Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The forest swayed silently in the frigid night. Silhouetted against the star filled, moonless sky, they could be mistaken for jagged and reaching fingers, daring the bipedal apes crawling across the earth’s surface to venture in and be welcomed forever.

As Paladin Lord Alyx Vance and her company marched loudly into their wintery embrace, an urge tugged on her skull that they might never leave. Even in her protective shell of power armored paladins and fellow scribes, disaster felt imminent in her bones. Instinct told her to order the entire unit to turn and retreat to the mainland, to send more scouts until they were certain of what they would encounter. But reason, the human invention and ally, warned better. It was too late to turn back now.

To ease her anxiety, she moved through the ranks until she found Procter Kleiner worrying with a portable computer. Even with the eerie glow of equations across his face his presence was always grounding, especially in a high-stake operation. He noticed her approach and glanced up with a surprised smile.

“Ah! Alyx. Wonderful to see you.” His voice was sharp and clear, totally unbothered by the midnight nightmare swallowing them. Alyx noted the lack of title in his words.

“Proctor Kleiner.” She regarded, “Any updates?”

He nodded solemnly and shifted the terminal for her to view. “Only the slightest, I’m afraid. But, as Eli—I’m sorry—as General Vance predicted, the signal in question has become clearer the further we encroach the Upper Peninsula.”

“So can you make sense of it?” Alyx looked over the figures on the screen. Much of it was a mess of numbers and language only the scribes typically cared to understand. While her father had taught her how to understand the vast majority of ancient symbols, Kleiner’s general disorganization made it a new language on its own.

“Only just.” Kleiner said, “Judging by the waveform, it appears to be some kind of pulse transmitting through radio frequencies. Why, if we had some form of audio device, I would be able to connect it to the terminal and it would resolve into sound.”

“So, it’s a distress beacon?”

“Perhaps. Or—And I hazard to say this that you might be disappointed—It could simply be a radio station.”

A radio station?

Alyx shook her head, dissatisfied and fearful of the thought. All this manpower chasing down a rogue station. Even if the parts were worth salvaging, she had organized enough manpower to level a well-fortified town. All her men would be terribly frustrated at having been brought all the way north just for a radio dish and receiver. Not to mention the humiliation of returning empty handed.

“There must be something more,” she said, “We were picking up its background noise in Colorado before Springs was lost. Have you ever heard of a station that powerful?”

“I agree completely. It’s far too strong for an average transmitter. Either there are relay towers we’ve missed—”

“Impossible.”

“—Or it’s something else entirely.”

Alyx thought for a moment. Radio waves could be converted into sound then played through a radio. If they had traveled close enough to resolve the waveform, then perhaps it could be picked up by one.

She broke away from Kleiner and moved to the front of the march. Paladin Calhoun, her second in command was leading. He yawned before he noticed her approach, then snapped to attention immediately.

“Paladin Lord.” He acknowledged.

“Order the men to set up camp. This is as far as we go tonight.”

Calhoun seemed relieved at the chance to rest but still seemed unsure at the prospect. “Not to question your orders sir, but we’ve only just crossed the Mackinac. Shouldn’t we find a more well defensible area?”

“This will do.” Alyx affirmed.

Reluctantly, Calhoun saluted and gave the order. A temporary camp would do for now, Alyx thought. She just needed the chance to confirm Kleiner’s findings.

The men were efficient, and in less than half an hour, a small fort’s worth of tents and parked power armor were set up along the darkened road. As duties were handed out, she summoned herself and Paladin Calhoun to Proctor Kleiner’s field lab at the center of camp.

She could tell Calhoun had been hoping he would have been granted rest with the rest of his men, a fact made apparent by his slouched posture outside his armor. While his behavior on duty required constant correction, Alyx still found his loyalty and courageousness in battle more than made up for his professional shortcomings.

Proctor Kleiner meanwhile was the patron saint of mania. Alyx could not name a time when she ever found him asleep or appeared tired. Now was no different as he transferred his attention from the handheld computer to a proper monitor. She noted that he already beaten her to the radio issue as a few squires were digging through a pile of scrap for a working receiver. At last, one was found, crackling to life when the squire accidentally hit its power.

“Perfect!” Kleiner rejoiced as though celebrating a stash of fusion cores. “Let’s see that here.”

The squire, naïve and confused at the old man’s enthusiasm, gently set the radio on the table beside the terminal, before being quickly dismissed.

Calhoun groaned at the sight. “What, are we listening to music now? Doc if you’re wanting to throw a party it could have waited till tomorrow.”

“On the contrary Barney,” Kleiner said, continuing his long-standing tradition of forgoing formalities, “This is a momentous occasion. (“Yeah, right. You say that about everything.”) The signal we’ve been monitoring for the past three months has led us here. And if my readings are correct, we may just now be in range to hear it.”

“And what if it’s just some pirate radio station? Do we scrap it or do we turn around.”

“It’s not just a radio station Calhoun.” Alyx cut in, “It’s something much stronger than that. The energy for it to reach Colorado alone--”

“And not just Colorado,” Kleiner pulled up the waveform readings on the monitor, “The estimated power supply would allow the signal to cover the entire world.”

Calhoun was still unimpressed, “Well are we just going to sit around and talk about it? Let’s listen to the damn thing.”

Alyx pursed her lips and made a note to correct his attitude, but still gave Kleiner the go ahead.

The proctor instantly refocused, mumbling under his breath as he read through the terminal’s read outs, occasionally typing inputs and whispering “amazing” or “incredible” at the results.

“Remarkable,” he said, “It’s transmitting below standard FM operating frequencies.

Alyx placed her hand on the radio’s dial. “Hit me Doc.”

“85.2 Megahertz.”

Alyx stared at the radio’s display, puzzled. “The band doesn’t go down that far.”

“Astute as always Lord Vance,” Kleiner responded. She almost took offense to the sudden patronization before she reminded herself it was physically impossible for Kleiner to patronize anyone. “But if I connect the terminal to the radio’s auxiliary port like so.”

He took a wire from the computer and plugged it somewhere into the radio’s back. It’s speakers suddenly crackled with connection. As Kleiner stood back to admire his handy work, suddenly sound flooded through.

It was music.

The tune was largely inoffensive, sounding almost tropical or like the waiting music in an elevator that was still functional. Occasionally it became garbled and swallowed with static, but the tune remained consistent and repeated without fail. Dare Alyx think, it almost sounded jazzy.

The three stood for over ten minutes before Calhoun violently disconnected the radio.

“Was that useful for you doc?” He grumbled.

Kleiner perked up without missing a beat, “My I say it was! Now we at least know what the signal is.”

“But what is it for?” Alyx exasperatedly raged. “It can’t just be a radio station. It must be something more. We’ve put too many resources in this for it to be just another scrap mission.”

Kleiner shut off the radio and began entering the findings into his monitor, “I’m afraid the only way to find all our answers is to find the transmissions source.” A few readouts scanned across the screen. “And there we have it!”

“Have what?”

“This close to the source, I can pinpoint its location to somewhere roughly on the east side of the peninsula. My word this all quite exciting.”

Calhoun scoffed and rubbed his eyes. “My lord, can I talk to you for a minute.”

Alyx withheld sighed. This wouldn’t be great.

She left Kleiner’s tent and Calhoun followed. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. Around them the camp was resting, bundled up against the frigid night. A few guards were on patrol, the lamps from their power armor bobbing in the distance and casting twisted shadows against the pale snow.

Finding a spot close to her tent, Alyx faced Barney.

“What’s up?”

Suddenly Calhoun seemed shy, rubbing the back of his head anxiously, which annoyed her more than his generally poor attitude.

She snapped, “I said speak soldier.”

“Alright,” he said defensively, “I just think you’re chasing this thing too hard.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just,” he stumbled his words for a pause, “I understand the pressure you under, your father being general and all, but marching this far north with no backup on some hairbrained Kleiner theory that there might be some mythical power source hiding on the fringes of civilization, it’s not the way to go.”

Alyx was thankful for the dark as it spared Barney from seeing her flush angrily. This amount of insubordination was unusual for Calhoun. The way he talked so openly about her father. Was she still a child to him?

“What else?”

He hesitated once more, this time like he didn’t want to say his next words. All too late did Alyx realize what they would be, “I also think, you’re trying to find him. But he’s gone Alyx, gone with all the rest.”

She couldn’t believe his audacity. She felt her fists tighten, ready bloody ground with Barney’s teeth.

“Is that all?” She dared.

Calhoun sighed, “Permission to be dismissed for the night. Sir.”

He was always weaseling out of the hard conversations.

Before Alyx could give her permission, or have him whipped where he stood, there was a scream.

Alyx snapped her head to the sound of laser fire and the flashes of red lighting up the south of camp. A buzzing sound, like a swarm of cazadors, filled the air and there was another scream that was cut short.

Before the words “Hostiles spotted!” even sounded across the camp, Alyx and Calhoun were springing into action, splitting up to retrieve their armor and weapons.

Alyx called out for anyone to hear as she took position by her command tent, “Ambush! Defense maneuver Sierra Hotel Echo Lima Lima! Confirm target positions!”

In a mad flash, she threw on her recon hood and switched off her laser pistol’s safety. The buzzing was growing louder by the second and the sounds of gunfire began to split the night.

Just before she crawled out her tent, she heard someone shout, “They’re airborne!” followed by a bloody scream and the of a rifle clattering to the ground.

Stepping into the night, she could smell them before she saw them. A scent like rotten food and rancid garbage assaulted her nose as a dark silhouette crossed the stars and landed gracefully on the top of her tent.

Alyx spun to face it, and hesitated when she didn’t quite understand what she was seeing.

It was green and roughly human shaped—not unlike a putrid feral ghoul—but any similarities with humanity ended there. Where hands should have been its arms ended in enormous, fleshy and serrated scythes. Bursting from its spine, a pair of insectile wings shivered. Its face, if it could be called that, stared back at Alyx with bulging yellow eyes and teeth-filled mandibles in the process of chewing a squire’s severed hand.

When her senses came crashing back to her, Alyx opened fire.

The lasers pierced the creature’s thorax like a needle through paper. It let a painful, chittering screech as its wings sent it leaping through the air in her direction. Before its scythes could tear her apart, she spent the rest of her energy cell into it, leaving it a sizzling husk at her feet.

Before she could even catch her breath, the buzzing reached a crescendo and suddenly three more of the wretched things landed far to near her for comfort.

There was no time to reload; she pulled her combat knife from her hip and thrusted the blade through one of the assaulting creature’s faces.

Her focus towards one’s demise however left her fatally open to those behind her. Before she could turn, she felt ragged claws tear through her stomach and wrap around her hips. Her shout of agony was cut viciously short as the creature, by way of retracting its natural weapons, dragged her down into the snow.

All around her, the sounds of fighting grew more desperate and pained. Her men’s dying screams assaulted her while the air in her lungs failed to return. She tried to stand, but the abomination kept her supine against the ground. It blotted out the stars.

She watched, trapped in her body, as it reared its arms for the final blow. Alyx despaired; her father wouldn’t even know what happened to her. She would never find—

But suddenly there was a roar of gunfire, far louder and closer than the rest, and the insectile monstrosity above her exploded into green mist. Another explosion of sound and the last of her assailants fell into pieces.

She struggled vainly to move, to fight while she had the opportunity, but Barney was beside her in an instant, kneeling down in his power armor to lift her into his arms.

“Hang on there Alyx, I’ve got you.”

She had only seen him moments ago, but he already looked so ragged and beaten. A deep cut oozed across his scalp. Were they losing? Already?

“Barney—” She tried weakly, “. . . Kleiner. . .”

“He’s next. I’ve ordered a retreat. Maybe he’s already gone.”

“What. . . what are they?”

“Hold tight my Lord.”

Alyx could feel distantly they were moving, the shockwaves of Calhoun’s every step shaking her deeper into a bloodless trance. Every moment or so Barney stopped, fired his shotgun into something, then continued. Alyx saw Kleiner’s tent appear in her view, then suddenly they were inside.

It looked as though it had been completely ransacked. All of Kleiner’s vital equipment; his terminal, his hand-held monitor, the feral pacifier he’d spent the last year working on, all of it was thrown over and torn apart.

And upon the table where transceiver had been, where she, Barney and Issac had just been, one of the abominations stood. In its alien jaws, an arm, torn from someone’s shoulder and still dressed in the sleeve of a lab coat, hanged loosely.

“No!”

“Fucking bugs!”

The creature chattered aggressively, vibrating its wings in deadly preparation to attack. But it was far too late, for all of them. Barney fired the remainder of his shotgun’s ammo and green mist showered in its wake.

Alyx held tightly to Barney’s armor as they broke once more into the night. The sounds of fighting were dying now, replaced by the keeling moans of doomed men. The buzzing too was fading, but all around, Alyx saw shadowed glimpses of beasts tearing into the stomachs of her faithful soldiers.

As the camp fell behind and the forest consumed them, Alyx realized that everyone had been right. Her father, Calhoun, even that bastard Mossman. This entire expedition was a mistake.

In the dark she saw what Barney, focused on their escape, could not. An old highway sign, its original text long faded and painted over. Perhaps it once welcomed travelers to Upper Michigan or gave directions to the town Alyx’s company never reached.

Now it was roost for midnight crows, scattering as an infernal creation of man’s hubris and desire for power buzzed hungrily onto its steel for a perch. Below its scythe like claws, painted across the sign in red were the words:

“Welcome to Yooperland.”

Alyx whispered, pale as a ghost,

“We should have never come here.”

Then she died.

Chapter Text

You woke to a warmth clutched tightly to your chest and a dull ringing in the back of your brain. The air was cool on your sweat slick skin and breaths came shaky and strangled to your otherwise excessively strong lungs. The world poured in as light from a window, illuminating an off-white attic turned bedroom and the continuation of the rest of your life.

Stretching, you let the Companion Cube fall off the bed and thud against the floor. No doubt you were going to a receive some condemnation from Ma about that, but your mind was far from those thoughts, muddled in a twisted mess of time and uncertain reality. You rolled to your feet and stepped gently to the window; instinct kept your heels from touching the floor.

The morning had carried on without you, illuminating the skyline of an endless forest and casting gold onto the trimmed grass the grew around the front yard. Your haggard reflection cast a phantasmal shadow over the view, and you could still see the terror in your own face; tense muscles twitching and spasming as the images of nightmares faded.

It was just a nightmare, you told yourself.

You spotted Pa outside, walking from the porch to examine a rickety fence around Ma’s garden. With some odd reef in your chest, and feeling sufficiently grounded enough, you took position on the floor and rested your aching head atop your companion cube.

You glanced at a calendar hanging on the wall. It was for the year 2077, and so the dates were apparently slightly off, but it was certainly September.

One month.

One month and it still felt so horribly yesterday.

Your blissful idleness was cut short by feet thudding up the stairs. A moment later your door swung open, and Ma’s cheery presence filled the room. She was carrying a steaming bowel of something that smelt equal parts grotesque and delicious.

“Good morning sunshine!” She cheered, “I thought I heard you up! Fresh hot chicken soup, just for you.”

You nodded in appreciation as she set the bowel softly on the cube. The liquid inside the teal ceramic was unattractive green which put you in the mind of toxic pools rather than anything digestible. Yet the pale chunks of meat floating in the broth did not instantly dissolve, proving its safe consumption. Ma stopped you as you reluctantly grasped the spoon.

“Now wait a minute missy, that’s scalding hot eh? Give it time to cool and take your time. I think Pa wants you on varmint duty today, so there’s no need to rush.”

You stirred the soup around in understanding, not quite finding the energy to look up. Perhaps Ma noticed, as she made a worried sound then took a lumbering seat beside you.

“Oh sunshine.” She said bringing you into a tight embrace, “You’ll start to feel better soon. Trust.”

For some reason, her touch caused a tightening your chest and the corners of your eyes to itch. You flinched away from her, as though she were a boiling pot. The flash in her eyes showed confusion, but she did not question your bizarre reaction. Instead, she pat you on the shoulder, then used the bed as leverage to stand.

“Now then, when your dressed and ready, there’s some soot tea waiting in the pitcher downstairs. Don’t drink all of it, just what you need eh?”

You nodded and took a cautious sip of the soup. The heat was still intense, but the flavor of broth was delightfully repulsive. You felt Ma smile above, before she hobbled back downstairs.

She was a sickeningly kind woman. Her face, which had been the first human face you’d seen in a very long time had almost brought you to tears over how wonderfully gently and content it was. Lately however, crying took up far too much energy.

As did standing, so you relegated yourself to eating your soup on the floor like a lion, prideful in that you were the deadliest thing in the savanna and didn’t need to worry about some lesser feline stealing your meal. But in truth, you felt as helpless and the disemboweled gazelle.

When you were finished you threw on an ancient set of jeans and a flannel coat before you swayed dizzily down the stairs, toes first. Then you remembered your heels and finally put them down at the landing. Ma was already gone from the house, likely into town to trade, so you helped yourself to a smokey, plum colored glass of tea on the kitchen’s counter.

It smelt of smoke and tasted like ash, but each gulp brought more and more precious caffeine to your system. By the end of the first disgusting glass of the day, you could already feel the vertigo vanishing. feeling as ready for they say as you would likely ever get, you slung Pa’s varmint rifle over your shoulder and headed outside.

Your morning chores began as typical as any other day, by which you found each day the past month growing increasingly more atypical. You were put to work by Ma and Pa the moment they deemed you fit enough to stand longer than ten minutes. For all their hospitality, they began to teach you the work of the land and for you, who’s hardest job until that point was simply remaining alive, it was most you recalled ever straining your muscles.

Each day you were plowing the earth, planting seed, and pulling water from the well. Some days you boiled the water for drinking or for one of Ma’s grand recipes, but mostly used it to water the crop you spent the previous week planting.

You still recalled the sense of accomplishment that thrummed fully through your chest when you first saw the mutfruit trees begin to sprout. And then of course the beastly shock the following morning when something had dug up and eaten the fledgling crop.

“Mole rats.” Pa had grumbled beside you.

He was a large, inoffensive man with a thick salt and pepper beard. He never moved with any urgency, you noted, unless a Brahmin was taking off down the road. Even then he moved with a meandering trot as though knowing he would eventually outpace the two-headed cow.

That was the morning he had first handed you the rifle rather expectantly to hunt down the culprits. At the realization that you had never fired a real gun before, the afternoon turned into a chance for practice.

Pa and Ma were always patient with you. From your inefficient sowing, to your steadily improving aim, they let you take your time to, in their words, “recover.”

You weren’t sure what they meant by that. You never felt injured or incapable, but you noticed that after they realized you couldn’t speak and became exhausted after the slightest labor, they had stopped asking questions you were incapable of answering.

You of course had a small understanding what caused the former. As the for the latter, you just figured it had been some parting gift from Her.

You tried not to think about it too much and instead focused on the tasks set before you.

Today it was varmint duty.

The tatos you had planted yesterday had been the target this time. Shallow craters lined behind the house showed evidence of mole rats, likely the same bastards that raided the mutfruit. Typically, Pa would say something along the lines of “nothing to be done about it by try again.” But you were not having it today.

Revenge came easily to you. While the content life of farming had been satisfactory so far, you were incapable of letting this minor infraction to your freedom from sending you back on your deranged mission of violence.

You followed the culprits reckless trail out of the clearing and into the woods. It was the farthest you had ever gone from the homestead in the month you were taken in and the barrier into forest was like a portal connected to a faraway land.

The suns light dimmed through the thick foliage. Most of the trees still had their leaves, but most were rapidly reddening or shaking them off, leaving the rough ground covered in their remains that crunched with your every step.

It wasn’t difficult to track the mole rats. Pa had said they ate anything they could fit in their mouths and in turn they left a clear trail of destruction all the way to their lair. You didn’t put much thought into the actual size of their jaws of course until you witnessed one stretching in the morning light.

When you had set out, you had a very clear image in your brain of what a mole rat would look like, a small naked creature with perpetually closed eyes and roughly of stomping size. All myths and pictures in old Big Book of Science magazines were dispelled instantly as the abomination in question cocked its snaggle toothed head beady eyes in your direction.

It was the size of a very fat house cat—so at least you had that in common. It was indeed naked of any fur, but its filthy pink flesh was tumorous and natural scarred. It made a sound that was not unlike breathing, but only of breathing was by itself a taxing and painful activity. Its jaws, with teeth easily the size of your shocked face opened, and suddenly it was rushing to meet you.

You leveled your rifle in panic and fired.

The shot echoed through the air a brought a deafening ringing to ears. The mole rat, which had underestimated your affinity for moving targets, rolled dead to your feet.

The feeling of victory that thrummed through your skull was very short lived. There was barely time to kneel and examine your prey before you became distinctly aware of rumbling beneath your feet. You had sprung back up just in time as the ground around you erupted in a spray dirt and root.

Three more mole rats surrounded you.

You gripped your rifle tight and finally after what seemed like a lifetime of behaving like a maniac, you did the only sane thing a normal person would do.

You ran.

Wrestling through the foliage and sharp sticks relentlessly, you found yourself discovering many new things about the world in which you now lived in, particularly regarding information regarding the local rodent population.

For one, if you pushed hard enough, you could indeed outrun their fat little bodies. However, this fact did not matter given their propensity for burrowing, in which they shot through the ground with all the speed of a faith-plate bound turret.

The soil before you erupted once more and sent you careening into a painful roll that made you wish you had worn your ‘other’ boots today. You quickly leapt back to your feet, but not fast enough to avoid a pair of incisors from inserting themselves into your right forearm.

A sane person would have screamed with agony, but you, leading the charge in the discovery of human peculiarities, wasted no time with the mundane. Instead, like a madwoman you used the unlucky vermin as a shield to charge viciously into the trunk of nearby tree. Your heard its skull crack and in its own scream of pain, it released your arm before falling still to the forest floor.

One down, two to go.

Your thoughts were cold, calculating rage. Already you were planning the demise of the two other attackers when you felt the tremors under your toes.

At the last second you dodged your assailants as they leaped uselessly into the air. Falling to the earth, it took them only a moment to reorient before setting their sights on you.

It was a moment they would regret wasting.

Two more shots rang out in the forest.

When silence washed back over, still and calm as though no violence had ever transpired, you were alone, as always, in your victory.

You dragged what you could carry back to the house, two by the tail, feeling the highest you’ve ever been in the past few weeks. Each step brought a pulse of adrenaline into your system. You could run. You could jump. For once you felt awake and the nightmares around you were just part of a faded dream that you were the god of. All in all, it was not a healthy mindset.

Entering the homestead’s clearing, you spotted Ma and Pa rushing from the garden with an urgency you had not been privy to view before. Quickly, were by your side, worrying about the sounds of gunshots and checking you over for injuries. Ma flinch at sight of the wound on your arm.

“Oh my god!” She gasped, “What were you doing?” She stole your hand away from the mole rats while Pa collected them and his rifle, looking stunned by some vision he saw in your face.

She dragged you inside and sat you in the living room on the faded green couch that smelt like mildew. She quickly returned from the bathroom carrying a needle of morphine, a wet cloth and bandages. A shiver went down your back.

You wanted to tell her none of that was necessary, but your legs only twitched and tensed, nearly sending you flying up off the couch. Ma held you still anyways saying,

“Just sit quiet missy. You don’t want that getting infected, let me take care of you.”

Before you could object or even fight back, the needle was pressed into your arm and the rushing of glorious adrenaline was quickly subsumed by a tidal wave of numbness. You felt your eyes grow heavy, and your shoulders fell slack. You were vaguely aware of your jacket being removed and a slight damp sensation on your arm. You tried to look, but Ma was in the way and she turned your head the other direction with a gentle press of her hand.

Sound became difficult to parse, but you thought you heard Pa say, “Put the rats freezer, how’s she?”

“A couple of scrapes that’ll be fine.” Ma said a million miles away, “Even the bite’s looking like it healed a bit already? That can’t be right.”

“Well she’s got thick skin. Another scar for record, eh?” You think you felt his shadow cross your face. Its weight was like a hydraulic press and a voice in the back of your head told you that if you just closed your eyes, it would all go away. All the pain. All the anxiety.

You fought back violently against it, bringing jerks of muscle to your whole body.

“Hey kiddo? You doing alright?” You heard, “Hey Ma? Grace, something’s not right!”

“Aw shit, it’s the damn med-x. I wasn’t thinking. Damned adrenaline was all that was keeping her going.”

You felt the faintest of taps on your cheek. You tried to face the perpetrator, but some force was keeping your head into the side of the cushions. They didn’t smell like mildew anymore. In fact, you couldn’t smell much of anything at all, or feel anything for that matter. Staying conscious was also becoming somewhat difficult now that you thought about it.

“Oh sunshine, dear, you need to stop fighting it. Just relax Chell, your safe.”

Relax.

Your brain couldn’t comprehend the command. It seemed easier to stop your heart than to relax. For that, you felt very fortunate when a moment later, you died.

—

The world came to you in a dizzying spiral. Sensations of touch were out of the question, but the nausea did not stop your eyes from spinning in your skull. You rolled to your side to halt the assault the view of your ceiling and promptly vomited across your poor companion cube.

A part of you panged with what was surely unfamiliar guilt and you tore yourself away, resigning yourself to continue the expulsion of your stomach cavity onto your lap. You spotted signs of the chicken from this morning.

Through the sounds of your retching, you barely heard the hurried steps booming up the stairs before Ma burst through your door.

“Oh sunshine, goodness!”

You would have grumbled if your body allowed, instead your legs twitched painfully. The nickname was beginning to grate on you.

Ma was by your side, you sensed, fiddling with your bandaged arm and pressing a faraway hand to your head.

“Well you’re not getting a fever, so that’s good.” She said, “Your body just had a weird reaction to the chems, is all.”

Sure, that’s all. You sat back against the bed frame and between the taste of bile in your throat and the developing soreness in your arm, a part of you wished the air in your lungs were still laced with adrenal vapor.

Pa arrived shortly, looking worried and carrying a plate of meat you didn’t recognize. They gave you a moment to breathe and shiver and when it looked like you were finished with you committing your insides to the outside, he set the food beside you.

“The fruits of your labor kiddo.” He said with a wink, “great aim by the way.”

Eating was the farthest thing from your mind and the sight of mysterious meat initially caused a pressure beneath your tongue to briefly build. Upon learning it was from one of mole rats you murdered however, the ill sensation turned into morbid satisfaction. You dug in, to the relief of Ma and Pa.

You couldn’t tell what it tasted like, still feeling slightly numb from the morphine, but it was filling. When you were done, Ma helped you with cleaning and changing your clothes and sheets. Walking was difficult again, but you made it downstairs safely to help wash dishes and scrub down the cube.

“You know,” Ma started, “You’ve been taking care of that thing more than you’ve taken care of yourself. I’d love to know the story behind it.”

“Ma, don’t try to pry.” Pa called from the living room.

“I’m not, I’m not, keep your pants on.” She laughed, but that earnest tone and look in her eyes kept, “I just think you should take better care of yourself sunshine; you don’t need more scars.”

You shook your head, amused, and regretted the vertigo immediately.

“I’m serious! Vermin duty doesn’t mean taking on what, two mole rats at once!”

You held up four fingers while you rotated the cube with your other hand.

“Four mole rats? It’s amazing you weren’t eaten alive. Those things can be vicious.” She paused drying a plate as a thought suddenly came to her. “Did they have mole rats where you come from?”

You shook your head.

“Huh. What about radroaches?”

You had heard them mention something about roaches before, but after the mole rats, you figured those were probably just supersized insects. The thought put you in the mind of something vaguely familiar, but you shook your head.

“Yao gui? Trolls? Blood bugs? Hell, radstags?”

You shook your head.

“Well I’ll be damned, you must’ve been living under a rock.”

That was certainly one way to put it.

Your chores were done early and despite your reckless insistence you could still feed the two-headed cows and one-headed chickens, Ma was adamant you were finished for the day. As such, you decided to spend the period between noon and dusk lounging on the patio, enjoying the way the breeze felt on your skin, while sipping on awful tasting tea. The companion cube was sat next to you, humming along its silent and warm tune. You noticed no one else seemed to hear it, so you figured it was more brain damage.

It had become clear to you by now that your landlords didn’t actually need your help around the farm. Ma and Pa tilled the land, fed the animals, and even dealt with the varmints just fine by themselves. Still, they seemed to have taken some duty upon themselves to give you purpose in your new existence, as though somehow sensing that months of working towards escape had left you restless and aimless in your newfound freedom.

Perhaps for this reason, you stuck with them. Even on the days they took you to the market in the nearby town to find you better fitting clothes or a general supply run, where there was plenty of opportunity to find new work and carve a new life out, you remained content to the simple life they offered you.

And then, as you sat lost in thought in the reddening light of the evening; you saw a deer.

It stood gracefully down the dirt path leading to road, bent down and picking plainly at the grass. Its fur was a charcoal black with blasted flesh pealing through. Its eyes were an otherworldly void in which light vanished completely.

It was the second most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

Your breathing hitched, enraptured, and you found yourself standing to get a better look. At your movement, the creature looked up, anxiety flittering about its four ears.

It had two heads.

You suddenly remembered Her taunting. So very long ago now and yet not far away enough, She said She had seen a deer.

Of course, you never believed Her. It was a drop in a mire of insults and lies. And yet that statement stood out in your brain, even more so than when she claimed to have seen people. The latter was to inspire hopelessness, which you shrugged off plainly. The former though. . .

What hope was there to be found in knowing of a deer’s existence?

Did She know that the world had ended?

Did She know what she was sending you into?

The corners of your eyes were itching again. You moved to scratch them and flinched at the feeling of water under your fingers. A tear trailed unbidden down your cheek.

Before you could react to it, your world was shaken awake by the loud crack of gunshot.

You jolted to attention just as the deer collapsed over its feet and laid twitching in the dirt.

You felt rage and destruction in your heart and your entire body tensed to force a reckoning of pain out of the perpetrators body. But as you turned to find them, you noticed Pa walking towards the corpse nonchalantly, shotgun in hand.

He saw your shocked expression and waved a shout, “Stag’s good meat!”

You slumped back into your rocking chair. Your anger simmered short and unsatisfied, coming out in a deep sigh that you were too exhausted keep silent.

You retired to your room shortly.

Ma brought you cooked deer meat before the sun was finished setting.