The shelter hummed, low and tired, like an older man trying not to cough. Su Wu sat beside the console, staring at the blueprint display as static fuzzed around the edges. The turret schematic was crude, featuring a rotating base, a repurposed loader arm, and a magnetic-fed slug chamber—but it was something. A gun meant one thing: time. Time to work. Time to breathe. Time to think.
But he didn't have time.
He stood and walked to the back corridor where the drone bay used to be. It was now little more than scorched plating and cracked walls. He traced the wiring with his hand, noting every exposed copper vein and burnt junction. If he could restore the 3D printer down in Sublevel B, maybe he could fabricate the turret housing. Maybe.
Suddenly, the system pinged.
[Priority Update: External Signal Detected - Unclassified Frequency | Range: 4.2 km Source: UNKNOWN]
Su Wu stiffened. It wasn't just heat signatures in the ruins anymore. Someone—or something—was broadcasting.
He tapped the interface, bringing up the waveform. The jagged pulses and irregular
modulation indicated that it was not random. It was patterned, intelligent, and probably encrypted.
"Not machine noise," he muttered.
He ran a trace. TSourcerce pinged from Sector 7, northwest of the shelter, where a solar relay tower once stood before the collapse.
If the tower was intact—or even half-functional-it could explain the signal. But it also posed a risk. The infected weren't the only scavengers that might be drawn to a functional relay.
He ran logistics.
[Expedition Viability: 42%]
[Risk Rating: Severe]
[Suggested Loadout: Manual Blade, Pistol (if available), Scout Drone (UNAVAILABLE)]
Su Wu stared at the last line. The drone system was down; the parts were fried, and there were no backups.
He could either risk it blind or scavenge something first. A thought hit him: the corpse he found near the vending kiosk. If the infected wore gear, it might have scavenged tech too—maybe even a comms relay or a micro-drone. They were learning. They were using.
And if they had tech, it meant they were more than just animals.
He clenched his jaw.
There were now two options: scavenge the infected or risk the tower solo. Neither choice was good, but the world no longer offered anything good.
He suited up again. There were now two options: scavenge the infected or risk the tower solo. Neither choice was good, but the world no longer offered anything good.
He suited up again.
Su Wu rigged his gear like a surgeon preparing for an operation—quick, quiet, methodical. Every tool had to earn its weight. He strapped on the patched chest rig, loaded the last two power cells into a hybridized taser baton, and slung his blade—more machete than knife—across his back. The sheath was stitched from repurposed seatbelts.
The shelter door hissed open with reluctant hydraulics. Cold air met his face like a slap.
[Signal Ping Update: Distance - 3.8 km | Strength - Increasing]
Whatever was broadcasting, it hadn't stopped. Either it didn't care who heard it, or it wanted to be found.
He moved.
The sky above was a slab of steel-gray, cloudless, and humming with static. Dead trees twisted up from concrete, limbs clawing at nothing. Most buildings were hunched skeletons, their glass eyes shattered, bones of rebar jutting like exposed nerves.
Halfway to the old vending kiosk, he paused at a twisted wreck of a commuter van. Its hull was half-melted. One door opened, the interior scorched black. Signs of a firebomb, maybe homemade.
He peered in.
Nothing but ash and the melted shadows of seatframes. But then, under the bench, glinting metal. A gearbox.
He tugged it out, scraped away the grime. Inside: two micro-servos, a pressure switch, and one intact optic relay.
[Salvage Acquired: Servo Components +1 | Optical Relay +1]
Not turret-grade, but useful.
He kept moving.
When he reached the location of the infected sighting, the fog was thicker. It clung to the ground like mold, low and choking. He crouched behind a crumbled wall and waited.
No sound.
Then, faint, wet steps. Dragging, but rhythmic.
He edged forward. Thirty meters ahead, near a shattered storefront, they appeared.
Three of them.
One was hunched over a steel barrel, its gray skin peeled back in strips—like leather stretched too tight. It wore a scavenged radio headset, wires snaking down its spine, fused to scar tissue. Another had a prosthetic arm—metal rods crudely grafted to the bone. The third had no visible tech, but it moved like a predator, slow and tight, its head constantly turning.
They didn't look like the ones he'd seen before.
These were newer. Sharper.
Evolved.
Su Wu knew he couldn't take all three in a head-on fight. So he circled. Slipped through debris. Found higher ground: a tilted billboard scaffold.
He waited.
Then, a noise behind him.
Click. Metal on metal.
He spun.
Too late.
A fourth one. Smaller, faster. Dropping from above, limbs too long, eyes glowing faint red through a cracked visor.
It lunged.
He rolled, brought the taser baton up. Jammed it under its chin and triggered the discharge.
Electricity hissed. The creature convulsed, flailing—but didn't drop.
He punched its throat. Metal met flesh. Something snapped.
It shrieked and fell back, flailing.
The others turned.
Shit.
Su Wu ran.
Su Wu vaulted over a crumbling divider, boots landing hard on a patch of exposed tile that cracked under his weight. He didn't stop. Behind him came the inhuman screeches—raw, guttural, wet with rage. One high-pitched, one deep and rattling, one weirdly choked like a lungful of blood.
They were gaining.
He darted through the skeleton of an old pharmacy, shoving over a shelf stacked with half-melted pill bottles. It crashed to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust and glass. A pause—maybe confusion.
He kept moving.
Out the back. Down a collapsed stairwell. His hands scraped brick and wire. A rebar spike tore a chunk from his sleeve. Blood welled, but he ignored it.
No time.
The map flashed in his HUD—half-corrupted but still usable. A red blip marked the last safe spot he'd tagged in this zone: an old public transit hub buried beneath the street.
He angled toward it.
Behind him, footsteps changed.
They stopped running.
Bad sign.
He turned a corner—
—and nearly fell into a pit.
A sinkhole had cracked open the street, swallowing an entire intersection. At the bottom, water shimmered darkly, the remnants of a drainage tunnel barely visible.
A way down.
Or a trap.
Su Wu crouched low, breathing hard. His pulse roared in his ears.
Then he saw it—on the opposite side of the pit. One of the infected, standing perfectly still, head tilted like a curious child.
It had followed him.
But it didn't charge.
It lifted its arm. Something in its hand blinked—a small, black, rectangular device, blinking green.
A signal booster.
The broadcast. It was carrying the damn signal.
Su Wu's brain shifted gears.
These weren't just scavengers—they were couriers. Runners. Distributors.
They were spreading something.
And he was in the middle of the route.
He had to get that device.