Chapter 7: DEAD ZONE EAST

The air was thick with smoke,
Aya coughed as her vision returned in flashes—
Zair was kneeling beside her, his face pale but alive,
Blood streaked down his shoulder like war paint from a forgotten battle.

The boy stood close, fingers clenched tightly around the cracked data disk,
His voice came out trembling, yet serious,
“They found us,” he whispered, almost too soft to believe,
Zair gritted his teeth and said nothing—he already knew.

They ran through twisted tunnels of steel and ash,
Old train rails shattered beneath their boots,
Sparks danced like dying fireflies in the dust-thick air,
Somewhere behind them, metal boots echoed like death drums.

Suddenly, a voice rang from within the wall,
Low, mechanical, with poison laced in every word,
“You cannot run from ghosts you created,” it said,
It was the man with black boots and mirrored eyes.

They reached the edge of an elevator shaft,
Ropes swung loosely, rusted gears creaked below,
Zair stepped forward first, testing the cable’s strength,
Then turned to Aya and gave a short nod it was time.

They began to descend into the darkness,
One by one, foot by foot, heart by heart,
The boy stopped midway, looking back into the shadows above,
“I hear something,” he said, fear cracking his voice.

A thunderous snap ripped through the air,
One of the top cables split like an old bone,
Aya screamed, clutching tighter to her rope,
But from above came worse their hunters had arrived.

Gunfire tore down the shaft like angry lightning,
Zair pulled his weapon mid-climb, firing upward blindly,
His bullets echoed against steel but did not stop them,
Then one shot hit his shoulder, and his grip loosened.

Aya reached up in panic, her scream breaking through the chaos,
Zair looked down at her, eyes calm in the face of doom,
Then he let go, falling like a comet into endless dark,
His body struck a steel beam with a horrible crack then silence.

The boy froze. Aya stared downward, lips trembling but no words came,
She wanted to climb back up, to deny what happened,
But they had no time the sirens above were growing louder,
So together, they climbed downward, to whatever waited below.

At the bottom, they found something ancient a stone door built into the earth,
Not part of the facility. Not made by any machine.
The cracked disk in the boy’s hand began to glow faint blue,
Aya stepped forward and touched the stone it was warm.

The door slid open without a sound,
Inside, light pulsed from walls grown with crystal vines,
And in the center, a large sphere hovered,
Showing shadows of things neither human nor known.

Aya whispered, “Zair, we found it. But you’re not here to see it.”
The boy said nothing. His eyes were still wet.
They entered the new chamber, and behind them,
The door closed quietly—as if it had been waiting for them all along.