Rus woke up with the kind of headache that felt like someone had shoved a railroad spike through his temple and used it to hang up a sign reading, "Never Again." His mouth tasted like burnt copper, bad bourbon, and every decision he regretted since the age of thirteen. For a while, maybe thirty seconds, maybe ten minutes, Rus just lay there. Eyes closed. Trying to decide if dying might be the cleaner option.
Eventually, survival instinct kicked in. Slowly. Begrudgingly.
Rus cracked one eye open.
No ceiling fan. No strange ceiling either, which was already a good sign. The ceiling above him was the sterile white of the Sixth Array hotel, with a faint hum of air recycling through invisible vents. He rolled his head to the side… his own room.
And, thank God, no strange limbs entangled with his. No lipstick messages on the mirror. No Berta in post-coital smirk-mode whispering "Guess I broke you, sweetheart."
Thank the Gods.
He exhaled and sat up like a man escaping quicksand. His skull throbbed. The kind of hangover that didn't just hurt, it judged. Light from the high-rise window cut through the haze like it was angry at him. Libertalia's skyline of chrome towers, steel ribs, neon veins stared back at him like a disapproving parent.
Somewhere below, someone was probably having a worse morning.
It didn't help.
Rus turned, squinting, and caught the faint shimmer of a message in his peripheral vision.
[Objective: Go to Bed – Completed]
Rus stared at it. Blinked. It faded like morning fog.
"…Okay," Rus muttered, pressing two fingers into his temple. "That's new."
He'd had this thing inside him for a while now, the internal compass, combat prompts, a sixth sense that functioned like a glitchy game UI from a title nobody remembered releasing. It never spoke. It didn't explain itself. It just was. And now apparently, it had a sense of humor.
Rus thought about getting up, purely as a joke. Another line bloomed across his vision, as if summoned.
[Objective: Get Up – In Progress]
"Great," Rus groaned. "Now my inner voice is a life coach."
Still, it got him moving. He rolled out of bed like a sack of concrete and shuffled toward the window. The view was... intense. Libertalia sprawled across the horizon like it had something to prove. It was arrogance made urban. Lights. Motion. High-rise towers stacked like gun magazines. There was no real sky here, just smog-glazed clouds and flashing ads promising clean food, cleaner water, and the dirtiest after-hours experiences you could buy.
From up here, it looked untouchable. Like the rest of the world hadn't burned. As if swamps, gobbers, and Rift zones were just rumors people whispered to feel edgy.
Below, armored patrols walked their beats. Civvies moved in practiced waves, chasing errands, jobs, pleasure, survival. Drones zipped overhead, silent and unseen unless you were trained to watch for them.
Same illusion. Different day.
Rus watched it for a while. Not because he was in awe. Just because it gave him a reason not to vomit into the ficus near the wall.
"Objective: Reflect on Life," Rus muttered under my breath.
Nothing appeared.
Figures. Even his weird-ass system thought that was a waste of time.
Still, he stood there, letting the city's distant thrum settle in his bones. Letting the noise wrap around the silence he carried inside like armor. He wasn't sentimental, but even he could admit it felt... surreal. Especially after the days outside of the walls of Libertalia fighting for his life.
Cyma was scattered across the hotel. Probably.
Dan would be somewhere in his boxers, swearing at the coffee machine like it owed him child support. Gino might've tried hitting on a vending machine or passed out trying. Foster, God help him, was likely still asleep on a vending machine.
Stacy and Kate? They'd probably dragged Amiel into a breakfast spot, or at least tried. He imagined the conversation now:
"Do you want waffles, Amiel?"
"No."
"Pancakes?"
"Also no."
"Toast?"
"Go away."
The usual.
And Berta was probably still in bed, limbs tangled in sheets like a tragedy, sleeping with one eye open and dreaming in innuendos.
He was alive. More or less. And somehow still functioning. A man with a HUD, a half-working brain, and enough complaints to fill a memoir no one would want to read.
Libertalia glittered.
He blinked the phantom prompt away and whispered to no one in particular, voice dry and sharp as always,
"Objective: Survive. Still pending."
Eventually, he got dressed. Showered. Brushed his teeth like it was a full-contact sport. Splashed cold water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror.
Still him.
Still that same tired bastard with too many dead friends in the past life and not enough coffee.
Rus took the elevator down to the Sixth Array's main floor. The same crowd was still buzzing through the lobby, but less frenetic now slower, looser, post-hangover energy. Somewhere across the massive lounge space, He spotted Gino half-slumped in a booth, sunglasses indoors, holding a smoothie like it was a religious icon.
He waved when he saw Rus. "Hey, boss! Still alive?"
"Barely."
"That's the spirit."
The rest of the crew filtered in over the next hour. Dan arrived in a hoodie three sizes too large. Foster showed up last, looking like a raccoon that had survived a fire.
They got a corner table. Ordered whatever passed for breakfast in a place like this which half was greasy, half was glowing, all of it overpriced.
Berta slid into the booth like she owned it, balancing a drink that looked like motor oil and sin. "Morning, bitches," she greeted, grinning.
"You look like hell," Kate said.
"I am hell," Berta replied, sipping. "And I didn't even puke last night. So that's a win."
"Your standards are really tragic," Rus muttered.
Amiel joined without a word. She didn't sit, just stood behind them with eyes scanning the room like she expected someone to draw a weapon. Rus slid her a coffee. She took it without blinking. That was their entire interaction.
Breakfast became brunch. Brunch turned into pointless conversation. Dan joked about quitting and opening a bar like Berta. Gino suggested starting a podcast. Foster claimed he could be a model for survival gear. Berta just laughed at them all.
But underneath it, we knew what this was.
A moment.
Not peace. Not really.
Just the rare pause where they weren't being shot at or hallucinating or preparing to detonate a weapon designed to sterilize entire sectors of land.
Just… a breath.
A soft exhale between disasters.
Rus sipped his drink, leaned back, and watched them all… his the still alive, still intact, still dangerous in all the ways that mattered.
Outside, Libertalia burned bright outside the glass.
* * *
The rest of the day passed like a cigarette burning too slow and lazy, with a bitter aftertaste and the promise of something worse just around the corner.
After brunch, the squad split up. Foster wanted to check out a mech exhibition in Tower Quadrant Nine. Dan and Gino vanished into a VR den with promises of "cultural enrichment," which probably meant adult simulations and legally gray martial arts. Kate and Stacy tagged along for shopping, dragging Amiel with them. She looked exactly as thrilled as you'd expect.
That left him and Berta.
They wandered through the Sixth Array's side plaza, where half the shops sold military surplus and the other half sold vices. Berta kept pace beside him, sipping from a tall glass of something blue and probably toxic.
"You ever think," she said after a long silence, "that this is what peace feels like? You know, the weird sort of peace before someone drops a fucking orbital strike?"
"Every second," Rus replied.
She laughed. "Still sharp."
"Still sober, unfortunately."
They walked past a market stall selling knives designed to be gifts. Gilded, etched, engraved with names like Promisebreaker and Mother's Fury. He stopped. Picked one up. It was heavy and ceremonial, not practical. Just for show.
"Gonna buy it for someone?" Berta asked.
"I was thinking of stabbing you with it."
"Aw," she said, mock-swooning. "You always say the sweetest things to me, Boss."
Rus put the knife down.
They kept walking until they hit one of the rooftop bars. The wind up there hit differently, colder, less tainted by city smog. The skyline stretched like broken fingers reaching into the clouds. Everything felt… distant.
Berta leaned on the railing. "You think Reed's gonna drag us out again soon?"
"Eventually," Rus said. "They're watching. Waiting. Probably wondering when the next Rift's gonna chew open."
"You think that thing in the Ridge was just a fluke?"
Rus thought about that. About the silence. About the hallucinations. About the Rift's heartbeat syncing with his like it wanted him to understand it. Like it saw him.
"No," Rus said. "Not a fluke. A warning."
She was quiet after that. Which, coming from Berta, was like a goddamn solar eclipse.
Rus looked over.
Her usual smirk was gone. What he saw instead was the face of a soldier who'd seen one too many walls bleed.
"You know I joke a lot," she said. "Flirt. Pretend I'm fine. It's easier than thinking about how much of us that place took."
Rus didn't reply.
"Foster has nightmares," she continued. "Dan doesn't even remember some parts of the Ridge. Gino doesn't talk about what he saw at all."
"And you?"
She shrugged. "I saw myself."
"That doesn't sound so bad."
"No. It was."
The silence stretched. This time, it wasn't oppressive. It was shared.
He let it hang. Then he broke it. "I keep waiting for the next shoe to drop. The next hellhole to swallow us whole."
"Then what?" she asked.
"Then we walk in, spit in its eye, and blow it to hell."
That got the smirk back, faint as it was. "God, you're dramatic."
"I learned from the best."
She nudged Rus with her elbow. "Come on. Let's go find the others before they do something legally questionable."
By the time night fell, they'd all regrouped. The Sixth Array's rooftop, at least a section of it, was reserved for UH personnel, and Cyma took full advantage.
Stacy and Kate brought actual food. Not rations, not protein bricks. Real food. It was seasoned, hot, and edible. Foster cried.
Dan found a bottle of liquor that didn't taste like paint thinner and poured half of it into Gino before the man could object.
Amiel drank water and said exactly five words the entire evening. "This is acceptable," and "I'll kill you." The first was directed at the grilled fish. The second, at Dan, when he tried to dance with her.
Kate took pictures. Berta told stories that were 80% lies and 100% entertaining. Even Reed, who'd joined them for the first hour, cracked a smile before disappearing like a responsible adult.
Rus sat on the edge of the circle, letting them laugh. Letting them live.
These were his people. His misfits. His blood-soaked, sharp-tongued, trigger-happy family. He didn't know how long they'd have this. A week? A month? A day?
So he etched it in his memory.
The sound of Gino's laughter echoing over the glass towers. Berta mimicking Reed's voice with a pretend sock puppet. Amiel pretending not to be amused. Kate dancing with Stacy, boots clunking against steel.
And the city. Still alive. Still burning bright.
When it was time to leave, no one said much. They just walked back to their rooms like ghosts who'd remembered they still had flesh.
Rus reached my door and turned the handle.
One last message flickered in his vision.
[Objective: Remember This Night – Optional]
He stared at it.
Then he blinked it away.
Not because he didn't want to remember.
But because he already did.