Somewhere over the southern Detroit Exclusion Zone, Early October, 2285.
The muted whine of the Vertibird’s twin rotors thrummed through the cabin—a deep vibration in the bones, overlaid with the higher, mechanical whirr that seeped through armor plates and up through Hadrian’s spine. It was the kind of noise that drowned out stray thoughts and casual conversation both, turning everything into half-shouts and hand signals.
The craft pitched lazily in the crosswinds, a slow rocking that made loose gear sway on their hooks. If they’d been flying somewhere safe, the rhythm might have put half the squad to sleep.
But nobody slept on approach to the Detroit Exclusion Zone.
The air inside the cabin tasted like recycled sweat and gun oil, with a faint sting of hot hydraulic fluid edging in from the engine housing. Dust motes drifted through the thin red glow of the interior lights every time the Vertibird shuddered.
Hadrian adjusted his grip on the G11E held tight against his chest armor — not out of fear of losing it, but because the familiar weight settled him.
Feels right in my hands. Always does. If I put it down, I start thinking too much.
The rifle smelled faintly of polymer and old smoke. The textured grip fit comfortably against the grooves worn into it from a dozen drills and firefights.
At five-nine, Hadrian didn’t take up much room in the vertibird’s cramped cabin. His frame was compact, built for distance and endurance — a hiker’s build more than a brawler’s. Beneath his armor, lean, corded muscle moved with the quiet ease common to beastfolk.
His fur marked him clearly as African wild dog–blooded: mottled patterns of black, tawny gold, and white covering his muzzle and the edges of his jaw, tapering down his throat. Rounded, alert ears twitched unconsciously with every shift in engine pitch. His eyes — a striking amber-gold — caught reflections in the dim cabin like an animal built for twilight hunts.
Despite his youth, there was nothing green about him.
Four months out of boot camp and it already felt like he’d lived a lifetime in combat.
The feeling followed him like a shadow.
A creeping sense of déjà vu that made his fur prickle at the back of his neck sometimes; like he’d fought these fights before, in other streets, under other skies.
He didn’t understand it. He mostly tried not to think about it.
Across from him, Stroud hunched over his long rifle — all lean angles and quiet focus, the kind of man who seemed built out of firing lines and bad sleep. Half his face hid under his helmet, the rest under the shadowed cabin wall. The marksman racked the bolt back with a sharp clack, chambering a fresh round.
“If these bastards wreck my zero again,” Stroud muttered over the squad net, “I’m filing a complaint with God.”
Briggs — broad-chested, bearded, and perpetually offended at the concept of injury — yanked a strap on his medical bag until it creaked.
“If any of you idiots get shot today, pick a limb I can spare,” he said. “I’m not rebuilding anyone from the waist down again.”
Van Doren, the squad’s compact, gleefully unstable demolitions man, crammed more grenades into his pouches with the enthusiasm of someone packing for a vacation.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grunted. “You love us really.”
Kepler sat beside him, a squat wall of muscle with the squad machine gun resting across his knees. He fed the belt through with slow, deliberate confidence — the kind that made people move when he spoke.
“Just give me something worth 7.62,” Kepler said. “Been weeks since I’ve really gotten to stretch her legs.”
At the forward bulkhead, Sergeant Zimmer — a brick wall in human form, carved from stubbornness and sleep deprivation — didn’t even look up.
“Stop bitching,” he said. “Detroit’ll give you plenty to shoot.”
Hadrian snorted quietly.
Same shit-talk every flight. Ritualized complaining. Keeps the fear under the armor.
At the very rear of the cabin, two Watchers sat as still as statues.
Their presence put a weight in the air that had nothing to do with cabin pressure.
They wore fitted combat jumpsuits reinforced with modified Hellfire plates, the armor mounted directly to their bodies instead of onto frames. No servos whining, no bulky exoskeleton—just compact power packs on their backs feeding their onboard electronics. Their armor was digitigrade too, built to their lupine legs, allowing them to move with a fluid, predatory grace when they chose to.
Their helmets were unmistakable: elongated canid muzzles of layered alloy plating, ear housings armored yet flexible, shaped to accommodate their tall, jackal-like ears. On closer inspection, Hadrian could pick out holy iconography etched into the metal—protective sigils, Wepwawet’s marks, stylized representations of the jackal-wolf god himself. Not gaudy. Just… deliberate.
They reported directly to Wepwawet, and everyone knew it.
Hadrian tried not to stare. Failed.
One of the Watchers’ helmets tilted almost imperceptibly his way. Then the other’s.
Even through their opaque visors, it felt like being looked straight through.
Great. They noticed. Don’t stare at the god-wolves, genius. They’ll start asking why you’re interesting.
On the squad net, Van Doren muttered, “Tell me those two aren’t staring at us.”
Stroud replied, “They’re always staring. They know shit, that’s why.”
Zimmer cut in. “If they wanted you dead, you wouldn’t see it coming. Eyes front.”
Hadrian tore his gaze away and forced his shoulders to relax, fingers smoothing down the side of his rifle.
They’re here for the mission. Not for me. Hopefully.
On impulse—or maybe nerves—he reached back to the stowage rack behind him. His fingers brushed cold metal until they found a pair of familiar contours. He pulled out two extra magazines of caseless ammunition and an additional plasma grenade, clipping the spare mags into place and locking the grenade into an open slot on his belt.
Overkill, maybe. But it made his hackles lie flatter.
Then he pulled his helmet into his lap and slid it over his head. The lower muzzle plate sealed up with the upper half in a soft, hydraulic click-hiss. His ears settled into the internal housings, and a half-second later, the HUD flickered to life.
His visor brightened, a translucent overlay painting the interior of the Vertibird with icons and data. Little green boxes winked into being around each squadmate as they entered his field of view, accompanied by tags and vitals.
“This is your captain speaking,” the pilot’s voice crackled through the cabin speakers, light and mocking. “We’re on final approach. Please make sure your seats are in the upright position and tables are stowed away. Landing zone’s looking a little hot, so watch your step and kick some ass.”
Kepler snorted. “If he offers peanuts, I’m shooting him out of the sky.”
Briggs replied, “Relax. You’re not surviving the landing anyway, big man.”
Hadrian huffed a quiet laugh.
Old World jokes on the way to hell. Enclave Air, always full service.
The Vertibird’s nose dipped slightly, then climbed as it transitioned from forward flight into VTOL mode. The rotors deepened in pitch, the change in thrust pressing everyone slightly back in their harnesses.
That climb meant one thing.
They were close.
Zimmer unlatched and pulled himself up, one gauntleted hand hooked onto an overhead strap as the cabin rocked. His amplified voice carried easily over the rotor thunder.
“Alright, listen up, Hellhounds,” he barked, using their unit callsign. “We’re just under a minute out from the LZ. Remember the mission. We hit the ground, clear the LZ, push half a click down the road, and secure the radio station. Simple.”
Stroud muttered, “Always simple when you say it.”
“The radio station is active,” Zimmer continued. “Command says local cult’s been using it to spread their bullshit across the region. We’re shutting that down and taking the infrastructure. It’s intact enough to be worth something. Try not to break it if you don’t have to.”
Hadrian’s HUD marked a rough objective icon on his map overlay. Intel had shown the station mostly intact—scorched, patched, half-swallowed by overgrowth, but intact. Too intact. Either it had escaped the worst of the Great War’s fire, or someone had painstakingly repaired it.
If someone fixed it, they’re organized. Organized is worse than feral.
The cult broadcasts had been picked up on multiple bands—warped sermons, scrambled invocations, voices that didn’t always sound entirely human coming through bad radios in fringe communities.
It needed to be silenced.
A working transmission center in Detroit needed to be claimed.
That was why Hadrian Strahl and the Hellhounds were packed into a metal box screaming toward a decaying neighborhood.
The side doors slid open with a heavy whine, and cold Detroit air slammed into the cabin—sharp, carrying the scents of ash, exhaust, and distant burning. The crew chief and door gunner stepped into position, minigun mounts swinging down and locking with an audible clunk.
The pilot’s voice came over the hanger net again, slightly tighter now. “LZ is hot. Birds are making their PIB runs now. Eyes open.”
Outside, green-white flashes of plasma fire stitched the ruined landscape as supporting craft dropped Plasma Incendiary Bombs ahead of them. Far-off thumps rolled through the air, followed by rising plumes of smoke and the flickering glare of burning impacts.
The miniguns spun up with their familiar rising whine.
The crew chief leaned out, scanned the ruined intersection below, and then opened fire. The roar of chaingun fire swallowed everything—the steady, punishing growl of metal being hurled at inhuman speeds.
“Go, go, go!” the crew chief shouted over the radio.
They moved like they’d done it a hundred times.
Harness clips released. Boots hit the deck. The Vertibird’s skids kissed broken asphalt with a dampened lurch—and the Hellhounds flowed out of the bay doors like water, splitting into their assigned lanes.
Hadrian jumped, landing hard enough to feel it in his knees before muscle memory smoothed his stance. The rotor wash hammered at his armor and ruffled the fur on his neck. Grit and dust stung his muzzle filter as he pivoted toward cover.
Four other Vertibirds had set down in the same ruined crossroads, their rotors kicking up spirals of dust and debris that blurred the edges of the world in brown-gray haze.
The intersection itself was a graveyard.
Low-rise apartment buildings slumped against each other like drunks, their windows blown out, brick faces pockmarked with old impacts and new plasma scars. Shattered storefronts gaped open at street level, windows blown and doors hanging broken. On the northeastern corner, a Red Rocket station lay half-collapsed, its once-cheerful signage blackened and sagging, the ruined rocket a rusted spear aimed uselessly at a dirty sky.
Sporadic small-arms fire cracked from the northern stretch of the street. Through his scope, Hadrian saw ragged silhouettes leaning from cover—hoods, mismatched armor, scraps of cloth painted with blasphemous symbols.
“Contact north,” Stroud called. “Upper windows, right side.”
“Engage,” Zimmer snapped. “Take what you can, don’t overextend.”
Hadrian dropped to a knee behind the twisted body of an old sedan, shouldering his rifle. The world narrowed to crosshairs and breath. He exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger.
Pop-pop-pop.
Three-round burst. The target staggered back from the window, red mist painting the bricks.
Kepler’s machine gun thundered to his right, sending a string of rounds into a doorway where muzzle flashes had appeared. Glass, brick, and something softer erupted outward.
The air tasted like burnt propellant, hot metal, and the oily tang of Vertibird exhaust. The street echoed with the overlapping clatter of both suppressed and unsuppressed weapons.
Somewhere above, one of the Vertibirds launched a volley of rockets. The distinctive whoosh preceded an explosion that tore through an upper floor overlooking the intersection, blasting out a cloud of dust, brick fragments, and what had used to be a gunman.
Across the street, the evidence of their CAS work was everywhere. Blackened scorch marks licked across the pavement and building faces, and green-glowing puddles of plasma residue steamed where the PIBs had struck. Anything of flesh and blood caught inside those impact circles had simply ceased to be.
Detroit pacification, Enclave style. Melt it, land on it, shoot what’s still moving.
Zimmer’s voice came over the squad net. “Hellhounds, push north. Clear the street. Station’s half a click out. Keep it tight, watch the flanks.”
They flowed forward, rifles up.
The Enclave soldiers advanced in bounding overwatch, one element moving while the other covered, leapfrogging their way up the ravaged avenue. Boots crunched over shattered brick, twisted rebar, and the skeletal frames of vehicles eaten by time and heat.
To Hadrian’s left, Stroud’s unsuppressed rifle cracked in measured shots, each report echoing off hollowed buildings. Ahead, Van Doren fired a short burst into an upper window, showering the street below in broken glass. Kepler kept the machine gun talkative in controlled bursts, chewing chunks out of a balcony one second, then stitching rounds across the hood of a wreck the next.
Briggs moved low and fast, hugging cover, kit clinking softly as he ran. “If someone goes down, try not to fall apart in a place I can’t reach,” he said over the net. “I’m not scraping you out of a drainage ditch.”
“Love the positivity, Doc,” Van Doren replied.
Hadrian kept his muzzle high, scanning windows, doorways, alley mouths. When he fired, it was with deliberate intent.
He aimed low on purpose.
First shot to the gut—
fold them forward.
Second to the sternum—
knock the wind and structure out.
Third climbed into the throat or the skull.
If they’re dying, they’re not shooting back. Simple math.
The G11E’s caseless rounds tore through necrotic tissue and cheap armor with contemptuous ease. The ghouls they saw wore whatever they’d pulled off the dead—old riot gear, strapped-on scrap, metal plates bent into shape and wired into place. It didn’t matter. The bursts ripped through, and the targets crumpled.
Ahead, a feral ghoul lunged from a storefront, screaming, claws extended. Briggs didn’t even break stride. One controlled burst—tap-tap-tap—and the ghoul’s momentum carried its collapsing body face-first into the sidewalk.
From a partially collapsed stairwell, a cultist lunged out with a pistol. Stroud’s shot hit him so hard his legs seemed to forget how to function, dropping him like a marionette with its strings cut.
A trio of ferals burst out of a side door in a wave of shrieks, only to meet Kepler’s machine gun. The wall beside them detonated in a hail of plaster and gore.
Hadrian stepped around a burned-out motorcycle, muzzle sweeping. The air carried the smell of rotting ghoul flesh, long soaked into the concrete, mixed with dust and the sharp tang of oxidized metal.
This is what we see most days. Ferals, scavenger cult trash, idiots trying to be martyrs. Street-level stupid.
He knew better than to think this was the worst Detroit could offer.
There were places deeper in the city where the light didn’t fall right, where Watchers went in pairs and came out quiet. Places where air and geometry bent wrong, where the Old War’s spiritual fallout pooled like radiation.
They weren’t there. Not yet.
They’d made it about halfway to their objective when the hitch showed its teeth.
Something tugged at Hadrian’s awareness—a little spike of wrongness at the edge of his vision. He scanned ahead, narrowing his eyes behind the visor.
About a hundred yards up, the buildings on either side of the street—old mixed-use blocks with shattered storefronts and stacked apartments—had matching holes punched out of their upper corners. Too clean. Too symmetrical. Not the random collapse of time and weather.
The holes were dark. Black squares amid faded brick.
He tracked slowly across one opening and caught the faintest glint of blackened metal reflecting harsh noon light.
That’s a barrel. Shit.
“Get off the street! Heavies ahead!” Hadrian barked over the tacnet, his Afrikaner accent sharpening the words. “Top floors, hundred meters!”
The squad reacted on instinct. Men and women dove for cover—behind shredded cars, into doorways, behind chunks of fallen masonry.
A heartbeat later, the world exploded.
Great orange muzzle flashes bloomed from the dark holes, followed by the gut-punch roar of heavy machine guns opening up. Thick-caliber rounds ripped into the pavement where they’d just been standing, tearing chunks of asphalt into the air in a hail of rock and shrapnel.
Hadrian felt shards bounce off his armor and helmet, heard the savage metallic shriek as rounds slammed into cars and ate through their rusted frames.
“Jesus—” Briggs swore, sliding behind a half-collapsed concrete planter. “They got the whole damn street dialed in!”
“Keep your heads down!” Zimmer snapped. “Find cover, return fire if you’ve got a line!”
Zimmer himself slammed in behind the gutted shell of a Corvega. Even rotted and long since cored of its reactor, the old pre-War car had enough mass to soak up heavy hits.
Kepler dove behind the remains of a bus stop, swearing into the net. “This is some real bullshit, Sarge.”
“Complain later,” Zimmer growled.
Dust and pulverized concrete filled the air in a gritty haze. The heavies weren’t probing—they were raking the street, stitching automatic fire in long, punishing sweeps.
Hadrian pressed himself lower against his cover, peering past the planter’s cracked edge, timing the patterns of the tracers.
This is too clean. Too well placed. Not random. Someone thought this through.
At the periphery of his vision, he saw movement that didn’t match the flinch-and-duck pattern of pinned infantry.
The Watchers.
One of them rose slightly from behind a doorway where they’d taken temporary cover, then stepped forward, gauntleted hand closing around the handle of a rusted steel door. Metal squealed in protest.
The Watcher pulled.
The door tore free with a wrenching shriek, ripping off the hinges and warping like soft tin. The Watcher tossed it aside like scrap and disappeared into the dark interior beyond. The second followed, slipping into the building with the easy, predatory confidence of something that had never once doubted its own strength.
Briggs muttered, “Okay, I’m never kicking in another door again.”
Stroud said, “Door looked at them funny.”
Van Doren added, “I hate when they do spooky shit like that.”
Hadrian swallowed.
Either they saw a route to the gunners or they sensed something inside. Not sure which is worse.
Zimmer’s voice crackled sharply over the net, cutting through the roar of gunfire.
“This is Hellhound Actual. We’ve run into stiff resistance on approach to our target. Heavy guns covering the street, about a hundred meters north. Top floors, both sides.”
The tacnet went quiet for half a second, just the hiss of static and the distant thump of other engagements.
Then a different voice came online—brighter, almost cheerful, completely at odds with the situation.
“Hellhound Actual, this is Iron One. We hear you. We’re two mikes out from your position. Can you hold until then?”
Hadrian recognized the voice from earlier briefings—a platoon commander from the armored detachment.
Zimmer’s reply was tight, but controlled. “We’re pinned down, but we can hold. Just hurry the hell up.”
Kepler muttered under his breath, “Two minutes is like an hour in Detroit time.”
“Shut it, Kepler,” Zimmer said. “We’re not dead yet.”
“Roger that, Hellhound Actual,” the armored commander replied. “Mark them if you can. We’re on our way.”
The heavies continued pounding the street, rounds chewing into abandoned vehicles and smacking into building faces in showers of sparks and fragments.
Then, suddenly, there was a pause.
The machine guns fell silent—just for a few seconds, but it was a gap every soldier recognized.
“Reload!” someone shouted.
“Move! Move!” Zimmer called. “If you’re exposed, shift! Get off the line!”
Those still caught out in bad positions broke for it—diving into alleys, scrambling through ground-level storefronts, sliding behind sturdier chunks of concrete—while Stroud, Kepler, and others poured return fire up at the firing points, forcing the gunners to keep their heads in the shadows.
Hadrian sprinted for a more solid chunk of wall, hunched low, boots slipping on broken glass. Rounds snapped past overhead, one close enough that he felt it in his teeth.
He slid in behind a ruined concrete planter just as the heavy guns roared again.
Only this time, the rounds weren’t coming for them.
Farther ahead, a group of cultists had pushed out toward the Enclave positions, maybe thinking they could rush them while the heavies kept their heads down.
The machine guns cut them down without hesitation.
Hadrian watched through his scope as the gunfire tore into their own comrades—torsos rupturing, limbs flying, bodies spasming and collapsing in grotesque marionette motions.
Van Doren’s voice crackled in his ear. “Did they just light up their own guys?”
Briggs said, “Guess ‘friendly fire’ isn’t in their doctrine.”
Stroud added, “They don’t care. Just bodies to throw at us.”
One cultist leaned from behind a burnt-out delivery van, screaming something unintelligible, and got halfway through a gesture before a high-caliber round punched through his skull in a red spray.
Hadrian’s stomach twisted.
No loyalty. No coordination. Just spam bodies until something breaks. Even for enemies, that’s ugly.
He adjusted his grip, forced his breathing steady.
We hold. Two minutes. That’s all.
Those were among the longest two minutes of Hadrian’s life.
He caught movement in the reflection of a side mirror on a half-crushed sedan—shapes looming at the far end of the street they’d advanced from.
Two triangular silhouettes rolled into view, low and mean, tracks grinding over rubble with steady, unhurried confidence.
M50 Ontos.
Hadrian almost sighed in relief.
On the net, Iron One’s commander came back on, voice amused. “Right on time, boys. Mark ’em and keep your heads down.”
“Copy that, Iron,” Zimmer said. “Hellhounds, mark those nests!”
Hadrian rose just enough to clear his rifle above cover and flipped on his laser sight. A tight red line reached through drifting dust to paint a point of light on one of the upper gun positions. In his periphery, he saw other lasers flick on, tagging the second nest across the street.
Behind them, the Ontos vehicles adjusted position. Their banks of 105mm recoilless rifles elevated slightly. Hadrian heard the faint, metallic thunk of mechanisms locking.
“Cover your ears, boys,” Kepler muttered.
Then the world screamed.
Six 105mm rounds tore free with a series of concussive WHOOOMPs that punched in Hadrian’s chest like physical blows. The shells streaked overhead, leaving coiling trails of smoke as they slammed into the first building’s upper levels.
The impact turned the corner of the structure into a detonating bloom of brick, glass, and flame. A heartbeat later, the second building followed suit, its upper floors vanishing in a blinding flash and a thunderous roar that rolled down the street like a physical wave.
Chunks of masonry and twisted steel rained down. The shockwave slammed into Hadrian’s cover, rattling his teeth and sending dust and ash cascading from the upper ledges of the buildings flanking them.
For a moment, all he could hear was the high, thin ringing in his own ears.
Ontos overkill. Wouldn’t trade it for anything right now.
Gradually, the sound faded enough for other noises to filter back in—small debris clattering against the street, the low groan of collapsing brickwork, the distant pops of secondary small-arms fire from other sectors.
The air was now a churning gray wall of dust and smoke. Shapes moved within it only as vague shadows.
As the haze began to thin, the damage came into horrifying focus.
Where the upper fronts of the buildings had been there were now gaping, jagged wounds. The entire facades had been sheared away, leaving the gutted interiors of offices and apartments exposed—broken desks, dangling light fixtures, bits of personal life frozen mid-collapse.
The street below was clogged with rubble—chunks of brick, twisted rebar, splintered wood, and the broken, mangled bodies of cultists that had been too close when the shells hit.
Wires sparked and snapped from above, arcs of pale blue flickering in the dust. Papers fluttered down like dirty snow. A chair, somehow intact, teetered on the very edge of a half-missing floor.
The tacnet crackled.
“Temper, temper…” a deep, resonant voice drawled.
One of the Watchers.
Hadrian blinked behind his visor.
They… joke? That’s new.
Kepler muttered, “I did not need to know they had a sense of humor, thanks.”
Stroud replied, “We’re so dead.”
Iron One’s commander came back on, chuckling. “What can I say? I don’t like it when cultists think they’re clever. Or try to kill my brothers.”
A few quiet laughs traveled the net, tension bleeding off just a fraction.
Zimmer’s tone was all business again. “Hellhounds, status check. If you’re still in one piece, we’re moving. Objective’s still ahead.”
Hadrian exhaled slowly, feeling the fine tremor in his hands fade as he checked his mag and scanned the devastation downrange.
Detroit tried to bite. We’re still here. One more block in a city that never runs out of teeth.
He rose from cover with the rest of the squad, boots crunching on fresh rubble.
The radio station still waited for them.
And whatever else was listening deeper in the city.
It took them a few moments for the soldiers to reconvene in the street. Dust still rained down from the shattered façades, drifting in slow curtains through the sunlight. The Watchers reappeared out of the left-side building — the one that had taken two direct Ontos hits — coated head to toe in a fine white-gray powder. They looked like someone had rolled them through drywall. Hadrian tried not to think too hard about the fact that they must have been inside when the shells hit.
How the hell are they still standing…?
One of them shook his head like a dog shedding water, sending dust in a ring around his feet.
Zimmer conferred quickly with the armored platoon’s commander. They exchanged clipped radio bursts, a few gestures toward the station, and then a nod. They’d push forward together: armor providing overwatch outside, infantry clearing inside. Simple plan. Dangerous plan. Standard Detroit.
The Enclave soldiers began moving up the street, boots crunching on broken brick and pulverized mortar. Hadrian and several others drew their combat knives as they advanced. The work that followed was grim but necessary. Survivors — maimed cultists, crawling ghouls, men missing limbs but still trying to fight — were dispatched quickly.
Hadrian drove his knife in cleanly, mechanically, throat or heart, depending on angle.
Cleaner than they deserve, he thought dimly. But someone ought to give them that much.
The idea came out of nowhere, unasked, like a reflex that wasn’t entirely his. He shook it off and kept moving.
As they neared the radio station itself, Hadrian finally got his first good look at it.
A big slab of pre-War optimism — stone and brick in immaculate Art Deco lines, blackened with soot and age. The lettering that had once read WJR was long gone, ripped away decades ago, but the outline remained. You could still see where each gothic-style letter had been bolted into the stone, the scorch marks forming the negative image like a stenciled ghost. The pattern reminded him of gravestone rubbings.
Old building, he thought, stepping closer. Feels older than the bombs. Like it was already tired back then.
He reached out and let his gloved hand rest against the warm brick. A faint vibration hummed under his palm — maybe settling stone, maybe wind in the structure, maybe something else. He didn’t linger.
Zimmer’s voice cut through the street:
“Alright, everyone gather up!”
They closed in around him in a loose, dust-covered semicircle.
“We’re heading into tight quarters. Keep your fucking eyes open. Check corners, hallways, closets — anything with a gap big enough to hide a feral or some tweaked-out cult freak. Things get fucky real quick in places like this. We’ve got jack-shit for internal maps, so stay alert.”
Someone in the back — Hadrian thought it might be Kepler — muttered loud enough for everyone to hear, “Guess intel dropped the ball findin’ blueprints for this place, huh?”
Zimmer shot him a flat look through his visor.
“Can only do so much when city hall took a direct hit with a nuke.”
A soft chorus of snickering rippled through the group. Even the Watchers gave the faintest flick of an ear, which in Watcher language was practically a belly laugh.
Zimmer continued, “Alright. We split up. One group secures the basement — that’s probably where the generator is, maybe the transmitter feeds. The rest move through the offices and studios. Sector by sector until we own this place.”
He paused, letting the tension settle, then grinned behind his visor.
“We clear this shit heap, and when we get back home? First round’s on the brass.”
A few whoops and cheers followed, the kind of gallows humor bravado soldiers slip into before doing something risky enough that they have to pretend it’s casual.
Zimmer pulled his helmet back into place, locking the muzzle plates.
“Let’s get it done, Hellhounds.”
Hadrian swallowed once, tightened his grip on the G11E, and felt something deep inside him shift —
not fear, not readiness…
…something older.
Something that stirred when he touched the station wall.
Why the hell do I feel like I’ve walked into someplace I already know…?
A shiver climbed his spine.
Then the Watchers moved toward the entrance without a word, and everyone followed.
They breached the front door without incident.
The door didn’t even creak — it just swung inward on dead hinges that had given up caring decades ago. The lobby beyond was a tomb disguised as a room. Dust motes drifted like slow snowfall through the slanted beams of flickering fluorescent lights. The scattered remnants of old furniture — broken chairs, overturned benches, a receptionist desk with a cracked Formica top — lay abandoned in weird, unnatural positions, as if they’d been shoved aside in a panic and never touched again.
Hadrian took one breath inside and felt his skin crawl.
Wrong. Wrong in the walls. Wrong in the air. Wrong in the way the building’s bones feel like they’re listening.
He wasn’t the only one.
The Watchers halted just inside the threshold. Their postures shifted with animal precision — shoulders forward, ears angled toward the interior, weight centered on digitigrade legs. Anyone with half a clue about their body language could see it instantly:
They were on full alert.
A low growl rolled out of one, deep and resonant enough to vibrate in Hadrian’s ribcage.
“This place…” the first one rumbled, voice muffled through the elongated helmet muzzle, “…has something old in it. Something that has not let go.”
The second Watcher’s visor panned across the lobby, slow, deliberate, predatory.
“Be careful,” he murmured — and when a Watcher warned someone, it was never casual.
Then, with no hesitation at all, both of them moved ahead of the group, padding silently through the dust. Not checking corners. Not scanning for conventional threats. They weren’t worried about the mundane.
That, if anything, made Hadrian’s stomach drop.
Stroud cursed under his breath.
“Fuckin’ knew it…” he growled, slinging his long rifle to his back and drawing his P90C — the cut-down urban variant, a favorite of recon units and people who expected very unpleasant room-to-room fighting.
“Shoulda brought a priest,” Briggs muttered.
“Shoulda brought two,” Van Doren answered.
The squads began spreading out to push deeper into the building, boots whispering across dust-coated tile. The air smelled faintly of mildew, old paper, and something else — something metallic and stale, like the aftertaste of static.
Hadrian was about to fall in with the second element when Zimmer snagged him by the vest strap and pulled him aside. The sergeant’s face was hidden behind his full helmet, but his tone carried the expression just fine.
“Strahl,” he said low, “you’re on point.”
That part wasn’t surprising. He took point often enough.
But something in Zimmer’s voice — tighter, more honest than usual — made Hadrian stop fully.
Zimmer leaned in slightly, modulator dropping to a quieter rasp.
“You’ve got that… whatever it is you’ve got. Sixth-sense bullshit. And it keeps finding trouble before it finds us.”
He flicked a glance toward the Watchers — a small turn of the helmet, quick and cautious, like he didn’t want them reading him.
“This place?” Zimmer jerked his chin toward the cracked lobby. “It stinks of weird. Exactly your department.”
Hadrian blinked behind his visor.
Zimmer had never said it out loud before. Never acknowledged the pattern.
Hearing it spoken — plainly, without sarcasm — made Hadrian’s chest tighten.
“Uh… yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “I can take point.”
For the sake of pretending he wasn’t rattled, he added:
“Shouldn’t be too bad.”
He regretted it immediately.
Zimmer didn’t need a face to show skepticism — the way his helmet tilted a fraction to the side said it all.
Even the air felt like it disapproved.
A creeping cold slid down Hadrian’s spine.
He sensed the Watchers shift their weight, subtle but unmistakable — their version of hackles rising.
And in the hollow place beneath his ribs, something old stirred again.
Liar, it whispered.
You know this place is wrong.
Zimmer clapped him on the shoulder plate — the sharp, solid thud of armor on armor.
“That’s the spirit,” he said, tone dry. “Try not to die in there.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” Hadrian muttered — though he wasn’t remotely convinced.
He stepped toward the interior hallway.
The building responded with a long, low creak —
like an exhale,
like it knew he was coming,
like it had been waiting for him.
It was a slow, methodical advance through the building.
The first feral shambled out from behind a toppled filing cabinet — ragged breathing, twitchy movements, the guttural rasp of something long past human. Stroud put a tight three-round burst into its chest before it even turned fully toward them.
The second group hid in a break room.
The third slumped in a hallway outside an old soundproof door.
And after that third encounter, something clicked hard in Hadrian’s mind.
The scraps of what had once been office clothes.
Dust-caked ID badges still clipped to collars.
A wedding ring on one skeletal hand.
Closets with doors gouged from the inside.
Locked rooms where ferals sat facing the wall, as if waiting for instructions that would never come.
These weren’t wanderers.
These were people who’d been trapped here when the bombs fell.
The realization hit him so suddenly he stopped in his tracks.
“Oh gods…” he whispered. His throat tightened. “Oh gods — these poor people…”
Zimmer stepped up beside him, boots crunching softly through debris. His voice crackled low over the squad channel.
“What’s up?”
Hadrian swallowed hard.
“These people… they’ve been here since day one,” he said. “Since the bombs.”
Zimmer’s hand came down on his shoulder plate — firm pressure through armor, grounding him.
“Hey. Strahl. Breathe,” the sergeant said. “We’ve cleared places like this before. You know the drill. One room at a time. That’s how we get through it.”
Hadrian tried to inhale.
The dust felt thick.
His helmet felt too tight.
His pulse hammered.
And then—
A second voice slid into his thoughts.
Calm. Older. Warm in a way nothing else in this dead place was.
“Rustig nou, seun.”
(Easy now, son.)
Hadrian’s breath hitched.
Not from fear — from recognition he couldn’t place.
“Haal asem… stadig. Jy’s nie alleen nie.”
(Take a breath… slow. You’re not alone.)
The words carried the weight of someone who had said them a hundred times before on long-ago battlefields.
Zimmer’s grip and that familiar-not-familiar voice steadied him at once.
He drew in a breath.
Held it.
Let it out slowly.
“Yeah… okay,” he managed. “We’ll get through this.”
“Damn right,” Zimmer replied, giving his shoulder one last squeeze before stepping back. “Get back on point.”
Hadrian nodded and moved toward the next corridor, rifle raised.
Inside, the voice murmured again — softer, almost approving:
“Dís reg, Hadrian… hou kop.”
(That’s it, Hadrian… keep your head.)
He pushed deeper into the building that felt more and more like a mausoleum, but with steadier feet.
The deeper they went, the more the building’s history revealed itself.
Hadrian’s flashlight swept across a faded logo stenciled on the far wall. The paint was cracked, but still readable: Galaxy News Radio.
He blinked.
“…Huh,” Hadrian murmured. “Didn’t expect that out here.”
Briggs let out a low whistle. “You’re kidding. So this dump used to be one of their affiliates.” The medic didn’t sound impressed; more unsettled, like he’d just found a corpse in an antique suit.
Old promotional posters lined the corridor. A Silver Shroud poster with curled corners. A pre-War talk show advertisement no one in the squad had ever heard of. A smiling photograph of what must have been the newsroom staff. All of it entombed under dust, mold, and over two centuries of decay.
But the longer Hadrian stared, the more the wrongness sharpened.
Up close, the posters weren’t just deteriorating. They had been altered. The edges of the Silver Shroud poster were burned into a sigil-like shape. Concentric circles had been gouged into the newsroom plaque. A microphone stencil had been painted over with looping, spiraling lines. Sheets of paper had fused directly to the walls as if melted there. Wallpaper had warped into patterns that made his eyes ache when he tried to follow them.
Briggs muttered, “Yeah… okay. This place is definitely cursed.”
Hadrian couldn’t disagree.
The blasphemous rot of the cult had sunk into everything — into the walls, the wiring, the drywall. Even the silence felt wrong. Heavy. Like it had been recorded, played back, and distorted a hundred times.
A long, slow creak echoed through the hallway, like the building was holding its breath.
Hadrian felt his skin crawl.
Something deeper inside the station was listening.
As they continued deeper into the station, the dull thud of gunfire somewhere else in the building echoed through the ventilation ducts — distant, familiar, grounding.
Hadrian latched onto it.
Gunfire’s normal. Gunfire makes sense. Gunfire means the others are still alive.
Stay grounded. Stay here. Stay in the now.
Their tacnet crackled with voices from the basement element.
“Basement Alpha to command, second sublevel clear. Got ferals in the storage rooms. Moving to the generator hall now.”
Another voice chimed in, breathless but steady.
“Charlie team just cleared archives. Lots of bodies down here. Old ones. No movement.”
Zimmer gave a quiet grunt at that. Even with helmets on, Hadrian could hear the tension behind it.
He stepped over a broken swivel chair and into a hallway where the carpet had rotted into damp strands. But his mind drifted, uninvited, toward a thought he didn’t want resurfacing here of all places:
Home.
He hadn’t expected the memory to hit this hard in a place like this, surrounded by dust and broken ghosts of the past — but it came anyway, warm and painful at the same time.
Home. Just get home. Finish your term, come back in one piece.
He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.
Can’t have the others be proven right about “going to die out there,” can I?
His siblings had said it jokingly.
His mother hadn’t.
And yet he had enlisted anyway — stubborn, proud, determined — and that decision had carved a quiet rift in the family. Not a permanent one, but deep enough that letters home still carried tension in their margins.
He exhaled slowly.
The inside of his muzzle filter fogged.
Then another thought crept in.
October.
If it’s late October… they’ll be gearing up for the harvest festival.
Lanterns on the old windbreak trees.
Pumpkin wagons coming in from neighboring farms.
Warm cider, bonfire songs, slow-roasted pork.
And—
His birthday.
Only weeks away. Maybe less.
He almost smiled behind the helmet.
But the building didn’t let him keep it.
Because that was when the temperature changed.
It went from stale to cool.
Cool to cold.
Cold to wrong.
Not an HVAC malfunction.
Not an open door.
Not the normal kind of October chill spilling in from a broken window.
This was the cold of something unseen breathing directly on the back of his neck.
The lights flickered once.
Twice.
Hadrian’s fur bristled under the plates of his armor.
“…the hell is that?” Briggs whispered behind him. His tone was tight, nervous.
Stroud answered with a low, unhappy rumble in his voice.
“Feels like a freezer in here.”
Hadrian tried to slow his breathing, but each inhale felt thinner, sharper — as if the air itself was stretching.
Something’s off. Something’s badly off.
Another tacnet voice cut in, unaware of what the upstairs squad was experiencing.
“Basement Alpha to all teams — generator’s still warm. Something’s been down here recently.”
Hadrian barely registered it.
Because the hallway ahead exhaled a visible fog.
The temperature plunged another few degrees.
And that was when Hadrian realized something else — something he should have noticed sooner.
The Watchers hadn’t split off.
They hadn’t taken their own route.
They hadn’t drifted ahead or peeled off to clear rooms like they often did.
They had stayed with his squad.
Both of them.
Right behind him.
Right beside him.
Shadowing his movements like sentries guarding something fragile.
The realization comforted him.
And terrified him.
The Watchers stopped dead.
Both turned their heads toward an adjacent corridor. Their ears — armored under flexible plating — still managed to angle toward the darkness. Their posture changed instantly.
Shoulders forward.
Weight on their toes.
Fingers hovering near weapon grips.
A low rumble rising from one chest.
Zimmer’s tone was a tense hiss over the radio.
“Talk to me. What do you smell?”
Neither Watcher looked back.
One spoke, voice low and resonant through his vox.
“The air is wounded here.”
The second added:
“Something old is awake.”
Hadrian felt it then — a prickling deep under the ribs, like a tuning fork vibrating inside his chest.
He tightened his grip on the rifle.
He blinked — and in that blink, he swore he saw condensation pluming from the darkness ahead.
The building wasn’t just cold.
It was breathing back.
It hit fast.
One moment Hadrian was stepping across the warped floorboards — the next, the wood shifted under his boots with a soft, sickening lurch, as if the whole hallway inhaled beneath him.
Oh shi—
The floor gave out.
A sharp groan shot through the corridor as century-old support beams sheared apart, followed by a thunderous crack. Hadrian barely had the presence of mind to hurl his weight forward. The boards collapsed under him in a violent shudder, cold air rushing upward.
He dove.
His chest slammed against the opposite side of the broken floor, ribs flaring in pain. Dust blasted upward in a choking plume as the boards behind him dropped away into the lower level. The snap of splintering timber echoed like breaking bones.
For a moment he just lay there on his stomach, blinking through swirling dust motes.
Briggs’ voice hit the tacnet, sharp and worried:
“Christ, Hadrian! You good?!”
Hadrian coughed, tasting drywall and something metallic behind it. He forced a breath — thin, uneven — before responding.
“Yeah… yeah. Fucking floor gave way under me.”
He pushed up onto his elbows, staring at the gaping void where he’d been standing seconds earlier.
“Could’ve been a lot worse.”
Zimmer’s voice followed, steady but clipped.
“Mmm. Shit. Copy that. We’ll find another route. Don’t go too far on your own.”
Hadrian lifted his visor slightly to glance across the gap. Zimmer was already studying the hole, helmet tilted in that particular way sergeants do when calculating time, distance, and how close they’d come to losing a man.
Hadrian nodded instinctively, even though the haze made it hard to see.
“Yeah… I won’t go far.”
It sounded like a lie even to him.
A faint shift of movement caught his eye.
The Watchers had stopped.
Both stood rigid on the far side of the collapse, staring directly at him. That familiar prickling sensation threaded down Hadrian’s spine — the one you got only when a Watcher’s attention locked fully onto you.
Not a glance.
A reading.
This time, though, it didn’t feel like scrutiny.
It felt like curiosity.
Ancient. Cold. Patient.
The lead Watcher dipped his head slightly, muzzle angling toward the darkness behind Hadrian.
His voice carried across the gap, low and resonant through the vox:
“Be careful, little one.
It is close…”
Hadrian’s breath caught.
Something about a divine guardian calling you “little one” didn’t just unsettle — it unnerved in a way nothing else could.
A warning delivered like a fact.
Then the Watchers turned and padded after the squad, their silhouettes sliding into the gloom and vanishing with uncanny ease.
Hadrian was alone.
Silence settled around him.
Not the absence of sound — the building still creaked, somewhere a vent rattled, and a loose cable tapped gently against a desk.
But the sense of silence tightened, thick and oppressive, smothering the edges of hearing.
He pushed himself up fully and rolled his shoulder, wincing at the bruise blooming under his armor.
Fucking hate this place.
Every hallway felt wrong.
Every breath tasted wrong.
Every shadow leaned just a little too far, as if listening.
And now he was alone on a half-collapsed floor in a haunted radio station during a Detroit op in October.
He scrubbed a hand down his faceplate.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “The sooner we’re done here, the better.”
He took one step forward.
The building exhaled again.
And the cold sank deeper.
Hadrian moved deeper into the corridor without realizing he was doing it.
Something drew him — not a physical pull, but a quiet funneling of attention. The world seemed to narrow around him, sound dampening, colors dulling until the only direction that made sense was forward. Each step felt too soft. Each breath echoed inside his helmet like he was exhaling into a metal drum.
His rifle stayed shouldered, the weight of it grounding him.
Feels right. Don’t let go.
He wasn’t marching anymore.
He was creeping — instincts tightening like a bowstring. Not just his own instincts, either. Something deeper in his marrow whispered against the back of his thoughts.
Something foul is close.
The hallway curved to the right, and that was when he saw it.
A studio door.
A fogged-over window set into it.
Frosted from the inside — like someone had been breathing on it for hours.
He froze mid-step.
This is it.
This is where the cold’s coming from.
The air felt heavier the closer he got. Not colder — not at first — but denser, like humidity inverted.
Breathable, but wrong.
Thick enough to feel on his tongue.
His boots touched the floor with too much weight.
The silence folded in on itself, thickening.
He stepped in front of the fogged window. Couldn’t see anything except dark, shifting silhouettes.
The moment he leaned close enough—
His stomach flipped.
The air in front of the door changed.
It compressed.
Deepened.
Like stepping near a bonfire, except everything got colder instead of warmer.
Against every survival instinct screaming don’t touch that fucking door, Hadrian reached for the rusted knob.
His gloved fingers hovered over it.
Don’t.
Don’t open it.
Don’t—
He turned the knob.
The hinge let out a long, tortured groan — metal that hadn’t moved in more than two centuries protesting the intrusion. The crack opened just a sliver—
And something hit him.
Not physically.
Not heat.
Not wind.
Pressure.
Sudden, heavy, spiritual pressure.
Like crossing the threshold of an old church just as a funeral rite begins — a weight in the air, thick with memory, thick with presence.
He felt it before he saw anything.
Hadrian pushed the door open.
Dust swirled immediately in the beam of his helmet light, drifting like ash in slow suspension. The smell hit next — stale air trapped too long, mixed with old paper, mold, and something metallic beneath it.
The studio looked like a shrine abandoned to rot.
The floorboards were warped and swollen.
The acoustic foam on the walls sagged in melted clumps.
A toppled microphone stand lay on its side, its cable coiled across the floor like a dead snake.
Then his light caught the bones.
They had been arranged — deliberately — in a careful crescent on the floor before the DJ’s chair.
Some long-fingered.
Some broken.
Some gnawed.
A ritual pattern?
A memorial?
An offering?
Hadrian’s throat tightened.
But then he saw the thing in the chair.
At first glance, it looked like a ghoul — a starved, withered one — but the details were wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Its muscles had atrophied to string and wire.
Tendons hung from gray, crackled flesh like dying vines.
Its limbs were bound to the chair with old wires — some wrapped around its wrists, others looped across its ribs, one coiled tight under its jaw.
And the headphones…
An ancient pair sat fused to its skull.
Literally fused — earcups melted into the scalp, the plastic and flesh indistinguishable.
Cables dangled from the set like intestinal cords.
Hadrian’s muzzle filter clicked as his breathing hitched.
He took one step inside.
The atmosphere shifted.
Sound drifted out from somewhere deeper in the room — layers of faint, distant voices overlapping on themselves, like someone tuning through radio stations with a broken dial.
No rhythm.
No pattern.
No single source.
Multiple voices.
None human.
None living.
He swallowed, forcing his boots to move.
The chair sat dead center of the room.
The figure sat in it like a forgotten mannequin.
Then it moved.
The head turned first — craning at an impossible angle with a brittle crack of vertebrae.
The skin along its collarbone stretched like parchment pulled too tight.
Then the whole chair began to swivel.
Slow.
Grinding.
Metal screaming against rusted bearings in a long, agonizing arc.
The sound echoed through the studio like a creature dying a second time.
Hadrian’s breath fogged his visor.
His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
And the voices — all those overlapping whispers and hissed radio fragments — suddenly went silent.
Only the chair moved now.
Only the chair.
The creature’s swivel finally completed.
It faced him fully now.
The angle of its head — tilted too far, tendons pulled tight, vertebrae visibly misaligned — made Hadrian’s bones ache just to look at it.
Its empty eye sockets locked onto him with horrifying precision.
And then that sensation washed over him:
It was studying him.
Not observing — studying.
Measuring.
Comparing.
Like it recognized something.
Something in him.
Hadrian’s instincts surged hard enough to make his vision pulse.
Shoot it shoot it shoot it shoot it—
But his body refused.
His breath caught halfway up his throat.
His legs locked.
His tail pressed flat against the inside of his armor.
Frozen.
The creature leaned forward in its chair — joints scraping bone-on-bone — and then—
It spoke.
Two voices.
Layered.
One low and drowned in static.
One shrill and metallic, echoing like a broken transmitter.
“Haaaaadrian…”
The second voice cut through the air like a knife:
“LAAAANS—”
Both names hit him at the same time.
His real name.
And the one buried deep under his ribcage.
The one only the gods and the dead should know.
The impact was immediate:
A white-hot spike shot through his skull.
His ears rang.
His visor flickered.
His breath left his lungs in a strangled choke.
His heart seemed to stop, then restart with a violent thud.
Then came the worst sensation —
Sleep paralysis.
Mind awake.
Body locked.
Every instinct screaming MOVE, MOVE, MOVE—
And nothing obeying.
Not the fingers.
Not the legs.
Not the breath.
Frozen.
Pinned under its gaze like prey under a hawk’s shadow.
The creature’s jaw unhinged slightly and it spoke again — both voices overlapping into one awful, broken harmony:
“Weee rememmberrr…”
Then it lunged.
It moved faster than anything that should still be alive.
The wires binding it snapped like brittle twigs.
The headphones fused to its scalp crackled with a burst of static.
And then it launched — arms outstretched, fingers splayed, joints popping in rapid succession like amplified knuckle-cracks echoing through blown speakers.
Hadrian’s mind screamed.
His body didn’t move.
Not yet.
“Goddammit, seun—!”
The voice inside him — old, gravelly, impatient — slammed awake like a boot hitting a barracks door.
Before Hadrian could process it, his body jerked into motion.
Not from him.
From something else inside him.
A presence that coiled behind his ribs like a shadow with muscle memory.
His legs bent sharply, loading like springs. A command — instinctual, wordless — ignited through him:
Move. NOW.
His muscles obeyed before he did.
He launched backward just as the creature’s fingers scraped across the front of his armor.
The impact blew him through the plate-glass partition between studio and production room.
The window exploded around him in a storm of glittering shards — a crystalline roar ripping through the space.
He hit the floor hard.
Rolled through dust, tangled cables, rotting paper.
His visor cracked.
His rifle skittered away.
Air blasted from his lungs.
“Voorentoe, Hadrian! Op jou voete!
(Forward, boy! On your feet!)”
The inner presence snapped like a whip.
He pushed upright — not fully by choice.
The creature poured through the shattered window frame after him.
Not climbed.
Not lunged.
Poured.
Its limbs jittered in stiff, puppet-like bursts as if pulled by mismatched strings.
Voices — plural, layered, broken — screeched from its throat:
“Haaaadrian—
Laaans—
Haaaadrian—”
His breath hitched.
Cold sweat crawled down his spine.
Hadrian scrambled backward — again with that strange sense that his body was acting half a heartbeat faster than his mind.
His boot lashed out in a vicious kick, hammering the thing’s bony sternum.
It didn’t flinch.
Didn’t react at all.
When its fingers grazed his arm—
Cold tore into him.
Not surface cold.
Not winter cold.
Bone-deep.
Vein-deep.
Soul-deep.
A violent shudder rattled through him. His teeth clicked before he forced them still.
And then—
Something inside him pushed back.
Not a shove.
Not a strike.
A pulse — like a shockwave rolled outward from the center of his chest.
Invisible.
Instinctive.
Defensive.
It threw the creature off-balance for half a second.
Only half a second — but enough.
His right hand shot to his belt in a blur he didn’t fully control.
He didn’t remember choosing to throw the grenade.
But the pin was already between his fingers.
“Good lad,” the inner voice muttered — a faint rumble, almost fond, almost irritated.
The plasma grenade arced from his hand in a perfect throw.
It clattered at the creature’s feet.
FWOOOM—
A miniature green sun detonated.
Heat washed over him.
Paper disintegrated.
Tiles cracked.
Metal warped.
A scream of superheated air tore through the ruined studio.
Hadrian shielded his visor with his arm.
When the flare faded—
The thing was still standing.
Clothing vaporized.
Skin cracked like burnt clay.
Patches of bone exposed and smoldering.
But otherwise… unharmed.
It lunged again—
And that was when the wall behind Hadrian erupted inward in an explosion of brick, plaster, and dust.
Two massive silhouettes smashed through like living battering rams.
The Watchers.
Wepwawet’s chosen.
Digitigrade legs braced wide.
Hellfire plates glowing.
Amber eyes blazing behind their visors.
They hit the creature with divine force.
One slammed into its torso, driving it into the floorboards hard enough to splinter them.
The other moved impossibly fast — a divine blade materializing in hand like summoned light.
The blade plunged down—
Straight through the thing’s chest.
Impaled it to the floor.
The creature shrieked — a discordant, multi-layered howl of every stolen voice tearing loose at once.
Then the scream died.
Its limbs twitched.
Then stilled.
Silence fell — heavy, final, suffocating.
Hadrian crouched frozen where he’d landed, lungs burning, shoulder bleeding, breath fogging the cracked visor.
The echo of both his names still rang in his skull.
And he wasn’t entirely sure which terrified him more:
The thing that had called to him…
…or the thing inside him
that had answered first.
The sensation of not being in control bled away as suddenly as it had taken hold.
Hadrian staggered.
His limbs — moments ago moving with terrifying precision not entirely his own — now felt thick and heavy, like they’d been poured full of wet cement. The world rushed back in a messy, overwhelming swirl:
sound
breath
heartbeat
pain.
Then the temperature shifted.
The awful cold that had crawled into his bones didn’t snap away — it retreated in slow, uneven waves, like a fever grudgingly breaking.
Hadrian exhaled shakily.
And felt something warm slide down his back.
It traveled in a slow line beneath his armor, tracing the curve of his spine before soaking into the under-padding.
…shit.
His stomach flipped.
He reached back, fingers brushing the torn fabric around his left shoulder blade.
His gloves came away damp and sticky.
Fuck. Must’ve been the glass… or whatever that thing did when it touched me.
The wound burned.
Not a hot burn — a cold one.
Wrong.
Unclean.
But pain meant he was alive.
He’d take it.
Especially since he had no idea what that thing had been…
or what it had tried to do to him.
A shadow loomed over him.
One of the Watchers turned from the corpse and fixed its attention on him. The massive figure crossed the distance with slow, deliberate steps and knelt — a motion impossibly fluid for something so large, Hellfire plating shifting silently.
A heavy, clawed hand braced Hadrian’s elbow.
The other steadied his back.
“You are very fortunate, little one,” the Watcher rumbled through his vox, the deep resonance vibrating into Hadrian’s armor.
The glowing visor narrowed slightly — an expression as close to concern as Watchers ever showed.
“Though… you are hurt.”
Hadrian opened his mouth to answer — maybe to thank him, maybe to lie and say he was fine, maybe to ask what the hell had just happened —
—but the ground began shaking with the sound of pounding boots.
Zimmer’s squad stormed through the hole the Watchers had blasted into the wall, rifles up, armor dusted white from the falling plaster. Helmets swept the room in sharp, practiced sweeps.
Zimmer was in the lead, chest heaving.
“What the fuck is going on in here?!”
His visor snapped toward Hadrian.
“Had! You okay?!”
Hadrian tried to answer — but the Watcher beside him rose to his full towering height first.
“He is fine,” the Watcher said, calm and absolute. “All things considered.”
Zimmer froze mid-step, head tilting back to take in the full size of the divine guardian.
The Watcher gestured toward the corpse pinned to the floorboards — the twisted body still twitching faintly around the divine blade buried deep in its chest.
“The main threat in this building has been dealt with.”
Zimmer stared at the thing.
Then the blade.
Then Hadrian.
“…the main threat?” he muttered. “Fantastic.”
Stroud gave a low whistle.
“Jesus fucking Christ…”
But the Watchers weren’t done.
The second one — the one who had rammed his way through the wall — was already kneeling beside the corpse, hands moving with careful, reverent precision. He drew out a small funerary urn reinforced with metal bands and etched in protective script.
Ancient.
Sacred.
Older than any Vault-Tec or Enclave record.
He held it against the creature’s chest and began to chant.
Not English.
Not Afrikaans.
Not Latin.
Not any language Hadrian recognized.
Older.
Heavier.
Measured like a ritual that had been carved into the bones of time.
The air trembled faintly.
After several moments, the urn glowed — a soft, steady gold. A warmth that pushed back the last stinging threads of cold.
The Watcher finished the chant and looked to his companion.
A single, solemn nod.
Whatever he had done…
…was done.
Hadrian shivered.
Not from fear.
Not from cold.
From the knowledge that whatever the creature had once been —
its story was not allowed to simply end.
Not here.
Not like this.
The next stretch of time blurred.
Hands on his shoulders.
Zimmer cursing.
Kepler muttering threats against “Detroit’s bullshit.”
Stroud pacing, muttering, “We are not paid enough for this.”
Van Doren refusing to look at the corpse.
Briggs finally muscled in, shoving a medkit against Hadrian’s hip.
“Alright, genius,” Briggs grumbled, “either I send your stubborn ass back for stitches, or you take a stimpack. Pick one.”
Hadrian groaned.
He hated both options.
Stitches meant time out of rotation.
Time out meant missing missions.
Missing missions meant letting the squad carry his weight.
And stimpacks…
They worked.
Oh, they always worked.
But he hated the sensation.
He could feel them crawling under his skin — knitting tissue, rebuilding fibers, closing things he didn’t know were open.
Sometimes he swore they fixed things he didn’t know were wrong.
Sometimes that comforted him.
Sometimes it didn’t.
He sighed and muttered, “…fine,” and held out his arm.
Briggs jabbed him before he could change his mind.
The icy-hot rush surged through him — muscles tightening reflexively, breath catching behind his teeth.
It did the job.
But Hadrian hated every second of it.
—
Hadrian barely remembered getting out of the building.
The Watchers moved him through the halls with a speed and purpose that didn’t match their size. One took point, the other stayed behind him, their presence forming a silent corridor of protection around him as they swept him toward the exit.
He didn’t walk so much as get guided.
Not shoved. Not dragged.
Just… moved.
Every feral that lurched into their path fell without slowing them down.
Every shadow that twitched died before it could become a threat.
Hadrian barely even raised his rifle; the Watchers didn’t give him the chance.
They broke out onto the street through a half-collapsed emergency exit.
Sunlight. Dust. The smell of old brick and scorched metal.
The Watchers positioned him behind a shattered concrete barrier and stayed with him — one on each side. Their presence blocked half the street just by standing there.
He wasn’t allowed to move.
He wasn’t allowed to rejoin his squad.
And he wasn’t allowed to argue.
He tried once anyway.
“Sarge will need me up top—”
A massive hand pressed against his shoulder plate.
“Rest,” the Watcher said simply.
Hadrian shut up.
He wasn’t there when they assaulted the roof.
He only got the audio.
The tacnet exploded in a storm of overlapping voices:
“Contact right! Heavy gun by the antenna mast—!”
“Stroud—take the left, pin the slit!”
“Kepler, suppression—no, more—there you go!”
“Zimmer, they’ve got a belt-fed on the HVAC mound—watch the lane!”
“Frag out—mask up!”
Hadrian clenched his jaw.
He wanted to be up there.
Wanted to be clearing rooms.
Wanted to be taking fire with them.
Instead, he sat on the street with two divine warriors watching over him like a pair of ancient statues that would rather let Detroit crumble than let him stand up too fast.
A final burst of gunfire crackled over comms.
Then Zimmer’s voice:
“Roof secure. Guns down. LZ’s clear.”
Hadrian exhaled.
Half relief.
Half shame.
The Vertibird swept in low over the smoking street, kicking up ash and loose debris in a spiraling cloud. Its landing struts hit the pavement with a thud that trembled through Hadrian’s boots.
Zimmer’s squad jogged out of the station ruins moments later — sweat-streaked, dust-caked, breathing hard.
Zimmer stormed toward the Watchers.
“Strahl’s walking. He’s breathing. He can finish the op and get evaluated later. He’s fine.”
The Watchers didn’t flinch.
“He is coming with us,” one said, tone iron-bound.
Zimmer opened his mouth to argue again.
The Watcher on Hadrian’s left turned his head slightly.
Just slightly.
Enough.
Zimmer closed his mouth.
“Fine,” he muttered, slapping Hadrian’s shoulder plate. “Don’t die before I get back.”
Hadrian tried for a smile.
It came out shaky.
They put him in the Vertibird alone with the two Watchers.
No squad.
No medic.
No one else.
Just him.
And them.
They took the side seats, leaving Hadrian in the center like a precious artifact under transport.
The cabin door slammed shut.
The rotors spun up.
The aircraft lifted.
And suddenly the ruined street fell away beneath them.
The cabin smelled like:
cordite
hot metal
old wiring
sweat
and the faint ozone sting of someone’s overworked laser pack.
Hadrian’s exhaustion hit like a body blow.
His muscles trembled.
His eyelids drooped.
His breath slowed.
He didn’t intend to lean sideways.
He just… did.
His head drifted until it rested against the Watcher to his right.
The divine warrior didn’t shift or comment — just accepted the weight.
Steady.
Silent.
Endlessly patient.
The steady thrum of the rotors washed through him like a heartbeat.
He let his eyes close.
His mind didn’t go to the creature.
Didn’t go to the cold or the near-death moment or the ice in his bones.
It went to home.
To harvest festival lanterns swinging in the breeze.
To bonfires crackling under crisp October skies.
To mugs of spiced cider warming cold hands.
To his mother humming while chopping apples.
To his father’s tired but proud smile.
To siblings arguing about stupid, harmless things.
He hadn’t meant to think about any of it.
But exhaustion made memory louder.
Pain made memory honest.
And as the Vertibird carried him away from the ruined city, Hadrian drifted into that strange liminal space—
half memory,
half dream,
half something else altogether.
Where the other presence waited.
Quiet.
Restless.
Watching.
The one that had moved his body.
The one that whispered in frustration.
The one whose instincts had saved his life.
The one whose name he didn’t dare say.
Hadrian’s breathing softened.
The thrum of the rotors blurred.
Darkness folded around him.
And the first question rose from the depths:
Why did I enlist?
And how far back does the answer go…?