The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 02: Echoes After A Storm

He woke up cold.

Greg snapped his eyes open and straightened up, performing a quick survey of his immediate environment. There were...rock walls. And white daylight. And the remains of a fire in front of him. He remembered...being freezing, and in pain, and his thoughts so broken and incoherent that for a few seconds, he thought he might be waking from a blackout drunk night. Only this was not that haze of a hangover, and he hadn't taken a drink in years.

And this was a cave.

Well, whatever the case, he felt much clearer now, his thoughts faster and more concise. He slowly got to his feet, groaning with the effort and the pain of the action. His whole body was stiff and sore, though there was a layer of cold numbness to everything that partially muted it all. Looking down at himself, he saw that his uniform was as he remembered it: tattered, ripped, and bloodied. Everything hurt. What the hell had happened?

Before he got to that train of thought, Greg took inventory of himself first.

He determined that he had no broken bones, and, at least as far as he could tell, was not actively bleeding anywhere. Well, that was a good start, actually. An added bonus: the fact that he'd actually woken up meant he probably didn't have a concussion or a brain bleed. He recalled his name: Greg Walker. His rank: Corporal, in the United Nations Space Command. His age: twenty six. All of this came to him without hesitation. He wanted to perform a diagnostic test on his cognitive abilities, but that required another person. Even something as simple as having someone tell him five random animals and having him repeat them back would be enough, but he was, as far as he could tell, alone here in this cave.

Okay, so his mind and his body were, if not fully functional, at least intact.

Which meant that whatever tasks lay ahead, he could do. Or, more accurately: he had to do. Because obviously something catastrophic had happened. He'd survived catastrophes and calamities and disasters before, but only by keeping a tight watch on his self control and pushing himself to tremendous lengths to survive.

Next, he took stock of his inventory. Pieces of his armor were missing, including his helmet. That was going to be a big problem. Another problem: he had no weapons. Not even a combat knife. A third problem: he had almost zero inventory. In fact, the only thing he could find was a damaged flashlight. After checking his pockets carefully and thoroughly twice over, he determined that yes, this flashlight was all he had to his name. With a sigh, he pocketed it and then stepped over the dead fire. He was very cold and he'd need to restart it. And if only he had his canteen, he could melt some snow and get something to drink.

Those were his first problems: getting warm, getting something to drink, and getting something to eat. Although really food could wait. He doubted he'd been asleep for that long, and although he didn't feel hungry now, and he knew that when he did it would be powerful, he could for at least a few weeks without food if absolutely necessary. It would be pretty detrimental to his health, but he had bigger concerns right now.

Greg looked ahead of him, at the exit of the cave, and saw a world of white and blue. Where was he? That was something he had to find out, but that would come later. At least, hopefully it would. He walked out of the cave, coming to stand just a few feet beyond the entrance. The whole world was covered in a fresh layer of snow that made everything both eerily silent and picturesque. He remembered this place only through a haze of madly blowing snow and shrieking winds and rapidly fading light.

But everything was bright and smooth and clear now. The sunshine was clean and felt amazing on his face and body. From his vantage point, he saw several isolated trees, two of which he remembered desperately gathering fallen twigs and sticks from the previous night. Surrounding him on all sides were trees, nothing but trees and trees and more trees. In this little clearing he resided in, all he could see besides the trees and the snowy ground was a lake. Well, a pond really. Maybe somewhere in between the two. What qualified a lake as a lake anyway? Or a pond? Things were floating in the lake, so the water wasn't totally frozen over.