My Mechanical Womb

HEAVY CONTENT WARNING for: dubious/non-consensual sex, heavy emphasis on bodily fluids including vomit and menstrual blood, and themes of systemic oppression, misogyny, and trans-inclusive bioessentialism.

The mission took us to the New California mega structure. We’d been stationed here for about six weeks, just sitting on standby with no real action, waiting for the Galvison gang to make a move. They didn’t. I’m losing my mind with boredom. Airship life was taxing under the best of circumstances, but in the mega-structure? It was torture. The smog alone was enough to make anyone want to be just about anywhere else. Even space habitating is more tolerable. At least the air is clean, if sterile. Here it doesn’t matter how much you filter it, enough pollution always manages to seep in to irritate your lungs and make you want to wear a face mask at all times. And that’s to say nothing of the constant swaying. The airship needs a lot of maneuvering to weave through the skyscrapers. Actually, calling them skyscrapers did them a disservice. They’re more like towering monstrosities that extend hundreds of miles above and below ground. If you fell from the top of one you would starve to death before you ever hit anything resembling a bottom. The whole city is like this, extending across the entire surface of what had once been the west coast of the “United States of America”. Or so the history filmbooks say. It’s nearly uninhabited now, aside from a few gangs squabbling over precious scrap, of which the Galvisons are the most well-equipped and dangerous. And then there’s us of course, the Foundation, the last remnant of the old empire and the closest thing to an authority there is left in the region.

I’m in the lounge area when we get the news. It’s a cramped little closet of a room they set aside for us pilots to rest and relax in. One of the few concessions to our humanity that they’re willing to make. Not that the rest of the ship is much more comfortable for the humans either, with its cramped metal corridors and exposed pipework running everywhere. Crysta is here with me, one of the other pilots on my squad. I’m sitting on her lap, my tongue in her mouth. There isn’t a lot for us to do on the ship besides sleep and fuck. It’s not like the view from the window was anything to write home about. Just more monstrous machinery and smokestacks belching smog, factories aimlessly manufacturing nothing for no one in particular. 

I pull back, trailing spit from our lips. Crysta looks bored, staring right through me like I’m not even here. Her mind is clearly somewhere else, like she’s only doing this to placate me. She hates being on this ship more than anyone. Hates being a pilot. She makes no secret of it either. It wouldn’t bother me except she’s so much better at it than I am, and that drives me crazy. I move my hand to fondle her breast, hoping to get some kind of reaction out of her. She closes her eyes and leans back in her chair a little. It’s not much but it’s something.

“Can’t you at least look at me?” I say, bitterly.

She looks into my eyes, her contempt and sadness plain to see. She has bags under her eyes like she hasn’t slept, which she probably hasn’t. She looks empty, tired, like she’s at her limit. It’s infuriating. It’s intoxicating. I grind against her thigh and start kissing her again. Neither of us closes our eyes.

We’re interrupted by the horrible squeak of the door sliding open. In walks our handler, looking angry at even having to speak to us.

“Pilots! Galvison activity. Get Mirel and suit up,” he says, not acknowledging the state we’re in.

Weeks of nothing and just like that, it was time to risk our lives again. I sigh and exchange a look with Crysta. I’m still burning for her, but she looks entirely deflated. I know it’s not because she wants me that badly, but merely because she’s dreading seeing combat. She had only fought twice before, but that’s already more than she ever wanted to. Too bad for her. We can’t stop until we cease functionality. So it goes. As for me, I’m just glad to have something to do. I get off of her and together we leave for the pilots’ quarters, where we’re sure to find Mirel.

Mirel is asleep in her cot. She always is when she’s not in her mech. It’s as if all matters besides piloting bore her. I’m the one who wakes her up, and she nearly slaps me as I shake her shoulder.

“Get up, idiot!” I say. “We have a mission!”

At the mention of a mission she bolts up and leaps out of bed. She’s completely naked. It’s not worth it to put anything on, we’ll have to strip down for inspection anyways. We make our way to the inspection chambers, the crew members we pass on the way make an effort to politely avert their eyes from Mirel’s body, but I hear them curse us under their breath. To them, we’re all animals, filthy and undignified. It isn’t surprising to see an animal without clothes.

Crysta and I strip down in the locker rooms while Mirel waits impatiently by the door. Crysta finishes quickly and throws her clothes in her locker with an almost angry abandon. I make an effort to be a little neater, folding my standard issue beige jumpsuit and carefully placing my bra and undershorts over it. My pad shows only minor flow. I hope that means I won’t get kicked off the mission. Being on your period can interfere with the synchronization process. It can make you go haywire. At times like this, I envy Crysta. She has a much easier time hiding her periods from our handlers, since she doesn't have to worry about bleeding. Her all-important estrogenized hormone balance is artificially induced, but it took to her very effectively. She looks more feminine than I do, her hair is longer, her hips curvier, even her breasts are bigger than mine. Only her penis gives it away. It sits small and dignified at the bottom of her torso like a badge, a proud emblem of all she gave up to be here. It’s pleasantly soft but it can still wake up under the right circumstances, usually when it’s inside my mouth.

We stand before the door to the chamber, waiting for the signal to let us know we can enter. I try to keep my eyes off the conspicuous camera watching us. A buzzer sounds and Mirel opens the door. I follow her in, with Crysta trailing behind. The chamber is narrow, and contains three rusty stalls equipped with all the necessary sensors. We each step into ours. I hold my hands behind my head and let the beams of light dance upon my naked flesh. 

“Abygail!” comes a voice from the speaker.

“Yes, sir?” I reply.

“You’re on your period, yes?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“How bad is it?”

“Pretty mild, sir. Low flow. Mild stomach ache, but otherwise I feel normal, sir.”

“We can’t afford to spare any pilots for this mission. I’m taking a risk and letting you operate anyways. Make sure you abort the mission and eject the moment you feel anything out of the ordinary, understood?”

“Yes, sir!” I try to suppress a smile. 

“Alright. Suit up, and be quick about it!”

“Yes, sir!” we all say in unison. 

Finally, we’re allowed to step onto the launching bay. The catwalk rattles in the harsh outside wind. The chill bites our naked skin. We cling to the railings and walk carefully to our mechs. They hang over the bay doors, suspended in fetal position. The mechs are slender and organic, closer to large armored beasts than robots, a hideous amalgam of machine and flesh. They’re eerily human-like. Massive vacant eyes stare into us, slack jawed, rows of sharp teeth exposed, metal paneling lining the insides of their mouths. The entrances are situated on their bellies. I climb in. The cockpit is dark and cramped. There is no chair and no controls, only a harness to strap into. The beasts are controlled via psychic link, established and controlled by the careful administering of combat drugs. When everything works correctly, it’s completely frictionless.

Once I’ve strapped myself in, I shut my eyes and wait for my handlers to activate the connection process. I think they’re still moving into position. The heavy swaying of the airship rattles the machinery, making me all too conscious of the fact that I’m strapped inside a giant metal coffin.

A voice sounds over the comm system: “Preparing synchronization process.” The machinery hums to life. Between the swaying of the airship, the vibrations of the mech parts, and the gentle rumbling of the beast’s flesh, there’s a lot of stimulation around me, and I’m starting to get a little excited. A series of nozzles open above my head. “Deploying uterine fluid,” the voice says. A red substance starts pouring into the tube, immediately drenching my head. I sputter and spit as the foul liquid drips down my face. It quickly fills up the chamber, and I hold my breath as it rises to the level of my mouth. It’s thinner than water, and perfectly breathable, but I’ve never gotten used to the transition between breathing air and breathing liquid. It fills the tube completely, and I release my breath and allow the fluid to fill my lungs. It tastes awful, like blood and urine, and yet there’s a comforting familiarity to it. It’s warm.

“Activating synchronization.”

In an instant, an intense heat engulfs my body. The uterine fluid begins to bubble and I feel like I am being dissolved into the beast. Its body becomes my body; I flex its fingers, open its eyes, see what it sees. In the euphoric process of synchronizing, my machine self trembles, and I let out something between a moan and a roar. The others join me as well, and a cacophony of beastly ecstasy fills the launch bay.

“I hate when they do that,” came a voice over the comms. “Fucking animals.” Either she forgot to turn off the communicator, or she simply didn’t care if we heard her. It’s not like we didn’t know what they thought of us. From the moment we were born, we were treated like animals. Those of us that can’t become pilots are simply put down. We don’t know what it is about us that separates us from the rest of humanity. Something inside us repulses all good humans on a visceral level, causes them to turn away from us, and hate us. It also makes us the only ones able to sync with the mechs. Something useful that spares us all from annihilation, assuming our bodies can either produce, or take estrogen. The hormone is key to making the bio-synchronization work.

I unfurl my machine body and stretch my legs, still dangling in the harness. My partners do the same.

“Synchronization complete. All systems nominal. I’m downloading the mission briefing into your mental banks. Prepare for deployment.”

Before us stretches the sea of pale smoke and winding black spires and bridges spreading web-like in all directions. Incomprehensibly vast and deep, they reach beyond sight below and above us. We are trapped inside it now, a tangled nest that ensnared all life in its mechanical grasp, and now we leave the safety of our cocoon airship. The harnesses release, and one by one we plummet into the abyss.

My limbs move as responsively and nimbly as if they were my own. I grab a stray cable and swing onto a nearby bridge. My comrades find their own way to me and we group up. The bridge is large enough for all three of our mechs to stand on with plenty of room to spare. If a human tried to walk across it with their naked body, it would take days to cross the width of it and years to cross its length. This city is simply too large to be traversed without machine clothing.

We trek our way through the city, climbing spires, finding careful footing in the cracks and cravases of the intricate metalwork. Even in mechs, the city utterly dwarfs us. 

“Where are we headed again?” Mirel says over the comm channel. 

“Will you just read the briefing?” I say. “They literally downloaded it into our brains. It’ll take seconds.”

“I don’t touch the mental databanks. That stuff freaks me out.”

“We’re heading for the Dome,” Crysta says with a palpable resignation in her voice. “The Galvisons have been spotted there. They want to harvest parts from the it.”

“What kind of parts?”

“The whole thing is coated in this super hard substance. Armies like taking it for armor plating. It can take a full artillery bombardment and not get a single scratch. The structure is massive so there’s plenty of it to take.”

“What’s the Dome used for that it needs that kind of protection?”

“Nothing,” I say. “This whole city was built by a rogue AI that went haywire. Nobody knows why it made any of the choices it did. It was on the loose for decades before the Foundation figured out how to shut it down, devouring the land and displacing millions. This mess is what it left behind.” I gesture to the incomprehensible structures around us. It’s not surprising Mirel doesn’t know all of this already. She spends so much of her life sleeping I don’t think has any time left to learn history.

“That explains why this place gives me the creeps.”

I glance over at Crysta. She seems more uneasy than usual. She never seems like she wants to be here but something is different today. It’s like she knows something we don’t.

We come upon a sharp drop before us. The towers and bridges seem to end here like a kind of clearing. Up ahead is the looming structure of the Dome. Massive and pitch white, surrounded by pale smoke swirling violently as if caught in its gravitational field. The air pressure creates a disquieting hum all about it that makes my machine flesh twitch uneasily. 

“Should we try to leap to it?” Mirel asks, “it should be within range of our boosters.”

“No,” I say. “They’ll likely have painted themselves white as camouflage. We should keep our distance and watch for any signs of movement. We want to be the ones doing the ambushing.”

“Good call,” Crysta says. There’s a distance in her voice, as if noting something curious rather than giving me praise.

We perch on a distant spire, looking for any sign of activity with our advanced mech sight. We watch for hours, but see nothing.

"Do you think our intel was wrong?" says Mirel.

"Couldn't be," I say. "We had visual and everything."

"Maybe they've moved on," Crysta says, hopefully. "Maybe they spotted us and escaped."

"No, these gang types wouldn't just give up a payday like this. They'd rather die fighting for it."

"You sound so sure."

"Trust me. These people don't have anything else to live for. They don't believe in anything."

"And we do?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what makes their fight any more meaningless than ours?"

"Well, we fight for the Foundation, for one."

"And what is the Foundation."

"The future. We're the seed that'll bloom into the next world government and bring stability."

"You don't really believe that."

It's true. I don't. Whatever ambitions the Foundation started with, it was a husk of its former self now. All important plans for the future had been dashed a long time ago when the water wars began. In truth, we're little more than a gang ourselves now. But I don't dare admit it out loud. If you can't at least pretend to believe in what you're fighting for, then what other choice is there but suicide?

"Mirel, you believe in the Foundation, right?" I say, turning to her.

"I couldn't possibly care less either way,” she says. “As long as I get those sweet, sweet combat endorphins, I don’t care which side I fight for.”

There’s a long pause between us after that. 

Finally, Crysta says, “I suppose there’s something admirable in that, too.”

Why aren’t we seeing any movement from them yet?” I say, eager to change the subject. “This doesn’t make sense. We’ve scoped all around the Dome.”

There’s a ripple in the air, the spire wobbles. We go dead quiet. I glance around. My synthetic eyes detect disturbances in the fog. Phantoms passing between the metal. 

“Run,” I say.

Before my comrades can react, two white-painted mechs leap from the veil of smoke directly towards us. I barely have time to get my arm up to block before it catches a kick aimed squarely at my jaw plating. The force sends me flying off the spire and into the abyss below. I plummet a few stories before I’m able to catch a protruding antenna and swing back up. 

Mirel is holding an enemy’s prog knife away from her face when I land. I draw my own mech sword and ready a strike. Crysta grapples and throws the other one from the spire. Mirel’s attacker catches my sword in its palm. The force of the impact shatters the blade and sends a thunderous shock through my body so hard I feel it jostle my flesh self inside the cockpit womb. Immediately my enemy grabs my face and tries to twist me into a headlock. I see now that her palms are coated in white. The Dome substance. They’ve been busy here already. I throw my hands out just in time to avoid the headlock. Mirel takes the chance to sweep the mech’s leg and together we force her to the ground. I grab her head in my hands and jam my thumbs in her eyes. Her mech lets out a deep rumbling roar that shakes the structures nearby. The enemy Crysta threw off leaps above us, thrusters engaged and comes down to strike. She jams her knife into Mirel’s neck and kicks her off the platform. With a wound like that, it’s unlikely she’ll recover like I did. I allow a second to let the possibility of her death sink in. Then Mirel’s attacker kicks me in the stomach, sending so much force into my womb that for a second my connection severs and I see the inside of the cockpit. 

When I come to, I’m flat on my back and Crysta is fighting off the two mechs by herself. She’s holding her own impressively well. I’m still reeling from the blow to my core when I try to stand up again. My head is swimming. I’m all too aware of my flesh body. I suspect I may have a concussion. When I roll over onto my front and try to push myself up, I feel a horrible twisting in my real stomach. Instinctively, my human hands shoot to my mouth and I violently puke into my palms. My vision swirls between my two pairs of eyes, glancing down at both my messy flesh hands, and my pristine mechanical hands. Glancing up to see vomit floating in the uterine fluid and the gray, smog-choked sky above. The connection is unstable. 

Our attackers must spot me trying to get up, because they immediately flip Crysta hard on her back and turn to me again. One crouches over me with her knife drawn, the other stands by, watching. My mind is still split between two forms. I clench my fist and begin to tremble with rage. My attacker thrusts her knife at me and I grab her arm and twist as hard as I can. A sickening, thunderous snap rings out. Before she can even begin to scream, I grab her mech by the skull and squeeze. I squeeze until I feel my tendons rip from the force, until I feel her exterior armor crack. She tries to swipe my arm away but I leap up. I unhinge my mech’s jaw with a terrible wet crack and bite down on her head. My teeth sink into the points where her helmet broke. I bite down and her skull explodes in synthetic blood and viscera. I force her body off the spire and watch her tumble into the abyss.

Blood rains from my mouth. Dimly I become aware that my human self has bitten her tongue hard enough to bleed. I heave again, but this time nothing comes out. I don’t even care. My arm screams in agony but it does not reach me. This numbness can only mean I’m entering a combat frenzy. Endorphins interacting with the stimulating properties of the fluid crashing against my unstable hormone levels. 

The last attacker hesitates, no doubt remembering what I did to her eyes. I don’t give her the chance to work up the courage. I lunge at her and bite her neck. Her jabs and grabs at me start to slip and miss as her practiced technique gives way to desperation. I’m straddling her, my teeth clasped firmly around her throat. I feel her panic set in. She flails like a prey animal in my jaws. With my hand planted on her head, I force her chin up and rip her throat out. A violent gurgling screech erupts from her mouth. Her flesh hangs from my teeth. I’ve never felt more alive. She goes limp beneath me.

Crysta pushes herself upright and stares at me. I must be a pretty scary sight right now. The thought of her in there, naked and curled up in her cockpit womb, it drives me crazy. I stand up, let the bits of mech throat fall from my mouth, and begin shambling over to her. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with her when I get there. My mind is still swimming with violent and lustful urges. I might just tear her out of that mech and eat her. I feel my human mouth grinning at the thought. I can’t help it. The fear in her eyes, palpable even on her mech’s placid face, it’s intoxicating. She’s finally looking at me.

She instinctively shuffles away a little as I step up to her. I pause, staring, savoring the moment. And I offer her my hand. She takes it, I pull to help her up. I’m still reeling from the frenzy, but I’ve gained enough of my senses back to calm down.

Then Crysta punches straight through my abdomen. My cockpit is clutched in her tight fist, blood drips from her forearm. A net of cables trails from the pod back into the mech, tearing apart and coming undone from the force. Crysta drops me to the ground. The pod clatters, violently rattling me even more. She pulls her fist from my mech’s body and it slumps to its knees. 

Through my mech’s eyes, I see her turn her back to me. With my human ears, I hear her voice over commline.

“There’s been a problem,” comes her voice, crackling and full of static. She’s connecting to someone else. The conversation is choppy, fading in and out through the noise. “They weren’t supposed to ambush us like that.” 

I reach my hand out, my human hand, and press against the metal wall of the pod. I feel the harness tighten around my shoulders. I shakily undo it. I grapple in the dark for the emergency release. I find it. I pull it. Upon meeting with the outside air, the fluid begins to boil and steam. I pull myself out, gasping at the smog-choaked air, coughing, sputtering, and naked. 

My body swells with sensory data, my human sight and mech sight overlap. I’m still connected. That shouldn’t be possible. I notice blood pouring from my nose onto the metal shell of the pod. 

“Well just get a team out here and start scavenging the dome,” came her voice from the radio again. “I held up my end. You may have lost some pilots but the foundation doesn’t have another team ready to come after you. The dome is yours.”

“This isn’t ideal,” a new voice, much scratchier, I could barely make it out through the static, “but we can work with it. Welcome to the Galvison gang. We’ll meet you at the drop zone.”

I lift my hand. My mechself follows. Blood drips from my face to my palm. My mechself clenches its fist. My lustful frenzy hasn’t left. With great effort, I get my mech back onto its feet. Crysta barely has time to turn around before I launch myself at her. I plunge my fist into her abdomen and pull out her core. I crush it. Umbilical fluid sprays out. I toss it aside and it lands before my human self.

Crysta’s pod sits there, crushed and steaming, pouring red fluid from its perforated surface. I climb out of my pod and stumble towards it. I grab hold of the emergency hatch and pry it open. More fluid spills out. I climb in. There she is, curled up and unconscious. I climb on top of her naked body, leaning over her face. She’s cute when she sleeps. My nose drips blood on her cheek. She opens her eyes. Terror washes over her face as her eyes adjust to the sight of me. 

“Why?” It’s the only thing I can think to say to her now.

She stares at me wide eyed for a moment, then looks away, shamefully. “They offered to pay me more.”

And that’s all there is to say between us. I wrap my hands around her throat and slowly, I begin to squeeze. Her breath catches, her delicate gasps for air are adorable. The terror in her eyes gives way to despair. She looks miserable, defeated, lacking even the will to fight me off. It’s as if in refusing to die, I had ripped away the last shred of hope she had left. Tears fill my eyes and mix with the blood on her cheek. I let go of her throat. She inhales desperately and coughs. She looks away from me, but remains limp. Amidst the whirlwind of emotions churning in my head as I straddle this beautiful, naked, utterly disloyal and ruined girl, one emerges as the loudest. A force so strong I can no more resist it than she can. I have never been this horny before in my life.

I lean over and kiss her, tracing my tongue over her’s. She doesn’t move with me nor does she attempt to resist. She merely sits there and lets me do as I please. I cup her breast in my hand and take her nipple into my mouth, sucking until I feel her quiver and hear her moan. There’s too much I want to do to her. I lick and suck and bite her all over like I’m sampling a buffet, not staying in one place for too long. Her neck. Her shoulder. Her Fingers. Her belly. Her thigh. I can’t get enough. If I could, I would fit her entire body into my mouth. 

Not content with her flesh, I open my mech self’s jaws and tear into her suit’s neck. She jolts beneath me. So She’s still connected too. Curious. I work my way to her lap until I’m staring at her limp penis. I take it in, running my tongue over her head, sucking her soft shaft. I bite down harder on her mech’s throat. The mix of sensations animates her more than I’ve seen her in a long time, bucking her hips and moaning loudly into the hand covering her mouth. She grabs my hair with her other hand. She hardens slightly in my mouth. I pull away, trailing spit and precum on my tongue. I climb over her, reaching down and spreading the lips of my vulva. I notice I’m still bleeding. It trails down my thigh and drips onto her penis. I grab her and jerk, trying to get her harder, blood lubricating my hand. She squirms at my touch, kicking her feet in the uterine fluid.

“Please,” she whispers.

When I’m convinced she’s as hard as she’ll ever be, I bring myself down on her, guiding her into me. She jerks her head back as she enters me fully, her legs shaking. I feel her leaking into me. I feel her synthetic blood dripping down my mechanical lips. I take another bite as I ride her. She whimpers miserably. Her shaking hands grab my hips and guide my rhythm. Her mech wraps its arms around mine and embraces me as my teeth tear her flesh.

“Oh my god,” she whispers feebly, her eyes rolling back. I notice her nose is bleeding now too. It streams down her face, over her soft lips, down her chin, onto her collar, her breasts, her belly. I lean down and lick the blood from her lips and kiss her again as she pumps into me. This time her tongue moves with mine, trading spit and blood between us. 

“Oh my god,” she whispers again, breathless into my open mouth. She hugs me tight, squeezing me. I feel her cum. She shuts her eyes tight, tears begin to stream down her cheeks. She buries her face in my shoulder and sobs, thrusting harder and harder into me. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

I run my hand down the back of her head, feeling her soft, flowing hair. 

“Bite me harder,” she says, thrusting into me with wild abandon. I wrap my legs around her waist and tighten my metal jaws. She screams in pleasure. With my claws I tear at her face, taking out the eyes. She shrieks so loud I pierces my eardrums, her hand clasped over her human eyes. She convulses in agony, sending waves of pleasure crashing over me. I grip her tightly, press my face to her and drool on her shoulder as I cum. 

My mech goes berserk. I rip her face apart with my hands, sink my teeth into her belly and tear out synthetic flesh and cables and steel. We scream together. We scream and scream until it tears our throats and leaves us coughing messes. In the excitement, she heaves and throws up on my back. I hug her tighter. In this moment, I love her more than anything. She slumps down, arms limp, and cries into me. 

“I’m not even gonna ask what’s going on here.” A voice from the radio. Mirel’s voice. From my mech I can see that she’s barely standing, hunched over and nursing the injury in her neck, but very much alive. She must have climbed all the way back to the top. “How you both ended up in the same pod is just something you’re gonna have to explain in the debrief.”

She takes the pod into her hands and begins the journey back to the rendezvous point. It rattles and shakes hideously. I brace myself against the metal wall with my legs, Crysta remains safe in her harness. We don’t look at each other. I don’t know how to anymore. The distance severs my connection to my mech, and the frenzy that gripped me has dissipated. Slowly the truth of what happened here, what I did, begins to sink in. I feel empty. It takes everything I have left just to keep myself steady. Blood, semen, and my own wetness leak out of me and swirl in the sloshing fluid of the pod. In the corner of my eye, I see Crysta start to touch herself.

~~~

I give the report during the debrief, leaving out what happened between me and Crysta, including her attempted betrayal. I don’t know why I protected her. She seems just as confused as I am when we walk out of the office. We’re told to rest up and prepare to stand by for another mission. They’ll never run out of uses for us. Once Mirel’s injuries are patched up she just heads back to our quarters and goes back to sleep. She never asks about what happened. 

Crysta and I sit in the lounge, not speaking, not making eye contact. There’s so much I want to say to her. So much I want to do to her. I want to scream at her, to apologize, to slap her, strangle her, kiss her. Mostly, I want to know when she’ll be ready to fuck me again. The boredom and despair are grinding down my soul and leaving me with nothing but my lust. For now, we gaze out the window, watching towers of black steal belching smoke amidst a sea of white fog. The air is caustic, and bitter, and there’s no sign that there was ever anything alive here. Crysta reaches over and takes my hand. She stares forward, not looking at me. I squeeze, clinging to the only other living thing in sight.

 

終劇