I stepped out of Nico’s house, and headed toward the eastern district of the city. I felt heavy, but when I checked my pack and did a quick inventory I couldn’t find any noticeable difference in anything. When I picked my pack back up, and continued walking I realized that I was being followed. I ducked down a few side paths, and did a loop to confirm it. They were not subtle, and seemed unsure of how closely they should be following. Eventually I sighed and turned down a dead end between three domes, turned around, and waited with my arms folded.

Three deadmen, realizing I’d noticed them, followed me in. One of them had a two pronged pitchfork, another a small club, and the third nothing, though he was physically larger than the others. Maybe six foot 1 or two, so around a head shorter than I was, though roughly twice as broad. I looked them over and decided to offer a courtesy I wouldn’t have offered humans that had done what they were doing.

“You don’t want to do this.”

They looked at one another, the one with the pitchfork looked particularly hesitant, but the one without a weapon stepped forward. “You're damn right we don’t want to, but you keep dragging deadmen into human affairs and we’re sick of it. If you won’t see reason on your own, it’s our responsibility to do what we can to stop you.

I rubbed my forehead for a moment. I was trying to be nice, but, clearly it wasn’t my wheelhouse. “Listen. I took a shit this morning that was scarier than you three. I’ve killed monsters the sight of which would haunt your nightmares forever, and slain literal,” I did a quick mental count, “hundreds of men.” Think about this.”

The one with the pitchfork and the one with the club stepped back. The unarmed deadman looked down a moment, and seemed to lower his guard before he stepped quickly forward and tried to sucker me.

There was a problem I’d noticed with the deadmen who’d been raised their whole life in Pott’s. They had no sense of the scale of how fucked everything is, and a highly inflated sense of self esteem. In some ways this had benefits, Deux for all his faults seemed all the better for it, but in this case it was a distinct negative. I dodged his sucker punch and slammed my own fist into his gut hard enough to lift him off the ground. He collapsed, gasping for breath, tears forming in the corners of his yellow eyes. If he’d been human, the hit may have killed him, but I wanted to do just enough damage to him to discourage his friends from rushing me once I was done.

I stepped over him and tipped my hat to the other two who stepped aside to let me through. I then got back on my original path and followed it until I was leaving the last of the domes behind me. Their attitude explained the dirty looks and increased nods I’d been on the receiving end of since arriving back. I could understand why some people would blame me for the shifting tides in Pott’s. To a certain extent they were my fault, but at the same time all I’d really done was speed things along. The Remnants would’ve arrived whether I’d been involved or not, and somehow, someway their impact would’ve been felt in Pott’s, no matter how hard it tried to bury its head in the sand.

Once I was out of Pott’s it was almost a full day's travel to reach the rally point. Pott’s had been placed that deep into the radiation of the Cut by design, in order to keep it too far for any human to reach. The time passed uneventfully, aside from a single notification I received when I was roughly two thirds of the way there.

Congratulations Citizen! You have earned a rank in walking! A great way to see the beautiful vistas of this great nation

I’d likely rank up that skill quite a few more times before my trip across the Cut was over. Couldn’t say that was a prospect I was looking forward to.

Night was falling as I felt the radiation wane and fade, the warmth it seemed to generate leaving me as I left it. It wasn’t much further that I saw a Shrike, the remnant’s silent aerial vehicle, a short distance ahead of me. I got closer and saw Leah, pacing up and down next to it, and Graves leaning against the Shrike, scanning the horizon in his massive armor. His helmet turned in my direction and he raised a hand to acknowledge me.

I returned the gesture, though as I continued to get closer Leah didn’t acknowledge me and I realized that she was pacing with her eyes closed. The same way she did when she was monitoring something with her agent abilities, though she tended to stay still when she’d done that in the past. As she walked I noticed she was also rubbing her neck along her severe burn scar.

She stopped in front of me, her eyes still glazed over, then she blinked and suddenly they were clear. “We have a situation,” she said, in her gravelly voice, her usually slight smile nowhere to be seen.

I activated my lie detector ability. “Situation?” I asked.

The slight smile returned for a moment. “I’m a green three headed giraffe that can breathe fire.”

TRUTH came the message in my vision, her health readings and heart rate unchanged. I sighed, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I turned the sensor briefly onto Graves even though I didn’t expect him to say anything, and while I didn’t get any indication of TRUTH or LIE, I did see a number of red indicators by all of his health readings.

“That’s all the time we have for playing. We have a situation, and wanted to get your support before you made your way to the Cut.”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t seem like my problem.”

“Get in the Shrike and I’ll explain on the way. If you want us to deposit you as we move I can send you the coordinates where we found the deadman from the other side of the Cut and drop you off.”

“Broad strokes before I get onto the Strike,” I replied. I’d likely have the advantage in the close quarters of the vehicle anyway, but I didn’t like the idea of being trapped in the air without knowing where we were headed.

Leah didn’t hesitate to answer. “We landed the last of our assets from space. There was an error, and instead of landing in the designated drop zone they landed square in the middle of The Republic, and they’ve refused to hand them over.”

I paused for a moment, that was dangerous, and from what little I knew about the Republic I didn’t like the idea of them having the kind of weaponry the Remnants had their hands on, still I had my own priorities. “I think I’ll just take the coordinates now. I doubt I’d be much help anyway.”

“You wouldn’t be involved in the main thrust. You and I would be infiltrating to retrieve someone we had embedded within the republic.”

I shrugged. “The Cut is my destination.”

“The person we’re retrieving is Mercy.”

I sighed. Mercy was a Marshall, an explosives expert and a native of the republic who I’d worked with when we’d sieged the production facility V had control of. I’d sold her a book, and just recently one of her bombs had saved me from killer hummingbirds. “I want the pay I was promised for the cut doubled, and I’ll need to talk with the cabinet again when we’re through.” Mercy had done me a good turn, and I intended to return the favor, but I wasn’t getting involved in what was clearly a shitshow for free.

Leah didn’t hesitate. “Deal. Now get into the shrike while we go over the details.”

I followed her and hopped into the vehicle, Graves was already inside when we began walking toward it. I took a seat in the back across from her, and braced myself slightly as we began to rise into the air.

“What should we expect?” I asked. “What kind of assets did they seize?”

“Suits of power armor, lasguns, munitions of various kinds, schematics, large amounts of medical equipment, about thirty personnel.”

“They know how to use any of it?”

She nodded. “We’ve already got confirmation of lasgun fire and enemy combatants in power armor. It’s believe they tortured the personnel for information on their functions.”

“What’s been done so far? Are we expecting backup?”

“A diplomatic solution was attempted, but they were killed. Before this they’d seemed open to negotiations and according to the intel I got from Mercy they knew that annexation was inevitable. Their walls are surrounded both by Remnant and STAR forces, but no major assaults will take place until we make it inside.”

“How’re we going to manage getting inside? You mentioned walls? I assume they’re manned.”

Leah’s smile returned again, and she reached under her seat, pulling out what looked to be a metal backpack. “The walls won’t be a problem.”