Cold concrete pressed against my cheek.
For a few seconds, I didn't move.
I just lay there, eyes half open, staring at a blur of grey and shadow while a faint ringing drifted through my ears. My thoughts came slowly, as if rising through deep water. The world felt distant and muted.
Dust floated through thin strips of pale light somewhere above me. I could smell oil, damp stone, and something metallic that clung to the back of my throat. The air was cold enough to bite.
I pushed onto my elbows.
The motion happened before I fully thought it through. My hands moved over me in quick, practised checks. Chest, Ribs, Stomach, Arms, Legs, I pressed harder the second time, expecting pain to flare somewhere.
Nothing broken.
No blood.
I flexed my fingers. Open. Closed.
Still working.
I drew in a slow breath and sat up, the ringing in my ears sharpening for a second before fading back again. My mouth was dry. My heart beat hard, but steady.
The last thing I remembered was the base.
Ukraine. The office. The alarms.
And then the meteor.
I could still see it if I let myself. That impossible thing descending through the sky above the base, bright enough to make the world look bleached and thin. The office window. The light swallowed everything beyond the glass. A pressure in the air like the whole world had taken a breath and forgotten to let it out.
After that, nothing.
I frowned and looked around.
I was in an underground car park.
Rows of concrete pillars stretched away in long, dim lines. Old tyre marks stained the ground black. A few cars sat abandoned nearby beneath a thin film of dust, their shapes dull in the weak light. Somewhere overhead, a fluorescent tube flickered with a tired, uneven buzz. Most of the others were dead.
I planted a hand on the floor and pushed myself to my feet.
My boots scraped softly against the concrete as I steadied myself. For a moment, I stood still, letting my body tell me if I'd missed something. A hidden fracture. A bad landing. Anything.
Nothing.
That should have been reassuring.
It wasn't.
The air felt colder than it should have been, and very still. Too still. Underground places always had some kind of life to them. Ventilation. Distant engines overhead. Pipes ticking. People moving somewhere beyond the walls.
Here, the silence sat heavy in the structure, as if it belonged there.
I turned slowly, taking it in.
A ramp led upward toward what looked like a street exit. Another curved away to my left. Most of the deeper parts of the garage disappeared into shadow where the dead lights gave up entirely. An overturned shopping trolley lay on its side near one of the pillars, one wheel still spinning slightly, or maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. A collapsed cardboard box had spilled its contents across the nearby floor—cans, plastic bottles, something wrapped in foil that had already split open.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
This didn't make sense.
I had been in Ukraine.
Now I was here.
Wherever here was.
I started walking.
My footsteps echoed quietly through the empty structure, tapping out ahead of me and then returning thinner from the pillars. The sound carried farther than it should have. Far enough to make the whole place feel hollow.
I passed a row of parked vehicles. Most looked like ordinary city cars. Compact. Civilian. One had both rear doors hanging open. Another had a smashed headlight and a spiderweb of cracks across the windscreen. There was a child's jacket on the back seat of one car and a takeaway coffee cup lying on its side beside another, dried brown streaks fixed to the concrete.
Still no people.
I reached the base of the nearest ramp and looked upward.
Daylight filtered down faintly from the street above, colourless and weak. Not proper sunlight. Just enough to show the incline and the dust drifting through it.
I took one step toward it.
"Wait!"
I stopped immediately.
The voice came from behind me, sharp with nerves.
I turned.
A man stepped out from behind one of the concrete pillars with his hands raised slightly, like he wasn't sure whether he was trying to calm me down or keep me from doing something stupid. Behind him stood a woman, close enough to him that they almost moved as one.
Both of them looked exhausted.
The man was maybe in his thirties, tall and lean, with dark hair that had been pushed back so many times it wouldn't stay in place anymore. His face was pale under the grime. The woman stood half a step behind him, watching me carefully. Blonde hair tied back badly, jaw tight, eyes alert in the way people got when they were holding themselves together by force.
For a moment, none of us spoke.
The man cleared his throat first.
"You're not one of them, right?"
I stared at him.
"One of whom?"
He hesitated, then let out a breath and gave a short shake of his head.
"Right. Yeah. Fair question."
He stepped forward a little more, still cautious.
"Name's Martin."
He gestured back toward the woman.
"This is Rachel."
Rachel gave a small nod, though her eyes never really left me.
I nodded once. "Johann."
Martin looked me over again, taking in the clothes, the stance, the way I'd stopped on the ramp instead of freezing outright.
"You just woke up, too?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Same."
He rubbed the back of his neck, looking past me toward the ramp and then back again, like he couldn't decide which worried him more.
"We woke up here maybe twenty minutes ago. Down that way." He pointed deeper into the car park, toward a darker section beyond a line of pillars. "Didn't hear you at first. Thought maybe we were alone."
I looked where he pointed.
Just more shadows.
"Do you know where we are?" Martin asked.
I shook my head.
"I was in Ukraine."
He blinked. "Ukraine?"
"Yes."
Martin turned and looked at Rachel. She looked back at him, then at me.
"That's not possible," he said, but there wasn't much force behind it.
I didn't answer. I didn't have anything useful to say to that.
He exhaled through his nose. "We're from Sydney."
I looked at him properly then. "Sydney."
"Yeah."
Rachel spoke before he could add anything else. Her voice was quiet, but the tremor in it was hard to miss.
"We were at home. In our apartment." She swallowed. "One moment, everything was normal, and then the whole room went bright. Not like the power going out. More like… lightning, except inside. Everywhere at once."
She gave a helpless little motion with one hand, taking in the concrete around us.
"And then we woke up here."
I said nothing.
Three people. Two different places. Same result.
That alone told me enough.
Something had happened.
Something far too large for any of us to understand by standing here and guessing.
Martin folded his arms and rubbed at them like he couldn't get warm.
"You got any idea what's going on?"
"No."
He gave a humourless huff. "Brilliant."
Rachel shot him a quick look. "Can you not?"
"What?" he said, too quickly. "I'm just saying—"
"You're not helping."
"I know I'm not helping."
The words bounced off the pillars and died in the silence.
I watched them for another second. Couple, most likely. Same age range. Close enough that Rachel looked toward him automatically, and Martin kept angling himself slightly in front of her without seeming to realise it. Frightened, but not useless.
A distant sound rolled faintly through the concrete structure.
A dull thud.
All three of us turned our heads at once.
Another sound followed, farther away and muffled by layers of concrete and earth.
Martin frowned. "What was that?"
I didn't answer. I was listening.
The sound came again.
This time it was sharper.
A crack. Then another.
Gunfire.
I moved instinctively toward the ramp.
Rachel's hand closed around Martin's sleeve. "Wait—"
A deep boom tore through the air outside.
The floor gave a hard, ugly jolt beneath my boots. Dust burst from the ceiling in a pale sheet. Rachel flinched so hard she stumbled sideways into a parked car, and Martin swore under his breath.
The boom echoed through the garage, rolled along the concrete, and faded into a long metallic groan from somewhere above us.
"That was an explosion," I said.
Martin stared at me. "You sure?"
I looked at him once.
He lifted both hands slightly. "Right. Stupid question."
More sounds drifted down from the street. Sporadic gunfire. Distant shouting. Another explosion farther off, followed by the sharp clatter of something collapsing.
Every instinct I had wanted to move upward, find sightlines, identify threats, work out what kind of fight was happening and who was winning it.
Instead, I turned and walked back down the ramp.
Behind me, Martin said, "Aren't we going up there?"
"No."
He looked genuinely thrown by that. "No?"
I scanned the car park quickly as I moved. Too open. Too many lanes of approach. Too many entrances, too many blind angles, too many unknowns. Going up that ramp without knowing what was outside would be like stepping onto a stage in the middle of someone else's firefight.
Another burst of gunfire cracked somewhere beyond the street above. Closer this time. Not close enough to pinpoint, but close enough to feel the shape of it in my chest.
I moved toward the nearest parked car and crouched beside it.
The rear door was half open. I looked inside. Empty fast-food wrappers, shopping bags, a cracked phone charger. Nothing useful.
I checked the glove compartment. Registration papers in a language I didn't know. Tissues. Nothing else.
I shut it and moved to the next vehicle.
Martin and Rachel followed, though I could hear the confusion in their footsteps.
"What are you doing?" Martin asked.
"Finding something useful."
"In a car?"
"Yes."
He opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, then thought better of it.
The second car had a locked boot. I left it. The third had been hit hard enough at some point that the rear panel sat crooked. The trunk didn't latch properly. I lifted it and found a blanket, jumper cables, a stained grocery bag, and beneath it all a metal tyre iron.
I picked it up and tested the weight in my hand.
Solid. Not ideal. Better than empty hands.
I straightened and looked around again.
A narrow maintenance door sat near the far wall, half hidden behind a pillar and painted the same dead grey as the concrete around it. It would have been easy to miss if I hadn't been looking for somewhere defensible.
"Follow me," I said.
Martin blinked. "Where?"
I pointed with the tyre iron. "There."
We crossed the open floor quickly.
The gunfire outside continued in bursts now, sometimes single shots, sometimes full strings. Between them came the distant roar of something I couldn't place. Too deep for a vehicle engine. Too rough to be machinery alone.
Rachel kept glancing toward the ramps as we moved.
"What's happening out there?"
"I don't know."
That was true, and I hated saying it.
Dust shivered from the ceiling with each distant concussion. Not much. Just enough to remind me that whatever was happening above us had weight behind it.
I reached the maintenance door first and tried the handle.
Unlocked.
I pulled it open and stepped aside just enough to keep the tyre iron free.
The room beyond was small and windowless, probably some kind of storage or utility space. Concrete walls. Shelving along one side. A coil of hose in one corner. Cleaning supplies. A rusted mop bucket. One entrance, no obvious second access point.
I swept it quickly with my eyes.
Clear.
I stepped inside first anyway, checked the corners properly, then moved back and gestured them in.
Martin entered, Rachel right behind him. She wrapped both arms around herself the second she crossed the threshold, as if the smaller space made the cold feel worse.
I shut the door behind us.
The room dimmed, and the sound from outside dulled at once. Not gone. Just pushed back behind layers of concrete until the gunfire felt farther away and the explosions came through as blunt vibrations more than real sound.
Rachel leaned against the wall and let out a shaky breath.
"Oh my God…"
Martin dragged a hand through his hair. "What the hell is going on?"
I didn't answer. I stood near the door, listening.
The room smelled of bleach, damp cement, and old dust. Somewhere in the wall behind me, a pipe ticked faintly. The shelving held random supplies—rags, a torch with no batteries, a box of disposable gloves, and a cracked plastic container half full of screws. Useless, mostly.
Martin looked at the tyre iron in my hand, then back at me.
"You military?"
I glanced at him.
"Yes," I said
"Army?"
"Yes."
He nodded once. Rachel pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, then dropped them. "So what do we do?"
"For now?" I said. "We stay quiet. We listen. We wait until we know more."
Martin gave a short laugh that had no amusement in it. "That's not much of a plan."
"It's better than walking into unknown contact with no weapon and no idea where we are."
He opened his mouth, then shut it.
Another burst of gunfire rattled in the distance.
Rachel lifted her head. "Do you think it's soldiers?"
"I don't know."
"You said gunfire."
"I said it sounded like gunfire."
She stared at me for a moment, then looked away, breathing through her nose like she was trying not to panic.
Martin pushed himself off the wall and paced once across the room, then back again. It was too small for it. He stopped, scrubbed both hands down his face, and said, "When I said 'one of them' before… we saw something."
That got my full attention. "What?"
He looked at Rachel before answering. She swallowed.
"Only for a second," she said. "Up near the other ramp."
Martin nodded. "We heard noise first. Thought maybe it was people. I went closer to look, and there was…" He stopped, jaw tightening. "I don't know. It moved wrong."
I said nothing.
Rachel took over, voice low. "It was down near the entrance. In the dark. Tall maybe. Or hunched. I couldn't tell. I just remember the sound."
"What sound?"
She looked at the floor. "Like breathing. But wet. And angry."
The room seemed to get smaller.
Martin forced out a breath. "Could've been a person. Could've been someone injured. I'm not saying it was a monster or some insane shit like that. I'm just saying I saw enough to know I didn't want to stay there."
Another explosion hit somewhere above, heavier than the others.
The walls shivered.
A scatter of dust fell from the ceiling. Rachel flinched again. One of the metal shelves rattled softly against the wall.
Then came the shouting.
Faint, muffled, impossible to make out—but human. More than one voice. Fast. Panicked.
Martin turned toward the door. "People."
"Maybe."
"We should help them."
"With what?" I asked. "A tyre iron?"
His jaw set. "We can't just hide in a cupboard."
"No," I said. "We can hide in a defensible room while we work out whether the people outside are actually the threat."
That stopped him.
Rachel stared at me. "You really think it could be that bad?"
Before I could answer, something hit the outer wall of the car park hard enough to make the whole room jump.
The sound was violent and close. Concrete boomed. The floor lurched under us. Dust dropped in a thick rush from the ceiling, and one of the bottles on the shelf toppled and burst against the floor.
Rachel gasped.
Martin swore.
I was already at the door, shoulder braced, tyre iron raised without thinking.
Then, through the concrete beyond us, muted but unmistakable, came a scream.
Not human.
No words in it. No shape I recognised. Just a raw, tearing sound that seemed to drag nails down my spine and leave them there.
Nobody moved.
Rachel's breath caught so sharply it almost sounded painful. Martin went pale in a way I didn't think people could on command.
Outside, the gunfire started again. Closer. Fast, desperate, overlapping. Someone shouted something I couldn't make out. Another explosion followed, then a heavy series of impacts like footsteps or blows, too deep and spaced too far apart to be anything ordinary.
I tightened my grip on the tyre iron until my knuckles hurt.
The room had gone completely still around us. Even the air felt as though it were listening.
Martin spoke first, but only just.
"What… was that?"
I kept my eyes on the door.
"I don't know."
It was the third time I'd said it since waking up, and each time it sounded worse.
Another scream ripped through the distance, shorter now, cut off suddenly in a way that made my stomach tighten.
Rachel whispered, "That's not possible."
No one answered her.
I took one slow breath, then another, forcing my pulse back under control.
Whatever was outside, panic wouldn't help. Guessing wouldn't help. We were alive, armed with almost nothing, trapped underground in a city that sounded like it was tearing itself apart above our heads.
For now, alive was enough.