Kirk once told me that Paris was the last of the great cities to fall.

When Zarathustra’s mighty armies marched across Europe, when the warriors of Man clashed against the cold machines they built with their own hands, no one bothered to think that the cause of all the world’s troubles lay beneath the catacombs of Notre Dame. She was born there, after all, from the brains of the world’s greatest, a genius entombed by her own gods.

Once they realized their mistake, the stars themselves fell from the sky, and the great warmind screaming from within the earth was finally laid to rest.

The war soon ended, and the ones left behind buried their troubles with the ghosts down below, and the fiery heart of hell became still and silent.

Kirk was a storyteller, if that wasn’t obvious enough. He liked to think he was a good one, too, though that depended a lot on who you asked.  The reality, however, was much less epic. Even now, the only signs that the “stars” might’ve fallen were the lake-sized craters scattered across the outskirts.

Paris was healing—a lot of cities were. The war ended nearly two hundred years ago. I’d ask him why that history would even matter if the world was better off moving forward than looking back. But that’s not how Kirk saw it. History was crucial to our job, he’d say, because if you didn’t know history, how could you know what was worth keeping and what was worth leaving behind?

I figured he didn’t like to forget. Sometimes I wished he would try.

The cold night air whipped past me as I ran my hoverboard to its breaking point. The dirty grey scarf around my neck threatened to tear itself away. My heart beat against my chest, and all the while, the butterflies in my stomach grew worse and worse. My hand grew hot and sweaty underneath its glove. I wanted to vomit.

It’s funny what you think about when you’re stressed. Supposedly, that’s what it feels like to be deathly afraid, but I’ve
risked my ass more times than I can count and never felt that way before. But I had no reason to worry, right?

He was always perfectly okay.

I crested a hill just outside the city, and took in the sight in front of me. Underneath the soft white light of the moon, Paris slept. Among the derelict structures scattered towards the black horizon, a few dim yellow lights flickered in and out. The campfires of squatters and scavengers, I figured, but I paid them only a second’s notice. Just long enough for my headset’s scanners to map the course to my objective.

A blinking circular marker appeared above the shadow of a large building with two towers jutting from its structure, one partially collapsed. I shifted my foot, pressing harder on the accelerator. The board’s engine whined, and an audible boom sounded off as more and more power pushed through its thrusters.

As the buildings grew in number around me, I slowed down only as much as I needed to bob and weave through half-buried streets. The wind pushed into me at each straightaway, and the pressure was threatening to knock me off.

My foot never left that accelerator. This is reckless. This is stupid. I shouldn’t be here. But no matter what I said, no matter how many commands my brain gave my body, I kept pushing onwards.

And I didn’t see the boulder-sized chunk of building until I hit.

The air rushed to greet me before my thoughts managed to catch up. I held my prosthetic arm outstretched, covering my face with the other. After a loud smack, I flipped into a roll and stopped on my back several feet away.

As I lay there for a few moments, my head spinning and my body aching, I checked everywhere I could and found only scrapes and a couple bruises. My prosthetic didn’t seem damaged, either, despite feeling a bit off.

I slowly rose to my feet, taking notice of the neat little crater in the cobblestone road behind me, and the hoverboard laying a few feet away. My rifle sat next to it, and the spare magazines were scattered around the debris. There was a nice big crack in the headset, too, right down the side of the viewing pain, distorting the motion tracker.

If Ivan doesn’t have my head on a platter by morning, I’ll be surprised.

Sighing, I went over to the board and flipped it around. Battery’s shot, along with the mag-pads, I thought. Fuck me. Shitty old piece of junk.

A call came through the earpiece—Contact: IVAN VASILIEV. Mixed Signal, Intermediate Encryption read the description on the viewpane.

Speak of the devil.

“You’re burning my charge, Ivan,” I said.

“You mean the charge on my headset, Sarah?” The ringing in my ears as he screamed didn’t really help alleviate the building headache. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? And with my shit, no less?”

“Saving a valuable asset,” I spat. “Or would you rather lose your best scavenger to some old ruins and God knows what else is out here?”

“That machine is a waste of my time. Why you’re wasting yours to save that mu’dak is anyone’s guess.”

“His name is Kirk, you fucking tool.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass who he was,” he said. “Get the hell out of there right now and back to London, devochka, or I swear on my grave I will personally make sure that you and that idiot never work aga—”

“The only one wasting my time here is you, asshole.” I grabbed the headset and tossed it to the ground, crushing it underneath my boot. My gut told me it was high time to rip his head clean off his shoulders the next time I saw him, but my gut always said a lot of things.

Fortunately, I had no doubt then that Ivan wouldn’t come after me. The man made big talk of preserving his own life, but he never had the guts to stay put and keep it that way, especially when an important asset was on the line.

Which probably wasn’t Kirk, but I’d have to be enough for the two of us.

I took a deep breath before picking up my rifle and hoisting it over my shoulder. After grabbing what spare magazines I could find, I turned towards the large building before me. Notre Dame stood there in all its ruined glory, one of the last of the great monuments left behind after the war ran its course.

Even in its current state, the stories didn’t really do it justice.

The stone felt cold as I brushed my way past the debris covering the entryway. What remained of vaulted ceilings and enormous stone pillars was all that was left to greet me. I pressed forwards until a blinding white light flashed on all around me. I slung my rifle into my hands, flicking the safety off and resting my finger on the trigger, my vision slowly coming back into focus.

“Hello, Scavenger 461!”, rang a voice from all around. It was cheery, but not in any genuine way—more like the kind of thing you’d hear from stringent merchants, trying to hock their wares on people too stupid to listen past the fake happiness.

When my vision finally cleared, monitors decorating each pillar were filled with the image of a tall, lanky woman. Her practiced smile and calm, steady demeanor had me tense. She flicked a stray strand of her long brown hair over her ear as her eyes twinkled with malice.

“I can’t believe you made it this far!” She cleared her nonexistent throat. “Welcome to the headquarters of the Zeitgeist Corporation, the pioneers of a changing tomorrow! We are the voice of humanity’s future, and the iron shield of its prese—”

“I didn’t come all this way to hear your fucking slogan. Where the hell is Kirk?”

“Oh?” Her face grew dark, and her smile wicked. “Cheeky little rat, aren’t you? Maybe he’s forgotten all about you. Seeing you now would only stir up bad memories.”

I gritted my teeth. She giggled. “Well, if you want to see that machine so badly, I suppose there’s no reason why I shouldn’t let you.”

She snapped her fingers, and a black box rose from a pit dug neatly where the altar should’ve been, stopping just as a walkway extended towards its doors. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to it.” I hesitated. “Oh come on now. If I wanted you dead, then the rest is self-explanatory.

Unless you really want to sit there, doing nothing, helping no one. Just like everyone else. Well, that’s not entirely true—you’d be doing me a big favor, and that’s something almost no one does.”

Begrudgingly, I obliged.

Soon, I’d slowly made my way to the foot of the catwalk. Peering over the edge gave me little comfort—it extended far beyond what the light could touch, and the echoes from below were less than reassuring. “I wouldn’t look down, if I were you,” she said, snickering.

“Sixteen-oh-nine point-three-four-four meters isn’t really the kind of distance you want to fall. All that’ll accomplish is making me clean up the mess you would make, and my time is better spent brooding.”

I crossed the catwalk and entered the black box. A scissor gate closed automatically behind me, and after a sudden jerk, I began a slow descent into the unknown. Cobblestone walls surrounded me, but they eventually gave way to ancient brick and
metal.

“