The wind whispered through shattered glass and rusted beams, carrying the scent of ash and old blood.
From the highest floor of a crumbling mall tower, Mirex watched the dead city breathe.
Below him stretched the ruins of what had once been a thriving market district—now just another graveyard, its buildings hollow, its streets cracked and silent.
In his palm, a small, black device pulsed with a single, blinking dot.
It was slow but steady, and it was drifting toward him. Closer with every second.
Mirex didn't move. He didn't need to. He was a precision instrument. A weapon shaped like a man.
A low growl, wet and gurgling, cut through the wind pulling him out of his thoughts.
From the skeletal remains of a collapsed department store, a beast emerged—mutated, half-muscle, half-bone. Its limbs twisted in too many places, teeth forming a jagged crown around its open maw.
A sight that would have sent any sane person fleeing in complete fear.
It circled slowly, sizing up its potential meal.
Mirex turned, his movement effortless.
His face was as passive as ever, with not a hint of panic or fear in his eyes.
He raised one hand.
There was no flash of light, no explosive burst of energy.
Instead, the air bent around the creature.
It stopped mid-pounce, suspended a meter off the ground.
The space around it trembled, a visible shimmer like heat rising from broken pavement.
Then, the decay began.
Its flesh shriveled, its bones buckled.
Its roar never had the chance to come out. Its muscles spasmed in reverse, collapsing inward, skin turning brittle and cracked.
In seconds, it had become a pile of gray dust, scattered by the wind.
Mirex lowered his hand.
The effect ended like a switch flipped.
No emotion, not even satisfaction, graced his face.
He refocused on the signal.
It was still blinking.
Still growing closer.
He holstered the scanner and turned toward the edge of the ruined tower.
His coat fluttered in the wind, but Mirex himself seemed to absorb the gusts, moving with a subtle, unnerving stillness that defied the elements.
The anomaly was nearby.
He didn't know what it was yet, but it was only a matter of time.
The signal was clean, unique, and unlike any Altered he'd ever encountered.
Whatever had activated it was not random.
He adjusted his gloves, checked his gear, and began moving again.
******
"So, what did you guys talk about?" Rill's voice, usually gruff and direct, held a subtle note of curiosity.
Ashen, Rill, and Jax were currently the vanguard, cutting a path ahead of the slower convoy.
Their boots crunched on scattered debris, the only sounds accompanying them as they navigated the silent, hollowed-out arteries of what was once a thriving metropolis.
Before the Pulse, this city would have been a breathtaking monument to human ambition.
Towering skyscrapers, their glass facades mirroring the sky, reached for the clouds like crystalline giants.
Bustling avenues were choked with sleek, self-driving vehicles, and vibrant neon signs painted the nights in a kaleidoscope of colors.
The constant, exhilarating thrum of millions of lives interwoven in a dizzying dance of commerce and culture.
It would have been a place of blinding light and endless motion.
Now, it was a skeletal graveyard.
The glass towers were shattered teeth against a bruised sky, their empty windows like hollow eyes staring out at a dead world.
Rust wept from exposed rebar, staining concrete like old blood.
Streets were choked with the husks of overturned cars, perpetually crashed in apocalyptic gridlock, their paint faded, tires disintegrated.
The air hung thick with dust and the metallic tang of decay, punctuated by the occasional mournful groan of twisting metal or the scuttling of unseen, scavenged life.
Every block was a monument to human failure, a desolate, suffocating testament to the destruction.
They had been moving for the entire day.
The sun was now bleeding orange and purple into the western horizon, painting the urban decay in hues of desperate beauty.
Moving at night, where the real dangers emerged—mutated creatures with sharpened senses, desperate raiders, or worse, the chilling glint of a drone's light—wasn't an option.
Their current task was urgent: find a suitable place to lay camp before darkness fully claimed the ruins.
Ashen turned to Rill, his expression blank.
"What?"
"You and Mara," Rill clarified, her gaze sharp, assessing. "What did you guys talk about down there?"
"Oh, that." Ashen felt a prickle of unease.
Apparently, the fact that he'd suddenly developed "super-speed" and caught Rill's falling bowl in a blur of motion had been swept under the rug, or at least, Mara had managed to control the information.
Luckily, only a handful of people had witnessed it, and Mara had probably silenced their confusion effectively.
But Rill and Jax, who had been with him when the Nexis incident happened, knew something unexplainable had occurred.
They were the only ones who might have an inkling of what was truly going on with him, even if they couldn't possibly guess the half of it.
"Not much, really," he said, keeping his eyes on the crumbling cityscape ahead. "She just said we'd continue... after we find a new camp."
"I see," Rill mumbled, her voice low, lost in thought as she scanned the skeletal remains of a building, her brow furrowed.
She didn't press, but Ashen could feel her unspoken questions, a heavy presence in the twilight air.
Then Jax, who had been impatiently hopping ahead, turned around with a wide, stupid grin plastered across his face. "So, do you know how you did it yet?" he piped up, his youthful energy almost unsettling in the somber environment.
Ashen blinked. "Did what?" he questioned back.
"You know!" Jax bounced on the balls of his feet, gesturing wildly. "The super-fast move thing you used to catch Rill's bowl! Can you do it again? Was it like, a burst of adrenaline? Or some kind of new superpower?"