The fog and rain that refused to fall has somehow slipped into Farrah’s rucksack and made the oat bars taste like damp paper dipped in cheap, expired, chocolate. Which, to be fair, was not that different from how they tasted dry. Farrah had never been a fan of the things, but with food being in an even more scarce supply than cigarettes, she didn’t get to be picky.
“By the way,” She said, suddenly remembering her manners after having scuffled down three energy bars. She quickly wiped her mouth of any potential damp chocolate residue and turned towards the woman. “I’m Farrah. The rest you could probably guess, but I mostly use guns, and I specialised in the polyvalent skills, which is to say I didn’t specialise at all.” She smiled.
The woman had that exact realisation about manners flash over her face, as she quickly finished her own energy bar, before replying:
“So sorry, introductions completely skipped my mind. And I didn’t even say thank you for the food…”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Farrah chuckled, having been there and done that, “So what’s your story then?”
“Oh, you know,” She turned away from Farrah, with a guilty expression on her face, that would have been hidden by locks of grey hair had they not been cut so short, “I don’t really remember much.”
Farrah sighed and also looked into the distance. She scanned the area in front of her, checking how many walkers had joined them since they’d arrived at the construction site. There were quite a few that were piling over each other, trying to get over the makeshift metal fence around the site.
This place – an unfinished 8-storey structure of bare concrete floors and a handful of walls on the lower levels – had unofficially been designated as a quest farming area. Access to half of the structure had been fully cut off by destroying stairways and parts of the floor. Removable wooden ladders allowed to traverse the building vertically, which was something the walkers were incapable of. A glorified bridge, made of a series of wooden planks nailed together, allowed access to the neighbouring roof, thus offering an easy secondary route of escape. An escape that would have been direly needed against the heavy bone zombies, who soaked up most of the standard calibre rounds, and could easily leap to the lower floors from the ground. And once within the structure, rebar and concrete would be no match for them.
“But, what’s your name?” Farrah asked, turning her gaze away from the greyish clouds.
In the few seconds it took for the woman to reply, Farrah had already come to terms with her giving the amnesia excuse again. Surprisingly enough, she instead replied:
“Vega.”
“Like the constellation?”
“Like the pistol make-” She cut herself off. “Yeah, or that I guess.” She didn’t seem too happy about either of the analogies, so Farrah didn’t correct herself for confusing a star with a constellation, nor did she mention that she’d never heard of that pistol make.
“And what brought you to Sambourough?” Farrah asked. She was going to be the bigger person and befriend Vega until she could get information on the Obelisk. The task would have been easier with some mutual trust, but it was what it was, and at least they seemed to be on the same page about that.
“I just said -” She didn’t sound too annoyed as she was about to repeat her amnesia story.
“No, I mean, short-term. Are there quests you’re doing here?”
“Not really,” She looked away once more.
“Not even to remove your amnesia? To find your memories?” Farrah pushed on.
“Huh?” Vega looked at Farrah in confusion.
“I could help,” Farrah shrugged. “I am from here – was from – Samborough born and raised, so if there are any places, any foods, any weird encounters form before the Fall, I’ll take you there.”
“And you’re offering to help why exactly?” Vega narrowed her eyes. She glanced at Farrah’s guns again, no doubt calculating if she could reach them before her.
Farrah only shrugged in response. Then, remembering that this was in fact not a random act of Collector comradery, she sighed.
“Okay, yes I want something from you-”
“Clearly not gear,” Vega narrowed her eyes even further, brushing over her empty hip holster as if on reflex, to assure herself that it was indeed empty.
Farrah chuckled.
“Yeah, clearly not. No, there’s a quest I am pursuing. Earlier in the tunnel, I found the - my first solid lead on it, and I need to,” What she wanted to say was ‘for you to drop the amnesia act and tell me in detail everything that happened in that tunnel’. But instead, she took a shallow breath, and said, “get more info on the Obelisk.”
There was a spark of recognition at the word in Vega’s eyes. She didn’t even try to hide it. Her expression turned more pensive as she weighed some options. Just as Farrah was about to beg – because the friendship route had gone down the drain, Vega spoke:
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“There is a place I remember more vividly than others. I don’t know how to get there,” For some reason, she sounded sincere for the first time, “But they have servers there. I’m not sure about backup generators, but they-”
“Where is it?”
“I just said I don’t know!” She put her hands over her mouth the second she realised she’d yelled.
A groan came from seven storeys below, telling Vega that she’d been heard fair and well.
“I meant the interior. Is it a library, a university, a …” Farrah struggled to think of other places with a server room.
“Something where something else was produced?” Vega replied, visibly happy that Farrah ignored the small outburst. “The part the OBELISK soldiers used was older, something they built around to hide it, the rest was old too, but not as much. They had double glazing on the windows and all that. The assembly lines all led outdoors, and before you ask, I’m not sure what they were assembling. But it was big. Some of it was metal, some of it was blue plastic.”
Farrah put her hands over her chin, before closing them and moving them over her mouth, and she thought about what this thing could be. She really didn’t know what to make of the information, but the way Vega let slip that Obelisk was a group didn’t escape her either. An organisation perhaps?
“It smelled like metal and burnt circuitry, if that helps?” Vega offered.
Farrah nodded.
“Alright. I don’t know what exactly you mean, but we can narrow it down to an industrial area,” Farrah didn’t add ‘hopefully’, “The problem is that there are six of them in greater Sambourough alone, and God knows how many in the provinces.”
“If I was …” She glanced to the side, coming up with another lie, “I was planning on going there to, umm, get my memories back, and I remember it being within an hour or so by car from the, umm, tunnel.”
“The tunnel?” Farrah made a little desperate noise. Doing this was hard. But when she saw the almost scared look Vega gave her, she dropped the issue again.
“Let’s start at the city council. They should have planning permits there so we can at least narrow it down somewhat. Then, we might need to look into getting some form of transport because Sambourough is 10 hours end to end, not counting the boroughs, and I’m not too keen on walking that. One time after a concert in 2010 was enough,” She attempted a joke. In truth, back then she, Anna, and a few other drunken friends had only walked for about 3 hours before the sun rose, and a woman going to work took pity on them and gave them a lift.
“We?” Vega seemed surprised.
“Hey, it’s your memories we’re looking for, right?” Farrah asked with a corner smile. “I know you don’t remember, but I need to know how trained you are in this domain. I have it Mastered, and if that means I’ll be the one keeping watch at night, I’d rather we went somewhere with less zombies.”
Vega thought about it for too long before replying:
“I have it Mastered too. I can keep watch.”
Farrah gave her a look, double-checking if she was sure. It’s not that she didn’t want to believe her, but she herself had to retry the Derelict Mastered quest twice and had gotten down to two luck points from constantly spam-healing her injuries. But domain quests also varied from Collector to Collector, so perhaps Vega had gotten an easier one. Farrah could have asked, but she already knew the answer.
She nodded and swung her rucksack over her shoulders before getting up.
“Let’s go?” She extended a hand to Vega, holding her rifle in the other.
“Okay, yeah,” Vega took it, albeit a tad confused, and let herself be pulled up.
The growls and noise of flesh hitting metal and cement told them that they would have to take the roof route.
----------------------------------------
Documents were spread all over the floor. Farrah’s bachelor in economics was paying off, in the sense that she could at least understand most of the legal jargon used. The hard part was figuring out what each industry actually did, because ‘InfaVictoria’, ‘Reety’, or ‘SeaLease’ really didn’t mean anything to her.
She ran her hand through her hair, then undid and re-did her ponytail, before scuffling over to a wall and leaning over it.
Scan
- Focused
- Seek: [anything useful for Christ’s sake]
Cost: 1P per 5m2.
Nothing got highlighted in the pile of documents littering the floor. But this outlet for her frustration did make her feel a bit better.
“I got you some soda,” Vega’s voice came from behind the door that separated the bedroom Farrah had declared her own from the rest of the house they’d secured.
“Thanks,” Farrah replied finally getting up and opening the door.
Vega handed her a can of orange soda. She was holding two bags of pasta and a can of beans, and looked at Farrah, expecting her to ask. Instead, Farrah nodded towards the bed and headed there to take a seat. Most of it was free from documents, on account of her “advanced organisational” technique of spreading everything on the floor.
The soda was cold and tasted of sugar and chemicals. Farrah glanced at the can and saw an unfortunate ‘caffeine-free’ label. Vega took a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Do you need any help with that?” She gestured to the building permits and maps littering the floor.
Farrah shrugged and shook her head, before taking another long sip of the chemical soda.
The silence was short-lived. Vega carefully opened a pack of pasta and poured a hand-full into her mouth.
Farrah rolled her eyes. She set the soda down and patted down her pockets. Realising she’d left her lighter in her jacket, she got up, trying not to step on too much paperwork in the dim light of her spotlight torch.
“Catch,” She warned Vega, before throwing the lighter to her.
“Huh?” She snatched it out of the air, confused more than anything.
“You can make a fire in the oven or the bathtub. Please don’t eat pasta raw.”
“It’s still the same amount of carbs,” Vega replied, with the genuine tone of someone who could not be asked to apply that extra effort.
It really wasn’t, but Farrah wasn’t going to argue.
“Make some for me too. Then it’s less effort per portion.”
Vega did think it over, before eventually agreeing, and getting up.
“But, are you sure you don’t need help with, umm, what you’re doing now? It’s late, and dark, so if you want to rest instead of sitting half-naked on the floor, I can take over.”
Farrah glanced down at her two layered tank tops. Sure, she was underdressed for what passed as late summer in these parts, but she was by no means half-naked.
“I’m more dressed than you,” she replied, before picking up her soda and returning to her spot on the floor. Truth was, Vega’s mix of stubbornness and ignorance was frustrating more than anything. Perhaps the woman had reasons to lie about the amnesia, perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps Farrah was just tired. “Thanks for the soda,” She nodded at Vega with a small smile. “I’ll call you if I get any leads.”
“Okay. I’ll try and make food without burning anything down,” Vega replied.
“Hey, wait,” Farrah called out just as Vega was about to leave the room. “Leave it for tomorrow. I’ll be at this for at least a few more hours, so get some sleep. We might want to get an early start, in the very unlikely case I find something.”
“Sure,” Vega didn’t sound sure as she left the room, but she closed the door behind her, allowing Farrah to return her focus to the documents.