Elsewhere in California, the ground had barely stopped trembling.
Even after the main earthquake, the aftershocks were still coming — relentless, unending.
Mid-March sunlight filtered weakly through a haze of concrete dust and smoke.
A row of aging apartnt buildings... structures that had stood for decades, now sagged inward, as if too tired to keep standing.
Chunks of brick and shattered glass were scattered across cracked pavent like fallen mories.
People stumbled into the streets in light jackets, disoriented and afraid.
So were bleeding, others crying as they clawed at the rubble with bare hands.
A teenager pulled desperately at a mangled railing.
An older man clutched his ribs, leaning against a tilted car and coughing into the dust.
Sowhere, soone was screaming nas into the chaos — but no one was answering.
Zero, Mina, and Jonathan stood at the edge of what had once been a three-story building.
Now, it was just a broken heap of concrete and twisted steel.
Mina stared at the wreckage, hands trembling in the cold March breeze, her expression etched with worry.
Jonathan stood beside her, brow tightly knotted, fists clenched at his sides.
Zero’s face was unreadable — his gaze locked on the ruins, as if bracing for the worst.
"Why is nobody fucking picking up when we call 911?!" Mina shouted, her voice cracking.
The sirens never ca.
Governnt, city, state, authority...
It seed no damn system was working anymore — not after the disaster hit so suddenly and without warning.
Did we go through all the trouble of getting into this place — searching for this shit Miles — only to end up just staring at the wreckage of where he might’ve been?
Mina’s thoughts swirled as helplessness began to take root.
That’s when Zero sudenly turned to Jonathan and said... calmly but firmly, "There’s nothing you or Mina can do here right now."
"Get out of the city. Try to contact the other branches. We’ll regroup at one of the company’s offices later."
"I’ll do what I can here, then follow after you."
Mina’s eyes widened at the order. She rushed to Zero and grabbed hold of him, clinging tightly.
Her eyes shimred with stubborn resolve, her body pressing firmly against his.
"No," she said, voice trembling. "I’m not going anywhere — not without you."
Jonathan, who had remained silent, looked away as he saw her reaction.
Still, he quietly agreed with the order.
The aftershocks hadn’t stopped. The Earth was still restless. And this instruction... it aligned with his own thoughts.
Zero didn’t respond to Mina. He simply kept his eyes on Jonathan.
And when he saw the flicker of understanding in Jonathan’s gaze, it was enough.
With a swift and decisive motion, Zero struck Mina at the nape of her neck. Her body went limp, and he gently caught her before she could fall.
Without a word, he carried her over to Jonathan.
They stared at each other for a brief mont. A silent exchange passed between them.
Then Jonathan took Mina into his arms and said, "I’ll make sure she stays safe... and I’ll do my best to handle the company’s situation, to the best of my ability."
Zero gave a simple nod.
And with that, Jonathan turned and left — carrying Mina away through the still-quaking city.
When they were finally out of sight, Zero turned back to the ruins—what had once been a building, now reduced to shattered concrete and twisted tal.
He stepped toward the wreckage and began clearing it piece by piece.
With every movent of his body, he analyzed the debris — sensing where he could dig safely, where he could apply pressure, and where it might collapse further.
His eyes scanned through layers of rubble, and deep within, he picked up faint traces of life.
Were any of them... Miles?
Zero didn’t know.
But even though this kind of manual recovery was slow and inefficient, he continued.
After all, his boss had given him a clear order: Contain. Don’t fall.
Well... helping soone like Miles , an important figure within the company, could very well fall under "contain," couldn’t it?
So, he wasn’t disobeying the order!
As he dug, Zero kept justifying his decision with a thousand interpretations of Christian’s words.
Using his Android body, He kept tearing through the wreckage, searching for the ones who were still alive.
What he didn’t know, however, was that so distance away, perched atop a building that had sohow survived the destruction, a man with amused eyes was watching him through a telescope... intently.
...
Ti passed. A few days later, in the state of Minnesota, inside a dimly lit eting room where a hologram of the Earth hovered in mid-air, sat Christian, Annabelle, Eva... and Olivia.
The situation had spiraled into deeper chaos.
What had started as earthquakes, with the governnt already slow to respond, had now evolved into sothing far more dangerous.
Small groups of people from other worlds, alongside the Liberation Front, were now working with ancient families and even certain personnel within the governnt, stirring the chaos even further by fighting among themselves.
Everything was going in an unknown direction, and peaceful tis seed less and less likely to return anyti soon.
That was why Olivia, fearing sothing might happen to her mother... or that shaless soone, had decided to visit and spend so ti with them.
[The official death toll has reached around fifty million so far. If we include those still buried under rubble or trapped in developing countries without support, the number is expected to surpass one hundred million.]
[If we also take into account the battles between outsider groups, ancient families, and the Liberation Front — conflicts that continue to escalate and claim lives, then we can safely add at least another ten million.]
All four listened in silence, to Iris, each wearing a different expression in response to the numbers.
Christian, however, wasn’t focused on the report.
His eyes were fixed on two darkened zones displayed on the holographic map — one in Africa, and the other in Arica.
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