Four years since the sky split open, the System hijacked reality, and the world never managed to stitch itself back together.
The voice-over remarks weren't spoken by anyone in particular, they were simply the kind of things people repeated until they sounded true.
Anyone alive already knew the facts: sectors broke, monsters spawned, physics stuttered, and survival turned into a daily gamble.
Rustbelt Sector 73 trembled with another glitch. The gravity surge hit first, everything in the air jerked downward by a few centimeters, then floated unnaturally for a breath before slamming back to normal.
Scrap metal clattered across the cracked concrete floor. A stripped-down loader bot two buildings away paused mid-movement, then resumed tearing apart another machine corpse for parts, cables dangling from its jaws like wet sinew.
Kane Voss didn't flinch. He just kept tightening the stabilizer bolt on the half-dead perimeter turret in front of him.
His knuckles were scraped raw from fighting rusted screws, and he could feel the heat bleeding through the metal housing. The thing shouldn't even work. But Kane never listened to what machines "shouldn't" do.
He wiped sweat onto the sleeve of his patchwork jacket and muttered, "Hold together for five minutes. That's all anyone's asking."
Something crunched on the rubble behind him.
"Talking to machinery again?" Lira's voice pulled him out. She looked amused, and carrying the familiar tone of someone who lived too close to dust storms and burning wires.
Kane didn't look up yet, still threading the cable into the firing relay. "It listens better than most people."
Lira stepped into view, boots grinding over broken metal. She wore mismatched scavenger armor, half of it dented, the other half held together with adhesive wrap. A glowing blue hex-pattern shimmered faintly along the forearm guard of her Barrier Class bracer whenever the light hit it.
She held out a ration bar; compressed algae and synthetic protein wrapped in flimsy foil. "Brought you lunch."
Kane eyed the bar. "That supposed to be food?"
"It's as close as Sector 73 gets."
He took it anyway, brushing his fingers against hers. She didn't comment on the contact. She hardly ever did.
He peeled the foil. "You looking to bribe me?"
"No," she said, leaning a hip against the sandbag pile behind him. "Just keeping you alive. Someone's got to fix things no one else bothers to touch."
Kane snorted under his breath. "Someone's got to keep the end of the world running."
She smiled; quick, tired, but real. He didn't see that expression often; most days it felt like everyone in Rustbelt had forgotten how to make one.
Lira looked at the turret's open casing, her eyebrows lifting. "That thing even safe?"
"No," Kane replied flatly, chewing a corner of the ration bar. "But it'll shoot. Probably."
"Probably?" she echoed.
"Probability is all we've got left."
She didn't argue. No one in the sector had the luxury of arguing with reality.
A faint metallic groan rolled down the street. Kane glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a three-legged mining bot snap one of its own legs off, twist it around, and weld it back on facing the wrong direction. It skittered away with its new limb dragging behind like a stubborn pet.
Lira gave a slow exhale. "This place gets worse every day."
"Yeah," Kane said. "But nobody else is volunteering to keep our defense patrol going."
"Patrol," she said with a hollow laugh. "It's three turrets, a welded gate, and whoever isn't sick that day."
"And us," Kane added.
"Unfortunately."
He finished connecting the last wire and leaned back as the turret hummed weakly, cycling through its start-up sequence with a jittering whine. The barrel scraped, adjusted, then locked into place. A tiny green indicator blinked. Functional.
Lira nudged his shoulder with the edge of her bracer. "There it is. Magic hands."
"It's not magic," Kane said. "It's duct tape and self-loathing."
"You don't give yourself enough credit."
"Don't give me any at all," he answered. "I'm a Null working on machinery powered by literal System code. That's already a joke."
"Not to me," she said quietly.
He paused. The ration bar suddenly felt heavy in his hand.
Before he could think of a reply, the ground rumbled again, this time, deeper, rolling through the scrap field like the approach of something large.
Machines in the distance froze, one by one, their limbs twitching as if sensing a signal passing through the air.
Kane tightened his grip on his toolpack strap.
Lira straightened, her eyes narrowing toward the western gate.
Something was wrong.
The turret Kane just repaired gave a soft, stuttering chirp as if responding to the vibration.
He swallowed once, feeling the air shift, thin and electric.
Then—
A boom echoed somewhere far off.
Kane's heart kicked up a beat.
The first warning tremor had arrived.
And Rustbelt Sector 73 never trembled without a reason.
The second tremor hit harder, sharp enough that loose scrap rattled like shaken bone. Kane barely had time to look up.
The sky tore open with color.
A red System alert flickered across the clouds, pixelating the air above Sector 73 like someone had dragged an error message across reality itself.
The letters glitched, duplicating, shivering, then reassembling into the same line.
Lira cursed under her breath. "Not now…"
Sirens blared through the sector; old mechanical horns wired into compromised power lines, screaming louder than the machines tearing themselves apart around them.
Defense lights snapped on along the rusted rooftops, bathing the camp in harsh, pulsing crimson.
Kane didn't hesitate. He slung his toolpack over his shoulder and grabbed the side handle of the turret to steady himself as the ground jolted again.
Lira was already pulling on her battered chest plate, buckling the straps with practiced speed. "Come on. If it's a breach on the west side, Mara's gonna need bodies."
"Bodies we've got plenty of," Kane muttered. "Useful ones? Less so."
"Move," she barked, grabbing his sleeve and dragging him toward the main walkway.
They sprinted across broken pavement, weaving between shacks built from old cargo containers. People spilled into the streets; scavengers, makeshift militia, kids carrying spare ammo boxes. Some wore proper armor. Most wore whatever metal plates or thick cloth they could scrounge.
A pair of teenage Users ran past them, activating flickering enhancements along their arms. One of them glanced at Lira. "Backup from Sector 71 coming?"
Lira shook her head without slowing. "They sealed their gate days ago. We're on our own."
The kid paled, but he kept running.
Kane followed Lira through the narrow path leading to the west barricade.
Three volunteers were trying to brace a collapsing barricade panel as they passed.
"Hold it up!" one shouted. "Anchor the left side!"
The panel groaned.
Lira didn't stop for them they had their own orders. Kane forced his legs to match her pace, lungs burning from the sprint. They turned the last corner, arriving at the perimeter just as another siren wailed.
The west gate looked worse than usual; half-welded plating, a half-finished tower, a row of defensive turrets in different stages of repair. Some were online. Some weren't. One of them—the one Kane just fixed, sat pointed toward the wasteland beyond the gate, making weak humming sounds.
Defense captain Mara stood atop a crate, barking orders at anyone who looked conscious enough to follow them. Her scarred face was lit by the crimson warning light overhead.
"Positions! Users in front! Nulls behind the barricade unless you've got gear worth using! Keep the entry lane clear!"
She spotted Lira and Kane. "You two! Take turret three! And if that thing jams, I'm shoving you both into the breach for bait!"
"Great motivational speech," Kane muttered.
Lira elbowed him lightly. "Just get it firing."
They reached turret three. Kane slid into position behind it, gripping the controls. The metal was hot under his palms, vibrating slightly.
He could feel every unstable component inside it, every stripped screw he hadn't had time to replace.
It would shoot. He hoped.
Lira took up a stance beside him, planting her boots in the fractured ground. The faint blue shimmer of her Barrier bracer lit the edge of her armor.
Kane glanced sideways at her. "Ready?"
"No," she said. "But we're here anyway."
Another tremor rolled through the ground, this one rhythmic. Heavy. Like steps.
People along the barricade fell silent.
Every eye turned toward the outer wasteland.
Kane tightened his fingers on the turret grips. His breath came slow, controlled, but the muscle in his jaw locked tight.
The wind shifted.
Something was coming. Close. Big.
A faint, metallic scraping echoed in the distance.
Then another.
Then the unmistakable, wet grind of metal twisting against bone.
Kane felt the vibrations before he saw it, through the ground, through the turret, through the air itself.
He swallowed.
The shadow moved behind the fog.
Massive.
Wrong.