Darkness.
Again.
At this point, I was starting to think I'd been cursed by the God of Ambient Lighting. No sun, no lamps, just darkness with a side of emotional damage. Ah, feels just like back home in UK.
Fucking lovely.
But then…
POP.
Like a bubble snapping inside my brain, memories slammed into me like a dump truck full of existential dread Twenty years of taxes, late-night Reddit doom scrolling, and the exact moment a patio table turned my head into pizza topping with extra red sauce. Italian approved.
I shot upright in bed, panting like I'd just lost a ranked game in Rainbow Six Siege, match point lost and with it my high rank of Gold 4 with it. Fuck, Copper Kings for the win anyway.
The room? Small. Grey. Depressingly organized. Military-style bunk, faded posters of pre-outbreak landscapes peeling off cracked concrete. Is that a hello kitty poster? A busted radio sat on a shelf like it was daring me to try and fix it.
My hands? Small. Tiny. Baby mode hands. I looked down, flexed my fingers they moved, sort of. Like worn-out controller drift. The skin was pale, a little dirty. Nails bitten short.
"...No fucking way."
My mouth made a perfect O.
Holy moly.
I swung my small chubby off the bed, that is definitely too big for a toddler and wobbled over to a mirror bolted to the wall. Cracked and smudged, obviously. Because god forbid I reincarnate somewhere with intact furniture, feel like I am back in that small town in the Balkans that I went to visit once when we got lost from our way from Croatian beaches.
What greeted me wasn't the tragic adult mess I used to be, but a four-year-old with messy black hair that looked like it lost a fight with a vacuum cleaner and dull green eyes that screamed, 'I've already seen some shit.' Under-eye bags? Present. Vibes? Immaculate. I looked like a Victorian orphan who mainlined caffeine and injected white paint for extra paleness.
I turned toward the window. Pulled aside the shutter.
"Holy, I can practically smell the rust on these bad boys."
And oh boy, the sight that greeted me was no better.
Welcome to Boston. Not the pre-war, Fenway-happy, lobster-roll-eating Boston. No, this was QZ Boston. Military checkpoints. Razor wire. Watchtowers with snipers who probably played "shoot the looter" for fun. The air smelled like smoke and bureaucracy.
God damn, if not for all the military and all, I'd think I am just in Birmingham.
Sniff
Smells like it too.
Buildings leaned like they were drunk. A patrol walked by two FEDRA soldiers in full gear, masks on, rifles slung like fashion accessories. Civilians shuffled in ragged lines toward a ration station, each one holding a number and the exact look of someone trying not to piss off the wrong corporal.
I let out a slow exhale.
"Right. Apocalypse world. No Wi-Fi. No pizza. No system interface. Just vibes and trauma."
This was it. No menus. No power-ups. No glowing loot drops from the sky.
Just me. Four years old. Again.In this timeline.
And the worst part?
Still no fucking voice.
The hallway outside my room smelled like stale socks and boiled rations.
I padded across the cracked cold tiles in bare feet, passing the other two bedroom doors. The apartment wasn't big, but it was efficient which is how military types say "you'll live, but you won't like it." The walls were reinforced concrete painted beige about a hundred years ago, and everything echoed slightly, like even the air was trying to mind its business.
I passed Grandma's room door cracked open, the smell of her mint tea drifting out then the tiny bathroom, where the sink dripped like a bad soundtrack.
The living room/kitchen hybrid was where everyone gathered. "Gathered" being a loose term for "coexisted without stabbing each other."
The apartment door loomed to the side reinforced steel, double-locked, heavy enough to stop an infected or at least delay it long enough to scream. The windows were sealed with thick metal shutters, always bolted. Sunlight? Hah. We had government lighting cold, flickering bulbs that buzzed like they hated their job.
In the corner of the room, sitting on its own dusty shelf like the Holy Grail of the Reyes family, was the old radio. Analog. Big knobs. Still functional. Still off-limits. Still glaring at me like it knew I'd try to touch it the second no one was watching.
Locked cabinets lined the kitchen walls, because in QZ life, trust was second to reinforced hinges.
This was home.
Three beds. One kitchen. One toilet. No privacy. Moderate paranoia.
FEDRA comfort level: "at least you're not on the street."
First thing I saw was my mom — Elena Reyes, she is in her early 30s, a FEDRA communications technician monitors radio traffic between Boston QZ and surrounding areas. Deeply loyal to FEDRA but paranoid of traitors and Fireflies.
She is standing at the metal table bolted to the floor like it might try to escape. She looked like someone had genetically engineered a woman specifically to intimidate prisoners of war. Her back was straight enough to snap steel, shoulder length black hair pulled into the tightest bun I'd ever seen, and she was slicing canned potatoes like they'd personally betrayed the state.
No nonsense. No softness. Just piercing hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and the aura of a woman who files her reports early and judges you for not doing the same. Sharply defined cheekbones and a rigid jawline. She is often seen with a data slate or radio in hand even when off-duty.
"You're up early," she said, not even turning around.
Of course she knew. She probably heard my existential toddler meltdown through the walls and just chalked it up to emotional weakness.
Yeah, you try processing two lifetimes before your first juice box.
I mumbled something like "morning," because I wasn't ready to get interrogated by the Warden of Breakfast yet.
Across the room, sitting on a couch made from repurposed storage crates and some very suspicious foam padding, was Tomas Reyes — my dad, in his mid-30s, a FEDRA logistics officer – coordinates ration shipments and supply routes, he is a practical, burnt-out, not cruel but disillusioned.
He is the quieter parent. The "if I ignore the world, maybe it won't collapse faster" type.
He looked... tired. Not the dramatic, cinematic kind of tired. The real kind. The kind where your face forgets how to smile unless you really try. He was tall, lean, and built like a man who could carry three crates of rations in one arm and still be thinking about paperwork the whole time. Faded green eyes. Buzzcut that was trying to pretend it wasn't going gray. Still wearing his damn uniform even off-duty. Always in uniform.
Both don't talk much about the world before the outbreak.
He glanced at me, gave a nod.
"Still alive?"
I nodded back.
"Regrettably."
Then came the wild card.
"You're up early, dear," said a quiet, aged voice from the corner and that's when I saw her: Grandma Reyes.
She was sitting in a rickety chair like it was a throne, a mismatched shawl around her shoulders and a thermos clutched in both hands like it was a holy relic. Face lined like the roads outside QZ walls, smile like she'd seen everything and just decided to laugh at it anyway. Her eyes green dark, knowing. They landed on me like I was a puzzle she half-remembered solving.
She always had this vibe. Like she knew I wasn't just a weird kid. Like if anyone was going to say "you've been here before, haven't you?" it was her.
"Did you dream again?" she asked.
I shrugged, because the actual answer "yes, I remembered my previous life and the time I got decapitated by decorative furniture" felt like a little much for breakfast and I feel like my FEDRA loving mother would send me off to the science division.
Elena didn't look up, but her tone was razor-sharp.
"He's fine. Night terrors are normal. Especially with kids this age."
Tomas sipped his coffee. Didn't speak.
And Grandma just smiled, like she knew damn well this wasn't a night terror.
"Well," she said. "Let's feed the little survivor."
The table was cold metal. The kind that absorbed your soul or whats left of it, through your elbows if you rested on it too long. A dent ran across one edge like someone had tried to headbutt their way to freedom and lost.
Breakfast was... edible. Rehydrated mush from a tin, toast that could be used as roofing material, and a chunk of mystery protein that claimed to be "rat-approved." I was still trying to figure out if that meant it was tested on rats or made of them. Probably both if I have to be honest.
Gulp
Man, I never thought I would miss fish and chips from that little shithole back home, even if the chips were soggy the rest was alright. Definitely better than this.
"At least it wasn't corpse starch" I mumbled to myself
"Eat," Elena said, placing the tray in front of me like a prison guard who was on a schedule. "Then you can draw or whatever."
Your love for me is overwhelming woman.
Yes, drawing, the creative pastime of oppressed youth across all totalitarian regimes.
She went back to the radio shelf and began adjusting the dials with the kind of intensity normally reserved for nuclear launch codes. Tomas stayed seated with his coffee and ration bar, chewing like it was an act of resignation.
Only Grandma joined me at the table, shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders, thermos of whatever ancient brew she considered drinkable in hand.
She watched me poke at the food like a disappointed chef spirit.
"You'll want to eat more than that, mijo," she said. "Can't fight off infection with air and sarcasm."
I gave her my best four-year-old version of a raised eyebrow. "Pretty sure if it comes down to it, sarcasm's all I've got."
She smiled like that was the right answer. Then took a long, loud sip from her thermos.
"Do you know what year you were born?"
I blinked. "2016." It came out too fast, too sharp. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn't comment.
"Right. That means you're four now, and it's 2020. And this world has been broken for longer than you've been alive."
A silence followed. Not the heavy kind. The kind people use to see if you're paying attention.
She shifted in her chair. "The infection started when your parents were young adults, just out of their teens. Everything fell apart in 2013. Cities burned. Planes fell from the sky. Cordyceps spread faster than anyone thought possible. By 2014, the government had collapsed and FEDRA filled the gap."
She said FEDRA like someone might say "tapeworm."
"People like to pretend it was a quick thing. But it wasn't. It dragged out. Looting, riots, martial law. The Fireflies showed up not long after. Some saw them as heroes. Others as traitors. It depends on who you ask. Your parents? They followed FEDRA. Not because they loved it. Because it was the only thing left."
Her eyes drifted to the window. Shutters still sealed. Outside, voices barked orders and the occasional scream echoed through the block like ambient white noise.
"I was in charge of a school when it happened. After the fall, I became a quartermaster in one of the early camps. Watched it turn from shelter to prison in a month."
She took another sip. I could smell something herbal and slightly illegal.
"This zone wasn't always like this. It used to have real buildings. Parks. A community. Now it has checkpoints and fire squads."
"And rats," I added.
She chuckled.
"Yes. Plenty of rats. But if you want to live, you listen, you learn, and you don't waste energy dreaming about what was. That's how people end up dead or crazy."
I didn't answer right away. My fork scraped the plate. The mush tasted like regret and chalk.
"So what's the plan?" I asked. "FEDRA wins? Fireflies blow it all up? We just… keep doing this until we die?"
She leaned closer, voice low enough that even the walls had to strain to hear.
"The plan, Callum, is survival. The rest? You figure that out once your ribs stop showing."
Her words were sharp, but not unkind. They were the kind that stuck to your bones.
I looked at my mystery meat.
It looked back.
I stabbed it like it owed me money and we are both from south London.
Night in the QZ was quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet where you fall asleep to the sound of crickets and wind chimes. This was the kind of quiet where you knew something was out there, watching, waiting, or just rotting. Knowing there are zombies in this world probably all 3.
Even with the reinforced shutters bolted tight, I could hear the hum of generators, the clink of boots on metal stairs outside, and the occasional cough that sounded like it had given up halfway through living.
I laid on my cot, eyes open, staring at the cracked ceiling like it owed me answers.
Still no menu.Still no HUD.Still no floating blue tutorial box telling me how to summon my first morally ambiguous companion.
Just silence.
And my four-year-old body. Small. Weak. No mini-map. No stat screen. No glowing sword that scaled with sarcasm.
"Bro really gave me the tutorial and ghosted like a Tinder match."
Where are the people who say "Personality is all that matters." Huh? Stood up on my first interdimensional travel. Oh the embarrassment.
I rolled over, pulling the scratchy blanket tighter. I'd taken a nap earlier, so now sleep was mocking me from a distance like a smug ex. My brain wouldn't shut up. It kept replaying the voice's words on loop, like a bad podcast I didn't even subscribe to.
"✨Your very own summoning system✨."Yeah? Where is it, Sparkle Bastard?
"Oh nooo, I'm a fallen angel, not a demon, teehee, your system won't unlock till later~."
Liar. Fraud. Celestial scam artist. Probably on fucking Epstein's list the nonce.
I didn't know what I expected. Maybe a screen to pop up when I said "status" or "open system" or "I consent to late-stage capitalism." Nothing worked. I tried all the magic words — even "please." I was getting desperate.
No pings. No levels. No quest log. Not even a "you have no friends" notification. Just the joy of having full access to a four-year-old body and a vague sense of cosmic betrayal.
"Cool. Guess I'll go collect bottle caps and emotional damage like everyone else."
I stared at the wall. A tiny crack ran diagonally from the floor to the ceiling, like the apartment itself was trying to escape.
What was I supposed to do? Grow up, hope I lived long enough for my glorified gacha system to unlock, and in the meantime become just another QZ kid running errands for stale bread and half-rusted scissors? Waiting for Joel and Ellie to kill enough FEDRA to destabilise the QZ and have another WLF situation where all FEDRA and families are hung on lamp posts?
Yeah, sounds about right.
And yet…
There was something beneath the disappointment. A little ember. Stupid, flickering hope. I didn't know what I'd be, or when the system would show up, or if I'd just die one day tripping into an open sewer pipe filled with clickers. But something about this world broken as it was, felt unfinished.
And I wasn't ready to quit it.
Not yet.
So I closed my eyes and whispered to the void:
"You better come through, asshole."
Then I rolled over and kicked the blanket off, because it was scratchy as hell and I was already angry.
Sleep eventually found me.I didn't dream.
But I did wake up with an idea, and the imaginary voice in my head of Junkrat screaming.
"I'VE GOTTEN AN IDEA"
Time passed.
Which was rude, honestly. I wasn't done sulking about my missing system. But apparently, childhood doesn't care about your cosmic disappointments.
I didn't wake up one day and suddenly understand everything. It crept in, slow and quiet. Muscle memory from a past life blending into tiny hands and developing legs. Sarcasm upgraded from "funny noises" to "actual weaponized tone." Vocabulary expanded. So did the existential dread.
My relationship with my family was... complicated.
Or, as Grandma used to say, "functional enough to not stab each other over rations."
Tomas, my dad was there. Solid. Present. But emotionally muted. The kind of guy who loved through action, not words. When I got sick, he brought back real aspirin from somewhere "he wasn't supposed to be." When I had nightmares, he stood by the door until I fell asleep again without saying a word. His way of showing love was making sure we had hot water and the generator didn't flicker.
He never asked what I was thinking. Which was smart, really.
Elena, my mom, was a different flavour of chaos. She had expectations. Not loud ones, but sharp. She never raised her voice, but when she looked at me, it felt like I was failing a pop quiz on survival instinct. She wanted me focused, disciplined, and preferably useful and ready and alive for when they are not there anymore.
I tried. Sometimes.
But it was Grandma who understood me. Or maybe she just tolerated me better. She used to say I had an "old man soul" and laughed like that was some kind of inside joke with the universe. She taught me how to boil herbs, how to barter without speaking, and how to walk like I didn't care, even if I was dying inside.
She also coughed more as the years went by. Subtle at first. Then not.
One winter, she didn't come to the table.
By spring, she was in her bed all day, skin pale, eyes cloudy, breath rattling like her lungs were made of scrap metal. They said it was "contaminated exposure." Bullshit. She hadn't left the building in months.
FEDRA didn't test her. Didn't help. Just flagged the apartment for "internal risk" and waited.
When she stopped breathing, they came fast. Flamethrower squad. No warning. No burial. No moment of silence. Just two guys in sealed suits who turned my grandmother into smoke in front of the entire block.
We weren't allowed to speak during the procedure.
Tomas stood still the whole time. Elena watched through the shutters with her jaw clenched tight. I sat on the floor and didn't move until the room stopped smelling like scorched fabric and burnt tea leaves.
After that, things got quieter.
Sometime around then, Tomas's brother, Daniel. a man I barely remembered, showed up for three hours and dropped off a kid. Nina Reyes, six years younger than me, all tangled curls and loud questions. She was technically my cousin, but more like a random NPC that got dumped into my storyline with no backstory.
She lived in one of the southern housing blocks with her mom. I saw her maybe once a month, when Tomas remembered he had a niece and tried to pretend we were a happy, connected family. Nina didn't care. She talked constantly, carried a red ribbon in her hair she said protected her from "the zombie air," and once gave me a paper flower that I immediately stashed in my locker like it was priceless treasure.
She was annoying. I liked her anyway.
Life inside the QZ wasn't safe, but it had routines.
By age nine, I was enrolled in FEDRA's Youth Preparedness Program — or as I liked to call it, "How to Become a COG in 12 Easy Steps." They taught us to follow orders, assemble rifles blindfolded, and keep our mouths shut if we saw anything weird.
Spoiler: I didn't always follow that last one.
I did "official" things — ran paperwork, helped carry ration crates, and learned how to scrub boots without crying. But my real education happened elsewhere.
In the alleys. The vents. The tunnels.
Old Joe, the half-mad scavenger near the fence line once told me, "Kid, there's more truth under your feet than above your head." So I started checking the floor more. And I started finding things.
Not treasure, not yet. But stories.
Old bunkers. Half-collapsed stairwells. Forgotten storage rooms full of rotted boots and sealed doors that hummed with generator power.
Some of them even had FEDRA markings on them, the kind that weren't in any manual.
I started carrying a notebook. Drew maps in the dark. Made deals with kids too scared to go with me but curious enough to trade for what I found.
Little by little, I became the weird kid with the info. Not important. Not powerful. But watched.
And still no system.
Just my own two hands, a growing list of side routes, and the creeping sense that if the voice ever did come back, it owed me interest.
Most people inside the Boston QZ fall into three categories.
You've got the lifers — the ones who genuinely think FEDRA is keeping the world glued together with rules and boot polish. Then there are the anglers — people who smile, follow the rules, but have five illegal things in their closet and know exactly when to vanish. And last, you've got the ghosts, the ones who look like they already died inside, just waiting for their body to catch up, not counting the infected that are in some underground abandoned places under the city, who are dead men walking, literally.
I was somewhere between category two and three.
FEDRA school was everything you'd expect from a military-controlled daycare. Uniforms. Slogans. Worksheets where we had to circle the proper response to "what do you do when you see Firefly graffiti?" The correct answer was always "report it." The real answer was "don't get caught looking at it."
Teachers weren't teachers. They were rebranded officers who gave us half a history lesson and half a "shut up and sit down or else." Most of them didn't care. One of them — Officer Lang — had eyes like someone who used to be a poet before the world broke him into a civics instructor.
I was a mediocre student on purpose. Smart enough not to be a target, lazy enough not to get promoted into the "maybe he'll be an officer" track and saddled with metric fuck ton of work and expectations and even more eyes looking in my direction.
Outside school hours, I worked.
Kids like me carried paperwork, swept floors, moved supplies. If you were strong and didn't mouth off, you got extra rations. If you were small and good at squeezing through tight places, you got stuck with things like inventory shifts in storage units where half the labels were either water-damaged or written in blood.
Not literal blood.
Probably.
I did my job. I smiled when I had to. I stole what I could when no one was watching. Just enough to keep it interesting.
That's how I met Lia. She was my age, had long blond hair, bright blue eyes. Usually wore jeans, some old sports shoes and dark blue jacket.
She is Quiet. Usually wearing a knit hat even in summer. Helped her aunt run a ration stall in one of the approved market lanes. Most kids my age were loud or stupid or trying to prove something. Lia was neither. She watched everything. Said very little. When she spoke, it was always worth hearing.
We didn't talk much at first. Just traded glances. Then came the first exchange — I gave her a packet of unopened disinfectant wipes I'd found in a broken crate, and she handed me a sealed tin labeled "not coffee." It wasn't. But it was bitter and hot and better than the ration sludge.
After that, we shared info. Who was buying. Which patrols looked bored. Which ration packs were double-sealed and worth fighting over.
Never friends. Not really. But there was trust there. Unspoken. Mutual. Valuable.
Then there was crazy old Joe, full of scars, wrinkles and smelling of booze.
He wasn't old the way grandmas are old. He was old the way concrete gets old. Cracked, stained, forgotten by time. Joe camped near the fence line on the south end, where the buildings started to lean and the wind smelled like wet rust. He wears a coat full of stitched-on patches, each representing a "zone he's seen." Claims one is from "where the sun still works."
He told stories. Half were nonsense. The other half were probably nonsense but had just enough detail to feel wrong.
"Used to be a door under the old clinic," he told me once. "They locked it from the inside. Not to keep people out. To keep something in."
"Sure, Joe."
"Suit yourself."
The thing is, sometimes Joe's stories lined up with places I'd already seen. Vents that were welded shut. Hallways that ended in clean-cut walls. FEDRA claimed certain wings were collapsed even though they had power readings.
So I listened. I remembered. I checked.
That's how I started building my own mental map. Not just of the QZ, but of the cracks inside it.
Abandoned stairwells. Half-crumbled basements. Dead-end tunnels that weren't so dead if you brought the right tools. Every week, I added something new.
I kept everything in a notebook I hid under a floor tile in my bedroom. Marked routes. Notes on patrols. Loot spots. Scav reports. I didn't share it. Not even with Lia. Not even with myself, out loud. Just in case.
The longer I lived here, the more obvious it became.
FEDRA controlled the surface.
But the real QZ lived underneath.
And I was getting better at navigating it.
It started with a smell.
Not the usual kind of smell. Not mold or piss or the weird chemical tang that came off wet concrete. This was something different. Metallic. Faint. Like blood and rust had made a baby and left it to bake in the sun under fifty pounds of garbage.
Naturally, I followed it.
It was two blocks north of "The Grid" where we live, the place 2 blocks north is called "The Spine" its where the buildings were more bone than flesh. The kind of area where FEDRA patrols didn't linger and locals didn't ask questions. In an alleywey between what seems and abandoned sex shop and a laundromat, there are two half-collapsed industrial grade washing machines, and between them there was a pile of trash and rubble that looked like it had been there since the outbreak. No one had touched it. No one had reason to.
Until I noticed a breeze.
A faint exhale from underneath making the plastic bag slowly rustle, from underneath.
I started clearing it. Quietly. Slowly. Moving in chunks over a few days so no one would see me and decide they deserved credit.
By the end of the week, I'd found it. A concrete access hatch half-buried under rusted shelving and tangled rebar. No FEDRA markings. No warnings. Just a faded maintenance stencil that read "Drain Line C-12."
I pried it open with a busted crowbar I'd found two months earlier.
And stepped into silence.
Not just quiet. Silence. Thick. Damp. Smothering. The tunnel dropped down into a sloped hallway that led into darkness. My flashlight, which barely worked on the best days, flickered like it was having second thoughts.
But the moment I stepped inside, I knew.
This place was untouched, this part of the sewer was probably blocked off from the rest, it was long and windy, with some scattered trash. I probably walked for a good 30 minutes and noticed that, there were no signs of looting. Usually everything from the sewer would be taken even soggy cardboard boxes, but here they lie in dozens.
No graffiti. No bloodstains, just old dump, but after walking for a while the road branched into 2, one is blocked off and collapsed, the other has a dead end with a metal double door that is rusted.
When I step in I whistle with what's in front of me, various gears, old and dusty but still probably functional. Abandoned crates with FEDRA stamps and what I can guess is pre-outbreak stamps from other businesses and organisations. All so faded they looked like relics. Tools. Sealed lockers. Emergency packs. A collapsed medical box that is sealed shut, and even an old generator that will need patching up.
All of it untouched because no one had gotten in.
Or maybe no one had gotten out.
I moved slowly. Careful not to kick dust or set off a chain reaction of collapsed ceiling tiles.
I presume this is an old storage facility, a warehouse, with 2 more rooms than this, I walked up to the door on the left and inside had more storage and cargo, still intact and unopened. The other side had a rusted metal door that looked like someone tried to weld it shut from the inside. I didn't go near that one. Hell to the fuck no, I dont know whats in there, knowing my luck probably a squad of bloaters.
But the most important part?
A broken window. Cracked open just enough for light to leak through at an angle no QZ building could cast. I climbed up on a crate and looked through it.
Beyond the glass was open space. Overgrown grass. Half a highway overpass covered in moss and vines.
The sewer system was on the very edge of the Boston QZ.
Or maybe even just beyond it.
Which meant I had access to something no one else inside had seen in years.
And I only had one way in or out. Through the hatch buried under rubble.
A secret place. Unmapped. Unclaimed. Full of resources and mystery.
My own little dungeon.
And I'd just claimed it.
I made a mental note of everything. Sealed it back up. Covered the entrance again, more carefully this time.
It was dangerous. It was stupid. It was exactly the kind of place a smart person avoided.
Which meant I'd be back tomorrow.
I came back the next day.
No hesitation. No prep montage. Just grabbed my flashlight, my crowbar, and stuffed my bag with a protein bar, and some water and an old bandage, and the kind of optimism that gets kids killed in horror movies.
The alleyway was still empty. The trash hadn't moved. The plastic bag was still rustling like it was waving me back in.
I climbed down, sealed the hatch behind me, and made my way back through Drain Line C-12 like I'd been walking it for years.
The storage warehouse looked exactly the same. Untouched. Dark. Full of the kind of crap that would make FEDRA wet themselves if they knew it was down here.
But now I wasn't just exploring. I was hunting. I wanted that medical box open. I wanted to see what was in the lockers, test the old tools, maybe even check the generator for parts.
It was stupid. I know that now.
I should've left it be. Marked it down, waited, planned something longer term.
But instead?
I tried to open the box.
The medical one. The big, sealed FEDRA crate. I wedged the crowbar under the side, braced my whole body against it, and pulled like my life depended on it.
Which, as it turns out, it almost did.
It didn't budge. Not even an inch. Whatever locking mechanism and materials it used was still functional, and my skinny eleven-year-old arms weren't putting a dent in anything other than my pride.
I gave up after ten minutes, breath ragged, sweat dripping down my face and into my eyes.
Then I made the second mistake.
I tried checking the far corner of the room — the one I hadn't gotten to yesterday. The crates were stacked weirdly high there, like someone had been organizing them before everything went to hell.
I stepped up on one of the lower ones. Reached for a box overhead. Tried to use the side as leverage to pull myself higher.
The crate shifted.
I slipped.
And I fell straight down, my leg catching the jagged corner of an open locker as I went.
There was a moment, a very small, very stupid moment, where I thought I was fine.
Then the pain hit.
Not a sting. Not a scrape. This was a full-blown, muscle-splitting, mind-wiping ripping sensation that tore through my entire left leg. I screamed, dropped hard onto the concrete, and curled in on myself before I even saw the blood.
But oh, there was blood.
Soaking through my pants, pooling under my thigh, trailing out from the cut like someone had turned on a faucet labelled "fuck you specifically."
My flashlight clattered away. I crawled after it, fingers trembling, breath shallow.
The second I tried to stand, I collapsed. My leg didn't just hurt — it shut down. Like a power outage from the thigh down.
I dragged myself across the floor toward the medical box. It still sat there, unbothered, smug, sealed like the tomb of a king.
I punched it. That did nothing except make my knuckles ache.
No way in. Just a big stupid crate that probably had antibiotics, gauze, and morphine laughing at me from inside.
I pressed the bandage roll I'd brought into the cut. It wasn't enough. Not even close.
By then I was getting dizzy.
I don't remember how I made it back to the tunnel. I just remember pain. Dragging my body across concrete. Crawling over wet patches and broken tiles and whispering curses with every breath.
Eventually, I found the hatch.
Pulled myself up through it.
Fell into the alley.
I couldn't walk. I could barely crawl. My leg was numb. My vision was going dark at the edges. I stumbled out into the Spine's main road, half-blind, legs trembling, blood soaking through my pants and leaving a nice little trail behind me like a goddamn scavenger breadcrumb path.
I think I made it to the stairs near Checkpoint 3.
I remember a voice.
"Holy shit, that's Reyes' kid!"
"He's bleeding! Someone get a patrol!"
"Hey, hey, stay awake, alright?"
Everything was spinning. Someone was holding me up. Or maybe I was lying on the ground and just thought I was upright. I couldn't tell.
And then, just as everything went dark—
Ping.
Soft. Mechanical. Real.
A sound that didn't belong in this world. Not from the streets. Not from the panic.
From inside me.
System.
Finally.
The last thing I remember before passing out?
"Oh now you show up, you absolute gacha-rigging bastard."
Then everything went black.