After applying a bit of stingy ointment around my bruised stomach, I dragged my aching body through a quick bath and brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Ugh. Nothing beats a cigarette after a thorough beating.
Sitting at my tiny table, sipping the bitter black coffee and puffing on my stick, I pulled up the local news feed. It turned out today was a regional holiday: Dormant Cell Activation Day, held every first of March.
It was an annual event, celebrated almost like a mass vaccination. Every year on this day, hordes of people flock to the center of the big cities inside the domes to get their yearly cell-activation shots. In the early days following the collapse, it was an experimental luxury. Now, it was just a regular part of the winter calendar.
The history behind it was old news. Back when the frost first set in, researchers inside the early domes worked day and night to synthesize a serum that could stop the global radiation from triggering wild, grotesque mutations in the surviving population. They needed a way to help the human body resist the severe, bone-chilling cold that was wiping out everyone beyond the walls.
On March 1st, 2093, a groundbreaking discovery by DNA researchers changed everything. They published a paper detailing hidden, dormant cells tucked away inside the human genome. Centuries before the war, early scientists had already proven that humans possessed ancient sensory remnants—like magnetoreception, the subconscious ability to detect Earth's magnetic fields. Controlled experiments inside isolated chambers had shown the human brain actively reacting to the planet's poles. The hypothesis back then was that ancient humans could pinpoint locations accurately by perceiving environmental wavelengths, though the early models required the objects to vibrate. In the modern, tech-heavy era leading up to the war, humanity didn't need those primal tracking systems anymore. So, the traits went dark. The wiring remained, but the switches were turned off.
Shortly after that paper was published, the dome researchers went into a frenzy, hyper-focusing their resources on genetic engineering. It took them just five years to invent the modern activation tools. Similar to primitive stem-cell therapy, these serums were designed to tweak a person's DNA, tricking the body into reviving those long-lost, dormant cellular traits.
The first person to successfully awaken his dormant cells was a man named Hans Dadaly. The Dadaly family had funded and led the entire project, and as a reward for their gamble, Hans became the world's first successful super-subject.
I don't know the exact molecular science behind it, but rumors say the procedure granted Hans an unbelievable gift: Hyper-Regeneration. No matter how severe his injuries were, his body began knitting itself back together the exact microsecond his flesh tore open. People claimed you could literally watch his wounds close up with the naked eye.
Damn, that must be nice. How good would life be if I had a gift like that? I wouldn't be hiding out in a cramped public flat. I could sign up as a high-tier underground cage fighter and pull in a fortune.
But a miracle like that doesn't come without a steep price tag. As anyone living in this bleak world knows, there's no such thing as free energy. The sheer physical power required to instantly close a gaping wound has to come from somewhere. It drains the cellular reserves that are normally meant to keep your body alive over a standard lifetime. By forcing a fast recovery, you burn through your biological fuse at ten times the speed. The research proved it clearly: the rapid-healing subjects had their lifespans cut drastically short.
But honestly? Even if it meant dropping dead at fifty, I'd sign up for regeneration in a heartbeat. You only live once. I'd rather live a short, incredibly rich life than spend eighty years starving day-to-day in the dark.
Even though Hans's procedure was a historic success, getting a high-tier power like hyper-regeneration wasn't common. Even among the elite Dadaly bloodline today, only about 60% of their descendants actually awaken the trait; the rest end up completely ordinary. But that initial breakthrough gave the dome scientists a roadmap. Decades of refined research eventually categorized the awakenings into four distinct cellular branches:
Regeneration: Accelerated healing and tissue repair.
Formless Body Structure: A Skeletal and Muscle suit on your activity without limit.
Reaction Sensitivity: Blazing-fast neural processing and reflex speed.
Wavelength Detection: The ability to sense magnetic fields, radar waves, or thermal vibrations.
Hmph. I stared at my reflection in the dark surface of my lukewarm coffee, tracing the faint swelling on my jaw line where Brett had clocked me.
I wonder what kind of commotion is happening out on the streets today. If it's the Activation Day crowds, it's going to be a total madhouse.
---
After finishing my holy golden hour—drinking lukewarm black coffee and burning through my last decent cigarette—I decided it was time to get moving. I needed to take a stroll outside and look for some creative way to make money.
It took an hour on the clanking public train to get from my cramped suburban block into the heart of the city. And as always, stepping into the inner city was a reality check. These days, simply having a family name wasn't enough to guarantee you a spot inside the core. Even though the nuclear winter had finally broken years ago, the giant domes didn't get torn down. They weren't kept around out of nostalgia, either; they stayed up because everything inside a dome was the absolute definition of luxury.
What I liked most about the inner city was the climate control. The temperature was locked at a crisp, constant twenty-three degrees Celsius. Damn, it felt good. And because the massive dome material filtered out the harsh ultraviolet rays, you wouldn't even get a sunburn if you lay naked under the skylights all day.
Then there was the tech. Levitation boards zipped effortlessly between high-rises that were built to look like towering modern castles. Man, I wanted to live in this place. But to secure a permanent residence here, you needed an income of at least fifteen hundred gold pieces a month. What could a guy like me do with a pathetic twenty-silver monthly salary? I couldn't even afford the basic subscription fee for public levitation board access. What a total load of crap.
This floating paradise inside the city was called Krakatoa. Looking at the shimmering architecture, I couldn't help but curse my ancestors. I wondered what the hell the Lankat line was doing centuries ago to not even secure a single asset in this sector. Fuck my family. Even the main branch of the Lankats lived outside the dome boundaries nowadays. Some legacy. What a total joke.
As you grow up around here, you learn the number-one rule of survival: never, under any circumstances, mess with the leading families. Five major bloodlines ruled everything inside Krakatoa: the Dadaly, the Voya, the Zhang, the Eldragy, and the Soekamto. In the early days after the winter, there used to be fifteen or twenty founding families residing in the core. But as the population exploded, raw power and concentrated wealth dictated who stayed. The weaker lines got pushed out. And the Lankats? Don't even get me started. We hadn't owned a single square meter of property inside this dome for four hundred years. I hated my useless lineage.
I had only been strolling around the polished lower plazas for about twenty minutes, daydreaming and nursing my sore ribs, when someone slammed hard into my right shoulder.
Thuck.
The impact rattled my bruised torso, sending a sharp spike of pain straight to my gut.
"Hey, fucker, watch your s—"
The words died instantly in my throat. I froze, my stomach dropping through the floor. Fuck. I'll be damned.