Dawn broke over the Etruscan hills, but there was no sun.
Just a bruised purple sky hanging low over the dead forest. The acid rain had stopped, leaving behind a thick, yellow fog that tasted of sulfur and copper.
At the mine entrance, chaos reigned.
"Move! Strap that tighter!" Decimus shouted, kicking a crate of supplies. "If it falls, we leave it!"
Two hundred refugees scrambled in the mud. They looked like ghosts. Emaciated, covered in soot, eyes wide with fear.
But they were moving.
They hauled crates of Nutrient Paste on their backs. They carried bundles of spears made from scrap iron. They dragged sleds piled with scavenged tech.
Marcus stood on a high rock, watching the column form.
The glitch in his brain flared. The UI overlaid the grim reality with cold text.
[UNIT: REFUGEE CARAVAN]
[SPEED: SLOW (BURDENED)]
[DEFENSE: NEGLIGIBLE]
[OBJECTIVE: REACH THE COAST (40 MILES)]
Marcus frowned. This wasn't an army. It was a buffet.
If the machines caught them in the open, it would be a massacre.
"We're too heavy," Lucilla said, climbing up beside him. She wore a heavy canvas poncho over her ruined suit. "They can barely walk. We won't make five miles by nightfall."
"We make ten," Marcus said. "Or we die."
He jumped down. He walked to the front of the line.
The air was getting worse. The fog wasn't just mist; it was chemical runoff steaming from the ground.
A woman near the front coughed. A wet, hacking sound. Then another man joined in.
"The air is poison," Galen said, appearing with a box in his hands. "The lungs will burn within the hour."
"Did you finish the print?" Marcus asked.
"Just in time," Galen nodded. "The fabricator battery died right after."
He opened the box.
Inside were hundreds of gray plastic masks. Simple, brutal designs. A filter cartridge over the mouth, elastic straps for the head.
[ITEM: CARBON RESPIRATOR (COMMON)]
"Pass them out," Marcus ordered.
The refugees took the masks. They strapped them on.
The transformation was instant.
They stopped looking like frightened farmers. With their faces hidden behind the skeletal gray masks, they looked uniform. Anonymous.
They looked like a cult. The Faceless Legion.
"Better," Marcus muttered.
He walked to the rear of the column.
Here, the heaviest burden waited.
A massive iron mine cart, wheels greased with animal fat, sat on the tracks. It was piled high with the most valuable loot from the White Fortress.
Spare Fusion Cores. Heavy ammunition crates. The deactivated Sentinel chassis Galen wanted to study.
It weighed two tons.
Narcissus stood in the harness.
He wore his black ceramic armor. The blue light in his chest cut through the fog like a beacon. He gripped the heavy chains wrapped around his chest.
"Can you pull it, Iron Dog?" Marcus asked.
Narcissus leaned forward. The titanium mount in his sternum hummed. His veins glowed blue with coolant.
"It is light," the giant rumbled. His voice was muffled by his own customized respirator—a black grill welded to his jaw.
He took a step.
CREAAAK.
The cart moved.
"Forward!" Marcus roared, his voice amplified by his mask. "To the sea!"
The column lurched into motion.
They entered the Dead Zone.
The forest here was a graveyard. Trees had melted into gray sludge. The ground was a soup of ash and mud.
The silence was absolute. No birds. No wind. Just the squelch of boots and the creak of Narcissus's cart.
Marcus walked the flank, Vibro-Gladius loose in its sheath.
Every shadow looked like a machine. Every snapping branch sounded like a gunshot.
"Keep the pace!" Decimus yelled from the front. "Don't bunch up!"
Two hours in.
The terrain got rougher. Roots slick with slime tripped the walkers.
A child—a girl no older than seven—stumbled. Her heavy pack pulled her down into the mud.
She didn't get up. She just lay there, small chest heaving.
Her mother dropped her own load and fell beside her. "Get up, Livia! Please!"
The column slowed. Heads turned.
Varro, the smith, marched over. He looked exhausted, his mask streaked with mud.
"Leave her," Varro rasped. "She's done. She slows us down."
"She's my daughter!" the mother screamed.
"We have two hundred lives to save!" Varro shouted back. "We cannot carry the dead!"
Marcus stepped between them.
He looked at Varro. The smith flinched, remembering the strength of the Vibro-Knife.
Marcus looked down at the girl. She was crying behind her mask.
He didn't offer a hand. He didn't offer comfort.
He reached down and grabbed her pack. He slung it over his own shoulder.
Then he picked the girl up. One arm. Effortless.
He walked to the rear. To the iron cart.
Narcissus stopped. He looked at Marcus.
"Cargo," Marcus said.
He placed the girl on top of the ammo crates.
"Hold on to the chains," Marcus told her. "Don't fall."
He turned back to Varro and the mother.
"We carry the weight," Marcus said. His voice was cold, flat, and final. "That is why we are strong."
He pointed North.
"Move."
The mother stared at him. Then she nodded. She picked up her pack. She marched with a new energy.
Varro looked at the ground, shamed. He went back to the line.
The column moved faster now. The fear had shifted. They weren't just running from monsters anymore. They were following a leader.
[MORALE INCREASED: +10%]
The fog thickened as midday approached. Visibility dropped to twenty yards.
Lucilla fell in step beside Marcus. She was holding her signal jammer—a device scavenged from the Liquidator's comms array.
It was a box of wires and antennas, humming softly.
"Status?" Marcus asked.
"Quiet," Lucilla said. "Too quiet. The jammer should be picking up background radiation from the orbital grid. Static. Noise."
"And?"
"It's clean," she said. "Something is filtering the signal locally."
BEEP.
A single, high-pitched tone cut the silence.
Lucilla froze. She stared at the small screen.
"What was that?" Marcus asked, hand dropping to his sword.
"A ping," she whispered. "Biometric scan."
"Radar?"
"No," she said, tapping the screen frantically. "Radar bounces off metal. This... this went through the trees. It measured heart rates."
"Distance?"
"Close," she said. "Fifty meters. Flanking."
Marcus stopped. He looked into the yellow mist.
Nothing but gray trees and shadows.
But the hair on his arms stood up. The Ghost of Commodus—the hunter, the gladiator—smelled it before he saw it.
It wasn't a machine. Machines hummed. Machines stepped heavy.
This was silent.
A shadow detached itself from a tree trunk. It was low to the ground. Sleek. It moved like oil pouring over stone.
It had four legs.
"Stalkers," Marcus whispered.
He didn't scream. Panic would scatter the refugees.
He tapped his comms.
"Decimus. Narcissus. Form the turtle."
"Now?" Decimus crackled.
"Right now," Marcus said.
He drew the Vibro-Gladius. The gray blade snapped to life, humming with a lethal thirst.
"They're hunting us."