Gone, was the sea and its coolness. The technorunner rose from the deepest state of sleep to the surface. With it, the grim truth of reality came back, but it was a truth nonetheless. A brilliant light struck his eyes the moment he opened them, which he struggled with for minutes as if he had been asleep for days or even weeks. It was the scorching sun of the desert, the desert known as the Outlands. He held his hand against his face to shield himself from the light. His body had become immobile, not because he was still half-asleep, but because he was surrounded by God-knows-what in this back of a truck.

A truck?!

It was certainly a truck or some kind of vehicle. He felt the ground beneath him shake upwards and downwards as if the vehicle was moving on a rocky road. Not a moment later before he could dwell on that thought some more, as his entire body began to completely come to wake, an awful stench strolled into his nose. He knew what the smell was. It was the smell of body odor — as if the sun wasn't enough.

Wait! The sun?!

The Outlands was a completely alien desert to the rest of the world. It had no sun, no heat, only dark clouds, and an awful lot of coldness. The technorunner was completely oblivious to where he was, but he still lacked the power to move his body and stand up. He couldn't recall how in the world did he end up in such an unknown place, but he tried to remember the past events before this one. He cast his mind back to the Outlands, the abandoned town, the bizarre mechcritter that belonged to the fabled dark riders, the hut and the android cannibal that inhabited it, the bounty hunters, his inadvertent reunion with Dara, the remnants of the dead swallowing almost everyone, to the inevitable end on the road. And then the weird hallucination trip he was on. Still, there was no answer to how he got in wherever he was at that moment.

As he regained more control over his body, he felt pain in the back of his head, and so he titled it to the side… only to be met by a horrific sight. It was a face, a pale and cold face, the face that belonged to a half-eaten corpse. The technorunner did not scream. He did, however, immediately recover control over himself and stood up — the shock was enough to do so. It wasn't just a dead corpse, half-eaten or not, it was the corpse of that old man, Ed, the reason for him being in such a situation. He thought back to before, but he couldn't remember ever seeing Ed after the incident with the dead.

Why was he here? He questioned himself. Where is here? Now, he was up and standing, confined by trash and corpses in the back of a moving vehicle. He looked at his surroundings. It was indeed a desert, but it was far from the Outlands, just a normal desert. In the distance were mountains that were as clear as day, no fog in sight at all. Disregarding all that — for there were more important matters at hand — he looked at the front of the vehicle he was on. There were two men sitting at the front, both of them were drivers by the looks of it — this was definitely a truck, but it was bizarre in some aspects. Even with all the ruckus that the technorunner believed he had caused upon waking up, the two men were completely oblivious to his presence. They were corpse collectors, he assumed, why would they bother to worry over a bunch of corpses.

Am I dead? He placed his hand over his chest and sensed beating coming from his heart. Of course, I'm alive, what the fuck are you even thinking, man? He scolded himself about his stupid thoughts. That didn't matter now, though. What mattered was taking care of those two deaf idiots who mistook him for a corpse. Taking caution into mind, he looked around in the truck and found that his weapons and bag were thrown along the trash in there. He swiftly grabbed his revolver, checked for ammo, and then pointed it at the two men. He had no intention of shooting them, but if they were dangerous, desperate measures must be taken.

'Who-' He tried to speak, but his throat was extremely dry, and so he cleared it, but that was enough to alarm the two men.

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The two men turned around and were set back by the technorunner.

'Wha… What in the bloody hell?'

This accent… They were Eldrians, no doubt about that.

'See! I told ya he was alive, ya dimwit!!' One, the skinny one, who looked even more afraid than the other, elbowed the other.

'Well, I didn't fucking know,' the other one, the rugged one, replied, 'Not like yer any better, ya left his fuckin' guns with 'em.'

'I knew it… I fuckin' knew it! Oyha fuckin' told us and ye didn't believe her, she said-'

'Oh, because she just said a "misfortune" is fallin' upon us, I'll fuckin' believe a corpse rose from the dead just like that, eh?'

'We should 'ave never set foot in there. Even mum told us there are dead in there, everybody fuckin' knows that.'

Before those two idiots could utter another single letter, the technorunner regained his voice, 'Do you want your brains to be delivered to this "Oyha" in a box?' They both fell silent, 'Then stop talking and stop fucking swearing!'

'But y-you just-'

'I know! So zip it! Both of you…' He was on the verge of going on a murder spree.

Both of them, just from their demeanor and surprise, proved to be the opposite of what the technorunner expected. They were scared to the point of pissing their pants and running to their mothers. Now that he thought about it, they did look like kids that were no older than sixteen or seventeen at maximum. Their clothing and their tanned skin made him assume that they were from the upper south region of the continent, where all the campers and nomads were.

Still holding his revolver, he took a deep breath, 'Now… Where am I, exactly?'

'A… A desert?' The skinny one replied before the other one slapped his forehead.

'No shit, Mr. Detective! Doesn't this desert have a name?'

The rugged one pushed the skinny one aside, 'W-We're in Route 104, the Flavus Circle.'

The technorunner had no idea what that was, but he knew he heard that name before, so he assumed he was still in Eldria. The boys' accents were enough evidence.

'How far is that from the Outlands?'

'I don't know, sir…'

He sighed, 'Okay, let's change the question… How long has it been since you left the Outlands?'

The rugged one tried to reply but he didn't remember, and so the other one stepped forward, still overwhelmed with fear, 'F-Four! Four to five hours, I believe so…'

Five hours! The technorunner didn't know every nook and cranny of the entire continent like the back of his hand, but he had been on the road for so long, that he still had an idea of where he might be. However, it depended on where this truck headed.

'We're heading west!' The skinny one said, 'We're still in the south if ya gonna ask. No need to run into those damn imperials.'

It's like he had read his mind. He tried to calculate it all in his mind, to try and pinpoint an approximate location. But he was too tired.

'We mean no harm, sir,' the rugged one spoke, 'We were just lookin' for some scrap, and found ya passed out on the road. Ya stopped breathin', at least, that's what he said,' he pointed at the other one, 'So we presumed ya had kicked the bucket, as they all say.'

'What about this guy?' He pointed at Ed's corpse, 'Where'd you find him?'

'I…,' the skinny boy answered, 'We found him among other corpses in an abandoned town. They were all burned to a crisp 'sept for this one.'

Out of the blue, the technorunner felt a sting in his leg, a sting that soon turned into a burning sensation. He looked at his leg, it was trembling, and there was the injury he had received from the hunter's arrow, the poisonous arrow, earlier. The adrenaline rush from before shielded him from the pain, but now, it was coming back as fast as a bullet from a gun. He dropped his revolver and fell on his knees. For a moment, he felt vulnerable, that the boys would use this chance to retaliate. But they did no such thing.

'Oh… that's why I thought ya were dead,' the skinny boy talked, 'I thought ya were poisoned!'

'Oh fuck,' the other one expressed his disgust, 'If ya wanna live then ya better treat that right now.'

'No…,' the technorunner replied, 'What I need to do is leave,' but he knew that was a lie, there was no way in hell he was going to make it alone like that. Heck, he might have been a few minutes away from death. The poison was rushing in with no signs of stopping.

He mustered up all his remaining strength and stood up, but that only made it worse. His surroundings were no longer clear, everything was turning hazy. His mind began spiraling, as the world around him did so as well. He passed out, and fell down on Ed's corpse.

Once more, darkness.