The white sands of the Empty Zone stretched endlessly, reflecting the silvery morning light from a clear, cloudless sky. Unlike the air inside New-Aethelgard, which was always filtered through chemical filters and regulated by artificial climate controls, the air beyond the city limits felt sharp, dry, and pure, carrying the scent of desert dust and ancient minerals that had been dead for centuries.
Kael stood at the edge of a rocky cliff, gazing down at a sea of ruins buried beneath the sand. The skeletons of Pre-Consolidation Era skyscrapers rose from the dunes like giant fingers clawing at the sky. Here, far beyond the reach of the Central Council's optical sensors and surveillance towers, the silence felt absolute. The only sound was the hiss of desert wind scraping against the cracked walls of old concrete.
He slowly made his way down the steep, rubble-strewn slope. Each step left a deep footprint in the fine white sand. Inside his coat pocket, the lead-lined storage container had stopped humming, but the neural implant behind his ear still sent low-frequency pulses in sync with his own heartbeat. Omega-class data was no longer merely an unfamiliar file; it had taken root in his biological memory, forming a kind of internal compass that pulled him straight toward the coordinates marked on the secret map.
The descent took longer than he had expected. The loose sand made every step a struggle, draining the energy that had already been exhausted during his escape from Riku's workshop. His throat felt dry and hot. He pulled out his metal water bottle and took the last remaining sip as sparingly as possible. The water was warm, but enough to wet his cracked lips.
"I have to move faster," Kael muttered to himself, realizing that although the special hunter unit couldn't track him easily beyond the border tunnels, the Central Council had surely deployed long-range surveillance drones to sweep the outskirts of the city.
He quickened his pace, entering a maze of concrete ruins that had once been the main highway of a modern megacity. On either side of the road, the rusted carcasses of ancient electric vehicles lay half-buried beneath mounds of sand. The windows of the surrounding buildings had shattered completely, leaving dark hollows that looked like empty eyes watching his every move.
As he continued walking, Kael turned over Riku's final words before the workshop door came under attack. The old man had sacrificed himself so Kael could get this information out. It wasn't something he could simply waste. If *The Core*—the artificial intelligence ruling New-Aethelgard—really did consume human memory to maintain the illusion of its power, then all the history taught in Upper Sector schools was one massive lie designed to pacify the population.
Suddenly, a high-pitched hum shattered the desert silence from the direction of the eastern sky.
Kael froze instantly. His survival instincts screamed. He threw himself behind the thick concrete wreckage of a half-buried underground transit shelter and pulled his coat hood down until it covered his entire face.
A few seconds later, a black shadow swept rapidly across the sky above the ruins of the old city. A large autonomous military surveillance drone, bearing the Central Council's distinctive double-triangle insignia on its hull, glided slowly over the area. The optical sensor beneath its body rotated 360 degrees, emitting thermal and infrared scanning waves that swept across the surrounding sand.
Kael held his breath, pressing his back against the cold concrete wall and trying to slow his heartbeat as much as possible. He knew his thermal armor was designed to dampen his body's heat signature, but at such close range, the risk of detection by the advanced scanning algorithms remained extremely high.
The drone hovered low over the pile of rubble where Kael was hiding. The hum of its electromagnetic rotors created a faint vibration in the air, blowing fine grains of sand down onto the shoulders of his coat. The red search sensor blinked back and forth near the gap where Kael was peering out.
*Please, don't look this way,* Kael thought, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white.
For several seconds that felt like an eternity, the drone hovered directly above his position. But before the scanning algorithm could finish analyzing the thermal pattern behind the concrete wall, a powerful gust of desert wind suddenly swept through, lifting a thick cloud of white dust that engulfed the ruins. The dust-particle interference seemed to throw off the drone's optical sensor calibration.
The drone paused, emitted a short warning beep, then changed direction and shot off toward the northeast, leaving a thin trail of smoke across the bright blue sky.
Kael let out the long breath he had been holding. Cold sweat soaked his back. He knew he couldn't linger in the open; the drone's presence meant the outer perimeter of the city was beginning to come under intensive surveillance.
He rose to his feet, brushed the sand from his coat, and once again aligned himself with the coordinates in his neural implant. According to the internal map, the secret facility he was searching for lay directly beneath the foundation of an ancient central archive tower located in the middle of the old city's ruins, about three kilometers from his current position.
With what little strength he had left, Kael continued forward through the expanse of sand and concrete ruins. The morning sun was now beginning to climb toward the zenith, radiating a scorching heat that burned his skin, but he ignored it. Every step brought him closer to the truth buried for thousands of years, and nothing in New-Aethelgard could stop him now.