You wake up suddenly, sweating and out of breath. As always, the same nightmare memory has awoken you. And as always, a deep sadness fills you. A longing for your past life lingers, but eventually ebbs away even as the world around you comes back into focus.
You sit up with a slight groan - the hard linoleum floor is hardly comfortable to sleep on. The only padding you have at your disposal is your poncho, and it's thin enough that it barely counts. Thankfully your messenger bag and backpack have some cloth in them, and makes for decent pillows.
You peer up over the counter and outside.
There, red daylight appears to be breaking through the sky. Although you can't see the sun itself, you can see its light just barely striking the buildings across the street.
A part of you wonders if it's dawn - it certainly seems like it could be.
But before you can do anything else, you feel something fuzzy bump up against your arm. You don't have to look down to realize it's Noir greeting you with a playful bunt. As always. The familiar feeling courses through you, and peels away some of that melancholy that your dreams impart onto you.
You pet her in gratitude, to which she responds with a reverberating purr.
You're up early, she projects.
"Yeah, I wanna get ahead a bit today," you reply.
Well, that's different…
"What's that word? Proactive? I wanna be more like that."
Also, I thought you said you wanted to travel at night.
"I do. But I figured we could make it to Grand Mall One before noon, while it's still cool. Could go around looting it, rest up for a few hours (or a few days), then getting a move on once we're set for the long haul."
Hopefully there's gonna be some good eating in there.
Your stomach rumbles lightly at the mention of food. Though Noir's no doubt thinking of vermin to kill, your mind is on more palatable things. Eggs and toast and bacon with a hot cup of coffee or tea, for example. Sadly, you don't have that, and might never have that again.
Instead, you open up your messenger bag and fish out one of your protein bars. You're not exactly salivating as you unwrap it, and you even become slightly irritated to see that its chocolate coating has melted into a gooey mess. Eating it is going to be a messy pain in the ass.
But you chomp it down anyway to help satiate your hunger. You wash it down with a few gulps of your electrolyte drink, which you then offer the remainder to Noir in the cap cup.
She laps it up as you mix up today's batch with the last of your water.
Once you're both done, you pack everything up, put your entire kit back on, and allow Noir to settle herself into her usual spot behind your head. You top everything off with your conical hat before heading back out into the street.
The heat hits you almost immediately, though it's nowhere near as hot as it will likely be later. In fact, you consider it downright cool. At least in comparison to most days, anyway.
Another thing that strikes you is how calm and quiet everything around you seems to be. It dawns on you that it's because you're alone for the first time in a very long time. There's an odd tranquility to the stillness around you, enough for you to question if there's some predator stalking you through the silence.
You shake that feeling away as you walk down the streets. After all, very few things can sneak up on you, seeing as you can sense thoughts and emotions. You can almost always tell when anyone's near, whether or not they're trying to be stealthy.
If anyone's sneaking up on you, they would have to be extraordinarily capable in terms of hiding their surface thoughts and emotions. Honestly, you think that's an impossibility.
The sun rises higher and higher as the two of you travel. Unfortunately, it's turning out to be a relatively cloudless day and the heat rises faster than usual. You find yourself dashing between shadows as a result.
Although the buildings dwindle the further you leave the city, you're greeted by more and more trees, overgrown shrubs, and the like. Although their very tops are practically burnt from the intense heat, the lower sections of their canopies seem rather lush and rich.
You spend as much time in their shade as possible, not just because you find them cooler than anywhere else. Mostly because you simply prefer them to buildings, even if their shadows aren't as encompassing.
You stop and give pause as you catch your breath beside a copse of trees. The ground shudders slightly under your feet, and certainly nowhere near as violently as it would with a stampede. You sweep outward with your Scan instead of your Telepathy. After all, you want to see what's out there, not necessarily talk to it.
You quickly locate a trio of minds a few dozen meters to the southeast, to slight alarm. That's only a block or so away, with only a few buildings between you. When you focus on them, you realize that they're Bone Crags. Their thoughts are still as unreadable as ever, but thankfully you find their emotional wavelengths are still relatable to some degree.
The trio don't seem harried or panicked or even violent, which encapsulates the majority of the emotions you've ever felt from the bugs. Instead, these three seem to be instilled with a sense of curiosity and exploration, with just a dash of apprehension and fear.
You're able to recognize them easily since you're also experiencing the same things. Similar, anyway. You're certainly a bit curious about this new world around you, but you'd say you're more than just a little bit afraid. Out here, you amount to little more than prey.
Still, you all share this desire to know more. And that's enough for you to realize that they're not here to hunt or eat or kill. They're here to search. But seeing as the Crags have a hive mind, you note that they can't possibly be wayward travelers like yourself. Most likely, they're scouts.
Thankfully, they're too far to realize that you're there. Or at least, if they do, they're ignoring you.
Which is fine - there's no need to bother them or cross their paths for any reason. They can do their thing, whatever it is. Just as long as they leave you alone, too.
So you put one foot in front of the other, stealthily, and keep on going. As a result, your trip to the shopping center is rather uneventful. It does take some time - about two or three hours at most. By then, the sun has almost reached its apex in the sky, and the asphalt has become sizzlingly hot.
You practically run across the wreck-strewn parking lot and into the shattered glass entrance of Grand Mall One - the last thing you want to happen to you is to get cooked alive.
The heat lifts significantly once further inside - it's dark and relatively cavernous. Best of all, there seems to be a light breeze that sweeps through it. No doubt its many entrances are all wide open, which allows the wind to travel through and cool it all down.
You quickly duck into the darkest shadows and allow your breath to catch up. As you do so, you observe the mall around you. Or at least, the eastern entrance hall leading to the rest of the shopping center.
Want me to scout out the place? Noir asks you with a thought.
Nah, you reply with your own. We'd best stick together for now, take it slow. Don't know what we'll find in here.
Truth is that Grand Mall One has always scared you a bit. No, that's the wrong word. Intimidated, perhaps. Or irritated. Or whatever is a mix of intimidated and irritated. In any case, this is a place you're only barely familiar with.
Back before everything stopped, at a time when you weren't even in your teens yet, Grand Mall One was the place to be. It had drawn in numerous crowds every single day, just because of how many individual shops it had carried. People came in droves not just from inside the city, but the area surrounding as well. It had even drawn in tourists from the other side of the country. Hell, from the entire world.
Although many people celebrated the shopping center as some great achievement, you have always thought of it as the opposite. To you, it has always been a temple where money was worshiped. And too many mindless worshipers in one place always made you deeply uncomfortable, even worse was being among them physically. So you always avoided the Mall as much as humanly possible.
But now, the place is completely different. It's no longer a celebration of capitalism, no longer a temple for consumers. It's a ruin, perhaps appropriately so.
You feel more amused than annoyed on this visit, that's for sure.
Although it is rather dark thanks to the lack of power, it has plenty of windows up in the ceiling numerous stories up. Ominous red light pierces the shadows in thin strips down the middle, which causes everything inside to be bathed in a shadowy red. A bit like a photographer's darkroom.
The shops around you are in absolute disarray. Their glass fronts are mostly shattered, and the ground is littered with various sizes of broken glass. All kinds of trash and junk is also scattered around, along with upturned benches and tipped garbage bins.
There's signs of large potted plants at some point - circular patches of dirt and whatnot appear regularly down the middle. But someone has taken every single one of them for some reason.
Although you're on the first floor, you can easily see the numerous banners hanging over the walkways on all the floors above you. Each of the banners seem to be celebrating the last holiday that the shopping center was going through.
Not only that, but numerous shop fronts have their own custom signs also celebrating the same holiday. Each seems as though they're supposed to be cute and cheery, but you get no such vibes from them.
—
Black Friday Extravaganza
Open 48 hours straight!
90% Off EVERYTHING
Buy Four, Get More
Shop Until the End
—
They all amuse you to some degree. And also depress you. People actually lived for this moment - to buy more things they didn't need. To spend money they didn't have. Saddened by it all, you force yourself to stop reading the banners and signs altogether.
Instead, you focus your attention on the shelves in the shops. They've certainly been looted as well, but there's still a good amount of stuff left on them. Well, it depends on the shop and what they carry, of course.
There's the kitchen goods store across from you, which looks moderately plundered. Much of their cookware appears to have been taken, though plenty of appliances are still on the shelves. You spot a few things you could take, so you make note of it. You'll definitely want to loot it later.
For now, you've gotta scout out the mall first. Figure out what you've gotta deal with, then get to the scavenging. That sort of thing. After all, you wouldn't want to be knee-deep in valuables and sorting out your inventory, only to fall into some ambush.
You glance at the store next to the kitchen store, which is an upholstery and beddings shop. Wind chimes dangle just inside the broken shop windows, tingling and jingling as the breeze sweeps through them. Not much of it has been looted, which makes sense. There's little need for matching sheets or cute couch pillows or crap like that any longer.
Still, you decide to poke your head in later, just in case you find a small travel pillow or something. That'd be nice, right?
You sneak further into the mall along the shadowy edges and peer into the shops as you go, making mental notes of places to loot. You find the activity genuinely joyful. In fact, you're delighted to discover one of the large mall center maps near the escalators leading up and down. You study it with such great care and detail that you begin to map out your path through the mall.
Your joy spikes again, to a point that you become conscious of it.
You stop for a moment as you realize that you're actually enjoying this moment. It's been so long since you last felt it that you're almost shocked. Not just that you haven't felt it in a while, which is amazing by itself. It's that this is enjoyable at all.
You like the fact that it's the apocalypse, that you can be here without having to deal with anyone. Not a single soul to contend with or talk to or whatever.
Why?
Why do you prefer this kind of emptiness? Why does this kind of decay give you enjoyment?
Your thoughts are shattered when a shrill chittering echoes through the Mall. You crouch down even further out of instinct, even as Noir stirs from behind your head. She hops down off you, then blends into the shadows as well.
You sense her move just ahead of you, her senses alert to everything around you.
As the two of you creep down towards the source of the sound, you carefully reach out with your Scan. And as you get closer, you sense another trio of Crags at the far end of the Western Wing of Grand Mall One. They seem to be agitated about something, though you can't tell what that something is.
You sense waves of alarm emanating from them, as though they're raring for a fight. But that stops suddenly, which throws you for a loop. Agitated bugs never just 'stop' getting agitated.
This shocks you greatly, as it reminds you of the time you had done the same thing to them. You had injected those Crags with your own emotions and diverted their mindless charge. What's happening to these three Crags seems similar.
Someone or something is affecting their state of mind, somehow. If there's someone out there with powers like yours, then you need to find out who they are. Hopefully they're friendly. You draw your pistol and switch off its safety in case they're not.
You sneak as quietly and carefully as you can as you head towards the trio of Crags at the western end of Great Mall One. And the closer you get, the more you realize that there are indeed psionic energies in the air.
But it isn't from some psion like yourself - it's coming from one of the Crags. Though the energies are patterned like your own, its alien thoughts are interwoven all throughout. Which means you're unable to see exactly what it's doing with those energies.
Still, you can tell that it's using the basic wavelengths of Temperance, ESP, and Scan. More importantly, you can see just how far it can reach out, which is far inside your own senses. Which makes you think that it's Tiered lower than you, at least in its current state. After all, it's very possible that the Crag is only channeling a portion of its energy.
You stop moving when you're far enough away to observe them, but still out of their reach. Although you settle yourself into a shadow in the corner of a store, Noir decides to keep going. Specifically, she creeps her way into a nearby stairwell up towards the floor above.
A sharp note at the edge of your hearing pierces through your thoughts, interrupting them wholly.
At the same time, the Crags shriek and scream, then chitter angrily. You can practically feel them reeling in what seems like a mix of pain and confusion. They move hastily in small circles as they search around for the source of the sound, but they find nothing. A wave of frustration fills the air around them as the seconds go by.
It strikes you that they search the same spots over and over again, as though they're compelled to do it. There's something about that tone that interrupts their minds, for some reason. Another thought hits you - there isn't a psion like you doing this. You don't feel any Telepathic energies getting injected into the Crags.
You come to the conclusion that this has to be some kind of device making this sound. That note you had heard felt tinny and electronic. But is it some random device in one of the stores doing it? Somehow? Or is it someone doing this on purpose?.
You focus your Scan towards the rest of the Mall, specifically the shops around the Crags. Hopefully, you'll find some indication of what's going on. You find what you're looking for about three floors above you - a pair of human minds in the midst of doing something.
They're right at the edge, so you can hardly tell what those thoughts actually are. But you get splashes of ideas here and there, along with emotions of elation intermixed with fear. Their minds quiet down as the sharp noise ends, as though they're waiting for a reaction.
And they get a reaction - the Crags calm down almost instantly, just like the first time.
When the note rings a third time, you realize that the Crags are definitely being toyed with, if not outright experimented on. A part of you is enraged by that, though you're not entirely sure why. All you know is that it feels cruel to put the bugs in that situation, that predicament.
You decide that you need to get closer. Close enough that you can read their surface thoughts more clearly. You need to know what they're about, and figure out what to do from there.
Both you and Noir coordinate with each other as you sneak upwards and closer to the human targets. It takes you a while, as you want to be sure that you won't get detected by anyone. And if you do, then you'll be far enough away to run if you need to.
As you do so, whoever's toying with the Crags continue to do their thing. They activate their machine - or whatever it is - numerous times in five to ten second intervals. It comes regularly enough that you're now dead certain that they're doing this purposefully. Whether it's for some nefarious reason or fun hardly matters at this point.
That note intensifies the closer you get to it. It doesn't just ring in your ears, but in your mind as well. As though its emitting a frequency that greatly disturbs psions like yourself. And you most definitely want to end it.
Now that you're getting much closer, you can more easily Scan what's on their minds. Their thought patterns seem to be that of adult men. They both share a kind of rigid thought process revolving around cause and effect. Both also hold a kind of curiosity as to their actions. Or rather, the effect they're causing on the Crags below.
But not just that, but they both have this childlike glee at what they're seeing and experiencing. No, wait. They're not amused by what's happening to the Crags. They're amused that they can inflict this onto the Crags.
And it's clear that the more they activate that tone, the more amused they become. You become angrier as a result.
Some part of you wants to balance out this injustice. And you wonder what you could do at all in this situation. You could try to Telepathically connect to the Crags, maybe try to tell them about these two. Somehow.
You're afraid the language barrier would only result in them turning against you, thinking you're the source of the sound. You'd rather not get torn apart, thank you very much.
And what if those people are doing this for a good reason? You imagine someone in the Settlement experimenting on something like this, to help keep Crags from going through the perimeter. Though obviously their methods seem cruel, their end result would be a boon for all you know, right?
Then again, you imagine that people could be doing this for a terrible reason, too. Such as someone using a device like this to cause Crags to attack the settlement. It would allow them to pick through everything without having to fire a shot.
Since you have no idea what their motivations are, you similarly have no idea what to do about it.
What they're doing seems wrong, and you definitely want to do something about that. But what makes you right to interfere in the first place?
Who the hell are you?
You're just a nobody making your way to the other side of the country. What these people are doing, what these Crags are doing, none of it should be your concern. You ought to ignore all this, get back to scavenging, and get out before any of them can notice you.
You've got other things to do with your life, and risking it for some Crags hardly seems like the right thing to do.
And yet here you are, debating it all anyway.
Part of you wishes you could see the future, what would happen if you choose to remove these people from the earth. Or even what would happen if you simply walk away from all this and allow them to their fates.
You desperately want to know which outcome would be better. Or at least, which outcome would be least painful.
And you realize that you can see the future. Just slivers in time just ahead of your present self. Of course, most of those visions are practically useless to you. All they truly do is infuse you with a sense of dissonance, of not quite being in the 'now', of being spread thin over the course of a few seconds.
It certainly helped greatly while in that Living Nexus, but doesn't seem to have any use here. Not as it is, anyway.
But maybe if you could stretch your vision further, beyond just a few moments, then you could possibly see the consequences of whatever choice you make. It dawns on you that you should be practicing this ability more on your own time, not in the middle of what could be a conflict or crisis.
Too late for that, though. Even as you flex outward with your Foresight, you realize that you won't be able to see much. After all, you'll only see your own future and not anyone else's.
You try anyway. You've already gotten this far, so why not keep going?
Time seems to stretch a bit around you, as you push your Cognition further and further out. Reality seems to fight against you and constrain you, as though attempting to keep you when you are.
Your brow furrows and grit your teeth as a result - it takes a great deal of effort to stretch your Foresight outward. Numerous shards of the future pile up around you and squeeze into each other. They merge into each other slowly as they eventually meld into the present, then are diffused into your past.
The strain of it all causes the pain in your head to sharpen more and more, seemingly exponentially. Excruciatingly long seconds pass, and you begin to get glimpses of what's in front of you. More and more slivers pile up, even as you reach further and further out.
For one moment you feel biting rain falling down all over you, soaking your clothing.
And in another moment, you feel something slice your cheek painfully.
The next moment, a flickering shadow creature extends an arm towards you, filling you with dread.
Each flash comes with sharper and sharper spikes of pain, to the point where you're forced to shut down all your psionic energies. You want to scream and shout at the throbbing you feel, but stifle yourself as best you can.
Not that it matters all that much - the psionic Crag shrieks and screams in alarm with incredible ferocity, which easily hides whatever grunts and groans you're making. It's compounded by the fact that the two regular Crags by its side do the exact same thing, because they're linked wholly to each other.
Your sharp headache subsides to a tolerable pounding after a few seconds. As you recover, it dawns on you that the Crags are alarmed by you. Your psionic energies have flared out as a result of your attempt to reach out, and the psionic one knows you're there.
You can feel its Scan and Telepathy reach out in your direction, as though in search of you.
At the same time, all three of them pound on the stone flooring with their chitinous legs, causing it to crack and shatter right at the point of every impact.
You reactivate your Scan and sweep the two people on the same floor as you, just to see if they've moved, or done anything in response. Both appear to be stunned by the sound of the Crags' screaming, and their minds are reeling.
Alarm sweeps through you as you feel the Mall shake slightly around you. When you turn your psionic energies back towards the three Crags, you find that they're climbing the walls upwards. Closer towards you.
You quickly throw Telepathic energies at the psionic Crag in an attempt to stop them. You don't send anything intrusive or painful or contrary, and instead send wavelengths of calm, of giving pause, of caution, of peace.
And you send them over and over repetitively, each time attempting to better conform to their own emotional states, to better communicate. It takes you a few moments, but you eventually align your thought's beats and cadence to their own, which imparts your message to them. At least to some degree.
It's enough for the psionic Crag to slow down, as well stop its ear-piercing shriek. The other two follow suit, though it's clear that they remain alert.
The psionic Crag emits a demanding trill, as though to prod you for answers.
You're not sure exactly how to respond - how exactly can you emote "spying" to them? Is that something they understand as a concept? And if they do, how can you impart that you're not spying on them, but rather on these people near you.
You decide to speak through your emotions.
The Crags appear to hold the same mentality and purpose as the scouts you had sensed earlier. So you easily slip feelings of curiosity and exploration into them. Then you form a ball of anger, but instead of pointing it at the Crags, you direct it towards the two people a dozen or so meters away from you.
You infuse the anger with the memory of the tone.
With it all combined, you hope that the Crags understand what you're doing. That you're spying on people that are doing harm to them.
It takes a moment, but a wave of realization sweeps out from the psionic Crag. It seems to understand what you're attempting to tell it. The bug climbs up a bit further then gets on the second-story walkway before it sidles over slowly.
When it comes in range of the two people - who are by this point exuding waves of fear - another wave of understanding wafts out of the psionic Crag. It seems to be using its Scan to read the two people's minds, and you find yourself helping it.
Much like a kind of translator, you echo what the two feel, but translate it to an emotional wavelength that the Crag better understands.
As you do so, a growing sense of appreciation fills all three Crags. It's an oddly wholesome feeling, and you feel much more connected to the insects than you ever have before.
Then, without warning, the psionic Crag lashes out with a refined Telekinetic attack. It's almost as though it has created pincers with its energies. And it catches one of the people in between those Telekinetic Pincers.
The man screams in absolute pain as he's lifted into the air, caught by an invisible, unbreakable force. At the same time, waves of vengefulness wafts out from the three Crags, all of whom clearly maddened by the sonic tortures they've been subjected to.
Waves of fear and pain and regret emanate from the man held in the pincers, but you feel no empathy for him in the slightest. Instead, you exude a sense of justice - one that the three Crags seem to share.
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