During the next few days the subject of OBELISK never really got brought up again. It was a weird partnership the two women had found themselves in. Farrah wasn’t sure what Vega was getting out of it, as more often than not she was the one who did most kills, and most of the scavenging. And for Farrah herself, there wasn’t much to be gained either, other than some spared ammo, and a few hours of looting here and there.
They’d left Sambourough proper four days after their meeting and were steadily heading South, into Aireshire. In that time, they’d stocked up on the essentials: cans, energy bars, and cigarettes. Farrah was carrying most of it, save for a tote bag of dry food, and 2 2.5 litre bottles of flat water, so perhaps what Vega was getting out of this travel arrangement was access to Farrah’s hiking rucksack.
The day was growing old, and the isolated trees alongside the rolling, overgrown, fields on both sides of the motorway cast long shadows over eight empty lanes. It was getting noticeably colder, as the percentage of asphalt-covered surface decreased. Even the occasional car carcass seemed smaller and less oppressive than its city counterparts. Unlike those in central Sambourough, these vehicles held no judgment over those they shared the roads with. They didn’t blame either woman for their untimely demise, as they rested, their leather and canvas interiors long free of blood, and now serving as a refuge to small animals.
Domain Entered: Lonely
Pinned notes available. Display notes?
Yes
No
“Bip,” Farrah announced, dismissing the screen.
“Huh?” Vega turned around, confused.
“Bip,” Farrah repeated. It was common curtesy among Collectors to notify each other when a System notification appeared.
Domain Goal
Kill 500 small-swarm enemy type within 15 minutes of entering the domain. Kill 100 standard enemy type within 30 minutes of entering the domain. Kill 5 unique enemies within 3 hours of entering the domain and without spending Power.
Reward
Domain mastery increase to Expert
Permanent bonus:
All dependant skills for all physical skills are discovered, and acquired at untrained level. Mastery of already discovered dependant skills increases by 1 mastery level without penalties.
Accept
Yes
No
“That’s actually a good quest for you,” Farrah spoke, having read the description. “Well, it’s near impossible, but we can grind. I tried this one 7 times already, then I decided to set it aside to when I get my swimming and climbing at Expert.” Vega didn’t respond, and Farrah was quickly hit with a realisation. “Oh, did you get the radius "ultrakill" quest? I got the timed one. The 500 in 15, 100 in 30, and 5 in 180.”
Vega thought for a second, glancing to the floor like she did when she came up with one of her very mediocre lies. Farrah used that time to reject the domain quest. She would have liked to get it for the passive bonuses, but this one was a particularly hard one to grind. The Lonely domain was by far the safest, due to how few zombies resided in it, and how spread out they were. This didn’t mean that the creatures hadn’t mutated to adapt to these vast fields and grasslands, but one had to really try to gather a swarm, which paradoxically also made this domain one of the hardest to master.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vega eventually replied. Her tone was between apologetic and annoyed, making her that much harder to read.
Farrah played with her cross, as she thought about how best to reply to this. Now that they were out here, where grass slowly fought to overtake the asphalt of a single deserted motorway that ran into the fog-engulfed horizon, they were stuck together proper. Farrah nodded to herself, having made a mental of things to bring up before she nodded at Vega to follow.
“Will you be travelling with me to Glenwick?” Farrah started.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I don’t like where this line of questioning is going…” Vega sighed.
“There’s only been one question,” Farrah dryly chucked, more so on reflex than out of genuine amusement at the sarcasm. “Okay, listen, us Collectors, we build our relationships on trust. Trust not only to not shoot each other in the head during the night, or not to steal supplies that weren’t shared, but also the smaller things.”
“If you want me to go-”
“There’s nowhere to go really, anymore,” Farrah turned towards the other woman, lips pressed into a tight smile. “So to not make the next two weeks extremely awkward, I would like you to stop lying to me about every other thing,” She sighed. She wanted to add that half-truths were no better, and that she wanted direct replies, especially when the System or quests were involved, but if she was going to demand something, she preferred it to be something she could actually get.
They walked in silence for several minutes. Vega was thinking it over, and Farrah was waiting for an answer, but the growing agitation of the other woman, which slowly escalated from small hand movements to fidgeting with the straps on her wrists, faded onto Farrah. She clicked her cigarette tin open, and lit one, angrily exhaling the first puff. Then more calmly inhaling the next.
“Okay,” Vega nervously replied. “What do you want to know? Is it about … umm… what you found in the data centre? About OBELISK?”
Farrah hummed, taking a long drag, and trying not to blow too much smoke into Vega’s face before replying.
“No, I think I got all I could from there. Among the useful stuff, I found that OBELISK, ‘Omni-Biological Experimentation and Lifeform Integration Systems Komplex’ was a military-sponsored scientific project that made,” She gestured around, making all 4 of her screens appear in front of her, “this. But nothing there said why they started it, why they forced it onto-” She did not like that word choice, but it had come out too fast. She tried to be considerate because hers and Vega’s situation wasn’t the same, but the System took much from her, and the anger from that was palpable in her voice, “onto all of us, why they killed so many people with it. Good folk, people whose sole crime was having too much of their life ahead of them, or not being old enough to understand-”
She cut herself off, taking another deep drag of the thick smoke. Vega didn’t need to hear about Farrah’s family. That was also an unspoken rule between Collectors. Whatever happened before or during the Fall, it was all in the past. It had shaped them, sure, just like the System shaped its own unholy creations, but what mattered was that Farrah hadn’t died then, and she couldn’t die now.
“So, umm, did not find anything else there?” Vega asked.
“No, nothing useful in the files. There were too many to go through.” Farrah lied, having picked up on the undertones of the question.
“So what do you want me to be honest with then?” Vega sounded genuinely perplexed.
Farrah shrugged, making a ‘I don’t know noise’. She squished the cigarette bud on the asphalt, before giving a proper reply:
“The bips, domains, skills, all that stuff is really important to me.” Vega was about to reply, but Farrah cut her off, turning towards her. “And the other thing, are you actually amnesiac?”
“Uhh…” Vega made the face of someone who was about to lie, then remembered they just promised not to. “I genuinely don’t know what you mean every time you go on these rambles about goals, levels, skills, domains, or monsters.” She glanced to the side.
They’d long since stopped in their tracks, and Farrah used this pause in the argument to scan the surrounding area.
“Okay, I know about skills. But the rest I really don’t. And not because I forgot, but because I … just don’t,” She made it sound almost like a question.
Farrah hummed. That sounded impossible, considering the ridged rules around the System itself, but Vega’s tone was genuine for once, so she accepted it as fact.
“I can explain the terminology, that’s fine.”
Vega squinted.
“Why would you?”
Farrah made another confused sound, and shrug combo. She didn’t really know herself. Because it was the correct thing to do? The polite and Christian thing her parents had raised her to do?
“Let’s put this a different way, why don’t you trust me?” Farrah asked.
Vega raised an eyebrow, pressing a corner of her lips up.
“I do?”
“Yeah, and I do too,” Farrah replied with a half-lie. She trusted Vega less than some Collectors she’d only talked to for a handful of hours. But it was Vega who held leads to the OBELISK, and it was Vega who was going to travel with her for the next few weeks. “I will be honest, I would trust you more if you explained the amnesia situation.” Farrah insisted on her main point of contention.
Vega sighed. She fidgeted with her straps again, and Farrah decided it would be as good of a time as any to start walking again.
“I don’t remember the past … okay, I don’t know how many weeks. I don’t remember when this happened,” she made a small gesture over her shoulder, waving twice at the concrete carcass of civilisation they'd left behind. “There are some pieces missing from earlier too, but okay, fair enough, I did lie about losing my memories after a monster attack.”
Farrah wasn’t sure she’d heard that right. She was about to ask where the woman had been to have missed the end of the world, but the answer to that was pretty obvious. She didn’t want to reopen that wound, especially now after having lied about Vega’s file.
“What year do you last remember it being?” She asked instead, as she reached for her tin.
“2013. I don’t know the month. They, umm, I think they messed with the calendar on purpose. So I, umm,” she glanced at the cigarette Farrah had just pulled out. “Shouldn’t you be rationing those?”
Farrah groaned a resigned ‘yeah’ and put the tin away. She didn’t want to though. But she reckoned she could smoke a bit during her night watch shift.
“You were saying?”
“Right, 2013, plus a few months after that,” She paused, then squinted at Farrah in a concerned way, “We are in, umm, sometime around that, right? It’s not, umm, like 1756 or 3097, right?”
Farrah chucked. Then she realised where the question was coming from.
“It’s 2016 now,” She replied. “September – October. I guess it’s too warm for October. And the last horde wave was in May, which was three week-ish ago… Wait,” The math of it all caught up to Farrah, and she realised how wrong she’d been this whole time to assume that summer was over, when in fact it was only beginning. “So June.” She concluded because she wanted to give a proper reply to Vega. But damn, was it cold and miserable for early- to mid-June.
She wondered, for the first time since the winter snow had melted only a month or so before that horde wave in May, what exactly had happened in the world. The word ‘climate change’ was thrown around a lot on news stations before the Fall, but it was typically followed with warnings about warming and mountain-ice melting. Not a six-month winter, and a summer that felt like autumn.
“That’s … umm,” Vega seemed to be lost in thoughts of her own.
“If we cross paths with someone who keeps track of the days we can ask,” Farrah continued. “I just don’t see much point in it myself. It’s not really like we celebrate Easter anymore…”
“So, umm, I don’t know what that is either,” Vega shyly spoke. It was as if she was testing if this was what Farrah had meant earlier about not lying about things.
“It’s a religious holiday, that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ.”
It was clear from Vega’s expression that the explanation hadn’t been sufficient, but Farrah knew an atheist when she saw one, and she wasn’t in the mood for the ‘how would God allow this?’ conversation. So instead, she changed the topic to finding shelter, and soon the women had left the motorway, just as the sun began to set.