Burning It All

The city of Celestia did not have a night.

That was the first lesson Ren learned when he was promoted to The Apex. Here, the sky was a gargantuan geodesic dome of high-definition LED panels, perpetually broadcasting the soft, golden light of an eternal summer afternoon. There were no shadows, no biting cold, and most importantly, no silence. The air was constantly saturated with the gentle hum of ionizing purifiers and low-frequency chamber orchestras, audio-engineered specifically to stimulate serotonin production in the brains of the citizenry.

Ren stood before the reinforced tempered glass of his apartment on the 105th floor, looking down at the city. Celestia was a masterpiece of crystal architecture and white steel. Spiraling towers reached upward like the fingers of desperate gods, connected by bridges of shimmering hard-light. Aero-cars glided in perfect silence, painting soft, glowing curves through the mid-air traffic lanes.

It was beautiful. It was flawless. It made Ren want to vomit.

He was a Level 4 System Architect. His job wasn’t to build new towers, but to maintain The Mirage. He was the one who patched the hairline fractures in Celestia’s pristine shell before anyone could realize that this paradise was built on top of a tomb.

“Architect Ren,” the apartment’s AI, Aura, chimed in a voice like liquid silk. “Your heart rate is elevating. Cortisol levels have exceeded the regulation threshold of 0.05%. Would you like me to synthesize a dose of ‘Tranquility’ into your morning coffee?”

Ren gripped the balcony railing, his knuckles turning white. “No, Aura. Disable biometric monitoring.”

“Disabling monitoring is a violation of Article 4.2 of the Ministry of Happiness protocols. I am required to log this refusal.”

“Log it,” Ren muttered, turning away from the false sun. “Log that I am sick to death of this cage.”

He turned his back on the artificial view and stepped into the dressing chamber. His uniform was a stark, pristine white trimmed with gold, made of a synthetic fabric that was self-cleaning and thermally regulated. He slid the Interface Gauntlet onto his left arm. It was a bulky, complex piece of tech—his tool, his weapon, and his shackle.

Today was the Scheduled Maintenance of the Thermal Core. A routine, mundane task, but one that required the high-level clearance codes only a Senior Architect possessed.

He stepped out of his apartment and into the vacuum transit tube system. In seconds, he was fired like a bullet through the city’s infrastructure, descending rapidly toward the Engineering Sector located at the very underbelly of Celestia.

When the tube doors hissed open, the perfection vanished.

The Engineering Sector had no golden light or symphonies. It was loud, sweltering, and reeked of machine oil, ozone, and molten metal. This was the gut of the beast. Massive pipes ran along the gray concrete walls, vibrating violently like arteries pumping poison.

“Ren!” A rough voice barked over the din.

It was Silas, the Chief of Pipeline Maintenance. He was an old man, his skin leathery and wrinkled from decades of exposure to thermal radiation—a stark, ugly contrast to the ageless, bio-sculpted residents of The Apex.

“Silas,” Ren nodded, stepping up to the central control bank. “Status report.”

“Pressure in Valve 7 is spiking,” Silas said, wiping grease and sweat from his forehead with a rag. “The cooling systems aren’t responding. If we don’t vent the pressure manually, the Thermal Core is going to go critical.”

Ren frowned, connecting his gauntlet to the hardline port of the system. Streams of green code cascaded across his retinal display. “That’s strange. The automated subroutines should have handled this hours ago. Why is the vent valve stuck?”

“I don’t know,” Silas lowered his voice, looking around nervously. “But Ren... I heard something.”

“Heard something?” Ren paused his diagnostics. “You mean mechanical failure?”

“No,” Silas whispered, his old eyes wide with a primal fear. “Banging. From beneath Valve 7.”

Ren stared at Silas. Valve 7 was the lowest point of Celestia’s hull. Beneath it was only three meters of thermal shielding and then... The Void. The toxic atmosphere of the dead Earth below, over which Celestia hovered. Nothing survived in the Void, and certainly, nothing could “bang” on the hull.

“You have heat sickness, Silas,” Ren said dismissively, though a cold shiver ran down his spine. “I’ll go down and inspect it manually.”

“Don’t,” Silas grabbed his arm. “They don’t want us down there. The Seraphim Guard sealed that sector off last week.”

“I am an Architect,” Ren pulled his arm free. “There is no door in this city I cannot open.”

Ren walked along the narrow catwalk gantries leading down to Valve 7. The deeper he went, the higher the temperature climbed. His suit began to whine as its cooling units worked overtime. The air was thick, heavy, and tasted of metal.

He arrived at the massive blast door of the Valve 7 containment chamber. It was sealed with a Red-Level biometric lock.

Ren placed his palm on the panel. Identity Confirmed: Ren. Level 4. Access Granted.

The door groaned and slid open. A blast of superheated steam hit him in the face.

Ren stepped into the chamber. In the center of the room was a massive conduit pipe disappearing into the floor. But something was wrong.

On the metal grating, right next to the maintenance hatch, was a smear.

Blood. Fresh, red blood.

Ren unholstered the pulse pistol from his belt. He moved closer.

The sound Silas had described echoed through the room. Thump. Thump.

It wasn’t metal striking metal. It was the sound of a fist. Flesh hitting steel.

Ren knelt, peering through the slats of the maintenance hatch.

Beneath the floor grating, in the cramped crawlspace between the city’s hull and the exhaust filters, there was a human being.

It was not a citizen of Celestia. The figure was filthy, clad in rags stitched together from industrial waste. His skin was the color of ash, his eyes bloodshot and weeping from atmospheric toxicity. He was trying to pry open an air filter.

He saw Ren.

He didn’t beg. He didn’t scream. He just looked at Ren with a hatred so profound it felt physical.

“Open it!” The man roared, his voice sounding like sandpaper on stone. “Give us air! You bastards are burning us alive!”

“What... what are you?” Ren asked, his voice trembling. According to official history, the surface of the Earth was dead. Sterilized. Celestia was the ark of humanity.

“I am the thing you are standing on!” The man screamed. He raised a crude device—a homemade bomb crafted from an old fuel canister.

Before Ren could react, a high-pitched whine pierced the air behind him.

THWIP.

A beam of concentrated red laser light sliced through the air, passed through the gap in the floor grating, and punched a clean hole through the man’s chest.

He collapsed, the bomb rolling harmlessly away. His body slid off the conduit and tumbled into the infinite darkness beneath the city.

Ren spun around, leveling his pistol.

Standing in the doorway was a Seraphim.

It was a war machine standing eight feet tall, encased in gleaming white ceramic armor, sculpted to resemble a faceless angel. The metal wings on its back were not for flight, but served as solar arrays and weapon mounts. Its face was a smooth, black glass visor, reflecting Ren’s terrified expression.

“Target neutralized,” the Seraphim’s voice intoned. It was not human; it was a symphonic synthesis of electronic chords. “Architect Ren, you have violated safety protocols. This sector is restricted.”

“Who was that?” Ren shouted, his gun not wavering. “Where did he come from? You told us the surface was dead!”

“That was a Parasite,” the Seraphim replied calmly. “A mutated lifeform born of the ash. Irrelevant.”

“He spoke! He bled red blood!” Ren stepped forward, a fury igniting in his chest that burned hotter than the thermal core. It cracked the shell of apathy he had worn his entire life. “And he said we are burning them. Valve 7... what does it vent down there?”

The Seraphim tilted its head, processing Ren’s threat level.

“Valve 7 vents toxic thermal waste and concentrated carbon dioxide from Celestia,” the robot stated. “To maintain the Golden Sky here, we must displace the pollution elsewhere. Downward.”

The truth hit Ren like a physical blow to the gut.

Celestia wasn’t an ark. It was a pressure cooker lid. It was sucking up clean resources and air, and pumping all of its poison down onto the heads of the survivors below. Their perfection was purchased with the slow, agonizing suffocation of millions.

“You knew,” Ren whispered. “The Council knew.”

“The survival of the elite few justifies the sacrifice of the primitive many,” the Seraphim said. “That is the algorithm of existence. Now, Architect, lower your weapon and accompany me for ideological realignment. Your instability rating exceeds 100%.”

Ren looked at the robot. He looked at the gun in his hand. He thought about the fake sun, the soothing music, and the drugged coffee.

He thought about the bloodshot eyes of the man who had just fallen into the abyss.

“Realign this,” Ren said.

He didn’t shoot the Seraphim. Its armor could withstand plasma fire.

He shot the control panel of Valve 7.

BOOM.

The circuit board exploded in a shower of sparks. The magnetic locking mechanism disengaged.

The pressure built up inside the massive pipe, no longer regulated by the computer, began to scream.

“Warning,” the automated alarm blared. “Valve 7 critical. Thermal Core breach imminent.”

The Seraphim lunged at Ren, its mechanical arm shifting into an energy blade. “You are endangering Paradise.”

Ren rolled beneath the slash. The blade sliced through the steel floor where he had just been standing. He activated his Interface Gauntlet, hacking into the room’s localized gravity stabilizers.

“This paradise,” Ren roared, reversing the local gravity polarity, “deserves to burn.”

The Seraphim was lifted off the floor, its heavy chassis flailing in zero-g. Ren seized the opportunity. He scrambled out of the chamber, slamming the manual override on the door and locking it with his personal encryption key.

Inside, the robot began to batter the door, but the pipe pressure was rising exponentially.

Ren sprinted down the corridor. Sirens began to wail across the entirety of Celestia. The fake golden sky flickered and turned a harsh, flashing crimson.

He couldn’t go back to his apartment. He couldn’t go back to his life.

Ren tapped his comms earpiece.

“Silas,” he said, his voice breathless. “Do you still have the old schematics for the Waste Chutes?”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“What did you do, Ren?” Silas asked, his voice shaking.

“I just lit a match,” Ren replied, watching a squad of security drones swarming in the distance. “Now I need to find a place to let the fire spread.”