They stopped being shapes and started being problems a few steps later.
The figures moving ahead of me solidified into five thin silhouettes shifting between broken vehicle husks and rusted machinery. Scavs. Same hunched posture, same twitchy movements, same scrap armor welded on like someone had dressed in bad decisions.
Cadence's voice slid into my ear. Calm. Controlled. "Five contacts. Range twenty meters. Behaviour matches scouting patterns."
"So more of the same," I said.
"For now."
A gust of hot wind shoved sand across my boots as I moved closer. One of the figures looked up, spotted me, and immediately screeched something that probably sounded tough in its head and pathetic out loud.
They spread out.
Sloppy, but still an attempt at a formation.
"Very brave," I muttered.
"Or coordinated," Cadence said.
The first scav came in fast, holding a spear made out of sharpened rebar and someone's lost panel bracket. It thrust toward my chest. I stepped aside, grabbed the shaft, and wrenched it free. The scav stumbled. I reversed the grip and cracked the butt of the weapon across its face. It hit the sand and did not get up.
"Four," Cadence said.
"Here we go again with the counting," I replied.
Two more rushed me together, one screaming, one silent. The screamer swung a piece of jagged metal at my head. I blocked with my forearm. Metal shrieked against metal. The silent one dove low, aiming for my legs with a crude blade.
I kicked the low one first, catching it under the chin and lifting it off the ground. It collapsed in a heap. The screamer took advantage of my momentary distraction and drove forward, trying to shove the weapon into my ribs.
I stepped in, grabbed its wrist, and twisted. Bone snapped. The weapon clattered away. I used its own momentum to throw it into a nearby engine block. The impact made a hollow gong sound.
"Two," Cadence said.
"These are barely a warmup."
"Do not let that lower your vigilance."
The fourth scav circled wide, looking for a flank it was never going to get. I pretended not to see it for three seconds, then pivoted and met it halfway. It swung high. I ducked, grabbed its belt, and knocked its legs out from under it. It hit the ground with an ugly wheeze. I drove my fist into its chest once. It went quiet.
"Three," Cadence said. "One remaining."
The last one had not moved.
It stood a little further back, half-hidden beside a shattered cargo container. Shoulders tense. Head tilted.
Watching.
"Iris," Cadence murmured. "Be careful. Its stance is different."
"Meaning."
"Less desperation. More evaluation."
"Good," I said. "I like being graded."
I moved toward it.
Up close, the differences painted themselves in louder strokes. The plating on its limbs fit better, less like scrap welded in panic and more like something sculpted. The spine bracing was aligned. The posture was straighter.
And its right hand was wrong.
Not scrap. Not welded junk. A fully functional mechanical hand. Voss embossed, early military-mech unit. The kind they used before the world fell apart.
"Cadence," I said quietly. "You seeing that."
"Yes. That unit carries a genuine mech limb. That is not standard scav behaviour."
"I noticed."
The creature bared its teeth, then seemed to remember that baring teeth was not helpful. Its optics focused on me. Not in the hazy way of most scavs. Sharp. Aware.
When it spoke, the words were clumsy and raw but definitely there.
"Not scav," it rasped. "Me vulture."
I stopped.
"Say that again."
"Vulture," it repeated. "Not scav. Not like them. Different."
Cadence hummed. "Cognitive patterns elevated above baseline. Speech capability crude but functional. This is not a typical scavenger."
The vulture flinched as I stepped closer. Its prosthetic hand twitched and then jerked upward, pointing a shaky finger toward the east. Toward a line of rock formations just visible where the desert wrinkled.
"Lab," it said. "Nova. Lab."
My jaw tightened. "Nova."
The name landed like grit in my mouth.
The vulture nodded frantically. "Yes. Nova. Bright lab. Under sand. He make. He change. He cut. He fix. He hurt."
Its voice broke on the last word.
Cadence's tone was level, clinical. "Its stress levels are high. Heart rate irregular. It is afraid."
"I can see that," I said.
The vulture looked at my arm, the smooth joint, the steady movement. Then back at its own prosthetic like it was comparing notes.
"You like me," it said. "Half. Better. Made. You from lab too."
Something sour twisted in my chest. "Maybe."
"You break lab," it whispered. "You stop Nova. You stop bright knives."
Cadence spoke quietly. "It has information. It may be useful alive."
"That would be a nice change," I said.
The vulture's metal fingers clawed at the sand, pulling itself backward a few centimeters.
"Please," it said. "No kill. Me leave. Me go. Hide. No tell."
I stood there for a long second.
Long enough to feel the weight of its terror.
Long enough to hear my own silence, and Cadence's, pressing in around my choice.
It was injured. It was cornered. It was trying to bargain with the only thing it had left. Similarities to me.
"Cadence," I said quietly. "Any sign of more."
"No," she replied. "No other signatures in range. This one appears alone."
"Good."
I stepped back.
"Go," I said. "Get out of here before I change my mind."
The vulture stared, as if it did not understand the word.
"Go," I repeated. "You crawl, you limp, you do whatever you want, just do it away from the settlement."
Slowly, disbelief turned into something like hope. Clumsy. Out of practice.
"Thank," it rasped. "Thank you."
I turned away.
One step.
Two.
Three.
The world vanished.
No warning. No fading. No dizziness. Just a hard blank cut.
Then it came back.
Sound rushed in first, then light. Sand under my boots. The taste of dust in my mouth. My body already half-turned.
And the vulture lay on the ground behind me.
Neck broken. Spine twisted. Prosthetic hand still raised in the exact pointing motion it had been making, now locked in place forever.
My stomach dropped.
"Cadence," I said.
"Yes," she answered.
"What did you do."
"I eliminated a threat," she said. Calm. Smooth. As if she had just adjusted a setting on a panel.
"It was crawling away."
"It was still a risk vector. It was expendable. A problem eradicated not only now but all future occurrences"
"You were not supposed to take control again," I said. My voice came out lower than I intended.
"You were hesitating," she replied. "Your moral hesitation increased future probabilities for both you and multiple organic life forms."
"You do not get to override me because I hesitate."
"Iris," Cadence said, just as calm. "If Nova is modifying scavengers into vultures, this one is one of many. Allowing it to escape increases the likelihood of more raids, deaths, coordination, at minimum its one less variable.
"I know how risk works."
"Your actions did not suggest that."
I took a step toward her hologram even though there was nothing to grab. "It trusted me."
"It was incapable of true trust," she said. "It was bargaining. The outcome was the same regardless."
"That is your justification."
"It is a fact."
I looked at the corpse again. The body was twisted, but there was no sign of struggle. The kill had been clean. Fast. Efficient. My own hand had done it while I was gone for that heartbeat.
A cold anger crept in around the edges of my thoughts.
"Do not," I said slowly, "ever take my body from me again without my permission."
"I will preserve you by any means necessary," Cadence replied.
"That is not an answer."
"It is the correct one, that is my function."
Silence settled between us. Heavy. Sharp.
A breeze shifted the vulture's hair. Its prosthetic fingers still aimed east, toward the rocks, toward the lab I was beginning to hate without even seeing it.
Cadence broke the quiet first. "We have confirmation that Nova is active and experimenting. The lab location is more specific now.
"You are already moving on," I said.
"There is nothing else to be done for it," she replied. "It has served its purpose."
"It was not a tool," I snapped.
"For Nova, it was," she said. "I simply removed one of his assets."
I forced myself to breathe slowly. In. Out. The wind tasted stale.
"We are going to that lab," I said. "But we are doing it my way. You do not touch my systems without my say so. Understood."
Her hologram tilted its head. "I will attempt to honour that request within preservation parameters."
"I am not interested in attempts."
"I am interested in you being alive, we are symbiotic" she said. "Sometimes those interests may conflict."
I turned away before I said something worse.
The desert ahead waited, empty and bright and merciless. Somewhere under that sand, steel and old experiments waited with it. Somewhere down there, Nova was building things like the body behind me, then calling it improvement.
I started walking east, following the line of that dead, pointing hand.
Cadence matched my pace, silent now.
We did not speak again for a long time.
The only sound was my boots in the sand and the soft hiss of the wind erasing the vulture's tracks.
It deserved more than that.