@f3nix's beginning:
Awakenings
The hoverbike lay abandoned on its side, the engine still warm. The fine black dust carried by the incessant wind was a snake that crept in every small recess.
From the top of the dune the Tesseract 19 could be seen with the naked eye. The column pierced the black sea of graphite and challenged the dark crimson sky. The awareness of his distance made him wince. That construction was enormous. That impenetrable artifact, Moloch's sharpest tooth.
Intertwined with dust, the warm wind brought an imperceptible howl: the bark of the monolith, an omen of death.
The man waited, a stiff exoskeleton bent over the black sand. The helmet lay abandoned beside him. Soon the team would have arrived.
"Soon you will arrive too and everything will be accomplished, one way or another."
He thought of her smile, her courage, her strength. "My life, how could I've been so reckless to have you involved in all this?" The tears were already kneading blackened as the memories of their happy normality swept over him.
"I can not let them find me like this". He stared at himself from outside: another tower on a dune, far more uncertain than the one that howled his feral wish.
These and other demons echoed within the chambers of his soul, when his eyes met a green sprout. The man stared that little miracle that, against every odd, was striving to affirm its existence. In the midst of that sea of bottomless despair.
The tear finally found its way lingering and bathed a leaf. The man managed to pull himself together and, now smiling, he put on his helmet.
"This Moloch will tremble, time has come for an awakening."
@raj808's ending:
A Change Gonna Come!
A whispered breath of life clawing its fingers from the earth. A zombie of a bygone age emerging. This green and growing thing signifies hope, but hope is a dangerous thing. Nothing has sprouted in over 100 years. Could the lies be true? Could the planet have moved far enough for a recovery? Could the promised time be starting? What the hell, time for some death and destruction.
Cold metal on hands, sun-sparks piercing eyes, intense flecks of diamond pain leaving ghosts across the retina. The reflected reminder of this scorched earth. The visor snaps down, the tang of salt sand as the wind whips up in the hoverbike's fury. Whistling wind and the heat of the day diminished. That black pinnacle of Tesseract 19 piercing a crimson sky, weighing down the clouds. Purple shrouds of gaseous death, suspended where creatures of the air once wheeled, once upon a time.
Forget the stories, I’ll stick to what I know. Heat, sand and thirst. Nothing grows, nothing wheels and calls in that crimson field. All legends of a past invented by weak, weary folk of the dark. People who can't take the reality of the underworld.
Fuck, let them come up into the light and see how long they'd last.
But... that green sprout, the shape of a leaf. Sublime lines like the capillaries in well-worn flesh. Stem and stalk. I remember the books she used to read. Not worth thinking about, just a mirage, just a trick of the mind.
Fuck, let them come up into the light and see how long they'd last.
But... that green sprout, the shape of a leaf. Sublime lines like the capillaries in well-worn flesh. Stem and stalk. I remember the books she used to read. Not worth thinking about, just a mirage, just a trick of the mind.
Hot wind scorches the space between visor and scarf. I grab the material, tuck it up behind my mask before engaging the suit’s unit. The sickening smell of Perspex air from the filter. The burn of scorched skin where boiling wind scolded flesh. Deafening rush of air, thoughts electric marbles ricochet around my skull, Tesseract 19 looms large in my visor. A pattern of wheeling specks rise from the crest of the tower. It's party time.
Jagged screaming metal. The flash of scrap propelled by plasma, hunks of iron flashing bright lines of molten flare through dry air. I tug the hoverbike's handlebars left then right, zigzagging a blotchy slipstream in the wake of the anti-grav.
That sack of shit, Cornelius is right on my tail. Traitor to the tunnels, he sold his soul for a place in the clouds and a VR lie. Thousands died for his treachery. The end of the resistance as we knew it. I only saw it once, from far away. The great cloud city at the peak of Tesseract 19. Glints of sunlight reflecting from buildings of some translucent material. The hint of green from who knows what infernal machinery and the endless blood boiling sky. Just as much a mirage as that sprouting leaf, it was the only way to explain it away. The only way to make sense of her death.
A brief roar then endless howling. The wind ripping and raking the suit as the earth spirals up to meet me. I twist painfully in the suit, that sack of shit follows in the blazing line of plasma leaking from the bikes femoral arteries. The engine croaks a last breath. I twist the effector, slamming it into reverse as the ground rears up to greet me. Jolting pain. Pressure bursts a blood vessel as g-force pulls my stomach into my throat. That wonderful, beautiful machine spits its dying breaths to save me. The bike's momentum slams sidelong into the desert and I leap and roll. Bones jarring, blood mixing with acrid vomit in the space between face and visor. I rip off the helmet and taste sand in my mouth. The reassuring grit of the scorched earth. I dive deep into blackness, before emerging into the sun.
A hum from a hoverbike idling. A black visor slashed across with a red bolt, the sign of the city. My finger twitches for my gun. The visor lifts. Her blue eyes shed tears of living light, one, two, three role down freckled cheeks, kissed by the sun.
"Garrett, my love. They were right all along. There were no lies... only the confused legends of a thousand year war. Turn your head. Look and see."
A green sprout waves in the breeze, backed by the column of Tesseract 19 erupting with azure luminescence. The sky slowly fades from red to green.
"It has begun Garrett. The time of awakening!"
The end.
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