The ridge offered a brutal, panoramic view of the Monongahela. Below them, the river was a jagged vein of black glass, cutting a path through the white-dusted ruins of the South Side. It wasn't the majestic waterway of the old world; it was a frozen grave.
Evan hunkered down behind a rusted guardrail, the pitted metal leaching heat through his tactical gloves. The wind whipped up from the valley, carrying the scent of wet soot and the distant, rhythmic metallic banging of a loose signpost miles away.
Beside him, Mark and Leo were little more than silhouettes against the encroaching gray of a winter dusk. Their breath came in heavy, syncopated puffs of steam, the only sign of life in the stillness. Evan looked down at the drive nestled in his palm. It was a ruggedized SHD storage unit, cold and heavy as a river stone, yet he felt a strange, phantom heat radiating from it the moment his wrist-comp detected the hardware.
As Evan slid the drive into the auxiliary port of his bracer, his vision flickered. For a split second, the world doubled—the gray reality of the ridge overlaid with the high-contrast orange of the Strategic Homeland Division's interface.
[ENCRYPTED DATA DETECTED: SHD LEGACY ARCHIVE]
[DECRYPTION FEAT INITIALIZED: 'GHOST IN THE MACHINE']
[OBJECTIVE: MAINTAIN PROXIMITY TO SECURE NODE DURING DECRYPTION]
[REWARD: WEAPON MOD - IMPROVED GAS BLOCK (BLUEPRINT)]
The text hung in his retina, sharp and steady. Unlike the standard-issue gear given to the Second Wave, Evan's kit felt... different. It didn't stutter under the load of high-level encryption, and it didn't drain his power cells. While other Agents lived in constant fear of their comms dying or their HUDs flickering out during a blizzard, Evan's ISAC unit hummed with an unnatural, efficiency. It didn't care about the laws of thermodynamics, It simply worked.
"How's it looking?" Leo whispered. He was prone, the long barrel of his marksman rifle tracking a rhythmic movement near the skeletal remains of the Smithfield Street Bridge.
"It's deep-coded," Evan said, his voice flat, filtered through his comms. "Old First Wave protocols. High-level stuff—likely a cached backup of the city's pre-Collapse logistics. ISAC can eat it, but it's going to take focus. I'm going to be half-blind on the HUD while the cycles run."
Mark shifted, his old-school, bulky gear rattling. He didn't have the sleek, specialized modifications Evan carried. He was a grunt of the old world trying to survive in the new one. "We're sitting ducks on this slope. The Stray scouts we saw earlier? If they find a trail, they'll flank us before we see the flash. We need cover, Evan. Real cover."
Evan scanned the map overlay.
The topographical data was being cannibalized by the decryption process, the detailed 3D mesh of the terrain dissolving into low-poly wireframes to save processing cycles for the 'Ghost in the Machine' protocol. A small maintenance shed, half-buried in a snowdrift a hundred yards east, glowed with a faint, pulsing tactical amber.
"There," Evan pointed. "Maintenance shed. If we get inside, I can tether to the local copper lines. The shed's old hardline grid is still partially grounded. It'll mask the signal spike when the decryption hits the cloud. Otherwise, ISAC's handshake is going to light us up like a flare on every bandit's radio scanner from here to Oakland."
They moved low, boots crunching through the treacherous crust of frozen sleet. Every step was a gamble. In this silence, a snapping branch sounded like a gunshot. Evan felt the weight of the download immediately.
As the decryption hit five percent, his HUD began to shed layers. The high-fidelity thermal outlines of distant buildings vanished. The wind-speed indicator and the ballistic trajectory calculator for his rifle flickered and died.
By the time they reached the shed, Evan was operating on a skeletal interface. He kicked the door inward—not a dynamic breach, but a heavy, desperate shove against the ice that had fused the frame to the threshold.
The interior was a tomb of the industrial age. The air was stagnant, smelling of dry rot, old grease, and the metallic tang of oxidizing iron. Evan didn't wait for his teammates to get settled. He slammed the drive into the shed's ancient terminal port, slaving his wrist-comp to the building's wiring.
[DECRYPTION: 12%... 17%...]
[CAUTION: TACTICAL OVERLAY REDUCED TO MINIMAL BANDWIDTH]
The world suddenly felt claustrophobically small. The glowing orange outlines of Mark and Leo, which usually allowed Evan to track their movement through solid walls, faded to dim, intermittent pulses. The long-range threat detection—the "early warning" chime that had saved his life a dozen times—was gone.
"Leo, watch the north approach," Evan commanded, his eyes darting between the physical room and the scrolling hex-code in his peripheral vision. "Mark, you've got the bridge side. Don't use your lights. If they come, they'll come quiet. I'm down to basic optics."
"Copy that," Leo muttered, wedging his rifle barrel through a crack in the boarded-up window. "Just hurry. This place feels like a trap."
The minutes stretched into an eternity. In the silence, the logic of Evan's modified ISAC felt like a haunting. The device didn't heat up, didn't whine, and the battery icon remained stubbornly, impossibly full. It was a piece of technology that defied the apocalypse, a relic of a design philosophy that prioritized the "User Experience" over the harsh realities of survival.
Yet, the data it was pulling was haunting. The decryption wasn't just numbers; it was a roadmap of what was lost. Names of transit workers, schedules for water purification, blueprints for infrastructure that no longer existed.
And then there was the Reward.
In the corner of his eye, a wireframe model of an Improved Gas Block flickered.
To a civilian, it was a trivial piece of metal. To Evan, it was a godsend. It promised a 15% reduction in vertical recoil and a more efficient gas cycle, meaning his rifle would run cleaner for longer. In a world of attrition, where every wasted round was a step closer to death, that blueprint was worth more than a room full of gold.
[DECRYPTION: 44%... 51%...]
"Evan," Mark hissed. He was crouched by the door, his hand hovering over a flashbang. "I've got shadows. Movement near the old substation. They're not Strays. Too organized."
Evan looked toward the door, but his HUD gave him nothing. No red diamonds, no distance markers. He felt naked. He was forced to rely on his own hearing—a sense he had allowed to atrophy in the shadow of his advanced tech.
He heard it then. A faint clink of metal on metal. A boot sliding on ice.
"Don't fire unless they enter the kill zone," Evan whispered. "If we can let them pass, we save the data."
"They're circling," Leo countered from the window. "They know someone's here. They saw the door-kick."
The decryption bar felt like it was moving through molasses.
[DECRYPTION: 68%... 72%...]
Outside, a voice rose above the wind. It was gravelly, strained by a cheap respirator.
"We saw the light, boys! Come out with your hands up, and maybe we just take the gear. Stay inside, and we burn the box!"
Scavengers. But Leo was right—these weren't the starving wretches usually found picking over the South Side. These men had a cadence to their movement.
"Leo, status," Evan whispered.
"Four contacts. One heavy coat, looks like a leader. They've got industrial masks and... damn, that's a National Guard M249. They've hit an armory."
Evan felt a bead of sweat roll down his temple. Without his HUD, he couldn't see the SAW gunner. He couldn't pre-aim the corner. He was a man in a dark room with a failing flashlight.
A floorboard creaked—not inside the shed, but on the small porch outside.
Evan's hand went to the grip of his rifle, his thumb flicking the safety to semi. He missed the "Optimal Range" indicator that usually sat in his lower-right vision, telling him exactly where his bullets would lose their lethality. He missed the "Enemy Health" bars that would tell him who was the weakest link.
[DECRYPTION: 88%... 91%...]
"Hold," Evan whispered to his team. "Wait for the ping."
"They're prepping a Molotov!" Leo shouted, dropping the whisper. "I'm taking the shot!"
"Wait!" Evan roared, but the roar was punctuated by the crack of Leo's rifle.
The shed erupted into chaos. The scavenger with the SAW opened up, a torrent of 5.56mm rounds shredding the rotten wood of the walls. Splinters flew like shrapnel. Mark dived for the floor, returning fire with his submachine gun, the muzzle flashes illuminating the cramped space in strobe-like bursts.
Evan stayed low, his back against the terminal. He couldn't help them—not yet. If he moved, the tether would break, and the data would be corrupted. He had to trust the gamey logic of the progress bar.
[DECRYPTION: 96%... 98%... 99%...]
[DECRYPTION COMPLETE]
[FEAT ACCOMPLISHED: 'GHOST IN THE MACHINE']
[REWARD ACQUIRED: IMPROVED GAS BLOCK BLUEPRINT - ACCESSIBLE AT CRAFTING STATION]
The HUD didn't just return; it snapped back to life with a violent, electric burst of clarity.
The world turned orange. The wooden walls of the shed became semi-transparent in Evan's mind's eye as ISAC's restored Pulse scanned the environment. Four red silhouettes bloomed in the darkness, illuminated with terrifying precision.
One scavenger was at the door, shotgun leveled.
Two were suppressed behind a concrete barrier.
The fourth—the one with the Molotov—was crouching just five feet away, shielded by the shed's corner.
"Now," Evan said, his voice cold and devoid of the previous tension.
He didn't aim for the man at the door. He didn't even look at him. Following the red wireframe provided by ISAC, Evan aimed his rifle through the wall, chest-high, right where the thermal signature of the man with the fire was hiding.
Thwip-thwip.
The muffled reports of his suppressed rifle were followed by a sudden, brilliant orange flare visible through the gaps in the wood. The scavenger hadn't even stood up before the rounds pierced the wall and shattered the glass bottle in his hand. A muffled scream was cut short as the incendiary liquid coated the man's legs and the dry snow, creating a localized inferno that silhouetted the other attackers.
"Push out!" Evan commanded.
He stood, the HUD now highlighting the SAW gunner's head with a small, pulsing red circle—the "Critical Hit" zone. Evan stepped into the doorway as Mark threw the flashbang.
The world went white for the scavengers, but Evan's ISAC automatically dampened the glare, keeping his vision crystal clear. He walked forward, the logistics of the next thirty seconds already calculated by the machine on his wrist. He wasn't just a soldier anymore; he was a cursor moving across a screen, deleting errors.
As the last scavenger fell into the slush, the silence returned to the ridge, heavier than before. Evan looked at his wrist. The Blueprint icon sat there, a digital trophy of their survival.
"You okay?" Mark asked, leaning against the charred remains of the shed's porch, checking his magazine.
Evan nodded, his HUD already beginning to highlight lootable containers in the area with a soft, inviting glow. "I'm fine. The data's secure, that's what matters the most right now."
He looked back at the city. For now, the machine was satisfied.