Chapter 18: They Arrived

The rain fell like sheets of iron.

Across the drowned continents, roads had turned into muddy riverbeds, and valleys had become gray inland seas. For days, the surviving candidates dragged themselves through the endless downpour, crawling up jagged mountain slopes, burning through whatever divine stamina they had left.

They abandoned their broken trucks in muddy ditches. They discarded heavy loot. The only thing that mattered was reaching the GPS coordinates Julius Vance had broadcasted.

Above the tree lines, high in the jagged granite peaks where the floodwaters could not reach, eight massive steel structures stood embedded in the bedrock.

Each site had a gigantic, blast-proof titanium bulkhead door. Above each door hung a heavy, reinforced LED screen encased in ballistic glass.

In the Canadian Shield, thirty-six figures dragged themselves onto the muddy plateau outside Site 1.

ThunderG was among them. His designer clothes were shredded, soaked in mud, and smelling of foul swamp water. Blue sparks still flickered weakly across his knuckles, but his eyes were bloodshot, sunken from exhaustion and hunger. Beside him was GaleForce, her lips blue from hypothermia, her breath coming in shallow, wheezing gasps.

A few meters behind them limped Titan_01. The massive man leaned heavily on a makeshift crutch made of a bent steel girder. His right leg was swollen to twice its normal size, wrapped in dirty rags that leaked yellowish fluid. Even with stone skin, sepsis was eating him alive.

Around them stood thirty-three other players. Some held bloody pipes, some held rifles, and others had strange weapons fashioned from scrap metal. They were panting, coughing, and shivering under the torrential rain.

"We made it..." someone sobbed, dropping to his knees in the mud. "We actually made it..."

"Shut up and look at the door," ThunderG barked, wiping wet hair from his face.

The crowd looked up at the massive steel gate.

The door was completely shut. There was no handle, no keyhole, and no keypad.

Suddenly, with a loud hum of high-voltage power, the giant screen above the bulkhead flickered to life.

A synthetic, female automated voice echoed from external horn speakers, cutting through the roar of the wind:

[Welcome to Regional Sanctuary Node 01: Canadian Shield.]

The survivors looked up with wild, desperate eyes.

[Scanning local biological signatures within the perimeter...]

A red laser grid swept across the muddy plateau, bathing all thirty-six players in a crimson glow.

[Scan Complete.]

[Detected Living Candidates in Perimeter: 36.]

The screen changed, displaying bold red letters that glowed brightly through the rain:

[SANCTUARY CAPACITY: MAXIMUM 30 OCCUPANTS.]

[CURRENT OCCUPANCY CONDITION: OVER CAPACITY.]

[PROTOCOL: The entrance will remain locked until the perimeter count reaches exactly 30 or fewer.]

[NOTE: If local count is below 30, the gate will remain on standby until the threshold is met or manual sequence overrides. If local count exceeds 30, access is strictly denied.]

[REDUCE LOCAL BIOMASS TO PROCEED.]

A digital counter appeared on the display:

[CURRENT COUNT: 36 / 30]

[STATUS: ACCESS DENIED]

The muddy plateau fell into a dead, suffocating silence.

The rain drummed against the rocks, but nobody moved. Nobody even seemed to breathe.

Thirty-six people were standing outside.

The door would only open for thirty.

"Six..." a man with a scarred face whispered, his voice cracking. "There are six too many."

GaleForce took a slow step backward, her hand trembling as a weak funnel of wind began to spin around her boots. "Wait... we don’t have to fight. Can’t we talk to whoever is inside? Can’t we just squeeze in?"

"Did you hear the speaker, you stupid bitch?!" a player with sharp, metal-coated claws screamed, his face twisting into pure madness. "It’s an automated system! It counts bodies! It doesn’t give a damn about talking!"

Thirty-six pairs of eyes suddenly shifted.

The camaraderie they had built while hiking through the mud vanished in a fraction of a second. Every person standing on that plateau was doing the exact same mental calculation.

Six people have to die. As long as six die, I can sleep in a dry bed.

ThunderG’s eyes locked straight onto Titan_01.

Titan_01 noticed the stare and gripped his steel girder tightly. "Don’t look at me like that, sparky! I’ll crush your skull before you can charge a bolt!"

"You’re already half-dead, old man," ThunderG said, his voice dropping into a vicious, ragged whisper. "Your leg is rotten. You’re slowing everyone down. Why don’t you do us a favor and take one for the team?"

"Fuck you!" Titan_01 roared.

His skin instantly turned to dull gray granite. He swung the massive steel beam with monstrous force, aiming straight for ThunderG’s head.

The battle for Site 1 began.

At the exact same moment, four thousand miles away in the Swiss Alps, a nearly identical scene was playing out on a snowy ledge outside Site 3.

Thirty-eight players stood shivering on the frozen mountain terrace outside the blast door.

The screen above them read:

[CURRENT COUNT: 38 / 30]

[STATUS: ACCESS DENIED]

Bloodhound stood near the front, his nose twitching as he smelled the raw sweat, fear, and blood coming from the crowd. Beside him stood Viper, her fingers dripping with dark, corrosive poison that hissed against the falling slush.

"Eight," Viper whispered, her tongue darting over dry, cracked lips. "Eight heads."

"Pick the weakest ones," Bloodhound growled, his eyes turning a predatory yellow. "The ones who can barely stand. Kill them fast so the door opens before more show up."

A young woman in the back, who had been crying from the cold, heard him and screamed. She turned to run back down the icy trail, but a man with stone blades extending from his forearms lunged forward, driving a jagged spike straight through her spine.

Her scream was cut short as her body hit the snow.

A chime sounded from the speaker above the gate:

[BIOMASS REDUCED.]

[CURRENT COUNT: 37 / 30]

[STATUS: ACCESS DENIED]

"It works!" someone yelled in a frenzy. "The counter dropped! Seven more! Kill seven more!"

The frozen ledge erupted into an explosion of divine violence. Fire met ice, shockwaves cracked the mountain stone, and desperate men tore at each other with bare hands and teeth, slipping on blood-slicked ice just to be one of the thirty left standing.

In North Africa’s Ahaggar mountains, thirty-four survivors butchered four men in a frantic knife fight under the dark sky.

In Siberia, thirty-three freezing players turned on their three wounded companions within ten seconds of reading the screen.

In every single location across the globe, the story was the same. The average turnout at each mountain entrance was thirty-five to thirty-eight people.

Just a few too many.

Just enough to demand blood.