The bitter cold clung to her thick, tattered coat as her heavy breaths fogged the air ahead of her. A big, hairy hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality and she turned to see someone, dressed in green, Soviet military gear that looked barely held together at the seams. They were saying something to her, but it sounded muted and distant. Her brain kept playing the same scenes before her eyes, a fire sweeping across the village and monsters wearing big bulky metal suits that tore through anyone that came close. The ones still alive told her to run and here she was, now at the edges of the town—a blaze at her back and a darkness beckoning her forward.
“Eva - Are you listening? You can’t stay here. If they find you.”
She looked at the man. His bushy beard and heavy-set eyes showed the same fear that had carried her to this point, but even if she embraced the darkness, they would still find her. It was not a matter of if but when.
“I’m scared…”
The man got down to her level and took hold of her thick, but still a little holey gloves. “We all are. Sometimes you have to be brave, even when it seems impossible.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
The man rose to his full height and shouldered his Mosin–Nagant, directing it back to the burning village. “Someone must face those demons.”
“But you’ll die.”
“It is by the Maxim’s will that I stand here now, child. Now go. I will buy you as much time as I can.”
She didn’t need to be told twice and began running. Soon enough she was enveloped by the thick tree line and when her hand touched one tree, something happened. Instead of feeling rough bark, or even snow. The cold was metallic and when she looked around her, she was surrounded by a thick, viscous fog and tubes full of liquid. Close by each one, were something akin to trees but these were blackened and leafless, its long branches reaching out to her. She blinked and was once more surrounded by endless wood and falling snow. She burst into a run but found her boots sinking wherever she stepped. Her feet became increasingly numb, the further away she got.
A shot ringing out into the night made her stop dead. Two more followed and then silence returned. She ran a little further before taking cover behind a tree and tried to calm herself in the hopes it would stop the dizziness.
“Eva, it’s over, Eva. You can come out now,” said a deep, gravelly voice some distance away. “You can’t outrun me.”
She could certainly try. She flew from her cover and ran in a diagonal direction. She would only get so far before a large shoulder collided with her back and she hit the nearest tree.
This broke her vision, as steam from the mesh-like floor blinded her. With her back to one of those strange trees. The monster before her was different now. Not the Dogs of the German war machine, but a man trapped between his suit and the creature taking over him.
“They sent you here to bring us home.”
“You’re one of the miners,” she spat and looked for an escape.
“There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. They’ve been waiting a long time for us.”
“Who?”
“The old masters.”
She had heard enough and mustered what strength she had left to keep pushing forward. I need a way out of this room, there has to be one.
The two worlds blurred together, metal and wooden hell as she recalled that night she fled the dogs of the German army. They had left none alive, torching anything they could. She never even learned the soldier’s name. Damn it, Eva now is not the time to be saddled with regrets!
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No matter which way she went, the result was row upon row of strange tubes and trees. Some bore fruit, others barren. It now sank in just what type of trees they were. The corruptions of the Mortalis had consumed this alien facility, and now it sought to claim her too. She pushed on, aimlessly and raised a shaking hand to touch the button on her suit that would reconnect her to others in her team through an inbuilt radio, instead, the creature that stalked her every move uttered a series of gurgling laughs. She ceased trying and with tears rolling down her cheek pushed on.
A blur coming at her side caught her by the throat and slammed her against the glass case. “There’s no reason to be afraid anymore. You came here to save us, now let us repay you.”
The Mortan lifted her with ease using its right claw and held her struggling body against the tree. It had biomechanical additions on its left arm that now came to life. The tube-like blade that came down from the elbow and to its wrist soon punctured her chest. A pain came first and she cried out, but then even she was silenced by a tidal wave of voices… so many voices.
They’ve been waiting for someone.
They’ve been waiting for us, all this time.
Primordalis.
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He sat in sobering silence, flanked by other mourners. Some were family, while others had simply come to pay their respect. The war had left them broken and what lay ahead was an uncertain and shakey union with Lenin now at the helm. The word had already reached them of events elsewhere. While the Russians fought amongst themselves, the West had begun to shift too. As the Great War carried on without them, whispers spread of revolution, from Great Britain to the other European powers. He didn’t know what to believe with hands folded together he dreamed of peace. Soon enough it came his time to pay his respects. He stood up, straightened his suit jacket and made his way to the open casket. He stopped before it, in a muffled silence. This was the first time he noticed that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing and looking back over his shoulder, something felt dreamlike about his surroundings.
It looks too perfect.
The faces of every other mourner were also well hidden and their features were each too difficult to discern. Part of him wanted to believe the reason they all hid was because they were all blank. He shook his head and faced the casket once more. There was no scent of death at least. It actually looked quite serene. He brushed his hand over the wood and tilted his head. His eyes stung as the metal before blurred in and out of focus. That was when he looked into the casket and saw the dead man for the first time.
I don’t even know you. Are you even human?
The body looked too tall and thin, while the head was more angular at the chin. The skin looked smooth and unblemished. Before he knew it he was reaching inside. The dark eyes opened and the hand, with three digits instead of five, seized his wrist. Memories not of his own flood his vision and the funeral was replaced by endless steel, steam and various apparatus. The casket lay before him. Except it wasn’t a casket. It was a cryosleep pod. He was Savin, and as to not be a burden to the other researchers, it would now be his time to sleep until eventually he would be needed once more to swap with someone else. A hand rose and he grabbed it sharing with the newly awoken all he had learned so far. Once they were out of the pod, it was his time to climb into the clear, cool liquid. He closed his eyes and entered a tranquil state while the lid sealed. To dream of our glorious future.
‘Glorious future?’ Pytor questioned staggering backwards as the hand went limp and flopped back into the now dirty-looking liquid. ‘How long has it been?’ he asked out loud and then paused. ‘A different tongue, and…’ he looked down and saw the strange suit he now wore.
Pyotr found the nearest reflective surface he could and looked at himself in it awhile. ‘I am no longer, Nirikiri. The dreamlink… I overwhelmed him. He’s not dead in here - sleeping- perhaps?’
Pyotr rotated around the room. What had once been carefully maintained equipment, had begun to falter and flicker. Some of the walls had strange fungal growths on them and the light of the room had dimmed significantly. It had never been this dark before. He put a gloved hand to his covered head and wondered how this new body would feel and why it required such insulation. Incapable of breathing without assistance. He moved his hand further back and noted something cylindrical on the back. Tank of sort? For breathing. Fascinating, but inefficient.
‘Where is everyone?’ he asked again out loud. ‘Wait, that nightmare I had. It spoke to me from the darkness. It called itself Truth. Only Truth.’
Pyotr stumbled forward, his mind a flurry of different thoughts and ideas. As a Nirikiri he had never done a full transplant like this into another body, but now he had questions. What happened in the intervening years since he went to sleep? And more importantly…
Why had their thousand-year experiment shown up to greet him?