Green Fields (Fight)

[thehonorablebat]

Summary: The second story I ever posted.

Before XCOM's victory over ADVENT, there was twenty years of struggle. Bradford isn't sure how he survived it.

A loose collection of snippets, pre-X2.

--

 

The new alien government was rounding up people like him. Old XCOM personnel and officials who refused to roll over for them. They had actual giant goddamned mechs patrolling the streets. They called them Sectopods, and they were honestly the most terrifying things Bradford had ever faced down.

Unfortunately the only way out of Manhattan had been through one. It had taken days of planning in a basement with six other people. If he were honest, laying low in that basement had been the worst part of the whole thing. He could see activity outside through the narrow windows near the ceiling. The seven of them held their breath every time someone walked up the garden path, fearing that this was it. Their cover had been blown. Only to exhale when it turned out to be nothing.

They broke into a gun store for extra ammunition on their way out of town. The alarms had done a lot to draw patrols away from the road out, but the Sectopod had still been there. He had seen those things vaporize people at the drop of a hat. Logic said that they hadn’t stood a chance.

They had destroyed it, but at the cost of five of them, and more blood out of Bradford than was healthy. They added a stolen car to their list of crimes. They took off as fast as the piece of shit pick up truck could go. The two of them ditched it before long. Hiking into the wilderness. Bradford wouldn’t properly step foot in a city again until years later.