2044:

United Denver Metropolis

Dark blood dripped around thick bone coated in malleable metallic circuitry. Bits of flesh hung from the wide open wound. Shotgun pellets were embedded in the crimson mass.

It was a point blank shot, enough to kill a normal man. But the time of normal humanity had ended in the west. Such enhancements had become common in North America, where the technology was guarded behind corporate political interest and red tape so thick that it hadn’t yet been shared with the rest of the world.

“...and just like that, Kann stands back up. What a competitor! What an athlete!” The announcer shouted in amazement. The men who fought on the holographic display today were Techbound. Fully enhanced combatants, irreversibly operated on to sport the most cutting edge cybernetics that the North American Union, the NAU, had to offer.

A corporate technical executive by the name of Gradius Byun watched the holo on his couch, admiring the cybernetics of the arena fighters. Even when coated in blood, the enhancements’ moisture repellant logos remained easy to read. “NeuroCybertec” shined through a split forehead, and the open chest cavity. Suddenly the match was interrupted as a national alert cut into the holo.

“For your own safety. Please remain indoors.” Scrolled across the bottom of the holo as a newscaster hurriedly took a seat. Gradius stood, grabbing his glass of scotch and furrowing his brow.

“This is an emergency report from your Union leaders. An antigrav vessel has just been detected off the coast of Seattle. It is believed to be of Eurasian Consortium design. It is advised that all NAU citizens remain indoors.”

A large, round, and heavily armored vehicle could be seen hovering above the ocean on the holo. Gradius’s jaw clenched.

“The vessel appears to have come to a stop.” A number of moments passed. The ship hung dead still below the clouds as the newscaster repeated the details of the situation.

Then an aperture opened on the bottom of the vehicle. A long rod fired into the ocean below at incredible speed. Moments passed by, feeling like an eternity. All the while, Gradius watched the holo intently. NAU security forces had finally arrived and were now firing at the ship. It took a surprising amount of damage before finally crashing into the ocean.

Silence. Nothing happened. Gradius watched with millions of others across the Union, waiting for something, anything to happen. What had the rod done? Why had they come all this way to fire a rod into the ocean and die? The holo flipped to a live feed of Yellowstone National Park.

Clouds above were ravaged into hollow whisps as a shockwave cascaded across an amber sky. Red light reflected from the eyes of onlookers in the park below. The color consumed all that it touched. It stretched itself forward, spreading the promise of fear and destruction at the speed of thought.

A wide burst of roiling lava belched out coal black plumes of smoke as it enrobed the earth and rock of the park. The ashen cloud blossomed with altitude, raining scorching jagged rocks below and raising contamination above. Gouts of gray and black ash reached high into the stratosphere, blocking the setting sun and gradually casting a shadow over the west coast of North America.

Twelve million lives ended within seconds; pulverized, overcome, buried, and choked with the ashen slurry cementing within their lungs. The debris and soot stretched over Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Utah.

Along the fringes of the United Denver Metropolis, autonomous flying vehicles were overwhelmed and suddenly dropped to the ground as ash and debris choked their engines. Their passengers were cooked within as the vehicles overheated and burst into flames. They descended in waves.

In the city’s core, Gradius gazed in horror from his rattling penthouse window. First there was a loud cracking sound that seemed to split the air itself. Then the setting sun faded to red and purple darkness and the ground began to rumble as the quaking earth overtook the city, immediately toppling many of the taller buildings on the north western edge.

Gradius's countenance slipped into shock with the sight of ash pouring over the city and buildings crumbling into clouds of dust. His reflection vibrated, blurring in his vision as the blooming darkness grew beyond and ashen debris pelted the window.

The condensation of his scotch glass slipped against his fingers, catching itself only by its rim. A breath rested unwillingly in his lungs. A warm metallic hand grasped his arm, allowing the drink to finally alight from his fingertips and smash to the floor. It was Donna. Her mouth was moving, but the sound was only a dull warbling to his ears. She looked panicked. Insistent.

Finally, a wave of alertness flashed across his mind. Donna’s voice cut through the tempting whisper of hopelessness within him.

“Now! We have to go! Right now!” The strength of her words broke the icy hold of fear. He felt the adrenaline swell up within as it overflowed from her.

“Y-yes... Yes!” Gradius shouted, grasping his keys from the glass table by the door.

They erupted into the hallway together. Donna’s dark eyes locked onto his.

“You with me now?” she asked. Her intense gaze demanded his attention. Her military training overwhelming all sense of panic. “We have to go!”

The lights in the hall flickered as neighbors rushed past. The building wavered with the gnashing of the substrate beneath it and the weight of the ash atop.

“NO! NO!” One of the neighbors screamed, hammering the elevator’s call button. He slammed his palms against the silver doors. In the rumbling chaos, they split apart a fraction to show the empty shaft beyond. The man pried at the seam, pulling a wider gap and looking down. Screams could be heard echoing up the shaft with gunshots following. Then only the beeping and shifting of blocked doors could be heard from below. The man slipped back from the door and looked at Gradius and Donna. “Fuck...” he muttered in disbelief.

Tears swelled in his eyes and his hand rose to his forehead. He slumped to his knees as the last ounce of confidence sunk from his body. “Fuck...” he said again, quieter this time.

“Come with us,” Gradius pleaded, but it was too late. The man had already descended into the dark draw of hopelessness.

“There’s no time...” The man turned away, his hand finding the cold nickel plating of the gun beneath his blazer. He released the clip to check its load. “There’s enough for you, too.” The clip locked back into place and he raised the weapon to his head. Then he freed a bullet into his brain with a loud reverberating blast that erupted through the tight space of the hallway and sprayed all manner of viscera along the wall. His body slumped forward to drip down the edge of the elevator shaft. The body twitched and the gun thunked heavily against the marble tiled floor.

Gradius and Donna backed away a step, then two. Gradius's eyes winced with the sight. Donna clenched her teeth and pushed her husband down the hall toward the stairwell, slamming him through the door.

“You keep your head, or we die,” she spoke pointedly, keeping her eyes on his. He breathed heavily, then they grasped hands. Below, people funneled endlessly downward in a whirl of screams and shouts. All of them were members of the upper crust. All of them had been reduced to cornered animals.

A woman jumped over the stairwell railing, falling over thirty stories before finally crashing into a pool of heads below. Rushing down the stairs, Donna and Gradius were soon pulled into the maelstrom. The air was thick with the humidity of packed flesh. An unceasing cacophony of voices roared around them. If they were going to stand any chance at all, they would have to find a way through the chaos.

The sticking heat and musky sweat of bodies surrounded them as they edged their way between both the flesh and the metal of people. Raging washes of self-preservation rippled through the crowd, consuming the humanity of all present. All but Donna. Never Donna. She held her calm, calling on her vast well of battlefield experience to focus on forward momentum.

The war… Gradius thought. Tonight, it has hit us like never before. He admired Donna as she carved a path through the writhing pour of bodies. He never could have been strong enough for this on his own. He would have taken the offer of the bullet back at the elevator, or stayed at the window, watching his world burn away. Here they were, having cut their way through more than ten stories of flesh because of Donna’s sheer strength of will.

The firm solidity of stairs gave way to a soft uneven slip of remains. Those who had lost their footing. Those who were trampled, jumped from higher floors, or otherwise consumed by the tide.

“Don’t think about it,” Donna called back. “Just focus on moving forward.” Her voice was almost inaudible amongst the wail and shuffle of the flow. It was getting thicker now. The press of bodies was harder to move between. They could see the packed doorway leading out into the ground floor below. It was only three more flights of blood slick stairs until they would be there, at the bottom.

Suddenly Donna stopped and dropped Gradius's hand. She sunk low, wrestling her way between a pair of exhausted men. When she rose again through the press of muscle, she was holding a young child, bloodied and bruised, but otherwise only suffering from fear. An elderly man in front of her frantically turned around and took the child from her, eyes gleaming with the hot tears of terror and relief.

The image burned itself into Gradius's brain. The sight of a grandfather holding his grandson with a mixture of fear and elation. In a moment of clear interpretation, he saw them. It was the perfect illustration of the living struggle in this age. Bloodied and battered, they survived by the skin of their teeth. Life is cheap for young and old alike, and if it wasn’t for a corporate soldier like Donna, one of them would be dead now. Wasn’t it just like Donna to save someone? It’s why she fought in the war, to protect people, to save lives. She had worked her way up the ranks of the North American Union Government Military to become a high level commander, guiding armies of security forces against those of the Eurasian Consortium.

But not Gradius. He didn’t have a military bone in his body. His work was in corporate research and development for the military, where he would ply his trade of building better cybernetic intratech for the rich and powerful. He and Donna both worked for the NAU in different ways, and both of them had contributed to this moment in time. Corporate greed had spilled out over the lives of the people in a new way. The subtlety of diplomacy had been replaced with all out war.

By 2037, Corporations had replaced political parties in democratic nations around the world. Company CEOs and Presidents became actual world leaders and the age of corporate government had begun. It wasn’t long before corporate war had become a means to obtain research and technology from rivals worldwide.

What had once been a polite request for the NAU to share their powerful cybernetics intratech with the rest of the world, had turned into a full scale assault on North American greed itself. After five years, the war had reached a boiling point that there truly was no coming back from.

Donna had seen the worst of it, and she never spoke a word about it to anyone. Nonetheless, she still retained her goodness. That’s something the war couldn’t take from her, but Gradius, he always teetered on the edge of morality.

Gradius watched as the old man disappeared with his grandson, becoming two indistinguishable drops in an ocean once again. Donna’s eyes found her husband’s once more and a new connection was formed between them, an awakening. They were tired from the push, the struggle, the fight. Yet they were also strangely renewed, knowing that after this night, everything would change. They would change, and they would change the world for the better. No matter the cost.

Donna and Gradius finally made their way through the stairwell doorway into the lobby. Gradius squinted over the sea of heads toward the glass windows and vestibule doors, and his expression dropped. Denver Metropolis police had blocked the doors with their shields. They were keeping people in. Shouts of rage reverberated through the lobby.

Flesh and metal fists slammed against the bulletproof lobby glass. The squawking metallic sound of a loudspeaker rang from outside, but it was impossible to decipher over the burning vitriol growing among the crowd. A holo-sign flickered to life on the side of a DMPD riot van. “For your safety, stay in your homes.” Scrolls came across the sign in calming powder blue as ash poured down from the sky.

“What are they doing?!” Donna shouted in vexation. “They’re going to get us killed!”

A massive rumble began to shake the building more. “The inertial dampeners in the substructure are failing! They can’t keep the building stable!” Gradius yelled over the din to Donna. Then he remembered something about the building and pulled Donna close so he could speak more privately into her ear. “The freight elevator. It’s reinforced. It’s not a safe room, but it’s the best chance we’ve got.”

Gunshots rang out, thunking heavily into the lobby windows. A panicked officer returned fire through the vestibule doors as people pried them open with bloodied hands. Shotgun blasts ripped through the people at the door. Hatred responded as the crowd pulled the officer inward, where he was torn apart. With one less shield to block the doorway, the people spilled out into the street. Some ran for freedom, others continued to unleash fury onto the officers. A shadow covered them all as the building leaned, a looming curve that smashed into the opposing building across the street. Concrete, glass, and personal effects rained upon all below.

Gradius and Donna sliced a path through the lobby crowd to a maintenance hall where the freight elevator was supposed to be; but when they arrived, they found that it was already down in the sublevel. Donna reached her chrome fingers around the door and pulled it wide, looking down upon the elevator’s roof. Gradius jumped onto the roof and kicked the hatch open. A shocked gasp came from within. Cracks began to split the wall behind Donna.

Gradius and Donna slipped into the elevator to see the building superintendent and his family cowering in the corner. Donna sat across from them. Gradius followed as everything around them shook in the deafening rain of concrete and steel. Gravity shifted within the elevator, the walls crumpling inward.

Gradius silently held the gaze of the superintendent. Then the man squeezed his eyes shut as another shower of debris poured through the open ceiling hatch. Gradius continued watching the man. Here they were, rich and poor in the same coffin, protecting the only things they could in this moment. Their people.

“If we get out of this...” Gradius whispered to Donna. “We will change the world for people like him. We will put an end to corporate war.” His eyes shifted to look at the children as they fearfully clung to the man. “This is no world for children. Not yet.”

Donna edged closer to him, thinking on his words. Change didn’t come easily in these times. It would be dangerous to even try, but she knew that he was right, and she felt it too. The drive to save people from the crushing weight of corporate control. They could do it, but it would require a shift in power. Their first task was to survive the night.

- -

“...and now for tonight’s lead story. The triggered eruption of Yellowstone National Park has destroyed the North American west coast, and forced the entire continent to rely on foreign trade to survive. The NAU has surrendered to the Eurasian Consortium, and refugees from the west continue to pour eastward seeking safety and a chance at a new life.

“The city of SOLA has become especially appealing for refugees due to its policy on accepting the needy and its dependence on ‘old fashioned’ politics. However, room has run out, and homelessness is rampant.

“We have darker days ahead of us, as we wait to see what will come of these events. On a personal note, I wish you all well, and I hope that you find yourselves some safety this night. This has been Garrett Shand for NAU News, signing off.”

- -

2066:

SaeSyn Incorporated HQ, SOLA Megalopolis

“Then where the hell is she?!” Gradius shouted into the phone, held white knuckled to his ear. Two year old Darius watched his father from the office floor. His eyes glistening, lips trembling at the sudden outburst of anger.

“I couldn’t tell you, but I have contracted top tier encryption-crackers to trace the virus that grounded her armored flight. Our investigators at the crash site have recovered the bodies of her guard detail. There are signs that she fought back, Gradius.” The voice of Del Peck spoke back through the device.

Gradius's eyes rimmed with a subtle glaze. His voice became a shadow. “That’s Donna… She’ll fight them the whole way, Del.”

“She will, but they’ll win in the end,” Del paused. “Look. You knew this could happen. I warned you when we started this thing. Personal attachments are the biggest threat to business. You promised me that it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Del, this isn’t the time for I told you s...”

“Yes, it is!” Del interrupted. “You knew better than to send her on that flight! I don’t need the investigators to tell me who did this. It’s the Consortium! They’ve caught wind of your work! They’ll kill her if we don’t give them schematics!”

Gradius brought a thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. Since the Consortium had ended the war by triggering the Yellowstone Catastrophe, they had forced the North American government to trade tech for food. However, in cases where the tech was secretive, the Consortium took it forcefully.

“Damn...” His jaw clenched. “They’ll kill her even if we do give them the schematics. Two birds, Del. They want to do more than just cripple us. She knows things... about the war.”

“What do you mean?” Del spoke in measured tones.

“We both know the war didn’t really end, it just returned to boardrooms where it belongs. She served as a commander for the NAU, Del,” Gradius's voice quavered.

Del's breath caught in his throat. “They’ll use every tool at their disposal to learn everything she knows. Fuck. They’ll have already started!”

“Regressive algorithms run directly into her core. They’ll replay her memories like a holovid and she’ll dictate every detail back to them. They’d have every piece of confidential knowledge in her brain. Then they’ll torture her, simply for the cost she had incurred them back in the war.” Gradius looked at Darius, sitting in the middle of the office floor with the dull shine of tears streaking his cheeks. Then he found himself suddenly unable to look at the boy, choosing instead to move to the window, staring 77 stories down at the distant lights of modified dozers pushing decades old ash into Lake Ontario.

Load by load, after all these years, they still tried to expand SOLA city. It was an image of hope to Gradius mere moments ago. Now, thinking about Donna, he looked down at the work as useless. Something within him was breaking. He spied Darius again from the corner of his eye. Watching his son, all he saw in the boy now was risk. No world for a child. He thought.

“You were right, Del… About the whole thing.” Gradius felt his eyes dry as a coldness settled deep within. There is an empty void now, in a place that once held hope. He accepted his mistake. “The prototypes go on the back burner. We’ll start work on the compression project. More money in that.”

“And Donna?” Del asked, knowing the answer already.

“When the Consortium sends their proxy to demand the schematics, tell them that the answer is no.” His voice was stern in the knowledge that Donna may yet draw breath, but she was effectively already dead, and there was nothing they could do about it.

- -

Donna’s body was found three weeks later in the freezer of an abandoned outskirts truck stop. Gradius stood over the freezer absorbing the image of her. Internalizing every incision and every bruise. Losing fragments of himself with every new acknowledgement of her pain.

She had been his strength, his moral center, the one person he loved more than himself. For a moment, he imagined her in his arms again. He felt the soft warmth of her skin, smelled the cool sweetness of her perfume, and heard the rhythmic draw of her breath. Then the moment was torn away from him in the crushing knowledge that he would never have that again. He sunk into the acknowledgement of his role in her death… and his denial to save her.

He gazed at her rigid body now with offset chiseled teeth. The pallid blue in her ebony skin, the cold iron stench of her blood, and the still silence. He saw the sweat that had crystalized on her tightly furrowed brow. The anger still locked on her face. The agony that had consumed her in those last moments was buried there beneath the rage.

With a numb hand, he reached down to touch her cheek. Her open eyes stared blankly beyond him. Beyond the wall. Beyond all creation. His fingers grazed the matted crust of blood in her hair. He recoiled, and a hot vapor of tears burned to the corners of his eyes. His breath caught in his throat as the story of her suffering compiled in his mind. Admitting now, how much worse it had been than he had ever imagined.

The picture was completing itself despite him. How long she had lived through the pain before finally receiving the grace of death. He could see where the life-support machines were connected. He could see how she had been kept alive to endure, to hope, to fear, to die only when they wanted her to.

His hand settled against her face, and he felt something shift beneath the swelling. A plate of her cybernetics had shifted during the beating. It now sit loosely under the skin. He swallowed hard, building the courage to finally look at what he had thus far refused to see. Her missing pieces. The new arms he had made for her as an anniversary present were gone. Taken, no doubt, to be studied in place of the schematics that they had wanted.

Those shoulders. Those powerful warm hands that he had loved, that had held their child. They had been so much more than just cybernetics. They were a part of her; but now they were in the possession of those who had tortured her, murdered her, and torn her apart.

His fingers lost their warmth, soaking the incendiary cold of her skin into his. Something within him was dying. It had begun that night when he had given up on her. The more real it all became, the more he lost.

Gradius crushed his eyelids together, pressing his tears into slick streaks down his face. Teeth grinding. Fingers losing all sense of touch. He opened his eyes, the cold wisps of frozen air cooling them. His tears no longer flowed. The numbness sunk deeper into him. To his very core.

He breathed in slowly.

He wrapped his arms around Donna, and pried her frosted skin from the side of the freezer. He carried her rigid body through the truck stop doorway and to the car waiting outside.

Del watched him approach through slit eyes. Unabashed.

“This has to be it, Gradius. Doesn’t matter what you do. As long as you care for your son, he’ll be a liability to the company. And if the company dies, then all this will have been for nothing. Step away from the kid. Let the caretakers raise him.” His voice was stern and unwavering.

Gradius paused, eyes still on Donna. He nodded in silent agreement as he closed the door. Turning slowly to Del. He stared with empty bloodshot eyes. Now a husk of the man he had once been.