Chapter 4 #2
“Good. Now put it away before you start thinking about it.” He claps me on the back with a touch that means to be gentle, but isn’t.
We sit at the workbench, the unspoken contest of exhaustion drawing both of us to silence.
The bunker is colder than usual this morning, the air edged with a metallic bite that could be ozone or just the memory of electricity.
Above us, the ceiling pipes vibrate with the subsonic rumble of the water recycler—a sound so constant it’s become background, the world’s oldest white noise.
Jackson picks at the seam of a ration pack, tears it open with the same efficiency he applies to everything else. He passes it to me without comment, and I dig in, tongue numb to the salt and chemical aftertaste. Only when the meal is half-gone does he speak, eyes focused on the far wall.
“Do you remember your old life yet?” The question is ritual.
He asks it every week, always on a different day, as if that might trick me into remembering.
I shake my head, mouth full of compressed protein.
“Only the highlights. The rest is just… noise.” I tap my temple.
“The gaps are bigger than the memories.” He nods, unsurprised.
“You were never much for sentimentality. Kept your head down, did your work, pissed off everyone you couldn’t outthink.
” He almost smiles. “You’d have hated being a patient. ”
“I do,” I say.
Another silence, not awkward. This is how we talk now—staccato, clipped, no room for sentiment.
When the breach alarm sounds, I’m already half out of my seat. The klaxon is nothing like the polite warnings of the upper labs; it’s a primal, air-raid howl that shreds through thought and habit both. Jackson is up too, already moving, hand on my shoulder to guide me toward the main corridor.
“They’re early,” he mutters, more to himself than me. “Should have had another week before the next sweep.”
He shoves a sidearm into my hand, no time for lessons now. “Two clips. Headshots only. Save the chemical ordnance until they bunch up.”
The plan unspools between us wordlessly. I move ahead, feet silent on the concrete, and press my back to the corridor wall. The Geiger counter at my belt ticks up, but not enough to matter. The real danger is human.
Jackson keys in a code on the next-door panel; a chunk of steel slides free, locking the armory behind us.
We’re in the “kill corridor” now, a bottleneck that leads directly to the lab proper.
The only light comes from recessed emergency LEDs, tinting the space in surgical blue.
I glance down and see my hands are steady, even as the rest of me is trying to vibrate out of existence.
The pounding above us is rhythmic, not random.
Whoever’s outside knows the layout, knows exactly where the load-bearing seams are weakest. The second breach alarm triggers, a lower, grinding sound.
Jackson tosses me a canister—acid, not labeled, but I know the density by the way it lands in my palm.
My body remembers before my brain does. I follow his lead, popping the seal and dumping a thin stream across the floor between two markers painted on the concrete.
“Why acid?” I hiss, keeping my voice low.
Jackson shrugs. “Slows them down. Wounds, doesn’t kill. Fear is better than death, sometimes.” He checks his own weapon, then his watch. “We’ve got maybe three minutes before they’re inside.”
I crouch beside the workbench at the corridor’s end, pull open a drawer, and without thinking, start assembling a set of pressure triggers—old-school, mechanical, but effective.
My hands fly across the components, wiring them with the muscle memory of a life I don’t recall living.
Jackson watches me for a second, then grins, white teeth sharp in the blue gloom.
“Didn’t think you’d remember how to do that. ”
“I don’t,” I say. “But my hands do.” The admission makes my skin crawl, but I finish the rig and slide it into place beneath the first line of defense.
The pounding intensifies. Somewhere behind the wall, a plasma torch ignites, its high whine piercing even the heavy bunker slab.
Jackson barks a single word: “Positions.” He takes the far end, near the fallback barricade.
I hunker by the bench, pistol out, acid canisters stacked within reach.
The pendant around my neck is awake now, blue at first but shading toward purple as the torch eats its way through the wall.
I grip it, not for comfort, but because the pulse tells me how close we are to catastrophe.
I run inventory in my head: Two pistols, five clips, three acid vials, six pressure bombs, one backup knife. One Jackson Avery. One me.
There’s a moment before every disaster where time suspends itself, goes elastic. I look over at Jackson and see his face: hard, focused, but a trace of worry in the lines around his eyes. He nods, once, in my direction.
“Ready?”
No. Never. But I say, “Yes,” and it’s true enough.
The torch cuts out. For a second, the world is silent except for the distant shriek of the wind outside the sealed hatch.
Then the wall explodes inward, sending a sheet of fire and shrapnel down the corridor.
Jackson is already firing, his first shot clipping a helmeted head before the body even crosses the threshold.
The Ravagers come in a wave—three, then five, armored but careless.
They trip the first wire and the acid floods their boots, eats through the soft joints at the ankles.
Screams echo, but the rest surge forward, firing blindly.
The pendant at my chest flashes once, then twice, searing heat against my skin.
I return fire, my shots tight, measured, surgical.
A raider barrels toward me, swinging a blade.
I duck, step inside the arc, and bury the backup knife in his armpit.
He collapses, red arterial spray painting the floor.
My hands are slick, but I don’t slip. I grab another acid canister, hurl it down the hall.
The glass shatters, mist hissing as it eats through both armor and flesh.
Jackson’s voice is a low growl, steady despite the chaos. “Two more, left side.” I shift, see them. I fire—miss once, hit twice. One goes down, the other staggers, falls into the puddle of acid left by the first trap.
I reload without looking, body doing the work before my mind even catches up. The corridor is a slaughterhouse now, bodies twitching on the concrete, the air thick with the smell of burning plastic and singed hair. For a moment, there’s no movement except for the trembling of my own breath.
Jackson calls out: “Hold.”
I freeze, pistol aimed at the darkness beyond the breach. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes.
We wait. Ten seconds, twenty. A minute. The only sound is the tick of the Geiger, now slow, almost restful.
Jackson rises, shoulders squared, and walks the length of the corridor.
He pauses by each downed body, checks for life.
He’s methodical, unhurried, as if this were just another round of target practice.
When he finishes, he turns to me. “You did good,” he says.
It’s not praise, just a statement of fact.
I sag against the workbench, the world narrowing to the pendant’s pulse and the electric burn in my arms.
“Who were they?” I ask, knowing the answer but needing to hear it.
“Ravagers,” Jackson says. “Clan Vost. They’ve been after this place since before you woke up.”
“Why?” The question is more rhetorical than real, but he answers anyway.
He kicks a dead raider, nudges the helmet off. The face beneath is young, barely old enough to shave. “For the same reason as everyone else. They want what’s left. And they don’t care who they kill to get it.”
I look at my hands, see the blood under my fingernails, and feel nothing.
Jackson returns to the workbench, pulls a flask from under the top drawer, and takes a long swig before passing it to me. “Drink. You’ve earned it.”
I do. The alcohol sears my throat, clears my head.
When I hand it back, Jackson looks at me with something like pride, or maybe just recognition.
He wipes his mouth, then gestures at the breach.
“They’ll be back. Always are.” He reloads his pistol, motions for me to do the same. “You ready to do this again?”
I glance at the corridor, at the carnage. At my own hands. “Yeah,” I say, surprising myself.
He nods. “Good. Because next time, they’ll bring friends.”
We reset the traps, reload, and wait. The bunker isn’t safe, but it’s ours, for now.