The air outside tasted different.

When Hale pushed open the bunker’s outer door, the wind met him—not with the acrid sting of decay or the metallic tang of scorched circuitry, but something cleaner, damp with the faint promise of rain. For a long moment, he just stood there, letting it wash over him.

The horizon stretched wide and gray, the industrial outskirts of the city still slumbering beneath layers of dust and silence. The towers in the distance were ghostly ...