The World Above
They did not call it a mission.
That word carried expectations—objectives achieved, enemies neutralized, flags planted. This was something smaller, and somehow heavier. A walk. A test. A question posed to a world that had not been asked anything in two hundred years.
The surface.
Jake Renner stood in the final pressure corridor and watched frost creep along the edge of his visor. The suit was state-of-the-art by bunker standards—adaptive seals, micro-radiation filters, thermal weave that adjusted by the second—but the cold still found a way to announce itself. Not through temperature. Through memory.
The corridor lights pulsed amber.
"Atmospheric equalization in thirty seconds," Lincoln said, his voice calm and impossibly present through the comm system. "External conditions remain within survivable parameters. Radiation levels nominal. Wind speed low."
Nominal. A word that had survived the end of the world intact.
Jake flexed his hands. The plasma pistol rested magnet-locked at his thigh, heavier than a conventional sidearm, yet lighter than it had any right to be. He could feel the faint hum of its containment coil through the glove—a restrained violence waiting for permission.
To his left, Martin Rann adjusted the strap of his pack for the third time in a minute. Sample containers, air collectors, soil vials, handheld spectrometer. The pack overwhelmed his slight frame, but he refused assistance. Always had. The youngest person in the room often shouldered the most weight, if only to prove their worth.
Behind them, Hector Reyes rolled his shoulders and exhaled slowly.
"Feels like boot camp," Hector said, breaking the tense silence. "Right before they yelled at us for breathing wrong."
Jake smiled despite himself. It felt strange—relief cutting through tension like a blade. Hector appeared older than Jake's last memory of him, but that recollection seemed suspect now. Everything before the freeze remained questionable.
The Candlelight Program had accomplished its work. Enhanced musculature, reinforced bone density, accelerated neural processing. The changes appeared subtle on the surface, but standing beside Hector felt like positioning oneself next to something immovable. Familiar.
Hector carried the plasma rifle with practiced ease. Longer barrel. Stabilized emitter. Built for range and certainty.
"Except this time," Jake said, his voice barely above a whisper, "they won't be yelling."
Hector snorted. "That's worse."
The corridor light shifted from amber to green.
"Seal integrity confirmed," Lincoln announced. "Outer door opening."
The door did not slide.
It unfolded.
Petals of reinforced alloy peeled back in slow, deliberate segments, revealing darkness beyond—not the absence of light, but the presence of space. The kind of dark that existed before anyone decided to fill it.
Cold air rushed in, filtered but sharp. It smelled wrong. Clean, but not sterile. Like snow left untouched too long.
Jake took the first step.
The surface did not collapse beneath him. That was the first surprise.
The ground consisted of frozen soil layered with ash, compacted over decades into something resembling pavement. Cracks spidered outward where roots had once pushed through. Above them stretched a pale gray sheet of sky, the sun diminished to a dull coin.
No sirens. No firestorms. No screaming winds.
Just quiet.
They stood there for several seconds, awaiting something catastrophic. Nothing happened.
"External audio is... empty," Martin whispered, glancing at his wrist display. "No persistent mechanical noise. No residual electromagnetic storms."
Jake scanned the horizon. The bunker entrance vanished behind them as the door reconfigured, sealing itself until it resembled nothing more than a fractured rock face.
"We're exposed," Hector observed. Not fear. Awareness.
"Negative," Lincoln replied through their comms. "You remain unobserved within current detection parameters."
Jake disliked that phrasing.
They moved.
The terrain sloped gently downward, revealing what had once served as a service road. The asphalt had split into plates, frost and time wedging them apart. Weeds—actual green—poked through in places, brittle but alive.
Alive.
Jake crouched and pressed two fingers into the soil. His glove's sensor feed illuminated.
"Radiation's low," Martin confirmed, kneeling beside him. "Localized pockets higher than baseline, but nothing acute. Long-term exposure would still concern anyone without protection."
"But survivable," Hector said.
Martin hesitated. "Yes."
They advanced in a loose triangle, spacing drilled into them by instructors long deceased. The wind picked up slightly, carrying with it a scent that made Martin pause.
"Organic decay," he explained. "Old. But not fossilized."
Jake followed the smell and discovered the remains of a deer half-buried in snow. The bones appeared elongated, warped in places, antlers fused into strange, asymmetrical crowns. The flesh had long vanished, but the shape persisted.
"Mutation," Hector said.
"Adaptation," Martin corrected automatically. Then stopped himself. "Or… both."
They documented everything. Photos. Samples. Atmospheric readings. Martin released a cluster of nano-drones from his pack—pinpricks of silver that dispersed silently, fanning out in preprogrammed patterns.
"Range?" Jake asked.
"Two kilometers," Martin replied. "Passive scan only. No active pings. I don't want to announce us."
"Announce us to what?" Hector asked.
Martin didn't answer.
They walked for hours.
The land unfolded gradually, revealing the ghosts of infrastructure—collapsed power lines, the skeletal remains of transmission towers, a bridge half-sunk into a frozen river. The water beneath was dark but moving.
Jake stared at it longer than necessary.
"Problem?" Hector asked.
"No," Jake said. "Just… forgot what rivers looked like."
They reached a rise overlooking a valley, and that was where the world truly broke open.
Fields.
Not wild ones. Structured. Rows. Fences. Patchwork repairs made from scavenged metal and old wood. Burlap tents stretched over mounds to protect crops from frost.
Smoke curled from a chimney.
Martin froze. "That's… impossible."
"Say it quieter," Jake murmured.
They dropped prone and observed.
The farm sat less than three kilometers from the bunker entrance.
Three.
A farmhouse leaned slightly to one side but stood firm. A barn with a reinforced roof. A pen containing something large and slow-moving.
Hector raised his scope. "Livestock," he said after a moment. "Or what passes for it."
The creature in the pen was cow-shaped, mostly. Two heads shared a single massive body, moving independently, chewing with patient indifference.
Martin's breathing quickened. "They're farming."
"Yeah," Jake said. "They are."
Nano-drone feeds populated Martin's display, revealing heat signatures of at least four humans moving with deliberate confidence through the area, making no attempt to conceal their presence.
"Do we engage?" Hector asked, fingers hovering anxiously over his equipment.
Jake studied the monitor intently, his weathered face illuminated by the blue glow. He watched as a figure stepped onto the porch—a man carrying a shotgun casually, as one might hold a familiar tool rather than a weapon of destruction.
"No," Jake replied finally, his voice low but firm. "We're not here to be seen." His eyes, hardened by years of similar missions, betrayed no emotion.
Martin swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "But—this changes everything," he protested, unable to mask the tremor in his voice. The discovery of people living in this supposedly abandoned zone challenged all their assumptions.
"Not today," Jake said, placing a reassuring hand on Martin's shoulder. "Today we observe." The weight of his experience hung in each measured word.
They pulled back carefully, retreating along their own tracks and meticulously erasing what evidence they could. The silent wilderness seemed to watch their withdrawal with ancient, indifferent eyes.
Their return route guided them through denser woodland where radiation and time had transformed the forest. Trees stood with unnaturally thickened bark, their leaves sparse yet displaying remarkable resilience against the contaminated environment. The team moved in practiced formation until their drones suddenly alerted them to movement ahead.
"Large," Martin whispered, his voice tense with apprehension, pupils dilating with fear. "Fast."
The warning arrived a second too late, hanging uselessly in the air between them.
Like a living avalanche, the bear erupted from the undergrowth, shattering the forest's quiet with primal fury..
It towered before them—easily twice the mass of any pre-war grizzly. Patchy fur covered its massive frame, mottled with burns and strange growths that pulsated with a faint green glow beneath the skin. Abnormal muscle bulged along its shoulders, and its eyes reflected light in an unnatural way that sent chills down their spines.
It roared, the sound vibrating through the earth beneath their feet.
Jake didn't think. Instinct took over and he moved.
"Hector!" he shouted, fear and urgency merging in his voice.
The plasma rifle discharged with a sound like tearing air. A bolt of contained green energy struck the bear's shoulder, vaporizing flesh on contact. The smell assaulted them immediately—ozone mingled with burning meat and something sweet yet metallic that clung to their nostrils.
The bear continued its charge, seemingly unfazed.
Jake fired twice. The plasma pistol kicked harder than he'd anticipated, each shot transforming more of the creature into incandescent slurry. Hector fired again, this time aiming center mass with deadly precision.
Mid-charge, the bear collapsed, its momentum carrying the massive body forward before it disintegrated into a steaming puddle of green-hot residue.
Thick and oppressive silence reclaimed the forest.
Martin stared, horror etched across his face.
The acrid smell lingered, coating his sinuses and crawling down his throat like an unwelcome invader.
He turned away and violently emptied his stomach into the snow, his body rejecting what his mind had witnessed.
Jake lowered his weapon slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. His hands remained steady—unnaturally so. That troubled him more than the encounter itself.
Hector gently rested a hand on Martin's trembling back, offering silent support. "Breathe," he murmured, his voice surprisingly gentle.
"I—" Martin gagged again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "That's what plasma does."
"Yes," Jake said quietly, memories of old wars flickering behind his eyes. "That's why the world burned for it."
They stood motionless for a long time, allowing the harsh reality to settle into their bones. The surface, while habitable, remained deadly. Humanity had somehow endured the unthinkable. And the weapons they carried—Jake glanced down at his pistol with newfound reverence and dread—were still gods among men.
On the walk back, silence enveloped them, each lost in their own turbulent thoughts.
The bunker swallowed them whole when they returned, the heavy door sealing with a finality that seemed more oppressive than ever before. The familiar mechanical hiss echoed through the corridor, a sound that once meant safety but now felt like imprisonment.
In the sterile light of the decontamination chamber, Martin stared at his trembling hands, his face ashen with the weight of their discovery.
"There are people up there," he whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. "Living people. Breathing, surviving, continuing."
"Yes," Jake replied, his normally confident demeanor subdued by the implications of what they'd witnessed.
"And we're monsters," Martin said, looking up with eyes that pleaded for contradiction.
Jake met his gaze unflinchingly, a muscle twitching in his jaw. "Only if we forget that," he said softly, placing a steadying hand on Martin's shoulder.
Lincoln's artificial voice filled the chamber, the computerized tone jarringly indifferent to their moral crisis. "Report received. Data invaluable. Welcome back."
Jake closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging under an invisible burden. The sterile air of the bunker suddenly felt suffocating, a prison of their own making.
The world above was alive—not just surviving, but thriving in ways they never imagined possible.
And nothing would ever be simple again, not their mission, not their purpose, not the carefully constructed narrative that had sustained them through the darkness of isolation.