Days Gone By

Your hands are busy as you hum a tune to the plants gently bobbing back and forth, suspended in the rocky substrate that barely supports them; like everything in the Bastion, it is ramshackle and cobbled together, nothing like the labs you used to work in way back when. The basin is made of hammered-out corrugated iron, with a self-wound air-pump system; the whole small structure sits in a manger-like stand, next to the regular growing fields. As you turn the crank to wind the pump, refusing to let these plants die due to your negligence, you think: it’s a shame you have had so little time over all these years to expand this setup into what it should have been; a glorious overabundant producer of vegetables, fruits, and full stomachs. But one day, caught up amongst your own thoughts, one day when all the maintenance work is done, one day when a patrol squad returns with every piece of equipment you could possibly need, with enough batteries and nutrients to fuel it all, then maybe it could finally be something that others will look at and marvel. But for now, it is just a small, steady stream of turnips, and winding, round, round, round.

Round, round, round.

Round, round, round.

Is this the life you foresaw for yourself before you knew it was all going to go wrong? You wonder if a better alternative really exists outside of the realm of dreams.

Your pondering is interrupted by a gunshot, followed by another, followed by three more; it’s not unusual to hear them, after all there are infected everywhere, gunshots are like birdsong at the Bastion. But what is surprising is the image of Eris sprinting out from the woods, with a panicked look spread clear as day on his normally ice cold face; In all the years you’ve known him, you know she isn’t the type to run from just anything. The figure that strides out of the woods afterwards serves as an explanation, a mammoth of a person, covered head to toe in police riot gear, with 5 fresh dents. Before you have time to think, or slink away, they turn to you and ask from beyond the fence: “Can you let me in?”

At least you know they aren’t an infected, but you fear they may be something worse. Nevertheless, letting them in is hardly a choice; you doubt the fence would be much of an obstacle to them anyway.

[OC: The person you meet is Fionn’s character, “The Saint”.]

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