“I believe we haven’t heard your name. Would you mind sharing it?” she asked, her eyes still just as fixated as before.

Pausing for a moment as if taking his time remembering it, he responded in a raspy, calm voice:

“Adrian. It’s Adrian Karpenko.”

Unpleased but making sure not to lose her warm gaze before the strange answer, she left the topic at that.

She had asked the Husk for its real name, not the name of its host. Nonetheless, she decided not to press the matter. If it didn’t want to introduce itself, so be it.

‘There’s a time and place for anything.’ She thought, slightly frustrated at its answer. After all, it wasn’t like she was asking for much here.

A Husk publicly coming to a city and not giving out its name was the equivalent of going out of your way to formally declare war but refusing to assume a flag. It didn’t serve any purpose at all, as announcing its presence would alert the city, but by not giving out a name it wouldn’t deter most, if any, other Husks from coming onto its territory.

Taking time to clear her throat, she answered in par with her name and position.

“I’m Eloise Levine, commander of Colseel Site Director’s personal guard.”

An awkward pause later, she broke the silence with another lighthearted question.

“How are you feeling? The kinetic dampening field is set quite strong.” With a short pause, she lightly chuckled. “Any normal person would be discomforted at the very least.”

Not redirecting his gaze, Adrian wasn’t too surprised.

He figured that most of his nerves had most likely been damaged during his cryo-sleep, which pointed to have probably been quite the decade-long power nap.

“I was in cryo-sleep up until now. It’s a side effect that I’ve noticed. I can’t feel much.” He responded calmly.

Eloise chuckled again, while Adrian could have sworn her lip had twitched for a moment.

‘This is almost too comical.’ She clenched her teeth.

Eloise aimed to be a calm and collected woman. Well, she tried to be, at least, and no one had said anything about it for the duration of her career. But this damned parasite was exceptionally skilled at making something inside her churn for the worse.

And churn for the worse it did.

Its claims seemed intentionally idiotic, every ‘attempt’ at deception easily debunkable by even the most gullible of people.

“Adrian… Adrian. Are you perhaps insulting my intelligence?”

Needless to say, he nearly broke character following those words.

‘What?! Again, what’s so hard to believe?!’

Adrian couldn’t believe it! What were these responses? Was there something he didn’t know? This had been the second person to not believe a word he said.

Even a complete stranger would at least word it in a way that would convey their simple disbelief, not this outright refusal to even consider it as factually true.

And neither could Eloise believe it! This Husk, practically shouting its identity through every action, simply refused at every turn to admit it. Superheating its body’s core temperature, nervous stimuli nullification, apathy, malnutrition, nonsensical back story. Literally every sign in the book!

Clenching her teeth, only bad thoughts came to mind.

‘This god damn-’

“Haaah…”

Eloise couldn’t help but sigh. She was this close to snapping at it, but doing so would only mean she took its bait for a reaction. Was that its plan? To piss her off?

Though, that didn’t mean she would continue playing good cop. If this bastard wasn’t going to play along, neither would she!

“Fine. Let’s stop beating around the bush. Why are you even here? What do you even want?” she asked with a near shaking voice, suppressed frustration and anger clearly seeping through.

All rays of warmth from her gaze instantly transformed into piercing daggers.

The rest of the soldiers didn’t even seem to notice or care about their commander’s sudden shift in tone. They all just stood with their backs tensed and upright, not unlike stone statues, their eyes unfocused and uncaring.

Adrian once again fell in disbelief from what he had just witnessed, his assumptions shattered. Only moments ago, she appeared to be a well-controlled officer with professionalism to spare.

‘Maybe it’s all psychological warfare?’ he considered seriously. She had to know ways to make people talk.

But at the same time, he did want something. If recovering his past memories appeared improbable, he would strive to make new ones. He would start and live a new life, but to do that, he both needed to be let into civilian society, and supplement his lack of general knowledge.

The first requirement would hopefully come with time. Right now, what he wanted and needed most was knowledge.

Jumping past her inexplicable change in demeanor, Adrian simply asked her what was currently going through his mind.

“Can you tell me about this ‘city’. Other than the building we were just in, it seems quite… deserted.”

Eloise visibly frowned.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

‘Is it still feigning ignorance?’ She thought, not even surprised anymore.

‘But on the off chance it really doesn’t know…’

Flicking her fingers on a switch, the walls of the vehicle instantly became transparent, together with the inner walls of the tunnel, allowing the outside for viewing.

Looking through, Adrian could see the rest of the city, more ravaged than he’d expected. From his new, elevated point of view, the previously masked ruins were revealed, all enveloped in an especially strong azure glow. Fallen debris from long-destroyed buildings littered the grated and empty streets.

There wasn’t any smoke rising from the collapsed structures, no bodies littering the streets. No raging infernos obscuring the horizon, nor any other signs of recent distraught. This had all happened a long time ago.

From a distance, there appeared to have once been a couple particularly towering structures, perhaps once giant skyscrapers. Unfortunate as it was, no none would ever get to see their true glory once more, as anything with a large presence found itself in horrible condition, mangled and hunched over multiple smaller buildings and streets. Turning his attention to the smaller, stockier buildings, at least they seemed to have remained relatively untouched by this unknown calamity.

It rang clear in his mind that these weren’t exactly the city’s glory days.

He also noticed that they were nearing the giant, illuminating pillar at the city’s center. Not long from now, they would most likely arrive.

“This the fallen citadel of Colseel. Skin Crawler killed it off completely a long time ago, but now we’re trying to rebuild and repopulate. That’s why it seems so ‘dead’.” She explained, some venom emanating from her voice.

This remained quite a famous event, even eighty or so years after the fact. It acted as its big debut, cementing it a new terror of the world.

She reminisced sourly at those times. Painful times they were.

If anything could be considered good to take from back then, it was that Skin Crawler not only represented humanity’s plague, but also every other Husk’s. Wherever it went, tragedy came to all, no exceptions.

Pretty much every other Husk had been forced into hiding during those times, surviving off its crumbs alone.

Now, however, was different. After its reign ended, legions of inferior Husks started appearing and harassing humanity once more.

These days, it proved quite rare for a Husk to be targeting more than a city alone. Most were fighting each other for small, relatively unprotected settlements.

Adrian, meanwhile, was lost in the deepest depths of his mind, trying to remember or understand what this ‘Skin Crawler’ was. A giant monster, perhaps?

‘I’ll need to ask.’

However, before having a chance to do so, the ship’s walls became solid once more. The blue lighting had become overbearing closing in on the central pillar, so it was a pleasant relief for the eyes.

Feeling a miniscule pull of inertia moments later, the bullet ship suddenly came to a halt.

After stopping near the central pillar, the bullet ship seemed to rise. The feeling was subtle, but noticeable, nonetheless.

A good few seconds passed before stabilizing, and doors opened up.

It seemed they had arrived.

Rising from their seats, the soldiers, together with Eloise and Adrian, all disembarked.

Once done so, the ship unceremoniously retracted its ramp and sped back to the terminal it had come from.

Looking around, Adrian noticed a clear difference between the station they had just arrived at and the giant terminal.

To start off, it appeared way smaller. But wat it lacked in size, it made up with in extravagance.

From an industrial, uncaring aesthetic, the surroundings had transitioned into something daresay regal.

The walls, no longer cold hard steel, but beautiful slabs of chiseled white marble. The ceiling, no longer the same as the walls, but entirely made of clear glass, allowing the outside to show. Through it revealed towering skyscrapers, with transparent walkways connecting them to each other, built like intricate spiderwebs. Surrounding them, looped around a circular wall of blackened steel, encompassing everything in its embrace.

Yes, encompassing. That was because…

‘This is inside the central pillar.’

And indeed, Adrian’s thought proved correct. The inside much resembled a much scaled down version of the entire city. The curvature of the walls being more noticeable thanks to the smaller size, but the city had essentially the same type of walls encircling it.

The inside of the station itself was baren of the civilians Adrian had seen before. Only a group of guards appeared present, standing in expectation of Eloise’s brigade.

Even the guards distinguished, these wore navy-blue uniforms with gold accents. If anything, their uniforms were more in line with the Major’s than the ones distributed to normal guards.

Standing in front, the oldest of the guards faced Eloise directly. While not directly showing any hostility, an intone of displeasure still escaped the elderly man’s mouth. Even through his tries to remain neutral, it remained impossible to hide the feeling that there wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows between the two.

“Sergeant First Class. While on especially short notice, we have been informed of the situation.”

Not letting her warm gaze falter as before, she, together with the rest of her soldiers, plastered a subtle, inviting smile on their faces.

“Well, that’s good to hear, Staff Sergeant Bruno. I am guessing there is no issue?”

Standing silently for a moment, Bruno responded with a light frown.

“There is.” He remarked, discontent building in his voice. Suddenly turning to Adrian, a note of hatred mixed itself in. “You brought this monster here, at the doorstep of the most powerful people inside the city.”

He quickly turned back to Eloise before continuing with his rant.

“And while they already know it appeared somewhere, far away in the outer city, do you think they’ll be ecstatic once they hear you brought it here?”

Not missing a beat, Eloise retorted at once.

“And what exactly are they going to do about it? These are the Site Director’s orders, and everyone is Colseel is to obey them. Be it you, Staff Sergeant, the biggest investors in the rebuilding project or the richest businessmen from the upper layer.”

Pausing a moment to scoff, she continued.

“They can complain about it all they want afterwards; it won’t stop the present.”

The elderly man sighed.

“I’m not going against you or the Director, but you know well enough that what you’ve said stands true only on paper. Without the investors, what’s going to become of the rebuilding project? Tell me, who’s going to want to invest if you keep bringing Husks into the city’s core?”

“Irrelevant.” Eloise commented. “If the Site Director wishes to speak with the Husk inside the upper layer, it will happen to his will.”

Bruno could feel his teeth clenching. Just how thoughtless was this damned Site Director?

“Fine, but the powers within don’t want to be in left in the dark, and I have to report something. Can you at least do me a favor and share something before we let you through?”

“This can also be some good damage control if you word it well.” He added.

She stared at him a little before responding.

“We have nothing concrete to share.”

Heart skipping a beat, Brunos face fell at once.

“What? Absolutely nothing? Not a motive? A name? Its abilities?”

“As I said, we have nothing. Discussing any further would be pointless, as it’s also frankly above your pay grade.” She responded with an unfitting warm tone.

This was bad, really bad! She brought a complete unknown danger to the people she was supposed to protect and please?!

What if this Husk could spread through air or water? It wasn’t unheard of, after all. What would they do then, if half of the most influential people were made into a monster’s hosts? The city would be lost once more!

Bruno’s mind went to a thousand places at once, trying to save both his career and reputation. After all, on whom would the blame for a disaster be put? On the Site Director, whose influence easily considered unmatched, or some guards who was supposed to stop and apprehend any suspicious personnel and intruders?

With an especially loud sigh, he turned to Eloise one last time to try to figure something out.

“Consider this, do a Husk scan here, and we both end up profiting. You gather your lacking information about it, while I get to report to my superiors. No one loses, and as I said, you may even be able to do damage control, somewhat at least. Isn’t that better for the city?” He tried to reason with her.

And to his surprise…

“Fine, let’s do a quick scan. Shouldn’t take too long.” she convinced herself, an ever so slight hesitance newly present in her voice.

It worked!