Being on the run was a terrible thing, and she'd been on the run for a long time. Never staying in the same place twice, never using the same name twice. She knew it was going to be a big deal, but she had hoped the powers-that-be would've ignored it. That their attention on the war and the Legion would've distracted them from it.

The bounty hunter who'd elected to go after her was relentless, unforgiving. A true mercenary, through and through. He'd tracked her all the way from California, across the Long 15 and the breadth of the Mojave, to the wide and barren deserts beyond. It was here where she almost met her end, nearly dehydrated and low on food. She'd found an abandoned shack that offered some respite from the harsh desert and spent a night there, and when she woke up there was a faint burning in her nose.

Chloe Raeder opened her last bottle of purified water with a shaking hand, quickly gulping half of it down. She set the bottle down on a table besides the bed and rubbed her face. She was tired, very tired, but she had to go on. She took a few minutes to eat some Dandy Boy Apples and a tin of dried sardines, feeling better once she was finished. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, stood, and ejected the magazine in her .45 Auto Pistol. Seven rounds of 230-grain .45 ACP ammunition gleamed in the low light of the shack, the brass and copper clean and high quality. She gently pushed the magazine back into the gun with a soft *click* and stuffed it back into her holster.

When she was well she left the shack to continue on, and that's when she noticed it. A faint red haze in the air, deep breaths creating that burning. The shack was built in a nook of cliffs running along a valley, and she slowly walked up to the edge of the valley. Below, obscuring the valley floor, was a thick blanket of blood-red clouds, as far as the eye could see. Standing proud and tall on a cliff, some distance away, was a pre-War building, lit like a monument. Spotlights cast their bright lights across the building's side, and a single light sent a light beaming into the hazy sky above.

Intrigued, she looked for a path down into the valley and set about finding out what was beneath this cloud.