Bonus Chapter: The Man in the Storm, Part One

  John Rearden—Many Years Prior

  The morning sun painted the horizon with soft strokes of golden light. Birds chirped lazily, bees hovered with mechanical precision, and life, despite everything, crawled forward.

  John Rearden had been awake long before the world even thought to stir. Four a.m. like clockwork—splash cold water on his face, a quick rinse to wipe the grit from his skin, and out the door to the Rearden Quick Stop. Nowhere, Texas. A gas station in the middle of a dead land.

  His father had bought the place right after the War, back when the world still had a future to sell at discount prices. “Good investment,” he had said many times since. “People need to drive, son. No matter what else burns.” They’d sunk everything they had into it—every scrap of hope, every coin they could pull together, and even the promise of better days.

  Outside, two battered pumps stood like sentinels. Relics of a different time, just like everything else. John moved through the morning ritual, broom in hand, fighting against the eternal grime. Filth coated the world, blown in from the Dusts—what the locals called the fallout. The War had left its mark, and nothing, not even this desolate station, was spared.

  The Dust clung to every surface, a reminder that the past was never far away. He wiped at the countertops, but it was like trying to clean soot off memories—you could push it around, but it never really left.

  The War had left behind more than just dust and ruins. Famine crept in like a slow-moving shadow, a silent consequence of the world’s unraveling. It wasn’t the kind of war you read about in history books. John was just a kid when it ended, barely old enough to understand. The Unseen War, they called it. Not a single shot fired, but the damage was total.

  AI, disease, nuclear war, poisoned crops, entire landscapes scarred beyond repair. His grandfather used to tell stories about a time when technology made life easier. Machines that could do anything—read you books, drive your car, even plow your fields. Phones you could carry in your pocket, talk to anyone, anywhere, through invisible wires that crisscrossed the sky. It sounded like magic, and maybe it was. But Grandpa had sworn it was all real.

  That was before the AI hit, before everything crumbled. No one knew who built it, and every nation blamed the others. But someone, somewhere, had crafted the perfect weapon—a self-replicating, self-sustaining virus. It spread through the lifeblood of the world, adapting, evolving, consuming everything that ran on ones and zeros. Its purpose? Simple. To end life as we knew it.

  A thousand rumors swirled about how it had all started, each more outlandish than the last. Some claimed it was an AI engineered for war; others whispered it was just a social experiment, an AI built with a single goal—a clean, simple formula to smooth out every edge, to make everything fair. And that, quietly, imperceptibly, had brought the silence.

  John remembered watching a film about that once, a worn VHS he’d unearthed in a dusty junk shop, half the tape chewed up by time. Still, the message was clear—a machine sent back to erase humanity before it even had a chance. Pure fiction, sure, but as he watched, he couldn’t shake the feeling that some truth lay hidden in those flickering images.

  You’d think we might’ve learned something from it. But we didn’t. We just kept spinning in circles, the same mistakes looping back like a broken record stuck on the end of the world. AI could have been a marvel, something to solve problems, to ease lives. But instead, it was Prometheus’ fire all over again. A tool, yes—but also a weapon. Fire doesn’t have motives; it’s just fire, wild and strange, bending to the hand that wields it. It can feed, it can save, it can shield us from the cold, saving countless lives. It can kindle warmth and hope—or it can consume, destroy, burn us all.

  He set the needle down on a worn-out vinyl and the scratchy sound of a forgotten era crackled to life. It was some old blues tune—gritty, raw, with a voice that had seen more pain than joy. The singer’s rasp echoed through the empty lot, hanging in the air like smoke. Outside, the wind stirred the dust and sand, but the record spun steadily, its rhythm a heartbeat in a world that had lost its pulse.

  John wiped the jukebox, the Dust clinging stubbornly to the rag like it had a claim on the past. It was a family heirloom, carefully hidden by his father during the dark days of the Technopurge. The automations had long since given up the ghost, leaving him to swap out the records by hand. He didn’t mind. In a world where everything was slipping away, there was something solid about the needle hitting vinyl, a sound he could control, even if just for a moment.

  When John was a kid, electricity was still considered too dangerous, the Technopurge in full swing. You didn’t mess around with tech—not if you wanted to keep your head on your neck. Get caught with anything more advanced than a wind-up clock? Straight to prison, or worse. Even now, decades later, people whispered about the Purge, about what happened to those who tried to hold onto the past. But here was John, defying it in his own small way, playing a record on a machine that shouldn’t exist anymore, in a place that time had forgotten.

  A flicker of rebellion sparked in him, small but insistent. A tiny resistance to what was. Yet, beneath that, he knew—the world was far too weary, far too hollowed out by hunger and time to notice, let alone care.

  Over the past twenty years, the restrictions on technology had relaxed. Machines sputtered and whirred, pieced together from fragments that gleamed with a faint, alien sheen—as if they’d once brushed against stars. Scavengers with a sharp eye unearthed relics that bordered on myth: helicopters with sleek, worn lines, engines bearing faded emblems of some lost empire. Rumors floated that the old government was stirring to life again, reimagining New York’s hollowed towers, repurposing them into tight, makeshift homes. But the city’s pulse beat unevenly, half promise, half snare—a place as treacherous as the Dust that drifted endlessly beyond its borders.

  One rule, though, held firm. The line in the sand—the one that would get you killed, or worse—was any trace of AI, any hint of the old networks stirring back to life. The AI hadn’t come with guns or marching steel; it had slipped through circuits like a ghost, a flicker in every hard drive, every line of code. Even now, the world treaded lightly, skirting the raw edges of that wound, careful not to stir whatever might still lie hidden, biding in the wires.

  The world had crumbled, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but a collage of faded memories. His eyes drifted to the calendar nailed to the wall, yellowed and warped, claiming a year long past. Didn’t matter. It still served its purpose. By the marks he’d scratched into it, Thanksgiving was closing in—at least, that’s what he figured. The page showed a feast—turkey, mashed potatoes, a spread that could break your heart if you stared too long—a cruel echo.

  John felt its absence gnawing at him, a hollow ache in his gut, mirrored in the pale ghost of himself reflected in the station’s window. He was paler than he should be, given all his time in the sun. His father used to blame their gaunt frames on bad genes, but John knew the truth. Life stripped you bare, left nothing but bone, hunger, and the relentless grit of survival. The War had taken it all—everything but the Dust. And after a few generations, well, what could you expect?

  A familiar rumble broke the quiet as a beat-up old car wheezed into the lot, sputtering out its last breath of fuel. John straightened, wiping his hands on his jeans as he stepped outside. He recognized the car, but it wasn’t until the driver stepped out that the years peeled back.

  “Damn, John,” the man said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You look tired.”

  “Eli,” John nodded, eyes drifting to the car’s roof, weighed down with a mess of goods strapped under a weathered tarp. “You leaving town for good?”

  Eli gave a tired chuckle, but his eyes were heavy, worn down by more than just miles. “Nothing left to stick around for. Everything I own’s in that car,” he said, nodding toward the back seat, piled high with bags and odds and ends. “Town’s dead, man.”

  John wiped his hands again, more out of habit than need. “Where you headed?”

  “Greener pastures. South, maybe. West. Hell, I don’t even know. Just away. Figure I’ll keep driving till the road runs out.” Eli leaned against the car, staring out at the empty horizon. “There’s nothing left for me here, not since…”

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  John glanced at the car, the bags crammed wherever they could fit, then over at the empty passenger seat. He hesitated before speaking. “I’m sorry about Sarah.”

  Eli’s jaw tightened as his gaze locked on the horizon. He gave a brief nod, but no words came.

  “You sure about this?” John asked, the edge gone from his words. “Ain’t much left out there either. At least here, you’ve still got a few friends.”

  Eli let out a weary chuckle, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “This place... it’s as dead as the dreams we used to talk about. I can’t stick around just waiting for it to rot further. It’s going to take us all with it.” He turned, scanning the station, the old pumps standing like forgotten relics of a world that had long since moved on.

  John filled up the tank, the clink of gold and silver coins in his hand. After the War, everyone had gone back to what they knew held value—precious metals, ores, the old ways of trade. Paper bills still floated around, but only the desperate or naive tried to use them. The rest of the world had reverted to something older, something primal.

  As John handed back the change, the sky darkened, and a low growl of wind stirred the air. The horizon shimmered with dust—more than usual. A War Storm was coming, the kind that killed crops and left the land bare.

  John called out against the sudden wind, motioning for Eli to follow him inside. “Storm’s picking up.”

  Eli shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it’ll be a long one. I’ll wait it out in the car.”

  John hesitated, glancing at the swirling clouds. “You sure, Eli? This storm looks meaner than most.”

  Eli gave the horizon a quick look, then settled back, a tired grin on his face. “Me and old Betsy,” he patted the steering wheel, “we’ve seen our share of bad weather.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’m not coming back to save you if you get blown away,” John said, flashing a grin.

  “Sure you wouldn’t. With that bleeding heart of yours?”

  Eli eased his car up to the eastern wall, one of four massive barriers built from raw steel and stone, each angled like a blunt wedge to split the storm’s force. He parked close, finding what little shelter he could along the wall that bore the worst of the winds tearing in from the east.

  John pushed against the wind, struggling his way back into the station. He’d seen worse. The storms always passed, but there was always the hope that maybe, just maybe, one day they’d stop for good, and the world could finally start growing green again. But each time they rolled through, they stripped that hope away—crops shriveled, the land laid bare, leaving nothing but more dust in their wake.

  It reminded him of an old tape he’d watched as a kid, some flick about an undead army devouring everything in its path, growing stronger with every soul it claimed. These storms were no different, sweeping through and adding to the endless wasteland, feeding the dead land with more emptiness.

  Inside, John locked the door and took his usual spot behind the counter, waiting for the storm to roll over. The jukebox still played, soft now, as if the song itself was hiding from the storm.

  A ragged, sepia haze choked the horizon, blurring the line where the sky met the cracked asphalt, as though the earth itself were exhaling centuries of buried anguish into the air. The wind howled with a feral intensity, carrying with it a mixture of ash, grit, and shadows of lost places, scraping against the gas station’s peeling facade like the raking of skeletal fingers. The storm twisted and undulated in chaotic patterns, an animalistic fury clashing against the battered, rust-riddled remnants of what was once a fuel oasis for travelers. Occasional glints caught in the murk—bits of twisted metal, shards of glass—flung into brief orbit before disappearing again in the ceaseless swirl.

  John stood behind the counter, eyes fixed on the dust-blurred window. The light outside shifted in strange patterns, distorted by the storm. Inside, the gas station was dimly lit, mostly by a single bare bulb overhead that swung gently, casting jagged shadows that danced across the walls.

  A faint rumble reverberated through the walls as the storm pressed harder, dust sifting down from the ceiling in thin streams, ghostly fingers reaching down in the dim, swaying light. John watched them with a distant sort of detachment, unfocused, as if he were looking through the ceiling and beyond it, somewhere far away. He ran his hand along the underside of the counter, feeling the cold metal of the rusted pipe he kept there—his only defense against whatever might come through that door. His fingers curled around it as he heard the soft jingle of the bell above the door.

  What could possibly be out there in this hell? He struggled to recall if he’d locked the door. He always locked the door—especially when storms like this rolled in. Storms brought scavengers, and you only had to learn that lesson once. He was certain he’d locked it. He had to be.

  But a moment later, he was proven wrong. The door creaked open, the wind howling louder before the stranger stepped inside. Sand swirled through the open door, rust-colored river spilling into the gas station, pooling against the battered counter and skittering across cracked tiles. John winced as radioactive grit hissed against the floor, grinding into places he’d spent hours trying to keep clear.

  John instinctively recoiled as the air shifted, the fine film of radioactive grit settling over everything. He cursed under his breath, teeth gritted, his brow knotted. The dust wouldn’t kill you fast, but it worked its poison over time. Most folk had adapted in some way or another—hardened skin, an extra eyelid or two. And then there were other, less pleasant mutations. The Evolved, they called them. John had seen things; things he tried not to remember.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He spoke with a grit he hadn’t meant; caught somewhere between anger and disbelief.

  The stranger didn’t flinch. His skin looked too smooth, too untouched by the world: no scars, no burns, no signs of radiation’s slow caress.

  “Nice day for a storm,” the man said, his tone casual. The sound was smooth, slippery like oil over water. Adjusting his sunglasses, he caught the dim glow of the light bulb, dark lenses reflecting it back, hiding his eyes and any hints of his intentions.

  “Close the damn door,” John growled, irritation laced with a thin thread of unease. “You’re letting half the desert in.”

  The man tilted his head slightly, like he hadn’t quite heard or maybe just didn’t care. The door swung shut with a thud, untouched by any hand John could see, sealing the storm outside. A faint murmur of wind against glass was all that remained of the chaos beyond.

  John tightened his grip on the rusted pipe beneath the counter, the cold metal grounding him. The stranger stood in the dim glow of the flickering bulb, perfectly composed, like he belonged in some cleaner, brighter place—one where the sky still remembered how to be blue.

  John tried not to think of the creatures the storm left in its wake—the ones with too many limbs or joints bending in unnatural directions. This man was different, disturbingly whole, as if the storm had bent around him, leaving him untouched.

  John’s gaze swept over the stranger, dissecting every detail. A reasonable number of fingers on each hand, hidden inside dark leather gloves. Skin, tanned and smooth, free of the scales or rough bone patches that had begun pressing through the flesh of others. He didn’t look like one of the Evolved. No extra joints, no twisted bones, none of the mutations that had warped so many. Just a man, by the look of him.

  Years spent behind the counter had drilled a kind of automatic calm into John. He settled into the routine, words slipping out as naturally as breathing, “Can I help you with something?”

  The man chuckled, low and throaty. “I do hope so,” he said, stepping forward. His boots crunched against the sand-strewn tiles, the leather creaking. Not a trace of sand marred his coat—an unnatural kind of clean that made John’s skin prickle. That smile—too broad, too casual.

  “You new around here?” John asked. His gaze flicked to the door, to the dust still settling on the floor like a veil of time.

  “Something like that,” the stranger replied, his voice smooth as the hum of old-world tech. He slipped off his gloves, tucking them into his coat pocket. His fingers, pale and unblemished, looked untouched by the ravages of this broken world. “You look worried, John.”

  The mention of his name sent a shiver through him, but John refused to give the stranger the satisfaction of seeing it. He forced a hard laugh, masking the knot tightening in his chest.

  “Have we met?”

  “Not yet,” the man replied, a thin smile curling at the edge of his mouth. “But soon, I hope.”

  John had heard strange stories about the Evolved—their mutations born from the fallout, twisting them in ways that made old myths look tame. Some said they could slip into your mind, pull your thoughts out like threads, or worse. But talk like that was easy to dismiss, the kind of tale folks swapped to pass the time in a dying world.

  The man stepped forward, and John’s instincts pulled him back, a primal sense gnawing at his nerves. There was something feral in this stranger’s presence, an edge that made John’s skin prickle.

  “Listen, friend,” he managed, forcing a calm he didn’t feel. “I’m not looking for trouble. You’re free to stay until the storm passes, but if you’d mind keeping some distance—“

  The man halted, his gaze intense, cutting through the dim light. “John,” he murmured, his tone slipping past polite pretense. “You and I both know… this storm isn’t passing anytime soon. Not the real storm. That one is building, growing. You feel it, don’t you? The shift on the horizon?”

  John clenched his jaw, willing his pulse to slow. He gripped the pipe with white knuckles beneath the counter. The stranger’s gaze didn’t falter; it held a patience almost maddening, a grimness that seemed carved from stone.

  “Who are you?” was all John could think to say.

  “I’m known by many names in my world: the wind, the ripples in the pond, the Infinite Potential. But I prefer to be called Jack. And, I’m sorry. I’d prefer to do this the easy way,” the man continued, his voice dropping to a raw edge, “but unfortunately, I don’t have much time. The connection is faint, and I can only hold it so long.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The man’s expression softened, almost apologetic. “You’ll forgive me, John.”

  “Forgive what?”

  Before John could blink, the stranger lunged. John swung the pipe hard, the motion reflexive and desperate. But the metal passed straight through the man’s form, colliding with a stack of goods behind him in a deafening crash that sent cans and boxes tumbling.

  He stared, stunned, his mind reeling as the man continued forward, unfazed. Cold hands seized John’s head, fingers curling like steel against his temples. The room’s edges blurred, the hum of the gas station fading into a thick silence as everything sharpened to just the two of them.

  It really, really, really helps.

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