Jay woke to the sound of wind scraping across stone, a dry hiss that carried the same warning tone as sandpaper dragged across metal. Dawn hadn't fully broken yet, but the horizon glowed with the faintest streak of pale orange. His joints ached, his mouth felt like he'd swallowed a handful of chalk, and his legs protested every attempt at movement.
"Morning already…? I swear I just blinked." He snorted at his own joke, then winced as his back cracked in a way no spine should.
Cortana flickered into existence beside him, hologram shimmering with faint static. "You slept for approximately five hours, Jay. Not ideal, but functional. Your vitals dipped twice during the night — stress spikes, dehydration, possible early-stage exhaustion."
"Oh, great. My first report card in the apocalypse and I'm already failing." Jay rubbed his eyes, pushing himself up. His HUD blinked awake, floating text flickering in his vision. Vitals: Stable-ish. Hydration: Low. Energy: Recovering. Skill Trees: Untouched.
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered.
He slid forward to peek over the ridge he had used for shelter, and that was when he saw it — not the valley, not the dunes, not the weird pillars of rock shaped like someone half-finished sculpting dinosaurs.
A road.
Faint, cracked, sun-bleached asphalt stretching across the wasteland like some ancient relic.
Jay blinked twice. "Wait… that's… that's a Borderlands road. That's a starting-area road. and not the Hyperion design. It even has the uneven patchwork!"
Cortana tilted her head. "Meaning…?"
"It means," Jay said, breath catching between disbelief and excitement, "I might be near one of the old respawn routes. Maybe Fyrestone's outskirts. Maybe something earlier. Maybe something cut from the game. But if there's a road — there might be a settlement. Or loot. Or bandits. Or skags."
He paused.
"Actually, statistically it's definitely skags."
He scanned the area again. The road cracked in several places, chunks missing, tire marks long since erased by weather and time. A few metal posts leaned at awkward angles — long-dead sign frames stripped bare by the elements.
"Alright," he muttered. "Road equals civilization. Civilization equals supplies. Supplies equal not dying. Let's move."
The moment Jay stepped onto the road, he felt a strange comfort — like stepping into familiar territory even though he'd never physically walked on Pandora's soil before.
The wind kicked dust across the asphalt, forming tiny spirals. Jay walked cautiously, revolver at his side, HUD tracking faint energy signatures. His Ruin Engine hummed passively, absorbing particles and micro-debris without conscious input.
"I always wondered what these roads felt like in person," he murmured. "In-game they make walking from point A to B feel like a death march. Turns out… yeah, same feeling."
Cortana drifted along beside him, scanning continuously. "Movement ahead. Small, fast, low to the ground."
Jay froze. "How many?"
"Three… no, four. Pattern suggests—"
The ground trembled.
A low growl reverberated through the dust.
"—skag spitters," Cortana finished.
Jay sighed. "Of course it's spitters. Why wouldn't it be spitters?"
The first one crested a small mound — doglike body, open maw splitting into four flaps, drool sizzling on the ground. Its pale, pustule-ridden throat bulged.
"Oh crap—"
It spat.
Jay dove left. The acidic projectile splattered against the asphalt, hissing violently, eating into the road with bubbling fury.
"Okay! Okay! We're doing this now!" Jay yanked out his revolver and fired. The recoil nearly spun him sideways, the shot going wide.
Three more skag spitters emerged, forming a semicircle.
"Cortana, why didn't you say they were that close!?"
"I said movement ahead."
"You could've said 'in murder range!'"
REMOVE
The first skag lunged. Jay instinctively triggered the Ruin Engine, absorbing fragments of broken asphalt and ambient metal dust. Without needing to gesture, he felt the material swirl into a compressed shard.
He flicked his hand forward — the Ruin Engine ejected a sharpened iron spike.
It slammed into the skag's shoulder.
The creature shrieked and fell back.
"Okay! That worked!" Jay shouted.
Another skag spat — this one catching him mid-dodge.
The acidic sludge slammed into his leg.
"AH—!" Jay collapsed, clutching his thigh as the burning sensation spread like fire eating into muscle.
Cortana's voice sharpened. "Damage detected! Tissue corrosion in progress! Jay, you must dilute or counteract the acid!"
Jay gritted his teeth, eyes watering. "Working on it!"
A skag charged toward him.
He panicked.
And Blinked.
It wasn't graceful.
It wasn't planned.
It wasn't even controlled.
Jay felt his body rip sideways, reality bending for a fragment of a second — and suddenly he reappeared four meters away, landing on his face in the dirt.
He spat out sand. "Ugh — okay — okay! Blink works when I'm terrified! Good to know!"
The skags regrouped, confused by the sudden displacement. Jay forced himself up, limping heavily. His leg throbbed, the acid burn searing deeper.
"Jay," Cortana urged, "you are not in a viable state to continue this fight without improvisation."
"Improvisation is my entire life now!" he hissed.
The Ruin Engine pulsed again — absorbing road debris, pulling in sand, metal flecks, rocks, anything within half a meter. It responded to his panic, operating faster.
Jay shaped the gathered material into three sharp shards and a dense iron ball.
The first shard he sent flying into a skag's eye.
The second buried itself into another's leg.
The third hit a throat sac — which immediately burst, spraying acid harmlessly into the air.
The last skag charged straight for him.
Jay hurled the iron ball.
It struck square between the creature's eyes.
The skag collapsed, skidding across the road.
Silence.
Jay fell backward onto the ground, chest heaving. His leg screamed in pain.
"Cortana… please tell me that's all of them."
"For now," she said. "You need immediate first aid."
Jay forced himself to sit up, hands shaking. The acid had eaten through part of his pant leg, the skin beneath blistered and raw. His HUD flickered warnings.
Injury: Chemical Burn — Severity: Moderate. Pain Level: High.
He swallowed. "Ruin Engine… can you fix this?"
Cortana answered before the device could respond. "You cannot absorb your own tissue safely. But you can remove external contaminants and neutralize residue by isolating the acidic compounds."
Jay didn't love the plan.
But he didn't have another.
He activated the Ruin Engine, mentally focusing on the acid clinging to his wound.
The air shimmered.
A faint pulling sensation tugged at his leg as the engine extracted droplets of corrosive material — careful, delicate, precise.
When the burning faded to a painful throb, Jay exhaled shakily. "Okay. Okay… pain's still there, but it's not actively killing me anymore."
"You should rest," Cortana advised.
Jay shook his head. "Can't. We're near something important. The road means something — and if I stay here, more skags are gonna smell the blood."
He pushed himself up, wobbling but determined. Every step hurt, but the alternative was worse.
"Let's move… slowly… painfully… but move."
The road stretched forward, quiet and deceptively peaceful. Jay limped along its length, sometimes using a metal rod created from Ruin Engine scrap as a makeshift cane.
The pain made his vision blur.
His HUD kept flashing alerts.
Cortana hovered anxiously.
But Jay kept walking.
Because ahead — just barely visible through the clearing dust — stood the unmistakable outline of a Borderlands structure. Not Hyperion-made, but the older, rusted type.
A shelter.
A checkpoint.
A place where a Vault Hunter might first learn how unforgiving Pandora truly was.
Jay stared, heart pounding.
"…I made it," he whispered.
He didn't know if he should laugh, cry, or collapse.
So he did all three.
And the wasteland watched silently as Jay — injured, exhausted, and very much alive — took his first real step into the world of Pandora.