It started with a mural.
Not a painting. Not art.
A message.
Scrawled across the interior wall of the laundromat next to the safehouse, barely visible beneath the peeling paint and vines. A smear of red, sun-faded but still clear.
A moth.
Wings open. Stylized. Carved over a faded Firefly symbol.
It hadn't been there last week.
⸻
Earlier That Morning
Zane knelt beside Benji, two fingers on the boy's neck. The pulse was there—faint but steady. His breaths came slow, uneven. Skin still too pale, lips tinged blue. He was alive, but the cold had sunk deep. And the hunger made it worse.
Sierra stood nearby, clutching a tin mug of warmed broth like it was the only thing anchoring her to the moment. Her hands trembled, her knuckles white, but she didn't seem to notice. She stared at Benji, eyes wide, red-rimmed, unfocused.
"I didn't know where else to go," she said finally, her voice cracked and low. "We weren't looking for trouble. Just somewhere safe."
Zane didn't let the silence stretch. He looked up at her, eyes steady, but hard. "I need to know what happened. Who you were running from. If we let you in, I need to know it's not going to bring hell to our door."
She flinched—not at the words, but at the weight behind them. Then she nodded, once, and sank down against the wall, the mug rattling against her knee.
"It started two weeks ago. Maybe more. We were near the highway—me and Benji and a few others. We'd found this old rest stop, boarded it up. Thought it'd hold. Then these guys showed up at night. Half of 'em with Firefly brands. But the rest… I don't know. They didn't talk like soldiers. Just men looking to settle a score."
Sierra's eyes dropped to the mug in her hands, watching the steam curl like smoke from a dying fire.
"They came fast. Quiet, at first. No shouting, no demands. Just… shapes in the dark. We were asleep. The screaming woke us up." She blinked hard, like the memory stung. "When I opened the door, there were already two of them inside. One had a blade to Gracie's throat. The other was just watching me. Smiling."
"We didn't stand a Chance. They herded us outside. Lined us up. Took everything. Food. Blankets. Even our shoes. Said we owed a debt for something we didn't even understand."
Zane stayed still, listening. His eyes never left her face.
"One of them— had a guitar pick araund his neck, he was older, white beard, patch on his jacket that said Jonah—he asked if we'd seen her. Said she killed his brother. That the Fireflies wanted her alive. But he didn't. He wanted to cut the moth tattoo off her arm and wear it as a trophy."
Sierra shuddered.
Zane felt something cold settle in his chest.
"Did they mention a name?"
"No. Just stories. One of them said 'she was death in denim.'
"I don't think they cared about us. Not really. We were just… bait. In case she came. Gracie was crying, telling them we didn't know anything. That we weren't part of it.
She looked up then, eyes glassy.
"They made Benji kneel in the snow. Made him watch while they—" Her voice stopped.
She went quiet, staring into the mug again.
A chill moved through him.
"I'm sorry for what happened to you and your companions. Rest for now. We'll talk later."
[System Alert: Associative Signal Detected]
Keyword: Moth. Subject Profile – REDACTED.
Updating Quest Thread: The Unfinished Path
There it was again.
Her shadow.
Ellie.
⸻
Later — Outer Wall
Ava found him at the mural.
She stood silently beside him, arms folded across her chest, watching him stare at the moth.
"You knew her ?" she asked.
Zane kept his voice flat. "No, I don't think so."
"What does that mean?"
He didn't answer.
She didn't press.
"If we draw that kind of attention, we're going to need more than walls and patched roofs. We're going to need people who can fight."
Zane nodded slowly. "I know."
[Base Status Updated: Threat Recognition - Zone Status: Watched]
⸻
Evening — Beneath the Safehouse
Zane returned to the sealed Firefly vault after nightfall. He brought tools this time. Flashlight. Knife. A pry bar. He needed to know more about who had used this place before.
He worked for over an hour, carving open old crates and boxes that had been sealed for years. Most of it was junk: busted radios, expired food rations, old maps of Seattle and Salt Lake.
Then he found the tapes.
Worn. Numbered. Each marked with a short label.
"Jackson - Entry 7"
"WY Camp - 3 Survivors"
"Moth - Eyes On"
That last one stopped him cold.
The tape recorder was ancient, but it still worked. Static gave way to a low, anxious voice.
"Saw her again. North edge of the river zone. Same moth tattoo. Same eyes. She's looking for something—or someone."
"If she finds them, we're all f***ed. But I'm not gonna let her walk past this place. Not without following."
"Marked the walls. If she sees it, maybe she'll come. If not… maybe someone else will."
The audio ended in a sharp scrape.
Zane shut it off.
[Quest Update: "The Unfinished Path" — Branch Discovered: The Watchers]
Someone is watching for Ellie.Someone dangerous. And they know how to draw her in.
He stared at the moth mural in his HUD.
Then, deeper in the vault, he saw something else.
A broken pair of dog tags.
Name unreadable.
But next to them, on the lid of a sealed med-kit, one word was scratched in jagged, desperate handwriting:
"Abby."
⸻
Night — Rooftop
Zane sat in silence as the wind picked up. The lights flickered in the courtyard below—solar power stretched thin, generator coughing.
The base was growing, but it was still fragile.
So were the people in it.
He glanced toward Sierra, asleep on the floor beside Benji, curled in close like she was afraid he'd vanish.
He looked down at his hands. The System's UI flickered softly around them, unreadable to everyone else.
[Population: 5]
[Morale: 58% - Holding]
[Structures: Memory Wall, Field Clinic, Armored Gate, Solar Node, Rooftop Garden (Seedling)]
[Base Progress: 12% | Tier: Hollow Refuge]
Next Threshold: Settlement (25%)
He could feel the weight of it now.
This was history being written with blood and sacrifice. Every name carved on that wall. Every person taken in. Every person buried.
And somewhere out there—someone else was writing their own story.
Maybe Ellie.
Maybe Abby.
And maybe—just maybe—those stories were about to collide.