Pathfinder

Part Three

As always, it's the pain that tells me I'm alive.

My breath comes in ragged shallow bursts and for a good few seconds I'm convinced that something's blinded me before I manage to blink the swirling cacophony of black spots from my vision. HUD's flashing like a fireworks display, all manner of panicked, glowing red warnings begging to tell me the myriad ways in which I am fucked-except for the spot where my visor has cracked completely, the reinforced smart glass shattered, a parting gift from the spokesman and his wastelander cohorts. Smart move, too. Why waste a bullet when you can just break open someone's helmet and let the radiation finish the job for you?

Muscles aching and straining from the effort, I haul myself onto my knees and then onto unsteady feet with a groan.

Spokesman and his cronies got me good. Stripped me of my gear pretty well, left only the battered armour and expended VIPER rounds behind. Anyone else would be glowing with the rad intake in just an hour or so, assuming they even got back up at all. But the wastelanders didn't factor in the subdermal antirad injectors in my legs and arms. They didn't know about the weeks of gene therapy treatments me and mine went through back in the day, the ceramic bone-lacing and synaptic boosters they implanted into every member of a regiment sent out to try and carve out a small sliver of sanity in a world that had lost its mind.

Or, to put it less politely? They didn't know who they were fucking with.

Getting ahead of myself, though. First things first: assess the damage and take stock of the situation. Find a weapon. Regain contact with Sidrovich and let him know his wonderful little 'outside the City business deal' has turned into a gargantuan clusterfuck and his merchandise is gone. That ought to get the fat Ukrainian shit into gear. Helmet's screwed six ways till Sunday, though, so I won't be getting through to him via its broadcaster. I haul the now useless hunk of metal and superpolymer layers off my head and let it hit the ground with a muffled thump. Still unsteady on my feet, I manage to haul off my overcoat and chest plate, leaving only the silver nanowire-lined bodysuit underneath. Internal power is still kicking, at least, heating the wire and keeping the chill at bay-if it wasn't, I'd be little more than an icy block of flesh by now.

One other small mercy is the holdout pistol that I have stowed in the chest plate's internal pockets, which managed to avoid the rifle fire I took. It fits snugly into my hand, the ceramic components feeling flimsy and small in the midst of the swirling grey snowstorm that surrounds me. Better than nothing, though.

Strapping the remains of my armour and jacket back on, my eyes dart about the bullet-riddled remains of the warehouse for Levi's body. My partner lies where he fell, face-plate stripped and shattered by his killers. Ice is starting to form on his skin, lending him even more of an inhuman, waxwork-like quality. The dead never look like they're sleeping, and whoever claimed otherwise was a fucking idiot. Limping over to him, I drop down to one knee so my hand can brush those staring eyes closed.

"Ostavaysya spokoyno, bratan," I mutter quietly, the words almost lost in the wind, "I'll send them on after you soon enough." Nearby, the corpses of Sidrovich's two contractors are also starting to frost over. As I reach down to close the eyes of the second man, it suddenly occurs to me that I never even learned their names. Didn't care to. I look down at his face, lined and scarred, bearing the marks of a man who had witnessed the end of the world and lived long enough to tell the tale. Survived all of that, only to die here in the snow for a pair of pre-war power cores.

Outside of the ruined warehouse and into the open elements, it quickly becomes apparent that the wastelanders have been thorough in their efforts to steal or destroy anything Levi and I brought with us. The truck is battered and smoking, flames still smouldering up from the engine block where the battery rows have been stripped or smashed. Nothing I wasn't anticipating, but the sight still sends my stomach spiralling. Vehicles like that don't come cheap in the City, and it had been Levi's pride and joy to own one.