| Health: 100% |

| Body Equilibrium: 18% |

| DPS: 15 |

| Defense: 31 |

| Agility: 23 |

| Perception: 27 |

| Intellect: 19 |

| - - - - - - - |

| Arm Holster |

| Spinal Decompression |

The sun faded to brown behind the haze, dust, and ash of the SOLA outskirts. The winds blew in from the east, carrying all manner of particulate matter and trash with it. Geracht walked rigidly against the wind, making his way towards nothing in particular. An army of ghosts stalked behind him, but he no longer had the spirit or the power to run.

Days had passed since the events at the abandoned construction yard, and the storm within him still raged. He had torn his tracer free on the first day, his chestplate off the second day; and on this day, his faceplate, flesh and all. The whole time, he was plagued by the ghosts. Followed and tormented by them. Reminded of his failures.

He held his daughter’s bloodied teddy bear in one hand. Her ghost and that of his wife led the maelstrom behind him. He refused to turn around. He refused to look.

What little flesh remained was dry and cracking, his metal scraped against the silt and dirt that crusted inside of it. He fell to his knees, but still crawled forward, trying to escape the ghosts. Those shadows from the war, from the street, from his job, from his home. A thousand voices were calling his name.

What little muscle remained in his body was burning, the cybernetics became less reliable in their long exposure to the elements. He continued to crawl in his malfunction, sinking lower, deeper, closer to the ash and debris that littered the ground beneath him. He coughed and sputtered, his cybernetic lungs unable to keep up with the task of cleansing the air. Then he finally collapsed, face down in the dirt.

The ghosts closed in around his still form; speaking his name, demanding retribution.

“I… can’t,” Geracht spoke through the dust. “I can’t give you what you want. I have already given all of myself to metal. There’s nothing left to give, but my life.”

“Geracht...,” they called. “Geracht.”

They reached for him with cold incorporeal hands. Hounded by shadows, he clasped at his parts, tearing pieces from his body. “What can I give you…that I haven’t already given?”

A shot rang out in the distance and a bullet struck Geracht’s shoulder hard, momentarily knocking his shoulder deeper into the dirt. He pushed himself painfully to his feet. The ghosts swirled around, and he suddenly recognized a team of Del’s elite P-Sec officers cresting the horizon behind him. He roared in rage and charged at the enclosing group.

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He threw his sparking metal shoulder into the closest P-Sec, slamming him down into the dirt with a sickening crack. The man’s spine broke under the compression of the hit. He groaned and screamed that he couldn't move his legs. Then Geracht rose quickly to his feet and stomped on the man’s head to silence him.

The other P-Sec officers fired a hail of shells and bullets at Geracht, but he had already expanded his cybernetic forearms into shields just in time to cover the exposed mechanics of his chest. Then he formed one arm shield into a blade and drove it down crosswise through the neck and collarbone of another officer.

Using the momentum of the strike, he spun around and tripped another P-Sec, sending her hard to the ground, where he smashed his shield into the softer armor between her helmet and body armor. Her windpipe closed and split, bleeding into her throat.

Three shotguns tore through the air at once as Geracht turned his back to catch the fragments in the metal plating there. The three men fired again, standing closely together. Geracht turned with the blade extended to full length, severing through the first man’s head, the second man’s neck, and burying it into the third man’s unarmored stomach.

Suddenly, his left arm locked up from the dirt and grime, forcing him to hold the shield at an awkward angle. He fell to the ground as his balance was thrown off by the locked arm.

“Geracht!” one of the remaining officers called. “Stop! Nobody else has to get hurt.”

Geracht slowed down, looking to the last two officers as they closed in on him with plasma rifles and EMP grenades at the ready. “Then drop your weapons!”

“You know we can’t do that,” The man responded. “Just retract the shield and blade, and we’ll take you back to Del. No problems.”

“Del,” the ghosts whispered.

“Del,” he spoke in a hushed voice, overcoming his locking tech and rising to his knees. He remembered the years of service to Del Peck. The time away from home. The time he had been at work instead of protecting his family. “That’s right. I was working that day. If I had been home…”

In the decades since that day, he had replaced so much of himself in an effort to remove the pain. In his craving to become something other than Geracht, he had forgotten so much of himself, of everything.

“I didn’t hear that, Geracht. What are you saying?”

“Del,” he whispered to the ghosts. “Will that make you leave me?”

The ghosts of his daughter and wife stood before him, and started walking in the direction of the city.

“Wait! Not you! Don’t leave. Don’t leave me! Not again!” His mind was addled, confused. He feared the ghosts, but watching his daughter and wife walking away tugged at something deep within. “Only you. Only the both of you. Stay with me. I want the others to go.”

The two remaining officers looked at each other and then back at Geracht, misunderstanding the situation and only half-hearing what he’d been saying. “Okay, buddy. Don’t worry, we won’t leave you.”

“Blood,” the ghosts whispered.

“Blood,” Geracht repeated. Then he rushed at the closest P-Sec, shield still locked in place. A plasma blast narrowly grazed his ear as he cracked the man across the face with the shield and drove his blade up through the armpit of the armor and into the man’s heart.

He blocked three more plasma shots with the man’s body before tossing it to the side and slamming into the final P-Sec. He pressed the blade into the chest of the body armor with his full strength. The armor began to bend and split beneath the weight and power of Geracht, until it finally gave way. The final P-Sec gurgled with wide eyes as blood poured from his mouth.

Geracht stood again with no small effort and pulled the blade from the dying elite. He looked off to his wife and daughter walking back towards SOLA city, and began to follow them. The rest of the spirits resumed their pace behind him.