The air was thick—too thick.
Kai Mercer's eyes fluttered open to darkness pierced by red emergency lights flickering in agonizing rhythm. He gasped, lungs fighting to process air laced with dust and sterile metal. A dull mechanical hum vibrated through his skull.
He wasn't dead.
That was the first thought—raw, irrational.The second: Where the hell am I?
He tried to sit up, only to be met with resistance. Straps across his chest, arms, legs. He twisted his neck and realized he was lying inside a containment pod—frosted glass, data wires, tubes, condensation clinging to the edges like dying breath. The label on the inside read PROJECT REVENANT - UNIT 06.
Project… Revenant?
Memories danced at the edge of his consciousness, like fog barely touched by dawn. A war. A city in flames. Screams. Then—nothing. Silence, absolute and endless.
Until now.
With a grunt, Kai yanked at the restraints. The pod hissed in response—hydraulics releasing. The lid creaked open and cool, stale air greeted him like a slap.
He sat up slowly. The room was a dim chamber of dust and ruin, monitors cracked, wires dangling like vines from the ceiling. Dried blood painted one wall. His own breath echoed in the hollow silence.
A shattered terminal blinked to life nearby.
[SYSTEM REBOOT COMPLETE]Welcome back, Operative Kai Mercer.Time elapsed since stasis initiation: 15 years, 4 months, 7 days.Environmental integrity: CRITICAL.Human presence: 0 detected.Non-human presence: 3 signatures within 100 meters.
Kai froze.Three… what?
Before he could process the implications, the sound reached him—something dragging across metal. Wet. Slow. Wrong.
He swung his legs off the pod and found his boots still on. Muscle memory took over. He scanned the area for a weapon and spotted a broken containment rod on the ground. It wasn't much, but it had weight.
The door to the chamber was half-open, crushed inward. Whatever had tried to get in—or out—hadn't used finesse.
Cautiously, Kai moved forward.
The hallway beyond was bathed in red. The power grid was failing, but emergency lighting still clung to function like a dying heartbeat. Every shadow felt alive. Every creak was a whisper of something watching.
Then he saw it.
A figure hunched over a corpse, back arched unnaturally, limbs twitching like a broken marionette. As Kai stepped closer, the thing's head snapped around—eyes hollow, jaw slack, skin half-decayed. It let out a gurgling snarl and scrambled to its feet with terrifying speed.
Not human. Not anymore.
It rushed him.
Kai didn't hesitate. The rod met flesh and bone with a sickening crunch. The creature shrieked—guttural, inhuman—but didn't stop. He ducked a swipe, drove the rod into its throat, and twisted. The thing fell, twitching violently before lying still.
His chest heaved. Not from exertion—but from realization.
They're real.They're still here.
Minutes later, Kai stood in what had once been a command hub. Dust covered shattered control panels. Dead bodies lay rotted and forgotten in corners. A digital map flickered on a surviving monitor, showing Sector 17-A—the underground research site where he'd been kept asleep.
Above the surface: blacked-out zones. Red markers. "X"s where cities had been.
The world… it was gone.
[WARNING: INFECTED LIFEFORM DETECTED - APPROACHING FROM SECTOR 17-C][RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE EVACUATION]
The warning blinked insistently.
Kai's hands clenched into fists. He didn't remember why he had been chosen for stasis. Didn't remember who had put him here. But he remembered how to survive.
He would find answers.He would find whoever did this.And if there was anything left worth saving… he would decide if it deserved to be saved.
He picked up a sidearm from a fallen guard. It had one magazine left.Outside, the silence screamed again.