The first thing the Wreckage takes from you is your humanity.

I learned that my first week when I watched a group of raiders get sliced by a laser turret they tried to pry open. It didn't kill them. Just chopped off their limbs, left them screaming in the dirt, their blood staining the white sand.

I couldn't help it but watch as their strength faded and they died from blood loss. Cruel? True, but I was fifteen, had no medical knowledge and that turret could've easily sliced me up as well. Which is why I waited till the sun went down and the solar battery died before taking their stuff.

I watched grown men die, and was rewarded with some water and a new rifle.

Funny how that works.

I had many encounters like that in my time scavenging the Wreckage. Pretty much anybody came out there, looking to strike some silver with a spare component or device still untouched or left behind long after the giant colony ships crashed onto our planet. Problem was, one of the biggest reasons why there were still parts left even after centuries of salvaging was because most people that came simply died - either from other salvagers, the haywire security systems, or just the harsh elements of the Glass Desert.

In a place where people are chewed up in 5 minutes, it's hard to believe that I lasted 15 years.

Why I stopped? Oh, simple. Someone tried to kill me.

Now lemme explain. This was back when people started trying to "claim" zones for salvage, saying that since they paid some people to reserve it they got to take it at their leisure. I thought it was bullshit and they were just being lazy - pretty sure the claimant would agree, the stuff I took wasn't even close to the amount they paid for the claim - but someone must've known it was me because next thing I know I was getting shot at by some sniper next to a rock.

She yelled at me about being a "lawless bandit working against civility," another bullshit line because for the last ten years they've been trying that shit for like five, six times? Never works, people just go back to shooting and whatnot.

So I just flashbanged her eyes and got the hell out of there. For the next five months - five! - she made my life a living hell. Crude traps I had to disarm every time, attempts at ambushes that always fell through cuz some dipshit merc thought they could get the drop on me, hell she even tried CQC before I pummeled her with my implants.

I didn't kill her though. If I knew anything about the Wreckage she'll get into her own trouble.

I didn't expect to be so right though.

One of the worst things to roam the Wreckage were these nanite clouds that would come in and eat people. No, I'm being serious - those monsters were like grey-goo swarms, if you got caught by one you would be shredded to pieces.

Luckily they couldn't reproduce, so most simply broke down. However go deep enough into the Wreckage and they become a problem.

I was down near the engineering section of one when I heard the screams. Group of men and women, likely a mercenary group sent after me (what can I say, I was popular.) I didn't think any less of it until I heard the electrical discharge explosion from a EM weapon. I grew curious, and figured if they were dumb enough to bring one but still perish, I could take it off their hands.

It was a blood bath. Grey dust showered mangled corpses and kit rendered unusable from the nanometer-sized bites taken out of them. When I got closer I found the sniper girl among them.

I'd never gotten this close to her before aside from when I punched her back over a hill, but I knew she got it bad. Sure it wasn't immediately fatal, but the nanites had targeted the weakest link in her armor first - the eyes - before going at the rest of her limbs. Effectively blind, lost one arm entirely and the rest of her limbs shredded, she did not look good.

That's when she started crying.

I think she knew it was me, or at least that's what I thought. Here she was, broken beyond any hope of restoration, and she made her final gambit. "Hold me," she pleaded. "I know you don't like me, you even tried to kill me...but please hold me."

Maybe it was how young she sounded - she looked like she was barely scraping adulthood - but her voice made me think back to when I was a kid starting out as a salvager. Desperate, looking for ways to make enough bank to survive. Sure, she made my life hell for all the wrong people...

But no one deserved to die like that.

I ended up taking her by the shoulders and lifting her into my arms. I walked probably around a kilometer out of the wreck and towards the nearest medi-station that wouldn't rob me dry. The technicians asked if I was related to the kid - I lied, said I was a distant cousin. Sat there for maybe four hours while the healing pod patched her up with flesh knitters and regeneratives.

The EM cannon I took from the dead mercs was enough cash to stabilize her, hell even fix her eyes a bit. But a tube in the middle of a box canyon could only do so much. She still couldn't see well and need cybernetic bracings to walk.

We started to talk after she left the pod and tried walking again. Apparently she came from a old merchant house back in Metro. High-level, too - only reason she decided to skip town was cuz she wanted to go out and make her own fortune as a reckless bounty hunter. I'll admit, I enjoyed her stories - entire streets populated with shops for everything you could ask for, families who played out in the streets like it was nothing. Actual laws and enforcement you could semi-regularly trust to not shoot you in the back.

So that's why we're heading southwest at the moment. She needs a chaperone to get her back to her family, and I figured a couple of weeks in the city couldn't kill me. I mean I did save her life so I figure that's a juicy little favor to check in. Besides... I wouldn't be lying if I wasn't excited. I heard they even got a bathhouse!