Cole looked as if he swallowed a lemon the instant he saw Adam's mug. "What do you want?" He said.

"Witches." Adam said,

"We don't got those monsters in Glenn's Rest, outsider."

"Not literally, obviously." Adam said. I already have one. "Intel on them. I don't wanna go out in the valley and run into one."

The way Cole's stare peeked out from beneath his long, straw-coloured fringe and examined Adam reminded him of an upstart in his old high school. The kid—the name he couldn't bother to remember—swaggered in one day with a brand-quality sports bag, nose turned up at all the plebeians in the classroom. He remembered being so shocked that someone would dare pull that idiocy in a Steeldale school, of all places. Cole even spoke with the same nasal tone.

"Wait, you don't know? Oh no. Oh no no no…"

Cole burst out laughing. He pointed a shaking hand at Adam as he tried to keep himself from doubling over. Christ, even the nasally tone was the same. The school hierarchy dealt with that upstart quick enough. Turned out skulls could fracture if smashed headfirst into a CRT monitor. There were no TVs in Glenn's Rest, but a nearby window had just as good as an effect.

"Is he threatening you again, Chosen?" Lucy whispered.

"No, he's being a fucking moron. Leave this to me." Adam said back. He noticed the hick watching Lucy, particularly her clothes and her hair. Probably never saw a girl this clean and good-looking in the village before. Adam patted Lucy on the shoulder, to which she returned with a smile, and Cole's own grin disappeared.

"Huh, that's new." Cole said.

"You keep calling me outsider. What the hell do you think that means?" Adam said, "Look, Jona said you had the lowdown, so will stop beating around the bush and tell me already?"

"Miss Jona said that. Shucks, well if it's her…" Cole said. He then paused, glanced around the watchtower and grabbed his rifle. At first, Adam thought the hick was about to open fire, but he wasn't looking in Adam's direction. He aimed his rifle towards the south-east, where grasslands gave way to a dense forest. He turned around with a wry smile. Adam felt a groan incoming.

"Actually, I've got a job for you." Cole said.

"What."

"You did alright with the bandits, so you can do this too." Cole pointed towards the forest. "There's a cabin in there. Friend of a friend of the blacksmith in the village lives there. He does carpentry and hunting, sometimes comes around to trade. We haven't heard from him for a while. Go and check up on him, then come back. It'll take a few hours from here to there and back."

"No." Adam said.

"Excuse me?"

"I said no. The hell is wrong with you?"

"What?" Cole said, taken aback, "But I thought…"

"You thought what?" Adam took a step forward. Cole retreated to the edge of the watchtower, holding up his rifle, yet he trembled as Adam's shadow loomed halfway over him. Adam was broader, taller and more muscular than Cole. Whatever field work Cole did for the village, it didn't compare to the arduous training from boot camp.

Go on, try it. Adam's posture—hands out in front, legs ready to spring—seemed to say, Yeah, you have a gun, but can you fire it in time?

"Though you were looking for work."

"If I get paid, sure." Adam said.

"You have all the guns and you brought Rick back." Cole muttered.

"Why are you bringing him up? What's that rat go to do with this?"

"Nothing!" Cole said, in a tone that suggested otherwise. "Aren't you types supposed to go from place to place doing odd jobs and stuff? That's the payment. Me telling you about Witches. Aren't you gonna be satisfied by that?"

"Does that intel fill my stomach or polish my gear? No, it doesn't. Learning about Witches aren't even my top priority." Adam said. He tipped his palm upside down, "Pay the chips or get stuffed, kid. I'm not your goddamn errand boy."

"Well, I never!" Cole said, puffing up his chest and snarling, "Guess you won't be learning about them, then. You outsiders are all the same."

Adam laughed, "Don't flatter yourself. You're not the only one in this village who knows about Witches, yeah? I'm only here because Jona recommended you. I could go down this ladder right now and ask one of the merchants or whatever. I don't need you."

Adam then smirked, "But, you need me. You were staring at my gear last night. I saw."

If looks could kill…Cole's glare wouldn't even pierce the first layer of his skin. Nothing in this village compared to the terror of a DI catching a rookie late at night.

"You want a favor done? Pay in return. That's how I run."

"We don't have that many chips after buying up all the guns!" Cole said.

"You're shit outta luck then." With that, Adam turned for the watchtower ladder. He climbed down a few rungs, the hick's body vanishing from his sight, before he heard him call back.

"Wait!"

Adam popped his head back up. "What?"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"You'll get ya pay. Jerk." Cole mumbled the last line.

"You wanna repeat that again?"

"Nothing! Thirty chips. Best I can do." Cole said, "So much for goodwill…"

"Life isn't your books, kid." Adam said. "Besides, you should've thought about that before you tried to headshot me."

----------------------------------------

Adam didn't leave immediately. He spent more time walking the village, acquiring enough experience to push him forward to Competency Level 2-3 via exploration alone. This rewarded him with two more Biometric Keys. Penny returned with two hundred more metal chips from the arm-sale and a sense of pride on her otherwise fraught nerves.

The walk to the cabin was uneventful, despite the high density of trees in the forest. They spotted the building in a forest clearing, which had been renovated with a well, a vegetable patch and a stump for cutting wood. The building was also wooden in construction, propped up on an incline with wooden posts and with a veranda surrounding the outsides. The owner had dug a dirt path to join with the main forest trail.

"Looks like something out of a movie…" A slasher movie, to be exact. One that he watched with his old gang during summer vacation. It involved a bunch of stupid college students having fun at a remote camp before spending the next two-thirds of the runtime fleeing from a crazed murderer with a sack on his head. It was a rip-off from start to finish and the only reason they watched it was because Jim couldn't get his hands on any of the Jason movies. The girlfriend of one of the gangers sobbed up a storm. Adam wondered if the vicious killings could've been prevented had those college students not been such smug pricks.

They approached from the bushes. The cabin was wooden in construction. Lucy peered through her scope.

"I don't think the signal beacon is here either."

"I wasn't thinking that, Lucy."

"They're very tall." Lucy continued, "I could balance on your shoulders and we wouldn't even reach half-way. The only option is there being a secret underground storage beneath the confines of the building."

"Thanks for the lesson, but could you tell me that over lunch or something?"

She looked at him. "I'm only saying, Chosen. Just in case, right?"

"Let's just knock on the damn doors already."

That notion died the instant he walked up to the front door. The cabin was locked tighter than a safe in a bank. Rusty chains covered the outside, assisted by heavy padlocks. The four windows were barred with thick wooden planks. Even the chimney was blocked.

"This is some kind of paranoid schizo shit." Adam said, shaking his head. More complications. Great. "That hick better pay us extra for this."

A tingle slicked down his plasma synapses as he approached the front door. He knocked once, twice. Nothing. He pressed his ear to the frame and listened.

"…we're doomed…"

"Damn boss! What's he thinking, tangling with a…of all things…"

"It's too much, even for us! We can't do this! We don't have…"

The occupants were paranoid nutters who sealed themselves inside after a job gone wrong, was Adam's first thought. His second was: wait, how can I hear these guys through all this security?

Lucy was next. "There's a soft groaning sound." She reported. "It sounds squishy. It's wraiths, Chosen. I can feel their horrible signatures from out here."

His instincts never lied. Something was wrong. As inane as Lucy could be, he never once doubted her senses. She was the human weapon, after all. That damn village had once again thrown him into an escalating scenario via their ignorance.

"Fuck it, let's break into this cabin."

Lucy circled around the side. Adam and Penny took the front.

The tingle occurred again. Adam drew his rifle. The occupants inside would hear if they broke the lock, so Adam and Lucy headed in hot. He sent a message via ADOSCH and received confirmation. She skewered the metal with a [Photokinesis] spear; he shot the lock right off. Together, they kicked the doors from opposite ends and shouted, "Hands up!"

They promptly received a group of wraiths for their trouble. Adam crushed the head of the first one with [Psychokinesis], then shot the second in his head. Lucy took out the remaining ones. It was all over in less than twenty seconds.

"See, Chosen?" Lucy said, kicking an arm away from her. "Wraiths."

"The hell?" Adam said, as he pinched his nose and inspected the corpses. "They were locked here the whole time?"

"Someone's sick experiment?" Penny offered, "Maybe it's a trap."

"I don't think so." Adam picked up a revolver off the ground, its barrel and front of the chamber covered in dried blood. It had lain amongst a pile of dirty clothes. A craftsman's shirt, a set of work jeans and a straw hat. A long, bloody smear ran across a piece of paper on a nearby table, reaching as far as the plates on the other edge. The words 'SPECIAL', 'HOT' and ‘SEND FAST' were legible.

"Boss, that's the Gasheads!" Penny pointed to the symbol of the sneering gas cloud at the bottom-right of the paper, "This is from them!"

"They got here before us. Shit!"

Why, though? What business did a gang of bandits have with a craftsman in the middle of the woods? He scanned the cabin. It only consisted of a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. The wraiths had knocked over many random objects—cups, cutlery, books and tools—onto the floor during their shambling gait. He flung open the cupboards and found tinned food and plates. There was a diary in the bedroom, but it was torn to scraps.

"Perhaps the occupant was afraid of retaliation." Lucy offered, as she placed the diary in the center of the room with the wraith corpses, "It would contain the names of his friends and family."

That didn't answer why he barricaded himself inside. The yard outside was untouched. What was this person defending himself from? Why did Adam hear his last words through the door, despite there being wraiths inside?

He picked up the gun again. It was jammed from the dried blood and the dead flesh. He put it down on the table a little too quickly. He'd killed a man yesterday, but it still gave him the creeps. It wasn't the first suicide scene he'd stumbled across. People offed themselves on the streets all the time. If you were unlucky, it'd happen in one of your hangouts, which meant the police got involved and blocked it off for a while. Why, the first time he saw a corpse it was…

He couldn't remember, actually. He felt like he should. He didn't forget the important things in life, like Mary, his first fight, the day he received the notice to head to boot camp and…

Pain bloomed in his forehead. He put the gun down.

"Penny!"

"Yes, boss?"

"What's the fastest route away from the village?"

"The north road or the river. Why do you ask?"

"We're leaving tomorrow. The village is attracting too much trouble. One of their guys got whacked this close and they didn't even know." Adam said, "We got everything we needed, anyway."

"Aren't you gonna do something?"

"What do you mean?" Adam said.

"Uh…" Penny pressed her fingers together, "Y'know. The Gasheads. They're gonna come here, and it's gonna be a war. Are you going to help the town out?"

"Why, because I killed bandits for them once? Penny, that was to tell them to shove off so they didn't try and screw us over." Adam said. He snorted, "I shouldn't have worried. They can't afford to screw us. They're too busy preparing."

"But isn't she…" Penny pointed to Lucy. Lucy pointed at herself, tilting her head. Penny flinched and retracted her finger, "She's super strong, right? Like, 'I can take on a dozen guys' strong. And you're pretty good too, boss! You've got that weird magic that can lift and throw things, like a wind spirit. You can do something!"

"We're not mercs. I ain't blundering into a warzone for a bunch of people I barely know." Adam said. He turned away and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, "That never works well."

"But…"

"Remember what happened when your boss did that, Penny?"

Penny fell silent. She looked at the pile of clothes on the floor, then at the dried blood.

"Thought so. Let's get out of here. I'm gonna give that hick a piece of my mind."

Experienced (Exploration) acknowledged: +10%

Experience (Combat) acknowledged: +5%

Experience (Investigation) acknowledged: +5%