As Max stepped over the sparking husk of the fallen Ultron drone, the tunnel ahead opened into a collapsed subway station. Signs hung lopsided, spray-painted over with red "U" symbols—Ultron's mark. Cracks spiderwebbed through the ceiling, flickering lights barely illuminating the chaos.
[Exiting Sector 7...]
[Now entering Wasteland Grid—New York, Zone D.]
The moment Max emerged from the tunnel, the world changed.
A once-great city now stood in silence, blanketed in ash and ruin. Skyscrapers leaned against each other like dying titans. Metal constructs patrolled the streets—Ultron's Watchers, scanning for survivors. Overhead, the sky was red with static storms and pulsing clouds, as if the air itself was infected.
In the center of the district, a once-grand Resistance Base sat in ruin. Its symbol—three claw marks in a circle—was barely visible under layers of dirt and blood.
Max crouched behind a chunk of broken concrete, peeking over.
Smoke curled from shattered walls. Gunfire marks riddled the outer defenses. Burned banners waved weakly in the wind. The entire base looked… dead.
"So this is the Resistance, huh?" he muttered. "Not much resisting going on."
He took a deep breath—but winced.
That last hit had done more damage than he thought. His body was still regenerating, but the Nightmare Mode's 30% power limit kept it painfully slow. His dark force wouldn't be enough right now for a full-frontal assault or defense.
Then he sensed it.
Power.
Terrifying, sharp, and cold.
Descending from the sky.
BOOOOM!
The concrete trembled as something crashed into the center of the ruined base—smoke and wind erupting from the impact. Max squinted through the dust… and then he saw it.
A towering figure, forged in dark chrome and crimson light, stepped forward from the crater.
Ultron Heresy Unit: Iron Widow.
Its face was a horrific hybrid of Natasha Romanoff and a drone—elegant and emotionless. The red of her synthetic hair streamed behind her, eyes glowing with eerie intelligence.
"Scanning. Unknown anomaly detected."
"Potential rogue AI signature… Analyzing: Hostile."
Max's eye twitched. "Yeah, not good."
The Heresy Unit raised her hand—and a swarm of micro-drones began forming a cannon around her wrist.
"I'm seriously not strong enough for this right now…" Max muttered as he backed away slowly.
BOOM!
A wall of energy exploded where he just stood—launching him backward into the rubble, crashing through a dead Sentinel's chest plate.
[Warning: Host power reserves at 28%.]
[Tip: Survive, don't win. Yet.]
Max groaned, coughing blood as he stood. "Yeah… thanks for the pep talk, system."
He stumbled into an old maintenance shaft, just as another energy blast tore past him.
Behind him, Iron Widow's voice echoed like a melody of doom.
"Run, little virus. You'll be deleted soon enough."
The shaft door slammed shut behind Max.
He panted in the dark, his hand on the wall.
"Okay… Nightmare difficulty really wasn't kidding."
Max leaned against the wall, breathing heavily as sparks crackled from his wounds. The darkness of the maintenance shaft offered a brief moment of safety… but also an oppressive silence.
He activated a low-light vision filter—barely functional with his current power cap—and moved forward cautiously, boots crunching over fallen debris and wires.
Then—a faint shuffle.
He froze, eyes narrowing.
"System," he whispered, "scan for movement."
[Scanning…]
[Lifeform detected: Human. Weak. Not hostile.]
A few meters ahead, tucked behind a pile of machinery, a figure stirred. Max edged closer, raising his hand with just enough force to cast a dim light.
A girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, blinked up at him. Her face was dirt-smudged, her short-cropped hair frizzed from static shocks. She had a busted leg and clutched a pipe defensively.
"…Who the hell are you?" she hissed, her voice rough.
Max crouched. "Not your enemy. Name's Max. I'm… new."
"So you're the idiot who's been running around like a ghost," she said, stepping out from the shadows and pointing a sparking stun baton at him. "Wait—weren't those Ultrons chasing you?"
Max raised an eyebrow, gently pushing her weapon aside. "Guess word travels fast. I've been wandering through the wreckage since I got here. Not exactly making friends."
"I figured," she muttered, eyeing him. "You've got that look. Like someone who already lost too much and just kept moving because there's nothing left to lose."
She sat down again, back against a chunk of collapsed piping. "After the Ultron Massacre, most of us lost someone. Now, we just survive. We don't resist, don't rebel—just try not to break what's left of the world."
Max frowned. "That's a messed up way to live. You're saying people can eat, sleep, maybe even laugh—as long as they don't piss off the machines?"
"Exactly." She let out a dry chuckle. "It's like some twisted rule written into the dirt: behave, and you get to exist."
"That's gotta be the most bizarre survival code I've ever heard," Max muttered.
She glanced up at him, her expression softer now. "And you sound like someone from an older world. One that believed in fighting back."
Max stared at the flickering lights above. "Maybe I am."
The girl exhaled and finally stood up, lowering her baton.
"…Name's Sara, by the way," she said, brushing some ash-specked hair from her face. "Don't usually bring strays to shelter, but you don't seem like a machine sympathizer."
Max gave her a small grin. "I'll try not to ruin your streak."
Sara waved for him to follow. "Come on, this way. We've got to move fast and quiet—Ultrons sweep every twenty minutes, like clockwork."
They crept through broken streets, ducking behind burned-out husks of cars and leaping across collapsed rooftops. The wind howled between metal skeletons of fallen towers, and the red tint in the sky gave everything a haunted, post-apocalyptic hue. Every now and then, Max caught sight of the Sentinel-drones high above, their eyes glowing a sinister blue as they scanned the streets with mechanical indifference.
After about twenty minutes of silent movement, Sara finally pushed aside what looked like a rusted metal slab leaning against a sewer entrance.
"In here." She climbed down first, motioning him to follow.
***
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