Breachers – Path of Steel

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Day 38

Marcus landed on the opposite side of the tall wall, his raincoat billowing in the wind. He glanced down at his red sneakers, a nervous grin playing on his lips as he shifted them in the dirt, fully aware how ‘not stealthy’ they were. ‘I’m an idiot,’ he thought as he glanced at them for a moment before standing up straight. The large Sphere sprawled ahead, its light blue hue dominating the junkyard that had been his prison for years. The sound of movement caught his attention as he heard and felt the robot climb up the wall, its weight pulling on the attached rope around Marcus’s waist. Without warning he suddenly spotted his backpack landing dangerously close to him. “Really?” he muttered as he turned around while undoing the rope around his torso. Specter landed on the ground near him seconds later in a dull thud. Just like him, it was wearing a black hoodie, black pants, and a non-reflective sturdy black raincoat. From the back, it looked surprisingly human, and around his height. It had strapped two knives to its clothes in improvised sheaths for quick access, made from bits of tape and plastic, mirroring Marcus’s setup. Marcus watched as the robot carefully pulled down the thick, cut-resistant blanket they had previously thrown over the barbed wire. They had used this tactic to climb over the wall and prevent from getting stuck or risking Marcus cutting himself on the wire, without having to spend time cutting it apart and avoiding the clear signs that someone had trespassed. Specter quickly folded the blanket and secured it around its back, using the rope that had previously been used to hoist the robot over the wall. ‘The right arm is looking good,’ Marcus thought as he watched just how much faster Specter had gotten now that it had both hands to work with.

Marcus observed as the robot picked up the shield in its right hand and the hatchet in the left, a reversal of what he himself would’ve done. ‘It’s a stubborn piece of work. That’s for sure,’ he thought, recognizing Specter’s persistent efforts to establish itself as a distinct entity. Whether it was the deeper tone of voice that it used, or the pride-driven struggle to become left-handed like their father had been. As of late, Specter had also been attempting to hold on to its individuality in more ways than one. Marcus extended his hand, resting it on Specter’s shoulder, merging their thoughts and experiences as they went over their plan again. Even with Marcus’s mind whole again, he could feel Specter’s presence, a subtle whisper at the back of his consciousness. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just peculiar, like a distant murmur. With the task of going in the Sphere, Marcus shared fifty percent of his mental capacity and gave it to Specter, making it an equal situation for both of them. Marcus let go of his companion as he watched the robot stride purposefully forward. Without a hint of hesitation, the robot slowly stepped through the Sphere’s barrier. Marcus followed it with his eyes, seeing the robot move past the barrier and into the junkyard proper, its form now slightly blurred by the Sphere’s distorting effects and the darkness of night. Eventually it became very difficult for him to see the robot at all. ‘I hate going in when it’s dark like this,’ he thought once again, although he knew that it was the only way he could get away with these raids. ‘Perhaps I could install flashlights into Specter. Would that even work?’

Marcus shifted his attention to his own gear, making sure that he had properly strapped the two knives to his chest before glancing at the spear protruding from his backpack. He seized the pipes, linking them with the threaded ends before twirling the makeshift weapon to get used to its size and weight again. Afterwards he took one last look inside the backpack, inspecting the things he had brought with him, including a plastic bag containing eight pieces of Monster-Glass. Specter had brought back those pieces over the past two days, sneaking into the Sphere near the lake that the two of them had explored before. “Just 12 more pieces,” Marcus muttered as he slung on the backpack, doing his best to calm his nerves. He then moved forward, stepping cautiously through the Sphere’s edge, spotting Specter waving on the other side. Marcus felt himself slowly glide through the peculiar gel-like membrane that looked like floating crystalline shards, and emerged on the other side, suddenly able to breathe again. When he was in the junkyard, the mingled odors of decay, fresh grass, flowers, and clean air flooded his senses, forming a peculiar amalgamation of weirdness that he had never experienced when he had been just a robot.

“Welcome home,” Specter greeted, strolling over to Marcus, observing him acclimate to the surroundings. “How does it feel being here? Weird?”

Marcus nodded. “Yeah, it feels strange being here in the flesh after all these years. The smell is something else, I can tell you that,” he remarked, tightening his grip on his spear. “But we’ve got a job to do. Lead the way.” Taking charge, Specter carefully guided them through the garbage covered terrain, overgrown with moss and peculiar plants. After about twenty tense minutes, the robot came to a stop, crouching down, and Marcus followed suit. The young man lightly touched Specter’s frame, immediately embracing the robot’s perspective and seeing the threat: a small monster, injured with a missing hind leg and wounds on its side. ‘Likely a survivor from a fight with the Breachers that came in earlier that day,’ Marcus and Specter mused as one as they observed the creature a while longer. Formulating a plan in his mind, Marcus severed the mental connection, watching the robot advance slowly, staying low and trying to sneak up on the monster. The creature spotted the robot moments later, rushing toward the steel threat with hisses and hostility. It crashed into Specter’s shield, injuring itself further on the spikes that the robot had welded on it. The monster withdrew briefly before launching another assault, repeatedly striking the robot’s shield and narrowly evading Specter’s retaliatory hatchet swings each time.

‘The monster’s quite nimble, despite its injuries,’ Marcus thought as he carefully closed in on the creature from the rear, with Specter tracking its movements and keeping it distracted. The robot occasionally delivered a shield bash, stunning the creature momentarily, or kept it on guard by feinting an attack. When Marcus had gotten close enough, he lunged forward, driving his spear into the monster’s remaining hind leg, immobilizing it. A split second later, Specter’s hatchet bit deep into the creature’s face, putting an end to the threat. Afterwards, Specter slammed the axe down two more times, just to be sure. “Fast little bugger, wasn’t he?” Marcus asked as he pulled out his spear.

Specter gave a nod. “Yeah, they weren’t like that the last time. They were bulkier and had weird mutations,” the robot remarked, dropping his gear. It grabbed a knife and used it to cut out the Glass piece from the monster skull and removed bits of brain still clinging to it before stashing it in Marcus’s backpack. “And that’s nine,” Specter said before picking up its gear again before continuing onward. Specter led the way as Marcus followed a few paces behind it as they climbed over smaller hills, scouting the terrain that had changed so much in the last few weeks. As they continued onwards, they occasionally whispered to each other, discussing why the monsters had become smaller and more agile all of a sudden, or how the terrain might change in the next few weeks. Massive stacks of debris and dirt loomed in the distance, resembling giant anthills, with some movement around them. In the center stood a larger tower, shimmering with metal and decay as it reached up into the sky. “That’s where the Orb is located, huh?” Specter commented, and Marcus nodded, both grappling with the sheer magnitude of the tower before them. “Well, how about we do not go there unless we’ve got a death wish?”

Marcus just stared for a moment longer before Specter suddenly hissed, “Movement.” The robot pointed its hatchet toward the east, and they could see several smaller monsters rushing in a straight line before breaking off into smaller groups. “Do you think we can handle two of them at once?” the robot asked, and Marcus observed it tracking the two monsters closest to them.

“Perhaps we could catch them by surprise, or set up a trap?” Marcus suggested, a small grin forming on his face. “Alright, let’s do this.” They then descended the mound, making their way toward the monsters, set on ripping out their Glass.

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Marcus arched backward, the debris behind him preventing him from moving any further. The creature in front of him blasted him with spittle as it snapped and hissed at him, trying to reach him. Marcus just kept the shaft of his spear lodged in its beak. “God, you smell!” He struggled to keep the monster at bay, its paws clawing at his chest, but unable to breach the cut-resistant layer beneath his hoodie, yet adding bruise after bruise. “At least take a breath mint,” Marcus hissed, feeling his arms burn. Suddenly, two metal hands seized the monster’s beak from behind, forcefully widening it as Marcus could hear the motors and pistols apply more and more pressure onto the beak until Specter suddenly ripped the monster’s head apart, showering Marcus in blood. Amidst the gruesome scene, the robot dropped off the top of the monster’s head. Yet, Marcus had little time to process it and thank his companion as another monster rammed into the robot’s back, sending both crashing into the garbage pile next to him. Marcus shot forward, driving the spear’s tip into the newcomer that was clawing at Specter’s back. He felt the weapon sink into the monster’s feather-clad torso, pushing it in deeper with a determined wiggle to cut apart flesh and force the monster backwards. The creature howled, limbs flailing, as Marcus pushed it away from Specter, feeling his momentum slowly lessening. With sheer luck, Marcus made the monster trip and tumble backwards into a rusted fridge that lay partially buried in a pile of rubble. Keeping the monster pinned down, he heard Specter rush toward him, leaping with its shield to slam down on the creature, containing it inside the fridge. “Stop screaming, stop screaming, stop screaming,” Marcus hissed as he continued to pull out and thrust his spear through the gaps between Specter’s shield and the fridge. With each stab, more blood sprayed as the monster kept hissing and screaming. He just kept stabbing and twisted his weapon for what felt like minutes until the creature’s cries transformed into bloody gargles before it finally went silent. “What kind of shitstorm was that?” Marcus moaned, retracting the spear and collapsing onto his knees, utterly spent. He turned to look around him, seeing the aftermath of the battle they had just waged. There were corpses of monsters in various states—some he had impaled with his spear, while Specter had hacked apart others. “This was a fucking great idea,” he muttered sarcastically before wincing at the bruises now adorning his chest.

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Specter just stepped back with its shield before dropping it, afterwards dragging the lifeless monster out of the fridge a few paces. Then, without so much as a pause, the robot snapped the creature’s neck before extracting the Glass piece and dropping the bloody fragment in front of Marcus. “The plan backfired, that’s all. It was just bad luck.”

Marcus sighed, shutting his eyes for a brief moment as he thought about how quickly things had gone wrong. “Right... bad luck.” Earlier, both Specter and himself had ambushed the two monsters that they had been following. The ambush had been relatively successful but one had gotten away, returning minutes later with a dozen of its kin as reinforcements. Marcus and Specter had been running ever since, jumping over debris, killing, or wounding monsters that had gotten too close. When they could, the two of them had hidden behind piles of garbage, or inside burned-out vehicles before setting off in another direction when the coast was clear again. Marcus had lost count of the monsters they’d killed and the Glass pieces they’d missed during the chaos. Marcus watched as Specter ripped out Glass after Glass, collecting each one before throwing them near the one already close to Marcus. “How much time has passed?” he asked, too fatigued to glance at his own HUD as he slowly slid off his backpack before storing the Glass pieces one by one.

“I’ve got about 45 minutes left, give or take. So, you do the math,” the robot remarked, yanking its hatchet out from a nearby corpse and rejoining Marcus. “Do you want to circle back and see if we can find the other corpses that we left behind to get some more Glass?”

“No, this place is like a maze at this point,” Marcus said, slowly getting to his feet, feeling the ache in his limbs. “Besides, I’m done for today. I doubt we’ve killed the monsters in this area, so who knows how many more might be out there, waiting for us to stumble around, tired and running out of battery.” He scanned the surroundings, trying to find a bit of familiar terrain, but failing to do so. ‘This place has changed way to much these last few weeks,’ he thought as he felt once again humbled by the Orb’s power to transform the landscape so quickly and in such bizarre ways. “We need to find shelter for now.”

Specter nodded before offering a helping hand by shouldering Marcus’s backpack as they left the bloody aftermath, sidestepping the corpses that were all around them. Specter led the two of them, periodically scouting ahead and returning afterwards so that they could avoid other monsters, or at least try to during the dead of night. Despite the clear signs that other Breachers had been inside the Sphere earlier that day, Marcus remained puzzled by the sheer number of creatures that were still out there. ‘Are there just hundreds of them out there at any given time, or do they regain to their numbers really fast?’ he wondered while spotting Specter jog back to his side.

“Come on, I’ve got a surprise,” Specter said before darting back, avoiding physical contact with Marcus to conceal its thoughts and memories. The robot disappeared behind a row of cars while the young man followed suit, slowly rounding the corner until he spotted his steel companion standing next to another stack of vehicles, entwined with vines and moss. “Tadaa,” Specter said as it pointed upwards, almost to the point where Marcus could imagine a grin on the robot’s face.

Marcus spotted a familiar van stuck there, just a row up. “Our old home,” he muttered, walking toward it, observing how the vines and moss had almost completely covered it. “This should work. And in a weird way, it’s kinda fitting.” He patted Specter’s shoulder, then watched as the robot moved up the cars, hacking apart a few vines before wiggling open the backdoor. After helping Marcus climb in, Specter closed the door behind them while Marcus just looked around and occasionally touched something of the vehicle. “It’s smaller than I remember.”

“Never mind the size. How’s the smell?” Specter asked, its camera lens zeroing in on him.

“Honestly? It’s like a wet dog and old sweaty socks. Trust me, you’re not missing much,” Marcus answered while reaching for his backpack and unzipping it to pull out the small bag filled with Monster-Glass. “15 pieces in total. We gained seven Glass this run despite killing way more, spent hours fighting for our lives, and came close to getting ourselves killed a few times.”

“Yeah, today was a bad run. No other way to say it. Still, we made it out alive and we’ll learn from it,” Specter said, setting its shield and axe close enough for both of them to reach in case of an emergency. “How are you holding up?”

“Bruised, battered and exhausted,” Marcus answered, eyeing his metallic counterpart. “You?”

Specter slowly lifted up the sleeve of its right arm. “Well...” He paused, revealing bits of broken plastic protective plating. “I think we’re going to need to borrow that printer again.”

The news made Marcus shake his head. “I can already hear Felix grumbling at that, and I’m running out of excuses to throw at him why I need to borrow the printer again.” He then retrieved his small gas stove from the backpack, setting it on a flat steel surface, and ignited it as the robot just watched him work. Placing a can of soup on the stove, Marcus then dug into his backpack for a sandwich and a bottle of water. He occasionally wiggled the soup can in order to heat it evenly, making sure it didn’t get too hot to touch directly.

Specter took over after a while, wiggling the soup can with its steel hand, unfazed by the temperature. After a few minutes, the robot placed it next to Marcus before turning off the stove. “I’m going to try to preserve as much power as I can in case of an emergency. Are you going to be ok?”

“I’ll be fine,” Marcus said, dunking the edges of his sandwich in the hot soup before devouring chunks of it. He ate in silence while the robot observed for a few moments before turning away. Specter just settled down in an oddly humanlike manner, staring up at the car’s roof, its eye—or rather, camera—unable to close. Marcus finished his meal, washing it down with the last of his water in large gulps before storing his things in his backpack again, including the Glass pieces. ‘Specter did great out there. Despite the arm being a bit cobbled-together, it performed quite well. Still, the two of us nearly got our asses handed to us, despite having better gear and the extra arm. I think we know how to fight, but we’re clueless about how monsters behave, what to look out for, and how to plan accordingly. We need more experience.’ Moving closer to the back door, Marcus wiped his torn raincoat sleeve on the dirty window, revealing the outside view. ‘This would be so much easier if I could go in during the day. Less risk that way,’ he thought, contemplating his current situation. The idea of taking the ‘official’ route, obtaining a proper license, crossed his mind as a way to reduce the danger, and make it easier to go out during the day. However, he knew his brother and uncle would disapprove, and his sister might resort to extreme measures. ‘Joline would probably go as far as breaking my legs to keep me away from a Sphere.’

Marcus sighed, thoughts drifting to his family. ‘Despite the risks, I’ve earned three Stat points in a short time. I’ve never heard of a Breacher or someone with a Mark that was able to increase their power like I am doing.’ His gaze shifted skyward, seeing the night sky tinged light blue. ‘People would freak out if they learned about my ability. News agencies, the government… guilds… I don’t want that kind of attention on my family.’ Spotting movement outside, Marcus instinctively backed away from the window, a momentary chill running down his spine as he heard howls and hisses. He quickly crawled back to his companion before he treated himself to a few sphincter tightening minutes to collect himself before cautiously pulling out his sleeping bag. Determined to ignore the idea that there were monsters just outside, he crawled inside the sleeping bag, lying still, and listening to the world around him. The occasional movement, odd growl, and the clanging of metal forced him to mutter a blatant lie to himself, “Probably just dogs. Just very, very big dogs.” Clutching Specter’s hatchet, he burrowed deeper into his sleeping bag, hoping the unpleasant smell within the vehicle would cloak his own scent while he tried to sleep with one eye open.

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