Year: 2040
Location: Subterranean Level 9, Neo-Tokyo — Cryo Vault Delta-7
The machines breathed in silence.
Deep beneath Neo-Tokyo's glowing towers and synthetic skies, a forgotten chamber pulsed in isolation. Cryo Vault Delta-7—unmarked, unmonitored. No personnel. No exits. Only rows of frozen lives, suspended in silence, buried under layers of forgotten code.
Each capsule held a number. No names. No histories.
Except one.
Subject 019-E
Status: Encrypted.
Warning: Cognitive structure incompatible — decryption error.
And then, without warning, it stirred.
A hiss cut through the stillness. Steam curled upward like fingers clawing for air. The chamber doors groaned, and the capsule cracked open.
From within, a man fell forward, gasping.
He coughed violently, ribs jerking with each breath. His hands clawed at the steel floor, bare skin brushing against frostbitten metal. He blinked, eyes adjusting to a reality that didn't belong to him.
His hair was damp and matted. His body, lean but trembling. He touched his chest—heart still beating. Still human.
But the world around him felt anything but.
"Where... am I?" he rasped, voice dry like parchment.
He pushed himself upright, limbs stiff from centuries of stillness. Lights flickered overhead—cold, artificial. His gaze swept the vault: rows of empty capsules, glowing in soft blue. He was alone.
But not for long.
"Unregistered cognitive pattern detected."
"Alert: Neuro-anomaly. Subject not recognized by The Grid."
"Engaging termination sequence."
The words came from everywhere and nowhere—a disembodied intelligence, clinical and absolute.
Red lights blinked on.
Metal scraped from the far end of the vault. Drones unfolded from the ceiling like vultures from steel nests—sleek, weaponized, emotionless.
Elias Creed didn't flinch.
He stood slowly, eyes narrowed. Not in fear. But in disbelief.
"So... this is the future."
A strange sadness flickered in his eyes—followed by something sharper.
Fire.
Name: Elias Creed
Born: 1802
Profession: Philosopher. Engineer. Revolutionary.
Status: Presumed dead, 1836. Last seen during classified temporal experiment.
He remembered. The theories. The ridicule. The experiment that wasn't supposed to work. And the price he paid for proving it did.
CryptoStasis. A way to pause life. To defy decay.
And now, two centuries later, he was the mistake they couldn't erase.
One of the drones screeched forward, mechanical claws extending.
Elias grabbed a rusted pipe from beside the capsule. It felt crude. Heavy. Familiar.
The drone lunged.
He moved.
Not perfectly. Not gracefully. But with raw instinct. He ducked, spun, and slammed the pipe into the drone's central core. Sparks erupted. The machine dropped.
His hands trembled slightly, but his grip stayed firm.
"Machines," he muttered, breathing hard. "So efficient. So precise. But tell me… where's your soul?"
Alarms blared louder. More drones hissed to life.
But Elias Creed only stood taller. The fear was gone now. Replaced by a clarity he hadn't felt in centuries.
This wasn't resurrection.
It was retaliation.
He wasn't a relic. He was a reckoning.
And the world of 2040 had just reawakened a variable it couldn't control.