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This one's usable. That one's junk.

I sorted through the blinded items with practiced ease, picking apart what I could put to work right now, what would fetch a high price on the way out, and what I needed to squirrel away for later. Even if the special gas mask's goggles redacted sensitive information, they couldn't completely hide an item's original shape. Vials of drugs and smart syringes, for instance, were especially easy to tell apart.

When it came to classified documents, I didn't bother unless the entire file folder had gone completely black. If I couldn't make out the contents at all, that usually just meant Grade 2 or lower—run-of-the-mill confidential junk.

Looks like the researchers who worked here swept up most of the important stuff when they bailed in a hurry.

The medicine cabinet that had been smashed ages ago, with nothing left inside, left a sour taste in my mouth. Items laced with biotech were famous for commanding prices every bit as high as anything with energy tech baked in. Hell, that was how good they sold—I'd even considered crawling back underground to carve some tissue off a Growler.

A shame, but I'd have to stick to valuables and intel. For all I knew, the researchers' personal lockers still had something worth a decent payday.

The PCs are all a lost cause. They didn't have time to dispose of them properly on the way out, but they completely wrecked the hard drives.

The trick of bricking a computer just by plugging in a USB stick had been around since the 2020s. No way a cutting-edge lab like this wouldn't have used it. Still, researchers were people, same as me. No matter how brilliant and meticulous they were, panic made them sloppy.

"Figured as much."

I cleared the trash and equipment out from under a researcher's desk, and there it was—a flush-mounted floor safe, camouflaged in the same pattern as the tiles. No keypad, no dial, none of the usual bulky ornaments that would have given the disguise away. Just a simple lock that opened with a single key in a small hole.

I'd never picked a lock in real life, but I'd done it to death in games. Locked doors and containers could be lockpicked at a certain success rate even without the proper key. So if I just jabbed around with a suitably bent piece of wire and a small awl to hold tension, something ought to give, right?

Click.

"Well, I'll be damned."

Lucky break. I knew this was my body now, but damn, what a body. I had no idea how convenient it would be to have it move exactly the way I wanted. Honestly, I'd been ready to walk away clean if it didn't open. Looks like the Darkzone was feeling generous after I'd taken out two Growlers.

Please be something good. Please be something good. Just let me hit the lottery this once.

They say beginner's luck is a thing. Sure, I wasn't a beginner—but this body was.

I threw open the long-awaited safe door, and what greeted my eyes was, astonishingly, a single wristwatch.

"..."

Ah, hell. You've got to be kidding me.

I barely swallowed the stream of profanity I wanted to bellow at the universe and picked up the watch, making do. It looked like an old-model smartwatch, the kind of design that would have been trendy about ten years ago back in the real world. A bit classier than that dingy digital watch the Senior Death Row Inmate had been wearing, but that was as far as the compliment went.

This was the kind of thing that sat in that awkward middle ground between Darkzone junk and actual valuables—a white item. Not trash-tier, not rare either. The kind of item where you'd be lucky to get exactly what you expected for it when you extracted from the Darkzone.

Of all the watch items I'd seen playing EFD, the only one that actually stuck in my memory was the most expensive and rare of the bunch: the FLEX WATCH. A watch of unhinged luxury, literally made of gold and diamonds. Hauling one of those out had always meant a fat payday. But I had zero memory of this particular watch, which meant I'd either never looted one in ten years—or I had, and I'd forgotten it immediately because it was that forgettable a white item.

If it's the former, at least it's got scarcity value, so it's worth grabbing. If it's the latter, what a letdown.

I almost didn't want to waste the backpack space. So I slipped it onto my wrist without thinking.

A sting!

"...!"

A sharp, insect-bite sting flared at the edge of my wrist, and then the smartwatch—which hadn't so much as flickered no matter how I'd tapped it—powered on by itself.

Allow me to revise that. This was no white item. It might have been something far more impressive than that FLEX-whatever watch.

But I played EFD for ten years and I never saw anything like this. Not once.

Was this part of the massive 10th anniversary update that dropped before I got dragged into this world? If so, I was excited and uneasy in equal measure. There was no guarantee that every piece of intel I had, or every future I knew, would match one hundred percent—but that also meant a veteran player like me might suddenly have a pile of long-wished-for features sitting in front of him.

If I were still holed up in my room tearing into fried chicken and playing the game, there wouldn't be better news in the world. Unfortunately, I was the one who had to put on the one-credit shitshow now.

If an uncertain variable or incident crops up during a Darkzone expedition, abort immediately. Famous saying.

I grabbed a few of the more conspicuous classified materials scattered around, then went from desk to desk yanking open drawers like a man possessed. Volume and weight first, decent resale second. Rarity and importance could wait. I packed the backpack by one metric only: bang for the buck.

That was when the smartwatch glowed faintly again and painted a laser X across the personal research notes I'd just picked up.

"I know it's low-value material. That's not the point right now. I need to grab what I can and get out of here."

The little firestarter party downstairs was already sending smoke up this way. Stay too long and I'd be in real trouble. No—more importantly, why was I arguing with a smartwatch? And who the hell was this thing to backseat my farming?

Didn't it know the ranking? Worst thing in the world is running cheats mid-game. Then intentional throwing. Then talking shit about someone's mom. Then backseat gaming.

The smartwatch, utterly unmoved, fired its laser the other way and directed me toward a bank of drawers taking up one wall of the lab—a spot crammed with so many books jammed in at random that I hadn't even wanted to look closely.

"If you're lying, you're getting sold for the price of my dinner tonight."

A smartwatch weird enough to talk inside my head ought to be worth at least a plate of bulgogi rice.

And the result of the breathless fake-or-not showdown between the smartwatch and one magnificent specimen of humanity?

"I'll be damned. It's real."

A USB stick, cleverly hidden inside the book. There were no markings on it at all, so the goggles hadn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠blinded it out—but anyone who'd gone to the trouble of hiding it in a book was probably sitting on some fairly precious information.

"I believed in you the whole time, you know."

"What, you wanna take a sniff?"

I answered playfully and held the USB close. Light poured from the smartwatch and began remotely reading the chip embedded in the port.

"..."

Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me. That was my high-value intel!

Handled right, a single USB could have put a cool ten million in my Prison Banking account—and I could have posted the receipt with my chest out. This lunatic watch had snapped it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up in one gulp and made damn sure I couldn't sell it.

I hadn't felt a murderous impulse this sharp since the army senior who'd made a career out of petty tyranny.

"Spit it out right now, you son of a—!"

Footsteps.

I was just entertaining the idea that a watch might cough something up if you punched it enough when the sound of footsteps from outside dropped me into a crouch on pure reflex. Small, even steps. And not one set, not two, not three. Four.

Not Growlers.

There was no way a Growler had walked out of that spectacular fire show alive, and even if one had, it would never have approached this quietly. I put punching the watch in the solar plexus on hold and hid myself among the fallen cabinets and desks.

"The door's open. Didn't you say this place was sealed?"

"That's why we hauled all this gear out here today, ready to crack it open. Turns out we didn't even need the damn equipment."

"Hey, if it opens without the gear, even better. More importantly, let's grab what we can and get out before the fire downstairs gets any worse. The smoke's burning through our oxygen filters fast."

So that's who it was—convicts on a Darkzone expedition, same as me. Not Darkzone primordials, which was a blessing, but showing up late to vacuum a room someone else had busted open and started farming was shameless even by prison standards. They sounded like bumbling amateurs, though. If I timed it right, I could slip out while they were busy elsewhere. Leaving all these items behind stung, but nothing in here was worth more than my life.

"Hold it!"

Just as they were grinning their way into the lab, the fourth voice stopped the others cold.

"Someone got here first."

"What? No way. Who the hell would crawl into a place that's already on fire unless they were scum like us?"

"What if that lunatic started the fire—and was targeting this place from the start, same as us?"

"That's... yeah. That could be."

"And those Growlers that were making all that racket just a minute ago? I don't hear them anymore. They're probably roasting downstairs by now."

All he'd done was add up the surroundings and a handful of clues, and he'd put together a pretty convincing theory. The fact that he was actually right made it worse.

Steel whispered from a sheath.

One of the men at the entrance drew a machete honed to a murderous edge, as if he were already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠certain someone was in here. That special-alloy blade could take a grown man's thick neck off in a single committed swing.

"We know you're hiding in there. Don't take it too personally. There's no law in the Darkzone, no order. In here, all that matters is strength and numbers."

I agreed. But the Darkzone had a different virtue entirely. Not overwhelming strength, not superior numbers, not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even the calculating mind that planned a betrayal at the very last second.

It was the silence that treated everyone as equals.

The dead don't talk in the Darkzone.

I quietly drew my knife.