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He wouldn’t explain what it meant even after more torture. My guess was that the Delta trained their troops to handle intense interrogation. These weren’t the shitty human traffickers I’d dealt with in the past. These were hardened, well-trained soldiers.

In the end, I’d killed him out of frustration more than anything. I’d gotten nowhere, and it wouldn’t be long before they tracked him to where we were. I’d captured March—and the soldier before him—mostly by being more practiced at stealth than they were, better at navigating the rough terrain, and having the element of surprise.

Since I hadn’t gotten anything from torturing them, their blood was on my hands for no good reason, and I wasn’t going to forget their screams or the reality of what I was capable of anytime soon.

I don’t hurt innocents, I tried to tell myself, and maybe that once was true…but the soldiers were innocent. They hadn’t done anything to deserve what I did to them. The worst part was that I didn’t regret it. I’d torture a thousand innocent men if it meant getting Claire back. I didn’t know what kind of monster that made me, and I didn’t even care anymore.

My wife took my heart with her. It was that simple.

I hiked up to the cliff that overlooked the Zone of Control—the empty border around the Delta, cleared of trees and patrolled by soldiers. I found the tallest tree that I could near the cliffside and climbed to the top for a better view of the Zone, and the compound beyond.

Settling on a thick branch, I got my binoculars from my pack. I’d done this countless times over the last week and a half. This tree didn’t offer a great view, but it was one of the only vantage points that didn’t get too close to the Zone.

The Delta was in a shallow valley, surrounded by low cliffs on its west side that dropped off into the flat, easily-walkable land that made up the Zone. The compound itself was fucking massive—easily twice the size of the Cave. I didn’t have a clear view of the inside, even with binoculars, so the only thing that was easily visible was a weird black pyramid in the centre of the place. It wasn’t very tall—they didn’t have skyscrapers like in the Old World—but it was the only structure that was taller than the Walls. It stuck out like a sore thumb, but I had no idea what it was for, and I was too far away to see what went on around it.

However, I could look down at soldiers patrolling the Zone, and see military vehicles entering and leaving the front gate. The gate itself was smaller than I’d expected—only wide enough for one vehicle at a time to pass through—and heavily fortified, with more guns at the entrance. There was also a side gate on the north side, but if it was ever opened, I’d never seen it.

If what Claire told me about the Cave still applied here, the guns were guided by artificial intelligence that detected the implants carried by the Delta soldiers. It didn’t fire on them…but it was open season on anyone else. It explained why the perimeter of the Zone was surrounded only by simple signs that warned Wastelanders to turn back. They didn’t need anything else.

The only other point of interest was some kind of crude wall at the far end of the compound, sectioning off a significant area of what looked like warehouses. It appeared to be made of sandbags, but I had no idea why it was there, and it wasn’t close enough to see whether anyone ever crossed it.

Coming up with a plan to get inside a fortress was proving impossible when I couldn’t even get close to it. All I could do was travel along the cliffs and try to map out the terrain as best I could from the trees, and set traps along the perimeter for soldiers. So far, though, that plan wasn’t working, and I needed to switch gears. I just didn’t know how.

After watching nothing of interest through my binoculars for a long time, I sighed heavily and set them in my lap, rubbing my eyes. I wasn’t sleeping well, and the sky was beginning to darken. I didn’t want to doze off in the tree and fall, breaking every bone on the way down.

That meant going back to camp and facing Kimmy, and I wasn’t eager to do that, either. Still, being out in the dark alone was never a great idea in the wilderness. Just as I started the climb down, a loud boom sounded from inside the compound, scaring the crap out of me. My hands slipped on the branches, but I managed to pull myself up again and pull out my binoculars with my heart pounding.

At the far end of the compound, near the weird sandbag wall, fire lit up the night. It looked like a building had exploded, though I didn’t know how. Another second later, boom! Another explosion split my eardrums, and a building close to the first blew up, too. Breathing heavy, I tried to see what was going on, but it was so hard to see people clearly at this distance. I only knew that there was screaming and shouting, and my stomach dropped.

My girl is in there somewhere, I thought, hating how helpless I was. Please be safe, baby. Please.

I pushed away the horrible images in my head, of Claire in that explosion, of her being hurt or worse. I took a long breath in through my nose, trying to calm myself. I had to believe she was alright. I had to. Nothing else was holding me together.

I waited for a long time, but there were no more explosions after that, and the screams stopped. Instead, they were replaced by loud, blaring noises unlike anything I’d heard before, and then strange, flashing blue and red lights. It took me a minute to understand it must’ve been an emergency response, because not long after, the fire went out. Back home, that would’ve been my job.

I pushed the thought out of my mind. I didn’t like thinking about home.

Instead, I focused on getting back to camp. By the time I arrived, it was fully dark, and the sky was lit up with a million stars. Kimmy was standing by the campfire, turning a slab of venison on a spit, the flames illuminating her face. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying, and I felt a stab of guilt. I pushed it down; there were more important things to talk about at the moment.

“There you are,” Kimmy said, scolding mixed with relief. “You’ve been gone for hours. I’ve been worried—”

“Did you hear the explosions?” I cut across her.

She sighed irritably, but nodded. “Scared me pretty bad, especially with you gone. Did you see what happened?”

“Yeah. It was inside the compound, behind that wall. Two buildings blew up.” I paused. “I don’t know. It was hard to tell from where I was, but…”

Kimmy eyed me with interest now. “What are you thinking?”

“It might be nothing,” I answered slowly, “but it was so…precisely timed, one after the other. And when the second building blew, it was like it was…”

“What?”

I tried to find the right word. “Controlled, somehow. The explosion seemed contained to each building. The fire wasn’t spreading. Kind of like…”

“Like it was done on purpose,” Kimmy finished, frowning. “I don’t know what to make of that.”

“Me neither. But it can’t be anything good.”