Holding Pattern

Your payment's recorded. Your conditioning is next.

He counts the ore, then opens the sacks of roots and electronics.

Fifty of each. That settles it.

He records the delivery in a ledger, then writes your name beneath the next conditioning slot.

These go to Frontier's stores. We never have enough coming in. You're paid up for conditioning.

Fifty Tungsten Ore, fifty Yerba Mansa Root, fifty Advanced Electronics Waste. Bring them here to Frontier (location 34,21).

All can be gathered outside the Red Zones. Tungsten traces give flakes; five flakes process into one ore if you can't work a full node yet.

Behind him, a recruit gets out of a strange-looking medical chair, rubbing pale circles on her wrists. A thick cable runs from the chair through a locked steel partition.

Heading past the scary signs to the Red Zone? You'll need CELL Attunement. Same as her. Same as me.

The Scar does something that pulls your body out of time. At first, it messes with your sense of time. Then your tissue starts breaking down. Like radiation, but much worse.

Fortunately, folks from the Institute found a way around it.

This chair exposes you to a little of that interference while a CELL holds you steady. Repeated sessions "teach" your body to resist the Scar's interference.

He opens a stores ledger. Several entries have been crossed out and replaced with smaller numbers.

Nothing's free here. We give you time on the chair and someone who knows when to switch it off. Frontier needs something in return.

As usual, we need resources. Let's say Tungsten Ore, Yerba Mansa Root and Advanced Electronics Waste - fifty each.

Our stores are always running low. You want to go farther out; we need supplies coming in.