Prologue
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iniquity
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Her world is an ashen stage, blurry and pale and chilling without the transgression of snow. Cinereal smokes slither like ghosts and vestiges of carnage litter the roads—artistically colored in velvet by cans of paint that were once called humans.
She keeps a tight grip on the handle of her black umbrella, cobalt eyes straining to see through the plastic lenses of the M85 F.P.M wrapped around her head. She swears she can see something shift a few feet ahead of her—no more than a dying animal, she reasons to herself, albeit forcibly, even though she knows, in her heart of hearts, that it is not so.
She hears an anguished groan, confirming her suspicions. Her heart quivers, and she forces her flummoxed eyes to look around her surroundings just in case she is being watched.
Realizing that the street is empty, she gathers enough strength to let out a sigh through the respirator.
Turn back and think nothing more of it.
You do realize what they'd do to you if you helped a Nonrespirator, don't you?
Turn back.
Turn.
Back.
Biting her lower lip, she traipses forward.
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rarity
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The rumbling in his stomach is growing worse. He has not eaten for two days ever since he'd managed to escape (albeit narrowly) from the hellish prison in the East. He spits bitterly on the ground, mind rancorous and raging, feverishly remembering the horrors those monsters had done to his people in the name of ''science.''
People are not scapegoats. He recalls the children—with their yellow skin and their brittle bones and their bloated, poisoned bellies.
People are not scapegoats. He vividly imagines the gassed remnants of the elderly and the younger ones whose bodies were deemed "unfit for experimentation."
People are not scapegoats. He hears the hoarse shrieks of mothers and widowers and teenage girls being raped and sabotaged and driven to insanity by libido driven soldiers.
A profanity escapes his chapped lips, and he falls, just like that, because his mind is too addled to give a damn about directions anymore and the toxic air that is sucking the life out of everything it touches has finally taken its toll on his lungs. He is giving up, he is giving up—he has been an optimist for far too long, idiotic for far too long. Miracles only exist in fairy tales, and fairy tales they had burned and destroyed along with everything else.
He coughs pathetically, clutching his throat with trembling hands, his vision blurring. He tries to scream, but his voice is too hoarse to even grant him this one last wish.
He bids bitter adieu in his mind instead.
Miracles only exist in fairy tales.
Despite the loud metallic ringing in his ears, he hears footsteps.
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