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The buzzing. They were slowly gaining on him. He ran, and ran, and ran, until his feet began to ache, his lungs began to scream. Dark clouds loomed over the sky, torn in halves by the ends of everything. He could hear whispering from up above.

Almost there, he thought to himself, the entrance right in sight.

He dug down beneath some collapsed pillars, toppled-over debris of a might once standing proudly against all odds of the cosmos, and beyond, now only a dilapitated husk of what once was. He couldn’t bother with it, though; they were right above him.

As the nano-bots swooped overhead, a loud whirring and clicking sound rang through his ears, almost deafening, like a stampede of a hundred horses. Eventually, though, the whirring passed by, and he gave out a sigh of relief.

It was only a few feet from the entrance.

*

The air was thick, moist, age-old like an attic of some abandoned building in the outskirts of No Man’s Land. You knew that there were once people in here, but everything seemed so lifeless, so decayed, there might as well never have been anybody at all.

With a push and a gasp for air, he slid the door open fully, finally allowing him a clear view inside. The sun’s light was sallow, tinged in a red hue, dust littering the twilight hallway to the brim.

He put on his gas mask, and ventured inside. There was a flashlight in his hands, hand-made, attached to a long power-cord. It was weighing down on him, making his every step as though he were entombed in the Mariana’s Trench, but he continued on.

The darkness enveloped him more and more the farther he stepped away from the entrance, his eyes having a hard time adjusting through the mask.

Long electrical cords hung from the ceiling like nooses, stains of blood decorating the bleak walls like an artist’s twisted idea of a masterpiece. Some halls were empty, others having already collapsed. Some doors were closed and with some he did not dare to look inside.

His scanners were clicking, louder and more frequent the more he got to the source. Despite this, he could feel his heart becoming heavy, beating more rapidly in his chest.

Left. Right. Left. Another left. Then right, no, left.

His movements became slower, feeling enveloped in quicksand, like something weighing down his soul. But he continued on, no matter what he was feeling.

Eventually, his scanners peaked. He was at the right place.

He pulled out an access card, a relic of forgotten days, and slid it through the scanner. He half-expected he needed to resort to less orthodox measures, so he was relieved to see the door actually opening on its own. He stepped inside.

The control room was gigantic, filled to the brim with monitors and speakers, all dead in their various tones, shapes and sizes, their last bits of life having fizzled out long ago.

He inspected the room, letting his makeshift flashlight go over every surface. One of the monitors was broken, there was a swivel chair, and mounts of documentation.

The power had long since fried, leaving everything dead. Great, but, what kind of survivor of the apocalypse would he be if he weren’t ready for such an eventuality?

He plugged a cable peeking out of his makeshift backpack-power source into the terminal. It soon beeped back into existence. The whirring and clicking by the machinery caused him to recoil in panic slightly, but as he looked at the terminal, his mind eased up again.

A few words flickered on the screen, his eyes wide open.

> Welcome. How may I be of assistance?

> Access Logs [June 2024]

The machine required some time to process the input. All the whirring made him queezy.

> Input Password

Shit. The password. What was it again? He put in something.

> ••••••••••••

> … … … Access Denied. You have (2) attempt(s) left.

Years of getting to this point, and it would fail because of his stupid mind not remembering a fucking password?

> ••••

> … … … Access Denied. You have (2) attempt(s) left.

All these years to reach this moment, only for his fragile human mind to finally give in. He had seen too much. Deseccrated humans, landscapes once so lush of life, corpses in every stage imaginable, even walking.

Then it hit. From the far corners of his mind, it was as clear as day now. Like a lightning strike in an open field. It was so clear.

”Sunshine,” he whispered to no one, but himself.

> ••••••••

He stared at the screen intently. These aching seconds were unbearable, just waiting for a response.

> … … … Access Granted.

Relief washed over him, as the terminal whirred for a moment and began its duty.

> Accessing Logs [June 2024]…

The screen became black, before it flickered to life once more. His eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, as the logs started playing…

*

The screen flickered to life with a man in his mid-twenties or late-twenties standing in front of the camera, his stance humble and weak. He wore standard Foundation attire if a bit worn.

He sat down on the swivel chair, it barely squeaking under his weight, as the sounds of paper shuffling dominated the feed for a good ten seconds, before the man looked back at the camera.

”June 24th, 2024. I am… I…”

His voice was not weak, but broken.

It was dark. Only a few monitors were blinking and beeping in the background, but even then they were too low and far-between to light up the room fully. The only thing that lit up the man’s face was the screen in front of him.

There was silence for a few seconds, before the man cleared his throat, and continued speaking, his focus shifted back to the camera.

”Level 2 Foundation researcher. Krug, Adam. Twenty-four years old. I’d tell you more, but—”

The man, calling himself by the name of Krug, chuckled a bit. It wasn’t a hefty chuckle, only a light one. Yet it was so full of life, like it had been a while since he had a genuine laugh.

”Site-67 is…” the man said, before abruptly pausing, ”it’s fucked. Borderline, nominally fucked!”

He sat there in utter silence, the total quietness piquing with every aching second.

There was a whirring, a buzzing. Nanites flying overhead, most likely. He temporarily paused the recording to listen in, until everything was plunged back into silence again.

”Colleague of mine pissed off a few days ago. Don’t know where she’s headed. I don’t even know if she’s still alive!”

Although the quality was low, he could see what appeared to be tears forming in the man’s eyes. He wiped them away as fast as they appeared.

”Safe wing breached a few hours ago… Guess they got bored of staring at the same concrete wall for years now.”

Krug stared at the camera, yet right through it. He felt uncomfortable watching the footage, as if Krug was able to see him. Then he stared at the camera again.

”Not much else going on, beside the literal end times.” Another weak chuckle. Then a sigh. He reached out his hand toward the cam.

”This is Foundation researcher Adam Krug. Signing off.”

The log ended.

> Proceed?

> N/Y?

> Yes.

The next log started playing. This one was dated to the first of June.

The view showed the exact same room from before, but with less monitors blinking and beeping in the background. There was no man in sight, only the swivel chair.

The noises of a door opening and shuffling echoed throughout the room, then Krug entered the frame with something in his hands. He sat down on the chair, bearing a smile on his face.

”Found this thing in one of t-the closets.” His voice was even weaker than before. His fingers barely held onto the strings. ”Let’s s-see if I can still w-work it.”

Dissonant tunes rang through the air. A cacophony of out-of-tune noises on a dusty, old guitar, in the hands of a once-hopeful man. His fingers were thin and bony.

As he adjusted the strings, Krug hummed the low melody of a song, quiet at first, before he moved his lips dryly. The noises of the guitar became more coherent, more of a song.

Krug began, humbly:

”W— what if the wind c— caught up w— with me? Starting t— to chance when I— I did…”

He watched Krug’s mind slowly trailing off, closing his eyes, singing along to the rythm of a song. Despite everything, his mind relaxed and he began to play the guitar with delicate, coordinated movements.

”And i— if dreams can come true, w— what does that say a— about nightmares?

He continued on in his slow, deliberate movements. What seemed to a smile formed on his face.

Then a string broke. It snapped Krug right out of his retrieve. He looked down at the broken string and lingered on it for a while. Then he let out a low chuckle.

”It was fun while it lasted,” he finally said.

His hand reached out and he ended the recording.

There was one more file. The date was scrubbed, corrupted. But given Krug’s appearance in the video, it must’ve been made a few weeks after the second.

Buzzing. The sound of clicking. Doors being pried open. Nanites. Those sounds made him tense up, even if they were coming from the recording. From the sounds, there were only a few meters away. In the dim light, he could see a guitar leaned against a table.

”I just realized…” Krug spoke in a calm voice, ”I never celebrated my seventeenth birthday. It’s not… we… we just forgot. Me, my parents, my friends…”

They were pounding on the door now. With each harsh crash against the metal, an indentation formed, bending outwards. Krug gave off no reaction.

”Huh.”

The door flung open, the nanites swarmed in and everything cut to black.

*

This can’t be it, he thought, staring at the now-blank screen. This couldn’t have been it.

Then the screen flickered back to life.

> There is @ne (1) m0re fil3. Ope#& it1?

> N/&Y€? …

He lingered on the question for a moment. With a quick movement, his hands moved to select an option. The terminal responded after a few minutes.

> Acc3s5ing f1l3…

*

They hovered over the vast expanse of sky, tinted now in a deep red. There were creatures roaming all around. Men, women and children hiding under the remnants of which was once civilization.

People in shiny armor and tattered lab coats tried to combat the threats lurking around every corner; one by one, they fell to the ground, their lifeless bodies looking up blankly into the sky.

Then, there was a sound. A signal, coming from not too far. In a swift motion, the swarm turned around, headed east, and flew hundreds of kilometers to their destination in an instant.

The sounds of buzzing and clicking were ever-so-present.

*

It was a bunch of images. Flowers, trees, concrete cradles, and insects. Inherently meaningless, yet they triggered something in his mind. His eyes were fixated on them, no, his mind was fixated on the rapid onslaught displayed on the screen.

It hurt to look at, yet was so, so beautiful. Unlike anything he’d ever seen.

Then the images ceased. What came next was incoherent noise, static, dominating the entire screen.

An unimaginable pain seared its way into his mind, burning and coiling all of his thoughts. It engraved its way deep into his mind, between his flesh, the neurons, his memories.

There was nothing for a moment. Then there was everything. He could see it all clearly.

A voice rang out from the terminal, through the white noise. It was that of Adam Krug.

”I’ve found a way to reverse this whole shit…” Krug spoke. ”It’s oh-fifty-five and five-seven-nine. If you bring them together, something… I don’t know… something definitely happens.”

Suddenly, his surroundings morphed and changed, and he found himself in a square room, five by five by two point five meters in dimensions, with… something resting in the middle of it.

”It happened before. It’ll happen again.”

The walls around him started to wither, rust, decompose, as the chamber was torn apart around him by a something just out of sight. He turned around to see an old wooden door with a rusty key stuck inside it, with the key being twisted, opening up a vast expanse of pure darkness and screams on the other side.

Before his mind was able to comprehend any of it, his feet lost hold of the floor, and he was pulled inside the door. Fear pounded inside him, as he tried desperately to hold onto the floor, anything, but, no matter how hard he tried, he approached the all-enveloping darkness.

The wooden door shut behind him in a cacophony of screams and cries.

”I’ve managed to send some of my compiled data to staff at ES-06, but I don’t know if that’ll be enough.”

Suddenly, he was back in the real world again, having collapsed to the floor. His breathing was rapid, his heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest at any second.

”Five-seven-nine is contained within Site-62C, inside of oh-oh-four,” Krug rambled on. ”Oh-fifty-five is… is…” He began to trail of.

”It’s… it’s… huh…”

Krug’s mind became distant. With each passing second, he lost more and more of himself, unsure of what he just said to the camera.

”I just realized…” he spoke, in a calm, peaceful voice, ”I never celebrated by seventeenth birthday.”

The buzzing. The pounding against the door. Cut to black.

He sat there in silence, his thoughts still recovering from the attack on his senses, and stared mindlessly at the white noise, before it shut off. His gaze met the floor, as he desperately tried to fight against the pain.

Suddenly, panic overcame him, pounding against his skull, each motion of his body reverberating down to his bones, burning through his frail body.

The buzzing. The clicking. It didn’t stop. It grew louder, nearer.

He quickly stumbled to his feet, as the buzzing and clicking of the nanite swarm was audible in the distance. He made his way to a security door on the far side of the room, the broken monitors looming above, as if staring down at him. The noises grew louder.

The door was shut. Sliding his keycard in, the roor didn’t budge an inch. The mechanism was damaged beyond repair. He had to open it himself. The buzzing grew closer.

He placed both of his hands on the handle and put his entire weight against the door to pull it open. Eventually, a loud creak emanated from the door, its metal scraping against the floor. Soon, there was an opening, but not enough to squeeze through.

He turned around. He could see the nanites and their rapid approach at the end of the hallway, cutting everything in their way apart.

Another pull. He was able to squeeze his arm through. Some of them crawled, others ran, most of them just flew toward him.

He pulled more rapidly on the door, each time causing a distinct pain to erupt in his head. The opening was as wide as his head now. They were only a few meters away now, enveloping the entire entrance.

Then the door slid open. He tumbled to the other side, left his backpack behind, got his bearings, before sliding the door shut behind him. His thoughts were screaming at him.

He quickly hid underneath some rubble, as he heard the nanites slashing and tearing anything in the room apart. Then they turned their attention to the security door, as the metal bent outward.

The door flew off its hinges, landing several feet away. The swarm of nanites made their way down the dark, winding corridors, while he could do nothing, but watch and hope. He closed his eyes, trying to ease his breathing, as sweat dripped down the sides of his face.

The buzzing and clicking grew more distant, everything became quieter, until everything was plunged into silence again. He opened his eyes.

He made his way out from under the rubble, turned around to look at the control room; everything was slashed, cut into little pieces. His backpack was tattered, unusable, as he’d expected. The terminal he’d just interacted with was sliced-up beyond recognition.

He rummaged through one of his pockets, and pulled out a marker, color purple, and wrote something down on his left forearm, as best as he could in the dim light.

O bje tiv e: 55 to 5 79

He salvaged what he could and left.

*

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