Chapter 3

The air above the surface was thick with a scorching scent of static electricity.

It was the precursor to "The Great Rupture." I sat before the central console deep within the bunker, where the thermometer readings on my monitor looked like a serpent out of control, climbing at an alarming rate. The temperature had already shattered the 40°C mark. No, that was merely the beginning.

"Kane, monitor the feedback from the crustal vibrations; the subterranean pressure layers are rapidly releasing energy," Echo’s voice manifested as pulses of red alarm on the screen. "Predicting that the temperature will hit extreme thresholds within six hours—approximately 60°C (140°F)."

Through the wide-angle lenses of the satellite mapping, I could see Drake’s squad trapped on the highway in the salt flats. Two modified heavy-duty RVs—their most critical "assets" of this timeline—were parked in the middle of the asphalt, looking bloated and ridiculous.

They were still celebrating. In the surveillance feed, I watched Drake drape a heavy polyester down jacket over his shoulders; his puffy attire looked like nothing more than a grotesque, rotting sculpture in the desert heat.

The disaster struck at noon.

First came a muffled rumble from deep within the earth—not an earthquake, but the labored breathing of the planet’s core. The ground felt like a scorching iron plate. Through the monitors, I could clearly see the interstate, once solid, beginning to soften under the rapid rise in surface temperature. Black asphalt turned into viscous, oily sludge, liquefying and disintegrating into charred mud pits.

The RV tires—those expensive, so-called "all-terrain anti-slip" tires—sank into the boiling bitumen in an instant, belching acrid smoke.

"What’s happening!" roared Connor’s panicked voice over the monitor feed. He kicked the door open, trying to step out to investigate. But I saw his foot touch the ground, and he recoiled instantly with a shrill scream. The surface temperature was sufficient to burn through rubber soles; any organism touching the ground directly faced literal incineration.

This was the price of everything they had hoarded, the cost paid with all their savings.

They had turned their RVs into metal ovens. To prepare for the "cold snap," Drake had installed layers of insulation and cotton lining inside the vehicles, even sealing the windows with duct tape. Now, those materials were a death sentence—heat could enter, but it had no way to dissipate. Coupled with the fuel-filled generators and crates of old rations, the cramped space became a perfect thermal trap.

"Shut down the generators! Open the vents!" Drake’s voice, raspy and off-key, crackled over the microphone. He was frantically clawing at his collar inside, the heavy down jacket now a lethal shroud.

But I saw it clearly: the heat had caused the fuel pump in the generator to leak due to pressure buildup. The air was thick with the scent of highly volatile oil fumes.

"Generator overheating. Risk of spontaneous combustion exceeds 99%," Echo recorded the data calmly.

Despair spread rapidly. Ella was screaming in the second RV, tearing at blankets, trying desperately to plug the gaps where the heat surged in with her clothes—her movements clumsy and hysterical. They struggled in this prison of steel and cotton; with every movement, their bodies lost moisture even faster. The temperature inside the cabin spiked from standard room temperature to over 50°C (122°F) in a mere thirty minutes.

"Don't panic! Dig a cellar!" Drake leaped out of the vehicle, wielding an entrenching tool, trying to carve a sanctuary by the roadside. "The ground is cold! As long as we can get under the sand, we can survive this damn chill!"

What a laughable survival logic. He had no clue that the crustal energy was already boiling. The sand wasn't frozen; it was like heating neutron sand, with every grain containing immense thermal energy.

I watched coldly as he jumped into the roughly dug pit. The moment his body was buried, his face contorted in a bizarre spasm. Layers of sand provided no shade; they were like fire-burned ash in a crematorium. He tried to dig deeper, but the upturned sub-surface sand was even hotter than the surface—the Earth's crust was venting heat; the center of the destruction was right beneath his feet.

"This is the end of the line for them," I said, taking a slow sip of cooling water.

Both RVs burst into flames one after the other. As the fuel tanks detonated, orange-red fire danced on the horizon like the bonfires of the apocalypse. Down jackets, quilts, generators—the things they viewed as life itself—were now nothing but ash.

They fled in every direction, like headless flies. In a desert with no cover, 60°C heat combined with omnipresent radiant heat meant no one was getting out alive. Hope was non-existent. There were no cooling methods, and even the last remnants of bottled water had turned boiling hot, toxic from the plastics melting under the heat.

Connor fell. He was walking when his movements suddenly went strangely stiff, and he collapsed like a marionette with cut strings. Ella sat by the road, her clothes soaked through with sweat before instantly drying into white salt crusts.

In the monitor, Drake was still struggling, trying to crawl toward a distant mountain that offered even a sliver of shade. But with every step, the rubber soles of his shoes melted away.

"Look," Echo’s voice rang in my ear. "They used you as a reserve pantry. And now, they've cooked themselves into the dinner that suffocates them."

I shut off the monitors. I didn't want to watch them beg or hallucinate in their final moments. Against a disaster of this magnitude, no one could save them—just as no one had come to save me when they strapped me to that chair in my past life.

The RVs slowly tipped in the desert, eventually twisting into piles of scrap under the heat. It happened like a scripted play, and I had simply activated my fortress at the perfect time.

In this scalding purgatory, my Titan Deep Well maintained a steady 20°C.

I felt no hate, nor pity. On the ladder of evolution, they chose down jackets and conformity; I chose the cold, the solitude of careful planning. The game was only halfway through. The carnival of reckoning had only just begun.