The gas had barely cleared, the last wisps of yellow mist curling into the scorched skyline, when the orders came down the line. Another zone cleared. Another slice of broken earth pried from the monsters' claws. A milestone, they said, from seven hundred thousand square kilometers of land that needs reclaiming. Six sprawling regions taken back from the things that once hunted us in the dark: the Coastal Plains, where Libertalia stood proud and cocky; the Northern Plains; the Great Plains; and that miserable stretch of rock we called the Mountains and Basins.
According to the brass, we were halfway done reclaiming this whole rotten chunk of land. The Libertalia Ark, our shining jewel of bureaucratic misery, was carving westward. Meanwhile, United Humanity's stockpiled firepower carefully hoarded since the end of the world was flattening anything that dared twitch. Firebases held. Fortifications were concrete and steel walls against the new wilderness United Humanity have encountered. Civilians wouldn't settle for years, but the war machine kept marching, one shell at a time.
We weren't the ones pressing the buttons for those shells.
No, our job was dumber.
Today, we were opening doors. Literally.
Some pre-Rift storage site had made it through the apocalypse. Looked like an office tower dropped on its side and buried in the dirt, with a front door built to stop God himself. Slab of alloyed steel the size of a bus. From the looks of it, the Orcs had tried opening it with teeth and hammers. Didn't work. The place was littered with their bodies baked by auto-turrets, collapsed under their own stupidity, or melted by whatever defense system was still humming inside.
You almost felt bad for them.
Almost.
We moved in slowly. Heat shimmered off the cracked pavement. Our boots crunched through bones and dirt. My internal compass pinged movement, but it was just another recon team, green dots on the compass, marching in lockstep.
I clutched the identifier card in my hand. Hard drive-sized, about as reassuring as a wooden gun. But it worked. Slotted it into the terminal, and the facility woke up like a cranky old man remembering where he left his teeth.
The slab door groaned. Gears the size of motorcycles churned. Lights flickered. Something deep inside the building moaned like it hadn't had visitors in decades.
Behind us, a drone hovered, blinking red, streaming everything to Command. Colonel Arnold Brunswick then gave the go-ahead. Counters poured in, weapons ready.
Dan, naturally, had complaints.
"Have you ever noticed that CP's idea of recon is just sending us to places that might explode?" he muttered.
"Or eat us," Gino added. "Or gas us."
Foster muttered something about lead poisoning and rubbed his temples.
I watched the squads vanish inside. "Command loves us. Reed and Muriel practically adopted us. We're their favorite little crash-test dummies."
Dan kicked a piece of rusted pipe. "I miss being just a grunt. I miss having no responsibility."
"Same," I muttered.
It was all part of the rhythm now. Advance. Secure. Burn. Report. Repeat. Like a factory line for controlled violence.
And apparently, we were now the factory inspectors.
***
Inside the facility, it was colder. Dry. Clean in a way that felt wrong. Everything sealed in synthetic silence, like this place had just been waiting for the world to end so it could finally relax.
Rows of sealed containers, stacked high. Crates with black hazard markers and yellow coding Data pads on the walls still blinking with unread messages. There was a time people thought this storage would be humanity's salvation. Now it was just another place for us to loot. Though in a way, we're going to use it for that purpose, a bloody one.
Colonel Brunswick's men started cataloging. TRU followed right behind, eager to dissect every bolt and microchip. I swear those bastards would dissect a coffee maker if they thought it ran on Gobber teeth and dark matter.
Dan flicked through one of the logs on a terminal. "Looks like this place was some kind of supply depot. Military cache. Maybe civilian conversion. Hard to tell."
Foster grinned. "You think there's pre-rift beer in here?"
Gino gave him a flat look. "Yeah, because what I want at the moment is eighty-year-old apocalypse beer."
We left them to it and kept scouting. SOP said clear all rooms, secure entry points, watch for hostiles. But honestly, the place was cleaner than half the bunks we've slept in. If it wasn't for the occasional corpse rotting in a chair, it would've passed for habitable.
Eventually, we hit what looked like a command room. Big monitors. LED screens that have gone blank. A central control chair with harnesses for haptic feedback — the kind you'd use if you wanted to pretend you were flying a gunship without actually dying in one.
I sat down for a second. Just long enough to feel the pressure ease off my feet.
That's when Berta showed up.
"Well, well," she said, lighting a cigarette. "Look who's playing captain of the bridge."
"If only this bridge came with an eject button," I said, dry as dust. "I'd have launched myself the moment I saw you coming."
She blew smoke in my direction and grinned. "Charming as always, Wilson."
It felt like a mantra to us now. How we start our convos. She seems to enjoy it and I'm so bored that I might as well entertain it.
"And you're still wandering around like a stray dog in heat. Coincidence?" I said finally.
"Maybe," she said, stepping closer. "Maybe I just like the way you pretend not to enjoy my company."
I looked at her. She was sweating through her gear, the grime on her cheek somehow managing to look deliberate. Behind her, Stacy was grinning like she was watching a soap opera. Kate and Amiel were somewhere deeper in the facility, probably looting or yelling at Gino or Foster to stop touching things.
"I pretend," I said, "the same way I pretend to enjoy MREs or your jokes. Out of necessity. And deep, unfathomable trauma."
She laughed. "Come on, Rus. Admit it. You'd miss me if I stopped being a thorn in your ass."
"Only in the way a man misses hemorrhoids once they're gone."
Berta moved behind the chair and leaned over it, her arms draped lazily over my shoulders. "You know," she said, voice low, "you could just give in. One night. It wouldn't kill you."
"Berta, sleeping with you seems like the exact kind of thing that would kill me."
"Not from disease," she winked. "Our immune systems are better than that."
"No," I said. "From asphyxiation, blood loss, or blunt trauma to the pelvis."
"Then Mama B will show you a gentle time."
"You don't have a gentle setting."
She opened her mouth, probably to make another inappropriate joke, but a call came through the comms before she could.
Brunswick's voice. Stern. Focused.
"Cyma Unit, finish your sweep and regroup. Command wants us moving east. New targets spotted."
Of course they were.
I stood up. Berta stepped back, stretching.
"Duty calls," she said.
"Praise be," I muttered. "Maybe this time, the Orcs will put me out of my misery."
As we moved back toward the rally point, Dan walked up beside me, chewing on another caffeine tab like it was gum.
"Heard Berta hit on you again."
"Please, she hits on everyone," I said. "She's like a horny predator drone."
He snorted. "Still think she's got a thing for you."
"She's got a thing for anything that breathes."
Foster piped in from behind us. "Not true. She's also into that one tech girl, Aira, from Logistics. Doesn't breathe much. Asthma or something."
"Wonderful," I muttered. "Berta's type is apparently 'alive or close enough.'"
The next location was a reclamation zone up north — near the fringes of the Great Plains. Apparently, UH had pinpointed another subterranean facility. This one was buried under what used to be a missile silo. They wanted it opened. Of course they did.
When we arrived, the place looked like a crater with teeth. Metal struts twisted out from the ground, half-buried silos like massive molars broken and snapped. TRU was already there, setting up cables and drones to map the place.
"Another day, another grave to dig through," Gino muttered.
"Think we'll find more baby Orcs?" Foster asked.
"God, I hope not," Dan groaned.
I checked the scanner. Nothing on motion yet. But the map was fuzzy with static interference. Berta approached, her team in tow, eyes already scanning the pit like she was planning to jump in headfirst.
"This one smells like fun," she said.
"No," I said. "This one smells like rust and radioactive disappointment."
"You sure you're not describing yourself?"
I turned, giving her a long, unimpressed look. "If I wanted to hear something that made my brain cells die one by one, I'd listen to your dirty talk again."
"You're just mad I didn't flirt with you yesterday."
"You called me your personal dildo."
"It was affectionate."
"You slapped Amiel's ass while doing it. Poor thing."
"She liked it."
"You're incorrigible."
"Aww you're really adorable when you're grumpy."
I sighed. Loudly. "Do me a favor, Berta. If I ever get captured, just tell them I was a virgin priest who lived a quiet, uneventful life. Don't let them know I have to survive four years in a trench with you."
She patted me on the back, laughing. "No promises, Rus. But I'll tell them your soul was pure and your ass was clenched 'til the end."
Dan snorted. "You two gonna fuck or keep bantering like old married people?"
Berta grinned. "That's up to him."
I muttered a prayer for patience, then checked my rifle.
***
After clearing the place.
The waiting was the worst part.
It always was.
Not the fighting that came and went in bursts of violence and noise and dead monsters. But this stretch of empty hours sitting on your ass, slowly fermenting in your own sweat and paranoia while staring at the horizon, wondering which direction death might crawl from next?
That was the real war.
Team Cyma was hunkered down on the slope overlooking the crater. Humvees parked, weapons propped, gear scattered like some weird post-apocalyptic picnic. The TRU boys were still digging through the ruins, their little probes buzzing and blinking like insects with graduate degrees.
And we waited.
Dan had stripped down to his undershirt, chewing on an MRE bar like it owed him money.
Foster was lying flat on the Humvee's roof, staring at the sky like it might offer him something more meaningful than endless clouds.
Gino had taken it upon himself to whittle a stick with his combat knife for reasons known only to God and possibly the recent voices in his head.
Berta and her squad and their HUmvee were next to ours, halfway into a card game that had devolved into accusations of cheating and vague threats of sexual favors being exchanged for winning hands.
Meanwhile, I was leaned against a busted crate, helmet off, rifle beside me, eyes scanning the horizon through a pair of binoculars with thermals. Not because I expected to see anything, but because it beat making small talk.
Berta slid down next to me, bumping her shoulder against mine. She smelled like sweat and tobacco, her face smudged with soot and that always-present grin threatening to evolve into mischief.
"You always stare into the distance like that?" she asked. "What are you, the last philosophical man in the wasteland?"
"I'm just waiting for the sweet embrace of death," I replied, dry. "Or the quartermaster to finally restock decent coffee. Whichever comes first."
She smirked. "What if I told you I still have a packet of real coffee in my pack?"
"I'd accuse you of lying, stealing, and possibly witchcraft."
"Mm," she said, exhaling smoke. "Could always share it. Trade you for a cuddle."
"You know, Berta, for someone so terrifying in combat, you really do act like a horny raccoon around a trash bin the moment it's calm."
"Only around you," she said sweetly.
"I should feel honored."
"You should feel lucky I haven't pinned you down and made you experience true enlightenment."
I side-eyed her. "If you're enlightenment, then I'll stay in the dark, thanks."
Across from us, Kate was now doing pull-ups on the side of a prefab shelter. Stacy was applying polish to her combat boots like she was prepping for a fashion show instead of a field op. Amiel went to sleep, her head tilted back against a pile of sandbags, one hand still loosely gripping her sidearm like a kid clutching a toy in their sleep.
"This feels wrong," Dan muttered, finally breaking the silence.
"Define wrong," I said.
"Too quiet. Too boring. Either something's about to go horribly wrong, or HQ's planning to send us to another meat grinder."
Foster nodded sagely from above. "I'd prefer monsters. At least then I get to shoot something."
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Gino said. "Maybe they'll forget we exist and we can live the rest of our service pretending this isn't a giant dumpster fire."
Berta blew a smoke ring. "That's cute. You really think HQ forgets anyone? We're like their favorite toy right now."
"Speak for yourself," I said. "I feel like a wrench someone left in the mud and now they're just kicking around to see what it'll hit."
Berta chuckled. "Even rusted tools can get the job done."
I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment, letting the wind graze my face. It was dry, sharp, full of dust and whatever else was blowing through this godforsaken zone. I caught a faint whiff of sulfur in the distance. Maybe from the last gas sweep. Maybe just this land's natural way of telling us to piss off.
The sun crawled toward the horizon, turning the landscape into a smear of orange and rust. In the distance, I could see the outline of another UH convoy rolling toward us. Reinforcements or replacements — same difference.
Eventually, someone broke out a radio and started playing music. Old world stuff. Fuzzy and warped, but still music.
We sat there, as the wind howled softly through broken buildings and TRU's drones blinked and chirped like bored insects.
Another day in old paradise.
"Hey, Wilson," Berta said suddenly, voice softer.
"Yeah?"
"When all this shit's over... if it ever ends... what're you gonna do?"
I opened my eyes, thought about it for a beat.
"Find the quietest corner of whatever's left of the world," I said. "And sleep for a year. Maybe grow a beard. Or a garden. I haven't decided."
"Sounds lonely."
"Sounds peaceful."
She nodded, then leaned her head against my shoulder for just a second — long enough to surprise me.
"I hope you get it," she said.
Then she got up, stretched like a cat, and went back to her squad like she hadn't just left me wondering what the hell that was all about.
"God," Dan muttered from nearby, "that looked weirdly emotional. You two gonna kiss now?"
"Shut the fuck up, Dan."
And just like that, the moment passed.
We went back to waiting.
And watching.
And wondering where our next trip would be in this land that has been abandoned and now was being reclaimed again.