The plaque ‘Lowborne Cemetery’ held a tragic irony. It loomed, repeated every few meters in blue embossed metal, among adverts and a handful of maps of this line, over empty tents and forgotten supplies. There were no corpses. Only dry blood. It’d been too long. If there’d ever been bits of flesh and bone stock on the odd makeshift weapons that littered the floor, they had long since been devoured by insects.
Farrah climbed over only the platform, with a grunt of effort. She could see a metal staircase a few meters down leading up to the platform. Textured like clean black metal, it stood perpendicular to the tracks. It wasn’t anyone.
When Farrah glanced at it from the platform, it had vanished. Instead, a torn black tent had joined the row of those already on the platform. Farrah shone her flashlight at it. One of the metal joints of the tent blinked at her with a greyish-blue eye before shutting its plastic-textured eyelids. The mimics were bottom feeders. It wasn’t going to pursue. Well, it might have if Farrah didn’t head upstairs, out of the station.
A helpful sign told her that only 38 steps separated her from the surface, and that if she had mobility issues, she was highly encouraged to take the lifts. A thumping sound came from the corridor leading to the elevators. It was followed by another, and several groans. Her scan told her there were five crawlers trying to break free. She hoped that was because they’d smelled zombie guts on the Collector who passed here before her, the one who knew about the Obelisk, and not because they’d smelled her. Because if that was the case, more likely than not she’d have to deal with them, and the mimic, on her way back down.
She readied her Steyr AUG and continued up the stairs. She wouldn’t go too far. Just under twenty walkers had gathered further down the street.
As she slid under the roll-up steel door, the padlock on which had been broken off, she couldn’t help but wonder if the Collector she was perusing was using some sort of camouflage skill, because a blue dot had yet to appear on her scans.
Domain Entered: Derelict
Pinned notes available. Display notes?
Yes
No
Farrah shooed the message away. What made her lean towards the possibility of a cloaking skill was the fact that the walkers, whose outline she could just about make out through the ambient fog some hundred meters ahead, were arranged in an almost perfect circular cluster on her map.
Scan
- Directional
- Targeted
Cost: Free.
And there were only 15 of them now. Rifle in hand, ready to assist, Farrah ran towards the hoard.
----------------------------------------
Dust rose in thin columns, forming a barely visible dome over an area of 15 by 15 meters. Cars, bins, and wooden pots with dead plants had been pushed aside to create an almost perfectly circular arena. At its centre, a woman was dodging the claws and teeth of a small swarm of walkers.
With the grace of someone who’d specialised in unarmed mele, punched one of the zombies in its chest, making it stumble backwards, and topple over the one behind it. This created an opening for her to high-kick a zombie on her left, smashing its head into the asphalt.
Utterly unbothered by the decaying brains that stained her black boots, she ducked under another pair of arms. Her elbow hit that zombie’s head, and she spun around with unnatural speed. She grabbed the head of the zombie she’d just hit, and one that ran at her, smashing them together.
The two now fully dead corpses slid to the ground, almost in dramatic slow motion, as the woman’s gaze remained steady.
She locked eyes with Farrah.
The morally correct thing would have been to move in and assist, as not even a second later their eye contact broke as the fight continued. Yet, Farrah had to fight every fibre in her body to not run away. She couldn’t explain it. She couldn’t put it into words. With one hand holding the cross that hung over her chest, and the other on the barrel grip of her weapon, she forced herself to take a few steps forward.
A kick there, an uppercut, another complex combination of dodges and using the zombie’s momentum and lack of coordination against them … There were fewer and fewer of them standing. Their brains, all smashed into goo, were piling in a large thin puddle. Then, Farrah finally came within range.
Identify
- Radius: 20 meters from point-source
- Item: none
- Status: all
- Skill: all
Cost: 1P for 4m radius form point source, 1P per 2 minutes of use.
Status:
nn_alive
nn_alive
nn_alive
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
nn_alive
nn_alive
nn_alive
nn_alive
nn_alive
Error: incompatible System version
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
dead
Mere seconds after this bip appeared, two of the cells on it went black. It was quickly followed by several screens with skill names. Farrah didn’t know their descriptions by heart, but “Iron Mountain Palm” sounded about right for the fancy karate chop that’d cut one of the zombie’s heads clean off its neck.
As another zombie fell down, kicked in the back of its head, an alarming bip appeared:
Undiscovered Skill
Undiscovered description
Domain independent
Expert
Cost: undiscovered
That was impossible. She’d met over a hundred of Collectors from the region. And they had met with Collectors from the whole island. For a skill to be at Expert level, it would have had to be trained since the start of all this. Meaning that someone would have shared information with someone, who would have passed it down in turn, about the quest or training needed for that skill.
Farrah tried to put her completely unfounded paranoia aside, as she put both hands where they belonged on the grips of her rifle when a second, identical screen appeared. Followed by a third. Followed by a zombie flying into a nearby car at the edge of the arena. The sound its bones made when they shattered was louder than its hungry groans.
For the first time in many months, Farrah didn’t understand what was happening.
The System had rules. Her skills always worked. It was a binary of life and death, of humans and zombies. Except, it wasn’t really, nor had it ever been. Death had become an impossible to define grey area, and the line between humans and monsters blurred, when so many transformed without mutating.
Farrah couldn’t explain what was going on with the skills, or why this woman didn’t show up on her scans. Or how, if at all, she was linked to the Obelisk. But Farrah didn’t need to understand. Not now, not when the person before her was being attacked.
Two silent gunshots took down the remaining walkers.
The wind whispered for Farrah to leave, as it slithered between the building. The cars that’d been pushed away by the ‘Arena’ skill whined about blood soaking into their cracked tyres. Groans came from further down the street, from deformed skin-less beings that argued among themselves if they should or shouldn’t venture under the white sky to avenge their brothers.
The two women locked eyes in tense silence. Farrah tried to move her finger from the trigger, but too much of her attention was lost on the red eyes staring at her. They were the colour of blood; not as it pooled in the streets now, or that dark, almost maroon shade that travelled inside Farrah’s veins. It was a vivid shade that blood took only in nightmares. Something bright, not necessarily lively or alive, that you’d never try to hide behind bandages, because once it appeared you’d know it was fatal.
The woman’s skin was a beige that’d never seen the sun or an acne cream. Her hair was dyed grey and would have looked platinum with the correct hair products. If not for her unmistakably Collector outfit, she could have been mistaken for someone who’d just walked into this mess from the pre-End days. But black straps ran over her white shorts, tube-top, and semi-transparent bodysuit in a way that could be best defined as ‘sexy tactical’.
“Are you alright?” The woman called out, eventually breaking the silence.
“Yeah,” Farrah replied out of a reflex to be polite.
Several phrases and questions flashed through her mind. The uneasiness from earlier wasn’t fully gone, and neither was the memory of the ‘Error’ for the woman’s classification. But she couldn’t really ask her what she was, because that was beyond rude. So instead, Farrah spoke, with what she hoped wasn’t too much weariness in her voice:
“How about you take your arena down, so we can talk?”
“About what?” The woman called out in turn, not moving from her position. She didn’t sound hostile, but her tone had definitely shifted. Perhaps Farrah would have been able to better read her expression had she not been busy tracing with her eyes how the straps of her empty hip holster wrapped around her thighs.
“Quests, maps, you know, the usual,” Farrah replied. Usually, exchange of information between Collectors either happened right away or simply didn’t. There was never this awkward convincing stage.
With a sigh, Farrah swung her primary weapon back over her shoulder. She tugged on the strap, making sure it sat nicely next to her rucksack, before giving the mystery woman an expectant nod.
She gave Farrah a confused look.
“Come on, Collector to Collector,” Farrah continued, failing to force a smile. Then seeing that she would have to take the first step, she added, “I don’t know how much use my range build notes will be to you, but I have a few maps of Sambourough. Plus all the unique quests from the Aireshire. I have both Derelict and Lonley Mastered if you need that.”
“I don’t, umm,” She glanced to the side, in an almost guilty manner, “So the thing is,” She raised her gaze again, looking at her rifle, then the pistol on her waist, “I got hit on the head and lost all my memory. So I don’t remember what, umm, any of what you just said means.”
Farrah chortled.
“Sure, and I’m the queen of UDR,” She replied with a smirk. That’d been a weird joke from the woman, but then again, Matthew also had a unique sense of humour, and he and Farrah got along just fine. “I’m not going inside your arena, because I’ve never met you before, but I have some oat bars we can share. I know an easy-to-secure building a few blocks from here.”
“What’s UDR?”
She had reacted to the mention of food, which, alongside ‘ammo’ and ‘keep’ were words everyone reacted to, so Farrah decided to play along.
“The United Dukedoms Republic. Capital city: Samborough. Population 2. Unless you’re with a group?”
“Sambraw is such a weird name for a capital,” the woman gave it some thought, before dispelling the Arena with a hand gesture. Then, she simply stood there, one hand resting over the crossed straps at her belt, as if waiting for Farrah’s next move.
“I’ll lead the way,” Farrah told her after scanning the area. “Are you good on Power? There’s a heavy incoming from the East and a lot of walkers from the South-West.” Farrah’s hiking boots squeaked as she crossed the distance between her and the woman. “You’re lucky this area is much emptier than the one where you used your grenade launcher.” As Farrah passed by, the woman gave her a friendly smile, before following a meter or so behind. It suddenly hit Farrah that Collectors usually had one speciality, especially at Expert level, which she knew the woman’s martial skills were. “That was you with the grenade launcher, right?”
“Yeah…” the woman admitted. It was clear from her tone she knew she’d messed up. “There was a, umm, mutation I’d never seen before. All, wrong, you know? With long claws and those creepy bony arms…”
“Yeah, wall crawlers can be a bitch,” Farrah sympathised. “And the lab coat then?”
“Oh, I don’t remember.”
The reply came all too quickly. Farrah stopped in her tracks, triggering a hasty apology from the woman. She accepted it with a hum, before continuing walking. Whatever weird bit this woman was doing, she needed to stick with her to convince, bribe, or beg her for information on Obelisk.
“I don’t want to waste ammo and Power on the heavy. Do you have ‘Run’ Mastered?” She changed the subject.
“Expert,” the woman corrected with a prideful tone.
Farrah turned towards her and nodded. A silent go-ahead. Her feelings towards this stranger were a complex mixture of weariness, frustration, and a sense of innate comradery towards a Collector that just about overwrote the other two. She didn’t get the amnesia joke. She didn’t get why the woman was being secretive. But now, with zombie insides on their shoes – and hands in the case of the woman – was not the time to discuss any of it. Nor the place.