The militiaman ran in and dropped to his knees.
Lena had a deep bullet wound in her thigh. They had tried to stop the bleeding with an improvised tourniquet made from belts, but the fabric beneath was soaked through. Evelyn, our only medical specialist, had remained above. We were alone.
But that wasn’t entirely true. Lena had been trained. Not as a doctor—as a nurse. Two years of nursing school before the apocalypse. Enough to know the basics: pressure, cleaning, keeping the patient still.
"Hold her leg," Lena said, her voice strained but controlled. "I need to see the wound."
Jonah looked at the stranger with contained fury.
"What happened?" Jonah asked.
"They attacked us," the man replied, without lowering his hands.
"Who?" Jonah insisted.
"The same ones who chased you down the road."
Jonah blinked, confused.
"How do you know who we are?"
The man sketched a tired smile and pointed at his own dirty clothes.
"Because I saw you before. I hid when you reached the barricade."
I kept my distance and focused my gaze on him. The scarlet interface wrapped around his figure.
SYNCHRONIZED HUMAN
Name: Elias Ward
Physical condition: Stable
Fatigue: High
Injuries: Minor
Synchronization: 4%
Adaptation: 2%
Detected Ability: Resonance Perception
Mastery: Unstable
Note: This individual is synchronized with the network. His ability is passive and perception-based. He is not hostile. His synchronization is unstable. Cause unknown.
Elias looked at me intently. His expression, previously exhausted, changed completely. His eyes seemed to focus on something invisible floating in front of my face.
"You can see it too," Elias whispered.
I tensed.
"See what?"
"The information. The flow."
I didn’t answer, but my silence was confirmation enough. Elias slowly lowered his hands, ignoring Marcus’s rifle.
"Then you’re connected."
"Yes."
Jonah turned from the mattress, looking at both of us as if we were speaking another language.
"What the hell are you two talking about?"
Elias didn’t take his eyes off me.
"About something that started before you arrived in this city, Jonah. Something much bigger."
I approached him, lowering the barrel of my weapon but keeping my finger near the trigger.
"Does your System show you complete statistics?"
Elias shook his head.
"No."
That surprised me. The nature of his interface was different from mine.
"You see nothing?"
"I see some things. Flashes, presences. But not structured numbers like the ones I know you just saw when you looked at me."
The reading marked his mastery as "unstable." He had no logical reason to lie to me.
"How long have you been synchronized?"
"I don’t know exactly. Time stopped making sense when the nightmares became real."
"And how did you survive a shootout with an unstable mastery?"
Elias lowered his gaze toward the woman on the mattress.
"She found me."
Lena, making a monumental effort, weakly raised her head.
"He was dying in an alley... when I found him."
Jonah clenched his jaw, assimilating the loyalty forged between them, but paranoia remained active.
"Who attacked this place exactly?"
Elias leaned against the wall.
"Mercer’s men. The ones who came after you."
Jonah shook his head firmly.
"They’re chasing me for stealing from them."
"They were chasing us too."
"Then we have the same enemy. It’s simple."
Elias shook his head slowly, and his gaze darkened.
"Not exactly."
Silence fell over the room, heavy and ominous.
"What do you mean, Elias?"
Elias looked Jonah in the eyes.
"The men chasing you weren’t the only ones operating in this sector."
Jonah froze, the color draining from his face.
"How many groups are out there?"
"At least three different factions hunting."
Marcus cursed under his breath.
"Perfect. Multiple fronts."
"What are they looking for?"
"Some are looking for the towers. The altered infrastructures."
"For what?"
"I don’t know."
"And what are you looking for?"
Elias looked at his own hands, covered in grime and dried blood.
"I just wanted to survive one more day."
A dull thud echoed in the outer hallway.
We all turned our heads in unison.
Another thud. Boots. Organized, tactical steps. Many.
Marcus raised his weapon immediately.
"They found us."
The first shot pierced the wooden door and embedded itself in the concrete of our room.
"Move!" Marcus roared. "We’re leaving now!"
Jonah tried to lift Lena, but his knees buckled under the dead weight.
"I can’t carry her for long, she’s losing consciousness!"
"I’ll help," Elias intervened quickly.
Together they draped the woman’s arms over their necks and lifted her.
Scarlett positioned herself by the entrance, covering the corridor. She was still bleeding from her side, but she ignored it.
"Gabriel!" Scarlett shouted over the roar of a second shot.
"What?"
"Escape route! Your system, use it!"
I closed my eyes for a second and ordered the tactical map to open. The complete structure of the underground bunker exploded before my eyes in a three-dimensional crimson hologram. Collapsed tunnels. Sealed rooms. Blind hallways. Blocked exits.
It was too much information. A sharp pain pierced my cornea.
Filter. Escape network.
I closed the sections I didn’t need with a blink. The map simplified, tracing a single viable line through the rubble.
"Sixty meters west, through the maintenance corridor."
"Is it a clean exit?" Marcus demanded.
I kept analyzing the structural data.
"Not exactly. There’s a hatch."
Elias, holding Lena, approached me with wide eyes.
"We can’t go right."
"Why? It’s the fastest route."
"There’s concentrated energy. A lot."
I looked at him, assessing his ability.
"You can detect it through the walls?"
"Yes." Elias closed his eyes tightly, as if the mere presence of the energy caused him physical pain. "To the right there’s a main pipe. Don’t dare touch it."
I checked the map. The System superimposed a warning box over the right route.
[Warning: High energy concentration. Anomalous origin.]
I corrected the course instantly.
"Then we’ll go left. Toward the west wing."
Scarlett, emptying a magazine into the hallway to give us cover, smiled slightly.
"You’re starting to be useful."
"Thanks."
"It’s not a compliment."
"I’ll take it anyway."
A shot struck the doorframe, throwing concrete splinters into our faces. We had no time for more words.
We ran. The hallway was narrow and claustrophobic. Jonah and Elias advanced clumsily, carrying Lena’s weight while she moaned with every step. Marcus covered the rear, walking backward and firing containment bursts. Scarlett led the vanguard, a lethal shadow clearing corners.
I ran in the middle, using continuous Analysis to track heat signatures.
One. Two. Three.
The enemies were infiltrating through different secondary corridors, trying to cut off our route. The scarlet System marked their positions by projecting silhouettes through the walls.
I wasn’t trying to analyze their names. I didn’t need to know who they were, their mood, or their fatigue. I just needed to know where they were.
[Immediate threat: 17 meters. Frontal intersection.]
"Right, imminent contact!" I shouted.
Marcus spun on his axis and fired through the smoke. The enemy militiaman turned the corner just in time to receive two impacts to the chest, falling heavily.
We kept moving. The flashlight beams bounced frantically around the environment.
Then a new warning. An attacker emerged from behind a support column to my left.
The interface marked him before he could even raise his rifle. I saw him in bright red before processing his features.
I raised my weapon. Time seemed to slow down. I pulled the trigger.
The recoil struck my shoulder. The man fell backward with a hole in his throat.
Blood splattered the gray wall behind him. A cold void invaded me as I understood that this was my first direct lethal shot. But I couldn’t stop to process it. Survival demanded movement.
"Gabriel!" Maya’s voice crackled from the communicator on my chest, distorted by static. "Where the hell are you?"
"We’re leaving through the west wing!" I replied, resuming the run.
Meters ahead, Scarlett stopped short, digging in her heels.
"Down!" Scarlett shouted.
I threw myself to the ground. A tracer bullet roared over us, lighting up the tunnel. Scarlett didn’t seek cover; she planted herself firmly, aimed into the darkness, and fired twice with surgical precision.
The attacker at the far end of the tunnel collapsed without a sound.
She lowered her weapon and continued advancing, but I saw her free hand travel by inertia toward her side. The bloodstain had grown, soaking the fabric down to her hip.
"Scarlett," I called.
"Later," Scarlett said.
"You’re losing too much blood."
"Later, Gabriel. Move."
I didn’t argue further. I quickened my pace.
We reached the end of the corridor. The route died in front of a heavy maintenance hatch reinforced with steel bars. It was hermetically sealed.
"Shit," Jonah muttered, leaning Lena against the wall.
I invoked the scanner on the metal.
[MAINTENANCE HATCH]
Status: Mechanical lock engaged.
Overall structural damage: 34%.
"The mechanism is jammed, we need to force it open."
Elias cautiously approached the wall adjacent to the door. He closed his eyes again, sweating profusely.
"There’s energy behind that wall. A lot."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes. I feel it burning my nerves just being near it."
"How much energy?"
"I don’t know, I don’t have numbers, I just know it’s lethal."
I observed the door mechanism. There was a rusted manual control lever connected to jammed gears. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled with all my strength. The veins in my neck throbbed, but the metal didn’t budge a millimeter.
Nothing.
Scarlett pushed me aside.
"Let me."
"No."
"What the hell are you doing?"
"You’re wounded. You’ll tear the muscle."
"And you don’t have enough strength. Move."
She was right. We had no hydraulic strength, no tools. I yielded the space, but she didn’t just pull the lever. She extended her hand toward the hatch, concentrated a contained kinetic pulse, and released it right on the locking mechanism.
The structure groaned, resisting. The gears screeched.
Elias, who was watching the wall, opened his eyes suddenly, terrified.
"Now! Release it!"
Scarlett dropped backward just as a violent discharge of bluish energy shot through the exposed pipe beside the mechanism. Sparks flew, devouring the rust, and the mechanical lock burst from the overload.
The hatch gave way with a dull blast, opening outward.
"Everyone out!" Marcus shouted.
We stumbled out one after another. The blinding outside light, filtered by the dead trees, struck our eyes like a whip. We had emerged from the back of the service station.
Marcus had been foresighted; he had moved the vehicles near the wooded perimeter. Maya and Evelyn ran toward us from the rear, weapons raised.
Upon seeing the wounded woman, Evelyn holstered her pistol instantly.
"Lena!" Evelyn shouted.
The medic slid across the dirt and knelt immediately beside the woman. She tore the fabric of the pants and assessed the wound in seconds.
"She’s alive. The artery isn’t compromised, but we need to stabilize her now."
Jonah released all the air he had held in his lungs and dropped to his knees, exhausted. Elias remained standing beside Lena, trembling from the effort.
I turned and saw Scarlett. She was leaning against the truck’s body, breathing shallowly and pressing one hand against the hemorrhage on her side.
Evelyn looked up from the tourniquet and examined her with a critical eye.
"You’re wounded too."
Scarlett tensed her jaw.
"I’m fine."
Evelyn pulled a clean compression bandage from her kit.
"If you say that stupidity in front of me again, I swear to God I’ll hit you in the wound."
To everyone’s surprise, Scarlett raised an eyebrow and the corners of her lips curved a millimeter.
"I like you."
Evelyn smiled without humor.
"Then sit down and shut up."
Scarlett obeyed, sliding down the vehicle’s metal until she sat on the ground.
While Evelyn treated the wound and injected a coagulant, I looked toward the station structure. The sounds of combat in the underground had ceased. The enemies were still inside, regrouping or searching for our trail, but they wouldn’t take long to find the destroyed hatch.
"We have to go. Now."
Marcus nodded dryly, climbing into the driver’s seat.
"Everyone on board. Evacuation."
We climbed in urgently. Jonah helped Lena lie down in the back of the truck. Elias sat beside her, holding her hand. I took the passenger seat, closing the door with a metallic slam.
The engine roared, and the truck took off, kicking up clouds of dust and dirt as we abandoned the sector.
During the first minutes of escape, no one uttered a word. Only the hum of the tires on the cracked asphalt and the heavy breathing of the wounded could be heard. Elias stared out the window, watching the mutated forest pass at full speed, assimilating his new reality.
Finally, he broke the silence.
"Where are you going?"
Marcus answered without taking his eyes off the rearview mirror:
"Outside the limits of this damn city. We’re looking for resources and a secure perimeter."
Elias turned his face toward me, with a somber curiosity in his eyes.
"And what are you looking for?"
I kept my gaze forward.
"I’m looking for answers."
"About the synchronization?"
"Among other things."
Elias smiled weakly, a crooked, exhausted smile.
"Then it seems we have something in common."
At that instant, I felt a cold, almost electric vibration, deeply rooted behind my eyes. The scarlet holoscreen unfolded spontaneously.
[NEW NETWORK CONNECTION REGISTERED.]
[Synchronized user: Elias Ward.]
[Synchronization: 4%.]
[Resonance compatibility with primary user: 71%.]
[Note: Such a high compatibility level with a stranger is statistically aberrant. Normal compatibility between synchronized individuals is below 20%.]
I frowned. Such a high compatibility level with a complete stranger was statistically aberrant in such a hostile environment.
But below, a second line appeared, blinking with urgency.
[System Warning.]
[Link compatibility is not bilateral.]
I looked at Elias through the side mirror. He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, noticing my scrutiny.
"What’s wrong?"
"My System just processed an analysis on you," I replied slowly, assessing his reactions.
"And what does it say?"
"It says we have a resonance compatibility of seventy-one percent. It’s unusually high."
Elias paled, and his expression turned rigid.
"That... that’s not possible."
"Why not?"
"Because when I tried to analyze you in the bunker room..." He paused, swallowing. "I didn’t get any percentage. My ability bounced off you like you were a black wall."
The System updated again before my eyes, injecting new scarlet text into the screen.
[Structural interference detected.]
[Origin: Passive connection between users.]
[Status: Unstable.]
[Note: The interference suggests an incompatibility at a fundamental level. The cause is unknown. Further data required.]
Elias stopped smiling. Real fear surfaced on his face.
"What does that mean?"
I looked at the blinking red screen, feeling a chill run down my spine. I didn’t have the answer, and my System didn’t intend to give it to me either.
The truck kept devouring kilometers along the cracked road while, in the distance, the service station and its secrets disappeared, swallowed by the thick forest.
The System issued one final silent notification, sealing the mystery in my mind.
[Resonance compatibility: 71%.]
[Risk of future interference: High.]
I looked at Elias one more time. He was staring at me with a mixture of fear and fascination.