Yellow Jacket

Warren sat alone in the aftermath. The ache hadn't left, not fully.

He leaned back against the cold wall, the dim light flickering overhead, and closed his eyes.

Then he focused.

The nanites responded to intent. Florence had said so. And he'd felt it, at times, when allocating stat points. The system wanted direction. It wanted meaning. So he gave it some.

"Execution," he whispered.

Nothing.

He waited.

Execution meant precision. It meant commitment without hesitation. Not the moment before a kill, but the decision itself. When he thought of execution, he saw his hands steady, his mind clear. No noise. No cruelty. Just outcome. But that wasn't him,not fully. It was a piece of him, stripped of the weight. A mask made of logic. And the System must have known that. There was no fear in it. No identity.

"Control."

A flicker. Not much.

Control had been a scaffolding his whole life. Mara taught him to take it, hold it, never lose it. To own his hands, his thoughts, his pace. But he didn't live inside control. He lived inside resistance. Every step he took was inside a world that hated structure. He didn't control outcomes. He just never let the chaos swallow him. Maybe that was the problem. Control wasn't who he was. It was what he clung to.

"Judgment."

Still nothing.

He saw a face, blank, tired, pleading. The moment just before a blow landed. Judgment wasn't about punishment. It wasn't revenge. It was removal. A function. One less threat. But he had judged too often without room for doubt. There was no empathy left in him. No second guessing. And maybe the System wanted that trace of uncertainty. That flicker of restraint. He didn't have it.

He tried again.

"Silence. Ruin. The end of motion. The hand that finishes."

And still nothing.

The phrases were real. But theatrical. Phrases others would use to describe him,not how he saw himself. He wasn't a poet. He wasn't a myth. He was a knife. Not the blade. The cut.

"Shadow. Breath before a scream. Crack in the door."

Still no surge.

Metaphor wasn't going to move the System. It wanted root. It wanted truth. What was he, beneath all of it? What stayed when the blood cooled and the lies dissolved?

He tried simpler words.

"The boy who wasn't saved. The ghost who didn't die."

That stirred a memory. Running barefoot through ruin. Rain in his eyes. Mara's voice somewhere behind him. His body wasn't meant to survive that year. But it had. It had shaped him. That boy was still inside. Angry. Quiet. Watching. But the System didn't care about boys who survived. It cared about what came after.

"What happens when nothing else works."

That line felt closer. He was never the first plan. He was the last. The one they sent when others broke. When the price got too high. But that wasn't identity. That was utility.

"The cost."

A flicker. Subtle. Sharp.

Cost. That was something he understood. He was never free. To have him meant pain. To send him meant damage. He came with aftermath. That was closer. But the System didn't want self-loathing. It wanted self-definition.

"The reminder."

Another tone,soft and aimless.

He was the thing people saw afterward. The reason they didn't try again. Not because he left a warning. Because he was the warning. But warnings fade. And he didn't.

He tried again.

"The one who walks in. Not brave. Just necessary."

That landed. He didn't think of himself as fearless. Just committed. His fear lived in quiet places. His need for stillness. His refusal to let the people he cared about be touched. It wasn't valor. It was need.

Still, the nanites stirred,no trigger.

"Not the hero. The silence after."

Silence wasn't peace. It was the shape left when sound was gone. He brought that with him. But silence wasn't his name.

He tried identities:

"The Ghost in the mist. The Yellow Jacket. Rabbit. Wasp. Forge Fire."

Forge Fire.

That one hung in the air longer. Not a title he'd ever claimed, but one he had heard Spoken by The Harrow, once. Forge Fire. It came to him like heat held in old stone, buried in the memory of metal and dust, familiar in a way that prickled behind his eyes.

He didn't know why it felt right. Maybe because it sounded like becoming. Like pain turned to purpose. Like something broken, reforged. Not just enduring, but adapting. Evolving. Burned, then built again.

That was close. Almost too close.

But then it faded.

And Warren couldn't tell if it had come from inside him, or from something else trying to name him.

All of them were projections. What others called him. What he performed. Not what he was.

He tried roles:

"Endling. Reaper. Phantom. Countermeasure."

Each one felt false. He wasn't the last. He wasn't death. He wasn't a ghost. He wasn't a fix. He was something else.

"Scavenger. Protector. Weapon."

All function. None essence.

He tried emotions:

"Anger. Resolve. Obsession. Discipline."

They were conditions. Not core. Reactions. Not identity.

Finally, he whispered the closest thing he had to the truth:

"I don't know what I am. But I will become what I need to be."

And the System remained still.

He let the silence come. The ache moved through his spine and into his teeth.

The chip heard him.

The System did not.

Warren exhaled through his nose. Reached for the bond instead.

"Styll."

The little shape stirred in the next room, then slipped under the doorframe like shadow stitched to fur. She blinked up at him, climbed his shoulder, and then launched out into the hallway.

Scout.

She went.

And the world changed.

Warren let the bond stretch,more than usual. Not just for commands. For immersion. He gave her space to be curious, and slipped into her head like breath filling lungs. There was no jarring flicker, no HUD, no system window. Just sensation. Raw, layered, ferret-sized.

The hallway smelled like dust and warm metal, but also skin, sweat and old oil and a hint of mint gum someone had dropped two days ago under the stairwell. Warren liked mint,fresh, clean, familiar. But Styll didn't. She paused, sniffed, then recoiled with a sharp shake of her head. To her, it wasn't bright, it was chemical, sour, false. A trick of scent. And through the bond, Warren tasted it as she did. The mint turned bitter in his throat. Sharp, artificial. Gross. His stomach turned slightly. He grimaced. It didn't matter that he liked it normally. Through her, he didn't.

Styll moved like smoke with claws. Every movement was a dart, a slither, a spiral. She didn't walk. She flowed. The world bent to her,not in fear, but in space. Gaps opened like invitations. Vents became roads. Pipes became highways. Grates bowed like cracked sky.

And the freedom,it hit Warren harder than expected. Styll felt no corners. No angles. Only passage. She was made for ruins. She lived in the margins. The cracks of the world were her kingdom.

She climbed the wall sideways. She licked condensation off copper. She paused to watch a beetle moving across the frame of a sealed emergency door. To Warren, it was nothing. To her, it was glorious. Gleaming black, legs clattering like tiny song. She pounced, missed, chased it anyway.

Warren caught her glee. Her play. It felt... absurd. Pure. Untethered. And it made something in him ache.

But not everything was pleasant.

She darted through a maintenance shaft where dried blood crusted the wall. Warren remembered the fight. He had taken someone's arm off there. Left the stump to clot while he moved on. He'd felt pride then,clean motion, no hesitation. Now, through her senses, he gagged. The copper was cloying. The protein thick. The decay wet. It tasted like rust in his lungs.

Styll twitched her nose and moved on. Dislike. Avoid. Too strong.

They passed a guard's laundry stash. Uniforms airing out over hot vents. Sweat. Soap. Salt. Warren had expected revulsion,his own memories of damp cloth, chemical stench, heat-trapped grime. But through Styll, it wasn't foul. It was complex. Layered. The warmth comforted her, the musk intriguing, even pleasant. She liked the life in it. The scent of people. She paused at a sock and bit it absently, content. And Warren, instead of flinching, felt calm. Curious. Something like affection. It wasn't his preference. But it was hers. And through the bond, that was enough.

He blinked through her eyes.

Another moment: the pantry.

Dried fish.

Warren had been excited about the dried fish. It was a good stash. Rare. Perfect for ration prep.

Styll tasted it.

And wretched in their shared bond.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Rot. Wrong. Salted meat but bitter from age. Too dry. Not prey.

Warren nearly gagged.

Styll sneezed. Batted it with a paw. Disgusted.

Then, sweetness. Fermenting fruit from Car's kitchen stash. Warren barely noticed it before, Styll needed it. She darted up a wood frame shelf, climbed with precision, then dropped onto the counter like a whisper. The fruit was sour. Perfect. Bright. Alive. She dug in.

Warren didn't like the pulp, the sticky coating. But she loved it. And through her, so did he. The bond softened his revulsion, replaced it with delight. He tasted what she tasted, filtered through her joy. What would've turned his stomach felt vibrant, electric, right. That was the trick of the link: it didn't just share senses. It reshaped them.

Then, a draft.

The air shifted.

She turned. Not in panic. In hunger. Curiosity. The scent came from beyond the main corridor,beyond the walls of the house entirely.

Outside.

She crept through a gap between floorboards and the paneling near the pantry, then vanished through a drainage duct only she knew how to navigate.

Warren followed through her eyes, her breath, her claws on metal.

Then he realized where she was going.

The drainage duct sloped lower than he expected. Not just out,but down. Beneath the exterior vents. Toward the old run-off channels.

Toward the sewer.

Panic stabbed through his chest.

It wasn't the smell. That he could handle. It wasn't the rot or the filth or the risk of getting wet.

It was what waited in the dark. Things that didn't make noise until it was too late. Old things. Twisted things. Broken things that didn't move like they should.

Things that sometimes didn't breathe.

Danger lay sleeping down there, and she was walking straight into it.

Then, scraping.

Her ears twitched.

Something moving.

She went still. Pressed to the floor. Bones compacted. Breath tight. Every muscle tuned for vibration.

In the northern sewage line. Her ears twitched, but not in fear. In recognition.

Then a voice, threaded through the bond.

"Hello again. Son of the Shine."

Warren's eyes snapped open. He didn't move.

The voice was old. Not crackling, not broken, old. Deliberate. Not filtered through system nodes or devices. It came from the bond itself.

"You still wear her silence. That coat was never just cloth."

He didn't speak. He knew who it was.

The Moth. She never called Mara by her name. Only 'the Shine.'

She had spoken to him once, years ago. Brief. Indirect. Never addressed to him. Only to Mara.

He remembered standing beside her in the ruins of a collapsed signal tower, the static still humming in the walls. Mara had told him, "You might not understand what she says, but remember every word as if your life depends on it."

He'd nodded.

The Moth hadn't looked at him, but her voice had carried anyway: "The Shine has chosen a son. That son will never shine, even when he wears her mantle. But why would the darkness need to shine? You shine bright enough to show him the path. He will bring the world you seek to the light,even if it is through ruin."

Just words, back then. Now, they trembled like prophecy about to rip open.

Now she spoke again, and the bond trembled to hold her.

"You've changed," she said. "The code screams louder now. Something woke when you touched that corpse. Something old enough to remember. And it is waiting. Watching like the cat that dreams of birds not yet hatched, patient, but ready to leap."

"You think you can build a world. A clean world. A world without rot. But tell me, Son of the Shine, can you build it without breaking the bones beneath it? Do you think light does not cast new shadows?"

Warren stayed still. Even his breath was measured.

"He waits behind the walls. Not the man, they always see the man, but the one behind him. The one who grinds teeth into keys and unlocks doors not meant to open."

"You want to build a world," she said. "A place worthy of who you are. You may even succeed. But not if you hesitate."

"At what?"

"At removing the one who feeds on fear. Fear is a ladder in his hands. And your silence gives him rungs."

"He will not stop until the well below him wakes. And it does not drink water."

His jaw locked.

"Kill the warlord. Sooner than you think. Before they find what's deep below their feet. Before they learn to feed it."

"He wears a name that isn't his. He hides behind old wires. But the System listens when he speaks because it does not know he is lying."

"I see signal, not vision. And the pulse around you now... it's older than you are. Burn it before it burns you."

"The Shine walks in your bones, but not your blood. That is the split. That is the war. You were born in stillness, but raised by fire. What survives will not be either."

"They will call you False Prophet. They will call you System Eater. They will call you Broken. But none of them are your name. Your name is a whisper in code. It has not yet been spoken."

"When the walls fall, do not stand where the light breaks. Stand in the shadow it cannot reach."

Then she was gone.

Silence followed,but not peace.

Warren sat frozen, still linked to Styll, but barely aware of the ground beneath him. His breath had shallowed, heart steady only by force of will. Not fear. Not awe. Something else. Something more primal.

Reverberation.

Every word she said echoed,not in the air, but in the structure beneath his ribs. It was like someone had whispered into the foundation of his spine and the marrow refused to forget.

He tried to dismiss it. Couldn't.

She had spoken in riddles. But some of those riddles knew things they shouldn't. She knew about the corpses. The change. She had seen them. Not in reports. Not through System lenses. She had felt it.

She knew about the warlord.

She knew what lay below.

And worse,she knew him. The part of him even he hadn't mapped yet.

"False Prophet." Prophet of what, though? He didn't speak in riddles, didn't offer salvation. He didn't even believe in anything sacred. The closest he came to faith was discipline, and that didn't need a pulpit. What prophecy could possibly come from someone like him? What future could rise from a boy trained to end futures?

"System Eater." That one tasted like something he hadn't become, but could. It felt wrong, twisted in the shape of prophecy, and yet it lingered like copper on the tongue. Not something he was,but something he could be. And that made it worse.

And the worst of them: "Son of the Shine."

Not a title. A warning. A warning and a promise, not to him, but to Mara. The Moth had told her that her dream would live on through him. That her vision would walk forward in his bones. And that made the mantle heavier. Made it a burden he had no choice in picking up. He had never asked for it. Never reached for legacy. But it clung to him all the same.

She had said his name hadn't been spoken yet. That it was a whisper in code.

He wondered, if he ever heard it, whether it would sound like a curse.

Styll blinked once. Shook her head. Cleaned a paw like nothing had happened.

But something had. And Warren knew it.

He stood up too fast. The bond quivered. He steadied it. Pulled back. Let Styll breathe on her own again.

The scent of rust and ozone still lingered in her fur, but it wasn't hers. It was the echo of something ancient passing through a channel not meant to hold it.

The Moth was gone.

But her message burned like static in his blood.

Warren stood slowly.

The ache in his limbs no longer mattered.

What did matter was the burn in his throat. The taste of copper and static. The hollow churn just beneath his sternum that didn't feel like pain,it felt like warning. Like the body had heard the words the brain couldn't process, and now refused to hold still.

He staggered sideways and caught the edge of a support beam. Swallowed hard. Breathed through his nose. It didn't help.

Styll returned five minutes later, tail twitching, paws wet, fur clumped from whatever she'd slithered through.

Warren didn't need the bond to smell her.

She reeked.

A mix of sewage, rust, ancient moss, oil, and something that shouldn't have existed in air.

Wren was the first to react. "Styll,what did you roll in?"

She chirped and shook herself violently. A damp mist of whatever it was hit the edge of the table. Wren gagged.

"Bath. Now."

She reached for her. Styll dodged. Slipped beneath a crate. Popped out behind Warren's leg.

Wren rounded the table slowly. "Come on, you little plague vector. You're getting washed. No arguments."

Styll tilted her head. Then exploded into motion.

Wren yelped as the blur shot across her boots, up the side of a chair, and over the edge of the kitchen sink. She launched from a cabinet handle and vanished into the pantry with a war cry Warren felt through the bond.

He laughed once,short, sharp,and then bent double.

His stomach flipped. Acid swirled.

The laugh turned into a dry heave. Then two.

He hit the floor on his knees. The scent of Styll's coat still clung to his nose,stale ozone and something worse. The echo of the Moth still rang in the back of his skull. Her words weren't fading. They were growing.

He barely heard the footsteps.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Grix said, around a mouthful of something crunchy.

He didn't look up. Just wiped his mouth and rasped, "Worse. I've seen a Moth."

There was a pause.

Grix stopped chewing. "The hell does that mean?"

Warren shook his head. "You don't want to know."

"Oh no, I absolutely do. If you're puking after it, I have to know."

Car's voice called from the next room. "Did someone say Moth?"

Grix grinned. "Yeah, apparently the kid saw one."

There was a clatter as Car dropped something. Heavy boots approached fast.

"You let her in the house?"

Warren, still on his knees, said nothing.

Car moved past Grix, started mumbling something under his breath. Pacing. Making signs in the air with one hand.

"She's a bad omen," he muttered. "Always has been. Not her fault. Just the way she is."

Grix raised an eyebrow. "You think she cursed us?"

"No," Car said. "She noticed us. That's worse."

He moved to the doorway. Took out a long strip of dried reed paper, charred at one end. Lit it. Let the smoke curl up into the beams.

Florence entered mid-ritual, holding a towel. "What's happening?"

"House cleansing," Car said. "Standard anti-prophecy pass."

Florence blinked. "...Did we get cursed?"

Warren finally sat back, breathing shallow.

"No. Just warned."

Car corrected, "Warned, cursed. Let's be thorough."

Styll returned at that moment, perfectly clean.

Styll blinked once. Jumped into Warren's lap.

He didn't flinch.

He still felt the static.

Warren stood by the door to Florence's lab, arms crossed, coat still damp from sweat and old fear. The rest of the house had calmed,mostly. Car was rechecking the walls for signs of metaphysical instability, Grix had gone back to snacking on something that probably shouldn't crunch, and Florence was halfway through running diagnostics on their backup water heater. Wren hovered by the doorframe, quiet, watching him.

He didn't move for a long time.

Then finally, "Florence."

She turned. "Yeah?"

"I need the scramble again. Full cloak."

She frowned. "This is getting costly. System doesn't like being locked out. You sure?"

He nodded.

"Yeah. We need to talk. Car, Grix. I need you here for this."

Florence glanced around the room, set her tool down, then walked over to the wall unit and keyed in a short command. A low hum filled the space. The lights dimmed just slightly,nothing visible from outside.

"Scramble's on. We've got nine minutes."

Warren looked at Wren. She stepped closer without being asked.

"We need to tell them," Warren said. "About what we found below."

Car stopped muttering superstitions under his breath. Florence didn't blink. Just waited.

"And," Warren added, turning slightly toward Wren, "I need to talk to you about what the Moth said to me."

Wren's face changed. Not fear, not confusion,focus. Sharp and clear. She nodded once.

The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was waiting.

Wren looked around at the others, then asked softly, "Should I start?"

Warren nodded.

Wren stepped forward. "Well, before I came here, I was under the warlord's control. But I escaped. And I didn't come out empty-handed."

She held up her messenger band, tapping it once. "I took a map. A vault map. One buried in the Red. That's how I met Warren. He was going to be my guide, since he survived a Red run solo."

Grix choked on her snack and nearly dropped the rest of it. "Did you say solo? No one,not even him, goes into the Red alone and lives."

Wren gave a small smile. "Well, he did. Anyway, that's not the point. We made it to the vault."

Warren stepped in. "It wasn't a vault. Not really. It was some sort of Ark. The password was 'Hemera.' It was written right on the door. Like it was meant to be found."

Florence narrowed her eyes slightly. "Hemera... that sounds familiar. I don't know where from, but I've heard it before."

Wren nodded. "Yeah. And it wasn't treasure or weapons or anything like that. It was an Ark, built to rebuild a world after collapse."

Florence blinked, then said carefully, "What do you mean?"

Warren reached into his coat and pulled out Mara's old drawing tube. He opened it and carefully unrolled the brittle pages. He handed them to Florence.

"We saw these things down there. Intact. Untouched by time. The real things, not schematics, or prototypes, stored in sealed cases. And more things we didn't understand. But enough to know we couldn't hold something like that on our own."

Warren looked around the room. "We also need to talk about what the Moth said to me. She said that if they found the Ark before I ended the warlord, it would be too late. That the world Mara dreamed of would die before it could take its first breath."

His voice was quiet, but steady. "She said I have to kill The Warlord before they find the Ark. Whoever they are."

He turned slightly to Wren. "You told me he's past the third threshold. And I'm not even through the first."

Warren looked to Florence and Car. "But you two are. You're strong enough. I need your help."

Florence's face didn't change. But her eyes dropped for a moment. Car looked away entirely.

Florence spoke first. "We're sorry. We do want to help. But we can't go into the Wilds. If we leave the City boarder, we break the oath we made to the Corps. It's the only reason they let us stay free."

Car nodded. "We gave our word. If we break it, they'll brand us outside the System. It won't just be us they come after, it'll be anyone who's helped us. This home, our people, you."

Florence added, "We'll support you in every other way we can. But we can't cross that line."

Grix chewed slowly, then shrugged. "I'll go with you. If these two geezers can't help, I can."

Wren didn't wait. She moved straight to Grix and hugged her without a word. Grix flinched, made a face, then let it happen.

Warren looked back at Florence. "If you can't help me with this, can you go to the Ark and see what you can figure out?"

Florence hesitated, thinking. "I would. But don't you think that might be the issue? The System's watching everything. That kind of movement, a trip to something like that, it'll trigger scrutiny."

Warren nodded. "That's why I need your help to make more of these." He reached into his coat again and pulled out a small, dark device, slim, hand-shaped, and faintly humming.

Car leaned in. "What's that?"

Warren set it on the table. "We got this off a squad of the warlord's men outside the Vault. They said you can use it like the scrambler, but it lasts for hours. If we can make more, we don't need to worry about surveillance."

Florence picked it up, eyes narrowing. She turned the device slowly in her hands, examining its casing, the faint seams in its construction. "You're serious. This is Wilds tech?"

Warren nodded again. "Never seen it work myself, but they wouldn't have lied about it."

Florence didn't answer right away. She tilted it closer to a nearby lamp, squinting as if trying to read something invisible beneath the surface. "The etching looks unfamiliar. Could be pre-collapse or hybrid. Power core's either integrated or inert, hard to tell without opening it."

She looked up. "How can you be sure?"

Warren's voice dropped slightly. "Because I made a promise to one of them. And she gave me everything they had left."

Wren moved to stand beside him, not saying anything, but the way her shoulder touched his made it clear she remembered the promise too. She didn't speak, but the memory of that moment passed between them. It wasn't just Warren's burden, it was hers too.

Florence looked to Car, then back at Warren. "Okay. If this is how we can help, we will."

Car gave a sharp nod. "We're in."