The terrain is far more treacherous than I could have imagined.

It’s been days since I began my journey to the West with my loyal companion, Four-Seven, and I still haven’t gotten use to all the changes in the terrain.

The Navi says there’s a clean, straight and traffic free road dead ahead and to infinity but of course that’s a lie. It cannot deceive me.

There is no traffic but that’s simply because there aren’t any people, and even if there were, there’s no working infrastructure.

But the Navi wouldn’t know this, its satellite has been shot out of orbit and most likely rained back down on the planet or clouded the orbit with even more debris than was already up there.

I have learned several things since I left the Craft. A most important one is not to underestimate the severity of the damage done to the planet.

Four-Seven and I have been in all sorts of places; new places given the nice renovations done to them. As though the universe were waving a stick of fresh meat in front of me, he and I came across a plaza.

A plaza I could tell by the rubble was once a towering one that sold basically everything you could possibly need. They’re at least two of these types of plazas in residential areas and where we landed was a residential area, I suppose it wouldn’t be considered odd to find a place like this nearby.

However, my excitement was quickly extinguished when I found that despite Four-Seven’s best efforts at excavating the site, there wasn’t a shred of food that hadn’t been long dissolved in the irradiated water that seems to soak everywhere now.

We found some processed foods of course, cans, sachets, that sort of thing. But I’m not quite ready to test the limits of the RR’s I took several days ago.

I may not feel it now but, I’ll be needing a top up if I want to continue living on this planet.

I thought about living within Four-Seven in suit form all day every day. But aside from the fact that living in an android doesn’t exactly suit my tastes for a proper standard of living, Four-Seven can only maintain the form for so long.

And that amount of time depends on how many nanobots he has left. Right now, about three billion.

He complains that there should be close to thirty billion but I can already give a good guess where he spent them.

The nanobots stored within him help him out in tough spots. If programmed they can begin atomic processes and regenerate broken parts of his body. I’m guessing he put them to use back on the facility while he faced off the hordes of Fei troopers that came after us initially.

With this in mind and my stomach constantly growling in protests at me, I’ve resorted to extreme solutions.

The Fei food packs.

They aren’t made for human consumption, but here I am, gulping one after the other. It tastes like dirt and leaves an after taste of medicine in my mouth but it does its job of filling me up enough so I can continue to function.

It’s a temporary fix though. It has its own problems, like the fact that I throw up the next day after consuming it.

But this is just the tip of the ice berg with my list of worries on this Planet.

The bulk of my worries came crawling out of their holes in the night. It’s obvious that the Fei have done their research on Rim, it’s terrifyingly thorough and something to be respected.

However, the literal monsters their research birthed don’t exactly give me time to marvel at any of it.

Yes. Monsters. I expected that there would be some natural mutations but that could only be after at least a decade. The Fei made sure it happened as they bombarded though.

Every night and sometimes even in board day, these mutated beasts of nature crawl out to hunt for their meals, and that includes me.

It’s rather annoying that the Fei machinations turned all the creatures on Fei into carnivores. I’m on the meal ticket of every single one of these monsters.

The Fei must have really wanted to make a terrifying entrance in the war. This is it. Any survivors down here won’t be surviving much longer.

I suppose that includes me as well. And I can’t say I wasn’t warned about the chances of survival.

It’s hard enough making it without giving in to the radiation but now I’ve got to deal with mutants? What a life.

Because of their existence, it’s hard to find a viable place to rest my head. And ideally, since there’s no power, I can’t have Four-Seven moving about without a charge. I mean, I can he’s powered by his own personal nuclear fission battery but it just doesn’t feel right.

Either way, Four-Seven has been the one to take care of any mutants that creep up on us. Luckily, they’re dumb.

They are all so dumb they haven’t evolved enough brain cells to tell them that cooperation is better that a free for all. Because of how dumb they are, it’s easy to pick them off one by one as they can’t just resist the impulse to attack the nearest living being.

So, every night I trust Four-Seven with my life and expect not to get much in the way of sleep. The sound of their screeching and the Four-Sven blasting them to smithereens isn’t exactly soothing.

But I’ve got to keep moving on until I fall over and die from exposure. I mean, what else is there to do in this broken world?

I really…really don’t know what to do other than studiously journey to the West even though I’m bound to fall over and die before I get the slightest glance at my goal.

Looking up at the sky I can see that Scrakna has moved the Cruisers back in place over the planet. They aren’t firing though, not a single shot ever since I landed and that object flew overhead.

I wonder what it is. But while I wonder, I disgustingly find myself looking up at the sky, at the Fei Cruiser and hoping that they’ll send someone to retrieve me.

I want to live. I’m such a coward that after all this destruction and after all the Fei have done, even though I haven’t the slightest clue whether Oscar is alive or dead…I want to live.

I pine and hope at the skies that Scrakna calls me a fool and saves me.

“It’s just instinct. I can’t fight it.” I mutter out my one feeble excuse.

“What was that?” Four-Seven piques.

“Oh nothing, just revelling in my loathsome and short existence.”

“You can always extend your existence with me, Mother.”

“Xerai.”

“Xerai…I heard something.” He says suddenly sounding very alarmed.

“What? Mutants?”

He shakes his head and tilts it to the side as he concentrates. As a Saeon android he’s built in with exceptional hearing that filters through all the noise within nearly a mile to hear anything that could spell immediate danger to the person they protect.

It’s a perfect system because there’s very little you can do to hide such malicious intents once they’ve been heard around a Saeon.

“There it is again…” He turns to me, “I’m certain of it now, there’s a cannon being fired straight ahead, we should reroute.”

“Reroute?” I scoff, “Why would we ever do that?”

“Xerai?”

If he’s hearing the sound of a cannon being fired, then in a world like this, ruined by orbital bombardment and infested with mutants.

It means there are survivors fighting out there. I’m not alone.