Silas moved quickly once the scavenger disappeared, but not so quickly that he drew attention. The ruins had ears. The city wasn't empty—it was hungry. Sometimes it was men like that scavenger. Sometimes it was worse.
The wind shifted, carrying a sharp, unpleasant smell. He ducked into what had once been a storefront, its glass shattered, its shelves overturned. The floor was littered with cans, most of them rusted through, their labels rotted and unreadable. He kicked one over; it rattled hollowly, crawling with ash beetles. He grimaced. They could be eaten if roasted, but their bitterness lingered for days, and he wasn't that desperate yet. Not yet.
The machine weighed against his ribs as he crouched, pulling it into the faint light that filtered through the broken ceiling. The wires gleamed faintly, and the needle glinted as if eager to pierce. He ran his thumb over the metal, tracing its strange design. It was too fine to be just scrap. Too deliberate.
"What are you?" he whispered, voice dry from days without clean water. His words felt too loud in the empty store, so he swallowed the rest.
He turned it over, inspecting every angle. A motor. A grip. A strange compartment that rattled when he shook it gently. He imagined the blacksmiths back in the market district seeing it, weighing it in their hands. Would they laugh? Or would they recognize it? Trade something real for it? Bread? Water? A knife that wouldn't snap the first time he used it?
The thought made his stomach twist with longing. He shoved the machine back under his coat. Don't think about trade now. Don't think about food now. Survival came first, and survival meant getting out of the ruins alive.
A noise outside made him stiffen. Not the shuffle of cautious footsteps this time. Louder. Wet. A dragging sound, as though something heavy was being pulled across the ground. Silas pressed himself deeper into the shadows, breath sharp in his chest.
Through a crack in the doorway, he saw it.
A shape slithered past, low to the ground, its body half-flesh, half-metal. The war had left more than ruins behind. Mutations, machines twisted with living tissue, things birthed from fire and poison. This one had too many limbs, some ending in claws, some dragging uselessly. Its head jerked unnaturally as it sniffed the air, a wet rasping sound.
Silas didn't breathe. Didn't move. His heart thundered so loudly he feared it might hear. The creature paused at the entrance, head tilting, jaws clicking as if it could taste him in the air.
His fingers brushed the handle of his knife. But the thought of using it against that made his gut sink. A knif wouldn't kill something like that. It would barely scratch it. He tightened his grip anyway, every muscle screaming to stay still.
The thing lingered for a heartbeat. Two. Then it moved on, dragging itself down the street with sickening ease.
Silas let out the breath he had been holding only when the sound faded completely. His knees felt weak, trembling as he pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the hard weight of the machine beneath his coat. He clenched his teeth. Thi world gave nothing freely. Not food. Not safety. Not even scraps of metal. Everything came with risk.
He slipped out of the store, keeping low, hugging the shadows. Every step carried him closer to the edge of the ruins, closer to the makeshift camp he called home. His mind kept drifting back to the machine. Its needle. The strange hum. He imagined it biting into skin, imagined the way the lines might form, black and jagged, permanent.
Why did it feel… important?
He pushed the thought aside. Later. He needed firewood. He needed food. He needed to live long enough for "later" to matter.
The streets narrowed into an alleyway, walls scarred with old burn marks. As he moved through, his eyes caught something—a mural, faint beneath soot and weather. Painted hands, marked with swirling black patterns, stretched out in defiance, their tattoos etched like living creatures across their skin. The figures were faded, almost gone, but the detail still clung stubbornly to the wall.
Silas stopped. His chest tightened. He looked down at the machine hidden beneath his coat, then back at the mural.
Coincidence, maybe. Just another scrap of a world that burned itself alive. But something in his gut told him otherwise.
He pulled his hood lower, shoving the thought into the back of his mind, and quickened his pace. The sky was bleeding red with sunset, and in the ruins, night belonged to things far worse than scavengers.
Silas Brine had survived the day. That was all that mattered.
But as the wind howled through the dead city, carrying the scent of ash and rust, he couldn't shake the feeling that what he had found wasn't just scrap.
It was something waiting to be used