#cursed_sun

Reactive shields. Hazmat armor. Modular weapons.

Despite the earliest onset of Spring the relentless sun was already hard at work, melting the enormous piles of snow accumulated on the city streets. Entire roads had already turned into wide gushing rivers, bustling and overflowing in crystal clear torrents to pour into the maws of bottomless ravines and fissures.

Above them, like ancient stalactites from the skeletal remains of leaning skyscrapers, gargantuan icicles slowly dripped in small showers that tip-tapped upon the wet snow and ice all around. Occasionally one of these giants would finally give in, breaking off to plummet into the hulks of abandoned cars in an echoing thunder of bent steel and shattered ice.

Whether under some anomalous influence, the composition of the water, or something else entirely, the empty window frames and shopping stalls have been filled with the purest of ice sheets, turning into arrays of great prisms that shot countless rays of dispersed light as it dazzled and reflected upon nearly every surface.

Slowly and carefully the two of them threaded along these melting roads, the city around them transformed by the passing season of bitter cold and endless blizzards into a tranquil and undisputed domain of ice. Now and again he'd turn to find her gawking at the radiance around them, eyes darting and tiny lips parted in awe, no matter how often he'd remind the girl to be on full alert and call her out.

As much as he enjoyed this time of peace and spectacle, the anxiety of what was yet to come kept gnawing at him.

In the days before the coming winter he cherished a deep and strong hope that the cold season would be their salvation - that the endless, bloody horrors would finally give in, if not to their fire and metal, then to the withering embrace of cold and the onslaught of biting snow. When the first blizzards struck he was more than happy to find mounds upon mounds of their petrified corpses filling the streets, their lifeless eyes of glass cracked and plates of metal armor weighed down by tombs of ice. Only the most resilient and prodigious of the abominations remained, easily put down as they struggled and slumbered with their frozen muscles.

But as he walked along these halls of blinding light and crystal prisms as if through a wondrous fairytale land, he could sense the putrid terror waking up below them.

For once, as they were well-fed and rested and healthy, he found his mind's reach stronger and greater than ever before. Through the aether he could easily sense and discern the heartbeat of any living thing several street blocks ahead of them. As expected, the palace of ice was nearly desolate save for some small alien critters here and there.

But with each and every step he took, a distant cacophony of a thousand heartbeats would emanate throughout the flow. They were frequent and low, like some distant war drums starting off a menacing battle rhythm. He could feel them beneath his own feet as if it were the buried dead demanding to be let go of the suffocating grasp of ice and concrete.

He had long since figured out that they had never left the city, nor was the cold enough to get them all. They simply retreated below, down into the remains of sewers and the sprawling cobweb of the metro, to claim that darkness as their own and turn the lifeless tunnels into living, pulsing veins. Down there they bred and slept in the warmth of their countless putrid breaths, patiently waiting for the prison of ice above to finally set them free.

Give it a few more days he thought. A week at most and the first wave of the hungering swarm will burst out of those tunnels like the abominable and mindless newborns that they are. The two of them would have to go back into hiding, forced to scour through these streets by mere inches in the dead silence of pitch black nights as they had in the warmer seasons before.

Ears ringing and his vision all blurry, Yura was slowly coming back to his senses. His burned legs ached and screamed for respite as he was slowly dragged along the sharp pebbles and gravel. Ahead of him, the dusty road they had walked upon only moments before had become a fiery river of fire, the inferno of the enraged anomaly gradually engulfing the charcoal-black buildings that lined the wide street. Through the roar of the flames he could barely recognise human voices, shouting and calling and cursing from somewhere behind them, followed by the cracking of an occasional gunshot.

By the time he and his saviour were out of the burning hellscape, the boy’s consciousness was slipping away once more. He would wake up only hours later, in the safety and care of their group’s campsite, screaming and gasping as if he were still on that damnable road.

As lucky as he was to get away with but a few burns, the final images would haunt him still for many nights to come: the sight of their group leader’s lifeless body sprawled in the middle of the road, the old man’s countenance frozen in wide-eyed terror just as the bullet found its mark right in his forehead. And the surrounding flames kept crawling, growing stronger, ever closer.

Мозг

Yura looked up at the Man in confusion

“What do you.. I’ve had plenty of cans and snacks stashed back home” he said " It’s not like we’re some monsters to let her starve and.. “

“Oh I’m not talking about preservatives and mere protein bars, no no” the Man interrupted

They are shaped

They are enhanced