Summer, 2446.
The sun blazed like it meant to burn the world clean.
Out across the endless Gobi, the ground was baked white-hot, heat rolling up in waves. From a distance, even the air looked twisted, like the whole wasteland was warping under the weight of the light.
Then came a roar.
From a stretch of land choked by gray fog, a heavy armored off-road vehicle burst out hard, savage and fast, tearing through the haze and kicking up a long tail of dust.
Right behind it, seven or eight aberrants came charging out in pursuit.
Those things stood two to three meters tall, wrapped head to toe in black vapor. Thick slime ran off their bodies and splattered onto the earth with a sharp sizzle, raising curls of corrosive white smoke.
The moment they were dragged into the harsh sunlight, they grew even more frenzied. They bared their fangs at the vehicle pulling away, snarling and snapping, every inch of them reeking of rage and unwillingness.
“Good chance. Rabbit, drop them!” a rough male voice bellowed.
“Got it!”
Inside the vehicle, a woman with short hair cut to her jaw rose from her seat. She had a heavy sniper rifle in hand. Clean motion, no wasted breath—she chambered a round and set herself.
The armored vehicle suddenly lurched backward, then swung through a sharp, beautiful drift, turning its nose around in one fierce move.
At the same time, the roof hatch snapped open.
The female sniper, callsign Rabbit, rose through the hatch and braced the rifle in one smooth motion. She found her support point fast and locked onto the target.
Bang—
Amid the flying yellow sand, one aberrant let out a shriek and crashed down the instant the shot rang out.
The brutal recoil kicked her upper body back, but she steadied at once, jaw tight, and shifted to the next target.
Sentinels were born with monstrous senses. To them, an aberrant’s movement path was clear as daylight.
“Beautiful! Kill the bastards!”
The big man driving let out a sharp whistle and kept the armored vehicle circling wide, drawing the monsters’ attention and keeping them chasing.
There were five people in the vehicle in all.
The man in the front passenger seat braced one arm against the window. His face was all hard lines and sharp edges, and under his brow sat a pair of deep-set eyes, cold and cutting as a blade.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
A few more shots cracked through the air.
Rowan Thorne turned his head and looked out the window.
The aberrants were all down.
In the back seat, the crew-cut young man sat steady, an old box hugged in both arms. “Captain, we got the thing. We heading back to base now?”
Rowan didn’t answer at once. He raised his left wrist and checked the terminal.
A long moment passed.
Then his expression tightened. His eyes narrowed a little, like a wolf catching a scent.
“We’re going near Contamination Zone Six.”
Contamination Zone Six?
The air inside the vehicle went stiff.
Rabbit snapped the roof hatch shut and dropped back into her seat with the rifle in her arms. “Captain, we’re low on supplies.”
“Yeah,” the big man driving muttered, hands locked on the wheel. “What are we going to Zone Six for?”
Another mission?
Rowan cut them a look. “Picking someone up.”
Everyone: “?”
...
After the twenty-second century, darkness fell without warning.
Power grids died across the world.
Strange contamination zones appeared. Aberrants came crawling out with them.
From that day on, the planet was dragged into a dark apocalypse that lasted two full centuries.
No light. No electricity. Monsters everywhere.
Humanity was driven to the brink more than once. Countless underground shelters fell.
Then, when things were at their worst, a small number of humans awakened special powers.
People gave them a name—
Sentinels.
Sentinels had bodies tougher than steel and senses sharp enough to peel the skin off the world.
But every time they used that power, they took one more step toward mutation. At the end of that road, dark matter would swallow them whole, and they would turn into the same man-eating monsters roaming the wasteland.
Once a sentinel mutated, it was far more dangerous than any ordinary aberrant.
Maybe that was why another kind of soldier had appeared.
People with immense spiritual power. People who could soothe a sentinel’s frayed mindscape, straighten out the chaos in a sentinel’s spirit, and calm them down.
Guides.
They were the backbone born for the dark age. But it was not until the tenth year after sentinels first appeared that the world saw its first guide.