As I stepped outside I was greeted by a cold gust of wind. Not exactly the friendly experience I wanted, but just about anything was better than the building I had left. I was in a metropolitan area, with apartment complexes and food joints on both sides of the street. The street itself was empty, save for a few cars, but the snowstorm had reduced visibility to less than a block in all directions; I couldn't even tell what time of day it was.

If I'm being honest I was a bit lost at this point. My only goal up until now had been to get outside, and now that I was I had no idea what to do next. Maybe I had been expecting that whatever nightmare I had woken up in would just end if I got out, maybe I thought that if I could just get outside I would be safe. Looking around, I realized that the hours I endured in the station were nothing to what awaited me here. The station was small, impossible to get lost in even if I had tried. Outside though, it was a completely different story. Each alleyway provided an opportunity for ambush, each street provided yet another potential path toward danger. The scale had increased and with it the danger.

I don't know how long I stood there, worrying over endless possibilities. I worried over all the possible ways I could die, worried that I would never be safe again, and worried that no matter what I did it wouldn't be enough to prevent the inevitable. I almost lost myself to that spiral of despair. It wasn't until I realized my butt was getting wet that I realized I had sat down.

That broke me out of the cycle. Worrying over death only invited it closer. I took a few deep breaths and shook myself off. Worrying only wasted time at this point, and who knew how much of that I had left until dark. I picked myself up and decided that either direction was as good as the other. It didn't take long for the police station to become nothing more than a bad memory.

I had been walking now for at least a few hours. At first, I had been tense and cautious, making sure to check every alley and doorway on my way past. Now, I was walking almost leisurely, having grown tired of constantly checking for nonexistent threats. The city was, for all intents and purposes, dead. This was a city, once filled to the brim with the hustle and bustle of millions of people. All that remained of their existence was hollow steel and concrete. That creeped me out more than if I had seen the city completely infested with the insects.

By now, my surroundings had started to change. The buildings had gotten taller, more elaborate. I suspected I was heading into the downtown area. Almost every building I had passed so far was open in one way or another, either the door was smashed, the window, or in rare cases, a hole in the wall.

The snowstorm had only gotten worse. The snow had had once barley reached my heel was now well on its way to overtaking my ankle. My hands had long since stiffened around my rifle, and my toes were starting to get numb. To make matters worse, darkness was approaching, I knew if I got caught here at night there was a chance I wouldn't live to see the day again. So I started looking for shelter.

Shelter turned out to be really hard to find. There were plenty of buildings, sure. But all of them seemed to have been broken into by something, and anything that could break down a door wasn't something I wanted to mess with.

My hopes of avoiding conflict faded with the daylight, and I was growing increasingly worried that I would be forced to sleep in a potentially hostile building. My fears were soon put to rest by a steel shuttered office.

The shutters were bent inwards and scratched all over, but they weren't open, nor were there any other entrances on the sides of the building. That only left me with one problem, how to get inside.

It was dusk by now, and visibility had fallen to only a few car lengths. The shutter was locked to the ground, and my only hope of opening it would be to find the key or maybe something to pry it off the ground with. If worst came to worst I could always sacrifice my rifle to pry open the door.

I looked around me, the only thing that nearby was a car that was parked just outside the office. The whole thing was covered in snow, save for the windshield which had a hole on the driver's side about the same size as the one in stock. It wasn't hard to guess what did that.

I tried opening the door on a whim, and to my surprise, it was unlocked, and something was pushing on it. I jumped back ready to shoot whatever decided to come out. Instead, a corpse tumbled out, with a fist-sized hole in its back and completely covered in snow. I moved towards it slowly, still worried that something was going to pop out of the car at me.

The car was clear, so I moved my attention back to the corpse. It had fallen over on its stomach, so I had to flip it over to get to its pockets. Whatever had killed it- or her as I now saw- I pierced through the windshield, clean her chest, and into the seat behind her.

My looting was rewarded with a keyring and an ID. I almost took the wallet, but on second thought decided that whatever was in it would probably be useless to me. I went back over to the shutter and decided to try my luck with the keys.

It didn't take long before I heard the satisfying click of the door opening, and I started pushing the shutter up. Of course, the door wouldn't open more than a few feet on account of the giant dent in it, but it was more than enough for me to crawl through.

I was greeted on the other side by a pitch-black room. I took a few steps forward, regretting that I hadn't taken the time to look for a flashlight, when the lights decided to come on. Thankfully, they were low intensity and didn't immediately blind me. Less thankfully, they were red and accompanied by a message.

"Welcome back -Emma Rosewell-, while you were away there were -eleven- break-in attempts. The police have been notified and will arrive shortly."

I couldn't help but scoff at that, but it was nice to hear another human's voice, even if prerecorded. The voice continued,

"This facility is currently running on back up generators with an estimated lifetime of -thirty- hours. You currently have -zero- pending notification. Have a nice day."

I guessed Emma Rosewell was the corpse currently lying in the street, and her ID was what triggered the lights. Either way, I now had a safe place to wait out the night, and even better, it was warm.

I had set up shop near a vent that spewing out heat in the reception area. Throughout the day, my clothes and, more importantly, my socks had become covered in snow. Most of them were laid out now scattered around the heater in the hopes they would dry out before tomorrow.

The area I was in was small, only containing a reception desk, a few chairs, and a sign that read: Winston Laboratories. Behind the reception area was a locked door. I was sure I could open it with my recently acquired ID, but I hadn't bothered to test it yet. After all, I was perfectly content where I was, and I had no reason to go looking for more danger.

That was when my stomach decided to rumble... loudly.

Shit.

I was hesitant to head back outside, which left me with only one option. I got up with my rifle and moved over to the door behind the reception desk. There was a window into the room behind it, but with the lights off inside there wasn't much to see. I placed the ID onto the scanner and the door swung open into the darkness.

Unlike when I entered the building, lights didn't automatically come on. Instead, I had to flail my arms about the wall trying to find the switch. Eventually, I was rewarded for my efforts with temporary blindness. In my defense, I wasn't really expecting floodlights to light up every corner of the room. When my vision finally returned, I started to wander the room.

The whole place looked like something out of a movie. In the corner, there was a workshop with all manner of tools. The majority of the room was filled with different kinds of devices none of which were recognizable. Robotic arms descended from the ceiling, hovering over some of the devices for some unknown purpose. And at the center of the room was a glass structure surrounded by several screens.

But I spot something useful, a breakroom. There wasn't much real food, only a few stale crackers and moldy sandwiches which I devoured without a second thought. There were, however, plenty of protein bars and energy drinks which I decided to take back to my little camp in the reception area.

Dinner done with, I was tempted to try to sleep. But now that the room was open I knew I couldn't just leave it unexplored. This time I went into the room with no particular goal in mind. I just wanted to see if there was any cool stuff. It's not like anyone else was going to use it anyways.

The workshop was the first place I checked. The tools were useless to me, but I did find some flashlights and electrical tape. It didn't take long to strap one of them to the barrel of my rifle, and I put another in my pocket alongside the tape just in case.

It didn't take long for me to realize that most of the machinery was useless, either because it was too big to move or just completely beyond my ability to use.

But it wasn't a total waste of time. In the center of the room, near the glass structure was another workstation, and sitting in the center of it was a watch. It was electronic with a simple leather strap and metal clasp. I put it on and couldn't help but frown when nothing happened. Maybe it was dead? Either way, it looked important and it was small, so I decided t keep it. The rest of the room was for all intents and purposes, barren.

I left the lab content with my haul. I had food, warmth, and a shiny watch. If that wasn't living the highlife I didn't know what was. Tomorrow I would be back outside, possibly risking my life, but now I was content.

I was rudely awoken that morning by a flash of pain in my wrist. And if anyone had been nearby they may have heard a scream. Not that it was me or anything.

When I looked to inspect the damage I saw a small trickle of blood moving away from my watch out onto my arm. When I tried removing it I found that I couldn't. Or at least not without a great deal of pain. On closer inspection, the damn thing had shot a needle into my wrist, and if the way it was pulling on my skin was any indication, the needle was fucking barbed. I guess this was the price for my greed. Go figure.

At least the little bastard was finally on. Maybe it fed on pain. Instead of displaying the time, though, it only displayed "unauthorized user" in bright red letters. I moved back to the lab, careful not to move my wrist in any way that might provoke the watch. I hope that there might be a way to get the watch off back in the lab, surely they had some kind of tool to remove it. If worst came to worst I could always try cutting it out, but I hoped things wouldn't come to that.

As I approached the door I pulled out Emma's ID. As I was about to scan it, I had a thought. Instead of scanning the ID at the door, I placed it over the watch. Surprisingly it worked, I felt something move under my skin as the barbs retracted, shortly followed by the needle itself. The face of the watch simply said "new user authorized" before transitioning to its home screen, with no apology for the pain it had caused.

I had half a mind to simply leave the thing here, but after browsing through its various menus, I quickly changed my mind. The thing was way more useful than its sized implied. I knew of watches that could monitor heart rate, but this thing monitor just about everything. Body temperature, blood tests, radio frequencies, hell, there was even a Geiger counter shoved in there. Whatever pain the thing had caused me was long forgotten as I lost myself in a wide array of options.

When I finally got back to the time portion of the watch, more than an hour had passed. I definitely hadn't explored all the options the watch had, but I made a dent in it. Currently, the watch was set up to alert me if it detected anything that might be able to kill me. Radiation, infection, poison, dehydration, and many more all fell under that list. Of course, most of those required it to stick the needle in me periodically, but that, of course, was a small price to pay. Best of all, the thing was powered by heat and sunlight, which meant I shouldn't have to ever charge it. Never before was I so happy that something decided to stab me.

With that out of the way, I started cleaning up my little camp I managed to shove enough energy bars in my pockets to last a few days, but without a pack, I could only carry a few bottles of water. But at this point, I seriously doubted anything could wipe the grin off my face. I had a cool watch, damn it, a few bottles were nothing compared to that.

I lifted up the shutter and wriggled out from under it. I was ready for whatever this urban hellscape could throw out. Or at least I thought I was because it was at that moment I locked eyes with a giant insect across the street.