The glass bottle sank half a foot into the snow. He had been tempted to personally drain the remaining scotch before tossing the container, but the last thing he needed was to come back to camp smelling like he had been drinking. If it weren’t for the very real shit he had taken by the ruins, they would wonder why he had left the camp at all. Eli scratched his ass with one hand, and covered his brow with the other as he looked at the where the bottle had landed. There was a noticeable depression in the open, but the glass had sunk enough so that it wasn’t reflecting any light to him. If someone had a bird’s eye view, they might see it. And he had made sure to weigh the bottle down so actual birds wouldn’t make off with it. He wouldn’t have to worry about the crew accidentally stumbling upon it either; they would be leaving soon and no one was in the mood to go off on their own unless they also had to take a shit. 

He had been given two secure cannisters to deposit his notes in. Naturally they were made of polished steel, like everything else Formers touched. They had been labeled, “First Contact,” and “End of Expedition”. He was well aware that the circumstances for dropping the second one could also be, “End of Researcher’s Life.” The idea, was that he would deposit the cannisters when their respective event occurred, and leave them stuffed full of relevant notes and other information that might be lost with him— should the expedition end early. Being given the cannisters didn’t exactly mean that they expected him to die, although that was implied. His order was built on redundancy and excess records, and the cannister system was no exception. As with all equipment that they provided, the containers had specialized tags that could reflect radio signals from miles away. If he didn’t make it, they’d send someone with a scanner to pick up the notes and anything else that was worth retrieving. He’d put the tag for his microscope into the scotch bottle, along with copies of the notes he had taken so far. The weights had been the coins from the laundromat. 

While he would keep the second cannister for its intended use, he had another plan for the first one. Last night had technically been “First Contact” with the phenomena the Singing Road produced. There was a brief description of what he had witnessed, along with some conjecture about what he thought had happened in his cabin. He was no longer shaken about that, it had been more exciting than anything else. The encounter had also been a prudent reminder of how safe the interior of the Roller was. The only way into his pipe-shaped abode was through the roof hatch. With one of his knives attached to a stick, he should be able to defend the space himself. But haphazard spears wouldn’t do much against a Regime-cast slug through his skull. In the end, it would be a matter of who got to D.Q. first. And he did had a leg-up on any potential competition.

Judging from the trail of blood that he saw winding back to camp, Beefcake had not only survived his escapade, but had made it back to camp. Eli had been looking the other way on his way out, so he wasn’t sure if Beefcake had traveled back during the night or in the morning. The blood was steaming. Had to have been very recently then. Someone was screaming at the camp-site. No one was on the side of the Roller that faced the town, but he could see two figures leaning against the railing. The action was on the far side, where the crew’s tent was. What could it be? 

He started climbing the ladder mounted on the Roller’s side. His fingers felt cold as he grasped the metal sides, and he had to close his eyes as he shook snow off of the structure with each step. They had received half a foot last night, and it was still coming down. The camp would have to be taken down very soon, or they would risk items being irretrievably buried. No one had thought to bring a winch for dragging items, or the Roller, out of snowdrifts. That was another item for the list: “Not Bringing Appropriate Add-Ons to Vehicle.” He had traded his light shirts and short pants for heavy coats and undergarments aboard the Rusted Horizon, so he was free from the consequences of that mistake. Still, it was fucking cold up here. 

The deck of the Roller had been swept clean, probably by Pontius as soon as he woke up. The man must have had a bad hip or something. Now that he thought of it, Eli had never seen their pilot walking. He had always been leaning against something, or sitting in his enclosure. The infirm made for amazing pilots, they drove with the same fervor that they would bring if they were able to run for their lives. There he was, with both hands clutching the railing, and leaning to one side. His right foot seemed more splayed out than the left one. Maybe he had broken something that hadn’t healed properly. Next to him was D.Q., who turned around and smiled at him as he approached. Before the three of them was the most ridiculous castration Eli had ever witnessed— and he when he was young he had been forced to chase a boar across his village, while its remaining testicle hung from a bloody thread. 

Beefcake had been tied belly-up to one of the crates on the snow, while Varly and Dedschik held his legs and arms. Hugo was tending to the metal bar that he held over the stove’s flame. Away from the commotion, Splint was sitting up against another crate while Cone tried to spoon-feed her broth. Beefcake’s pants had been pulled down to his ankles, and he was trying desperately to keep his knees together. Hugo pointed the red-hot iron bar at where Beefcake’s genitals had once been.

“I swear to God. if you don’t tell me what really happened out there, I will use this on you!” The old man threatened. Eli couldn’t see his face, but it sounded like he was on the verge of tears. This would probably hurt him more than Beefcake. 

“There wasn’t much of it left when he came in a few minutes ago, he doesn’t have anything to lose except blood.” D.Q. muttered to him. Eli motioned to Pontius, who was definitely paying more attention to him and the gunner than the proceedings down below. The last thing he needed was for the crew to realize that he had been withholding information. He couldn’t afford to lose their trust, yet. 

“Did he cut his junk off himself?” Eli asked. D.Q. nodded: she understood. 

“I think the medic clawed it up or something. He came in here, carrying her. We haven’t been able to get a word out of her. Dedschik says that her wrists are bruised like they were tied up, and maybe she had been gagged. No doubt there’s more to be found below her waist…” Pontius explained.

“So what is Beefcake saying happened?” Varly answered for him.

“He raped her, we know that— and then she diced his pecker! So he beat the shit out of the only person who could patch him up, and came crawling back to us with this story about an owl or some shit going after his worm!” The multi-colored specialist shouted.

“Wasn’t Beefcake the one who was making all of those jokes about dicks yesterday?” D.Q. said to no one in particular.

“All of her knives are here, and none of them are bloodied. Beefcake brought his ax back with him, and that was clean as well.” Cone said, spilling some of his broth into the snow. Splint grabbed him and shook her head violently.

“I’m telling you, it was something else that did it!” He exclaimed. 

“Yeah! A shard of broken glass or whatever she could have gotten her hands on—” Dedschik started to say before Beefcake interrupted.

“Her hands were fucking tied the whole time! It was that thing! I swear— I admitted what I did. That’s the first thing I said when I got here. So why would I go through all of this trouble, just to lie about her cutting my dick off?! We’re in danger, okay? We need to get moving.” The prisoner said with his own sense of urgency. 

“That’s just what he wants! He wants us to get all scared, and get back near the Horizon so he has a better chance of slipping away.” Varly shouted. Through all of this commotion, Hugo hadn’t said anything, or indicated what he believed. This was about to get ugly. Eli had an idea. He put a hand on D.Q.’s shoulder.

“My lady, I’m going to need you to get geared up— both barrels, the full autocannon. Use my office, so you don’t draw attention.” 

“Yessir!” She said and marched off.

“What do you two got going on?” Pontius inquired, while sneaking a glance at her rear as D.Q. pulled her box out from the cargo bundle. 

“Professional relationship.” Eli said as he put a tentative foot on the railing. There was no way in Hell he’d be able to balance on this. It would have been nice to have even more of a height advantage over the rest of the crew. He unsheathed one of his knives, the big one he used for dismemberments, and drew it across the railing. There was a noise, but not the attention-drawing shriek he had been hoping for. Besides, some of the people down there had drawn weapons of their own. He’d have to make do with shouting.

“Alright folks! Listen up!” He shouted. For a brief moment, the only sound was the hissing from the stove. Everyone was looking up at him. Except Warra. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday.

“Can any of you agree on what happened last night?” He asked. The crew looked at one another dubiously before staring back at him.

“Then it looks like we have a phenomena on our hands.” Eli said.

“With all due respect, Eli. There wasn’t anything supernatural last night. This is between me, and my people alone.” Hugo said. 

“Phenomena don’t have to be supernatural. It just has to be something without an apparent truth. And you all just proved that there was no apparent truth.” He said. Beefcake was staring desperately at him and nodding. 

“As I said before, this is what I do. I’ll talk with everyone who was involved, and find out what really happened.” Dedschik spoke up.

“I could give a fuck or less about what clawed him up. There was a woman raped last night, and no one’s denying that. So before you go on and try to find your ‘truth,’ can we give him some justice?!” She asked, raising a hatchet. 

Eli turned to Pontius.

“What’s justice count as in a situation like this?” He whispered.

“In our clan, we take a hot iron, cook the offender’s bits well-done, and drag it along their torso in two lines to make a ‘V’. Hurts like shit, but they’ll live. If the victim’s a child, we use a knife and let them bleed out.” Pontius answered.

“And what about putting them up on a wooden ‘T’ to be tortured to death?” He asked.

“The fuck?” Pontius didn’t get the reference. 

“Splint, regardless of what happened afterwards, do you deny what this man did to you?” Eli asked. The victim stared at him. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was covered in frozen snot. She looked like a corpse. And the corpse shook her head.

“You heard her. Dedschik, do the honors. I will talk with Hugo first.” Dedschik didn’t need to be told again. With her metal leg sinking into the snow, she hobbled over to her elder and grabbed the heated bar from him. Hugo stared at the flame on the stove before turning to the proceedings. Varly shoved his glove into Beefcake’s mouth, hiked his shirt up, and held his legs open. Dedschik held the reddened tip before him, so he could see.

“In the memory of the sisters, and the mothers, who’ve been burned and violated at the hands of your kind. I strip you of your ability to cause further harm. And your right to call yourself a man.” 

Beefcake screamed magnificently through the glove. Eli heard D.Q. chuckling in the room below him. Splint watched, but she didn’t look the least bit relieved. When the ceremony was done. Varly untied him, and led him back to the tent. Dedschik spat on the ground and started digging one of the crates out of the snow. Cone stayed next to Splint and kept trying to spoon her the broth. Eli climbed down the nearest ladder and found Hugo waiting for him.

“How are you holding up?” He asked the old man. Hugo waited until they were in front of the bow and out of earshot to start talking. 

“I feel responsible for what he did. I don’t expect you to understand this, but I’m like a father to them. I had kids before things went to shit, and I can only pray that they died mercifully. But I helped raise all of these ones, I taught them what they know, how to survive, and make something of themselves. And I thought I had done it right… but when one of your own… does that. A man’s got to ask himself what he did it for in the first place…” He said. Hugo looked back at the tent, where Beefcake was waddling out in a new pair of pants.

“His name is Richard. I’ve known him since he was just a bulge on his mother. I’m scared… of what he had in him, and what I didn’t see… And I’m terrified of the greedy men like Cone, and the empty men like you—”

“—And the women?” Eli asked.

“That ‘Death-Queen’ of your’s ain’t no woman. Anyone who does those things to themself, who lets themself go like that… that’s not a person anymore. I’m worried that Dedschik’s taking after that, she’s already lost so much… And I saw the way that Warra was crying to herself after she spoke with you, probably treated her like an animal… And Vanessa. She was the only one of them who I can tell you was truly good… But that’s what goodness gets you in this world. This is what you get for trying to stand against all of the insanity. I… I had hoped…” Hugo choked on his sobbing. What was he hoping for after all of this time?

“What did you dream?” Hugo perked back up.

“Heh. I saw a great fire, burning everything. New things. All of those bright colors and lights that I haven’t seen for half of my life. Plastics and nice metal. They were burning again in my dreams. They were screaming again too. I heard them all trapped under this…” He waved his hand in front of him to try and describe what he had seen. It looked like a flat plane. 

“they were trying to get out. We were all trying to get out of it, and we couldn’t. So we screamed... I guess I should have seen it a long time ago, but old men like me aren’t the only thing that’s left.” He said, with an unnerving amount of surness.

“What else is there? Your ruins?” 

“I saw it clearly this morning.” 

“Saw what?” Hugo smiled, like he had seen a child do something foolish but innocent.

“Something darker.” 

As Hugo left to move his personal items out of the tent, Varly approached. His stained beard had partially frozen, and now swung around like a pendulum. It made him look older too. 

“Look, I-I-I know I wasn’t there last night, and I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary, b-but…” The chemist looked to make sure no one else was near.

“My dreams are haunting me.” He said in a shrill whisper. Eli nodded.

“I understand… but first I got to ask about yourself.”

“Me? I-I’m a chemical specialist— Guild-recognized. Sometimes they bring me in for analysis i-if, there’s, l-leaks— toxins in old structures.”

“Did you plan on testing for lead pipes up here?” Eli asked.

“I also do autopsies, ne-necropsies too.”

“As refreshing as it is to speak with someone who also uses scientific language, I’m a bit rusty on the differences between the two.”

“Autopsies are on human remains, necropsies are…” Varly checked his peripheral. 

“So you think that…” 

“I’ve read some reports… There, i-if, I-I, If we could, if there was a… if I could get access to a specimen. I would want to dissect it.” 

“Assuming there are ‘specimens’ to be had, what would you hope to find?”

“Mutagens, evidence of genetic engineering, some of my colleagues down South have been pushing that there’s a Vro—” 

“I know that theory. I know the woman who came up with it. It’s horseshit. But I agree that these attacks go beyond just highly trained animals. Even if Beefcake really was attacked, I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to make owls attack someone’s groin like that.” 

“A-and some of the dimensions that have been described… o-over thirty feet long.” Varly held up his hands, like that would give Eli an idea of the scale. It did prompt him to look back at the camp. They were packing up. 

“We’ll be going soon. We can talk about this later, if you have any materials, I would love to see them. But right now, I need to know about these dreams.” Eli said.

“Right! I-I saw these splotches, these dots, amoeba… things in the snow. Buried in the snow. And it looked like they were growing, I thought about… fung— mold. Like mold spots growing on a wall.”

“You said they were under the snow.”

“A layer of snow. B-but they were still visible through the membrane. And I saw them 

moving a bit.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“Y-yes…” Varly eyed him suspiciously.

“There was murmuring, and soun— it- they- it was like- I heard voices talking. I couldn’t

make any sense of what they were saying. And they were in these mold spots under the snow.”

“And how did it all feel to you? Like what was the complete picture?”

“I t-thought about this myself… It felt embryonic, like something was growing. A lot of things were growing.” 

“Let’s start walking back.” Eli said.

“Can I ask?”

“Ask what?”

“Are the dreams a part of it?”

“The Singing Road’s phenomena?”

“I-I can’t help but feel that there’s some continuity, or r-relation between these dreams, and…”

“You have good instincts, Varly. And with your knowledge, you might be a solid addition to the same department I work in. And they would chip you…” Eli trailed off as he realized something.

“Is it painful?” Varly asked. He had probably heard from Cone that Eli didn’t have a chip in him. But Eli would definitely know more about the process than any of them.

“They need to keep you fully awake for it, so you can be calibrated. I don’t imagine it would hurt that much. But my superiors don’t tell me everything.” No. They rarely told him anything. 

They were back at the Roller now. The tent had been packed back up, and the snow as rapidly erasing all evidence that they had ever been there— even the blood.