Chapter 1

The air was thick with a nauseating stench—a rotting blend of oxidized metal, decaying organic matter, and ultra-high-energy radiation. When I crawled out of the maintenance hatch of "Furnace Zero," I felt less like a human being and more like a half-finished product fresh from a crematorium.

Blood was seeping beneath my skin. It wasn't the bright red of life, but a viscous, ink-like black-purple, polluted by the Abyss core. Every move I made caused my muscle fibers to rub together with the dry, rasping sound of cracked leather. The "Aberration Core" inside me was spinning at a frantic pace, acting like an overloaded millstone, grinding away my remaining humanity to forcibly suture the Void Rift that held the power to swallow the entire city of Saint Sebastian.

My left hand, clinging to the titanium railing, was trembling violently. My fingertips had festered and rotted away, exposing dark, skeletal ash-gray bone.

"Hey, Thorne. Looking at you is truly enough to turn my stomach."

The rhythmic click of hard-soled leather shoes approached. I didn't need to look up to know it was Marcus Chen, the administrative deputy of this "Black Rock Zone." A man who hid behind hazmat suits and high-end synthetic fibers, he was the only "symbol of civilization" in this hellhole, besides me—the Keeper.

Marcus stopped before me. With the tip of his meticulously polished, pointed shoe, he flipped over the damaged respirator valve I’d dropped on the floor.

"The inspection team will be here in twenty minutes," Marcus’s voice, filtered through an electronic modulator, was smooth and dripping with contempt. "If they see you looking like something dragged out of a sewer, the entire operations department will get a black mark for 'staff standards.' Given that your physiological metrics are in terminal decline, I suggest we just dispose of you. It'll save us the paperwork later."

I lifted my head, peering at him through the cracks in my visor. I felt the "suppression chip" implanted in my neck heating up in response to my rising hostility. It was a neural limiter; if my heart rate topped 120 beats per minute, or if my brain waves scanned for aggression, it would instantly fry my cerebellum with a surge of high-voltage current.

I took a deep breath of radioactive, dusty air, suppressing the nausea rising in my throat.

"I am... currently cleaning, sir." My voice sounded like it was being ground from fragments of broken metal.

"Cleaning? With those rotting hands?" Marcus sneered. He raised his foot and ground it firmly into the pool of black, dead blood I’d just leaked, smearing the filth across the pristine composite floor as he stepped over me. "Look at this filth, Thorne. You are company property, not a monster you can just excrete wherever you please."

He opened the hologram in his hand and tapped the touch screen with sharp, calculated motions.

"Given your gross negligence in maintaining the center, your 'survival supply quota' for the week has been docked by sixty percent. It’s the sort of basic discipline one gives to low-level consumables like you."

My pupils constricted violently.

"Marcus, I don't have enough credits left to power the terminal over there," I pleaded, my voice trembling. "That’s the only oxygen supply Sarah has."

My sister. Just the thought of that name felt like a long needle stabbing through my heart. She was my only soft spot in this cruel world, the only reason I’d fought to stay alive.

"Oh, that sickly brat?" Marcus chuckled mockingly. He leaned down, placing his delicate, indifferent face right up against my respirator. "That’s your problem, Thorne. If you want her to keep breathing the scrap air recycled from our garbage, you’d better act like a compliant dog, rather than spreading your stench around here."

He turned and walked away, followed by the mocking laughter of his two security guards.

He was gone. His rhythmic footsteps faded into the distance.

I slumped to the floor, my knees slamming hard against the cold, unyielding surface. Without warning, a jolt of electricity exploded through my spine. The agony of having my nerve endings shredded left me spasming on the ground. The chip had sensed my mounting rage and was issuing a forced warning.

I bit down on my teeth until I tasted the sharp, metallic tang of blood on my tongue. With my rotting hand, I reached out to wipe the blood Marcus had smeared across the floor. I would scrub it clean. I would make it look as if nothing had ever happened.

As long as Sarah was still alive. As long as she could live one more day in that cold isolation pod.

I am a monster. I am a hollowed-out human husk. But I cannot die yet. Even if I am treated as nothing but the sludge of the earth, even if these iron walls strip me down to the last drop of marrow—as long as I can still breathe...

I looked toward the end of the dark corridor, where the ventilation fan wheezed in its death throes. My gaze became empty and hollow, as if in that darkness, I could feel a deeper abyss beckoning to me.

Through the cracks in my soul, it whispered.

"Just hold on..." I told myself, the current crackling in my eardrums like burning wire.

"Just hold on."