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Prologue
They said the world burned in seven days. Not in the fires of war, though war was its match, but in a quiet, merciless fever. They called it "Rust." It didn't kill flesh, it devoured the very essence of things—memory, connection, the soul. The technologies that had united humanity into a single digital mind became its tomb. Networks collapsed, taking with them laws, governments, history. Knowledge stored in the clouds dissolved like smoke.
All that remains is the Wasteland. An endless sea of scorched earth beneath a bleak, eternally ash-covered sky. And people, doomed to wander through the ruins of a great yesterday, unable to remember tomorrow.

Part One: The Scorpion's Trail
Chapter 1
Sand was everywhere. It grated on his teeth, clogged the folds of his threadbare coat, and blinded his eyes. Artyom squinted, peering into the shimmering horizon. His world was limited by that horizon, plus a couple of empty plastic bottles at his belt and the heavy knife slung across his back.
He was heading east. So said the map he'd found three lunar cycles ago in a wrecked van. The map wasn't made of paper—the paper had long since rotted away—but scratched onto a piece of tin. To the east, at a spot marked by a stylized sun, was supposed to be the "Oasis." The final myth of a dying humanity.
The wind carried a familiar, sickeningly sweet scent to him. Artyom froze, his hand instinctively reaching for the handle of his knife. He knew that smell—rotting flesh and chemicals. The Flower of the Wasteland.
He climbed the next dune ridge and saw it. A settlement, if one could call it that. Fifteen shacks, cobbled together from rusty sheets and rotten wood. Now it was nothing more than a funeral pyre. The black, charred skeletons of the buildings smoked, filling the air with soot. In the center, in the square, stood a pole, and upon it lay the body of an old man, contorted with pain and terror. A symbol was burned into his forehead: a scorpion.
“A nest,” Artem thought with a chill in his stomach.
They were the nightmare of the Wasteland. Not bandits—they wanted food and ammo. The Nest was a cult, worshiping the Wasteland itself. They believed the Rust was a divine cleansing, and the survivors were a mistake to be righted. Their leader, a legendary figure no one had ever seen, was named Scorpion.
Artyom was about to give the settlement a wide berth, but his gaze fell on the well. Water. Possibly the only source for miles around. The risk was madness, but thirst is the best guide.
He descended the ridge silently, blending into the shadows. The air was thick and heavy. The silence was broken only by the crackling of cooling coals and the persistent buzz of flies. He had almost reached the well when he heard a groan.
Quiet, barely audible, like the last breath of the earth.
A thin, pale hand stuck out from under the pile of rubble.

Chapter 2
He didn't want this. To interfere would be to sign his own death warrant. But his feet carried him to the pile of rubble. He tossed aside the charred beam and saw her.
A girl. About ten years old. Her face was smeared with soot and blood, her eyes huge and full of silent terror. She clutched a rag doll with a severed head to her chest.
They looked at each other - a grown, hardened man who had seen all the horrors of this world, and a child who had just lost everything in it.
“Quiet,” Artem whispered, and his own voice seemed hoarse and alien to him.
He extended his hand. The girl recoiled, huddling deeper into the shelter.
“I will not harm you,” he said, and for the first time in many years these words were not a lie.
Suddenly, from the other side of the square, came the sound of horse hooves and rough laughter. The Nest had returned. To check their trophies.
Artyom grabbed the girl, hugged her, and covered her mouth with his hand. He darted to the nearest dilapidated shack, squeezed through a gaping hole in the wall, and pressed himself to the soot-sticky ground.
A trio of horsemen rode into the settlement. They were dressed in rags stitched together with leather and fur, their faces hidden by masks made of animal skulls. A necklace of human fingers dangled around the leader's neck.
"Look, the old man's still moving!" one of them laughed hoarsely, pointing at the body on the pole.
The leader jumped off his horse and walked up to the post.
"The Wasteland accepts its children, old man. Thank Scorpion for his mercy." His voice was raspy, like the scraping of metal. He pulled out a long, curved dagger.
Artyom felt the girl's body shake with silent sobs. He covered her eyes with his hand, but couldn't look away himself.
He was a hunter, a survivalist. He had seen death. But this was different. This was a ritual. A desecration.
The horsemen, having completed their task, began to search the ashes for loot. One of them headed toward their hiding place.
Artyom held his breath. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife. He knew that if he fought, his chances were zero. But he couldn't let them find the girl.
The footsteps were approaching. Artyom saw a shadow falling on the ground in front of him.
And at that moment, somewhere on the outskirts, a loud clang was heard—one of the riders had knocked over a bucket. The one approaching them froze, turned, and shouted, "What's that?"
"Hurry up! I think we've found the cellar!" came the reply.
The shadow retreated. Artyom held his breath until the footsteps faded into the distance. He waited a few more minutes until the riders, having found a few cans of food, galloped away with a whoop.
Only then did he let go of the girl. She looked at him, and the former horror was no longer in her eyes. There was cold. Emptiness. The same one that had lived inside him for so many years.
“What is your name?” he asked quietly.
She remained silent, clutching her headless doll.
"Lana," she finally whispered. "My name is Lana."
Artyom nodded. He pulled a nearly empty flask from his bag, took a sip, and handed it to her.
- Drink, Lana. We're leaving here.
“Where to?” Her voice was indifferent.
Artem looked to the east, where the sky was beginning to turn crimson with the sunset.
— Where there is sun.

Part Two: The Road Through the Shadow
Chapter 5
The days merged into a monotonous journey of pain and thirst. Lana barely spoke. She followed Artyom like a small shadow, mechanically moving her legs. He taught her everything he knew: how to find water in dry riverbeds, how to distinguish edible roots from poisonous ones, how to move without leaving traces.
He wasn't a father. He didn't feel a father's tenderness. He was a beast, with a helpless cub attached to him. And that cub became his greatest vulnerability and his only reason for not giving up.
One night, hiding in a cracked concrete tunnel, she spoke.
"They came at dawn. From the sky, on winged machines. Grandpa said they were helicopters. That they were like that before... before everything. They came down and started gathering everyone. Grandpa hid me in a potato stash."
She fell silent, looking at the flames of the fire.
— Then... then there was a man. In a silver mask. He spoke quietly. He asked Grandfather: "Where is the Archive?" Grandfather said he didn't know. Then he... he ordered him to be hanged. And to paint a sign.
Artem went cold.
— Archive? What is this?
Lana shrugged.
"Grandfather said this is the place where the world's memories are hidden. That it needs to be found for everything to be good again. But that's a fairy tale. Like the Oasis."
— What about the man in the mask? Did he give his name?
— They obeyed him. Everyone obeyed him. They called him... Scorpio.
The fire crackled, throwing up a shower of sparks. A scorpion. Not a myth, not a ghost. Flesh and blood. And he was searching for something. Something that might be real.

Chapter 6
The wasteland had its own surprises in store. They stumbled upon a machine graveyard—endless rows of petrified skeletons stretching to the horizon. Among them, they found refuge.
An old, rusty bus, sunken in sand up to its wheels. The inside was relatively clean. Someone had left a tattered notebook on the seat.
Artyom picked it up. The paper was fragile, the ink faded. But it was somewhat legible.
The rust wasn't accidental. It was a shield. They feared the Artificial Intelligence they'd created. They feared it would consume them. So they unleashed a virus to kill it. But the virus got out of control. It devoured not only networks, it devoured the very memories that bind us together...
"...The archive isn't a place. It's a person. The last carrier. The genetic key..."
The recording cut off.
Artyom stared at the lines, and the pieces of the puzzle began to form in his mind. "Rust" wasn't a disease, but a weapon. And "The Archive"... a carrier? A key to what?
He looked at Lana, curled up on the seat, sleeping, clutching her doll. Her grandfather knew something. And Scorpio had killed him for it.
He stepped off the bus. The night was moonless, the stars shining with an incredible, frightening brightness. He looked at these silent luminaries and felt his personal mission—to reach the Oasis—take on a new, terrifying meaning.
He was no longer simply fleeing the horrors of the Wasteland. He was pursuing a solution. And the Shadow of this world itself was hunting for that solution.
The wind carried a distant but familiar sound to him. Not the wind, not an animal. It was a steady, low-frequency hum. The hum of an engine.
Artem rushed into the bus and grabbed Lana.
- Wake up! They're here!
They jumped out. In the west, three dark silhouettes were clearly visible in the starry sky. Helicopters. And they were flying straight toward them.
There was nowhere to run. The car graveyard was the perfect trap.
Artyom looked around in panic. His gaze fell on a huge trailer lying on its side. The cargo hatch was slightly open.
"There!" He pulled Lana along with him.
They squeezed into a narrow gap, finding themselves in absolute darkness. Within seconds, the roar became deafening. The light from powerful spotlights pierced the darkness, gliding across the rusty hulls.
Artyom pressed Lana against the cold metal, feeling her tiny heartbeat. He peered through the hatch. One of the helicopters hovered directly above the bus. Several figures in tactile gear descended from it on ropes. Not the savages from the Nest. Professionals.
They burst onto the bus. A moment later, a short burst of machine gun fire rang out. They found a notebook.
One of the soldiers stepped out and said something into the radio. The spotlight picked out his figure. And Artyom saw on his shoulder not a burnt-out scorpion, but a neat, computer-generated patch: a scorpion enclosed in a circle, and the abbreviation beneath it: "P.K.B."
The Wasteland wasn't just chaos. It had structure. Hierarchy. And Scorpio stood at its pinnacle.
The helicopters, unable to find them, departed as suddenly as they had appeared. The silence returned, even more ominous.
Artem and Lana emerged from their hiding place. The bus was riddled with bullets.
"Who are they?" Lana whispered.
"A storm," Artyom replied, looking into the darkness where the lights had vanished. "And we're heading straight for its epicenter."
He took her hand, and they set off east again. But now their path was illuminated not by the mythical hope of an "Oasis," but by the cold fire of truth. They carried something within them. Knowledge. A secret. And this secret was being hunted.
And ahead, beyond the horizon, the sun of the Wasteland shone dimly.
What a great start! Let's continue our dive into the dark world of the Wasteland.

Part Three: Bones of the Old World
Chapter 7
The wasteland was changing. Smooth sands and dunes gave way to rolling, rocky terrain, strewn with concrete fragments and twisted rebar. These were the outskirts of one of the Ancient Cities. The tin map was becoming increasingly incomprehensible—the landmarks it had marked had been obliterated by time and disaster.
The water was running low. The canned food they'd found on the bus had long since run out. Hunger had become their constant companion, quiet and haunting, like the whisper of the wind through the broken windows of skeletal skyscrapers.
Lana seemed to have discovered a resource beyond her years. Her eyes, initially blank, were now constantly in motion, scanning the landscape. She learned to find edible lichens on rocks and identify possible nests by bird droppings.
"Artem," her voice was hoarse from lack of water. "Look."
She pointed to a flock of vultures circling nearby. Where there are scavengers, there is prey. Or death.
They followed the direction the birds indicated and soon came across the wreck of a truck that had crashed into the wall of a dilapidated building. Next to it lay the carcass of a mutated antelope—its body twisted unnaturally, and black foam oozing from its mouth—a clear sign of infection.
“Don’t touch,” Artem said curtly.
But it wasn't the corpse that caught his eye, but the truck itself. It wasn't just any truck, but a military transport. Remnants of camouflage paint were visible on its side.
Leaving Lana in hiding, Artyom carefully approached the cabin. The door hung by one hinge. Inside sat a skeleton in a decayed uniform, strapped in with belts. A pistol was clutched in his hand. A neat hole appeared in his temple.
“He chose a bullet over the Wasteland,” flashed through Artyom’s mind.
He searched the cabin. No ammo, no food. But in the glove compartment, he found something that made his heart pound. Not a paper map, but a real, working *tablet*. Or rather, its casing. The screen was dark and cracked, but the device itself seemed intact. And most importantly, it had a small solar cell attached.
Artyom's heart began to pound. Technology from the Before Age was extremely rare and precious. Most of it had rusted away—turned into useless junk. But military equipment sometimes held up.
He grabbed the tablet and returned to Lana.
“What is this?” she asked in surprise.
"Probably a one-way ticket," he muttered, unscrewing the solar panel and pointing it at the fading sun.
They sat until deep twilight. Artyom kept his eyes fixed on the dark screen. And then, as the last ray of sunlight glided across the panel, a tiny green dot flickered on the screen. Then another. And another.
With a hiss and a crackle, the screen flashed a dim blue light.
He worked.

Chapter 8
The interface was spartan and half-locked. Most of the files were either deleted or encrypted. But one folder was open. It was labeled "OPERATION PHOENIX FLAME."
Inside was a single file—a raster image of a map. But it wasn't the primitive diagram Artyom had. It was a detailed satellite map of the area, complete with coordinates. And on it, a bright, pulsating dot, glowed their target. "Oasis." It was real.
But the joy was short-lived. A red icon flashed next to their current position on the map: "ZONE KV-17. QUARANTINE. HIGH-LEVEL DANGER."
And at that very moment, a drawn-out, inhuman howl erupted from behind a nearby hill. Not a wolf, not a jackal. It was a blood-curdling sound. A sound Artyom had heard only once, many years ago, and hoped never to hear again. A sound that the Wasteland elders called "The Golem's Roar."
Mutants. Not just large or powerful beasts. Something worse. It was said that in some Exclusion Zones, where the "Rust" had consumed not only data but matter itself, creatures stitched together from flesh, metal, and pain still roamed. Fragments of failed experiments, or the creations of the "Rust" itself.
"Let's run!" Artem shouted, grabbing Lana's hand and ripping the tablet from its charger.
They rushed away, deeper into the stone labyrinth of the ruined city. Behind them, the roar grew louder—heavy, sprawling footsteps, the clang of claws on concrete.
Artyom didn't look back. He knew that to see this would be to go mad. They dove into the first opening they came to—an underground passage littered with rubble. Behind them, something massive crashed into the opening, collapsing the roof with a roar. The rockfall cut them off from their pursuer.
They sat in pitch darkness, listening to the monster outside, roaring and tearing apart the remains of the wall. The tablet, fallen to the floor, cast a dim light on Lana's face. It was pale, but focused.
"We... we live?" she whispered.
"For now, yes," Artyom breathed heavily. "But we're trapped. And our target is now on the other side of this... this whatever it is."
He picked up his tablet. The map showed that this underground passage was part of an old tunnel system that ran through the entire city. Directly beneath the Quarantine Zone.
They had no choice.

Chapter 9
The tunnels were a realm of darkness, dampness, and creaking sounds. The air was heavy and smelled of rust and death. They walked for hours, guided only by the dim light of their tablet.
Lana, clinging to Artem, suddenly said quietly:
- I'm afraid.
Artyom wanted to respond with something cheerful and familiar—"everything will be fine"—but the words stuck in his throat. Lying began to feel like blasphemy.
"Me too," he managed to choke out. And there was more truth and power in that simple phrase than in all his previous assurances.
This confession seemed to erase the last barrier between them. Lana squeezed his hand tighter.
They soon came across a branch—a reinforced door with a dim sign reading "SERVER UNIT 7." The door had been forced open, not from the outside, but from the inside. Something had burst out.
Chaos reigned inside. Torn-up server racks, severed wires, traces of a strange, corrosive slime on the walls. And in the midst of this chaos, another skeleton in a hazmat suit. Clutched in his hand wasn't a gun, but a small, flash-drive-like device with a blinking red LED.
Artem picked it up. Engraved on the body were: "Dr. E. Lis, Phoenix Project. Identification Key."
Phoenix. Same operation as on the tablet.
He inserted the flash drive into the port on the tablet. The screen vibrated, and a new message appeared:
"Emergency protocol activated. Genetic key carrier detected within 5 meters. Initiating identification procedure..."
Artem and Lana exchanged glances.
"...Identification complete. Greetings, host Lana M. Access to the Archive granted."
They froze, looking at these lines. The air grew cold. The sounds of the tunnel receded.
Archive. It wasn't Lana. It was in Lana. In her genes. She was the key Scorpio was looking for.
Outside, through the rubble, the distant, chilling Roar echoed again. But now it wasn't the only threat. Artyom carried the most terrifying monster with him, holding the hand of a little girl who looked at him with huge eyes full of trust and terror.

Part Four: The Burden of Blood
Chapter 10
The silence in the server room grew thick, viscous, like tar. Artyom looked at Lana, a piece of his dry rations sticking in his throat. She wasn't looking at the tablet. She was looking at him, and the last spark of childish ignorance slowly faded in her eyes, replaced by a cold, bottomless understanding.
"Is... is it me?" Her voice was thin as a spider's web. "I am the Archive?"
The words on the screen burned into his retinas. "Carrier Lana M." Not a place. Not a device. A girl. Her DNA. Her blood. Her brain, her bones—all of it was simply a container for something infinitely greater. For the world's memories that Scorpio so craved.
Artem abruptly pulled out the flash drive. The screen went dark, plunging them into near-total darkness, broken only by the dim glow of the emergency lights on the dead servers.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “You’re Lana. Just Lana. Everything else is just… words in a dead machine.”
But it was a lie, and they both knew it. Her grandfather knew it. She was killed for it. Helicopters and mutants were hunting for it. She was the most valuable and most dangerous creature in the entire Wasteland.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why me? What’s in me?”
"I don't know. And we don't want to know. Our goal is the Oasis. Everything else is irrelevant."
He spoke with a strength he didn't feel. Their journey was no longer simply a flight to a mythical refuge. Now they were leading a ghost, a shadow of the past, that could either destroy them, or... He didn't allow himself to think "either."
A new sound came from outside—not a roar, but a persistent, methodical grinding. The stones in the rubble were slowly shifting. The golem hadn't gone away. It was digging.

Chapter 11
There was nowhere to run but deeper. The tablet, reconnected to the flash drive, showed a map of the tunnels. One of them, marked "Service Entrance A-6," led to the old metro, which would take them beyond the city and the Quarantine Zone.
They moved by touch, crouched. The air grew increasingly stale, smelling of mold and something chemical. Lana walked, holding Artyom's hand, her fingers icy.
"He talked... Grandfather," she suddenly spoke, as if in a dream. "Sometimes, before bed. He talked about fire that doesn't burn, but heals. About a library where books read you. And about a garden under a glass dome where apples grow, like before... before everything."
Artyom was silent, listening. These were fragments, childhood memories filtered through the prism of a fairy tale. But there was truth in them. The truth about "Oasis." Or about "The Archive."
"He said the key couldn't be given up. Never. Otherwise, the world would burn again. With real fire."
The scraping noise behind them grew louder. The golem was pushing its way through the rubble. They had minutes left.
Finally, they emerged at an abandoned subway station. The platform was littered with bones and debris. In the middle stood an old, rusty train, firmly embedded in the tracks. Its doors were open.
"There!" Artem pointed to the tunnel behind the train.
They squeezed between the cars and jumped onto the tracks. And at that moment, a light fell on them from the platform. Not dim, but bright, white, following them.
A camera on a mechanical mount descended from the ventilation grille above. Its lens, as if alive, focused on Lana.
"Carrier detected," came a mechanical, soulless voice from the camera's speaker. "Remain where you are. Help is on the way."
The tracking system. It's been here all this time, in the dungeon, powered by its own batteries. And it betrayed them.
Behind them, at the end of the platform, the last barrier collapsed with a crash. In the opening, bathed in emergency light, the Golem's enormous, shapeless shadow appeared.
And from the tunnel ahead, the growing roar of engines could already be heard. Scorpio's "help."
They were trapped. From both sides.

Chapter 12
"Get on the train!" Artem shouted.
They crashed into the nearest car. Artyom immediately started pulling the levers in the driver's cabin. Everything was dead. No power, no response.
The golem stepped onto the platform. Its form was a monstrous hybrid of bear and industrial robot—steel claws, hydraulic muscles, a single red sensor eye in the center of its forehead. It let out that ear-splitting howl.
An armored all-terrain vehicle on huge wheels emerged from the tunnel. A soldier wearing a mask and a P.K.B. insignia emerged from the hatch.
"Carrier! Surrender! You will not be touched!" he shouted.
Lana pressed herself against the wall of the train car, her face contorted with horror. Artyom stood before her, clutching his knife. The fight was pointless. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.
And then his gaze fell on the control panel. Not the main levers, but a small, almost invisible button with a shield and lightning bolt icon. "Emergency pulse. For countering HF-level threats only."
Threats... like Golem.
It was madness. A drowning man's last attempt to grasp at straws.
"Close your eyes!" he shouted at Lana and punched the button with all his might.
Nothing happened.
The golem took a step toward their carriage. The soldiers jumped onto the platform.
And suddenly, all the lights on the panel lit up with a blinding white light. The air crackled with static. Blinding arcs of lightning erupted from the ceiling, walls, and rails, merging into a single, continuous cocoon of energy.
A deafening roar rang out—this time not of rage, but of pain. Light struck the Golem, causing its skeleton to emerge through its flesh. The monster convulsed, its metal melting, its flesh charring.
The soldiers fell to the ground, shielding their faces from the flash of light. Their electronics momentarily malfunctioned.
The pulse lasted no more than five seconds. Then the light went out, and silence fell, even more deafening than the previous roar.
On the platform lay a charred, smoking mess that had once been the Golem. The soldiers rose slowly, disoriented.
Artem, blind and deaf, grabbed Lana.
— Let's run! Before they come to their senses!
They jumped out of the carriage on the other side and rushed into the darkness of the tunnel, leaving behind smoke, ash and the screams of soldiers.
They were on the run again. But now Artyom understood: they didn't just carry a secret. They carried a spark within them. A spark that could both destroy the Wasteland and restore it. And this spark would be hunted to the very end.
And in the pocket of his coat lay Doctor Fox's flash drive, cold and heavy as sin.

Part Five: The Shadow of the Scorpion
Chapter 13
They ran until there was no air left in their lungs and no strength left in their legs. The subway tunnel gave way to an old drainage system, then to abandoned sewers. The water dripping from the ceiling was clean, almost odorless. It was the first good sign in a long time.
Finally, a glimmer of light appeared ahead. Not artificial, but sunlight. They crawled out of a round hole in the concrete, hidden behind a thicket of thorny burdock, and gasped.
The wasteland is over.
Before them lay a valley, covered not with parched grass, but with a lush, emerald carpet. In the distance, a veritable forest rustled with leaves. The air was fresh and clean, filled with the sweet scent of blooming plants. The sky here was not a pale yellow, but blue.
“Oasis...” Lana whispered, and for the first time her voice sounded hopeful, not fearful.
But Artyom didn't relax. His eyes, accustomed to scanning for danger, noticed details. The neatly trimmed trees lining the valley. The absence of any footprints on the soft ground around their shelter. It was too idyllic a scene. Too pristine.
He pulled out his tablet. The map showed they were there. The Oasis's pulsating dot matched their coordinates. But something was wrong.
“Wait here,” he ordered Lana, leaving her in the shelter of the drainage pipe.
He crawled through the tall grass like a snake, exploiting every fold in the terrain. After several hundred meters, he reached the edge of the forest and froze.
The forest was unnaturally quiet. No birds, no insects. And between the tree trunks, he saw them. Cameras. Small, disguised as birds' nests or growths on the bark. Wires running into the ground.
This wasn't an "Oasis." It was a trap. A perfectly preserved piece of nature, set out as bait.
He crawled back, but it was too late.
Three men in foliage-colored camouflage emerged silently from behind the trees. Their movements were precise, synchronized. They weren't savages from the Nest or PKB soldiers. These were professionals on a different level.
One of them approached the drainage pipe.
"Come out, host. You will not be harmed. Doctor Scorpio is waiting."

Chapter 14
They were led through the forest along a hidden path that led to a rock formation skillfully disguised as a hill. The rock moved silently, revealing the entrance to an illuminated tunnel. Pure, white light, a smooth floor, sterile air. This wasn't the Wasteland. This was a technological paradise hidden underground.
They were led into a spacious office with a glass wall overlooking an underground garden—the very one with the apple trees under the dome that Lana's grandfather had mentioned. A man sat at a desk in the office.
He wore a simple white uniform with no insignia. His face was youthful and smooth, but his eyes... his eyes were old. Impossibly old. They held centuries of pain, knowledge, and chilling determination.
"Lana. Artem. I'm Elias. Welcome to Eden." His voice was quiet, calm, almost fatherly. He wasn't wearing a silver mask.
"You... Scorpio?" Lana breathed, pressing herself against Artem.

The man named Elias smiled sadly.
"That's what they call me outside. Not the most flattering nickname for a gardener, is it?"
He walked up to the glass wall.
"Rust" wasn't a virus, my children. It was... an immune reaction. The world was trying to cure itself of cancer. The cancer was humanity. Its greed, its stupidity. I... we... were trying to create an Artificial Intelligence that would become the planet's new mind. A Guardian. But we rushed it. The system spiraled out of control and began "zeroing out" everything connected to the previous civilization. Including our own memories.
He turned to them.
"The 'Archive' isn't data. It's a reset key. The genetic code that allows us to disable the 'Rust' and reconnect with what's left of us. With the AI that now sleeps, buried in the depths of the network. Your grandfather, Lana, was one of us. He hid the key in the safest place—in the future. In you."
"Then why kill? Why burn settlements?" Artem asked defiantly.
Elias sighed.
"Because Rust isn't the only threat. There are other... factions. Fragments of the old world. They're hunting the Key, too. Not to restore the world, but to subjugate it. I can't let them find Lana. Sometimes you have to burn a field to save the harvest from locusts."
His logic was impeccable and therefore even more monstrous.
"What will happen to Lana?" Artem asked, feeling cold sweat running down his back.
Elias looked at the girl with almost tender regret.
"The extraction procedure is... complex. The key cannot be copied. It can only be activated. And this requires... a sacrifice. The host's consciousness will become the bridge. The body... alas, will not survive contact with a pure mind."
The silence in the office became absolute. Lana looked at Elias, her face slowly freezing into a mask of horror. They wouldn't kill her. They were using her. Like a battery. Like a consumable.
“No,” Artem said quietly, stepping back and shielding her with his body. “No way.”
Elias shook his head.
"You have no choice, hunter. This is not simply my will. It is necessity. The price of humanity's rebirth."
— What right do you have to decide at what cost?!
"The right of the one who founded it!" Elias's voice took on a steely edge for the first time. "The Phoenix Project is my brainchild! I am Doctor Elias Fox! And I will right my wrongs, even if I have to burn the last remnants of humanity to rebuild it anew!"
He pressed a button on the desk. The office doors opened and the guards entered.
Lana's fate was sealed.

Part Six: Phoenix
Chapter 15
They were separated without cruelty, but with merciless efficiency. Lana was led deeper into the complex, and Artem into a clean, empty cell, more like a hospital ward. The door closed silently behind him.
Despair, sharp and physical, gripped his throat. He walked up to the mirrored wall—of course it was mirrored glass. He punched it. The glass didn't even flinch.
"The price of humanity's rebirth." Elias's words hung in the air. Rational. Inhuman. And in their monstrous logic—impeccable.
But Artyom didn't see humanity. He saw the frightened eyes of a girl in a burning village. He felt her small hand trustingly squeeze his fingers in the darkness of the tunnel. He heard her quiet voice: "I'm afraid."
And he replied, "Me too."
He was just a hunter. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't supposed to save the world. His world had shrunk to one person. And that world was being taken away from him.
He glanced again at his reflection in the mirror—the haggard, scarred face of an outsider in a world he'd never understood. And suddenly his gaze fell on the pocket of his coat. The very one containing Dr. Fox's flash drive.
"Identifier key".
He pulled it out. A cold piece of metal and plastic. A gateway to the heart of the system.
He looked around his cell. There were no visible panels or outlets. But in the corner, near the floor, there was a barely noticeable ventilation panel. The grate was screwed in place.
Artyom's heart began to pound. He pulled out his knife—a trusty, tried-and-true blade that had traversed the entire Wasteland. The blade was strong, and the handle was metal. He inserted the tip of the blade into the Phillips head of the screw and pressed. The screw gave way.
Five minutes of intense work—and the grate was removed. Behind it lay a narrow ventilation tunnel. Dark and cramped.
Without thinking, Artem crawled into it.

Chapter 16
Lana was afraid. But strangely, this fear now felt quiet and accepted. She was placed in a room that resembled a laboratory. In the center stood a chair, surrounded by flickering screens and mechanical manipulators. A thin bracelet was placed on her wrist.
"The procedure is painless," the technician said, his voice indifferent. "Your consciousness will become part of something great. The foundation of a new world."
"What will happen to my world?" Lana asked quietly. "What about Artem?"
The technician remained silent, turning away to the screen.
The door opened and Elias walked in. He looked at Lana not as a person, but as a rare, priceless artifact.
"The time has come, my child," he said softly. "Your sacrifice will usher in a new era."
"You're not a god," Lana whispered. "You're just a scared old man who burned the world down to feel powerful."
Elias's eyes flashed with anger for a moment, but he immediately controlled himself.
"Wise words for a child. Too bad they won't change anything."
He nodded to the technician. The manipulators around the chair began to move.

Chapter 17
The ventilation shafts were a labyrinth. Artyom crawled toward the sound—muffled voices and the hum of equipment. He navigated using the tablet, which had miraculously not been taken away. The complex map was blocked, but the energy flow diagram was accessible. The most powerful flow was directed toward a single room: the "Initiation Hall."
He found the grate leading into it. The room was filled with equipment. And in the center, in a chair, sat Lana. Her face was pale but determined. Elias stood nearby.
"Stop!" Artem shouted, breaking down the bars and jumping out into the hall.
The guards raised their weapons. Elias turned slowly.
"Persistence is your strong point, hunter. But it's useless."
"I'm not saving humanity," Artem said, picking up the flash drive. "I'm saving her."
He plugged the flash drive into the nearest interface.
The system froze. The screens flickered. The emergency alarm went off.
"An ID conflict has been detected," a mechanical voice said. "Access with Dr. Fox's key has priority. Abort the procedure."
"What did you do?" Elias whispered.
"I gave the system a choice," Artem said. "Between your orders and the orders of its creator. Doctor Fox left you a clue, Elias. He didn't want this. He didn't want another victim."
The manipulators froze. The bracelet on Lana's wrist clicked open.
Elias stood there, his face white. His grand plan was crumbling in an instant because of a piece of plastic he'd dismissed as trash.
“It’s impossible...” he whispered. “I... I have to...”
He looked at Artyom, and his eyes flashed with the rage of someone who had lost too much to back down. He grabbed a surgical scalpel from the table and rushed toward Lana.
There was no shot. Just a dull thud. Artyom stepped between them, taking the blade into his body. It sank deep, under his ribs.
He looked into Elias's shocked eyes.
“A mistake... cannot be corrected... by another death...” he said with difficulty.
Elias stepped back, his hand loosening. He looked at the blood on his fingers, at Artyom falling, at Lana freed. And before his eyes, it wasn't just an idea that collapsed. The meaning of his entire long life had collapsed.
He slowly sank to his knees.
Lana rushed towards Artem.
- No no!
Artyom smiled at her, and there was no pain in his eyes. There was only calm.
"Go..." he whispered. "Find your garden... without glass..."
His hand loosened. He looked into her eyes until his own gaze faded.
Lana raised her head. She looked at the fallen Elias, at the flickering screens, at the body of the man who had become her only family in this cruel world.
And in the silence of a mad genius's shattered dream, a new era of humanity wasn't born. A new resolve was born. The resolve of one girl.

Epilogue
She emerged onto the surface alone. She carried a backpack with supplies, a tablet, and Dr. Fox's flash drive. The entrance to Eden was permanently sealed, and his heart had stopped.
The wasteland greeted her with the same pale sun and hot wind. But now she looked at it with different eyes.
She was no longer Lana, the frightened girl. She was no longer "the Archive" or "the Key." She was a keeper. A keeper of the memory of a man who chose to save one life over an abstract "humanity." A keeper of the truth about "Rust" and the fall. A keeper of a seed that might one day sprout.
She turned to face the east. Toward the real horizon. Not the mythical "Oasis," but the future she was destined to build. Not of glass and steel, but of sand and hope.
She took a step. Then another. The human footprint left in the sand was small, but infinitely stubborn.
The wasteland was silent. But now its silence held more than just wind. It held a promise.

Prologue (from the past)
"Final entry from Dr. Elias Lys. The Phoenix Protocol... failed. We were wrong. We thought we were creating a guardian, but we created an executioner. Rust does not stabilize AI... it devours everything in its path. It erases memory. Communication. The very soul of the world.
I have ordered a quarantine. We must bury this place. Bury our pride.
But the seed must be preserved. The key... the genetic cancellation code... we will hide it. In the future. In the next generation. Where "Rust" won't look for it. In life.
Forgive us all, Kate. Forgive me for breaking my promise. Forgive me for leaving you alone in a world we destroyed...
...The power system is failing. This is the end. I hope that one day someone will find our "Archive." Not to resurrect the past, but to avoid repeating our mistakes. To build something new. Something... more humane.
Goodbye."