I took a moment at the precipice of the exit above me.
Half blinded but ears sharp, nothing but a strong wind could be only faintly heard, muffled and distant outside. I climbed out. There I was in a reinforced titanium structure on the exterior surface for housing snowmobiles. Yet those useful machines were nowhere to be seen.
Closing the hatch behind me and turning the wheel to lock it I then went to look out of one the thickly reinforced bulletproof windows, there were only two of them. And they were emanating pure cold. Outside was a scorching whiteness that would have burned normal eyes and which mine were struggling to pierce. Yet there was no mistaking it. Outside was only a harsh, bone chilling blizzard.
A frozen, barren desert.
I have found the way. I have found the outside. I quickly grabbed an empty can that was free of rust and opened the side way door on the inside. I was amazed the door gave in to my strength, even if begrudgingly and after a tremendous fight with it. The cold wind blasted at my face and I felt its touch as that of a mistress wanting to take my life. I filled my can and quickly went back inside. I wouldn't risk having snow burns all over my mouth. I survived this far, I would survive a little longer waiting for the snow to melt.
There in a corner I sat down and fell asleep. That time, the nightmares decided not to bother me.
I had awoken finally at one point. Everything was engulfed in darkness again except for the strange glimmers outside the windows. I raised myself and went to it. The aurora borealis. It was still there. A majestic symphony of lights that lightened my spirit. I couldn't help but think of Joshua even though he decided his guidance I needed not at that moment.
I went back and carefully found my cup, drinking from the waters of life. Slow sip by sip, yet soon I found it empty and next time around I refilled a few more. I took a box and sat near the window, gazing at it as I tried to put my past in order.
''What has happened to me? What am I even at this point...'' My thoughts stretched heavily.
Memories, all jumbled, speeding fast-forward and around, skipping some and showing something new each time. I forced my mind to clear and search deeply for my first memories, from there slowly taking it to my present. I needed to know, I needed to comprehend who I was and what had happened. I remembered madness and anger assailed me when I was a young kid, threatening to shatter my mind from the loss of my grandfather. Yet I taught myself cold hard discipline in order to simply not lose my mind. I did not lack much really, yet, my childhood was such that it left me uniquely the way I was. I learned to live alone and to like being alone. That trait would remain more or less with me forever I was sure. Years passed, I grew, I changed, bodily and mentality as all do when they grow.
The world was the same as ever, unfair but providing for the most. There were no wars and we were uplifted technologically. Yet it all changed during the time of my youth when the world decided to experiment with genetic modifications on man and beast. To splice DNA and blend it again with that of many species. A private enterprise that was fuelled by the mass demand and interest in genetically modified animal people. Interest in concepts such as cat people, dog people, fox people... wolf people. And others.
An idea quickly picked up by all sorts of government branches and other private medical firms. The goal was noble they all said. Who wouldn't want increased senses and small, beautiful features of animals? Who wouldn't want to make medical breakthroughs to better improve the human body in a naturally biological way? I could see it backfiring so hard though a part of me was enticed by the idea.
Still it felt wrong, and oh so wrong it went.
In a few years it had gone rampant as I had suspected. By the time I was in my late teenage years there was already an outbreak of horribly mutated beasts, killing and pillaging. Spreading upon the entirety of our protean world. Abhorrent creatures that brought forth with their menace an evolved and highly infectious strain of rabies as well. So much for those medical breakthroughs in our benefit.
''They really did play God.'' I thought to myself.
The hands of many played God, and it was to be our downfall. They couldn't contain what they had created. More so even than what I knew of at the time. They couldn't stop their breeding and evolution. As highly trained extermination teams were going more often missing during their missions, open war took its place. All while a decadent and divided society exacerbated by the corrupt Authority made everything so much worse. To the point that an entire region seceded from the Authority, prompting a war between ourselves. I realised I drew the short straw with the timing of my birth.
I was born in time to experience the fall of Humanity.
''Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create bad times. And bad times create strong men.'' I thought. And I just happened to have nailed myself in the worst times.
It was a decision of good fortune that I decided to join the armed forces early in my late adolescent years. Just a year before the onset of open war and conscription. Being a volunteer gave me many perks. Though at the time I would never have believed I would live so long. Quite frankly I thought I would have the time of my life and probably die too early by a shrapnel to the head. Heh, looking back though I would have likely died more from a claw to the head, considering the kind of war that was coming.
It was just a month before I would leave for my boot camp training that I looked upon the sky and saw many fiery dots plunging back to earth.
''The orbitals...''
We were being cut off. Exiled on our own world. Rejected by our own kind for our choices and our regression as a society. There were enough hardships pressing on our race out there, they didn't need our own. After that I would have no more leave from the military. The war would escalate to engulf us all.
It was all to the point and noble at first. Defeat the mutants and the monsters. Protect the population and secure infrastructure assets. Until it slowly eroded our morals. War was Hell after all, who would charge us because we did what we had to do? Or because we executed a few suspected beast sympathizers? More lines were crossed as the war was getting more desperate for us. My squad and I were smug. And I was young and stupid. Quite an eager and inexperienced little shit I could say.
But I had my buddies, and we covered for each other. That's how I stayed alive longer than most.
-Sigh.
Yeah... than most.
I knew each and every one of my three squad mates even before the war. We were an odd bunch that strangely found common ground as different as we were. I would survive, but I would lose all three of them in the first hellish eight years of cutting through that struggle.
Phesius, he was an old and close friend. Part of the same unit while not part of my squad. I had long-lost contact with him when his squad went missing in action. I would miss his council and the long, even philosophical conversations we had.
Aleksei, heroic Nordic bastard. Died protecting a convoy of civilians trying to make it to the docks from one of the largest packs yet to attack us. He died as he imagined he would. Wielding an electro power mace and a steel riot shield. Stupid magnificent bastard. I could not snipe them all to cover you, they were so many.
I cursed myself for not jumping off that boat as it left, the other two keeping me from it. Even though I knew it was futile. You were already mush by that point...
Lorenzo, the team leader along with Audomus were ambushed in Darglow city's command base. Besieged by the werewolf hordes that infiltrated through the sewers.
-''Come get some, come get some!'' Audomus sounded like he was having a blast keeping them at bay. Though I could well notice the desperation in his voice, as static as it was through the radio.
-We're done for man, we're cut off! Get out of here and live on! Me and Audom are going to reach for the tactical nuke in the armoury and set it off. Can't guarantee in how long so haul your ass out of here!
That was the last transmission I heard from them.
I could only watch from the evac Osprey as the base was swarmed. And far in the distance I saw only waves upon waves of demonic looking horned creatures that slowly shrank the battle cordon. The city was lost that day. A mere two-day siege. Once out of the city's range a big mushroom cloud would rise high in the sky from where the epicentre of that megalopolis once was. It made our Osprey crash and the few survivors and I had to reach back to our lines through hostile territory. A restless journey that lasted seven days.
I was all that was left of our four-man team that lasted nearly eight years together. The war was going against us. We all knew that. It was after the fourth year's mark that we all knew it was but a futile struggle. A dying breath, our lines were always only shrinking.
I was beyond enraged when Safe Zone Alpha was abandoned, left to its own by the Authority. A small city state left to fend for itself. Not being viable for protection anymore after the Authority had extracted the most precious of resources from it. The defence of that place became so desperate and close cut that I had to drop my sniper rifle and pick up dual wielding machetes to battle the hordes in a hectic battle with no clear lines.
Before realising that many civilians were damn beast loving degenerates themselves. Opening new holes for the monsters to slip in through the already pressured military cordon. Not that it would save them. They were deluded or desperate. They tore through them as they greeted the beasts with open arms. Hoping for who knows what stupid outcome. I butchered them all. Men, women and children. A curtain of hate descended upon my eyes. I thought I would bathe and die in that fire, yet I didn't. I remained in a pool of blood mixed from many. Traitor and monster. Enemy and coward.
Taking one of the last transports to leave the zone I survived yet again, perhaps to the worst for my soul.
It was later the next year as the Authority led human forces started to disintegrate that I was forcefully retrieved at the time by a mad man. A man with which I had a lot in common at that particular point in my life. At that time my flesh was melting, my internal organs were shutting down and pain prevailed over every part of my body. As two days before I had found myself too close to where a nuclear strike landed by the retreating forces of the Authority.
I was dying a slow, gruesome death by radiation. I do not know why I didn't just simply shoot my brains out. There was no access for the advanced facilities needed to treat my radiation poisoning, I knew that. For some reason I had decided to postpone it as much as I could endure. It was enough for him to find me, to find an interest in me, and be taken forcefully. Not that I could resist much in the state that I was.
The one who retrieved me with little effort was a general of the high echelons of the Authority itself gone rogue. But in actuality more of a ruthless scientist.
-I have followed you for some time. After all you operated in my region for a year now.
The old man wanted to imprison me. To make me his pawn or experiment subject. He soon realised he didn't need to coerce me. As we spoke we discovered how like-minded we were. I had nothing but utter disgust for what humanity had become at that point. A potent mix of hate and apathy was in control of me.
I was brought back to his base, to his laboratory, where many needles came in and out of me. Many exotic and potent solutions were pumped into me and many regenerative skin graphs applied. I screamed until blood gave way in my mouth, my cords destroyed or decayed before being repaired again by my seeming benefactor. As near mind shattering as the pain was I would make a full recovery.
-''I will kill them all until there's only me, in a quiet world.'' He said.
-''The world needs some quiet for all I still care.'' I replied to him.
-I have seen your records. My spies have told me what you've done.
-And I seem to have misjudged you. I could use someone like-minded. Somebody young and with the vigour of youth still in them. Someone resourceful and without scruples.
-''Let's make this land how it used to be. Undisturbed by living men, together.'' He said as an offer.
-''Yes. Let's do this, my mentor.'' I said, agreeing wholeheartedly.
In the short year that followed the hope of Bastion Zero-One faded when a mysterious toxic cloud poured forth from it. Killing all living beings. Monster and human.
The cloud grew to apocalyptic proportions as it enveloped the entire region and then spread further west into the last safe human held zones. The supply of that deadly weapon, inexhaustible. As it came siphoned from the deep beneath, in the bowels of the world.
They didn't know what doom was set afoot. Only that it brought death. The black ops teams sent by the Authority failed. Soon the citizens and soldiery fleeing in terror would report strange lights and deadly mechanical beings stalking in the cloud. Killing all those that dared enter it.
It was of course my mentor's own army of mind scrubbed puppets, cyborgs. Humans who unlike me, were tampered in the brain, making them a mockery of a human being. Meat puppets were all they would be. But useful still. All led by me into the fray to break the last pockets of human existence.
Breaking open their hidden bunkers, sabotaging their sarcophagi, letting the toxic new atmosphere in or even the coming hordes of beasts. Personally sabotaging their life support permanently. There were stories that terrified the human populace of the cities as they were approached by the cloud and then engulfed. Death silencing every settlement soon after. With their bunkers ripped open there would be no salvation for them. The sky denied them. My mentor and I would deny them the earth.
The Authority... the enigmatic leaders of our world. By that time it was rumoured that they were a class of people apart by themselves. That they weren't even human anymore. It was true that to be part of the higher echelons that guided Humanity towards achieving strength and prosperity one needed a certain, genuine dedication. A certain mental capability and realization upon what needed to be done. I knew that.
But for all that they were supposed to represent, their supremacy crumbled. Their hold upon any semblance of order a long gone reality. Their actions contested, their rule denied. The disaster of their making so utterly dehumanizing that the greater human civilization decided on blockading our world.
The last chapter of Humanity came as my mentor took control of the Authority's new experimental weapons of mass destruction. Laying a grid to saturate the whole world. Beast and human controlled. The Authority that was the government would have eventually used those weapons themselves to try to erase the opposite side despite the consequences.
My mentor and I only made sure the last remnant of Humanity would receive the full blow of those consequences as well. And that time was fast approaching even though I was certain that there was at the very least one hidden sarcophagi vault somewhere on Terra. That and we have received reports of more secession within their crumbling rule.
The entire drilling and engineering core left. The ones who were supposed to discover the wonder left for us, hijacked the last remaining earth drillers. Fleeing deep within the mantle of the earth in hope of safety. And a scientific division already fled with a fleet of submersible ships to the enigmatic covers of Terra's seas. I was ready for pursue the remnants to the bottom of the Earth if it was needed. Since it ill-stood with me the to know that wretched beings still drew breath.
But more importantly to me there was one figure in the ranks of the Authority that always managed to elude my search for him. To the point that I started investing my own time to track him down. However, my mentor forbid any such more actions to be taken. There was no need he said, for they would come to their own ends. Apparently both the sea and the deep earth held a terrible foe that I was not apprised of.
Before we unleashed that arsenal I was tasked with making contact and taking control of a curious underground research facility far near the Northern Pole of Terra. My mentor's words were strange then as well before I departed. It was not treachery that I sensed. Perhaps sorrow?
-Before you go. Know that the great fires of extinction will soon come. You may not have the time or the means to return back or contact me.
-Take reign of that facility, make it your own and wait. There you will find Sarcophagi should you have need of them, for much is unpredictable at this point.
-But soon Terra will be a quiet world. It needs to be in order to survive.
-Moreover. Beware that the facility holds a great gate. A technological marvel that also holds great peril despite its promise. Many voices that I once believed equal to mine called for its use.
-It must not be done so, for their folly would be even greater than all their mistakes so far combined. The gate is unpowered, it's dimensional anchoring pylon on hard lock. Make sure it remains so!
-Sigh. Before you depart. I must confide in you. I feel of you as if my son, and I want to tell you further. Avoid my fate if you can. I feel myself slipping away. I am a rigid man of science and practicality, brutal even...
-But I sense I am slowly losing the last shred of humanity that one should never lose.
-I will only say this to you. Do not lose yourself. Keep your mind intact. Keep it together no matter what. Even if everything comes to dust, even if you lose everyone and everything you know!
-Find a reason to live and do not let yourself go. Let greed of life be what keeps you alive if that need be!
-''I understand my mentor. I will keep your words close.'' I had said.
-Good. Before you leave I have one thing more to give to you. Consider it the last gift from Mankind.
He said as he seated me on a medical chair, preparing a high-tech looking syringe.
-What is it that you'll do to me, mentor?
-This is the last batch of specially created and calibrated nanomachines. It will bond with your body. It will improve you as much as it can. It will heighten your senses and strengths to the peak of a human body can be in its prime and maybe a little beyond.
-It will always keep your mind sharp. It will keep you alive through many perils, and it will extend your life if not outright make you immortal if so you would wish upon it. This gift, and it's many secrets you will learn to control in time.
-But do not worry. It will not change your human form nor your thinking. I personally created this batch to keep all that there is human to yourself.
He stood before me presenting the syringe.
-I see, I thank you mentor, I accept your gift.
And thus a man of science tried to speak of the soul though he had no notion to understand it.
I was close to my mentor, but I knew my place. And I... well knew and accepted that. I was a loyal, conscious tool. I knew I could be discarded, and I expected it. And I desired it to be no other way. A cold greyness was upon me and my vision upon the world. All I desired was my revenge and the knowledge that all life would be cleansed. It was a broken way of thinking, yet... I was the product of over ten years of gruelling Hell. Hope had died.
Yet his speech touched me. I realised I was more to him that I had ever thought. He cared and he... had hopes for me. Even then I knew he had many secrets still that he held from me, even after discovering I was more to him that what I would have thought of.
I departed. Unsure of myself. Of my own status. My mentor evidently had plans for me and wanted to live despite still leaving me in darkness on many subjects. Even so I left content with the task I was given to achieve. Despite his kind words I could feel a veil coming onto my soul, eroding it, eating away at it.
Perhaps that is why fate made me stumble upon Joshua on my way to the north.
I was flying in a UD-3S Drop-ship, a fast flying atmospheric jet, superior in all ways to the Osprey. Through its sensors I had discovered a large group of human survivors that were traversing a certain part of a deserted land. I deviated from my course though time was short. And I was about to end this large group of survivors until I met him at the front of his people. A holy man, a simple man, a man who had seen all the horrors as I did and was burned by the fires of war and treachery.
Somehow, he managed to convince me to stay my hand, and I sat by the fire with him that night. He talked of life and God, and of a great many other things that related to our experience.
-''Though the End Times may come one should die with his fate and with the fire of his soul still shinning brightly.'' He said then.
After all that I have been through at that point. Recklessness, rage, and then apathy of life. For the first time in a long while at that moment I felt my soul relieved while talking with him. I refused the bible he offered, but I thanked him sincerely for his words of wisdom and comfort. I left, giving them directions of the local area and leaving them to prepare for the end as they wished to see fit... and I would never see him again but in my visions.
My arrival couldn't have been more timely, I first thought at that time. The world ending weapons were being unleashed and were purging the surface. It's tremors having been felt as far as the underground research station where I had arrived at. I could see in real time through the few remote cameras as the bombs detonated in various places around the world before the shockwave destroyed the receivers and scrambled all signals.
Through my mentor I had the clearance codes of a top administrator and took reign of the facility with no opposition from the staff present.
There, apathy assailed me again harder than ever. The staff present were quick to inform me of the disaster which happened just a day previous. They had activated the gate in hope of escaping Terra to another, safer habited planet. Those damn fucking fools.
The gate as far as I found out was Clarketechnology, something beyond my people's ability. Most probably given to the Authority at an unknown time by the higher order of Humanity's empire. A conundrum for me to find out since I was under the impression that the entire Terran people was forcefully detained on its home world.
The gate had been activated by the staff here, but far from functioning with it's intended use. Instead of creating a portal to deliver it opened a gate to something unknown. Letting inside a torrent of abnormal dark matter. It seemed to alter and destroy everything it touched, almost ripping the fabric of what we perceived as reality.
The portal itself was located on one of the least subsurface levels. Enclosed within a one thick meter vault of titanium on all sides within a greater security chamber constructed by the Authority's best engineers. Baptized as the ''Impossible Hexahedrom''. Itself surrounded by a small mountain of dense rock at the surface.
The power held in that chamber had detonated, obliterating all in its wake. The gate would remain in its same position where it always were. Now just free to the open, freezing sky of the far reaches of Terra. The mountain was simply gone, blasted in all directions. The Authority's Terran effort at designing their own ''Clarketech'' to contain the portal, an utter failure. Only metal wrecks surrounding the portal remaining as vestiges of their incompetence or hubris. The area was irreversibly contaminated with something inexplicable, and as water gathered into a lake around the portal so did it seep through.
The entire facility had then been suddenly compromised. Despite the multilayered protections and the complete sealing of entire sections, a subsequent, debilitating and mysterious disease appeared throughout the whole facility.
Deep in my bowels I knew that something was already unleashed and that I arrived too late to stop it. And my guts told me that the proverbial shit had well hit the fan, hard. It had been little over a day when the disaster had happened. A few days later twenty percent of the entire staff was confirmed as infected. There was no pattern to it, and it was impossible to contain at that point anymore. It was debilitating and showing signs of changing its host in strange and unknown ways. With these grave feelings I decided I could not withstand the wanting death no more. All that I knew was gone. I felt like my life went full circle and that I was near its conclusion.
Maybe this was to be my end. But their voices rang in my head. My mentor and Joshua's. I felt shame for my weakness yet apathy was still eating at me. I could not escape this place to the then unlivable surface and soon all that still lived in the facility would be touched by that corruptive illness. A bleak darkness hanged over my mind which could not be dispelled as much as I wished it. No word from my mentor ever reached me.
It was the end of the road for me. I compromised, deciding to make use of one of the sarcophagus units present. The facility had such technology available, again by the grace of the higher order of Humanity. For Terran technology at the time had only reached workable cryogenics in terms of preservation. I set it to release me only when the other personnel decided to or in case of imminent failure.
Then... I died, for a long time.
My life's story went full circle in my head and now the sun was creeping up the windows of the insulated shed. I made a mental effort to remember the rough location of this side of the facility. Fortunately it was an exit far away enough from the then anomalous gate. And all that I would find for a long walk down south would be snow and deadly cold weather.
Sustenance in the form of animals was very unlikely if any survived, at least this far up north. I checked my inventory closely and packed everything. I had only my small measure of equipment and weapons. No food though water was plentiful around me and hopefully not too deadly contaminated that my gift couldn't filter out. I put on my grey jacket, raised the hood and covered my face with a black scarf and a pair of special tactical glasses I had.
Opening the heavy metal door I faced the screaming wind and entered that cold light.