Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 70: The Rat

I stand in the center of the artificial canyon, the shattered armor at my feet, turning the localized Echo fragment over in my hand.

I need the intel locked inside this piece of crystalline memory. But doing it here means exposing my hand.

Everyone is watching.

Up until now, only Lola has caught glimpses of what I can really do, and she is a non-issue. The others are a liability.

I look at the cadet with the bandaged jaw. Then at Oliver’s remaining man. I don’t say a word. I just let my hand rest on the hilt of Eventide and hold their gaze until they both find somewhere else to look.

Good. Some lessons don’t need a voice.

I grip the fragment tighter.

[Activate RESCUE? Y/N]

Yes.

The world snaps backward.

My vision violently inverts, tearing me out of my body and plunging me into a corrupted rewind.

The end first. A shadow blotting out the sky. Bones splintering into powder, lungs collapsing before the brain can process the shape of what killed him. Total obliteration. I feel every microsecond of it.

Rewind.

Kneeling by a murky stream, shivering, scooping cold water into trembling hands. Alone. He split from Danton’s group hours ago.

Rewind.

Walking in the dirt behind Danton and his two heavy-hitters. A glance at their backs. Then quietly slipping away toward the shoreline, heart hammering with cowardice.

Rewind.

The Gatekeeper’s hall. The lantern heavy in my hand. I aim. I adjust my wrist. I throw it — intentionally wide. The darkness swallows the light. It was sabotage. I failed the mechanic on purpose.

Rewind.

A dimly lit room. Freya. A quiet nod. I am her rat. Her spy.

The memory flashes accelerate into a blinding, sickening strobe. A heavy, suffocating wave of foreign emotions crashes into me. Loyalty to Freya. Terror of this biome. The desperate, pathetic hope that Danton’s mutiny offered a way home.

I gasp, snapping back to reality, and force the alien feelings down. Not my fear. Not my cowardice.

But the sabotage—that one stays. That lantern in the Gatekeeper’s hall didn’t fail because of panic. It failed because Freya’s rat threw it wide on purpose. The spike that almost killed Rhayne. The chaos that nearly broke our formation. All of it was manufactured.

I filed Freya Gunnulf’s name in a very specific mental folder.

The one labeled "debts."

The irony isn’t lost on me.

In the corridor outside Rae’s office, she warned me she’d watch my every step. I thought she meant personally. Turns out she had eyes inside my squad from the very beginning.

I was never unwatched...

I was just too arrogant to check my own blind spots.

I open my eyes. The Echo fragment—a sacred, untouchable artifact meant to be delivered to a grieving family as a digital funeral—is gone. Absorbed. Consumed.

The squad is staring at me in absolute, jaw-dropping horror. They don’t understand how or why I just ate a dead man’s soul.

Lola kicks a pebble into the dirt, breaking the heavy silence. "Uncle does the creepy thing again," she mumbles, unimpressed.

I ignore the shock on their faces. If they want answers, they can earn them by staying alive.

The operational data is already sorting itself in my mind.

The map. The topography. Danton’s plan.

"We’re moving in this direction," I say, pointing out the path that tracks a small, dried-out waterbed toward the distant mountain ridge. "Danton is a pressomancer. He was reading the seismic vibrations in the terrain, searching for deep foundation work—metal, reinforced concrete. I think he found something solid."

Oliver’s pale face lights up with a desperate, fractured hope.

"Finally! We found the exit station."

Lola scowls, adjusting the straps on her gear.

"I don’t want to take the bizarre train. It’s annoying."

"Nobody is taking any train," I say. "We’re finding Danton first. Whatever he discovered in there, I want to see it before he has time to weaponize it against us."

"Stay quiet and step exactly where I step," I command, cutting the chatter.

The trek toward the mountain is a brutal lesson in the food chain. With the cadet’s memories augmenting my own veteran instincts, I lead them through the shadowed ravines.

The biome is waking up in the aftermath of the Leviathan’s passing.

Twice, I force the squad flat into the mud, masking our OXI signatures as a pair of massive, sightless amphibians drag themselves across the ridges above us.

They are Abyssal-class predators, built like armored salamanders with rows of sensory pits along their snouts, tasting the air for blood. We wait in agonizing silence until their heavy, wet footfalls fade.

During the silence, Rhayne’s bare hand finds my sleeve. Not a grip — just two fingers resting on the leather. Grounding herself. I don’t pull away. I can’t afford to make a sound, and that’s the only reason.

That’s what I tell myself.

A few miles later, I guide us through a dense thicket of razor-ferns to bypass a nest of winged, mantis-like scavengers fighting over the remains of a crushed Firefly Deer. It’s a slow, grueling dance of evasion.

Every snapped twig is a death sentence.

Oliver handles himself better than I expected. The man moves with the heavy, practiced silence of someone who spent years navigating hostile terrain on foot. Farmer or not, his body remembers how to be quiet when it matters.

Except for hunting...

Eventually, the canyon walls converge, opening into a massive, sheer cliff face.

Embedded in the solid rock is an architectural anomaly. A colossal stone and metal blast door, towering fifty feet high. It’s slightly opened, the rusted locking mechanisms blown open.

There are fresh boot prints in the dust at the threshold.

Danton made it inside...

"We’re going in," I say, unholstering my weapon.

Oliver hesitates, staring up at the imposing, dark gap. He swallows hard. "Dryden... what if there’s another Gatekeeper in there?"

I check my HUD one last time before the darkness swallows us.

[OXI: 1,340/1,600]

Enough to fight. Maybe enough to survive.

I look at him, my expression deadpan.

"After finding out this is a Leviathan’s land," I say, stepping into the dark, "an Abyssal Rank A is the least of our worries."