Lightning splits the sky upon the horizon of a barren, war-scarred wasteland. Clouds reflect the hue of the bloodstained soil below, threatening to funnel down to earth at any moment. Gravel shifts and crunches beneath the writhing fallen and the few struggles that remain. Bodies of gods in the flesh of man and beast lay scattered across the valley in beaten heaps. Would-be tyrants grin down to fallen defenders, fangs bared and tongues rolling out in sadistic glee at having conquered the mightiest from the east. At the center of them all stands one lone victor towering over his greatest foe to date.
A horned titan stands above a fallen lion. The lion’s crumbles as blood flows from between his fangs among gags. He grips a collection of broken ribs with a shattered hand covered in a crimson prosthetic. Mechanical fingers twitch and spark through cracked plating. The titan standing over him barks out a bellowing laugh. “You’ve fought well, but this country is ours now!” His forces holler and cheer. Their jubilant stomping shakes the earth. He starts to pace a slow circle around the lion, carefully watching his every move, in case a spark of rebellion remains in him. “You failed spectacularly. As expected of the foolhardy tools of a ruined nation.” With a right-handed thrust, the bull stabs his hefty and broken blade into the dirt beside his fallen foe. The dim lights of sunset through stormclouds reflect off its blackened edge, showing the dying lion a bloody reflection of his broken comrades’ silhouettes. All remain hunched onto their knees or flat on the ground, pinned by the titan’s many servants. Knees grind into their backs, spines arched into painful submission, arms twisted and bound. Even with only their shadows in his vision, the lion can still picture every one with burning passion in their eyes, undying even as they lay at death’s door.
“Now…” The lion’s musings are interrupted once more by the horned brute. “I’ll give you one last chance. You went to war over one life lost. If you care for them so much, you’ll end your life here and now, with my sword.” A sadistic grin encompasses the bull’s face, his eyes beginning to project a gentle yet eerie gray into the air. “Then, I’ll spare the rest to let them join me.”?
The lion struggles to push himself upright, gripping the hilt of the sacrificial blade. He slips on gravel before he can manage to rise off one knee. His eyes remain hidden by the bangs of his mane, soaked in crimson and weighed down from its usual flare. He grits his fangs, his ears ringing as the trauma to his head leaves all senses dulled. Even dulled as they are, he can still taste the copper tinge flowing through his mouth. The world spins around him, clouding all sensation in a cacophony of panic and approaching unconsciousness. He can barely see his comrades laid across the scorched earth as the tyrant’s thugs hold them to it, and yet, he can still hear the cries of pain and defiance surrounding him as though they were speaking directly into his ears. Fallen brothers, sisters, warriors whom he’d taken in out of no obligation of any sort, but trust and compassion, cry for him to turn down this offer. He can finally hear the shuffling of gravel beneath feet ahead of him as the titan turns to leave. He is certain of his victory, certain he has already won, that he’s taken the west for himself. All that remains is to march eastward and capture the defenseless masses awaiting their new ruler. North America as a whole will be entirely under his command within months. All of the lion’s work will be for naught. How many other tyrants have he and his comrades brought to their knees? How many other cities has he freed from the chaos of this new world? What choice does he have but to let it all go to waste now, to save what little he can? A grim, gargling chuckle escapes the lion’s split lips. “Yeah… yeah, this end makes sense. It’s always been this.” He sputters and coughs as the chaos of the last six months flashes through his mind’s eye.
“Oy, boss.” A chiseled, grizzly man in his early twenties steps through a curtain of hanging chains into what he and his companions have come to call ‘the lounge’, the light jangling softened by spotty patches of rust. His tired eyes scan across the deflated bean bags and flat tires that litter the floor and an overturned cooler tucked into the corner beside multiple emptied beer cases. Every surface from the sheets upon the bed tucked in the corner to the concrete floor is stained with oil, bile, and blood. Sitting upon one of the many bean bags, stacked upon a tire, is a young man quite a few years his junior, barely even a legal adult by the looks of him. He wears a tattered and stained black tank top, matching the darkened oil spots of his faded jeans, the ankles shredded away into a fray of hair-like white thread halfway up his shins, just above a pair of stained leather boots, military standard and laced up high. His jet black mohawk stood tall and pointed at six peaks, a detail that would normally be distracting, if not for the menace within his swamp green eyes, split horizontally into the twin pupils of a frog.
“What the hell is it now, Artie?” His voice is high-pitched, grating, yet rough and stern. Artie stumbles as he catches the boss’s eyes, quickly turning away and looking back out through the doorway. He can’t help but stammer under his boss’s watchful gaze. “U-Uh, we’ve found someone at the door.” He pulls the chains aside to get a better look back into the main workspace of the garage they call home. “Probably a new recruit, but he passed out just after we’d let ‘im in.” His frantic rambling trails off as turns back to face his boss. “W-What should we do about him, boss?”
The boss raises an eyebrow for just a moment. It’s been quite a while since any of his subordinates, even old friends among them, called him by name. Something about this new guy must have unsettled him. Cody pulls himself to his feet and steps past Artie with his hands buried deep in his pockets. “Time to greet the newbie then.” His lips part into a fanged grin. “I’ve been looking forward to the next initiation…” His mutated teeth are yellowed and jagged. He likely hasn’t brushed in months, but that would have done nothing to contribute to the unnatural shape and number of teeth filling his mouth.
Nearly a dozen heads turn as the heavy clacking of his boots upon the concrete floor echoes within the abandoned garage. Fools swinging from chains and drumming away at tin barrels suddenly go silent. A group of young drunks perched up on the empty lift fall eerily still from the midst of frantic laughter. As the undeniable lord of their violent little kingdom steps up, various animal traits and appendages dispersed among the gang of mutant misfits twitch in anticipation. The occasional tail sways and flicks with feline curiosity. Feral eyes dilate as they prepare to witness their leader’s next move. Claws unsheathe unconsciously as they wait to sink into anything upon an order. Disturbing clicks and buzzes echo throughout the concrete chamber.
In the center of the now eerily quiet room, a young man lays face-down and motionless on the floor, face shrouded by an overgrown mess of dark chocolate hair. His thin and threadbare black trench coat bears tears and holes revealing a red tee beneath. Below this was matching black cargo pants with several burnt patches. Lastly was a pair of old, beaten, and clearly cheap gray foam sandals, so haggard that any pattern on the soles has long since been worn down to a blank canvas. A handful of cretins gathering around him dig into the many pockets of his cargos, collecting a small bounty from them. There’s some batteries, an old handheld game system with translucent green cartridge inside, some protein bars, and two dog-eared photos seemingly of their new victim. One depicts him with two close friends and the other with his family of four, as a single son clung to by a cheerful little sister.
The boss snorts at the sight of him. “So, this is the little shit you dragged in, huh? He looks too beat to be of any use…” He kicks the helpless young man in the ribs. There’s no reaction. “And got the shit kicked out of ‘im already. He’ll be useless to us. Prob’ly just some beggar asking us to let up on the taxes.” He huffs and snaps his fingers. “Roll ‘im over, wanna get a look at this guy’s face. Might know the lil shit from somewhere.” Heeding their leader’s word, two burlier members of the group roll the new arrival onto his back. This reveals a rather pasty complexion and a strong chin, barely covered in thin, sparse stubble. His nose is squared and sharp, denoting some mild feline features. His skin appears to have jagged, discolored patches akin to scar tissue, but in a structured and organic tiger stripe pattern.One of the women off to the side chuckles, playing with her greasy blonde hair. “This one’s just some clueless kid, kick him back to the streets boss.”
The boss nods and turns to slink back to his room. “Yeah, get ‘im out. Got no use for anyone so pathetic.” Upon his command, the seemingly unconscious young man was heaved up by his arms, feet dragging across the concrete floor as the two burly guards carry him back to the open garage door.
Before the henchmen could get anywhere near the garage’s open front, a blast of crimson flame erupts from the limp captive between them, tossing the two aside. Their limp and unconscious forms crash into opposite walls and lay slumped against them in broken heaps. Jagged tongues of flame graze against each other in a spiraling dance, cocooning the young man in a glowing bloody shroud. The flames snuff out as quickly as they appeared. Before them now stands not a man, but a beast. Skin is traded for brunet fur marred with black stipes. He rolls his shoulders, shifting a frame now a few inches taller. He abandons his sandals to walk on feline toes. His scowl is shrouded beneath a shaggy mane. Slit feline eyes of deep sapphire pierce the boss’s faded swamp green. “Not much for hospitality, are you, Cody? No wonder the whole town wants you dead.”
The utterance of those words summons down chaos. Bursts of colored flame and lightning consume the men and women scattered across the room, taking on equally if not more beastly forms. Screams of rage erupt from their bestial jaws. The lion at the center of this storm of claws allows a wild grin to spread across his face. As they all take their time with far slower transformations, he kneels to collect the photos they stole from him and dropped. He gently dusts them off and secures them back in his left pocket.
Upon standing, he swings to his left hand out of his pocket, backhanding a bipedal gecko mutant in the jaw. The snapping of bone is barely audible through the battle cries of the remaining gang members. His slack, flailing form spins and vaults into one of his cohorts nearly fifteen feet away.
As a set of feline claws swipe by the lion’s face, he falls onto his still outstretched left hand and swings an upwards heel kick into his assailant’s chest, sending them straight into the ceiling.
His eyes narrow when he feels an incoming burst of heat. He peeks to his right just in time to see a man with cracked, jagged hide unleashing a torrent of flame into the floor, scattering waves of fire across the room. The scale of the attack is too large to escape. The lion pushes off the floor, going airborne, but he can only manage to flip himself upright and receive a burn to his right leg instead. Much to his amusement, the pyro’s own cohorts had also been burned in his attack, spurring some of the band of thieves to start turning on each other and others to abandon the squabble altogether.
Once on his feet, he launches a spin-kick into a hexapedal canine’s shoulder, cringing as he agitates his burn, only to have his heel catch against their stone-covered hand. The target still skids a foot or so to his side, before a series of stones from the gravel scattered about gathers on his right forearm, forming a thick gauntlet to match the other. The lion stumbles for a moment as his leg is pulled higher and forward by his ankle. He then instead picks his other leg off the ground and thrusts another kick at his foe’s wrist. He breaks off a portion of the stone gauntlet, loosening their grip enough to drop to the floor.
Taking advantage of his feline traits, he uprights himself to land face-down on hand and elbow, but then has to roll to the right to escape another brute’s attempt to impale him. He barely escapes a blade made from an onyx beetle mutant’s carapace.
After a roll and a half, he pushes off the ground to leap over a third thug’s attempt to sandblast him with a jet of fine particles firing from organic valves in his wrists. The lion knees the sandblaster in the base of his skull as he vaults over them. They slump to the ground as the last of their stored sand and air sputters out with in the sad tones of a broken whoopee cushion.
The stone wielder rushes the lion with both arms clad in gravel gauntlets. The lion sighs through pursed lips, then rushes past their guard and behind them, grabbing their left elbow. He pulls inwards, yanks them off their feet, over his shoulder, and into the beetle who had just barely managed to remove his blade from the floor. As the beetle attempts to catch him, he instead manages to impale his ally’s bicep with his organic blade, leaving them stacked front to back as the lion leaps in to land a vicious elbow thrust to the beetle’s ribs. Bone and carapace alike snap under that strike, leaving them collapsed into an oozing heap, struggling to catch their breath through a punctured lung.
Hearing chains rattling above, the lion leaps to the side and peeks back to address his next target. He finds a set of needle-thin claws long as unshaven pencils reaching over his shoulder, where his head has just been. Almost imperceptible to most of those present, the lion begins to move at twice his former speed without even touching the ground, ending his jump in half the time it should have taken. By the time he’s landed, the mosquito woman has buzzed her way into his face again and the party assaulting their pyro cohort is wrapping up. The pyro is still trying to fight his way out.
The lion grabs the mosquito woman by the wrist and throws her into the crowd with the pyro. Before she reaches them, he unleashes a concussive lion’s roar at her back. The living projectile knocks them all into a stack of gas cans, breaking some open and spilling the contents across the floor. With the pyro unconscious, no flames are produced to light them, much to the lion’s chagrin.
As the rest of the rabble breaks away and off into the town, desperate to escape the lion’s onslaught, his hunting azure eyes focus on Cody’s swamp green. Silence passes between the two for several moments. Cody growls to himself as he envisions the many ways he’ll punish his deserters.
“… Alright, not bad.” Cody begins to pace. His eyes never leave the lion’s. “You’ve got power. A lot more than those chicken shits. So I guess I can let you join as second in command.”
The hunting lion snorts. He bares his fangs in an almost playful grin. “I’m not here to join, Cody. I’m here on behalf of the citizens of Spring City.” He reaches down and picks up the game system they almost stole from him. “The people you’ve been bleeding dry for weeks. Now, the next thing to bleed will be you.” His threat is spoken with a dry, even tone, bereft of either anger or joy. It’s simply a fact.
The prey lets out a raspy yet deep chuckle, gray flames forming around his feet. It flows in a motion akin to razors scraping past one another, sparking lightning along their edges. “You really think you can take me? News flash.” He slaps his chest and spreads his arms in a vain and pathetic display of dominance. “I’m the biggest badass in this town, and probably for several around here. On top of that, I’ve already caught ya’ disarmed.” His eyes drift down to the space beneath the lion’s right elbow, to find nothing but a two inch stump healed shut, unscarred and grown over with fresh fur. “Even if ya are a leftie, I’ve still got the upper hand, and one more than you.” With a sudden burst of silver fire, he emerges with rubbery, yet spike-covered gunmetal gray skin, his pupils still split sideways, and webs of skin between his fingers. His stance becomes hunched by a spine that curves forward into the base of a widened skull.
The hunter raises an eyebrow. “Ah, a horned toad. That’s new.” he remarks as he shifts himself sideways and leaves himself wide open. “Stop yapping already and fight me, so I can get out of here.”
That did it. The punk’s lips and brow curl into an almost painful scowl, his limbs twitching spastically. He backflips into the wall, planting his feet upon it, before kicking off to launching himself at inhuman speed. A thick layer of spikes and blades of hardened skin form along his right arm and grow outwards into a jagged two foot mass past his hand, swinging in to shred the hunter.
Hair hangs down from the lion’s mane and casts a shadow over his eyes as he pivots in on his right foot. He swings in his left fist at speeds the toad’s bifurcated eyes can’t track. Crimson flames rise at his feet once more. His stripes and eyes begin to glow with the same fire. So does his fist.
The impact rocks the room with a thunderous blast. The lion’s knuckles bleed. The toad’s spikes snap and clatter to the floor. The lion blocks another swing with a thrust of his elbow, producing a satisfying crunch within the toad’s hand. Lightning surges through the lion. He hunches, but his eyes and stripes are then alight with bloody flames. He blocks the next left hook with his right elbow and forces their strike up and out of the way. The toad can’t retaliate in time. A left straight into his throat cuts off his windpipe. He reels back and grabs the lion’s wrist before he can pull away. Silver lightning flows up the lion’s arm and courses through his veins.
But where the lion had cut off the toad’s air, the toad had pushed the lion to roar. The concussive blast of his voice forces the toad’s grip loose, hurdling backwards and into a support beam. Concrete cracks and crumbles off the pillar as he drops to his feet and raises his head- but the lion is already beside him with his left arm cocked back. The following left hook plows through the feeble defense of mostly shattered spikes on his right arm. The snap of Cody’s wrist breaking is followed by the deep metallic bass of clattering oil drums as his flailing body careens through them.
The lion remains by the pillar, watching as oil spills across the room and over his fallen prey. He speaks across the black pond slowly overtaking the floor. “Ya know…” he sighs deeply. “It’s amazing how cathartic tossing a self-entitled prick like you can be.” He starts to pace around the oil, making his way towards the door. “Dirty job, yeah, but someone needs to take the trash out, right?”
Cody rises from the oil, his silver skin stained black and dripping. The rage in his split pupils could strike a lesser man down with a glance. “What the hell do you even want from us? What do you get out of this?”
The lion snorts and shakes his head. “No, no, man, listen…” He steps up and sits on a tire outside the oil. “I’m not here to take your town over, or steal your stockpile, or some arrogant shit like that. I already got what I wanted.” He reaches into his pockets and pulls out a pack of batteries and his game system. “A little entertainment, a place to sleep and eat for a day or two, and some rations for the road.” The battery compartment snaps shut. A flick of a switch later, and he’s graced by the familiar tones of the system booting up. “Mm, wonderful.” He shuts it off to conserve power and shoves it back in his pocket. “That, and leaving everything you guys have to the fine people of Spring City. It’s a small town, there should be enough to go around.” He levels a blank stare at Cody from across the room. “You’ve got a hell of a lot in that truck out back. It’s theirs now. Your lackies bolted, your most competent ones are broken or dead, you’ve got no hold on this town anymore.” He pushes himself up and turns to leave. “So, I’m done here.”
Cody can only stare. Not a word of that made any sense to him. They were both Unleashed. They had all the power in the world, no government to stop them, no cops left, they could have anything they wanted! How could this fool step in, tear his cronies apart, destroy a large chunk of his base, and want none of it? All Cody can see is a neanderthal that stumbled into his home, terrorized him, and is now walking back out without a care in the world.
His anger gets the best of him. He grips the concrete floor and pierces it with his claws. The spikes across his arms and back begin to regrow. The lion doesn’t bother to look back. He knows it’s over the moment Cody retaliates. He returns to his human form and slips his sandals back on.
Lightning sparks between Cody’s oiled spikes.
As the hunter steps out through the door, he hears a zap, then the deep sigh of a flame’s ignition, and feels the gust of an explosion blowing past him. Debris and smoke follow in its wake, careening over his shoulders. Smoldering scraps bounce off his back. “I said I’m done. No reason to blow up over it.”
An exasperated breath escapes the victor’s lips and he runs his remaining hand through his overgrown hair. The gravel driveway crunches beneath every step as flames lick at his heels and scorch the stone. “That was uneventful. Just another group of punks with big heads.” He steps out onto the side of the road and starts walking along Route 724 headed east, allowing his mind to wander over the past few months. It’s been a long road, but he’s almost home.
At least he still knows a few trustworthy people there, and one isn’t too far ahead now. A long walk, but nothing compared to the hellish march he’s had so far. If only Pennsylvanian summers didn’t take forever to peter-out into the shortest of autumns.
He’s certainly met some interesting characters along the way, at least. An obnoxious number of pyros and generic close combat abilities, but so many unique and beautiful minds pushed to their limits in this hellscape. Shapeshifting, electromagnetic conversion, energy vampirism, even manipulation of physics itself all dotted the highlights of his trip. Then there was that one kid who could stick to anything and figured out he could do it with points in space rather than just objects. How the fuck did that work?
And then there was the wildlife. He never liked camping before The Breach, and now it’s an exercise in either futility or attempted suicide. That bear had to be ten feet tall, and somehow ended up able to split the earth by yelling at it. No way in hell he’d ever get that tent back.
Returning from his rambling thoughts, the road ahead proves to be a testament to the decay of civilization. Abandoned cars litter the streets, strewn about at odd angles. Some have crashed into one another or been left abandoned in ditches, headlights down or overturned. A few are embedded into the guardrails. Occasionally, dried blood can be found in the seats and windshields. The bodies didn’t last long. A five-foot-tall buzzard atop one of the vehicles could attest to that. It ignores the vagabond with the soul of a lion as he passes. It knows better than to attack an Unleashed.
Hours into his trek, he ventures into the borders of Phoenixville, cringing upon the sight of these all too familiar streets. Sidewalks crumbled until the individual pavers were indeterminable and littered with weeds growing through the cracks. The graveyard to his right is in shambles, tombstones defaced and split. Some were ripped clean from the ground and tossed across the street, wedged into broken windows and buried upside-down into front yards. He could see one embedded into the third-floor window of an apartment complex to his left. Looks more like a stone barricade than a projectile in this case. Whatever works to keep your windows boarded.
The pizza parlor was almost unrecognizable. The best he could determine from the glass shards scattered about the lot and angles of the split and bent roof was that someone within it had set off a potent explosive ability somewhere in the kitchen. “Damnit.” He sighs and hangs his head. “Really liked their calzones.”
An echoing car alarm blares in the distance, only for the battery to die out within seconds. Silence overcomes the urban terrain once more. In this silence, he takes a moment to appreciate the one thing that’s remained beautiful in this town. The greenery lining Phoenixville’s streets has always been calming. Lush and thriving trees tower over the road on both sides, shading the sidewalks and bringing a colorful respite from constant visions of chaos and death in recent months. It’s almost enough to feel like some semblance of normalcy remains.
His tired eyes pan to the shattered windows and broken doors, until resting upon the sight of an intact door framed in peeling white paint, surrounded by boarded windows upon a backdrop of faded brick. It was the right half of one of the many duplexes lining this old street. Most of the surrounding buildings appear nearly untouched, almost like the apocalypse never happened. The front steps appear to have taken the only damage on this property. Three steps have been cracked and split in a manner that sinks half of it and chips off the bottom. Something, or someone had been flung into these steps hard enough to bust the coarse cement. He ventures up to the door and kicks a few pieces of debris, scraps of metal from who knows where and fallen roof tiles. The sounds echo through the otherwise silent streets.
By the time he reaches the door, he finds it already cracked open. A smooth and breathy voice addresses him from behind it. “Alright, the hell are you doin here? Be careful with your words. I’m in no mood to deal with any threats.”
A faint chuckle escapes the vagabond’s lips, propping himself up against the doorway with his left hand. “You seriously gonna greet an old friend like that, Mason? I know it’s been a few months, but I don’t think that justifies being a dick.”
Silence falls for just a moment until the door’s thrown open to reveal a tall, gangly gentleman with vibrant white crew-cut hair. Not even as yellowed as platinum blonde, but albino white. His soft green eyes fall upon his visitor, just short enough compared to him to have to significantly adjust his gaze. “Scott? The hell are you doing here? I thought you were dead!” Despite his shock, he can’t help but grin at the sight of his best friend. He leans in the doorway and sizes Scott up, his gaze lingering on Scott’s right side for a moment.
Scott raises his arms in an almost comically exaggerated shrug, leaving his right sleeve to hang off his stumped elbow. “Thought I was too for a while. You gonna invite me in, or is that thick head stuck in the doorway?”
With a roll of his eyes, Mason steps away and holds the door, letting Scott pass through. A few sighs of relief sound throughout the living room. Mason’s mother wearily lifts herself from her seat and wraps her scrawny arms around Scott in a tight embrace. Her own wavy waist-length hair has grayed quite a bit since they last met, the stress of these past few months having aged her by decades. Despite the constant sagging in her tired face, her smile is as inviting as ever. “Oh thank God you’re alive. When I heard about the massacre out there, I thought-”
“Please, I’m fine, you don’t need to worry!” Scott slowly pries himself from her arms and removes his jacket, seeming practiced in functioning without a right hand. As proof of this, he tosses his jacket to Mason with his stumped elbow. “Can ya hang that for me?” Despite the grim reactions of his peers, he saunters across the unpolished hardwood floor over to a nearby chair and drops into place. It’s thick, plush cushions welcome him back into their familiar and comforting embrace. The dimly lit home soothes him for a few moments as he takes in the familiar scents of cinnamon and wet wood that constantly permeate this house. Despite that, he only allows that peace and silence to remain for a few moments. His curiosity about his favorite surviving family overtakes that need for comfort. “So were you all here at home when it went down?”
Mason nods as he leans back against the wall. “Yeah… My parents and I were the only ones awake when The Breach hit. Father was out drinking.” He crosses his arms and closes his eyes, drifting into memories. “He didn’t like seeing me when he got home. Or Sadie…” He peeks across the room to his youngest sister, curled up on the couch with petite horns poking out of her auburn hair. “Started ranting about us being demons.” He casts his gaze back to Scott. “…Had no choice in the end. He’s buried out back.”
Scott hunches over and grunts, staring off into empty space. Mr. Bowers’ hatred was no news to him. He’s seen too many fall victim to it since The Breach that he can’t even be surprised anymore. I quick glance at Sadie and Mrs. Bowers tells him all he needs to know. Sadie’s head is low, yet she remains silent. She’s crestfallen, but grown used to loss already. Mrs. Bowers, on the other hand, focuses on cradling Sadie while she looks to her son with subtle reverence. Scott nods in understanding and passes up that landmine topic. “I see. Well, at least the rest of you are alright. But on that note… how far into hell has this town fallen?”
They look amongst each other for a moment before Mrs. Bowers looks to Mason with prying eyes. He sighs and paces about the room, checking each of the windows for signs of anyone who could have tailed Scott. “Well, it was pretty far at first. People started changing, and half the town started burning. The high school was blown up a few minutes in.” he chuckles at that. “Apparently someone with combustion powers put in a little too much effort. Within a few days, things settled down enough for people to hide in their own homes, if they still had ‘em.” He leans against the wall with crossed arms, letting a quick flare of black and white flames surround him for a moment. “I happened to keep this place intact.”
“Well, that explains the white hair.” Scott shrugs. “Seen weirder shit out of Unleashed before…” Scott leans forward and props himself up with his left elbow. “Pretty sure last week I saw a guy with two-foot antennae and one giant eye in his dormant form.”
Mason groans and lowers his head. “Yeah, well, it’s not as bad as Richie.” Scott’s brow furled at the mention of that name, mumbling ‘Richie Anderson’ to himself. “The dick’s been ‘roided out since The Breach and made a new home out of the bank. Rumor has it when he took over, he tore the vault door off with his bare hands and flattened someone with it. But…”
Scott knew the look on his face. That smirk spoke of rebellion. The last time he’d seen it was in the process of unleashing what had to be the best senior prank he’d ever seen, consisting of a homemade mixtape, an agent in the staff, and a misplaced key.
Mason stops his pacing and looks Scott dead in the eyes. “There’s a team comin’ together. People from across the state have started gathering here, one of ‘em was even a big player in Paoli’s home team when the first raiding parties arrived. So far, they’re gathered up in a base we set up across town. Well-hidden and kind of out of the way for most survivors here. As long as we approach quietly and watch our backs, we’ll be safe from any raids.”
Silence falls throughout the room as all eyes fall upon Scott. His own gaze falls upon something imperceptible, glazed yet focused. “Alright then...” He turns to face Mason with stone-faced determination. His limbs are loose and relaxed, yet the steel in his back and fire in his eyes speaks volumes. “Where do I sign up?”
Mason grins from ear to ear, stepping up and taking Scott’s hand with a renewed passion and pulling him from his seat. “We’ll have to go after sunset, make sure we stay hidden. After midnight would probably be best. So, go crash up in my room for a while, and I’ll come grab ya later.” He pats Scott’s back and sends him off towards the stairs, as Scott gives him a casual two-fingered salute.
“Thanks. Could use a rest after dealin’ with… I think was about fifteen dipshits runnin’ a gang out of a garage in Spring City.” Scott snorts as he marches up the creaky steps. “Over half of em bailed in the middle of the fight to save their own asses.” He yawns and trails off upon stepping into a familiar room full of old games and consoles that no longer worked thanks to the lack of electricity. Some ornate weapons hang on the walls, most too dull to be of any use in cutting and all likely too fragile to be of any worth in combat. A worn military vest hangs above the headboard. Chuckling to himself, he kicks off his sandals and collapses into the bed. He crosses his arms over his chest as he lays flat on his back, staring at the ceiling in silence for several minutes. Good to know how to sleep without moving, if you want to avoid detection out on the road. He can hear the Bowers chattering amongst themselves below, but having finally found a peaceful place to rest, he drifts off into the deepest sleep he’s had in months.
BUY NOW