"Show me the door to outside," Elena says, her voice steady despite the fear that is pressing against her chest.
There's a brief pause before the system answers. "Dangerous. That's why this bunker was left behind. Infected density outside the zone exceeds survivable parameters. Logistic routes are impossible."
"I need to see the world with my own eyes," Elena replies without hesitation.
Another pause, longer this time. "Proceed to the armory and equip yourself with all available assets," the system finally says.
The floor beneath her feet lights up, guiding her forward. Steel panels slide aside as she follows the illuminated path deeper into ECHELON-01, until the corridor opens into a large chamber that steals the breath from her lungs.
The armory is immense. Weapons line the walls in neat rows, suspended in magnetic frames that hum softly with restrained power. Rifles unlike anything she has trained with rest beside modular components that shift subtly as she approaches, adjusting their form to her reach and posture.
Sidearms glow faintly in their housings, interfaces alive and ready. Heavy weapons occupy reinforced platforms along the far wall, their designs crafted not just to kill but to endure centuries of neglect without failing.
Everything is intact. No rust. No dust. No sign that anyone has touched this place in a very long time.
Elena moves through the room slowly, her fingers brushing over cold, polished surfaces. The system feeds quiet data into her vision, energy yield, recoil suppression, and adaptive targeting, but she barely notices. Her body understands weapons instinctively.
Her eyes are drawn to the Arc-III pistol. It commands attention with its sleek, angular frame crafted from a lightweight alloy known as Xyphalon.
She can almost hear the hum of energy within the weapon, waiting to be unleashed. The barrel is robust, engineered for high-velocity plasma casings, bullets of ionized gas, and superheated plasma that promise to scorch through armor and flesh alike.
Moving down the row, her gaze lands on the SR4 assault rifle, its gleaming white chassis contrasting with the darker elements surrounding it. This isn't just any rifle; its nanofusion rounds are designed to self-replicate on impact, creating devastating explosions that rip through the thickest defenses.
As Elena continues her exploration, she catches sight of the advanced armor sets. Crafted for both male and female operatives, the suits are sleek and imposing, composed of a lightweight nanofiber blend that enhances agility and strength while shielding against zombie bites.
The complex design of circuitry weaves through the fabric, capable of amplifying physical prowess and reflexes, allowing the wearer to move and fight with lethal efficiency.
She pauses in front of a single armor frame, sleeker than the rest, contoured unmistakably for a female body. The surface is matte and dark, threaded with faint lines of dormant light. The moment her fingers brush against it, the armor reacts.
Panels unfold smoothly, flowing toward her like liquid metal guided by invisible hands. Before she can take a step back, the armor wraps around her body, sealing itself with a soft, resonant click.
It molds perfectly to her frame, light where it should be light, firm where it needs to be firm, moving with her instead of against her. A quiet hum spreads across her skin as systems synchronize, strength amplifiers settle into place, and sensors align with her spine and limbs.
Elena exhales slowly, flexing her fingers. The armor responds instantly. She reaches for a rifle next, choosing one that feels right the moment it settles into her hands, its balance tuned for quick movement and close-quarters control.
She secures the Arc-III at her thigh, the compact weapon resting there like an extension of her intent, a reminder that speed and precision can still rule even in a broken world. A combat knife slides into her boot with ease. She grabs several extra magazines, their weight familiar and reassuring, then steps away from the racks and toward the armory exit.
"Okay," she says quietly, more to herself than the system. "Let's go."
"Place your finger on the weapon's interface," the system instructs. "It will register you as its handler."
Elena does as told.
A brief, sharp prick touches her skin, barely more than a sting. The rifle and pistol respond immediately, lines of light igniting along their frames as internal systems come alive. The armor around her hums again, deeper this time, as everything links together.
Then a voice resonates inside her helmet, "Captain Elena Moreau. Weapons detected. Authorization confirmed. Handler registered."
When she's finally ready, the bunker responds. A massive outer corridor activates, pressure seals disengaging layer by layer. The airlock cycles with a deep thrum, and then the final doors begin to open.
Light spills in. Elena steps forward and squints against it, her eyes adjusting to a sky that looks bleached and empty, stretched too wide above a land that feels abandoned by time itself.
The ground outside is cracked and uneven, littered with the remains of structures that have collapsed into skeletal ruins. Roads fracture into nothingness, swallowed by aggressive weeds and unfamiliar growth that creeps across concrete and steel alike.
There is no sound of life, nothing green alive, no trees, no birds. Nothing. Just a harsh land, with nothing on it. She gulped seeing that and kept walking forward.
For a moment, the world feels eerily still. Then she hears it.
A dragging shuffle. Wet footsteps scraping across broken stone. She turns her head faster while pointing her rifle to the sounds.
Then it came into her view slowly, emerging from behind ruined walls and overturned vehicles. Human shapes, but wrong in every way that matters. Their skin hangs loose and discolored, eyes clouded and unfocused, and jaws slack as low, broken sounds leak from their throats. Some still wear the remnants of uniforms or civilian clothing, fabric fused to flesh by time and decay.
The infected, or what she calls zombies, are just like she knows from the series and movies in her time. And the moment they see her, the stillness shatters.
They lurch forward, movements jerky at first, then faster as more bodies press from behind. Anger radiates from them, raw and unthinking. Some are slow, some are even faster than human, the evolved one.
Elena raises her rifle; the first shot drops the closest infected instantly, its skull snapping back as the round tears through the head.
"The head, it's always in the head." She keeps reminding herself, and she fires again and again, each pull of the trigger punctuated by a body collapsing into the dust.
The weapon barely kicks, adapting to her stance as if it knows her. But the infected keep coming, they climb over the fallen, clawing and snapping, their numbers swelling with every second. One breaks through the line, lunging with startling speed. Elena pivots, firing point-blank, then slams the rifle butt into another skull with a wet crack.
The smell of rot thickens, clinging to her lungs. Her heart pounds as she retreats step by step, boots slipping slightly on blood-slick ground.
"So this is where the rotting smell comes from," Elena muttered.
"Warning," the system says calmly in her ear. "External threat escalation detected."
"I see it," Elena mutters, firing again as another infected grabs for her arm. She twists free, draws her knife, and drives it upward beneath the creature's jaw. It goes limp instantly.
Closer in, she turns and runs. The situation didn't give her a choice to keep moving forward, so she runs back to the bunker.
The bunker entrance looms ahead, doors already beginning to open in response to her approach. She fires over her shoulder, buying seconds, then sprints the final distance and dives inside as the doors slam shut behind her. One infected slips through at the last moment, crashing into her with feral strength.
They hit the floor hard, Elena reacts without thinking, shoving the knife up into its skull and twisting until it goes still.
The doors seal completely.
Silence crashes down, broken only by her ragged breathing and the familiar hum of ECHELON-01 reasserting itself. Elena pushes herself to her feet, blood smeared across her gear, her hands trembling from adrenaline rather than fear.
The system speaks again. "Bunker integrity secure."
Almost immediately, four small maintenance units emerge from concealed panels along the walls. The spider-like robots move to clean the fallen infected. They work in silence, scanning, sterilizing, and disassembling the remains. Chemical mist hisses softly as the floor is cleansed, every trace of contamination erased until the bunker looks untouched once more, as if the intrusion had never happened.
Elena watches them for a moment, then wipes her blade clean against a cloth panel on her armor. She exhales slowly, the tension finally bleeding out of her shoulders.
"So… now what?" she asks, a hint of dry humor creeping into her voice. "Can I see my status panel now?"
For a fraction of a second, nothing happens. Then a blue holographic interface flickers to life in front of her eyes, crisp and impossibly clear, layered directly over her vision. Lines of data cascade downward, symbols and metrics locking in her eyes.
Elena freezes. "…Shit," she mutters, she has seen enough.