The clocks of the old world had stopped working long ago.
Some froze at the moment the sky burned. Others melted, warped into useless rings of glass and metal, fused to walls that no longer remembered what "time" was supposed to mean. In the ruins, people measured days by shifts, hunger by pain, and years by how many died between seasons.
Still, the date mattered.
August 17th, 2076.
Exactly fifty years after the first nuclear warhead was launched.
07:00 Local Time — Tanjung Null
(00:00 UTC)
The siren screamed.
Not a warning—Tanjung Null had exhausted the concept of warnings decades ago. This was a shift bell, its sound engineered to penetrate sleep, exhaustion, and resignation alike. A jagged mechanical howl echoed through stacked metal corridors, vibrating through steel floors slick with condensation and rust.
Kael opened his eyes.
Or rather—he allowed them to open.
Light stabbed down from a flickering strip lamp above his pod, a narrow coffin of reinforced alloy bolted into a wall with hundreds of others. The air smelled of salt, oil, and something faintly organic—decay trapped in recycled oxygen.
Kael lay still for a second longer than allowed.
He counted his breaths.
One.Two.Three.
His body hurt in familiar places: shoulders from lifting scrap, wrists from torque tools, lower spine from hours bent inside coolant trenches. Pain was not an alarm to him. Pain was confirmation.
I'm still functional.
He swung his legs down and stepped onto the grated floor. Bare feet met cold metal. Around him, other Assets, or people from the Broken World called slave, were waking—silent, automatic movements, hollow eyes reflecting the same dim light. No one spoke. Speaking wasted energy.
Kael is 18 years old, though no record officially confirmed it. His body was lean to the point of looking unfinished, skin stretched over wiry muscle hardened by years of labor rather than training. His hair, black and uneven, fell into his eyes because no one cut it unless it interfered with work. Amber irises—dull, unremarkable—glanced briefly at the number etched into the wall beside his pod.
AR-1108
That was who he is here. an Asset called AR-1108.
He pulled on his work gear: polymer gloves patched too many times, a faded pressure jacket with a cracked VAULTEX logo, reinforced trousers stiff with dried chemical residue. The jacket smelled faintly of antiseptic and blood—not necessarily his.
As he stepped into the corridor, the scale of Tanjung Null revealed itself through habit rather than awe.
The port-city had once been a jewel of logistics, a gateway between continents. Now it was a carcass, half-submerged along the North Java coast, its megastructures leaning toward the sea like broken teeth. Neon signage still burned—corporate colors refusing to die—casting electric reflections across black water choked with debris.
Above, cargo cranes loomed like skeletal giants, automated arms moving endlessly as they unloaded scrap from ships that never stayed long. Below, the Grey Zone pressed inward—flooded slums, mutant-infested ruins, and radiation pockets where nothing human should survive.
Kael moved with the morning flow toward Sub-Level 6.
The elevator was packed.
Assets stood shoulder to shoulder, swaying slightly as the lift descended deep into the port's industrial gut. No one made eye contact. A man with cybernetic fingers twitched compulsively; the servos were misaligned. A woman missing her left ear stared at the wall, lips moving silently as if reciting something only she could hear.
Kael focused on the hum of the cables.
That was when it happened.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Absence.
For a fraction of a second—less than a breath—the world simply… paused.
The elevator lights dimmed.
The hum vanished.
Kael felt his heart skip, then slow, as if something unseen had wrapped cold fingers around it and squeezed—gently, precisely.
Sound disappeared.
Sight flattened.
Thoughts stretched thin.
Then—
"Helios Seed initialized."
The voice was inside his head.
A woman's enchanting voice.
Not loud. Not soft.
Perfectly clear.
Kael did not flinch. He had grown up with neural warnings, overseer pings, chemical hallucinations from bad serum batches. A voice alone did not mean danger.
"F-Level access granted."
The sensation ended.
The elevator lurched as systems corrected themselves. Lights flickered back to full strength. The hum returned. Someone cursed quietly in the corner.
No alarms sounded.
No overseer drones descended.
Kael blinked once.
His heartbeat returned to normal.
Just another malfunction, he told himself.
He stepped out when the doors opened.
Sub-Level 6 was heat and noise and death stretched into routine.
A vast trench ran through the center, filled with coolant slurry glowing faintly green, steam rising where radiation-resistant bacteria fed on contaminants. Machines lined the walls—filters, grinders, cyberware disassembly rigs—most of them partially automated, all of them dangerous.
Kael's assignment was posted on a cracked display.
AR-1108: FILTER MAINTENANCE — ZONE D
He nodded once and moved.
As he approached the trench, a familiar ache bloomed behind his eyes. Old serum residue reacting to radiation. He ignored it. He always did.
Then the voice returned.
"Warning: structural instability detected."
Kael froze.
The tone was the same—flat, informational. No urgency. No command.
He looked at the support beam he was about to pass beneath. To his eyes, it looked fine. Rusted, yes. Everything here was rusted.
"Probability of collapse within ninety seconds: eighty-seven percent."
Kael's fingers tightened slightly.
He stepped back.
Thirty seconds later, the beam snapped.
Metal screamed. A section of the ceiling collapsed into the trench, sending coolant splashing violently upward. Two Assets who had ignored the warning were knocked into the slurry. Their screams cut off almost instantly.
Overseer drones descended, scanning, tagging the bodies as losses, already calculating replacement costs.
Kael stood where he was, untouched.
No one noticed.
His breathing was steady.
Inside his head, the voice spoke once more.
"Recommendation successful."
That was all. What is that voice? Kael though.
By the end of the shift, rumors spread.
"Did you see Zone D?""Two dead.""Again?""Always."
Kael washed his hands at a rusted basin, scrubbing until the chemical smell faded. His reflection stared back at him—expression blank, eyes tired, skin pale under the flickering light.
He touched his temple unconsciously.
The voice did not speak again.
Outside, beyond the steel walls of Tanjung Null, the ocean rolled beneath a sky permanently stained by old ash. Somewhere far above, corporations tracked profits, nations argued borders, and an AI watched the world without interference.
None of them noticed a slave who had just become viable.
But the system had.
And on August 17th, 2076, at exactly 00:00 UTC, the Helios Convergence had begun.