Darius was huddled in the dark beneath the awning of a back alley loading bay. Fever had taken him to horrific places. His days were composed of sleep, and his dreams were only of his father, fearfully falling through a black void, but never hitting the ground. At times, Darius was convinced that he could see his father’s mouth moving as though speaking to him, but he could never make out the words.

In rare moments, he would wake from the dream just long enough to separate reality from the imagination. Even though everything within him demanded surrender to death, to hopelessness and silence; with his waking mind, Darius refused to die.

It has been three days of fever and agony beneath the awning, drinking the slow stream of water that ran from an outdoor faucet nearby. He finally found the strength to fight through the hallucinations and the fatigue, forcing himself out of the alley for the first time.

His horrific visage drew all of the wrong attention, but the iridescent scorch marks on his chrome and the broken blistered swollen flesh left people disgusted enough to avoid him, and uninterested enough not to bother scavenging him. He simply wasn’t worth anyone’s time. He dug through bags of trash, finding old blankets and clothing to cover himself. It wasn’t long before nobody bothered looking at him anymore.

He had always wanted to see the bright lights of SOLA, and the many sights that he’d always marveled at on TV. He hadn’t known that of the eight million inhabitants of the city, three million were homeless. He had joined the ranks of those least fortunate, and no help was coming. So yes, he got to see the neon, and the people. However, he knew now that it was only a facade. SOLA was a spectacle to behold, but its core festered.

He watched people walk past him to the restaurant down the street. He could smell the food. It wasn’t fresh, like he’d known. He rested painfully against a concrete wall. The lights fractured in his vision, blurred between his swollen eyelids. He feels a tightening in his gut. His stomach had been empty since his last day in luxury. He knew it’s hunger, he knew he was getting weaker, but he had no desire to eat. Fighting the cascading waves of pain was all that mattered to him now.

His chrome spine was framed by a spider web of deep purple lines of infected tissue. Every place where flesh met metal was red with inflammation, but at least he could move now. Whatever Geracht had done, caused the system to boot in safe mode. Darius had standard motion, but no additional features, and everything only worked some of the time.

It’s been two days since he lost the will to cry, and one day since he’d hit the acceptance stage of grief. He didn’t grieve for his father as much as he’d expected. The man was never around. The grief was more selfishly tied to losing everything he had ever known. This world of loss and poverty is one that he had never seen before. Sure, he’d watched Armored Expedite, but it was about the glorious action of battle through the lense of SOLA’s bravest souls. It never showed the true terror of being destitute, or the exhaustion of living in chronic pain in a gutter.

Now, he sat awkwardly, trying to position himself in a way that made the pain even mildly bearable. However, there was no hope of that now. It had gone too long without healing. It burned ever further into his flesh. He barely had the energy to move.

He drew another agonizing breath, and trids to lean forward to stand. An acrid tinge reached his nose and he felt a sudden dread. The acid rains are coming. He remembered it from his childhood. It had happened only once at his home. It was a smell that he’d never forget, and a vision that remained in his mind. That thick glossy mess covering everything. It was ashen as it fell, and coated everything as the alkaline sprinklers fired to attempt to counter the damage.

Now, the tawny smell of it wafted toward him in the air. Other huddled figures found their coverings and their safe spaces. He looked back, to see that his awning was already overly packed with people. They gave him looks of warning to stay away. He turned from them, pushing forward through every ounce of resistance that his body forced upon him.

He felt a sudden numbness in his left cheek. His metallic left arm stopped moving, locking in place at an awkward angle. His left eye shifted to an upturned position and flickered off. His flesh was so weak. It refused to obey, but he commanded it anyway. He fought to overcome every last whisper of death. Every signal of the inevitable drove him to push harder. Every ounce of his strength poured unfettered into his attempt to get to some kind of shelter.

He crumbled against a concrete wall in a thin firestained alley. Again he commanded his body, but this time it didn't respond. Overcome with pain, he lay on the ground with his back to the wall, and waited for the burning rain to come down. It would cover him and seep into his wounds. Wrap him in a layer of smokey grime. It would find its way into his nose, his mouth, and it would choke him. He would die, unloved, alone, and forgotten.

A single thin milky drop struck the ground an arm’s reach from Darius's face. The smell of it trickled toward him and quickly overwhelmed his senses.

Acceptance… He thought. Time to accept the inevitable.

He had fought to survive. Harder than he’d fought for anything before. He had refused to die, but SOLA wouldn’t accept that refusal. It is the boot, and he is the ant. What right does an ant have to refuse the will of something so much greater?

A shadow was cast over his face as someone stood in the wavering glow of a streetlight nearby. The shadow expanded wide with a loud slapping sound. The cool rough texture of a tarp landed over Darius's face. Then the tarp was secured to the wall with some sort of adhesive gum, lifted off of him, and stretched over like a lean-to. His right eye adjusted to the change in light and he saw the face of a little girl. She couldn’t be more than seven years old. He blinked painfully. He could tell that she had a hard time looking at him in his state, but when she did make eye contact, he saw kindness there.