For three hundred years, his people had lived in "The Hive," a subterranean labyrinth built by the "Ancients" before the surface became a scorched graveyard of radiation and glass. They were told the world above was dead. They were told the Archives were forbidden.
He looked at the hologram of the woman standing in a field of green. He looked at the rusted, dripping pipes of his home.
The air in Sector 42 didn't just smell like rust; it tasted like it—a metallic tang that coated the back of Kael’s throat. He adjusted the straps of his atmospheric filter, the rubber seals hissing against his scarred skin.
Kael didn’t care for the rules. He was a Scavenger, and today, he had found something the Overseers had spent centuries trying to delete.
As his grease-stained fingers swiped the surface, a holographic interface flickered to life. A woman appeared, her clothes strange and vibrant—colors Kael didn't have names for.
Kael froze. The "seeds" weren't plants—they were coordinates.
"Not today," he muttered, tucking the slate into his chest plate.