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Chapter 1
Carrion
The entire cityscape was illuminated with a green glow which shined down from the skyscraper like a moonlight tower. Showing its brutalized exterior in full display, which was cracked and maimed by decades of bombardment and wear. Its rebar frame poking out like exposed bone and concrete falling off like rotten flesh.
Everything else around was more of the same. The monuments which once held pride, the stores which once held warmth, and the apartments which held hearts, all were indistinguishable from rubble.
Yet, this building still stood, even with all its scars.
Hopping over fields of broken glass, Frost stopped Free right in front of the entrance, “Remember where we parked.”
Free sighed, “Right side of the fountain on the ground floor of the mall, in that weird utility store with the blue mold—covered with a plastic sheet and tumbleweeds.”
“Mm-hmm.”
The skyscraper’s lobby reflected the outside, with cracked marble floors and arrays of trashed crystal chandeliers spread across the floor.
But if one put aside the cruelty of time—and the strange smell—it was a masterwork of a multitude of professions. Its smooth and organic architecture was just complex enough to show sophistication but simple enough to show elegance.
Across its walls was a faded yet still complete mural—minimalist abstract shapes covered in rags venturing from a secluded swamp, finding a trove of metal and gemstone then returning home with the riches, a few figures missing by the end.
And perhaps most impressively of all was its centerpiece, a diorama of the building and its surroundings that left no detail left unreplicated—It was as nearly as big as the lobby itself, and covered in a thick layer of protective glass, seemly the only thing that has remained untouched.
“What a trash heap,” Free picked up a large rock and walked over to the diorama, first checking under it for any wires that may have been rigged to it—finding them severed with bite marks.
Then, after warming his arm up, he struck the glass, the rock bouncing off it and flinging him back-first onto the floor. He quickly recovered from his fumble, cursing at the centerpiece for its fortitude.
But just before he could try a different approach, he felt a cold presence looming behind him.
“Hey,” Frost whispered from the shadows—appearing out of nowhere. “Found something you may like,” they presented a palm-sized circuit board with four differently colored bulbs on each corner—in clockwise order: yellow, green, red, orange—with a button next to them and one large button with a coin-sized battery below it.
Free turned around, unfazed by their abrupt appearance, and took the chip “Hmm.”
He briefly examined it before pressing the button next to the red bulb, but nothing seemed to happen. Pressing the middle button next, the yellow bulb flashed and made a
bee-di-boop
sound. Then he pressed the button next to the green bulb, causing all bulbs to flash for a moment and
beep
harshly.
As he wandered around the lobby—still pressing random buttons—he passed by an elevator. Its door was conversely angular when compared to the rest of the lobby—being made up of several slices which inscribed a cube in its center and with no buttons on the panel at its side.
“Do you know what it is?” Frost asked while trailing behind Free, picking up whatever scrap he ignored.
“Definitely a remote—just needs to be in proximity to something,” Free said.
But no matter where he went, the “remote” seemed to do nothing, at most sometimes it would flash two presses after the one before—instead of just after one.
“Not RM from what I can tell, definitely not Universal either—couldn’t be,” Free pondered as he walked back to the elevator door, “Also scratch what I said earlier, this may be some kind of password-based access key.”
“Would it work as scrap for the Camper?”
“Probably, but I’d like to know what this could be. Something so simple that has stood the test of time—unlike the broken overdesigned garbage all around here—is worth its weight in platinum.”
Without a control panel in sight, he tried opening the elevator door by force with random button presses, but just like before it had no effect.
“Hmm.”
Free sighed while pocketing the device, “This floor is cleared right?”
“Yep,” Frost said as they attempted to force the door open with a long piece of rusted metal, although their—literal—attempt at opening the door by force was as successful as Free’s. “Thirty-five floors total, I counted them on the way here,” they gestured towards the stairwell, “Better get going before the sun comes up.”
Free reluctantly followed Frost up the stairs, confiding with his curiosity and lack of other viable options.
***
The duo went in and out of each floor, scavenging whatever they could find. Most floors were like one another, large expanses of cubicles, chairs, and coolers, and they held a similar amount of loot—practically none. Other than some scrap and a bag of charcoal, this section of the sca-venture was about as fruitful as the last.
Now rummaging through the eighteenth floor, they hoped the eighteenth time was the charm.
Free bursts open a paper-thin faux wood door, entering a circular room which was much fancier than the rest—adorned with almost-blank paintings, crumbled sculptures, and a large round table in the center. But most importantly of all—for him at least—was that poking out of its walls where tarnished copper pipes, a jackpot for a scavenger like him.
“Finally,” he transformed his arm into a saw and approached one of the pipes with fierce intent, but as he got closer, he heard water rushing from within. He placed his non-transformed hand on the pipe, “How is this still—bah, whatever—Frost, I need some help over here!”
“Yeah?” Frost peeked into the room.
“Can you freeze this?”
“Mm-hmm,” they walked over and brushed their hand against the exposed top and bottom of the pipe. The water miraculously stopped flowing as both sides puffed slightly outwards.
“Thank you,” Free quickly sawed off the isolated section of piping, leaving two frozen over holes.
“Not an issue.”
“…Say how come the copper—or you know the water pressure—doesn't melt your ice?” Free asked while moving to the next pipe.
Frost shrugged, “I told you before, it is just something I can do.”
The duo repeated the same actions as before, freezing the ends then sawing off whatever they could.
“That’s a non-answer—I had never even heard of ‘RB’ before meeting you. Is it an offshoot of RM, or Abstract stuff, or something unique to you, or—”
“I do not have anything more to tell you.”
Finishing up their pipe extraction, Free suggested they take a break—Frost agreed.
Free plopped onto the most intact chair, it was uncomfortable but much better than the floor. He had positioned himself just at the perfect angle near the shattered wall of glass, so that the cold wind from the outside hit him without any of the glass shards following. Plus, it gave him a nice view of the night sky, although there was no moon nor stars in sight, thanks to that pillar of light.
Meanwhile, Frost’s “break” consisted of looking through more rubble and tearing through the paintings with their knife in hopes of hidden loot. The few paintings that were not completely eroded depicted a humanoid figure covered in silver embroidered strips of fabric—most likely a form of satin as Free had half-heartly identified.
“I expected more corpses,” Frost said plainly.
“Maybe something ate them—but probably not,” Free yawned, stretching his arms and spinning his chair slowly, “Because that would mean something actually wanted to lurk here.”
“Or they left no bones,” Frost said ominously as they finished up their painting slashing, joining Free and sitting in a—slightly more—worse for wear chair.
Free quietly chuckled to himself, “Then you should be careful.” He slowly rolled closer to them—the chair letting out ear-splitting screeches, “They may have a bone to pick
from
you.”
“…”
“What? Did I scare you? Did that rattle your—”
Before Free could continue his Frost-agitating-onslaught, he saw something strange that was right above the window’s top edge—a bright orange-yellow light which faded in and out like a firefly.
“Dude, turn around, you see that orange light?” Free whispered and pointed towards it.
Frost looked over, “The yellow light?”
“The
orange
light, yeah.” Free got up and sneaked closer to it, leaning out of the window for a better look, seeing the tip of a spiky metallic tail. But before he could see the creature that the tail belonged to, it leaped away to a higher floor—not making a single sound.
“Must have scared it off,” Frost stood up, stretching after their two-minute break and joining Free’s side, investigating to see if the yellow-orange light had left any markings or tracks behind.
Free scratched his head, “Hmm… I wonder if—”
Deep and harsh creaks and whirrs echoed from within the walls as speakers emerged out of nowhere.
Before either of the two could react, the speakers emitted a series of sharp screeches, shaking off all the dust and grime, forming a dust cloud and completely obscuring their senses.
Disoriented, Free tripped over a chair but before he could hit the ground—Frost grabbed him.
“Exit—Now,” Frost said as they dragged Free back onto his feet and rushed to the door with him in tow.
Both burst out the meeting room, the dust cloud clearing as the alarm stopped from a split moment until shouting out again—but this time with what seemed to be an announcement made up of spliced together audio clips, “744-6-F24-SQ:Del-ST:Silk.”
With no time to sit and figure out what that meant, Frost kicked open the door to the stairwell—noticing that the speakers reverberated from the other floors as well—and then dashed down the steps with Free right beside them—but as they rounded the corner to the seventeenth floor, they saw that they were not alone.
A horde of guards, numbering in the hundreds, in full armor stared directly at them, their eyes glowing a sickly green and helmets oozing with muck.
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