Chapter One: Twenty-Three Percent

The storm drew closer. The sky looked as if a giant iron hand had crushed it. City broadcasts began looping warnings. All surface personnel were ordered into shelters. Leon walked north along an abandoned transport line. The old mining zone there was marked red on every map: unstable geology, radiation leakage, condemned equipment. It was also the only place he could be alone. Three hours later, the storm swallowed the city. In the scrap yard of the old zone, Leon climbed into the cockpit of a dead excavator. Half the canopy was gone, and it could not stop all the sand, but it hid him from patrol drones. He opened his pack and took out his father's military tag. VOSS, ELIAS. Solar Federation Marine Mech Corps.