Somewhere Northeast of Central Knot Crater
Three days after the Voidout
The world didn't end with fire.
It ended with stillness.
Samantha Bridges walked a path where the wind had forgotten how to howl. The land was gray now—drained, exhausted. Not even Timefall touched this zone anymore. As if the sky itself knew it had taken too much.
Each step was deliberate. Not because she was tired, but because she didn't want to leave a footprint.
Kael had been there.
She'd seen him on the ridge. Felt the echo of him in the chiral density. Mire too—she hadn't seen the girl clearly, but she'd felt her. A pulse in the air, familiar and haunting.
Samantha hadn't gone down to him.
Some part of her regretted that.
Most of her didn't.
Not yet.
---
She reached an old outpost bunker by dusk. Pre-UCA, off-grid. Probably a smuggler's stop once, back when people still tried to make connections without politics. The roof was gone, the interior half-flooded. But the comms still had power.
Samantha knelt beside the terminal and jacked in.
No Bridges uplink.
Good.
She didn't want them finding her yet.
She accessed her private line instead—a closed echo channel only two people had ever used.
> NO SIGNAL.
She stared at the blinking screen for a long moment before shutting it down.
She unpacked quickly. No photos. No keepsakes. Her only possessions were her gear, her rifle, and a single broken cargo tag she kept tucked inside a scrap of oilcloth. The name on it was burned off.
But she remembered who it had belonged to.
A girl.
A child.
One that had never made it to the shelter her parents tried to reach.
Samantha had found the body near an old tar fall two years ago. She'd carried it out. Cremated it. Named the BT that formed from it. And then, when the chiral spike passed, she walked away.
Some porters left trails of cargo behind.
Samantha left silence.
---
That night, she dreamed of the Voidout.
But not the moment of the blast.
The moment before.
A corpse twitching on the gurney.
A technician too slow to burn.
The siren spinning red across her visor.
And someone—a man—screaming from the other side of the prep bay. Voice cracking like he was trying to stop fate.
She hadn't seen his face.
But she remembered his sound.
When she woke, her breath caught in her throat. Her suit read normal, vitals stable. Still alone.
She stood and walked outside.
The stars were dim tonight, as if ashamed to watch.
---
Samantha didn't use Odradek anymore.
She could sense BTs well enough on her own. Her DOOMS was Level 2, same as it had always been—but the longer she walked, the clearer the "echoes" became. She no longer needed line-of-sight to know where the shadows were.
She stopped by a half-collapsed transmission tower. Black tar lined its base, but no hands stirred within it. A BT had passed through here… maybe a day ago.
She knelt in the ash and whispered, "Where did you go?"
She didn't expect an answer.
But the wind shifted slightly.
And in the distance, something answered back.
Not a voice.
Not a howl.
A footstep.
---
By mid-morning, she reached higher ground. From here, she could see the faint glow of another BT zone forming to the southeast—Kael's direction. She hesitated.
Part of her wanted to go to him.
Part of her wanted to watch him from a distance.
He wasn't ready. Maybe she wasn't either.
She didn't want to be seen as a symbol again. Not by Bridges. Not by the UCA. And especially not by someone like Kael, who walked with the dead and still bore the weight of his living.
What if he looked at her and only saw another ghost?
What if she looked back and saw the same?
---
She sat on a cliffside and pulled out a small, rusted dog tag. Not military issue. Homemade. Just a number carved into it:
7.
It had been her call sign, once. Back when she was part of the elite courier unit known as Specters. Before Bridges absorbed them. Before they told her to stop naming the BTs she killed. Before they told her she was too emotional to carry a BB.
They'd given her a new name.
"Porter."
But she'd never forgotten what it was like to feel human.
Not just a courier.
A witness.
---
As night came again, Samantha built a fire using old resin packs and a broken shelter panel. She rarely made fires anymore. They attracted things. Gave away position.
But tonight, she needed to feel the warmth.
She stared into the flame.
And thought of Kael's eyes. Sharp. Hollow. Searching.
He didn't wear the Bridges name anymore.
That mattered.
So maybe she'd let him find her.
Eventually.
---
Before dawn, she walked again.
She reached a cliff overlooking a valley where the BT activity had grown thick. In the center of it stood a warped monolith of blackened steel—an old comm tower twisted by the blast. BTs floated silently around it, moving in rhythmic spirals, drawn to something unseen.
She would have to pass through.
She didn't hesitate.
She walked straight into the center.
The BTs sensed her immediately.
Hands reached.
Whispers echoed.
But she didn't run.
Didn't attack.
She raised one hand and whispered a name.
> "Kael."
The BTs froze.
Then backed away.
Like even the dead knew what was coming.
---