Chapter 1: Welcome

  It was difficult to say which moment was the one that messed up Alex’s life entirely. If you asked him, it was when he had picked up that god damn rock. If he was more honest with himself, he would say it was the moment he split from his brother in the womb. That would have been his massive negative self-esteem talking though.

  Being more objective, it might have been the moment he signed up to join the military service. That was the choice which had led him to be in that soccer field when it happened, after all. In absolute truth, it was the moment he was swept up in the blast of a nuclear bomb. That turned out to be a pretty big fucking deal, unsurprisingly.

  Finding out exactly why he was bloodied and exhausted, standing over the shattered body of an undead Dungeon Boss, might not be the point though. Who really gave a shit about the why? Instead, Alex cared about the realization he had just gone through. The feeling of conquered fear and connection to the world around him.

  I survived, and I’ll keep surviving. He raised his head to look at the cavern chamber, or at least the smoldering remnants of it. I’ll make it through whatever is thrown at me.

  His hands tightened into fists as anger started to bubble inside his mind. The meager amount of aether energy in his body kindled in response to his emotions. Was it his new powerful understanding, or yet another bit of influence by the so called “Heavenly System”?

  Relax, Alex, figure out what to do next. His teammate’s faces loomed in his mind. He was so close to earning their freedom back. Once he did, that was only the beginning, they would have even more hardships to triumph over.

  Alex once again looked at his quest timer as he brought up the system screen. Nearly a month since we were all brought to this fucking world… it has felt like so much longer than that.

  ***

  Time Until Nuclear Incident: 7 Hrs 48 Minutes…

  “Fucking hell.” His stomach growled a protest on his behalf.

  Alexander Pierce was having a pretty crap day. Chaffed sores on his feet, a sunburn on his neck, regret of his lunch from earlier. MRE’s are never actually ready-to-be, nor should-be, eaten.

  When he had first signed up for the New States Armed Forces, he thought it would be a little more laid back. Instead it was missions which had him on long romantic hikes through a dilapidated city-scapes, with views of nothing but concrete and metal far beyond the horizon.

  It was like a snapshot of generations past. Each day Alex and his team sulked through half-destroyed buildings, crumbling malls, and overgrown city parks. If time travel were a thing, Alex would’ve gone back and slapped the pen out of his own hand at that recruitment office. But alas, all he could do now was suffer in sunburned silence.

  "Okay let's move squad, enough rest for the day." Captain Thompson called out to them.

  "Intel says there shouldn't be any contact today either. No known Union squads out here until the mid-zone." The captain said this with a reassuring smile. No one was itching to run into any hostile squads.

  "We haven't run into any Uni's on our entire detail,” Allie mumbled. She was elbow-deep in her medic bag, rearranging its contents for the third time that hour. It was her personal coping mechanism, like stress-baking, but with tourniquets. “They’re probably not even out here.”

  Her statement was probably true. Alex remembered reading on the web that in Europe people were calling the conflict the "Second Cold War". A reference to an earlier non-combat conflict between a country where Russia currently existed and, ironically, the old United States.

  "We won't know until we get out there. And we have at least three more relay points to set in either case." Devon said.

  Alex peeked up from his tablet screen to look at Private Devon Andrews. The guy was scrawny, but not freakishly so, and had rather well-kept dark brown hair. Alex kind of saw him as a younger version of that one actor, in the old movie where everyone was in a computer program. With slow-motion bullets and stuff, whatever it was called.

  "Once we do, Alex and I can monitor the whole length of the mid-way." Devon said.

  Alex simply nodded in confirmation. Allie gave him a look of doubt which he ignored to continue typing on his tablet.

  Technically, Alex outranked Devon. Technically. In the same way that someone technically owns a cat. The truth was, when it came to the team’s tech, Devon was faster, and had significantly more patience for things that required binary logic and duct tape. Alex had learned early on to treat him like a very nervous mining jackhammer: just point him at the problem and let go. So far, the system had never failed.

  He even suspected that if his own Radiant-Ion gear ever malfunctioned, a piece of tech so complicated it might actually require a priest rather than an engineer, Devon could fix it.

  "Okay, we should have the relay antennas ready once we reach the next mission location, no issues," Alex spoke up this time, making sure the captain could hear him. From whom, he received a nod.

  "Finally, let's move then, my butt is starting to get numb sitting here." Garret Singer shouted and rolled his shoulders as he stood and he gave everyone his trademark goofy-style smile.

  "Garret, if I have to stand downwind of you again, I’m filing a grievance.” Allie said. “I swear, you could bottle that smell as a weapon." She made a gagging motion as she gave Garret some dagger eyes.

  "Hey, if it works, I’m happy to help. ‘Weaponized funk,’ patent pending." Garret raised a hand towards Henry, trying to get a high five from the burly man.

  Henry Imose, their second squad scout, stood up. He remained blank-faced, and simply looked at Garret for a long moment. His eyes flitted between the offending outstretched hand and Garret’s face. Finally, he looked over to Allie and just nodded before walking away.

  "Let's move. No sandbagging." Captain spoke above everyone else as he shouldered his pack. Garret still held up his hand, angling towards the captain to help him where Henry had failed. The captain also left him hanging.

  "Sorry, Garret." Alex patted his shoulder as he passed, he looked at Alex with his mouth slightly agape in dismay. Allie simply giggled as she trotted past him.

  "Oh come on guys," Garret whined, chasing after the squad once even Devon failed to meet his hand. "You never wanna try it. I swear, it was super cool like fifty years ago!"

  "More like eighty years, Garret. It’s 2088. Get with the times, please. You can't be spending your life with your head in the medieval ages." Allie tapped her tablet as she talked, not bothering to look up. She walked with confidence despite all the rubble and debris around them.

  The team moved as silently as possible through a long string of apartment buildings on a strip of bombed-out road. The buildings were all barely half upright, windows blown, walls collapsed, the whole nine yards towards apocalyptic zombie-scape. This was all that was left of Kansas City. That’s what it used to be anyway, or at least what Alex was told it had been.

  "Next spot is seventy yards ahead," Alex called out in a subdued shout to make sure Garret and Henry, who were acting as vanguard, could hear him. He got two thumbs up in return, letting him know they got the message.

  "Think things will get exciting this time? I hope we get at least some action." Devon looked at him, a crooked grin on his face. Alex simply huffed and shook his head slowly in response as he walked past him. Devon looked on in confusion and scampered to keep up.

  "What did I s-" Devon started to ask.

  "I told you before Devon,” Alex cut him off. “Never jinx a mission man."

  A sudden blare of noise from the captain’s Ion-suit brought the entire team to a stop. Everyone knew what that blaring sound meant, and they didn't need the accompanying red flashing light to come off the captain's Ion gear to inform them. Though, flash it did.

  Everyone moved instinctively, taking a knee on the ground with a hand that moved to hover over their hip-bags. The captain was already tearing open the velcro on his bag when his eyes narrowed, and he yelled. “Wait.”

  A silence fell over the whole team as the captain's suit stopped releasing its shrill squeal, and the light ceased flashing. Thompson continued to look at his tablet in his other hand for a few seconds and began to stand up. "False alert. We're fine." He stated quietly.

  Alex let out a sigh, and he heard everyone else following his lead. Damn, I think I peed myself a little.

  He looked at his own suit, double-checking the light indicator himself, wondering for the first time if he really trusted this thing to work when it was supposed to.

  The Radiant-Ion gear wasn't designed to block bullets or impacts. What it did do, was constantly monitor the surrounding area for radiation spikes. Once it picked up a positive response, it would blare and light up like the captain's had. At that point it would begin generating a powerful electromagnetic field around them, stopping a few inches from their body. Alex wasn't certain on all the scientific details of how it really worked.

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  “Must have picked up a random flare," Thompson looked at each of them in turn. "We are fine." His voice remained even and strong, the team all relaxed further under the man's confidence.

  All except Alex, because under the strong exterior of the captain, Alex could see the spark of anxiety in the man's eyes when he looked at him. It wasn't just some false alarm; the captain didn't think so at least. Thompson wasn't saying anything, probably because it really was no worry and as a human, even the captain could get scared sometimes. Alex didn't know.

  Garret and Henry were already heading toward the next location. Allie had adjusted her pack and started down the debris slope behind them, her earlier tension faded. Alex lingered. Devon eventually followed after the others, leaving just him and the captain.

  Thompson brushed past him, his footsteps kicking up dust and stale ash. The scent clung to Alex’s nostrils, a stench of dry clay, rusted steel, and something burnt long ago and forgotten. His throat clenched. Whether it was the dust or the dread, he couldn’t tell. His hand found the barrel shroud of his rifle, gripping tight.

  Something wasn’t right.

  ***

  Time Until Nuclear Incident: 1 Hr 8 Minutes...

  “Absolutely not,” Henry said as he crossed his arms.

  “Seriously man? We have to take it with us. It’s a true antique, it belongs in a museum!” Garret said as he stroked the outer paneling of the object in front of them. “You carry it the first mile, then I will. We alternate after that.”

  “I would rather be exposed to one hundred instances of ‘Weaponized Funk’,” Henry said. Garret looked at his fellow team scout with a look of betrayal.

  Alex looked up from his work and over at the two men. He almost sighed as he discovered the two of them were standing in front of a decrepit old vending machine leaning awkwardly against a wall. Garret was already trying to bribe Henry with a promise of “ twelve high-fives and a backrub of questionable quality.” The burly man simply shook his head and walked away in a tactical retreat. Alex ignored this and got back to the mission.

  "Finishing final checks now. Just give me two minutes." Devon was knelt at the base of the antenna, his tablet plugged directly into the device.

  "Singer, Imose," The captain turned towards Garret and Henry, using their family names, as dictated by military tradition. The two men turned towards the captain with serious faces. "Scout ahead while Andrews finishes the checks. I don't want any surprises.

  Meanwhile, Alex’s mind kept circling the false alarm from the captain’s suit. He tried distracting himself, thinking about the cantina food waiting at the outpost, but his thoughts inevitably drifted even further. To back home, to Greater Montana, to his parents, still working at the same Veltech office they’d been at his whole life, maybe longer.

  Our whole life, he corrected himself. Alex was a twin, but his brother Adam shared his face but little else. Sure, Alex was smart, athletic, decent with a paintbrush, but Adam had always been... more. Everything seemed easy for him. The top athlete, the star student. The kind of guy who walked into a room and made everyone else feel like background NPCs. It would've been easy to hate him, if he wasn’t so damn kind.

  Adam had a way of knowing exactly what Alex needed to hear. Like a sixth sense. Twin thing, maybe. Except Alex never felt like it worked both ways. He never quite knew what Adam was thinking. Well, except for one thing. Beneath the confidence, the charisma, the relentless smiles, Alex had always felt it: a sadness. Faint but persistent. Like the still surface of a lake hiding a quiet current below.

  “Three hundred yards, sir!” Devon’s words snapped him back to the present. Alex blinked. Devon was giving him a look. Uh-oh.

  “What did I miss?” Alex whispered.

  “Dude, the captain asked you like three times how far we had left. You were just... standing there. Zoning out. With that thousand-yard stare.”

  “Shit. Sorry. Just spaced for a sec.” Alex forced a grin and gave a thumbs-up.

  Daydreaming wasn’t like him. Not on missions. And clearly, Devon noticed too because he was still watching him suspiciously. “Okay, man. Just one more stop, then it’s food time,” Devon said, turning forward again. “Let’s get it done.”

  Alex glanced around and found they were moving through what remained of a city park. Grass reached up to his thighs, obscuring the path ahead. He could just make out Garret and Henry about thirty feet in front. Alex stayed sharp, not eager to slip into another mental fog. Allie was a few meters ahead, Devon just in front of her, and the captain brought up the rear, eyes constantly scanning.

  The area was all tall grass, dense shrubs, and a canopy of trees filtering soft green light over everything. A clean breeze carried the scent of foliage, masking the usual stink of rot. For once it was strangely peaceful.

  They moved in formation another hundred feet before the vanguard stopped at the edge of a tree line. The team caught up, spotting their final relay site: the middle of an old soccer field.

  The grass there was shorter at first glance. Closer inspection showed it wasn’t real grass at all, but synthetic turf, weathered and patchy.

  The captain stepped up behind Henry and looked about carefully. It was a long silent two minutes before the captain finally tapped Henry on the shoulder. It was the signal to proceed.

  “Move,” Henry whispered. Garret heard and the two advanced together, rifles up, moving in tight sync. They’d barely made it a quarter into the field when two more figures stepped from the opposite tree line, also armed.

  For a breath, Alex thought it was another squad from base. Overlapping patrols, maybe.

  Then he saw the uniforms. Burgundy-tinged, not olive.

  Uni’s....

  “Hold! Identify yourselves!” Garret’s voice sliced through the silence like an axe splitting wood. The two figures stopped, but they didn’t reply. Then three more emerged from the same tree line, followed by a fourth, all with rifles raised and matching uniforms.

  “Shit,” Alex hissed.

  “Identify yourselves under Unified State protocol!” one of them called back. A woman’s voice.

  Outnumbered six to two. They’re screwed. Alex unslung his rifle and raised it without thinking, but then his legs locked up. He wanted to move, to back up Garret and Henry, but fear nailed him to the spot.

  Seconds passed. His blood thumped in his ears, his rifle grew heavier, and panic clawed at the edge of his mind. Then heard a voice that was calm and familiar.

  “We are with the New States Armed Forces. Identify yourselves per neutral zone protocol, paragraph eight.” It was the captain. He’d stepped up beside Garret. Allie and Devon were there too.

  When did they move? Alex hadn’t even noticed. Had he zoned out again? Gritting his teeth, he forced his legs to move, sprinting out into the field and joined Devon, rifle up.

  “New’sers. Fuck,” someone from the other team muttered.

  Alex looked them over, seeing it was a man about his age. The person directly beside him was a woman around a year younger than Alex.

  "We are under the Americas Union. As you know, this is a mid-zone, firing on someone is considered an act of war. Treaty protocol; neutral zone procedures, paragraph twelve." The other teams’ leader stared at Thompson a moment, then her eyes flickered to the many weapons they had pointed at her team. "Kindly lower your weapons."

  "Happy to, once you lower all of yours." The Captain said with a deadpan tone. He didn’t flinch. If he was worried about the numbers, he didn’t show it. Alex, on the other hand, definitely was . Numbers mattered, skill mattered too, sure, but you couldn’t outshoot being outnumbered forever.

  “Not going to happen,” the woman said.

  “Then we’re at an impasse,” the captain replied, eyes flicking toward Alex and the others.

  “Well, there are more of us than you,” she said, stepping forward, rifle tight to her shoulder. Alex noticed something then, their Radiant-Ion suits were the same models, just tinted differently. And her hands were trembling. Slight, but visible. Her rifle pulsed with each nervous twitch. Her nostrils flared. One eyebrow creased more than the other. Tiny tells, but unmistakable.

  Funny, Alex thought. What the brain notices when it thinks it’s about to die.

  “Numbers won’t matter here. I know my squad,” Thompson said, calm and sure. Garret and Henry straightened, confidence radiating off them like armor.

  “And I know mine,” the woman snapped back.

  Silence fell again as the tension suddenly thickened. Every hand gripped tighter, eyes narrowed. Alex felt each second strung out like a thread pulled far too tight, or the heavy silence that accompanied an awkward family dinner.

  A bead of sweat rolled into Alex’s left eye, stinging like he’d been bit by a spider made of acid. The urge to rub it was overwhelming, but he resisted. One twitch might be all it took to turn the standoff into a bloodbath. And then it happened. It wasn’t one of the soldiers who broke the stalemate.

  It was a sound.

  The blare of a Radiant-Ion suit’s alarm. The front Uni woman’s suit flashed red, loud and shrill. No one fired. That sound triggered a different instinct in everyone present.

  Alex’s first thought it was a false alarm. Just like Thompson’s suit earlier. But then Garret’s suit lit up, and then Henry’s, then all of them. A wave of red lights and sirens screamed around the field like a coordinated nightmare.

  “Oh fuck,” Alex muttered, already dropping to one knee. His fingers tore open the velcro on his hip pouch and yanked out the gas mask. As he lifted it to his face, his gaze rose and he saw it.

  On the horizon, like a flower blooming, petals stretched across the sky. Bright, expanding, unnatural. His skin prickled. The sensation triggered something deep in his memory. A static charge, like waking up as a kid on Christmas morning and racing down the stairs in fuzzy pajamas. Except this wasn’t excitement. This was static electricity crawling across his entire body, surging from every suit in the field.

  Then the cloud of light hit Alex and everyone else almost simultaneously.

  In one instant everything was awash with a searing white. Then the next Alex saw nothing but blackness. No sound, no smell, he couldn't even taste the metallic tinge of blood he was certain was filling his mouth by this point. He was floating in the void and he wasn't sure for how long.

  So this is what it feels like to die?

  Just before even his consciousness failed him as well, he saw one last thing in the bleak void in which he floated. He wasn't certain, as it seemed crazy. Just six words, like a neon sign in the backdrop of a starless night. A border of gilded gold and midnight blue.