Damien lay chained in the suffocating darkness of Zara's den, his mind a cold, silent forge, hammering out the fine details of his retribution. He was a weapon waiting for its moment. That moment, however, would not be his to choose. A new sound, alien and alarming, cut through the familiar, chaotic din of the scavenger camp. It was not the shambling gait of a scavenger or the heavy tread of a mutated beast. It was the sharp, rhythmic, and utterly disciplined sound of marching boots.
A sharp, commanding shout from the camp's perimeter was followed by a sudden, tense silence. The usual chaotic energy of the camp evaporated, replaced by a palpable wave of fear. Damien heard Zara's voice, sharp and laced with a sudden, unfamiliar note of deference.
"We weren't expecting you for another week," she said, her tone attempting a casualness that failed to mask her anxiety.
"The schedule has been moved up," a new voice replied. It was a man's voice, cold, professional, and utterly devoid of emotion. It was the voice of a soldier, not a scavenger. "Lord Bane requires his tithe. Prepare the stock for collection."
The heavy door to Zara's den was thrown open, flooding the room with the light of the main fire pit. Zara stood there, her face a mask of forced composure, but her eyes darted nervously. Behind her stood two men who were a different species from her ragged crew. They were tall, broad-shouldered, and clad in matching, well-maintained black combat gear, their faces hidden behind sleek, impersonal helmets. They held high-end pulse rifles with a casual, deadly efficiency. They were soldiers.
One of them stepped into the room, his gaze sweeping over Damien's chained form on the cot. "This one is new," the soldier stated, his voice a clipped, metallic report. "An anomaly. Strong build."
Zara's merchant instincts overrode her fear. "He's a prime specimen," she said, her voice a little too loud. "Took four of my best fighters to bring him down. He'll fetch a premium price. A special asset."
The soldier turned his helmeted head slowly to look at her. The silence stretched. "Lord Bane does not pay for his own property, scavenger," he said, his voice flat and final. "He pays you for the service of collection and holding. You will receive the standard rate for all stock delivered. Now, assemble the cargo. All of it."
The command was absolute. Zara's face flushed with anger and humiliation, but she gave a single, jerky nod. The power dynamic was clear. She was a jackal, and the lions had come to collect their share.
The roundup was a brutal, efficient process. Damien was dragged from the den, his chains clanking on the packed-dirt floor. He was shoved into a line with the other captives being herded from their squalid holding pens. The three surviving women from the previous day were there, their faces pale and hollowed-out, their spirits completely broken.
Then, from a separate, even filthier cage, four other men were dragged out. They were gaunt, starved, and covered in filth, their eyes wide with the terror of men who had long given up hope. They were the forgotten stock, the leftovers from previous raids. Damien looked at them, and a cold dread settled in his gut. He was no longer a solo prize, an anomaly to be sold. He was now just the strongest-looking member of a doomed cohort, a fact that would undoubtedly draw the wrong kind of attention from their new owner.
The two women who had been brutalized by Zara's men were dragged out last. They were a pathetic sight, broken and barely conscious. One of Bane's soldiers looked them over, his helmeted head tilting with cold assessment. "This one is damaged," he said, pointing to the woman who had been beaten for her defiance. "And this one is near death. Lord Bane has no use for broken goods. They will not survive the journey."
Zara, her face a mask of cold fury at the slight to her management, did not argue. Wasted resources were an inefficiency she would not tolerate. "Fine," she spat. She drew her pulse-pistol. "Waste disposal." Two sharp cracks echoed through the camp, and the two women collapsed in a heap, their suffering finally at an end. It was a final, brutal act of house-cleaning, a grim ledger entry being closed.
The remaining captives—Damien, the four other men, and the three women—were chained together in a single, miserable line. They were marched out of the scavenger camp, leaving the stench of death and despair behind them. Their journey had begun.
It was a descent through the layers of a dead city. They were forced through canyons of crumbling concrete and rusted steel, the skeletal remains of skyscrapers that clawed at a sickly yellow sky. The streets were choked with the husks of ancient vehicles and a thick, gray dust that stirred with every mournful gust of wind. The silence here was profound, broken only by the crunch of their own footsteps on shattered pavement.
This quiet was soon broken by a new sound—a low, guttural groaning that echoed from the shadowed alleyways. The soldiers didn't even break stride. "Shamblers," one of them stated, his voice flat with boredom.
A small group of zombies, perhaps a dozen, emerged from the ruins. They were pathetic figures, their flesh hanging in rotten strips from their bones, their movements slow and uncoordinated. They were drawn by the scent of the living, their dead eyes fixed on the line of captives.
The soldiers dealt with them with an almost contemptuous efficiency. They didn't even raise their rifles to their shoulders. Firing from the hip in short, controlled bursts, they put a single pulse-bolt through the head of each zombie. VZT. VZT. VZT. The sound was sharp, clinical. Each shot found its mark, and a zombie would collapse without a sound, a neat, cauterized hole in its skull. There was no wasted ammunition, no panic, no shouting. It was pest control, not a battle. Damien watched, a cold knot tightening in his stomach. The casual lethality of these men was a different universe from the chaotic brawling of Zara's crew.
As they moved deeper into the city's decaying heart, the terrain changed. They entered a district of collapsed overpasses and shattered plazas, a maze of shadows and rubble. Here, the threats were faster. A flicker of movement in the darkness, and suddenly they were surrounded.
They were Gutter-Cats, sleek, feline predators the size of leopards, but horribly wrong. Their fur was a mangy, patchy black, and their limbs had too many joints, allowing them to scuttle up walls and through tight spaces with an unnatural speed. Their eyes glowed with a faint, predatory green light in the gloom.
"Cats," the lead soldier grunted, his tone shifting from boredom to mild annoyance. "Perimeter."
Instantly, the two soldiers moved, placing themselves back-to-back, creating a 360-degree field of fire. The captives were now a liability in the center of their kill zone. One soldier's rifle began to spit bolts of energy into the darkness, not aimed to kill, but to suppress, forcing the agile creatures to stay behind cover. The other soldier detached a device from his belt. With a click, it emitted a high-frequency, piercing shriek that made Damien's teeth ache. The Gutter-Cats recoiled, their glowing eyes blinking in pain and confusion, their ambush broken by the sonic assault.
In that moment of disorientation, the first soldier switched from suppression to execution. VZT. VZT. Two of the beasts fell, their unnatural agility useless against precise, targeted shots. The remaining cats, intelligent enough to recognize a failed hunt, let out a series of enraged hisses and melted back into the shadows. The entire engagement had lasted less than thirty seconds.
The journey continued. They passed through a district of what must have once been high-end residences, now just hollowed-out concrete shells. Here, the danger was quieter. A flash of movement in the periphery—a blur of brown and rust scurrying into a drainpipe. A Rust Rat, Damien surmised, a smaller, quicker cousin to the Ratamons he'd heard whispers of. It was a scavenger, not a threat, but its presence was a sign that they were not alone.
The real threat emerged moments later. A pack of them. Corpse-Hounds. They were gaunt, skeletal canids, their hide stretched tight over their ribcages, their jaws grotesquely oversized, designed for cracking bone. They didn't charge mindlessly. They flanked, using the husks of burnt-out vehicles for cover, their movements coordinated and intelligent.
"Hounds," the lead soldier said, his voice now holding a note of genuine focus. "Hold the line."
The soldiers didn't panic. They herded the captives into the relative safety of a collapsed bus stop and took up positions on either side. They communicated with sharp, efficient hand signals. One laid down a covering fire, forcing the hounds to keep their heads down, while the other took out a small, disc-shaped object. He threw it. It landed in the middle of the street and erupted in a blinding flash of white light.
The Corpse-Hounds, their eyes adapted to the gloom, yelped in pain, temporarily blinded. The soldiers opened fire in unison, their pulse-bolts cutting through the pack with ruthless precision. In seconds, the street was littered with the twitching bodies of the dead hounds.
Throughout these encounters, Damien was a chained, helpless observer. His analytical mind absorbed every detail: the soldiers' flawless discipline, their specialized equipment, their cold, efficient tactics for every specific threat. He understood now, on a visceral level, the chasm that separated these professional soldiers from Zara's savage opportunists. He was being transported from the cage of a jackal to the abattoir of a lion.
After hours of marching through the desolate urban graveyard, the soldiers led them towards the base of what had once been a colossal, prestigious hotel, its glass facade now a spiderweb of cracks and gaping holes. They didn't enter the grand, debris-choked lobby. Instead, they were herded down a wide, spiraling ramp that descended deep into the earth—an entrance to a massive, multi-level underground car park.
The air grew cold and stale, carrying the faint, metallic scent of recycled air and the low hum of a powerful generator. This was the entrance to the Negative Floors.
Upon their arrival in the first receiving chamber of the car park, a new group of guards, clad in the same black combat gear, met them. The three women were immediately unchained from the line and herded away down a separate, dimly lit corridor, their terrified sobs echoing in the enclosed space before a heavy door slammed shut, cutting them off. Their own grim purpose, unknown.
This left Damien and the four other men alone, their shared fate now sealed. They were shoved forward, deeper into the facility, their bare feet cold on the smooth concrete floor. They were brought before a single, heavy, sound-proofed door, its surface scarred and dented from the inside. One of the soldiers worked a complex lock, and the door swung open, revealing a dark, foul-smelling room.
Without a word, the soldiers brutally shoved the five men forward. They tumbled down a short, steep ramp, their chained bodies a tangle of limbs, and landed in a heap at the bottom of a deep, circular pit.
The door slammed shut above them, plunging the room into near-total darkness. Damien, his body a symphony of fresh bruises and old agony, pushed himself up. He got his first look at his new home. The walls of the pit were smooth, and even in the dim light filtering from a grate high above, he could see they were stained dark with old, dried blood. He was at the bottom of a well of despair, surrounded by four terrified strangers who were about to become his fellow canvases for a madman's art.