The campus of CU Denver was a monument to a dying peace. Students lounged on grass, staring at phones. A gentle breeze carried the scent of cut grass and coffee. It was a tableau of normalcy that felt like a museum exhibit to Elias. He walked through it like a ghost, his backpack heavy with cash and the weight of the future.
He found the biochemistry lab. Through a window, he saw her.
Aris Thorne.
She was younger. So much younger. Her hair was pulled back in a messy but practical ponytail, a few strands escaping to frame a face still soft with youth, not yet hardened by years of grinding survival. She was bent over a microscope, her brow furrowed in concentration. She wore a simple lab coat over jeans.
Elias's breath hitched. The memories crashed over him—not the painful ones of her death, but the quiet ones. Her hand on his arm in the command center. The way she'd smile, tired but determined, when a breakthrough was close. The sound of her arguing with Leo about sterilizing field medkits.
He pushed the door open. The smell of disinfectant and agar hit him, another sense-memory from a different life.
She looked up, her expression politely questioning. "Can I help you?"
"Aris Thorne?" he asked, though he knew.
"That's me. Are you Elias Vane? The one who called?" She stood, wiping her hands on her coat. She was taller than he remembered. Or maybe he was just shorter, weaker.
"I am. Thanks for seeing me on short notice."
She gestured to a cluttered desk with two chairs. "Your call was… intriguing. You said you read my paper? Most people's eyes glaze over at the abstract."
"I found the section on prion-like protein propagation under non-standard energy fields fascinating," Elias said, sitting. He had memorized this. In the old timeline, her paper, dismissed as fringe science, would become the foundational text for understanding how System energies mutated biology. "Specifically, your hypothesis about catalytic environmental feedback loops."
Aris blinked, surprise flashing in her intelligent eyes. "Okay. You actually read it. Most 'donors' just want their name on a plaque. What's your interest, Mr. Vane? You don't look like a venture capitalist."
"I'm not. I'm a… preparedness consultant." The lie slid off his tongue, crafted with a commander's skill for half-truths. "I model catastrophic scenarios. Pandemics, nuclear fallout, cosmic events. Your research fits a model I'm building."
"A model for what?" she asked, leaning forward, her skepticism now mixed with curiosity.
"For a rapid, global environmental shift that would apply novel energy stresses to all organic matter," he said, keeping his voice low and serious. "Think of it as a planet-wide exposure to an unknown radiation. Your paper suggests such an event could trigger cascading, unstable mutations in baseline genetics. Correct?"
Aris's face grew still. "Theoretically, yes. But the energy source you're describing is…"
"Impossible? Until it isn't." He opened his backpack and pulled out a manila folder. Inside were not scientific documents, but printouts of financial transfers. He slid it toward her. "This is a grant. Fifty thousand dollars. No strings, no university overhead. Direct to you. For your personal research account."
She stared at the number. It was more funding than her entire department had seen in years. "This is a joke. Who are you?"
"I'm the man who believes your work is the most important on the planet right now," Elias said, locking eyes with her. He let the intensity he used on Leo show again. "In the next seventy-two hours, I believe a triggering event will occur. I need you to be ready. I need you to start sourcing materials now, specific reagents, growth media, portable lab equipment. The shopping list is in the folder."
She flipped through the pages. The list was terrifyingly specific: viral RNA extraction kits, portable PCR machines, bulk ethylene oxide, high-grade biological safety cabinets. It was a list for building a field lab to study a plague.
"This is for a Level-4 mobile biocontainment unit," she whispered, her face pale. "What are you expecting, Mr. Vane? An alien pathogen?"
"Something like that," he said, his voice grim. "When it happens—if it happens—the world will panic. Supply chains will shatter. The things on that list will be worth more than gold. If you have them, you can do real work. You can save lives."
He was manipulating her again. Using her brilliance, her idealism, her desire to do good. He was pointing her at the horror and giving her the tools to fight it, making her need him.
"And what do you get out of this?" she asked, her guard up but wavering. The money was a powerful argument. So was being taken seriously.
"I get a partner," he said simply. "When everything changes, knowledge will be the new currency. Medical knowledge will be the highest denomination. I'm investing in the best banker I know."
He stood up, the meeting already over in his mind. He had planted the seed, given her the resources, and the hook of terrifying purpose. "The money transfers now. Use it. Buy everything on the list. Store it somewhere secure, not on campus. On Saturday afternoon, when you see the news… you'll know where to find me."
"Where?" she asked, standing as well, the folder clutched tightly in her hands.
"I'll find you," he said. And he would. He knew the coffee shop she'd flee to when the first Gates opened, scared but driven to understand.
He left her standing there, surrounded by her peaceful world of science, holding a check and a prophecy for hell.
Sixty-six hours remaining.
The next stop was a pawn shop in a run-down part of town. "Rocky Mountain Treasures." The bell jingled as he entered. The air smelled of dust and old metal.
The meteorite was in a dusty display case, labeled "Space Rock - $400." A lump of iron and nickel, pitted from its journey. To anyone else, a curiosity. To Elias, it was a key to a [Geomancer]'s loyalty. He paid in cash, no questions.
Then, a surplus store. He bought the HAM radio, the topographic maps, the heavy-duty axes and machetes. The clerk, a bored older man, raised an eyebrow at the volume.
"Starting a militia?" the clerk joked.
"Something like that," Elias said, counting out hundreds.
He rented a small, anonymous storage unit on the outskirts of the city. He began filling it. Each trip in his hatchback, loaded with supplies, felt like laying a single brick for a wall against oblivion. Water filters. Medical kits. MREs. The axes. The radio.
His phone buzzed constantly. More loans cleared. His account swelled with doomed money. He spent it as fast as it came, a madman on a spending spree for the end of the world.
As the sun began to dip, painting the sky in oranges and pinks, a sunset no one would appreciate in three days, he drove back to Manny's Auto.
The van was parked out front. A bulky, white, ex-FedEx vehicle. It looked like a giant, dirty brick on wheels. Perfect.
Leo was waiting, leaning against the fender. His arms were crossed, his face unreadable. The easygoing mechanic was gone, replaced by a man wrestling with a terrible decision.
"It's ready," Leo said, his voice flat. He tossed Elias the keys. "Full service. New oil. Diesel tank's full. It'll go anywhere you point it, even through hell." He paused. "I looked you up, Elias Vane. Geology graduate. No job. No family in town. No reason to need a war machine like this or to know about my daughter's… future."
Elias caught the keys. "And?"
"And you're either the craziest son of a bitch I've ever met, or you're telling the truth." Leo's eyes were hard. "The money cleared. The van's yours. But if this is some scam, if you've hurt a single hair on Mia's head…"
"It's not a scam," Elias said, opening the van's rear doors. The interior was empty, a cavernous space. Soon it would be packed with survival. "Be here Saturday at 3 PM. Bring Mia. Bring any family you want to keep alive. Pack for a long trip. Weapons, if you have them. Then you'll see."
He started transferring the supplies from his hatchback's tiny trunk into the van's vast hold. Leo watched him for a minute, seeing the serious, efficient way Elias moved the heavy boxes of medical gear and food.
"You really believe it, don't you?" Leo said quietly. "You're not just a nut. You're… afraid."
Elias stopped, a case of water in his arms. He looked at Leo, and for a second, the mask of the Commander slipped. The young man's fear, the bone-deep terror of the memories he carried, showed through.
"I'm not afraid of what's coming, Leo," Elias said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I've already lived through it. I'm afraid of failing to stop it this time."
He loaded the water and slammed the van doors shut. The sound was final.
"Saturday. 3 PM," Elias repeated. He got into the driver's seat of the van. It smelled of diesel and clean oil. The engine roared to life, a powerful, throaty sound his hatchback could never make.
He didn't look back as he pulled away. In the mirror, he saw Leo still standing there, a large, confused silhouette against the garage lights, caught between a peaceful present and a terrible future.
Fifty-nine hours remaining.
Elias drove the van to his new storage unit. He spent the next two hours in a frenzy of organization, stacking, sorting. Building his ark in a concrete cube.
As he secured the unit's padlock, his body screamed in protest. His soft muscles ached. His mind, however, was clear. The first moves were made. The pieces were in motion.
He pulled out his phone one last time. He had one more recruit tonight. The hardest one, in some ways.
He drove across town to a quiet, tree-lined street. He parked down the block from a modest house. The lights were on inside.
He didn't approach. He just watched.
After twenty minutes, the front door opened. A teenager stepped out, taking out the trash. He was lanky, wearing noise-cancelling headphones over his ears. Sam. He moved with a slight hunch, as if trying to make himself smaller, unseen.
As Sam turned to go back inside, a group of three other boys rounded the corner. They were loud, laughing. One of them saw Sam and said something. Sam didn't hear, but he saw their lips move, saw their mocking smiles. He froze, a rabbit in headlights.
Elias's hand tightened on the steering wheel. He remembered this story. The bullying. The isolation. The day after Integration, these same boys, newly Awakened with minor [Brute] powers, had cornered Sam in an alley. They'd broken his ribs, left him for dead, laughing at the "deaf freak" who couldn't hear his own bones snap.
Sam had survived. And he had never forgotten.
Elias started the van. He didn't intervene. Not yet. Saving Sam now would create dependency, not loyalty. He had to save him at the moment of consequence. When Sam's unique trait, his silence, his ability to navigate a world without sound, became his greatest strength, and Elias was the only one who saw it.
He drove away, leaving Sam to his quiet hell for one more day.
He returned to his empty apartment. It was almost bare now. He'd sold anything of value. It was just a shell.
He sat on the floor, his back against the wall. He opened his laptop. The final, most important task.
He began to write. Not a shopping list. Not a plan.
The Vane Protocols. Draft 1.
He typed everything he wished someone had told him on Integration Day. Simple, clear directives.
· If a blue box appears, remain calm. It is called the System.
· Your Class is not your destiny. It is a tool.
· Avoid crowds. The first Gates will open in population centers.
· Water is life. Secure it first.
· Trust no one who offers easy power.
· If you see silver shapes that make no sound, RUN. Do not look back.
He wrote about basic first aid in a world without hospitals. How to form a secure perimeter. The value of skills over violence in the early days.
It was a manifesto for survival. A love letter to a humanity he'd failed once.
He would post it anonymously on every forum, social media site, and emergency broadcast channel he could access at 3:05 PM on Integration Day, two minutes after the System went live. Most would dismiss it as a hoax. But a few would read it. A few would listen. A few would survive because of it.
He saved the document. The clock on his screen glowed in the dark room.
Fifty-two hours remaining.
He closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his lids, he didn't see the quiet apartment. He saw the Null-Chronicler's gaze, the un-writing of all he was trying to rebuild.
A faint, familiar shimmer pulsed at the edge of his vision—the sleeping System interface, a secret only he could see.
He was laying the foundation. But he could feel the ground already beginning to crack beneath him.