Day 30.
The Factory Floor (Sub-Level Access).
Sauget, Illinois.
00:30 Hours.
The jackhammer had punched a hole in reality.
I stood over the breach, the heat of the freshly broken concrete radiating against my shins. The green light from the sky poured into the crater, illuminating something that had no business being buried under a rust-belt factory in Illinois.
It was a hatch.
But it wasn't the rusted steel of the Coldwell plant. It wasn't the iron of the sewers. It was a seamless, matte-black alloy that seemed to drink the light. It pulsed with a faint, rhythmic heartbeat of emerald circuitry embedded deep within the metal.
"Travis," I said. "Peel it back."
Travis stepped forward. He looked at the hole, then at his new arm—the fused, club-like limb of bone and callus that the System had designated as an upgrade. He knelt, jamming his massive, mismatched fingers into the crack I had drilled.
He grunted. The muscles in his back coiled like pythons under his grey skin.
SCREEECH.
The concrete slab lifted. It didn't crack; it tore. Travis hauled a six-foot section of the foundation upright and shoved it aside. It crashed onto the factory floor with a sound like a bomb going off, kicking up a cloud of bone dust and ash.
We looked down.
The hatch was massive. A circular airlock wheel, pristine and dust-free, stared back at us. Etched into the center, glowing with that same impossible green light, was a single word.
KERNEL.
A blast of air hissed up from the seal. It didn't smell like rot. It didn't smell like the slurry tanks. It smelled of ozone, super-cooled nitrogen, and static electricity.
It smelled like the future.
"What is that?" Paige whispered. She was standing behind me, clutching her mop handle like a spear. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the green glow. "Jack, what is under us?"
"The operating system," I said.
I looked at Boyd. The kid was vibrating. His Technomancer implants—the copper wires he had threaded into his own neck, the silver sheen of his skin—were resonating with whatever was down there. He tilted his head, listening to a frequency none of us could hear.
"It's the Kernel," Boyd whispered, his voice devoid of inflection, purely synthesized. "The core code. Sector 1 isn't just a factory. It's the CPU."
"Open it," I ordered Travis.
Travis gripped the wheel. It should have been seized by thirty years of rust. Instead, it spun effortlessly on magnetic bearings, silent and smooth.
HISS-THUNK.
The locking mechanism disengaged. The heavy door swung upward on hydraulic pistons, revealing a shaft illuminated by strips of pulsing green LEDs.
"I'll go first," I said, checking the load on the Fang .45. "Boyd, you're second. Travis, rear guard. Yana, watch the perimeter. If the Enclave comes back, they'll see the lights. Be ready."
"I'm coming too," Ronnie said. He stepped forward, his shotgun racked. He touched the patch over his missing eye. The skin around it was pink and new, thanks to the System Mercy, but the socket was still empty. "I'm not staying up here in the dark."
I looked at him. The System had flagged him as a Constructor candidate during the drone swarm. He had earned his ticket.
"Fine," I said. "Watch your step."
I climbed down.
The shaft was deep. Thirty feet of vertical descent, bypassing the ruined sewers and the foundation pilings. The walls of the shaft were lined with cooling pipes that hummed with a low, powerful vibration.
I hit the floor. It was a grate, suspended over a black void that dropped away into nothingness. I could hear the hum of massive fans spinning somewhere far below, cycling air for a machine the size of a city.
I looked up. Boyd, Ronnie, Paige, and Travis were scrambling down behind me.
We were standing in a circular room. The walls were curved, lined with banks of server towers, coolant pipes, and data terminals that flickered with streams of binary code. It looked like the bridge of a spaceship buried in the mud.
In the center of the room, a single pedestal rose from the floor.
THE KERNEL TERMINAL.
`[LOCAL NODE DETECTED.]`
`[SECTOR 1: HARDLINE CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.]`
`[ARCHITECT RECOGNIZED: JACK MONROE.]`
"It's a server farm," Boyd whispered, walking toward the walls. He reached out and touched a bank of drives. "Jack... this whole facility... the Coldwell plant... it was built on top of this. The System didn't just appear on Day 1. It was always here. Buried. Waiting."
"Focus," I said. "We have twenty-four hours before the walls drop."
I walked to the central terminal. There was no keyboard. No mouse. Just a handprint scanner on a sheet of black glass.
I placed my hand on the glass.
FLASH.
The room exploded with light.
A holographic projection erupted from the pedestal, expanding until it filled the entire chamber. It passed through us, a web of blue and green light constructing a 3D model of the world.
It wasn't just the Silo anymore. It wasn't just Sauget.
It was the Region.
The boundaries of East St. Louis shrank until they were just a speck. I saw the Mississippi River winding like a black snake through the glowing terrain. I saw the ruins of St. Louis. I saw the highways stretching out into the dark like glowing arteries.
5-STATE REGION UNLOCKED.
Illinois
Missouri
Iowa
Indiana
Kentucky
`[PHASE 2 PREPARATION: 23 HOURS REMAINING.]`
`[OBJECTIVE: EXPANSION.]`
"Look at the dots," Paige said, pointing at the map. Her hand passed through a holographic mountain range.
The map was covered in red dots. Hundreds of them. Glowing like embers in ash.
"Territories," I said. "Survivors."
`[TOTAL TERRITORIES REMAINING: 172.]`
`[GENESIS SELECTION TARGET: 10.]`
The Voice—the one that had spoken at midnight—boomed in the small room, vibrating against the metal walls.
"ATTENTION, SURVIVORS. PHASE 1 WAS THE FILTER. PHASE 2 IS THE FORGE."
A list of new rules scrolled across the hologram, massive letters hovering in the air.
RULE 1: TERRITORY MANAGEMENT.
You may now annex rival nodes. Connected nodes provide resource bonuses (Water, Electricity, Ammo Fabrication, Cloning).
RULE 2: THE LEVIATHANS.
Tier 4 Threats will spawn every 7 days. Failure to eliminate a Leviathan results in Sector Purge.
RULE 3: USURPATION.
I froze. I read the text twice to make sure I wasn't hallucinating from the Regression hangover. Even with my sanity restored, the words sent a chill down my spine.
RULE 3: USURPATION PROTOCOL.
Class Locks are disabled.
Any Null who delivers a killing blow to a User instantly inherits that User's Class, Level, and Stats.
Warning: Friendly Fire is enabled.
The silence in the Kernel was absolute. The hum of the servers seemed to drop away.
I slowly turned around.
I looked at Travis. He was a User. A Tank. Rank 200+. A mountain of power.
I looked at Boyd. A Technomancer. Essential.
And I looked at Ronnie and Paige.
Nulls.
Starving, traumatized, desperate Nulls who had just been told that the only thing standing between them and godhood was a single bullet.
"Did you hear that?" Ronnie asked. His voice echoed in the small room. He looked at his hands. "Usurpation?"
"I heard it," I said. My hand drifted to the Fang .45. The Cruelty trait spiked, analyzing the threat vectors.
The System had just turned every Null in the world into a potential assassin. They didn't need to earn a serum anymore. They didn't need to find a loot box. They just needed to slip a knife between a User's ribs while they slept. Or push them off a catwalk.
"It's trying to make us kill each other," Boyd said. His blue eyes flickered. "It's introducing internal competition to maximize combat data."
"It's trying to start a civil war," I said.
I watched Ronnie. He was looking at Travis. He was looking at the massive, club-like arm that could crush a skull. He was looking at the power that had saved his life, but also the power that separated them.
"Kill a User, become a User," Ronnie whispered.
"You want to try?" Travis rumbled. He stepped forward, putting himself between Ronnie and me. His orange veins flared. "You want to take my spot, Ron?"
Ronnie flinched. He backed up, hands raised. "No! Jesus, Travis, I'm a welder. I don't want to be a tank. I don't want... that." He pointed at Travis's grey skin.
"But someone will," I said. "Maybe not you. But someone in the barracks. Someone who is hungry. Someone who blames me for Paul's death. Someone who thinks they can do a better job."
I walked over to the terminal.
"System," I commanded. "Display Sector 1 Assets."
The hologram shifted. It showed a list of our personnel.
USERS:
Jack Monroe (Regressor)
Travis (Tank)
Yana (Shadow)
Boyd (Technomancer)
NULLS:
Ronnie (Constructor Candidate)
Paige (Logistics Candidate)
Helen (Medic)
Laborer 4...
Laborer 5...
"Candidates?" Paige asked, stepping closer to the light. She pointed at her name. "What does that mean?"
"It means you don't need to kill us," I said. "You're already evolving."
I turned to them. This was the moment. The pivot point. I could rule by fear—lock them up, execute anyone who looked at me wrong—or I could rule by value.
"This is the test," I said. "Phase 2 isn't just about fighting the dead. It's about building an army. The System wants chaos. It wants Usurpation. It wants me to execute you right now to secure my position."
I looked at Ronnie.
"You defended the factory," I said. "You organized the fire team. You used junk to kill drones. The System saw that. It's flagging you for a promotion. You don't need to steal power, Ron. You earned it."
I tapped his name on the screen.
`[SYSTEM CONFIRMATION: CONSTRUCTOR CLASS AVAILABLE.]`
`[UNLOCK CONDITION: PHASE 2 START (23 HOURS).]`
`[EFFECT: BUILD SPEED +50%. STRUCTURAL REINFORCEMENT +20%.]`
Ronnie stared at the text. Tears welled in his good eye. "I... I get a class? I'm not a Null?"
"Not if you survive tomorrow," I said.
I looked at Paige.
`[SYSTEM CONFIRMATION: LOGISTICS CLASS AVAILABLE.]`
`[UNLOCK CONDITION: PHASE 2 START.]`
`[EFFECT: RESOURCE MANAGEMENT +30%. INVENTORY EXPANSION.]`
"You kept the inventory," I said to her. "You managed the water when we were dying of thirst. You're the quartermaster now."
Paige touched the hologram. Her hand trembled. "I'm useful."
"You're essential," I corrected.
I looked at the map again.
To the south, fifteen miles out, a massive red icon was pulsing. It was bigger than the others. It wasn't a dot. It was a skull.
[THREAT DETECTED: TIER 4 HIVE-MIND.]
[SPAWN TIMER: 48 HOURS.]
"We have twenty-three hours to prep," I said. "We have to lock down the Silo. We have to secure the Nulls before they hear the broadcast and decide to stab us in the back."
"How?" Travis asked. "We can't watch everyone."
"We don't watch them," I said. "We recruit them."
I tapped the terminal.
BROADCAST MODE.
"I'm going to make an announcement," I said. "To everyone. Our crew. The Enclave. The Zealots. Everyone in the region."
"What are you going to say?" Boyd asked.
"I'm going to tell them the truth," I said. "That the game is rigged. That the System wants us to eat each other. And that I have a better offer."
I looked at the timer.
`[PHASE 2 PREP: 22:58:00.]`
"Day 30 is a shopping day," I said. "Let's go get some groceries. And then... we build an empire."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 30
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
STATUS: PHASE 2 PREP
New Rules: Usurpation (Friendly Fire Risk)
Discovery: The Kernel Map (5 States)
New Assets: Constructor Class (Pending), Logistics Class (Pending)