The Novus cafeteria sat silent and empty, a bare carcass plucked clean of any meat, blood, guts, and anything else of any substance. They had torn the benches from the floors, wooden panels from the walls, even tiles from the ceiling. Anything that could be harvested and used to keep the skeleton hospital safe had been purged. What was left was Novus in its simplest and purest form, a refuge.
The deafening silence was interrupted by the high-pitch slap of a trainer against the tiled floor, followed by solitary screw, accidentally kicked along with a series of clinks. Lizzie sighed. They had stripped away the outer beauty of this place; the normality. Her mourning didn't linger; if it kept people safe then it was a sacrifice worth making. Perhaps normality didn't have a place in the world
