The sky above Citadel Nova was not the sky of the old world.
It wasn't blue.
It wasn't free.
It was a dome — a vast, transparent shield of reinforced crystal lattice and humming energy fields, stretching so far and so high that you could almost believe it was a real sky… until you noticed the faint shimmer of its surface, or the dark silhouettes of machines patrolling its outer layer like slow-moving insects.
Beyond that dome was death.
The Dead Zones.
Kael Orion had grown up under this artificial sky, knowing only its dim, filtered sunlight and its constant hum — a sound so faint you could only hear it in moments of silence. In the Citadel's lower sectors, silence was rare. Markets shouted, gears clanked, steam hissed from old vents, and people… people talked too much. Everyone was always bargaining, lying, cursing, or laughing to hide the fact that they were all trapped in the same metal cage.
Kael didn't mind the noise.
Noise meant life.
Silence meant something was wrong.
It was early morning, and the slum streets were already awake.
The stench of rust and wet stone mixed with the bitter smell of synth-coffee from corner stalls. Makeshift neon signs buzzed weakly, flickering between colors, struggling to stay alive just like the people beneath them.
Kael pulled the hood of his jacket lower over his eyes and kept walking.
His boots splashed through shallow puddles of last night's acid rain. The soles were cracked, letting in water, but he didn't care. His eyes scanned every shadow, every alley mouth. People here stole anything they could grab — food, clothes, even the ragged breathing mask hanging loosely around his neck.
"Orion," a voice called from somewhere to his left.
Kael didn't turn.
"Not today," he muttered under his breath.
A skinny man with half his teeth gone stepped into the street, holding a battered rifle that probably didn't even fire anymore.
"You owe me, boy."
Kael stopped, his expression calm. "I paid you last week."
"Paid?" The man spat. "You call that payment? That was scrap metal! I can't eat scrap!"
Kael sighed, then pulled a thin steel rod from inside his jacket. "It wasn't just scrap. That piece was high-density ferrosteel. Sell it to the right buyer, you'll eat for a month."
The man hesitated. His eyes darted to the rod, then back to Kael. In the end, he stepped aside without another word.
Kael walked past him without looking back. This was the Citadel's lower sector — nothing but trade, threats, and survival. And Kael had learned a long time ago that survival meant keeping your head down… until you had to lift it.
His destination was the Eastern Gate.
Most people stayed away from it. Beyond that gate was the world outside — the Dead Zones, where the air was toxic, the ground was unstable, and the creatures… weren't exactly human anymore.
But for Kael, the Dead Zones were work.
He was a scavenger.
Not because he wanted to be, but because it was the only way to earn enough credits to buy the medicines his little brother needed.
Liam was only ten years old. Too young to work, too weak to fight. A coughing sickness had been eating away at his lungs since birth, and the Citadel's doctors charged more for treatment than Kael could ever hope to pay through normal means.
So Kael went out. Again and again. Into the ruins of the old world. Into the places where death waited in every shadow. Because every time he came back, he brought something — old tech, alien alloys, energy cells — that could be traded for just enough medicine to keep Liam breathing.
The Eastern Gate loomed ahead now — a towering wall of reinforced titanium and humming shield generators. Armored guards stood in pairs, their rifles glowing faintly with charged plasma cells. Above them, the shield shimmered, cutting off the view of the twisted wastelands beyond.
Kael showed his scavenger ID at the checkpoint.
One of the guards, a woman with sharp eyes and a scar across her cheek, studied him for a long moment. "You go out too often, Orion. One day, you won't come back."
Kael met her gaze evenly. "Then I guess that day isn't today."
She smirked slightly, handed back his ID, and nodded toward the massive steel door. "Gate's opening. Don't get eaten."
The Dead Zone air hit him like a wall — dry, metallic, and carrying a faint acidic sting that burned the back of his throat. The sky out here wasn't the soft glow of the dome — it was a deep, sickly red, streaked with dark clouds that moved too fast to be natural.
Ruined skyscrapers jutted from the cracked earth like broken teeth. Rusted vehicles lay in heaps along the shattered streets. The wind carried distant sounds — metallic groans, sudden crashes, and something else… a faint clicking, too regular to be random.
Kael adjusted the breathing mask over his face and started moving.
He knew this route.
Knew which streets were unstable, which buildings were safe to enter, and which alleys led straight into the nests of things better left unseen.
Today's target was a ruin about two kilometers east — an old military outpost that had been abandoned after the first alien waves hit. Word was, it still held locked storage crates of old-world tech.
It took him thirty minutes to reach the outpost.
The gates were half-open, one hanging by a single hinge. Inside, the shadows felt thicker, as if the air itself was heavier. The silence pressed against his ears.
Kael moved carefully, scanning every corner with the small wrist light strapped to his arm.
Half the rooms were empty.
The rest were filled with dust, debris, and the skeletons of soldiers who had never made it out.
Then he saw it — a storage vault, still sealed, its keypad glowing faintly with backup power.
He crouched in front of it, pulling out a small device from his pack. The lockpick tool was old and half-broken, but it had never failed him.
"Come on… come on…" he whispered.
The keypad beeped softly, then the vault door slid open with a hiss of stale air.
Inside was a single object — a crystal sphere, no bigger than his fist, glowing faintly with shifting patterns of light.
Kael froze.
He had seen alien tech before.
But nothing like this.
The moment his fingers touched the sphere, pain shot through his skull.
He gasped, dropping to one knee as his vision blurred.
A voice — soft, feminine, but layered with something mechanical — spoke inside his mind.
• "Connection established. Neural pattern… compatible. Identity: unknown. Designation: subject zero."
Kael's breath came in ragged gasps.
"Who… who's there?"
• "I am Nyra. Fragment of the Neuro-Core Network. You will be my host."
The light from the sphere flared, flooding the room, swallowing everything.
When Kael's vision cleared, he wasn't in the outpost anymore.
He was standing in a vast black space, stars glittering all around him. In front of him floated a figure made of light — a woman's silhouette, her eyes glowing like distant suns.
• "You are weak," Nyra said, her voice echoing inside his mind. "But you have potential. I can make you stronger."
Kael's hands clenched. "Stronger? For what?"
Nyra tilted her head.
• "For survival. For vengeance. For the truth behind the fall of your world."
Something in her tone made Kael's blood run cold.
• "But power has a price."
Before he could answer, the black void cracked — and something huge and monstrous burst through, its claws reaching for him.
Kael's scream echoed in the darkness as the light swallowed him again.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in the vault. The sphere was gone.
But in its place, his left hand was glowing — faint, pulsing lines like veins of light running under his skin.
Somewhere deep inside, Nyra's voice whispered:
• "Now… run."
From outside the outpost, Kael heard it — the clicking sound again.
Closer this time.
Much closer.
And then the wall exploded.
End of chapter 1