Being covered in blood, guts, and bits of bone matter was not Atlas's idea of a vacation.

It had been a fucking tough year of battling through the wasteland, a place populated by portals that randomly sucked people in from Earth.

The relentless year of fighting trolls, bandits, and the undead had left him both physically and emotionally scarred, but the thought of returning to normalcy kept him going.

Cold beer, hot pizza, and not having to constantly watch his back were calling him.

Atlas finally saw the portal home.

Atlas stood among the group of survivors, their faces illuminated by the otherworldly glow of the portal. Each person bore the marks of their journey—scars, exhaustion, and the haunted look of those who had seen too much.

But now, amongst those looks of exhaustion, a new emotion was seen—hope.

Atlas’s heart pounded as he stared at the swirling vortex.

*This is it,* he thought, barely able to believe it. *After a year, I’m finally going home. The last year had been brutal, but now it was time.*

In front of the large group stood Clark, his scrawny shoulders barely filling out his ragged cloak. In his hands, he clutched a small pouch, his fingers twitching as if itching to reveal its contents. Clark, as the settlement leader, had been the designated token holder, responsible for distributing the precious tokens that would allow the survivors to pass through the portal and return home.

Clark emptied the pouch, letting 100 gleaming tokens spill into his hand.

"Alright, we've got everybody here," Clark announced nasally, his voice grating on Atlas’s nerves. "Let's go through the portal and go home."

The group cheered and eagerly grabbed tokens from him, heading toward the waiting portal. Atlas wasn’t the only person dying to get home.

Despite his unimposing appearance, Clark had become the de facto leader of this ragtag group. A feat that was hard to accomplish in the wasteland where the strong made the rules. Luckily, he had paired up with Atlas early on. The two of them had teamed up. Clark ran the settlement, while Atlas fought from the front.

*I can’t wait till I never have to see this guy again,* Atlas thought. *I don’t know what was worse about him—his callous disregard for other people, or the way he hid it all behind a veneer of social justice and equality.*

The two of them had fought together against the dangers of the wasteland. But they had also spent a year butting heads.

*I can’t believe I fell for his “good guy act,” like so many other people.*

Atlas watched as people started moving through the portal, thinking of all the things he would do when he got home.

*Wait a second,* he thought. Something didn’t add up. He scanned the crowd, noting the eager, weary faces of those around him as they also headed home.

"What’s Shaniqua doing here?" Atlas yelled out.

*Shaniqua wasn’t supposed to be here. Was she here to say goodbye to her girlfriend? I tallied up the contribution points personally, and she hadn’t made the cut.*

The slowly moving crowd paused, all eyes turning to Clark. Some people looked confused, others questioning, and a few indifferent. Regardless, they just kept moving through the portal in an orderly manner.

Clark turned to Atlas slowly, a smug smile curling on his lips. "Well, that's the thing, Atlas," Clark yelled, his voice dripping with mockery that made Atlas’s blood run cold. "I've made a new decision."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Clark had backstabbed other leaders to rise to power, and now, it seemed, he was ready to do it again.

Atlas’s heart stopped. "What’s going on here, Clark?"

People kept moving through the portal.

Everyone was eager to get home, and nobody wanted to stop and deal with last-minute drama, especially if Atlas and Clark were involved. They had seen enough of their internal conflict throughout the year of battles in the wasteland. The number of times they had seen Clark and Atlas argue over decisions was too many to count.

*Fuck the wasteland and fuck this drama, just gotta get myself home,* thought one of the people returning through.

As Atlas waited for Clark’s response, something felt off. A thought hit him like a truck—*was he being betrayed?*

Clark’s smile widened, a sinister edge to it that made Atlas’s skin crawl. The man oozed social justice and smarmy self-satisfaction. Clark turned slightly, gesturing lazily to a woman standing apart from the rest of the group.

She stood stiffly, avoiding Atlas’s gaze, her face a mask of conflicted guilt. But it was the look on her girlfriend’s face that hit Atlas like a punch to the gut—a smirk of smug satisfaction, her arms crossed in triumph as if she had won a prize.

"Keep moving, people. I’ll chat with Atlas," Clark said, his voice taking on a tone of condescending reasonableness, as if he were explaining something to a child. "Shaniqua here... she’s never had opportunities like you. If we leave her behind, she’ll die. You? You’ll be fine here. So, I felt it was better and more fair that she gets this chance."

Clark stepped up his pace, moving toward the exit home.

“You’re fucking betraying me for a piece of pussy you probably had a threesome with last minute?” Atlas yelled. Clark and Atlas had had a decision-making conference last night about the 100 people who would get the tokens to go home. Shaniqua’s girlfriend had made the cut, but Shaniqua hadn’t.

“Keep moving, people!” one of the other survivors said, as they all saw the impending crisis.

Atlas pulled his twin swords from their scabbards. He had killed thousands over the past year, and fuck him if he wasn’t going to exact revenge right now.

Atlas looked around at the quickly exiting survivors.

*Wait, they all knew this, and nobody told me? Betrayed? I never expected this would be my fate. I was a dumb fucker to trust Clark to handle the distribution of the return tokens.*

Sensing his thoughts, one of the people leaving through the portal yelled, "We didn’t know anything about this, Atlas! Deal with him yourself. We’re going home!"

"Fuck you," Atlas said, enraged.

"Clark, you sanctimonious prick, you’re dead!" he said, rushing toward him.

A few other survivors who were going through the portal were knocked to the ground as Atlas charged toward Clark.

Clark ran toward the portal, knowing how effective those swords were. No way was he going to be able to stop Atlas.

He couldn’t help but toss one last response as he ran. "Life isn’t fair, Atlas," he yelled back, his tone dripping with sanctimony. "It’s about equality. You should know that giving other people chances when they are disadvantaged is the right thing to do. Just be a better person. Saving Shaniqua was the right thing to do!" He was only a few feet away from entering the portal and could afford to throw another jibe.

*Bye, Atlas, I won’t be missing your ugly face when I’m back home with Shaniqua and her girlfriend, and you’re stuck here,* Clark thought in satisfaction.

He had purposely assigned Atlas to the rear guard to ostensibly watch for other groups attacking them.

*Fucking Clark. I don’t know what’s worse—the fact that he’s a selfish asshole or the fact that he keeps constantly covering it up in public with bullshit. Either way, he’s fucking dead for betraying me.*

Nobody could stop him. And nobody wanted to. They had seen how lethal Atlas was with his swords. None of them was his match in the wasteland.

As Atlas rushed toward Clark, he watched his so-called friends leaving. Nobody even made eye contact. Some of them muttered “Sorry”. They all sped into the portal home. If they had turned en masse and grabbed Clark, they could stop him. But nobody made that decision.

The portal's glow grew brighter as the people ran through.

The last of the other survivors continued scrambling through, some bleeding as they avoided the enraged Atlas.

The portal's light flickered and dimmed, its energy quickly draining.

*Betrayed.*

*Abandoned.*

The words echoed in his mind, growing louder, more insistent, until they drowned out everything else.

Atlas watched in horror as Clark ran through the portal.

While Atlas was deadly with his swords, even he couldn’t defeat the sheer facts of distance. No matter his desire, he had been just a little too far away to stop Clark.

“Fuck you, Clark. If I’m not getting home, you aren’t either!” he yelled.

Atlas hurled one of his swords.

The sword crackled as it tore through the shimmering portal, striking Clark and the token in his hand.

BOOM!

“No!” yelled Clark.

A burst of wild energy erupted from the portal as it exploded.

Atlas felt himself being shattered into little pieces and fragments, as the energies from the unintended portal destruction enveloped him.

*What the hell is going on?* he thought.

The atoms of his body seemed to dissolve bit by bit.

The pain was more than he had ever felt in all the battles he had fought. And he had felt a lot of pain before.

*Clark... you fucking bastard! I’m hoping the portal eruption fucked you up too.*

He had always been motivated by his desire to get home. That was what kept him going through all the battles. The pain, the near-death experiences, all of those fights were for one sole reason: getting home.

But now, a new motivation was taking root, one that was darker and more personal.

*If I get another chance, I’ll be stronger. I’ll be smarter. I’ll never let this happen again.*