10 years, 62 days before The Incident – 1217H

  The Outskirts

  Uncharted Woodlands

  To the people of the city, vegetation was an almost unknown concept. People lived and died surrounded by steel, concrete and dust, with parks – let alone small woodlands – only being enjoyed by the exceedingly wealthy. With the density of most Districts, space was at a premium, and space that wasn’t making money either via taxes or commerce was seen as wasted space by most, making such ‘luxury’ seen as eccentric and odd.

  Even for Lian, who was from a comfortable and powerful Nest, the Outskirts had been something of a shock, or at least the minuscule part of it she’d explored so far. The badlands she’d first encountered were what she expected: a dead and burned land killed by the refuse of the City’s industry, hazardous to navigate just by its own tainted existence. What had came next though, past the initial badlands, was what could only be described as a forest. It was relatively sparse on the edges that were adjacent to the badlands, but it was a forest nonetheless. A real one, not an artificial park.

  As she cautiously entered and navigated what should have been a natural, normal and even soothing environment to the humans of an age long past, Lian couldn’t help but feel uneasy. As with anyone else who had lived their entire lives in the city, a place like this felt paradoxically alien and exotic simply because of how much it stood in contrast to what they knew. It could never be emphasized enough that for some denizens of the Backstreets, they had never so much as seen a single tree. To be surrounded by them now, was eerie.

  Yet, for her, it was eerie in an intriguing way more than a frightening one. Of course, the young Fixer was well aware of all the rumors about horrible creatures lurking in the Outskirts, it was known as the ‘dumping grounds’ for everything the Head wanted brushed away but decided not to exterminate outright for whatever reasons. Despite knowing that, she still allowed herself to take in the wonder of those sights, mostly untouched by the hand of urbanization and industry. Untouched by the Sins of the City, or at least it seemed, despite knowing better.

  For a moment, Yue couldn’t help but wonder what might one find if they were to simply... continue on their journey outbound, for days, weeks, months even. No one in the City ever really thought much about what laid beyond its borders, being far too busy with daily survival or personal enrichment or politics or whatever else have you. All in all, people were... near-sighted and narrow-minded, and while deep down she always knew, witnessing this sight – this mundane, innocuous forest – really drove the point home and into the light.

  Unfortunately for Lian’s attempts at philosophical musings, short-sightedness was far from the only reason that the people of the City avoided the Outskirts, and one of the many, many ‘reasons’ was just about to make itself evident to her, in a very direct and very real way. It first came as distant but ominous cawing. It was too loud and too twisted to be that of any normal crow, and only the most naive of minds could have mistaken it for them

  She leapt without a second thought, so as to avoid making herself an easy target to whatever might have come next. For all of the depravity one could find within the City, a majority of its threats were still human. Even of those who had shed off parts of their humanity, they still for the most parts respected certain rules and conformed to certain expectations. What lurked within the Outskirts was beyond any quaint attempts at prediction, and the more one tried, the more likely they were to start to lose their own sanity.

  It didn’t take long for fleet and light ‘footsteps’ to start to surround the lone Fixer as shadowed forms quickly advanced through the permanent twilight of the forest’s canopy. They moved like pack hunters, attempting to position themselves to strike from all sides and cut off any avenue of retreat before the first blow was even announced. The cawing, for better or worse, had itself stopped shortly after it first rang out, and was now almost deafening in its absence.

  Lian did not wait for the entities to make the first move. She dashed forth, guided by the sound of light skittering upon the underbrush to track the impending threats. A twisted limb shot out from the foliage, half-way between a hand and a talon. The bloated arm was like a diseased thing, half-covered by black feathers, but with a great many featherless spots that showed skin of a greyed, unhealthy hue. The hand itself featured unnaturally long and slender digits half-way between flesh and keratin or bone, as if they had partially ossified.

  A wet crunch erupted as the Fixer’s black mace slammed right into the palm that had reached forth, shattering it and causing those clawed digits to slump limp. As the injured creature backed off, more of its mutant anatomy came into view. It stood bidepal, vaguely like a man, though black feathers covered most of its body. Its feet had fully turned into black talons while its head suffered the most extreme of changes. It was well and wholly a bird’s head, neck fused into the torso, with a beak and giant, deep gold eyes on its sides.

  Sapphire eyes peered deep into that giant golden globe. There was still a level of intelligence within, but it was nothing like what humans would recognize as such. Animal instincts reigned supreme in an uncaring self-indulgence all but the most psychotic of Syndicates would struggle to match. She had never seen them before, not even heard of them, but it mattered not. The nuances of what these creatures were, where they came from, or how, mattered not.

  All that mattered was that Lian Yue did not wish to find out what they planned to do with their victims, and was therefore going to strike first and ask questions a distant second, ideally to someone else. This would prove easier said than done, as the avian mutants soon revealed themselves to be far more capable fighters than the average Backstreet scum. To the civilian eye, they would appear blindingly fast, and although they had nothing in the way of armor, they were resilient enough to survive blows that would fell thugs in one.

  Sheer brute strength and speed would not be enough however, as animal ferocity met tactical thinking. Arcs of powers jolted and sparked as the young woman’s black mace swung and swung and she waltzed. Every hit from it that did not kill at least slowed its target as the electricity numbed them and shorted their nerves. It proved a much-needed equalizer against the creatures’ superior numbers, yet even so it wouldn’t have been enough on its own.

  By smashing through the encirclement as it was still setting up, Lian had prevented the aberrations from bringing their numbers down at once in the way they had wanted, forcing them to play their hand early and while partially out of position. Capitalizing on that by subsequently continuing to be on the move, she was able to limit how many of the beasts were capable of engaging her at any given time. Still, there was a catch to this strategy, which forced her to rapidly double back and not get too far from the initial site.

  As the people of the Great Lakes often liked to say... there was always a bigger fish. Running blindly to escape a predator ran the risk of running straight into another, possibly worse one, and while the trip up to this point had been mostly quiet... taking the Outskirts lightly was not a mistake that many had a chance to make twice.

  Fallen leaves tumbled and kicked up as soles and talons alike kicked and swept along the ground while black metal and ossified flesh turned into claws cleaved through the air with significant force. Whenever one of the birdfolk fell behind, another stepped up to replace them. Whenever they tried to flank and pounce on her, the white Fixer repositioned and countered with a fluid grace and efficient motions that betrayed greater skills, but lacked any audience.

  One by one, the avian beasts fell, broken and twitching. Eight in total, she could count as this ‘flock’ from the remnants on the ground. Though the woman now stood winded but mostly unscathed, her own instincts whispered to the back of her mind that even just grazes from these creatures could have been... especially dangerous.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Barely had her jet-black locks settled back down from the last blow that ended the deformed menace, Lian was already looking around with renewed urgency. Though she had not used her firearm – partially on purpose – there was still a chance that the sound of fighting could have drawn the attention of something else. She did not know what sort of ‘bigger fish’ lurked around this forest, nor did she much care to find out by being found by it first. It was why she had been much more cautious on her approach than she might have seemed.

  With the proverbial coast clear, she quickly got moving. It had grown apparent that this forest had its share of surprises and while she had handled the first competently, it was best not to linger needlessly. As she did, her thoughts momentarily drifted back to something she had seen on her way here; something that felt ever more improbable and out of place the more she thought back on it. Against all odds and expectation, there had been, in fact, people living nearby.

  As shocking as it would be to most, she had encountered a small hamlet at the border between the badlands and the forest. It was.. not entirely far-fetched, as there would always be people who either desired to live away from the rules of the Head and the oppressive systems of the City, or whom were simply cast out either due to crimes or perceived lack of use. Living in the Outskirts, however, had as many if not more dangers, and the creatures Lian had just fought were a good example of them.

  The people she briefly encountered in that hamlet were, for all intent and purposes, civilians who had not a snowball’s chance in hell of fighting off said creatures. As such, one of three things had to be true. Either they had found some way to ward off or escape their notice, they had one to a few actually competent and powerful members, or they had gotten exceedingly lucky thus far. With how unlikely the last option was, she leaned about 30% the first and 70% the second.

  Or at least she damn well hoped this little ragtag bunch of outcasts living in huts like some kind of anti-technology activists had protectors, because she saw kids among their numbers. The thought of the little wide-eyed snots being disembowelled by those spindly claws did not sit well with her. Yet, such tragedies were if perhaps not commonplace, then an at least not so infrequent bitter reality of the world they lived in. She could not throw away her own life to stay and protect them from the dangers with which they flirted, and so she hoped. Earnestly.

  Eventually, what had drawn Lian Yue to the Outskirts began to appear through the canopy. A building of some kind rose in the distance, its purpose unknown, but not unknowable. Truth be told, the desperate and the outcasts were not the only people to frequent the Outskirts. This same remote location, outside of the immediate gaze of the Head, made it a somewhat popular choice for anyone and everyone who wanted to run experiments that were either sufficiently twisted – or sufficiently potentially upsetting to the status quo – to be kept out of the way...

  What proved to be somewhat more surprising, was the revelation that she wasn’t the only one to have come there. As the young Fixer emerged from the treeline and took in the scope of the building in its full grandeur, she also noticed what looked like a fairly well concealed camp at the edge of the treeline. Tarp sheets were hidden on two sides by large shrubs and ferns while camo print sheets closed the ‘perimeter’ between the shrubs and a lone tree. It was only by chance that she had noticed, as the simple display was nonetheless quite effective.

  Peering inside showed the camp to be empty of living souls, but it nonetheless provided two crucial bits of information. The state of the small camp and its accessories showed that it had been used very recently, as all the survival equipment was in pristine working order. There was also a noticeable lack of dead bodies, which indicated that its owner must have been still around, actively somewhere in the area. Of course, Lian was not the sort to be disappointed at the continued living of random strangers, but this could.. complicate things, and it was good to have the forewarning.

  Unsurprisingly, the building itself seemed abandoned, but the small camp was not the only sign of activity around its entrance. Traces coming back and forth on foot indicated more than just one individual, and the tracks indicated people’s footsteps, which were immediately recognizable as different from those of the talons of the birdspawn beasts from earlier. These were fairly recent, with traces of vehicles being much older and faded.

  Of course, if its original owners had managed to become a Wing, then this facility was most likely no longer needed, whatever it had been used for in the past. The real question was whether or not it would still hold anything worth bringing back, be that under the form of physical items, or answers to the young Fixer’s increasingly more numerous and pointed questions. These more recent traces and the presence of that camp did not bode well for the former, but hopefully the latter could still be found.

  In and around the City were things referred to as ‘Ruins’, which were more complex than their simple name suggested. When one spoke of Ruins, they did not refer to just any abandoned structure or neighborhood, but one of two very specific things. It referred to places that were often used either for research or by powerful groups who had access to equally powerful technologies. Whichever the case, those places held the promise of extremely valuable artifacts left behind by their former masters, should one be able to brave the many dangers and hazards that still lurked. Many within the City made this sort of expeditions their entire profession, and that was likely the case of whoever had made this camp outside.

  Then, there were THE Ruins. Near mythological in nature, legends spoke of a.. layer, for a lack of better term, that supposedly existed very deep underneath the City itself. Lower than the festering damp and dark of its tunnels and sewage was, it was said, a place more dangerous than any other ‘Ruins’ that held within its remote caves not technological artifacts, but ‘natural’ phenomena that could bend or even rewrite reality itself. Whether such grand tales had any speck of truth to them, Lian had no real idea. One way or another though, relics were very much real, and their power was impossible to overstate...

  As she cautiously entered into the darkened halls, she kept her mace at the ready for whatever come may. So far, she couldn’t make out a sound, as the facility ahead resonated with the deafening silence of a tomb. It certainly made for a rather jarring contrast, thinking back on the optimistic little leaflet that had sparked this whole investigation. It sure seemed genuine on the surface; the desire to help carried by those people on the old photo. As the saying went though, the road to hell was paved with good intentions...

  Moreover, Wings were rarely, if ever, built from ‘good intentions’. Only the search for profit, power or both really motivated those with the means and ambition to do so. Had they lost their way due to something they found? Not found after countless hours of effort and sacrifice? If the former, then had they found ‘it’ on purpose or by accident? Had ‘it’ been a force with pseudo-sentience of its own or at the very least an insidious influence, like radiations that affected the mind rather than the cells? The possibilities were only limited by how twisted one’s imagination could get.

  With that considered, there was a small, gnawing discomfort at the back of Lian’s mind. Though she liked to think of herself as an ‘ally of Justice’ and one of the few people who genuinely gave a shit in the City, the fact that she had seen or read enough for her ‘imagination’ to have nothing to envy to even the psychotic members of the Ring was not lost on her. What was the Ring one might ask? Well, the topic of the Fingers was best kept for another day.

  Because she just heard footsteps deeper into the darkness.