-"Where the hell am I?!"
Those were the first words that Taylor Davidson yelled out after waking up on a cold stone floor. In this almost complete darkness, he could only see around a meter in front of him, as his eyes were starting to adjust.
Seeing that his words echoed out through, what seems to be, a large cavern, Taylor started to slowly get up without making a sound. At this moment, he was not sure if this was a dream, was he in a prison cell, or is this just some post-death imagery after the experiment back, what seems to be, a couple minutes ago.
Davidson was still wearing his protective white suit, which seems to have been mostly destroyed in the experiment, but his body seemed to be intact. He checks his senses - and this just seemed to be too realistic to be a dream.
Being as trained as he is, he quietly started taking small steps back. After 10 seconds or so, he hit a solid stone wall that he started to slowly follow. While doing so, he started searching his pockets or his belt for anything useful. The only thing he could find is 1 unused stimulant - which was quite obvious since he left the unnecessary things back at the laboratory, so nothing would be in the way of the experiment. He pockets the syringe back.
The air was starting to get colder and colder as he was progressing down the stone wall. It got to the point where he could see his own breath, which he tried to keep as steady and as slow as possible.
And, all of a sudden, his foot hits something solid. Taylor looked down, just to have his cold sweat break through - it was an image of his, at this point hardly recognizable, comrade - Claus. His body was torn apart, missing the bottom half of his torso, his eyeballs hanging from their sockets and his skin withered. The stench immediately hit Taylor, so he quickly covered his nose with the top part of his camo shirt.
-"What the actual hell is going on here? A nightmare?" -he thought to himself.
Stepping over the body, Taylor continued his path toward a possible exit. The air was getting colder, but he sensed a small gust of wind coming from the direction he is going.
*CRACK!*
All of a sudden, a loud cracking noise echoes through the cavern, and the source of it seemed to come from the direction Taylor is traveling. Without hesitation, he hid behind the closest rock.
Waiting a moment or two, he started hearing small footsteps coming his direction. Slow, but sloppy. Davidson covered his mouth and started breathing as slowly as possible, trying not to make a sound. After 20 or so seconds, the footsteps got to right around the rock he was hiding behind. Passing by him was a large, horrific-looking creature - glowing skin, 4 legs, large gnarly teeth in the front of a terrifying jaw. It was sniffing around itself, looking quite alert. A bit of sweat broke out of Taylor's forehead.
The creature seemed to pass by and went deeper into the cave where Taylor had come from. Using this chance, Davidson continued his path. He kept stepping over dozens of skeletal and decomposing bodies, but taking closer looks at some of them, he could not recognize any of his other comrades. Looking over a decomposing, torn body of what seemed to once be an old human man - he gets a glimpse of something shining underneath the pebbles next to the body. Using his foot, he slowly and quietly clears it and picks up a dusted shortsword.
-"A sword? What is this suppose to mean?" - he thought to himself while continuing down the path.
Going further and further down the path, Taylor started thinking that all of this feels too real to be a dream, but at the same time too weird to be real.
Eventually, going through a curving tunnel, he finally starts seeing a glimpse of daylight peeking through broken corners of the stone walls. At this point the temperature dropped below -15C and his body slowly started to shiver from the cold. Taking a deep breath of cold, but fresh air, Taylor makes a small stop before going out of this tunnel. He sits down and pulls the bits of ruined protective suit that he had out. Rummaging through the pieces, he takes the biggest and the least ruined ones and wraps them around the areas of his body where the skin is exposed. The military camo shirt that he is wearing is sufficient enough to withstand some degree of low temperature, but it had no sleeves, and the pants were made out of expensive fabric which made them cold and slash-resistant aswell.
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Looking silly, but functional, Taylor picks up small pieces of the discarded suit fabric and pockets them. He finally starts making his way towards the exit.
No more than a minute passes, as Davidson starts hearing the whistling wind and sees small bits of snowflakes dropping down from the holes in the ceiling. A gentle breeze comes through, as he steps out of the cavern into the shining, beautiful sunlight. It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the outside brightness, but eventually, he is brought to a stunning view - a vast mountain range covered in snow, almost reflecting the sunlight. Small bits of trees and plant life growing through the sides of the stone. He steps closer to the visible edge of the peak and looks down - just to see a mile drop ending with a thick fog, blocking his vision.
-"Alright, this is quite a sight. For now, let's just pretend it's not a dream. What is the last thing I remember?... The Miracle, right! We were so close to finishing the experiment! Or... did we actually succeed and this is the result? Are these the Alps? Did I get teleported or something? But that would just make no sense scientifically... Think, think! What the hell is going on around here? What was that beast in the cave? I've seen the body of Claus, was that the beast's work? Where am I?! Too many questions, and it looks like I'm not going to get any answers." - thought Taylor to himself, whilst looking around himself, still carrying the shortsword in his right hand.
-"Calm down Taylor, let's analyze the situation. First priority - is to survive."
He finds a nice spot away from the cliff, sits down on a rock and starts going through his possessions. He searches his pockets.
-"My wallet with $13, a pen, a chocolate bar and a sword. These pieces of protective suit can probably shield me from the cold some-what for a little while, these boots will also last longer. What if I encounter an enemy? Am I really forced into using a goddamn medieval sword? Is this the 800's?"
Giving off a heavy sigh, he continues his chain of thoughts: -"Alright, first things first - let's try and get off to lower ground - the wind might be getting stronger and stronger - and at night it might be too dangerous to climb. Let's try finding some...Flint!"
Taylor stands up and starts slowly heading down the pathway that has some footprints in the snow, whilst keeping an eye on any pieces of flint - that could help him start a fire if he needs. Also using his hands, he breaks off some branches from the nearby thin trees and pockets them for later.
Proceeding further down the path, the vision gets more and more blurry, as the snow fog is getting thicker. After an hour of intense searching, he finally finds a bit of hard black rock imbed in the mountain, which he recognizes as flint. Using his sword, he hacks multiple times and gets a small piece of it - just enough he needed. The sword suffered some severe damage, as it bent a little bit, but still seemed functional.
Taking small 5-minute breaks in between, Taylor kept going down the pathway for over an hour, as he started noticing the sun disappearing behind the tall mountains, as the day was switching with the night. It's time to find shelter.
Eventually, before the sun completely sets, using whatever vision he has left, he manages to find a small curve in the in the wall, that would be deep enough to partially cover him from the blowing wind, although it was not a cave.
-"This should do for now. I need to spend some time organizing a possible plan for my further actions, but first - fire. I won't survive long enough without heat. Water... I don't have water. I can try melting the snow, but drinking that might bring a disease... I have no other choice. This chocolate bar might give me a day of extra energy."
Taylor puts the branches that he got earlier closer together and puts some pieces of stone around them to make a makeshift fire pit. He waits an hour in thinking, covering himself more up in pieces of protective suit, and looking into the distant mountains. As the sun has almost set, and the small beams of orange-ish light had started to disappear, Davidson readies himself for a series of difficult tasks. But first, fire.
He pulls out the $10 bill that he had with him, puts it below the sticks in the firepit and, using the pieces of flint that he had gathered earlier, starts heavily smashing the stones against each other, producing bits of sparks in the process. Doing this for over 10 minutes, he finally manages to light the bill on fire, which spreads out onto the sticks. With the warmth taking him, Taylor pulls out a large piece of the ruined suit fabric, scoops some of the snow towards to firepit, and uses that fabric to contain the melting snow.
-"Not boiled, but better than nothing".
He drinks all of the warm water from the container, puts some pieces of the suit down on the ground to act as a cover to protect from the cold stone, and lays down. With the crackling sound of fire next to him and the gentle whistle of the wind around him, Taylor tries to have a night's rest.