She didn't fully know what she was looking at.
In retrospect, it made sense. All of Sector 3 had been gated. A massive border wrapped the entire slum on three sides—only breaking in the direction of the wasteland. The wasteland that'd been rumored to host the Eclipse.
The checkpoint was military, unmoving, and yet not as alien to her as it felt. A squared bulge jutted from the intersection of the northern and western walls, its structure cold and clinical—an unmarked authority. At its center, a vertical slit cut through the barricade, dividing two enormous panels.
Metal beams crossed the opening in threes. Idle flood lamps buzzed above. A ring of sensors pulsed along the outer columns—red, then green, then static. Surveillance cameras rotated at the corners, scanning in steady, mechanical arcs.
Elara watched as a man in a dark overcoat approached the desk. After a few quiet words with the stationed officers, he flashed a few belongings. A moment later, a low hum sounded above. Something responded beneath the floor with a hiss, and he passed through.
Others followed. Not all spoke, nor did they take the same path. But one by one, they slipped into the inner sector. The crowd wasn't large by any regard, but it was constant.
Elara wasn't standing idle. She was still moving.
Her pulse hadn't slowed since the news she'd been told. Rage kept it climbing—high enough that she barely felt the ache in her feet. Her mind hadn't caught up. She didn't know what waited past the gate. Only that she needed to continue beyond it.
She stepped forward.
Head down. Eyes low. She didn't want a conversation. Didn't want anyone to look her in the face, to see the pure rage, the murderous intent she'd been boasting. Her cloak still clung to her—white, dirt-stained, unmistakably uniform. But it was so familiar she'd forgotten what it meant.
She walked a direct line toward the checkpoint.
That's when the voice cracked across the clearing—sharp, male, and absolutely certain.
"Hey!"
She didn't slow. She wasn't interested in whatever drama was happening around her.
"You know good and damn well you're not allowed through here."
The voice echoed—bounced off steel and stone and the spaces in between. It was the kind of voice that didn't like being ignored.
Bootsteps followed. Heavy. Confident. The man approached like her presence had insulted him.
Elara kept her arms loose at her sides, confused more than anything. Her mind was still catching up.
Just my luck. All these people, and of course I'm the one you stop.
The guard stepped into view—taller than her by a full head, armored in dull gray plating. Visor raised. His hair was buzzed close to the scalp, and a deep crease ran through his brow.
He stopped a few feet from her. Let his eyes move down her frame—not leering, just scanning. Clocking the robes. The boots. The tag on her collar.
"Kynenn," he said flatly, like it was a slur.
Elara opened her mouth. Closed it. She had nothing to offer. The wrong lie could get her dropped where she stood.
Dammit. I was so used to wearing this cloak… I forgot we were the only ones who wore it.
The guard grabbed her wrist and twisted her arms down, locking them just above her waist. Cold metal snapped over her skin. She heard the buzz before she felt it, a soft magnetic pulse threading along the inner spine.
The pressure felt wrong, foreign. Like it was meant to short-circuit something inside her.
Nothing happened.
Of course.
The guard didn't notice. Or didn't care. He adjusted her stance with a grunt and started walking her back toward the structure.
"Elara," he read, glancing at the tag stitched beneath her collarbone. Then, louder—almost proud, "I'll see her back to where she belongs. Myself."
Another voice rang out from across the barricade. "You sure you wanna go alone? I heard Kynenn are trained for nothing but war."
"I'll be fine," the first guard called back, barking a low laugh. "I cuffed her with damp-steel. It's not like she can use her powers or anything. What's one little girl supposed to do to me?"
"Suit yourself. Let me know if you run into trouble."
"Yeah, yeah."
The first guard gave her shoulder a sharp tug.
Elara stumbled forward, wrists swaying in the cuffs—but she didn't feel particularly bound.
The guard didn't speak again—not to her, not to anyone. He walked fast, like the sooner she was off his checklist, the better. Elara kept pace, silent, matching his steps just enough to avoid getting yanked. The muscles in her arms burned slightly from the way they were twisted in front of her.
They crossed a narrow footbridge—bare steel stretched over a channel of drainage runoff. Below, the water shimmered dull green. She could hear other guards in the distance, but no one else joined them.
He really is going alone. Must be thinner than they let on.
The Foundation was only a few blocks away—tucked into a hill behind two utility stations and what looked like a former processing plant.
Her eyes shifted ahead. That dull ache behind her ribs returned. She let the pain harden her spine.
They turned a corner. The guard loosened his grip just slightly as they stepped into a narrow alley between two administrative buildings—shortcutting the main road.
She moved first.
Elara leaned in and drove her shoulder into his ribs. Enough to shift his balance.
He grunted, staggered half a step. Not much.
But enough.
The motion itself twisted her body sideways, her cuffed hands raked past the base of his coat.
He retaliated, pushing her off of him and stomping down into her thigh.
She began to spin, tensing to keep her hands as tightly together as possible and clobbered the guard across the shoulder.
Completely ignoring the strike, the guard ducked low, wrapping his arms around her waist and spearing her to the ground. He smacked her across the cheek. Once, but hard.
"You serious?" he spat, tightening his grip again while yanking her off the ground. "Try that again, I'll break your kneecaps."
Elara didn't answer.
He kept walking. Pulled her forward.
Well I guess I can't just force my way past him. Not like this anyway.
The guard continued to walk. Now holding his shoulder, likely contused from impact. They reached the hill shortly after.
For her second time seeing the building's new state, Elara was even more surprised than before. From a distance, it didn't look real. The damage was too absolute.
The main gate had been blown off completely. One half lay twisted in the dirt, the other still hanging sideways from a single hinge. Walls, bars, even some of the ground itself had been mauled by elements. There were burns, and cracks in everything, the building looked as if it'd been both hit by a tornado, and a thunderstorm simultaneously.
If what that girl said about the man taking over was true, I would bet my 'classmates' did this in a revenge fit once they felt any freedom.
The guard stopped.
For the first time since grabbing her, he didn't look annoyed. Just… confused.
"What the hell," he muttered.
Elara didn't say anything. She stared past him, eyes locked on the building's frame. The west wing was collapsed inward, the walls punched open like a giant boulder rolled from the inside.
They stepped forward together, slowly now. The guard's grip had gone loose.
He passed the first checkpoint gate. Then the side yard. His steps lost purpose. Eyes darting, jaw clenching, hand halfway to the weapon at his hip—not out of threat. Out of habit.
"Instructors should've been posted out front," he muttered. "This doesn't make any sense."
He led her inside.
Or tried to.
The door creaked open—half of it missing. The lobby was gutted. Blood across the steps. Papers strewn in wide fans.
"Juno?" he called out.
No answer.
"Captain?" he tried again.
Still nothing.
Elara recognized that name, that'd been how the instructors addressed their superior, Captain Juno, he was also kynenn. And he'd been in charge of many of the punishments Elara received in her life.
He stepped deeper into the compound, calling out, flipping open doors, retreating again. Every movement louder than the last. Elara waited for the right one.
He ducked past the eastern hall, entering what used to be the dorm monitor's office. And consequently adjacent to the barracks where they'd slept, just yesterday.
She moved.
A quiet step back. Then another. Her cuffed hands brushed the edge of the door—the one left off its hinges. She turned, ducked, and slipped down into the lower hall before the guard could resurface.
She didn't run. Not yet.
She moved fast, breathing evenly. Her mind counted steps, not thoughts. She passed through the long corridor of barracks, then directed into the doorless dorm that belonged to Hikari.
From there she found the hole.
She dropped to her knees, slid shoulder-first into the crawlspace, and vanished back outside into the yard of the stone building.
The white moss outside was still damp.
She rose slowly from the crawlspace, crouching low behind the shadow of the stone wall. No one followed.
Elara exhaled through her nose and moved along the building's edge, hugging what was left of the outer corridor. Finally, with no one watching, Elara allowed her hands to fall at her sides. Releasing the tension in her chest and shoulders.
So they were magnetic. They probably were powered by my Myaku.
But she had none.
That was her advantage—maybe the only one. The entire reason she studied the workings of Myaku was in effort to escape the feeling of inferiority, especially if she was to be forced into the Eclipse.
But with everything going on, the Eclipse seemed to be much less of a threat. Right now, the bigger problem was how she looked.
She was still wearing Foundation robes—white, stained, torn across the hip. Her boots were also state-issued. The stitched collar still bore her name. Anyone who got close would see what she was. And like that guard, know exactly she'd escaped.
I can't walk another block dressed like this. Not toward another checkpoint. Not anywhere near the wall.
She reached the base of the southern slope and ducked beneath a collapsed fence, emerging into a weed-ridden drainage cut that led toward the outer commons. Just past it was a scattered market fringe. Scavenger stalls, clothing barrels, the runoff crowd of a dozen dying corners.
Her eyes locked on a narrow concrete stairwell leading up to street level. She moved quickly, quietly. Her heart had slowed now, again. Her mind was sharper.
She needed clothes. She needed quiet.
She needed to disappear—completely.
And when she reemerged, it wouldn't be as Elara the runaway.
The stairwell led to a side lot pressed between two shuttered buildings. Steam hissed from a broken pipe overhead. The further she walked, the louder the crowd became—low voices, the clatter of crates, the shuffle of feet. Smoke drifted from makeshift grills and cracked chimneys. Elara moved through it with her head down, body angled slightly sideways to narrow her silhouette.
No one stopped her.
Most people here weren't looking for trouble. And if they were, they didn't expect to find it in someone walking like she had somewhere to be.
She kept her pace steady until she reached a cluster of vendor stalls—weather-worn boards, cloth awnings, buckets of mismatched goods. One section was devoted to clothes: faded dresses, tunics, sashes, and state castoffs picked clean of insignias. A barrel near the edge overflowed with satchels, belts, and worn cloaks.
Elara waited a beat.
Then stepped in, eyes scanning like she was just another scavenger with too little coin and too much time.
A woman behind the stall narrowed her eyes at her but said nothing. Elara moved quick, practiced.
She pulled a long-sleeve tunic dress from a bundle near the back—gray, unremarkable, high-collared and loose in the sleeves. The kind worn by inner-sector clerks or street stewards. No markings. No embroidery. It looked… invisible.
She grabbed a second-hand satchel next. Stiff, but clean. And Elara walked up to the lady selling.
She looked at her briefly—just for a second. The woman wasn't old. Eyes sharp, skin cracked from smoke and weather. Elara felt a flicker of something—sympathy, maybe. But it didn't last.
The moment the vendor opened her mouth, Elara turned and sprinted.
She was out of the stall before the woman could finish her first word. Elara heard her shout something—half shock, half curse—but no one followed.
Elara vanished down the first alley she found, ducking between two leaning walls of corrugated tin and mud-choked brick. She didn't stop running until the sound of the market had faded into nothing behind her.
Then she slowed. Turned off into a dead-end passage behind a burned-out canteen. Only then did she breathe.
She changed fast.
The robe hit the dirt, followed by the undershirt and tags. She slid the tunic over her shoulders, cinched it at the waist, then clipped the satchel crosswise along her back. It wasn't elegant. But it didn't need to be.
When she checked herself in the shattered windowpane next to her, she didn't look like a soldier.
She didn't look like anyone at all.
Exactly how she needed to look.
The new clothes helped, but they didn't buy her a way in.
Elara stopped in the shadow of a covered stairwell just off a drainage alley, the fabric of her stolen dress bagged against her frame.
These sleeves should cover the cuffs, at the very least. I should keep these, if i can.
She was clean now—plain, invisible to most—but she knew better than to test the same gate twice.
That one was burned.
The checkpoint she'd tried earlier was likely flagged. The guards would've already logged the incident. Maybe not her name, but the interaction. Kynenn girl. No ID. And most of all, they'd seen her face.
The eastern gate crossed water. A bridge split the slums from the mid-sector trading docks, lined with checkpoints and toll logs. The boats were monitored. And if she tried to swim, the current would eat her—or at the very least, ruin the illusion she'd worked so hard to shape.
Too slow. Too risky.
She crouched low, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then looked west.
There was one more option.
She skirted the edge of Sector 3, tracing the broken walls and overgrown service lanes. The crowd got thinner the further south she went, until even the vendors thinned out, and the streets stopped pretending to be streets at all.
Eventually, she reached the southwestern border. The wall here looked the same as before—steel and stone, stacked and humming—but the checkpoint was smaller. Less formal.
Elara approached steadily, matching the posture of everyone she'd watched back at the real gate. One foot in front of the other. Calm. Casual. Like the ground belonged to her.
The guard looked up as she neared. Lazily. Like he didn't expect much from this job.
"What's someone like you doing this deep in the outer ring? You're damn near in the Wastelands."
Her heart kicked once—but she didn't blink.
He was younger than the last. Not by much, but enough to show it in the way he leaned, the way his boots weren't fully laced, and the way he smiled without checking her ID first.
Elara herself was attractive enough—thin, modestly curved, sharp-boned and narrow at the waist. Her hair was a pale silver-gold, tangled at the edges but pulled behind her shoulders. Her eyes were dark, soft, beautiful. She never thought much about how she looked.
But the guard did. She saw it in the pause. The way his eyes flicked over her once, then again.
He was flirting. Or trying to.
She kept her expression flat. "Just heading back in."
He raised a brow, but didn't question her further. He only gestured lazily to the inner gate behind him.
"Try not to get lost."
She nodded once, gave a courtesy smile, and kept walking.
The gate was just ahead—taller up close, with no clear handle.
No one had been manning it. Finally Elara was passed her trial. Relieved of the stress that came from strained nerves.
Just the same dark vertical split down the middle and a steel arch embedded with sensors. A panel sat to the right, faintly glowing.
She reached it. And was halted.For a moment, the whole world seemed to slow.
Nothing moved.
She stepped toward the door. The door had a scanner, the only way to open it.
The panel pulsed—red over and over.
Access required.
Elara froze.
Behind her, she heard the guard shift his weight. He stared her down the whole way back, shamelessly. "You alright?" he called out, voice less casual now.
She didn't turn. Her hand slid slowly to her satchel.
Then she pulled the badge.
Held it just long enough to be seen.
The panel flickered. Then buzzed.
Green light.
The doors unlatched with a subtle mechanical hiss, splitting down the center.
She stepped through without looking back.
A shuttle sat parked just past the second gate, its side panels unmarked, its front plate half-faded from weather. A few passengers were already inside—quiet, well-dressed, not paying her any attention.
Elara walked calmly across the platform and stepped on board. The driver didn't even lift his head. Just flicked a finger toward the back.
She found a seat in the center row, tucked close to the window, and let her body settle in.
No one looked twice.
She exhaled slowly, arms crossed tight over her satchel. The movement pulled her sleeves higher. She let them.
Her mind was still ticking. Elara had been fighting laughter at how lucky she'd been.
Back in the alley—when she rammed the guard, when they'd twisted and hit the dirt—her hands had been locked tight in front of her, fingers interlaced to look comforting. But the scuffle had brought her wrists flush to his waist, and she'd felt the leather. She didn't think much of the decision. She just took it. Kept the wallet wedged between her palms, masked by the cuffs.
She'd planned to use the money. That was it.
But when she reached the vendor's booth, the weight of it changed in her head. Kynenn didn't carry money. They didn't even belong on the street. Nothing about it made her look any less suspicious, and she couldn't afford to have the clerk calling the authorities.
So she kept it hidden. She assumed she couldn't use it.
Not until now—when the panel pulsed red, her stomach dropped. That was when she remembered the man at the first checkpoint. The overcoat. The flash of a card. The faint hiss beneath the floor.
Whatever he used, whatever permission the system required—it had come from some small form of ID. Probably in a wallet.
She took a chance. And the badge was there.
Her infiltration was the product of good guesswork. And earned luck.
Elara fought the smile completely. But her shoulders dropped a little. Her heartbeat slowed.
After a few more people arrived, the shuttle hissed and lurched into motion, cutting north through the divider wall towards the inner ring.
In passing the northwest gate, where she'd started this whole expedition, Elara kept her head down even more, but she noticed that even less guards manned the area now than when she first attempted to pass.
The foundation must be swarming with guards now
She leaned against the window and watched the buildings shift.
All that mattered was the fact that she was soon to be in.
After nearly an hour the shuttle slowed to a glide, tires whispering against polished stone. It didn't stop with a jolt, but a smooth deceleration that felt more like landing than braking. Elara felt the change before the vehicle halted fully—the pressure in the air lightened.
The inner ring didn't feel like another district. It felt like another world.
She kept her eyes low, posture stiff but neutral, one hand resting across her satchel, the other brushing the inside of her stolen coat. Her fingers grazed the edge of the badge—it was still warm. The fact that it had worked should've brought relief. It didn't. She was inside. But being inside only proved how little she understood about where to go next.
The doors hissed open.
Warm air rushed in—dry and scented, like someone had crushed citrus and metal together. Clean. Too clean. Not like a bath, but like a scrubbed wound.
She stepped out onto a wide promenade. The shuttle dock was small—no gates, no security post. Just polished benches and a floating info pillar with pulsing blue text. It reminded her more of the food queues from the outer sectors than a checkpoint.
No one stopped her. No one looked twice.
Elara stood still longer than she should've. Just listening. Observing. Then, slowly, she walked.
The street stretched in both directions, paved in smooth blackstone that drank in light. The lamps above it weren't like the flickering orange torch posts she was used to—they shone soft amber, diffused through glass panels arranged like folded wings. She kept her steps measured. She didn't change direction more than once every few blocks. She'd never been here, but she wasn't going to look lost.
But she was lost.
She scanned the buildings carefully. The architecture—curved glass, metal beams that disappeared into skybridges, and stacked homes with gardens suspended in air between floors. One balcony had a tree growing sideways out of it, its trunk threaded through an arch like a sculpture.
Elara turned a corner into a narrow plaza,
That's when she heard it.
A voice rang out—sharp, manic.
"I told you! I told all of you—they're all dead!! They're zombies!"