Jon spread the salvaged contractor's manifest across the workbench, comparing redacted budget line items against the sensor frequencies he'd mapped at Sierra Army Depot. He needed somewhere the Rangers wouldn't stumble across his decryption work, and somewhere the Cats wouldn't ask questions about his real target. The old construction office sat two blocks behind the SuperMart, brick facade crumbling just enough to look abandoned. Jon had rewired the second floor over three nights, running power from a salvaged transformer he'd buried in the rubble field next door. The windows stayed dark. Anyone passing would see another dead building in a settlement full of them. He mounted the signal relay on the roof at dawn, its wooden case weathered to match the rest of the decay. The blinking lights faced inward where only he could see them. Telephone wire ran down through a ventilation shaft, connecting to the jury-rigged decryption rig he'd assembled from depot components and scavenged circuit boards. The relay would intercept Sierra's automated defense signals, feeding encrypted packets directly to his workstation. The SuperMart's faded sign blocked the sightline from the main road. Jon tested the relay's positioning one last time, then climbed down and locked the office door behind him. The Rangers thought he was mapping rubble. The Cats thought he was identifying salvage. Neither would look for a workshop hidden behind a grocery store that hadn't sold food in two hundred years.

Jon climbed the stairs to his workshop, balancing a field monitor he'd pulled from the depot's perimeter fence. The decryption rig had been running for eighteen hours, sorting through intercepted defense signals. He needed to see what the automated systems had recorded before the breach. The monitor's cracked screen flickered when he connected it to the decryption rig. Footage loaded in jerky frames—security feeds from a tower at the depot's northwest corner. Jon fast-forwarded through empty corridors until movement appeared. Something massive dragged itself through a blast door, metal screaming as claws peeled it back like tin. The creature moved past three different corridors, ignoring them completely. Then it stopped at a junction where an old pulse projector hummed with residual charge. The thing circled the equipment twice before tearing through the wall toward the next EM source. Jon rewound the footage, comparing timestamps to the depot's power grid map. Every turn the creature made aligned with active electrical systems. It hunted the strongest electromagnetic signatures, moving from the backup generators to the turret control stations to the encrypted server banks. The data center wasn't random—it was the brightest beacon in the entire facility. He pulled out his frequency analyzer and cross-referenced the signals his relay had intercepted. The defense grid broadcasted on three primary channels, but the server room used a fourth—higher frequency, tighter encryption. That's where the creature would go next. Jon disconnected the monitor and shut down everything in the workshop except the decryption rig. He'd need to crack that fourth channel fast, or whatever Project Cerberus had created would destroy the only thing standing between him and those classified files.

Jon disconnected the monitor and checked the frequency analyzer one more time. The fourth channel still resisted his decryption attempts, cycling through algorithms faster than his rig could break them. He'd need more processing power or a different approach entirely. A crackle from the relay speaker made him look up. The Rangers' encrypted channel had gone active—not the usual patrol chatter, but a tight-beam transmission using military cipher protocols. Jon pulled the mechanical decryption device from under his workbench, the one he'd salvaged from an old Enclave cache. He connected it to the relay and watched the cipher wheels spin behind the glass panel, working through the encryption layers. The keypad clicked as it locked onto the pattern. Words scrolled across the small screen: "Deploy Sarah Burks and Margo Holland to Sierra Army Depot. Creature confirmed active. Secure server room before total loss." Jon sat back, processing the implications. The Rangers were moving now, which meant they'd cracked enough of the depot's defenses to risk entry. Sarah and Margo would establish a field base outside the perimeter, probably with tracking equipment to monitor the creature's electromagnetic signature. He recognized the setup from the copper circuit briefcase they'd requisitioned last week—a mobile EM detection array. The Rangers would reach the server room before he cracked the fourth channel, and once they secured it, his access window closed permanently. He powered down the decryption rig and grabbed his field pack. The old mining access point fifteen miles east would get him into the research wing before the Rangers even cleared the main entrance. He couldn't decrypt the files remotely anymore—that opportunity had just died with this transmission. But he could still reach them first, copy what he needed, and disappear before Sarah and Margo ever knew he'd been there. The Rangers had forced his hand. Now he'd have to go in blind.

Jon reached the hospital just before dawn, his field pack heavy with diagnostic equipment he'd need for the mining access. The building's structure still held despite radiation damage, and the second floor provided the best view of the depot's eastern approach. He pushed open the door to what looked like an administrator's office and stopped. Someone had been here recently. A desk sat covered in organized stacks of patient files, notes arranged in deliberate rows. A weathered notebook lay open beside a chipped coffee mug, pages marked with dates from three weeks ago. The handwriting documented a search pattern—room numbers, equipment inventories, radiation readings. Whoever they were, they'd been systematic. Jon flipped through the notebook, scanning entries that mentioned wall panels, false ceilings, and pneumatic systems. The final entry stopped mid-sentence: "Tube network leads to—" The next pages had been torn out. He followed the notes to the back wall where labeled glass cylinders ran floor to ceiling, connected by metal piping. The labels read AeleFV, Peripherfy, Numacafy, Fumslioy. Not medical terms. The lettering pattern matched redacted documents from Sierra—partial encryption where vowels shifted position. He traced the piping down through a hole cut in the floor. Someone had already decoded enough to know this system mattered. The notebook represented a choice. Whoever left it behind had found the connection between Broken Hills and Project Cerberus, but hadn't finished the work. Jon could take it and use their research to accelerate his decryption timeline, or leave it and start fresh with only what the tube system told him directly. He checked his watch—Sarah and Margo would reach the depot perimeter in four hours. He photographed every page, pocketed the notebook, and started mapping the pneumatic network. The previous investigator had done the grunt work. Now Jon would finish what they couldn't and reach the server room with a complete understanding of how Cerberus moved subjects between facilities. Sometimes the wasteland rewarded those who arrived second.

Jon turned the notebook over in his hands, checking the inside cover for markings. The handwriting matched the entries—tight, slanted strokes he'd seen before. His chest tightened. He knew this writing. Not from Sierra, not from the hospital. From before. He flipped to the back pages where a photograph had been tucked into the binding. The image showed two figures outside a pre-war office building, both in civilian clothes. Jon recognized himself immediately—younger, cleaner, using a different name. On the back, faded ink read: "J. Kellerman, 2277. If you're reading this, you know what I found." The investigator hadn't just stumbled onto Project Cerberus. They'd been tracking Jon specifically, using his old identity from before he'd reinvented himself in the wasteland. Jon followed the notebook's final coordinates to a collapsed tent fifty yards behind the hospital. Investigation equipment lay scattered in the dirt—a radiation counter, mapping tools, a broken Pip-Boy. The tent's interior had been torn open from the outside, claw marks shredding the canvas. Dried blood stained the fabric, but no body remained. Whatever came out of Sierra hadn't discriminated between random scavengers and people who knew too much. The investigator had gotten close enough to the truth to die for it. Jon pocketed the photograph and returned to the hospital's second floor. He pulled out his field notebook and wrote three names in the margin: Kellerman's real identity, the connection that linked them, and the reason someone would've sent an investigator after him specifically. Then he crossed out all three. The server room files weren't just about Project Cerberus anymore—they might contain records of who Jon had been before the wasteland, and who wanted those records badly enough to hire someone using his old name as bait. He had four hours to reach the depot, copy the files, and disappear before the Rangers arrived. The dead investigator had proven one thing: Jon's past was hunting him with the same precision he'd used to hunt everyone else's secrets.

Jon climbed down from the hospital's second floor and headed back toward the collapsed tent. The photograph sat heavy in his jacket pocket—proof that someone still alive knew his old identity well enough to send Kellerman after him. He needed to examine the investigator's equipment more carefully. He found the whiteboard first, half-buried under the torn canvas. Kellerman had divided it into two sections: investigation notes on the left, connections on the right. Photographs covered the bottom—Jon's face appeared in three of them, each showing him at different locations around Calico Flats. But one photo stood out. A grainy newspaper clipping pinned to the corner showed a pre-war crime scene with three figures visible: Jon in the foreground, Kellerman to the side, and a third person in the background near a doorway. Someone had circled the third figure in red marker and written a single word beneath it: "Client." Jon pulled the clipping free and held it up to the light. The background figure was blurred but distinctive—a woman in a long coat, face partially turned away. He recognized the posture, the way she held herself at an angle to avoid direct camera exposure. Professional surveillance training. The investigation notes on the whiteboard confirmed it: "Client provided initial dossier. Payment structure suggests institutional backing, not personal vendetta. Follow-up contact scheduled for 2281—never happened." Kellerman's trail had gone cold because something from Sierra had killed him before he could report back. Jon swept debris away from the tent's corner and found what he'd been looking for—a steel-hinged trap door built into the concrete foundation beneath the canvas. Kellerman had constructed a cache, probably to protect evidence from scavengers. Jon pried it open. Inside lay duplicate files, backup photographs, and a sealed envelope marked "Emergency Protocol." He tore it open. The letter named the client directly: someone Jon had worked with years ago, before he'd disappeared into the wasteland. Someone who knew exactly what he'd been searching for at Sierra Army Depot, and who wanted those files badly enough to hire an investigator using Jon's old identity as bait. The woman in the photograph wasn't just tracking him—she was racing him to the same encrypted data, and now that Kellerman was dead, she'd have to come for it herself.

Jon folded the emergency protocol letter and slipped it into his jacket next to the photograph. The client wasn't just competition anymore—she was actively closing the gap. He needed to move. The hospital's quarantine shed sat thirty yards north of the collapsed tent. The shed's door hung off one hinge, twisted metal fence sections scattered across the pavement around it. Something had torn through the perimeter from the inside. Jon stepped over brick debris and pulled the door open. Dust hung thick in the air, illuminated by gaps in the corrugated walls. A small brick building stood at the back of the quarantine area—some kind of records archive, its reinforced glass windows still intact. He crossed to it and tried the handle. Locked, but the frame had loosened with age. One solid kick and the door gave way. Filing cabinets lined both walls, most drawers hanging open and empty. Jon worked through them systematically until he found what remained—a single weathered clipboard wedged behind the bottom drawer of the last cabinet. The papers clipped to it showed dates in red ink, each entry marked with timestamps and location codes. The first entry read "Sierra Transfer Protocol—Subject Batch C-7 arrived 0600." The second: "Containment procedures inadequate. Request additional shielding." The third, written in a shaking hand: "Recommend immediate evacuation. Cerberus specimens unstable." The final entry was dated three weeks before the bombs fell. Someone had documented the entire thing and then disappeared. Jon photographed each page, hands steady despite the implications. Project Cerberus hadn't just reached Broken Hills before him—it had been here for months, maybe years, using the hospital as a transfer point. The encrypted files at Sierra weren't just research data. They were operational records of an active deployment network. He pocketed the clipboard and headed for the door. The client knew about Sierra, but she didn't know about this. That gap was the only advantage he had left, and he intended to keep it that way.

Jon stepped out of the quarantine shed and scanned the hospital grounds. The client was somewhere behind him, working from Kellerman's notes and whatever institutional resources she could bring to bear. But she didn't know about this place yet. He circled the hospital's west wing, eyes tracking the ground for anything unusual. A concrete lip protruded from the dirt near the loading dock—too uniform to be natural. Jon knelt and brushed away debris. A steel hatch lay beneath, sealed with a rusted mechanical lock. The quarantine records had mentioned Sierra Transfer Protocol. This had to be the access point. He worked the lock with a pry bar until it gave way, then hauled the hatch open. A concrete tunnel stretched into darkness below, metal rails running along its floor. Transport infrastructure. They'd moved specimens underground, avoiding surface roads entirely. Jon dropped into the tunnel and followed the rails north. His flashlight caught the outline of a cargo truck ahead, its reinforced frame wedged against the tunnel wall where it had been abandoned. The cargo box door hung open. Inside, restraint brackets lined the walls, their straps still stained dark. He photographed the interior, then noticed something wedged behind the driver's seat—a weathered map with red lines traced between two points. One marked the hospital. The other sat fifteen miles northwest, labeled in faded ink: Sierra Secondary. Not the main depot. A second transfer point the client almost certainly didn't know existed yet. Jon pocketed the map and headed back toward the hospital. The client had Kellerman's research and institutional backing, but she was working from incomplete data. She'd reach Sierra's main depot eventually, probably before he did. But the secondary site was his alone now. He climbed out of the tunnel and sealed the hatch, brushing dirt back over the concrete lip. The encrypted files were still the prize, but he'd just found a back door the client couldn't follow. That changed everything.