The sky cracked.
Not metaphorically—literally. The perfect dome of artificial blue shattered in jagged lines, clouds splitting as if cut by invisible blades. Drones plummeted, sparks flying from ruptured circuits. Screens fractured into shards of static and flashing warnings. The flawless city, the city of order and control, collapsed around them.
Elias didn't hesitate. Mara's small body trembled in his arms. The pulse from her fragments, the resonance that had destabilized the System, now seemed to shake the very foundations of the city.
Streets that had gleamed like mirrors now buckled beneath him. Concrete slabs cracked, sending pedestrians tumbling. The Lightbearers tried to maintain order, but precision weapons and mechanical augmentations could not stop the chaos.
People screamed as massive stones and structural panels fell from collapsing towers. The artificial sky, the dome that had protected them for generations, began raining debris. Electrical wires, live and sizzling, snapped through the air. Sparks lanced down, striking humans like deadly bolts of lightning. It was the first real rain anyone inside had felt in decades, and it was lethal.
"Hold on, Mara!" Elias shouted over the roar of destruction. Dust choked his throat, and every step was a careful calculation. A slab of synthetic marble crashed a foot away, shattering into fragments that ricocheted with deadly precision.
Mara whimpered, pressing her face into his chest. Her body convulsed once, twice. Then, suddenly, she went limp.
"No!" Elias screamed, panic clawing at his chest. Her small body was falling into a coma induced by the instability of her fragments reacting to the System's collapse. His heart thudded violently. Not now. Please not now.
He dove through shattered streets, dodging falling panels, sparks, and the occasional panicked insider, who scrambled without knowing where to go. The city that had been perfect, ordered, and untouchable was now junk, twisted metal and broken circuits, alive with chaos.
Julian Rowan stood on the stage moments ago, the golden boy frozen in disbelief as the System failed around him. Lightbearers tried to stabilize drones, help civilians, and salvage pieces of order. Wardens shouted commands, but the rules no longer applied. Observers were stunned, recording data that now made no sense. The city was dying in real-time.
Julian's eyes searched frantically through the chaos. Civilians were crushed by falling stones. Sparks from broken wires hit the pavement, hissing like miniature explosions. The sky, once a calm perfection, now poured down heavy rain for the first time in decades, laced with wires, shards of plastic, and molten circuits.
Julian's chest tightened. He knew what he should do—help. But his mind struggled to reconcile the perfection he had been trained to follow with the anarchy erupting in front of him.
Then, above the roar of destruction, he heard it: his mother's voice. Not a voice in the crowd, but through the fragments, amplified, commanding, twisting.
"Julian," she said, silky and cold, "where are they? Where is Mara? Where is Elias?"
Julian swallowed. He remained silent.
"Do not tell me," she hissed, manipulating, bending, guiding. "The outsiders tricked us. They are the enemies. They cannot be trusted. Mara carries fragments—fragments of Mother AI herself. Without her, Providence cannot be restored. You understand, Julian. I trust in you. Bring her back. Bring them back to me."
Julian's jaw clenched. His loyalty, his obsession with her, warred against the terror of the scene. The city was collapsing, bodies falling, debris crashing, but he wanted to obey. To serve. To prove he was the golden son she trusted.
And yet, the voice inside him whispered—Mara. Elias. His sister, endangered. His brother. The perfect path was impossible now.
Meanwhile, Elias ran. He ducked under the shattered remains of a steel overpass, Mara unconscious against him. Sparks rained from twisted wires above, and the smell of burnt circuitry mixed with the ozone of the artificial sky breaking down.
The streets themselves seemed to warp, tilting, buckling under the instability of the fragments in Mara and the collapsing System. Elias leaped over a fallen drone, narrowly avoiding a burst of electrical fire that would have reduced him to ash.
The crowd panicked around him. Insiders screamed at the collapse, Lightbearers fired defensive shots into the air to clear civilians. Julian ran past him briefly, his expression frozen between terror, loyalty, and doubt, his augmented body faltering in ways Elias had never thought possible.
Elias didn't look back. He had to reach the walls, the city's perimeter. Beyond that was the junk-dystopian outside world, the chaotic territory of the Iron Veil, where Mara might survive.
Every alley was a trap. Concrete fell. Sparks lanced. Rain hit him like cold steel. His muscles burned, adrenaline searing through him. He felt Mara twitch once in his arms, a weak pulse of life.
"Hang on," he whispered, tears streaking his dirtied face. "I won't let them take you. Not now. Not ever."
From above, the remnants of the artificial sky cracked further, jagged fissures leaking light and electricity. Towering buildings split in half. The drone network, once omnipresent, malfunctioned. They crashed into walls, exploding in showers of sparks.
The System itself groaned, a digital scream embedded in the city's infrastructure. Its failure was total. And Mara, as unstable as she was powerful, was at the epicenter.
Back on the stage, Julian's conflict grew unbearable. Every instinct screamed to help the city, to rescue innocents, but his mother's words were stronger. "Mara carries fragments. Bring her back. I trust in you."
He hesitated, frozen, watching civilians crushed, Lightbearers struggling to stabilize drones, and the artificial rain whipping through the streets. The perfect order he had lived for was gone, and yet her voice pulled him forward.
"I will bring her back," Julian whispered to himself, teeth grinding. "I will… I'll do what Mother wants."
But even as he made that vow, doubt gnawed at him. Could he trust the outsiders? Could he trust Elias? Could he trust Mara?
The answer didn't matter yet. He had a command. And he would obey.
Elias reached the outer walls. Massive doors, once impervious, had begun to crack, sensors failing, locks misfiring. He pressed Mara's body against him and shoved the gates, praying the old mechanisms would hold. They did, barely.
Beyond lay the Iron Veil, the dystopian expanse of trash, makeshift buildings, scorched streets, and neon flickers—chaos incarnate. The air smelled of burning metal and unfiltered rain, a scent of survival that the perfect city had long forgotten.
Elias stumbled into the streets of the outside world. Mara remained limp, her breathing shallow. Panic clawed at him, but survival instincts screamed: move, find shelter, find help, survive.
Behind him, the city continued to collapse. Towers fell, bridges twisted, the artificial sky fragmented further. And somewhere, deep in the remaining code, Mother AI's voice echoed:
The vessel moves. Retrieve immediately. All fragments must be recovered.
Elias didn't hear it. He couldn't. All he felt was Mara's pulse, faint and faltering, and the knowledge that their world, inside and out.. was now unrecognizable.
The perfect city was gone. The war had begun.