I watch GMD stick another half-metre long rod into the frozen snowcap, the little beeping machine duct-taped to the tip flashes green.

"What's this for?" I ask. I'm not really all that curious, but it's 6:30 am we are not on top of the Panopticon, and I'd rather be anywhere but in the Bleak Lands right now.

"You don't know?" He pats the snow off his gloves, "It's a Geiger counter connected to a proximity detector. Any time it spikes above 100 roentgen, the radar goes ping! and I'll know where it's coming from."

The path we came from is littered with his little black toothpick-shaped gadgets.

"What could cause a spike in radiation?"

GMD crouches down to my height and sticks his stupid mask right in my face. "Green blighters. They've been wandering away from Niemandsland lately, gettin' too close to Sanctorium."

> Generating internal query...

> Blighters: hostile humanoid entity. Although individual levels may differ, all blighters are known to exhibit some level of radioactivity. The highest recorded radiation released by a blighter approximates 10,000 roentgens per hour...

> Data incomplete. Unable to assess risk level.

I really, really hope we won't run into one this far out.

Other than the threat of imminent alpha decay, the Bleak Lands fall surprisingly calm and quiet to my senses. None of Sanctorium's high-pitched alarms, whirring machinery, chattering drones, and endless anti-cognition interferences that threaten to jam my noggin. It's nothing but the sky, the snow, and the wind here.

Oh, and GMD.

Maybe he wanted an excuse off that lonely high tower too, poor guy. Out of sympathy, I don't ask him why he couldn't have entrusted finding the blighters to me. I mean, one glance with my UV vision and I can pinpoint even a shard of uranium from kilometres away.

But GMD seems dead-set on putting up his little perimeter. I scuttle over to him as he finishes planting the last few sticks.

"Aren't you worried these may become damaged or sabotaged?"

"Nah, they're rigged to IEDs. If someone tries to uproot these - boom. Second, Spooks said she'll just make me some new ones if these get broken."

"The Nexus approved of her spendings?"

A deep sigh, then a hesitant head shake, "I have no idea where that woman gets her money. Nobody really does."

He goes back to fiddling with the device, I go back to scanning the wastelands (don't want any Insurrectionist snipers taking potshots at us now), and I'm almost tempted to drop "GMD" in favour of "Renfield" for once because he's being uncharacteristically tolerable.

"And since you're not much help here, why can't you just stay in the tower?"

Ah, there it is.

I cross all six of my arms, "I'm here to keep you safe from ambushes. I've been scanning the environment as we speak, so you don't get shot in the head."

GMD is, to my joy, taken aback by the sass. A moment later he clears his throat and goes back to work, but it's plenty obvious he's just pretending to be busy so he doesn't have to deal with me or his second-hand embarrassment. Heh, it feels pretty great to be a little mean sometimes.

Inevitably, all silence between me and GMD simmers into another meandering conversation, and this one is no different.

"What?" GMD notices me staring at him, "Want me to tell you another scary story again? Those kinds of things will get me fined by the Nexus, y'know."

"Why?"

"Because it's disturbing material? The Nexus works hard to separate life from death inside Sanctorium. Most people don't ever witness a single death in their entire lives."

"But death is inevitable."

"Look who you're talking to." he chuckles bitterly, "Death is just an excuse to sell you more stuff. Doesn't hurt to put a veil up for the people, though. I like to think that I've seen enough death for at least a sector's worth of people. I deal with that so they don't have to."

That is almost...noble? Touching? Two words that I've come to absolutely never associate with GMD, and have no business being used in the same sentence to describe him. Did TRISS bring him back wrong somehow?

"Tell me about the blighters then, and how they came to be."

He just turns to glare at me with the black void behind his mask, somehow that pitch darkness manages to ooze disdain for me all the same. I mean, my facial recognition programs aren't capturing anything substantial for me to analyse, but I can hazard a guess the face he's making under there isn't too pretty.

"You really just came out of the factory yesterday, huh?"

> Retrieving date of assembly...

NO! He didn't ask for that!

Something crunches under GMD's boots. We both stop as he pries away the snow covering whatever is beneath.

Small, white stones (?) delicately arranged in a frozen puzzle. I don't know what I'm looking at, even though my brain is telling me it's likely organic; it's likely to contain calcium; it's likely once a living thing. Gradually, the picture begins to emerge out of my gestalt-core, tracing its contour along sun-bleached coils.

Bones.

GMD picks up the skull and looks it over under the pale sunlight, he thumbs away the synthetic snow from its long, hook-like teeth.

"Zmeya. I remember some Bleak Land radio chatter called it that. Or zmiya, depending on who you ask. Weird that this one isn't in a burrow. Wonder what it's doing so far out?"

"They lived in burrows?"

"They despise the cold. When I was on patrol duty, I used to find loads of 'em curled up behind the Mauer Wall's heating pipes, dead. Some of them had been there so long they were dried into jerky."

Poor things.

I'm able to dissect its structure in x-ray, UV light and the full colour spectrum. I want to drink all the details in - the little scuffs along its cranium, the way its fangs curl inwards, the split mandible still latching onto remnants of its last meal. A part of me archives the information along with all possible taxonomic connections, filing away each vertebrae for future references. Another part of me wonders what it was like while it lived, if it saw warmth misted in red as I do, if it had an appetite for velvet cake.

GMD stuffs the skull into his Thermatek® coat pocket.

"I can sell this to the other riflemen, you know." He sounds quite pleased with his find, "How's this for 'disturbing material'? Huh? I know a guy who'd wanna get his hands on this for at least 500 marks-"

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

He pauses to look over the rest of the bones.

> Warning: heart rate irregularity detected

"What's wrong?" I scan the snowy wilderness all around us, not a single blip in sight. GMD has nonetheless tensed up.

"Look," He picks up the elongated ribcage and dangles it in front of me, "Its lower half was bitten off."

The vertebrae abruptly snap off at what would be the thoracic 10 section. I switch on my UV sensor and a closer glance gets my metaphorical organs twisting - specks of green luminescence dots the cross-section, traces of leftover uranium from something's teeth.

"The blighters did it." I confirm for GMD.

We are damned. We are both too far out into their territory now, or they've come too close to Sanctorium.

> Warning: multiple biosignal clusters are rapidly approaching

One after another, small beeping sounds fill the air around us. Then a green light blinks innocuously from afar, another sparks next to it until a ring of green dances around us in ominous unison.

How could I not have seen them?

Where did they come from?!

The snow beneath us breaks open, from within ice shrapnel and the black earth I catch a glimpse of it. Something leaves a scorched trail on my vision and I can feel alpha particles mercilessly barraging steel. Whatever is burning in its core flares up brighter than a diesel engine, because it's overclocking all my sensors to the point of glitching out.

"These things DIG now?!" I can hear GMD going hysterical behind me.

It's like someone took a human, put them in a cement mixer with a thousand pieces of uranium shrapnel, then vacuum-sealed them for a decade or so. Veins like black trees writhe along its naked body, radioactivity makes for one hell of an arterial clog.

Snap out of it!

"I count sixteen. Ten at your twelve, three to your nine, three to your six." I report.

"Fuck." GMD hisses, "It's a five-round mag. How fast are they moving?"

"35 klicks an hour."

He eyes the distance between us and the burrows, then his hand flies to the rifle. Stops. Mutters something. He goes for the hunting knife strapped to his uniform instead.

"Make a run for it once I drop the first three. Head straight for the Mauer Wall and don't look back."

"I can't leave you here."

"Don't be stubborn." Renfield snaps, "I can come back. You can't."

"My protocol inhibits me from abandoning you." I can feel my neuroprocessor burning to compensate for the fear subroutines, "I am programmed to self-destruct in case of-"

"WHO THE FUCK PROGRAMMED YOU?!"

I...I truly don't know. "I'm sorry,"

"Fine, we'll run together. Just don't slow me down."

> Executing: sŭ̶͙br̷̥̐ou̸̻̎t̵î̷̥n̵ḛ̴̅_̷̲́f̶é̸͓ar.̵e̷͎̐xe̵

Bang. I see one blighter tumble over in the snow. Renfield tugs on the firing bolt so hard I thought he'd pull his precious rifle in two. Bang. Another one falls down in a cloud of ice.

This might not be the right time to contemplate this, but maybe Renfield doesn't need a spotter after all.

"Get ready to run."

Another casing hits the snow and immediately vaporizes some of it.

"NOW!"

We don't make it that far.

Renfield empties out the last of his rifle ammo. Then he switches to his backup pistol and takes out ten more. The gun jams on the last five bullets with a soft click.

One of them lunges us, it catches Renfield by his coat and pulls him down into the snow. There's a surprised yelp from my partner, his gun goes flying-

I hear my heart thudding in my chest

-he wrestles away and sinks the hunting knife into its neck. Serrated steel comes out the other end with a cloud of radioactive dust.

"Run!" He screams hoarsely, plunging the knife into another blighter's chest.

> Breaking regulatory subroutine SLC6A4_5-HTTLPR?

I have to!

> Justification for use of violence?

Conflict with first law.

> Breaking this regulatory psych-core subroutine will lead to program destabilization. Continue?

Just let me pick up the damn gun!

> V̵̧̿ë̷̼́r̴̮̐ỳ̴̗ ̶̺̾ẘ̶̯é̴̬l̸͉̊l̵̯̓

Renfield spins around in shock when the blighter behind him drops dead. He then sees me holding his discarded pistol, smoke still trailing from the barrel.

"Madaraki, you-"

He drops to one knee before he can finish the sentence. Something's wrong something's wrong with him something'swrongsomething'swrong-

> Ŵ̷̜ā̴͜r̸̯͆n̸͉̈ĩ̷̲n̴͖̽g̴̓ͅ:̷̨͒ abnormal body temperature. Elevated blood pressure. Elevated heart rate. Please seek med drone assistance immediately.

What's wrong with him?!

Ice breaks right behind him, the blighter that emerges towers over both of us. My gun goes off then there's a brilliant spray of blood, it lights up across my thermal vision in rainbow colours. I can hear Renfield cursing again.

Please be alive.

More tremors beneath us, more blighters burrowing towards source of the commotion. Renfield fishes out a detonator from his pocket and slams it into one of their heads.

BOOM

The IEDs attached to his little Geiger fence send snow and scattered body parts flying high, including the one he was standing on. I wait for the glitching warning signs to subside, then I stumble over to the small crater where Renfield is lying.

I wish Spooks gave me tear ducts. I wish I had eyes to cry with.

He's breathing rough, I can hear soft wheezing gasps coming through the scorched rubber mask. A fine cloud of shimmering uranium has settled on his entire body.

"I told you not to slow me down." He's slurring his words.

"I'm sorry."

He pushes a hand against my chest plate, there's a soft crack followed by crumbling pieces of steel as my brittle exterior peels away.

"You'll be fine." Renfield mutters, rapping his knuckles against the lead plating underneath, "Guess Spooks wasn't lyin' about the lead..."

"What about you? That was almost 100,000 roentgens. You-"

"Not gonna make it."

He shucks a glove off, underneath is a patchwork of burnt and blackened skin. Red cracks weave through flesh like reptilian scales. Like the zmeya, maybe. Please shut down my fear core, please shut down everything.

"Go," He uselessly swats at me with his charred hand, "Get to Spooks. Get fixed. I'll be waitin' for ya."

"I don't want to leave you here."

He tilts his head towards me, then immediately groans in pain. "Well then, do me a favour and shoot me."

> Warning: extreme psych-core instability detected. Reboot now?

NO!

Nonetheless, I have the gun trained on him with my finger on the trigger-

"I..."

"What?"

"I can't do it." I say. I hate how perfectly flat my voice is.

Renfield just sighs and throws away his other glove.

"Figures. Laws of robotics an' all that..." He trails off again, this time sounding more delirious than pained, "Can I at least get some water?"

Water...water. His canteen lies broken in pieces across the snow, like one last insult to add onto his suffering.

"I'm sorry."

But I don't think Renfield can hear me anymore. He's curled onto his side with one bloodied hand on my wrists, muttering nonsense into his gas mask filter.

Please. Please get me some water. I'm dying of thirst here. Roko, moja draga, I need water. Molim...

There's that name again: Roko. I don't understand what Renfield is saying, maybe I don't want to know what his dying murmurs are. I let him lean against me so he can lift his head a little. Broken strings of unknown words spill from his mask. I can do nothing but hold my head to his chest, hoping my overheating circuits can warm him up a little.

Žedan sam, dragi Bože, umirem od žeđi. Kamo si nestala, Roko? Tko god pije od te vode, opet će ožednjeti...

Eventually his words dissolve into the poisoned morning air. I know there'll be a new Renfield waiting for me. I don't want to be tardy, but I don't want to just leave.

> Warning: no v̵̩̔ȉ̸͍t̸ạ̶̾ḷ̴̾ ̴̨͗s̴ï̴͕ġ̵̻n̸͔̈́s̴͇̔ detected. Please n̵̠̅ȃ̵̘v̶̫́igate to the closest vivariu̸͈̚m̷̩͗ available.

My mind falls to pieces.