges were the talk of sailors, that they had the capability. Louder than usual, indeed. She could not remember a raid this large, or any time that they had brought such fire down. The thought of her town being destroyed piecemeal by these miserable assholes burned in her mind. Her golden eyes flashed and the electricity sparked around them as she looked down the road at the approaching force. 

Marie’ revulsion built upon itself, and lightning grew in answer, the static thickening and beginning to arc around her. Crackling streamers of tiny lightning bolts trailed in her wake as she strode towards the harbor. She took her time, reveling in feeling the currents of electricity in the air around her, in the ground, in the air, in the wires and power lines. So much of it, everywhere. She swam in an oceanic electromagnetic field that she felt encompassed a world so much larger than her island and the Emerald Sea. It knew she was angry. It wanted to help. If she would just let it in.

Not yet.

She faced the oncoming wave of Griefer raiders, embracing the electricity that wrapped itself around her in concentrated layers. The Griefer forces had spread in a wave, but they trailed back to their landing craft where they had begun loading their stolen bounty. Like breadcrumbs. Like links in a chain. 

That was good. She could use that.

Marie Fortuna honed the electricity around her into a coil while focusing on the farthest of the landing craft. She held the image of the coil along her arm, the image of the links in the chain through the approaching raiders, the image of the craft at the end of the chain. She raised a hand towards it, palm open. Then she clenched it tight. 

A surge of current shot through her, leaving her fist and hitting the boat faster than the eye could see. The charge followed in an instant, the chain made visible as a great lightning bolt struck through the scattered raiders and down the road to the craft. A cataclysmic thunderclap split the air and caused the windows of the buildings along the strip to rattle and shatter. The raiders along the path were thrown back or caught by the bolt that arced and branched around and through them. The landing craft exploded in a burst of fire and shrapnel that splintered the already damaged pier. The tethered boats around it rocked in waters that churned and boiled. 

The harbor went silent in the wake of the thunderbolt. All eyes were on Marie.

Lightning sprung up in her footsteps and chased away the shadows. Her golden eyes were wild now. She was still coming, bringing her vengeance with her. The surviving raiders, those not crispened by the strike, struggled to their feet. The few that still held swords gripped them and rushed to meet her. Those whose blades had gone too hot to hold, dropped them and brandished clubs instead. 

Marie, clad in lightning, thought about the absurdity of the men and women rushing towards her. What did a self respecting Mage need to do to be appreciated these days? But then, if Griefers had the sense to not charge at a thunderstorm, then they wouldn’t be Griefers in the first place.

By now the town had begun to rally. Sailors, engineers, shopkeepers, and vagrants had taken up arms and rushed into the street. The still thunderstruck raiders were caught in the mob and found themselves overwhelmed, their stragglers soundly beaten and swallowed up by the crowd as they tried to retreat.

Her anger did not subside. Southport was a tough town, hardened by the merciless waves and erratic weather of the Emerald Sea. But even they could be overwhelmed. The combination of a ruinstorm followed by a paramilitary invasion might do the trick. Feeble as they might seem in the face of a well placed lightning bolt, the Griefers were a dangerous militarized fighting force, and the menace they provided was more than a passing irritation. 

As if answering this thought, two more landing craft crashed into the docks, each unloading a quatro of riot troops and a heavy armored dreadnought apiece.

Good, she thought. She wasn’t yet satisfied. 

Marie rushed to meet the thickly armored riot soldiers as they trampled up the cracked stone of the piers towards the top of the seawall. Marie deftly dodged the first two as they swung their batons and charged her with their shields. She propelled herself off of the first and swung solidly into the second, drop-kicking squarely into her helmet. She felt the charge slide off of her and cling to the soldier, who shuddered and twitched as the current flowed through her. She sprung backward into the first armored raider and gripped him by the helmet, flipping over him and using her momentum to pull him back after her. He tumbled backwards as she swung herself between his legs from behind and caught him behind the knees. Her momentum was building, the friction pulling more electricity from the air, which she directed into him as his body tumbled backwards, the energy arcing through him into the ground.

She bolted away from the next pair and slid roughly over the ground to meet the second wave. She leapt to her feet, kicked hard off the riot shield of the next raider, and went sailing into the air above the squad of riot troopers. She grasped at the nearest currents, held tightly and, as she landed, and discharged the mass of electricity. The streaming arcs pulsed from the ground and brought down an earth shattering bolt of lightning down on the Griefer squad. The charge that followed her kept building.

Only the two heavy dreadnoughts remaining. 

The sixteen foot iron plated mechanima suits stood over Marie, brandishing their terrible armaments. Griefers armament was limited to what they could steal, or produce in whatever holes they crawled out of. Their soldiers almost never carried firearms, saving their gunpowder and explosives for artillery and heavy arms. 

The dreadnoughts certainly counted as heavy arms. Each armored limb was fitted with a heavy assault weapon. 

Marie quickly took stock: Both armors were fitted with huge flamethrowers, though she could not tell at a glance whether they were dragonfire or not. She hoped not. If it was then this would get extra messy. One dreadnought had a gatling gun, the other a grenade launcher. Clearly they were meant to provide devastating fire support to the raiding party. Even with support from the mob of Southport citizens, it was unlikely that they could overcome the heavy armor without artillery of their own. 

Marie knew that there were denizens of Southport other than Carlos who could provide that kind of support, but whether they would get to the docks anytime soon was another matter entirely.

Marie glared. Her charge continued to build and the storm wanted in. She hated them. She hated them so very much. She hated them for their thievery. She hated them for their pride. She hated their utter contempt for the same people they depended on to steal from. She hated them for everything that they took, and everything that they broke, and everyone that they hurt. She hated them with overflowing, boiling, white hot dragonfire hatred. And the lightning hated them too, it hated them with her. 

The charge was overflowing now. Marie was enveloped entirely, visible only as a focus for the white hot arcs surrounding her. Now, she thought, and let the storm in.

Her rage was incandescent.

Everything was lost in the thunderclap. A great blinding bolt split the air and rained down a cascade of wild strikes that speared through the landing crafts and the armors. Batteries and fuel tanks, engines and munitions boiled and ignited and exploded all at once. The blast echoed across the water, and the splinters and shrapnel of the landing craft and pier alike rained down on the harbor. 

****

“What was that?” Raven sputtered in disbelief as the waterfront went up in a terrifying blaze of light and concussive noise. “What was that? What- I don’t- Carlos? Sir? Mr. Desocrates?”

“What’s the matter, Kid? Never seen Magecraft before? Maat’s Glaive. What are they even teaching you kids these days? I swear.” he muttered. He shook his head, then turned back to look towards the harbor. The older man cast a critical eye at the light show and gave a single firm nod, as if it was what he expected to see.

Truthfully, he was a touch surprised something like that hadn’t happened sooner. Even smaller thunderstorms tended to make Marie... feisty. A ruinstorm like last night’s? Well. No wonder she had been running the kitchen herself instead of leaving it to the staff. With all the charge in the air, Carlos figured it was a smarter bet to speculate about what she couldn’t do rather than the inverse. And it was nice to see her let herself go, so to speak; the way she had to hold back all the time couldn’t be healthy. On the other hand, he knew Marie had… feelings about letting herself cut loose. Carlos wouldn’t claim to fully understand them, but he respected them. Either way, whether she took the Griefers all out at once or drew out the conflict, it still served to keep eyes off him, and make for a clearer path ahead.

Leaving Fortuna’s through the back door, Carlos had led Raven through the alleys of Southport. They wound their way around storm damage and through cannon fire, passing townsfolk as they went. Everywhere, people were running to join the fighting or shoring up buildings or digging people out of rubble. After a few streets, Carlos just kept a hand on Raven, pushing him forward when he strayed to help. 

Not only was the kid naive, he had no sense of how to prioritize in a crisis. All that mattered was what they could do in the moment, he thought. And what they could do was put themselves in the right spot to make the biggest difference. Not spend their precious seconds helping every soul along the way. 

They’d finally reached a dock on the far side of Southport harbor, away from the fighting. Now, the two men waited on the dock. Raven watched the lightning. Carlos watched the water.

He heard the engines before he could see the ship. Even quiet and moving slow, Carlos would know those engines anywhere.

The ship was entirely a dull, coppery brown, with metal hull, and a deck that sat low to the water. She was long and flat. A converted barge with a large open cargo bay in the center, and a raised forward cabin, atop which sat a large object, covered by a tarp and tied down with ropes. The wheelhouse sat to the stern with a sloped roof, and behind the wheelhouse sat a crane. It was mounted on short rails, and tied down low over a small cove that split her stern. Wakes from two large propellers trailed behind. Carlos listened for a moment to the noise of her twin engines, quietly growling in harmony.

“Is that your boat?” Raven asked. “Are we going to get help? Are we going to be the help? Are we going to evacuate the town? Maybe we should head back to the restaurant? Or help Miss Fortuna from the water?”

“Yes, No, Yes, No, No, Yes.” Carlos shook his head. “How can you be overthinking this and underthinking it at the same time?” He looked askance at Raven.

“What do you mean?” The young man’s face flushed with confusion.

Carlos was exasperated. And annoyed. “Get on the boat. I’ll walk you through it.”

There was a lot to do, a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and Carlos needed the kid to get his head in the game. As soon as The barge was brought close enough, Carlos leapt onto the deck. With practiced movements, he cast a chain to catch the dock and pulled the ship against it while Raven stepped gingerly onboard.

“First time on the water?” Carlos watched unimpressed as Raven staggered clumsily around the ship’s deck.

“I’m fine!” Raven replied quickly. His arms pinwheeled while he struggled to find his balance. Carlos didn’t imagine that the armor helped in this instance.

There came the sound of tapping on glass and the two turned toward the wheelhouse. Morty was at the wheel, wearing a small hat at a jaunty angle. He tapped the glass once more with one massive claw and waved.

“Is your lobster steering the boat?”

Carlos rolled his eyes. “He’s not my lobster. He’s my business partner! Morty ain’t nobody's lobster but his own.” 

“Right! Sorry. Morty. My bad. Sorry, Morty!” Raven shouted at the wheelhouse. Morty waved again, then set a pair of claws on the wheel and turned the vessel out into open water.

“Not that I’m not happy to help - I am - but this feels less like volunteering and more like,” Raven finished the thought awkwardly, “conscription?” 

“So you’re catching on,” Carlos said approvingly. “Glad you’re so willing, though. That’ll make this go easier. Welcome aboard the Aimless Drifter”

“So your boat, that is, your ship, is the Aimless... But why-” Raven found an accusing finger pointed under his nose.

“Firstly. Whatever monstrosity Marie fixed you for lunch on my tab, I gotta have you pay back somehow.”

Raven considered this. “Again, not that I’m not happy to help, but, hypothetically speaking, how would it affect my debt if I didn’t get to finish all of it?”

“....” Morty gurgled from the wheel house.

“That’s a fair point,” Carlos conceded to his partner. Raven didn’t even ask. “We’d have to weigh it against how much she added to the plate when you weren’t looking.”

Raven looked ready to argue, but then his face went blank. His eyes widened in realization and he whispered, “when did the pie get there?”

“When indeed,” Carlos said, raising an eyebrow. “You can ponder it later. Right now, I need a Sweeper, not a hero. So as I was saying,” Carlos gathered up the chain and recoiled it. He moved towards the large tarp in the center of the deck. “Secondly. I’m press ganging you because you want to help, and - and I am guessing here - you might actually be able to help with what needs to happen now. Assuming that story you told me wasn’t a gross exaggeration?” 

Raven was affronted. “I would NEVER-” Carlos again raised a finger to Raven to silence him.

“Good.” Carlos nodded and went back to busying himself untying the ropes that held the tarp in place. “So let’s break it down. Obvious problem? The port is under attack. Two things are happening right now. The first, several boatloads of contemptible ratfuckers are wrecking everyone’s shit in an effort to terrorize and steal.” He turned to Raven. “They are not too particular about which one they intend to do more of. With me so far?” 

The kid looked taken aback, Carlos observed. Did ASEC not swear anymore? But the young man nodded, listening with rapt attention.

“Two.” Carlos continued as he moved to untie the other side of the tarp. “Presumably you have taken notice, that in addition to running roughshod over the docks and wrecking everyone’s shit, these Griefer bastards are also shelling the town from yonder gunboat.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards a large metal ship, looming in the distance, but getting closer. “Morty? Careful on the approach. We don’t want to be in range of their deck guns just yet.”

“…”

“Okay, okay. I know it’s not your first rodeo.” Carlos winced. He had known it was a ridiculous thing to say the moment the words left his mouth. Was whatever the kid had catching?

Carlos continued. “In case it wasn’t clear from the light show back there, the town is more than capable of dealing with the assholes in the landing crafts. Marie is probably mopping them up now. But even without a dropout archmage bringing down the Four Kings’ wrath, Southport would still hand them their asses. It might just take a little longer, which would mean a lot more damage.” He stood and grabbed the tarp with both hands.

Raven was still listening intently.

“But. They can’t very well stop the cannonfire while they have their hands full with a land invasion. Not to mention, that said land invasion is the only thing stopping that gunboat from redirecting its fire to the waterfront again, and all the people gathered there.”

A dawning look of horror crossed the Raven’s face. He was coming to understand the gravity of their situation.

“That, is where we come in.” Carlos jerked the tarp, which fluttered in the wind as it slid off a long artillery cannon mounted to the deck.

“B-but,” Raven stuttered. “There’s only the two of us? And why do you have that?”

“Which is one more than we would’ve had if you weren’t here to help.” Carlos turned and grinned at Raven and Morty gurgled. He chose to ignore the second question, answering by  loading a yard long, shell into the breach. 

“So,” The boy slowly uttered, “We’re going to fight our way through a boat full of … bad guys?  And somehow stop them from firing at the town?”

Carlos looked up thoughtfully for a moment. “Yeah. That about sums it up.” He closed the breach with a clang, and turned a series of wheels and cranks as he looked down the barrel to the Griefer ship, adjusting the angle and position of the long gun.

“Mind you,” Carlos turned to Raven. “It’s not as if I plan to fight fair.” He pulled a lever and the gun fired with a deafening blast.

The shot struck the hull of the Griefer Destroyer. Mere inches from the waterline, it seemed. The Destroyer rocked as its side exploded in a white hot blaze that left a burning splash of white phosphorus flame searing around the point of impact and melting a large hole in the armored hull. Dragonfire shells were expensive and difficult to make, as well as dangerous to carry, but situations like this one were precisely why he kept a few on hand. The water boiled as it surged into the gash in the ship, causing the larger vessel to list to the side. The battery of deck cannons dipped lower just as they fired, and their volley exploded in the waters just before the waterfront docks.

“You did it!” Exclaimed Raven. “But- then why did you need me?”

“We’re not done yet, Kid.” Carlos said grimly. “There’s no guarantee that we killed her. They could still seal the compartments, recalibrate those cannons, and go right back to firing. We need a more permanent solution. But hopefully, that’ll distract them long enough for us to get the jump on them. LET’S GO!” At Carlos’ shout Morty opened up the throttle and the engines roared. 

The Drifter lurched forward and sped towards the Destroyer. The great ship listed to starboard and the deck, once easily 10 feet above the waterline, now dipped to the level of the Drifter’s. This was where things were going to get dicey. To approach the Destroyer meant getting in range of their smaller deck guns. They would have to close the distance and get under their line of sight before the rattled deck crew got to their gunnery posts.

“So, what’s the plan?” Raven shouted over the roar of the Drifter’s engines as they rapidly approached the Griefer ship.

“Simple!” Carlos shouted back. “Get on their boat. Break a whole lotta stuff. Stop them shelling the town.”

The young man took a moment to consider this and nodded. “Wait, you said I wasn’t even fit for a walk in the third yard, like, an hour ago. What makes you think I can fight a bunch of pirates right now?”

“Well, for one, these are Griefers. Don’t compare them to pirates, it’s rude.” The boy’s thought process was almost transparent. A small pout crossed his face as he looked down in remorse. Probably thinking about offending unassuming pirates. This kid was too honest, Carlos thought. “And secondly, how many of those pancakes did you eat?”

The young man opened his mouth, then paused. Counting perhaps. Carlos was amused.

“Try out that axe of yours and see how it feels now.” Carlos added, interrupting the kid’s apparent internal crisis. Carlos briefly considered whether he had misjudged the young man and decided he hadn’t. Given everything he had seen that morning, he had no doubt that Raven was not exaggerating. Anyone who could survive an ordeal like that was clearly not as helpless as the kid seemed.

Raven hefted the axe, he seemed to brace for the ache of his bruised and battered muscles. Then he looked surprised. He lifted it with a single hand and twirled it with a flourish. The kid looked at Carlos, first incredulous, then through narrowed eyes. “What did she put in my food?”

Then again, he seemed pretty helpless.

“Honestly, kid, your ignorance of Magecraft makes me seriously question my faith in our educational system.” Carlos said as Morty steered the smaller ship to line up parallel to the damaged Destroyer. “Now are you going to help me take out this trash, or should I leave you here and take care of this myself?”

The young man paused, considering … something. Carlos was losing patience. Sweeper or no, the kid was young. Too young. 

“I’m ready!” The boy said with a determined smile.

Carlos nodded. “Here we go!”

Morty slowed the Drifter as they pulled alongside the Destroyer. The aft deck of the Destroyer was low now. Carlos had hoped the odds of the Griefers stopping the flooding were slim, but he couldn’t tell. And he could see the deck cannons already starting to realign. The gunners at least were determined bastards. The gap between the two ships narrowed. Morty was more than competent as a helms-lobster, but for a moment Carlos considered the possibility of a collision. Wouldn’t it just be a capper on an already absurd day if he had to repaint his boat. But the ship held steady, just away from the Destroyer. He took a step back and then dashed forward to leap to the deck of the Griefer gunship.

Carlos landed and slid a short distance on the slick deck before looking back to check on Raven. The young man hesitated a moment then followed, struggling to keep his balance as he landed on the slanted deck. Less slanted than Carlos would have liked mind you, though this was probably better for the kid to keep his footing. The ship was less tilted now, and starting to hold steady. As he had suspected, the Griefers had managed to control the flooding. 

Fucking hells.

The worst thing about Griefers, thought Carlos… No, scratch that, there was too great a contest for the worst thing about the contemptible bastards. But certainly one of the most frustrating things about them, was that they were damn competent sailors. It came from having no ground to stand on, and a complete dependence on their ships to stay alive on the Emerald Sea. A hole below the waterline carried no guarantee of sinking them. Which is why they were here, thought Carlos, to guarantee that the fuckers were not sailing home.

Once Raven was aboard, Morty steered hard away from the Destroyer and took off at full speed, opening the distance and taking the Drifter well out of range and sightlines of the Griefer deck gunners. Good, Carlos thought. One less thing to worry about. Their boarding had not gone unnoticed though, and the Destroyer’s deck crew turned and charged at them.

“Right.” Carlos said flatly as he drew his machete.

The first Griefers came at them in pairs. Carlos engaged without missing a beat as the first two slashed at him, low from the left, and high from the right. Carlos parried with his blade, pushing both swords up and across one another as he passed beneath them, grabbing the wrist of the assailant to his right and pulling them forward and into their partner. Carlos kicked the stumbling crewman hard and sent both men to the deck before turning to check on Raven.

The young Sweeper seemed out of his element fighting the Griefers. Carlos imagined that these were a different sort of monster than the young Sweeper was accustomed to. Raven stepped back and back as he blocked and parried the sword blows with his axe. He defended well enough, thought Carlos, and his reflexes and balance were better under pressure than he had observed of the young man when he first stepped onto the Drifter. But Carlos’ brow furrowed. They did not have time for this.

Carlos stepped to the Griefers as they swung their swords at the young Sweeper. He swiftly kicked the back of the knee of the first, dropping him to the deck before landing a strong blow to the back of his neck. As the first man fell forward Carlos swung upward at the second with his machete, slashing across his chest, before turning the sword in his hand and striking across the man’s face with a right cross that knocked the Griefer flat. 

“We’re in a hurry, Kid. Let’s keep it moving.” Carlos said, turning away from Raven towards the doors to the bridge of the Destroyer.

“You’re just gonna kill them?!” Raven exclaimed. Another three Griefers poured from the open door to the bridge.

“I’m not gonna tell them a bedtime story.” Carlos said without slowing. He stepped towards the trio of attackers, ducking to avoid a swinging sword and leaning forward to throw the wielder over his shoulder. They landed hard on their back on the deck. “Besides, do ya see them pulling punches? It’s professional courtesy.” Another swing of his machete parried an incoming strike with force to make the Griefer drop the blade. Carlos fluidly stepped forward and kicked the knee that she bore her weight on. She dropped face first, and her bloodied nose stained the already slick deck. “They’ll be fine. Probably. Careful on your left, Kid.” Carlos nodded over his shoulder to the boy as the pair of Griefers Carlos had initially knocked down rose to attack.

Raven turned, axe in hand, just barely managing to raise the great broad blade to block the two flashing sabers that came at him from above. For a moment the young man seemed panicked and at a loss. Carlos turned down the corner of his mouth in disapproval as he prepared to once again bail out the inexperienced youth. Potential or no, the kid was going to slow them down at this rate, and there was no time to lose.

Raven looked down for a moment as he pushed back against his attackers, holding their blades at bay. His face quickly shifted to a look of determination as he pushed hard and threw back the sabers. Raven swung low and struck with the flat of his axe in a powerful wide arcing swing that took both men off their feet and sent them sailing overboard. Carlos raised an eyebrow in surprise. That was more like it.

“Professional Courtesy, right?” The kid said and smiled.

“Not bad.” Carlos said with a wry grin. “C’mon, Kid. We got places to be.”

Together they pressed forward across the upper decks of the Destroyer. Carlos was pleased to see the kid finding his stride as he leveraged the axe not just to parry and block, but as a cudgel and a great metal bar against the Griefer crew. Raven slammed crew members against the walls and ceiling, and throwing them overboard as they passed, he kept pace with Carlos. True, he seemed resolute in not using the cutting edge of his great weapon, but Carlos appreciated the quality of blunt force trauma that the young man delivered to the ‘Bad Guys.’ If only he knew what kind of monsters he was fighting. Time for that later, Carlos supposed.

As the two of them crested a set of stairs leading to the bridge, Carlos held up a hand, signaling Raven to stop. Carlos pressed himself against the wall adjacent to the door to the bridge and cocked his head, signaling Raven to do the same. He sheathed his machete and drew his shotgun from its holster. Both men stood on opposite sides of the door with weapons drawn. Carlos turned the wheel of the hatch, standing to the side. Shots rang out as the door opened.

“By all means do come in.” Came a rough voice from the bridge. “Just show me your faces so I can get a proper look at you.”

“That would be the Captain.” Carlos said to Raven. No surprises here. Griefer officers regularly carried firearms. More delays and complications, Carlos thought. He reached into one of his many vest pockets, but then stopped as he looked across the doorway at Raven.

“Kid. Y’mind if I borrow one of those?” Carlos pointed at Raven’s utility belt, where a series of thin cylinders were snugly affixed.  Raven looked puzzled, but pulled the cylinder from his belt and rolled it across the floor to Carlos.

“Consider lunch paid for.” Carlos smiled, picking up the flash grenade and pulling the pin. He held it for a four count, then tossed it into the bridge cabin. Overlapping shouting rang from the cabin, cut short by a powerful bang and blinding flash of light, followed by a thick cloud of smoke. Carlos wasted no time in stepping through the door with his shotgun drawn. A crewman with wincing blinded eyes charged him, but Carlos deftly stepped to the side with a well placed foot in the path of the Griefer, toppling him onto the cabin floor. The Captain stood and leveled a pistol, but Carlos was faster, taking aim and discharging his own weapon into the Captain’s shoulder. The pistol fell to the floor. 

Carlos delivered a swift kick to the head of the crewman on the floor and strode to the Captain, kicking the pistol away and leveling his shotgun at the Captain’s face. The man glared at Carlos with gritted teeth as he gripped his bloody shoulder. 

“Mongrel wretch!” He exclaimed and made to leap at Carlos.

“Nope.” Carlos said flatly as he stepped forward into the Captain’s lunge and struck the man hard across the face with the butt of his shotgun, knocking him to the floor.

“Carlos, are you alright?!” Raven exclaimed, stepping through the remaining smoke and over the body of the fallen crewman. 

“Right as rain, Kid.” Carlos said without turning. He was looking around the cabin. He knew he only had moments, they had to keep moving. Despite the diversion caused by their boarding action, the guns could resume firing at any moment. His eyes scanned the room. 

“There we go.” He said to himself as he looked at the map table in the center of the room. Laid out on the table, over the navigational charts were a firing table, and a rough map of the Artisan coast. A set of firing lines and range marks on the map radiated from the position of the ship, crossing through Southport. Carlos’ eyes narrowed as his mind raced. He already knew that this raid had not been typical. It was in broad daylight, and they had brought an artillery ship. That alone would have been brazen, if not entirely surprising. 

This was different. The charts showed a specific path around the island, with more points ahead to presumably move on to after shelling Southport. Was the raid just a pretense? The range marks lined up with the areas already hit by the shelling. There were check marks by each of the ranges shelled so far, as if they were items on a list to be crossed off. Another chart showed firing angles with an elevation drawing of the island coast, leading up to the Barrier Wall. Trajectories marked on the chart showed the firing coordinates and the projected arcs of the shells. Dotted lines extending from the trajectories seemed to reach further, intersecting with and arcing over the Barrier Wall. The guns on this ship were not that powerful, but the drawings seemed to indicate that they knew that. Was this entire raid an operation to confirm fire arcs?

Carlos gathered up the charts quickly and stuffed them into a leather tube that had fallen off the table onto the floor. He slung it across his back and turned to Raven. He picked up the sawed off shotgun from where he had placed it on the map table and fired into the forward bridge window, shattering it outward. He holstered the shotgun and drew a smaller flare gun from his belt behind his back. “About time we finished up here.” Carlos scowled. 

“When did you have that on you?!” Raven exclaimed in surprise.

“Always be prepared.” Carlos said calmly as he leaned out the broken window, firing a flare into the sky above the Destroyer. With that Carlos moved to the helm and pushed forward the throttle, engaging the ships engines as he spun the ship’s wheel hard to port. The ship lurched and heaved to port, causing Raven to stumble as he tried to keep his footing. Shouting came from the forward deck ahead. Once again the great deck cannons had no bearing to fire, and now the ship was turning out to sea. The stress from the turn would likely make things harder on the damaged starboard hull, which would force the crew to attend to their pumps and sealed hatches below deck. Good, he thought. Anything to keep them busy and away from the upper decks. They had been lucky so far and moved fast enough to raise no alarms. Griefer arrogance at its finest, no alarms for a mere two people. Best to keep what Carlos estimated were two hundred or more crewmen, below decks and out of the way. Carlos fumed. He was going to ruin this godsforsaken ship and its godsforsaken crew.

Carlos motioned for Raven to follow and the two left the bridge of the ship and descended, exiting onto the forward deck. Ahead of them the forward cannon battery turrets had begun to turn, straining to reacquire their targets. Determined. Bastards. Carlos thought again, and reloaded his shotgun as he strode towards the nearest turret. More Griefer crewmen rushed at the pair, abandoning their posts and charging.

“Kid, you mind taking care of these assholes? I gotta see a man about a belt.” Carlos said again without turning as he marked the farthest Griefer on the deck who was charging at them.

“Yes, sir!” Raven nodded enthusiastically and rushed forward. He met the Griefers midway and swung wide and swung hard, knocking  two of them off their feet and overboard. Other crewmen attacked from his flank, but the kid parried and blocked and countered, throwing them across the deck like ragdolls. Carlos allowed himself a smile. The kid was a natural after all.

Carlos’ smile faded as he turned to the Griefer gunner that had fallen behind his comrades. He wore the usual moronic grey uniform to show his allegiance to the lost cause of the banished City Guard, but more importantly he wore a belt of munitions for the deck mounted grenade launchers that Morty had so deftly avoided when they made their approach. The young soldier screamed and charged, saber in hand. Carlos was in no fucking mood to indulge the honor of a bigoted fascist, no matter how young. He drew his shotgun and fired squarely into the boy’s kneecap. Now the scream from the young Griefer was of a different quality. Carlos kicked away the saber and pulled the grenade belt from the crewman, who cursed and screamed as he cradled his bleeding leg.

“You godsdamned mongrel half-breed son-of-a-” The boy was cut off as Carlos put his boot to the Griefer’s head and kicked him hard across the tilted deck. 

“Such a nice boy.” Carlos shook his head in disgust. He turned to look at Raven and saw the young Sweeper finish tidying up the deck, knocking the remaining Griefer deck crew overboard. The kid waved sheepishly and smiled at him. Carlos smiled in spite of himself. He was starting to like the kid. He looked over the ship’s bow to see the oncoming form of the Aimless Drifter, with Morty at the helm.

“Alright, Kid. Time to go.” Carlos shouted to Raven. He reached into his pocket to check a watch, then from a different vest pocket he pulled a grenade with a dial instead of a pin. Carlos turned the timer and clipped it onto the grenade belt. He casually stepped across an open hatch to the lower decks and tossed the belt in as he moved to meet Raven at the port side of the deck. “You ready to head out?”

“Is that all?” Raven asked. The kid was scarcely out of breath at all, and seemed ready to keep on fighting. Marie had given him a ten-stack at least, Carlos mused.

“Yeah, we’re done.” Carlos stretched as he stepped to the railing. “Here’s our ride.” He gestured downward to the Aimless Drifter, which Morty had pulled alongside the Destroyer. He and Raven hung off the side of the ship before dropping down onto the deck. Carlos drew the pocket watch from his vest and checked it. “Let’s get some distance, ‘ay?!” He shouted to the Lobster at the helm.

“...”

“What do you think? Just get us clear!” He shouted to Morty. The great crustacean gurgled in reply and spun the wheel, turning the Drifter away from the Griefer ship and again opening up the throttle. They sped away from the Destroyer just in time to see the front end explode in a brilliant tower of flames and black smoke that poured into the sky as the ship went down.

“What was THAT!?” Shouted Raven over the Drifter’s engines.

“That would be their magazine.” Carlos shouted back. “All the shells that they didn’t have time to shoot at us.”  A second explosion came from the sinking ship. This one larger, sending a pillar of water and steam shooting high into the air. “And that would be their boiler.” Carlos shouted, now wearing a broad and satisfied smile across his face.

“Alright, Morty. I think we’re clear. Bring us around. The kid and I’ll set the claim.” Carlos waved to Morty, who proceeded to turn the ship about to pass over the site of the sinking wreck. 

“Ok, Kid. Last chore before we head back. Gimme a hand over here.” Carlos led Raven to the back of the ship. Under the crane on its short rails, were a series of large barrels, each with a black lobster stencil painted around the sides. Carlos unhooked one and gestured Raven to assist as he began shifting it towards the edge of the deck. Raven picked up the barrel with ease and carried it to the stern of the Drifter. “Good. Now we just attach the anchor and let her go” Carlos said as he hooked a weighted cable to the bottom of the barrel and dropped it over the side. Raven released the buoy, which bobbed up and down in the churning waters as the Drifter pulled away and Morty set a course for the town. As they moved away, surviving Griefers swam and clung to the buoy.

“I see, so this is so the survivors don’t drown.” Raven said and nodded approvingly.

“That is handy for them.” Carlos said, moving to the front of the ship and beginning to secure the tarp over the deck gun. “But mostly it marks the wreck as mine to salvage or sell later.”

“Wait,” Raven wheeled around. “you do this for money? What about saving the town?”

“Course I want to save the town!” Carlos shot back over his shoulder. “I live there. My favorite bar is there. But if you’re good at something, Kid, you never do it for free.”

The kid was quiet. Carlos didn’t care to think too hard about the crestfallen expression on the young man’s face. Young. Too young. And naive. And honest. Kid was on track to be a hero alright, and get himself killed in the process.

****

The molten shells of the dreadnoughts fell upon the seawall, rent asunder by the lightning. Their pilots, badly burned and bleeding from their ears, dragged themselves from the burning, twisted wreckage of their mechanima armors. The cascade of lightning strikes had subsided, and the landing force was scattered along the waterfront, scrambling to board those landing craft that remained seaworthy after the unholy barrage.

Marie Fortuna stood at the center. She breathed deep. As she looked over the remains of the piers and the nearby landing craft she could see the fight continuing in the distance, the mob of townsfolk surging into and over the platoons of raiders. There were still a lot of them. Less than they had arrived with, though. She looked around her, surveying the damage. She was calmer now, and she could see that the effect of her strike had spread beyond the immediate vicinity. The docks were on fire.

Control. It came down to control, and she had slipped. She thought of the shattered windows, and burning boats and the charred and cracked remains of the pier. Damage on top of damage, she thought. And it figured that the bastards would have crashed into one of the few piers that was made of wood. What a fucking waste.

A series of explosions out on the water confirmed that Carlos had done his part. Sinking some Griefers would put him in a better mood, at least. Marie struggled to not feel guilty in the wake of her own mission. The people were safe, the Griefers were retreating. Everything else was just stuff. Stuff got wrecked all the time, she shouldn’t feel so bad about it. And yet.

She shook herself free of her own grim thoughts. This wasn’t finished until the Griefers were gone. She debated what to do next. Destroying the rest of the landing ships would be… satisfying. But then they’d be stuck with even more remaining Griefers. Marie could leave them to the mob though. She was not the only Southport denizen with an axe to grind, and her neighbors deserved their chance to get their shots in. 

Marie scanned the area. She could see the Griefers frantically retreating to their remaining boats. She looked to the far pier where a pair of the few undamaged landing craft were being filled beyond capacity by surviving raiders. Good, she thought. Let them crawl back where they came from. She flexed her fingers, feeling the sparks crackling. The charge around her was lower now, calmer, and she was beginning to feel sore and singed. Even if it was her magic, no Mage was entirely immune from the local effects, and given the white hot bolts and arcs she had channeled, she counted herself fortunate that the light burns were all she had to endure. Still, she smiled. Property damage notwithstanding, it was a job well done. Her head was clear and she no longer felt the overflowing charge of the storm surging inside her.

She looked again at the pier in the distance where the Griefers were preparing their escape. Something was off. Marie looked closer. She saw the landing crafts, and the retreating force piling onto them. Trails of Griefers ran along the pier to the boats, many of them wounded. And then she saw something odd. At the steps leading from the seawall to the pier, stood three figures, looking out on the battle ravaged waterfront and conversing.

One of the three was obviously a Griefer officer. That much was evident by his cap and the pistol at his side. Next to him was a robed figure, dressed all in black, with their face shadowed by a low hood. A cultist from the inner ring? A mage? A cultist mage? Too many cults in the city to properly keep track of, she thought as she strained to look closer. But then she turned to the third figure. Her rage rekindled. Rage and shock.

This changed things.

-----

<Last chapter | Next chapter>

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Hi Morty!

Source

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 1 Sequence 3

It was the pain that woke Raven. Absent the adrenaline and endorphins generated by life threatening danger, his body had been given time to realize the extent of the beating it had recently taken. His muscles hurt and his arms felt like lead. He could still feel the soreness in his chest from where the Walker Engineer had shoved him. And all that was compounded by untold bruises that he must have sustained when the water carried him away down the drain. He became aware that he was lying down, and tried to sit up, but his body declined to obey. 

He tried to take stock of his surroundings. He was dry, at least. That was good. He seemed to be lying on a musty couch in front of a hot electric radiator. He was still in his armor, but his helmet, chest plate, and air tank had been removed. Raven turned his head and spotted them all resting on a chair next to him. For a hot second, he considered putting them on. Almost as soon as the thought formed, his nerves flared fiercely with pain. The armor would make him safer, but his body simply couldn’t take it now. He’d have to go without for the moment. It would probably be fine, he rationalized. If there were any real danger, whoever took his gear off probably wouldn’t have left it within easy reach.

He took inventory. Raven’s body was a mass of aches and pains, but as far as he could tell, nothing was broken. Slowly, he eased himself upright and checked his gear. Even above ground, his radio spat nothing more than static. Optimism still made him want to blame storm interference, but logically, he could admit it was almost definitely broken. His air tank was nearly depleted, he assessed grimly, and his helmet was cracked in at least two places with the largest running across the visor. Considering, it was surprising it was still in one piece. Raven couldn’t begin to tell which close call was responsible for that. Could it be repaired? He felt a pang at the thought of losing a piece of his father’s armor.

The rest of it - the chest plate, wrist and shin guards, etc - were all dented to hell and back. But he was relieved to see that it was nothing that couldn’t be buffed out when he got back to the barracks. He was less optimistic about his right shoulderguard, crumpled where the Walker had grabbed him at the vault door. Still. Let Cortez laugh about his armor now!

Cortez… he hoped the crusty old sweeper would be okay.

Altogether, everything was accounted for, except for his axe. A hot flood of panic and grief swept through Raven at the thought of having lost it. It was like losing his father again in miniature. He was alive, though. His dad always focused on the good, and Raven followed that example as best he could. He was alive, his armor was mostly okay, and he would be able to tell the Sanitation Corps about everything he’d seen. He could not push away the pang of deep grief however. His father’s axe was gone.

Lacking anything else to do, Raven decided to try his luck standing, and then walking. He tested his legs and circled the apartment, examining it as he went. It was cluttered, but Raven could tell there was an order to it. What caught his eye first were the two shelves. They were made of wood, an incongruous display of wealth in such a small space. They hung over a desk covered in stacks of journals and maps, and were full of artifacts. 

Raven recognized a few of them - sextants, a record player, a small gyroscope - but there was more he didn’t know. He was curious about the journals, too, but that was a degree of snooping he was uncomfortable with. This person had saved him, after all. It wouldn’t do to be rude. 

Besides the desk, and the chairs that circled the radiator, the rest of the living area was dominated by a workbench. The items here were much more familiar to Raven, who’d spent unknowable hours in Abby’s workshop. There were a few tools Raven thought she’d happily break approximately all of the laws to get her hands on. A narrow hall led deeper into the apartment; a bedroom and bathroom, and a dark open door. A closet, Raven assumed. And attached to the living area but a step up was a modest kitchen.

Raven’s stomach gave a thunderous growl at the thought of food. It would probably be a good idea to find his mysterious benefactor now. Before he ate them out of house and home. 

There was only one obvious exit from the apartment. It led through a heavy metal door out to the brick walkway along a drainage tunnel which Raven recognized as the same one he had been pulled from. He passed through the entryway and out into the light of day. Raven’s eyes burned in the daylight. It was the first he had seen of the surface in near to 24 hours. As he looked out of the drainage tunnel he saw the expanse of the Emerald Sea spread before him, boats in the distance. It was the first time he had seen the ocean. 

It was so much bigger and more open than anything he had experienced. It had the expanse of the chasm beneath the Barrier Wall, but the sky seemed to go on forever. It was so different than the sky he was used to on the surface within the inner ring of the city, framed by the overhanging buildings and elevated crosswalks, and often broken apart by their long shadows. It took Raven’s breath away.

As he stepped blearily out onto the walkway along the seawall, drawn to the waters’ edge, he heard the unmistakable sound of music. Electro-swing unless he was mistaken (Raven preferred the sound of Big Band). It wafted from above and behind, and he came to realize that he stood upon a lower tier of the seawall. A little further down was a stairway leading to the top of the wall. More stairs, he thought bleakly, but he climbed. At the top, Raven took one more look out at the water.

It was an impressive sight, but he had things to do. Raven turned back towards the island and continued following the sound. He saw the coastal road along the seawall stretching into the distance. Across it was the high fenced edge of a massive yard, filled with towering mountains of scrap. As he followed the edge of the fence to the music’s source, he saw signs marking it as Yard 3. He was momentarily hopeful; if he could navigate through the third yard, he could find his way back to the Precinct and the barracks. 

This hope quickly faded however. Yard 3 was expansive and Raven had no idea of which of the miles of labyrinthine, junkyard paths would lead him back to the precinct. At last, he came upon the entrance to a smaller gated subdivision of the massive yard. Over the gate was a sign: 

“Morty and Carl’s Bespoke Salvage.”

“Hello?” Raven called out warily as he stepped through the gate. The music was coming from somewhere within, but there were stacks piled high on either side of the path, blocking his view of anything beyond them. There was no choice but to follow the path and hope there was a friendly face at the end. He paid careful attention to his surroundings as he ventured into the yard. Raven would be the first to admit he didn’t have an eye for the junk that made up Artisan. Even after a few years as a Trash-man, he struggled to tell scrap from artifact unless someone told him. But even he could see that the quality of the stuff here was more...complete than the usual junk heap. 

Just before a turn in the path, Raven heard voices over the music. Well, one voice and a gurgle with inflection. They seemed to be arguing.

“No, I don’t care how easy it would have been to dispose of the body.”  

“…”  

“He wasn’t dead! Listen, when you’re the one buying the groceries, you can argue about the cost of meat.”  

“...”

“Yes I do! For the past three months, which one of us has been going to market? Me, that’s who! Besides, it’s a moot point. He’s wearing Sweeper armor, ergo he is a sweeper. We do not eat Sweepers.”

“…” 

“Since always. That’s been a rule since always.”

“Um, hello?” Raven thought it was a testament to how stressful his day had been that a conversation about eating his corpse caused him only mild concern. “Hi there. Uh, I’m Raven, Raven Daniels. Is that your apartment I woke up in?”

An older man sat on a brightly colored folding chair under a large umbrella. Next to him on a folding reclining chair sat a massive, black shelled Rock Lobster. Yes. That was what it was. Just a rock lobster. It was larger than any number of street dogs he had seen in his life, but it was unmistakably a lobster. 

The older man did not answer immediately, taking a moment to look over Raven. “I was expecting that you’d come up the stairs.” He gestured a thumb over his shoulder to an open doorway in a box like office behind them. Apparently the door at the end of the dark hallway had not been a closet.

“The name’s Carlos. Carlos Desocrates. This is Morty.” A gurgle came from the crustacean and it raised a clawed arm. Seeming to wave hello. 

Carlos Desocrates was shorter than Raven at about 6’ tall, with sharp black hair that bristled out from under a red bandanna that matched his shirt. He thought he could see streaks of gray in Carlos’ hair and stubble. A sharp scar cut from the corner of his jaw up the side of his cheek. His burly arms had tattoos on his copper skin that were incomprehensible to Raven. He was muscular but with a bit of a paunch, and wore a pair of pants and matching vest that seemed to Raven to be entirely made of pockets. A sawed off shotgun and machete were holstered at his hip, which caused Raven some momentary consternation. Raven could not place his age, since he seemed grizzled in a way that was only familiar to him from knowing Chief Hobbs. Raven could not tell if it was age or mileage that he saw on the older man’s weathered face. 

“Well, um, thank you for your help. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t gotten me out of the, the seagate? Thing? But I’ve, um, I’ve had a very busy night and I really need to report in. I,uh, I think they might think I’m dead,” Raven said with some surprise. He hadn’t thought of that before. But the fact was his squad had last seen him trapped with a few dozen Walkers. People generally didn’t come back from that alive. He presumed at least. It had been a surprising day. “If you could just tell me how to get back to the Third Precinct, I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Kid. You are about to fall over. Take a seat,” the man said, and pulled another folding chair from behind him. It was more an order than an offer, Raven realized. 

“I took the liberty of shelling you of that armor to pump the water out of your lungs. Figured I didn’t know you well enough to take off more than that. This is yours, by the way.” 

Carlos reached down and unfolded a long towel on the ground next to his chair. Raven’s heart skipped a beat as Carlos picked up the axe and held it out to him. “Seemed like a good idea to keep this out of reach in case you woke up twitchy. You already soaked my couch, and I don’t need you making any more of a mess than that.” 

Raven stared agog at the axe. His axe. His fathers’ axe. The axe he’d thought lost forever. That axe. Raven promptly burst into tears.

Carlos wore an expression half way between compassionate pity and unimpressed disapproval. From somewhere, Morty produced a handkerchief.

“... Anyway.” Carlos coughed, still holding Raven’s axe. Raven took it from him with trembling hands and clutched it close. With a few wet sniffles, he reined in the last of his tears. This had been the longest day, he thought again, and cradled the axe in his lap. 

“I’m good now,” Raven said, though his choked up voice belied how light his grip was on his emotions. Carlos made the executive decision to carry on anyway.

“As for getting back to your Precinct, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. South Gate through the wall is sealed and it ain’t gonna open up again until tomorrow morning. Pretty routine after a monster storm like what we had last night. So, you may as well relax and rest up awhile.” Carlos took a long drought from a large flask at his hip, but did not offer Raven any of whatever it contained.

“What? No.” Raven protested. “What about through the third yard? I need to get back as soon as possible.”

Carlos raised an eyebrow. “Kid,” he said flatly. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are in no shape to trek through Wrecker territory.” He cocked his head to gesture to Yard 3 in the distance. “ASEC doesn’t take particular care of the outer yard, and the locals ain’t real friendly.”

“I can do it,” Raven insisted. “I have to. I saw something in the pipes, something big. ASEC needs to know about it as soon as possible!”

Carlos stood and leveled a flat, unimpressed look at the young man, then squatted low to bring himself to eye level with Raven and leaned forward. He raised a finger to Raven’s face. Raven stared for a moment cross eyed before Carlos pointed, and proceeded to poke him squarely in the middle of his forehead. Raven immediately lost his balance and toppled backwards, falling out of his chair onto the ground.

“...ow,” Raven mewled in a small, sad voice.

“...” Morty gurgled.

“Fine,” Carlos said, rolling his eyes, but relenting to his crustacean companion. “Kid, why don’t you tell us what’s going on. If it’s actually important and not ‘tHey’rE goNNa firE mE ‘CAuse i diD soMEthinG sTuPID’ important, maybe, MAYBE, we’ll see what we can do about getting a message inland.” Carlos returned to his chair. “So. Indulge us.”

Raven struggled to right himself and the chair, failed, and rolled to sit up on the ground cross legged. He looked at Carlos with watery eyes. “Do you really mean it?”

“We’ll see,” Carlos repeated firmly.

“...” Morty gurgled encouragingly.

Raven recounted the story in as much detail as he could. Finally, Carlos held up a hand and interjected: “Ok, stop. STOP. We get it. You climbed a lot of stairs.”

“But you understand now, right? I have to get back to my Precinct and tell them! If we work fast, we can catch that weird old man, and bring him to justice before anyone else gets hurt!”

Carlos looked decidedly nonplussed. “Justice, huh? 

The older man sat thoughtfully for a moment. 

“Not to snuff your flare, kiddo. But ASEC has a hurricane to clean up after. That is gonna be priority one. AND if you sealed him off in the deep shafts like you say, then I don’t imagine that they’re gonna drop everything for a manhunt, through the uncharted depths, trying to follow a tram line, that nobody knew existed until this morning, with only your word that this guy is a threat.”

“You don’t think this is important?” Raven asked, feeling inexplicably hurt.

“I think you’re gonna have a hard time convincing the people in charge that you didn’t just hit your head real hard.”

 Raven was incensed enough to climb to his feet, though he leaned on his axe to do it. “But he can command Walkers! The whole city could be in danger!”

“Kid. The whole city is always in danger. You’re a Sweeper, you oughta know this. Anyway, there’s a couple hundred more of you taking care of things inside. They can keep a handle on the city until we get lunch. C’mon” 

Raven wanted to argue more, but his stomach growled loud enough to drown out the music. The old man was right, he could save the city after lunch… Was it lunchtime? How long had he been unconscious?

They returned to Carlos’ apartment long enough for Raven to put on his armor. It was heavy, and Raven was tender, but he’d rather face exhaustion than risk losing a single piece of it through carelessness. And wearing it felt a lot lighter and less awkward than carrying it. Morty stayed behind to watch the yard and the two men took off along the seaside walkway to the heart of the Southport District.

The neighborhood reminded Raven of his own borough; the bustle of people at work, the market trading, the variety of shops, the sheer camaraderie of people greeting each other and helping one another as they made repairs to their town. It made Raven a touch homesick. Silly of him, he thought, since it hadn’t even been a full 24 hours since he was last home. 

Nevertheless, he struggled not to wave when people stared at Carlos and himself. No one knew him here. He’d just be a weirdly friendly Sweeper… above ground… outside the wall… on his way to lunch, following a trip by storm drain to the coast. Reports of that sort of behavior wouldn’t help convince his superiors he wasn’t concussed.

Carlos led him to a restaurant near the water. Above the door hung a sign with a ship’s wheel that read ‘Fortuna’s Tavern’. Raven could smell bread and meat on the air surrounding the building and he very nearly swooned.

“Don’t fall over just yet,” Carlos groused without turning, then opened the door.

The aroma intensified, and was joined by coffee and syrup and was that cinnamon he smelled? Raven nearly knocked over Carlos in his eagerness to get inside. He felt as if he could feel the stares, but his attention was on the display case next to the bar. There were pies and quiches and scones. He was going to eat them all.

“Hey there, Carl,” came a cheerful voice from behind the bar. A pretty woman with gold tanned skin, short, wiry rust colored hair, and a warm smile was wiping down the counter. “I was wondering if you were going to grace us with your presence this morning or if I’d have to send someone to your yard to get you.” 

Carlos nodded his head at the woman. “Marie,” he said by way of greeting. “Got work for me?”

“Just a few tow jobs. If you have the time. Which I know you do.” The woman, Marie, smiled winningly at Carlos. Her gold eyes seemed to flash in the light. Raven thought something was striking about them. He could not place it at first, but as he looked closer he could see that the whites of her eyes were slighter, and darker, and her too large irises were a striking, shimmering gold. Something about her sharp gaze, and her wry smile reminded him of Captain Mendoza’s obsidian glare and predatory grin full of too sharp teeth. Carlos glowered at her for a couple heart beats, but even Raven, distracted as he was by hunger, could tell the older man wouldn’t argue. “Glad that’s settled,” Marie said, though as far as Raven could tell nothing had been settled. Who needed a tow? Why did she expect Carlos to do it? Why did Carlos listen to her? Did she serve waffles?

“And who’s this strapping young man you’ve brought to my door?” She rounded on Raven with a smile that made him want to double check his weapons, even without the carnivorous sharpness of his Captain’s grin. “The name’s Marie Fortuna, hon! This is my place. What’s a nice boy like you doing with this curmudgeon?”

Raven opened his mouth to reply, but Carlos cut him off. “This is Raven. Fished him out of the storm drain this morning. He got washed out with the last of the debris from the surge. Listen, I’ve gotta make a few calls. Can you feed this kid? My tab.” He turned to exit, then doubled back to add, “Nothing fancy!”

Marie saluted his departing figure, but agreed to nothing. Raven didn’t even think to say “bye” or ask what constituted fancy until the door was closed. Then, in the sudden quiet, Raven’s stomach gave another aggravated rumble. 

“Why don’t you have a seat, kiddo?” Marie’s voice was a good deal gentler than it had been, though Raven hadn’t thought she was brusque before. He pulled up the nearest stool and sat. “Don’t worry about that grump. He’s got more credit here than he lets on. And he’ll be back as soon as he finishes his calls... If he can even make them, that is” she said in a quiet, wry aside. “Anyway, what can I get for ya?”

“... Waffles?” 

She hisses through her teeth, an apologetic sound. “No waffles, I’m afraid. The griddle broke yesterday and with the storm damage, no one has time to fix it right now. Pancakes okay?”

“Pancakes are fine,” he said, but he could hear his own disappointment. 

It wasn’t just the lack of waffles that had gotten him down, though that was the icing on his sad, fluffy but not crispy cake. With a late but welcome breakfast in reach and no clear course of action beyond it, he’d suddenly felt the weight of everything that had gone wrong. Cortez was hurt, and his gear damaged. He’d discovered that city was in danger, but his credibility was uncertain. Meanwhile, his only help was an old man with a lobster who wanted to eat him. And everyone kept calling him a kid.

“I’m not a kid,” Raven said, sulking into his chest.

“Of course you’re not,” Marie said consolingly. “Are you worried about Carlos? You shouldn’t be. He’s probably just sore about you making him get up early. Strawberry or chocolate, honey?”

“Strawberry, thanks,” said Raven. Marie placed a large glass of strawberry milk in front of him with a twisty straw. A moment later, she slid a ten-stack of fluffy banana pancakes under his nose, a whipped cream smiley face drawn on top and a couple sparklers stuck in the heaping scoop of Neapolitan ice cream on the side. “Thank you, ma’am,” Raven said and dug in. Would this be considered fancy? He tried and failed to restrain himself, then fell upon the breakfast with ravenous hunger. As he ate and drank, he felt a slight tingle, like static in the air around his food. He tasted a spark. Were the sparklers really necessary?

Marie let him eat in peace for a while. She busied herself with the other customers, brewing more coffee, and cleaning the griddle for the next order. Raven watched as she directed several young servers to handle different tables. He caught two of the young women smiling in his direction as he stuffed a forkful of pancake into his mouth, and whispering to one another. He paused and waved sheepishly. When Raven had made a sizeable dent in the pancakes, and slowed his pace enough that she could see him chew before swallowing, she came back to him and asked, “So what’s your story, hon? You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind, and as an official, certified bartender, I can assure you telling me your troubles will make them easier.”

Raven’s eyes flicked from her to his pancakes and back again, considering. At last, he swallowed and began to tell her an abridged story of the morning.

 “So, um, as you might’ve guessed, I’m a Sweeper,” he began, and gestured vaguely the armor he was wearing. “My squad was out last night, well, this morning, doing a retrieval from the pipes. There was another team down there, and an excavation crew, and- Anyway. Something happened down there. Something bad. My team went down to help, but we got caught up in it instead. I made it out. I think my team did too. I hope they did,” he said in a quiet aside. “After we got separated, I saw some stuff. Important, the-city-may-be-in-danger stuff,” he said intensely. “I’m the only one who knows about it. But I shouldn’t be. My captain needs to know. The commanders at ASEC definitely need to know. But my radio is broken and the gates are closed and I can’t get in touch with any of them!”

By that point, Raven had nearly worked himself into a frenzy, catching concerned stares from other patrons. But just as quickly he seemed to deflate before Marie’s hawk-like eyes. “I told that old guy about it, but I’m not sure if he believed me. When I said it out loud I guess it sounds unbelievable. The further away I get from it, I’m starting to think ‘maybe I did just hallucinate all that’.” Marie watched as his lower lip trembled a smidge. The smile slid off her face.

“You might be surprised what people will believe, hon. Especially around here.” She laid a hand on top of his. “And don’t you fret about Carlos. If he thought you weren’t worth listening to, he would have taken you to some other bar.” She winked and slid him another strawberry milk. Raven hadn’t even seen her make it. “Don’t let Carlos hear you calling him old though.” She said with a smirk.

Marie kept Raven company in between brewing coffees, making breakfasts, and directing her small squad of servers to attend to the stream of people who came through. Nearly all of them were sailors, or technicians, or machinists of some kind, and they all bore circles under their eyes of varying darkness. Raven wasn’t the only one who’d had a long night, it seemed.

A half hour later, Carlos returned. 

Marie handed him a stein of coffee and he sat next to Raven. “Bad news, kid. Lines to the inner ring are down. I couldn’t get through to ASEC. Storm Damage I expect.” 

Raven would not be deterred. He pushed back from the bar and stood. “Then I can’t waste time. I need to get back as soon as possible.”

Marie just shook her head and pushed down on his shoulder. “Sit and finish your pancakes, hon.” Raven looked down, surprised to see his stack was less than halfway eaten. He’d missed her sliding more onto his plate. “The City Gate isn’t gonna open until tomorrow for damage assessment. And that’s at the earliest.”

Raven looked between her and Carlos in honest surprise. “Wait,” he said. “You don’t mean to tell me they just leave all of you cut off when storms hit?” When neither of the two contradicted him, his face contorted in a grimace of appalled shock. “That’s terrible! I had no idea.” 

Marie just shrugged and snuck a hand pie onto his plate. Raven didn’t even notice when he began to eat it. “Well, it’s not like it’s totally malicious. The Barrier Wall makes it hard to support the outer ring. We take care of each other, though.”

Raven thought of all the friendly people he’d passed on his way to the tavern and found himself agreeing. He’d opened his mouth to ask more questions - he had so many! - when Marie and Carlos both held up hands for silence. At this signal, the whole tavern had gone quiet, the other patrons looking at the pair nervously. 

Raven didn’t understand what was happening, but he watched them, too. He saw them look at each other in alarm, then shout, “DOWN!”

 Not a moment later, the tavern shook and the air thundered as artillery exploded outside.

---

<Last chapter | Next chapter>

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Raven Daniels with Sweeper armor and axe (sans helmet).

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 1 Sequence 2

They hadn’t yet reached the vault, and already they knew something was very wrong.

It had taken precious minutes to check on the status of all members of Squad 13 and regroup to continue the mission. Their encounter with the Doom Rat had given them bumps and bruises. But worst of all, it had cost them time. They felt that dearly as they made their approach to Vault 213. 

A few yards from the vault door, the scorch marks started. Spattered splashes of dragonfire residue where it had flamed out. There were just a few at first. Maybe they’d come upon a Walker with an exceptionally wide Loop? But as they got closer to the door, the number and concentration of marks grew. In some places the white phosphorous liquid still burned. And then they found a Walker. And another. And another. Metal bodies had been melted, hacked, and fused to the tunnel floor. Some of them still groaned softly as they struggled in vain to move.

Squad 13 moved forward, stepping lightly and listening closely. There was no rearguard to be seen in the tunnel outside the vault. But from within… Light shone from the open door, casting shadows that crawled across the far tunnel wall. Something was moving in the vault. 

As they made their approach, Rosie’s lights hit Muskrat’s rig, Alphonse. It was empty, abandoned, and the plating showed signs of the Walkers attack; palm sized dents and claw marks where metal fingers had dug into the side.

A shiver ran down Raven’s spine. He knew how tough the rigs were. And he had thought he knew how strong Walkers were. But seeing the evidence of their clash left him unsettled. All those dents, the crumpled corners, and gouges made by grasping metal hands. His own armor wouldn’t stand up to that sort of attack. And he’d nearly rushed two.

“No bodies.” Came the voice of Sweeper Ko. “Muskrat must have disengaged.”

“They can only have gone for the vault.” Chimed in Sweeper Li. 

It was clear from the carnage that Squad Muskrat had put up a fight, and as Ko had pointed out, no Sweepers were among the molten Walkers. The vault would have been their only escape route, and they had not reestablished a guard outside, so the fight had not ended. Or at least Muskrat had not been the winner… 

Raven shook the thought from his head. If Cortez was smart enough to disengage for two Walkers, then surely Muskrat must have found a way out. He looked ahead to the shadows cast from the vault door. It seemed to Raven that it was unlikely that they would find Squad Muskrat idly milling around with the research team inside. But if all that remained inside were Walkers that Muskrat had escaped or succumb to, then what would his squad do if they had to face the same  odds?

“I guess we might end up being a cleanup crew after all.” Said Cortez flatly. It seemed that Raven was not alone in his appraisal of the situation.

“Can it, Sweeper.” The Captain snapped. “Vanguard, form up. Burners to the front. Li. Give me eyes on whatever’s inside that vault.”

Sweeper Li nodded curtly and moved swiftly and silently to the vault door. Raven briefly marveled at how his senior officer managed to move without a sound while loaded down with nearly 60 lbs of heavy scaled armor, an air tank, and a belt and pack full of gear. Not to mention her axe.

Li positioned herself squatting just outside the corner of the doorway and pulled a mirror on a telescoping rod from her belt. She held it out into the large open doorway, turning it to see from several angles what awaited them. After a moment, Li stood and leaned into the doorway to look into the vault. 

“Li. What are we looking at?” Captain Mendoza softly barked over the crackling radio channel.

No response. Li simply stood, looking into the open door.

“Li! Respond! Are we clear?!” The Captain sounded anxious.

“We… Affirmative! Clear, sir.” Li sounded uncertain. “But, I’m not sure what… something is off.”

The Captain waved the squad forward and Raven and the rest of the vanguard moved to the door. They approached Li, who nodded and gestured them inside. Together they passed under the heavy brace that held the huge door open, entered the vault, and Raven stood for a moment, both relieved and agape at the strange scene before him. 

All twelve members of Squad 11 could be seen, alongside another dozen or so scientists and engineers. Everyone was working, excavating piles of ancient trash. Researchers stood over tables, carefully studying artifacts retrieved. On the ground Raven could see the melted, lacerated bodies of the final four Walkers. Counting the ones outside, that meant that Muskrat had brought down ten of the metal horrors. 

Raven and the vanguard stepped further into the vault. Cortez knelt down near the bodies of the Walkers, touching his gloved fingers to the iridescent fluid that spilled from the axe wounds. He took a moment and whistled in appreciation of a job well done. A wave of relief passed through the squad. But Captain Mendoza was still visibly tense as she sternly surveyed the scene. Raven wondered for a moment at the cause of the look of consternation on his Captain’s face. It did not take long however for him to register the wrongness of the scene. Sweepers did not dig. Engineers were not research assistants.

What was going on here?

“Hell of a mess you guys made down here!” Cortez laughed. Raven too looked at the extent of the splatter from the bodies of the Walkers. The luminous blue-green bile was everywhere. It stained the armor of the Sweepers in great washes, and it even seemed to have spread in trickles across the floor to the researchers and engineers, staining their clothing and skin. No wonder a quarantine had been called, thought Raven. Even he knew that direct contact with Verdigris was the surest way to contract the dread sickness.

“Trash Panda! Hold!” Captain Mendoza commanded, just as Li and Howell approached Muskrat’s captain as he heaved a large piece of detritus and tossed it away. Raven thought he had almost put the pieces together when the captain shouted, “Don’t interrupt the loops!”

Squad 13 froze. Yes, Raven could see it now. There was no conversation. No casual interaction. Only silent work. Their movements were stiff, halting, and completely synchronized. Sweepers excavated and stopped to pull particular items from the piles. They handed them off to Engineers or NOIR researchers, and passed them to tables. Silently, efficiently. Moving together like a hive. 

Raven stood in silent awe and counted. More than two dozen Walkers, all working together. This could not be real, he thought. 

“Howell?” Raven spoke into his headset, his voice near to breaking. “What does protocol say to do here?”

“Sorry kid. We are officially off the map.” The senior Sweeper said flatly.

“Everyone fall back,” Captain Mendoza ordered. “Carefully. Take it slow, but get back to the vault door.”

Raven suddenly realized how far into the vault he and Cortez had ventured, and how far it was to the door. He was pulled from his thoughts as a hand roughly grabbed his shoulder and pulled him hard. Raven spun round, hand on his axe, just in time to see Cortez pointing across him to the Walker that had very nearly bumped into him. It was as if he and Cortez were not even there, he thought. On the one hand it was a relief. If they had been Shamblers, this would already have descended into a life or death fight. On the other hand, he and Cortez now seemed to be trapped halfway across a minefield as the Walkers crossed back and forth across the vault platform between the two men and the only exit. Cortez pointed at an opening past one of the tables of artifacts where no Walkers seemed to be working. They began edging carefully between bodies. They could do this, Raven thought with manufactured confidence. They’d do this and get topside and he’d tell Abby all about it over waffles. Maybe she’d even treat him! (No. She would not. He knew this.)

The crash echoed across the platform, the sound so loud Raven thought they’d hear it topside. His thoughts scattered in panic. The first articulate thought was ‘no waffles after all.’ The second was ‘wait, we’re not dead?’

Raven had knocked over something, he realized with chagrin - it could’ve been Cortez, but Raven was mature enough to admit it was probably him. He’d thought the Walkers would’ve been on them in a second. But there he was, comparing them to Shamblers again. He’d made a racket, but he hadn’t interrupted the loop. They were still oka-

“Mess! Mess everywhere!” a voice muttered. “Can I not have a moment’s peace to work?” 

The voice came from behind them, deeper into the vault. Looking back, Raven could see what looked like a cable car suspended from some sort of track among the beams above the platform. From the open door stepped a disheveled older man, thin and sickly looking. Raven thought he looked like he could use a whole stack of waffles, and maybe a nap. He was being ridiculous, he realized. Absurdity was a new response to panic. He looked closer at the old man’s face. He seemed to still be human, but this shift had already gone very differently than he’d ever imagined. 

Bright eyes burned in dark sockets ringed by dark circles. The old man’s skin seemed to have a metallic sheen. And peeking out from his shirt collar were veins of iridescent blue-green. He wasn’t a Walker, Raven guessed. But he was definitely ill.

 The rest of the Squad had already gathered at the door. Cortez was ahead of him. Raven wondered if any of them had noticed the man in the cable car? Was he even real?

“Hello?” Raven called back across the wide space. His voice echoing into the dark expanse. “Sir? It’s not safe here! Come with us and we can get you to a doctor! You can get across if you just don’t touch them.”

“Kid, what in the Hells are you yammering at?” Cortez groused and turned to check on Raven. Raven could tell when he saw the man in the tram, his face making a complicated expression of surprise and disbelief. So the man really was there. That was good, Raven thought. He wasn’t seeing things. Cortez opened his mouth. “Hey,” he began to say something but the old man cut him off.

“Get them out of here,” the man muttered as he waved them away, before turning around and disappearing into the dark of the tram. 

Suddenly, the loops stopped. Footsteps and the soft rustling of excavation that had previously filled the space went silent, and Raven’s blood ran cold as every Walker turned their fiery gaze upon them. The nearest Walker turned and picked up Cortez in one swift, sure movement. Cortez couldn’t even get breath to shout, it happened so quickly. Raven could only watch in horror as the Walker threw him bodily towards the vault door. 

He hit the wall with a sonorous impact, the metal scales of his armor reverberating against metal wall. Raven’s thoughts went back to the jumper as Cortez’ body landed with another crash and crumpled on the floor. The Walker had taken direction but not well; it had aimed Cortez at the right wall, but still several meters from the door. Cortez was down and as far from help as ever.

Time slowed again. Raven saw the Captain shouting in a drawn out motion that carried no sound. His squadmates slowly readied their axes in the face of the throng of Walkers that lurched towards them. But Raven’s eyes returned to Cortez, lying on the floor at the base of the wall. Raven once again found his body already in motion, making great strides toward the older man. He saw Cortez move, weakly pushing at the ground to roll over while another Walker, a former Sweeper, closed on him. 

The Walker grew closer and larger and time resumed as Raven threw his body against it, knocking it off its feet away from Cortez.

Raven’s shoulder hurt. His whole side hurt where he had body-checked the Walker. It had not given way easily and he felt like he had thrown himself against a wall. He could still move however, and he rushed to Cortez, who coughed and gasped in a great breath as he rolled onto his back. 

“Cortez!” Shouted Raven as he pulled at the older man.

“Looks like I get to be the one with the concussion, rook,” Cortez chuckled weakly. “Somebody told me once that you aren’t supposed to move someone with a head injury. Maybe I should lie down for a minute.” The Sweeper smiled weakly and his eyes closed in a wince. 

Cortez was barely conscious, and his breathing was labored. Raven did not want to think about the injuries the old Sweeper would have under his armor. His helmet was visibly cracked, and the air tank on his back was loudly hissing from a broken valve. Time. There was no time, thought Raven. The Walker Raven had knocked over was rising to its feet, and more were closing in. He had to get them to safety.

Suddenly there came a bellowing shout from the door - “EYES!” the Captain screamed. Raven barely had time to pull down his and Cortez’s eyeshields before the white flare of dragonfire burners lit up the platform, bathing the nearest Walkers in blinding liquid flame. Raven shook off his surprise and dragged Cortez to his feet, shouldering the bigger man and carrying him roughly towards the door. Sweepers from the Vanguard, Li, Ko, and Howell rushed forward and struck at the burning Walkers, one to a man in defiance of protocol. The recently turned walkers crumpled easily as the dragonfire burned away the flesh that had yet to metamorphose into metal. They met Raven halfway and he handed Cortez to them. They hurried him back towards the door, Raven trailing close behind them.

Ahead, Raven saw the rest of his squad closing in on the vault door as well. It looked like Cortez had taken the biggest hit; everyone else was running on their own steam. For a thrilling minute, Raven realized they’d make it.

And then he heard the clomping of metal feet behind them. Realized that Rosie was big and strong, but how fast was she? He remembered the state of Alphonse just outside. Time. It all came down to time. They needed more of it. 

The thought struck Raven like lightning.

“The Door!” Raven shouted at Captain Mendoza. “We gotta close the door!”

The Captain paused for only a moment, then nodded. “Move it people!” she bellowed as she ushered them past her through the door. Li and Howell carried Cortez through the opening. Raven was only steps behind and closing fast. 

The Verdigris infected Sweeper grabbed Raven by the armor at his shoulder and he felt it crumple as the Walker lifted him and threw him backwards away from the door. He saw Captain Mendoza move to help, but she was blocked by the wall of Walkers closing on them at the door. Raven was cut off, his Squad was pinned by a group of Walkers at the door and he could see their axes battering against the brace. They would make it in time, but not if they waited for him. 

Raven knew what he had to do. He had to close the door. From inside.

Raven rolled forward and slashed in a wide arc with his axe, striking the Sweeper-Walker across the shins and bringing it to its knees. He wasted no time, leaping forward and using the Walker as a springboard to launch himself into the air above the throng that closed on the door. He would only have one chance. He had time for one breath and he heaved his axe overhead as he flew, bringing it down hard onto the brace that held the door.

The brace buckled for an instant, then screamed as it bent and flew out from the doorway, knocking down a row of the closest walkers. Raven landed with the same grace Cortez had displayed as he bounced off the far wall, managing just barely to roll as he hit the ground. He watched the Captain yell something he could not hear as the heavy door slammed shut in front of her. Raven was on his own, but his Squad was safe.

He thought his dad would be proud. Raven would probably be able to ask him in a minute.

No. Stop that. He wasn’t dead yet. Thinking that way would only make him dead. Cortez had specifically told him to not get dead. If he got dead, Abby would kill him. So dying was off the table. Think, Raven.

The Walkers were strong, and sometimes fast, but they could be evaded. He’d managed to do that much already. Frantically Raven scanned the platform looking for any way to go that would take him away from the closed vault door and the throng of Walkers that were gathering there. The Tram, thought Raven. 

He looked at the encroaching crowd, saw their eyes that were dead, but burned. Veins of verdigris fluid pulsed beneath their exposed skin; skin that was still unmistakably flesh. He hoped that lingering human frailty went down to the bone too. There was one Walker at the edge of the group that seemed spaced just a bit farther out. He took a breath as he singled it out. It would be a gamble.

Raven threw himself forward, across the encroaching arms, and towards the furthermost Walker. He hefted his axe at his side as soon as he landed and swung in an upward arc, contacting the Walker’s side just below the arm. It struck with a hacking sound against something that was clearly not meat, but not metal either. He put his hips and back into the  follow-through on his swing, and felt the great blade give as it sliced upward, cleaving the Walker’s arm at the shoulder, and knocking it to the side. A gush of green fluid sprayed out as the Walker fell. With an economy of movement, Raven dodged to avoid the splatter of bright verdigris, then he ran.

Raven bolted past the larger group of Walkers. Not like Shamblers, he thought. Same stiff movements, but terribly fast when you got close. Raven thanked the Four Kings that the terrifying things seemed slow to react as he sprinted away from them towards the cable car. Whatever the sick old man was, he was not a throng of undead copper ghouls with superhuman strength. Raven would take his chances. 

As he approached the car there came a loud thunk, followed by a steady hum as the lights on the tram came on. A tremor ran through the platform, causing Raven to stumble and fall against the side of the car. He righted himself and made towards the open door, gripping the frame and swinging himself inside. But he was stopped as he crashed against a human form. Both fell to the floor. 

As Raven struggled to rise, he recognized the uniform of a Mechanical Engineering Corpsman. Then saw the Burning eyes. Another Walker. Staggering to his feet in the doorway, Raven took stock of the tram. The Walker Engineer remained on the ground but a second was standing to his left. And on his right was something - someone - else.

“Young man, these interruptions are intolerable,” came the old man’s voice. It had a strange metallic resonance, as if the pipe organ from the Undercity Market Carnival had learned to speak. Raven turned to see him, and what appeared to be another figure behind him. “I don’t know if you can appreciate the significance of what we have discovered here, but I do not have time to suffer delays on your account.”

The old man looked terribly frail and ill, but he stood straight and stared down at Raven with eyes that burned with the same fire as those of the Walkers. “Remove him please, and let us be on our way.”

The second engineer on his left side quickly moved before him and with a single hand pushed Raven hard out the tram door. Raven felt the breath rush out of him as he flew backward. Even when he hit the ground, he kept sliding away from the car. When he came to a stop, he gasped for breath and strained to get back on his feet. Meanwhile, the doors closed and the tram lurched forward, moving away from the platform. Looking through the tram windows, he could see the two engineers, the old man, and the shorter figure of what he guessed was a researcher in the yellow light. Then the car sped away along the overhead rail, disappearing into the darkness of the canyon-like shafts. 

The sound of heavy footfalls brought Raven back to the moment, reminding him of the remaining crowd of Walkers closing on him from behind. How many were there? Where could he go? He looked around desperately. The vault door was closed and he had no hope of opening it on his own. The cable car had disappeared into the darkness. All that was left was the impenetrable deep dark of the shaft at the edge of the platform. The Platform. Suddenly Raven saw what the tram had obscured. A scaffold, reaching upwards into the dark of the beams above. He could not see how far up it went, but for the moment, it was the best path away from the Walkers.

Raven ran and kept running. His armor seemed to become heavier with each breath as he reached the stairs and ladders of the scaffold and began climbing. He could take the time to breathe properly once he got away. Every flight, he paused to listen for the clambering of the Walkers. They were coming, but they were slow. The Walkers did not climb very well or very quickly. At least not as quickly as he could. Raven wondered if they even needed to breathe.

Stupid. Of course they didn’t need to breathe. They were dead. Not only were they dead, but their lungs and other organs were made of metal. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was stupider than usual. There wasn’t enough oxygen reaching his brain to think clearly. Stupid stairs. Just how many flights did it go up? Stupid Walkers. How long did they plan to chase him? The old man had said to ‘remove’ him, but what did that even mean to them? How would a corpse with a copper plated brain parse those instructions? Stupid old man. And for that matter, who was that man and why did the Walkers obey him? 

Stupid. The entire situation was stupid, and Abby would make fun of him later for it. Percy was right to avoid the undercity. There was no way Abby would spring for waffles, but maybe Percy could be convinced….

Raven was breathing heavily now. Gulping for air. Positively heaving in fact. How much time had passed? It felt like he had been running for hours. He pushed up the cuff of his glove to check a watch. Ten minutes. He looked down to see the distant floodlights of the platform below. In the darkness it seemed that he could even see the shape of the pipe from the outside. He wondered how many Sweepers could say that they had seen the tunnels from the outside?

His attention was torn from the view by the shaking of the scaffold. Then the metal groaned and Raven was nearly thrown off his feet as the landing jerked wildly. He looked down and saw burning eyes against the dark. A great mass of them were clustered near the platform, still slowly climbing. But two pairs were ascending fast, practically leaping up the scaffold, graceful even with their heavy, stiffening bodies.

Engineers.

Well that’s just not fair, Raven thought plaintively. 

He thought of how many games of tag he’d lost to Abby over the years, the limber way she’d twist and leap and climb. And that was before she’d had proper training as an engineer to make all those movements finer, faster, ever more precise. All to better service the machines in the heights of the barrier wall and the towering buildings of the inner ring. Raven knew he was slowing; it was only a matter of time before these Engineer Walkers caught up to him. And that was if the scaffolding didn’t collapse first under their combined weight-

Wait a minute.

He looked up. Yes! Above him was another platform sitting atop another pipe. He could just make out the outline in the fading light of the flood lamps.There was his escape. Below him, the scaffolding was beginning to warp more as more Walkers began to climb. The joints that connected the steps to the landing he was on were noticeably disfigured, the left one especially. He saw the burning eyes of the Engineers right below him, rising. There was no time to doubt. He wrapped his left arm around the railing, and with his right, he swung his axe down hard on the weak joint. It gave easily and with a hard kick to the top step, it swung away from the landing. 

Raven heard one of the Engineers hit the landing below, felt the scaffold sway dangerously. Then with a great whining moan, the scaffolding began to collapse. Raven saw some of it hit the vault platform, heard the crash as it and the Walkers fell. The rest of it swung out over the shaft and fell and fell and fell.

Meanwhile Raven hung from the steps by a single arm. But the steps held, as did the rest of the scaffold. He took a deep breath, sheathed his axe across his back, and began to finish the climb.

 He did not look back again. 

At the top of the upper pipe, Raven turned his headlamp on. The platform was smaller than the one he’d just fled, and it connected to paths that led deep outward into the darkness. A junction between Bridges perhaps. But bridges to where? Now that he was out of danger, Raven was acutely aware of how lost he was. No one had ever been so far out of the pipes before - no one that had lived to tell about it, anyway. Looking up, he could see the Gears, but that was only passingly helpful. Of course the Gears were above him, the Gears sat above the Pipes. But he had not imagined that he had risen so many levels toward the upper undercity.

Okay, okay, so he wasn’t that lost. He still knew these structures, he was just looking at them from a new perspective. He had to make for a pylon, one of the massive pillars that held up the city. All sorts of things converged at the pylons. If he found one and went up, he was bound to eventually reach something familiar. Of course he needed to find his way to a Pylon first. 

In the darkness of the pipes, it was all too easy to become lost or disoriented. Compasses were of no use in the Deep Down. The only way that Sweepers ever found their way home again was through radio beacons placed along the charted routes, using them to retrace their paths. So far from the pipes, he was unsure whether his radio would be able to pick them up, but it was worth checking to see.

The results weren’t promising. His radio wasn’t picking up anything more than blips of static, and he couldn’t tell if the uneven signal was because he was so far out, or if his equipment had been damaged in the conflict. Raven wracked his brain for a moment, trying to think past the lingering adrenaline. He laid out the facts as he knew them; he was in an uncharted part of the undercity, his headlamp was the only source of light, his communications equipment was unreliable, and he had the biggest craving for waffles after running up, what was that, 70 flights of stairs?

What he did have were the pipes. It had been a straightforward path from the lift through the pipes to the vault. Just the single turn. If he could follow the pipe back to the lift, he’d be that much closer to the beacons. Maybe he’d be able to get back inside - that Doom Rat had chewed a pretty big hole, after all. 

Raven immediately regretted thinking about the Doom Rat.

Still, Raven had survived a great number of horrors from the Deep Shaft today with a shockingly small amount of damage to his gear and person. He figured that as long as he didn’t take anymore obviously bone-headed chances, he should be able to get back to the lift in one piece. He’d take it slowly, and keep his senses attuned for rats, giant tunnel worms, or anything else that could end him in a matter of bites. And he could always go up.

For a while, this plan seemed to work nicely. By his own estimation, he’d made it halfway back following the bridges along the pipe below. But as he retraced his steps he kept looking for the large hole chewed by the Doom Rat, but he could not find it. He began to feel anxious. Was he even following the right pipe? No. How could he be? He had climbed how many flights of stairs on the scaffold? He was easily hundreds of feet above the pipe his Squad had followed. He could only hope that the pipe below also had beacons that he could tune into. He checked to see if the signal was any better - nope, still static - then doubled back to the last connecting bridge. At the end of it was a ladder going up to meet yet another pipe. Raven’s breath caught at the sight. It was just as big as the pipe he’d come from, but it curved and twisted, wrapping around a straighter pipe like a knot. 

He’d heard about pipes like this: pipes that were just huge, hellish slants that people fell down and never climbed out of. A few of the crazier salvage operators occasionally tried to send people down them - they were just as full of junk as everywhere else in the undercity - but the mortality rate didn’t bear thinking about. Death pay alone would’ve bankrupt any company that stuck with it. Raven spared a thought for the dead that may rest in that pipe, then began to climb. He didn’t have time to be dead. He’d have to work his way up and around.

Except once he was up, there wasn’t a way back down. He tried to keep moving toward the lift, but there was no way for him to see it in the dark. He could only guess and keep moving. And so it went for hours. He would head in what he hoped was the right direction, and when that failed, he went up. In this way, Raven quickly moved through the gears. He had to stop completely only once; it had started raining, making the catwalks and ladders were too wet to try. Had he ever heard of rain in the Deep Shafts?

It was yet one more mystery of Artisan; the undercity apparently had its own weather. At least, Raven thought optimistically, it wasn’t a deluge like what was happening topside. He took shelter under an especially large bevel gear and waited it out. He nearly napped. He was tired enough for it. But the sooner he got back to his squad, the better. Besides, the barracks had beds. The rain lasted less than half an hour - Raven was timing everything to include in his report later - and after sitting another half hour to let things dry out, he carried on.

Finally, he reached a wall. And on the wall, Raven found a hatch. It was oval, and set a foot up from the floor. A small round window looked into the next chamber, but the glass was murky with age. Still, he had to try it. At least it wasn’t another ladder or flight of stairs.

The hatch was secured with a wheel lock, and it didn’t budge easily or quietly, but if Raven couldn’t brute force a door, the Sanitation Corps wouldn’t have let him look at an axe let alone wield one. The minute it was open, Raven was assaulted with sound. Rushing water thundered past him. He’d reached a canal. And he could see it, too! Maintenance lights dotted the walls, rendering his headlight unnecessary. A good thing too; Raven had done his best to conserve power, but even so he didn’t think his battery would’ve lasted much longer.

He was giddy with relief as he stepped through the door onto the slick catwalk. Canals always led to the surface. He could just follow the path and check hatches or ladders (he shuddered) as he went. The black market could usually be found along the canals, and the market always had people, no matter the time of day. It would be the easiest thing in the world to get back to the barracks if he found the market.

Just as he was thinking happy thoughts about the barracks cots and how many waffles he could eat and taking off his father’s armor for a minute, the sound changed.

It was still water. Still rushing. But it was louder. Angrier. Storm surge, Raven realized with dismay. He turned back at a run, trying to reach the hatch he’d come through. If he could just wait out the surge-

The water was on him, swiftly rising and filling the whole of the canal and the tunnel above. He was too far from the hatch, and as he looked towards the source of the angry sound, he saw the wall of water surging towards him. He had only a moment to remember his air tank and open up the valve to the breathing mask in his helmet before he was swept away. The wall of water hit him with a force that reminded him of being thrown from the tram by the Engineer Walker. His feet left the catwalk and suddenly he had no bearing, no ground to stand on. Raven flailed, reaching for something, anything, that could keep him in place. But the water was too strong and he was too tired after his long night.

Raven fell in and out of consciousness as the water buffeted him this way and that. He had no way of knowing how far it had taken him, or how much farther it would carry him. Maybe to the ocean? He mused. It was hard to think. He could feel himself in freefall at one point, but in the dark water he could only just barely focus on breathing. He was grateful for the air tank, for without it he would surely have drowned by now. 

He was tired. So, very, tired. Even breathing through his mask seemed to take effort and concentration. The effort was the only thing that kept him awake as he faded in and out of consciousness. 

A sudden, harsh stop brought him back to himself. He’d been thrust against a drainage grate, one of many that ringed the island to dump excess water back into the sea. Raven could see a light, and the ceiling of the drainage tunnel. He could hear the wind of the storm outside, and the wind whistled against his helmet. He was at the surface, no longer submerged in the surging waters. He sputtered and removed his mask and visor. He smelled sea air. With the last of his strength, he raised a hand to pull himself up against the grate. Nothing. He could not pull himself up or out of the water. He had nothing left. And he was so tired.

Raven struggled to keep his eyes open. He tried to call out, but no sound escaped his lips. After all he had been through, was this how it ended? He felt himself fading into sleep. He worried about what would come next, but the fatigue erased the last of his worries.  He felt a shadow pass over him. Was someone there? Could someone help him? No, only sleep mattered now.  Raven closed his eyes and knew nothing more.

----

<Last chapter | Next chapter>

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 1 Sequence 1

Raven Daniels awoke with a start. The harsh blare of the precinct klaxon rang through the barracks. He checked the clock and saw it was just past three. His sleep had been shallow and restless. Raven had spent shifts on standby at the precinct barracks before, but this was his first shift since being promoted and a doozy of a storm was bearing down on the city. He listened to the P.A.

“Repeat, Squad 13 Trash Panda to Bay 9. Trash Panda, all Sweepers report to Vehicle Bay 9.”

Raven had slept in his armor. He could not have known that his team would be called to action, but he had secretly hoped. He felt a twinge of guilt. A call to action had to mean someone needed help. It was selfish of him to hope for an emergency. But today was his first day as a full Sweeper, and he was going to be ready for anything. 

Raven sat up quickly and immediately banged his helmet against the upper bunk. Not an auspicious start. He turned up his visor and hastily tucked his long blue-black hair under his hood, tightened the straps on his somewhat ill fitting armor, grabbed his axe, and headed for the Vehicle Bay.

“We’ve got a Code Black,” Captain Meri Mendoza shouted as the klaxons continued to blare. “Trash Panda form up on me! Get the lead out people, let’s move it!”

Squad Trash Panda rushed into action. Captain Mendoza was still yelling. “This is a Medical Retrieval mission. Gear up and head to the Southwest Drop. We’re riding Rosie and going in hot. Daniels’, you’re with us.”

Raven felt a thrill of excitement rush through him as joined the press of men and women checking their armor and axes. It was only his first day as a full Sweeper, and already he was off to handle a Code Black. He couldn’t wait to tell Abby and Percy about it later. Raven’s guilt eased the more he thought about it. This storm was a beast, one of the worst Raven could remember, and the undercity was prone to flooding. It was not unheard of for work teams to get trapped. And then there were all the things that got chased out of their dens by the rushing water. A bad situation could turn catastrophic in an instant. It was a harsh reality of city life, especially in the undercity. But at last Raven would be able to help people. 

He was so excited!

Armed and ready, he followed his team to the Southwest Drop. Captain Mendoza was already there, loading up Rosie. The Heavy Rig was a massive beast of a tractor, armored top to bottom, with a monstrous engine, and drill and plow attachments at forward mounting points, made to clear even the most congested tunnels. All sides were heavily plated to defend against whatever beasties the deeps could throw at them. The medical trailer had already been coupled and the Rig rolled onto the massive elevator platform.

“Hey, Mendoza!” Sweeper Cortez shouted to catch her attention, then threw a thumb back to point at Raven. “Are you sure the kid is ready for this?”

“That kid got his promotion a full two years before you got yours, Sweeper Cortez. Sweeper Daniels’ will be fine.” Mendoza cast a sharp eye over her team as they assembled. “Though if you’re that worried about him, you can join him up front.” 

Cortez grimaced comically but kept his mouth shut. Instead, he wrapped one meaty arm around Raven’s shoulders and gave him a brief but affectionate rap on his helmet before mounting his post on the Rig. With Cortez occupied, Captain Mendoza looked down at Raven with her bright obsidian eyes and quietly confirmed, “you ready for this, Daniels?” 

“Yes, Captain! Absolutely.” Raven stood with his shoulders pushed back and chin up, trying to look as tall as possible. At 6’4” and with a powerful physique he was small for a Sweeper. His teammates to a one had at least a good half foot on him vertically, and some horizontally. Captain Mendoza was 7’6” slouching and twice as broad as himself. Raven knew (hoped) he had some more growing to do. He was confident he could do his job well no matter how short he was, but didn’t want to be the team shrimp forever.

The captain smiled with too many sharp teeth. “Good. Now get in formation. Sweeper Howell?”

“The squad’s ready on your call, boss.”

She nodded and faced the team. “Brace for the Drop.” She shouted.

“Everybody ready for the Deep-Down!” Cortez bellowed

Something swooped low in Raven’s stomach as the huge lift descended abruptly. The knot was more than just the feeling of freefall. The ride down would take a few minutes, and the captain took this time to brief her squad.

“Dispatch received a medical distress call from Squad Muskrat in the deep shafts. A Spire team was down there on a routine excavation with Muskrat running escort. Coms on site called in for immediate medical extraction with an emergency quarantine. Following that, we lost contact with the team. No further details so we’re going in blind. Are there any questions?”

“Yeah,” Cortez jumped in. “Who dressed the rookie?”

Raven flushed red. A few chuckles spread through the squad. “It’s classic.” he mumbled. 

Raven shuffled awkwardly under the attention before straightening his back and standing as tall as he could without going on tiptoe. He was aware that his armor was too big for him. That it was old. But it had belonged to his father, Darius, a veteran sweeper and Raven’s hero. It had given him pride and no small sense of comfort to don the armor he’d seen his father wear almost every day of his life. The bronze colored armor did indeed look out of place among the newer Sweeper gear. The armor was heavy plate over insulated coveralls of reinforced durable mesh. His air tank was covered by the sturdy metal shell of his back plate. His heavy helmet visor, looking like a great welding hood covered his face so completely without contour as to look a metal can on his head when it was lowered. By contrast, modern sweeper armor was lighter, and looked more like heavy scaled fire coats. The air tanks were exposed, and the newer designs eschewed heavy plating in favor of highly durable and resilient fabrics, with armored breathing masks and large goggles for improved visibility. 

Raven’s father’s armor had been cared for through the years, and had survived a 30 year tour of service without breaking down. Despite improved models through the years Sweepers never forcibly discontinued armor that still worked. You wore it until it no longer did the job, then you got something new. So while the style could kindly be called vintage, and the fit was poor at best, Raven wouldn’t be ashamed of it. Just a tiny bit embarrassed, maybe? In hindsight, it was pretty sentimental of him. 

Meanwhile, the chuckles Cortez had garnered withered quickly under Captain Mendoza’s stern unblinking black eyes. “I’ll rephrase: does anyone have any questions that are pertinent to the mission and not dumber than a day old gob-sausage?”

Silence among the squad of twelve. 

Captain Mendoza had a reputation, Raven knew that much. But a reputation for what changed often from person to person. Depending on who he’d asked, Captain Mendoza was known for being a hard ass, for excellent training, for having enough tunnel sense to fill a deep shaft, for being more terrifying than a tunnel-full of Doom Rats. But her teams had some of the highest survival rates. And Sweepers who worked her Squad long enough often found themselves Team Leaders or Captains. And Raven was already beginning to see why. “We have a little time, so pop quiz, Sweepers. The point of armor is to what? Sweeper Howell?”

“To keep us alive, Captain.”

“Correct. Sweeper Daniels’ armor has obviously seen several years worth of action and survived to be worn again. That’s more than most of our own armor can say. Obviously it’s doing the job it was built for. Besides aesthetic critiques about Sweeper Daniels’ sartorial choices, can anyone give me a valid reason for him to change?”

Silence reigned on the platform. Raven watched, slightly awestruck, as the captain let the squad marinate in their own embarrassment for a few more tense moments. Then, “good talk, everyone. If it ever comes up again, I’ll be telling Sweeper Daniels about every fashion mistake I’ve seen on this squad, starting with that gods-awful hair-cut you’ve got under your helmet, Cortez.”

From atop Rosie, Cortez squawked indignantly and he adjusted his helmet. The tension broke as the squad dissolved in laughter. But the lesson seemed to stick, and no one looked askance at Raven again.

“Tunnel contact,” Sweeper Howell called over the din. “Everyone prepare to disembark.”

The elevator shook with a loud bang as the platform came to an abrupt halt. Though he couldn’t see it, Raven was suddenly and intensely aware that he was suspended above a seemingly bottomless chasm. As deep as the Barrier Wall was high, the Deep stretched over one thousand feet down into the abyss. And Raven was now just a few fallible sheets of metal from falling into its black depths.

The elevator’s front gate dropped forward with another deafening bang as the ramp connected with the tunnel entrance. Rosie’s engines revved loudly as it lurched forward across the ramp and into the tunnel. So much sound, echoing into the great chasm. What noises were there in the Deep, when the Sweepers weren’t there to make it?

“Everyone mount up! We’re on double-time!” Captain Mendoza bellowed. The remaining members of the Squad who had not taken up hard points on the Rig gripped the handrails and steps on either side. Raven pulled himself up and into position as Rosie rolled down the tunnel at speed.

Raven held tight to the side as the Heavy Rig barreled through the dark. His heart was pumping like mad. It was only his second time in the Tunnels. His first time had been his supervised expeditionary training. Though he’d paid close attention and taken many mental notes, it had felt almost like a tour. But this was a real mission and that made everything different. 

He had been a trash-man for two years now. He’d started topside the minute he turned 18, walking the city streets and running collections bi-weekly. He had developed a rapport with the citizens along his route, and it was a good job. But he’d always known that the real heroes of the sanitation corps were the Sweepers who patrolled the upper undercroft and kept vigil against the horrors that crept up from the deeps to menace the city. 

Raven had worked his way down the ladder, applying after only a year of service for duty at the frontlines in the undercity, clearing the underground blocks of trash and chasing out the crawlers, weavers, and assorted subterranean fauna. He had even taken out a pair of scrap-eaters at one point. Single-handedly slaying the two man-sized rodents in defense of the citizenry was an impressive achievement for a rookie trash-man, and it earned him a fast-track to special training to join the Sweepers.

Raven’s father had been a Sweeper, and he was the bravest, strongest  man Raven had ever known. Only Chief Hobbs had the same kind of presence. Appropriate, Raven thought, since he had grown up hearing his father’s stories of his years as a trash-man with Hobbs as his partner. Raven had loved hearing about his father’s adventures. 

Stories of the monsters of the deep down, of protecting excavators and engineers as they worked to map the undercity. Stories of finding lost treasures, ancient mechanima, smuggler’s caches. Of the mountains of varied scrap, mined to build the city and the Jewel Isle settlements. To Raven there was no greater calling than to be a Sweeper, like his father before him.

“Junction coming up.” Howell’s voice in Raven’s helmet radio came through over the rumble and roar of Rosie’s engines.

“Slow and dismount” crackled Mendoza. “Roll by slow, and ready on the left flank.”

The Heavy Rig slowed. Raven and his squadmates hopped down from their posts on the side rails and walked slowly and deliberately up to the gaping maw of the adjoining tunnel. Rosie’s headlights only pierced the dark so far, but they took a moment to evaluate what they could see.

Moss and lichen covered an assortment of junk. There was furniture overgrown with it - shapes of couches and tables subsumed by carpets of luminescent subterranean flora. There was familiar debris, like kitchen appliances - ovens, refrigerators - and stuff they couldn’t place - wheeled box-like machines like miniature Rosies, metal and plastic picture frames with no picture. It was a scene which Raven had come across before. But never quite so wild. 

The floor of the tunnel had a carpet of moss. A wide path cut its way through the junk, and Raven could see, right before the light reached its’ end, it began to veer a little. 

“Rosie’ll fit,” said Cortez. Raven hadn’t realized the older man was beside him. “Sweepers cut the path down here years ago to fit Bubbles. Rosie’s a smaller lady, so she’ll get through easy so long as the path’s still clear. But it’s been a while since this entrance was used. We’ve got to scout ahead for any blockages.”

“Didn’t Muskrat have to take care of this on their way down?” 

With perfect timing, Captain Mendoza’s voice came through the headset. “Alright Trash Pandas, listen up. Good news bad news time. Bad news first. We are not following Muskrat’s path. Muskrat came down via a Spire access point coming from the opposite direction. That road would take double the time and we’re on the clock. This pipe hasn't been swept in  months, so there’s been more than enough time for the local ecosystem to creep back in. The good news is, the elevator we rode down puts us closer by half. This route is only one tunnel league away from the vault. Let’s roll on and keep those eyes peeled and ears open. We don’t know what’s moved in while we’ve been gone.”

With that, the Vanguard took point in front of Rosie and entered the tunnel. The moss was soft under Raven’s feet but also unexpectedly slippery. He found himself constantly second-guessing his footing, and in no time, excitement turned to annoyance. There were people counting on them! They had to move faster than this.

“Hey,” Cortez’s heavy hand fell on Raven’s shoulder. “Cool it, kid.”

“But-” Raven began, frustration bleeding into his stance.

Cortez cut him off before he could even begin. “Listen. We’re going to go as fast as we can while still making sure to get there in good enough condition to kick as much ass as Muskrat needs help kicking. Meanwhile, trust your squad. And slow down. We’re gonna be shitty cavalry if we show up with you nursing a concussion after slipping on moss.”

“I’ve got my helmet on,” Raven said petulantly. He was not sure he liked Cortez very much right now. “It even fits.”

“Sure does, kid. Guess that big head’s good for something. Now here’s a tip. It’s a good one, too, no bullshit. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Keep that in mind and you might live long enough to fit the rest of that armor.”

Raven didn’t reply, but he did slow down. And he chewed on what Cortez told him.

Rosie rolled behind them, slow and bright. The headlights were low beams; enough light to see what they needed, not so bright they’d blind themselves if they turned around. The path serpentined madly through the cavernous tunnel, but it was mostly clear. The few blockages were more shallow spraws of junk. Probably debris from the clumsy passage of a tunnel worm or something. They didn’t reach a true interruption until they were more than halfway through to the vault.

A smaller tunnel branched off the route they were taking. From inside, the Vanguard could hear the sound of footsteps.

“Lets have some light,” requested Sweeper Ko. The flood-light atop Rosie swiveled towards the smaller tunnel. A few feet in, Raven spotted a pair of humanoid figures. Their clothes were rumpled and their movements were jerky and uneven. Raven hefted his ax and made to rush forward. Cortez grabbed him by the nape of his armor and pulled him back like an errant kitten.

“What in all the hells do you think you’re doing?!”

Raven looked at him and the two traded incredulous looks. Raven replied, “those are shamblers. You’re supposed to kill them on sight.”

Cortez groaned and manhandled Raven to face the tunnel again. “Kid, take a minute, clear off your visor, and take a good hard look at those two. Do those really look like shamblers to you? Really?”

Raven was really starting to get annoyed with Sweeper Cortez. But that was still one of his teammates, and a senior officer, so he listened and took a second look. At first, he was certain his first impression was the correct one. He’d fought shamblers before and he recognized the halting, uneven movements of the undead. But then he looked harder. And he listened. 

In the light there was a bright blue-green rash across their skin. At least at this distance. Up close, however, it would undoubtedly look like bright crusty corrosion and flaking scales of oxidized metal. The clothes were not just worn, but in tatters, a gruesome clue to how many years they had seen. Shamblers fell apart before their clothes reached that state of degradation. And the footsteps. Raven hadn’t noticed it at first, but there was a ringing that echoed after each step. The size of the tunnels, the proliferation of noise dampening mosses, the layering of each echo - they’d combined to camouflage the metallic quality of the sound. But now Raven could hear it, could see what he’d overlooked the first time. Lastly, the eyes. They burned in the dark like embers in black sockets. How could he have mistaken them for shamblers? He wanted to kick himself for not recognizing them immediately. Walkers.

Another Sweeper stepped forward. Raven thought he recognized them as Sweeper Li. “Walkers confirmed. Two of them. Tracking loops now.”

It seemed like the tunnel itself held its breath while they watched the pair. 

“Aren’t we going to engage?” Raven asked Cortez in a whisper.

The older man shook his head. “Not unless we have to. We’re a rescue party, not a cleaning crew. As long as these guys aren’t in our way, we can leave them and come back later. Now watch.”

The Walkers stayed in the side tunnel for several minutes as they repeated movements. But soon enough, one stepped out into the tunnel. A ragged tightened noose dangled from its neck. It stepped into the larger tunnel and began climbing the junk. Once it reached a certain height, and Raven noticed the pile had been packed down there, almost into a ledge, Raven watched in quiet horror as the Walker's hands moved as if to tie off the long lost end of the rope. It pulled to tighten the knot around its neck. Then, the Walker jumped. 

It landed on the tunnel floor with all the impact of a falling bell. Raven felt the sound reverberate in his bones. It sprawled in the path looking broken, unmoving for minutes. Then it pulled itself to its knees and crawled back into the smaller tunnel. There, Raven caught sight of the second Walker. He hadn’t paid as much attention to it as the other at first. It was just cradling trash in its arms like a baby, pacing across a moss-bare patch of tunnel floor. 

Raven could hear chatter on the radio, but he’d given up listening. The second Walker had stopped pacing. It lifted the trash in both hands, inspecting it, and started shaking it. The shaking grew wilder. Then the walker stopped and fell to its knees. In Rosie’s light, Raven saw the Walkers face change, the once expressionless visage twisted into agony. Then it collapsed, still cradling the trash bundle. 

It stayed on the ground, totally motionless. Then it got up, and resumed cradling its trash bundle and pacing. 

Raven felt sick.

“Looks like only Walker 1 strays into the Rig’s path. Both loops took in excess of 10 minutes. More than enough time for Rosie to clear this intersection.”

Captain Mendoza acknowledged it over the headsets. “Mark it and radio topside. Let’s keep moving.”

The squad progressed and Rosie rumbled after them. Her engine was loud enough, Raven could almost convince himself he couldn’t hear the steps anymore. Or the thud of the jumper landing. Almost. 

Once they were past the intersection, the radio crackled in Raven’s headset. "Daniels, channel 11."  Sweeper Howell’s voice spoke in his ear and he switched his radio channel. “Was that your first Walker, Daniels?”

“I, yeah. I’ve heard about them, we covered them in basic. First I’ve seen one, though. I think the closest I’ve ever been before was helping evacuate part of the black market 8 months ago? There’d been a sighting on that level, but I never- I didn’t- And my dad told me about the looping, but- I didn’t expect it to be like that,” Raven confessed. “On the street, people say they’re just tougher shamblers.”

“It’s different seeing it,” Howell agreed. “And if you need to talk about it after this mission, you’re welcome to come see me or Captain Mendoza about it. For now, though, I want to make sure you know the right protocol. ‘Tougher shamblers… Devin’s Maul, that might be the worst understatement I’ve ever heard.”

Howell quickly broke down the differences. Shamblers and Walkers were both undead humans. But while Shamblers still had human flesh, Walkers were metal, and hard enough to break an axe on if you swung carelessly. A single, well trained trash man could take a Shambler and come out alright. One good swing would do, often enough. Walkers on the other hand, took half a squad, six sweepers, armed with axes and dragon fire, to safely engage with even a single Walker. Shamblers could hear you, and would attack unprovoked. You'd be in for a fight whether you wanted it or not. But Walkers looped. 

Looping was simple in theory but horrifying to watch. Things that used to be people repeated their human actions again and again. Trapped, stuck, like a record skipping. And like the two they’d passed in the smaller tunnel, they’d often repeat one moment of their life before, some moment that preceded their succumbing to the Sickness. Looping Walkers were passive, mindless things. You could go around them. But if you interrupted the loop, they’d turn on you, angry and flailing and so, so strong. Strong enough to tear off limbs, as Howell told it. 

So sure, they could’ve engaged with the two back there, and probably come out fresh. But they would’ve spent precious time, energy, and resources well before they reached Muskrat in Vault 213. Vault 213 was the priority.

If they found another Walker and if they had to engage it, as part of the Vanguard, Raven would stand in formation with his fellow Sweepers to surround it. They would alternate between dousing the Walker in dragonfire and attacking the heat-softened metal body with their axes. Two sweepers with dragonfire burners to hose it down, two to hold it in place,  and two to go for  the head until it was severed or crushed. Hopefully, however, there would be no more Walkers for the rest of the journey. Ideally, there would be nothing for the rest of the journey and they could get to Vault 213 with no more interruptions.

After nearly half an hour of walking in mostly silence, Raven had to ask. “Cortez, why are you sticking with me?”

“Captain told me to,” Cortez answered matter of factly. 

“And you always listen to her? Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t really seem the type.”

“Oh no, I absolutely am not,” Cortez assured him. “But Captain Mendoza’s good at keeping her people alive. And my recursive career path notwithstanding, I am very partial to being alive.”

Almost immediately after saying as much, there came a low, guttural chittering sound. Something between a growl and a roar, echoing through the tunnel from the darkness ahead. 

The Squad stopped dead. The captain spoke softly over the com. "Lights." Without a word all squad members switched off their helmet lamps, and Rosie's headlights went dark. It took Raven a moment to adjust his eyes to the soft glow of the bio-luminescence. It was more light than he had been afforded in training. Sweepers had to learn to work in the black. They wouldn't last long otherwise. "Li, scope and recon." Said the Captain.

Sweeper Li brushed past Raven and quietly strode forward around the bend of the tunnel ahead. "Confirmed contact. Doom Rat. Big one. Maybe 12 meters."

"Shit." Cortez said softly. "Well kid, looks like you'll get to use that antique of yours after all." Cortez nodded at Raven's axe. Like his armor, it had belonged to his father, Darius. It was heavier than the fire axe he had carried as a trash-man. It had to be. Sweeper axes were made to fight monsters. Less a true axe than a polearm, a long handled great sword or a short handled halberd. If Raven was short for a Sweeper, then his axe made up some of the gap, with a longer handle and blade, straight, single edged, and tapered to a harpoon-like axehead tip. By contrast, Cortez's newer model axe was shorter and broader, with a curved head at the end. Sweeper axes always had a jagged hook at the tip of the blade. Raven once again felt the knot in his stomach, knowing that he was about to use his father's weapon for its intended purpose.

"Vanguard, form up and ahead slow. Rearguard to flanks." Mendoza said softly. They rounded the turn and saw Li crouched and low against the far tunnel wall. She gestured ahead, and there, on its haunches making a meal of a nest of thick shelled giant pill bugs, was the colossal rodent.

This was a little more familiar to Raven, but just barely. Outsized rodents were a scourge that popped up all over the city, his promotion after all had been for laying out a pair of man-sized Scrap-eaters. This one was just bigger, he thought. MUCH bigger. Almost as big as Rosie. 

Gargantism was an attribute that appeared in almost all the creatures that lived in the Tunnels, and it was especially pronounced in the Deep-Down. For reasons unknown, the deeper something lived in the undercity, the bigger it got. Theories about the cause, and Artisan’s lower ecology in general, ran wild. But given how dangerous it was to work in the Tunnels, they were rarely if ever proven. Sweepers especially liked to theorize as, without these things creeping up to the surface, there might not be a need for Sweepers in the first place.

Shamblers tended to appear less frequently the deeper one went, presumably because of alpha predators like the one sitting before him. Even rotten meat was still meat, after all and Doom Rats were notoriously not picky eaters. Walkers however seemed to be passed over as subterranean meals went. Possibly because they were made of metal? And they didn’t grow.

Raven shook his head to clear it. None of that was important now. He swallowed hard to curb both his fear and his enthusiasm. His near mistake with the Walkers was fresh; he didn’t want to make another.

“You good on protocol for this, Rookie?” Cortez whispered in a tone that was void of levity and heavy with somber resolve. The change in demeanor in the older man, to one of serious professionalism took Raven by surprise. Suddenly Cortez seemed to Raven like a shadow of Captain Mendoza.

“Y-Yeah.” Raven stumbled. “Vanguard forms an axe wall and draws its attention to lead it into a Flashlight protocol or flashbang, while Rearguard flanks and goes for the legs to immobilize, and finally go for the throat.” He remembered his basic training, but the practice drills against a thrashing mechanical puppet seemed quaint now that the real thing was before him, at least 3 times bigger.

“Don’t forget to watch the teeth.” Cortez whispered flatly as his eyes remained fixed ahead at the Doom-Rat. “These things chew through the walls down here.”

“Any other advice?” Raven spoke softly.

“Sure,” said Cortez. A caustic levity returning to his voice. “Don’t get dead. Now get your head in the game. Here we go.”

Captain Mendoza stepped forward ahead of the Vanguard and raised her axe high. The squad stepped up behind her in unison and raised their own. Mendoza turned the flat of her axe toward the tunnel floor and brought the huge blade down hard. Raven and the others followed and the sound that resulted was deafening. The clatter of a dozen blades ringing out and echoing against the walls of the massive pipe. The monstrous beast whipped its head around to face them and in an instant had turned its body into a defensive posture that seemed to nearly fill the tunnel. 

“AGAIN!” Cried the captain. Again the sound rang like some fractured bell and echoed in the dark. It seemed as if the great rat winced, and in a moment that seemed to stretch far longer than it should have, it lunged forward towards the squad. In the same stretched instant, there came a sound like a muffled shot as Howell switched on Rosie’s high beam headlights. The rat screamed and flipped backward, wheeling away from the blinding light. In the flood of light, the creature seemed even larger, thought Raven. 

The rat’s scream drowned out all other sound as it lunged again. It was throwing itself towards the silhouettes of the Sweepers against the searing light. The flashlight protocol was intended to either frighten away the monstrous creatures or at least put them at a painful disadvantage. Raven was unsure how much that handicap would count for as he stepped forward with the rest of the vanguard to form an axe-wall for the beast to throw itself against. The lunging teeth and claws moved with lightning speed and it was all Raven could do to raise his axe in front of him. 

The rat missed him entirely, but its gaping maw rushed towards Sweeper Li. At the same moment the Rearguard was rushing along the sides, Raven caught the sight of Captain Mendoza’s axe striking hard against the long, axe-like front teeth, cracking and chipping one. Again the rat screamed, but this time it whirled around, and a thick 20 ft tail lashed like a whip in a frenzied circle. The Rearguard was knocked back, half a dozen sweepers thrown against the walls or into the dark of the tunnel behind the rat. The captain was hit and thrown back past Rosie’s front wheel, and the whirling rat lunged once more Sweeper Li.

Raven’s body moved before he realized it, throwing himself into a mad sprint towards Li. Time slowed. Li raised her axe across herself like a shield. The rat’s gaping maw spread wide and sharp. Raven raised his blade overhead in an action that seemed in the frozen moment to take more effort than he had known himself capable of. 

And then time snapped back, Raven’s blade flashed, and the Rat screamed a deep roar as it leapt backward, toppling head over tail and scrambling as it flipped and lashed. It turned towards them again, this time sporting a large gash across its face that crossed over a bloody socket where its right eye had been. It hissed with a sound that shook the tunnel, then scrambled backward and up through a huge hole chewed through the tunnel wall.

Silence reigned within the tunnel as the skittering scream of claws on metal faded into the distance. 

 “First time I’ve known anybody to jump towards the teeth.” Li laughed. “That was nice and stupid, rook. Beautiful, but stupid.” Li removed her helmet to smile at Raven. “Thank you, Sweeper Daniels.”

“Oh! Well, of course!” Raven stuttered as he helped Li to her feet. He felt a few other hands clap his shoulders. Suddenly Captain Mendoza was there. 

“Sweeper Cortez, didn’t I tell you to keep an eye on Daniels?”

“Aw, c’mon cap” Cortez  protested under her stern glare, slouching exasperatedly and gesturing a wave at Raven. She turned to look at Raven, giving him a once over. “Sweeper Daniels,” she said, her tone flat and unforgiving, “that was incredibly reckless, and entirely against protocol.” Raven’s adrenaline gave a sharp spike. He hadn’t had time to be afraid of the Doom Rat, not in a real, articulate, ‘I’m going to die now’ way. Now, he was terrified that the captain was going to send him back up to the trash men, acutely aware of how crushing such a demotion would be. Then her lips quirked in a small but genuine smile. “That makes you one of us now.”

----

<Last chapter | Next chapter>

[mortyandcarlsbespokesalvage]

Day 1 Sequence 0

So it is written,

It came to pass that the world wrought by men was ended. Planes of order and reason fell away to be formed anew, and those small in spirit were claimed by the Maelstrom.

Here is spoken the coming of the Arpage. Raw and primordial, its vastness eclipses mediocrity and neutrality. Only vibrancy and vitality endure within its swirling torrents.

The world was rent asunder. Like with like, polarities balanced. Dimensional lines blurred and physical law undone. Reality made fluid.

This Storm shapes our world.

Blessed are we who stand, here on the other side of time. 

Our world washed clean, free from the sins of our fathers.

We are alive, we who stand.

Children of the Storm, stand for tomorrow.

                  -Prelude to historical account of the founding of the city of Artisan.

To the reader,

By virtue of your presence in this archive, it may be assumed that you are mildly to moderately to severely displaced from the time and/or place to which you are accustomed. To contextualize, it will be to your benefit to know that the following account begins here in the island city of Artisan, located upon the Emerald Basin, in the year 324 of the New Common Era. As it happens, it begins on a Tuesday.

…

The storm that bore down on the city in the early morning hours was a grand one. Swirling from the south, a ruinstorm great enough to make even the proud denizens of Southport close their shutters.Strong enough that the wary watchers of the great barrier wall set to seal off the innermost city, that the winds and rains might not tear the pretty faces from her towering edifices. Midnight patrols of city Sweepers huddled against the winds and rains as they walked the empty streets, securing as much as could be tied down to keep from becoming destructive flack from the force of the gales. The Artisan Streets were as empty, and the city as quiet, as ever it could manage.

Artisan is never silent however, even on the precipice of a storm to end the world. For if everything stopped every time the world ended, how would anything get done? And so it is that our story takes us below the quieted streets above, under the murmuring, lamp-lit undercity markets, and below the darkened catacombs where the city’s ancient gears lie still. 

The city of Artisan was founded over three centuries ago, in the wake of the Great Cataclysm. The Founders were swept away from their old lives by the torrents of the great Maelstrom, and deposited on the shores of a vast junkyard island, with only an endless ocean horizon as far as their eyes could see. Artisan was discovered, not built. At least not by the Founders. Oh, of course it had been built by someone. But if anyone had some notion of who that someone was, then they had successfully held their tongue for a dozen odd generations hence. 

The name Artisan itself was uncovered and not coined. City blocks beneath the vast trash heaps, each with bronze plaques set into the cracked concrete, declaring them to be Artisan 109-a, 303-s, or any of thousands of combinations. Ancient labels declaring the island to be Artisan, in regular sections of concentric rings, radiating out from the great citadel at the center. The city of Artisan is built upon ten thousand-thousand mysteries, and it did not take long for the Founders to rightly conclude that someone needed to make it their business to set to work solving them. 

The Founders of Artisan inherited an uninhabited trash heap upon the waves. Then they recycled that heap into a metropolis. They pushed out the surface scrap to three huge Yards, and over the centuries continued to use their bounty of ancient refuse as a source of building materials and lost artifacts. Below the surface, each level less and less explored, wholly unknown save the fact that they were all filled with garbage and scrap from untold years of the place being used as a dumping ground by parties unknown. Over the centuries, different explorers and curious trashmen were commissioned by the municipal authority to work together to try to figure it all out. To map the vast underground space, and to uncover more and more of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of resources.These curious souls were formed together into the Non-integrated Offices of Interior Rediscovery (N.O.I.R.), an entity whose sole business is to sift through the refuse of untold ages, and try to make sense of … 

… well, for all intents and purposes everything, about the world’s last city.

…

Dr Archibald Morphesus (never Archie) is but one of the latest in a long history of esteemed archaeologists of N.O.I.R. Curious to a fault, focused to the point of obsession. Morphesus has been captivated by his city since he was a boy and first noticed the tendency of the utility lines in his family’s apartment to quietly rearrange themselves when nobody was looking. To him the city is a living organism. A friend he has sought to know for the better part of a lifetime. In his 30 year career, the doctor has mapped more of the undercity, led more expeditions, uncovered more vaults of artifacts than any other archaeologist of N.O.I.R. 

Dr Archibald Morphesus is respected by his students and colleagues, a quiet older man with a passion for his work, and a track record for being a determined explorer. Deep beneath the charted levels of the Undercity above, Morphesus stands before a massive vault door. The Vault, marked 213 in bold ancient script, is the latest in a lifetime of closed doors waiting to be opened. How many more doors remain, and how little time remains to open them? he wonders, always. There is so little time left, and there’s still so much to do.

“On my count: three, two, one and HEAVE.” 

The Sweepers, hulking figures in their heavy armor, pull at the vault door. The Engineers stand ready with braces to hold it open and floodlights to illuminate the platform. This is all routine, an endeavor that’s been undertaken dozens of times, each time a deep shaft is located, since long before he became an archaeologist. Still, he watches with rapt attention. 

Beyond the vault door will be a platform overlooking the shaft, a vast, bottomless canyon sprawling into the dark as far as can be seen. That is what’s been behind every door so far. But there will also be the rails. The beams above the platform, stretch out into the dark, over the abyss. Sturdy, solid ,evenly spaced, but for purposes unknown. 

Morphesus has spent years theorizing, and he knows what he hopes to find. The door opens with a clang and the screech and groan of steel on steel. The Sweepers at the door pull it open wider, while the engineers rush to prop it, and behind them another row of Sweepers stand ready with their great glaive axes, braced for whatever horrors might be waiting on the platform. It is empty. The lights shine through the breach, bathing the platform in incandescent orange and shining through the dust motes into the darkness. 

He sees it. 

After thirty years he sees it at the end of the platform, hanging from the rails as he always imagined it would. A bulky metal train car, suspended over the bottomless chasm. 

For Morphesus, the world fades away. His research team spills out onto the platform, setting up floodlights and tables, beginning the work of sifting through the refuse and searching for anything and everything that could tell them about what came before. All he sees is the tram. 

It’s something out of a dream. Something he’s looked for, theorized about, for years. And here it is before him. Proof of a rail system running through the space between the titanic Pylons that support the city above, and perhaps the first concrete clue in centuries to the mystery of the city’s unknown architects. The doors to the tram are forced open, an easier task by far than the vault. A thin layer of dust covers its interior. Motes drift across the lamplight.

“After you, professor.” Zel Pathos, his research assistant, aims the light into the open carriage and gestures him forward. Zel has been with the professor long enough to guess what this find means to him. Morphesus steps forward with his heart in his throat. 

And there, the first thing he sees is a map. There is a map on the wall of concentric circles woven together. There are numbers marked on it, spaced regularly along the circles. 208, 209, 210, 211, 212...

213.

There is so much. So much to look at, to examine, to find. He cannot move quickly enough. And yet. He takes a moment for himself. This is it. All his theories. His life’s work. The answers are here. Zel and the other researchers pour in gently, mindful of the professor. But they’re eager too. The sooner they get to work, the sooner they have answers. 

There is too much here. The tram alone would validate the professor’s theory about the nature of the rails. The MAP by itself would be historic. No map of the original city has ever been found in the centuries since the discovery of Artisan by the city founders. Morphesus’ heart pounds in his chest. He feels about to burst. History is about to be re-written here. 

Around him, the other researchers murmur to each other as they begin the excavation. A sudden rise in volume catches his attention. “There’s even a log book here! Hah! Listen to this: 

‘Entry 509

Junction 212 is cleared. Proceeding to 213. Personal aside, this thing is too damn big. If 213 checks out, the Artisan will be clear for testing. Not that it shouldn’t check out. It was fine two weeks ago. And two weeks before that. It was probably fine when the last guy was looking at it.  Are we ever going to test this thing? Are we going to get paid this month? Is anyone even reading these reports? What is the Gatekeeper even doing? And another thing-’ Professor? Oh gods, Professor!”

“Medic!” someone calls.

Dr. Morphesus is seizing on the floor, his limbs jerking and shaking like a child’s wind up toy knocked on its’ side. 

“Shit, get him off the train!” a Sweeper yells. 

“Somebody time it!”

There is panic amongst the researchers - Dr. Morphesus had always had a frail constitution, but he’d never been sick before. Any sense of routine or order is lost as the Sweepers rush to secure him and get him off the tram. There’s no room to work in there. 

“How long was that?”

“Is he breathing?”

“He’s struggling. It sounds like there’s something blocking his airways.” 

“Get the intubation ready.”

“His pulse is thready.”

“Ready the potions and paddles, we may have to shock him.”

The words rush over each other and all other work comes to a stop. The news of Morphesus’ collapse spreads like fire among the archaeologists and a grim silence falls on them as they wait to see what happens next. And then...

“Holy hells, he’s got Verdigris.”

The quiet announcement falls like a bomb. Shock waves ripple through the assemblage, followed by tight fisted panic. There’s a gap in the circle of Sweepers tending to Morphesus, enough for some to see his chest. His open shirt reveals a wide rash of metallic scales, an undeniable indicator of Verdigris Syndrome.

“Sweet Dale, it looks like his entire respiratory system has been compromised.”

“How long has this gone untreated?”

“Somebody contact the Spire, we need to know everyone he’s been in contact with and set up a quarantine immediately!”

Morphesus hears the clamor around him through a haze. But he understands. His life has ended. His illness discovered. There will be no more doors to open. The sickness started small with Morphesus. Just a tiny rash that scaled and grew over the years with his doubt about being able to prove his theories. His body became slower, heavier. His breathing harder by degrees. It was easy to hide. Nobody noticed because he had always been sickly and colleagues just assumed that he was getting old. He never went to the doctor anyway. He kept to himself. He never had much of any kind of social life outside of work. He always politely, nervously declined any invitation. He was respected, looked up to, possibly even beloved by his team of grads and undergrads. Just a quiet older man with a passion for his work, and a track record for being a determined explorer in spite of being a socially inept weakling.

But not now. His work cannot end now, not when proof of his theories is in sight. Not when he lies mere feet away from the greatest discovery in a century. He feels his despair turning to resentment. He has lived with his sickness for years, never losing himself, never succumbing. Who among his colleagues had ever been infected? Whose business was it how he chose to spend his last years? Who said that the sickness, already a death sentence, had to mean the death of his dreams as well? His anger rises now. Fire burns in his eyes as he struggles against the Sweepers holding him down. 

“Four Kings! How is he this strong?”

“It’s gotta be the sickness.”

“Yard 3 Precinct. Come in Yard 3, this is Squad 11, Muskrat. We are requesting immediate medivac and quarantine at Vault 213. I repeat this is Muskrat-”

“Hold him!”

Four Sweepers struggle to suppress the doctor’s frail frame.

Morphesus tries to speak, to tell them, to defend himself and his work. His students, they’ll understand. They must understand! But all that comes when he opens his mouth is the awful, distorted sound of screeching metal. All is lost. He screams. The sound is too big. It does not fit his body. It echoes endlessly into the dark.

And then the quiet. Stunned researchers and Sweepers stare without speaking. Morphesus lays on the platform, all the fight gone out of him. He just lays there and sobs.  No one has to hold him down anymore. 

They don’t notice it at first. Shock has numbed their senses, and the sound is still so faint. A distant clanking coming from the tunnel. Rhythmic, like footsteps shuffling. The Sweepers hear it first. They quickly move into position, ready with their axes and dragon fire. One of them breaks the silence, quietly repeating into the radio the need for a medical retrieval team. 

The clanking of metal footsteps multiplies. One set. Two. More. But how many more? The tunnels and shaft are cavernous spaces, and the ringing steps echo and grow in the dark. It’s impossible to guess their number. Rearguard sweepers redirect the floodlights into the tunnel. There, a dull reflection coming closer. Another. Another.

All they can do is ready themselves for the fight and hope reinforcements arrive in time.

Through it all, the professor weeps.

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