2026-06-22 12:49:27The darkness of the subway tunnel was thick enough to chew on. It wasn’t just the lack of light; it was that damn Black Mist seeping down from the surface, turning the air into a soup of metallic dust and old, wet basement smells. Our headlights cut through the gloom in two shaky white beams, reflecting off the rusted tracks and the occasional skeletal remains of a stalled train car.
Inside the BearCat, the silence was heavy. Every time the tires crunched over a piece of debris or a stray bone, the sound echoed like a gunshot in the enclosed space.
DING!
Mutation Level: 0.19% Warning: Enclosed space detected. Hive Sense sensitivity increased."Keep your eyes on the ceiling, Jaxen," I muttered. My hand was still resting on his shoulder, and I could feel the tension in his muscles. He was vibrating like a tuning fork. To a guy with "Hyper-Awareness," this tunnel was probably screaming at him. "The System says there’s Mimics down here. Those bastards don’t fight fair."
Jaxen didn’t take his eyes off the path. "I know. I can hear 'em. Sounds like... wet static."
He shifted gears, the armored truck crawling forward. "And stop calling me Jaxen. It’s Commander. Or sir."
I let out a short, dry laugh. "Look around, 'Commander.' The world just took a giant dump on the chain of command. Out there, people are burning. In here, it’s just you, me, and whatever is hungry. I think we’re past the 'sir' stage, don’t you?"
He didn’t argue, but I saw his jaw tighten. Typical military hard-ass. Even when the sky is falling, he wants to worry about his shiny badges.
Suddenly, the BearCat’s headlights caught something about fifty yards ahead. A woman was standing in the middle of the tracks. She was wearing a tattered business suit, her hair a bird’s nest of knots, and she was waving her arms frantically.
"Help! Please, stop!" she wailed. Her voice was thin, cracking with desperation. "My baby... he’s trapped in the car! Please!"
Jaxen’s foot drifted toward the brake. His hero instincts were screaming louder than his common sense. "Mateo, look. A survivor."
"Don’t you dare," I hissed, my fingers digging into his tactical vest. "Look at her feet, Jaxen. Use that super-brain of yours."
He squinted. In the harsh glare of the LEDs, I saw it. The woman wasn’t wearing shoes, but she wasn’t bleeding either. Her feet didn’t touch the ground quite right—they looked more like gray, fleshy stumps. And her shadow... her shadow had too many joints.
WARNING!
Target Identified: Tier 3 Mimic Note: They use emotional triggers to lure prey. Do not engage in conversation."Please!" the woman shrieked, her face contorting into a mask of grief that looked just a little too perfect. "He’s dying! Help me!"
"Jaxen, floor it," I commanded. "That’s not a woman. That’s a dinner bell."
"But what if—"
"There is no 'what if'!" I shouted, the heat in my blood flaring up. My eyes started to burn with that violet light, and the Eros-Survival System kicked into high gear. "In this life, I don’t play 'hero' for things that don’t have a heartbeat. Drive or move over and let me do it!"
The 'woman' realized the ruse was up. Her jaw didn’t just open; it unhinged, her face splitting apart like a piece of overripe fruit to reveal rows of needle-like teeth. A long, black tongue lashed out, tasting the air. The "baby" she was holding wasn’t a child—it was a pulsing sac of gray meat that let out a high-pitched psychic shriek.
Jaxen didn’t need more convincing. He slammed his boot onto the gas. The BearCat roared, the massive engine drowned out the Mimic’s scream. We hit the creature at sixty miles per hour. There was a sickening squelch and a heavy thud against the reinforced bumper, followed by the sound of something wet being dragged under the chassis for a few yards.
DING!
Tier 3 Mimic Neutralized. +200 SP. Bonus: Face-Slapping Reward! You denied the predator's trap. +50 SP."Jesus," Jaxen panted, his hands shaking on the wheel. "It sounded... it sounded just like a person."
"That’s the point," I said, leaning back and trying to get my heart rate under control. My mutation meter was hovering at 0.22%. I was feeling a bit too "wired," a bit too ready to kill something else. "The Black Sun didn’t just make monsters, Jaxen. They made mirrors. They’re using our own empathy to turn us into snacks."
"And you?" Jaxen asked, casting a sideways glance at me. His blue eyes were searching, wary. "How do you know all this? You’re acting like you’ve been through this war for a decade, but the Mist only dropped this morning."
I looked out at the dark tunnel walls passing by. How could I tell him? 'Hey, I died because my bastard girlfriend used me as a meat shield, and now a computer in my head is telling me how to save your life.' Yeah, that would go over real well.
"I’m a fast learner," I said instead. "And I don’t plan on dying twice."
We drove in silence for another ten minutes before the tunnel widened into an old maintenance hub. Huge iron doors marked with the Hawthorne Physics logo stood at the far end. This was it. The start of my New Eden.
"There’s the entrance," I pointed. "But the power’s out. Those doors are weighted; we aren’t getting through without a jump-start."
Jaxen parked the BearCat, his rifle already in his hands. "I’ll check the breaker box. You stay in the truck."
"Fat chance," I said, swinging my door open. I felt the weight of my machete in my hand, pulled silently from the Space Warehouse. "You might be the 'Anchor,' but I’m the one with the map. We go together."
I stepped out onto the damp concrete. The air here was stagnant, buzzing with a low-frequency hum that made my skin crawl.
DING!
Quest Update: The Birth of New Eden Objective: Secure the Lab. Eliminate all 'Squatters'."Squatters?" I whispered.
Just then, a light flickered on in the guard booth near the doors. A man stepped out, holding a shotgun. He wasn’t a zombie. He was human—or at least, he looked like one. He was wearing a lab coat stained with dark grease and had a wild, twitchy look in his eyes.
"This is private property!" the man screamed. "The Doctor says no guests! The Mist is a gift! You can’t come in!"
Behind him, I saw more movement. Other people—staff, maybe?—but they were all moving with that weird, synchronized rhythm. They weren’t Shamblers, but they weren’t 'us' either. They were "Half-Awake," the poor bastards who got a dose of the Mist but didn’t have the genes to become Architects.
"Jaxen, get down!" I yelled.
The man leveled the shotgun. But before he could pull the trigger, I moved. The 20% mutation boost hit my legs like a shot of nitrous. I wasn’t just running; I was a blur of black clothes and violet eyes.
I didn’t use the machete. I didn’t want to waste the blade on a crazy old man. I slammed into him, my shoulder hitting his chest with the force of a wrecking ball. He flew back into the guard booth, the shotgun clattering to the floor.
"Mateo, stop!" Jaxen shouted, his voice echoing in the hub.
I stood over the man, my hand glowing with a faint, angry light. I could feel his heartbeat—fast, terrified, and so loud. The System was whispering in my ear: [Consume. Expand. Rule.]
"Who is 'The Doctor'?" I hissed, grabbing the man by his collar.
"He... he's the one who stayed!" the man blubbered. "He's making us better! He's the Architect!"
My blood went cold. An Architect? Already? If another Subject had already claimed the lab, this wasn't going to be a simple move-in. It was going to be a coup.
I looked back at Jaxen, who was watching me with a look of pure horror. He wasn't seeing the guy he'd rescued at the gate anymore. He was seeing a King starting to find his crown.
"Change of plans, Jaxen," I said, letting the man drop to the floor. "We aren't just securing a lab. We're taking a throne."
SP Earned: +150
New Target: The Mad Doctor (Subject 009)"Let's go," I said, walking toward the iron doors. "I want my house back."
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00135
Up close, Red Sun's headquarters looked less like a military installation and more like something grown out of the bones of an older world, concrete bunkers and reinforced steel fencing wrapped around structures that had clearly started life as a research facility before being retrofitted for war.I studied it from the ridge for a long moment, trying to reconcile the sheer scale of the place with everything we'd planned against it over these past two weeks, and felt the plan we'd built so carefully in the safety of the war room suddenly feel much smaller against the reality standing in front of us.We'd spent the better part of the morning working our way down from the ridge, staying low, using what cover the terrain offered, until we reached a position close enough to actually study the perimeter properly through Ruby's salvaged optics."Three layers of defense," Rourke said quietly, passing the scope to Jaxen. "Outer fence, patrol road, then the actual walls.
00134
The strike team gathered at the gate just before dawn, a hundred and twenty fighters drawn from every allied settlement, their breath visible in the cold morning air, weapons checked one final time in the gray predawn light.The fortress behind us stood quiet, most of Haven Ridge still asleep except for the small crowd who'd gathered to see us off, faces I recognized from months of shared survival watching with expressions that mixed hope and fear in equal measure. I searched the crowd briefly for Priya and Ward, found them both near the wall, and let myself hold their steady presence in my mind for the journey ahead.I stood beside Jaxen near the front of the formation, watching the last preparations settle into place, and felt the weight of everything riding on the next several days press down harder than it had at any point during our two weeks of planning."Ready," Jaxen asked quietly, close enough that only I could hear him over the murmur of the gathering
00133
Ruby's workshop had transformed into something resembling an armory over the final days before departure, every surface covered with weapons and gear laid out in careful, methodical rows, each piece checked and rechecked with an intensity that spoke to exactly how much she understood was riding on this mission's success.I watched her work for a while before she noticed me in the doorway, her movements precise and practiced despite the visible exhaustion, every screw tightened, every wire tested twice, the particular focus of someone pouring every ounce of control she had left into the one part of this mission she could actually manage completely."Twelve pulse devices, fully calibrated," she said, walking me through the inventory one final time, her voice steady despite the exhaustion visible in the dark circles under her eyes. "Modified specifically to counter Red Sun's known defensive tech based on everything Rourke could remember about their standard equipment load
00132
The two weeks of preparation moved fast, every day filled with training drills and equipment checks and endless logistics, but Jaxen found ways to steal small pockets of quiet for us anyway, insisting we needed them as much as the fortress needed our leadership.I'd argued with him about it the first few times, certain we couldn't spare even an hour with so much still left to organize before the mission, but he'd been right, the same way he usually was about the things that actually mattered. We needed these small, stolen evenings more than either of us wanted to admit out loud.Tonight he'd led me to the old orchard behind the fortress's northern wall, a small stretch of surviving apple trees that had somehow weathered years of chaos, their branches heavy with fruit nobody had gotten around to harvesting yet."I found this place a few weeks ago," he said, spreading a worn blanket across the grass beneath one of the larger trees. "Thought about telling you soone
00131
The war room felt different this time, crowded with more people than it had ever held before, representatives from every allied settlement gathered around a table that Ruby had extended twice already to accommodate the growing maps and schematics spread across its surface.I stood near the head of the table watching everyone settle into their places, faces I'd only recently learned alongside ones I'd known for months now, all of us bound together by a shared understanding of exactly how much this next mission would cost us if we got any part of it wrong."This is what we're working with," Ruby said, pulling up a detailed layout of Red Sun's central headquarters, pieced together from Rourke's firsthand knowledge and fragments of documentation salvaged from the facility. "Heavily fortified, multiple perimeter checkpoints, and somewhere at the core, the primary activation node for the Global Stabilizer network.""How heavily fortified," Delacroix asked, studying th
00130
I found Ruby in the workshop late one night, long after most of the fortress had gone quiet, hunched over a small, battered photograph she quickly tried to tuck away when she noticed me in the doorway.The rest of the workshop sat dark around her, tools and half finished projects abandoned for the night, just a single lantern casting warm light over the small space where she'd chosen to sit alone with whatever she'd been holding onto."You don't have to hide that," I said gently, stepping inside.She hesitated, then set it back down on the workbench, and I moved closer to see it properly, a faded image of a younger Ruby standing beside an older woman with the same sharp eyes, both of them laughing at something outside the frame."My mother," Ruby said quietly. "Before all of this.""I didn't know you kept photos.""I don't, usually. Too easy to lose things like this, and losing them hurts worse than never having them at all." She traced the
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