The first thing you noticed about Axiom wasn't the towers.
It was the silence.
No wind. No birds. Not even the crunch of snow underfoot—because there was no snow within a ten-mile radius. Antarctica's ice sheet ended abruptly at a smooth, obsidian-black perimeter wall that hummed with low-frequency energy. Beyond it, the air shimmered like heat haze over desert asphalt, even at minus forty.
Inside, everything gleamed.
Towers of white alloy spiraled into the gray sky, connected by glass walkways that pulsed faint blue with internal transit systems. Rooftop gardens grew under artificial suns. Drones zipped between buildings like metallic insects, scanning, cleaning, delivering.
And people—thousands of them—walked calmly through plazas lined with holographic trees that never shed leaves.
All of them wore silver wristbands.
All of them were "immune."
Kai watched from the ridge, binoculars pressed to his eyes, breath fogging in the brutal cold.
