The sky over the Grey Wastes was the color of a bruised lung,
a sickly,
swirling vortex of toxic purples and suffocating greys.
In the Wastes,
the sun wasn't a source of warmth;
It was a distant,
pale ghost struggling to pierce through a thousand years of atmospheric rot.
Reed Blackwell pulled his tattered,
grease-stained scarf tighter around his face,
shielding his lungs from the caustic dust that swirled between the rusted ribs of fallen skyscrapers.
Every breath was a gamble.
The grit tasted like copper and old bone.
A constant reminder that the world had ended long before he was born,
leaving only the scavengers to pick through the corpse of civilization.
"Nothing today,"
Reed muttered,
his voice a raspy friction against the silence.
He kicked a jagged piece of scrap metal,
watching it tumble into a crater left by a weapon that had no name in his era.
At eighteen,
Reed was a "Null,"
a slur used for those born without even a flickering spark of elemental core energy.
In a world where the elite,
lived in the floating city of Zenith,
conjuring fire with a snap of their fingers or weaving the wind into blades,
Reed was a zero.
He was the invisible trash of the post-apocalyptic frontier,
a human being with no "value,"
in a society that measured a man by the kilojoules of his soul.
He had spent the last six hours digging through the "Iron Graveyard,"
hoping to find a pre-war battery or a shard of refined Aether.
Anything he could trade for a clean canister of oxygen and a bowl of synthetic protein,
but the Wastes were empty today.
It was as if the earth itself had finally run out of things to give.
"Just one more hour,"
Reed whispered to himself,
his fingers numb inside his fingerless gloves.
"Just one spark, That's all I need,"
Suddenly the wind died.
The silence that followed was so absolute,
it felt PHYSICAL,
like a heavy blanket being dropped over the ruins.
The shifting dust stopped moving,
hanging suspended in the air.
Reed froze,
his hand flying to the rusted,
notched shiv tucked into his belt.
Out here,
silence was the loudest warning of a predator.
Then the shadows began to bleed.
From the dark corners of a collapsed subway entrance,
a thick violet mist began to pour out.
It didn't drift with the wind;
it moved with a deliberate,
predatory intelligence.
From the center of the mist,
a figure emerged.
It wasn't a monster,
but a man dressed in a suit of interlocking black plates that seemed to absorb the very light around him.
He didn't walk so much as glide,
his presence warping the space he occupied.
He wore a mask that looked like a shattered mirror,
reflecting nothing but the grey desolation around them.
"Reed Blackwell,"
the stranger said,
The voice didn't come from a mouth.
It echoed directly inside Reed's skull,
vibrating against his teeth.
Reed stumbled back,
his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Who are you?
How do you know my name?"
Reed demanded,
his voice cracking.
He pulled his shiv though he knew the rusted metal was useless against a man who looked like he had stepped out of a nightmare.
"I am a messenger of a forgotten truth,"
the man said,
stepping closer.
He didn't seem to notice the weapon.
He held out a hand,
palm upward.
In his gloved hand lay two things:
a black metallic coin etched with jagged runes,
and a swirling,
liquid-like orb of absolute darkness.
"The world says you are empty Reed.
The MASTERS in their silver city call you a Null.
They call you a Zero,
They say you are a vessel with no contents."
Reed's knuckles turned white.
"I know what I am, I don't need a ghost to tell me."
"But they are wrong,"
the stranger continued,
his voice growing deeper,
colder.
"You are not empty because you are broken,
You are empty because you are a vessel designed for something the world tried to erase,
You have the capacity to hold the Void."
"I don't want your cult magic,"
Reed spat,
though he couldn't look away from the swirling black orb.
It felt...
familiar,
like a hunger he had carried since birth was finally seeing food.
"It is not magic, it is the end of all things,
and the beginning of you."
The stranger tossed the black coin.
It flipped through the air,
moving in slow motion,
the jagged runes glowing with a faint violet light.
As Reed instinctively reached out to catch it,
the liquid orb in the stranger's other hand leaped.
It didn't fall;
it flew.
The darkness slammed into Reed's chest with the force of a high-speed transport.
Reed screamed,
a sound that was instantly swallowed by the violet mist.
He fell to his knees,
his back arching as a sensation of absolute,
bone-chilling cold exploded through his veins.
It wasn't the pain of a wound;
it was the feeling of his very soul being hollowed out,
as if a vacuum had been opened inside his heart.
He looked down at his chest.
The black liquid was sinking through his rags,
through his skin,
disappearing into his sternum.
"SYSTEM INITIALIZING..."
"CORE DETECTED:
UNSTABLE VOID"
"LINKING TO HOST:
REED BLACKWELL"
"COMPATIBILITY:
99.9%...
OVERFLOW"
The stranger began to fade back into the mist,
his form dissolving into smoke.
"They will come for you now,
Reed.
The Zenith Institute,
The High Council,
They have spent three thousand years making sure your kind stayed dead.
They will see an 'Error' where they expect a Zero."
Reed gasped for air,
his vision flickering.
The grey world was being replaced by a digital interface that shimmered in his field of vision,
glowing with a dangerous,
violet light.
"Run to the silver city,"
the stranger's voice echoed one last time.
"Hide in the shadows of those who hate you,
And whatever you do...
do not let the hunger win.
If the Void finishes its meal,
there will be nothing left of you to save."
The mist vanished.
The stranger was gone.
The wind returned with a howl,
kicking up the dust as if nothing had happened.
Reed lay in the grey dirt,
his lungs burning.
He felt...
different.
The constant,
hollow ache of being a "Null" was gone.
In its place was a heavy,
rhythmic thrumming behind his ribs.
He looked at his hand—
the one that had caught the coin.
The black metal was cold,
and the runes were pulsing in sync with his heart.
A translucent screen floated before his eyes,
moving as he moved.
"THE VOID SYSTEM:"
"VERSION 1."
"HOST STATUS:"
"REJECT"
"ERROR."
"CURRENT MISSION:"
"SURVIVE THE EXTRACTION."
"THREAT LEVEL:"
"HIGH"
"COUNCIL RECOVERY TEAM INBOUND."
In the far distance,
the low,
rhythmic thrum of high-tech engines broke the silence of the Wastes.
The Zenith Council's recovery teams—
the "Purifiers"—
were already tracking the energy spike.
They were coming to
"fix"
the Error.
Reed clutched the black coin,
his knuckles white.
He didn't understand the system,
and he didn't understand the
"Void,"
but for the first time in his eighteen years of misery,
he didn't feel like a Zero.
He felt like a weapon that had finally been loaded.
And he was ready to pull the trigger.