The doors creaked open, unveiling a vast wasteland of ruin. Clyde and the woman stepped out of the collapsing structure, their footsteps heavy with exhaustion, yet driven by purpose. Behind them, the facility—once a place where minds were twisted and rewritten—crumbled into dust, a tomb of buried sins and lost truths.
Clyde squinted as sunlight hit his face. It had been ages since he'd seen the sky for what it was. But this wasn't the sky he remembered. It wasn't blue or bright. Instead, it was bruised—streaked with violet hues and laced with flickers of digital interference, like a broken world struggling to render itself. Even the horizon pulsed, as if reality hadn't fully settled back into place.
"This… is this really the world?" Clyde asked, uncertain.
The woman didn't reply right away. She crouched, running her fingers over the grass—if it could even be called that. It buzzed faintly, constantly shifting, like unstable pixels trying to hold form.
"It's what's left," she said softly. "Everything we once knew—gone. When the experiments spiraled out of control, they didn't just stay in the facility. They rewrote time, memory… even the rules that used to hold our world together."
Clyde took a slow breath. "So what are we standing in right now?"
"A liminal space. Between what was real… and what got rewritten." She stood, eyes scanning the strange terrain. "And we're not alone out here."
Clyde's heart skipped. "There are others?"
She nodded. "Some woke up too late. Others were born into this twisted version of reality. Some are trying to recover what was lost. Others… they're clinging to the version the System left behind."
A low hum broke the silence—barely audible at first, then steadily growing. Clyde spun toward the sound. Shapes were moving across the flickering landscape. Not quite human. Not entirely machine. A disturbing blend of both.
"Revenants," the woman said under her breath.
Clyde furrowed his brow. "What are they?"
"Test subjects who never made it out," she replied, pulling a device from her coat. It glowed blue, syncing to her pulse. "They're still tethered to the old system. Corrupted. Half-aware. And lethal."
Clyde's grip tightened. "How many are there?"
"Too many." She turned to face him directly. "That's why we need to find the others. The ones who still remember how things used to be. If we want to fix any of this, we're going to need allies."
Clyde looked out at the broken world, a twisted echo of what he once called home. For the first time, his purpose was bigger than survival. It was about bringing back what mattered.
"Then let's find them," he said firmly. "Let's fight. And this time—we write the story our way."
As the revenants closed in, Clyde braced himself, gripping the battered weapon he'd scavenged along the way. This fight wasn't just his. It belonged to everyone still trapped in the wreckage of a stolen world.
And he wasn't going to run.