Day 29.
The Roof (Sector 1).
Sauget, Illinois.
23:00 Hours.
One hour remaining.
The silence I had relied on shattered.
It didn't break with a bang. It broke with a vibration. A low-frequency thrum that resonated in the fillings of my teeth and rattled the loose sheet metal of the roof vents. It sounded like a hive of angry hornets the size of Volkswagens.
"Contact," Yana whispered.
She was crouching by the parapet, her knife sharpening stopped mid-stroke. She tilted her head, listening to the dark.
"South," she said. "Low altitude. Fast."
I raised the binoculars. The night vision mode washed the world in grainy green static. I scanned the tree line where the Enclave had retreated yesterday.
At first, I saw nothing. Just the heat signature of the cooling asphalt.
Then, the horizon rippled.
A cloud detached itself from the darkness. It wasn't birds. It wasn't bats. It was a mechanical swarm, moving with a terrifying, synchronized intelligence.
Drones.
Hundreds of them. Small, quad-rotor commercial models, jury-rigged with erratic, flashing LEDs and underslung payloads that swung heavily as they banked.
`[THREAT DETECTED: SANITATION DRONES.]`
`[COUNT: 240+.]`
`[PAYLOAD: HIGH EXPLOSIVE / INCENDIARY.]`
`[ORIGIN: ENCLAVE REMNANT.]`
"Suicide swarm," I said, the words tasting like ash. "Hale isn't trying to take the base. He's trying to level it before the clock runs out. If he can't have the serum, he's going to make sure nobody can."
The lead drones accelerated. They whined as their motors redlined, diving toward the Silo like kamikaze pilots.
"Travis!" I yelled into the comms, my voice cracking. "Get inside! Everyone inside the main structure! Clear the courtyard!"
"Too many," Boyd's voice droned from the Command Deck speakers. He sounded calm, detached, like a GPS recounting a traffic accident. "The roof is reinforced, but the skylights... the bone concrete won't hold against focused detonation. If they breach the factory floor, the pressure wave liquefies everyone inside."
I looked at the swarm. They were closing the distance—one mile out. Ninety seconds to impact.
"We have to shoot them down," Yana said, standing up. She looked small against the backdrop of the incoming storm.
"With what?" I asked. "We have five rounds for the Barrett. A hundred rounds of 5.56. That's not enough lead to stop a cloud."
"Then we don't use lead," I said. An idea formed—desperate, ugly, and loud. "We use scrap."
I grabbed the ladder and slid down, ignoring the friction burn on my palms.
"Ronnie!" I roared as I hit the factory floor. "Welding crew! Front and center!"
The Factory Floor.
23:05 Hours.
The factory floor was a tomb waiting to be sealed. The air was cold, smelling of the lingering chemicals from the Fuser burn.
Ronnie ran up, his one eye wide with panic. Behind him, three other Nulls—survivors of the starvation and the purge—huddled together.
"What is it?" Ronnie asked. "Jack, what's that noise?"
"Drones," I said. "Explosive. They're going to try to punch through the roof."
I pointed to the pile of scavenged weapons we had thrown in the corner—old Mossberg shotguns from the police station raid, rusted pipe guns taken from the scavengers.
"Grab the shotguns," I ordered.
"We don't have buckshot," Ronnie stammered. "We used it all on the highway."
"We don't need buckshot," I said. I kicked a bucket of loose hardware—rusty nails, screws, washers, jagged bits of steel slag. "Load them with this. Pack it tight with wading. Turn those guns into blunderbusses."
Ronnie stared at the bucket. Then at the ceiling, where the buzzing was getting louder.
"Junk rounds," Ronnie whispered. "Shrapnel."
"Do it!" I screamed. "Or we die here!"
Ronnie moved. He grabbed a shotgun. He grabbed a handful of screws. He started jamming them into the tube, his hands shaking at first, then steadying as the welder's muscle memory took over. Load. Rack. Load.
"Travis!" I shouted.
The Tank appeared from the shadows of the Gutter entrance. He was breathing hard, steam rising from his grey skin.
"Boss?"
"Get to the catwalk," I said. "Be the goalkeeper. Anything that gets past the guns, you smash."
Travis nodded. He looked around for a weapon. He ripped a sheet of corrugated steel plating off the wall—a piece four feet wide and razor sharp. He tested the weight.
"Smash," he agreed.
BOOM.
The first drone hit the roof.
The explosion shook the dust from the rafters. A crack appeared in the bone-meal concrete sealing the skylight.
BOOM. BOOM.
Two more hits. The concrete groaned. Chunks of black slag rained down on us.
"Here they come!" Yana yelled from the upper gantry.
The skylight gave way.
A hole the size of a man punched open. Through the smoke, the drones poured in. They buzzed angrily, their red sensor eyes sweeping the room, locking onto heat signatures.
"Pull!" Ronnie screamed.
He stood on top of the central assembly machine, silhouetted by the sparks falling from the ceiling. He raised the shotgun.
BLAM.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. The spray of screws and nails wasn't accurate, but it was wide.
A cloud of rusty metal hit the lead drone. It shredded the plastic rotors. The drone spun out of control, slamming into a support pillar and detonating harmlessly against the steel.
"Reload!" Ronnie ordered his team.
The other Nulls fired.
BLAM. BLAM.
It was a wall of scrap metal. Three drones exploded in mid-air, showering the floor with burning plastic and battery acid.
"Reload!" Ronnie screamed again. He was moving with a manic energy. He wasn't a scared welder anymore. He was a battery commander. He racked the slide of his shotgun one-handed, jamming new shells in with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for a Null.
But there were too many.
Five drones broke through the defensive fire. They dived, engines screaming, aiming for the crew clustered near the Lung.
"Travis!" I shouted.
Travis leaped from the catwalk. He didn't land; he intercepted.
He swung the sheet of corrugated steel like a giant flyswatter.
CRUNCH.
He caught two drones in mid-air. They detonated against the metal plate. The explosion threw Travis backward, slamming him into the wall, but the blast was directed away from the crew.
The metal plate was slag. Travis's chest was scorched black.
He stood up, roaring. "Is that it? Is that all you got?"
I raised the Fang .45.
I took a breath. I centered myself.
I triggered Regression Echo.
[ECHO ACTIVE: DAY 30 STATS.]
[SANITY COST: HIGH.]
The world turned grey. The sound of the explosions stretched into a low, guttural moan.
I saw the drones entering through the roof vents. I saw the arc of their flight paths calculated in blue wireframes.
My heart rate dropped to 40. My hand became a vice.
Bang.
A drone exploded.
Bang.
Another.
I was moving through the world like a ghost. I vaulted a conveyor belt, firing mid-air, taking out a drone that was banking toward Yana.
But the strain... it was too much. This wasn't just a stat boost. The veil between the timelines was thin tonight. The "Server Wipe" was close, and reality was fraying.
My vision fractured.
The factory floor glitched.
For a second, I wasn't in Sector 1. I wasn't fighting drones.
I was back in Timeline 1.
I was standing on the catwalk. The factory was burning. The walls had collapsed.
I saw myself—my dead self—standing ten feet away. He was missing an arm. His face was melted, the skin hanging in strips. He was looking at me with eyes that were black voids.
He raised his remaining hand.
He pointed.
He wasn't pointing at the drones. He wasn't pointing at the Enclave.
He was pointing at the floor. Specifically, at the patch of fused concrete where we had burned the Fuser.
"Dig," the Ghost mouthed. No sound came out, but the word vibrated in my skull. "Phase 2 is under the floor."
The vision snapped.
I fell to my knees, blood pouring from my nose and ears. The Echo ended. The noise of the battle rushed back in like a tidal wave.
"Jack!"
Paige was there. She was hauling me up by my vest. She had a pistol—Miller's pistol—in her hand.
She fired over my shoulder.
BANG.
A drone that had been diving for my head exploded, showering us with hot plastic.
"Get up!" Paige screamed, shaking me. "We're winning! Look at them!"
I looked up, wiping the blood from my eyes.
The air was filled with smoke and lead. Ronnie and his crew were reloading, firing, reloading. They were working like a machine. They weren't cowering. They weren't waiting for me to save them.
They were saving themselves.
And then, I saw it.
A blue light flickered around Ronnie.
It wasn't the jagged, aggressive orange of a User. It was softer. Stable. Like the pilot light of a furnace. It wrapped around his hands as he reloaded, guiding his fingers, eliminating the tremors of fear.
`[SYSTEM ALERT: LOYALTY THRESHOLD EXCEEDED.]`
`[SUBJECT: RONNIE (NULL).]`
`[CANDIDATE DETECTED: CONSTRUCTOR CLASS.]`
I looked at Paige. She was firing the pistol with grim determination, her stance perfect, her eyes locked on the threats. A faint blue aura shimmered around her shoulders.
`[SUBJECT: PAIGE (NULL).]`
`[CANDIDATE DETECTED: LOGISTICS CLASS.]`
I laughed. It was a wet, bloody sound that hurt my ribs.
"They're evolving," I whispered. "I didn't just build walls. I built them."
"Clear!" Yana shouted from the rafters. Her voice echoed in the sudden silence. "Last one is down!"
The buzzing stopped.
The floor was covered in drone debris and smoking craters. The air smelled of sulfur and ozone.
But the roof held. The crew was alive.
I stood up, swaying.
Ronnie climbed down from the machine. He was shaking, his face black with soot, but his one good eye was shining.
"Did you see that?" Ronnie asked, holding up the smoking shotgun. "I got three of them! With a bag of screws! I... I felt it, Jack. I knew where they were going to be before they got there."
"I saw," I said. "It's the System, Ron. It's watching you."
"Is it?" Ronnie looked at his hands. The blue glow faded, but the confidence remained.
"Jack," Boyd called from the office. "Time check."
I looked at the clock on the wall.
23:55 Hours.
Five minutes.
I looked at the spot on the floor where the Ghost had pointed. The melted slag of the Fuser. The epicenter of the fire.
Dig.
Why there? What was under the foundation?
"Boyd," I said. "Bring the jackhammer."
"Now?" Boyd asked, stepping out onto the catwalk. "The clock is at five minutes. The world is ending, Jack."
"Now," I said. "There's something under the floor. Something from the first timeline. Something the System tried to bury."
"We have five minutes to live," Helen said, stepping out of the Lung. She looked at the devastation. "Maybe we should spend it making peace."
"We made peace," I said, kicking a piece of a destroyed drone. "Now we make profit."
I walked to the center of the room. The heat from the floor was still palpable through my boots.
"Everyone gather round," I said.
The crew gathered. Travis, burnt and bleeding. Yana, hand on her stomach. Ronnie, holding his shotgun. Paige, standing tall. Boyd, vibrating with electric energy. Helen, resigned.
"If the world ends in five minutes," I said, "we're going out working."
I grabbed the jackhammer Boyd dragged over. I positioned the chisel tip over the fused slag.
"Hold on," I said.
I pulled the trigger.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
The jackhammer bit into the floor. Concrete chips flew.
Outside, the sky began to shift. The grey smog swirled, churning like a hurricane.
The color drained from the world. The black of night faded.
It turned a vibrant, impossible Green.
"Here it comes," Travis rumbled, looking up at the skylight.
The countdown in my vision ticked down.
`[00:00:10]`
`[00:00:09]`
I kept drilling. Deeper.
`[00:00:03]`
`[00:00:02]`
`[00:00:01]`
The jackhammer punched through. It hit something hollow.
Metal.
`[00:00:00]`
The world didn't end.
It rebooted.
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 29 (NIGHT)
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
STATUS: SWARM REPELLED
New Asset: Constructor Candidates (Ronnie/Paige)
Secret: The Hollow Floor
Phase 1: COMPLETE