It’s been three years since the beginning of the end. The outcome every B movie sci fi release depicts, but you can’t mess up, or you’ll die.

Lysander was a gymnast before all of this bullshit went down. Before he started to fear the sound of ion thrusters and metal on metal. Before phonophobia, misophonia, and agoraphobia wedges themselves into his psyche, possibly permanently. Well. I guess it would be permanent. As far as he knows this mechanical hell isn’t going to end anyway, providing no opportunity for recovery.

As he walks down sidewalks, skin crawling with the level of vulnerability the location provides, something hits the cement and rolls to a stop, like a can out of a dumpster that no garbage truck has touched in years. Honestly, this city, or what remains stinks. Lysander whips his head around brass knuckles firm between his fingers he’s met with another person, not a bot.