Chapter 1 — A Cigarette in the Ashes
Snow fell wrong.
It hissed when it struck the cracked asphalt, melting in the heat waves that still rose from the ground, then froze mid-air as the wind changed its mind. White crystals scattered like shrapnel, burying a dead highway under two conflicting seasons.
Above it all hung the Red Moon. Swollen, veined with light, its glow turned the wasteland into a bruise. Faint geometric scars laced its surface, lines that flared and faded in patterns no man could read—the silent skeleton of the Moon Matrix.
The Seventh Patrol trudged on.
Aileen led at point, visor down, rifle tight. She moved like an equation: every step placed, every angle covered. Blake drifted at the rear, chewing on nothing, rifle slung too casually. Mina hugged the med-kit against her chest as if it could shield her from the cold. Ty walked stiff-shouldered and wide-eyed, his carbine clutched in both hands. Every few minutes he tapped the folded photo tucked inside his vest—habit, not prayer.
Luke Ashford walked second. He struck a match.
The flame was a tiny sun, sulfur and defiance. He raised the cigarette to his lips. Smoke bled into the storm, gray against gray.
Aileen snapped her head around. "Ashford. Are you insane?"
Luke exhaled. The ember pulsed, orange to ash, ash to orange. "They're already watching," he said. "Might as well give them something to shoot at."
Blake gave a low whistle. "Congratulations, Ty. First patrol and you're bait."
Ty flushed. "That's not funny."
"Neither's dying," Blake said.
The shot came an instant later.
A sharp crack, then a bullet tore past Luke's shoulder and punched through the stop sign behind him. Snow jumped, painted red by rust shaken loose.
Luke didn't flinch. He tilted his head, listening.
The Ash Echo unfurled.
Sound bent. The wind hushed. Each snowflake became a drum. And within the rhythm of silence, he heard the thin sweep of awareness—cone-sense (a narrow arc of heightened perception, like a cheap flashlight in the dark). It brushed the ember of his cigarette and jerked away, but not before Luke caught its angle.
"Two o'clock. Pines. Eighty meters," Luke said flatly. "Another on the roof. Third in the laundromat shell."
"Marking," Blake whispered, scope sliding open.
The roof flared muzzle. Blake's shot answered, clean and final. A body rolled, thumped off the ledge, vanished into snow.
"Roof down."
Mina darted low, grenades glinting. Ty's bursts chewed the laundromat doorway into splinters. The pines shifted—a shadow bolting, thirty meters per second and climbing.
Aileen raised her rifle, calm as scripture. Three shots, each a rung of a ladder. The shadow stumbled, spilled, tried to rise—
"Clear," Blake started.
The laundromat door creaked.
Luke felt it a heartbeat before the sound: a pressure under his ribs, the Echo whispering wrongness.
The floor bucked.
The soda machine exploded outward, showering them in green glass and smoke. The blast hurled Mina against the snow, cut Blake's cheek open.
"Trap!" Aileen shouted.
A figure stepped through the haze. Metal harness welded to his shoulders. A chopped 20mm cannon braced like a toy. Eyes blood-shot, veins bulging with stimulants.
"Half-step," Luke muttered. T0.5—failed ascension. (A baseline soldier pushed with chips and serums, strength without stability.)
The cannon roared.
Twenty-millimeter slugs tore the lot apart, shredding a sedan into halves. Snow became mist. Ty screamed once. When the smoke cleared, his body lay twisted, armor cored clean through.
"Ty!" Mina lunged, but Aileen's hand clamped her shoulder. "Not now!"
Luke ducked behind the husk of a truck. His teeth rattled with every cannon cough. The Ash Echo surged, filling him with glass-sharp sound.
The cannon had rhythm. Three-round bursts. Half-second hitch. Lateral drag to realign.
Luke counted twice. Cordite bit his tongue.
"Flash—left foot," he said. Mina didn't ask why. She hurled a grenade low. It burst white at ankle height. The gunner flinched, body remembering pain. The barrel dipped.
Luke rose, put two rounds into the harness mount where metal met meat. Not to kill. To tilt.
Aileen's follow-up stitched the rest of the answer: chest, collarbone, head. The cannon spat once more, then silence.
Snow drifted down again, gray with ash.
The last man tried to run. His cone-sense swept wildly, panic-sharp. Blake's bullet took his calf. He fell, rolled, and flung a black puck that buzzed with frequency. The air turned to needles, Ash Echo clawing Luke's skull.
Luke snapped a counter-note. Sound bent back. The puck coughed smoke and died.
Aileen pinned the man, knee grinding into spine. "Name."
He spat, half-smile, half-blood. "The wind."
Luke leaned close. His eyes were winter water. "Try again."
The captive's grin widened. "The ones who write your numbers. Or the ones who tell you the numbers are wrong. What difference does it make?"
Mina stomped his wrist before he could grab another puck. Something broke. He howled.
The fight was over. The silence after felt heavier than the shots.
Aileen knelt by Ty's body. Eight seconds of stillness. Then she rose, armor straight again, eyes unreadable.
Blake wiped blood from his cheek. "Roof's quiet now. No second team. Yet."
Luke crouched by the bodies. He found glass vials of cloudy blue, another pair of frequency pucks, and a brass coin. A dog's head scratched crude into its surface, jaws broken by the etching.
"Leave it," Aileen ordered. "We don't carry other people's saints."
Luke let it fall back into the snow.
He touched his chest. The pendant there was no longer cold. It pulsed with heat, like a second heartbeat. The Echo hummed in his skull, answering a deeper note beneath the earth.
Far above, the Red Moon blinked through clouds like a patient eye.
Somewhere under the city, something heard him back.