Year 1920.
The tavern was long dead. Its structure reeked of sour ale and rotten wood. Dust choked the empty bottles, bits of paper lay everywhere—on the floor, hung over the sagging sofa, stuck to the cracked old counter. Scribbles of equations, diagrams, and strange formulas no sane man could've written.
In the middle of it all, crouched low like a beggar before a dying hearth, an old man scratched a pencil across the wooden floorboards. His coat sleeves were torn, black with ink stains, his bony fingers trembling from too many nights without sleep.
"No… no, this has to work. It must work," the man muttered, voice rasping like rust. His words tumbled, desperate, spilling into the silence. "If not… then—" He stopped his sentence, took breath sharp and uneven. "Then humanity… there's no hope."
He pressed harder. The pencil lead snapped with a crack.
He froze. His sunken eyes fixed on the jagged mark gouged into the wood. His lips parted like he might shatter apart entirely. Slowly, his whisper trickled out.
"We have to be prepared… before it's too late."
His chest heaved, panic surging in him like a fever. For all his genius, the man looked like nothing more than a broken glass stuck between brilliance and madness.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The tavern door rattled at the hinges. Dust fluttered down.
"Tesla! TESLA!" a rough voice boomed from outside. "You comin' out or not? "
Tesla froze where he crouched. The silence pressed against the noise. For a moment, he looked like a hunted animal.
"Hayes...," he muttered darkly.
With rattling breath, he pushed weakly to his feet. His once-proud coat now hung like drapery over his frail frame, threadbare where it had been fine. His gaunt face was lined by sleepless years, unshaven stubble bristling like shadows over sunken cheeks.
He tucked the broken pencil into his pocket like it was a relic — then whispered one more time, only for himself:
"We're running out of time."
Then, shoulders slumped, Nikola Tesla opened the rotting door and stepped into the morning light.
Present Day.
Arin yawns as he walks down a dark corridor with a little baton in his left hand and the flashlight on his right.
Reaching the end of the hallway, he hesitates for a moment, as he slowly reaches for the doorknob and turns the gate open. "Ha!" he shouts as he flashes the light in the room.
Then he sighs in relief as he realises that there is no one in the room
He takes a step inside and stumbles a bit, tripping on his shoelace.
He catches himself in balance and lets out a breath, "Phew, that was a close one." he looks down and realizes that his lace is undone and most likely steeped out on that lace, his face twitches a little in annoyance.
'Man, this sucks'
He gets to his knees and begins to tie his laces
That's when he felt it—two hands on his shoulders.
"Hey," a voice said casually.
Arin's body went cold.
Arin startled for a sec, and without a moment of hesitation, he turned around with his baton ready to swing.
"huahohhhh---" Arin's shout died down as he realised the person behind him
"What the hell, Alan!?" Arin placed a hand near his chest
"wtf were you thinking? Phew, mf, you scared the shit out of me."
Alan, who had placed his hand in a defensive position, yells,
"fucking hell, I did, you were about to crack my skull open, you bitch."
4 hours ago
Rajiv clapped Arin on the shoulder hard enough to jolt him. "Let's go, son. Time to pretend we know how to pitch tents."
Arin staggered forward. "Yeah, yeah… Wait, pitch what now?"
"Not what you're thinking, Romeo," Rajiv smirked.
Arin grinned sleepily. "A man can dream."
As the two stepped out, Carter stood near the bus gate, squinting into the distance. The growl of an approaching vehicle cut through the quiet.
A dirty black SUV rolled into the field like it owned the place.
Arin squinted. "Uh… we're expecting company?"
Rajiv frowned. "That doesn't look like a supply vehicle."
Carter stepped forward, flashlight swinging in one hand like a weapon. "Who the hell are these guys?"
Arin and Rajiv exchanged a look.
Rajiv gave him an upward nod, 'You know anything?'
Arin puffed his lip and shook his head, 'no clue.'
"We've got some company," Arin said to the ladies inside the bus.
Carter approached the vehicle with caution. Arin and Rajiv stepped out of the bus while the ladies and kids remained inside. The workers who were setting the tent up nearby were now alerted, and whispers were flowing through
'Who is that?'
'What are they doing here?'
Carter stood some 5ft away from the car and flashed the light at it
"Who are you?" Carter shouted
The car's engine turned off, and the door opened
A man dressed in some torn-out suit and another middle-aged man in some old construction equipment stepped out.
Arin and Rajiv got cautious
"Oh, sir!" Carter responded, surprised.
"Hello, Hayes, " the man in a suit smiled at him and extended his hand forward. "Sorry for the sudden visitation."
"No need for apologies, Sir Hwang." Carter shook his hand. " Is there any problem?"
Arin and Rajiv had joined the rest of the workers by now, and they all looked at the man who had just stepped out of the car.
They knew him, that was Saint Hwang, one of the senior Project managers at their firm.
"Why is Hwang here?" Arin had this question on his mind; well, he wasn't the only one there who had the same question.
"What do you think they are talking about?" One of the workers asked Arin
"No idea," He replied.
" It must be something serious," Rajiv joined in
"Maybe some update for our assignment," Eli walked over to them.
"Maybe," Arin shrugged his shoulders.
Some 15 minutes later.
Carter walked over to them and began to address them
"Alright, listen up !!! Mr. Hwang here is one of our senior members of the company."
'Course, old Jackie Chan is the senior here,' Arin thought to himself.
"Steve here," he pointed towards the man, the construction worker who was with Mr.Hwang.
"We will choose eight of you for some additional help near sector 47, 40 40-minute drive from here."
people began to whisper
'Ain't that the old military town?'
'heard that place is haunted'
'Why now '
'Man, I wanted to sleep.'
Carter clapped his hands together and shouted.
" You lazy fucks, listen, you will get some extra money and some paid off hours at the new construction site for the time being, it's for the time being, Steve will now choose."
The worker then stepped forward, he had a long beard and tattoos on his forearm, and the sunglasses that he had on even at night.
'Why the hell is he wearing sunglasses at night!?' Arin and Rajiv thought simultaneously
Steve ran his gaze through the crowd and began picking up the workers who seemed fresh and less tired, one by one.
"And you, "Steeve pointed at the area near the bus, his finger towards Arin.
"Who me!?"Arin pointed a finger towards himself and groaned
"I'm not very lucky, am I ?" He said while looking at Rajiv, who had an apologetic look on his face
"It happens, there is nothing we can do, Son." Rajiv placed a hand on his shoulder
Arin looked inside the bus, and Maya had that same apologetic look on her face
"Why me!?" he groaned
Present Time
Somewhere near the jungles of the New Amazon.
"We haven't seen a single soldier since we crossed into this place," Luis muttered. "No rangers. No border patrols. Nothing. Shouldn't there be… someone?"
The jungle stretched endlessly before them, a dark mass of towering trees and unfamiliar peaks that pierced the night sky.
The Amazon had always been vast, but after the Shift, it had become something else entirely.
Whole landscapes had changed—mountains now stood where there had been only dense forest, rivers had shifted course, and parts of the jungle that had once been mapped were now completely foreign.
And yet, the air still carried that same thick humidity, the scent of damp earth, and the distant, ceaseless hum of unseen creatures.
Luca's crew had been traveling for six days now, moving carefully along the outskirts of the jungle near the Colombian border.
No military patrols.
No rangers.
No checkpoints.
That alone was enough to unsettle Luis.
Sitting by the fire as the scent of roasting meat filled the air, he nudged Rodrigo, who was sharpening his knife with slow, practiced movements.
Rodrigo didn't stop sharpening, the scrape of metal against metal filling the brief silence. Then, with a smirk, he glanced at the younger man.
"You think governments have the time to worry about a jungle?" he asked.
Luis frowned. "But still—"
Rodrigo exhaled, finally setting his knife down. His expression turned serious.
"You don't get it, chico." He motioned vaguely at the jungle surrounding them. "When the Shift hit, almost half the damn world was wiped out in a year. Cities flooded, earthquakes swallowed entire towns, and entire fucking countries burned. The survivors? They weren't thinking about guarding trees—they are too busy not dying."
Luis swallowed. He had seen it himself. The day the sky changed, the weeks of chaos, the months of absolute hell that followed.
"So what? Governments just gave up?"
Rodrigo let out a dry chuckle.
"No, they have restructured. The United Front formed, and whatever was left of the big players—America, China, Russia, the EU—decided survival came first. They pooled their resources, focused on keeping the biggest cities from collapsing completely. But that meant everything else—forests, remote towns, entire fucking regions—got abandoned."
Luis looked around, as if expecting to suddenly see movement in the trees. "And the cartels?"
Rodrigo smirked, tossing a twig into the fire.
"We adapted faster than any government ever could. While the big dogs were arguing over treaties and rebuilding, we were already making moves. New smuggling routes, new suppliers, new buyers. We mapped out this jungle before the governments even knew it had changed."
Luca, sitting across from them, let out a low chuckle.
"That's why we're here, Luis. We own these routes now."