The pain didn't stop.
It dulled, shifted, but it never vanished.
It pulsed behind his ribs like something alive. A rhythm too deep to be his own. Each beat sent a faint tremor through his chest, the echo of the incomplete core trying to settle inside him.
He dreamed.
Or maybe he didn't.
He felt heat
Heard noise
Then nothing
He opened his eyes.
The sky was orange.
It shouldn't have been.
He blinked, thinking it was firelight, but it wasn't. The whole world was washed in the same burning hue, as if the sky itself had been opened and left to bleed.
He turned around.
Ruins stretched in every direction. Cars lay along the street like dead insects, some burned hollow, some with glass punched out and hanging in jagged teeth. Towers that once scraped the clouds were folded into the ground, their glass guts scattered across the road.
He looked down at his feet.
The ground was closer than it should have.
Grass and thin weeds pushed up through the cracked concrete, pale green against the ash. There was no wind. Only the slow drift of gray falling like soft snow, settling on his shoulders, on his head, tasting faintly of metal when it found his tongue.
His hands were small
Too small
They were shaking
His clothes were torn and stiff with old sweat and smoke. His throat was raw. He couldn't remember why.
A sound cracked in the distance.
Low
Deep
Metallic
Another followed it, a short burst that echoed through the empty avenues.
He didn't have the words for it, but his bones recognized it and tensed.
He stumbled forward. His shoes scraped over broken tile, loose gravel, and uneven ground. The street was slick with a film he chose not to see. His toe caught on something soft and yielding, and there was a wet squelch under his weight.
He didn't look down.
He didn't want to.
He just kept moving.
Through the haze, figures ran. Some were human shapes that broke apart in the heat shimmer. Others were wrong in ways his eyes refused to resolve. He tried to call out. The sound tore in his throat and came out as a dry whisper that the heat and wind swallowed whole.
The air pressed into his chest like a weight. Dark specks drifted at the edge of his vision. He coughed once, then twice. Something warm slid down his chin.
He touched it.
Looking down at his small hand he saw it.
Red.
Shouts rose with the gunfire now. Harsh commands. Footsteps pounded concrete, fast and many. Beneath it, closer, a chorus of wet growls, breath that sounded like meat being pulled from the bone. It didn't sound human. Not anymore.
He turned in fear and looked around. His heart pounding as he spotted an opening on a building with shattered windows and garbage piled in the door way. He tried running as he continued to limp towards it. His shoes dragging against the floor. He bit his lip and threw his body through a doorway. Inside, a shop lay melted into itself with equipment and papers scattered across the ground. He dropped behind a counter where a cash register hung open like a cracked jaw. He pressed his back to the tile and tried to trap the ragged sound of his breathing behind his teeth.
The pounding came closer.
Stomp
Stomp
Stomp
He bit his tongue until he tasted iron. The air thickened, hot and sour. A snarl split the doorway. It scraped along his nerves. The sound was wrong. Too human to be animal. Too animal to be human.
Then came the scream.
"NO! WAIT! PLEASE! DON'T LEAVE ME!"
The voice pitched upward into terror. Something hit the ground with a heavy thud. Boots scrambled. Metal clattered. A second voice tried to answer and vanished under the first.
"NOOO! PLEASE, PLEASE, HELP ME! DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!"
The cries broke into a wet choking sound.
The cries turned into shrieks.
There was a tearing noise and the clatter of something being grabbed.
Bang.
A single loud noise echoed across the street. Cementing itself into his mind. The sound of something being ripped and wet being chewed continued for a while.
And then it was quiet.
He stayed like that for a long time. His body shook so hard the counter rattled against his shoulder. When he finally let himself breathe, the air left him in a careful, stuttering thread that hung between his lips. He pressed a palm over his mouth to muffle it, his chest ached from the effort of staying quiet.
That was when he felt it.
His face was cooling.
The skin along his cheeks and jaw grew damp, the heat there fading.
Drops gathered at his chin and fell.
They soaked into his filthy pants, darkening the cloth.
He watched them fall one by one.
The sound outside was gone now.
No chewing
No boots
No growls
No gunfire
Only the whisper of ash settling on the broken shelves.
He kept looking down.
Time moved without his permission. He didn't know how long. When his vision settled again, he noticed the small puddle beneath him, thin and dirty, ringed with dust.
He stared at it for a long time.
A face stared back.
A child. Perhaps thirteen. Eyes swollen red and glassy. Skin streaked with soot, ash, and lines of tears. Snot crusted at one nostril. A smear of dried blood along the lip. Lips split in white lines. Cheeks hollow, as if someone had scooped out the softness with a cold spoon.
What unsettled him most were the eyes.
Hollow.
Like they didn't belong to a living person.
As if a light had been taken out and the socket left empty.
He leaned a little closer. The puddle quivered with his breath and turned the face to ripples. The glow from a dying fire trembled across the surface and made the features writhe and melt. For a heartbeat it seemed the boy might blur away completely.
It was familiar
He knew that face
He didn't remember how
He simply knew it belonged to him.
He kept staring as if a name might climb up from the water.
A sound
A memory
The shape of a home
Anything
Nothing came.
Everything before this felt like a smear of color pulled thin across glass.
He touched the puddle with one finger. The surface broke. The face shattered into rings that fled toward the edges and disappeared.
He rolled onto his side and tucked his knees to his chest.
The tile was cold against his skin.
The air tasted of smoke and rust.
The world beyond the doorway hissed and clicked as fires fell low and embers gave up.
His eyelids lowered
The orange dimmed to gray
The gray shut to black
And then everything went dark