Chapter 1: The Corpse of Steel

Content warnings: gore, abuse (physical and emotional,) kidnapping, death.
The steel corpse stood defiantly on the outskirts of the city. Husks of vegetation rooted its base to the earth, having once desperately climbed the giant in search of the heavens. The closer to the summit the vines and branches clung, the more signs of radiation burn and cancerous mutations their own fossils displayed. Little of the building's rudimentary block design remained at the ground floor. Bulbous organic material -itself more charcoal than life at this point- gave the steel skeleton its only flesh that hadn't rotted away. The cement, plaster and undoubtedly asbestos that once attached to the bones had long since burned, crumbled and otherwise decayed into the hazmat below. Further up the building, its blocky cement design was more apparent. It's form in life more recognizable.