The world did not end in fire. It screamed.
I was eighteen years old when the oceans broke their ancient boundaries. The bombs they dropped from the atmosphere were not designed to burn cities. They were engineered to crack the tectonic plates. England vanished first. I watched walls of violent black water devour the horizon. When the chaotic tide finally retreated it left behind a mass grave of twisted steel rebar and fractured stone. The survivors called it NewV. I called it a tomb.
That is exactly where Alpha Division found me.
They did not bring humanitarian aid. They did not carry food rations or wool blankets. They wore dark tactical armor. Their faces remained completely obscured behind mirrored visors. They marched through the thick mud and the starving crowds. They selected recruits based entirely on physical bone structure and muscle density. My stomach was hollow but I kept my chin parallel to the ground. I refused to look down at the dirt. They did not rescue me. They claimed me.
Training started with absolute engineered starvation. They locked us inside wire cages. They withheld food until we fought each other over a single protein packet. Hesitation meant starvation. They stripped our names away and assigned us numerical designations. I held onto my name in the dark. Zack Rivers. I knew losing my name meant losing the final anchor to my sanity.
I remember the exact weight of the first pistol they handed me. The boy standing across the concrete floor trembled so violently his knees knocked together. Snot mixed with tears on his upper lip. The instructor stepped behind me. The cold steel of his sidearm pressed directly into my temple. He told me to pull the trigger or die.
The boy across from me dropped his weapon. He collapsed to his knees and begged the concrete floor. My hand stayed completely steady. I squeezed the trigger. The slide racked back. The boy slumped forward onto the ground. I was nineteen years old. Alpha Division did not build soldiers. They built apex survivors by actively starving our compassion.
The years blurred into a continuous cycle of bruised knuckles and torn ligaments. I survived by weaponizing what I already knew. Before the oceans swallowed the continents I had studied Taekwondo. Alpha Division took the rigid discipline of the martial art and distilled it into pure kinetic brutality. My legs became faster than forged steel. A spinning kick shattered floating ribs. A descending axe kick severed spinal cords. By twenty four my body was a fully automated weapon.
I still heard the late night whispers in the dark barracks.
The older veterans talked about the Weapon Project. An old failed experiment designed to build the ultimate biological asset. The instructors stated it was completely abandoned. I recognized the lie in their rigid posture. In Alpha Division secrets only stayed buried if the subjects were dead.
Then intelligence sent my squad down into the ruined NewV bunker.
We walked over thick layers of broken glass and dried black blood. We breached the very center of the underground facility and found a slaughterhouse. Shattered computer consoles. Dangling wires spitting blue sparks. Dead Division soldiers lying in cracked Kevlar armor.
I saw a body sprawled on the floor. I categorized him as another casualty. Then his chest cavity expanded.
I stepped into the doorway. I analyzed the dead soldiers and then looked down at him. Recognition hit my visual cortex instantly. My rifle snapped up to my shoulder. The barrel leveled directly between his eyes.
He moved before my finger could depress the trigger. He rolled sideways as my warning shot chipped the concrete wall. He scrambled forward and clamped his bare hand directly onto the hot barrel of my rifle.
Our faces were inches apart. He was young. I scanned his pupils for deception. My finger stayed frozen on the trigger guard.
"You are alive?" I asked. My voice rasped against the dust in my throat.
He forced out a bitter breath. "What does it look like?"
My jaw tightened. "Did you do this?"
He looked at the skeletal hands gripping the weapons and the black stains coating the floor. "I do not know."
I lowered my muzzle a fraction of an inch. I studied the tension lines around his mouth. "Name."
"Ashen. Ashen Ashford"
I stared at him. The whispers in the dark barracks were completely real.
It happened on a standard Tuesday. There were no klaxons. My squad geared up for a routine briefing. We secured our helmets and racked our charging handles. We walked down the designated corridors. The ambient temperature dropped. The concrete walls grew colder and narrower.
"Wrong turn," I said.
Nobody answered the observation. My squad closed the physical distance around me. They angled their rifle muzzles inward. Heavy polymer rifle stocks pressed hard into my ribs and pinned my arms against my sides.
"What is this?" I asked.
Max stepped out of the shadows. He wore a pristine tailored suit that completely contradicted the tactical environment. He wore a polite empty smile. "Stand down Rivers."
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because you saw Ashen Ashford," Max stated smoothly. "The Weapon. The Division does not keep liabilities."
I dropped my center of gravity and lunged. I threw a spinning kick aimed right at his temple. My squad anticipated the shift. A rifle butt smashed heavily into my jawbone. A second strike caved into my stomach. I hit the floor. The sharp taste of copper flooded my tongue. Heavy combat boots pinned my chest flat against the tiles.
Max crouched beside my face. He adjusted his silk cuffs. "You will rot where we put you."
They dragged my dead weight down to a dark solitary cell. The heavy steel door engaged its pneumatic locks and sealed shut. I sat on the freezing floor. My broken ribs ground together with every breath. I knew Ashen was real. I knew he was breathing. And I knew if I ever breached that steel door Alpha Division would regret leaving me alive.