Chapter 11: It Now Begins

By the end of the first month, the internet wasn’t dead, but it was wheezing.

Subsea cables and major terrestrial hubs were slowly failing as coastal junction points drowned beneath feet of contaminated sludge. What remained online was a chaotic, unmoderated sewer of panicked livestreams, desperate SOS calls, and grainy smartphone videos recorded from the upper floors of half-submerged skyscrapers.

Julius sat in an ergonomic leather swivel chair on the central observation catwalk, his coffee replaced by a chilled glass of sparkling cider. In front of him, three large monitors tapped into the fortress’s dedicated satellite dishes, pulling down every byte of raw, uncurated data trickling out of the drowning mainland.

Colonel Mercer stood a pace behind him, arms folded, his weathered jaw set like granite.

"The civilian authorities have completely lost the plot," Mercer said, pointing toward the center screen. "Police garrisons have abandoned their precincts to evacuate their own families. National guard units are getting stranded on flooded expressways. The rule of law just evaporated."

"It was always going to," Julius replied smoothly. "A modern state only functions when the toilets flush and trucks deliver groceries. Cut the supply lines for three weeks, and civility strips right off."

He tapped a key, bringing up a trending livestream uploaded to a rogue server in Chicago.

The camera was shaky, filmed through the cracked rain-streaked window of an upscale high-rise apartment. Below in the flooded streets, the water reached nearly to the second-story marquees of luxury shops. A crowd of desperate civilians had gathered on the fire escapes, clutching trash bags of canned goods.

Suddenly, a blinding flash of azure lightning ripped through the murky rain.

A young man wearing a soaked hoodie stepped onto the roof of a stalled transit bus. Arcs of violent electricity crackled along his bare forearms, leaping into the water around him and boiling it to steam. With a flick of his wrist, he hurled a spear of blue plasma directly into the steel shutters of a high-end department store, blowing the reinforced doors clear off their hinges in a shower of sparks and molten iron.

The streamer holding the phone whimpered behind the glass: "Jesus Christ... who is that guy?! He’s not human! He just blew up the vault door with his hands!"

The hooded kid didn’t even look back at the terrified onlookers. He waded into the blown-out building, casually emerging minutes later carrying crates of dry rations, luxury watches, and bottles of liquor, tossing a lightning bolt toward a group of shivering citizens who tried to approach him for scraps. They fell back screaming, two of them twitching violently from the electric backwash in the water.

Julius leaned forward, his eyes narrowing slightly.

He didn’t need to look at a registry to know who that was.

ThunderG.

To Mercer and the bridge crew, the people drowning in the cities were innocent civilians and the looters were terrifying freaks. But Julius knew the cold, fundamental reality of this mirror Earth: every person out there—the police, the politicians, the shopkeepers, the weeping families on the rooftops—was an NPC generated by the Trial. Disposable backdrop designed to simulate a living, breathing world.

The only real souls were the five hundred who had died on their original Earth.

And now that civilization had crumbled under forty days of ceaseless rain, the players were dropping the act. They weren’t hiding in the shadows anymore. They weren’t trying to hold down dishwashing jobs or pay rent.

They were gods among cattle.

Julius switched feeds to a chaotic broadcast out of Frankfurt.

A massive man whose skin gleamed like polished slate—Titan_01—was physically tossing civilian rescue boats aside, ripping open locked shipping containers on elevated rail platforms with his bare hands and chewing through vacuum-sealed beef jerky like a starved animal.

Another video from suburban London showed a woman surrounded by a swirling barrier of gale-force winds, deflecting national guard rifle rounds with careless ease before sending a localized tornado down an avenue to clear out anyone competing for a dry pharmacy.

Mercer drew in a sharp breath, his fingers tightening around his holster. "These aren’t ordinary looters, Mr. Vance. Mutants? Black-budget genetic test subjects? How the hell are there individuals throwing lightning and lifting twenty-ton containers?"

Julius took a calm sip of cider, his eyes never leaving the screen.

"I don’t know, maybe there are superhumans in this world. Still, they are all the same, surviving. While here on this island, we are so comfortable we are pitying those beyond our island."

Mercer nodded slowly, the grim tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction. He turned back toward the primary display, where the emerald telemetry of St. Jude’s Spire pulsed with steady, rhythmic life.

Down in the residential decks, children were eating hot meals, unaware of the drownings abroad. In the hydroponic vaults, fresh strawberries and lettuce leaves grew under violet lights. The reactors purred without strain, and four hundred meters of impenetrable volcanic stone stood between them and the weeping sky.

"You built an ark, Mr. Vance," Mercer said quietly, genuine reverence bleeding into his gravelly tone. "While the rest of mankind tears each other apart for scraps, you made an oasis."

"Preparation is simply recognizing reality before it arrives, Colonel," Julius said.

He glanced down at the black phone resting beside his glass.

Under the table, the [World Chat] flared with desperate cries as players realized the water was rising faster than their abilities could climb.

Julius locked the screen, leaving them in the dark.

He leaned back, rested his boots on the brass railing, and took another long sip of cider. Let the superhumans play king in the mud. Out here in the black Atlantic, the king was already crowned.