The sky had stopped falling, but the earth had not stopped burning.
For three days after the stars fell, Chicago Zone lay under a choking blanket of ash and smoke. The impacts had ignited hundreds of fires that merged into a single roaring inferno. What remained of the downtown core glowed orange at night, a false sunrise that never set. The air itself tasted of sulfur and melted plastic.
The four survivors had taken refuge in the upper levels of the half-collapsed parking garage, high enough to avoid the rising floodwaters from the lake but low enough to stay hidden from Unity patrols. The structure trembled constantly, as if the city were breathing its last.
Ava stood watch at a shattered concrete ledge, rifle ready, eyes scanning the burning streets below. Her face was streaked with soot, and a fresh cut across her forehead had scabbed over. She hadn't slept more than two hours at a stretch since the sky fell. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her daughter's face in the flames.
"We can't stay here much longer," she said without turning around. "The fire's moving this way. Wind's shifting."
Behind her, the group sat around a small, carefully shielded fire they had built from broken furniture. Elijah stirred a thin soup made from the last of their scavenged cans. His hands were steady now, the tremor from earlier weeks replaced by something harder.
Lara sat apart from the others, knees drawn up, staring into the flames. The encrypted drive rested in her lap like a live grenade. She had carried the truth long enough. The falling stars had cracked something open inside her.
"I need to tell you everything," she said suddenly, voice raw. "Before this fire takes us all."
Kaito looked up from repairing one of his surviving drones. His injured arm was healing badly, but he ignored the pain. "We're listening."
Lara took a shaky breath.
"Project Aurora wasn't just geoengineering. Kane's people hijacked it. They used the aerosol deployment system I helped design to inject compounds into the stratosphere that destabilized the tectonic plates and jet streams. They *wanted* the disasters. Plagues, wars, floods, earthquakes — all of it was accelerated on purpose. The goal was to break the world so completely that people would beg for a savior. For him."
She looked at each of them, eyes glistening.
"I found the proof three weeks before everything went dark. I tried to go public. That's why I went into hiding. But it was already too late. The first seal had opened the moment Kane stepped onto that stage."
Silence fell over the group, broken only by the distant roar of the firestorm.
Elijah spoke first, his voice gentle but firm. "You didn't cause this, Lara. You were used. Like so many others."
"I still built the weapon," she whispered.
Ava turned from her watch, eyes hard. "And now you're fighting against it. That's what matters. My family was killed by terrorists who used weapons someone else built. I don't blame the metal. I blame the hands that pulled the trigger. Kane's hands."
Kaito nodded. "The code I'm writing to break the Unity Network? It's using fragments of Aurora's original architecture. Your work is going to help tear his system down."
Lara wiped her face, smearing ash and tears. For the first time in months, the crushing weight on her chest felt slightly lighter.
A sudden, violent tremor shook the garage. The fire in the barrel flared wildly. From the streets below came a new sound — a deep, guttural rumbling that wasn't thunder or collapsing buildings.
They moved to the edge together.
What they saw stole their breath.
The firestorm had reached the old industrial district along the river. Chemical plants and fuel depots that had survived the earlier disasters were now igniting in sequence. Rivers of burning fuel and molten debris flowed through the streets like liquid fire, pooling in craters left by the falling satellites. The inferno created glowing lakes of flame that stretched for blocks, swallowing entire neighborhoods.
The Lake of Fire.
Elijah's voice was barely a whisper. "Revelation 19… the beast and the false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire. But this… this is happening now."
Kaito's drone, newly repaired, rose into the smoky air and relayed images. Unity safe zones — massive fortified compounds with white domes — stood untouched amid the blaze. Force fields or advanced fire-suppression tech kept the flames at bay. Inside those domes, thousands of Linked citizens lived in relative comfort while the unmarked burned.
Marcus Kane's voice still broadcast from the surviving towers, calm and paternal even now:
"This is the purification. The old world is being consumed so the new can rise. Come to the domes. Accept the full Unity and be saved from the fire."
Ava watched a group of desperate unmarked people running toward one of the domes, only to be turned away by enforcers. Those who tried to force their way in were shot. Their bodies fell into the advancing lakes of flame.
"We have to do something," she said, grip tightening on her rifle. "We can't just watch them die."
Elijah placed a hand on her shoulder. "We will. But not with bullets alone. Faith without works is dead… but works without wisdom is suicide."
Lara stood straighter, the guilt in her eyes transforming into resolve. "I know the weakness in their fire-suppression systems. The domes use a derivative of Aurora tech. If we can overload one of the relay stations, we might be able to bring a dome down — or at least open a breach long enough to get people out."
Kaito grinned fiercely despite the exhaustion. "I can spoof their security long enough for us to get close. One shot. High risk."
Ava looked at each of them — the pastor who had lost his faith and found it again in action, the scientist drowning in guilt, the hacker who refused to hide anymore.
For the first time since the world ended, she felt something close to hope.
"Then we move at first light," she said. "We hit the relay station near the old Navy Pier. We save who we can. And we remind Kane that not everyone is willing to kneel."
As they prepared through the night, the lakes of fire continued to grow, reflecting in the dark sky like the surface of hell itself.
The beast had built his kingdom on ashes.
But four souls who carried no mark had decided to fight fire with fire.
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(End of Chapter 5)