Boundless blackness was all that there was. An endless expanse of nothing, so dark that it was almost blinding, so silent that it rang in one’s ears. But it was calm. Like a still surface of a lake, it was soothing in a malicious way, inviting one to step in without a thought, without a care in the world. To step in.

It stirred, restless, humming its promises in complete silence. But also its demands. To let the nothing that was now everything take you and wash you away, like a speck of dust taken by the torrential rain.

There was no reply. There never was, and never would be.

And so the serene silence bearing the promise of soothing finality cracked with a cloud of gray spilling into existence with whispered words. The hushed tones were like a distant thunder. Subdued, yet primal. Powerful beyond imagination. Yet they meant nothing, quivering, shifting and melting into each other, forming an unintelligible mess. A cacophony of sounds that grew in strength with each second that felt like an eternity, only to end abruptly, as the world settled in, blurry and incomplete.

- My condolences. - a voice echoed, its tone unreadable.

The fog outlined two silhouettes, clinging to their skin like water to glass, as they grew sharper with each passing moment. They stood opposite of one another. An uncomfortable stalemate of complete silence.

The larger wore a coat and a rimmed hat, its face an unrecognizable blur. Expressionless. Alien. Cold.

The smaller, a boy, was subdued, as if trying to disappear in the milky darkness. He turned, and a door closed between them as the mist swirled. The figure held something in its hands. A square envelope that it then threw onto a flat surface, disappearing from sight, only to reappear in front of a mirror.

The fabric of this place quivered, becoming sharper, and another scene played out.

The boy was walking, his gaze low and inoffensive, his presence not even a blip on the radar of the surrounding figures. They talked, but with each movement of their lips, only gibberish came out, like an old tape played in reverse. They did not even spare a glance at the boy as he passed them by, gently brushing past them.

Suddenly, there was a commotion, and one of the shapes grabbed the boy by the wrist. He struggled, but to no avail, his limbs thin and weak. A sudden crash sent him to the floor, his weak grip letting loose a small item.

The shapes now spoke with bile, their empty faces turned to him, and only him. Five, ten, twenty. The figures seemed to multiply as their scornful voices grew ever louder, until there was a sea of them all around him. A tide of judgement. Of disgust.

They melted into one mass of liquid smoke and another scene emerged.

The boy looked rougher, but more defined in this foggy realm. His clothes were tattered and dirty. His hair was a mess, and his hands seemed to crack at the slightest movement, same as his lips.

The fingers of his right hand wrapped tightly around a gory ball of fur, dripping blood into the ever-present haze. In the other, he held a small object. Its jagged edge glinting through the fog with each shaky movement of the boy’s hand.

- Ah… - a voice rang out from everywhere at once, quiet, yet booming at the same time. Its tone melancholic and full of realization. - This again.

As it spoke, the milky veil slowly lifted from the scene, and from its depths, like a carcass washing ashore, emerged yet another figure.

Small and emaciated, it lived yet, balled up as it sat, with its back against a red brick wall. Its bare feet were covered in grime and shallow cuts.

A sorry and wretched sight, one the boy was supposed to ignore. To walk past it and forget it, like the world did all the time. Yet he stopped, something drawing him to this pathetic thing. He looked it in the eye with a look of contempt he knew so well, and what he saw gazing back almost made him flinch.

A hopeless look, tainted with indifference. An empty void that invited death instead of fearing it.

The boy lingered as his body shook, urging him to move on, but he couldn’t. An otherworldly pull rooting him in place. He sheathed the knife and reached out with his hand.

There was a gust and the fog swept everything away in a blurry hurricane.

Fight. Run. Eat. Repeat.

For years, condensed to seconds as they flew by.

Hand in hand with the little wretch he found in the alley.

Blood flowed freely as wounds came and went, but they mattered not.

It was survival. A never ending struggle to stave off starvation, illness and cold. Death itself.

Gray and cold, just like the fog all around.

Until it all came to a sudden stop when the spectacle of struggles halted at once. The boy, now taller by a head, stood before an ivory desk with a stack of papers in his hand.

Food snapped into view, and a bed hard as rock, but his nonetheless. And his brother’s.

Years flew by again. Years of hardship, but also stability. The pain of a struggle, so familiar, now felt comforting in how predictable it was. Drills, drills, drills.

Then war.

Lives grinding against lives to see which one would remain.

And his was hard as a diamond. A gem washed in blood.

No longer a boy, he was a man.

In conflict, he found a kind of peace. In his comrades, a strange feeling of solace.

But none of those came without a price. As corpses mounted at his feet, so did the gnawing feelings of uncertainty.

Uncertainty that he could not afford. And so he pressed on, trudging through the haze, until another fateful meeting.

The mist parted to reveal a cage of glass, glistening in the shadowy expanse, its corners sharp and walls thick, but clinically clear. Inside, a small, human shape in the middle.

Dark arms reached out from every direction, tearing at its body, taking black chunks out of it in handfuls as they grew back almost as quickly. Yellow ichor spilled from the figure’s wounds, filling the glass room.

The man looked upon the tortured soul, and through the glassy surface he saw a familiar sight of a wretched face. Blank and absent, as if life itself was drained from it, yet not quite dead.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

His gaze quivered as something in the glass looked back at him. It was his own reflection from a time long gone. From the day he looked at himself in the mirror on the day he received the envelope. A face devoid of expression. No fear. No sorrow. A blank slate, untouched by emotions.

It overlapped with the face of the figure in the cage perfectly, as if they were one and the same. It was also the same face the little wretch made all those years ago in the alley.

And just like then, the man reached out his hand, sinking into the glass, ready to grasp the figure’s hand, but just as they were about to touch, something strange happened.

A sudden feeling of dread overcame, not only him, but seemingly the foggy void as a whole. A tremor ran through the place, sudden as a lightning, and the small figure burst into flame.

- No! - the all-present voice boomed, taken by panic, mimicking the man’s panicked cry, almost drowned out by the burning figure’s agonal screech.

The figure flailed and thrashed, slamming into glass walls as the flame consumed its flesh. Yet it grew as it burned away, becoming bloated with overgrown muscles that fueled the combustion in a never ending chemical reaction of death.

The man slammed his hands into the glass, but with each hit got pushed away with redoubled strength.

- Jason! - he screamed as his blows grew more feeble as his hands dripped with blood. And yet, there were no wounds.

Only the coldness remained. But it felt different, it prickled his skin. It was the only sensation he could pinpoint at moments notice as his whole body felt numb.

- Easy there old man, we thought we lost you there for a moment! - without much care Barbara threw the magazine to the ground, uncrossing her legs in the meantime. - Passing out while covered in blood without a word? That's how heroes usually go out in movies, you know? Got us plenty worried.

- I told you, his vitals were normal, he passed out from extreme exhaustion. - Armistice gave his newly awoken patient only a passing glance. - Everything else wrong with him was simply a matter of age and profession.

- How long was I out? - Dirk didn't feel like really getting up, he simply stared at the metal ceiling while feeling out his body, nothing was out of place.

He simply overdid it, as shameful as it felt. More importantly he could no longer recall what he dreamt about, it dissipated like a morning mist.

- A while. - vagueness was something he expected from Barbara at this point, despite her deep roots in engineering. He more or less hoped that the good doctor would take charge in the conversation, but no cigar. - But don't you worry, we had been proceeding according to the route while you napped.

- What? - Dirk turned towards the speaker, their bewilderment at full display. - The Our-

- Don't sweat it, we agreed to keep it under wraps. The big-wigs don't know shit. - the mech pilot waved dismissively. - Michael is driving, with Spoon being his back-up.

- Three Stooges agreed to it?

- Of course they didn't. But the old beer-belly convinced them quickly.

Barbara leaned in, her face suddenly washed by childish glee. She took a breath and after a few attempts at forming a sentence she spilled the beans.

- He decked Ted's shit in so fucking hard, you should have seen it man. That was some of the cleanest combination of hooks I have seen in my life.

- From Michael? - something didn't align with Dirk's image of the old gun-totter. - You telling me he bested Ted? In close quarters?

- Knocked him five ways to Sunday.

That sure was a surprising bit of knowledge to be greeted with after waking up. From the first interaction he took the aged war profiteer for more of a gun specialist, but not to a degree Black was. Due to the line of work and way he behaved. Last thing he expected was learning that someone with a sizable gut could move swiftly enough to take down an ex-military man, even if that man was Ted.

"I'll have to ask someone who gets less emotional about the details" - Dirk moved into a seated position on the bunk, causing the already seated merc to spring up.

- Whoa there buddy, are you sure you want to move up so suddenly?

- It was simple exhaustion, mind your own business.

- You are part of my business-deal old man, so don't get mouthy here. What the hell even happened to you out there? You were so spry and, genuinely, cool one moment only to collapse like a doll with cut strings the moment we weren’t looking.

The old man exhaled. Maybe it was time to divulge some more info about himself to the people he somewhat trusted in the Scout Squad. Might as well start with the baby steps.

- The special forces unit I used to be part of, had this specific method of fighting. - he began, instantly grabbing both medic’s and Barbara's attention. - We were a rapid response unit, so what was required of us was constant vigilance, so our leader - Dirk meant himself. - devised a training plan meant to force us into a constant state of flow where our bodies could operate normally from the outsiders perspective while constantly responsive to all outside stimuli.

He looked towards his listeners while swallowing a mouthful of spit, his throat was dry from sleeping.

- You know how pro boxers are taught to relax their entire body, against natural human instincts, to take less damage from hits? Or how top level parkour specialists can disperse weight and speed of their fall no matter at what part of their body they are currently falling? Our training was meant to put us in a state of focus where we can combine all possible techniques invented in sports, combat arts and military to ensure that we can be constantly safe and vigilant while on duty. To ensure that we are in a 'counter-attack' state no matter the situation.

What he was saying was probably the most he ever said to both these people in the days they spent together. They were both visibly stunned but still attentive in their own ways, making their own silent conclusions to never before heard information about a dehydrated hobo sitting on a bunk

- By the time we were deployed we all could hold that state for forty-eight hours straight if the situation required it. But it would strain our heads like you wouldn't believe. - the old man chuckled, as if remembering those days, shaking head from side to side ever so slightly. - So we mostly held it for eight hours, a normal work-shift you know, it was enough to keep us in form while keeping us alive in hot-zones. With four hours of sleep our tired brains were ready to go afterwards. But look at me now.

His mind returned from past to the present, as he looked into his open palms.

- Few years of drinking and I can barely keep that state for a combat encounter after pulling an all-nighter. Then my noggin' short-circuits, aging's a bitch. - he looked at both Armistice and Garuda, finally done with his speech. - Now what does a man need to do to get a cup of water in this joint?

Armistice was the one that got up, silently grabbing a bottle from one of his utalitarian cubbords. He took a few steps in Dirks direction and then threw it at him only for the latter to catch it without much effort.

- You can improve your comedy routine, that's for starters. - then he sat down again, before glaring at the old soldier from the safety of his desk. - Special forces unit that focuses on, what amounts to, perfecting a state that middle-aged women practice at yoga classes? For a second I hoped the moment of unconsciousness made you reconsider my request at helping with psych-eval, making both our lives easier. I suppose I expected too much.

- What do you mean doc? - Barbara still was in the process of grasping the whole occurrence. - But he said all that stuff about boxers and shit, you've seen him fight?

- Years of training and hard-wired combat responses, most professional former soldiers behave like that, this neural behaviour can be linked to an underlying PTSD. - the medical officers simply returned to his notepad, while smirking slightly. - What? Maybe you also see in slow-motion while in said zone? Get real or stop wasting my time.

Dirk almost felt offended by such a comment, especially after opening up in front of his squadmates for the first time since the establishment of their group. Alas, he had to make peace with it.

After all, the validity of his words will remain, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance. So once they wisen-up to it, they will thank him.

With that he casually sipped on his water, it was somewhat bitter.

- What did you put in this water? - the old soldier couldn’t help but frown.

- Vitamins and other microelements. - the doctor took a pen and began scribbling something again. - Your body is pretty low on those after a prolonged state of unconsciousness. I’d advise you to drink the whole bottle.

- Doctors orders. - the vet smiled ever so slightly and drank again.

Barbara got up, approached him and patted him on the shoulder, somewhat condescending.

- Don’t worry old man, I believe you. - her genuine smile ran contradictory to her gesture. - Still, now that you’re up and about Imma split, poor Elephant is driving my pickup, she must be pretty lonely in there.

- Sure.

As she was about to leave…

- One more thing. - Dirk’s words made her turn around. - Thanks.

She wanted to ask what he meant, but then she seemed to realize what it was about.

- No sweat, we’re a team after all. See you around. Have a good one doc! - Armistice grumbled in response. - I’ll alert Argonaut that his master is up and about.

- He’s not a-

- Don’t worry. I think he likes me!

With these words she left the room.

His gaze remained on the closed door for a moment, before taking another greedy sip. The taste was growing on him.