The world didn't begin with a bang. It began with the sound of his own blood—thick, sluggish, and loud—thumping against his eardrums.
In the 21st century, the world was never truly quiet. There was always the 60-hertz hum of the power grid, the distant throb of an engine, or the invisible pressure of a thousand Wi-Fi signals passing through the skin. Now, there was nothing. A vacuum of sound so absolute it felt like an inner-ear infection.
Marcus Kovacs—Vials—woke with the taste of copper in his mouth and his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He opened his eyes to a forest that looked like it had been designed by a lunatic. The trees were too tall, the moss too thick, and the air... it tasted like there wasn't a single factory within a thousand miles. The sky was a deep, bruised violet, devoid of the hazy light pollution of the Eastern Seaboard. The stars were too bright, too numerous, and entirely out of position.
"Status," a voice rasped.
It was Gravel. SSG Miller was five feet away, slumped against a tree that looked like it had been carved from obsidian. Miller was clutching his head, his face a map of burst capillaries.
"Lead... I'm red," Vials croaked. He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea rolled over him. He felt "noisy." His gut was cramping from the processed rations of the morning, his joints stiff with the inflammation of a decade of combat. A localized pressure was building behind his eyes.
"Tape? Hinge? Ink?" Miller called out.
"Up," Tape breathed from the shadows. The Recon scout, usually a ghost, looked clumsy; he had tripped over a root any trainee should have seen.
"I feel like I'm moving through gelatin," Hinge muttered, his breathing heavy. "Hey, Vials? Tell me I'm concussed. Tell me we're in a simulation at Bragg and the power went out."
"Check your comms," Gravel ordered.
Vials tapped his Peltors. Dead air. He checked his Garmin. The screen was a spiderweb of cracked glass.
"Comms are dark," Ink added, staring at his dead tablet with glazed eyes. "No GPS. No signal. Lead, I think... I think my heart is beating too slow."
Vials forced himself to crawl toward Miller. He reached into his kit for a diagnostic light, but his fingers felt like sausages. His fine motor skills were stripped away by whatever environmental pressure was crushing them.
"Secure the perimeter," Gravel commanded, his 'Team Lead' voice acting as a mask. "Vials, check the Boss's shoulder. Hinge, find the package. If Aris triggered that—"
"Contact," Tape hissed, though it lacked his usual lethality.
Three men stepped out from behind the massive trunks. They weren't soldiers. They were farmers—lean, sun-bronzed, in rough-spun tunics. They moved with a terrifyingly smooth efficiency. Every step was silent; every breath was deep and effortless. To the five soldiers in the dirt, they looked like gods.
The lead farmer spoke—a sharp, percussive language. He looked at the five men in their pixelated camouflage and spat.
"Identify," Miller commanded, reaching for a sidearm that wasn't there.
The farmer didn't flinch. He walked up and shoved Miller with the butt of his scythe. Miller, a 200-pound Tier-1 operator, tumbled backward like a toddler.
"Hey!" Hinge lunged, throwing a practiced punch. In the old world, it would have shattered a jaw. Here, Hinge was too slow. The farmer simply pivoted—a casual, fluid movement—and Hinge's momentum carried him face-first into the loam.
The locals didn't even draw their weapons. They looked at the "Sentinels" with pity. The leader said a single word, shaking his head at the grey-faced, panting giants.
"Khy-ar."
They turned and vanished into the brush, fading into the air itself.
"Ink, you got that?" Gravel asked.
"Negative," Ink muttered. "Not a language I recognize. Sounds old. Guttural."
Vials lay in the dirt. He felt weird—the caffeine, the microplastics, the stale air of the world they'd left behind—poisoning him in this clean, high-energy silence.
"We aren't the predators here," Vials whispered.
"No," Miller said, forcing himself to stand, his eyes burning with a desperate, new focus. "Not yet. We go dark. We find a place to hide. And we figure out how to get back to normal."