Chapter 2: Echoes of the Past

Elias forced himself to breathe. His hands trembled as he lowered the stolen gun, his pulse still hammering from the fight. The dead man lay motionless at his feet, eyes glazed over, the last remnants of his grim smile frozen in place.

The words lingered in Elias’s mind.

"You really don’t remember, do you?"

"They’ll be coming for you soon."

A deep unease settled in his gut. He had no memories, no clue who "they" were, and a dead body at his feet with no answers left to give. He needed to move.

Swallowing down the nausea, Elias crouched and searched the corpse. A cracked visor, tactical armor worn from years of use, and a few pouches strapped to his belt. Inside one, Elias found a small metal card, smooth with a faintly glowing emblem at its center—a stylized eye, surrounded by jagged lines. A symbol of some kind.

Nothing else of use. No ID. No communicator. Whoever this man was, he had erased his tracks well.

Elias tucked the card into his pocket and stood, scanning the ruins. The bunker—or whatever remained of it—was eerily silent now, save for the occasional drip of leaking pipes. He needed to get out before more people showed up looking for their missing operative.

But where the hell was he supposed to go?

He turned to the crumbling stairwell at the far end of the room, leading upward toward a faint glow. Sunlight. With one last glance at the body, Elias started climbing, boots crunching against loose rubble. His body ached with every step, muscles sluggish as if they were waking up from a long slumber.

At the top, he emerged into a wasteland.

The sky above was a murky gray, heavy with clouds that never quite cleared. The land stretched endlessly before him—abandoned buildings, rusted metal husks of vehicles long stripped for parts, and distant, jagged towers swallowed by creeping vines and dust. The remnants of a world that once thrived but had long since fallen into decay.

A ruined city, buried under time.

A gust of wind sent loose debris skittering across the cracked pavement. Elias took a slow, steady breath. Despite the emptiness, he felt eyes on him. Watching. Waiting.

"They’ll be coming for you soon."

His fingers tightened around the grip of the stolen gun. He needed a plan. Food, shelter, answers. Most importantly, he needed to know what was in his arm—and why it had reacted during the fight.

A flicker of blue light caught his attention. He glanced down at the device, still pulsing faintly. Testing a theory, he lifted his arm and slowly turned, watching the glow shift in intensity.

Then—a response.

The device flickered stronger as he turned east, toward the heart of the ruined city.

It was pointing him somewhere.

Elias exhaled, adjusting his grip on the gun. He had no memories, no allies, and no idea what was waiting for him. But standing still wasn’t an option.

If the past was out there, buried beneath the ruins, then he would dig it up himself.

And he would survive.

—End of Chapter 2

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***