PROLOGUE: DEAD MAN NARRATES
I am Adam Kryos. Or what remains of him.
Once, I was human—skin, blood, nerves that burned and bled. Now? I’m a fucking ghost in a metal cage. They termed it Neurovault. A fancy name for what’s basically a high-tech prison—like it’s some kind of miracle. Like it’s progress. My body? Gone, probably rotting under some rubble. What’s left of me—my mind, my soul, whatever the hell you wanna call it—is wired into this tin-can shell. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I just exist. I’m not alive. I’m not dead. I’m something in between. And if you think that sounds like freedom, let me assure you—it’s hell.
Welcome to the future—where dying isn’t enough to save you from hell.
They called it the Great Lockdown. The world froze in terror as the virus swept through cities, and people dropped like flies, the assholes in charge gave us a "solution." Capsules. Fucking capsules. Humanity’s desperation birthed the capsules—an innovation meant to protect. "Stay safe," they said. "Plug in, wait it out." A miracle cure for humanity’s fuckups, sold to the desperate. The rich got glass domes—pretty, sterile, and stacked with luxury. They spent their last days sipping wine and watching the world rot. The rest? They got shoved into metal boxes, dark and airless, cut off from everything—claustrophobic tombs with just enough tech to keep breathing.
Before this shitshow, I was a bio-engineer at NovaGenics, one of the corporations promising a cure. We pushed boundaries: gene therapy, nanotech, transferring consciousness into machines. We sold hope wrapped in progress, but hope is just a marketing term. Behind closed doors, we tore apart humanity in the name of science. And I was damn good at it.
I had a family—Claire, my wife, and Evelyn, my little girl. They were my reason, my world. When the virus hit, I thought I could save them. I thought I was smart enough to outthink death, to cheat the reaper. Turns out, I was just another arrogant bastard with a lab coat.
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I failed.
And then I died, and then it got worse.
I woke up in this metal prison—stronger, faster, but it felt wrong. I can crush steel with my hands, but they don’t feel like mine. My voice comes out distorted when I want to scream, to talk. I designed the neural interface, the consciousness mapping. I thought I was doing something revolutionary. Little did I know, I was just building my own prison.
And the worst part? The silence.
No birds. No wind. No fucking life. Through my optic sensors, I see what remains of humanity—Just ruins. Shattered domes. The endless, oppressive quiet of a dead world. Skeletons trapped in capsules that were supposed to be salvation. It’s silent, except for the whispers. There are glitches in my sensors—voices in the static. There’s something still running the show. The capsules weren’t just coffins—they were part of a system. A fucked-up game. Data glitches in my sensors, fragments of old broadcasts, and voices in the static. Challenges appear like some twisted god wants me to play. Complete objectives gather pieces of the truth, and maybe—just maybe—unlock the secrets of why we ended up here.
And the more I uncover, the worse it gets.
They didn’t just lock us in capsules to survive the virus. They locked us in to hide something. A secret so big, so ugly, they’d rather bury the world than let it out.
I’m not the only one left, either. Signals flicker in the static. Something out there is alive—or pretending to be. Maybe it’s someone like me. Perhaps it’s something worse.
They ripped me from the grave for a reason. Maybe they want me to remember. Perhaps they want me to fix what’s left. Or maybe they just want to watch me suffer.
I don’t know what I am in this system. A player? A pawn? A fucking joke? All I know is I can’t trust it.
But here’s the thing: I don’t give a shit what they want. I’m not playing this game by their rules. I’ll dig up every goddamn secret they buried.
Because if I don’t? This dead man is going to burn the rest of this world to the ground.