Work Text:
Tanya Temnova looked up at the black sky as she climbed the wall separating the facility from the rest of the Zone. Her boots crunched on the dead grass as she slid down the wall onto the abandoned city floor, the concrete ground cracked and covered with plants and graphite. The air tasted metallic on her tongue.
She strode down the empty streets surrounded by dilapidated buildings, abandoned years ago and left to the mutants. In the moonlit darkness a cylindrical structure in front of her seemed to be floating, suspended by the radioactive arteries of the zone.
After a while, she stopped to rest. The veins of the zone were her veins, and every breath she took was a symbol of her devotion. She looked up at the brightening sky, and when she sat down, she pressed a hand onto her neck and felt her heartbeat.
If she were to put a hand onto the blackened sidewalk, the concrete would have pulsed in time with her heart.
The dawn wouldn't rise for hours in the rest of the country, but in the Zone of Alienation, the ghost of Reactor 4 smiling upon the rats and the mutants was all that Tanya Temnova would ever need to light her way.