The dashboard clock of the stolen Toyota Land Cruiser flashed 12:00 relentlessly. It had been flashing that for three weeks, ever since the battery died and Ignis jury-rigged a solar charger to the starter.
Noctis stared at the blinking red digits. Flash. Flash. Flash. It was the only thing in the world that felt urgent. Everything else outside the cracked passenger window was moving in slow motion, suffocated by the grey heat of a mid-July afternoon.
They were driving north on Interstate 5, somewhere past the skeletal remains of Sacramento. The six-lane highway, once the artery of the West Coast, was now a graveyard of rust. Cars sat abandoned in gridlock that had lasted for two years—sun-bleached Teslas with shattered panoramic roofs, delivery trucks with their sides ripped open, sedans that had become metal coffins for families who ran out of gas before they could outrun the fallout.
Ignis navigated the wreckage with the precision of a surgeon, steering the heavy SUV through the narrow gaps between the dead vehicles. He didn't look like a tactician today; he looked like a tired man in a torn dress shirt that had once been white. His glasses were missing a nose pad, replaced by a wad of electrical tape.
"Signal check," Ignis said. His voice was rasping, dry.
Prompto, sitting in the back amidst a pile of rucksacks and ammunition crates, sighed. It was the heavy, dramatic sigh of someone trying to keep the silence from eating them alive. The sound of a zipper sliding back and forth echoed in the cabin.
"Dead," Prompto said, tossing a cracked iPhone onto the leather seat. "No satellite. No GPS. No 5G. Just static." He picked it up again, swiping his thumb uselessly across the black screen. "You know, my Spotify Premium just expired yesterday. I got the notification right before the last tower went dark. Cruel, right? The world ends, but the subscription model survives."
"Put it away," Gladio grunted. He was cleaning a SIG Sauer P320, the metallic click-clack of the slide racking back providing a harsh rhythm to the drive. He sat behind Noctis, his massive frame taking up two-thirds of the rear bench. A scar, fresh and angry red, ran down his forearm—a souvenir from the raid on the grocery store in Fresno. "Battery is gold. Don't waste it looking for ghosts."
"I'm not looking for ghosts," Prompto muttered, shoving the phone into his tactical vest. "I'm looking for a signal. There's a difference."
Noctis shifted in the front seat. His body ached. It wasn't the sharp pain of a wound, but the dull, grinding ache of malnutrition and sleeping upright for four nights straight. He looked out at the horizon. The sky wasn't blue anymore; it was a bruised purple, the lingering effect of the chemical fires that were still burning in the Bay Area, hundreds of miles south.
"How's the fuel?" Noctis asked. He didn't recognize his own voice sometimes. It sounded older.
"Quarter tank," Ignis replied without taking his eyes off the road. He swerved slightly to avoid a deer carcass rotting in the fast lane. "We can make it to Redding if we don't idle. But we need water. The radiator is running hot, and so are we."
"Redding is a kill zone," Gladio said. "The last broadcast said the militias burned the bridges."
"That was six months ago," Noctis said. "A lot changes in six months."
"Yeah," Gladio countered, locking the slide of his pistol. "Usually for the worse."
The car fell silent again. The landscape outside rolled by—endless fields of dead yellow grass, punctuated by burnt-out farmhouses and the occasional billboard. One billboard, miraculously untouched, advertised a Marvel movie that was supposed to come out in 2024. The smiling faces of the superheroes looked alien now. Garish. A mockery of the heroes who never showed up when the real world fell apart.
Noctis looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly. He clenched them into fists. He was the one holding them together. The 'Leader.' The one with the strange ability to sense the dangers before they happened—a quirk of biology or mutation that had saved them a dozen times. But he couldn't sense water. He couldn't sense hope.
"Stop," Noctis said suddenly.
Ignis slammed on the brakes instantly. The SUV skidded on the asphalt, the tires screaming against the grit. The heavy vehicle fishtailed slightly before coming to a halt inches from the bumper of a stalled FedEx truck.
"Contact?" Gladio barked, already reaching for the door handle, weapon raised.
"No," Noctis said, his eyes fixed on the roadside. "Look."
He pointed to a crumbling concrete rest stop on the right. It was a standard American roadside ruin—a vending machine tipped over, a bathroom block covered in spray paint. But parked in the shade of the overhang was a sedan.
It wasn't rusted. It wasn't covered in dust. It was clean.
"A trap?" Prompto whispered, leaning forward between the front seats.
"Maybe," Noctis said. He unbuckled his seatbelt. "But clean means maintained. Maintained means people. People mean water."
"Or bullets," Gladio added.
"We take the risk," Noctis said, opening the door. The heat hit him like a physical blow, smelling of asphalt and dry pine needles. It was 104 degrees easily. "Ignis, stay with the car. Keep the engine running. Prompto, eyes up high. Watch the tree line. Gladio, on me."
They moved with practiced fluidity. This wasn't a road trip anymore; it was a patrol. They stepped out onto the highway, the silence of the world rushing in to meet them. No birds sang. No distant traffic hummed. Just the wind whistling through the shattered windows of the cars around them.
Noctis walked toward the rest stop, his boots crunching on broken glass. He wore a faded black hoodie despite the heat, the hood up to shield his neck from the sun. He reached out with his mind, that sixth sense of his, feeling for the prickle of intent, the malice of an ambush.
Nothing. Just emptiness.
He signaled Gladio to the left. They approached the clean sedan. It was a Ford, dark blue. As they got closer, Noctis saw the license plate. Oregon.
He wiped the dust from the driver's side window and peered inside.
Empty. But on the passenger seat, sitting in the direct sunlight, was a plastic water bottle. Half full.
It looked like a diamond.
"Clear," Gladio called out from the bathroom block. "Nobody here. But there's a fire pit around back. Ashes are cold, but not old. Maybe two days."
Noctis tried the door handle of the Ford. Locked. He looked at the water bottle again. He could break the window, but the noise would carry for miles.
"Prompto," Noctis whispered into the comms earpiece he wore—a remnant of their gaming headsets, repurposed. "Anything?"
"Negative. Just a hawk circling about a mile out. We're alone, Noct."
Noctis pulled a multitool from his pocket. He jammed the blade into the weather stripping of the window, applying pressure until the glass groaned. With a sharp pop, the safety glass shattered, crumbling into thousands of tiny cubes.
He reached in and grabbed the water bottle. It was warm, almost hot. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed it. No chemical smell. Just water.
He took a sip. It tasted like warm plastic, but it was the best thing he had ever tasted. He capped it and tossed it to Gladio.
"Share it with the others," Noctis said. "Check the trunk."
Gladio popped the trunk. Inside, there were no weapons, no food. Just a suitcase filled with children's clothes and a single, leather-bound photo album.
Gladio flipped the album open. Photos of a family at Disneyland. A birthday party with a cake shaped like a dinosaur. A graduation. The dates on the back of the photos stopped in 2024.
"They didn't make it," Gladio said quietly, closing the album. He didn't say it with pity. Just a statement of fact. He placed the album gently back into the trunk and closed it.
"Let's strip it," Noctis said, turning away. "Take the battery, the siphon the gas, and grab the spare tire. Leave the rest."
"The clothes?" Gladio asked.
"Leave them."
As they worked, stripping the Ford of its vitals to feed their own dying machine, Noctis felt that heavy feeling in his chest again. The despair. It wasn't about the monsters or the raiders. It was about the silence. The fact that a family had packed their life into this car, tried to run, and simply... vanished. Leaving behind a clean car and a half-bottle of water.
Noctis looked north, toward the mountains. The road ahead was long, and he had a feeling that the silence was only going to get louder.
"Loaded up!" Prompto called from the SUV. "Ignis says the solar array is picking up a spike. We might have enough juice to run the AC for ten minutes."
"Luxury," Noctis muttered.
He walked back to the Land Cruiser, the heat shimmering off the asphalt. He paused at the door, looking back at the abandoned Ford. For a second, he thought he saw a shadow move in the tree line, a flicker of something unnatural.
He blinked, and it was gone.
"You coming?" Ignis asked, revving the engine.
Noctis got in. "Drive."
The sun didn't set; it just dissolved into the smog layer, turning the world a sickly, bruised purple. Night was worse than day. In the day, you could see the ambushes. At night, the Interstate became a void, and every shadow looked like a man with a tire iron.
They pulled off the highway near the Oregon border, finding shelter in the husk of a 'Travelodge' motel. The neon sign was long dead, the swimming pool filled with black rainwater and trash bags.
"Room 104," Gladio whispered, checking the door frame for tripwires. He was big, too big for stealth, really, but he moved with a terrifying quietness. He wasn't a 'shield' or a bodyguard; he was just an ex-marine who had lost his unit in the first month and adopted three civilians instead. "Clear. No signs of squatters."
They moved inside. The room smelled of mildew and stale cigarette smoke. Two twin beds, stripped to the springs. A CRT television with a shattered screen.
Ignis immediately went to the window, duct-taping a black trash bag over the glass to block any light leak. He was the glue of the group—the one who knew how to suture a wound with fishing line and how to distill water from condensation. He placed a small camping lantern on the floor, keeping the setting on low.
"Rations," Ignis said, dumping his backpack onto the bare mattress. "We have three cans of peaches, two packets of beef jerky, and... half a bag of stale Doritos."
"Feast of champions," Prompto muttered, sliding down the wall to sit on the carpet. He looked wrecked. He was the youngest, or at least he acted like it. A tech kid who used to fix servers before the grid went down. Now, he carried a HAM radio he'd built out of scraps, obsessively scanning for a voice in the dark.
Noctis sat on the edge of the bed frame, the metal springs creaking under his weight. He pulled a map from his jacket pocket. It was a standard Rand McNally road atlas, dog-eared and covered in Sharpie circles.
"We need fuel," Noctis said, tracing the I-5 corridor with a dirty fingernail. "The SUV is running on fumes. If we don't find a station that hasn't been pumped dry by tomorrow noon, we're walking."
"Walking is a death sentence," Gladio said, pacing the small room. "Open ground. No cover. We'd be pickings for the raiders out of Medford."
"I know," Noctis snapped. The stress was a physical weight on his shoulders. He wasn't a leader by choice; he was just the one who made the decisions because everyone else was too afraid to be wrong. "So we find gas. We hit the rural farms. Siphon tractors. Someone has to have a reserve."
"It's been two years, Noct," Prompto said quietly. He had the radio in his lap, headphones around his neck. "There's no reserves left. We're picking carcassess."
"Just keep scanning, Prompto," Noctis said, his voice softer. "Do your job."
Prompto sighed and pulled the headphones up. He turned the dial. Static. Hiss. White noise. The sound of a dead world.
The room settled into a tense quiet. Ignis opened a can of peaches with a pocket knife, dividing the slices meticulously onto four paper napkins. It was pathetic, but it was order.
"Eat," Ignis commanded.
Noctis took a slice. It was overly sweet, the syrup cloying. He ate it fast, just to get the sugar into his blood.
"Wait," Prompto said suddenly. His hand froze on the dial.
"What?" Gladio stopped pacing.
"Shh." Prompto pressed the headphones tighter to his ears. His eyes went wide. He tweaked the frequency knob, a millimeter at a time. "I got something. It's... it's looping. It's a loop."
"Military?" Noctis asked, sliding off the bed to kneel beside him.
"Doesn't sound military. No encryption. It's AM band. Short range, maybe fifty miles out." Prompto unplugged the headphones so they could all hear.
A voice crackled through the tiny speaker. It was distorted, buried under layers of static, but it was human. A woman's voice. Calm. Almost professional.
"...repeat. This is the Meridian Settlement. We have power. We have secure borders. We have hydroponics. We are accepting survivors with skills. Coordinates follow: 42.3 North, 122.8 West. Do not approach the main gate. Use the service road. We are safe. We are alive. This is Meridian..."
The message looped. Static. "Repeat. This is the Meridian Settlement..."
The four men stared at the radio.
"Meridian," Ignis said, his brow furrowing. "I've never heard of it."
"Hydroponics," Gladio repeated. The word hung in the air like a spell. "Fresh food. Sustainable food."
"It's a trap," Noctis said immediately. It was his default setting. Cynicism kept you alive. "Raiders set up loops like that all the time. Lure people in, strip them, kill them."
"Raiders don't know the word 'hydroponics'," Prompto argued, looking up at Noctis. There was a desperate hunger in his eyes that had nothing to do with food. "And listen to her voice. She's not screaming. She's not crazy. She sounds... bored. Bored is good. Bored means safe."
"Coordinates match the foothills east of Medford," Ignis said, already checking the map. "It's off the main highway. Defensible terrain. Old logging country. It's plausible."
Noctis looked at his crew. Gladio was trying to look skeptical, but he was gripping his pistol so hard his knuckles were white. Ignis was calculating, doing the math of risk versus reward. Prompto was practically vibrating with hope.
They were dying. Slowly, surely. The peaches were gone. The gas was gone. If they kept driving north blindly, they would starve in a week.
"If we go there," Noctis said, "and it's a trap, we don't have the ammo to fight our way out. We have three magazines for the rifle and two for the pistol."
"If we don't go," Gladio said, his voice low and heavy, "we die in this motel. Or the next one."
Noctis stood up. He walked to the window, peering through a slit in the trash bag. Outside, the dark shapes of the forest loomed, endless and indifferent. He felt the burden of their lives in his hands. If he made the call, and they died, it was on him.
But if he did nothing, they died anyway.
He turned back to them. The loop on the radio played again. "We are safe. We are alive."
"We check it out," Noctis said. "But we do it my way. We park two miles out. We hike in. We observe for twenty-four hours. If anything smells off—if I see a single head on a spike or a tripwire—we bail. No questions asked."
"Two miles?" Prompto groaned. "In this heat?"
"Two miles," Noctis confirmed. "Ignis, can the SUV make it to those coordinates?"
Ignis pushed his glasses up his nose. "It will be tight. We'll be running on vapors when we arrive. It's a one-way trip, Noctis. If Meridian isn't there... we're stranded."
Noctis nodded. The decision felt like locking a door behind them.
"Then we make sure it's there," Noctis said. "Pack up. We move at first light. I want to hit the tree line before the heat peaks."
Prompto switched off the radio. The silence rushed back in, heavier than before. But the texture of it had changed. It wasn't just the silence of survival anymore.
It was the silence of hope.
And in this world, hope was the most dangerous thing you could carry.
The Land Cruiser died two miles short of the target.
It wasn't a dramatic death. There was no explosion, no smoke, just a soft, pathetic shudder as the last drop of gasoline evaporated in the injectors. The engine cut out, and the heavy silence of the mountain forest flooded the cabin instantly.
Ignis didn't try to restart it. He just took his hands off the wheel and let them drop to his lap. He looked at the dashboard, then at Noctis.
"That's it," Ignis said. His voice was devoid of emotion, hollowed out by the heat. "We walk from here."
"Grab the essentials," Noctis ordered, forcing his door open. His legs felt like lead pipes. "Water, ammo, the medkit. Leave the heavy stuff. Leave the tents. If Meridian isn't there, we won't need tents anyway."
It was a grim calculus, but nobody argued. They knew the score. They were shedding weight to save calories.
They hiked up the logging road in single file. The incline was brutal. The asphalt had long since given way to gravel and dirt, washed out by unchecked winter rains. The air here was thinner, cooler, but it smelled of pine resin and something else—something faint and acrid, like copper.
Prompto struggled the most. He was lagging behind, his breathing ragged and wet. He stopped every few hundred yards to heave, dry-retching nothing but bile and exhaustion.
"Come on," Gladio urged, his hand on Prompto's back, pushing him forward. He was practically carrying the smaller man. "Just another ridge. The GPS said another ridge."
"I see it," Noctis said. He froze.
They scrambled up beside him, cresting the hill.
Below them, nestled in a natural bowl of the valley, was a fortress.
It wasn't a military base. It looked like an old logging mill or a luxury mountain retreat that had been hardened. A twelve-foot wall of corrugated steel and timber trunks encircled a cluster of buildings. Floodlights, dark now in the day, were mounted on the corners. Solar panels covered every roof, glinting like obsidian scales in the sun.
And in the center, rising from the main lodge, a thin wisp of grey smoke curled into the sky.
"Smoke," Prompto wheezed, a smile breaking through the grime on his face. "That's a kitchen fire. That's... that's food."
"Hold," Noctis warned. He raised his binoculars—a battered pair of Nikons with a cracked lens. He scanned the perimeter.
"Do you see guards?" Gladio asked, unholstering his pistol.
"Two in the tower," Noctis muttered. "Rifles slung. They aren't scanning the road. They're... talking. Drinking coffee."
"Coffee," Ignis whispered. The word sounded like a prayer.
"They aren't afraid," Noctis noted. "They aren't hiding. That means they're strong enough not to care."
"Or they're inviting us in," Prompto said. He started walking down the slope, stumbling in his haste. "I don't care. I'm going."
"Prompto, wait!" Noctis hissed, but it was too late. The kid was already sliding down the gravel embankment, waving his arms.
"Hey!" Prompto screamed, his voice cracking. "Hey! Down here! We're friendly! We need help!"
The figures in the tower froze. One of them raised a rifle, not with panic, but with a slow, practiced calm.
Noctis cursed under his breath and stood up, revealing himself. Gladio and Ignis flanked him. They walked down the slope, hands visible, weapons holstered but accessible.
As they reached the heavy steel gates, a loudspeaker crackled. It was the same voice from the radio loop.
"State your business and your numbers."
"Four," Noctis shouted back. "Travelers. We heard the broadcast. We have skills. Mechanics. Medical. Security."
There was a long pause. The kind of pause where life and death hang in the balance. Noctis listened to the wind in the trees, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Mechanics?" the voice asked. "We have a generator acting up."
"I can fix it," Prompto yelled, desperation leaking into his tone. "I can fix anything."
Another pause. Then, the grin