The sky over the eastern trenches didn’t darken with natural rain. It curdled into an oily, bruised violet eclipse.
By 06:40 in the morning, a rolling wall of dense mutagenic foul fog, sweeping inward from the deep radioactive waste, had swallowed the horizon. The fog was thick as wet flannel. It smelled of ozone, rotting marrow, and the sweet, nauseating reek of man-made growth hormones. Where the violet mist touched the metal low roof walls, the zinc-coated zinc fizzed and peeled in greasy black blisters. Where it drifted over the trench grass, the stems blackened and dissolved into sludge in seconds.
Inside the forward command watching post of Outpost 4-Alpha, the tactical displays flickered with violent static before turning entirely red.
WARNING: Light-beam SPECTROMETRY SCRAMBLED Outside AETHER: 118 PPM [ACUTE ZONE 4 SPIKE] Air FILTRATION CORRODED
“Breathing mask seals checked!” Arthur Vance shouted, his voice muffled through the tight rubber housing of his dual-canister charcoal straining mask.
Arthur stood at the trench firing step, his fingers checking the airtight seals around his neck. The heavy carbon-weave trench coat was fully buttoned, the cuffs taped tightly to his heavy handling gloves. Over his left eye, the Zeiss magnifying glass spun its quartz prisms with rapid, rhythmic clicks, struggling to penetrate the churning purple murk that had reduced visual range to less than eight meters.
