Ten years after the battle at Single Oak, the four groups of Oregon are still reeling from its after effects. Territory lines were drawn and stories have been told, those who were heroes once are legends now. In order to avoid new conflicts, solstic...
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"So," Phoenix loomed over Rixon's shoulder. "What is it?"
They'd taken the odd metal device back to their camp after they found it and had given it to their designated tech guy. He was leaning over a table in the medical house, with the pieces splayed out in front of him. He itched at his beard for a bit, his bushy brows narrowed to concentrate. "It's a tracker of some kind, but it's a shitty one." He finally said.
"A...tracker?"
"Or some sorta butchered attempt at it. Looks like a half-assed high school final project." Rixon grunted. "But if it was makin' noise like that blondie's crow said, then it was doin' somethin."
"But why would anybody want to track a biter?" Phoenix exclaimed, shaking her head.
"Your guess is good as mine, Nix." Rixon replied. "But your Daddy asked what it is and that's it. Tell em.' If he's gotta talk about it more with me then he will, but you need to worry your mind about other stuff, not this leader-ly gunk we old folk gotta deal with."
Phoenix huffed. She rubbed her temples to offset a headache that would inevitably develop. Much as she loved her teacher, Rixon sure could be a pain in the ass. I was one of the people who found it, I deserve to know what's going on! Not just the leaders! I'm just as important as the rest of you, I'm just as strong! I should be ahead of this whole thing, just like Dad and Papa. Maybe Hawk was right. Maybe she really was more capable than she thought and her group themselves were dragging her down. She bit the inside of her cheek. Sometimes the idea of leaving didn't seem so bad, until she thought about her family.
Keisuke would miss me so much. Daddy and Papa would be worried sick. How could I ever leave here? It goes against everything...Loyalty to the group is what matters and leaving is the exact opposite, especially leaving with Reapers! They'd curse my name after I'm gone, but if I'm not here to hear it would it matter? No, just knowing about it is bad enough. So many things plagued Phoenix's mind from day to day, it was like when she started to think she couldn't stop. That usually led her down some unpleasant mental rabbit-holes. Maybe if she thought less then everything would be alright. Just stop caring. You promised yourself you wouldn't start trouble again, so just stop thinking and do what you're told for once!
Phoenix wrapped her arms around herself and left Rixon to keep poking at the mechanism. The older people in this group would know more about techy stuff than the younger ones, who barely remembered any of it. Ronan and Violet, Phoenix's twin cousins, hadn't ever seen a cell phone before. She didn't even remember what those looked like. Nobody had use for them anymore, unless they stripped them down for parts. All the cell towers had stopped working, so they were all useless. Radios could still be used hypothetically, but there were no radio towers out here and nobody to operate the systems within the city, let alone having any power to actually broadcast. It was honestly a shock to see a technological mechanism still in use, no matter how amateur-ish it'd been built.
