The Mist Tents smelled of crushed eucalyptus and old, rusted iron. It was meant to be a place of healing, tucked away somewhere in the subterranean colony, but to Will, the thick canvas walls felt exactly like a cage.
In the far corner, Elyas was face-down on a narrow cot, utterly dead to the world. A small mountain of empty, scavenged nutrient-paste wrappers littered the dirt floor beneath his dangling hand. His mutated biology had demanded a massive, immediate calorie influx to replace the physical mass he'd melted away during the breach, dropping him into a deep, restorative coma the second he had finished chewing.
His loud, rattling snores were the only sound in the tent, but the silence beneath it only amplified the buzzing in Will's skull.
