Chapter 4
On Day Ten of the apocalypse, the icebound cold had frozen the city’s last pulse into silence.
I wore comfortable cashmere loungewear, leaned back on the leather sofa of my spring-warm climate room, and held a cup of freshly hand-brewed Geisha coffee. The rich aroma filled the air—an absurd contrast to the minus-fifty whiteout outside that could crack steel.
Then a deep, penetrating low-frequency vibration punched through the thick, military-grade soundproof glass.
That wasn’t wind.
That was heavy machinery tearing through air.
I set the cup down and typed rapidly on the tabletop supercomputing control console. Using the private military satellite antenna already mounted on my roof, I effortlessly cut into a nearby unencrypted public detection channel.
A huge holographic screen snapped to life, instantly locking onto the target—Luke’s giant warehouse, dozens of kilometers away.
Under the bleak, hopeless cloud ceiling, three heavy rescue helicopters—painted with unmistakable official markings—forced their way into the blizzard like blades splitting chaos.
Cargo doors open. Massive Red Cross supply crates drifted down on parachutes. At the same time, a storm of insulated cold-weather flyers rained across the industrial park like white sheets of hail.
“Attention all citizens! Maintain order! The state is operating at full capacity. Rescue units are deploying grid-based search and extraction across all districts—”
The official broadcast boomed from loudspeakers under the helicopters, authoritative and electric—like a nuclear blast dropped into dead water.
On-screen, the warehouse perimeter exploded into motion.
Dozens of Luke’s men—faces blue with cold, kept obedient by food control—stared up at the falling flyers. In their deadened eyes, a desperate frenzy of survival ignited.
“The government’s alive! Rescue is here!”
Someone shouted with a shaking voice. Then several men who’d been gripping iron pipes for “defense” let them fall with a clatter onto the ice and ran madly for the descending supply crates.
If the state still existed, who wanted to be a madman’s dog?
The crisp clang of metal came through the audio feed I’d intercepted, deepening the cold smile at my mouth.
Luke’s “apocalypse empire” was thinner than a window film in the face of a restarting state machine.
Boom—!!
Just as the first men were about to reach the crates, a deafening Remington shotgun blast tore the frenzy apart.
The recoil threw up a burst of snow. One bright-red official crate was blown apart midair. High-calorie rations and life-saving antibiotics turned into flying debris, splattering down with filthy slush onto people’s faces.
At the edge of the frame, Luke—bundled in exaggerated polar gear—kicked open the warehouse’s heavy steel door. White smoke still drifted from the barrel.
His eyes were blood-red. Veins on his forehead throbbed with rage and swollen arrogance.
“Rescue?” Luke raised the shotgun toward the sky and fired again. Over the gunfire, his laughter was so wild it nearly drowned out the helicopters. “The grid’s down—three lousy choppers tossing dog food and you think the world’s back? Listen up—this ‘government’ is bluffing! In this park, I’m your only way to live. I am the law!”
The insane rant—backed by a black muzzle—forced every man to stop.
The crowd fell into a dead hush. Fear coiled back around their throats like a snake.
But in that suffocating standoff, something shifted.
On the outer edge of the group, a scavenger old man—starved to skin and bone—didn’t stop. He knelt in the snow, fingers dry like bark, clawing toward a government flyer that had landed farther away.
The words “National Rescue” printed on the paper were his last faith.
That tiny, clumsy movement became a red-hot needle, stabbing into Luke’s bloated, hypersensitive nerve.
Absolute control couldn’t tolerate even a fraction of disobedience.
Luke’s eye twitched. He tossed the shotgun to a trusted man and drew a solid high-carbon steel baton from his belt, striding toward the old man.
His boots crunched on snow—an execution countdown.
“What are you trying to pick up?” Luke barked. “Louder. Tell me what you’re trying to pick up!”
He reached the old man and, without hesitation, lifted his military boot and ground his full weight onto the hand reaching for the flyer.
A crisp crack of breaking bone cut through the wind.
The old man screamed and curled into himself, tears freezing on his face in an instant.
“Boss… I just wanted to see… please…” he begged weakly, voice ready to snap.
Luke didn’t care.
He needed absolute intimidation. He needed blood to drown out the hope that had just sparked.
“You want to read it? I’ll send you underground to read it forever!”
Luke roared like an animal, both hands gripping the baton and raising it high overhead.
No hesitation. No mercy.
The heavy steel club came down with a terrible whistle of torn air—straight toward the back of the old man’s head.
Once.
The dull impact shook every man watching. Someone covered his eyes in terror.
Twice. Three times.
Hot red blood bloomed across the white snow like a poisonous flower. The old man’s screams cut off, replaced by the horrifying thud of metal striking flesh again and again.
Only when the body stopped twitching did Luke finally stop, panting.
He wiped blood from his face, then planted the evil-smeared baton into the ice with a clang. He looked around at his men—knees going soft, breaths held—and his eyes filled with sick satisfaction.
He believed this brutality would secure his rule.
He believed in this catastrophe he had become a god.
He was wrong.
In warmth, I took a slow sip of coffee and scrolled the mouse wheel, widening the image depth.
Above Luke’s head—far above the gray cloud layer, beyond what human eyes could see—
A pitch-black high-altitude stealth military drone—the state’s most advanced technology—hovered in silence.
Its high-definition electro-optical turret had already locked focus on Luke’s blood-smeared face. In the analysis pane at the right of my screen, a long cascade of red data raced downward—then froze into four glaring characters:
EXTREME FELON.
