Cracks Invisible
Original Fiction
#CracksInvisible
❕❕ Wasteland-themed ❕❕
With subtle Soviet undertones
Original work, not AI-generated
(As if our school even had AI for me to use anyway…)
My writing style is plain, please bear with it — I poured my heart into this all the same.
Word count: 3400+
Enjoy your read.
I. The Collapse
Murmansk, Year 25 of the Collapse Era, Siberia.
Tick, tick.
The Geiger counter’s clicking cuts sharply through the outpost’s deathly hush.
Inside the outpost, murky air hangs like congealed grease, weighing down the only two survivors left. The air purifier died long ago; its filter crusted over with ash-black frost.
Only 47 minutes left.
Ivan coughs, spitting a glob of tar-black blood. Radiation gnaws relentlessly at his lungs, tearing his body apart piece by piece.
“Take out my pacemaker, Anna,” he says to the little girl. Her mask glows a harsh crimson — filter life drained to the end.
“My pacemaker runs on a nuclear battery. It can power the purifier for half an hour straight.”
“No.” Anna grips his wrist with startling strength. “Without it, you won’t last the night! We wait for rescue. The broadcasts said—”
“The broadcasts have been silent for twenty years, Anna.” Ivan cuts her off, his gaze set in unyielding resolve.
“No one’s coming for us. It’s only us… and this outpost.”
He rises and strides to the control console. The reactor flickers with unstable, piercing blue light; sickly roentgen rays bathe the hall in an eerie, sacred azure glow.
A corner of the red flag is torn loose by tremors, hanging limp in the air.
“Listen closely.” Ivan begins removing the pacemaker. “As long as the reactor runs, the searchlights stay lit. Those abominations won’t draw near. Whatever you do, don’t let the lights die.”
Click.
The battery is pulled free. The purifier whirs to life. Anna’s mask shifts from red to steady green.
Ivan clutches his chest and slides slowly to the floor. His complexion fades to ashen gray before her very eyes.
“Look.” His lips turn a sickly bruised purple. “The lights are on.”
A bitter, faint smile tugs at his mouth.
“Beautiful…” he murmurs to himself. “Just like the parades every year.”
The pacemaker battery kicks into full power. Another searing beam pierces the snow veil, illuminating the fallen statue of Lenin in the distance.
Within the pillar of light, swirling snowflakes drift down… just like the waving red banners of old, like doves gliding across Red Square’s sky.
Anna kneels beside Ivan. Tears freeze mid-lid, hardening into jagged icicles.
Only 32 minutes left.
Thirty-two minutes until the coolant burns out.
What can she trade for the time remaining?
II.
Time bleeds on, unmeasured.
The Geiger counter falls silent at last.
Not from fading radiation — simply dead, out of power entirely.
Absolute darkness engulfs the room. Only the reactor core’s blue pulse endures, beating tireless like a living heart.
Only 12 minutes left.
Anna reaches out and closes Ivan’s vacant eyes. As she straightens his clothes, her fingers brush something hard: a hammer-and-sickle medal.
“You were right, Ivan,” she whispers to the quiet air. “There is no rescue.”
Her gaze drifts to the long-range transmitter terminal in the distance. Activating it will siphon the reactor’s last reserves — even draining the life support systems. Everyone here would suffocate within five minutes.
But Ivan is already gone, she thinks.
I will not let radiation devour me in the end.
Better to burn like a star, than rot waiting for death.
She walks toward the transmitter platform, steps heavy with resolve, no trace of hesitation left. Every footfall echoes hollow through the empty hall.
The drumbeat of fate has already sounded.
Only 8 minutes left.
III.
Her hovers above the red protective casing. One flip, one press of the button — and all pain, cold, and fear will end. In its place, an electromagnetic wave will slice through eons of silence, carrying humanity’s last shred of dignity out into the boundless galaxy.
“Look, Ivan.” A bleak smile tugs at her lips. “Our parade begins now.”
She flips the cover open.
Click.
Alarms shriek to life — not a low whine, but a shrill, wailing cry.
The reactor’s blue light flares into a blinding burst, flooding the room like broad daylight. Radiation dust dances in the glare, like the streamers of long-gone parades.
Anna stands straight and salutes the tattered red flag.
[Transmission Initiated]
Frigid air surges in, draining the oxygen from her lungs in an instant. Her vision blurs at the edges, yet she knows the radio wave races onward at the speed of light — piercing thick ice, tearing through irradiated skies, drifting toward unknown far reaches.
Murmansk, this ruin is no longer a tomb.
It has become a lighthouse.
Lighthouse Era, Year One.
The reactor’s soft blue has morphed into a ferocious pale white. Vast raw energy is wrenched free, pouring into the long-dormant long-wave antenna. Rivets snap one after another; the base groans and shudders, fighting its final battle.
[Critical Threshold Breached: 15%]
Anna feels her blood simmer beneath her skin. Blistering heat and bitter cold wage war inside her. Radiation rashes bloom across her skin; her exhalations crystallize mid-air, hanging as ice crystals on her brows.
She fixes her stare on the screen, watching the green signal-strength line climb slowly upward.
15%… 25%… 54%… 75%…
“Hurry…” She bites her lip till blood wells, iron tang flooding her nose. “Just a little faster…”
BOOM!!
A deafening crash rumbles from above. Not wind — no storm holds such brute force. Something has slammed into the base.
She jerks her head up to the surveillance feed. The shadowy figures once held at bay by the searchlights now hurl themselves savagely against the outpost walls.
They have sensed the energy surge — the last struggle of prey, the height of the hunter’s frenzy.
Crash.
A concrete wall panel is pierced clean through, shards exploding outward. Frigid wind blasts in, carrying black snow and the unearthly roars of abominations, flooding the front hall in an instant.
Only 2 minutes 35 seconds left.
“Damn it…” Anna staggers to the inner bulkhead wheel. Leave it open, and those horrors will surge inside in seconds — tear her apart, smash the transmitter terminal. Seal it shut, and she traps herself inside a control room bound for meltdown, cutting off her only escape.
Though escape was never an option to begin with.
[Signal Strength: 78%]
“Not enough… still not enough…” Her eyes burn with despair and fevered resolve.
She grips the bulkhead wheel and twists. Her palms tear and bleed, yet she feels no pain at all.
Clang.
The inner bulkhead slams shut, rusted metal screaming in protest, muffling the maddening roars to a distant growl beyond the wall.
Silence crashes back down, leaving only the antenna’s low hum and her own pounding heartbeat.
She glances back at the screen. “It needs to hit 100%… only then will the signal fully break free…”
Without warning, the green line plummets.
78%… 65%… 62%…
Energy is failing to keep up!
“No — don’t you dare stop!!” She lunges for the console, desperate to overclock the system. “Divert all power from life support to the antenna! Cut the lights! Feed everything into it!!!”
[This will permanently disable all life support systems. Confirm?]
Anna’s finger hovers over the Enter key. She glances once more at Ivan’s tattered hazmat suit, hanging empty like a shed shell. Then at the red flag, fluttering as if ready to tear itself apart at any moment.
“We have no time left to hesitate, Ivan.”
She slams her hand down on Enter.
Zzzzt——!
Lights across the base cut out instantly. Night crashes in like a flood.
All that remains is the reactor’s blanching white glare, illuminating Anna’s deathly pale face.
The cold sharpens to a brutal bite. Moisture in the air crystallizes into fine ice shards, swirling in the white glow. They slice through her lungs with every breath, like inhaling shards of glass. Anna gasps for air, each inhale a torment.
[85%… 95%… 97%]
The impacts against the walls grow fiercer still. The airtight door groans with a bone-grinding creak, buckling under the assault — it will not hold much longer. Even with the inner bulkhead sealed, the beasts will smash through the outer walls and burst inside.
[98%]
Anna’s body trembles uncontrollably. Oxygen starvation blots her vision with dark spots. She drives her nails deep into metal crevices, clinging on by sheer will alone.
[99.7% … ]
Tinnitus drowns out all other sound.
“Please… just send it… please…”
[99.78% …]
Suddenly, a shadow smashes through the observation window. A long, clawed arm lined with sharp bone reaches inside, knocking instruments askew. Next, a gaping, compound-eyed head pokes through the shattered glass. It locks onto Anna and hisses with ravenous excitement.
Anna does not flinch. She does not even glance its way. Her eyes stay fixed rigidly on the screen.
[ 100% ]
A mechanical chime rings out, pure as salvation.
Anna’s taut nerves unravel at last. She sinks to the floor, a radiant smile spreading across her face unlike any before.
“…Do you copy?… Whoever you are… do you copy…”
The monster lunges forward, claws inches from tearing her throat open. In that exact moment, the reactor unleashes one final, thunderous roar.
Not an explosion — a release.
A visible blue energy wave bursts outward from the outpost’s core, expanding in an instant.
It tears through walls, sears straight through the abomination’s body, pierces thick ice and irradiated atmosphere, surging straight into the distant galaxy. Before this tidal wave of power, the feral creature is incinerated instantly, reduced to ash and nothingness. All of Murmansk blazes bright as day. Ice across a hundred-mile radius sublimates at once, soaring skyward as towering cloud pillars.
Anna closes her eyes, feeling no pain. She grows light, unshackled from her heavy mortal shell, drifting upward alongside the radio wave.
She sees it all.
She sees the long-lost sun, greening forests, bustling crowds. She sees Ivan standing in sunlight, holding out a hand to her.
“Welcome home, Comrade.”
A massive detonation echoes far away — yet it sounds as if from another world entirely.
The lonely outpost, frozen tundra, ravenous abominations — all dissolve into nothingness in this instant.
And the radio wave drifts onward, carrying the message We are here, racing through the cosmos at light speed, eternal and unyielding.
IV.
Eons pass.
A hundred years. Ten thousand years.
Seas shift, mountains crumble.
In a distant star system, a colossal starship drifts across the void.
Its receivers suddenly lock onto a faint, ancient signal. All but faded beyond recognition — yet it is amplified and projected onto the main screen.
We are here.
We stand fast amid the snowstorm.
We gaze upward from the ruins.
The observers fall into long silence. The coordinates mark nothing but a radioactive wasteland, devoid of all life.
Yet the rock there has turned glassy from searing instant heat, forming a vast, perfect circular mirror that reflects the light of its star.
“Is this… a tomb for a lost civilization?” a young observer asks.
“No.” The senior officer shakes his head. “This is a lighthouse. It proves that even in endless darkness, a flame once burned bright.”
He offers the highest salute to the coordinate. The starship turns course, sailing deeper into the void.
And that beam of light lingers still, resounding forever across the universe.
Epilogue
In one fleeting instant, sunrise and sunset blaze side by side upon this land.
Light cones twist out of order; light speed falls still here.
A dragon of shadow surges skyward, spilling darkness over the earth.
When frozen night begins to flow, drifting clouds streak shadow across the shutter’s gaze.
The drone of old warplanes hums in the ears.
Piercing thick cloud cover, colossal searchlights rise from the ocean depths.
Lenin’s statue lies buried under snow and ash.
Trapped forever in that looping night — the moment the red flag fell.
Steel and stars. Technology and humanity.
Utopia and endeavor. Science and revolution.
Yet red flag and shadow are two sides of the same coin; dragon and firefly share one soul and bone.
Glory and suffering walk the same path, sing the same tune.
It bears the sublime grandeur of lofty ideal and primal terror intertwined.
It is the spiritual homeland of idealism itself.
Still I see the power station bursting into towering flame.
The clang of iron ringing from mines and factories.
Sealed away in the ice age, frozen fast in endless blizzards.
I remember that single moment —
A bird glides past, shedding one crystalline tear.