Day 31.
Phase 2: Day 1.
The Roof (Sector 1).
Sauget, Illinois.
05:00 Hours.
The sun didn't rise. The darkness just dissolved into a sick, radioactive emerald haze that looked less like morning and more like the inside of a bruised lung.
I stood on the edge of the roof, the wind whipping my heavy canvas coat around my legs. I spat a glob of blood-tinged saliva over the parapet, watching it fall into the gloom. The green filter of Phase 2 stained everything. The mud of the courtyard looked like coagulated oil, thick and slick. The rusted steel of the factory skeleton looked like it was sweating disease, slick with condensation that tasted of copper.
Even the air was different. It sat heavy in the lungs, metallic and sour, charged with a static electricity that made the hair on my arms stand up. It tasted like licking a 9-volt battery covered in grime.
I lit a cigarette. It was one of Helen's—stale tobacco scavenged from a dead man's pocket weeks ago. I took a drag, letting the harsh smoke sear my lungs, grounding me in the physical sensation of burning.
"Day 31," I rasped. The words felt strange in my mouth.
In the first timeline, I was dead by now. My body was rotting in the rubble of a failed base, Rank 47, maggot food for the new world order. I was a footnote. A glitch that had been corrected.
But I was still here. And I was Rank 172.
I leaned over the edge, looking down into the belly of the beast I had built. The Silo was waking up, and it was ugly.
Below, the new mechanics of the world were already in motion.
Ronnie was screaming at a team of Nulls near the main gate.
"Heave, you useless shits!" Ronnie roared. He kicked a Null who stumbled under a load of scrap metal, his boot connecting with a dull thud. The Null didn't complain; he just scrambled up and lifted harder.
The blue aura of Ronnie's [Foreman's Voice] skill shimmered around him. It wasn't a holy halo; it looked like heat distortion rising from hot pavement. It warped the air, bending the light. Inside that radius, the Nulls moved with a jerky, unnatural speed. They lifted beams that should have broken their backs. They didn't breathe hard. They were machines made of meat, driven by the buffer.
Paige was by the loading dock. She wasn't using a tablet; she was using a grease pencil on the hood of the Enclave truck. She looked feral. Her hair, once a perfect blonde bob, was chopped jagged with a knife, matted with grease and sweat. Her eyes darted between the inventory crates like a miser counting gold coins.
Vanessa was dead. She had died in the elevator of a glass tower in my memories. This was Paige—the Quartermaster of the Apocalypse. She was the kind of woman who would cut your throat for a bottle of water and sleep soundly afterwards.
And Travis.
The Tank was doing one-armed pushups in the slurry. His massive, club-like arm—the one fused by the serum into a biological bludgeon—was strapped to his back with duct tape to let the bone settle. But his good arm... it was a piston.
He moved with a terrifying, fluid power. His skin was the color of a tombstone, grey and pitted. His veins pulsed with a slow, steady orange rhythm, like a furnace idling on low heat.
He wasn't a hero. He was a siege weapon waiting for a target.
They were monsters. All of them.
And I had made them.
"You look like shit," Yana said.
She stepped out of the shadows of the ventilation stack. She moved slower today. The System Mercy had healed her wounds, scrubbed the shrapnel scars from her thigh, but it hadn't touched the anomaly in her womb. The pregnancy was advancing with terrifying speed. I could see the slight curve of her stomach beneath her leather courier jacket.
"I feel like shit," I said, not turning around. "This air tastes like cancer."
"It's the spores," Yana said, joining me at the railing. She looked out at the green horizon. "The Leviathan is shedding. We're breathing it in."
"Good," I said. "Builds immunity."
I flicked the cigarette butt at the Nulls below. It spiraled down, a tiny orange spark lost in the green fog.
"We can't hide anymore," I said. "Phase 1 was about defense. About building a wall high enough to keep the water out. Phase 2..."
I looked at the horizon.
To the West, the smoke columns from St. Louis were black and greasy, rising in perfect vertical lines. That was the Zealots burning the bodies of the initiates who didn't survive the mutation process.
To the East, the rigid, militaristic searchlights of the Enclave swept the sky, hunting for targets. They were regrouping. They were rearming.
"Phase 2 is about flooding the valley," I said.
"We need meat," I added.
"Meat?" Yana asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Bodies," I said. "Labor. Soldiers. Cannon fodder. We have twenty-eight people, Yana. We're a snack for that Leviathan. We need to be a choking hazard."
"So we attack?"
"No," I said. "We recruit. But we don't ask nicely."
I turned away from the edge, the wind catching the tails of my coat.
"Get Boyd. Get the crew. Meet me in the Kernel. We're going live."
The Kernel.
06:00 Hours.
The circular server room hummed with a low, menacing vibration. The sound was deeper now, as if the earth itself was groaning. The holographic map of the 5-State Region filled the center of the chamber, casting a corpse-light blue glow over the twenty-eight survivors of Sector 1.
They stood in silence. They didn't look hopeful. They looked dangerous. They looked like a pack of wolves that had just realized they were the apex predators in the room.
I stood at the terminal. Boyd was plugged in, his eyes rolled back in his head, the whites showing veins of silver. His hands twitched as he raped the radio frequencies, bypassing encryptions with his mind.
"Signal boosted," Boyd droned. His voice was pure machine now, stripped of humanity, layered with digital reverb. "I've hijacked the Emergency Broadcast System towers in three counties. Frequency hopping. Unblockable. Range: 200 miles. Audio and Video."
"Put me on," I said.
A camera—a drone eye hovering in the center of the room—blinked red.
BROADCASTING.
I looked into the lens. I didn't smile. I didn't try to look friendly or reassuring. I let the Cruelty trait settle over my face like a concrete mask. I let them see the cold, dead silver of my eyes.
"This is Jack Monroe," I said. "Architect of Sector 1."
I paused. I let the silence hang, heavy and threatening, transmitting the weight of thirty days of survival.
"If you are hearing this, you survived Phase 1. Congratulations. You didn't die. You didn't starve. You managed to keep your blood inside your skin when the rest of the world dissolved."
I walked around the holographic table, letting the camera track me. I gestured to the map—the glowing, complex web of territory and death.
"But the tutorial is over," I said. "The walls are down. And the real butchery has started."
I pointed to the West, stabbing my finger into the violet light of the city.
"To the West, you have the Reborn. They offer you evolution. They tell you that if you inject the virus, you will become gods. They are lying. You will become cattle. You will become biomass for their Prophet to consume. You will lose your mind before you lose your life."
I pointed to the East.
"To the East, you have the Enclave. They offer you order. They tell you that if you submit, if you wear the collar, you will be safe. They are lying. You will be batteries. You will be spent fuel for their war machine. You will die in a trench fighting their wars."
I leaned into the camera until my face filled the frame, distorting slightly at the edges.
"You have a choice," I said. "You can die for a false god. You can die for a master who hates you. Or you can work for me."
I signaled Travis.
The Tank stepped into the frame. He didn't flex. He just stood there, a mountain of grey muscle and violence. He looked at the camera like it was something he wanted to break. The orange glow of his eyes burned through the feed.
"We are Sector 1," I said. "We are the Foundry. We don't worship the System. We exploit it."
I kicked a crate open. Cans of beef stew spilled out, clattering on the metal floor.
"We have food."
I racked the slide on the Barrett .50cal. The sound was loud, sharp, metallic.
"We have ammo."
I pointed to the pulsing walls of the Kernel.
"We have power."
"We are open for business," I announced. "If you are a Null, if you are a laborer, if you are a survivor hiding in a basement wiping your ass with leaves... come to Sauget. I don't care about your past. I don't care who you were. I care about your hands."
I let the Cruelty sharpen my voice into a blade.
"Work," I said. "Fight. Build. And you eat. You sleep safe behind walls made of bone and steel. You earn your place."
Then, the threat.
"But know this," I whispered. "We have a law here. Usurpation is death."
I pointed at the Gutter vents on the screen behind me.
"If you come to steal, if you come to betray... we have a grinder. And it is always hungry. We will turn you into fuel before you hit the ground."
I signaled Boyd.
"Cut it."
The red light on the drone died.
The room was silent.
"Do you think they'll come?" Ronnie asked, rubbing his eyepatch nervously.
"They're starving, Ronnie," I said. "They're terrified. The System just told them their neighbors can kill them for XP. And we just told them there's a place where the lights are on and the monsters are on a leash."
I looked at the map.
Rank 172.
Suddenly, a white dot appeared on the edge of the map near Highway 40. Then another. Then a cluster.
Neutrals. Moving.
"They're coming," Boyd whispered. "Heat signatures converging on the access road."
"Let them come," I said. "The desperate ones. The killers. The ones who want to survive at any cost. And we're going to use them to build an empire on top of this graveyard."
The Roof.
07:00 Hours.
I went back up to the roof to watch the sun fully rise.
Yana joined me. She handed me a cup of coffee—black, bitter sludge that tasted like heaven.
"That wasn't a recruitment drive," she said, leaning on the railing. "That was a threat."
"It was a filter," I said, taking a sip. "I don't want the weak ones. I want the ones who are scared enough to work and smart enough to obey."
I looked south.
On the horizon, fifteen miles away, a shape was rising from the earth.
It was the Leviathan.
Even from here, I could see it. A massive, pulsing spire of flesh and bone, towering over the tree line like a cancerous skyscraper. It dwarfed the surrounding buildings. Clouds of yellow spores drifted from its summit, choking the sky. Swarms of Flyers circled it like gnats.
`[THREAT: LEVIATHAN (TIER 4).]`
`[SPAWN COMPLETE.]`
`[MOVEMENT DETECTED.]`
It was moving. Slowly. Inexorably. Toward us. It was dragging its roots through the earth, leaving a trench of corruption in its wake.
"It's awake," Yana whispered. Her hand went to her stomach, a protective instinct she couldn't suppress. "Jack... can we kill that thing?"
"We have to," I said.
I reached into my vest and pulled out the blueprint the Administrator had given me. The Water Purification Plant.
I pinned it to the railing with my knife. The paper fluttered in the toxic wind.
"Let it come," I said. "Let them all come."
I looked at the System text hovering in my vision.
`[PHASE 1 ASSESSMENT: ADEQUATE. SURVIVAL RATE: 46%.]`
`[PHASE 2 ASSESSMENT: LETHAL. CHAOS FACTOR: EXTREME.]`
`[OBJECTIVE: ELIMINATE 162 TERRITORIES.]`
I smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man who had looked into the abyss and decided to sell tickets.
"We aren't just surviving anymore," I told the wind. "We're winning."
FOUNDRY PROTOCOL - DAY 31
SECTOR 1 (JACK MONROE) █████████░ 9/10 Nodes
RANK: 172/172 (Phase 2 Start)
STATUS: EXPANDING
THREATS: Tier 4 Leviathan (45 Hours), Enclave, Zealots
ASSETS: Kernel, Constructor Class, Tank Class
NEXT EVENT: VOLUME 2: THE EXPANSION