Exemption

Prologue

     High up on the hills at the outskirts of a scorched city, a lone chromalily flower stands watch. The wind howls, whispering the secrets and memories of those who have long since passed.

     This is the end. For how long the spark of humanity has endured is the final mystery. All we have seeded, we have reaped. This is the end. For this planet is our tomb.

     The chromalily wavers as if to answer. Further on, two graves, marked only by the flower, sits. The gray dirt sits uneven, recently disheveled. The city's ruins stay silent, save for the occasional rubble that spills from the burnt wreckage of towering skyward buildings. No fire, no smoke. Just emptiness, concrete jungles and metal structures reaching toward endless cloudy skies attempting to escape a lonely, vacant Earth denied by time. Neither the sun rises nor falls upon the last grasping monuments of humanity.

     The winds amp up their aggressive efforts, complemented by snow. White specks sprinkle towards the ground, thrown about without consent. The flower begins to wilt. In the fading light, the footprints start to fade.

Sleep well.

---

      Held fast was a wooden door reinforced with corrugated metal. The cracks between the material hinted at an urgent message of apocalypse, but were still unable to be adequately relayed. Instead, mesmerized by the red-hot licks of a fire pit is the recipient. The blanket of snow had long since melted, dripping off of the stitched tarp-converted-poncho draped over the young girl, splattering and drying on rough wooden planks—arms outstretched, unmoving, unblinking, allowing the flames to consume her attention. The remains of a once flourishing hydroponics garden lay dormant, leftover water reflecting its only light source.

     A chromalily for you, just as you wanted, mother.

     Clumped dark brown hair, served as a garnishment of the wet cocktail that surrounded her with a hint of irradiation. A moment's repose in a world already filled with silence. The memories are all that linger, but the girl does not seem to recall them anymore. Inside, she felt without direction, without aim, an emptiness devoid of even the darkness associated with the memories of the dead. She sat there for a while, eventually drying up by the heat of the flames. She hardly noticed.

     The rumble of spatial displacement shook the safe house.

Alone. Alone.

     The animal-like screams, the black speech of the drones.

There is no one left, not even myself.

      The rubble and dust shook off of the foundations as the entity slammed into the door.

Nothing left, not even pain.

     The explosion, the splinter of cobbled lumber, the gray dirt flying in all directions.

     Let my body go unnoticed.

     And finally, the sight of twisted flesh-like muscle, a contorted skinned appendage floating against the laws of physics. It howled without a mouth, spotting her without eyes, slicing the very space where her head was. She felt nothing but also saw nothing. In just a moment, she was thrown into the very emptiness that had already consumed her. Drowning and drowning into a texture-less abyss where there was no stimuli or beginning or end. Yet, despite all of that, she still did not notice anything.