Chapter Text
It was the light trickle of rain stinging against the deep-set cold of her cheeks that woke her.
The truck that had carried her, occupants unwitting, to her relative freedom was long gone. She could remember the jump she’d made, the way she’d guessed their route away from the Veteran’s Center and decided on the best opportunity for a successful landing nearly a mile from the actual spot. She remembered hoping that she wouldn’t land on anything too sharp or pointy as she aimed for what looked like a soft thicket when the time finally came.
And then she was under the clear mountain sky, the branches above her drizzling her with the remnants of a soft rainstorm. The sky was bright, a stark contrast to the near pitch black night that had surrounded her when she’d fled. She must’ve been out for hours. She reached back in her memory, idly wondering when it could have been that she’d last gotten so much sleep.
Too long, she decided, pushing herself and her aching limbs up to a seat. If only she had knocked herself into unconsciousness on a plush bed rather than in the damn dirt. Then she might have at least made the best of it and gotten some good goddamned rest for a change.
The road was only a stone’s throw from her but she was well-concealed in the thicket, thankfully. Surely there would be hunters out for her by now, scouring the Whitetails to bring back their Herald’s most promising victim. After a brief run down of her injuries - minor, it seemed, other than her sluggish vision and shotty balance indicating a possible concussion - she stood and started her trek.
The spot she’d picked had been strategic in more ways than one. It bordered a portion of the forest that she and the Whitetail militia had swept clean of the Project's cameras, giving her the best shot at getting to safety before being recaptured. The passed time put a bit of a damper on her confidence, increasing the likelihood that Chosen would be in the area, but she tried to put that out of her mind as she carefully traversed the familiar swath of wilderness, working her way down into a gentle hollow before climbing back up towards the next ridge. More than once she thought of her gear, squirreled away somewhere back at St Francis or absorbed into the Center’s supplies and redistributed between the soldiers there, and how useful it would all be right then. A jacket would have been nice. Or some dry socks. A fucking hat for her numb ears and gloves for her brittle-feeling fingers…
She had been thinking of her hiking boots, regaling all the benefits of not being able to feel every single twig and rock under her socked feet, when the sound of dirt shifting and falling away nearby caught her attention. She wouldn’t have spotted it had it not been for the sound, had she not taken extra care in looking, but there was a divot in the earth, the ground sloping gently at first but then more severely before dropping off entirely just in front of a lush bush. She backtracked, carefully making her way back down the steep incline before approaching. Nudging the foliage away revealed a dark chasm in the side of the mountain, forged of poured concrete.
Rook damned her lack of a flashlight.
A prepper bunker, right along one of her most favored paths across the mountains. How had she never noticed this before?
There was always a chance these things were occupied. It wasn’t like they were put here by a higher power, sprinkled across Hope County specifically for her to find and use in her time of need. It sort of felt that way at times, considering she’d sheltered in more than one over the last few horrifying months, but she’d also come across shelters that were locked up tight, their inhabitants presumably having gone to ground to seek refuge from the war raging across the landscape.
She pressed into the dark space. It would be worth it to check it out. Her plan had been to finish scaling the ridge, pick up some supplies and use the ham radio in the cabin she’d found there a few months before. The inhabitants were freshly dead when she’d encountered the place - the project’s doing, she’d assumed - so she didn’t feel too bad about the prospect of utilizing what had been left behind. But if this bunker was empty? If she could stop right here and now and put herself behind a locked door, a fucking bunker door? It sounded too good to be true.
That’s precisely why, once she’d navigated the steep, dark staircase and found the steel entrance, she was almost shocked to have it swing open for her.
A couple more steps just inside had her slapping the wall and being rewarded when a switch flipped under her fingers and the cavern before her lit up.
Rook gasped. Her hand still anchoring her to the wall as she looked from one impossible blessing to the next. Once she was able to thaw enough out of her shock to move, she pushed the bunker door shut behind her and secured it before turning back to the surprisingly large space - the couch and the bookshelf and the desk, a homey kind of den.
Surely this was some sort of… dream.
There was no way that…
A shadowed corridor in the corner of the space drew her eye. She shuffled over to it, peering around the corner and nearly falling over when she found herself looking through an open doorway to see a god damned bed.
…when was the last time she’d slept in a bed? And a queen, no less?
“Hello?” she called out, surprised for some reason by the croak of her dry throat. She cleared her voice, turning to regard the first space again. There were a few doors still and she peeked into the first, trying not to cum in her fucking rancid panties at the sight of the narrow shower and fucking toilet she was faced with. (When was the last time she’d shit somewhere other than behind a tree?) before moving on to the last space.
The sight of what must have been thousands of cans of food, all lined up along a narrow corridor the length of the whole bunker, twisted her stomach as much as it elated her. Food. And not fucking people meat like she’d been sparsely provided over her time at St Francis. It was really food. A ton of food. Like literally probably a few tons of food.
Seven years worth of food?
God damn it. Was this a fucking peggie shelter?
She abandoned the food in favor of finding evidence to either confirm or deny that notion. If it were peggies, she would find the Book of Joseph somewhere. She scanned the bookshelf for the tell-tale stark white spine, but it yielded nothing. The desk didn’t have much on it, just a radio and a hotplate and, in the drawers, pens and what must have been a small tree’s worth of notebooks. She pulled out the one on top and flipped through its blank pages.
The bedroom yielded no clues either. There was a soft decor in the room, a couple paintings on the walls and two empty end tables. There was a dresser opposite the bed with an absurd amount of dressier clothes, as well as a few comfier looking items. She held up a dark green t-shirt, several sizes too big, by the looks of it. It would be entirely impractical to sleep in if she were out there, slave to the possibility that she may have to flee at any moment…
But for right now? It was calling her name, telling her to strip out of her blood and mud and sweat soaked regalia and curl up comfortably in the bed instead. She hadn’t found the Book of Joseph, afterall. She hadn’t found anything to tell her about the bunker’s owners or when they might’ve last been there, when they might be back.
She weighed her options, the possible ramifications of it all. Braving it in the woods meant she’d have to actively hide, to cover her tracks and pilfer for supplies and hope to god that that motherfucker and his music box never got the opportunity to use her for what he had in mind, for what he’d trained her for. Staying in the bunker, on the other hand, only meant that she might encounter a pissed off prepper when she eventually popped her head out.
She clutched the shirt, looking longingly at the bed.
Of all the decisions that had been forced on her over the last few months, this was the easiest one yet.
She had thought her frigid shower might have been the closest to heaven she’d ever get until she and her full belly and her freshly brushed teeth and her clean, clean skin slipped on the oversized shirt she’d been coveting, pulled back the comforter on the bed and found a plush blanket underneath.
“Good God in heaven,” her decidedly atheist lips muttered before she flipped off the light and curled into herself under the covers. It was like she was cuddling into a cloud as she groaned aloud, pulling one of the pillows tight against her chest. If she walked out of this bunker in the morning and immediately ate some peggie fuck’s rifle, she’d be alright with it. The bed alone was enough to make her feel justified in the risk she was taking. She only hoped, as she felt herself flagging quickly into her heavy exhaustion, that she would actually wake up here in the morning, and not back in a cage after such a nice, fleeting dream.
***
One thing that the bunker didn’t have and which she sorely needed was a sturdy pair of shoes. There were a few pairs of both men’s and women’s - again, mostly dress shoes - but none of them were her size. There was a pair of men’s sneakers that were about two sizes too big and she pulled them on, standing and pacing the length of the bunker a few times. Easy enough to walk in. She pivoted, as if feigning out of the way of an attack, and just managed not to do any real damage when she felt her ankle roll.
Great. So, no shoes then.
And no weapons.
She couldn’t even bring any supplies with her; the bunker lacked any kind of luggage for her to use.
Rook sank down onto the couch, pressing her hands into her face. Sock-footed hike up the mountain? No weapons? No gear? She could do it. If it needed to be done, she could do just about anything…
But fuck, that bed... it had spoiled her! The idea of doing anything other than eating more canned soup and going back to bed with a warm, full belly was abhorrent…
And didn’t she deserve it? After the leg-up she’d given the resistance in the Henbane, the Valley… after helping the Whitetails sweep through the mountains, taking out wolf beacons and deprogramming and freeing their caught soldiers, didn’t she deserve a rest? More than just a cold shower and an - admittedly blissful - night of uninterrupted sleep? She’d gone through something, afterall. Tracking time had been elusive to her while she was at the Veteran’s Center, being starved and brainwashed and trained to cull the herd, but she was sure she’d been there for at least a week, probably longer. She’d lost weight in that time. Strength, too. Would the cause really be better off with her coming back right god damn now, frail and weak and undoubtedly being sent off on another dangerous errand more or less immediately? If she even made it back to them, that is. Add barefoot and concussed to her list of ailments and you had some easy fucking prey on your hands.
No, as much as the militia needed her - and as much as she hated to think of them floundering without her there to keep them moving forward - she would do more good after a few more days of rest. She owed it to her friends to put her best foot forward - to make sure they were getting the best Deputy she could be.
So, the too-big shoes were shucked to the side and after another can of food she curled up in the bed with a book. She couldn’t read it. Her mind was still sluggish from the apparent blow she’d taken to the head… but upon realizing that and setting the book aside, she sank back into the plush bedding and shut her eyes.
***
A week passed.
…or at least she guessed it was about a week. There was a clock in the bunker, but with how hard she slept and how groggily she awoke, it was sometimes difficult to decide if she’d slept for six hours or eighteen.
In any case, she’d decided around day four that the mountain-man life of solitude was definitely not her cup of tea. St Francis had been lonely, of course, but even then Pratt had been around - a familiar face. A reminder of the life they’d lived before the war. Even the occasional visit from her captor - mister head dick in charge of his own fucked up army - was starting to look like welcome company.
Still, she pushed through a couple more days, doing her best to read to pass time while she wasn’t sleeping like the dead. At day 5 she started doing twice daily strength and endurance training, careful not to push herself or her body too hard or fast but needing to be prepared for whatever happened when she left. On day eight she donned an extra pair of thick socks and tried the sneakers again. Still off, but decidedly less dangerous. She was loath to leave the bunker at all at this point, the safety it offered almost too tempting a prospect to give up. She could stay there for years, insulated from the war waging just outside. Eventually it would be over, the peggies will have won with her out of the picture, and with their guard down she could slip out of the county unhindered. Come back with the fucking national guard.
To take back a land with none of her friends left alive to enjoy it.
Who would she even be after something like that? After cutting her losses entirely? After giving up so thoroughly, so selfishly…
She adjusted the sling-bag that she’d made from one of the dresses in the bedroom, setting it as comfortably as she could over her shoulder. She needed to get back out there, gather supplies and weapons and get back to the Wolf’s Den. Hope County was counting on her. Pratt and Joey were still counting on her. Jerome and Mary May and Nick and Kim and all the residents of Fall’s End were counting on her. She was the only one strong enough to end this - to give them their home back.
And doesn’t that just suck a bag of dicks? she thought as she scaled her way up the rest of the mountain, coming at last to the abandoned cabin she’d poked through a few weeks before. She entered strategically through the shattered window next to the hearth, recalling precisely where the log-poker had been resting on its rack. Armed, she crept through the rest of the empty home and, once satisfied with her apparent solitude, set out gathering supplies. First, a hiking pack from the mudroom. She dumped out its contents, keeping the compass, the watch, the matches and the swiss army knife but leaving the rest behind. There were two pairs of boots but, just as with the shoes in the bunker, one pair was too big, the other too small…
Just like the shoes in the bunker. Like, they were exactly the same sizes.
She dropped her new pack in the main room next to the old one as she took in the space with fresh eyes. Around all the utility and function one would expect to find in a cabin in the middle of the woods, there was the same soft, clean decor. The books on the shelf had a lot of the same authors and subjects - even some repeats. When she poked her head into the cabinet under the bathroom sink, she found the same brand of bar soap that had been stocked in bulk in the bunker.
So it had belonged to them - before they had met their untimely end. They hadn’t been peggies, that much was clear from how viscously they had been murdered, but they had prepared for the end just the same. They’d set up the bunker to help them survive the end of the world - a prospective future she wasn’t entirely convinced of herself - and had been killed before they could see their hard work pay off. As cruel and unfair as that was, she couldn’t help the measure of weight lifting off her shoulders at the idea of her little found paradise officially being up for grabs. She had left that morning with a longing look cast towards the bedroom - towards its soft bedding and the oversized green shirt she’d been wearing all week - and hated to think that she may never be able to go back there, that it might be reclaimed by its intended occupants. That wasn’t happening, though. As long as no one happened upon it while she was gone, it could be a safe refuge for her.
She gathered the rest of her supplies - noting a marked lack of weaponry... the peggies must’ve already grabbed all of that - and took off towards the Wolf’s Den.
***
The location of the bunker was less than ideal when it came to doing work for the Whitetails. It was only a few clicks between the two as the bird flies, but taking the most direct route would put her passing through a section of the forest that was still dotted with the Project’s cameras. To avoid them, she would have to cut up to the line of forest they’d cleared nearly a mile up a steep mountain, then work her way back down. It more than doubled her travel time, and her well-founded cautious streak was warring with ill-fitting boots and a lack of weapons as she meandered her way towards the stream that marked the border into more dangerous territory. Caution was in the lead for most of the journey, but once she made it to the trickle of water and recalled just how close her target was, her aching knees - tired from overcompensating her shotty balance in the too-big boots - won out in a sudden comeback.
She was firmly tucked into enemy territory when the crackle of feedback all around her made her jump, the iron grip of the fire poker biting into her hands as she wheeled in search of the threat.
“There you are,” he taunted, voice bouncing and echoing off of what must have been a dozen cameras within earshot as her darting gaze spiked in time with her heart. “Was beginning to think something big and bad had gotten ahold of you, pup… but I’m glad to see all my hard work wasn’t for nothin afterall.”
It sure as fuck was for nothing because before he’d even finished his sentence she was running, sprinting as fast as she could in her shitty boots towards the edge of the dangerzone. It was hard to run with the fire poker pointed back and away, but she was hesitant to abandon it completely and the last thing she needed was to impale herself on the fucking thing.
No, actually the last thing she needed was to end up locked in a fucking cage again so that Jacob classical conditioning is my passion Seed could play fucking COD with her as Player 1 again. That was not happening. Not in a million fucking eons.
The first simple chords of Only You sang around her in an ugly clash. She flung the poker away from her in favor of clapping her palms over her ears. Within a few steps she knew it wouldn’t work, the croon of the song reaching her ears despite her hands and her panting breaths muffling it. A couple more stumbles forward and she officially lost her footing, sending her tumbling into the underbrush and instinctively reaching out to catch herself.
Her palms hadn’t even connected with the forest floor before red began to edge out her vision, her breaths becoming more and more ragged as she slipped out of consciousness.
***
There was something caught in her teeth. Something tough, like a stringy piece of jerky that she wouldn’t have left there unless she just couldn’t get at it with her tongue. That was her first thought. Her second thought was about the wet all down her face and chin, her third about the squish of viscous liquid under her nails.
The blur of red before her sharpened, then, shaking the last of who she’d been just a moment before from her skin as she took in the sight of squishing organs just under her nose. She jolted, and it wasn’t until then that she realized her hands were buried in the chest cavity of a cougar.
Her first instinct - before even taking a breath - was to look at the poor thing’s face. Not Peaches. Good. She didn’t need to immediately eat a bullet after all.
When she finally took a shuddering breath and pulled her hands from the animal - thoughts of giving the Whitetails’ almighty Herald the same treatment as the cat at the next possible opportunity flitting through her mind - a stab of pain in her shoulder stopped her short. It was hard to tell with how thoroughly soaked she was, but appraising the site told her that there were definitely two distinct holes in the front of her shoulder, oozing blood. Pain and instinct had her reaching to feel for the accompanying marks on her back. They were larger and set farther apart, indicating where the cougar had managed a respectable bite before she’d inevitably won their tussle.
Her pack had a suture kit in it - one of the few she’d found in the bunker’s storage room - but of course she’d abandoned that somewhere in the haze. Panic thrummed through her, hands shaking as she struggled with the task of bandaging her wounds with strips she tore off her shirt. As far as resources went she had nothing, and she was now lost in the woods and likely still pinned under the many watchful eyes and ears of her enemy. She could see him clearly in her mind’s eye, poised over a handset in a surveillance room as he monitored her location, her movements. She could almost feel his rapt attention like pinpricks on the back of her neck, could see the scrutiny in his brow as he watched her tear the vicious predator apart like tissue paper beneath her nails and teeth.
She needed to get out of there.
She wasn’t even all the way to her feet yet when she heard it, the faint crackle of a radio in the near-distance. Someone was in the woods with her, and whoever it was she knew that it could only mean danger. The hunters would take her down, then take her back to her cage to be conditioned and tortured until the moment where she found herself tearing into Eli’s ribcage with her teeth and nails.
As determined as she was to keep that from coming to pass, she didn’t exactly have a lot of time to come up with a plan that wouldn’t aggravate the shit out of her wounds.
She seethed pained breaths through gritted teeth, straining at the pain in her shoulder as she gripped the lowest branch of the tree she was beneath and walked her booted feet up the trunk. Once she managed a perch, she reached for the next. She was only twelve or so feet off the ground, shrouded well enough by the foliage to be obscured, when the whisper-soft sound of a well trained tactician trodding across the forest floor reached her ears. She froze where she was, leaning her weight against the tree’s trunk as she struggled to take quiet, controlled breaths instead of the gasps of air her lungs were begging for. Her wounded shoulder and the arm attached to it trembled with exertion.
Beneath the tree a Chosen in full Project regalia was stalled, inspecting the cougar. She held her breath as he gestured towards someone nearby and felt her hopes of ever getting away slip farther and farther from reality with each additional person that gathered beneath her. She didn’t recognize any of them, but she recognized their gait, their stances. Going up against four Chosen wouldn’t usually have such terrible odds, but weaponless? Injured?
The last soldier to join the group raised a radio to his lips, murmured quietly into it, obviously still trying to obscure their location to anyone who may be listening.
The radio crackled loudly in response. Jacob’s damned voice again. “That's her handiwork. She hasn’t been out of range of the song for very long though…” A measure of relief. She was out of range? Of the cameras? Of the speakers? If she could keep quiet and concealed long enough, maybe she could wait them out, find her way back to the bunker to recoup… “She hasn’t gone far,” he decides, a tinge of finality blanketing his words, as if he knew that she was merely a few yards above his team, listening in on their call.
“We’ll sweep the area,” the Chosen with the radio says, hooking the device back on his belt as the other three begin to organize their strategy.
Jacob’s response pulls a chill up her spine, instilling her with a paralyzing dread, like watching two cars about to collide. She could hear the crackling of the music box being wound in the background, his voice chilled with private humor as her nails dug into the bark of the branch beneath her. “You do that… I’m sure she’ll turn up.”
The song has barely begun before she’s lost to the haze again, red obfuscating her awareness as she launches herself out of the tree and towards the soldiers below.
***
“Yes,” she hears herself croak, her thumb lifting off the pushkey of a radio. Fresh awareness fizzles over her, like a cup being spilled over a clean floor, spreading slowly from her mind - still half waiting eagerly for her master’s next instructions - down her body - aching and heavy, like she’d acquired another hundred pounds - and through her limbs - shoulder aching, bare arms scratched to hell by the forest, feet pulsing and swollen in her shoes. In front of her, the Jefferson Lookout Tower is a shadow against the starry sky.
…when had night fallen?
“Yes what?” Jacob demands through her handset.
She doesn’t know how to answer him. She doesn’t know what he’d asked, or what her answer had meant. All she knew for sure what that she was wounded, she was heavily armed - she could feel the pinch of a thigh holster that hadn’t been there before, the weight of a heavy piece strapped to her back, the knife stuffed in her boot - and that she had passed through immense time and space since she last remembered being herself. She also knew that there was a piece of her that wanted desperately to answer him correctly, to do good and hear him acknowledge it. But above that desire is the fact that she knows where she’d been heading while under his spell. With the map forming in her mind’s eye, showing her where she’d been, where she was now, it’s clear as day. The Wolf’s Den was less than a 20 minute walk away.
She only holds solace in the knowledge that her bone deep exhaustion would only allow her to go so far before she fell. Brainwashed, feral, hellbent on fulfilling her master’s every demand - none of that would matter in the face of her own bedraggled mortality.
Her imminent death is a small comfort, but she holds onto it as the radio crackles to life again, her awareness too sudden and fleeting for her to have done anything useful with it, like smash the damn thing to pieces. She barely registers the change this time, just slips back into the red haze as Jacob’s voice pours over the top of the song playing through her handset, “Not done with you yet, soldier.”
***
Pain is the first thing she registers this time. It’s slapping against the soles of her feet, rubbing against the tips of her toes, radiating up her shins, up her femurs, settling into her knees and hips.
One side, then the other.
One side, the other.
Left, right. Left, right. Left, right.
Something heavy and solid thumps against her spine with every step, hitting the same fucking raw vertebrae every time.
Left, right. Left, right. Left, right.
Thump thump thump thump…
There’s feedback from her hip. “How much farther?”
The song isn’t playing anymore. The red has receded enough that she can see the road in front of her, can tell precisely how close she’s brought them to the Den. She can hear a helicopter nearby, could hear it more clearly through the radio, as if he were aboard. Grief rolls over her as she continues her pace, reaching to take the radio in hand. She doesn’t need to survive to have done them some good, then. Best case, she kills a couple whitetails and then he finishes the job after she’s dead.
The decision is instantaneous. She’d lifted the handset to her mouth, the part of her still eager to please ready to say Half a click, sir! Instead, she took great satisfaction in the taste of what would probably be her last words.
“Go fuck yourself, old man,” she sneered, immediately shattering the handset on the pavement at her feet before pivoting and dashing into the woods.
She plugged her ears, cursing her shitty shoes for the already poor balance that was now made much worse by the lack of arms to compensate with. There really wasn’t much hope that she’d make it back to her bunker. She was a hell of a lot more likely to trip and crack her head open or impale herself on a branch before she even got out of range of the helicopter. Still, that was better than letting that monster force her to kill Eli.
Something caught the toe of her boot only 50 yards or so into the thicket, but this time instead of instinctually trying to catch herself, she shoved her fingers harder into her ears as she toppled to the ground. There was a sharp jab in her shoulder, though she couldn’t see what it was she’d fallen on in the darkness. Pain radiated between the bite from the cougar and the new throbbing pain as she rolled to her knees. The ground was vibrating around her - either an earthquake or, more likely, the chopper flying overhead in search of their escapee - and the thrum of her heart and the scorch of her dry throat had her feeling lightheaded with fear… but there was no searchlight. She was still concealed in the darkness. There was still a chance to get out of this, to escape the fate that loomed over her, throwing the branches and the underbrush around her into a violent disarray. If she could get out of this, she wasn’t going to give him the chance to nab her again.
The dust around her settled as the taillight of the chopper moved through the breaks in the foliage above. Ahead of her now. She had an opportunity. She sighed a shaky breath as she got back to her feet, ears still plugged shut, and took off at a lope towards the bunker.