v: survivors of ground zero (apocalypse au)
It’s a goal reached with outstretched hands, and leaps and bounds taken. Better worlds and faith in a new system, this idea – for peace, for safety, for a promised haven. Yet, not all is what it seems (though there are those who always ask – is it ever?) Therein, past it all, past the veil of utopia so blindly followed, lay the dark underbelly of what it took to achieve it all.
There’s those who work in the darkness, tend to inner workings and mechanics of a system seemed impossible, where friction is necessary, and with rise comes the inevitable fall. They build, they create, they do what they can with the idea to protect, and to maintain structure and stability. After all, peace is a fragile thing.
It’s a deterrence, a threat, and to those that breach the bounds of safety, a target – proof that peace is not the only thing on the agenda, and proof that they are ready for wars of a far greater scale. They’re young, but they’re capable --- dangerously so.
They take it. Opportunity seized, they seek to destroy, to prove worth and difference. They’re the enemies, the monsters in stories told, imprinting themselves in history as the catalysts for the destruction that had ensued.
It’s a poison that spreads, seeps into skin, and kills them from the inside, strips them of their sanity --- their humanity. They become creatures, bloodthirsty, with flawed survival instincts, preying on those who are innocent, on those who have yet been infected.
He was too late.
A mission failed, with lives lost and with guilt a heavy burden, he stands at ground zero, a survivor, and a man desperate to fix this, and to find safe haven.
But was he the only one?
