"The world ended with a bright white flash. Everything fell silent, no engines, no singing birds and no muttering. Then, the screams erupted."
It has been years since the earth burned to ashes and humanity fled into the last place inhabitable: The S...
You know, Vulture was once nothing more but a citizen. He had a wife, kids and a normal life...
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The invisible gears inside my head started shifting as he revealed his identity,frantically trying to find the gap it fitted into. As if a light had been turned on in my head, I remembered the reason why I was here, the friendly advice and a letter from a close stranger. The dimly lightened up scene from yesterday entered my head again and I could almost smell the sweet curls of smoke trailing through the air when Vulture handed me the soft envelope.
"Mendez?" I asked and stopped in my tracks. Some of the residents around looked at me strangely while others kept displaying their goods on the weathered tables standing around between the stone columns. The crowd kept pushing me forward and I had no choice than to obey their urge and to drift down the raging currents.
"That's my name, yes," said the general, confirmation for my jumping heart. "So you know Vulture?"
This time it wasn't me who flinched and stopped in their tracks. One of the lights above us dangled and left us in a temporary shadow. His face was only partially turned towards me and Kenny but I could see that there was a conflict bothering his dark eyes like winds sweeping clean unknown plains of hate and bitterness. Mendez raised a finger to his lips and muttered, "We will discuss this somewhere more... appropriate. This isn't something you tell your friends at a dinner table."
Tendrils of stone closed around my heart and ripped away its warmth, what could be so bad that he wouldn't be able to tell us about it on a market, filled with chattering, mumbling and screaming people who wouldn't be able to overhear anything? Asking myself that question I followed the general to a small, lonely looking shack on the other side of the station. The people on our way greeted their leader with a smile and a nod, none of them seemed to be hostile in any way. There were no poisoned glands being shot from men's eyes passing by, not even a mutter that sounded hateful against Mendez. All of this made me worry even more.
The door of the shack was narrow and looked as if it would fall apart to dust at the slightest touch when we arrived. Mendez, looking a little unnerved by having to slither through the crowd, didn't pay any attention to that detail. He pulled out an old rusty key, unlocked the door and hushed me and my mentor into the dimly lit room. Then he threw another glance out of the door, scanning the outdoors for unwanted listeners one more time and closed the door, locking it behind us. The room reminded me a bit of 181st, what instantly resulted in a spike piercing the stone surrounding my heart. Almost the same constellation of chairs and couches, paired with a small dangling headlight from the ceiling, next to a low table. What would I give to go back and sleep in my bed one more time, wake up and be greeted by the sweet sooty air of my town and have a nice unspectacular breakfast with Kenny. But all of that was no more, all I would find would either be blackened stumps of our former house or a Desmo jumping into my arms from the nest made out of carcasses on my sleeping spot.
Sitting down on the two damp chairs, Mendez ripped me out of my thoughts as he threw up the question, "So, what are you doing with Vulture around? I mean, he is not the kind of man who just enjoys happy family dinners." I didn't know what to answer, I had always asked myself the same. Why would a stalker, who lived on the irradiated surface, miles away from the safe womb of the metro, even consider to have more than just a few seconds of contact with us? What could be so important that he abandoned the plains of madness just to be able to hang out with a kid and her adoptive father?
