Was- was this it? I checked my Mapp™ again and again, lining up the landmarks on the satellite imagery and comparing them to the location Athena Alexandria gave me. There’s no way, right?

Although I didn’t know much about the Nomad group, the Leper-Khans were supposed to be a prominent nomadic group known for their scavenging skills. They moved in massive camps, well protected from any of the more vulture-like nomads looking for easy pickings.

I looked around the camp I found from my perch atop the closest mountain, wondering how exactly it came to this. The camp sat in the middle of several dunes, small lookouts erected on each one. Or at least, small lookouts had been built upon each one. They were all knocked over, the towers in pieces.

I pulled my binocs out of my bag, sorely missing the dual-zoom augment of the Advent Phantom as I looked about. The camp itself was tossed like a salad, with bits of tents and temporary abodes scattered around the entire area. Personal belongings hid under the pieces of the camp, left behind as if the entire place had been evacuated instantly.

Vehicles were scattered around as if the Nomads had just left them behind. Bits and pieces of equipment, metal, and tools were just left behind in the sand, glinting in what little of the light made it through the faint smog.

The entire scene was… odd. The camp looked as though they had been attacked, yet I couldn’t see any bodies amongst the rubble. Sure, I was far off, so they might be hidden below the rubble, but surely I would’ve seen at least one crumpled form.

For a moment I even questioned if this was the Leper-Khan camp in the first place and not an ancient battle site. It was just too clean to have been a recent development- like in three days. That question was answered as I spotted the plethora of markings across the tents. A short, disfigured man wearing what looked like red fur armor was painted onto most of them. I guess Leper-Khan was quite literal in this case.

Where would they have gone if there weren’t any bodies? It looked like all of the vehicles were still here, so the Leper-Khans couldn’t have just left, right? Were they… abducted? But surely they would’ve fought back, and there would be more signs of a fight.

Too bad I don’t have a drone to get a closer look. Maybe I should look at building one? Hmm… I don’t think I can quite get around to that yet. Maybe I could make a cheap sling or something to launch my Scouters further then? That would be a good alternative…

Unfortunately, those were all ideas for the future. Seeing as none of those were viable at the moment, I stowed away my binoculars and kicked my bike into gear. I slowly made my way down the side of the mountain and to the camp proper, keeping an eye on the camp for any sign of movement or detail I missed.

As I approached, I felt an ethereal tingle of Insight. Flicking on Aetherial Perception with a thought, I was surprised to find the entire Leper-Khan camp filled with an ethereal aura. Unlike in the past, this one was dark as if someone had put a pitch-black blanket over the place- no, that wasn’t quite right. It didn’t look pitch black, but the deepest, darkest red.

It was unsettling to look at, and as I slowly drove into the camp, goosebumps broke out across my skin. There was a certain… maliciousness in the air. It felt as if the very air was hostile to my presence, and the brief desire to delta crossed my mind. I mercilessly crushed it; I needed to complete this gig and get paid, otherwise all that driving would’ve been for nothing.

I wasn’t the only one to feel the unsettling air either. There weren’t any animals anywhere—no scavengers, vultures, or signs of small rodents in a large area surrounding the camp. I felt a chill down my spine at the realization entirely unrelated to Insight.

Speaking of Insight, as I approached I felt an insidious cool. It wasn’t quite a danger warning, but definitely an unsettling vibe as if something could go wrong at any moment. Once more, the thought to just delta crossed my mind.

I slowly made my way through the camp, finding the occasional blood stain, but still no bodies. There were even valuables still left behind in the camp, of which I was tempted to just… yoink. Pissing off a Nomad group by taking their stuff while nobody was home wasn’t exactly the best idea. Now, if I just so happened to conclude that the entire camp had been wiped out… Well, free loot is free loot.

I parked my bike in the middle of the camp and looked around. For once, I actually had the opportunity to use the core feature of the Advent Ghost, the Genetic Optical Node Enhancer. I hesitated as I booted up the program with a thought, my Neural System Interface feeding it into the cyber-eye. An overlay popped up, showing the program.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Did I really want to just use it raw? What if it overloaded my Neural System Interface… Hmm… No, not worth the risk. I messed around in my saddlebags till I found my deck and pulled it out.

After booting it up, I plugged in my wrist jack and started to go through the deck before I found the right connection port to my eye. From there, the program transferred from my eye down onto the deck.

I looked around at the program for a while, messing with it as I tried to figure out how to get everything to work. I really should’ve tested this function back at the apartment instead of out in the field in a recently savaged camp…

After a bit, I managed to find the right way to run it and directed my eye to a small pool of blood under a tent. With a mental command, a loading circle popped up in my vision and a little pinpoint appeared on the blood stain. I held my eye perfectly still for several minutes as the thing analyzed the genetic makeup of the fluid, after which the circle disappeared.

I checked back onto my deck to see the ‘Template Catalog’ function now held ‘Sample A’. From here, it looked as though I could directly transfer ‘Sample A’ into the ‘Scanning’ function of the program and start the GONE program in full.

Overall it took several minutes, of which most of the time was just trying to hold still and not mess up the initial recording process of the eye. I looked around the wanton destruction, several different flicks of blood and DNA everywhere… This was going to take a while.

I moved around the camp, scanning every chance I could get. As I grew more comfortable with the process, the time it took slowly started to whittle down till I could get one scanned and uploaded to the Catalog in just a minute.

By then though, I grew tired of the process. I had been actively swapping out the sole ‘Scanning’ template as I walked around, and none of the polls matched the other hundred percent. There were some matches, but most of them were in the way of familial recognition of like DNA rather than the same person.

It was insanely weird. With the amount of blood everywhere, the injured people should’ve left a trail I could follow at the least. And yet, it was almost as if the victims vanished into thin air, leaving neither trail nor body.

And it wasn’t as if a group had driven into the camp and snatched the bodies either! That theory was shot down when I noticed no new vehicular tracks across the entire area inside of the camp. Unless said hypothetical group walked into the camp and picked up every single corpse manually, which was a shit ton of effort, it was highly unlikely.

I walked up to yet another collapsed tent, dry blood splattered across its surface in another bizarre scene. The chill of Insight I had been feeling the entire time focused for a brief moment, giving me a bit more direction.

Their corpse hadn’t left a mark. I looked around, seeing the same thing in the other areas. Whenever the victims had been killed or whatever, they hadn’t hit the ground. There wasn’t piled-up sand nor bunched-up debris from the impact, just nothing. Sure, the shifting nature of the desert could’ve helped cover it up, but for every single spot to be the same? Highly unlikely.

Just what the hell was going on?

I left the tents and moved over to the vehicles scattered about the place. They were by far the most bizarre thing about the entire situation. Sure, the camp being totaled was odd, but vehicles were literally the MO of Nomads. Without their souped-up cars, trucks, and bikes, were they even really Nomads?

So, by a continuation of that thought process, what kind of Nomad would ditch their vehicles?

I moved over to one. It was a large HV with its blocky style and high mobility; a Sentinel Prowler, I think. I faintly remember driving one back during the learning process for Land Vehicles. The Nomads had kitted out the vehicle with some high-grade ballistic armor and an HMG turret on the roof of the vehicle.

I checked it over, finding the door surprisingly unlocked. After a bit of shopping around the vehicle and popping open the hood, I found out why. The entire electrical system for the off-road car was fried, leaving the maglocks and the rest of the vehicle dead. The Nomads wouldn’t have been able to drive off even if they wanted to. It would take a full rewiring of the thing to get it running again. I might be able to do it with my current Tech knowledge, but it would take quite a bit of time.

I also checked the turret, finding it to be a .50 cal belt-fed machine gun of some kind. It looked faintly Sentinel, but someone had drawn all over it with spray paint, covering up most of the normal markings. It matched the rest of the camp in its weirdness; it sat fully loaded, not a single shot fired. Whoever, or whatever considering the malicious aura, attacked the Leper-Khans hadn’t even been fought off.

I went around checking the rest of the vehicles and electrical devices, including some highly specialized radio equipment, to find them in the same state as the Prowler. It's as if everything electrical had been killed in an instant. And I say in an instant thanks to some of the clocks around the camp all being frozen at the same time. Whatever happened happened fast, probably before the Nomads could even think of putting up a fight.

Just what occurred here? Nothing made any sense. I walked around the area looking for more clues, but they all proved as inconclusive as what I already found. Eventually, I set my sights outward, finding several prints outside as if the Nomads had run away from their camp. Most had tracks going from and to the camp though, as if they had come back.

I walked around the perimeter of the camp, eventually stumbling across a mass exodus of footprints leading back up toward the mountains.