Chapter 26
To The Gate
Part 4
Day Four
Date: 04/01/01
Location: In the City
Mission Duration: Four Days
Remaining Time: One Day
Objective: Reach the City Gate
Subject Names: Thomas, Samira Ali, Amanda Jefferson
Native: Khorcha (Guide)
Previous Success Rate: 85%
Expected Success Rate: 70%
Failed Subjects: 250
Successful Subjects: 10
Success Percentage: 4%
Experiment Results: 96% Failure
Experiment Outcome: Termination
Next Stage: Initiated
Objective: Monitoring
Stage Duration: 30 Days
Days Count-Down: 30
{Congratulations! You have passed the test and successfully completed your first mission.}
{You have leveled up.}
{You have been awarded ten points.}
{You can use the points as currency to purchase whatever you require, and to enhance your attributes and skills.}
{The next mission will be available in ten minutes.}
{A new option is now available to you.}
{Voice Command: With Voice Command, you can hear your messages and navigate through the system menus by speaking the desired function. However, please note that this will disable the Visual Command. You can activate or deactivate any command by simply touching the screen or thinking of the desired function.}
The moment I stepped out of the building, I was greeted by that message floating in front of me — and at the same time, the familiar voice echoed inside my head. The word "Profile" blinked faintly on the interface, flashing like an alert, hinting there was new information waiting to be checked.
Although I was still shaken by the fight with that monstrous rodent, I couldn't deny the growing realization inside me — this wasn't random. It wasn't some hallucination, nor a dream. Something about the system, the missions, and everything happening around me felt... structured. Controlled.
Like a test.
But the question was — a test for what?
I tried to convince myself that maybe this was some kind of military or government experiment — that maybe I had been drugged or abducted. That would've been easier to believe than the truth my eyes were about to see.
Nobody gave me a choice to be here. Nobody asked for my consent. And from the way the system warned me earlier — I was certain of one thing:
Whatever this place was, letting my guard down for even a second could get me killed.
Still, curiosity won over fear.
I wanted to check my Profile — to see what had changed after that fight. But something deeper in me, a survival instinct or perhaps a gamer's sense of caution, told me not to. Not yet.
So I took a breath, dismissed the holographic screen with a thought, and finally looked around me for the first time.
The view hit me like a physical blow.
The sky above was wrong. A dull, sickly green-gray — like storm clouds trapped behind a tinted glass dome — swirled endlessly overhead. Faint flashes of violet lightning rippled silently between them.
The city stretched far in every direction, but nothing looked familiar. Buildings towered at odd angles, their surfaces warped and twisted as if melted and reformed. Entire blocks had fused together like wax, frozen mid-collapse.
And the streets…
Cracked pavement covered in a thin layer of black dust. Shattered glass glimmered faintly under the unnatural light. What once might have been cars or machines lay half-buried and melted into the asphalt, their frames distorted beyond recognition.
I took a step forward, my boots crunching over debris. The sound echoed far too loudly in the silence.
Strange vines crawled along the buildings, glowing faintly with a pulsating blue-green light. Every time the wind passed — if it was even wind — the vines twitched and shifted like they were alive. The air smelled heavy, metallic, and faintly rotten, like burnt oil mixed with decay.
I looked down the street and saw something I couldn't describe properly — a shape, tall and thin, standing far away near a collapsed bridge. It didn't move. Maybe it wasn't even alive. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was looking at me.
"This… this isn't real," I whispered. My voice cracked in the still air. "It can't be."
But everything around me said otherwise. The world I see in front of me was real. The pain that I felt and still lingering through my body, the air, the weight of fear in my chest — all of it too vivid to be a dream.
{Mission Update: City Map Unlocked.}
{New Objective: Proceed toward the City Gate.}
{Estimated Distance: 14.6 kilometers.}
{Supplementary Objective: Survive.}
{Time Limit: None.}
I stared at the new message. The word "Survive" blinked slowly in red before fading into the corner of my vision.
"Survive… yeah, I got that part," I muttered.
Then another line appeared.
{Bonus Reward: City Map (Active Tracking Enabled).}
{Follow the marked path to reach the next checkpoint.}
The holographic map expanded in front of me. It was shaped like a half-broken city grid, most sections blurred or marked with red warnings. Only one faint white line glowed — leading toward a distant point labeled City Gate.
I stared at it for a moment, then sighed. "Guess I'm going for a walk."
But as I took my first steps down the cracked road, the weight of what I saw around me finally sank in. The silence. The destruction. The fact that there were no people, no signs of life anywhere — not even birds.
This wasn't Earth anymore. It couldn't be so where the h##l I am and most importantly why me? What did I do to deserve this kind of punishment? My regular life was to begin with was based on survival. I didn't ask for this so why me, here I remembered that I was the fourth human in the city at least I am not alone, but the question is will I be able to survive until I meat one of them or are they even alive in this strange world.
And somehow, I was right in the middle of it.
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We left the hideout just after Khorcha prepared something he didn't tell what it was and I didn't ask. And the sunrise began that dull orange light that never quite reached the ground. It wasn't sunlight, not like the one I remembered back on Earth. Here, it looked more like the sky was bleeding, like the light came from a fire burning behind a thick wall of smoke of course that was not our sun.
Our mission was simple on paper and that was to collect food and supplies for the hideout's survivors. But in this world, nothing ever stayed simple for long not that I saw so far at least.
The air outside the shelter was heavy, and the ground still trembled from time to time — like the whole city was breathing, deep and slow. Every sound echoed too far, as if the buildings themselves whispered back.
Khorcha led the way, his tall figure wrapped in tattered cloth that blended perfectly with the metallic gray of the ruins. His movements were quiet, almost graceful, like he knew this place better than he knew himself. Samira walked beside me, checking her scanner every few minutes while I carried the storage packs.
According to the system, there was a food storage unit less than a kilometer east from where we were. But the map didn't show how dangerous that route could be.
{Objective: Collect usable food and substitute items necessary for the community.}
Luckly there was no time limit here and the fact that I was worried to miss the deadline to reach the city gate was a constant pain in my heart and effecting my mental health.
We passed through what used to be a residential block. The houses were nothing like the ones I knew. They were tall and narrow, with curved roofs made of dark material that shimmered faintly. Some still stood, but most had collapsed inward, like their foundations had melted.
Khorcha stopped suddenly, crouching beside a pile of rubble.
He ran one of his long, gray fingers over a black mark burned into the wall — claw marks. Fresh ones.
"Something big came through here," he said in that low, calm voice of his. "Not long ago."
Samira and I exchanged a look.
"Big?" I asked, tightening my grip on my weapon.
He nodded once. "Yes. But it is not hunting now. It already fed."
"Fed?" I repeated, my stomach tightening. "On what?"
Khorcha didn't answer right away. He just looked at me, those golden eyes unreadable, then turned away. "Come. We are wasting time."
We continued down the street until we reached what looked like a shattered what looked like a regular marketplace. The only difference I couldn't recognize any thing from what renaiedy from the items that used to be there. Half the stalls were torn apart, and the rest were covered in thick layers of black dust.
Samira sighed. "There's nothing left here."
"There might be," I said, kneeling beside a broken counter. "Check the containers."
We started moving through the debris. Most of what we found was useless — metal fragments, cracked glass, or things that had long since rotted I couldn't tell of it was consumable to begin with. But some containers were still sealed tight, and Khorcha seemed to know which ones were safe.
He tapped one with the back of his hand, then cut it open with a curved blade made from something like bone. Inside were small gray cubes, dry and brittle.
Samira frowned. "What is that?"
Khorcha handed one to me. "Food."
I looked at it — it didn't smell like anything. "You're kidding."
He tilted his head, confused. "You do not eat?"
"Not that," I said, forcing a weak laugh. "I mean, we don't eat... rocks."
He blinked slowly. "Not rocks. Nutrient bind."
I hesitated, then bit a corner. It crumbled instantly, dry and powdery — and tasted like dust mixed with salt and something chemical. I forced myself to swallow it down, coughing.
Khorcha watched with mild amusement. "You humans always eat strange things."
Samira snorted. "Says the guy eating dried bricks."
Khorcha ignored her and picked up another cube, biting through it without flinching.
I looked at him closely for the first time in a while. Even under that gray skin, I could see the faint pulse of light — like veins glowing just under the surface. He wasn't human, but he wasn't exactly monstrous either. Something about him carried the same air as the world around us — dangerous, but alive in its own way.
After a few moments of silence, I finally asked, "Khorcha… what do your kind actually eat?"
He didn't answer at first. He just stared into the distance, eyes half-closed.
Then he said quietly, "We eat what the world gives us. Sometimes the soil. Sometimes the flesh of what walks upon it. Sometimes... the fallen of our own."
That last part made my skin crawl.
"You mean… your people eat each other?"
He looked at me again. "When the world began dying, yes. The system made us that way — to survive."
Samira looked down, her voice quiet. "That's... terrible."
Khorcha shook his head. "No. It is what kept us alive long enough to guide you now."
His tone wasn't defensive — it was matter-of-fact, almost like he was explaining gravity.
I didn't know what to say to that. The silence stretched for a while until the system chimed softly in my ear:
{Inventory Updated: Nutrient Binds (x14) Acquired.}
{Points Earned: +5.}
At least it was something.
We continued searching the area for the next hour, filling our packs with whatever the system marked as "edible." But even after we'd gathered enough for two or three days, that hollow feeling didn't go away.
It wasn't hunger. It was the realization that this — scavenging from the ruins of a dead world — was becoming normal.
As we prepared to leave, I looked back at the broken market. A part of me wondered how many people had once walked through here. If they'd been alive when everything changed.
Khorcha must've noticed my silence. "You think of your world," he said.
I nodded slowly. "Yeah… I was just wondering if it looked like this before it ended."
He looked up at the sickly sky, then back at me. "All worlds end, Thomas. Some with fire, some with silence. What matters is who walks away afterward."
I didn't answer. There was nothing to say.
We started walking again, following the faint white line on our map — the one that led to the City Gate. Khorcha promised that once we reached it, we'd understand what the system truly wanted from us.
But for now, all I could think about was the strange echo in the distance — the sound of something large moving, far beyond the next street.
And somewhere out there, someone else was fighting for their life.
A/N
Here is one of the longest chapters in this book so please don't forget to comment review and add it to your library