EASRS: Zero Z
Chapter 1
April 11th, 2017
Universe 001
Nevada – United States of America
Beneath the vast night sky of the western American desert, the land below lay dry and lifeless—nothing but cracked earth, stones, and endless sand. Tumbleweeds rolled across the ground, carried by the cold wind of the night, scraping softly against the silence that had ruled this place long before humanity learned to name it.
Then—
The silence was torn apart.
The roar of helicopter rotors ripped through the sky like the beating wings of ancient dragons. From the darkness, V-22 Ospreys suddenly emerged, plunging forward at high speed. Their rotors tilted ahead as they cut through the night like massive mechanical bats, while powerful LED searchlights mounted beneath their bodies pierced the darkness and flooded the desert floor with blinding white light.
Nothing escaped that illumination.
Every rock.
Every shadow.
Even a lone desert mouse freezing in terror.
The aircraft swept low along crude, ancient trails—paths that had not been used for thousands of years. Roads once carved by Native Americans long before modern civilization had ever reached this land.
Suddenly, dust and sand exploded upward.
A violent sandstorm rose without warning, swallowing the sky and rendering the LED lights nearly useless. From afar, the thermal cameras of the EASRS Foundation—
Endure. Adapt. Secure. Restrain. Survive.
—began to fail. The desert itself radiated heat, drowning everything in white static. On the thermal feed, there was no contrast—only a single, blinding shade of white suspended between black and void.
Then—
A burst of interference.
A sharp screech of static.
And the cameras went dark.
They never turned back on.
---
The Next Morning…
New Mexico – United States of America
A highway stretched endlessly across the land, vanishing into heat distortion on the horizon. Vehicles rushed along its cracked asphalt, their tires worn thin from traveling thousands of kilometers across America's vast spine.
Among them was a van.
Perfectly ordinary at first glance—except for its one-way tinted windows.
Inside the scorching heat that had haunted travelers long before Europeans ever set foot on this continent, the van moved steadily forward, blending in effortlessly.
Behind the wheel sat a man who looked painfully average.
Around 1.85 meters tall, olive-colored skin, messy brown hair and beard like a crow's nest, and dull blue eyes that carried nothing remarkable. He wore faded blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt, one hand on the steering wheel, the other casually lifting a can of Coca-Cola to his lips.
The passenger seat was a mess—cameras, film canisters, cables, equipment tossed together without care.
The back of the van looked more like a mobile warehouse than a vehicle. Brown cardboard boxes were stacked chaotically, filled with unknown contents.
He looked less like a professional and more like a homeless man in his thirties—another drifter living out of his car, roaming the highways of America.
Certainly not someone you'd expect to be a serious investigator of the FDC—
Freedom Detective Council.
As he drove, loud, trashy music blasted through the speakers—the kind of meaningless noise that anyone with even the slightest understanding of music would curse without hesitation.
Time passed.
By nightfall, he finally reached Nevada.
Ahead, police sirens screamed through the darkness. The highway was sealed off completely. Patrol cars blocked every path forward, lights flashing violently. Journalists not affiliated with the government were being forced to remain outside the perimeter.
The man slowed down.
He pulled his van to the roadside and shut off the lights, pretending to be just another vehicle abandoned on the endless American highway—a common enough sight in a country where roads stretched longer than fuel tanks could endure.
His dull blue eyes scanned the scene.
Then they stopped.
A blonde female reporter stood nearby, her curvy body wrapped in a tight business suit, illuminated by flashing red and blue lights.
He whistled.
His voice came out crude, lazy—like any low-life wandering the streets just to stare at women.
David
> "Damn… that bitch's hot.
Wonder if she's still a virgin."
---
Suddenly—
A long, piercing shriek tore through the air.
David squeezed his eyes shut.
Then—
BOOM.
An explosion erupted.
A shockwave shattered the van's windows, glass tearing through the air like blades. Heat and chaos swallowed everything as the world turned white.
Pain slammed into his body.
Shards of glass embedded themselves into his flesh.
When his vision finally returned, his clothes were soaked—darkened by blood.
The vehicles around him were gone.
Not empty.
Gone.
Charred corpses lay scattered across melted asphalt, burned black like lumps of coal. The stench of scorched metal and flesh filled the air.
In the distance—
A colossal pillar of light rose into the sky like a false pole star.
White.
Purple.
Pink.
Blue.
Colors that should not exist together twisted violently upward, while bolts of white lightning crackled through the air around it.
The desert screamed.
---
A few minutes later—
The sky had sunk into a pitch-black abyss, broken only by streaks of cold blue light and faint violet hues leaking from the artificial aurora that towered above the desert like a wound torn open in reality itself.
From within that darkness, black aircraft emerged.
Their frames were rigid, angular, and predatory. Plasma flames erupted violently from their rear thrusters as they cut through the night, their silhouettes resembling hunting falcons diving at full speed. F-16s surged forward in tight formations, slicing through the sky with mechanical precision, their wings reflecting distorted fragments of the glowing phenomenon ahead.
Before them stood the pillar of light.
A colossal column of white brilliance, threaded with flowing veins of pink, violet, and pale blue—like a corrupted Tree of Life rooted between heaven and earth. It pulsed slowly, rhythmically, as if breathing. Beautiful. Majestic.
And unmistakably lethal.
Yet the pilots did not hesitate.
The fighter jets weaved between arcs of lightning spilling from the pillar, darting through the luminous storm without fear. Their cockpits flooded with blinding white light as they approached, a radiance seductive enough to drive lesser minds into madness.
But these men did not succumb.
With mechanical discipline, missile bays opened.
A volley of missiles burst forward in unison, white smoke streaming from their engines and carving long scars across the night sky as they raced toward the pillar.
For a fraction of a second—
They vanished.
Swallowed whole.
From within the column, thousands of lightning bolts erupted outward like the jaws of a monstrous beast snapping shut. The sky screamed. Aircraft were torn apart mid-maneuver, their evasive turns rendered meaningless as the storm consumed them.
Heat surged violently.
The outer paint of the jets began to melt. The black coating peeled away, revealing the GAM—Global Anomaly Monitoring insignia as it liquefied and dripped like tar. The metal frames followed soon after, warping, glowing, dissolving.
Then—
They became rain.
Molten steel cascaded down from the heavens, a storm of burning metal crashing into the desert below like judgment made physical.
---
Far away, armored vehicles thundered across the western desert of the United States.
M2A3 Bradleys advanced like steel beasts, their tracks grinding deep scars into the earth. Behind them, M109A6 Paladins rolled forward, artillery barrels locked directly onto the glowing pillar in the distance.
The air was heavy. Suffocating.
Then—
Fire.
Artillery shells launched with deafening detonations, the recoil forcing the massive barrels backward as shockwaves rippled through the desert. Smoke and dust exploded outward, heat distortion warping the battlefield as shells screamed through the air.
The impacts came almost instantly.
Explosions engulfed the pillar, bathing it in crimson fire. A new color stained its surface—red.
And then it moved.
A beam of pure red light swept outward from the column.
The world shattered.
Armored vehicles were engulfed in fire and shockwaves, hurled aside like toys. Metal screamed as hulls collapsed inward. Engines roared once—then fell silent.
When the smoke cleared, nothing remained but burning wreckage scattered across the sand.
No movement.
No sound.
Only fire.
---
After a long, hollow silence—
A radio crackled to life from among the bodies of fallen soldiers.
Static cleared.
A woman's voice emerged—soft, young, yet unmistakably composed. Each word was calm, deliberate, carrying authority that cut through the frozen desert night.
Kane
> "This is Dr. Kane Astor, EASRS Foundation—
Endure. Adapt. Secure. Restrain. Survive.
Western United States Branch.
From this moment onward, this entire area is under our control."
The transmission cut off.
Almost immediately, streaks of blue light descended from the sky.
Missiles—moving so fast the surrounding air ignited into plasma—rained down like falling stars, slamming directly into the pillar of light.
The explosion was catastrophic.
The sky turned blood-red, the blast blooming outward like a nuclear detonation. Inside the inferno, the pillar flickered violently, its structure destabilizing from within.
It was still shining.
Still beautiful.
But weakening.
---
At the same time—
Inside David's van, he pushed himself upright with a grunt.
His body was wrapped in layers of bloodstained bandages—wounds roughly treated by his own hands. He leaned against the familiar frame of his four-wheeled companion, exhaustion weighing heavy on his shoulders.
He lit a cigarette.
The smoke curled into the air as he watched the distant horizon burn, the light reflecting faintly in his tired blue eyes.
He inhaled.
And exhaled.
Silently.
---
[To be continued]