THE NORTHERN VEIL CHAPTER 2
Almost losing myself
Chapter 2 — Absence
Her tracks were easy at first.
Maddie walked light, but she didn’t hide. She’d never needed to. The snow held her like memory holds guilt — every step pressed deep and deliberate, the crust breaking clean beneath her heel with a soft, brittle crack. Powder clung to the edges of each print, catching what little light the sky had left, glittering faintly like frostbitten glass.
The trail led where I expected.
Past the creek.
Into the clearing.
The air there always smelled wrong in winter — iron-rich water breathing up through thin ice, rot sealed beneath snow, old leaves dissolving into something sour and metallic. Life refusing to stop even when it should have.
I knelt and brushed the snow aside with numb fingers.
Blood.
Not much.
Enough.
Small drops. Controlled. Dark against the white, already skinning over at the edges where the cold had started to win. Spaced wrong for a stumble. Too even. Too deliberate.
She’d been hit.
My chest tightened, breath snagging halfway in like something had hooked behind my ribs and yanked. For a second I stayed there, crouched in the snow, staring at the red like it might explain itself if I lookeded hard enough.
Then I moved.
Faster now. Boots crunching louder than I liked. The sound felt obscene in the quiet, like shouting in a graveyard. My eyes swept the tree line. My ears strained past the wind, past my own breathing.
The pattern changed.
Longer strides. Sharper turns. The snow kicked up more violently.
She’d run.
Then the other tracks cut in.
Five of them.
Two heavy enough to crack the crust entirely, the snow spider-webbing outward from each step. Too heavy for normal men. Augmented, maybe — weight distributed wrong, pressure too even. The other three were lighter. Controlled. Their spacing was clean. Efficient. The kind of walking that came from training, not hunger.
Not raiders.
The blood spray filled in the rest.
She’d fought.
Close. Violent. Ugly. Knife work.
I saw where someone dropped to one knee, imprint warped and smeared. Where Maddie pivoted hard enough to carve a crescent into the snow. Where a man staggered sideways, huge boot scuffing erratic half-steps, blood sprinkled in the snow and on the bark of the tree — a handprint of blood on the trunk following her.
Pride flared through the fear before I could stop it. Warm. Reckless. Stupid.
I smirked at the blood in the snow.
“That’s my sister,” I said aloud.
The tracks veered hard east.
Jackshaw’s place.
I knew that barn. Bought a brahmin off him last winter. Quiet man. Careful. The kind who survived by keeping his head down and his mouth shut. The boards were gray and split with age, the roof sagging under old snow like it had given up trying to look strong.
Smoke lifted from the chimney. Thin. Steady.
Someone was alive in there.
I stepped inside like I belonged.
Warmth hit first — stale, metallic, wrong. Heat that had sat too long without fresh air. Then sound. Boots shifting. Fabric creaking. A radio hissing low, breathing static into the room.
Three men.
Different clothes. Same posture. Grimy gear. Radios clipped to their shoulders, antennae nicked and taped back together. Their eyes slid over me without lingering — because they didn’t need to linger. They’d already decided where I fit in the room.
“Where’s Mr. Jackshaw?” I asked.
My voice came out steady. Calm. Even to me.
One of them didn’t bother looking my way.
“We bought the farm.”
The lie landed wrong. Too flat. Too fast.
A radio crackled.
“—the girl’s not cooperating. Not getting in her cell. Might need backup.”
My stomach dropped, cold and hollow, like stepping off something solid and realizing too late it wasn’t there.
The man with the radio turned slightly away from me, thumb brushing the transmit. His voice dropped. Respectful.
“I believe her brother is here. How should we continue, sir?”
The reply came immediately. No static. No thought.
“Put him down like the farmer. Or capture him like his sister.”
The man turned back toward me, pistol rising.
He never finished the motion.
I caught his wrist and twisted. Bone went with a sharp, dry crack — like snapping frozen wood. The sound was louder than his scream. I drove my knee into his elbow and felt it collapse, the joint turning to slurry under pressure. He went down howling, boots scraping uselessly against the floor, breath breaking into wet, panicked gasps as I shifted my footwork and weight before slamming my knuckles into his temple as his head hit the floor.
The second man lunged, punched me across the jaw.
I staggered back, then I went to meet him halfway. He was bigger and lifted me and slammed me into a wall.
My hands closed around his throat. Skin hot. Slick with sweat. I felt his pulse hammering under my thumbs. He clawed at my wrists with one hand, but still he was big enough to hold me up against the wall with one arm, nails scraping, breath wheezing out of him in short, desperate bursts.
He was strangling me.
I didn’t shout.
I didn’t think.
My legs kicked as I was lifted off the ground.
I kneed his solar plexus, but as he dropped me I stomped his knee with a wet crack. I took the opportunity to grab his neck again with both hands, hard. I leaned in, growling, and felt vertebrae shift.
Then snap.
His body went slack all at once. Dead weight. I let him drop. His head hit the floor wrong — a dull, hollow crack that echoed too long before going quiet.
The third man stumbled. He wasn’t a man but a teen. He fell backward, eyes blown wide, shaking so hard his rifle rattled against his chest.
I picked up a rusted pipe from the floor. It was heavier than it looked. Cold. Familiar. The grip bit into my palm, flakes of rust digging into old scars.
“You can tell me where she is now,” I said, breath fogging slow and steady, “or after I break your arm as well.”
He folded instantly.
“Downstairs— please—”
I shifted my feet, roaring.
I swung anyway.
Not at his head.
Beside it.
The pipe dented the wall. Dust burst free. The sound made him scream — high, raw, animal — like his body had already decided what was coming.
I didn’t look back. I couldn’t, or I would finish the job.
The cellar smelled like mold, dust, and old power — damp concrete and ozone. The air tasted thick, electric. My boots echoed softly on the steps, the sound swallowed fast like the space didn’t want to remember it.
Lights glowed faintly. Pre-war. Jury-rigged. Still alive.
Wires crawled along the ceiling like veins.
This wasn’t a random grab.
I moved low.
I heard Maddie before I saw her.
“Come in here,” she was screaming, voice shredded raw, feral with pain and fury, “and I’ll take the other eye!”
A smile twitched across my mouth before I could stop it.
Once again. That’s my sister.
She was locked in a reinforced cell. Four men around it. One of them missing an eye — the socket torn and wet, blood still steaming faintly in the cold air. The smell hit me hard. Copper. Heat. Meat trying to start early.
Her fingers were raw from the cold and the scrap. Bloody at the tips. Nails split and broken — either from attacking the men or clawing the bars until something had given.
Two more men lurked in the next room. Shadows shifting. Boots scraping concrete.
And somewhere above us—
Heavy footsteps.
Measured. Slow. Deliberate.
Power armor.
Each step sent a dull vibration through the floor, up my legs, into my teeth. The sound crawled into my bones and stayed there.
My chest went cold.
These men weren’t just trained.
They were organized.
I saw the markings then — subtle, half-scraped away. Old Brotherhood lines, warped by time and misuse. Familiar in the way a scar is familiar — something you don’t notice until it starts aching again.
This wasn’t about Maddie.
She was leverage.
A voice carried through the corridor.
Low. Controlled. Empty.
“Status.”
No one answered fast enough.
I tightened my grip on the pipe.
I hadn’t come chasing ghosts.
But the past had crossed my line.
I waited.
Breathing low. Slow. Counting steps — the way I’d taught myself, because I still believed discipline could save people. Four men around the cell. Two beyond the doorway. Rifles slung. Confidence loose in their shoulders.
The air tasted like smoke and old sweat.
Maddie saw me.
Her eyes snapped to the shadow by the support beam. I could smell her fear flicker — quick and sharp — then vanish.
She smiled.
“Oh good,” she said loudly. “They sent more idiots.”
Every head turned.
That was enough.
I moved.
The first man never saw me.
Pipe slamming under his chin, crushing his windpipe. My left fist hitting his jaw. Teeth cracked together. He went limp without a sound, weight folding forward like his bones had quit early.
The second turned too late.
I smashed the pipe into his knee. It folded wrong with a wet, stomach-turning crack. He screamed. I smashed the pipe off his face with a downward strike, both arms driving it, a growl tearing out of me.
Maddie laughed. Sharp. Mean. Surprised.
“Should’ve kept the eye,” she spat at the now knocked-out one-eyed man.
Gunfire exploded.
The sound was brutal in the enclosed space — pressure and ringing and white pain. I dove as rounds chewed through wood behind me, splinters biting into my cheek. Heat grazed my shoulder, close enough to burn.
I rolled, came up with a dropped pistol, fired twice without aiming.
One hit meat. A grunt. A body hitting concrete.
The other shot went wide.
A rifle butt slammed into my ribs.
Air left my lungs in a humiliating rush. I went down hard, teeth biting into my tongue, copper flooding my mouth. Someone kicked me — once, twice — boots heavy and careless. Another grabbed my coat, trying to drag me backward.
I caught his wrist and bit.
Skin split. Salt and iron filled my mouth. I felt tendons give under my teeth. He screamed. I don’t remember letting go. I do remember sticking my thumb into his eye socket and slamming his face into my knee as I lost control of my anger.
Maddie was rattling the bars now, shouting everything she had — insults, threats, hate — anything to pull eyes off me.
“You like cages?” she screamed. “I’ll build you one out of your bones!”
I got up because staying down meant dying.
I got tackled by the nearest man and he drove me into the cell door. The impact rang through my skull like a bell struck too hard. His rifle was up against my neck. I punched into his left armpit, felt ribs break into his lungs and heart. He began to slump.
I grabbed the rifle and used it like a club — smashing a nose flat, then snapping a wrist with the stock when he used what strength he had left to try to block.
A knife slid into my side.
Not deep.
Deep enough.
Pain bloomed hot and blinding. I gasped, staggered, slammed the butt of the rifle backward and felt cartilage crush. The blade came free with a wet sound. I dropped the rifle and drove my forehead into his face again and again until his body stopped answering, my hair soaked in blood.
The room dissolved into noise and motion.
Blood slicked the concrete. Smoke burned my eyes. Shouts piled over each other, meaningless and frantic.
And then—
BOOM.
The floor gave way like rotten ice.
Concrete shattered, dust choking the air, stinging my eyes and throat. The sharp scent of ozone and rusted metal filled the cellar, clinging to my lungs as I coughed, dragging it in with every ragged breath. Something impossibly heavy had come straight through from above. The lights flickered, then steadied, humming low — obedient, mechanical — like the whole world had just paused to watch.
A power armor suit stood in the wreckage.
Not Brotherhood standard.
Darker. Thicker. Reinforced in places that suggested experience, not doctrine. Scraped clean of insignia like someone had erased a past instead of escaping it. The metal was scarred, pitted, and glinting in the fractured light — every dent a memory I didn’t want to think about.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
I raised the rifle anyway, hands slick with my own blood, the wood grain pressing cool against my palms. My chest hammered; each inhale a sharp stab through the wound in my side.
The suit crossed the distance in two steps. The metal plates shifted with a whisper of hydraulics and ancient servos, a rhythm that set something alive inside me on edge.
A massive hand closed around my throat and lifted me off the ground. My boots kicked uselessly, scraping the concrete, the rifle starting to slip from my fingers as I pressed it against the power armor’s exposed area. The fingers were heavy, unyielding, servos whining softly as the grip tightened. Pain bloomed hot and sharp at the base of my skull, radiating through my neck like fire lacing bone.
This wasn’t rage.
This was control.
The helmet tilted slightly, studying me — my grip on the rifle, the blood on my hands, the way I still fought even while choking. I could feel every flex of the fingers against my windpipe, the cold bite of metal against my skin, and the subtle vibration of servos through my shoulders. My vision narrowed. The edges of the room blurred, the smell of iron and concrete and fear thick in my mouth.
Then a voice came through the external speaker.
Low. Calm. Familiar, even through the voice modulation. Familiar in a way that made something in my chest break.
“That’s enough.”
The room froze.
The grip didn’t tighten further.
It didn’t loosen either.
“Stand down,” the voice said again — not just to me.
To them.
Every remaining soldier straightened instantly. One of them started to speak.
The armored head snapped toward him.
“If any of you touch the girl,” the voice continued evenly, “you die.”
A pause.
“If any of you touch him,” it added, metal fingers flexing once around my throat, “you die slower.”
Silence swallowed the cellar.
Maddie stopped shouting. Her eyes were wide, locked on the armor. On the voice. On me.
The hand released.
I hit the ground hard, coughing, dragging air into my lungs like it might never come again. My throat burned raw, my side pulsing with fire where the knife had stabbed me. My hands shook, slick with sweat and blood, fingers curling in the dust and grit.
I stayed on one knee — not because I was beaten, but because standing felt like it might tear me in half.
The armored man stepped between me and the others.
A wall of steel.
A line drawn.
He turned toward Maddie’s cell.
“No one opens that door without my order,” he said. “No restraints. No sedatives. No corrections.”
One man swallowed hard. “Sir… she’s dangerous.”
The helmet turned back slowly.
“So is he,” the voice replied. “And you’re still breathing.”
That ended the discussion.
The suit pivoted toward me. Up close, the armor was scarred, pitted, repaired too many times to count. Not ceremonial. Not proud. Used. I could see the faint brush of rust and the warped edges of metal where it had taken blows and kept going.
The visor angled down. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The only sound was the faint hiss of hydraulics, my own uneven breathing, and the distant dripping of water somewhere in the cellar.
Then—
“Get up,” the man in the armor said.
Not unkind. Not gentle. An order.
I pushed myself to my feet, blood dripping from my side, jaw tight, muscles trembling with the effort. Every nerve screamed in protest, but the mutations inside me — the ones that had already healed worse than this — whispered that I could. I could still fight. I had to.
Maddie’s voice cut through the tension, sharp and furious.
“Who the hell are you?”
The armor didn’t turn toward her. Its attention stayed on me.
And when he finally spoke again, the modulator was turned off. The words landed heavier than the armor ever could, because I now recognized the man.
“Your brother knows who I am.”
I tasted iron in my mouth, coppery and thick. I’d known it the second he grabbed me — the tone of his voice, the posture, the restraint, the way the violence stopped exactly when it needed to. Every flex of his fingers, every servo whisper, carried authority that didn’t bend.
I wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “I do.”
The man in the power armor stood there, between my sister and the men who took her. Between my past and my present. Between the man who left—
And the man who stayed.
The armor stood between us like a verdict.
Not just the bulk of it — not just the weapon mounts or the scorched-off Brotherhood insignia — but the certainty. The unyielding mass of a man who had already decided how this ended, and did not need to raise his voice to enforce it.
I straightened fully, even as my body screamed its refusal. Pain flared hot and immediate through my ribs, a sharp electric line every time I inhaled. Something inside me ground wetly when I moved. Blood slid down my side in slow, sticky warmth, soaking into my shirt, tugging at the fabric with every breath. My nerves buzzed in a chaotic symphony, alert to every vibration in the cellar, every scrape of armor, every hesitant breath. The air smelled like rust, mold, spent casings, and old earth — the familiar rot now tainted with violence.
The helmet tilted.
Not impatient.
Not curious.
Professional.
A predator pausing, not because it hesitated — but because it wanted to hear its prey speak first.
I swallowed the iron taste in my mouth. My jaw ached, throat raw, and yet my body felt alive in a way that terrified me — bruised tissues pulsing with subtle regenerative warmth, adrenaline sharpening every sense.
“Matthew Robson,” I said.
“Our father. Mad Dog.”
The name didn’t echo. It didn’t need to. It hit the cellar like a dropped tool on concrete — sharp, undeniable.
One of the soldiers stiffened so fast I heard his armor plates scrape. Another muttered a curse, low and involuntary, like the word had punched him in the gut.
Maddie froze. I felt it without looking — the way her breath caught, the way her whole body went taut behind the bars like a wire pulled too tight. The faint green shimmer from my left eye danced as adrenaline started to spike through me, muscles twitching with reflexive precision, faster than my own mind seemed ready for.
The armored figure didn’t react. Not outwardly.
“You shouldn’t use names,” the voice said evenly, filtered and cold through the helmet’s speaker. “They complicate things.”
I laughed. It came out wrong — a dry, broken sound that scraped my throat raw. That almost made it better.
“Funny,” I said. “You didn’t seem to have trouble leaving yours behind.”
That did it.
Not anger. Recognition.
The visor rose like a knight’s — just enough. Enough that I knew he was really looking at me now, the black beads of his eyes in the pre-war lights measuring the way I stood despite pain, the way my hands stayed loose, ready.
“You’re holding a village together with wire, duct tape, and stubbornness,” he growled. “That won’t last.”
Each word was measured. Not a threat. An assessment.
“And you’re holding men together with fear, opposing dogma, and stolen steel,” I shot back. “That won’t either.”
Silence stretched. Thick and heavy. My pulse thumped in my ears, sharp as the pain still coursing through torn ribs, while nerve endings danced in heightened alertness as micro-healing began. Somewhere above, wood shifted, creaking like a warning.
Then Maddie exploded.
“You son of a bitch.”
Every head snapped toward her.
“You don’t get to stand there,” she screamed, fingers white around the bars of her cell, knuckles split and bleeding, “you don’t get to look at him like that after what you did!”
Her voice cracked — not with fear, but with years of buried rage and grief forcing its way out. I felt my own chest twist with mirrored tension, fear and anger dancing together in the tightening coils of my muscles.
The armor turned toward her, deliberate. She didn’t flinch. She never would.
“You left,” she went on, the words tearing out of her. “You left us with him. With Paul. With the fire. With the nights we hid and hoped he’d pass out before he noticed Mom or us.” Her breath hitched once — then she shoved it down and kept going. No fear. No reverence. Just truth, hurled like a blade meant to stick.
“He stayed,” she said, jerking her head toward me. “He bled. He broke. He carried it all so we didn’t have to. So don’t you dare—”
“Enough,” my father said.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Final.
The word slammed like a blacksmith working steel.
“I didn’t come here to be judged by children.”
Maddie laughed — sharp, cracked, half-hysterical. My own chest twisted with relief and grief, hands trembling as my adrenaline kept my muscles wired for instant reaction.
“No,” she said. “You came here to cage one.”
The air changed. A subtle pressure shift, almost imperceptible, but I felt it — nerve endings firing, adrenaline spiking, muscles tensing with anticipation like something was coming.
A radio on one of the fallen soldiers crackled.
Static burst through, loud and frantic, followed by a voice pitched too high with panic.
“Sir— movement outside— big— bigger than a yao guai—”
The ground shuddered. Dust stung my eyes and coated my tongue. Shelves rattled. My body reacted instinctively — every scar, every healed fracture recalling movement, reflexes sharpening beyond normal limits.
Something heavy thudded overhead, then again — massive, deliberate. A sound rolled through the earth. Not a roar. Not exactly. More like grinding lungs of something too large to be alive, attuned to radiation and cold instead of air.
My muscles twitched, reflexive heat blooming under bruised skin, healing threads flexing beneath pressure.
My father turned instantly, pulling from his back his battle axe of scrap steel and welded metal — edges jagged, weight perfect for the swing that would decide life and death. Every step he took made the floor tremble slightly, snow clinging to boots, each movement precise, unhesitant.
“All units topside,” he ordered. “Heavy weapons. Now.”
One soldier glanced at me, rifle twitching.
“If they move—” he started.
The armored head snapped toward him, the modulator turned back on.
“If you touch either of them,” my father said coldly, “you die before the thing outside gets the chance.”
That settled it. Don’t be afraid of the rad creatures. Be afraid of his son.
That felt weird to hear.
Boots pounded up the stairs. Servos screamed as the armor launched through the hole he came through. Discipline snapped into place.
The door slammed behind them. Metal locks clanged home.
Maddie and I were alone again.
Her caged.
Me standing, thinking a million miles a minute.
She spun on me, fury blazing through the fear now. My adrenaline roared through me, pain dulled by the rush, healing pulses knitting torn tissue beneath my skin, muscles coiling like springs.
“No,” she said, already knowing what I was planning. “No, don’t you dare—”I was already moving. The pipe came down hard against the lock. Sparks flew. Metal shrieked. Pain bloomed, sharp, but adrenaline made each strike feel almost weightless.
Third strike — the lock split with a sound like a bone breaking. I ripped the door wide.
She staggered out, shaking — alive, overloaded. Her eyes caught the green shimmer from my left eye, trailing faintly with every twitch and sudden movement, and she blinked rapidly, fear and awe mixed in her gaze.
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Yeah, we are,” I agreed.
We didn’t get far.
The barn above exploded outward. Wood, metal, and frozen earth blasted into the air as a colossal shape tore through the wall — antlers first, splintering beams like matchsticks. It hit the ground with a seismic thud, knocking me off my feet.
A moose.
But wrong.
Too big. Too thick. Hide warped, scarred, muscle knotted unnaturally beneath irradiated flesh. Skull dense and reinforced, like nature had tried to armor it. Eyes burned unnatural green, steaming in the cold.
Gunfire erupted — useless. Rounds flattened against hide. Soldiers disappeared beneath hooves, screaming.
Power armor charged it.
Hit.
And bounced.
My father slammed into the snow hard enough to crater it, battle axe swinging in a wide arc, metal singing against bone and antler.
The moose turned toward him. Lowered its head and charged, pushing our father into fallen tree roots, antlers and wood stabbing into exposed areas and crushing his armor.
Maddie grabbed my arm, nails digging in.
“No,” she said. “Zander, no— be—”
He was pinned. Armor sparking, warning lights flickering wildly. One arm crushed beneath the beast’s weight.
Antlers dipped.
I saw it then. Clear as anything. If I didn’t move, he would die. If I did — I’d become the thing I swore I wouldn’t be. Someone who didn’t care.
“You don’t owe him,” Maddie said, tears cutting clean tracks through grime. The green glow in my eye flickered as adrenaline spiked further, muscles tensing, reflexes sharpened.
I tore free from my personal restraint. Limbs moving faster than thought, healing threads knitting abrasions even as they formed, adrenaline surging like wildfire.
“I know,” I said. “I owe it to myself. I can’t be like them, Maddie. You know that.”
Then I ran.
Pipe laughably small in my hands. A joke. A lie. Vaulting fencing, kicking debris, hurling anything I could grab. Shouting until my throat burned. Pain and adrenaline in constant feedback, every movement precise and violent.
“HEY!” I roared. “COME ON!” as a chunk of ice bounced off the fogging head.
The moose turned — almost laughing at the attempt — then charged, snorting radioactive steam, hooves carving trenches through frozen ground.
I barely stayed ahead — ducking, rolling, slamming the pipe against bone and antler, making myself the problem. Pain bloomed everywhere, clipped, thrown, dragged through snow and splinters.
Just long enough.
Long enough for my father to wrench his arm free. Long enough to stand. Long enough to finish it.
He stood and screamed, “Bring it this way.”
The two-ton beast charged me as I ran toward my father. The power armor sprinted toward me as I slid underneath the fogging head as it lowered to charge. My father uppercut the fogging in the jaw with his axe. The beast staggered as my father punched its front leg like a twig snapping. It collapsed, screaming and roaring, as my father executioner-style killed the beast with one last chop.
The killing blow shook the earth.
The beast fully collapsed, headless, crashing in a cloud of steam and blood. The sound echoed across the Veil until even the wind fell silent.
Smoke drifted. Blood steamed. Snow stained dark.
Father stood there, breathing hard, armor ruined, surrounded by dead men. He looked at me. Really looked.
I didn’t speak.
Neither did he.
Behind me, Maddie whispered, broken and furious,
“You didn’t have to.”
I answered without turning.
“I know.”
Two men. Two choices. Bound by blood. Neither forgiven. Neither finished.
And the Veil — cold, patient, and watching — kept its silence.
---
The helmet failed first.
Not dramatically. No sparks or explosions.
Just a slow, grinding whine as the seals gave out, servos stuttering like a dying animal. The faceplate sagged, hung for a breath too long, then slipped free and hit the ground with a dull, hollow clang.
For the first time in my life, I saw him.
Not a knight.
Not a ghost.
Not a myth wrapped in steel.
A man.
He was Black — unmistakably, undeniably — his skin weathered and scarred, his scalp shaved down to thinning stubble where hair no longer bothered to grow. One eye sat a fraction lower than the other, the result of a healed fracture that had never quite set right. Burn scars traced his jaw and neck, puckered and pale, disappearing beneath the collar of the armor.
His face wasn’t cruel.
It was tired.
Maddie sucked in a sharp breath beside me. My chest tightened, pulse skipping as my adrenaline spiked. The green shimmer in my left eye flared faintly as my body reacted — muscles twitching with instinctive precision, subtle warmth coursing through torn tissues, already knitting small abrasions. My fingers flexed, feeling the micro-vibrations of the floor beneath us.
We looked like him. Not enough that strangers would guess — but enough that blood would know. Same cheekbones. Same jawline. Same set to the eyes when the world demanded too much and offered nothing back.
Half Black.
Half something else.
Fully marked by him whether he’d stayed or not.
“Come inside,” he said.
Not an order. A request wrapped in command habit.
He turned and ducked back through the hole into the cellar. The armor groaned as he moved, damaged joints struggling to obey him. The sound made my own nerves tingle — a low, shared recognition of effort and strain.
I hesitated. Heart racing. My muscles itched to move faster than they should, subtle pulses in the joints where mutations had strengthened reflex arcs beyond normal human limits. Maddie’s hand brushed mine lightly — a fleeting recognition of tension and latent power.
Then I followed.
Inside, the power armor opened with reluctant hydraulics. He stepped out slowly, like a man shedding a skin that had grown into him. Up close, he was barely taller than me — five-seven at most — but heavier, denser. One hundred seventy-five pounds of muscle earned the hard way. My own body stirred with adrenaline, tissues reacting to his presence, heart thudding.
Shirtless, his body told the rest of the story.
Scars mapped him like a battlefield: old laser burns along his ribs, blunt trauma across his shoulders, pressure scars where armor had eaten into him over years. My own skin tingled, as if attuned to the memory of pain and repair, sensing the echoes of every healed fracture.
He pulled a muscle shirt from a crate and slipped it on, fabric stretching over scars that didn’t care to hide. Old Brotherhood jumper pants. No insignia.
Just a man who’d stepped out of a machine and didn’t quite know how to stand without it.
I broke the silence.
“We can’t stay.”
He paused, hands braced on the crate. I felt the tension radiating off him. My chest tightened. A faint green glow flickered from my left eye as adrenaline spiked — muscles coiling, nerves firing with readiness I couldn’t suppress.
I pressed on before he could answer.
“There are kids depending on us. Our siblings. A whole damn village that doesn’t get power armor or air support or backup when things go wrong.”
Maddie nodded hard. Her hand brushed mine briefly; I felt her eyes linger on the green shimmer in my eye, wide with a mix of fear and awe.
Our father exhaled slowly, then reached up and keyed his wrist unit.
“Robson to command,” he said. “Situation changed. I’m standing down active pursuit. Repeat — standing down.”
A pause.
“I’ll explain later.”
He cut the channel.
“I’m not the leader,” he said, like it mattered. “Second-in-command. That still buys me time.”
“Time for what?” I asked.
He looked at us then — really looked — not measuring, not judging.
“Word’s already moving,” he said. “Scouts. Observers. People who remember names they shouldn’t.”
His jaw tightened.
“The Brotherhood knows the lost Knight Matthew Robson didn’t die. And now they’ll know he found his family.”
Maddie crossed her arms. “So?”
“So a war is coming,” he said flatly. “And if you want your other siblings to survive it… you’ll need us.”
I snorted before I could stop myself.
“Did pretty fine without you for years.”
The words landed hard. My chest tightened with guilt and defiance, adrenaline spiking again, tiny healing pulses knitting old bruises on my ribs as my body prepared for instinctive fight.
His shoulders stiffened.
“I left so you’d be safe,” he growled.
There it was. The line he’d practiced.
I snapped.
“Some good that did.”
A laugh tore out of me — ugly, sharp, broken. Pain and fury lacing every note.
“So much for keeping us safe. My life was worse because you hid.”
That did it. His restraint cracked.
“I didn’t hide, boy.”
The word boy hit wrong — not cruel, just old, just reflex. Brotherhood training slipping into something older, angrier.
“What would you call it,” I spat, “leaving your kids in a worse scenario?”
The cellar went dead quiet.
Our father stared at me, jaw clenched so tight I could hear the ghost of grinding teeth.
“I chose a battlefield,” he said slowly. “You think that house was worse? A drunk with fists and rage? A world where the strong prey on the weak and no one stops them?”
“That was your job,” I shot back. “You don’t get to outsource that to a child.”
Silence. Heavy. Loaded.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower. Rougher.
“I stayed away because if the Brotherhood found you,” he said, “they would’ve taken you. Trained you. Broken you into something useful.”
I laughed again — but there was no humor left.
“I’m already forced to be something else,” I said. “You just weren’t there to see it.”
He looked at me then — really looked — and for the first time since the helmet came off, something flickered behind his eyes.
Not regret.
Recognition.
Outside, the wind howled through the Veil. Snow skittered across frozen ground.
And somewhere far beyond the fields, forces were already moving.
Because blood had a way of calling things out of hiding.
And none of us were armored enough for what came next.
If you made it this far, thank you so much for the support on the last chapter. Comments, questions, critiques, or any thoughts on Canadian Fallout or Fallout lore in general are always welcome.🤟🏽
