"What the hell!" the man in the tan mask snapped, raising his voice over the noise of the cramped settlement market. His uniform was a patchwork of faded camo and mismatched gear, dust clinging to every crease. He pointed accusingly at the device on the counter — a small piece of scavenged tech unlike anything he'd seen before.
"That's the price," the shopkeeper replied without looking at him, waving a dismissive hand. "Take it or leave it."
"The price is eight batteries," the man added, turning his head to spit on the dirt. "Nothing less."
Cole — Stillface, as everyone here called him — let out a long, irritated sigh behind the mask. He reached into a pouch on his vest and slapped down eight precious AA batteries. Under his breath, barely audible through the balaclava, he muttered:
"You cocksucker…"
"Glad to do business with you, Stillface. As always," the shopkeeper grinned, already turning to deal with another screaming customer.
Cole pocketed the strange device and rolled it around in his hands, squinting behind his dark shades. It looked simple enough, but he couldn't tell which side was supposed to point where. He turned it over again, then tested the weight, then squinted harder.
"How the hell does this work…" he muttered.
Behind him, the ground shook with a soft, rhythmic thud. Not violent — just heavy. The creature standing there loomed at nearly ten feet tall, its entire body a living mass of mud, concrete chunks, stones, roots, and random pieces of debris fused together by Fault-born energy. Its shoulders were broad and nearly fused into its torso, giving it a hulking, blocky shape. The head resembled a crude statue — a human outline with no flesh, only hardened earth. Its "eyes" were two mismatched river rocks wedged deep into the face, angled downward in a perpetually confused expression.
The settlement folk kept a solid twenty-foot distance from them at all times.
The giant Aberrant lifted its massive arm, moving with slow, deliberate effort. Its fingers — if they could be called that — were jagged chunks of concrete shaped into a crude hand. Even its slightest tap could crush a metal door.
It reached forward and gently poked the device in Cole's hands.
"Toy," the Aberrant rumbled, the voice deep and simple, like rocks grinding together. It sounded as though forming even that single word took effort.
"No, Golem. Not a toy." Cole scolded without looking back.
The Aberrant — Golem, as Cole named him — lowered its arm immediately and let out a soft, disappointed groan. Its massive head drooped. Despite its terrifying size and build, it pouted like a child denied candy.
The name fit it perfectly.
And the people around them? The ones whispering, the ones staring, the ones clutching their weapons a little tighter?
They didn't know whether to fear the monster…
…or the man it listened to.
Cole finally found a button on the strange device and pressed it with his gloved thumb. The machine beeped once, the speakers crackling like they were older than he was, and a blotchy, low-resolution image flickered onto the tiny screen. After a second of static, the picture stabilized — a grainy silhouette of Golem, towering behind him.
Under the image, blocky green text appeared:
FAULT READING LEVEL: 7
"Damn," Cole muttered, sharper than he intended. He knew enough about these things to understand how bad that number was. Travelers used devices like this all the time, and over the months, he'd picked up the basics. Fault levels ranged from 0 to 18 — some idiot somewhere had decided the world needed a neat, clean measurement system for horrors that broke the laws of physics. Zero meant harmless, barely even a distortion. Eighteen… that was something else entirely.
Eighteen meant walking apocalypses. Faults that could collapse space, generate miniature black holes, or twist entire cities into spiraling sculptures of death. Aberrants spawned from those levels weren't monsters. They were extinction events. Nobody truly knew what happened inside an 18, because nothing that entered one ever came back. Humans, animals — even machines — simply evaporated into blood mist or disappeared in ways people refused to describe.
Cole had traveled with a handful of survivors over the last six months, drifting from Montana to Idaho Falls in broken caravans of people too desperate to stop moving. A couple of them had devices just like this. They'd taught him how to read them, how to listen for the warning tones, how to judge whether a Fault was survivable or suicidal. The highest number he'd ever seen in person was an 8.
That was the caravan.
His caravan.
The one that got torn apart in seconds.
His entire group — the people he'd shared fires with, the ones who'd asked him questions he never answered, the ones who stopped being scared of Golem after a few days — all of them were shredded by something in that Fault. Something he barely saw before he ran.
Ran faster than he'd ever run in his life.
Golem didn't chase the monster.
Golem chased him.
Cole snapped the device shut and sighed behind his mask.
Level 7.
Just his luck.
Golem was an Aberrant of insanity.
A level 7.
Something that could wipe this entire settlement off the map if it ever felt like it. Cole knew that. Everyone here knew that. The only reason they weren't already dead was because Golem behaved like a dumb, loyal child—and because Cole, for whatever impossible reason, was the only thing it listened to.
Before meeting the creature, Cole hadn't even realized the Hollow Virus could create life. He thought it only twisted and destroyed. But the virus didn't care about rules, biology, or logic. It made what it wanted, and that made it far deadlier than any government broadcast ever warned them about.
"Well, Golem," Cole muttered, turning away from the stall. "We better get back. It's almost dark already."
He didn't wait for a response.
"Okay…" the Aberrant grumbled, the word vibrating through its stone-thick chest. It followed right behind him, massive footsteps shaking the dirt like a shadow made of concrete.
Cole caught the looks—the nervous side-eyes, the hushed whispers, the way people instinctively backed up as he and Golem walked past. Even after a week of staying in this settlement, people still weren't sure whether the monster was allowed to be here.
But what were they going to do? Kill it?
Impossible.
Cole was honestly shocked they let him through the gates in the first place. A masked man walking with a ten-foot monster of stones and soil… even he wouldn't have let himself in.
He'd earned a reputation already. The kind that spread fast in small communities. A man who survived Faults. A man who didn't warp. A man who commanded a creature stronger than any wall they could build.
Most survivors said natural-born aberrants—the ones made from the land, not from humans or animals—were always hostile, cruel, and unpredictable. Golem broke that rule. Or maybe Cole did. Either way, the two of them together scared the hell out of everyone.
And honestly?
Cole didn't mind.