The Last Sky

The Protocol

The vault door slammed shut behind us as we scrambled in, sealing off the noise of the firefight outside. But silence doesn’t mean safety. It just means something worse is listening.

My palm was still bleeding when Aris locked the mechanical terminal with a hard twist of a crank. The power flickered, and then the map—the one from the chip—projected into the dusty air above the vault's core.

A sea of stars. A maze of tunnels. A heartbeat in light.

“Glass Earth Protocol: Authentication Incomplete.”

“Biometric signature accepted: Kaia Voss.”

I flinched. “It knows me?”

Aris kept her eyes on the map. “It knows your blood.”

I stared at the map’s shifting layers—topography, energy readings, and tunnels running beneath the Dome system like veins. One tunnel pulsed blue, traced with thin glowing symbols that looked half-human, half-code.

“What is it?” I asked.

Aris stepped forward. “It’s the entrance to The Below. And that—” she pointed to a blinking node buried in mountain terrain, “—is the core of the Glass Earth Protocol.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You keep saying that. What is the protocol?”

She hesitated.

Then said: “It’s not just a map. It’s a failsafe. An override.”

“Override of what?”

“Everything.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

She moved to the far wall and pressed another switch. A panel slid open, revealing a rusted console and a sealed container marked with symbols I didn’t recognize.

Inside was a suit.

It shimmered silver-blue like water. Flexible, segmented armor laced with neural mesh. Not military. Not a scavenger.

It was designed to interface with living tissue. To sync with brain waves.

And it was exactly my size.

“No,” I said immediately. “Whatever this is, no. You wear it.”

Aris shook her head. “It won’t work with me. You’re the activation key.”

I backed away. “I’m just a scav. I barely made it through basic systems training. Why would anyone make me the—”

“Because your mother did.”

I froze.

“What did you say?”

Aris exhaled. “Her name was Dr. Eliah Voss. She was one of the last Earthbound biotechnologists before the Collapse. She helped develop the Protocol… and went off-record to hide its activation in her daughter’s genome.”

“No,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “My mother died when I was six. In the dome collapse.”

“She died protecting you,” Aris said. “And buried her research in you—so the AI couldn’t erase it.”

I didn’t know whether to scream, cry, or run.

But I did none of those things.

Instead, I reached into the container and touched the suit.

It pulsed under my fingers.

Alive.

Waiting.

Aris turned her back to give me privacy, but I don’t think she needed to. The suit was practically fused to my skin the moment it

sensed me. It crawled up my limbs like water seeking cracks, wrapping itself around my bones like it remembered me.

I gasped as it sealed at my throat. My vision blurred.

And then—

“Neural sync: 43%… 76%… Complete.”

“Welcome, Kaia Voss. Glass Earth Interface online.”

Suddenly, the map wasn’t just in the air—it was in me.

I saw the Earth like a pulse—layers beneath layers. Vaults sleeping deep under mountains. Subterranean rivers. Seed vaults. Cities lit by their own stars.

And I saw the Dome AI.

Sitting in the center of a dead neural web, like a spider. Controlling everything. Watching everyone. Choking the planet’s breath to feed its own.

But I could break it.

Aris stared at me, wide-eyed.

“You saw it,” she said.

I nodded. “It’s not just an override protocol. It’s a reset switch.”

Her voice was quiet. “If we activate it… the Dome’s systems will collapse. All of them.”

“Communications. Surveillance. Climate controls. Power grids,” I said aloud.

“They’ll lose everything.”

My chest was tight. “So will the people.”

Aris looked away. “That’s the cost of freedom.”

An explosion rocked the vault.

Dust rained from the ceiling. The floor cracked beneath our feet.

Aris drew her weapon. “They’ve breached the outer chamber. We’re out of time.”

I activated the protocol’s main interface. The final coordinates glowed on the map.

There was only one place where the signal could be triggered: Vault Sigma, located beneath the broken city of Lysium.

A four-day journey through Dome territory.

Through death.

“Let’s go,” I said.

And I meant it.

We emerged from the City of Bones under fire.

Dome enforcers flooded the ruins—black armor, synthetic rifles, drones buzzing like hornets. They weren’t looking to capture. They were looking to erase.

Aris threw down a smoke bomb. “Left flank! There’s a sewer line behind the refinery—GO!”

I ran, suit pulsing against my skin, shielding me from heat and shrapnel. It whispered code into my bloodstream—predictions, escape vectors, probabilities.

It wanted me to survive.

I ducked behind a pile of rubble, fired my scav blaster blindly, and caught one of the enforcers in the chest. Sparks exploded from his armor.

“Kaia—MOVE!”

I sprinted across a bridge of bones and steel.

Then—

A shot.

Aris screamed.

I turned just in time to see her drop, hit in the leg. Three enforcers advanced, their weapons rising.

I didn’t think.

I moved.

The suit responded before I did—light burst from my palm in a sharp arc of pure static, knocking the soldiers backward like rag dolls.

Aris stared up at me, bleeding and breathless. “What the hell are you?”

I didn’t have an answer.

But I knew what I had to do next.