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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/IvorFreyrsson on 2025-06-30 22:41:00+00:00.

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[Monday, April 2nd. A maintenance tunnel fifteen miles away from Central City, near the Empty Lands.]

I opened the rusty door, finally emerging into the sunlight after several hours of walking. The air smelled like motor oil and rancid water. I did my best to ignore it and, finding the path, headed toward the north, where I could just make out the towers of an old generator station, now decommissioned. I kept my eyes peeled for any signs that hunter wasps or wild dogs had nested nearby.

Hunter wasp nests had an odd shimmer to them in the light, and a sting in the leg would leave it limp and lifeless for an hour or two. You could still hobble out of danger, if you were only on the edge of their territory. A sting in the neck, or more than one wasp? You’d be lucky to crawl to safety. Drone swarms kept them out of the city -the clay hives were easy to crush and destroy- but we Nullborn had no such luxury.

For us, nature still had teeth.

Thankfully, knowledge of this world’s flora and fauna were drilled into us from an early age. I knew how to spot nests and signs that the pests had set up shop nearby, so I wasn’t too worried. They were just another danger that I needed to be aware of. The wild dogs were easy to deal with. A stout stick or, if needs be, a bullet to the head would take care of them. A pack would be bad news for a single traveler such as myself.

It was good, then, that I found no trace of either. What I found instead was a network of thick, sticky webbing. Looking around, I found a rusted pipe on the ground, and figured that if I needed to, I could use it against anything that decided I belonged on the menu. First, I had to get away from the pouncer traps.

I took the pipe and stuffed it into my pack. No need to worry about dogs or hunter wasps near pouncer traps. I pulled out a thin, collapsible baton and extended it to its full three feet. Waving it in a slow figure eight, I tested the air in front of me for snare threads. Pouncers liked to lay traps across open trails with thin filaments of silk to a tree or boulder as an anchor. I stepped carefully around the traps, guided by almost invisible threads in the late morning sun. A twig snapped off to my left. I froze, baton mid-sweep. A flicker of movement up in the trees—one of the pouncers shifting position to get a better view. Creepy little bastards.

Pouncers were a mild nuisance to the Nullborn. They would anchor one of their webs to whatever was stable for long enough to set a trap. Sometimes, that wound up being your foot if you slept out in the open. Travelers had woken up to find themselves the center of several traps with a pouncer or two watching from a high vantage point. The little bastards would get so irritated when their anchor began moving. As I swept the baton in a soft figure eight, I recalled my Aunt’s teachings. ‘Gently, William. Like you’re petting a sleeping razor-cat.’. Too much force on the thread, and it would set off the trap, turning it into a squishy glue-like resin that hardened after a couple of minutes. We preferred to avoid that, if at all possible. Getting that glue out of our pants was an absolute nightmare. Those traps could be turned into all sorts of useful tools, as long as we were careful.

I recalled one time waking up to a tugging on my boot, only to find a pouncer attaching an anchor thread to my sleeping body. I eased my foot out of my boot, and began the long process of untangling the trap, and winding up all the silk. I did so while staring at the little pouncer the whole while, its two shining eyes trained on my face at all times. The fact that they didn’t blink was unnerving.

I made it out of the wooded overhang and away from the pouncer traps without setting any off, thankfully. I followed the trail to a small outcropping of stone refuse, and turned right. After about fifty paces, I saw the disguised doorway, and after finding the keypad and entering this month’s passcode, went inside, finding the safe room clean, dry and blessedly devoid of any opportunistic pouncers. I walked to the back, and keyed a panel open with my phone. Inside were ten heavy crates, and I smiled. Home was just a few days away.

I pulled the topmost crate down, and checked the monitors. No local traffic, and no wandering people. Excellent. I walked out, and set the crate down. Opening it, I was greeted with the familiar sight of a disassembled electric bike. I’d put so many of these together, I could do it in my sleep. A good tent, solar charging tarp and a stout blade found their way onto my pack, along with a distiller bottle and condenser unit, and I was on the move in just a few minutes.

Since it was a little after noon, I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere near as much runtime as I would on any other day. For that reason, I simply resolved to get as far away from Central City as possible before I had to stop for the night. The two days’ worth of home made travel rations I’d brought would suffice for now, but I needed to make sure I could secure food along the way.

I opened the throttle up and pushed the little bike to its maximum speed. The path had opened up to an old, now-defunct road. Nice and smooth, perfect for a mid-afternoon ride away from the City. While I was fairly safe here, I still kept a vigilant watch. There could always be a dog nearby, or worse - a survivor.

Survivors were those people that had been Disconnected and refused to join us Nullborn. They instead chose to wander into the Wilds, and let life take them where it would. Some did fairly well for themselves, living for a few years to a decade or so, but most died in a few weeks. Knowledge of pouncers and hunter wasps wasn’t exactly widespread. There were a few, though, who lived, adapted, and survived for long periods of time. A few had begun to create little pockets of civilization out in the Wilds, and these were the bane of our existence, even more than the MegaCorps. They devolved into raider-type societies, usually, and as such, tended to try their luck against our communities.

It never went well for them.

We had been living with the omnipresent threat from the MegaCorps for a couple thousand years, and we all knew how to handle incursions from them. From the raiders, though? Hardly worth the time it took to talk about them. But, talk about them we did, as we had to know about all the dangers the Wilds posed. Especially we operatives. We had to know not only how many there were, but how to deal with them, and how to keep from becoming a victim. We operatives were trained relentlessly in avoidance techniques, how to spot their camps and trails, and as a last resort, how to fight them. I just wanted to avoid them, if at all possible.

So it was that I sped along the dry, cracked pavement of centuries past; old Biocrete that had fallen into disuse over the years. The 'crete slowly transitioned to a healthier shape, smoother, slightly springy, and a delightful smell of a living road, not unlike the smell of a warm summer rain. Such a huge difference from life in the cities. See, Citystone was dead. Well, not really dead, just inert. There was only the omnipresent smell of sterility, reminiscent of the insides of the phones Ozzy brought me. No earthy smell of the living roads we enjoyed out here in the Wilds. Just… blankness. Citystone was a sad copy of real Biocrete.

Sure, you got used to it after a while. Forgot what real life smelled like. That’s why I loved to make these trips back home. The reintroduction of the Roads was always a clear sign that I’d escaped the cities. And that smell always slammed back into my nostrils like the embrace of a long-lost friend.

I rode on until the sun began to dip below the tree line, then started looking for a likely campsite. The bike had about half a charge left, and I didn’t want to strain the battery. I veered off to the right, into a field for about a quarter mile, and started hunting for a smooth, flat patch of land to set up my tent. Once I found one, I dismounted and stretched. Felt good to be off the bike. I pulled off my pack and draped the tarp over the bike, plugging it in underneath the footboard, seeing the battery charge begin to climb ever so slowly. I drove some pegs into the ground and secured the tarp to them. Wasn’t about to lose another power tarp to the wind.

I grabbed the condenser unit. Thankfully, it had a full charge after the short ride. I dug into my pack for the tube of salt pellets and dropped one in the reservoir in the unit. By morning, I should have a liter of pure, fresh water. It would be a little metallic tasting, but that was a small price to pay for survival.

Once the bike was settled. I flattened the grass and pitched the tent. It was well-used and a little faded in places, but the overall camouflage would be fine. Most likely. I hung the condenser unit from the clip on the outside of the flap, pulled my shoes off and crawled into the tent, securing the opening. I ate a little food, then lay down for the night.

Morning came, and with it, the songs of birds. A symphony that I’d dearly missed during my time in the City. You tend to forget what true nature is like when surrounded by walls all the time. I sat up, nibbled on some of the rations I’d brought, pulled my …

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