Mark took a deep breath as he stood outside. The cool air washed against his skin, passing over him like a calm wave on a beach. It was rare the weather was so pleasant here, even if the skies were still blocked by clouds and smog.
He had just finished a sermon; one he was mildly proud of. Of course, it was performed to an empty church, folks around here didn’t seem to click with his interpretation of the universe. He was comfortable with that, it still wouldn’t prevent him from performing his duty, congregation or not, prayers must be made, and kindness spread.
The streets were quiet, as they normally were. Despite how many people lived in the blocks surrounding him, hardly anyone walked the streets, especially alone. Mark’s confidence in his own safety was unfounded, but persistent. He wouldn’t let stories of automaton enforcers and trigger-happy gangers, despite their objective truth, deter him from breathing the air God had ordained him to breathe. He exhaled out through his mouth, his body calm and mind thoughtful, it was rare he had a day where he felt his faith so strongly, it was like it was seeping out of his bones. He enjoyed the unfortunately uncommon certainty it brought him. He began the walk back to his quarters, taking in the admittedly poor, but familiar sights, of his home city.
Tall, entirely grey concrete buildings lined the intimidatingly wide roads, none of them had been built with any identifying features aside from symmetrically placed, completely glassless windows, and the bronze plaques above each of their entrances. Above him, the jury-rigged rusted metal residences of the quarterless stuck to the walls like barnacles, or hung between them like an arrow in a drawn bow string aimed at the sky. Mark muttered a prayer for them, the cleaners hadn’t been through this sector in a while, it was always a matter of time for those less fortunate. He would house as many as he could, when the time came, but he was only one man, and one man couldn’t save everyone.
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He took the shortcut he always did, a sparse alleyway between two monolithic buildings. Sometimes there would be a quarterless taking shelter in it, he would spare them some of his rations and advise better places to hide. They always checked the alleys around here.
He heard a distant rumbling, the sound of thunder, as usual. Except...
It wasn't thunder, Mark could recognise that sound anywhere, the currently absent storms that constantly overcast the planet had been a familiar soundtrack to his entire life, the fact he hesitated to identify it after his initial assumption was an answer in itself. Thunder rumbled, and echoed, it also varied the longer it was drawn out. The sound Mark was hearing was constant, like a slow-motion build-up to the crack of a whip. He looked up, his vision of the grey skey obscured by the towers that surrounded him. Nothing. But the sound kept getting louder.
Then it hit. Something large and heavy shot downward from the sky with a speed exceeding anything he had seen before. It crashed into the left wall of the alley ahead of him, it’s angle was steep, and it dragged against the concrete, the sound of stone being torn apart violently echoed against the smooth and reflective walls, it found itself embedded in the building itself before it could finish its path down to the ground. Mark blocked his face with his arm, it wouldn’t have saved him from any of the rubble if he was close enough to be hit by it, but it blocked most of the dust from getting in his eyes.
He swallowed hard and blinked in disbelief. He looked up again, as if that would answer any of his questions. It didn’t. He looked at the object again, it was an escape pod, that much was certain. He hadn’t seen one of them before, and stories of their use were rare, why had one been launched, and why had it landed here? Why weren’t there any others? He shook his head, that wasn’t important right now, what was important was the person contained within it.
He jogged quickly up to where it had impaled itself, he squinted to get a look through the view port, but it was too clouded up to see anything through it. It was also too high up for him to reach. He could spot an emergency exterior release handle, but he wouldn’t have been able to brush it even if he jumped. He looked around, there had to be something that would give him the height he needed.
