Chapter I:  Denver, 2127

As I run through the streets, I feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins, every stride a heartbeat. The heartbeat intensifies in my palms and rings throughout my ears with everlasting fear that the enraged horde behind me closes in for the final blow. As the dense forest of buildings weave and stem out of the ground creating an artificial barrier around me, I dodge the upcoming blockades. As I run on the dark midnight path, ominous walls approach me as if soldiers were marching in from both sides. This is it. I’m running out of room. The abandoned metal shells started to appear from societies’ former days of yore, mostly decomposed from the chronic acid rain that resulted from the Great War.
As I guide through and choose wisely the twisted alleys, Kantervilles start appearing that were built from the last depression. George Kanter. The man that would fix everything. The man that promised to take Syria back and not let another Satan II go off. Well we all know how that went. The recurrence of the Roman empire. All that is good must collapse under human stupidity and greed.
I noticed a crimson flash in my peripheral vision; this was indeed a flash of hope. I planted my front foot and dove into the metal carcass of a nearby car. I hear slight tapping on the metal behind me like morse code. I put my hands under the scrap sheet being careful to not cut myself with the dissipating rust and lifted. A pale ghostly figure is revealed, the bony finger feebly rose from the rat bones that he was currently trying to devour.
“Et rubrum manibus.”
I quickly dropped the piece of metal as if startled and leaped under the dashboard. The sound of the group approached the car. The group must have heard the metal drop, crap. The sunlight filtered through the stripped dashboard and a dark figure emerged over the hatch of the car. I started to cringe at the image, and grind my teeth in anticipation. As I felt the jagged ridge that use to be my tongue enrage with pain as the adrenaline wore off, I see the patch emerge from the gloomy gunsmoke uniform, the black cross. The feeling of swallowed blood erupted from my throat. I look back down at the sheet of metal that has now shifted to only expose a single eye. Watching as my cheeks inflate, the figure lunged out of the metal, screeching. The figure over the hatch quickly inverted, facing the rotten carcass of metal, quickly spraying bullets in the direction of the skeleton figure that crawled into the sewer system. As I study the face that tried to scour for the pale figure, I recognised the weather tormented face left before me. The face looked down at me as I tucked my head under my arm and heave all of the blood from the spewing wound. The man’s face, enlightened with recognition, quickly looks up and acts if nothing occurred. As the group slowly proceeds to the next street corner, I collapse out of the carcass from the sudden light-headed sensation that rose from the loss of blood and pain. As I grip and claw at the rugged road trying to inch my way to the door with the red glimpse that proluded through the rigid scenery, the world filled with darkness.