me anymore.
I keep moving.
And I keep thinking about how my brother
could be dead.
No.
There’s no way.
If the blast from the frag grenade didn’t
kill me, it didn’t kill him.
But what if I’m already dead?
I try not to think about how I might already
be dead. I try not to think about how I could be taking a long walk
into the afterlife.
Instead, I think about what the hell is going
on. And I think about where I’ve gone wrong. Maybe, just maybe,
I’ve been too soft. Too complacent. Too forgiving. I didn’t believe
the rumors about the Lord of Wonderland, about the Collector. I
didn’t believe the Mayor, the Enforcers, I didn’t believe my own
brother when he said they’d sent an Overseer to the Buried
City.
I didn’t even believe Overseers existed. Not
until I got into a fight with one.
A fight to the death.
It’s funny how you never feel so alive when
you’re fighting to the death, when you’re trying not to die. It’s
funny and sad. I shouldn’t need that kind of excitement and stress
to make me feel alive.
But I do.
Death. It’s really the only thing that can
make me appreciate life.
And Ruby. She made me appreciate life. She
made me appreciate it like no one else ever has. But she’s dead
now. She’s dead because I couldn’t save her. Couldn’t protect her.
And now I’m thinking about the promise I made her. I swore to her
that I’d make things right. That I’d find the bastards responsible
and I’d make them pay.
But what have I accomplished?
I’ve taken out a few Mercs. I’ve taken out a
few Enforcers. Soldiers who were just following orders. And the
Mercs were just trying to get paid, trying to make a living.
This is not good enough. This… all of this
violence and killing is accomplishing jack shit.
What I need to do is, I need to go after the
source.
The people in charge.
The people Ruby was running from.
Wonderland.
I need to go after Wonderland…
Yeah.
Its sounds crazy. It sounds like an
impossibility, but this is what I need to do.
I need to find out what secrets Ruby knew. I
need to find out what secrets got her killed.
Something is rotten in Wonderland.
And I need to find out what.
Wonderland is the last operational space
station in this part of the world. For decades, for over a century,
the Shuttles have been coming back here to ferry the last of us to
the Arks.
As a result, every single surviving human has
flocked to Wonderland. And when it became full, overcrowded, filled
to capacity, people took up residence here, in the Buried City. And
when the Buried City became overcrowded and riddled with crime and
filth, they took up residence in the Canyons. They turned them into
permanent refugee camps. And we all waited patiently for our turn,
for our ticket into Wonderland, for our ticket to one of the great
continental Arks. And because space was limited, because the
majority of people had to wait, Wonderland, and the people in
charge of Wonderland became powerful. They became Kings and Queens.
Princes and Princesses.
The citizens of Wonderland became the lucky
few, the wealthy elite, the first class citizens of Earth.
Wonderland is power. The power to save. The
power to condemn. No one, not a single person left alive on Earth
would dare go against Wonderland. Doing so would accomplish
nothing, except guarantee that you lived out your remaining days in
the Wasteland.
The flip side of this is that once a person
gained access, once they were chosen, they would never leave.
They would never return to the Buried City,
or to the Canyons.
So why would someone leave, why would anyone
give up their one shot of surviving the Red Giant?
They wouldn’t. No one ever has.
And yet Ruby did.
She ran.
She escaped.
I’ve been thinking about this non-stop. I
keep thinking it over and over.
The voice in my head keeps repeating it. And
so I repeat it out loud. “Why did she leave? Why did she escape?
What was she running from?”
Something is rotten in
I keep moving.
And I keep thinking about how my brother
could be dead.
No.
There’s no way.
If the blast from the frag grenade didn’t
kill me, it didn’t kill him.
But what if I’m already dead?
I try not to think about how I might already
be dead. I try not to think about how I could be taking a long walk
into the afterlife.
Instead, I think about what the hell is going
on. And I think about where I’ve gone wrong. Maybe, just maybe,
I’ve been too soft. Too complacent. Too forgiving. I didn’t believe
the rumors about the Lord of Wonderland, about the Collector. I
didn’t believe the Mayor, the Enforcers, I didn’t believe my own
brother when he said they’d sent an Overseer to the Buried
City.
I didn’t even believe Overseers existed. Not
until I got into a fight with one.
A fight to the death.
It’s funny how you never feel so alive when
you’re fighting to the death, when you’re trying not to die. It’s
funny and sad. I shouldn’t need that kind of excitement and stress
to make me feel alive.
But I do.
Death. It’s really the only thing that can
make me appreciate life.
And Ruby. She made me appreciate life. She
made me appreciate it like no one else ever has. But she’s dead
now. She’s dead because I couldn’t save her. Couldn’t protect her.
And now I’m thinking about the promise I made her. I swore to her
that I’d make things right. That I’d find the bastards responsible
and I’d make them pay.
But what have I accomplished?
I’ve taken out a few Mercs. I’ve taken out a
few Enforcers. Soldiers who were just following orders. And the
Mercs were just trying to get paid, trying to make a living.
This is not good enough. This… all of this
violence and killing is accomplishing jack shit.
What I need to do is, I need to go after the
source.
The people in charge.
The people Ruby was running from.
Wonderland.
I need to go after Wonderland…
Yeah.
Its sounds crazy. It sounds like an
impossibility, but this is what I need to do.
I need to find out what secrets Ruby knew. I
need to find out what secrets got her killed.
Something is rotten in Wonderland.
And I need to find out what.
Wonderland is the last operational space
station in this part of the world. For decades, for over a century,
the Shuttles have been coming back here to ferry the last of us to
the Arks.
As a result, every single surviving human has
flocked to Wonderland. And when it became full, overcrowded, filled
to capacity, people took up residence here, in the Buried City. And
when the Buried City became overcrowded and riddled with crime and
filth, they took up residence in the Canyons. They turned them into
permanent refugee camps. And we all waited patiently for our turn,
for our ticket into Wonderland, for our ticket to one of the great
continental Arks. And because space was limited, because the
majority of people had to wait, Wonderland, and the people in
charge of Wonderland became powerful. They became Kings and Queens.
Princes and Princesses.
The citizens of Wonderland became the lucky
few, the wealthy elite, the first class citizens of Earth.
Wonderland is power. The power to save. The
power to condemn. No one, not a single person left alive on Earth
would dare go against Wonderland. Doing so would accomplish
nothing, except guarantee that you lived out your remaining days in
the Wasteland.
The flip side of this is that once a person
gained access, once they were chosen, they would never leave.
They would never return to the Buried City,
or to the Canyons.
So why would someone leave, why would anyone
give up their one shot of surviving the Red Giant?
They wouldn’t. No one ever has.
And yet Ruby did.
She ran.
She escaped.
I’ve been thinking about this non-stop. I
keep thinking it over and over.
The voice in my head keeps repeating it. And
so I repeat it out loud. “Why did she leave? Why did she escape?
What was she running from?”
Something is rotten in
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