The gates of Saunter’s Settlement groaned open with the sound of sand scrapping across the desert surface. As the men of Saunters began building the makeshift Bridge, I sat in my seat watching them work for a solid twenty minutes without stopping.

Once they finished constructing the bridge, Rook took his truck over the bridge as slowly as possible, ensuring it didn’t shift. “Still can’t believe they surrounded themselves with land mines.”

“Me either,” Rook said, “that’s downright crazy.”

“Like most people in the damn Waste,” I said.

“Right?” Rook laughed.

The truck rolled off the bridge and eight men with what looked like Assault Rifles strapped to their shoulders approached Rook’s window. The window crept down and we were met by a man with a toothy smile, despite his thick beard. “You’ve returned.” He said calmly. “Who’s the bootlicker in the back?”

“A guest. The Warden knows he’s with me.

“Is that so eh?”

“Yeah, He’s been to Saunters before, he already knows the decontamination protocols so rest easy.”

“Is that so.” The man said.

Another man rounded the car, gun trained at me. He hit the glass with his nozzle, nodding the barrel down. I puffed my cheeks and pressed the button lowering my window.

I held a friendly smile as my window came down, hoping to quell the bitterness the man with the assault rifle had trained on me.

“Sir, I’ve never seen him before.” He said.

“Get the Warden He knows me,” I said gruffly.

The man slid his rifle into my face, then snapped the safety off. Mentally, I shook my head. I don’t know what it was about guns and people, but when the wrong man had a gun in his hands, intimidation came easy to him.

I turned to Rook, who shook his head, not trying to get involved. Which, I understand.

It was one thing to leave a city full of assholes and dipshits, but to come into the Carib Waste to meet dipshits and assholes. I guess assholes and dipshits are all over I thought.

“Put the gun down.” Rook finally said, “Let's get inside, get decontaminated and we’ll be out of your hair before the sun goes down.”

The little shit’s nozzle finally retreated from the truck and we were able to cross the minefield. As we went past the gate, thousands of eyes peered at us like prey.

I looked up, noticing ten men stare at us as we passed them by, rifles strapped to their flack jackets, fingers circling the trigger. “Yeah…I Dare Ya” Their faces said, which made me want to chuckle.

Across the wall, were hundreds of barrels lined across the back, with various metal slabs and concrete slabs with steel bars drilled into them. I looked to the right, and found the same thing, in perfect unison.

All in all, nothing had changed here at Saunters Settlement, nothing but the improved equipment. The last time I was here for Elhisia’s ‘kidnapping’, these men didn’t have such pristine equipment as if they glowed. Compliments no doubt, thanks to Mr Black.

I didn’t have any evidence of that, but the way the man was set up here, with a FOB with the Kite I used to fly in was more than enough proof for me, that being friends with Mr Black, in the waste, had its perks.

Rook made a right a few meters down the straight, then turned left. On the right, what I couldn’t see before my first time was open to me and brought to life thanks to the afternoon sun.

In the distance, hundreds, if not thousands of houses sat within a ravine, nestled and stapled to the walls, in between crevices and caves. It was like looking out in a cracked bowl, coloured in brown, red and black, mimicking the rock formation each house sat against.

If this was how people in the waste truly lived, then it wasn’t too far from how people lived within Bridge City, the only difference was the lights, the people and the smell.

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The air here smelled fresher, but a little rusted. It tasted dry as well, but I bogged that down to the smoke trailing from the chimneys of the houses far off.

At least there wasn’t a smog here I noted, realising my natural eye didn’t water as we sped away. Children passed us by, whilst adults' eyes peered into the truck, trying to get a gist of who had now entered their territory. So much for contamination, I mused, laughing to myself.

Rook brought the truck up a small incline, turning left, leaving the half-bowl village, and disappearing from my eyesight. The afternoon sun rays poured into the vehicle like an array of red dot sights, scorching the right side of my face, despite my tinted window.

The truck levelled out and a small dome came into view as the truck rounded a corner, to my right. A long tunnel appeared right next to it, and on each side of the dome, was old metal chopped and clopped, clearly left there to intimidate guests.

Rook reversed the truck into a spot that had shade. I pushed the door open, the sun beating down on my neck and five men appeared in front of me, rifles pointed at the both of us. “Quarantine.” One of them said through their mask.

I rolled my eyes mentally, taking my haversack with me, and heading into the Dome. Rook stood by the truck, which made me pause, turning to him. “You’re not coming?” I asked.

“I’ll wait till you’re finished.”

“Whatever,” I said.

A gentle gust of wind traced across the incline, and the metal clanked all around me as I looked at the tunnel leading into the small dome.

I huffed, feeling annoyed that despite everything, I’d have to feel that damn paste smothered around me once more, not as though once wasn’t enough, when a man makes an agreement he follows it through. “I hope Sceleratus doesn’t have this shit either,” I said, walking towards the dome.

◆◆◆

The decontamination process was even worst this time. I felt as though my skin was flaking. The bristles from that goddamn broom scrapped me so deeply that I almost fired my damn cybernetic wrist into that quack doctor’s face.

Thankfully though, that was that.

Six men, back to front, all wearing desert fatigues took me through Saunters. It was the situation as last time, but more guarded. I didn’t know whether they were showing off their newly acquired strength, but I wasn’t the guy you needed strength to be. It was the Scavengers or Ravagers out there.

A strong sense of Deja Vu hit me, which wasn’t something I’d hoped for. The last time I came to the Waste, my damn family was kidnapped. That can’t happen again, I thought.

A guard in the front, on the left, bopped as he walked, showing a swagger which wasn’t needed, especially when guarding a foreign element such as mine in a village. It made me wonder where this confidence came from.

The further I went into the village, the more I realised that certain sections of the settlement were painted differently, making them blend in well with the outer rock formation of the settlement.

If a house was close enough to a rock formation, the colour was either blackish or brown, whilst in the open area, the colours were close to the sand itself.

The men finally brought me to a small chattel house with a brown door with a small staircase. The men ahead of me, split off, aiming their rifles at me. “Your residence,” The leader said. I didn’t confer an answer, I simply walked in, ignoring them.

I pushed the door open, to meet the same assorted furniture I had last time. A table in the middle with a kitchen on the far right, in the distance, around the middle of the chattel house was a fireplace, with red bricks built in to form a chimney, something I hadn’t noticed from outside.

Slamming the door shut, was my defiance for the day. Flakes of dust puffed themselves from off the ground trailing the chattel house for a few seconds before settling back on the ground.

As I stood there, annoyance swept across my mind like a hammer, pounding at each brain cell that held a thought within me.

I was back in the damn WASTE. To top it off, Mr Black nor Rook hardly gave me anything to work with. Debrief? I thought bitterly, “…more like a puddle of water with a smidgen of explanation.”

I tossed my haversack on the ground, pulling my shirt free, feeling fatigue wash over me.

From Castrian to Bridge City was two hours by Skylane. However, the journey from Bridge City to Saunters was three hours, so yes, after five hours of travelling my body needed a rest, despite not moving.

I parked my ass on the bed, which was on the left side of the house, and felt as if vertigo hit me, I fell back, hitting the wooden wall and the world around me began to spin

Challenges of being Cybernetic at times. I thought. They were times when finding my centre of gravity was troublesome, but usually, this rarely happened as I didn’t need to travel as regular as I did.

Once the feeling left me, I placed my head on the bed, and closed my eyes, trying to get some rest.

Shin-Lee and Hannah appeared in the abyss of my closed eyes. Shin-Lee smiled, as she held Hannah in her arms.

“Daddy!” Hannah shouted something she didn’t say when I left her. I HATE YOU I reminisced painfully.

I’d never heard those words coming from Hannah before, but my god did it hurt. It felt like my heart was cut from my chest with a dull knife, then yanked down to my stomach and pulled out, slowly.

I opened my eyes just so I wouldn’t hear Hannah’s harrowing words echoing in my mind, but that didn’t work.

Pushing myself up from the bed, didn’t either.

I began working out, doing push-ups, squats, burpees, and anything that’ll allow me to keep my mind free, but my mind wouldn’t allow it.

Visions of Shin-Lee’s severed fingers muddled through my mind as I exercised.

Beads of sweat rushed down my forehead, hitting the ground, bubbling dust beneath me.

By the time I had a small pool of water beneath me, Hannah’s words began a new. I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU. Repeating over and over.

Eventually, it turned into a vocoder-like tone, just like the two Reavers I’d killed…robotic and haunting.

This continued, until my mind was just too tired to take it, leaving me to fall asleep, but not peacefully as I’d left my family exposed, again.