The Sundering

Sector 7 was gone. His home was gone.

Sarah and Mira were gone.

"No," Elias whispered, staggering to his feet. "No, no, no."

He ran. Ignoring the shouts of his team, the orders crackling over his radio, he ran toward where his apartment building had stood. The streets were unrecognizable, landmarks obliterated. He oriented himself by the remains of a water tower that had somehow remained standing, its legs twisted like paper straws.

Where his building had been, there was only a crater filled with rubble and ash. Elias fell to his knees at the edge, a scream building in his throat that he couldn't release. His eyes burned from the dust in the airor were those tears? He couldn't tell anymore.

"Sarah!" he called, his voice breaking. "Mira!"

Only silence answered him. He began to dig through the rubble with his bare hands, ignoring the cuts and bruises, moving debris that should have been too heavy for one man to shift. Adrenaline and desperation gave him strength he didn't know he possessed.

Hours passed. Other firefighters found him, tried to pull him away. He fought them off. The sun set, and still he dug, illuminated now by emergency floodlights as rescue teams established a perimeter around what was being called "The Sundering Zone."

It was near midnight when he found ita small, charred hand protruding from beneath a fallen beam. Elias's world narrowed to that single point, his movements becoming mechanical as he cleared the debris.

It wasn't Mira. It was a doll, her favorite stuffed rabbit, now barely recognizable. But clutched in the doll's arms was a locket. Sarah's locket, the one with their family photo inside.

Elias opened it with trembling fingers. The heat had partially melted the metal, warping the photograph inside. But their faces were still visible to him, Sarah, and Mira, smiling on a beach trip the previous summer. Their last vacation together.

Something broke inside him then. He clutched the locket to his chest and finally released the scream that had been building since the explosion was a raw, primal sound of loss and rage that echoed through the ruins of Sector 7.

He didn't notice the men in Voss Industries security uniforms approaching until they surrounded him. Didn't register their presence until rough hands pulled him to his feet.

"Elias Voss?" one of them asked, though it wasn't really a question.

"My family," Elias said, his voice a rasp. "My wife and daughter"

"You need to come with us," the man cut him off. "Mr. Voss wants to speak with you."

"Voss?" Elias repeated, confusion cutting through his grief. "Magnus Voss? The CEO?"

The security officer nodded. "He has questions about your wife's research."

Something clicked in Elias's mind. The papers. Sarah's warning. He reached into his coat pocket, but it was empty. The papers were gone, likely destroyed in the chaos or fallen out during his desperate search.

"I don't know anything about her research," Elias said, trying to pull away. "I need to find my family."

The officer's expression hardened. "Your family is dead, Mr. Voss. Along with three thousand others. And according to our information, your wife may have been responsible."

The accusation hit Elias like a physical blow. "That's a lie!"

"We have evidence that Dr. Sarah Voss was planning to sabotage a critical experiment. An experiment that, coincidentally, went catastrophically wrong today."

"Sarah would never"

"She accessed restricted files. Copied classified research. And she was attempting to flee the facility when the containment breach occurred." The officer's voice was cold, reciting facts as if from a report. "The timing suggests her actions may have triggered The Sundering."

Elias lunged at the man, blind with rage, but the other security officers restrained him. "You're lying! The company did this! Your precious Oblivion Dust did this!"

The officer's eyes narrowed. "How do you know that name?"

Before Elias could respond, something sharp pricked his neck. A sedative. His limbs grew heavy, his vision blurring.

"Take him to the holding facility," he heard the officer say as darkness closed in. "Magnus Voss wants him alive for questioning."

As consciousness slipped away, Elias's last thought was of the locket still clutched in his hand, the only proof that his family had ever existed.

And in the swirling darkness of his mind, he made a promise. He would discover the truth. He would expose Voss Industries for what they had done.

And he would make them pay.

---

Elias woke with a gasp, the memory-dream releasing him back to the present. He was in his apartment, lying on his mattress, sweat soaking his clothes despite the chill in the air. The burned photograph, the one from the locket, sat on the floor beside him, its edges curling with age and damage.

Ten years. It had been ten years since The Sundering. Ten years since he'd lost everything. Ten years of fighting, first from inside a prison cell where the Syndicate had thrown him after framing him for the disaster, and then as the Wraith after he'd escaped.

Victory felt hollow as he surveyed the cost. He sat up slowly, his right arm throbbing where the Nullsteel knife had cut him the night before. The wound was bandaged now, but the pain lingered as a reminder of his vulnerability despite his powers.

He was still human after all.

On the table across the room sat the data drive he'd taken from Captain Mercer, waiting to be decrypted. Beside it, the injection gun with its cargo of crimson Dust Pandora, they'd called it. 

Elias looked at his translucent right hand, watching as it flickered between solid and insubstantial. The Dust in his system was fading again. Soon he'd need another dose, continuing the cycle of dependency that had defined his existence since he'd first injected himself in that prison cell. Time seemed to slow as the Dust activated, sounds becoming distant and colors intensifying..

 But if Pandora was real, if it could truly create permanent bonding without the need for regular doses, it would change everything. For him, and for Ironhaven.

The question was whether he could trust the information. The Syndicate had lied about The Sundering, blamed Sarah for their own catastrophic failure. They'd buried the truth beneath propaganda and misdirection, rebranding themselves as the city's saviors rather than its destroyers.

Why would Pandora be any different?

What was the real purpose behind this new strain?

Elias rose from the mattress, moving to the table. He needed answers. And to get them, he might need to do something he'd avoided for years. The line between justice and revenge blurred more each day.

He might need to ask for help.

The thought made him uncomfortable. The Wraith worked alone. That was the rule he'd established after escaping prison, the boundary that kept others safe from the Syndicate's retribution. But Pandora was bigger than his preference for solitude. If the Syndicate was planning to use it against the Underground, thousands could die.

Just like in The Sundering.

Elias picked up the data drive, turning it over in his hands. He knew people in the Underground hackers who could decrypt this information in hours rather than the days it would take him. But contacting them meant exposing himself, becoming visible in a way he'd carefully avoided.

It meant trusting someone. And trust was a luxury he hadn't been able to afford since the day the sky turned dark above Sector 7.

He closed his fist around the drive, decision made. Some risks were necessary. Some ghosts couldn't be outrun forever.

Tomorrow, he would reach out to the Underground. But tonight, he had a shift to work at Syndicate Tower. The janitor's eyes and ears were needed more than ever.

Elias tucked the drive into a hidden compartment in the floor, alongside the injection gun. Then he prepared for his shift, pushing the memories of fire and ash back into the corners of his mind where they usually resided.

The past was a wound that never healed. But the future - Ironhaven's future was still worth fighting for.

Even if it cost him what little remained of his humanity.

***

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