Sean Benett aimed his rifle at the once-human creature that shambled towards him. The wind picked up the dust of the ruined city around him and scratched at the grotesque amalgamation of flesh and metal. His hands had stopped shaking a long time ago.

This creature would try to immobilize him, but it wasn’t particularly strong or agile. Its main purpose was to act as a sentinel, a surveillance drone. It had relayed Sean’s position to a ship in orbit the moment it saw him. Killing the creature was of little consequence.

He pulled the trigger and the organic side of the cyborg’s skull exploded. The gunshot was still ringing, but Sean was already running for the first open doorway he saw. He needed a basement or a dark corner to hide in, but the destroyed building offered neither.

Out the backdoor and into a taller and less stable building he went. Sean dashed to the elevator door at the end of the hall and pried it open. His luck hadn’t fully abandoned him; the cables were still there, and he rode them down.

A faint buzzing appeared in the lobby above him, almost like the sound of high-tension power lines or neon lights. It was barely audible above the sound of his pounding heart.

But the survivor had heard it before. He loosened his grip on the cables to fall faster. More importantly, he kept his eyes down. He didn’t look up at the iridescent light that slithered in through the opening above him.

It went up instead of down, and coiled electromagnetic tendrils around the elevator cabin. The error created enough time for Sean to land at the bottom of the shaft and open a door to an underground car park.

He ran to the closest car and smashed open a window. The thought of driving out never crossed his mind: it was impractical in a city and attracted too much attention.

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No, he just turned on the radio. It was a fairly recent model, an ultra-low power one that used Benett Radio Waves.

As soon as it was on, he dashed over to the next vehicle. And the next. And the next one after that. He didn’t stop to see whether the radios even turned on. He just moved as quickly as he could.

When the buzzing became a deafening ringing in his skull, he changed course and headed for the mechanical room instead. He locked the door behind him, but he could see blinding light pierce the edges. A moment later, and he could see the light’s source through the door.

As blinding as the light was, he could make out the three-metre-long seed-shaped object at its centre. It sent out ripples as it glided through the air the same way a cube would leave a large wake moving through water. Light reached out from the metallic carapace towards the first car’s radio.

Sean couldn’t blink, not that his eyelids would hide him from the creature at this stage. His neck strained to turn away, but, in a moment, the back of his skull wouldn’t hide him either.

He could still move his arms, though. Putting his hands over his eyes would work just as well as his eyelids. So he only had one option.

He hit himself hard on the back of the head. His vision went black for a brief moment; his eyes lost focus. The door was opaque again.

There was no time for celebration. Sean was still in danger; the light could still seep in. So, he made his way deeper into the dark room.

His hands blindly searched for a better hiding spot. After a silent minute, he stumbled on a vent entrance close to the floor. He put a dust mask on and climbed in. Then he sealed the vent with his coat as best he could.

When he had been in here for what felt like an eternity and his eyes didn’t adjust to the dark, Sean finally let himself relax. The sound of his frantic heart cleared from his skull, and he could feel dried blood around his eyes and ears.

The quiet gave him space to regret. Time and again he’d told himself the city wasn’t safe, that there wasn’t anything here important enough to risk it.

But he still let himself be convinced to hike from the mountains of Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. John Cavanaugh had a bunker here. For what? Just because a ghost suddenly started broadcasting pure static…