The surface wasn't supposed to look like this.
Kai stood at the edge of the broken elevator shaft, peering through the bent steel doors that had been forced open manually. A gust of wind blew upward from the darkness below, carrying the stench of mildew, rust, and rot.
He'd made it out of the underground facility. Somehow.
His muscles ached. Every breath tasted like rust. But what struck him most wasn't pain or exhaustion—it was the sheer, unrelenting emptiness of the world above.
He stepped out into the open.
The city stretched before him like a graveyard of forgotten giants. Skyscrapers leaned against each other like drunk sentinels, their windows shattered, their bones of glass and steel exposed. Vines climbed the ruins like nature had decided to reclaim her lost territory in a hurry. The sky was not blue—it was a dull reddish hue, tinged with ash and cloaked by an eternal, bruised overcast.
There were no birds. No cars. No voices. Only the wind.
And the afterglow.That eerie crimson glow on the horizon.Like a dying sun that refused to set.
He walked for hours, guided only by instinct and half-glimpsed memories that flickered like broken film. Street signs were rusted over. Corpses—some human, some twisted beyond recognition—lay slumped in doorways and alley shadows. One still clutched a teddy bear soaked in dried blood.
Kai looked away.
He didn't know what had happened. But it had been complete.Efficient.And merciless.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Lifeform detected. Distance: 64 meters. Unknown origin.]
He froze.
The Heads-Up Display from his neural implant flickered faintly, a leftover benefit of whatever augmentation the military had given him before putting him on ice. It didn't show faces or names—just proximity, direction, and threat level.
And this one was pulsing red.
Kai moved.
He slipped between abandoned cars and ducked into what used to be a convenience store. The glass was broken, shelves empty. A single can rolled under his boot with a hollow clang.
Then—movement.
Outside. Fast.
Something skittered across the rooftops. He couldn't see it, but he could hear the clattering steps, too quick and too chaotic to be human.
Kai's hand closed around the grip of his sidearm. One bullet chambered. Seven left in the magazine.
He waited.
The silence stretched.
And then a voice—soft, almost a whisper—cut through the tension.
"Don't shoot."
He turned.
A girl—maybe twenty—stood behind the cashier's counter, half-hidden by a dusty shelf of expired chips. Her clothes were ragged, her face smudged with dirt, but her eyes were sharp. Alive.
Kai didn't lower his weapon.
"Are you infected?" he asked flatly.
She shook her head slowly, her hands raised just enough to signal she meant no harm. "Are you?"
"Would I be talking if I was?"
She shrugged. "Some of them talk now."
That caught him off guard.
"The infected? They… talk?"
She nodded. "Whispers. Repeating words they heard before they changed. Mimicking old conversations. It's not speech. It's like… echoes."
Kai lowered the pistol—just a little.
"What's your name?"
"Elira," she said. "You?"
"Kai."
"How long have you been topside?"
He hesitated. "A few hours."
Her expression faltered. "Wait. Are you—? Were you in stasis?"
Kai said nothing. He didn't need to confirm it. She saw it in his face.
"I thought they all died," she whispered.
"Apparently not."
A loud crash on the roof made both of them duck instinctively.
The sound of something heavy moving—crawling.
Not running. Not jumping. Crawling. Slowly. Deliberately.
Elira's eyes widened. "It followed you."
"No," Kai said. "It followed you."
They didn't have time to argue.
The ceiling above them groaned. Then a skeletal hand—elongated fingers with talons instead of nails—punched through the tiles. Another followed.
Elira grabbed his arm. "Basement. Now."
They ran.
Through a back door. Down cracked concrete steps. Into a dark cellar that smelled of mold and old oil. She slammed the door shut behind them and slid a rusted bolt across.
For a moment, everything was silent again—except their breathing.
Then the creature let out a shriek from above.
It wasn't human.It wasn't even pretending to be.
In the safety of the basement, lit only by the dying beam of a flickering flashlight, Elira finally sat.
Kai watched her quietly.
She was thin. Starved, maybe. But not weak. There was steel in her spine, even if she trembled slightly now that the adrenaline had faded.
"You been surviving alone?" he asked.
She nodded. "Since the eighth year."
Kai frowned. "The eighth…?"
"Elapse Calendar. Started when the first cities fell. I was thirteen."
He did the math. That meant fifteen years since the collapse. His stasis had kept him asleep through all of it.
"All this time…" he murmured. "What happened to the world?"
She met his eyes. "We did."
He waited for her to elaborate.
Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out a thin, bent datapad. Most of its screen was cracked, but a few parts still worked. She tapped through images—photos, articles, surveillance footage. He saw people convulsing in the streets. Fire consuming hospitals. Scientists screaming at government briefings. A military base in flames.
Then… the blackouts. The silencing.
And finally… Project Revenant.
His breath caught in his throat. That name again.
"You know it?" she asked.
"I was it."
She blinked, confused. "You're Revenant?"
"One of the prototypes. They froze us before it got bad. Said we'd be needed for the recovery."
"Recovery," she scoffed. "There's nothing left to recover."
Kai looked down at the weapon in his hands. "Then I'll rebuild it from what's left."
Elira tilted her head. "You're serious."
"I don't joke."
"No," she said softly. "I can tell."
The creature above didn't return that night.
But neither of them slept.
By dawn, the crimson glow had faded to a dull amber. The world outside remained broken. But in that quiet moment, in that ruinous cellar beneath the bones of the old world, two survivors shared their first fragile alliance.
And the war for what remained… had begun.