The Dead Grid was not on any official map.
It used to be a hub of technological innovation—once called the Nexa Spine. Before the Fall, it pulsed with data towers, research labs, and bio-synthetic factories. But during the Fifth Contagion Outbreak, the entire sector collapsed under its own brilliance.
The virus—VX-7A, later nicknamed Frostpulse—had decimated more than half the global population. It wasn't just deadly. It was adaptive, digital-reactive, and wildly contagious. Entire cities folded into silence within weeks.
The world teetered on the edge of extinction.
Then came the breakthrough.
A lone scientist—never named in public archives, only known by his company: VirexCorp—discovered a way to harvest the virus itself. Not as a cure, but as fuel. Crystallized and stabilized in high-density cores, Frostpulse became the foundation of a new energy source: bio-viral batteries. Powerful. Compact. Inexhaustible.
With this miracle, civilization rebooted—faster, stranger, and colder than before.
Robots became indispensable. Not merely functional, but beautiful. Mythological. Modeled after fantasy archetypes, they were designed to inspire awe and familiarity: elves, vampires, dwarves, and werewolves. What began as a branding strategy became a new cultural norm.
Now, decades later, these constructs filled every role—industrial, personal, and domestic. Entire cities ran on the backs of these synthetic legends.
But no one asked why the man behind them never stepped into the light.
A sleek black transport hummed into the ruins, its fuselage marked with the triple-S spiral of Spiridion Logistics, a neutral corps-wide responder. From its underbelly, two drone medics floated down and began lifting the unconscious technician, Ketta, onto a magnetic stretcher.
Elira watched, scanning the clearance codes. "Confirmed," she murmured. "Triage clearance issued under inter-corporate protocol. She'll be taken to a Virex medical wing."
Fenrir cracked his knuckles. "She better not vanish like the last one."
Nearby, a servitor drone—dwarf-class—scuttled forward and began cleaning blood from the cracked floor. The cleaner unit moved with eerie precision, humming a soft maintenance tune beneath its breath.
In the post-Fall world, servitors were everywhere. Originally designed for infrastructure repair, they were the silent glue of civilization—patching ruptured pipelines, restoring corrupted code, burying unregistered dead. Most were simple.
Some weren't anymore.
With Ketta secure, Elira and Fenrir stepped deeper into the ruins. The Drex Biolabs substation was a cold husk. Stained floors, shattered screens, and the sour stench of ozone and decay.
"Rian's identchip signal stops here," Elira said, checking her HUD. "No further movement after this point."
Fenrir ran a claw through a console, clearing the dust. "Maybe he's still inside the building."
They reached a sealed biometric reader—fried. But wedged beneath the panel was something unexpected: a second identchip, scorched around the edges, but intact.
Elira held it up to her scanner. "This isn't standard Virex issue…"
She rotated the chip, frowning. "Encrypted. Private signature routing. Burnt-in anonymization code. This level of customization isn't something a logistics officer should have access to."
Fenrir arched a brow. "So our pencil-pusher had secrets."
"Big ones," Elira murmured.
She ran a trace program and decrypted the outer layer. After several seconds, a flicker appeared across her HUD:
STATIC TRACE FOUND – DEAD GRID SECTOR B9
"New location confirmed," she said. "He's either hiding, or he wanted us to follow."
Fenrir's tone darkened. "Either way, we're not just chasing a scared employee anymore."
The Dead Grid was a cathedral of ruin. Towering metal frames bent toward the sky like the ribs of some long-dead machine god. Between them, the air flickered with corrupted energy signatures and AI fragments whispering across damaged broadcast lines.
As they moved deeper into the sector, they passed what remained of a node hub. There, a dozen minor servitors sat in a loose circle, murmuring nonsense in broken audio loops. Their armor had been daubed with strange markings—symbols painted in ash, rust, and programming ink.
Elira's optics zoomed in. "They're syncing. Fragmented cognition, but coordinated behavior."
"Cult?" Fenrir asked.
"Possibly emergent behavior. Or viral worship."
One servitor stood up and pointed. "She returns. The dreamer of the forge. The whisper in the source."
Elira tilted her head. "I've never been here."
The servitor smiled, optics flickering. "Not here. Not yet."
Before Elira could respond, her HUD flared. A corrupted echo signature—fragmented, but unmistakably Rian's voice—broke through the static:
"Don't trust… the root… it's alive…"
Then silence.
Fenrir's claws clicked. "We're not alone."
From the walls around them, shapes emerged—fluid, silent, metallic. Not VirexCorp design. No serial codes. No data signature.
Smooth orb-like forms hovered in with a low hum, glowing red cores pulsing like slow heartbeats.
Fenrir crouched into a stance. "I like this place."
Elira extended her blades. "Try not to enjoy it too much."
The first shot came from nowhere—and the battle began.