Day ??? of year 384 Post-Downfall
74:04:75 LNT (early evening) 
Sunstorm imminent

[h3]The Lone Survivor[/h3]

	Interrogation was ... easy. It might have been such in the most technical sense, but the mechanics of it remained the same. Someone asked questions. He answered. Simple. Only this time, there were no gunmen behind his back, the person was in front of him [i]mattered[/i] rather than being a slightly shinier cog in the grinder, and most importantly, everyone was probably at least half as clueless as he was. So [i]that[/i] was new. 
	Much like before, he disconnected his helmet from the fest of his armor, unlatched it, and carefully pulled it over his head, keeping it on his lap for security. Unlike before, he was at least inside - not that the shack would have stopped even the pickup they drove in on -, but it still felt odd. Vulnerable. As if he had lost half his senses. 
	[i]He had technically lost half his senses, hadn't he?[/i] Too quiet, too loud, too bright, too dim, unable to see heat or EM. But he couldn't exactly eat or drink without removing it. 
	[i]“The drone was too big to be a bug, too small to be a manned vehicle, and it can't have been remote-controlled during the sunstorm. So it's probably the thing to the west.”[/i]
	The thing to the west... "There might be at least two. The thing to the west. Or, at the very least, it has two different kinds of units; we were ordered to fall back in either case. They stressed the importance of not letting anyone take hostages. It reads minds." He had promised to tell what he knew. The young renegade's eyes were slightly unfocused as he tried to recall what might have been relevant. 
	"Before - my first four years out of twelve [[1.24 and 3.72 Earth-years]] - there were cyborgs. Half-human, half-machine. They fought hard, but they were already few by that point. As far as I know, they're all gone. That land is now divided between Trenians and Anderekians to the north." 

	If anything, there were [i]too many[/i] questions. "Kay-Gee told me some things about life is here usually. At best I could have managed on my own until I ran out of bullets and a direstalker figured it out. I would be fine living as a civilian or soldier in a different faction. I wouldn't know how to begin asking questions. Besides one, anyway. I'm here - [i]now what?[/i]"
	As he asked that, his head suddenly snapped to attention, gray-blue eyes in a still-youthful face focusing directly on Gramps. He hadn't come here just to die a different death for no good reason. He doubted anyone [i]living[/i] here lived here to die a pointless death, either. Hide. Run. Fight. [i]He only [b]knew[/b] how to fight, and 'hide' had already failed. But where would they run?[/i] 
	He wasn't going to sit there and be blown up, he knew as much. 

74:21:75 LNT