Morning broke not with sunlight, but with a gray haze that settled like dust on forgotten memories. The storm had passed, but it left the world hushed and bruised — like a battlefield waiting to breathe again.
Kaela stood on the edge of the north district ruins, her boots crunching against broken tiles and rusted shell casings. Smoke rose in the distance — thin, winding — like fingers beckoning from an unseen hand.
The city looked like a ghost of itself.
But something in the silence felt... off.
She scanned the landscape through her visor. Buildings once thought collapsed showed subtle signs of movement — a curtain drawn, a footprint in the mud that hadn't been there before.
They weren't alone.
Behind her, Joren adjusted his scope from atop a crumbled statue of Lady Veia, once a symbol of unity, now chipped and hollow-eyed.
"Kaela," he called down, voice tense. "Movement. South quadrant. Two figures. Civilian size… but they're fast."
She nodded. "Let's go. Ava, with me."
Together, they descended into the shadowed alleyways — old paths now crawling with secrets.
The scent of damp ash and rusted metal clung to the air. Each wall was tattooed with old propaganda slogans, half-burned or scratched through in defiance. Overhead, wires swung like broken limbs in the wind.
They turned a corner — and froze.
Two children.
Covered in soot. Wild-eyed. Holding hands like the world might steal one of them away.
Kaela slowly raised her hands. "It's okay. We're not here to hurt you."
The taller child — a girl, no older than ten — stepped in front of the boy and lifted a shard of glass like a dagger. Her arm trembled.
"We don't belong to them," she whispered. "We're not traitors."
Kaela knelt, voice gentle. "Neither do we."
The girl's eyes searched hers, desperate for truth. After a moment, she dropped the shard.
Ava moved forward, wrapping a thermal blanket around their shaking forms. "Where are your parents?" she asked.
The boy pointed toward the ruins of the old metro station. "They went to find food. They… didn't come back."
Kaela's jaw tightened. The metro was a death trap — still crawling with automated drones and traps from the regime's final sweep.
"We'll find them," she said, even if the words tasted like hope she couldn't guarantee.
She turned to Joren. "Get them to safety. Prep a recon team."
Before he could respond, her communicator buzzed. Static. Then a voice, low and grainy:
"Kaela. You need to see this. We found something… under the archives."
The hidden archives — once sealed by the Ministry of Silence, long thought destroyed.
Kaela's blood turned to ice.
They reached the vault entrance by dusk.
Ava pried open the rusted gates, revealing a spiral staircase descending into blackness. Lights flickered as backup power sputtered to life, casting sickly yellow glows against stone walls marked with ancient resistance symbols — symbols older than Kaela herself.
At the bottom, the air was cold. Heavy. Like it remembered screams.
They found it in the final room: a chamber lined with data cores, untouched by time. And at the center — a sealed pod.
Glass-fronted. Wired into the walls. Inside lay a man, breathing slowly, a mask feeding oxygen into his mouth.
His chest rose and fell like the ticking of a bomb.
Ava stepped forward. "What the hell is this?"
Kaela stared at the readings. Her heart pounded.
"He's not just anyone. That's Deren Vale — the Regime's chief architect of neural warfare. The man who created the Silence Protocol."
"He's alive?"
Kaela's fingers curled into fists.
"No. He's a secret they wanted buried."
Outside, the sky began to clear. A single beam of sunlight pierced the clouds, illuminating the tower ruins in gold. But deep underground, truths long buried were waking.
And Kaela knew — the real war hadn't ended.
It was just beginning.