Some sort of instrumental jazz piece was playing as I walked down the center of the soulless road. It was rather amazing to me that the sound of music not only had to compete with the sound of silence but was nearly drowned out by it. Despite being on full blast I could hardly hear it over the nothingness surrounding me, the song being eaten by the air before it could reach my ears. It was actually rather disheartening, seeing and hearing just how dead the world was. I had had a lot of time to think about it before but I never truly had acknowledged it, perhaps the looming thought of my annexation pushing these thoughts further forward than they had been. I don't know, and all I did know was that I had a long road ahead of me, one that I'm not sure I could even reach the end of.

The piece came to an end and I was greeted with a familiar voice, his voice. "What a great little number that was, nothing else like music to soothe the soul! Unfortunately though this next bit of news might not be so soothing. The demon of Empire City has recently returned to the group that first held him, Harland. It appears that they have changed there minds and have brokered an alliance with the conduit. I don't think I have to tell you why this deal with the devil is bad news, and if anyone out there is willing and able to take action I suggest you do it. Moving onto lighter news Helen's League and The AOP had a major clash today over a supply outpost that left dozens of casualties on both sides without a considerable gain for either one of them. We can only hope that these dogs will bite each other to pieces and bleed out, leaving New Marais to the New Marais-ers. Coming up we have survival tips on how to scavenge for safe canned goods even two hundred years beyond there expiration date but before that we have more smooth jazz, brought to you by The Voice of Survival." Static cut in briefly before more instrumental music kicked in and I turned my eyes back to the road.

The song bounced off of the building in a haunting echo as if each crumbling structure was attempting to sing along with it to feel more alive, though the silence stifled it to a hauntingly quiet echo. As I walked towards my ultimate objective only on occasion switching off the radio and checking my map I grew more and more aware of the stench. The acrid odor clung to the air and was increasingly thick as I proceeded, nostrils assaulted to the point of watering eyes as I drew further into the cloud of noxious fumes. It was the smell of gasoline, a lot of it. The smell had never really bothered me before as I had long since grown used to all sorts of air pollution in cities like Empire City and old New Marais, but in this veritable sensory deprivation tank the odor was in such stark contrast to the dust that I almost had to stop and catch my breath. It was pretty funny actually, how this place can both stifle music and amplify stench.

Through my blearing eyes I saw in the near distance the encampment of Fire Spitters, a set of tents and scrap-work shacks huddled around a large gas station. Near the epicenter of the encampment were a fleet of tanker trucks, the wheels having been stripped from the frames and the metal tanks now teaming with new mechanical equipment and personnel. While I'm no expert in the field of... anything, especially fuel distillation and storage, I would actually hazard a guess that these guys had converted the tankers into some sort of refining center or perhaps specialized storage containers to incubate the oil to keep it from going off over time. Either way the rigs were rather impressive for a bunch of supposed savages, the metalwork alone likely having taken some serious ingenuity with the scarce tools at hand.

I walked with a greater sense of caution now though I made no attempt to hide myself. I was just here to talk after all, no use getting them all worked up by sneaking up on them. To my surprise I was drawing rather close to the periphery of there camp and none of them had caught sight nor taken notice of me, I could see a couple of them from this distance clear as day, dirt caked and grease stained bodies scampering about like rats between the oil rigs, moving around mostly empty jerry cans between them with a few of them breaking off to take large huffs of the stuff.

It took me a moment to realize that I was making eye contact, my concentration shifting from the gang to a single man before me. Twelve feet stood between us and all we could do for a while was stare. He had stepped out of the nearest alleyway, can of gas with a scarce collection of droplets in hand and had caught sight of me out of the corner of his bloodshot brown eyes. We studied one another; he observing my odd equipment and dress, me taking in his emaciated chest and dirt caked grey skin. He looked as though he hadn't eaten in weeks, and looked at me as though I were a ghost.

He broke the silence, backing away from me and screeching in panicked wheezes "It's the demon! The demon is here!" His delirious screams caught the attention of his comrades, every head in the village turning to see me standing still in the middle of the road. I made no movement, hoping that doing so would calm them or at least confuse them enough to make them ask me what I was doing. Neither of those things happened, in fact something I had never considered occurred. Every gun dropped, all the knives clattered to the ground, each makeshift bludgeon slipped from the wielders grip, the whole encampment cowered before me. "Please, please don't kill us!" A voice called from the mass.

I hadn't actually planned out any sort of speech or statement, this being made clear by the next five seconds being filled with the sound of me clearing my throat. I finally started off my negotiations with "Uh, don't panic. Everything's going to be alright, I'm not here to hurt anyone." A pause took up the space for a time, prompting me to add "I'm just here to talk."

They were just as surprised as I was a few moments ago, the whole lot of them remaining as still and silent as corpses. Nothing happened amongst them so I took another uncertain turn. "I'm here on the behalf of Harland; they want to negotiate with you."

This broke their silence, or rather the silence of one. He seemed to be the group's leader or at least a high ranking official as he was dressed in a welded suit of powered armor unlike anyone else in the mass. "We ain't got nothing to say to those murderous sons of bitches! We just want to be left alone!"

Before I could find a more tactful way of expressing my thoughts words tumbled out of my mouth and into the crowd. "I'm sorry, which one of you is the murdering sons of bitches? Because the way I've seen things you've been the ones doing the attacking."

"We're fighting for our lives here man! They've been making raids on us for years, picking us off and pushing us to the edge, all because that jackboot Lazarus didn't want us leaving this behind for while!" He retorted, voice cracking with rage.

"Leave what behind?" I ask, not knowing if I was being clueless or if the habitual gas sniffer was having the fumes do his talking.

"THIS!" He repeated, waving his hands about spastically. "This godforsaken hellhole! We just wanted to leave for a little, pretend for a few minutes every day that maybe things weren't so bad, that we were happy." Tears welled in his eyes, a deep and aching pain cutting him to his core now visible. "Do you have any idea what it's like, living in a world without any sort of escape, not even an option to leave?"

"What are you talking ab-"

He cut me off with a roar. "DRUGS! BOOZE! CHEMS! Our forefathers in the vault had their tolerance to poison improved to basically being immune, and over the centuries it got passed to us. It just had one little side effect, we couldn't be affected by most recreational drugs. We could pump 30 cc of grade A heroine into our arms and get nothing but a little headache, liquor had the same effect as water, we had no way to just forget all this..." He paused, looking back to the tankers. "Nothing could help us, but the gas. I ain't no pharmacist, but something about the inhalants worked. We could just let the world go, at least for a little while. Be happy..." He turned back to me. "BUT LAZARUS?! No, he could let us have that. He just wanted an army, a perfect little set of soldiers to march in perfect little lockstep to his command. He didn't care about us, his people, he just wanted to have his little Napoleon fantasy realized. So what did he do with us, the 'weak ones'? He kicked us out and left us to die, and when we didn't he began the wars."

I didn't say anything.

"Let's just say we did negotiate; what would Lazarus want?" He asked, his tone making it clear that he was not even considering the possibility.

I swallowed hard. "He wants you all to leave, head as far away as possible, and leave behind the oil."

"Tell your boss that he can have the oil. Over our dead bodies." He replied. One by one the Fire Spitters picked their weapons back up. Though their was hopelessness and fear etched into each and every face before me they all retrieved their weapons. They'd choose to die for their little slice of happiness.

Suddenly I wasn't in a negotiating mood.

AN: Yes this is very late and yes I did get punched, it hurt. It's late because I suck and it's only been quickly proofread by me because it was so late I didn't want to delay it further by having it read by someone else. Anyway since it's my birthday here's a present from me to you, shit. I don't know when/if the next chapter is coming out but when/if it does stuff will actually happen. Anyway I'm going to try and use fewer Author's notes from now on so don't expect as many in the future. If anyone is still reading this bye.