Tension-filled sweat covered Isaak's face as he stared outward at the looming dunes of red sand in the distance. If what he had been taught was true, then he could not be blamed for keeping his gaze on the distant hills that blocked their line of sight a couple of miles ahead.
They were in 'feral territory,' as it was called by the locals. It was given that name because the inhabitants that lived in the particular area that Isaak and Elaine were in was home to Wildlings who had gone off the deep end — the Ferals.
'Feral,' was slang for an individual suffering from an exceptional case of MIST (Metastasis Induced Suicidal Tendencies). They were people who had suffered extensive psychological damage because of a Metastasis Burst, resulting in what could only be described as a 'psyche-death.'
Higher cognitive functions still remained, but various boundaries of human perception, memory, and judgment become irreparably stuck in a state of permanent flux.
A feral could be completely cognizant of its surroundings and perfectly understand what was happening around them at one point in time but in the next moment...
Pure, unfiltered insanity.
Though many feared them, no one truly hated ferals. Not really. After all, who could ever hate someone who was already trapped in a never-ending hell?
There was one account — a video recording — of a particular feral that was always shown to Federation soldiers during basic training. It was that of a feral man that had been captured and taken to a medical institution for study.
The way he acted so normally, so rationally and clearly, just like a normal person... only to have his consciousness sink into some fathomless abyss and turn into a psychotic monster was equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking.
But it was the defeated, tear-stained expression on the man's face as he begged the doctors to put him out of his misery before he lost control again — that was most recruits could not forget.
It was as if they were fighting or running away from something, resulting in the repeated relapses of violent insanity that defined their appalling condition.
There was no cure for their affliction. The only thing one could do to ease their pain was sedate them into a medically induced coma or grant them their final wish...
"Is it really true that they... eat other people?" asked Isaak as he kept his eyes peeled on the sand dunes ahead of them, not daring to look away for even a second.
As Elaine rifled through the remnants of a weathered skeleton's belongings for anything useful, she said "There's an old saying in the corps; always save a bullet when traveling through feral territories. That's all I'm going to say about that question..."
"Then what the fuck are we doing here?!" shouted Isaak before he quickly lowered his voice down to a stifled hush. He wanted nothing more than to leave but alas, he was not the one holding the car keys.
"Ah, nice! Lookie, I found an M89 and it's still got half a magazine left!" said Elaine, waving a dirty, blood-stained pistol at Isaak with a smile on her face.
Today's field trip into feral territory was for lethal equipment, the type of stuff that Williams could not supply them without setting off red alarms. As they were places that few scavengers dared to venture, feral territories were gold mines for valuable resources out in the relatively barren Wilderness of the western United States.
One could always find a great deal of ammunition, weapons, combat gear, and other supplies in feral territories, that much was for certain.
The problem was that feral territories were among the most dangerous places one could travel to. Even though most areas of the Wilderness were generally lawless, tyrannical regions where the powerful ruled with iron fists, they had nothing on feral territories in terms of savagery.
Nothing was sacred in the lands where the deranged, the lost, and the damned resided.
It was said that when the sun sank beneath the horizon, one could hear the screams of unspeakable atrocities being committed in feral territories. The type of horrors that would haunt even the most hardened veterans for years to come...
That was why people did not venture too deep into contaminated areas that were frequently affected by Metastasis Bursts. They were danger zones that were irradiated with the same exotic energy source contained within MBs.
The former city of Los Angeles was one such place, a legendary hotspot for MBs of significant intensity. And like most major cities, the deeper one traveled to the heart of these former cities, the more contamination they would be expected to pass through.
This was why MB hotspots were categorized by layers of residual contamination, starting from Layer-0 all the way to Layer-4, which was considered inaccessible to humans.
Nevertheless, Isaak and Elaine trudged through the Dune City of Los Angeles as they scoured through the inner circumference of Layer-1 for everything that had some value.
It was both practice and preparation — an extremely dangerous strategy, but one that allowed Isaak to learn faster than normal. Together, Isaak and Elaine set out to scavenge old gear and weapons, all the while putting them to good use.
Isaak, under Elaine's instructions, was taught to disassemble, repair, and modify almost everything that they discovered. What they repaired was then stored away in a secret stash for the night of his escape. He was going to need every edge could get once he was on his own and Elaine was determined to set Isaak up for success as best as she could.
But these were only side objectives to Elaine; what she was after for today's lesson was something else.
She was hunting for prey, the type that Isaak needed the most right now as someone uninitiated in the act of murder. To her, it was absolutely essential in her mind that Isaak get over the hurdle of taking a life as soon as possible.
If Isaak was to survive a real fight, then he needed to be able to pull the trigger when it mattered the most without the slightest bit of hesitation and act on his instincts.
And that meant Elaine had three important lessons she needed to teach Isaak about combat:
The first lesson was to desensitize Isaak to real violence enough that he would not panic in a life-and-death situation. He needed to be able to not flinch or hesitate when it came to killing other people, regardless of the situation or context.
The second lesson was to teach him to always remain semi-conscious of his surroundings and recognize immediate and potential threats to his life. Isaak was still too green, too unaware and unguarded — he had to be able to discern the body language, subtle behaviors, and tell-tale signs of people that wanted to hurt him.
The last and most challenging lesson was to drill into Isaak the necessary skills to fight back enough that they would become embedded into his muscle memory.
She needed to permanently beat into his head the necessary actions Isaak had to take in a fight such that his unconscious self would automatically react to threats in a fight before he even consciously recognized that he was in combat.
For what it was worth, the first two parts could be feasibly ingrained into Isaak within a two-month span, but the last part was something that he would have to spend years in combat to properly cultivate.
Unfortunately, it wasn't something that could be learned on the fly... but that did not mean that Elaine couldn't at least get the ball rolling for Isaak.
So if Isaak was to get real combat experience, there would be no better place to get it than in Los Angeles. The city was the perfect place for him to learn how to kill... as there were plenty of lost souls for them to "save," as Elaine so aptly described it.
"You can't be serious," said Isaak as he gazed through a high-powered scope. "Is this why we climbed this unstable fucking building? To off some poor ferals for target practice?"
"In an actual firefight, your enemies aren't going to stand still for you in a shooting range, you know. And while this certainly isn't crazy stuff, it's better than just having you shoot paper targets back at Firehawk Base," said Elaine as she peered through her spotting scope.
"Treating people like practice targets..." said Isaak before he added, "Shit, are you even human? Where'd your damn soul go? Did you lose it in a bet or were you born without one?"
"Trust me, you're doing them a favor by killing them," said Elaine before she barked out firing adjustment corrections for Isaak.
"There's no one in the world who'd want to live on as a psychotic bastard roaming the Wilderness for shit to mindlessly kill, violate, and destroy without a second thought. Killing them is an act of mercy, above all else. It's better to think of them as condemned spirits rather than living people, to be honest. What we're doing is a good thing, despite what you may think..."
It took a lot of justifying but eventually, Elaine was able to convince Isaak to kill ferals for the sake of granting them peace.
That was when Elaine realized how difficult it was probably going to be for Isaak to kill other people. The final remnants of his Old World upbringing — the ethics and morals of his time period — were still deeply embedded into his character.
As someone who had been raised to obey her superiors and their orders without question, Elaine never had to deal with the consequences of committing murder or other destructive acts of violence. It was simply her job, her duty as a member of the Federation.
She had been raised with a completely different set of moral tenets that allowed her to do whatever was necessary to kill, survive, and at the end of the day, win over her enemies.
It was then that Elaine understood that she was going to have to break Isaak if she was to succeed in getting him to completely adapt to their world.
Just like in the olden days, back when normal people joined the military — she was going to have to destroy Isaak's identity and rebuild him from the ground up into a proper soldier. So as long as there was a part of his civilian self, Isaak would always have a chink in his armor... and that was a fatal weakness that would eventually get him killed someday.
Elaine let out a deep sigh when she thought about all the extra homework she had just stumbled into today. It was going to be a very busy and painful two months, indeed...
And without further ado, they both got to work and began hunting for prey...
"Fire when ready," said Elaine as she wiped the sweat off her brow.
Upon hearing her instructions, Isaak took a deep breath and fired. His shot connected and he watched another poor bastard fall about 270 meters away from them, as his round tore through a surprised feral man's chest without stopping.
"Kill confirmed," said Elaine as she whistled in surprise. "That was a clean shot. Got him right in the heart. Good job."
For the last two hours, Elaine had dragged Isaak across the blood dunes of Los Angeles searching for ferals to kill around the inner circumference of Layer-01.
At first, Isaak's shots had been worrying but after spending about two and a half weeks in the shooting range at Firehawk, he'd improved significantly much to Elaine's surprise. Being able to land a body shot at nearly 300 meters at least once every three shots for someone who had never held a gun before in his life before meeting her.
Funnily enough, though, Isaak did not take it well when Elaine complimented him about his developing skills. He, for the most part, did not find it enjoyable to be building up the skillset of a murderer despite what Elaine thought about him.
"You know, I'll think we'll make a half-decent sniper out of you yet, Grumpo. Were you not in the fucked situation you're in, I would have definitely asked my uncle to give you a recommendation to enter the Pilot Program," said Elaine as she confirmed Isaak's twelfth kill for the day.
"So I can get turned into a soulless killing machine? Nah, hard pass. And don't call me by that name ever again, thank you very much," said Isaak in denial.
"What? Come on now, it fits you well and it's even a bit cute. What's not to like about it?" said Elaine as she opened her canteen and remarked, "Then how about—"
And without warning, a compelling, ferocious bellow in the distance caught their attention and startled them.
Like gnarled, sharp nails scratching an old chalkboard but far worse. If the concept of pain had a voice, then the loud scream in the distance beyond the dunes belonged to it.
It was a sound Isaak had never heard before in his life... and as if almost a preemptive response, Elaine immediately covered his mouth and made a silent hand signal for him to remain silent.
Isaak suddenly felt extremely nauseous as a throbbing headache began to assault his mind, beating his brain like a drum. He wanted to cry out in pain, but with Elaine's hand over his mouth, all he could do was let out a couple of muffled grunts of pain.
But that throbbing pain was soon swept aside when they both felt the sand tremble beneath their feet. Tiny vibrations made bloody grains of sand around them dance like pieces of popcorn ready to burst out of their kernels.
Something was happening.
Elaine already knew. Isaak felt it in his gut.
The subtle, bristling dance around them exploded into a furious crescendo and the small tremor grew into a deadly rage that could not be stopped.
...And then, darkness shrouded the sky.
A shadow of death had come for them.