The sun beat down on me as I looked down at the smoothly cut walls of the Cut. It had been easier to reach the other side this time. The Forest of Teeth had accepted my bribe of fresh meat. The Metal Wastes had been a blessing of fresh clothes and equipment rather than a curse of whispered Russian voices in the night. The Cut itself, and the hideously mutated man-wyrms I’d encountered, no longer saw me as prey, even though they’d swallowed me and spat me out during our last encounter, saving me in a corpse-filled larder for their young to devour. Whatever senses remained to them had caused them to see me instead as one of their own, even going so far as to offer me food.

I knew the journey had changed me. That was the nature of traveling. Whether it had been delivering letters as a Postman, or bringing justice as a Marshall, I never came back the same. Normally, that change was mental. Sure I’d had a fresh bullet hole or stab wound once or twice, but this was different. The change this time was more fundamental, deeper.

I sat thinking for a few more moments. It would be easier to kill them now, I assumed, since I could get closer without causing them to stir. I’d granted the ferals I’d met in the hallucinogenic clouds around the R.A.S. bunker that mercy. This would be different. These creatures seemed to have been born as they were, rather than changed. On a more practical level, I felt that removing an obstacle between the two sides of the Cut would be nothing but trouble. Even if I’d removed the threat of Eden for good, I remembered the pile of corpses I’d woken up in. It had been full of the invisible coyote mutants, and other creatures that I imagined would do tremendous damage if their populations weren’t kept in check. Every one of them that made it past the wyrms could wind up a problem for Pott’s.

I turned around and started walking East again. They’d be there waiting for me if I changed my mind. I wasn’t going to do anything to them until I was certain.

The next few days of travel were melancholy and reflective. I rested little, finding that I didn’t need to. I experimented with absorbing and expelling the thick radiation in the air. Moving it through my body freely, letting it sit in different parts of myself, matching it to radiation around me, or even seeing just how much I was able to contain. Those particular tests always ceased when I began to glow and feel my hold on how much I was taking in start to slip. There didn’t seem much benefit to me to be lit up like a christmas tree while I walked through what was, as far as I knew, the deadliest part of the country. The First may have benefited from glowing, it set him apart from his followers, but I wasn’t certain he could turn it off or on the way I seemed to be able to. It was possible we were entirely different kinds of freaks. I think I’d prefer that to be the case.

It didn’t take long for me to reach the black sands that covered the Ozymandias Project bunker. I considered, for a moment, overwriting one of my extra data squares to save whatever information I could find, but decided against it. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that could be controlled. Besides, thinking of the note that the scientist who’d sabotaged the facility had left, I felt oddly compelled to do right by him.

After a few more days, supplies were low. At the pace I’d been traveling I estimated that I could make it, but it would be close, and I’d need to ration water for the rest of the trip. When I started to recognize landmarks that meant I was getting closer to where I’d started, I took my radio from my pack and started turning the dials. Searching the static for either the Remnant’s station or preferably, Deux’s. I listened to a few crackles, then a voice came in more clearly.

“...have continued to fortify the city of Medina, as the forces of the false orientals of the khanate increase their patrols at our border. It is unfortunate that our attempts to welcome them back to the bosom of America have been met with only hostility and malice as their ignoble horde continues to forbid us travel through their lands, and even burn their own settlements rather than lose them to the principles of democracy, and freedom.”

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That was Adam’s talking, the Remnant’s head of Patriotism. I slowed my walking, wanting to listen more carefully to whatever may have changed since I’d been gone.

“Why has the Horde not accepted our olive branch in the way of STAR and the Republic? While once we were many, now we are a fully integrated society, working together for the restoration of America. Certainly there had been some deviation since the war, but this Khanate thinks itself sovereign when they exist on soil that belongs forever to the United States, and will eventually be returned to her, one way…or another.”

This speech was very different from the ones I’d heard before. It was still propaganda, but it was less elevated and lofty, more like a heavily colored report of current events. It did give me valuable information though. I now knew that tensions between the Horde and the Remnants had grown. The Remnants have consolidated their gains within the Republic, and now they’d captured Medina, which had been a lawless border town between STAR and the Khanate. War was inevitable, that much was clear. I heard nothing to indicate Pott’s had yet taken a side, and perhaps they wouldn’t even when war began.

I found myself wondering exactly how I would handle completing my job for the Remnants. I pulled up the R.A.S.

Advanced R.A.S.patching in progress [97/100]

The patch was almost complete. I had no idea what it would bring, I only really knew that it was unfinished, and from what I could tell from the logs, the only thing they would unlock would be a President. I wasn’t fully certain of what the implications of that would be, but I knew that the role would allow someone to have the power to actually change the system. I would’ve ignored it completely, but now that I had it, it would spread from me to anyone I interacted with. No one in Eden had commented on it, which either meant that it wasn’t going to start spreading until the patching was complete, or Eden’s aversion to the system meant that they weren’t checking their R.A.S. Either way was to my benefit, though I also hadn’t noticed anyone doubling over in pain at what the process had begun as I had, though that was possibly because I was the first to receive it directly from the lab.

I hoped that with the information I had, the people in Pott’s may be able to help me figure things out. There was no way I was heading straight back into Remnant territory before that, no matter how valuable the rewards they’d offered or how much I needed a resupply. The data I’d gathered needed to make its way to Julian and the Honored Dead before anyone else could see it. When I arrived I’d speak with them first, after that…

I needed to check in with Nico. I’d deputized her before I’d left and heaped an enormous amount of responsibility onto her shoulders, but I was hesitant about it. I’d learned in the R.A.S. bunker that she was my sister. The one my Mother had taken with her when she’d fled from my father, leaving me behind with him. Leaving me as the only remaining victim of his rage.

I shook that thought away, realizing my pace had slowed to a crawl, and forced myself to focus on my surroundings. Adams was still giving speeches, but they were basically just repeating the same information over and over again with only slight variance in what metaphor or imagery he was drawing from each time. His speaking rhythm had changed as well, and after listening to him a bit longer I realized that it reminded me of the Prophet, the leader of the Republic. I’d only ever heard him speak when I was sneaking through his compound, but the similarity was uncanny. I wondered if it was a skill that nanites drilled into their minds that led to the similarity, or something else.

I twisted the knob on the radio just in time to hear the screech of a guitar as a song ended, and Deux’s voice coming back on.

“Welcome back to Radiation Revolution Radio, the Triple R. Today's weather is heavily irradiated with a chance of acid rain, and hellfire raining down on us. Thank you all for listening, and proving you have the good taste to prefer hearing music over some asshole encouraging poor wasters to die for shit that doesn’t matter. Up next we’ll be listening to The Skirmish, with their top 100 hit, at least according to a pre-war mag I found, ‘Should I remain or should I leave’.

The music started back up and I was surprised to find a smile tugging on the corner of my mouth, my sharp teeth peeking through. At least Deux seemed about the same as always.