The cold in Sector 4 didn’t just bite; it chewed. It gnawed at your fingertips until they turned the color of bruised plums and settled deep in the marrow of your bones, a heavy, aching constant that made you forget what warmth felt like.
Elara adjusted the rag wrapped around her face, her breath puffing out in short, terrified bursts of steam that vanished instantly into the blizzard. She was crouching in the mud behind the mess hall, the stench of boiled cabbage and unwashed bodies faint beneath the sterile, metallic smell of the snow.
She checked her wrist. The bio-monitor clamped there blinked a steady, ominous green. If she crossed the perimeter—the Red Line—it would turn red. Three seconds later, the neuro-toxin would release, and her heart would stop. That was the Rule. The only Rule that mattered.
Stay inside. Stay alive. Outside is death. Outside is the Scourge.
But inside was death, too. Just slower.
Elara looked down at the small, crumpled photograph in her hand. It was of her brother, limit—six years old, pale as the snow falling around her, coughing up blood in their shared bunk. The Sector doctor had shrugged. “Pneumonia. No antibiotics left. Prepare the body.”
She wasn’t going to prepare his body. She was going to save it.
Rumors had always circulated in the dark corners of the barracks. Whispers from the old-timers who claimed to remember the Before. They said the Commanders kept a stash of “Old World” medicine in the Outpost, a concrete fortress that sat just beyond the barbed wire, theoretically guarding them from the radioactive monsters roaming the wasteland.
Elara had a pair of wire cutters stolen from the maintenance shed and a death wish.
The searchlight from the guard tower swept over the yard, a blinding cyclops eye cutting through the swirling snow. Elara flattened herself against the frozen mud. The light passed. One, two, three.
She moved.
She scrambled on her belly toward the perimeter fence. The barbed wire here was rusted, neglected. The Commanders were arrogant; they relied on the bio-monitors and the fear of the Scourge to keep the cattle in the pen. They didn’t think anyone was stupid enough to try and leave.
Elara reached the fence. Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the cutters. For Liam, she thought. Just for Liam.
She positioned the blades over the bottom wire. Snip. The sound was deafening in her ears, like a gunshot, but the wind howled louder. She cut the second wire. Then the third.
She grabbed the mesh and pulled it up, creating a gap just wide enough to shimmy through.
This was it. The moment of truth. She pushed her arm through.
She waited for the beep. She waited for the burning sensation of the toxin. She waited for death.
Her bio-monitor stayed silent.
She frowned, glancing at the wristband. It was still blinking green. Had it malfunctioned? Or… was the perimeter sensor broken?
She didn’t have time to question miracles. She dragged her body through the mud, the barbs tearing at her coat, scratching her back. Then, she was out.
She stood up in the wasteland.
She expected the radiation to burn her skin immediately. She expected the air to taste like ash. She expected the Scourge—twisted, mutated beasts—to come lunging out of the dark.
But the air… tasted fresh. It smelled of pine needles and wet earth.
Elara ran toward the Outpost. It was a dark silhouette against the night sky, about two hundred yards away. As she got closer, she realized there were no guards patrolling the perimeter. No automated turrets.
She reached the back wall of the concrete building and found a heavy steel door. It was unlocked.
Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. This was too easy. It felt like a trap. But she pushed the door open and slipped inside.
She found herself in a hallway. But it wasn’t the stark, industrial military bunker she expected. The floor was carpeted. The walls were painted a soft beige. And there was a smell—coffee? And… vanilla?
She crept down the hall, her muddy boots sinking into the plush carpet. She heard voices coming from a room ahead. Laughter.
She pulled her knife—a sharpened piece of scrap metal—and peered around the corner.
The room was a break room. Two men in Sector Commander uniforms were sitting at a table. But they weren’t eating nutrient paste. They were eating pizza. From a box. A bright, colorful box with a cartoon chef on it.
On the wall, a flat screen was glowing. Elara had only seen screens used for propaganda broadcasts, grainy black-and-white speeches about the glory of the Sector.
This screen showed… a game. Men running on green grass, chasing a ball. The bottom of the screen scrolled with text: LIVE from Chicago.
Chicago? Chicago was a crater. The history books said Chicago was the first to fall in the Great War of 2099.
One of the Commanders laughed, wiping tomato sauce from his lip. “Man, I hate the night shift. Can’t wait to clock out and drive back to the city. My wife’s been nagging me about fixing the deck.”
“Quit whining,” the other said. ” The hazard pay for working the Exclusion Zone is triple. You want to go back to being a mall cop?”
Elara’s brain couldn’t process the words. Drive back? City? Mall cop?
She stepped back, her head spinning. Her elbow bumped a picture frame on the wall. It crashed to the floor.
The two men jumped up, hands going to the holstered tasers at their belts. “Hey! Who’s there?”
Elara didn’t think. She ran.
“We got a stray!” one of them yelled. “Code Orange! Don’t shoot, just subdue!”
Elara burst out the back door, back into the snow. But she didn’t run toward the fence. She ran toward the rise of the hill, past the Outpost. She had to see. She had to know.
She scrambled up the icy slope, her lungs burning, the voices of the men fading behind her as the wind picked up. She reached the crest of the hill, gasping, tears freezing on her cheeks.
And then she stopped.
Below her, stretching out as far as the eye could see, was a sea of light.
Golden grids of streetlamps. towering skyscrapers of glass and steel glowing in the night. Red and white rivers of light moving along massive highways.
It was a world. A whole, living, breathing world.
There was no nuclear winter. There was no Scourge.
Sector 4 wasn’t a survival bunker for the last of humanity.
It was a prison. Or a zoo. A twisted historical reenactment or a social experiment kept isolated from a modern, thriving civilization. They had been starving, freezing, and dying for generations, believing they were the lucky ones, while the rest of the world watched football and ate pizza just five miles away.
Elara looked down at her wrist. She grabbed a rock and smashed the bio-monitor until it shattered, the plastic shards cutting her skin.
She looked back at the dark, miserable patch of the Sector behind her, where Liam was coughing his life away in the dark.
She wasn’t just going to get medicine. She was going to burn this whole lie to the ground.
Elara took a deep breath of the free air, turned her back on the city lights, and began the descent back toward the fence. She had work to do.
