Chapter 1

Dry, stale, tasting like a mouthful of sand—that is the taste of the air I’d been breathing for a hundred years, three hundred meters beneath the Nevada desert.

The auxiliary supply station for the "Coffin" facility was essentially a massive metal tin can. Every five minutes, a cooling pipe overhead would drop a bead of icy water, striking the armrest of my creaky, broken recliner with rhythmic precision. I’m Cain West, though that name holds no currency down here. Here, I’m just a serial number—or rather, a corpse that the system hadn't even bothered to delete.

I shook the aluminum can in my hand. Another cheap bottle of "Blues" beer; the carbonation had long since evaporated, leaving it tasting like cold, fermented sweat. The TV sat on a rusted, rotating stand. Most of the screen flickered with irritating static, save for the occasional flash of an old news loop.

It was footage from a century ago, black-and-white, etched with heavy film grain. Arthur Rex stood on a podium, radiant and arrogant, the medals on his chest reflecting the deceitful gold of that era. His confident face distorted on the screen, his voice thin and shrill from magnetic tape degradation: "We have sealed away the fear! Humanity shall welcome an eternal dawn!"

I sneered—a cold grunt squeezed from the depths of my chest. I crunched the can into a grotesque, twisted shape; the metal edge bit into my palm, but I felt nothing. I flicked it with a casual motion; it landed precisely in the pile of garbage in the corner, a mountain of thousands of identical metallic empty shells, a monument to the wasteland of my wasted life.

Time to work. It was my ritual, even in this place the world had forgotten. I snubbed out the last of the beer foam with my heel and stood. My joints groaned like grinding teeth. I dragged my feet toward the end of the corridor, where a circular steel door awaited. The geometric patterns engraved around the frame had lost their luster, but the tremor that chilled the marrow remained—it was alive. Or perhaps, it was a cage for something that was.

I extended my right hand. The calluses on my palm felt like sandpaper. I closed my eyes and pressed my hand slowly against the cold lock zone.

Beep.

The electronic prompt sounded ancient, almost asthmatic. A faint green light flickered once, like a failing heartbeat. The tumblers shifted and locked.

A ghostly white mist seeped from the door seal, like corrosive silk, silently licking the surrounding metal walls. The metal hissed, developing microscopic depressions. I was used to it. I pulled a roll of yellowed, heavy-duty sealing tape from my pocket, tore a strip with mechanical indifference, and jammed it over the crack.

The tape turned black as it corroded. In three days, I’d have to peel it off and do it again.

A piercing metal-on-metal screech echoed from the tracks above. The automated supply drone. It hovered at the maintenance bay, spat out three cases of rations and a few packs of beer, and the cold, mechanical voice boomed through the empty corridor: "Supply delivery complete. Site status: Abandoned. No personnel on-site. System entering automatic dormant mode."

Personnel had been wiped from the books long ago. In the world’s archives, this place didn't exist, and the people here had died in the river of history with the "Sealing" a century ago. I was just a ghost, guarding a grave that didn't even need a guard.

I hauled the supply case back, collapsed into my chair, and was just about to crack open a third beer when the entire space began to quake violently.

This wasn't an earthquake.

A moth-eaten radar screen in the corner crackled with electrical discharge before flashing three crimson dots. They were piercing through the strata like three greedy drills, heading straight for us.

The can in my hand dropped to the floor with a dull thud. I couldn't remember the last time I’d stood up this fast. My muscles spasmed from years of atrophy, but I held my stance.

I pulled a rusted crowbar from a secret compartment beneath the chair, my knuckles turning white.

"Finally," I whispered, the sound scraping like sandpaper. "A hundred years, not even a mouse has dared to crawl in. Looks like I have guests today coming to demolish my house."