Time flew by, and hunger eventually struck Adrian. Although, it didn’t mean much. He had more than enough food. Water though, would be an issue. He had identified multiple water rations by now, all being brown, plastic bags that were supposed to slosh around.

Unfortunately for him, they didn’t.

Well, how so?

‘They’re all frozen! All of them!’ Frowned Adrian in frustration.

‘Is the room temperature at freezing point?’ he silently asked himself, flicking his finger at one of the rock-hard bags.

While it would be doing himself a favor by finding a solution, right now he wanted to think about other things. In addition, he wasn’t in the bit thirsty. With that in mind, it was deemed as one of future Adrians’s problems so solve.

For the time being, his catalogue was filled with wondering about his identity and future. There wasn’t much else to do while having his eyes adjusted to light. While agonizingly slow and boring, at least he was making progress on that front.

Staring with a half squint at a yellow glow stick on the floor, Adrian went through another mental revision of his next move.

After his eyes adapted as well as they could, he would go look around the room to see if anything would spark some of his lost memories. If not, it would be alright, as his secondary goal was to learn more about his current situation.

Looking back at the stack of unused glow sticks, he would have more than enough. He was currently on his second stick, but there was still a dozen yet to be touched.

And so, Adrian waited in silence.

An hour later, he was interrupted.

Interrupted by his grumbling stomach, that is.

‘I just ate…” Adrian frowned. “Looks like it won’t last as long as I thought.’ he side eyed the small pile of rations he had constructed.

After shrinking the pile by a few packs, he suddenly remembered something.

‘I forgot to check if it works.’ Adrian embarrassingly realized. ‘Eh, might as well do it now.’

Had he truly been so preoccupied with doing nothing that he had forgotten about it?

Taking out the small flashlight out of his pocket, he uttered a silent prayer before pressing the button on top.

Flickering for a moment, its pure white light eventually stabilized and engulfed everything in front of him.

Its rays shone overpowering compared to the glow sticks Adrian had been using up until now, but with a squint, he could still see.

‘At least I now know it works.’ He thought, sounding a small sigh of relief as he stood up.

Moving the flashlight from side to side, more of the same revealed.

A long corridor with dozens, if not hundreds of rusted capsules riddled the walls. Some, still standing, while others, reduced to unrecognizable piles of rust on the floor.

“Expected.” Adrian muttered.

This view, while grander than the last, revealed nothing new. The glow sticks from before already lit up the immediate surroundings, which were much of the same.

Destroyed and abandoned, the entire room lay in shambles. Time was not kind to anything, be it man or machine, flesh or steel.

For a while, Adrian’s gaze only met with rust. That remained until an oddity appeared, someplace still shining with an almost factory new vigor.

‘Huh, that’s what that was.’ He remembered, as memories of the smooth surface that he had walked on while venturing the darkness rekindled.

A large, shiny patch of smooth metal appeared in view as the flashlight’s rays directed to one of the lateral walls.

Piquing his interest, Adrian moved closer for inspection, the smoothness under his feet once again being unlike anywhere else in the elongated room.

Nearing closer to the wall, which bore an uncharacteristic lack of cryo-pods, every bit of levelness now disappeared, replaced by uneven waves in the flooring.

Inspecting further, Adrian noticed a passing copper pipe bolted to the wall, this one differing from the pipes near both the doors. To start, it had the circumference of a human head, which was to say, way bigger than the rest. Then, came the other thing…

‘Did it explode?’ He wondered, looking at the spectacle in front of him.

The copper pipe adorned quite a nasty gash, right above where all the waves of metal appeared to originate.

By connecting all the dots, Adrian made an assumption of what had happened.

‘When the pipe exploded, the floor plates melted and smoothed out. The waves must’ve been caused by some of the liquid metal being push outward by the explosion, like blowing air into a body of water.’

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Figuring out what had caused it was all fine and dandy, but more pressing conclusions appeared in his mind.

‘Considering that it’s still unrusted, it probably happened relatively recently.’ he speculated, instantly drawing the people he had heard outside as suspects.

While Adrian didn’t discard the possibility that the pipe could have simply exploded without anyone’s interference, the chances of that happening had to be minuscule.

‘So, it seems they’ve previously entered here. Assuming I’m not overthinking, and they did enter, there’s no way they wouldn’t notice my capsule.’

A conglomerate of thoughts raced inside Adrian’s mind at once.

‘Do they know I’m here? Why wouldn’t they wake me up? Are there others like me? …And, are the ones outside even friendly?’

Questions ran rampant, but near the end, he realized he wouldn’t be getting any answers.

There was no point in speculating without any information, and at that end, he truly was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Cleansing his mind of most pointless thoughts, he once again got a move on, heading further.

Five meters passed. Nothing.

Ten more. Still more of the same.

However, at around the twenty-meter mark, something caught his eye.

On the right appeared an opened cryogenic pod. Sitting at a slight angle against the wall, its exterior appeared just as dead as the rest, if maybe in slightly better condition. The only major thing differentiating it from the others was the interior’s condition, which was leagues better.

‘That’s my pod. Disappointing, doesn’t seem to be anything special.’ Adrian concluded after a quick search. His hopes of finding out more about himself were for nought.

Moving past, another ten meters were traversed before stopping.

The corridor wasn’t short by any means, but a small while later, he reached the opposite side.

In front of him stood a frosty door, five frigid fingers still stuck to its surface.

Staring intently at them for some time, Adrian eventually sighed.

‘Saw everything there was to see. Guess it’s time to greet my ‘friends’ from outside.’

A short walk back, he arrived at his anthill of rations. Seeing as he was getting hungry again, he didn’t hesitate to devour some more, frankly, dust flavored food.

‘What a sad excuse for a possible last meal.’ He tried to muse.

Ignoring the horrendous taste, now came the deciding moment. This would either make it or break it.

Standing in front of the vault-like door, Adrian listened for any sounds.

‘Nothing. Hope it’s clear.’

Once confirmed, Adrian apprehensively put his hand on the circular handle. He wasn’t afraid of the door ripping more of his fingers off, he had already tested if it was safe sometime while adjusting his eyesight. No, what merited fear was what lay on the other side.

With no way of knowing if the people outside were peaceful, a thousand thoughts raced through Adrian’s mind. Would the people beyond help him? Would they kill him?

He’d already gone through these thoughts before.

And he would find out soon enough the answers he craved.

Taking a moment to steel himself, Adrian put all his weight into rotating the handle. At first, it barely budged, frequently getting stuck and making screeching noises, but every rotation made the next easier.

And finally, it swung open.

Blinding light came through, making him immediately squint and shield his sight with a hand, but quickly his eyes adjusted.

Before having any time to think, Adrian happened to notice a few worrying things in front of him.

1.. 2.. 3.. 4…. 11.

Eleven worrying things to be exact.

‘Well then... So much for not making a scene.’

Eleven high caliber machine guns were pointed right at his head, manned by a small brigade of men.

“D-Don’t fucking move!” One of the wide-eyed brutes at the front yelled with all his might, clearly flustered.

After all, who in his position wouldn’t be? Hell had come crashing down, perhaps even worse.

It all started once he noticed firsthand how the door to the room that served as an airlock to the outside began opening from the other side.

Worrying.

No one was supposed or allowed to be there. Didn’t that mean that something had crawled from the surface into their airlock room?

While trying put on a brave face, to say he was unnerved would be an understatement. What kind of monstrosity could have come from up there? They were on the dark side of Earth for God’s sake! Nothing remotely good could survive the -120°C wasteland above!

Thankfully, he wasn’t alone, but with a bunch of others on their breaks. He didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if this abomination had entered at a time when no one was looking.

Following the door swinging open, he nearly pissed his pants. Even the bravest and most experienced of the people present got at least a cold sweat when they saw what had come to greet them.

A sickly and disheveled looking ‘human’.

‘No! A… A Husk?! Why the fuck would it come here!?’ One of the men thought in terror.

Another, older fellow, seemingly lost a certain luster from his eyes upon realizing what had come.

It was one of those previously unthinkable moments when everyone would have collectively preferred for some giant mutant to have crawled from the surface.

Although everyone knew what they were looking at, the youngsters of the group still almost jumped the gun out of fear and pumped it full of lead.

The more experienced ones didn’t even think about doing such a thing. Shooting now wouldn’t have been the right call. It already knew where and who they were.

Killing its messenger would only do more harm to themselves. Husks were truly hardy creatures, capable of infecting and controlling most lifeforms. The reality was that it’d take killing every single one of its hosts to fully get rid of it. Killing this disposable host that it had brought would do nothing.

Right now, depending on its numbers, the colony was at serious risk of plunging into another dark age because of one of these things infiltrating. Everyone’s lives were at risk, be it not immediate.

Well, there still was hope for peace.

Negotiation.

Yes, they would have to negotiate with humanity’s number one enemy.

Staring into its eyes caused the men a silent shiver. They looked so genuine, indistinguishable from a real person’s gaze.

Identifying the calamity that had just waltzed into their home, some of the unarmed men rushed to contact a superior. This was way above their paygrade.

Moments later, every single nearby person’s chip informed them of the situation. This was code a-5-33/A/Grey, meaning an unknown threat level in zone a-5-33, but with the highest level or priority, being A-priority. Of course, the people in charge from all over would be further detailed about the situation. These codes were for the average denizen, and each was trained in what to do in such situations.

Soon, someone of meaningful rank would come to talk with this messenger. Unfortunately for the men pointing their weapons at the motionless Husk, soon was not now.

All of them were beyond uncomfortable, locked in a staring contest with the intruder. It was making itself known as a Husk, with an emotionless, calculating expression on its face.

Under normal circumstances, it would try to come off as human, acting scared when pointed at with guns, and in general, full of emotions.

Of course, it was all an act. These ‘things’ didn’t feel fear, compassion or pity. However, this one wasn’t even trying to hide it. It had come here to talk.

‘Well, if it wants to talk… hopefully it only wants to talk.’ One silently hoped.

Meanwhile, Adrian was quite happy, considering the situation at hand.

‘They didn’t immediately shoot. That’s a good sign, right?’ He chuckled slightly out of relief, almost giving the men heart attacks.