I moved quickly through the forest. Keeping my senses open for any other deadmen. I exited the deadzone, and felt the tingle of radiation cease, leaving me with nothing to counteract the heat I’d been feeling. It was feeling even stronger than it had before. I crept along the side path I was on for a few miles. Eventually I began to smell blood, smog, and rot. I slowed down, moved off the main path, and approached the scent slowly.

After a mile or so I could hear voices yelling, some kind of industrial machinery whirring, and the unmistakable cracking of a whip.It made my back ache to hear, and I gritted my teeth, and started to cut around further, trying to find an elevated position. Eventually I reached a rocky hill, once at the top I was able to make out a large grey building with smoke rising from it, surrounded by small meager tents on one side, and more sturdy housing on the other side. The entire perimeter was surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire, and at each corner was a small watch tower. I couldn’t make out any individual faces, but could see people milling about, some of them human sized, and a handful much larger.

I moved toward the nearest corner, staying low and moving carefully while keeping an eye on the person manning the guard tower. I reached it without finding any resistance and noticed that the guards were all looking to the inside, rather than the outside. The defenses weren’t to keep people out, but rather in. That made sense considering they had no reason to expect a threat from the outside. I reached the fence, grabbing a space in the center of it and slowly, deliberately, tearing a hole through it with my hands.

I slipped inside, and crept around the tower, marking anyone I took for a guard as Under Arrest to keep them highlighted in my vision. I moved carefully, creeping along walls and between houses all while keeping the positions of the guards in my mind. The homes themselves were empty, modestly decorated, and clean. I moved toward the large central building that was billowing smoke. The smell of gunpowder and heated metal was strong. I found a stack of scrap by a window and climbed it after making sure the area was clear.

Inside, I saw dozens of humans chained to a series of conveyors. They were working different machinery, making bullets, gun parts, and other armaments. Around them were a number of deadman guards, a few of them the larger brute variant that seemed common in Eden. They were mostly watching with a mixture of boredom and disinterest, though a few of them were barking orders or beating any of the workers that seemed to slow down.

I heard another whip-crack, and flinched in spite of myself. I looked closer, and realized that the weapons wielded by the guards were the same as the ones I’d seen in and around the planes that had crashed in the Metal Wastes. That made sense, they’d taken the weapons and restored them, but didn’t have easy access to the specialized ammunition they needed to use them long term. The solution was slave labor.

I noticed after a few more moments of observation that a few of the slaves were other deadmen. Chained just as the human workers were. A paradise for deadmen, that’s what Eden had been described as to me, clearly that wasn’t the case for all of us. I started to lower myself down when I heard a loud buzz. I looked around, making sure I hadn’t been compromised, but saw no one, and the buzz ceased shortly after it had begun.

I glanced back inside the factory, and saw the workers sitting, being given a single cup of water each. On the edge of them I saw one of the brute deadmen pull a charred leg out of his pack and take a large bite out of its calf. Taking a bite of the bone along with the meat as he chewed.

I grimaced. I’d figured I’d see some of that in Eden eventually, but I was wondering if it was the one vice they’d avoided considering I hadn’t seen or smelled any of it up to this point. I’d tasted human and deadmen flesh, more than once, but it had always been in times I’d lost control, or been desperate, I never did so casually. Nor did I do so as openly as they were, as a way of keeping the chattel in line.

I looked around more, noting the contents on each of the crates, then I let myself down. I moved slowly back out of the facility, slipping once again between each of the houses, avoiding the eyes of the guards, and making my way back to the fence where I pulled and twisted the fence together into a half decent approximation of how it had looked before.

Eden needed to go. Even if they were isolated from the East, they were a threat. The opposite of everything Pott’s was. Given how The First had spoken of Pott’s, there was no guarantee he didn’t have plans to return either. I gritted my teeth. If I destroyed Eden, and that assumed I even could, it would have a cost, a high one. I couldn’t let it stand though. Pott’s itself might want peace and cooperation, but it was wrong in this case, and it needed protecting.

I started making my East, moving toward where I assumed, based on the areas I’d traveled through, and conversations I’d had, whereI could find Eden’s gate. I’d need explosives, more ammo, more options, and the nearest place I could find them without raising alarms would be in the territory of the humans I’d encountered when I’d first made it out of the Forest of Teeth.

I traveled for a day, avoiding a few small groups of human and deadman travelers, mostly ones moving wagons of goods between villages. I found a secluded patch of forest, away from any of the paths, and set up camp. Eating some of the bird I still had left, though it was starting to stink of rot.

After a short nap in the brush, I continued making my way toward where I thought I’d find the gate. My deliberate method of travel made progress slow, as I avoided random passersby, and traveled through thick woods. Things only got tougher as I got closer, with more and more deadmen traveling nearby. I took extra care, as most of them were either Shepherds or brute deadmen guards. I had several close calls, but wanted to see more of how things operated, and so took the risk.

The gate itself was too heavily guarded and patrolled for me to approach directly, so I went around it, through the deadzone on one side, and climbed a large tree to get a better look. It was a massive construction of metal and wood, a wall at least ten feet high that went for easily five hundred feet. The backing was a thick framework of wood, and the front was metal, made up mostly of scrap I could tell had been dragged from the Metal Wastes. I saw it open to let some shepherds through that were dragging several humans behind them, then slid closed. At the top of the walls were massive guns that I assumed had also been taken from the Wastes. They looked powerful enough to bring down a building with a solid enough shot. Looking closely though, I could tell that they could only be turned around 90 degrees. They didn’t need to worry about their rear, after all.

A plan was forming in my head. Simple, but definitely more subtle than my usual method of killing until there wasn’t a problem anymore. It would still involve a lot of death, but I couldn’t sit back and let Eden continue as it was. I knew I probably couldn’t destroy it, I was alone, isolated, and under equipped for that, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have ways of changing things.

I slipped around the gate, sticking to the deadzone to avoid Edenites as I slipped out of their territory. It was important to maintain the element of surprise. For all they knew, they were perfectly safe, and didn’t even have anything to worry about me to begin with. The First may have believed I was already dead, considering he’d knowingly let me enter the hallucinogenic gas full of rabid deadmen.

I started walking, eventually making my way out of the deadzone, feeling the tingle of it leave my body. I made my way back toward where I’d first encountered the strange tribal humans when I’d first left the forest of teeth. I didn’t encounter any of them when I got there, but I did find a number of trails leading away from the encounter. The massive mobile cover sleds had left tracks, and created paths through the woods. There were two, one for each team. I picked the one heading further away from Eden, and started walking.