It was a cold, dark night- perfect for just a little bit of trespassing and theft. In fact, it was better than perfect: college had a three-day weekend and a Breach had been cleared that friday. The only annoying part was that I did have to drive for eight hours right after my last class ended to get to the small town adjacent to the small town that had been impacted.

For a while I had been kinda hoping for something like this to happen, so I already had a bag prepped and a hotel booking website bookmarked. I was slightly concerned about secrecy, so I only used the website to check availability then paid in cash. Definitely suspicious, but only to one really tired guy manning the front desk at eleven at night.

On Saturday, I had driven another half hour to get to the actual site of the Breach to scout out what the security was like. The smart thing that probably should have been standard procedure would be to shut down all the roads leading in with a few temporary barriers and cops to turn people like me around a few miles out.

Given this was America, what had actually been done was that, but right outside the town so the media and various government PR groups could get good shots of people working and giving speeches.

It was easy to pull off the road where all the various support vehicles were. After a bit of searching through my bag of useful tricks, I pulled out a beanie and vest with a fake news station logo printed on the front and back. Together with the ubiquitous infiltration clipboard and a camera around my neck, I fit right in.

I only got a few eye rolls as I did an intentionally poor job of ‘sneaking off’ from the informally designated area. Once out of view- but still outside the blocked off perimeter- I started looking for a route in. All the road had temporary fencing and water-filled barriers set up to keep vehicles out. The more major streets also had cop cars parked with one or two people dosing inside. I’m sure I could have found somewhere to just walk in if I had circled all the way around, but it was cold and didn’t end up being necessary.

Fairly early on, I found a nice and secure looking drainpipe leading up a three storey building in proximity to windows I could rest on and check to see if someone didn’t lock up in the panic. For a modicum of legitimacy, I took some pictures through the barriers at the damage done. I had been planning to use them to put together a list of places to check out, but hadn't gotten around to it before I came back that night.

I wasn’t planning to sneak around in a freshly cleared Breach for a specific purpose, I was mostly intrigued by the idea of doing so and the possibility to pick up a souvenir for… myself, really. I had no one who would care beyond my parents- and they would probably only scold me for doing something so smooth brained.

Sneaking back to the cleared Breach was a heaping of stress that resulted in zero complications. I had driven probably a few too many miles with all the car’s lights turned off and since it was electric, it made little to no noise, but I still parked almost a mile out then walked.

When I finally arrived at the pipe I had scouted, the only noise audible over the low winds was a few cars idling in the distance. I had changed into a set of dark gray clothes with a headlamp, backpack of supplies, and bag of chalk. I wasn’t worried about leaving marks behind from my climb- at least not more than not getting a good grip.

The climb wasn’t an issue. It did suck, though. To get a good grip, I needed to be in an awkward position that put a lot of stress on everything. The windows were a big help, and the one on the third floor was even unlocked. I had brought a spring-loaded center punch to break one if needed, but that would have been loud and messy. Some more uncomfortable and exhausting maneuvering let me slip into the apartment, where I collapsed and let my jelly-like limbs take a break.

Nothing in there caught my attention. Partially because it was pretty bare-bones and partially because I wasn’t looking to steal from somewhere where an item might be noticed as missing.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Rested up, I slowly creeped through the building, checking the rooms with doors left open from the panic, but not finding anything interesting. As I left, I used a few miscellaneous items to prop open the doors into the side stairwell I used to descend. It had an exterior fire-door at the bottom, but the town’s power was shut down so I wasn’t concerned about alarms.

I made a quick mental note on the position of the building in case no other egress point was forthcoming before heading out into the streets. A few minutes of watching and listening told me there were no patrols or lookouts, so I gradually relaxed from the large adrenaline high I had worked up from the climbing and sneaking into only a minor one.

As I mostly aimlessly wandered the outskirts, slowly circling my way in, I was struck at how beautiful it was. The town’s isolation and power loss meant there was very little light pollution and the constant, mild winds pushed most of the clouds away. If you went looking for them, there were plenty of ghost towns abandoned in the wake of the Cascadia Subduction Zone giving way- but the little hints that this town used to be lived in until very recently gave it more personality and texture than the withered husks elsewhere.

I ended up taking a few pictures. Not to show anyone, but because it felt like the right thing to do.

The mood quickly changed from “everyone vanished” to “leftovers of a war” as I made my way into the center of the town. It didn’t look like any buildings had collapsed, but bodies and scrap were strewn all over. The roads were pock-marked with craters, windows were broken, cars here crumbled, and debris littered everywhere else. Despite no evidence of anyone being close, every crunch from rubble shifting underfoot made me cringe as I picked my way over to a ruined mall. Refraining from using my light made it more difficult, but also made distinguishing what was a corpse and what was a pile of concrete near impossible if you didn’t want to know.

Inside the mall, things were a little better. There were only bodies of Demons- still terrifying even cold and dead. MGs were very sure they got every last one before declaring a Breach cleared, so only my irrational paranoia instilled a worry one would jump me.

As I made my way up to the second floor, a quiet humming caught my attention. The constant, low noise stood out as electric or mechanical over the otherwise dead infrastructure. It was a little difficult to track down the source, but eventually I narrowed it down to a particularly messed up shop. The level of devastation that it and those close to it were subjected to made identifying what they sold impossible.

As I followed the humming in, the body of a massive demon was framed by a missing wall that it had clearly crashed through. I was apprehensive to get close, but the humming was like a siren’s call. Turning my light on the lowest setting, I got a good look at it.

The demon looked like a western depiction of a dragon- long body with four legs and two wings. Sticking outside the mall, a set of innumerable thin tails ruffled in the breeze, scratching just as many lines into every surface they dragged along. Getting to the other side of the massive beast, I found what I was looking for: buried in a bloody mess that might have been a neck at some point was a slightly vibrating spike.

It was nearly two feet long and made of a dark material. The upper six-ish inches were rubberized and textured for grip, which is also where I carefully grabbed it. Curious, I poked the demon with the tip.

With no resistance, the tip of the spike parted the thick armored plates and plunged all the way to the handle. As I was stunned at the ease I was able to do that, the humming changed. It became inaudible, but I could feel it pulsing through the grip and in my chest to some degree. As I held it steady, fluid started leaking out of the small hole I had made. After another fifteen seconds, the section of flesh the spike was in started collapsing in on itself, revealing a disgusting pulp where muscle used to be.

It had been pretty obvious before now, but I was hit with the realization I was holding an MG’s weapon.

This was the perfect thing to take- literally being magical and probably unique. I had heard some stories of people like me getting caught with stuff like this due to built in trackers or too openly bragging. It incurred some serious fines if you got caught, the severity ultimately depended on the temperament of the MG who owned the tech.

Solving this issue was pretty simple: I’d bury it somewhere near my college where I could find it and come back after a few weeks. If it was gone, oh well. If not, it would be pretty safe to assume I was out of the woods.

Now I just had to leave before something went wrong.