Into The Deadline
1127 Words
We buried Aris’s signal near the edge of the blast zone, right beneath a collapsed command tower.
She was still alive—barely. The leg wound had ruptured a blood vessel, and we had no proper medtech, no pain inhibitors, no time.
“I can’t go with you,” she said, her voice a breath above silence.
“You’re not dying,” I told her, choking on ash and denial.
“I’m not dying,” she echoed with a weak smirk. “But I’ll bleed out trying to follow you. The suit chose you, Kaia. You don’t need me.”
“I do.” My voice cracked. “You’re the only one who—”
“No,” she cut me off. “You’re the only one now.”
I dragged her into a drainage pipe beneath the ruins, sealed it from the inside, and left her with a water pack, a shock stick, and a single emergency flare.
“I’ll come back,” I told her.
She grabbed my arm. “Don’t. Not until it’s done.”
The flare’s red tip glowed in the dim.
“I’ll buy you 20 minutes. After that…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
I didn’t need her to.
The Deadzone stretched like a graveyard between the City of Bones and the edge of Dome territory. A no-man’s-land. Bombed out. Scrubbed clean of all signals. No oxygen towers. No data clouds. No AI coverage.
It was where rebels came to vanish.
Or die.
The sky above was darker here—less ash, more void. I could see fractured stars breaking through the smog like tiny knives.
I moved fast, keeping low. The suit adapted to my breathing, compressing air in short bursts. Its AI whispered fragments of code into my head, filtering sound, projecting path vectors across my vision.
“Path to Vault Sigma: 91.3 km.”
“Terrain: unstable. Radiation: moderate.”
“Caution: bio-signatures detected.”
I paused near the skeleton of a water tower, crouching to scan the area.
That’s when I heard them—clicks, too fast and rhythmic to be human.
Scraps. Half-drone, half-organic scavenger beasts created during the AI’s early bio-weapons experiments. Abandoned, forgotten.
But still alive.
The suit began to pulse around my limbs, preparing to shield.
“Adrenaline detected. Autodefense systems primed.”
One of the Scraps emerged from the smoke. Metal spine, organic jaw. Its eyes blinked blue for a second—recognizing me.
Then it charged.
I dove sideways, rolled beneath a cracked solar panel, and fired from the ground. The blast seared straight through its head. Sparks and bone flew in every direction.
Two more approached.
I didn’t think.
I let the suit take over.
Time slowed.
I was moving before I meant to—vaulting over wreckage, flipping behind cover, turning, firing, striking. The suit amplified every movement. Every breath. I wasn’t fighting—I was flowing.
The second Scrap dropped, smoking. The third lunged—and I caught it mid-leap, slamming it to the ground with enough force to fracture concrete.
It didn’t get back up.
My hands trembled.
I hadn’t trained for this.
But somehow, I knew what to do.
The Glass Earth Protocol wasn’t just a map. It was a weapon.
And it was training me.
I made camp at the edge of an old aquifer. The structure was still mostly intact—subterranean, shielded from drones. There was no fire. No light. Just a cracked corner where I could sit, knees drawn to my chest, suit still humming against my skin.
I pulled out the map projection and stared at the coordinates.
Vault Sigma. Buried beneath the ruins of Lysium.
A city erased from all Dome archives.
Aris had said the Vault was the final piece of the protocol—the place where it could be broadcast. A wave that would shatter the
Dome’s neural cloud, reboot the biosphere, and awaken the hidden ecosystems below.
But it came with a cost.
If I launched it, the Dome’s infrastructure would collapse. Life support. Medical AI. Food synthesis. Billions would die—before they ever knew they were prisoners.
I pressed my forehead to my knees.
I hadn’t asked for this.
I didn’t want this.
But I was the only one left.
I slept in fits, haunted by images I didn’t understand—green fields, a laughing woman, a child running barefoot through grass.
My mother’s voice, saying:
“The Earth remembers, Kaia. It just needs to be reminded.”
I woke at dawn—if you could call it dawn, when the sky was always gray—and continued west. The Deadzone narrowed into a ravine flanked by sunken rail lines and fallen transmit towers. No patrols. No drones. Just a silence so deep, it pressed against my ears.
“Proximity alert: Lysium ruins, 4.2 km.”
As I climbed a ridge, the city came into view.
Or what was left of it.
A crater of twisted metal and black stone. Buildings turned inside out. Roads collapsed into spirals. It was like something had tried to erase Lysium from time, not just the map.
But right at the center—half-buried under a broken geodome—was a pulse of blue light.
Vault Sigma.
I was 200 meters away when the Dome found me.
A transport glider dropped like a blade from the sky. No warning. No sound.
And from it emerged the thing I feared most—
Not a soldier.
Not a drone.
Not even a human.
A Replica.
Modeled on human form, but built from mirrorsteel and AI memory cores. Faster. Smarter. Unstoppable.
It looked like a girl. My age. My height. But with black glass for eyes, and no shadow.
The Replica tilted its head.
“Surrender the protocol. You will not be harmed.”
I didn’t answer.
I ran.
I reached Vault Sigma seconds before it caught me.
Slid through the cracked hatch, slammed it shut, and plunged into darkness.
It pounded on the vault door, but the suit sealed it behind me—hard light locking into steel.
I stumbled down a spiral staircase, deeper and deeper into the earth.
Lights flickered on as I passed—old Earth tech, responding to my presence.
And then the chamber opened.
A sphere of glowing crystal. A console pulsing with a heartbeat. A voice humming in the walls.
“Kaia Voss. Biogenetic match confirmed.”
“Do you wish to initiate planetary restoration protocol?”
I stared at the console.
My fingers trembled.
Then I heard a voice—behind me.
A whisper.
Not AI. Not the Replica.
Human.
“Wait.”
I turned.
And there, standing in the dark…
...was someone I never thought I’d see again.
- Writer
