Clad in my air-tight Prototype II Power Armor and equipped with a Rawkadium Assault Rifle, I pass through a noiseless air-lock. Long ago it may have worked but now it’s nothing more than a rusty memorial to one of Earth’s mighty space faring warships, ready to cleanse the filth that inhabits this place. As I passed through it, the sun’s light barely touching the far side of the hallway, all is quiet as I ride my hand across the wall feeling what it must have been like to live in a ship of this magnitude, feeling the dents and holes from past battles fought.
It was then that I saw for the first time, one of those unlucky enough to have escaped the nuclear holocaust that rattled our mother to her very core. Riddled with poisonous sacks of disease and pus, massive scars, burns and mutations that no ordinary man could endure, this poor soul lays on his side in the dirt waiting to be released from his eternal pain that only death could achieve. Along the walls of his fetid cavern, radioactive and glowing fungi grow and create an ominous feeling about the room. To the right of the first creature three figures, disfigured beyond recognition, crawl out of a jagged hole in the ceiling with a terrible bone creaking noise, sensing my approach. Hideously discolored, their bodies vaguely resemble a spider, with eight legs that have hooked claws where their hands should be and an awful, nightmarish jaw that has a mouthful of razor sharp and infectious fangs. These creatures eye me warily for intruding upon their domain. They do not attack, almost as if knowing it was futile. For the first time, I notice that the ground is covered in bones and decaying flesh from unknowing wanderers, seeking a safe haven from the acidic rain of this now alien planet only to be preyed upon by these demonic monstrosities. Then the smell hit me. The smell was excruciating, even through the air purifier on my helmet, it crept through and burned my nose. The smell was like a combination of a thousand rotting, burning corpses. Barely holding back tears from the putrid stench, I finished my survey of the room. On the wall to my left sits a locker that’s barely holding on to the wall with one rusty hinge. Inside the locker, resting its back to the wall, a child’s teddy bear with a rip on its leg sits, as if waiting for his master to come and claim him. Above me, hanging from the roof, is what’s left of a once beautiful crystal chandelier with only a few crystal rods left. Even a fraction of its former self it still has an essence of beauty hanging around it as if saying, “Even in a world of unimaginable horrors, I remain. A rebel denying this planet from being a barren wasteland, a place without beauty, to stand up to our mother, to show there is still something worth living for. I remain.”