I opened my mouth to take a breath and immediately broke into a cough. I was lying face down, my nose buried in something cold and slimy.
I tried to push off with my right hand.
Nothing.
Memory returned in short fragments. I tried to move my shoulder. Again, nothing.
"I have never seen such a terrible sight," the thought flashed.
I climbed to the top of the pile. It was slightly lighter here: dim rays fell from somewhere far away, catching a gray haze hanging in the air.
"Ephraim..." I rasped. "Ephraim, where are you?"
Instead of an answer, a heavy metallic groan came from somewhere to the right.
I began to dig through the trash with my left hand. My fingers hit broken ceramics, rusty springs, and bones. Thin, fragile—children’s bones.
I found him ten minutes later. Ephraim lay pinned between two crumpled steel containers.
"Hey, old man, wake up," I shook him by the shoulder. "Come on. Get up. We don't have time."
Ephraim opened his eyes. His gaze was unfocused, his pupils dilated.
"Iron..." he whispered. "Are we... in hell?"
"I think this place is worse. We're in the Pit. Do you feel your leg?"
He tried to move—and immediately cried out, biting his lip until it bled.
"Pinned. The bone... I think it's finished."
I examined the container. Move it with my hands? Impossible.
A few meters away, a thick water pipe poked out of the heap of junk. I crawled to it and grabbed the pipe with my left hand, bracing my feet against the container, and pulled.
"Pointless," Zeno's voice suddenly intervened. "Your efficiency is below five percent. The tissues of the shoulder girdle are torn. You'll just break your remaining bones."
"You don't know until you try," I growled through gritted teeth.
I drove the end of the pipe under the edge of the container, propping it up with a piece of concrete. I threw my entire weight onto the other end, using the inertia of my dead limb.
The metal shrieked. The container rose a few centimeters.
"Crawl out!" I barked at Ephraim. "Fast!"
Through the pain, the old man freed his leg. I let go of the pipe, and the container crashed back down with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.
We lay there, breathing heavily.
"Thank you," Ephraim grabbed my shoulder.
I saw something moving in the darkness. Richter? Again?
"No," Ephraim rasped. "We call them zombies."
"Zombies? What else even exists in this world," I thought.
"They were once people. Now—only scraps," Ephraim continued. Some moved on all fours; others had rusty hooks welded on instead of hands. Their faces were covered in sores, their eyes clouded by cataracts from the eternal darkness.
"Do you have a knife?" I asked Ephraim.
"Dropped it when we fell."
My hand gripped that pipe.
"Stay behind me."
One of the "zombies"—a creature with a dislocated jaw—lunged first. I thrust the pipe forward with force. The metal pierced its sternum with a crunch.
"To the wall," I ordered. "It’ll be harder for them to surround us there."
We backed away. Ephraim limped, leaning on me. There were more and more zombies. Dozens of red and yellow dots lit up in the dark—eyes waiting for the right moment.
And then a sound rang out that made even them stop.
Clang... Clang...
Twenty meters from us, a figure rose from the pile of trash. He saw us and the zombies.
Richter swung the fragment of his blade, hacking the nearest scavenger clean in half. The creatures fell upon the iron giant, swarming him, gnawing at the joints of his armor.
"Run!" Ephraim jerked my sleeve.
We bolted deep into the Pit, away from the fight. Skulls and metal crunched underfoot. We ran until our lungs burned as if filled with molten tin.
"Dead end..." Ephraim leaned against the wall, sliding down.
I ran my palm over the surface. It was slightly warm.
"No," I said, feeling for the seams.
I found a small indentation—a perfect circle the size of a palm.
"Don't," panic surfaced in Zeno's voice.
"Old man, I understand everything, but just let us survive," I said tiredly, pressing my right hand to the circle.
At first—nothing.
Then the crystal began to resonate. A thin ultrasonic beep sliced through the air, and blood began to flow from my ears.
[Biometric key detected. Identification... Host 0. Access granted.]
Heavy slabs slid into their grooves, revealing a clean corridor flooded with dead white fluorescent light.
"What is this?" Ephraim squinted.
"If you don't know, I certainly don't, but at the very least we need to move forward," I dragged him inside.
The airlock sealed behind us with a pneumatic exhale.
We stood in a hall filled with rows of servers and capsule-like structures. As we approached, the central console flared to life.
I stepped toward the main terminal. My hand touched the smooth surface.
"Iron..." Zeno howled in my head.
A red warning flashed on the main screen.
[WARNING. Self-destruct protocol for the "Citadel" Cleaning System initiated. Timer: 15:00... 14:59...]
Then, Valerius's calm voice came from the ceiling speakers.
"Thank you, Object Alpha. You have no idea how difficult it was to guide you here."
"You... you're going to blow everything up?" I stared into the camera. "There are thousands of people here!"
"People are a resource," Valerius replied. "Fifteen minutes, Object Alpha. Try to survive the reboot."
"Zeno," I grit my teeth. "How do we stop this?"
Silence.
"Zeno!"
"You can't," he whispered. "To stop the explosion, the code in the core must be rewritten. And the core... is right in front of you."
I looked at the massive column in the center of the hall. A white light pulsed inside it.
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