The skies were filled with the cries of the dead, as though the wind itself bore witness to the breaking of the night. Those voices did not belong to any living throat, yet they seemed to coil above the compound, threading through the smoke and drifting embers like a grim chorus. Beneath that mournful canopy, men armed with spray-painted, short-barreled assault rifles burst into the home with practiced violence, their boots striking stone and tile in harsh, echoing rhythms. Beyond the shattered doorway, another knot of them fanned outward, clearing the compound with ruthless precision, each movement rehearsed and devoid of hesitation.
Moments earlier, a thunderous blast had torn the tall courtyard wall asunder, hurling dust and stone into the air and carving a jagged wound through which the mercenaries poured. Now, as a smaller section of the group pressed inward, the crack of shotgun slugs rang out, slamming into the door's knob and lock. Metal shrieked and buckled under the force, and the sound of it echoed across the compound like a hammer striking an anvil, announcing that no threshold would be permitted to stand.
Men spilled from their rooms half-clothed and half-awake, eyes wide with fear and confusion, as the mercenaries advanced without pause. They moved as a single tide, pushing ever forward, room by room, breath by breath, until at last they reached the chamber that held the prize for which they had come. The door burst inward, splintering beneath their charge, and men wielding heavy shotguns surged to the fore. Two bean-bag rounds thundered forth, striking the panicked man who stood clutching a modern rifle. The force lifted him from his feet, casting him backward into a table strewn with small, forgotten objects. Bone bent and failed beneath him—his shoulder breaking with a dull finality, his knee twisting grotesquely as his body collapsed in a heap.
No words were spoken. The mercenaries let their slung shotguns fall and raised their rifles as one. In a single, terrible instant, they fired into the huddled group upon the bed—women and children frozen by terror, caught in the merciless glare of muzzle flashes. The thunder of gunfire filled the room, then faded, leaving only smoke and the ringing silence that followed. More men poured in at once, stepping over the fallen without so much as a glance, their purpose unbroken.
A small plate carrier was thrown onto the unconscious man, straps cinched tight with brutal efficiency, and a ballistic blanket was cast over him like a shroud. The largest among them bent, hoisted the broken body onto his shoulder as if it were no more than a sack of grain, and turned without pause. He ran from the room, boots pounding a retreating drumbeat, while the others followed close behind, their shadows stretching long across the walls as they vanished into the night they had torn apart.
They reached the exterior courtyard with the same relentless swiftness that had carried them through the inner chambers of the compound, their boots scarcely slowing as they spilled into the open air. One among them paused only long enough to draw forth a flare gun, its dull metal catching the firelight. He raised it toward the heavens and loosed a single round. With a sharp hiss, the flare climbed skyward and bloomed into a great red star, burning fiercely against the dark vault above. For a breathless moment it hung there, unwavering and watchful, before beginning its slow descent, trailing sparks like falling embers. It was a sign, ancient in its simplicity and terrible in its meaning.
The prize was taken. Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Hoorie was in their grasp—alive, as demanded. His name carried weight far beyond the walls they had shattered, and a fortune had been promised for his survival.
They hurled him into the back of an unarmored, unmarked vehicle, its doors slamming shut with finality. As the engine roared to life, an escort formed around the car, weapons raised, eyes scanning the shadows. Gunfire still crackled behind them as they pushed into the streets, but the city was already unraveling. Chaos had seized it fully—alarms shrieked, fires blossomed, and terrified figures scattered like leaves before a storm. None of this stirred surprise among the armed men. They had expected no less; such turmoil was merely the wake left behind by their passing.
Only once they had cleared the outer edges of the city did they lower their masks, drawing deep, weary breaths of open air. Faces slick with sweat emerged beneath the fabric, hardened and expressionless. The road stretched on ahead, empty and dark, and for nearly an hour they did not slow nor speak. At last, the convoy veered toward a desolate cluster of structures: a small, abandoned brick building crouched amid towering warehouses, all of them silent and long forsaken.
This place had once been an Egyptian salt mine, ancient beyond memory. In ages past, its depths had yielded reservoirs of edible gold, torn from the earth by modern machines until nothing of value remained. Now the land lay stripped and forgotten, waiting patiently. Perhaps, in years yet to come, when salt reclaimed the tunnels and time dulled old scars, men would return once more to take what little the earth chose to give.
El-Hoorie was dragged from the vehicle without ceremony, his body scraping across the cold desert floor as they hauled him toward the looming warehouse doors. Inside, the air was thick with dust and the ghosts of labor long ended. Rusted beams stretched overhead, and the vast space echoed with each footstep as they pulled him deeper within. They stopped beside a massive hanging scale, its iron hook suspended from a central support beam like the gallows of some forgotten age.
With brutal efficiency, bolt cutters snapped shut around the chain that bound him, metal giving way with a sharp, ringing crack. At the same moment, another man seized El-Hoorie's arms and wrenched them upward. Cold steel cuffs were fastened tight and clipped onto the hook above, leaving him hanging and helpless beneath the towering skeleton of the warehouse. The men stepped back in silence, their task complete, as the shadows closed in around their captive.
The crack of bone and the tearing pull of tendon and muscle rang through the vast warehouse with a sound that turned the stomach, sharp and unmistakable. El-Hoorie woke screaming, his voice raw and ragged as his shattered shoulder was wrenched and twisted in ways no wounded limb should ever endure. Each movement sent fresh waves of agony through him, and the iron hook above creaked softly, indifferent to his suffering, as though it were merely another tool of the place.
"Hello, Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Hoorie."
The voice was calm, almost courteous, cutting cleanly through the screams. A man stepped forward and pulled down the painted bandana that had hidden his face. At the sight of him, El-Hoorie whimpered and thrashed, his eyes darting wildly across the cavernous space in search of some imagined escape. He yanked at the handcuffs with his unbroken arm, testing their strength, hopping awkwardly on his one good leg as panic drove him onward.
"Ah," the man said mildly, tilting his head as he took in the sight. "That looks bad."
He drew his pistol and passed it without ceremony to one of the men flanking him, as though setting aside a trivial burden. Then he stepped closer, boots crunching softly against the dust-strewn floor, and crouched to examine El-Hoorie's ruined knee. His gaze was clinical, detached.
"Must hurt like a bitch," he remarked. "That's why we love those bean-bag rounds. Really ensures compliance."
At his approach, El-Hoorie recoiled, whimpering as he tried to hop backward, terror flooding his face. He knew, with dreadful certainty, that whatever the man intended would not bring mercy. In a sudden burst of speed, the western man seized the ankle of El-Hoorie's injured leg and hauled it upward. A howl tore from El-Hoorie's throat, a sound stripped of all dignity, as pain overwhelmed him. His pleas echoed uselessly through the warehouse, rising and breaking against the iron beams, until at last his voice faltered and died. His eyes rolled back, and his body went slack as darkness claimed him.
"Hm."
The man scoffed softly and released the leg, letting it fall without care. He reached behind him and produced a vial of powerful-smelling salts, pressing it beneath El-Hoorie's nose. The effect was immediate. El-Hoorie gasped violently as consciousness snapped back into place, adrenaline surging through his veins. The pain dulled, not gone but pushed aside, replaced by a sharp, dreadful clarity.
"You are going to tell me where Al-Nasser is," the man said, his voice low and unwavering as he loomed over him.
Through blurred vision and ragged breaths, El-Hoorie looked up and truly saw him for the first time. Not only western, but unmistakably so—blue eyes cold and unblinking, pale hair catching the dim light, his height casting a long shadow that swallowed El-Hoorie whole. In that moment of clarity, El-Hoorie understood with chilling certainty that this man would not be hurried, nor swayed, nor denied.
"I know you speak English," the man said evenly, his voice carrying neither haste nor heat. "Tell me where Al-Nasser is, or you are going to have a date with Mr. Roosevelt. You don't want that. I don't want to see that. So just tell me."
For a moment, El-Hoorie's breath came in harsh, broken pulls. Then he spat blood and saliva onto the dusty floor and forced his head up as best he could. "Fuck you," he snarled.
It was not bravado alone that fueled the words. In his eyes flickered the knowledge of what betrayal would cost him—an understanding so deep that it outweighed even the terror of what stood before him now. Whatever fate Al-Nasser would deal to traitors was darker, longer, and more unforgiving than the pain promised here.
The western mercenary laughed softly at this, the sound devoid of humor. "Very well," he said at last, with a small shrug. "Mr. Roosevelt it is." He lifted one hand and made a casual beckoning motion toward the shadows.
From among the men stepped a fat Chinese figure wrapped in loose, flowing robes. He moved with a strange, eager energy, eyes bright and restless. "Ooh," Mr. Roosevelt crooned, his voice slick with anticipation as he looked El-Hoorie up and down. "This one is going to be good."
There was something profoundly unsettling about him. His movements were quick and twitching, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed the air, and his large, protruding teeth gleamed when he smiled. He reminded those watching of a rat—furtive, clever, and always hungry. With small, eager steps he crossed to an ancient wooden table scarred by age and use. Running one finger slowly across an unrolled leather bag, he revealed a neat array of instruments laid within, each catching the dim light like a promise. He smiled to himself, murmuring about "merry work," as though speaking of a favored craft.
"Augustus!"
The shout came from outside the warehouse, sharp and urgent, slicing through the moment like a blade. The western mercenary stiffened instantly. That voice he knew. Without another word, he turned and strode out through the wide doors into the open night. The man who had called him hurried forward, breathless and pale.
"Radios are down," he said quickly. "An atmospheric storm is about to send this entire hemisphere into the Stone Age." He raised a trembling hand and pointed skyward.
Above them, the heavens were in upheaval. A ceaseless rain of fire streaked across the sky as asteroids fell upon the world, just as they had for months past. But this was different. The lightning fields—unnatural, unmeasured by any science—swelled and collapsed upon themselves, vast and roaring. Where they surged, cities vanished in white annihilation; where they receded, only scorched emptiness remained. Civilization itself seemed to be unraveling beneath their passing, reduced to vapor and silence.
Augustus stared upward, his expression darkening. The storm was imploding on a scale he had never witnessed before, and for the first time that night, the hunt below felt small compared to the ruin unfolding above.
The first of the strange and dreadful signs had come months earlier, when a lone asteroid tore screaming from the heavens and struck the Italian peninsula. Its fall shook the world's confidence, yet it was dismissed at first as cruel chance. Days later, another followed, greater and more merciless, scouring the Baltic Mountains from the map as though a divine hand had brushed them aside. Then the stones from the sky grew smaller, innumerable, until micrometeors rained ceaselessly upon the earth like ash from a burning firmament.
With those falling embers came a storm unlike any known to man. It swelled without warning, a vast and unknowable force, devouring whole regions before vanishing as swiftly as it appeared. The first of these tempests erased most of Central America, leaving silence where cities had once stood. No law of science could explain it, and no prayer yet uttered had stayed its course.
Society had not survived unbroken. It had cracked, fractured, and in many places fallen outright. Yet Augustus remained unshaken in his belief that humanity would endure. Of all creatures that walked the earth, he judged mankind second only to the cockroach in stubborn refusal to perish.
"Very well," he said at last, his jaw set. "Abandon all electronics in that warehouse. The blowback should be minimal."
"Does that include the vics?" one of the men asked quickly, urgency sharpening his voice. Time was bleeding away from them; the air itself felt wrong, heavy with approaching ruin. They might have minutes—no more—before the storm descended.
"Yes," Augustus answered, the word dragged from him like a wound. It was a bitter choice. It would strand them far from aid, but they had supplies, skill, and will enough to reach Cairo on foot if need be. Beyond that, true civilization would be harder to find—but they would endure. They always had.
He turned sharply and strode back into the warehouse, signaling the senior mercenaries to abandon their grim vigil and discard anything that hummed, blinked, or breathed electricity. They moved at once, urgency driving them faster than fear. All of them knew what was coming.
Augustus halted the armed man at the door, reclaimed his pistol, and crossed the floor toward El-Hoorie. The captive whimpered weakly, broken and barely conscious, his suffering prolonged by a man who reveled too deeply in it. Augustus looked down at him without pity.
"What a lucky fuck you are," he said coldly.
The pistol barked—once, then again—each sound final and without ceremony. When the body finally fell silent, Augustus ended it cleanly, sparing the world further noise.
"What the fuck?" Mr. Roosevelt hissed, fury twisting his features. He loathed nothing more than a prize stolen from him, and screams were his chosen currency.
"Time to go," Augustus snapped. "A massive storm is descending. If we stay, we risk dea—"
The world answered him first.
Boom.
The sound was not thunder alone, but the voice of something vast and descending, and in its wake the very air began to tear.
...
Darkness gave way to light—and to heat. Such heat as no forge nor desert sun had ever known. It pressed upon him from all sides, a living weight that stole breath and thought alike. With great effort he forced his eyes open, and was met by a blinding blue radiance that seemed to pierce straight through him. His scorched irises rebelled, vision splitting and wavering, the world doubling and then dissolving into a trembling blur. Yet through the haze he knew what he beheld. A Heaven's Stone. One of the fallen remnants of the sky—great enough to endure the fury of descent, yet mercifully small, sparing the land from utter annihilation. Its glow promised numbness, perhaps even release.
He began to crawl toward it, dragging himself grasp by agonizing grasp across the scorched earth. A guttural sound escaped him as his left arm gave way, tearing free as it scraped behind him, the last bonds of flesh and will failing at once. His legs were already gone, lost somewhere behind him in the ruin. That he yet lived—had not bled out upon the ground—could only be named a miracle, cruel and divine in equal measure.
He lay there, broken beneath the burning sky, and stretched out a trembling hand toward the stone. His fingers fell short. The distance, so small, might as well have been a league. A sob broke free from his chest, raw and childlike. This was not the ending he had imagined. Not the end he had earned. Only a year more, he had thought. One final year, and then rest. He would leave this life behind, find someone to share it with, and spend the vast fortune he had gathered over decades of hunting the unfindable. He would give her anything she desired. Everything. A quiet life, far from fire and screams.
Summoning the last remnants of his strength, he lurched forward once more—and this time his fingertip brushed the smooth, unblemished edge of the stone.
The pain vanished.
Not faded—vanished, as though it had never been. And with that sudden mercy, the world fell away. He was falling. His ruined eyes found no ground, no sky—only endless darkness opening beneath him. Yet warmth followed him, gentle and encompassing, like sunlight through closed eyelids. His muscles loosened. His breath slowed. Peace, deep and absolute, settled over him at last. Perhaps it was not the stone that had saved him, he thought dimly. Perhaps death had simply arrived first.
His mind lingered there, savoring that quiet… until unease crept in.
Something was wrong.
He should be dead.
Is this death? he wondered. Endless night, a soundless fall, warmth upon his face like a benediction? But no—he was no longer falling. The sensation had stilled. In its place came a sudden, violent clarity. Adrenaline surged through him, sharp and unwelcome, dragging him back toward awareness.
And then a voice thundered within his mind, vast and undeniable, shaking the dark itself.
"WAKE UP!"