Nikki slowly stood up from the scavenged mattress, the heavy wool blanket slipping from her shoulders and pooling onto the dust-choked floor. The dull ache in her blistered hands completely vanished, entirely overridden by the sudden, freezing spike of cortisol flooding her veins. She walked over to the shattered window, standing beside the towering, bare-chested God of War.
She peered through the narrow gap in the rotted wood.
The smog-choked sky above Sector 4, usually a sickly, bruised purple in the early morning, was already darkening into a violent, apocalyptic red. It wasn't the weather. The sky was literally swarming with thousands of automated pacification drones. They were descending from the upper atmospheric maintenance bays of Tower Zero, their dark purple optical sensors glowing like a plague of mechanical locusts.
