I awoke from what felt like the worst sleep of my life to find that the rain had stopped.
I almost wanted the rain to continue, to give me an excuse to crawl back into the shelter and never emerge again. I would spend my last days tucked away from the world, avoiding reality.
Some unknown will in me forced me to my feet, forced me to crawl from the shelter and dust down my stained outfit, black from the rain… almost like the black dye that stained my uniform that day. It was a strange parallel, suddenly hitting me how much things had really changed. While before, my biggest concern was the hair dye on my shirt, now one of the many large concerns was the fact that the sky literally wept black.
I shouldered the bag I'd packed full of clothes and began to walk… where?
I stopped dead. Where was I going?
Like a broken compass, I stood hopelessly, directionless, amidst the rubble, surveying my surroundings as if hoping a light-up arrow would appear on the floor to guide me like in video games.
Natasha talked of a base and we were heading… which way were we heading?
Left seemed to be right, right was left and south was west… north was now east… My point was that everything was upside down, the wrong way round; just plain screwed up; in this new world.
I helplessly held my arm out straight, as if that would help me find a direction.
Giving up, I decided to spin in a circle, probably looking like an idiot, and go in the direction of whichever way my arm was pointing when I stopped spinning.
Now slightly dizzy and regretting my life choices, I began to walk in the direction my arm indicated, towards large dunes of rubble with no sign of intact buildings.
Natasha hadn't even told me anything useful about base. I had nothing to go off, no indicative landmarks or a description of what it looked like.
After a while of trying to summon what little common sense I had, I decided that the most likely place for a base in the apocalypse would be near the least affected buildings on the outskirts of Titan. No matter how long it took me, I would walk in one direction to the outskirts and scout the entirety of Titan until I found more people. At least I now had a goal, the reassurance that there might be people.
My heart sank with a sudden realisation. If humans were killed by radiation… then surely the last survivors were rapidly dying out and the only ones left would be the horrifically mutated monsters like Banks. Would I die? Would I end up like Natasha, spitting up black and becoming a broken rag doll atop a tower of rubble? Or would I mutate into some nightmare-come-to-life?
I tried to reassure myself. I hadn't died yet, I'd survived in the epicentre of an explosion and three days without food or water. Also, I was still myself, wasn't I? Natasha had said that the mutation process ignited a completely reverse in personality. As far as I could tell, I was still the same me. I, Cato Faltor, could survive a little radiation.
Although the rain had stopped a few hours ago, the heavy debris-filled clouds crackled with dark red electricity, threatening more rain. If it rained, I decided I would sprint to the nearest intact looking building and take shelter in there, no matter how far away that would be.
Luckily, it hadn't rained, even in what felt like hours of walking (or more like stumbling). Finally, more intact looking buildings loomed in the distance, emerging from the humid, shimmering air like gargantuan monsters. The smattering of half-destroyed buildings appeared to me like a desert of destruction: a picture of desolation and loneliness.
I picked up my pace…until something slammed into my side with an impossible force.
Me and my attacker rolled down a hill of rubble, my head, my shoulder, my back, my entire body smacking into brick after brick.
Then I felt it, the unbearable pain in my abdomen. A scream erupted from me, sounding almost inhuman.
My breaths came out jagged, wheezing. What felt like blood according to its coppery taste spilled out of my mouth. I had come to a stop.
Amidst the blur of pain and confusion, I raised my head slightly to try and process what exactly had happened.
Panic clawed at me as I made out the rusted and sharp metal protruding from my stomach. Slight movement confirmed my worst fear, that the metal had impaled me through my lower back. Unable to move or do much more than scream, I was trapped.
A disgusted voice was just audible from somewhere above me, undoubtedly my attacker. "How long will it take for it to die?" The voice was a man's, or perhaps a teenage boy's. In my sprawled position against the side of a rubble tower, I couldn't see who was speaking.
Another voice emerged, a soft-spoken woman who almost sounded like a robotic translator voice of some sorts. "Judging by the scars on his body already, I'm betting that he has the ability to heal." I felt someone crouch beside me, no doubt inspecting the wounds more closely. "If he stays impaled, he won't be able to heal. It'll probably be a few hours before he bleeds out." There was a sadness in her voice. "It's a shame, he looks young."
"Wait," I shouted at them, wincing through the pain.
"He can talk?" the boy said in a panic-struck voice. "Oh my god, Chloe, he's one of us! Oh god, I've just impaled a Speaker. What do we do?" Judging by the sound of heavy boots knocking loose rubble, I assumed the boy had begun to pace. Speaker? Chloe?
Chloe. Where had I heard that name before? Through my pain I couldn't remember.
Who I presumed to be Chloe spoke again. "You're a mutant right? What abilities do you have?"
She wasn't making any sense. "Abilities?"
"Aside from healing, what abilities?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said desperately. "But you have to help me out of here. I'm looking for… for a base. Do you know it?"
Something sharp was pressed to my throat. What was with people threatening me with a makeshift knife to my throat today? "How do you know about base?" Her voice became firm, almost scarily demanding.
"Someone told me about it."
"Who?"
"Natasha, she was called Natasha."
The hand holding the weapon slackened. "You know Natasha?"
"Yes, I do. I did."
"Did? Past tense?"
"Yeah. She died a few hours ago."
The weapon was completely removed from my throat and I heard a choked sob emerge from the girl. Then, it suddenly struck me… where I'd heard the name before. Chloe, Natasha's girlfriend.
Surely not, Natasha had told me that she'd changed, that she'd turned into a mutant. From her voice, she didn't seem like one.
I slowly raised my head, despite the pain.
Then I saw all the confirmation I needed: one eye brown, one eye green.