The Last Sky

Echoes in the Dust

The wind outside the Done howled like it was mourning the dead.

I had made it nearly 2 km into the Exclusion Zone when I felt the first tremor. Just a shift beneath the souls of my boots, like something ancient rolling over in its sleep.

The wasteland stretched endlessly before me , fractured concrete road, old towers, and the rusted out shells of shuttles that would never fly again.

They said the zone was poisoned, unbreathable.

But with a filter, you could survive for a few hours at a time. Long enough to pass through the road.

Enough to disappear.

I walked until the Dome’s glow faded from the horizon. Until there was only ash.

And then I saw it.

A strip of black steel running through the dust - half buried, forgotten.

The River of Steel.

An old maglev line from before the Collapse. Spread like a scar, bending West towards the mountain ridges. Toward Sector V.

And the rebels, if they even still existed.

It was just after the nightfall when the drone found me .

I was resting beneath the remnant of a derailed train , catching my breath, when the air just pulsed with a soft hum.

I completely froze.

A single glider drone lowered into my view. It was too late to run, and hiding would cause too much noise.

There was no Dome markings on the drone, it was smaller than the enforcement models. It buzzed above me., then dipped lower.

Watching.

My hand slipped to the EMP coil I had hidden in my boot,, I could knock it off- but I hesitated.

Then the voice came, a real voice. A Woman.

“You don’t belong here, girl”, the voice of the woman said.

I greeted my teeth.

“That makes the two of us”, I replied with equal sass.

There was a pause and then laughter.

“Follow the drone.”, the woman said.

I didn’t have a choice, so I did.

The drone turned slowly and began to drift west along the old track. I picked up my stuff and followed.

An hour later, I reached what looked like the wreckage of an old overpass . Half collapsed, the underside reinforced with scrap and solar mesh. A door hissed open as I approached.

There stood a figure inside , cloaked in a dark grey fabric and armour stitched with scavenger tech.

The figure lowered the hood , and I stopped breathing.

She wasn’t old around 25 or 30. Her eyes were silver, literally silver, as if they have been replaced.

PURE REBEL.

“Kaia Voss”, she said, without a question.

“How do you know my name?”, I asked, tensing.

“You trapped three surveillances out of E-9. You are either brave, stupid or both.”, she replied.

“ I will take all three”, I said to her.

She grinned.

“My name is Aris. I used to work for t Archivists. But then I found out what they were actually hiding.”, she said.

The note had mentioned her. Aris.

I felt my stomach twisting. The note did tell me to trust no one, but her.

“What are they hiding?”, I asked.

She reached into her jacket, pulling out a device and slid my chip into it.

The screen lit up instantly , maps coordinates satellite Data from two centuries ago, showing. An entire schematic untouched by AI filters.

Aris’s expression turned serious.

“This isn’t just a map”, she whispered.

“It’s the last clean record of the Earth, before the Collapse. Every route system, every underground tunnel, every freshwater line. And here……”, she said, pointing to a blinking Sector under a mountain range.

“… is where they buried the truth”

“What truth?”, I asked, stepping closer.

“That the Earth is healing. Has been healing for years.”, she replied.

I felt my world shifting .

“No”, I breathe out.

“That’s not possible, not after the radiation”, I continued in disbelief.

“It is all a lie. The Dome’s AI maintains the illusion to keep control over the environment, but they missed this one chip.”, she replied to me.

But what she said, left me feeling cold all over my body.

“So what do we do?”, I asked her utterly puzzled.

“We find The Below. We bring back the truth. And we burn the dome to the ground.”, she replied, locking her eyes with mine.

The next day, we set out for the City of Bones- the last known rebel stronghold before the rebellion was wiped out.

If anyone still knew how to decode the lower coordinates on the chip, we would probably find them there.

But the path was very dangerous .

AI petrol still swept the Exclusion not to mention radiation pockets, wild drones gone rogue, and dome - born bounty hunters, looking for off - grid tech.

We kept our Travel light and fast . Aris moved like someone who had escaped too many times to slow down. She barely spoke, except when it mattered.

“What made you leave the Archivists?”, I asked her once when we were inside the hollow of an old aqueduct.

She kept silent for a long time.

“They erased my sister”, she replied.

I waited, but that was all she said, I never asked her again after that.

It took five days to reach the City of Bones.

Or what was left of it .

Once it had been a thriving rebel stronghold. now it was charred metal and sunken concrete, half swallowed by ash and time.

But it can be seen that someone had been there recently. There were tracks in the dust, of the footprints. Burn out signal flares.

Aris crouched near the entrance.

“Stay close. We don’t know who has been here.”, she said, and I complied for I know that it could be an enemy as well.

We moved through the lower ducts, my heart was hammering. The silence was unnerving.

Just then, my filter buzzed, giving a warning of low oxygen.

Then, a gunshot.

Very close.

We took cover, as voice is echoed from the hall above.

“They’re here!”, someone shouted.

“Get the drone net, we can’t let them reach the archive!”

Aris grab hold of my wrist.

“They’re Dome agents. They have been waiting.”, she said to me.

”How?”, I asked.

She greeted her teeth.

“They must have tracked the chip.”, she replied.

We started escaping through the corridors, dodging beams of light . I could also hear drones clicking overhead, scanning out for heat sources.

“We need to reach the vault!”, Aris shouted.

“What vault?!”, I asked.

She skidded to a stop in front of a cracked wall, slapped a hand-print scanner.

It buzzed denying the access.

She cursed under her breath and told me to trust her.

Before I could answer to her , she reached out and pressed her fingers to my temple.

A surge of static filled my head.

And then I saw it, a memory that was not mine.

A woman’s voice .

“If you ever find Kaia… tell her the key is in her blood.”

I gasped.

“What did you just do?”, I asked her.

“No time to explain.”, she said.

She sliced my palm with a dagger and press it to the scanner. The light turned green. The vault opened.

Inside was a terminal older than any I had ever seen, with real keys, analog switches. No AI link. Off-grid.

Aris plugged in the chip, the room lit up.

Hologram of the Earth - lush, green, breathing, flashed in front of my eyes. Coordinates to underground cities. Deep sea labs. Oxygen rich vaults untouched for centuries. Places where people still lived. Where people were still thriving.

“The Below is real.”, I whispered.

”And the Dome’s lie is about to fall.”, Aris said.