Lina: The World We Know Ends

Chapter 1: The Sky is a Ceiling

The wooden practice sword hummed as it cut through the air, stopping just an inch from the instructor's throat.

Lina held her breath, her lungs burning from the thin, high-altitude air of the plateau. Sweat slicked her palms, but her grip was iron.

"Slow," the instructor grunted, leaning back slightly. He was a man named Captain Kael, his face a map of scars from the early days of the Great Evacuation. "If that were a Rotter, he wouldn't have waited for you to find your balance, Lina. He would have just... tumbled into you. And then you're dead. Not because he's a master swordsman, but because you were too slow to move a hundred pounds of dead weight."

Lina lowered the blade, her chest heaving. Around them, the massive training hall—carved directly into the basalt heart of the Monolith—echoed with the sounds of five hundred other students practicing the same forms.

"I was trying to be precise," Lina managed to say, wiping her forehead with her sleeve.

"Precision is for the Science Division," Kael said, his voice softening just a fraction. He looked at her, his eyes lingering on the blue-and-grey patch on her shoulder. "You’re twenty-three, Lina. You're part of the 'Gap Generation.' You remember the world before. Most of these kids were toddlers when we moved up here. They think zombies are monsters from legends. But you... why are you pushing yourself this hard?"

Lina looked past him, toward the massive reinforced windows at the end of the hall. Beyond the glass, the sun was setting over the edge of the rock, casting a golden light over the wheat fields.

"I don't want to be a gear in a machine, Captain," she said quietly. "I read the old archives. The mangas, the histories. People used to walk for miles without hitting a stone railing. They didn't have to calculate the caloric intake of a hundred million people just to justify a festival."

Kael let out a short, dry laugh. "Ah. A dreamer. We don't get many of those in the Commerce classes. Usually, you lot are too busy worrying about the five-percent margin on soil nitrates."

"I do my commerce work," Lina snapped, a flash of the 'Eren' fire in her eyes. "I maintain a 98% accuracy rate in economic forecasting. The Higher-ups said if I keep my literacy and math scores perfect, they wouldn't block my application for the Vanguard. They said the Kingdom needs people who want to be out there."

Kael sighed, sheathing his own practice blade. "They're right. That's the curse of this place. We’re so efficient that we’ve almost forgotten how to be restless. Go on. Get out of here. The Harvest Festival starts in an hour, and if you’re late for your mother’s dinner, she’ll have my head for keeping you over-hours."

The walk back to the residential sector was a sensory overload. The Monolith was alive. Because space was limited, the city grew upward and downward. Buildings were etched into the rock, connected by suspended walkways.

"Lina! Wait up!"

She turned to see Mark, a classmate from her Advanced Macro-Economics seminar, jog toward her. He was carrying a crate of lanterns.

"Tell me you finished the report on the South-Sector rations," Mark said, falling into step with her. "The Professor said if the math is off by even one percent, the whole district’s festival bonus gets delayed."

"It’s finished, Mark. I sent it to the Higher-ups this morning," Lina said, offering him a small, tired smile. "The balance is perfect. No one is losing their bonus."

"Thank God," Mark sighed. "I don't know how you do it. You spend four hours in the gym, then six hours in the library, and you still have time to be... well, you. If I had to fight a zombie barehanded, I’d probably just trip and save it the trouble of hunting me."

"You wouldn't," Lina said, her tone suddenly serious. "You’d fight. Because if you don't, the person standing behind you has to. That’s the first rule of the Rock."

Mark winced. "Right. The 'No Waste' policy. Sometimes I wish the Higher-ups were a little more... I don't know, lazy? Just for a day?"

"Laziness is how the world ended," Lina replied, though there was no malice in her voice. "Anyway, I have to go. My mom is expecting me."

"See you at the fireworks?"

"Maybe," she lied.

The apartment was small but warm, filled with the scent of sterilized herbs and roasting vegetables. Her mother, was hunched over a tablet at the kitchen table, her brow furrowed.

"The synthesis is failing again," Lina's mother muttered, not looking up as Lina entered. "If we can't stabilize the viral suppressant, we’re just wasting resources. The Economic Council is going to cut our funding if we don't show a breakthrough in the next quarter."

Lina walked over and placed a hand on her mother’s shoulder. "They won't cut it, Mom. You're the leading virologist in the East. They know that a cure is the only way we ever actually leave this rock."

Lina's mother finally looked up, her eyes tired but sharp. She reached up and squeezed Lina’s hand. "I heard you applied for the Vanguard field-exams today."

Lina stayed silent for a heartbeat. "I did."

"I could stop you, you know," Lina's mother said softly. "The Government policy says I can’t interfere with a 'high-potential talent's' path, but as your mother... I could find a reason to keep you in the labs."

"But you won't," Lina said.

"No," Lina's mother sighed, standing up to check the stove. "Because you’ve had that look in your eyes since you were fourteen. Since the day we lost your father in the crowd. You aren't looking for a career, Lina. You're looking for a way back to a world that doesn't exist anymore."

"I want to make it exist again," Lina said.

An hour later, the sky turned a deep, bruised purple. The first of the festival fireworks hissed into the air, exploding in bursts of red and green that reflected off the basalt walls of the kingdom.

Lina didn't go to the plaza. Instead, she found herself at the Shrine of Remembrance.

It was a hollowed-out alcove at the very edge of the northern cliff. The wind howled through the stone arches, a low, mourning sound that drowned out the distant cheers of the festival. Thousands of small, flickering candles sat in niches in the wall.

Lina walked to the very back, where the shadows were deepest. She stopped in front of a simple stone plaque.

Aris.

She hadn't said the name out loud in years. She knelt, the cold stone biting into her shins.

"I saw a boy today in the market," she whispered, her voice trembling. "For a second... just one second... I thought it was you. I thought maybe you had found a different truck. Maybe you were in a different sector all this time."

She leaned her forehead against the cold stone of the plaque.

"I wish you survived," she sobbed, the sound muffled by the wind. "I really do. It's so lonely up here, Aris. Everything is so... perfect. Everyone is so busy being 'useful.' I just want to go home. I just want to go down there and find the house where we used to hide from the rain."

She stayed there for a long time, crying for the boy she lost, for the father who never made it to the elevator, and for the version of herself that died nine years ago.

When she finally stood up, the tears were dry. The fireworks were still going off, but she didn't look at them. She looked down, over the railing, into the pitch-black abyss below the Monolith.

Somewhere down there, billions of things were wandering in the dark.

And somewhere, far to the West, across a distance she couldn't even imagine, a satellite signal flickered in the silence of space, waiting for someone to find it.