Two vehicles make their way down a dirt road.

In one of them, the navigator is a freckle-faced man who is languidly sticking half an arm out the passenger window. Though he holds a telescope, he doesn’t care to use it, merely relying on his eyesight to get through the damp, dark area. A mix of hail and rainwater wets the sleeve of his shirt.

“Roll up the goddamn windows, asshat,” the driver spits out. “My clothes are getting wet ‘cuz of you.”

“Face forward when you drive and quit staring at the rearview, dumbass,” the freckled man replies smugly, without much bark. He does retract his hand and roll up the window, though he leaves a bit of gap intentionally to allow wind inside. “You some kinda voyeur?”

The driver, a man in his fifties, guffaws loudly. He’s red-faced and reeks of alcohol. “Ain’t being a voyeur if they’re the ones fucking behind my back.”

The other freckled-faced man looks to be in his thirties. He has greasy brown hair, an equally brown pair of eyes, and a tasteless, whole dragon tattoo on his left forearm. It extends from his wrist all the way up to his shoulders where it disappears inside a black tee shirt. His belt is unbuckled and his pants half-zipped.

The scent of booze and sex engulfs the air. The driver continues to stare at the rearview mirror – the show continues in the backseat and the man lets out a loud whistle, obviously appreciating the sight.

The alpha pheromones are musky and pungent behind them. There are two passengers inside the military truck – a young, beautiful woman and an older man with a much bigger, also tattooed body. He has her legs around him, her entire body arched and bent on the backseat, her long hair pooling around the sides.

Her lingerie is discarded onto the floor. Sergeant Adams has found a good one this time – his men have said with leers on their faces – such an attractive person is hard to find nowadays and even harder if she is an omega. The strong, sweet scent of her pheromones make the three alphas fully crazed.

“The omega bitch is in heat. Wouldn’t you say it’s a shame to deny such a pretty thing?” Adams grins as he roughly smacks her hip upwards. “Fucking slut…”

The woman is completely gone, her eyes unfocused and her mouth drooling at the pleasure. A closer look would indicate she’s intoxicated as well. She’s unable to control herself in her heat and she’s too flushed to care.

Rowdy laughter comes from the three men.

“Holy shit!” a comment is exclaimed among the grunts and cheers. “Look at how desperate she is for it.”

“This might be our hottest lay yet.” Freckle-face has his whole body turned and ready to join in. “As expected from an omega whore.”

“Her body ain’t bad but I’ve had better.” Adams chortles, his breath smells of stale liquor and cigarettes. “The last one was a virgin.”

“You got terrible tastes,” one of his men guffaws. “Not like you had a taste anyway—you’d fuck any hole you see.”

“To bring a prostitute from the city with us…” The driver slows his speed down the road, distracted by the scene. He whistles again and says, “You are the worst kind of person, Adams.”

Adams forcibly presses the woman’s face down on the seat. He laughs, “Come on, what else can I do on such a boring trip? Besides, wouldn’t you say it’s an honor to be personally selected by me? We’re risking our lives and all these omegas need to do is to spread their legs… Ain’t that more unfair for us?”

The two alphas unanimously agree. “We’re doing them a favor anyway. They have no other use besides mating like rabbits. Save humanity from extinction and all that, eh?”

The other man gets off the shotgun seat and climbs to the back, his pants already pulled low to his knees. “Pass me the booze. Gonna be a long night, yeah?”

---

In the other vehicle, the atmosphere is less energetic. A group of eleven sits in silence, staring out the window, adjusting their eyesight to the dark. Of the eleven, three of them are gatherers – men or women employed to retrieve anomalistic carcasses and send them back to the city for research. It’s hardly as demanding a job as being a frontline soldier, but the danger is not negligible.

The Nexus employs any and all participants for the position of ‘gatherer’ regardless of physical prowess, age, or sex – the only exception is the rare, almost extinct secondary omega gender. Individuals of that category are highly contained within the walls, living in rent-free homes or special facilities purposed to breed.

There have been grievances, frankly, coming not from the few protected omegas but from lower caste betas – they dream of staying in the inner city, away from the turmoil and chaos, but the competition is so stiff that most end up in perilous blue-collar jobs.

A gatherer is one such job. It may be easy to identify them from white-collar scientists, researchers and government workers and even easier to identify them from army men – generally, gatherers are not as experienced as the latter but also not as levelheaded as the former. The experienced ones are, however, quite familiar with the radioactive landscape.

Unfortunately, none of the three gatherers that sit in the vehicle right now are experienced. Two lanky young men, one short, even lankier woman – they’re obvious rookies from the way they’re nervously looking around, hands clasped onto their mini daggers, the only weapons they’ve been distributed with on this expedition.

“Fucking Christ,” someone snorts, “quit killing the mood, will y’all? Feels like we’re babysitting a bunch of greenhorns—who thought to assign us these twelve-year-old twats?”

“…I apologize, sir.” One of the male gatherers sounds daunted by his tone. “Many anomalies in the Arctic are attracted to movement and loud sounds, so we are looking out for—"

“Seems like you read a lot of books.” The soldier waves him off dismissively. “You’ll get used to it when we blast the goddamned anomalies with a shotgun. First time, sonny?”

“My second expedition, sir.” The gatherer is reassured by how confident the war-scarred, big-framed soldier sounds. “My first was a recovery mission with the Fifth Platoon.”

“How’d that go?”

“No losses, sir. The recovery was a success.”

“See?” The man laughs, his beer-belly protruding out his army-green shirt. “If the Fifth Platoon can handle it, then the 641^st Unit will be fine an’ dandy. You lucked out with us, Leonard-boy.”

The gatherer chuckles along nervously. “Thank you. Um, my name is Benny.”

“My bad, my bad.” The gruff man turns to the side and unapologetically checks out the other gatherer, the only female in the vehicle. “I’m more interested in the name of this young woman here. What do you say, beautiful? How ‘bout we go somewhere nice after?”

The female gatherer gives him a tight-lipped smile and scooches away slightly. She had been silent for the entire ride, all the while trying to ignore the man’s advances.

“Aw, don’t be like that…” The man snakes his hands on her waist. “I know a good place.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she finally replies shakily. “I have a boyfriend.”

The man laughs loudly. “Huh? Not like he’ll know anything that goes on here. What is he? An alpha? Maybe he’ll be willing to share his woman, too.”

“We are engaged,” she whispers.

The man lets out a condescending snort. “Boring. Hey, Luther, drop me off so I can get in the sergeant’s car instead. Bet’cha they’re having more fun in there.”

“Dumbass,” the driver replies to him, “don’t you have some kinda STD?”

The vehicle erupts into mocking laughter.

The seven soldiers are well-acquainted with one another and such topics are commonplace in the 641^st Unit. The sex-crazed group of alphas and more dominant betas is high in infamy, the rumors of their deeds spreading from unit to squad to platoon and then the entire city. It’s poor luck that the gatherers were assigned here, but it’d be unwise to complain, else they’d be left behind in a ditch.

Prideful and aggressive – common attributes among alpha army men, but these soldiers in particular are some of the most self-absorbed chauvinists around. The reason is that their sergeant, Adams, readily enables them to do whatever vulgar things they’re into. The other reason is that strong, able-bodied alphas are also few and far between, and seldom would individuals question their authority. They are the backbone of the military, the top government brass, the hopes of mankind.

The vehicle tires run over a small object on the road.

“…!” The third gatherer jumps up from his seat and points outside the window. “W-What happened? Did you… feel a bump? I think we’ve run over something.”

“Seriously, man? You’re scaring the rookie.” A different soldier groans and kicks the back of the driver’s seat. “And can your driving get any worse? You just rolled over a rock.”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry ‘bout that, mate.”

The vehicle reverses and runs over another bump on the road. The hail outside is starting to sound louder, pelting on the aluminum roof, incessant clings and clanks going off in their ears. With the windows closed, however, all of the people inside attribute the strange noise to environmental factors.