The air in the southern wastes was thin and metallic, laden with the scent of scorched sand and ozone. The wind whipped violently through shattered canyon ridges as the Mobile Operations Unit rolled deeper into unfamiliar territory. The encrypted signal they'd picked up days earlier had not wavered—it was constant, deliberate, and distinctly military.
Kael stood behind the wheel, his eyes darting between HUD overlays. The AI, Sentry-9, whispered quietly through his neural interface.
"Signal strength increasing. Estimated contact range: 7.2 kilometers. Probability of organized structure: 88%."
Dane was checking his railgun for the fifth time. "You think they're still soldiers? Or something worse?"
Jonas looked up from his scanning equipment. "If they've survived this long out here, they're either very well-prepared… or very well-armed."
Elara remained silent, her gaze fixed on the ridgeline.
The signal led them to an old military blacksite, partially buried beneath layers of collapsed desert. Towers and drone platforms peeked out from beneath sand-drifts. Surprisingly, automated sentries still moved along the high walls, scanning the horizon with glowing red lenses.
Kael halted the MO-U1 and activated the long-range broadcast system.
"This is Commander Kael Arden of Settlement Zero. Responding to military distress beacon. We're not hostile. Repeat—we are not hostile."
A long silence followed.
Then: static… and a voice.
"Commander Arden, this is Fort Meridian. Stand down. We have visual. Preparing for perimeter entry."
The gates groaned open. Kael exchanged a wary look with Elara, then eased the vehicle forward into the exposed gullet of Fort Meridian.
Inside, the base was shockingly intact. Solar panels hummed with clean energy. Barracks were lined with precision. Mechs and ground drones stood on standby beneath protective awnings. It looked less like a ruin and more like a base that had never stopped operating.
A team of soldiers greeted them at the entrance. Their armor was patched but functional. One bore the insignia of the United Continental Command—a faction Kael had thought long disbanded.
At their lead was Colonel Halric Monroe, tall, silver-haired, and sharp-eyed. He regarded Kael's team with practiced scrutiny.
"Kael Arden," he said, extending a hand. "Your name's been bouncing around military archives since the western collapse."
Kael shook it. "I get that a lot lately."
Monroe nodded to Jonas. "Your signal decrypts were clean. That AI you've got is old-world tech. Impressive you got it running."
Sentry-9 Interface: "Colonel Monroe. Recognition achieved. Clearance delta-two-prime. Project Ascension collaborator, Phase I."
Monroe's expression hardened. "Then it's true. Ascension tech still breathes."
The teams exchanged intel in the command tent. Monroe confirmed what Kael had begun to suspect: Project Alpha wasn't just a prototype—it was a weapon. A test subject created to interface directly with anomaly fields, meant to command legions of bio-mechanical constructs through mental tethering.
And Alpha had gone dark a decade ago.
"The incident that triggered Gridfall," Monroe explained, "wasn't just an experiment gone wrong. Alpha broke containment. It didn't die. It adapted. And it fled into the Red Zone."
Kael leaned forward. "Do you know where?"
Monroe brought up a map. "The last triangulated signature before the signal vanished was here—Site V-6. An old dome facility buried under anomaly clusters. We call it the Maw."
Elara's voice was low. "You want us to go in there?"
"No," Monroe replied. "I want to go with you. If we're going to face Alpha, you're going to need more than firepower. You'll need someone who helped build it."
In the following days, Fort Meridian's engineers assisted in integrating new upgrades into Kael's settlement tech:
Heavy-Grade Armor for MO-U1
Drone Command Link Protocols
High-Output Power Cells for Gauntlet Overcharge
Meanwhile, Sentry-9 collaborated with Monroe's own tactical AI, Lancer, and the two systems began drafting anomaly approach algorithms for surviving the Red Zone.
Kael stood at the edge of Meridian's eastern wall on the last night of their stay, staring into the vast darkness of the wasteland beyond.
Elara joined him. "Think Alpha's waiting?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
"If it remembers what it was… it's not waiting."
He turned toward the campfire glow behind them. "It's building something. Just like we are."