Leo’s POV

The shift ended at 3 AM. With the extra pay, I had just enough for a partial energy payment. One thousand credits. Not enough to restore full service, but enough to keep the door functioning and basic lighting for another week.

I thought about taking the shuttle, but even the night fare cost more than I had left. I needed one more week. Cover the energy bill, pass the exam, and hold on long enough to make the move into repair work. It was a shit plan, but it was still a plan. So I walked.

Public displays still pretended it was autumn somewhere, assuming they even worked, but seasons were just another forgotten ghost from the ruined world outside. Down here, the corridors were just cold. The heating always dropped this late. Exposed pipes dripped condensation onto the concrete floor. Another patchwork fix failing somewhere in the grid.

Rust-streaked panels lined the corridor where power conduits had been rerouted a dozen times. You could tell which sectors were patched by volunteers and which ones had been “officially repaired.” The volunteers used scrap, but they cared. The Admin teams used new parts, but never came back when something cracked.

I traced the buzz of electricity with my eyes, watching it skip along a faulty line. Not enough current. Probably another bypass feeding power into Sector C’s filtration tower. They always prioritized filtration over lighting. Not that I blamed them, choking in the dark was worse than stumbling through it.

I used to wonder how things got so bad. I don’t anymore. Now I wonder how any of it still works at all.

An illegal street food vendor operated nearby, the smell of hot grease making my stomach growl painfully. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten something that wasn’t processed ration packs. Bad food was another shortcut to being too sick to work. I didn’t need that. You never knew what kind of “meat” those vendors were selling.

People disappeared from the domes without a trace all the time, and nobody asked questions. I stuck with synthetic protein—at least I knew what was in it. They said the Nephilim biome had contaminated animals outside the domes, mutated beyond recognition. I’d never seen a real animal to know if that was true.

By the time I reached Block D, my hands were stiff from the cold. I passed a few others along the way, moving slow, heads down, wrapped in thin coats or still in their work uniforms. They looked like people who didn’t have much time left.

I probably looked the same.

The door slid open on backup power. That much, anyway, still worked. Inside the apartment, darkness greeted me. Emergency lights stretched long shadows across the small space. It was colder than the hallway. The air didn’t move.

I needed to check the time, but didn’t want to waste my phone battery. Maya’s charger had given me enough to use tomorrow, and with no working outlets in my apartment, I had to be careful.

I fumbled through drawers until I found an old digital wristwatch. From before. Before everything. Before the curtain, before the domes, before the portals. It was one of the only possessions returned to me after Dome City Twelve fell, salvaged from the ruins of my family’s quarters by recovery teams and eventually handed to me at the orphan housing facility when I turned fifteen.

The metal felt cool beneath my touch as I ran my fingers over the engraving. JT. My grandfather. A man I never met.

My parents said he was an engineer, too, back when that meant building bridges and communication satellites, not scraping through piles of trash, looking for the same old tech. I don’t know if that was true. People lie to kids to keep them hopeful.

Still, the watch survived when so much didn’t. No network. No batteries. Just stored kinetic energy and old design.

Looking at the time, I calculated what little remained before the power completely shut down. Only nine hours left. I set the alarm for 8 AM. Four hours of sleep, then pay the partial energy bill, then another shift. After that, the engineering exam.

Something had to give. Eventually, something always gave.

I collapsed onto my bed, not bothering to undress. Sleep came instantly, and with it, the same dream I always had. Running through a sunlit field, butterflies spinning around me. Warmth on my skin. Laughter came easily. A child’s joy in a world that never existed for me.

I’d never felt real sunlight, never seen an actual butterfly, never stood in a field of flowers. Those things were gone before I was born. My mind must have conjured them from the impossible stories my parents always told, painting pictures of a world they only knew from those fragmented stories they so desperately believed in.

When I woke, the world was silent. Utterly silent. No hum of ventilation systems, no distant voices from neighboring units, no announcements from dome authorities. Just a dead quiet deeper than the usual gloom, a stillness that felt wrong.

Even during energy downtimes, there was always something.

My eyes adjusted slowly. The watch read 11:26 AM.

I had overslept by hours.

Shit.

My stomach dropped. The door would lock soon. The exam had started an hour ago. Torres would mark me as a no-show and probably had already replaced me on the shift rotation. Three months of perfect attendance gone. All those credits I’d scraped together for tuition wasted. And for what? Four hours of sleep that turned into seven?

I jumped up, panic finally breaking through my usual indifference. I scrambled through the dark apartment, grabbing my backpack, phone, student ID card, and an extra shirt.

A vibration rumbled through the floor as I stuffed my belongings into the bag. Like a heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I recognized that pattern immediately. I’d felt it once before, ten years ago in Dome City Twelve. The rhythmic tremors of massive footfalls, followed by that unnatural silence right before death arrived.

I knew exactly what it meant. I should have stayed back. But ignoring it wouldn’t make the danger disappear.

I moved to the balcony door, my fingers trembling as I slid it open.

At first, nothing made sense. A section of the dome’s protective ceiling had caved in. The buildings I should have seen across the sector weren’t there. Only empty spaces and jagged ruins where they used to stand.

An enormous shape loomed in the distance, partially obscured by dust and debris.

A Nephilim.

Titan-class.

The six glowing eyes arranged in a circular pattern on its head confirmed it. Lower class variants had no visual organs at all, just sensory membranes.

Its eight-limbed body towered over the remaining structures, easily fifteen stories tall. Gray-blue skin stretched over an exoskeleton of bone-like plates. Four massive primary arms ended in hooked claws that could tear through reinforced concrete like paper.

Fighting it was our desperate solution after everything else failed. Conventional weapons like tanks, jets, and nukes barely scratched the first wave. So, someone decided we needed to be bigger. Fight monsters with monsters of our own making, and the Aegis Units were born.

The massive mechas were designed for full neural integration. The pilot connected through a complete brain synapsis, becoming one with the machine. Arms, legs, and even the proportions were built to match the human form, a body shaped for a single mind.

All that power, and it still might not be enough.

Digital boards throughout the remaining structures flashed: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION.

How long had those been going? How had I missed it? The dome-wide alerts should’ve reached me. Should’ve blared through the vents or scrolled across the emergency board of the apartment. But the power cut meant I didn’t hear a thing. No warnings. Just silence. Just sleep.

Shock held me rooted to the spot. My breath shallowed.

I didn’t even register the mech at first. Just a new shape in the dust, moving like it had a purpose while the world cracked open.

Then I saw the armor. Sleek. Ornamental. The shield-shaped shoulders.

The Valkyrie.

Callan Pierce’s machine.

One of only five Aegis units still operational.

Everyone in the domes knew Callan Pierce. His missions and battles played on public boards for morale—the hero who never lost. Blond hair, square jaw, blue eyes that always looked too calm for someone fighting monsters. Broad shoulders, lean frame, all muscle. He had to be. Not everyone could pilot an Aegis unit. It took focus, speed, and a mind that wouldn’t break under pressure.

He looked like the kind of man the world wasn’t meant to keep. Maybe that’s why I hated watching him. Or why I always did.

Valkyrie wasn’t like the other units. Where most Aegis were bulky and uniform, Pierce’s was streamlined. Its armor plates resembled ancient Norse warrior gear, complete with a helmet-shaped head module and shield-like shoulder guards. Some idiot designer thought making our last defense look like mythological figures would boost morale. Waste of resources if you asked me.

Blue energy conduits traced paths along its limbs, channeling power directly from the core. That core sucked energy from our last three fusion reactors, the same energy that could power entire dome sectors for a month. People starved in the dark while the Aegis units ate power like it was infinite, but the Resistance Nations called it “necessary sacrifice.” As if we had a choice.

Valkyrie ducked beneath the Nephilim’s arm, spun behind it, and stabbed both blades into its shoulder joints. The monster howled, its secondary arms now useless. I clamped my hands over my ears, teeth clenched. The sound was like metal tearing inside my head.

I’d seen broadcasts of Pierce fighting before, but nothing compared to this. The ground shook with each step of the Aegis Unit. Valkyrie’s energy core whined as it powered up for each strike. I tasted metal on my tongue as the air ionized around us. My skin prickled with static electricity.

The monster roared and lunged forward. I ducked instinctively as debris scattered from nearby buildings. Valkyrie drove a blade through its center, piercing the energy chamber where Nephilim housed their life force.

The blade flared with blue energy. A killing blow.

The Nephilim’s massive form went rigid. I gripped the balcony railing, my knuckles white. The creature swayed, then pitched backward, directly toward my sector of the dome.

The giant body began to fall. I watched its dark shape against the gray dome ceiling. It was falling right toward Block D. Toward my apartment. Right on top of me.

A high-pitched whine drilled into my skull as its core destabilized. My legs wouldn’t move. It was the sound, that specific pitch of the destabilizing core, exactly like the one that had torn through Dome City Twelve.

My breath caught in my throat as the shadow above grew larger. I should run inside, away from the balcony, but my muscles refused to cooperate. So much for staying numb. The fear came anyway. Ten years since Dome City Twelve, I was still that same terrified kid watching death approach.

Old memories crashed into the present. The screams. The weight of debris. My parents pushing me onto the transport, their faces disappearing into chaos.

It was happening again.

Steel and concrete rained down around me.

Ten years of surviving meant nothing now. The universe had a sense of humor. I’d live through one Nephilim attack only to die in another.

Valkyrie pivoted toward my balcony. Had Pierce spotted me?

Ah, it doesn’t matter. My last thought was simple: At least I wouldn’t have to worry about that energy bill.

Then darkness.