Chapter 1: Arrival

I was falling in darkness, Lord only knows how long, before I hit the ground. It was hard concrete, hard dirty concrete. The rubble I was laying in was dimly light, amber and red lights. Sounds of dripping water and crumbling rubble. I stood up and began to look around I was in ruins, crumbling walls, dripping pipes, and flickering lights. An indistinct din of chaos was in the distance. Looking around the large empty room, something drawing me towards the archway.

Slowly working my way though the ruined hallway climbing over debris, the acidic smell filling the air. I came to a room. The walls were collapsing in, leaking pipes spilling caustic liquid. As I crept around the pool of the glowing blue and orange liquid. A large slab of the ceiling had crushed a giant rat, wearing a chest rig, a black riffle sat just out of it’s reach. I watched the rat for some time, making sure it wasn’t moving. I tossed some rubble at it, it didn’t react. I approached and took both items. I checked over the rifle, it looked to be in .300 blackout, with a large integral suppressor under the hand-guard, Cool, a full mag in the rifle and five more on my chest I moved onward much more quickly. Walking down the next ruined hallway I wished I had a light on the rifle and that the optic made some sense. It was a mess of chevrons and circles with strange markings on the bottom. I decided this nightmare had turned good.

I jaunted though the next two hallways, drifting around corners as I had worked up a quite enjoyable ammount of speed. I wasn’t paying that much attention to where I was going, as I was following the dream. I passed though more ruins, broken pipes, strange corpses, the sounds of chaos growing. Then one sound punched though, a woman screaming.

"Hilfe!" she screamed.

I turned and dashed heading towards her screams, sliding around corners, vaulting over debris. Skidding I entered a room the girl screaming a seven foot tall ant with a scorpion tail was approaching her. I snapped the safety off and put a burst into the creature. The gun chirped, bouncing with the recoil. The carapace of the ant-scorpion had holes punched in it the rubble behind was painted in a chunky blue substance. Instead of being whisked to the “logical” results of rescuing a cute girl, I got hit with another dump of adrenaline. I’m not dreaming. that realization snapped my mind into focus. I turned back to the girl, who was looking at me in shock.

I approached her, the safety making a satisfying click. “Are you okay?” I asked lowering the rifle. She blinked, her emerald eyes sparking with recognition before smiling and unloading on me. I caught every seventh or so word. Most sounded like questions and I answered them all by saying, “American” placing my hand on my chest. Understanding spread across her face, her freckles were cute, very cute.

“Österreicher” she said mirroring my gesture. “My English ist old.”

"Me, two" I replied half in German, hoping she would understand. After puzzling for a moment understanding spread across her face. She brushed her copper hair out of her face and we looked around the small room. We both had one question on our mind, how did we get in here? I sat down on a hunk of rubble letting my heart-rate slow. She seemed to realize I needed a break and she sat next to me. In our hybrid language she asked, “What do we do now?” I looked around the room, there were two doors other than the one I came in from. “Which door?” I asked her, gesturing to the two other doors. She pointed to the door across from the one I entered, “It chased me though.” She eyed the giant ant-scorpion.

We both looked at the third door. I lead the way. The hallway was in just as bad condition as everything else I’d seen so far. Eventually it was collapsed, with a staircase going down. We went down into dark tunnels. Dull red lights cast long shadows, she grabbed my shirt. I slowed down but kept moving. I didn’t want to stay down here. I could tell she agreed with that sentiment.

Eventually the tunnel narrowed and then stopped, a cliff of broken rubble. The only way to go was up. The rubble looked largely stable and there were a few large platforms, a sinking feeling swept over me. If this is a nightmare, or a dream it’s been going on for far to long. What is going on. I thought shaking my head. The sound of collapsing rubble made both of us turn to the tunnel. One of the ant-scorpions broke out of the tunnel we had came from and turned to go away from us, it’s carelessness collapsing the tunnel behind it. We were trapped. I saw the soul leave the Austrian girl. She collapsed to her knees her poke-a-dot dress falling in a circle around her. I realized how small she was, she had to be five foot two, maybe five four, and small. I decided she was a little younger than me, 23 maybe? I sat down on my heals in front of her and offered her my handkerchief. She lifted her face, and took it.

“Danke.” she whispered.

I stood up as she dried her eyes. I got air. Surprised I did a few toe hops to test a theory. I got reasonable air. She giggled like a glockenspiel, I had to make a bit of a fool of myself prompting more giggling. “Do we climb?”, I asked.

She looked at the walls of the shaft. She nodded, “You first, because, ah” her face scrunched in confusion, “Rock.”

I looked at her confused. “What rock?” I said looking around, trying to find what rock she was worried about, there was rubble all around. Nothing he’d call a rock. She saw the confusion on his face. Giggling she swayed her skirt “This Rock.” then it clicked. I laughed Of course the girl in the 50s housewife dress doesn’t want the strange man helping her up from below. I shook my head and hopefully gave the universal I'm a dumbass hand gesture before jumping up a platform. I than lay down and she jumped and grabbed my hand. I picked her up. The gravity of this place was clearly light as it was easy to lift her onto the platform. We repeated this little dance layer by layer until we both heard something.

The sound of helicopter blades filled the air along with voices shouting. They didn’t sound human, the clicking sound of the ant-scorpions then yelling, and gunfire. We attempted to hide, on the flat outcropping. Deciding we couldn’t stay here we continued our climb, at a much slower pace. We got to the final platform I poked my head over, “Clear” I whispered. We clambered onto the floor of a massive warehouse, or at least before it was abandoned and the current chaos rolled though like a hurricane. It was clear that a battle was raging around us. Gunfire, the clanging of metal, screams, and the roar of engines.

We moved towards some cargo containers, I kept my head on a swivel. Strange werewolf like creatures were in melee with the ant-scorpions various balls of blue, green and red were flying across the warehouse. It looked like a mix-mash of Sci-Fi firefights. Sprinting from container to container was taking it’s toll on Austrian Girl. We reached an exit, and I saw a road leaving the immediate danger. She grabbed my shoulder, and wheezed something. I turned and sat her down. I kept watch as her breathing returned to normal. I prayed the chaos around us didn’t notice us.

Then it did.

A lanky tentacle, thing spotted me and open fire with teal bolts of energy. I ducked down as the bolts flew over my head splashing against the container above us. My first shot went low hitting the dirt at the base of the tentacle creature, the second popped the middle mass of the creature. I looked at her “We must move.” she said reading my mind. I nodded and we dashed outside into the container yard, going from container to container, my route hoping to minimize our exposure to fire. I stopped in the last line of containers before a long sprint across a road and clearing before we could get to the far side of the concrete wall that surrounded the container yard. I poked out and as grabbed by an ant-scorpion. It struck me with it’s tail and I felt something get injected. The pain was bad but manageable and I lifted my rifle, seemingly to it’s surprise, and emptied the rest of the mag into it’s abdomen. Another wave of pain washed over me as in it’s death more toxins were pumped into my left shoulder.

Hunched over I reloaded, stowing the empty mag, “Go” I yelled gesturing towards the break in the wall “I’ll be behind you”, I said not quite believing myself. To her credit Austrian Girl took off at a mad dash, I struggled to keep up but managed. Each beat of my heart spreading what felt like molten peanut-butter though my body. But I made it, we were outside the wall and the chaos was largely behind us. She got in front of me and said something, I saw her speak but I couldn’t hear anything over my own heartbeat. When I didn’t give a response she put herself under my collapsing left side and we started stumbling down the road an inviting glow in front of us. We continued on like that for a while, yet I knew we couldn’t have gotten as far as it looked when I turned my head around. Whatever that ant-scorpion hit me with was making me loopy.

I could tell we were heading towards a city. Yet there wasn’t a firm horizon. The city seemed to meld into the mountain behind it. Yet there was something strange about it. There were other hills in the sky. Trying to make sense of that made my stomach twist knots and I dropped my eyes. Strange creatures, strange guns, flying islands and some form of toxin was mixing to cause nausea. I lowered my head, watching the pavement helped to calm my stomach. While my stomach was unraveling I noticed her shoes, or rather lack of shoes. On her feet were slippers of some sort, the kind girls wear to fancy parties. They were very sparkly and her feet were very red. I raised my head to limit the pounding of my heart.

Suddenly bright lights started approaching, from her reaction very loud bright lights, a green and black thing with orange and green lights came to a stop in front of us and I shoved Austrian Girl into the alley we were crossing. A large alien in dark armor got out as the thing landed on the ground. It was huge. Twice the size of the ant-scorpion and thrice as shiny. “Who are you! What are you doing! Stay there!” I attempted to yell however my mouth only could produce a jumbled mess. It approached one set of hands on its hips and I growled at it. That seemed to convey my message clearer and it stopped moving and raised all four of it’s arms. Something then touched my mind. I knew it wasn’t real and my attention was spun to a telephone pole of a creature. I let out another growl and raised my rifle at it. The mind touched feeling didn’t change so with what strength was left in my left side I shouldered my rifle and pulled the trigger.

As I stood up to get a better angle on the telephone pole creature I realized; I was screwed. A dark curtain fell across my vision, yet I heard the rifle chirp, before I started to fall. The last thing I heard was the cry of the Austrian Girl. Then all was dark and quiet.