DEV>Sacrifices

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Some kind of something. A very rough draft that probably isn't long enough. Needed to post something in the new year, so here we are!

I went through my deviations (finally) and got inspired by a few. (I am lovingly blaming neurotype, Memnalar, SRSmith, and ikazon.)

NucleusThe three of them met by flickering nightlight in the heart of the bunker, next to the puffing computer core where they wouldn't disturb the sleepers. Haumea supported thirty staff, all in a subsurface bunker that was timed to mimic the lighting and subtle gravitational and magnetic shifts of near-equatorial Earth. After hours, they were limited to emergency redlights, which reflected off their eyes like demonic possession.
"We've all noticed something is off," Nalani said, leaving the rest of the thought unfinished. They were the only ones with access, the ones whose psychological profiles showed they would absolutely not panic if - well, if someone were trying to sabotage the mission.
Tien, who held one of the most important posts on a rocky self-sufficient blob where the sun was barely visible, was the first to coalesce those fears. "There's almost no wai niu left."
"We rationed enough for six years!" The palm trees that produced these enhanced coconuts wouldn't grow on a little egg Brick WitchcraftThe stadium roof was a steel spider web, lit pink and red from above by digital sakura falling from a passing promo airship.
Nuri stood in silhouette against the giant springtime display behind her. Far below, pyros fired, bold colors reflecting from her left eye. A crowd roared. She shifted her weight, leaned against the metal support of the huge LEDs that craned over the stadium like wide-eyed insects. Final score. Somebody won, somebody lost.
Nuri clicked through her feed brought through her right eye. Money changing hands. She could see it pulse through the stadium like a heartbeat, fed through satellites, wire transfers, currency exchanges. She smiled a little as she confirmed one exchange. Why not? She was here anyway.
She clicked over to the social feeds, then VR, then news crawls, all the while watching her cameras. Killing time, until.
Her mouthpiece slid into place from her ear like a grass snake, and Gardener's voice crackled in, right on time as always. "Is he moving?"
Quic LV4Yosun blinked in the afternoon sun, the viewport on her hazmat suit filtering the harsh UV rays but doing little to reduce the glare.
Her shuttle had settled a few hundred meters from the blast site, the ground compressed into a large bowl almost thirty meters across. Ignition had been seconds before impact, the containment shell having been detonated above the ground to maximize its effect.
Nothing would have survived this.
The damage near ground zero was complete, there were no structures, no bodies, no signs of life. As Yosun walked away from what had been the center of the settlement, signs of what had been a self-sustaining research colony slowly began to appear. Shrapnel from the prefab structures the crew had been sent here with, vehicle debris, fragments of the familiar blue and yellow supply containers from what would have been the landing zone, the remains larger and more defined the further she went.
It was nearly twenty minutes walk before there was any biological detritus.

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