Dogma’s presence tells us it’s only a matter of time.
And now we’re forced to find extra supplies of suppressants because omegas have been on the run. We never turn one away if they come to us.
Some even become nurses like me.
Territories are everything in this world. I bet Dominion will offer to aid us through the winter, forcing our hand into owing them. How could we deny it when it means keeping people alive?
That’s how they’ll take over the Enclave, even if we’re supposed to be a neutral territory. It’s how biker gangs operate. Like the men who rode horses in the Wild West, these assholes ride on two wheels. During these cold months, they use refurbished vehicles that are painted and redesigned to fit their wild, brutal aesthetic.
And they’re rumored to be sniffing out New Bunker, too…
If there’s one thing Dominion loves more than expanding their territory, it’s unmated omegas like myself. Like we’re a fucking currency for them.
Which means if they catch me, my ass will be cooked.
DIANA
A well-used trailis what we follow, the dirt a dark brown from where the frost relented in the morning sun. The scent of smoking meats precedes the caravan of vans and trailers, all parked with a permanence as if this is their housing. Mismatched lawn chairs fill the space, coverings of all textures giving shade. Everything is repaired with scraps, and smoke curls around in a promise of warmth?—
Thereitis.
The scent of an alpha drifts through like I’m being followed by a ghost. There’s one… then another… It’s a lot of walking with our gazes straight ahead before I scent a possible third. I do everything within my power to pretend like their musk doesn’t find me in a different manner than the rest. The omega side of me is turning her head over her shoulders, wondering what it would be like to smell one upclose.
I mentally swat at her.
I’ve been fighting that hoe for the last ten years of my life, ever since I got my first heat at fifteen.
It’s like having another person living inside of me, being anomega who stifleseverybit of her instincts. Which makes me stare a little too blankly ahead.
You’re fine. You don’t smell like an omega. The little pills in your stomach and also your pocket ensure that.
Omega…
You know, it’s odd that I don’t scent a single one of my kind. There’s no intense musk that’s more inviting than overbearing. Do they have pills, too? Or are they all mated and kept far away from society? More often than not, alphas don’t let their omegas wander unless they’re in a gang or undersomekind of control.
Otherwise, they’d be taken advantage of in a heartbeat if their scent were bare.
My eyes widen when I take in a large concrete wall covered in graffiti of a terrifying-looking spider made of metal with the wordsThe Black Mirageunderneath it, surrounded by handprints and random markings that don’t match the original artwork. The cold doesn’t seem to bother me anymore as I stare at it like meeting someone for the first time.
Isthatwhat it looks like?
The Black Mirage is a giant machine that somehow was made in these wastes after thebloomdecimated infrastructure and logistics. I’ve heard that the military hid many secret experiments like this, and when law and order died, some leaders saw their opportunity to become rulers in their own right. One of them engineered that massive moving contraption that’s said to house a small city.
There are some fucked up things said to live on The Black Mirage, along with technology that I’ve heard is actually magic. It’s always felt so far away, like a fable thatmightexist.
I’m reminded once more why I hate leaving my perfect little bubble, because there’s too many unwritten laws guiding the wastes. I’d so much rather stay safe at the Enclave, treating the victims of this world.
A surge of purpose helps wipe away the stains of adrenaline when I see the ground rise to our right, broken up by clear patches of thick plexiglass that give way to sunlight below. We are walking on top of a massive bunker that became overrun and repurposed intothis.
A sign that civilization is trying to blossom once more, even if the petals are unrecognizable now.
Where Selene and I are from, we maintain power to our facility with a large water-powered generator, good enough to sustain us andonlyus. Something else clearly fuels this place, but if it’s old military tech, then it could literally be anything.
They were responsible for thebloom, which created pockmarks ofblightthat poisoned us all. If they can make that, then they could probably make anything.
Like the Black Mirage.
Get in and out, then back to my bubble.
