It was practically a miracle how I was able to survive any of that at all.
Swinging first. Shooting first. Violence before thought.
That seemed to be the only language this place respected.
My chest heaved as I leaned against the wall of some narrow alley I'd stumbled into, the adrenaline finally bleeding out of my system in ugly little waves. Sweat clung to the back of my neck. My fingers still twitched from recoil.
I closed my eyes for a second.
Opened them again.
Looked up—
And realized there was no sky.
Just another ceiling.
Concrete stretched high above the alleyway, lined with pipes and artificial lights that hummed faintly overhead. No stars. No moon. No wind.
The realization hit me harder than the gunfights did.
This place was buried so deep underground it genuinely felt disconnected from the world above it. Like somebody had carved out an entirely different civilization beneath the apocalypse and decided the rest of humanity wasn't worth saving.
