Steamson’s eyes flickered open. Dust choked the air, and everything was gray. For a moment, he couldn’t remember who he was—just the weight on his chest, the throb in his head, and the scent of scorched metal. Then something shifted beside him. “Calvine,” he croaked, coughing. “Dahlia—?” A cough answered him from somewhere under the rubble. Then a groan. He pushed upward, gritting his teeth as debris scraped his arms raw. The world was half-collapsed around him—concrete slabs, twisted rebar, shattered glass. All that was left of the old facility was ruin. “Help—!” came Dahlia’s voice, weak but alive. Steamson scrambled, ignoring the sharp sting of broken edges as he clawed away a chunk of wall. After what felt like hours—but was probably seconds—Calvine’s dirt-covered face emerged from the debris. His goggles were cracked, his lip split, but he was breathing. “You good?” Steamson asked. Calvine nodded stiffly. “Where’s Dahlia?” She answered again—closer now—and between the two of them, they pulled her free. Her left arm was scraped up bad, her braid caked in ash, but her eyes were steady. They sat there, the three of them, breathing hard on the cold concrete floor as the dust settled like snow. And then the silence hit. No humming generators. No flickering lights. No distant sounds of city life or wind turbines. Just stillness. “What... happened?” Dahlia asked, voice barely above a whisper. Calvine pushed himself up, stepping carefully through the ruins. “This was a data core. Civil sector, probably. Place used to power half the grid down here.” Steamson squinted at a collapsed wall. The rusted-out remains of a neon sign were barely visible through the dust: "Genesis Core—Authorized Access Only." “Must’ve been underground,” he muttered. “Or buried during the blasts.” “Blasts,” Dahlia repeated. “You think it was a fallout zone?” No one answered. The memory hit Steamson like a punch—brief flashes of screaming, sirens, a sky lit up in colors no natural sun could ever make. And the silence that followed. That same silence. “I think...” Calvine knelt by a smashed terminal, tapping uselessly on its surface. “...we're in the Waist Lands.” Dahlia’s face drained of color. “No way,” she said. “That’s not real. That’s a scare story.” “It was,” Calvine said quietly. “Until the fallout. Seventy-five percent of the world fried in a matter of days. Circuits gone. Networks down. The Grid burned to cinders. Only the Neons came out of it alive.” Steamson looked up sharply. “The Neons?” “They were built to survive it,” Calvine said. “Synthetic cores. Bio-fusion drives. Immune to EMP, radiation, system collapse. While the rest of the world choked, they adapted. Took over the cities. Maybe even the sky.” Dahlia stared at the cracked ceiling, her voice hollow. “Then what are we?” “Leftovers,” Steamson said. They were quiet again after that. Eventually, they found a stairwell, mostly intact, leading upward through the rubble. They climbed in silence, shoulders brushing walls as narrow shafts of daylight pierced the dust. When they finally emerged, blinking into the light— They saw it. A monster stood across the horizon. Towering. Grotesque. Its limbs were part flesh, part exposed machinery—pistons hissing in its joints, wires woven through muscle like veins. Its face was an open wound of metal and bone, eyes glowing with artificial fire. And it was searching. Sniffing. Hunting. Its gaze drifted lazily over the cracked landscape, dragging behind it a ruined chain of twisted metal and... something else. “Holy sh—” Steamson couldn’t even finish. The creature turned slightly. It hadn’t seen them. Not yet. But it would. Because it was looking for survivors. For prey. And they were standing in the open. “Run,” Calvine whispered. Steamson didn’t need to be told twice. They turned, hearts pounding, and bolted into the broken landscape of the Waist Lands, the creature’s distant mechanical howl chasing after them. End of Chapter One.
