The first, pale-gold fingers of the rising sun found the small convoy as it slipped from the gates of Sweetwater Gulch. It was a modest procession, led by the pickup truck with its mounted anti-aircraft machine gun—a beast of polished metal and deadly promise that had proven its brutal worth in the ruins of Detroit. Following it were two of the resilient, boxy Wuling vans, their engines humming a low, steady tune.
Even with his force reduced to a skeleton crew—John the minotaur, a couple of his most grizzled fighters, and the ever-present Zhang Tiezhu—Michael felt a surprising sense of security. The hulking presence of the .50 cal was a powerful talisman. Its only drawback was the painfully finite supply of ammunition: one hundred and eighty-two rounds remaining, each one counted like a diamond. The rifle ammunition was slightly more plentiful, but only just; every man carried three full magazines, and that was the extent of the settlement's reserve. The rest of the guards back home carried mostly empty promises in their weapons. This reality made the day's mission critical. Failure was not an option; it would render the blood spilled in Detroit a transaction of catastrophic loss.
Inside the lead Wuling, the wheel was in the unsteady but determined hands of Zhang Tiezhu. Michael, eschewing driving duty, occupied the passenger seat. In his hands was a breakfast prepared with what he chose to interpret as affectionate care by Kaoru: a potent, steaming bowl of luosifen noodles, atop which two perfectly fried lizard eggs stared up like golden, unblinking eyes. The aroma—a uniquely challenging bouquet of fermented bamboo shoots, sour pickles, and rich broth—filled the cabin entirely.
Send a person roses, and the scent lingers on your hands, Michael mused, slurping a noodle. His charitable decision to ensure the fox-eared girl didn't catch a chill the previous night had evidently yielded this… aromatic reward. The whybehind his presumed need for such fortifying sustenance was a detail he gracefully ignored.
Zhang Tiezhu, who had already consumed three bowls of plain rice that morning, found his stomach giving an unexpected, plaintive rumble. The smell was somehow both revolting and deeply tempting. Thankfully, Michael spoke, distracting him.
"Tiezhu," Michael said between bites, the words slightly muffled. "This 'Old Leader' of yours, frozen in that pod. What's he actually like?"
Behind the thick, frosted viewing plate of the cryo-chamber, the occupant was a vague, human-shaped shadow. Gender, age, build—all were mysteries. Michael's curiosity had itched at him for weeks, but questions about Base 0005's ultimate raison d'être had felt intrusive. Now, on the verge of the reveal, the itch was unbearable.
The answer he got was not what he expected. "I don't know," Zhang Tiezhu said simply, his eyes fixed on the broken road ahead. "Our founders, my grandfather's generation… they didn't know either. Their orders were to protect the facility and the occupant. The identity was need-to-know, and they didn't need to know. Opening the pod for a look would have risked the occupant's life."
He paused, a lifetime of faith coloring his next words. "But we have always believed… he must be a revered elder. A brilliant military strategist. Or a master of civil administration. Or perhaps… a pre-Collapse scientist of the highest order. Someone whose knowledge could save us all."
Michael said nothing, concentrating on his noodles to hide his expression. The sheer, staggering faithit took to guard a literal cypher for generations, to spill blood for a complete unknown, left him humbled and slightly bewildered. Popsicle, his mind supplied, the old-gamer slang for such frozen relics surfacing irreverently. What else do you call a decades-old human Popsicle?
…
They stood once more in the heart of the mountain, in the silent, climate-controlled chamber that held the great cryo-coffin. The atmosphere was starkly different from his first visit. The crowd of anxious, hopeful faces from Base 0005 was gone, whittled down by Detroit's brutality. Only Zhang Tiezhu, the young Li Hao, and two other grizzled veterans remained, their faces pale with a potent mix of exhaustion, grief, and desperate hope.
Michael's own men were absent, engaged in a somber duty in the valley below: conducting funeral pyres for the eight fallen soldiers. Burying bodies whole in the Wasteland was an invitation for trouble. The carrion birds, mutated and cunning, possessed a terrifying efficiency for excavation. Cremation was the only way to ensure the dead rested in peace. The scent of burning wood and a darker, greasy smoke would be drifting up to the cave entrance even now.
In the chamber, the ritual began. Zhang Tiezhu, his hands steady but his breath shallow, produced two dog tags. One was his own, inherited from his grandfather Zhang Dabiao. The other, still bearing flecks of dark, dried blood, had been taken from the body of the fallen Captain Liu. With a reverence that bordered on the sacred, he inserted them into twin slots on the main console.
The large wall-mounted screen, which had slumbered for decades, flickered to life with a soft, electric hum. A line of text glowed in sterile green letters: Authorization confirmed. Please input 72-character decryption key.
Zhang's fingers flew over a dusty but functional keyboard, inputting the long sequence memorized over a lifetime. The screen changed, presenting a simple, menu-driven interface. It was, as Michael observed with a flicker of amusement, remarkably user-friendly for pre-Collapse tech. A large button labelled INITIATE REVIVAL SEQUENCEwas prominent.
Below it, in glaring, pulsating red text, was the obstacle: WARNING: Cryogenic Thawing Solution reserves insufficient. Procedure cannot be initiated.
"Right," Michael said, clapping his hands together, the sound sharp in the quiet room. "Let's get to work. We're not carrying these damn cans for our health."
Under his direction, they set about their preparations. First, Zhang carefully applied a thick bead of industrial sealant—scavenged from the vault and smelling strongly of chemicals—along a hairline crack on the pod's side panel, the suspected source of the original, fateful leak. Then, with the care of a bomb disposal expert, Michael unsealed the first gleaming aluminum canister. He shook it vigorously, a move that made Li Hao blink in confusion.
"Settling," Michael explained tersely. "Things separate over decades. We need it mixed." The explanation, while simplified, carried the weight of practical wisdom. He then connected a sterile transfer hose to the pod's intake port and began the slow process of feeding the viscous, honey-colored fluid into the ancient system.
The moment the last drop from the first canister drained, the ominous red warning on the screen vanished, replaced by a steady, green READY.
A profound silence descended, broken only by the faint hum of the machinery and the ragged sound of Zhang Tiezhu's breathing. He looked at Michael, who gave a single, curt nod. This was their moment. The culmination of generations of watchful, sacrificial guardianship.
Zhang, the highest-ranking officer of Base 0005, reached out. His hand, which had held a rifle steady against hordes of the Infected, now trembled violently. He pressed the button.
A deep, resonant thrumpulsed through the chamber, a sound that had not been heard for over half a century. Lights on the pod's console, long dark, began to wink on in a sequenced cascade. A low, cycling whir filled the air. The great pod was awakening.
The next three hours were an eternity condensed. They didn't speak. They barely moved. Michael paced a slow, tight circle. Zhang Tiezhu stood at rigid attention, as if on parade before a superior. The two other veterans watched the screen with hawk-like intensity. Li Hao simply looked terrified, as if the pod might explode.
Doubt began to creep in, cold and insidious. Had the systems degraded? Was the fluid incompatible? Had they, in their desperation, killed the very person they sought to save?
Then, with a soft, melodic chime, the screen refreshed.
REVIVAL SEQUENCE COMPLETE. VITALS STABLE.
A collective, shuddering gasp was sucked into the room. Before anyone could react, there was a hydraulic hiss, the sound of seals breaking their decades-long grip. The heavy, transparent lid of the cryo-pod, frosted from the inside, began to descend slowly, sliding into a recess with a slight, grating stiffness.
As it lowered, it revealed first a cloud of cold, misty vapor. Then, as the vapor cleared, the occupant.
All of Michael's and Zhang's assumptions shattered in an instant.
It was not an elderly, revered statesman. It was not a grizzled general. It was not a stooped, scholarly scientist.
Revealed was the face of a woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with flawless, pale skin and a striking, elegant beauty that seemed untouched by time or strife. Her features were distinctly East Asian, framed by a cascade of jet-black hair fanned out around her head. She possessed a sharp, aristocratic bone structure, an unconscious hauteur that spoke of a 'high-cold' aura even in deep stasis. As the lid continued to retract, it promised to reveal more of her form, currently unclothed save for modest medical sensors.
Zhang Tiezhu and his men reacted as if struck by a physical force. A lifetime of ingrained, quasi-religious reverence for the sleeping "Old Leader" collided violently with the reality before them. With a choked, simultaneous sound of utter mortification, they spun on their heels as one, slamming their eyes shut. To look upon her in this state felt like the deepest sacrilege.
Michael, unburdened by such generational piety, stared openly. His analytical mind, however, quickly overrode other considerations. The screen said the revival was complete. Yet the woman showed no signs of waking. No flutter of eyelids, no hitch in the steady, shallow rise and fall of her chest. She lay there, impossibly preserved, a princess in a glass and steel coffin, waiting for a spell to break.
The fairy-tale analogy took root in his sleep-deprived, stressed brain. Sleeping Beauty.The absurdity of the situation, the sheer surrealism of it all, washed over him. Here, in a dead world, in the belly of a mountain, after unimaginable cost, they had found not a savior, but a sleeping queen from a dead age.
A strange, impulsive chivalry, mixed with a hefty dose of reckless curiosity, took hold. He was already the 'Harry Potter' of this odd little kingdom. Why not play the prince?
Almost without conscious thought, he stepped forward, past the rigid, backward-turned soldiers. He leaned over the open pod, the cold air from within brushing his face. The woman's lips were slightly parted. With a mental shrug that he would later blame on exhaustion and trauma, he bent down and pressed his lips to hers.
It was not a romantic kiss. It was dry, cold, and tasted faintly of antiseptic and static. It was the kiss of a man poking a historical artifact with a stick, wrapped in a moment of theatrical whimsy.
He pulled back.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, her long, dark eyelashes fluttered. Once, twice. They parted, revealing eyes of a deep, liquid brown, clear and strangely focused despite their decades of disuse. They found Michael's face, hovering close above her.
Her brow furrowed slightly, as if trying to place a distant memory. Her lips moved, shaping a word silently at first. Then, a voice emerged, husky from disuse but melodious, utterly devoid of confusion or alarm. It was a statement, simple and clear, directed with puzzling specificity at Michael.
The word hung in the sterile, recycled air of the chamber, devastating in its innocence and profound in its bizarre implication.
"Daddy?"