Buying My Way Through the Multiverse

The massive engine of the INKAS Sentry growled as Gray navigated the Georgia roads. Even though it was barely 11:00 AM, the bright morning sun did little to ease the tense atmosphere inside the armored hull. Rick and Daryl sat in the back row, their eyes glued to the thick, bulletproof glass windows, searching the passing tree lines for any sign of movement. Up front, Merle sat shotgun, restlessly tapping his fingers against his dashboard. Gray kept his focus entirely on the asphalt ahead, tracking the distance until the familiar silhouette of the Greene family farm materialized.

Pulling through the open fencing, Gray parked the armored beast near the main house. ”Vests on, helmets secure, weapons hot,” he said quietly.

The four men slipped out into the daylight, moving like a synchronized military unit. Working seamlessly together, they cleared every building on the property. They swept the main house room by room, moved through the dark barn, and checked the smaller utility sheds. Nothing. The entire farm was completely abandoned, devoid of both living intruders and the walking dead.

Stepping back out onto the dirt driveway, Gray stood by the truck and opened his system store interface. He needed a way to track his targets without relying on traditional scouting, and he had the capital to buy the best. Without breaking a sweat, he purchased Wraith Sight from Middle-earth: Shadow of War for 35,000,000 Gold. Right next to it, he added Sin Vision to his arsenal for another 15,000,000 Gold.

The change slammed into his nervous system almost immediately. A cool, electric current surged behind his eyelids. When Gray activated his Wraith Sight, his eyes flared with a piercing, supernatural white glow.

Beside him, Rick, Daryl, and Merle caught the flash and visibly recoiled. ”What the hell...” Merle muttered.

Gray ignored the reaction, entirely mesmerized by the shift in his perception. The physical world dissolved into an ethereal, spectral overlay. He could see easily two miles out into the wilderness, his gaze piercing cleanly through solid wooden walls and dense forestry. Standing right next to him, Rick, Daryl, and Merle pulsed with a vibrant, glowing light-blue aura. Looking far off into the tree lines, he could spot a few scattered walkers wandering aimlessly; they possessed a greyish aura wrapped in a dark, murky red mist right around the center of their heads.

Gray slowly panned his head across the horizon, filtering through the spectral layers. No other blue-glowing silhouettes appeared in the immediate vicinity of the farm. With a brief thought, he deactivated the power.

”No one is around here,” Gray reported, his voice steady. ”The farm is clear.” He paused, opening up his map. ”There’s a small town just a few miles down the road. If Tomas and Andrew came this way, that town is the most logical place for them to stop.”

”Let me drive the damn truck this time,” Merle demanded, a wicked grin spreading across his face. ”This thing is built to crush walls anyway.”

Gray let out a brief sigh but tossed the keys to the older Dixon. ”Fine. Just keep it steady.”

Merle happily climbed into the driver’s seat while Gray took the passenger side, keeping his Wraith Sight active to sweep the landscape. As they approached the outskirts of the small town, Gray’s supernatural vision immediately picked up multiple signatures cutting through the walls of the abandoned buildings.

”Hold up,” Gray murmured, his glowing white eyes locking onto a specific structure down the main street. ”I’ve got two silhouettes inside the local bar. And looking further down... There are three more individuals scattered elsewhere in the town.” Five people total. The numbers matched the exact footprint count Daryl had discovered back in the woods.

”We park a block back,” Gray instructed Merle, turning off the sight. ”We move in on foot and take them by surprise.”

Merle parked the bulletproof truck a short distance away, masking the vehicle behind the shadow of an overgrown storefront. The group checked their gear one final time and approached the bar. Daryl melted into the shadows near the side of the building, keeping watch over the windows. Rick slipped around to the rear entrance. Gray and Merle stacked up at the front entrance, and on Gray’s silent count of three, they busted in.

The heavy front door flew open with a violent crash. Inside, the bar was a filthy, dimly lit cavern. The two men inside were caught completely off guard. A heavily built, fat man was in the middle of pissing right next to a cracked wooden bar stool, while a skinnier man stood behind the counter, actively pouring himself a drink from a dusty bottle. The moment the doors shattered inward, both men panicked, their hands instantly dropping toward the holsters at their hips.

They were catastrophically outmatched. Before their fingers could even touch leather, Gray’s rifle was already up, its barrel aimed dead center at the fat man’s forehead. Merle was just as fast, his weapon locked squarely onto the skinny bartender’s chest. Not even two seconds later, the back door clicked open. Rick slipped out from the kitchen area, quickly and efficiently taking off their gun belts and tossing their weapons across the floor.

As the two men raised their hands, Gray’s eyes widened slightly under his helmet. He instantly recognized them from his knowledge of the Walking Dead timeline. These were Dave and Tony. He knew exactly what kind of group they belonged to, the brutal pack that Randall had traveled with. He remembered the heinous, stomach-churning acts Randall had bragged about.

Wanting confirmation, Gray didn’t waste a single second and immediately activated his Sin Vision.

The world shifted color, and a horrifying, bloody script etched itself over the two men. Gray saw the various, monstrous crimes they had committed. The overlay detailed innocent people they had slaughtered, victims they had raped, and communities they had violently robbed. A profound sense of disgust washed over Gray.

”You seen two survivors running through here today?” Gray demanded, his voice icy and completely devoid of warmth. He quickly described Tomas and Andrew, detailing their physical appearance and what they were wearing.

Dave, the skinnier man behind the bar, shook his head quickly, trying to project a charming, harmless smile. ”Whoa, brother, take it easy. We ain’t ever seen those people. Look, can we just lower the guns? We’re just innocent survivors trying to get a drink, alright?”

Gray let out a mocking scoff but didn’t lower his weapon, letting the man keep digging his own grave.

”Seriously, me and my buddy Tony we’re just out here scavenging right now,” Dave continued, gesturing with his hands. ”Our group was making a run up toward D.C., but the whole area was a total bust. Now we’re just looking for a better place to call home.” Dave’s eyes drifted over the heavy tactical armor, the ballistic helmets, and the high-grade weaponry that Gray, Rick, and Merle were wearing. His eyes gleamed with a sudden, greedy curiosity. ”You guys look like military. You got a camp somewhere nearby? A safe place you call home?”

”No,” Gray replied flatly. ”And you’re not getting a single shred of information out of us.”

Gray leaned in slightly, his rifle perfectly steady. ”How many more people do you have with you?”

Dave chuckled nervously, exchanging a quick look with the heavy-set Tony. ”Just us, man. We’re a real small group of survivors. For this whole scavenging run, they only sent the two of us.”

A smirk played on Gray’s lips. ”So... you guys won’t mind if I go ahead and kill the other three survivors out there right now, then, right?”

Dave and Tony’s eyes instantly went wide, their jaws dropping. Their minds raced, they had assumed that if they just played it smart and bought some time, they could catch these newcomers off guard the second the rest of their armed patrol showed up to ambush them.

Without giving them a chance to reply, Gray turned his Wraith Sight back on. Through the walls, he saw the other three members of Dave’s group had already heard the commotion and were actively sneaking their way toward the bar, weapons drawn. Gray pushed his mind further, attempting to layer his Sin Vision at the exact same time. The powers fused flawlessly. Peering directly through the solid wooden walls of the bar, the three advancing silhouettes bled with the exact same familiar, dark crimson markers of murder, theft, and assault that stained Dave and Tony.

Tony and Dave watched in absolute, paralyzed horror as Gray’s eyes suddenly flared with that supernatural, blinding white glow. They had initially thought these men were just exceptionally well-geared soldiers, but seeing a human being whose eyes literally radiated light threw them into a state of sheer, unadulterated terror.

Gray opened his system store one more time.

{RS-422 Railgun} (200,000 Gold)

With a heavy metallic hum, a sleek, futuristic railgun materialized directly into his grip. Gray didn’t hesitate. He flipped the weapon’s safety mechanism off and switched it to Unsafe Mode, allowing the capacitor to overcharge to maximum, lethal capacity. The gun whined with a terrifying, high-pitched electrical crackle.

Aiming straight at the wall, Gray tracked the closest sneaking silhouette. He pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

A blinding slug of pure kinetic energy erupted from the barrel. The hyper-velocity round tore cleanly through three solid building walls, leaving perfectly round, smoking holes in its wake before impacting the sneaking member of ”The Living” straight through the skull. Through his Wraith Sight, Gray watched the silhouette instantly stop moving, the light-blue aura vanishing as the head was completely obliterated.

Dave and Tony were practically shitting their pants by now. They had just witnessed the complete and utter impossible. The glowing-eyed teenager in front of them had just pulled a futuristic weapon out of thin air and shot through multiple solid structures without even looking outside.

”What the fuck are you?!” Dave screamed, his voice cracking in a total panic as he backed up against the liquor shelves. ”Some kind of monster?! What did you just do?!”

Inside his own mind, Gray paused for a fraction of a second. He realized that he had just killed his first-ever human being. Not a walker, not an animal, but a living, breathing person. What surprised him the most, however, was the complete lack of an emotional reaction. He felt no sudden wave of nausea. There was no urge to throw up, and absolutely no remorse whatsoever.

’Maybe because I can see exactly what they’ve done,’ Gray thought to himself. ’They’re not even human anymore. Just monsters disguised as normal people.’

Gray turned his white-eyed gaze back onto Dave. Dave visibly faltered under the stare, sweating profusely, feeling as though Gray was looking directly through his skin and into his very soul.

”You’re full of shit,” Gray said, his voice echoing. ”I know exactly what kind of ’people’ you guys are.”

”You don’t know us!” Dave stammered, his hands shaking violently in the air. ”We don’t even know each other!”

”I can see every single crime you have ever committed,” Gray replied calmly, his voice ringing like a death sentence. He began listing off their sins with chilling accuracy, stating the exact number of cold-blooded murders, rapes, and thefts they had ever perpetrated. ”I came out here hunting for those other two escaped prisoners, but I’m more than happy to start cleansing the world of filth like you.”

Dave froze, his face losing all color as he realized this teenager somehow knew their deepest, darkest secrets. Tony, however, grew desperate. Hearing his horrific crimes listed out so casually made him realize these men were never going to let them walk out of this bar alive.

Driven by sheer, blind panic, Tony decided to gamble everything. He dropped his raised hands and made a sudden dive for a compact backup pistol tucked tightly into his back, hoping the element of surprise would let him get a shot off first.

He thought he was fast enough. He thought he could catch them off guard.

But Rick Grimes was a veteran sheriff’s deputy with fast combat reflexes. The split second Tony’s arms dropped, Rick’s instincts took over. Before Tony’s fingers could even wrap around the grip of his hidden gun, Rick snapped his futuristic UAC handgun forward and pulled the trigger.

ZAP!

A hyper-concentrated plasma bolt erupted from the sci-fi pistol, hitting Tony. The raw kinetic and thermal energy completely exploded Tony’s head into a violent mist of blood and bone fragments, painting the back wall crimson. The headless torso slumped backward, crashing hard against a wooden table before crumpling to the floor like a sack of bricks.

The bar went dead silent except for the faint hum of Rick’s glowing weapon. Merle’s eyes went as wide as saucers as he stared at the smoking, bloody wall, then down at his own identical UAC handgun. ”Damn, these guns are crazy! You just turned that fat bastard’s dome into absolute soup! I gotta kill some bastard like that!”

Rick kept the weapon raised, his chest heaving slightly as he stared at the sci-fi gun in his hand, amazed by its sheer power and zero recoil. He quickly swung the glowing barrel directly toward Dave’s face, ready to neutralize him too if he made a single wrong move.

Gray quickly stepped in, placing a heavy hand on Rick’s arm to lower his aim. ”Hold on, Rick. We need this one alive. We need the exact location of their main camp.”

Gray turned back toward the walls, raising his Helldivers railgun once more. He fired two highly precise kinetic slugs through the building’s structure. Down the street, the remaining two scouts were instantly dropped, their glowing silhouettes slumping into the dirt as their brains were destroyed by the wall-piercing rounds.

With the town entirely cleared of external threats, Gray lowered the heavy railgun and looked down at the trembling, terrified Dave, who was staring at Tony’s corpse.

Gray deactivated his glowing eyes and looked down at the broken scavenger. ”So...” he muttered softly, the bar’s silence making his voice echo. ”Ready to start talking?”