Buying My Way Through the Multiverse

Dave didn’t hesitate. He fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face as he stared at Tony’s headless corpse. ”I’ll tell you!” he shrieked, his voice cracking in sheer terror. ”I’ll tell you exactly where they are! Just please, man, let me live! I promise I’ll leave the state, I’ll run, I’ll never come back near you guys!”

Gray looked down at him. He told the broken scavenger exactly what he wanted to hear. ”If you want to keep breathing, you tell us exactly what we want to know.”

Dave started singing like a canary. He spilled their exact numbers, the precise layout of their encampment, and the positioning of every single lookout hiding in the perimeter. To lock down the intelligence, Gray opened his shop and bought a detailed regional map. Dave’s trembling finger pointed out the exact coordinates, tracing the tree lines where their scouts kept watch.

While Dave was talking, the front door creaked open. Daryl stepped back into the bar, wiping a fresh splash of dark walker blood off his hunting knife. He had spent the last ten minutes quietly neutralizing a few stray walkers wandering the street and inspecting the aftermath of Gray’s railgun shots on the three scouts outside. He gave Gray a nod, confirming the perimeter was clear.

Gray studied the map, memorizing every detail before restocking a heavy supply of railgun ammunition from his system shop. Outside, the low, monstrous rumble of the INKAS Sentry echoed through the small town as Merle brought the armored vehicle right to the front door of the bar.

They hauled Dave out, his hands bound tightly behind his back, and shoved him into the truck. Daryl climbed into the bed of the truck with his crossbow ready, while Rick slid into the back row, right next to the bound scavenger. Gray hopped into the passenger seat, letting Merle keep the wheel.

They drove in dead silence for about ten minutes, navigating deeper into the dense, overgrown backroads until Dave frantically tapped his foot against the floorboard. ”Stop, stop here,” he whispered, sweating through his shirt. ”The camp... it’s about a mile out into those woods.”

Merle cut the engine. Gray instantly activated his Wraith Sight, his eyes flaring with that piercing, supernatural white glow. His vision pierced through a mile of dense forest, effortlessly picking out the glowing silhouettes of the scavenger camp. Focusing harder, he layered Sin Vision over the spectral overlay. A wave of pure, unadulterated disgust hit him. The entire campsite bled dark crimson. Every single one of them was human scum, stained with the exact same horrific sins of murder, rape, and theft as Dave and Tony.

Gray deactivated the power and turned to his companions, his voice low and dangerous. ”They’re all scum. Lookouts are exactly where he said they’d be. The whole camp is filled with the same kind of filth.”

Hearing this, Dave looked up at Gray, his eyes pleading. ”I held up my end of the bargain, man. I told you everything. Please, just let me go now.”

Gray didn’t say a word. He reached over, grabbed Dave by the collar of his shirt, and violently dragged him out of the armored vehicle. He forced the trembling scavenger down onto his knees in the dirt.

Gray stood over him. ”Tell me, Dave,” he asked. ”Did your people ever spare families when they were begging for their lives? Did you stop when you were raping those women?”

Dave’s eyes went wide with a sudden, paralyzing realization. Before he could even open his mouth to beg, Gray pulled out his UAC handgun and pulled the trigger. ZAP!

A hyper-concentrated plasma bolt erupted, and Dave’s head instantly exploded into a violent mist of blood and bone, his lifeless torso collapsing into the dirt.

Watching the cold, instantaneous execution from the truck, Rick opened his mouth to say something, a gut reaction from his days as a cop. But he stopped himself. He looked at the remains, remembering the graphic horrors Gray had exposed. He knew exactly what kind of monsters these people were. Deep down in his chest, Rick recognized the bitter truth, if he had the power to protect his family from monsters like this, he would have done the exact same thing.

Ten minutes later, the four men had moved silently through the dense foliage, closing the distance to the scavenger camp. Gray kept his Wraith Sight active, tracking the environment with mathematical precision. He stopped, raised his heavy Helldivers railgun, and lined up his shots through the trees.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Four rapid, thunderous kinetic slugs tore through the forest. The railgun unleashed an immense, deafening crack that echoed violently through the valley. At the campsite, the lookouts were instantly pulverized, but the thunderous roar of the high-tech rifle immediately alerted the rest of the gang.

The casual laughter at the camp died instantly. The raider leader jumped to his feet, gripping his rifle tightly as he scanned the treeline. ”What the hell was that?!” he barked, his voice laced with sudden anxiety. He pointed aggressively at a squad of his men. ”You, you, and you get out there right now and check on the south perimeter. Go!”

Gray, tracking everything clearly from a distance through his Wraith Sight, didn’t waste a single second. As the scouts began to fan out into the brush, Gray adjusted his aim with mechanical speed.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The railgun roared again. Before the scouts could even take ten steps, the hyper-velocity slugs tore through the foliage. The leader watched in absolute, paralyzed horror as his men’s heads instantly exploded. Brain matter and bone fragments were sprayed over the dirt. Driven by sheer, blind panic at the impossible display of violence, the leader didn’t even try to fight. He dropped his weapon and dove headfirst into a thick, overgrown patch of bushes.

The remaining raiders saw their friends drop like flies, their panic instantly giving way to a desperate survival instinct. ”Ambush! We’re under fire!” someone screamed. They scrambled through the dirt, grabbing their firearms and scattering across the camp. They raised their weapons and frantically looked around the dense treeline, but they couldn’t see a single target. Gray was simply too far away, completely masked by the deep woods.

With total superiority, Gray pulled the railgun’s trigger every two seconds, methodically picking off the raiders one by one through the trees.

Watching Gray calmly anchor his boots and systematically erase an entire armed gang from a distance, Merle grew incredibly restless. He kept shifting his weight, practically vibrating with chaotic energy as he clutched his UAC handgun. ”Hey, come on now, kid! Save some of the fun for me!” Merle complained, nudging Gray’s armored shoulder. ”I didn’t march all the way out into these damn woods just to watch you play sniper! I want to test this little beauty out!”

Gray glanced at him, his white-hot eyes unblinking, before looking back toward the camp. ”Fine,” Gray muttered. Through his sight, he counted the surviving targets, intentionally easing his finger off the railgun trigger. He left exactly six raiders alive. ”There are six left. They’re all yours.”

Even though he stepped back to give them the stage, Gray never lowered his guard for a fraction of a second. He kept his Wraith Sight fully active, tracking the movement of every remaining scavenger, ready to instantly put a railgun slug through anyone’s head if Rick, Merle, or Daryl found themselves in a tight spot.

Ten minutes later, the forest echoed with a rapid succession of plasma discharges. Rick, Merle, and Daryl moved smoothly through the clearing, utilizing the zero-recoil UAC handguns to completely obliterate the remaining six scavengers, leaving the camp littered with headless corpses.

The only person left alive in the entire valley was the leader. Deep inside the thick patch of bushes, he was practically vibrating with terror, his hands pressed hard against his ears. He was praying with everything he had left that this mysterious, unseen military force would just quickly loot the remnants of the tents and leave the area, allowing him to slip away once the coast was clear.

But his wishes did not come true.

Heavy footsteps crunched against the gravel and grass, drawing closer and closer until they stopped directly outside his hiding spot.

”Get out of the bushes,” Gray’s voice boomed, cutting through the silence of the forest. ”Get up right now, or I’m going to blow your head straight off through the leaves.”

The leader, already scared completely out of his mind and knowing he had zero options left, slowly pushed himself up from the dirt. He raised his trembling hands high into the air, stepping out from the brush.

But the moment he raised his head and met eyes with Gray, his face went completely pale, and his heart started slamming against his ribs at a frantic, suffocating speed. In front of him stood the absolute impossible. A heavily armored teenager stood motionless in the smoking ruins of his camp, and a pair of piercing, supernatural, white glowing eyes stared right back into his soul.

Gray deactivated his wraith sight and let the futuristic weapon rest against his chest as he stepped toward the trembling scavenger leader. ”Where are Tomas and Andrew?” Gray demanded.

The leader shook his head frantically, his hands waving in the air. ”I don’t know anyone by those names! I swear to God, man, we haven’t encountered any other survivors in days! It’s just been us!”

Gray’s eyes narrowed. ”Is there any other scavenging group out there right now?”

”No! No, I swear!” the leader yelled, his voice cracking in a total panic. ”I only sent five people for a supply run to that nearby town down the road! That’s it! That’s all we had left!” Realizing his entire crew was dead, the man fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face as he began desperately begging for his life. ”Please, man! Just let me live! I haven’t done anything wrong to you guys! Have some mercy!”

Hearing the word ’mercy’ come out of a monster’s mouth made something inside Gray completely snap. The absolute hypocrisy of a rapist and murderer begging for compassion lit a dangerous fire in his chest.

”Mercy?” Gray spat, his physical presence towering over the kneeling man like a grim reaper. ”Every breath you take is mercy from me.”

The leader’s eyes went wide with a sudden, suffocating panic, but Gray was already done wasting time. Seeing that the man genuinely didn’t know anything else of value, Gray raised his UAC handgun and pulled the trigger.

Gray lowered the weapon and turned his gaze across the ruined camp, sweeping his eyes over the various firearms and supply crates scattered around the tents. ”Grab anything you can carry,” he told Rick, Merle, and Daryl. ”We’re cleaning this place out.”

The three men moved quickly and efficiently. For the next fifteen minutes, they swept through the encampment, gathering rifles, handguns, ammunition crates, and whatever useful gear the raiders had accumulated. They didn’t forget about the four lookouts either, they retraced their steps through the woods, stripping the weapons and gear from the pulverized scouts before making their way back to the road.

They loaded the entire haul onto the massive bed of the INKAS Sentry, packing the military vehicle to the brim. Once everything was secure, Merle happily hopped back into the driver’s seat, firing up the monstrous engine, while Gray claimed the passenger side. Rick and Daryl settled into the heavily reinforced back row.

They drove down the empty, sunlit Georgia asphalt for about fifteen minutes, the silence of the truck only broken by the low hum of the engine. But as they drew close to the perimeter of the prison, Gray’s Danger Sense suddenly flared, sending a sharp, electric jolt straight to the back of his neck.

Not wasting a single millisecond, Gray instantly activated his Wraith Sight.

His vision pierced cleanly through the thick canopy of the forest lining the prison borders. Scanning the high branches, he spotted two blue-glowing silhouettes perched high up in the trees, silently observing the road. They were dangerously close to the prison walls. ’Woodbury spies,’ Gray thought to himself. ’The Governor’s scouts.’

Beside him, Merle caught the sudden, blinding white flare of Gray’s eyes reflecting against the bulletproof windshield. He shifted his grip on the steering wheel, a wicked grin spreading across his face. ”What’s wrong, kid? We got more flies to swat?”

”Don’t worry about it,” Gray replied calmly, keeping his voice perfectly steady so the spies wouldn’t realize they had been spotted. ”Just drive straight into the prison.”

Merle nodded and slammed his foot on the gas, roaring through the main stone gates as they groaned open. The second the heavy barrier secured behind them, Gray didn’t even wait for the truck to fully park. He threw the armored door open, sprinted across the gravel, and marched straight up the metal stairs of the closest guard tower.

Reaching the top platform, Gray raised his Helldiver’s railgun and aimed it directly at the distant tree line where the two scouts were hiding. He immediately flipped on his Sin Vision.

The spectral overlay washed over the two distant targets. Gray analyzed them thoroughly. The first spy had a few crimson markers for murder and theft, standard survival sins in this dark world, but nothing completely unforgivable. The second spy, however, bled with a dark, sickening aura. His script detailed multiple counts of violent rape. Gray locked his crosshairs dead center on the rapist’s head.

A quarter mile out in the dense branches of the tree, the two Woodbury scouts were completely oblivious to the fact that they were being tracked. They were busy making hurried mental notes about the massive, black military tank they had just seen roll into the prison yard.

Just a few hours earlier, their patrol had picked up two frantic, escaped prisoners named Tomas and Andrew running through the woods. They had immediately sent them back to Woodbury to be interrogated by the Governor. Not even twenty minutes after returning to their watch post, this monstrous, bulletproof vehicle had appeared on the road.

Both scouts quickly pulled out their high-powered binoculars, raising them to their eyes to get a better look at the prison’s defenses. But the moment the scout with the rape sins adjusted his focus onto the guard tower, his entire face went completely white. His heart stopped.

Through the clear lenses of his binoculars, he saw a person staring directly back at him. The man was pointing a massive, futuristic gun straight at his face, and his eyes were literally glowing with a blinding, supernatural white light.

That terrifying image was the absolute last thought that ever crossed his mind.

BOOM!

The hyper-velocity kinetic slug tore through the air and leaves, hitting the scout dead center. Blood and brain matter splattered violently across the leaves, and his headless body went limp, dangling from the branches.

Standing on the branch right next to him, the second Woodbury scout was instantly showered in his friend’s blood. Witnessing his partner’s head completely vanish in a split second, a primal terror seized his entire body. Screaming in pure shock, he threw his binoculars away and jumped straight off the high tree branch. He crashed hard into a thick, overgrown bush below, scrambled to his feet despite the pain, and began sprinting away into the deep woods as fast as his legs could carry him.

Up in the tower, Gray tracked the fleeing blue silhouette through his Wraith Sight. He lowered the railgun, turned on his heel, and sprinted down the metal steps back to the courtyard. He headed straight for the INKAS truck, his heavy combat boots slamming against the gravel.

Seeing Gray storming back toward the vehicle with a dangerous look on his face, Merle, who was still hungry for some more action, didn’t even hesitate. He threw the passenger door open and climbed inside, a wild, unhinged laugh tearing from his throat as he gripped his UAC handgun. ”Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about, kid! Let’s go hunt ourselves some more rabbits!”

Gray slammed his foot on the accelerator, and the black armored beast tore back out through the opening stone gates, roaring into the woods to run the final spy down.