Chapter One
It has been five months since China has taken over America and other countries. Mainly USA, Russia, and India, while moving to take over the world. America became a wasteland of bones, destruction, and death. Nearly every person in America were killed or being hunted down now. It was like a zombie apocalypse, but these zombies had guns and the control of USA. But somewhere deep in Arizona, USA, lived a small down that was hidden under the radar. Though most of the place was destroyed, there still sat an abandoned town. And in that town lived a young woman named Perla Agata, around her early twenties. She was a strange one in that small town, and nobody knew anything about her. She’d always stay in her house, since there was nobody else who lived there. It was hard to live in such climates, since the sun was hotter caused by mass pollution and poisonous gas filling the air. And due to the water supplize being taken over by China as well, growing crops or animals was scarce. So life was difficult for Perla, but she didn’t have to worry about anyone else but herself, because she was alone. Having been alone for years since she came to that town after her university she was had been destroyed when China came.
October sixth, 2089. The silence in the Arizona desert was no longer the peaceful quiet of nature; it was a heavy, suffocating pressure. Perla pulled her dampened scarf tighter around her face, filtering the yellow-tinged air as she stepped onto the warped wood of her porch. The horizon was a hazy blur of heat waves and chemical smog, hiding the skeletal remains of the world that used to be. She survived on ingenuity and silence. Her home was a fortress of makeshift air filters and a basement cellar that stayed just a few degrees cooler than the scorching surface. Every drop of water was recycled through a hand-built rhythmic filtration system she’d cobbled together from university lab scraps. As she scanned the dunes for the glint of patrol drones, she saw something that shouldn’t exist: A silhouette moving against the jagged rocks of the canyon. The silhouette wasn’t the rigid, metallic flicker of a drone, nor was it the coordinated march of a retrieval squad. It moved with a desperate, stumbling cadence—the gait of someone whose muscles were seizing from the high-alkaline dust of the Arizona flats. Perla ducked behind a rusted support beam, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. In 2089, “company” was synonymous with “sentence.” She reached for the sharpened rebar she kept by the door, her knuckles white.
The figure collapsed twenty yards from her porch, kicking up a plume of toxic yellow silt. Perla waited. Minutes ticked by as the sun beat down, the heat reaching a blistering 115 degrees fahrenheit. If she left him there, the caustic air would sear his lungs within the hour. If she brought him in, she risked her sanctuary. Cursing her own lingering humanity, she grabbed a spare respirator and lunged into the heat. The man was young, perhaps her age, with skin cracked like the desert floor and hair matted with grime. His clothes were a patchwork of high-tech insulation and scavenged rags. As she rolled him onto his back, he gasped, his eyes fluttering open—a startling, clear blue the ochre wasteland. The man’s breath came in ragged, wet hitches, the sound of someone whose lungs were losing the fight against the alkaline haze. Perla didn’t waste time with questions; she jammed the spare respirator over his face and cinched the straps. The hiss of filtered oxygen seemed deafening in the heavy silence. With a grunt of effort, she hooked her arms under his and began to drag him toward the porch. He was surprisingly light—dangerously so—his frame thin and wiry beneath the layers of scavenged tech. By the time she pulled him across the threshold and kicked the heavy, insulated door shut, Perla was drenched in sweat, her own chest aching from the brief exposure to the outside air.
Inside the cool, dim light of the house, the rhythmic thrum-thunk of the water filtration system provided a steady heartbeat. Perla dropped him onto a tattered rug and stood back, her hand instinctively hovering near the sharpened rebar. “Don’t move.” She rasped, her voice gravelly from disuse. The man didn’t move. He couldn’t. He lay there trembling, his chest heaving as the clean air began to clear the fog from his brain. He slowly reached up, his fingers—long, slender, and shaking—fumbling with the seal of the respirator. When he finally pulled the mask down, Perla saw a face that looked entirely out of place in a wasteland. His skin was fair, though currently mapped with red heat-rashes and streaks of grease. A mess of curly, ear-length brown hair, surprisingly soft-looking despite the grime, fell over his forehead. He looked up at her with wide, startlingly blue eyes—the color of a sky that hadn’t existed since the Great Collapse. “I... I’m sorry,” He whispered. His voice was soft, high-pitched with anxiety. “I didn’t mean... to be a problem.” Perla narrowed her eyes, keeping her distance. “Who are you? Did the patrol squads send you?” “No!” He flinched, curling into himself, making his thin frame look even smaller. He was no taller than her, perhaps even an inch shorter. “I’m Alex. Alex Urla. I ran... I’ve been running for three weeks. I saw the windmill on your roof. I thought it was a mirage.”
He looked around the room, his eyes darting nervously from the makeshift air filters to the stacks of old university textbooks Perla used for insulation. He seemed less like a threat and more like a lost bird that had flown into a window. “You’re a long way from the colonies, Alex.” Perla said, though she lowered the rebar slightly. “Nobody survives out here without a reason. Or a death wish.” “I was a technician,” he said, his voice trembling as he tried to sit up. He fumbled with the hem of his patchwork jacket, a nervous habit that made his curly hair bounce. “In the New-Beijing-Denver sector. I... I heard things I wasn’t supposed to hear. About the water rations. So I left. I’m not a soldier. I’m barely a person, most days.” Perla watched him. He was shy, avoiding her gaze by staring intently at a loose thread on his sleeve. In a world of predators, he looked like the ultimate prey. Yet, he had survived the Arizona flats alone. “The air is going to get worse tonight.” Perla said, turning toward her workbench. “The yellow tide is coming in from the coast. You can stay in the cellar. But you touch my filters, you’re back out in the silt. Understood?” Alex nodded frantically, his face flushing a pale pink. “Understood. Thank you. I can... I can help, maybe? I’m good with circuits. I saw your intake valve outside—it’s vibrating at a frequency that suggests a loose gasket. I could fix it. If you want. You don’t have to let me. I just thought...” He trailed off, his face falling as he realized he was rambling. He looked down at his boots, his shoulders hunched.
Perla looked at the boy—this strange, anxious remnant of a world that used to value things like “technicians” and “shyness.” For the first time in five months, the silence of the desert felt a little less heavy, replaced by the soft, nervous breathing of a stranger. “The tools are in the corner.” She said, nodding toward a crate. “Don’t make me regret this, Alex.” The toxic storm began to howl against the reinforced walls of the house, a low, mournful whistle that signaled the arrival of the yellow tide. Inside, the air grew thick with the smell of ozone and recycled oxygen. Perla moved with a practiced, predatory grace, though her left ankle gave a faint, rhythmic click with every third step—a ghost of the girl who had once spent her weekends on roller skates before the world fell apart. She reached for a tin of dried protein on a high shelf, her eyes squinting. To Alex, she looked like a sentinel, her wavy, waist-length chocolate hair tied back in a messy knot to keep it out of her face. “Here.” Perla said, tossing a small ration pack toward Alex. He caught it with fumbling fingers, his pale skin flushing as he looked up. Even in the low light, her dark grey eyes seemed to pierce right through him, though she was actually struggling to focus on the expression on his face.
To Perla, Alex was a soft-edged blur of blue and brown, his features lost to her deteriorating vision. “T-thank you.” Alex whispered. He stayed huddled near the tool crate, his curly hair casting long, dancing shadows on the wall. He noticed the way she moved— the slight stiffness in her left leg where two jagged scars peeked out from the hem of her tactical trousers. “You... you’re hurt.” Perla stiffened, her protective walls slamming back into place. “It’s old. Focus on your food.” Alex ducked his head so low his chin hit his chest. “I’m sorry.” He squeaked, “I just... I have a medical kit in my bag. Not a big one. But it has localized antiseptic. I saw the scar on your elbow too. It looks like it caught some of the alkaline dust today.” Perla looked down at her left arm. He was right; a small graze on her old scar was inflamed from the outside air. She cursed silently. She hadn’t even noticed. She prided herself on being the protector, the strong one— the ROTC student who had survived the fall of her university while others perished. Being perceived as vulnerable made her skin crawl. “I don’t need your help, Alex.” She said, her voice cold, though her hand stayed near the wound. Alex didn’t push. He just sat there, his thin frame vibrating with a mix of fear and a strange, quiet empathy. He reached into his patchwork jacket and pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles he’d been cleaning.
“I noticed you... you squint at the monitors.” He said softly, not looking her in the eye. “I found these in a scout’s kit a few miles back. They’re adjustable focal lenses. High-end tech. I fixed the bridge.” He set them on the floor and slid them toward her with a trembling hand, then immediately retreated back into his corner, hugging his knees. Perla stared at the glasses. She could barely see the frames from five feet away; they were just a dark smudge against the floorboards. She felt a surge of irritation— how dare this stray, this boy, see the one weakness she tried so hard to hide? But as the wind rattled the house and the poisonous gas scratched at the window seals, her selfless nature warred with her pride. If a patrol drone spotted them because she couldn’t read the long-range scanners, they were both dead. She stepped forward, her taller frame casting a shadow over him. She picked up the glasses. When she slid them on, the world snapped into terrifying, beautiful clarity. She could see the individual curls of his hair, the flecks of gold in his pearl-blue eyes, and the deep, anxious lines of exhaustion on his face. She could also see how much he was shaking.
