Suspiciously Silent

We approached the docks of Iron Manor. There were two boats already here. One looked like it was worse for wear, as if it hadn’t been moved in years and succumbed to the harsh elements around it. The other was about as good as ours was when we left, likely belonging to Ben and Sadie.

From the docks, we could see a lot of broken down machines in the yard. From the looks of it, those were all auto turrets and other defenses that had been ruined by the duo.

I couldn't be sure that they took care of everything here, considering that these defenses were like automated sprinklers that just popped up when you least expected it. The only sure safe way up this surprisingly well groomed lawn was to follow in Ben and Sadie’s footsteps exactly. But figuring that out was going to be a pain.

“Follow me,” I told Yuri. “Stay close.”

The only visible trace of where they’d walked was the large concentration of wrecked machinery. Even then, I wasn’t completely sure this was the right way.

My senses flared up when I heard a quiet mechanical whistle sound behind us. Not a moment too soon I shoved Yuri behind me and fired a shot at one of the auto turrets that just sprung up.

“That was close,” Yuri said.

“Don’t think we're out of the woods yet.”

There was about fifty yards of lawn left before we reached the house. Half a football field's worth of creeping around might not have seemed like much, but the stress of those turrets popping up at any given moment kept me on my toes.

Like I expected, we had to deal with about five more of those things. I had a feeling that we definitely didn’t follow the same path as the other two. Fortunately we reached the manor doors alive. My wound from the boat shootout was hurting bad though, so I needed to do some more treatment if I didn’t want it to slow me down.

Scavengers didn’t tend to leave doors unlocked when they were checking out a place. It risked having someone sneak in behind you, even if unknowingly. Ben and Sadie definitely had that part down, so we needed to get past the locks. Adding an extra layer of difficulty, there were pretty advanced security systems in place that my phone app wasn’t able to crack.

“Let me see that…” Yuri took up my phone, messing with the app in indiscernible ways until it gave us a green light. “There, it should be safe to enter.”

He was right. Whatever tech magic he just used got the door unlocked.

“Glad you're here, nerd.”

“Clearly not glad enough to nickname me something a little more respectable,” he lightly pouted.

“I could have called you a lot worse than that, you know?” I snickered, pushing the door open and stepping inside. “Can you lock it when we're in? Those bandits might try to crawl in after us.”

I could see them from our elevated position. A few boats were on the lake and they were watching us from a very healthy distance. It was weird though. Through my binoculars, I could see they looked a little scared. What was up with that?

Even if they had the backbone to follow us, Yuri already had that taken care of. The door would only stay open for about two minutes. Once again, I applauded his forethought.

Getting inside the house should have been a great experience, but my arm immediately gave out in pain.

“Damn…” I grunted, leaning against the wall. Blood was pouring out from where the bullet nicked me.

“Your wound is bleeding again…” Yuri stated the obvious, checking my shoulder. “Let’s find a bathroom. We can get you cleaned up.”

There were supposedly a lot of bathrooms in this house, more than any one person would ever need. We made a quick decision to choose the closest down the hall. It was huge, bigger than my shop back home. It also was very well stocked, even better than some of the doctors back home. Plenty of good stuff to snag and sell.

Iodine, sanitation wipes, gauze… Those were just a few of the items worth picking up. With how organized all this stuff was, I’d have thought a scavenger left it here by accident. I was surprised the duo before us didn’t grab anything. Very odd, but they probably focused more on the bigger treasure rumored to be here.

To me though, it's the little things that add up to give you some good value. Waste all your time hunting for diamonds and gold and you miss all the gems hidden in plain sight.

Speaking of treasure, the most profitable thing I found here were things to help with ‘that time of the month.’

“I better grab these…”

Womanly care products sold extremely well for obvious reasons. But I kept a personal stock for even more obvious reasons. Not that people back home didn’t make them, but those sucked compared to the ones made pre-war.

Yuri blushed while he was fixing up my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was the tampons or the fact that he was seeing a little more of my skin than usual. Probably a nice little combo of the two.

“Don’t get too excited, nerd,” I told him. “You ever heard of a girl before?”

His face turned even more red.

“So you're sticking with that name?” he sighed.

“Until I think of a better one, yes,” I chortled.

As if we hadn’t wasted enough time dicking around, it took Yuri about twenty minutes to make sure my wound wasn't going to open back up again. He gave a solid warning to me that I’d have to take it easy. Not that I could make that promise, considering how strenuous this job could get.

I put back on my jacket, stepping back out into the hallway and finally noticing extravagant looking jewels and decorative gold items scattered around on tables and mounted on walls.

“Maybe your friends haven’t been here,” Yuri said. “Wouldn’t they have taken all this stuff?”

He noticed the same thing I did, but for a different reason.

“Gold and shit don’t mean much anymore,” I said. “The medical supplies though, that I would have thought would be on their checklist. So unless they’re after something valuable deeper in, something must have distracted them.”

That was when I noticed how quiet the house was. For all those defenses outside, it stood to reason that somebody still lived here. That was the rumor, anyway.

What had me even more suspicious was how simple it was to get in. Bandits were dumb as rocks, but could they seriously not get inside? If they threw enough of their goons at the wall, eventually it would come down.

Then again, people would just suddenly go missing once they got here. So maybe that had them freaking out. Even with that, how come this place didn’t look even moderately disturbed at all? Everything was so pristine and unmoved, like literally nobody had ever explored it.

“Let’s do some scouting.” I said, pulling out my three little mouse toys. “You did that upgrade I asked you?”

Yuri nodded. “The camera feed from their eyes should transmit to this cell phone.”

He handed me a fancy looking flip phone. The resolution was piss poor, but I could cycle through all the different visions of the three mice.

“Baller,” I said, letting them scamper away and start scouting out the house.