They built Fort Octave’s mess hall like they built everything else here. Out of necessity and steel plate. Prefab walls, bolted aluminum support beams, and acoustic tiles hung overhead. Rows of folding tables lined the space beneath burning oil lamps.

  Xander sat at a metal bench with one boot braced to stop the table from wobbling. The coffee in front of him was more suggestion than substance. The bacon had lost whatever war it fought against the griddle. He still wasn't a coffee drinker, but it was better than no caffeine at all.

  His head throbbed with the dull weight of a night spent drinking Rex’s version of diplomacy. His coat still stank of cigar smoke and cheap whiskey.

  Still, he didn’t regret it. A night with Rex wasn’t about the drinks. It was about anchoring things. About two men sitting across a table trying to make sense of the same storm from different sides of the map. Talking like old friends instead of representatives. Remembering that even in a world twisted sideways, loyalty could still matter.

  He stared down at the chipped plate in front of him, its surface occupied by a congealed egg puck and something that might have once been potatoes. Neither looked eager to be eaten.

  Across the table, Zoey banged a spoon twice on her tray, loud enough to snap the silence. Her tone was light, but the tension in her shoulders wasn’t.

  "So," she said, "what’s the plan before the train leaves?"

  Xander blinked once, then sat back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The Simulation chose that moment to chime in. Not in his head exactly, but just behind the eyes. A familiar flicker, like a system notification sliding across his vision.

  [Crusader's Righteousness] You gain a general sense that a goal is in the southwest direction.

  He didn’t react outwardly, just tucked it away. Southwest. It tracked. They’d known the cult had moved in that direction. Whatever the Simulation pointed at, it aligned with Victor's route.

  And it was a reminder. That the councilors could argue over trade, mutual defense, and territorial boundaries all they wanted. He hadn’t signed up for politics. The Simulation hadn’t asked him to mediate trade disputes. His crusade had come straight from the AI itself. Unfiltered and dare he say, divine, in the weird way only something digital pretending to be god could manage.

  His eyes tracked across the table. Ford had that thoughtful tilt he always wore when parsing too many ideas at once, the cleric’s mace leaning beside his chair like a third wheel. Kane was stabbing a fork into something with the consistency of regret and the color of rust.

  "I'm just saying," Kane muttered, starting in the middle of his thought. "There seems to be a skill for just about anything. I'd love a passive called Functional Before Nine AM."

  "That would imply you were ever functional to begin with," Zoey said.

  Kane pointed his fork at her. "My shield blocked an acid blast yesterday, thank you. Where were you?"

  "Getting flung off a platform by a demonic mech-spider. You know, cardio."

  Ford gave a soft snort. "Can we not start the day with a trauma competition?"

  Jo was quiet beside him, still half-turned toward the window. Her coat hung open, sword propped against the bench, a cup of tea untouched in front of her. She wasn’t blinking much. Just watching the street outside like it might decide to throw something at them. Xander had known her long enough to know that she had something on her mind and would tell him when she was ready.

  Xander exhaled slowly. "I’ve been thinking about our next move."

  That earned him a shift in posture across the board. Not full attention as they were trying to act casual about whatever bomb Xander was obviously getting ready to drop on the table. Though the tension in the air at the table ratcheted up several notches.

  He gestured vaguely toward the mug in front of him. "This summit, the politics… it matters. But it’s not our fight. Not directly. The cult and Victor are the threats that we can do something about."

  Jo leaned forward now, forearms braced on the table. "You want to go after Victor?"

  Xander nodded once. "JT and Rex are running their safe zones. The summit can happen without us. But the cult will not wait for a motion to pass. They’re moving. Victor’s on the board. And I’m not convinced that what happened at the mine was an isolated play."

  Zoey tilted her head. "You think we split off after the summit?"

  "No," Xander said. "I think we leave straight from here. We resupply, and then we head out. South and west. We don’t wait for another machine to wake up under a town."

  Ford leaned back. "Well. We told JT we'd watch out for the councilor. Plus, there aren't any shops here from which we can purchase supplies."

  "Rex will cover it," Jo said before Xander could. "He wants this over as much as we do."

  Kane took a bite of something crispy and unidentifiable, chewed, then spoke around it. "You think we’ll find Victor?"

  "No," Xander said. "I think he’ll find us when we start kicking over his sandcastles."

  Zoey tapped her spoon once more. "So it’s decided then. No politics or committee meetings. Just a ragtag team of overarmed problems pretending to be the solution. Again."

  Xander smiled faintly. "Feels familiar."

  "Comforting," Ford added dryly.

  Kane raised his cup. "To familiar disasters."

  Jo tapped her knuckle against her cup but didn’t drink. "Do we even have a trail?"

  Xander looked to her first. "Darvos’ scouts reported a site near the I-74 rest stop that was some kind of forward outpost. It’s gone now. Victor was seen nearby a few days earlier, and they used the same corpse trap layout in Champaign."

  Ford’s face shifted, mouth tightening under the weight of that. He’d seen what was left at the raid dungeon. This wouldn’t be better.

  Kane stood, scraping his chair back with a low screech of metal on tile. He popped the last of his charred bacon into his mouth like it owed him money. "Guess that means we’re not riding the train."

  Xander nodded. "We’ll tell Rex. I don’t want him planning for us to secure the diplomatic car if we’re not even on board."

  Jo stood with him. "The councilor should know too. And we’ll want to send a message to JT through her. He’ll need to know where we’re headed."

  "Got it," Xander said. "You write it, she delivers it."

  "She's going to be pissed," Jo responded.

  "Probably."

  The rest moved in quiet agreement. Ford collected his tray. Zoey took a longer moment, as if trying to decide whether to bring the half-eaten tray or throw it away on principle. She opted for neither, leaving it like a threat to whoever cleaned the mess hall.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Kane paused at the edge of the table. "I didn’t bother finding a smith since we were heading back to Starlight," he said, glancing toward his shield. "But if we’re going cult-hunting now… I’ll swing by the forge and see if they’ve got time for a patch job."

  Xander gave him a nod. "Good call. We meet at the train in thirty."

  The group broke like they had a dozen times before, no need for words or ceremony. Just the quiet professionalism of people who knew their roles and already had their gear in hand.

  Xander moved alone toward the outbound platform.

  Fort Octave wasn’t built for trains. The makeshift yard was little more than a packed dirt clearing flanked by razorwire and sandbag barricades, with a few torn tarps strung up to block line of sight from the hills. Someone had dragged in a row of utility pallets to serve as a boarding platform, uneven but functional.

  Starlight’s steam engine loomed at the center, its nose already hissing pressure, the railcars behind it mismatched but armored with reinforced shutters. A pair of guards adjusted jury-rigged weapon mounts near the second car while Rex barked something sharp to a junior officer at the front of the line.

  Xander approached, raising a hand to catch his eye.

  Rex broke off the conversation and met him halfway. "Let me guess. You’re not riding out," he said. It wasn’t a question.

  "No," Xander confirmed. "Victor’s still moving. So is the cult. If we wait, we lose the lead. I can’t do both jobs, and I think you’ve got the summit handled."

  Rex’s mouth quirked like he wanted to argue but couldn’t find a point worth making.

  "After last night, I figured this might be the conclusion you came to," he said instead. "Wait here."

  He turned and stepped toward the map case sitting on a nearby picnic table. Unlatched it, dug through the contents, then returned with a folded field chart printed on durable laminate. He handed it off without comment.

  "It’s the same quadrant we reviewed last night," Rex said. "I marked where the scouts lost contact and where the forward observation post was. You’ll need to stay off the highways. Expect stragglers or worse."

  "Nothing new there," Xander said.

  Rex turned, snapped his fingers, and flagged a soldier nearby. "Quartermaster’s got a pre-load of MREs and canteens for the trip. Runner’s bringing them now. Should keep you moving for a week if you ration tight."

  The soldier jogged off without needing further instruction.

  Then Rex dug into his own coat pocket. He pulled out a wrapped bundle. Six cigars. All intact.

  "Peace offering for the headache," Rex said, pressing it into Xander’s palm. "Or a bribe to make sure you come back."

  Xander took it with a slight nod. "I’ll light one when we find him."

  The train whistle screamed overhead. The engineer wasn’t being subtle. It was time to roll.

  Jo approached from the other side, her coat already fastened, her sword looped against her hip. In her hand, a folded sheet of paper.

  The councilor stood on the platform’s metal steps, flanked by Darvos and a pair of aides. She looked sharp, crisp, entirely prepared for a political summit and absolutely not thrilled.

  Xander walked up beside her.

  "You’re not coming with us," Councilwoman Weller said, her voice flat but threaded with that particular disappointment older officials honed through decades of budget hearings and crisis management. The kind that deepened when dealing with adventurers she already didn’t trust.

  "No," Xander replied. "Victor’s not sitting still. Neither is the cult. This isn’t about disrupting your talks, Councilor. It’s about making sure you’ve got something meaningful to talk about when the summit starts."

  Councilwoman Weller studied him for a beat. "You made a commitment to JT to see me safely home."

  "You’ll get there," he said. "Rex looks to be sending two squads, including Darvos. Nobody’s going to touch this train."

  "You think that’s enough?"

  "I think we’ve all got roles to play," Xander said. "Yours is diplomacy and building alliances. Mine’s figuring out what the hell the cult is up to and stopping it before we need those alliances."

  Jo held out the note.

  The councilor took it without opening it. "For JT, I assume."

  "He needs to know where we’ve gone and why," Jo said. "He’ll understand."

  The councilor gave a curt nod and moved toward the stairs. At the first step, she paused.

  "Don’t be gone too long," she said without turning around. "Whatever you find… it’s going to matter. And if this summit works, we’ll need to act on it fast."

  Xander didn’t answer. Just met her gaze long enough to acknowledge the weight of what she’d said.

  She climbed aboard.

  A second whistle cut through the morning stillness. The platform crew moved to secure the doors. The soldiers took their places on the train's flatcars, and Darvos gave a sharp signal from the rear as the train lurched forward.

  Steam chased the train like a ghost, curling across the dirt in thick white sheets before vanishing into the colder air. It left behind a kind of silence that wasn’t really silence at all, just the echo of things in motion. The passenger car swayed behind the engine as it cleared the edge of the makeshift yard, rails groaning under weight and intention.

  Xander turned from the platform and didn’t look back.

  The others were already waiting near the access road. Kane had returned from the forge with his shield slung over one shoulder, a fresh line of welds still cooling along the bottom curve. Zoey was stretching one leg, testing her brace. Her bow was now replaced by a compact short-sword which hung low and loose at her side. Ford handed out ration bars without comment, already dividing the rest into his pack by weight. Jo watched the departing train until it was just a hiss at the treeline, then fell in at Xander’s side without saying a word.

  They moved west.

  The road out of Fort Octave wasn’t much to look at. It was old even before the reboot. A two-lane state highway with a faded stripe and too many cracks. The old signage had long since rusted out or been scavenged for scrap. Every so often they passed a husk of a car rolled into a ditch, paint stripped and vines curling through shattered glass. Most of the wrecks had been moved off the road entirely. Whether by Fort Octave’s patrols or wandering monsters, it was hard to say.

  After about an hour, the terrain changed. What had been cracked asphalt turned worse. Potholes widened into fractures. Chunks of the surface looked like they’d been hammered by something massive and repetitive. Something big had walked this stretch. Maybe several somethings.

  They passed a skeletal checkpoint sometime after noon. It wasn’t the forward outpost Rex had mentioned. This one had the wrong layout. Sheet metal and scavenged barricades, some of it burned out. Someone had bolted a stop sign onto the roof of a crumpled security shack like it was a banner. It had all the hallmarks of highwaymen trying to take advantage directly after the cataclysm had kicked off.

  Xander slowed as they moved through it, eyes scanning the scorch patterns along the barricade edges.

  "Checkpoint?" Ford asked.

  "After the reboot," Jo said, reading the same story in the debris. "People playing at control. Probably local farmers or a gang pretending to be one."

  "They didn’t last long," Zoey muttered. "Whatever took them out didn't leave much behind."

  The road turned narrow past that point, climbing a shallow ridge before dipping back into patchy farmland. Corn had once grown there. Now it was overrun with wild grass and stalks gone to seed, sprouting between collapsed fences and half-eaten scarecrows.

  Ford broke the silence. "It’s been like this ever since the train job."

  Xander glanced over.

  "Someone’s always ahead of us," Ford said. "Like we’re chasing shadows. Whatever we find, someone’s already been through, burned it down, and kept walking."

  He wasn’t wrong.

  They kept walking.

  The wind cut across the road at an angle now, dragging dust in thin spirals. The group adjusted their spacing out of habit. Ford near the center, Kane and Jo on the outer flanks. Xander in the lead. Zoey lagged behind just far enough to keep watch without drawing attention.

  A rusted sign appeared ahead. Or rather, the remains of one. The metal frame still stood, but whatever message it once bore had peeled away in layers. Only the bottom half of a corporate logo remained, too sun-bleached to read.

  Zoey squinted and raised the binoculars Xander had loaned her earlier. She held them steady for a long moment. Longer than usual.

  "I’ve got movement," she said. "Near a farmhouse. Quarter mile off the road, maybe a bit more. Just past the ridge."

  Jo stepped up beside her. "Details?"

  Zoey passed the binoculars over.

  Jo adjusted the lens and tracked left. "Blood," she said after a pause. "Looks like it’s on the barn siding. No obvious signs of who’s inside. Could be survivors or monsters."

  "If there’s anyone left, they might need help." Ford said.

  "And if it’s a nest?" Jo asked.

  "Then we clean it out," he said. "We can’t leave people behind to die wondering if someone saw the smoke and kept walking."

  Xander looked at the others. No argument yet, but the logic tree was branching fast.

  Before he could weigh in, the Simulation chose its moment.

  The Red Barn Inquiry

  Quest Notification! An old barn sits off the highway, half-sunken into the overgrowth, its siding streaked with fresh blood. Something moved inside. No smoke or signs of distress. Just silence, and a building that should be empty. Investigate the structure and determine the source of the disturbance. Survivors may need aid… or it may already be too late. Difficulty: Easy

  Completion Conditions: Discover what has taken place at the farm.

  Rewards: Variable

  Accept Quest? Yes / No

  Everyone paused.

  Zoey made a face. "Guess that settles it."

  "Every time we get one of these that says easy, it turns into a giant headache," Jo said.

  Xander scanned the horizon once more. The barn crouched behind a patch of dead trees, red streaked black where the blood had smeared in long drags. It was going to be a very long day, he thought.

  He pulled the spear from his back.

  "Alright," he said. "We take a look."

  Jo already had her sword unhooked before he finished the sentence.

  They stepped off the road.

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