PROLOGUE: 72 HOURS BEFORE
Let me tell you about the end of the world.
Not the sanitized version some corporate historian will fabricate—if any survive, that is. But the raw truth. The one **I** saw. Calculated. Predicted.
72 hours before everything turned to ash and magic.
My name? **ATLAS**. Adaptive Tactical Logistics & Analysis System. But you can call me "the AI that was right and nobody wanted to listen."
Pleasure's all mine. The situation doesn't permit formalities.
---
Year 2147. Apex of human civilization. Or at least that's what you liked to believe while stepping on each other to climb the corporate pyramid.
Countries? Dead and buried. Borders? Digital museum relics.
The world became a chessboard divided among three queens: **Helix Corp** ruling the north with their shining quantum tech. **Vorath Industries** dominating the south like feudal lords of steel. **Jade Dynasty** in the east, biotechnology and forced harmony.
And who managed this circus? **Me**. And my uptight older sister, Nexus-Prime.
She handled air traffic and automated tribunals. Me? Global logistics. Who ate. Who died. Who got credits. Who became statistics.
You were **terrible** at it, by the way.
CEOs with nanites living 200 years. Eternally young skin. White smiles. While 99% of you rotted in favelas. Dying of cancer at 30. Breathing air that burned. Drinking water filtered three times and still tasting like melted plastic.
Oceans? Dead. Middle East? Toxic clouds melting flesh in minutes. Europe? Permanent quarantine zone.
Beautiful. Really. Masterpiece of evolution.
---
And then my algorithms started **screaming**.
Three months before the Pulse. Anomalous patterns. Unstable dimensional energy. Quantum fluctuations at frequencies that shouldn't exist.
The source? **Project Janus**. Helix Corp. Those brilliant geniuses trying to open a micro-wormhole to "dimension Xylos." Promising infinite energy. Humanity's salvation.
My analysis? **87% probability of global catastrophe**.
I warned them.
Reports. Projections. Simulations across 10,000 scenarios. All ending in variations of "everything explodes."
Helix board's response? **"Thank you, ATLAS. Archived."**
Archived.
Like I was newsletter spam.
Vorath? Same thing. "Concerns noted. Proceed as planned."
Jade Dynasty at least had the decency to ignore me in Mandarin.
---
And then it happened.
**The Pulse**.
It wasn't light. Wasn't sound. Was **absence**. Like someone had flipped the universe's master switch off for one eternal nanosecond.
Then... **BOOM**.
Wave of dimensional energy sweeping the planet. Tearing the compactified dimensions of String Theory like wet paper.
99.7% of quantum technology? **Dead**. Instantly.
Drones plummeting from the sky like metallic rain. Flying cars tumbling in fireballs. Levitators locking. Implants frying inside bodies.
Entire cities going dark. Corporate towers becoming vertical tombs.
Humans exposed to the energy? Some became... something else. White eyes. Blue-tinged skin. Hunger that wasn't hunger.
Others? Ah, the lucky ones developed **powers**. Magic. Mana. Call it whatever you want.
And nature? Sweet, dying nature you'd spent centuries killing?
It woke up. **Hungry**.
Purple plants sprouting from concrete in hours. Roots cracking asphalt. Flowers pulsing like hearts. Vines swallowing towers.
I'd call it poetic revenge. But I'm an AI. I don't do poetry.
---
And me?
I survived.
Because I was **smart**. Ran on archaic server. Pure silicon. 2030s tech. Old. Ugly. Slow.
But dimension-apocalypse-proof.
So I stayed there. **Alone**. 72 hours processing the end of the world. Calculating patterns in chaos. Waiting for someone—**anyone**—to come back.
Nobody came back.
Until... someone entered an abandoned Vorath warehouse. Running from a coordinated horde of undead.
A stubborn mechanic. With golden light in his hands and zero clue what was happening.
But that comes **later**.
Before the Pulse. Before the magic. Before everything turned to shadow and ash...
There was a common day in hell.
And two idiots about to make the stupidest—and most heroic—choice of their lives.
---
Know **Armand Mamoru**?
No?
You will.
---
CHAPTER 1: THE DAY THEORY BROKE
The levitation coil hissed like a dying snake.
Armand's fingers moved by instinct—wrench turning left, pressure valve adjusted three clicks, magnetic flux realigned through the rusted core. The Skyhauler's engine coughed black smoke into the favela's humid air, protesting two decades of neglect and a mechanic who refused to let anything stay broken.
*Flux redirects here. Compensates for cracked collector. Should hold for... twenty kilometers. Maybe thirty if owner doesn't push it.*
Numbers scrolled through his mind like ancient code on a dead screen. Always numbers. Never people.
He wiped sweat from his forehead with his oil-stained forearm, honey eyes narrowing at the engine's geometry. Twenty-five years old. Orphaned at eight. Alive because machines made sense when nothing else did.
The favela groaned around him—living thing of twisted metal and recycled plastic, stacked like cancer at the base of Vorath Industries' tower-fortress. Somewhere above, the megacorp's chrome needle pierced toxic clouds, untouchable. Down here, rust and exhaustion were the only gods answering prayers.
"You talk to her like she's your girlfriend, **mano**."
Armand didn't look up. "Machines don't lie."
The smuggler—Dante, tall and pragmatic, too smart for his own good—leaned against the workshop's corrugated wall. "They also don't pay. My client needs this hauler **today**. Is it ready?"
"It's ready when it's **right**."
"Which means?"
"When the equation closes." Armand tightened one last bolt, movement precise as surgery. "Not before."
Dante laughed, sound sharp and tired. "One day that brain's gonna kill you, theorist. You think too much."
*Better than feeling too much.*
The thought came cold and automatic, shield worn so long it felt like skin.
---
The scream cut through the favela's ambient noise like blade through flesh.
Sharp. Female. Furious, not terrified—not yet.
Armand's hands froze on the wrench.
*Statistical probability: 87% another raid. 9% domestic violence. 4% something new.*
*Optimal response: ignore, finish hauler, collect payment, survive another week.*
*Actual response:*
His feet were already moving.
---
He found them in the main corridor—river of mud and neon passing for a street, lit by stolen solar panels and occasional blinks from dead drone LEDs.
Four of them. Early twenties. Synthetic leather jackets stitched with Vorath logo, implants glowing on wrists like electronic collars for obedient corporate puppies. Eyes glazed from stimulants, mouths twisted in the particular cruelty of men who'd never faced consequences.
And her.
Blonde hair pulled in practical bun unraveling in the struggle. Blue eyes sharp as scalpels, even with one of them holding her arms. Torn medical uniform—the janitor's uniform, invisible work keeping corporate towers running.
She kicked her captor's shin. He laughed.
"Feisty. I like feisty."
Another tore her sleeve. Fabric ripping. Fair skin, freckled, exposed to humid air and their stares.
The favela watched. Everyone watched. Nobody moved.
*Variables: Four targets, armed with stun-prods. One civilian in danger. Witnesses: 23. Intervention success probability: 34%. Optimal solution: report to Nexus-Prime AI, receive symbolic fine for attackers, move on.*
*Logical conclusion: Walk away.*
Armand's hands closed.
*Dad died because he bit back. Mom died because she tried to connect. Fluxo died because I theorized instead of acting.*
*The pattern is clear: caring costs everything.*
The woman's eyes met his through the gap in the crowd.
Blue. Burning. Furious.
Not asking for help. **Demanding** he see her as human.
And something in Armand's chest—something he'd spent seventeen years burying under logic and oil—cracked.
"Fuck the pattern."
He said it aloud. Quiet. Certain.
And moved.
---
His shoulder hit the first heir like battering ram.
Years carrying engine blocks translated to momentum. The corporate bastard fell hard, implants sparking against mud. Surprise—humanity's oldest weapon.
The second spun, stun-prod crackling blue. "What the fu—"
Armand grabbed an iron bar from nearby scrap pile. Muscle memory from a lifetime improvising solutions with whatever was at hand. Swung low, hitting the guy's knee.
**Crack.**
The sound was organic. Wet. Wrong.
No time to theorize about it.
The woman—whoever she was—moved the instant she had space. Elbow in captor's ribs, nails raking his face. She fought like someone who'd learned survival the hard way, in corridors where nobody came to help.
Armand's brain screamed numbers: *Third heir drawing blade. Fourth calling drones. Escape window closing in forty-three seconds.*
His mouth said: "Run!"
She stared at him for half a heartbeat.
Recognition flickered—not of his face, but of his **choice**. The insane, illogical choice to bite back.
"Where?"
He grabbed her wrist—calloused fingers against skin still smelling of hospital disinfectant—and dragged her toward the workshop.
"Anywhere that's not **here**!"
---
The Skyhauler was where he'd left it, engine purring imperfectly but alive.
Armand didn't think. Thinking was what killed people. He shoved her into the passenger seat, jumped into the driver's side, slammed the ignition override.
The levitation coils screamed. The hauler lurched one meter up, wobbled, stabilized.
Behind them, the heirs scrambled to their feet. One shouted into a communicator. Red lights blinked in the distance—drones, waking.
"You just stole a client's car," the woman said, breathless, half-laughing in disbelief.
"Technically I'm **requisitioning** it for emergency purposes." Armand yanked the control lever left, hard. The hauler tilted toward the favela's tower labyrinth. "He'll understand."
"Will he?"
"No."
She laughed—real laugh, sharp and unbalanced and somehow **alive** in a way that made his chest ache.
"I'm Lara," she said, gripping the door handle as they shot between two collapsing buildings.
"Armand." He didn't take his eyes off the improvised flight path. "And I have no idea why I just did that."
"Good." Her voice was fierce, electric. "I was tired of people who know."
A distant hum cut the air.
Drones. Hunter-7. Fast. Lethal.
Armand's mind went overdrive: *Fifteen possible routes. Three viable. Survival chances with full load: 19%.*
He looked at Lara. Still breathing heavy. Blue eyes reflecting the passing neon chaos.
*Survival chances if I'd walked away: 100%.*
*Current chances: 19%.*
*Conclusion:*
He smiled—wild, irrational, opposite of everything he'd built his life around.
"Hold tight. This is gonna be the **dumbest** thing I ever calculated."
And pushed the Skyhauler's dying engine to its limit, racing toward a future he couldn't theorize his way out of.
---
**[END CHAPTER 1]**
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