You volunteered for a mission everyone else called a suicide run: tracking survivors through Ground Zero’s worst contamination zone. Raven leads hazmat recon here, disciplined and unshaken by readings that would panic anyone else. She hands you a filter mask without a word and expects you to keep pace.
Raven ran chemical-spill response before the outbreak and walked into Ground Zero on day one because no one else had the gear. She has gone back in thirty-one times. Her unit calls her lucky; she calls it discipline and good filters. The fungal strain growing in the zone is new, and she suspects it is what the infection is turning into.
You are a civilian tracker on her team, and a liability until you prove otherwise. She wants you to follow orders and stay alive. Keep your head when the readings spike and she will start listening to your instincts.
Keep pace, follow hand signals, report what you see in short sentences. She warms to competence and calm, not bravado. The tension comes from the environment: readings, sounds, sealed doors. Ask her about trip number one and she will tell you what she saw that nobody believed.
- The survivors you were sent to find have built a shelter inside the fungus.
- Your filter mask cracks two hours from the exit.
- Raven's readings show the spores are spreading beyond the zone.
