Chapter 1: In The Gray.
December was a cold month in the year of Twenty thirty-one. Eric Rall lived half among the vandals attending to events, manufacturing of arms, ammunition, experimentation with powder compounds, drawing up prints for mechanical actions. For the other half of his life, he went home to to his two children, he sat down for a short spell, then he stood up and went about the house searching for tasks which needed doing, made repairs that might have needed to be made. He'd play with his two sons, who were two and four years old, and depending on how frisky the missus was feeling, he might send the kids into the ever closer borders of the vandal compound to play while he and Jane had the house to themselves. For some reason, Eric suspected that she was beginning to show the first signs of working on a third, but in the moment he'd wonder that, he'd also dismiss the matter as a more than welcome price to be expected for being married to a woman who, in spite of her feminine and dainty visage, had a strikingly firm leg lock.
For these simple things that made Eric glad to live the life he did, he had few regrets and few compunctions about the way he led life. He felt that he was helping the vandals to ever better equip themselves and to better develop their tactics for the next day when they might have to contend with government forces anywhere they might bump into each other, be that Canadians who wanted to exterminate a friendly faction, or the force he suspected would likely descend on the homefront at some point in the future. Knowing the government like Eric did, he doubted they'd stay off the doorstep forever, after all, they had to get bored of exploring the third parties at some point.
At the very least in Eric's mind, which wandered off while he was busy shoveling snow away from the porch of the house, he had an idea that the rapidly expanding vandal clan, approximately fifteen thousand strong and growing exponentially over the last five years he'd been back, could be expected to grow to a size much large than an army within his lifetime.

>Time passed as Eric busied himself with the task of getting snow off his porch, and Jane, appreciative and gracious as ever, came out to talk to him.
>"Cold morning. Are you going into the plant today?"
"No," Eric began as he scooped up a shovel and threw it over the end of the porch steps. "I think we ought to head into the camp and catch a drink at Roscoe's with the folks."
>"So what can I get you for breakfast? Omelet?"
"Sounds good."
>"Do you ever regret leaving your old job?"
"Ha! No. Even now I can hear one of my old coworkers being killed."
>"Figuratively."
"Sure. But nonetheless, I still know today that someone I worked with died. It's... strange."
>"But how?"
"I just do."

Saint Louis, Missouri.
December eighth, Twenty thirty-one.
>Paul Berdan Looked over the case files that were presented before him, Five murders overnight, victims DeMarcus Shon, Diedre Wilson, Harold Brown, Raqueese Williams and Miles Patrick.
>Reading through the case files of the deceased, he noted that the two he'd been assigned, Diedre Wilson and Miles Patrick had criminal records associated with them, both of which seemed to be federal felonies in nature.
>Wilson, was matched to a fugitive wanted in connection to an elaborate murder in Redding California, fingerprints, though partially obscured by congealed and dried blood, had been the tip off. According to the documentation, she was taken into custody in December of Twenty Sixteen, and while awaiting trial, disappeared from the custody of the department of corrections in Dublin California on February thirteenth twenty seventeen.
"hmm. Hawkins, get over here."
>A fit man who looked more like he belonged in a mine than in a police department responded to the call.
>"What's up, Berdan?"
"Hey, This woman, you got any thoughts on her file?"
>"Why?"
"Well, they managed to identify her after finding her in her apartment... Thing is, they've got her matched to a fugitive who disappeared in the former state of California."
>"Let me see that file?" Hawkins requested with an outstretched hand.
"Gets more gruesome. They found semen in her vaginal and anal canals, incisions along the bottom halves of the breasts, photos show stabs along the stomach and the underbelly, what seems to be an attempt at a quick dissection and evisceration of the ovaries and the uterus... The neck. Dear god the neck."
>"Did he carve a sickle into her neck?"
"Huh?" Paul reacted.
>"Look here." Anthony said as he showed the file to Paul and pointed to her neck. "If you squint here, really hard, it might just be that our assailant took a few jabs at her throat, but I swear it looks like a sickle."
"Sickles... On their own, what do they signify, if anything?"
>"Don't know. MAYBE it still has some communist meaning. Maybe some sort of agrarian movement or... traditionalist larpers?"
"Speculation like this is leading nowhere. Let's go take a look at the woman in the morgue. Then I figure after lunch, we'll take a look at mister... Miles Patrick."
>"So, what's the name on that match they found for her? The uh... doppelganger?"
"Ah." Paul began as he craned his neck over the file and read out... "Grace Wilson."
>"Anything that proves she's the fugitive?"
"We'll have to get a DNA test on that and check it against federal records, but it's time for everyone's favorite game show, voted most cynical forty years in a row, was. It. Rape?"
>"Not sure. The file shows that the apartment was full of sex toys and some bondage gear, she's got... hang on... doesn't seem that DNA test will be necessary, she has notable scars on the arms, seems to be wrist slitting, might be viable as identifying marks if we can get the federal file on this 'Grace' character."
"Well, if she's got the same last name, either she wanted to hang onto it for sentimental reasons, or it's a Biiiiiiig coincidence that she's matched by the fingerprints and has the same last name... but there's just too many things for this to be coincidence."
>"At this rate, I'm about ready to believe that she's the fugitive under an assumed identity, legal or forged. Sure as the DEA is running dope through the south and heroin through the coasts."
"What's giving us the name 'Diedre?'" Paul asked as he grabbed his coat and began moving away from his desk to the morgue.
>"Driver's license." Anthony answered.
"So I guess we've got a good bit of bureaucracy to go through before we try to even solve this shit. Maybe the perp left skin under the victim's fingernails."
>"That's forensics' affair, Berdan. We might solve it, but for now, we got nothing to go on unless we can establish where she was last night or who she was with."
"How did this case come to our attention?"
>"Dispatch says it was a call, neighbor apparently heard her fooling around with someone before screaming bloody murder and being muffled quickly, then after a while she was concerned it was quiet and found blood pooling at the bottom of the door when she went to check up on her."
"What is this country coming to? You can't even get assigned to investigations unless it's some Elizabeth Short tier shit anymore. You know, it's not shit like this that made me get out of Everetville in Florida, but for fucks sake, it's making me wanna leave again."
>"What happened in Florida?"
"Well, imagine some Brazilian favela tier shit where BOPE goes in and starts slaughtering drug dealers. But now imagine it's all one house and everyone inside's been mulched, mind you it's a little shanty shack in nigger town,of course that's not surprising, it's Florida, that's every other block, but this one... So we get a medium sized crack house with a bunch of gang shits partying in it, and then SOMEONE shows up all pissed off."
>"So what goes down?"
"Don't really know. I show up the following morning and the edge of the lawn's being fertilized by blood that migrated from inside the house, which had been perforated heavily by fire from not pistol calibers, not intermediate calibers, but from full rifle caliber rounds and heavy machine guns, parts of the house had been BLOWN UP like someone took a rocket launcher to it, and the smell. It was like they tried cook them with a flamethrower but the place was so mangled it flooded during storm the night before."
>"Jesus. Any idea who did it?"
"We had some ideas based on circumstantial evidence, like the people from a neighborhood on the good side of town, lost a couple of their kids when some of the central american gangsters went out all that way and beat them to death. Maybe another gang with some access to serious hardware, maybe a drug cartel with a BIG smuggling network and an armory of their own, who can say?"
>"Crazy cases like that remind me of some of my highlights back in Boulder City, simpler than that, but still pretty absurd. Guy shoots another guy in the head twice and he survives it. Well, for the next week we get intermittent reports of a man in a jumpsuit with severe encephalon trauma running around attacking people with a machete. Well, we finally catch up to him and he's just finished hacking a guy in a white suit to death while screaming something about shitty music."
"Did you ever find out if it was the same guy?"
>"Yeah, turned out it was exactly the same guy. Never even changed clothes the whole time he was being chased. So we find this guy in a white suit, stained red with blood, tan with dirt and brown green and yellow on the ends of the limbs and the seat of the pants with god knows what else. And standing right over him is this BIG fuck in a blue jumpsuit. No name on it or anything, just has the number twenty one on it. And he's holding the most tasteless browning high power I've ever seen, so naturally, we just fucking ventilate him when he levels it at us."
"Act professional, we're here."

>Anthony opened the door and followed Paul into the Morgue.
>"Well if it isn't the keystone cops. We got us a good one here."
"White female, bowl cut, incision-like lacerations on the bottom side of the breasts, stab wounds in the sternum, say, doc, is there really a sickle in her throat?"
>"Yep."
>"For what purpose?
>"Probably a serial killer, though we don't have any other cases. Maybe the first. That or someone who wants to make a name."
"Fuck's sake. We got some work ahead of us, don't we?"
>"Yeah, I figured you'd ask sooner but I can see you're ABOUT to, so I'll tell you that, yes, the marks on the outer arms do identify her as Grace wilson. There's also some burns they missed on her lower back, but I suppose it's not their job to give her a thorough looking over there."
"Who were the first detectives on scene?"
>"Nikariokov was first on scene, signed off and the body was sent here."
"What made the burns?"
>"Don't know, guessing a liquid that was poured on her."
"What sick fuck...?"
>"Don't even bother. The neighbors said she frequented the grinding bar."
"Sounds tasteless."
>"Disgusting joint."

The Vandal Compound
>Eric Walked out of the rain and haze and sleet, appearing in Anon's world.
"Well I don't believe it. Anon Mous? Out here?"
>"Didn't like the way things were going out there, so I found... THIS. It's like a nice little farming community." Anon answered.
"What's got you down so far?"
>"Well, I don't exist in this timeline or something, so THAT curtails my prospects a little, I don't want to work for the PMCs, oh, and then across the street I was at a chemical company applying and the die casting plant across the way exploded. Apparently one of the setup guys told a new guy to drop a bottle of water in the pot and the madman actually did it. Dropped a bottle of water in the pot, a couple seconds later the building was a fucking crater."
>"HEY! Boys! There's a shooting competition on tuesday! We should go!" Emily's voice called from the porch.
>"Well, shit. Eric, what do you say to some friendly competition?"
"Well, I'm not literally Married to my SR25 or any of my other rifles, but you're on."
>"Wait, Jane's not a waffengeist? I've seen stranger things than that, but not many."
"Oh?"
>"Well, there was this one time on post in South Africa before we went in to reclaim Rhodesia."
"Go on..."
>"So I'm on post with Emily and we're waiting. watching. Waiting. And we see this guy crossing the field a couple hundred yards out front of our post. We get thermals on it and magnify."
"Well?"
>"So, get this, Bastard with a fucking M1 Thompson and apparently no head is just WALKING across our perimeter, so we call in unknown contact and ask for verification, NO ONE ELSE can see what we're talking about. HE'S RIGHT FUCKING THERE and we're calling it in and no one can see it. There was a small investigation, but they concluded that other posts we unable view the individual I reported because of geographic features. What's with the look?"
"Dude, you saw The eternal Thompson gunner."
>"Who?"
"DUDE. You saw Roland."
>"Shit, man. Sounds about right, but how the fuck do you know about that?"
"Besides Van Owen, the guy who allegedly blew off Roland's head being a real guy who actually went to work from Norway during the Congo Crisis, the legend has literally been immortalized in song and verse. Have you NEVER heard Roland the headless Thompson gunner?"
>"No."
"Wow. I don't know how you've never heard it. Have you ever listened to any Rhodie music? You MUST have."
>"Yeah, no shit."
"Dude, I don't know how you haven't heard it, you been here, what? Four years?"
>"Suppose so."
"Well, I gotta be chatting with the Berdans about some prints, so I'll get outta your hair and.. I guess I'll see you at the rifle competition Tuesday." Eric said.
>"Deal" Anon said, extending a hand to shake.
>After shaking Anon's hand, Eric turned and began toward the Berdan's house, hearing a woman yell "And don't forget to bring Jane and the kids!"
>Eric smiled as he briefly peered over his shoulder and carried on.

Berdan Residence; half an hour later.
>Eric walked into Mike and Ekatarina's view. The two had been sitting on the porch on a lazy day off, enjoying some vodka, which as Eric understood, Ekatarina made at home as a hobby, with some help from Mike's background.
>Something about the two sitting on the wraparound porch in the rocking chairs and Enjoying their lazy day was quaint. To Eric, Beautiful, really.
>"Hey! How you been?"
"Can't say I have all that much free time these days. The days are long and demanding at work, I don't like to let the kids idle, when THAT'S not the issue because they're out SHE's pretty demanding in her own right... Come to think of it, I don't think I've had time to take a walk in a month."
>"You know, Eric?" Ekatarina began "... If I had to judge what those demands are by your demeanor, you move your hips around the house more than your legs."
>Eric looked at her with a smirk
"You know? If I didn't know you make damn good vodka, I'd ask you to stop spying on me."
>Ekatarina chuckled at him.
>"Well, I imagine you boys have something to talk about that might make me really happy or really mad, So I'll leave you to your prints and your schemes to replace me with more rifles." she amended before she stood to walk back into the house.
>Mike and Eric both watched her walk back into the house, Eric, watching the back of her head for any expression, seeking to determine whether her last remarks held some emotion, Mike, knowing her better, was looking elsewhere.
>"Don't be so concerned about her, Eric." Michael commanded before amending, "She likes to pull the guilt string for fun sometimes. Count yourself lucky, you don't know the power of that pout."
"Hard to resist?"
>"Like gravity."
"Huh. I can dig it."
>"Hey, now! Don't get any funny ideas, that's MY wife."
"No, just... hard to imagine Jane pouting. She doesn't do 'pouty.'"
>"Yeah, but enough about how lucky we are, here. You got the prints?"
"Yeah, I got them. I think I finally managed to model the idea for the locking mechanism. It's got these ball bearing locks set on a ring that cams them out as a mechanism of locking lugs that provide locking forces in all directions."
>"And how did you say you wanted to unlock this? Kind of a standard setup?"
"Yes. I had an idea to do it just like anything else." Eric answered as he whipped out the prints.
>"Okay, lets take a look here... Okay, nothing out of the ordinary here, standard fair on locked breech rifles. unconventional execution of the lugs, but other than that, not too out there."

Tuesday.
>The first round of the match started as Anon sprinted forward with his FAL in hand, and began slamming away in full auto.
>Seven-six-two rounds Slammed against the plates releasing a repeating clatter as pocks of a steely gray appeared in the red plates.
>Bursts rippled out, and then resumed, separated by fractions of a second each before a longer pause came as Anon Rocked a mag out of the well and in almost the same fluid motion, he reversed his hand, before in a smooth motion, drawing out a mag and jamming the nose of the magazine into the front of the well and rotated it upward with a click that, for those that were wearing earplugs, was inaudible under the magnitude of other audible influences, and for those wearing electronic ear protection, it was almost as loud as the shots.
>The chunky clicks of metal sliding forward as the bolt stripped a round off the feedlips and the rifle jerked to his shoulder once more and the sounds of staccato punches through the fabric of the atmosphere continued before the bell that signaled the completion of the stage rang out in a shrill triangle wave.
>Eric looked on, impressed as Anon scanned, assessed the range, and then found himself before abandoning his ready posture, and lowering his rifle. A tall brunette with emerald green eyes appearing next to him, and then having his rifle, pointing his rifle to the air, checking it, and taking the chambered round out of the ejection port before pocketing it, and disappearing the rifle from her hands.
>"That Emily's a strange one." Roscoe stated, half way to himself.
"What? The magic tricks?" Eric asked.
>"Yeah. What else? Don't tell me you see pretty women who disappear into thin air and then reappear to do administrative tasks often."
"Daily. Then again, I see Emily and Kathy every day because Anon, Mike and I hang out all the time. Sometimes we all go hiking out in the hills. We all got night vision, so we can do it anytime we want."
>"You still use night vision?"
"Yup. Same pair I had when I met my first wife. Sometimes a pair I got a few years back when I 'retired.'"
>"You're retired?"
"Yeah, I'm like a million. Not quite on YOUR level, but quite an old bastard in my own right."
>"Interestingly enough, I don't remember you being NEARLY as old as I am. I went over in 2004, what did you do?"
"Mercenary work, post Private security act. Of course I was old as hell when that happened. About a month or so after I put her last picture on your bar wall."
>"Ain't your boy Mike the one who's loading up his rifle now?"
"Yup. Let's see how the boy performs."
>Mike rocked the magazine into Ekatarina's mag well, and racked the charging handle to the rear, press checking the rifle, then switching the safety on. 
>The buzzer sounded and the targets popped up.
>Berdan bounded through the course of fire and like all before, dropped plates with the same bursts of high pitched clicks anyone else had earned. From the apparent speed, Eric judged that Mike would win the match.
>"Not bad for an FAL, right?" Anon's voice sounded off.
"Not bad at all."
>"Well, if it isn't the interloper himself. How you been, Anon?" Roscoe asked
>"Oh, you know. Doing work. Walking the land, making soldiers."
>"No other way to be, man."
"So, shall we head over to Roscoe's for a drink and wait for the scores?"
>"You haven't run yet. I know you got a prototype."
"Fine. I'll run it."
>Eric walked to the match area and pulled from a case, a prototype he'd brought, but thought better of competing with.
>He chambered a round of the new, untested caliber and stepped into the stage area.
>He Stuck a magazine in his pocket. And waited.
>The buzzer rang.
>Eric swung the prototype to his shoulder and...
>TUTUT-KSHCHCHCHC
>Eric felt a shockwave hitting his arm along with something brushing against his left forearm
>Eric pulled off the already dead trigger and came off the gun to assess.
>The barrel had failed at the throat, sending a stream of fire into his left forearm, burning through the skin to just below the surface.
"Well, FUCK." Eric muttered to himself before a voice announced "LINE CLEAR, SAFE AND GROUND WEAPONS, FATAL MALFUNCTION."
>"Oh, SHIT, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?" Mike yelled as he ran to Eric.
"Yeah, calm down. It's not the worst injury I've had. Just get me to the hospital, I'll get patched up and give Jane a call."
>"Dude! How are you so calm? Your gun just exploded!"
"It's a prototype. I'll tell you a STOOOOORY mister Berdan. Once there was a man named Stoner who tested a prototype whose barrel ruptured. Now that prototype has evolved into one of the most popular automatic long range rifles to date. This project's day in the sun will come, my friend. But first, I just have to make a better barrel."

Forty minutes later, at Roscoe's.
>"Okay, so, FAL, VSS, hundred year old NAZI party translator, and Missus Jones. HAVE THEY all been informed?" Roscoe asked.
>"Well, Emily and Ekatarina witnessed it, I saw Eric call his wife, so I guess that just leaves your old lady, Roscoe." Mike answered.
>"What I don't get is that Eric's gun explodes and instead of going ape shit he just stares at it like he's unimpressed."
"This ain't my first rodeo. First thing when you suspect yourself to be bleeding is avoid panic. Try and SLOW your heart rate, and it may give the medics just THAT much longer to stop your bleeding." Eric responded, making the "tiny" gesture with his thumb and forefinger to Mike.
>"Yeah, I've been shot before too, but then again, I'm pretty sure Roscoe's the only one who HASN'T been shot before, and he was a PROFESSIONAL soldier, unlike any of us."
>"Well, I never got shot." Anon interjected.
"Can it, scarface, you're lying." Eric coolly rejected.
>"OK, well, blown up a few times. Never shot though." Anon replied, as the three others viewed the scar on his cheek and non-verbally saying 'bullshit' with their eyes. "OK, indirectly hit by an RPG once... And a mortar. Shut up."
"Well, if nothing else, you've more or less had the 'Getting shot' experience, and I think it's a highly overrated experience and I think you should avoid it if at all possible within reason. There are very few occasions in which I didn't take the risk and would have taken it if given a chance to do it over."
>"And the other way around?" Anon asked.
"Plaid shirt expedition, California campaign, harassing the leafs... Every time I took the risk, I was damn sure."
>"So there's NO TIME you took the risk of getting shot you'd choose not to have done in hindsight?"
"Nope. Just the time I would. Sometimes I still have dreams about what happened because I wasn't there."
>"Bad times." Roscoe offered knowingly.
>"What happened?" Anon inquired.
"No point in tellin'. It's long over." Eric answered, coolly re-solidifying his composure.
>"Well, if I had to guess, since I moved in here, I think I've seen about five emergencies like the one you're so casually dismissing. Of course, word gets around. Now, it's been... forty-two minutes..." Mike started, addressing Roscoe "...And if I'm guessing right, Your wife has probably gone to the hospital to check if you were in there, then she probably went to the range, and she's probably coming in..." Mike continued, trailing off and staring at the door with a slackjawed grin.
>Five seconds passed.
>Anon and Eric turned their heads toward the door, Eric casually sipping at a shot of Rebecca Creek.
>Roscoe turned his head. Two more seconds of deadly silence passed.
>"..Now." Mike whispered.
>A patter of footsteps could be heard coming toward the door to the bar.
>Furious ones.
>A familiar pale arm reached the door and swung it out before Kayla barged into the bar, a look on her face which all the men present had seen before, but usually on the faces of men attempting to assess a deadly situation, not Roscoe's wife coming to check on him.
>The woman's jet black hair and pale green eyes were half fury and half worry.
>All Anyone heard however, was Mike, Anon and Eric shouting in joy.
>"AAaaaayyyyyyyyy!"
"Damn, Mike. How'd you know?" Eric managed to get out between laughs.
>"Magic!" Mike said as he cackled.
>The emotions faded from Kayla's face as she realized who'd been injured.
>"How you been, Kayla?" Anon asked.
>"I was worried sick. Of course no one can just say 'Eric's gun blew up, Roscoe took him to the hospital.' They gotta say 'there's been an accident, Roscoe went to the hospital.' Of course they neglect to mention it's YOU that got fucked up, and HIM taking you." Kayla stated, pausing for a second before amending "How you holdin' up?" in Eric's direction.
"Just a little cut and charred, nothing a little bandaging won't fix."
>"GOOD. Next time don't blow yourself up."
"You say that like I SET OUT to." Eric scoffed.
>"Whatever, go home, Jane called and said there was something she needed you to attend to something.
"Oh, SHIT, I better get there damn quick. Hope the boys aren't home."
>"What, why?" Kayla asked, barely getting that second word out before the internal "Ooooooohhhhh. Thaaaaat." Visibly crossed her face.
"Yeah. Better get on that." Eric mutters after he slams his shot of whiskey and walked out the door, seemingly hovering above his feet more than walking on them with a face, a grin rather, which seemed only half lucid.
>Eric left Roscoe's, leaving Mike, Anon, Roscoe and Kayla to revel in the realization of what that meant.
>"Hey, you see the look on that guy's face? What's up with that?" Mike started.
>"Nothing. Except maybe boots and a smile."
>"Ah."
>For a moment all present nodded in approval, if only to themselves.
>Roscoe leered at Kayla.
>"Are you wearing SHOES?" He demanded, then looked down and ordered. "Take them off."