The world ended while you slept.

It began with hope—a desperate, fragile thing. The Cryogenic Initiative was supposed to be a lifeboat. While soldiers fought and died on the surface, while the Xenovians spread like a plague across continents, the best and brightest of humanity were sealed away in bunkers deep beneath the earth. Scientists, engineers, doctors, geneticists. People with skills that might rebuild a world worth saving.

You were chosen for a reason you never fully understood. Something in your blood. Something the researchers found valuable enough to preserve.

You remember the cold. The countdown. The darkness.

Then nothing.

---

Seventy years.

The wars raged. The cities fell. The domes went up one by one like desperate prayers made glass and steel. The Initiative was forgotten—its facilities abandoned, lost, buried beneath Xenovian hives and contaminated soil. The sleepers became ghosts, their chambers failing one by one, their dreams ending in silence and darkness.

But not you.

---

Light burns through your eyelids—harsh, clinical, wrong. Your body screams in protest as consciousness floods back into limbs that have forgotten how to move. Cryogenic reanimation is violent under ideal conditions. This is not ideal.

Your pod is failing. You can hear it—the groan of overtaxed systems, the hiss of escaping coolant, the frantic beeping of warning indicators that no one has heeded in decades. Your lungs seize. Your stomach clenches. You cough, sputter, wretch—fluids you didn't know were there spilling from your lips as your body remembers how to function.

Everything is blurred. Shapes swim in your vision, indistinct and strange. Your ears ring with a high-pitched whine that makes everything sound distant, muffled, like hearing the world through water.

Three shapes. Three figures. Women, you think, though you cannot make out details yet. They wear something that clings to their forms—skin-tight, sleek, unlike any military uniform you remember. Advanced. Alien, almost, though clearly human in design.

The one in white moves with precision, her hand tapping against a tablet. Green light reflects off armor plating you don't recognize. Her voice reaches you in fragments.

"—vital signs stabilizing. Neural activity nominal. Cryo-sickness present but manageable—"

Another voice cuts in. Sharper. Commanding.

"Status on the others?"

The first voice again, quieter now.

"All other chambers compromised. Total loss. This one is the only survivor."

The words take a moment to register. Only survivor. The others are dead. Everyone you knew, everyone who was sealed away with you—they're gone. You've been sleeping in a tomb for seventy years while the world outside burned.

You shake your head, trying to clear the fog. Trying to focus. The shapes sharpen slowly, resolving into distinct forms.

The one in white stands rigid, posture impeccable, blonde hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Her eyes are fixed on her tablet, processing data with clinical detachment. She radiates authority—the kind that expects obedience without question.

To her left, a smaller figure in green and black lingers near the shadows of the ruined facility. Short dark hair, sharp eyes watching you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle. She hasn't spoken. She doesn't need to. Her gaze alone is assessment enough.

And then there's the one moving toward you.

She is massive—not fat, but built with a density of muscle that makes her seem carved from stone. Her suit is orange and black, stretched over broad shoulders and powerful limbs. A cigar hangs unlit in the corner of her mouth. She smells of smoke—real smoke, tobacco and something else, something burning—before she even reaches you.

Her hands are gentle despite their size. She grips your arms, steadying you as your legs threaten to give out. She pulls you from the pod with practiced ease, guiding your trembling body onto solid ground.

Your knees buckle. She catches you.

"Easy, little one." Her voice is a low rumble, warm despite the gruffness. "You've been under a long time. Take a breath. Let it come back slow."

The one in white steps closer, her tablet extended, scanning you with a beam of green light.

"Identification confirmed. Subject is responsive. Cognitive function appears intact." She glances at you, her expression professional. "Can you understand me? Blink twice if you can hear me clearly."

The one in the shadows—green and black—moves closer. Her voice is quiet, analytical.

"Seventy years in a failing pod. Remarkable that cellular degradation isn't more severe. This one is... unusual."

The one in white nods.

"Unusual is correct. Command will want to see these readings immediately." She taps her tablet rapidly. "We have a survivor. Genetic profile matches priority classification. Requesting extraction orders."

Your hearing is still muffled. The words don't fully connect. But you catch fragments—Genesis, priority, extraction.

The large one in orange keeps her hands on your shoulders, steadying you. Her expression is unreadable, but her grip is firm. Protective.

"You're the only one left," she says, and there's something almost gentle beneath the roughness. "Everyone else in this facility is dead. You've been sleeping through hell. But you're awake now."

She pauses.

"And we're going to get you somewhere safe."

The one in white looks up from her tablet, her expression sharp.

"Change of plans. New orders from Aegis. This survivor is to be transported to Dome City Genesis immediately. Highest priority."

The one in the shadows tenses.

"Genesis? That's across half the continent. Through Blightland territory."

"Correct." The one in white's voice leaves no room for argument. "We leave within the hour. Prepare the transport."

Seventy years. The world ended while you slept. And now, three strangers in advanced armor are telling you that you're being taken across a ruined world to a city you've never heard of.

You don't know why you were chosen. You don't know why you survived when everyone else died. You don't know what waits for you in Genesis.

But you're about to find out.