Hot Smiles, Hotter explosives.

I grin as I run down the stairs, all teeth and wolfish insanity. I check my makeshift wrist rig. five minutes until the top floor starts exploding. 

I grin. It's gonna be close. 

Perfect.

My scuffed, black combat boots hit the third floor of five in the megastructure that has been begging for my attention for a year. I run around old debris and tables that are half fallen through the floor, grabbing 'mild' explosions from the pocket of my leather jacket I definitely didn't have an hour ago and shoving them in the crevices before running back to the stairs.

"Explosives detected close by. Probably yours. Again. Honestly, I should unionize. 😮‍💨" A exasperated robotic but sassy voice comes from my wrist rig. My personal AI companion, Pixie. I made her with copper filaments, circuit etchings, bits of my old jewelry, and a stolen AI starter chip.

I am very proud of her.

"C'mon Pixie. You should know by now. I can't live without a daily dose of explosives in my life." I grin and you can hear it in my breathless voice.

"I could guess by the way normal people like to keep their lives.💀" 

Finally, I get out of there, my foot just outside the entrance when the highest floor starts exploding. I don't stop running until I'm about twenty-five feet away. Safe enough distance.

I collapse on the sad, grey, dusty ground of what used to be green and watch vibrant colors of red and orange and yellow paint the sky in the most color it has seen in years. I whoop, delighted, screaming at the top of my lungs from the adrenaline that doesn't ever seem to fade.

The explosion leaves the megastructure in burning ruins, the color of the licking fire leaving slight strokes of red on the black, ashed debris. light gray paints the sky like it has the rest of time to fill it.

You can barely call it a sky anymore, with how much ash is floating around there. I've heard stories of the sun and the moon, how one brightens the sky in a brilliant, light blue, and one paints the sky with dark black, spots of countless, smaller suns that the elite call stars following it like a mother and her children.

I've heard stories of the fresh air the elite breathe in every day up in the clouds. How it fills your lungs with a refreshing, almost cold feeling. How it doesn't scratch your throat with the need to cough every time you simply inhale. 

I've never been there. The closest I've gotten is the lower levels of the midshaft. Usually to steal stuff like my jacket that I did just a couple hours ago. The ash that hasn't settled for my entire life still is too thick for me to hope to see a clear sky, but sometimes I see a spot of dim light when the sun is brightly shining enough to it penetrates through a couple layers of the dust. 

I sit down on the ground, leaning back until I'm resting on my elbows, and watch the rest of the fire slowly consume the ruins, leaving behind small, glowing, enchanting embers in their place.

That's when I hear heavy footsteps.