Acid Reign : Genesis

“You never really get used to the Fringe. It tests you. It beats on you, and just when you think you might have actually figured out how to subdue its ferocity, it burns what’s left. It doesn’t burn like fire or like the sun on a blistering day, it burns like small flames of electricity that dance across your nerves, doing just enough damage to drive you mad.”

-Journal of the Unknown-

Rust stains seemed to make the walls bleed as Lilly made her way through the cluttered hallway. The subtle click and hiss of her radiation breather combined with the sway of her helmet light eerily gave life to the otherwise silent structure. Shadows danced in every direction.

She took a deep breath and scanned the floor with her helmet light. She knew better than to let her imagination unsettle her, but she was still relieved that there were no other footprints in the dust.

The office doors had rotted long ago, leaving the hardware hanging oddly in some of the frames. Lilly scanned the rooms on both sides of the hall, finding only a few pieces of worthless furniture blanketed in dust. Like everything else outside of Nucrea, the Androdyne Transport Factory had also become a corpse, mummified in the unforgiving way of the Fringe.

When Nun gave Lilly the contact, he had explained that Androdyne was a transport manufacturer for Theonicorp’s shipping fleet. It wasn’t a military company, but he was willing to pay just as much for anything here as he would for weapons or materials from the old army bases. He also told her that he would pay double for any type of data file she could find, even if it seemed like it might not work. If it had “Theonicorp” on it, he wanted it.

Her leg caught on the edge of a chair, knocking it off balance. She held her breath and closed her eyes waiting for the sound of Fringers to come rushing towards the noise.

Nothing.

Her lungs started to burn, reminding her to breathe. This was her first scavenging contract without Ripp or Gus, and thinking about fighting a group of Fringers alone made her miss the security of their company more than ever. It didn’t matter how experienced you were, or how well you prepared, the Fringe was unpredictable.

This was going to be Lilly’s chance to prove she could hold her own, and if she could pull this contract off herself, Ripp would finally have to stop treating her like a child.

Through the sea of dust particles suspended in the air, she saw broken chairs and rusted metal containers piled in front of an unexpected dead end.

“Seriously?”

Nun had given her the grid location and the blueprint of the building himself, so she knew it had to be accurate, but according to the blueprint there should have been a room right in front of her, not a stupid wall.

She didn’t have time for walls. Nun had made a big deal about giving her information for the contract before it actually posted, promising her that she would have a whole day ahead of everyone else. She knew better, and as much as she wanted to feel special, someone would be coming soon.

One thing was for sure, the man who controlled Nucrea’s black market couldn’t be trusted, and it wouldn’t be a contract with Nun, if there wasn’t any competition.

She had to get through the wall, but she knew she couldn’t risk the noise of an explosion. Irritated, she pulled back her sleeve and activated the display on her Pigeon that she secretly borrowed from Ripp. The blue and white screen displayed a hologram of the factory. With two fingers, Lilly turned the hologram to align with the hallway she was in, and then zoomed out so she could see the whole area. After pushing a series of buttons, a miniature yellow version of herself appeared on the hologram and began replicating her movements.

The digital clone slid down a hillside, jogged through a crater, climbed up steep broken stairs and stopped at a group of concrete walls. It looked down at its arm, hurried over to a mound of dirt then disappeared into a hole. The hologram’s point of view followed Lilly’s digital double through the hole, pivoted, and then followed her through the hallway. The replay froze and disappeared as it matched Lilly’s current location. She looked at the blueprint again and verified that there was supposed to be a room in front of her.

“Supposed to be right…there,” she yelled to herself. “Right there!”

She yanked her sleeve back over the Pigeon, and started to make her way through the piles of rusted metal and fallen ceiling tiles. She stopped and looked around as if some magical veil fell from her eyes and realized what must have happened. She moved forward and quickly shoved the empty containers and rotten debris to the side. The scratches and gouges on the wall only meant one thing, people had wanted in. She saw a line in the middle of the wall that ran from the ceiling to the floor. She realized that it wasn’t a wall, it was a door.

Lilly never thought she would be so grateful that Ripp had forced her to spend all of those hours, learning how to rewire control panels, bypass security measures, and reroute power.

Kneeling, she pulled out a portable battery from the bottom of her pack and set it next to a broken human ribcage. Lilly was used to human remains. Any building, somewhat intact, was bound to have a few bodies. Gus would say that “a dead body was always better than a Fringer, because dead bodies didn’t do anything except sit there looking dead. Fringers, on the other hand, wanted to kill you then eat you, or eat you and let that kill you”. Lilly loved the way Gus always explained things to her.

The panel on the wall was easy to pry open. She was relieved that the wiring was simple enough. After quickly cutting the wires and connecting them to a hacking device, she hooked everything up to the portable battery and turned it on.

Everything was easy to open in the Fringe. Lock boxes fell apart when you moved them. Hidden doors and secret rooms were easy to see. Even safes were easy to pry open with a little force. Mechanical metal doors were easy enough if you knew what to do-and thanks to long afternoons with Ripp, Lilly knew what to do. The door mechanics looked intact, but she hoped that the internal wiring hadn’t been too damaged. After a short hesitation, she turned the portable battery on. The battery hummed and the keypad blinked, illuminating the dark corner in green and white.

Runners spent most of their time in the Fringe sorting through garbage and useless junk hoping to find something they might be able to sell. She could do that, too, but she wanted to be like Ripp, and Gus, and Red, and Tooth and the others that actually went to the Fringe for high-paying missions. That’s where the glory was: being a top contract runner for Nucrea.

Her mind raced with all of the possibilities of what might be on the other side of the door, and all the gear she could buy with the credits. Ripp would be proud and have to admit she was ready to take on solo contracts. It also meant her Pigeon rating would be untouchable for anyone close to her age, and that had endless rewards of its own.

She turned on the hacker, and stared at the small red light that blinked halfway up the right side of the door. The hacking device cycled through the first two spots and stopped on the number three, and then two. The next three numbers seemed to take forever for the hacker to locate. She nervously watched the portable battery as the numbers cycled through, worried that there might not be enough power left to finish.

“C’mon, c’mon.”

The light on the door turned green and the door clicked. Lilly screamed inside her rad-breather. She was in! Her first solo run, her first locked door, and she was in. She shut off the portable battery, stood up, and quickly pulled the door open as far as she could. Air rushed out through the door, blowing dust in every direction.

Lilly shook off the dust and pulled her sidearm. She pointed its light at the small opening in the door, and slowly exposed the contents of the room from one corner to the other.

The room was small. There was a desk in the middle, and a row of rusted filing cabinets along the left wall. The floor was completely covered with empty, rusted cans. There were rotted books lumped on sagging shelves, and plastic buckets stacked to the ceiling next to the door. One of the buckets looked like it had melted near the bottom and a large dark stain surrounded it. Lilly did not want to think about what might have been in it.

In the corner to her right, two skeletons lay next to one another. One clutched the remains of a picture frame, the picture long decayed and the other had something in its hand that she couldn’t see clearly. She angled the light higher and saw that it was a gun.

“Hell, yeah!”

She squeezed through the opening in the door. The air was thick and even through her filters it reeked of decay and rot.

“Now Lilly, I don’t think you’re ready for your own contract. You’re a good shot, but still way too young,” she said mockingly and in a very good impersonation of the way, Ripp had said it. “You have a lot to learn, you need to know where to look,” she continued.

As she got closer, her light revealed a bullet hole in both their heads. A dark rust colored stain on the wall finished the scenario for Lilly. She felt sorry for them, and wondered how long they had been locked in the room.

She leaned over, grabbed the gun and pulled, but it didn’t come free. She pulled harder, bones snapped and it dropped to the floor with part of the hand still wrapped around it.

“Thanks for the gun,” she said as she playfully patted the rotted cloth on his shoulder.

Lilly picked up the gun, peeled the remaining finger bones from the stock, and put it in her pack. She scanned the room one more time, then walked over to the first filing cabinet. The drawer let out a horrible shriek of metal dragging across metal as she yanked it open. She wasn’t worried about the noise. She was where she needed to be and could leave in a hurry.

The drawer was empty and so were all of the others. Lilly checked the other filing cabinets with no luck, and then moved to the desk. There was a metal badge of some kind. Rust and oxidation hid whatever design had been on the front. There was a box of ammo she knew wouldn’t be good anymore, but shoved it in her pack anyway. Gus could reconstruct them or at least smelt the good metal out of the rounds. There was an empty glass bottle in good condition that she knew Johnny would pay for. She pulled a cloth from one of her pant pockets, wrapped it carefully, and put it in her bag. The last item was a small plastic device. Its monitor and case were surprisingly unblemished. She checked all the sides. There were no symbols on it, but she knew Nun would pay well for it. She hadn’t been this excited since her first trip to the Fringe with Ripp and Gus. Nun would have to pay her well.

A crash from outside the building echoed down the corridor, waking Lilly from her daydream about all the things she would buy. She squeezed back through the doorway, quickly packed the rest of her gear, and moved smoothly down the hall with her gun drawn. She made her way back to the opening in the ceiling that she had used to get inside and waited. She activated the Pigeon display. The battery was about to die, but it didn’t matter; she had what she came for. She typed a few commands into her Pigeon and waited. A sonar pinged the area. The scan showed nothing moving or making noise. She jumped up and grabbed a metal bar that was sticking out of the ceiling near the hole. While holding onto it with one hand, she managed to toss her pack through the opening with the other, then easily pulled herself up.

Another hundred yards and she would be on her way back to Nucrea. No one would know she had even left. Ripp wouldn’t be back from his contract for another day, and that gave her plenty of time to charge his spare Pigeon and put it back where it was supposed to be.

Lilly decided to skip the broken stairs and slid down the embankment. When she reached the bottom of the crater, she looked up at the sun, barely visible behind the rust hued overcast of the Fringe, and thought there might even be enough time to see Nun tonight.

She picked up speed and plowed her way up the other side of the crater. Breathing heavily through her filters, she turned to see if anyone or anything had followed, but there were just the ruins of the factory and a broken city surrounding it.

Lilly dusted off and headed to the transport she had parked under a partially collapsed building. It was a one seater, which didn’t leave much space in the cab, but it had a rugged six-tire system that could navigate over and through almost anything. It was well armored with tempered steel and sealed tight. It might have been overkill, but it was the cheapest to rent, and Nun suggested it in case she needed to drive through a pack of Fringers.

The Pigeon beeped as the battery went dead. Lilly should have been worried about not having navigation, but her tracks should be easy to retrace, and she could partially charge it on the way back.

She keyed the code on the hatch to unlock the cargo hold and was about to pull the lever down when two Fringers came running around the corner of one of the buildings.

Broken teeth forced their way through cracked frothy mouths. Their eyes were dark yellow and wide with hunger. Their skin had rotted and was covered in dark veins. They were fast.

She pulled her gun from its holster and in the same motion shot the closest one in the shoulder. The impact threw him back for a moment, but he quickly regained his footing and charged. She took aimed again and took half of his head off with the second shot. The other one was now right on top of her. She quickly pulled her knife, deflected a grab and stabbed him twice, once in the side of the chest, puncturing a lung and once in the neck. He let out a garbled, painful cough and grabbed at his side, seemingly unaware of the neck wound.

Lilly didn’t expect the Fringer to charge and was knocked off balance. Twisting, she stabbed him twice again, once in the back and once in the cheek, crunching bone. She pushed him away from her and got ready for another attack, but the Fringer slowly walked away and collapsed. Dark blood painted the ground around him.

She shook from the adrenaline racing through her body as she looked around for more. She had killed Fringers before, but never alone. Lilly caught her breath and walked over to where she had dropped her bag. She picked up her gun, holstered it, and smiled, as she realized that killing these Fringers made the contract official, and it wasn’t only about proving to Ripp that she was ready to work alone, but she also needed to prove something to herself, and she had.

A flash of light blinded Lilly as she reached down to grab her bag. Electrical needles stabbed every inch of her back. Her vision blurred. As she reached for her sidearm in her mind, but her arm wouldn’t move. Instead, the world turned upside down and the ground came up to meet her. The searing pain in her back started to leave. She had to try something, but as she was about to reach for her gun, the surge of another electrical shock forced its way through her blood.

Muffled footsteps echoed in her head as a shadow loomed over her. Her knife was easier to draw and so she tried, but another surge made her convulse into blackness. The spasms seemed to crush her body from the inside, keeping her lungs from finding air.

Lilly could no longer fight the darkness. She knew she should have been worried about being helpless in the Fringe, or about what her attacker was going to do to her, but instead she remembered an old woman, running through an alien landscape, cradling a baby.