Chapter 1: Tremor

"What the hell is happening?" The earth suddenly began to tremble, and Kyrian fell on his butt: "Is it an earthquake? Isn't this place built to withstand this kind of thing?!"

Kyrian looked around, feeling the ground and walls shaking intensely, instilling fear within his heart.

He was currently working underground, and as far as he knew, this was the most isolated room in the facility, the cleaning products room. The location was a highly renowned and important medical research institute worldwide, so it was expected that such places would have earthquake-resistant systems to mitigate tremors in such cases.

However, just the onset of tremors was enough to make Kyrian fall to the ground, and he could feel their strength increasing every moment. This made him wonder if they forgot to install this system in this room or if the tremors were so strong that even they couldn't dampen the impact.

It didn't take long for him to start rolling until he hit the walls of the room. Fortunately, the facility was very modern, and the benches, equipment, and other objects were integrated into the walls and only appeared when requested by someone.

"Wooooooo..." Suddenly an alarm sounded, and a red light could be seen through the door of the room.

"Attention everyone! This is a magnitude 15 earthquake! I repeat, a magnitude 15 earthquake! Everyone, prioritize heading to the safety compartment opened in your room, this is not a drill!" A woman's voice echoed loudly through all the institution's corridors.

"Safety compartment?" Kyrian, who was hugging his knees like a ball and being tossed from side to side, tried to find the entrance to this place but couldn't. He then shouted, "Room A90, where is the safety compartment?"

"I'm sorry, but this room does not have that type of installation due to the low possibility of posing a threat to human life." A robotic voice, neither male nor female, came from some speakers on the ceiling of the room: "But don't worry too much, even though the tremors are strong, this part of S.A.M.Y. is slightly distant from the central force, and according to my calculations, the chances of something happening in this room are less than 20%."

"Are the tremors even stronger in the rest of the lab?" Kyrian's heart beat faster, as he didn't even want to imagine the disaster of being in the other rooms: "What's the possibility of something happening to the other rooms?"

"About 90%."

"It's truly a catastrophe..." Kyrian sighed and held on as best he could while banging his back and limbs against the wall from time to time.

The tremors only ceased after five full minutes, during which Kyrian heard many thunderous noises coming from above and wondered if he could go back to the surface even if he survived in the end.

He took a deep breath and sat on the floor as he removed his jumpsuit halfway.

Kyrian is a mixed-race man, and injuries shouldn't be so apparent on his body, but it was easy to identify the various purple bruises scattered across his back, arms, and legs. His face was also quite battered, and his hair was disheveled.

"Fortunately, nothing serious happened to me." Kyrian assessed himself and didn't notice anything broken, at most he was very sore: "I hope another one of these doesn't happen anytime soon..."

"Very unlikely, seismic disturbances of this intensity don't occur easily." The robotic voice sounded again: "The internet connection has been cut, and I cannot determine the cause at the moment, but I suppose some meteorite hit the planet at a sensitive point."

"A meteorite? Shouldn't the government notify people to prepare for impact if that were the case?" Kyrian asked.

"Information of that level can cause panic in the population and trigger various consequences. And they can only try to divert the meteorite's path before it enters our orbit, but something probably went wrong and resulted in the current situation." The voice from room 90 sounded pensive.

'Why does this AI give me the feeling of being different from the others? Is it just in my head?' Kyrian looked thoughtfully at the ceiling: "Can you tell me the current situation of S.A.M.Y.?"

"Oh! Just a moment." A compartment opened in the room's ceiling, and a holographic device appeared, forming a screen in front of Kyrian: "The building on the surface no longer exists, nor does anything from the first to the fifth floor below ground, the sixth and seventh floors were heavily damaged, only the eighth and ninth had minor or no incidents."

Kyrian looked at the laboratory map with wide eyes and trembling hands. Most of it was gray, indicating total destruction of the area, while the rest alternated between red and green, with red being the predominant color, indicating partial destruction.

He stood there lost in thought for a while before coming back to his senses: "Room 90, if I or the survivors wanted to return to the surface, could we? Or were passages to the upper levels destroyed by the quake?"

As soon as he finished speaking, four images appeared on the holographic screen in front of him:

"There are four routes to the surface: the elevator, the regular and emergency stairs, and the air ducts. But according to my analysis, using the elevator to exit is impossible. The next option would be the stairs, which at this moment must be practically destroyed or close to it, so I do not recommend trying that route. There are also emergency stairs built with more resistant materials, so they may not be in very bad condition. And finally, there are the air ducts, which I consider the best escape route for you."

"The ducts?" Kyrian was responsible for cleaning the ninth floor, so he knew the way well: "It's a bit far, but along the way, I can check the rooms to see if I find survivors to leave with me."

"I have a better and much more useful idea than yours." The robotic voice from room 90 said: "If you take me to the central server room, I can instantly send a message to all the remaining active facilities in S.A.M.Y."

"Take you? How can I do that?" As Kyrian asked, he saw one of the walls open, and a supercomputer appeared in his view: "Wow!"

A kind of 3D machine started operating and quickly gave rise to something resembling a headset.

Kyrian quickly picked it up and put it on.

"Can you hear me? Hello?" The robotic voice no longer came from the ceiling but from the headset: "I think it worked..."

"You're really too odd to be just a common AI from a room like this." Kyrian looked thoughtfully at the supercomputer, which now showed no signs of activation: "But I don't care what you are, how you were created, or how you developed. Just help me get out of here, and we'll be square."

"I really like your way of thinking, Kyrian Astrion." The robotic voice underwent a slight change and became more feminine as it spoke this time: "And please, call me Ginta."