The land ahead wasn't just dead. It was hollow. Something had carved the soul out of it and left only the shell behind. Zayn stood on the high ridge overlooking what remained of Vireo City, a place his father had once touched. Time had buried the city in silence, and the wind no longer moved through it with the voice of nature. It moved with purpose, low and cold, brushing over collapsed skyscrapers like a whisper through grave markers.
F-13 stood at his side, her hood drawn low but her eyes wide open. She hadn't spoken in several minutes, and when she finally did, her voice was smaller than usual, as if whatever lived beneath them demanded silence.
"This place doesn't sleep," she said. "It remembers."
Zayn scanned the horizon. What remained of Vireo was little more than twisted metal and scorched stone, like a city that had died screaming. Only the tallest of its buildings still stood, and even they looked hollowed out, windowless, their cores stripped. The sky above flickered in strange pulses. Once every minute, the clouds shifted unnaturally. Geometry broke slightly. Colors became the wrong shades for seconds at a time. Null distortion. It wasn't just here. It was awake here.
"Was he really here?" Zayn asked.
F-13 didn't answer immediately. She took a slow step forward, boots crunching over the fractured rock at their feet. The Null pulsed faintly through her skin like moonlight caught under flesh.
"He was one of the first to test the fracture engine," she finally said. "Before CoreTech built the Ark. Before the stasis chambers. Before they knew what the Null really was."
She turned and looked at him. "Vireo City was the original site of the Fracture Pulse."
Zayn swallowed. The name didn't feel like something from a textbook. It felt like something the world itself tried to erase.
They descended the slope without further words. The valley that led into the city felt wrong. Light fell strangely here. The shadows leaned slightly forward, even when the sun sat overhead. The Null didn't announce itself with violence. It announced itself with memory. Echoes of events played out in fragments. A group of children ran across the road in front of them, their laughter hollow. When Zayn blinked, they were gone. F-13 didn't react. She had seen them too often in places like this.
They passed the outer ring of collapsed streets and stepped into the heart of the city. Massive stone statues, once symbols of innovation, now leaned at odd angles. One of them had its face erased. Not broken, cleanly removed. Zayn paused at the base of the structure and ran his fingers along the edge where the stone should have met eyes and a mouth.
"They scrubbed him out," he said.
F-13 looked at him from a short distance away.
"Not them," she said. "He did."
Zayn turned sharply.
"He removed himself?"
She nodded.
"He knew what he was building. And he knew one day you'd come back here. He didn't want you to see his face first."
Zayn looked down the broken boulevard ahead. It led into the lower districts, where the earth had buckled inward. Something had collapsed the foundations years ago, maybe decades. This city hadn't just been destroyed from above. It had collapsed from the inside.
"He left a trail?" Zayn asked.
F-13 raised her hand. The Null in her pulsed in a rhythm he didn't understand. Somewhere in the city below, the air responded.
"He left something better," she said. "A door. One that can only open now."
They walked.
For over an hour, they navigated the fallen city. Each step deeper brought stranger phenomena. A car that had no wheels floated upside down above a small crater. A building where the windows reflected stars, even though it was daylight. A stairwell that looped into itself three times before ending at a door they didn't open.
The Null didn't behave logically here. It leaked into the geometry, rewriting small aspects of matter. Zayn could feel it pressing against his skin, not with aggression, but with anticipation.
They came to a tunnel system near the base of what had once been a government archive building. A slanted structure sat over it, half-embedded in the ground. The front entrance had collapsed, but the side walls held. F-13 approached one of them and placed her palm flat against the stone.
It responded.
A circular ring of light unfurled around her hand, like a lock waking from hibernation.
Zayn stepped closer.
F-13 looked over her shoulder at him.
"Only someone with your signature can open it."
He hesitated. For the first time since entering the city, fear surfaced. Not of what lay ahead, but of what he would learn. He pressed his hand beside hers.
The wall split down the middle.
Dust spilled out into the air, and the smell that followed was clean. Not fresh, sterile. Untouched. No decay.
They entered the vault.
Inside, artificial lights hummed to life overhead. Soft blue tones lit the hallways, long and curved like the inside of a shell. The walls were layered with embedded screens that flickered on as they passed. No video played. Only symbols. Null glyphs. Code that wrapped and unwound like breathing language.
They reached the heart of the vault.
A large circular chamber opened before them. At its center, a chair faced a dark console. The body in the chair sat unnaturally still. Wires connected from the back of the skull to the ceiling above. Tubes ran down the arms, into the floor. The man had not decayed. His body had not shriveled. He looked frozen. Waiting.
Zayn stepped forward.
His knees felt heavier than they should. The Null inside him stirred again. Not violently. Like recognition. Like return.
The console lit up.
A voice spoke.
"Zayn."
F-13 took a step back.
The voice was not a recording. It was live. Faint. Weak. Old.
"If you're here, then the fractures have widened."
Zayn approached the console slowly.
"I didn't know how long it would take," the voice continued. "But I knew you would survive. You always had the core. Even before you were born."
Zayn stared at the body.
"Are you alive?" he asked.
The voice answered with a pause.
"I'm... aware. Not in the way you are. I am the memory now. The living recording. My body is long past its worth."
Zayn clenched his fists.
"You're my father."
"Yes."
"You left."
The pause returned.
"I had to."
Zayn's voice rose.
"You had a choice."
The lights dimmed briefly.
"I had a responsibility."
F-13 stepped forward.
"You had a son."
The console flickered.
"I had a weapon."
Zayn didn't speak.
The voice pressed on.
"Your mother... she offered herself. Not because I asked. Because she understood. She believed in what we could build. The Null engine was unstable, but the child inside her stabilized it."
Zayn stared at the floor.
"You used me."
"You were the only one who could survive the link. And you did. Even after I failed to contain the first pulse. Even after I left. You lived."
Zayn looked up. "Is that supposed to make me grateful?"
"No," the voice said. "It's supposed to make you aware."
The console darkened.
F-13 touched his shoulder.
"There's more below."
They walked past the body and entered the lower vault. Beneath the central chamber, a stairwell spiraled downward into a room without any machinery. Instead, mirrors lined the walls, each slightly curved inward. Zayn's reflection looked strange in them. Older in one. Younger in another. In some, he was wounded. In one, he was gone entirely.
"These are outcomes," F-13 said. "Reflections of what could be. He tried to predict your path."
Zayn stepped into the center.
The Null inside him surged.
The mirrors shattered.
The room screamed.
Not sound. Memory. Thousands of voices flooding into the air. A rush of names, dates, cries, images. A woman's voice calling his name. A child's laugh that wasn't his. A city burning in slow motion.
Zayn collapsed to one knee.
F-13 tried to reach him.
The Null expanded outward, brushing her back.
And then, silence.
Zayn rose slowly.
The mirrors were gone.
The light had changed.
He breathed once, then again.
"What did you see?" F-13 asked.
He turned.
"I saw what I have to break."
They walked out together.
Behind them, the vault faded.
And for the first time, the Null didn't feel like it was living inside Zayn.
It felt like it was listening.