Chapter 5: The Crossing
Cassian's journey to the frostline outpost
CHAPTER 5: THE CROSSING
Edge of the Frostline – Missouri Quadrant Wilderness
Outpost 47: The Relay Fields | Weather: Static Storms and Frost Bloom
The road north was older than maps.
Cassian followed it through skeletal windbreaks and gutted silos, each one tagged with rusted sigils of empires that had devoured one another in succession. The last working Pulse towers loomed far behind him now like gray spines along the horizon, blinking faintly in the mist like dying stars. Ahead, the world bent.
His implant flickered. The signal had been thinning for miles, its rhythm stuttering, heartbeat slowing. A low hum filled the air, the residue of electrical storms that haunted the boundary between the Pulse and the Frostline. Even the light felt fractured here, almost too pale, too sharp, as if reflected through frozen glass.
He stopped on a ridge where the land fell away into white fog. Below lay what had once been the Missouri Valley was now an expanse of frozen mud and fractured concrete, riddled with shallow trenches and collapsed bridges.
The air reeked faintly of iron.
He’d read about this place in Directorate briefings, though never in full. They called it The Dead Meridian, a region where electromagnetic warfare during the Axis–Allied collapse had poisoned the soil and destabilized neural frequencies for generations. The Pulse grid never fully reached it.
This was where the Reich had overextended by sending legions of engineered soldiers and early Reaper units into a war they couldn’t control. The frostline wasn’t just weather. It was a consequence.
Cassian walked down the slope, boots crunching through the crust of permafrost. The wind carried faint, hollow sounds that could have been the groaning of metal or voices, warped by time.
He passed a row of derelict tanks half-buried in ice, their insignias faded beneath graffiti scrawled in half a dozen dialects. A crow perched on one of the turrets, its feathers rimed with frost. For a moment, it looked directly at him, unblinking.
Further ahead, he found a stone marker split in two. The inscription had been chiseled away, but faint outlines of letters remained: SOLDIERS FIELD – 1948. Someone had carved new words below it, crudely with a knife: THE LAND REMEMBERS. Cassian touched the stone. It vibrated faintly beneath his glove, a subsonic hum buried deep in the frozen earth like the land was still mourning. He could almost see it, the echoes of battle layered over the present: shadows of men in winter uniforms, shouting across smoke and fire; tracer rounds slicing through snow; the howl of engines. History had scarred the land so deeply that even the Pulse refused to touch it. It was cheaper to erase its memory than to rebuild.
By dusk, the fog thickened into static haze. Cassian followed a trail of collapsed pylons toward a silhouette flickering with intermittent light toward a decommissioned Pulse relay tower, half-swallowed by snowdrifts. He climbed the final rise and saw it clearly: a fortress of scavenged steel and flickering panels. The base of the tower had been walled off with corrugated metal and barbed wire, but the air carried smoke and movement.
Outpost 47.
It wasn’t on any map.
He approached slowly, the token heavy in his coat pocket. From the distance came voices-low, wary, and distinctly human. A spotlight snapped on, cutting through the haze and blinding him.
“Hands up,” someone shouted. “Show the implant.”
Cassian raised his palms, turning slightly to show the faint blue glint at his temple.
There was murmuring. Another voice, sharper, female:
“Power’s too clean. He’s Directorate.”
“I’m not Directorate anymore,” Cassian called back. “I need shelter. I’ve been traveling since dawn.”
Bitter laughter rang out in the cold air. “So have we. Doesn’t mean you’re welcome.”
The gate creaked open anyway. Two figures emerged, their faces hidden by scarves, eyes bright with suspicion. They wore coats lined with wires and glass tubing that glowed faintly amber, giving away their analog prosthetics.
They frisked him quickly, then gestured for him inside.
The outpost was a hybrid of ruin and resurrection. A pulse tower’s remains had been converted into shelter: lower floors lined with bunks, hydroponic pipes, and flickering generators powered by scavenged batteries. Children darted between rusted terminals, carrying cans of water or wires. Old flags hung like ghosts; one was American, torn and half-burned, overpainted with a spiral sunwheel broken in half.
Cassian tried not to stare.
They brought him to the central chamber where a woman hunched over a table covered in circuit boards and scraps of tech. Her hands moved with precision, re-soldering a coil that pulsed with faint light.
“Nadia Korvin,” one of the guards said. “Found him outside the perimeter.”
Nadia looked up. She had soot smudges on her cheek and streaks of silver in her hair that didn’t seem from age. Her eyes were sharp, assessing.
“State your name.”
“Cassian Vale.”
Her brow twitched with recognition, maybe. Or disgust.
“Vale,” she repeated. “Like the scientist.”
Cassian stiffened. “He was my father.”
Nadia exhaled, setting down the coil. “Then you shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m not Directorate,” Cassian said quietly. “Not anymore.”
“People like you don’t stop being Directorate,” she snapped. “You’re built for obedience.”
Her words hit harder than he expected.
Another man entered then who was older, with a limp and neural scars running along his neck like faint lightning. His name, Cassian would learn later, was Elias. He glanced between them, studying Cassian’s implant.
“Vale,” he said softly. “So it’s true.”
Cassian frowned. “What’s true?”
Elias’s voice was low, almost reverent. “Your father taught the Reaper to dream.”
The room fell silent.
Nadia’s hand hovered near her pistol. Elias’s eyes were heavy with something between hatred and pity.
Cassian finally spoke. “If you believe that, then you know I can’t be part of it anymore.”
Nadia’s laugh was sharp. “You are it. Even out here, that thing in your skull hums their anthem.”
“I didn’t choose it,” Cassian said.
“Neither did we,” Elias muttered. “Every implant carries a return beacon. The Pulse can still hear you. You’re a walking signal flare.”
Nadia leaned forward. “If you want to stay, we cut it out.”
Cassian stiffened. “That’s suicide.”
“Then you walk back south and let the towers sing you home.”
The silence between them felt heavier than any command he’d ever received.
Finally, Cassian pulled off his gloves and placed the token on the table. Its hum filled the room, deep and resonant. “You said you wanted proof I wasn’t Directorate. Let me show you.”
He pressed two fingers to the implant port. A blue spark jumped between metal and flesh. Pain lanced through his skull, but he didn’t stop. The light at his temple flared, then dimmed.
Nadia cursed. “You’re frying your cortex!”
“Maybe,” Cassian said through his teeth, “or maybe I’m turning it off.”
Elias hesitated, then grabbed his tools: some old surgical clamps, wire cutters, and a magnetic key. “Hold still.”
Cassian dropped to one knee as Elias worked quickly, muttering in old engineer’s Latin. Sparks danced across the floor. The smell of burnt metal filled the room. Cassian’s jaw clenched until he tasted blood.
Then silence.
The light went dark.
Elias straightened, breathing hard. “Signal’s gone.”
Cassian’s world felt hollow. For the first time, there was no hum. Just the raw pulse of his own heart.
Nadia studied him, expression unreadable. “You did it. You actually cut yourself loose.”
Cassian rose slowly. “So do I stay, or bleed for nothing?”
Elias nodded once. “He stays. Anyone willing to gut their own leash deserves a night’s fire.”
Nadia hesitated, then exhaled. “One night. You prove you’re more than your father’s shadow, maybe longer.”
Later, by the fire, they spoke little. The heat licked at Cassian’s hands as he stared into the flames, replaying the echo of Elias’s words: Every heartbeat of the Pulse is built from a scream your father captured.
Tavi, the youngest, sat nearby sketching glyphs in the ash. “This one’s for crossing,” he said quietly. “The Bridge mark.”
Nadia passed Cassian a tin cup. “If you’re heading north, you’ll need more than belief. Past the Frostline, it isn’t the cold that kills you. It’s remembering what warmth felt like.”
Cassian stared into the fire. “Then maybe I’m already dead.”
He climbed the relay tower before dawn. The storm had thinned to a whisper, auroras bleeding faint color across the sky. Below, the outpost glowed faintly against the snow. He touched the wound already scarring at his temple, feeling only the phantom pulse of what used to be there. But then, faintly, just beneath the silence, he heard something else. A whisper. It wasn’t the wind.
His vision wavered, the frostline glowing brighter on the horizon. For a heartbeat, he saw shapes moving within it like shadows, flickers of faces. He stumbled, gripping the railing. A surge of heat burned through his skull where the implant had been. His breath fogged in ragged bursts as the sky split open in color.
And then he heard it again—his name, this time.
“Cassian…”
He fell to his knees, gasping. The world tilted, and the frostline expanded until it filled the horizon. The token burned hot in his hand, light spilling through his fingers.
The ground seemed to drop away.
He wasn’t standing anymore…he was falling.
Light.
Shards.
Rust and lavender.
He was back in the orchard. But the trees were darker now, and among them walked a figure, only now they were no longer faceless. A man in a black coat with wires trailing from his ears, his movements fractured like a broken reel of film.
“You’re close,” the man said. “But you’ve only cut the leash, not the chain.”
Cassian tried to speak, but the words caught.
“Find the boy,” the man continued. “He knows how to wake the dead.”
The orchard cracked apart in a burst of light.
Cassian jolted awake on the outpost floor, drenched in sweat. Nadia and Elias hovered over him, alarmed.
“What happened?” Nadia asked.
Cassian looked past her to the horizon. The frostline still shimmered faintly in the distance, pulsing like a heartbeat.
He wiped blood from his nose and whispered, “I think the Reaper found me first.”
