Story 1266: The Ferry Lied

The storm didn’t die when the tower fell.

It screamed.

Red lightning spiraled into the clouds like veins pulled from a corpse, then vanished in a vacuumed silence. The Stormwalkers collapsed in twitching heaps. The spire’s core exploded in a whisper, folding in on itself with a sound like static breathing.

Juno stood among the wreckage, chest heaving, face lit by the flickering fire of a broken world.

“We need to move,” Shade said, wiping blood from his brow. “Sector 9’s collapsing. Storm or no storm, it’s unstable.”

“There’s one way left,” H-13 said, holding out a cracked datapad. “An emergency ferry route. Hidden. Military-class evac from before the fall. Heads toward the Drift—a neutral zone with no viral density. If we can reach it—”

“We’re out,” Juno finished.