Chapter 34 – Outpost Echo
The gates groaned as they opened, steel scraping steel.
They looked like they hadn't moved in years.
As I stepped through, the air felt heavier—like walking into a tomb that had once been a city. Outpost Echo wasn't just an outpost. It was a graveyard. A memory kept alive by malfunctioning lights and wires that still sparked like veins refusing to die.
Buildings here weren't made of brick or wood.
They were made of consoles, radio towers, old cathode monitors, and satellite dishes that pointed at a sky filled with dead signals.
And beneath it all…
I could hear the hum.
Not just electricity.
The system.
Breathing.
---
> [Location Confirmed: Outpost Echo – Core Perimeter]
Status: Secure (Relative)
Entities Detected: 17 – Human, Mutated, Static-Bound
System Activity: Suppressed
Observation: ACTIVE
Observation?
I scanned the rooftops, the windows, the corners.
Someone was watching.
> [Side Mission Alert: "Find the Ferryman"]
Objective: Locate Contact "The Ferryman"
Notes: The Ferryman manages access to Deep Core Systems. Survivors here are… unstable.
I moved through the ruins cautiously, weapon in hand—a jagged piece of rebar wrapped in old signal tape. My only comfort was that for once, there were no whispers in my head. Just the ambient static of the zone.
Until I heard it.
Laughter.
---
It echoed through the bones of a collapsed broadcast tower.
Childlike. Wrong.
I turned the corner and saw a woman standing beside a stack of old CRT televisions, each one flickering with different faces. Some crying. Some screaming. Some smiling like they knew me.
The woman wore a cracked radio headset and a red scarf.
She didn't look up.
"Don't speak," she said. "They're still tuned in."
"Are you the Ferryman?"
She laughed. "No. I'm the toll booth."
She finally looked at me.
One of her eyes had been replaced with a lens.
The other? Still human. But tired.
"Name's Rae. I keep the echoes from bleeding out. You must be Kai."
I nodded.
"The system's watching me."
"It always does," she said. "But here, its grip weakens. That's why they sealed this place off. You want the Ferryman?"
"Yes."
"Then follow the power lines."
She pointed to the ground.
And that's when I saw it—
A trail of exposed, humming cables running along the street like veins leading into a heart.
"Be careful," she said. "Some things never stop broadcasting. Even in death."
---
I followed the cables.
They snaked through the ruins, past hollow-eyed survivors sitting around broken signal towers, murmuring prayers to forgotten frequencies. Some of them looked up as I passed.
One of them—a man missing half his face—reached out to me.
"Don't trust the gateways," he croaked. "They show you what you want. But they never give it."
His hand slipped, and he fell back into his trance.
I kept walking.
---
The cables led underground—into a bunker carved beneath the old city.
And waiting at the bottom was the Ferryman.
Not what I expected.
He looked... normal. Mid-40s. Long black coat. Eyes sunken from too little sleep.
But the moment I saw him, my system reacted.
> [Classified Entity Detected: CODE NAME – "The Ferryman"]
Status: Semi-Synthetic / Former Executor-Class User
Threat Level: Unknown
Sanity Anchor: Stable
Known Alignment: Divergent
He was pouring coffee from an old tin kettle.
"You made good time," he said, not looking up. "Did Grist send you?"
"He said you could tell me what the system really is."
The Ferryman handed me a cup.
"It's not about what it is. It's about what it's becoming."
He gestured toward a wall filled with monitors—each one showing a different user interface. Some resembled mine. Others were ancient—coded in languages I couldn't recognize.
"There have been others before you. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Chosen by the system. Given missions. Purging sins. Cleansing the dead."
He looked at me sharply.
"But you're not like them. You ask why."
I sipped the coffee. It was strong. Bitter.
"Because it's not just about survival anymore," I said. "It's about understanding who's pulling the strings."
He nodded. "Good. Because the Gateway won't open for someone who doesn't question."
> [System Alert: Unlocked Major Questline – "The Gateway Protocol"]
Mission Chain: 7 Tiers
First Task: Reconstruct the Signal Map (Tier 1)
Goal: Discover the origin point of the system's broadcast
Reward: Class Evolution Path Revealed
The Ferryman turned to me.
"If you want to understand the truth, you'll have to go places that don't follow the laws of this world anymore. Dead zones. Signal prisons. Folds in time."
"I've been to hell," I said.
He shook his head. "That was just a warm-up."
He handed me something wrapped in signal cloth.
A black card. Embossed with silver lines that looked like veins—or circuitry.
> [Item Acquired: Gateway Access Card – Tier 0]
Function: Unlocks entrance to corrupted dimensional nodes
Note: Key must be attuned via "The Pulse Ritual" in the Dead Cathedral
> New Objective Unlocked: Locate the Dead Cathedral
"The gateways lead to forgotten places," he said. "Worlds the system tried to erase. But fragments remain."
He stepped back, and suddenly I felt the space around me bend. The walls shook. Monitors fuzzed with static.
And I saw it.
Just for a second.
A door made of bone and metal. Floating in blackness.
Something waited behind it.
Watching me.
Smiling.
---
> [Warning: You have seen what cannot be unseen.]
Sanity Check Failed
Current Sanity: 30% → 25%
Trait Gained: Touched by the Beyond
You can now detect "Unwritten Missions" hidden beneath normal objectives.
The Ferryman grabbed my shoulder, grounding me.
"Don't stare at it too long," he said. "The first thing it takes is your name. The second is your voice."
I gasped for breath, steadying myself.
"What's behind the Gateway?" I asked.
He smiled, just barely.
"The answer to every question you're afraid to ask."