He licked his dry, cracked lips. Peering up through a hole in the everpresent grey blanket of clouds, he squinted against the sun. It leered down at him, taunting him. Just give up, it said. Your bones will be better served as rests for the crows and home for the snakes.

Tap. Tap. He frowned at the canteen’s hollow reply. He doubted his water supply could hold another day, and that was if he could stop himself from guzzling the last drops like an engine happily draining a fuel tank. He smiled wryly at the thought. He had a vehicle once, at least he thought he did. The wind tore through his hair, as a girl laughed in the passenger seat. He’d loved that thing. A fat lot of good it did him in the end.

He was on the ground now. How did he get here, he wondered. He should get up, but the sky swirled unpleasantly around him at the very thought. He told his back to tense, his belly muscles to put in their allotted effort. Somehow, he ended up back upright. He blinked. Wow, he thought, he hadn’t known there were so many pretty colours in the world. He blinked again, the colours replaced with a dull throbbing in his leg. He frowned. The colours were much nicer, and hurt less. He rubbed his leg, and gave it a pat, assuring it that he would bring it back safe and sound. His other, he didn’t bother. That ship had already sailed years ago, when he left it in a country whose name he couldn’t for the life of him remember. Something about patriotism and the faceless Enemy. He wondered if those two concepts had ever met. What kind of discussion would they have?

He glanced down, feeling somehow lighter. His ever loyal canteen was missing, somewhere between the ship and the patriotism. He shook his head. It had been drained a mile back, no point in looping around for it now. Deadweight. Just like his missing leg, he chuckled to himself.

Something darted past his feet. He blinked. A prairie dog wasn’t much for size, but it could keep his trek going for a scant bit longer, if he could catch it. Back before this, before the vast expanse of brown, waving grass, before the endless expanse of mocking sky, he would have scoffed at the thought of eating one of the small, adorable creatures. No, scratch that, he wouldn’t have thought about it at all. Why would he? There had been an abundance of foodstuffs, anything he could ever want. He looked down at the black briefcase grasped tightly in his hand, briefly wondering how leather would taste.

He smiled jaggedly at the smooth white rectangles dancing merrily in the light breeze. He wasn’t sure what clearance the wolves had, but he didn’t think it likely they’d report any of their contents to the Enemy anyway. The case was far more intriguing to him now.

The small outcropping cast a long enough shadow to fit his wasted body, if he pulled his legs in close anyway. He wasn’t sure if the trap would work. He recalled his high school teacher mentioning something about prairie dogs liking leaves, not defense reports. Even if they did, they were far too dry to provide much sustenance. Yet somehow an entire country had groaned along under the digestive weight of just such papers. The wry smile was back. He knew that if the reports had come just a little sooner, given them just a little more time, they could have…

  SNAP!

His head jarred forward. He glanced around fearfully. Had they found him? Why was it dark? Had they thrown a bag over his head already? He gasped for air, reclaiming the precious drops of blood speckled on his lips that the vast waste so desperately tried to claim as its own. He peered through the gathering dark. He was intact, or at least as much so as could be said as of late. Looking up, he swore he could still see the Dippers, although he knew the very thought was foolish.

More alert now, he swayed to his feet, somberly looking at the source of the noise that had jarred him from his satin embrace. It lay closed, a still and ominous rectangle in the grass. He poked it, feeling the fine craftsmanship of the leather. It had been the envy of lesser men, once. A heavy weight bearing down on his lone shoulders, yet he could not cry out his anguish for fear of the loss of innocence of a people whose very thoughts poisoned his soul. Well, that had happened anyway, and he was not now in a position to cry at all. Precious hydration was not easily regained.

The briefcase was light, unburdened by its usual load. This time, however, its contents were less docile. He cracked it open to the faint moonlight. He frowned. No less dangerous though, to be sure. This would call for more preparation than he had thought.

It turned out that prairie dog tasted an awful lot like chicken. Not Ma’s fried, granted, but if you squinted your nose just right, you almost could distract yourself past that point. He grimaced. Maybe it would have been better roasted, but the luxury of a fire was not one he had the privilege of enjoying. He smiled again. A few long days ago, the entire world was a barbeque, but these days he found even a spark to be at a premium.

He slept fitfully after, the sleep of a man who seemingly cannot believe he still has the breath of life flowing through his battered and broken body. His churning mind wrung out schemes, machinations, surefire ways he could beat this whole mess. His closed mouth twitched downward. Even in a semi-conscious stupor, he could not bring himself to believe there was a way out of this. Even if there was, for what? After this, where could he go? Perhaps the kindest mercy would be to let go. Return to the soil and let God sort out the mess He had started Himself.

Faces. Endless visages floating by in macabre display, jeering at him. The endless void called out, taunting him even in his restless sleep. He saw his mother, warm and large, the comfort of a time now lost forever. He saw his people, a multitude of downturned faces parading in endless rows. Suddenly the scene shifted. In his dream, he blinked. He was standing at the edge of a cliff. He leaned over, hit with a sudden burst of vertigo that he had never experienced before, not even when getting ready to jump from the heavens.

He snapped back upright, suddenly aware of a presence beside him. It was a man, kindly looking, but with a melancholy demeanor, as if the weight of the world was forever just behind him. The man was looking over the edge of the cliff, as if judging the distance to the raging waters below. The man never spoke, but the dreamer swore that he heard him just the same.

Would you change it all? Could you bear to?

The man turned towards the dreamer. He gasped, for his face wasn’t a face at all, a sun-bleached skull shining through a rippling layer of translucent skin.

He gasped for air. Bolting upright, his head collided hard with the bottom of the fallen oak he had taken cover under. Stars flashed in front of his eyes. At least the pain proved he was back in the real world. Back in the nightmare.

The man struggled back to his feet. His skin was cold, what remained of his ragged and charred suit didn’t protect well against the night’s chill. He shook his head. Walking would warm his bones, even if it did hasten the return of the hunger. He looked up into the heavens. It was still dark, but the stars were starting to become visible through the everpresent blanket of clouds. He smiled. It may have been many long years since his scout training, but he still knew how to pinpoint the North Star.

He set off, one foot in front of the other, heading westward, just like so many did all those hundreds of years ago. He too was a pioneer of sorts, heading into a new world, unsure of what dangers awaited him. Yet he continued. Step. Step. Step. Ste…

He was frozen, his foot unfallen. There had been a noise, rustling in the dead bushes in the shallow depression to his right. Once he would have continued, oblivious to anything but the weight of his commission, but now, now he listened. He carefully lowered his foot, raising the empty briefcase as if it offered any protection against the weapons of the Enemy. He stalked closer, circling around where he had heard the sound. There! Another bush, further down this time. He followed, slowly.

The rustling kept just ahead of him, urging his cautious journey ever on. He was focused, ignoring the sickly grey of the wasted landscape, the ceaseless beating of the loathsome sun. His ragged suit hissed softly as his feet raised and fell. The rustling stopped. He had it.

Merciless, bottomless nothing.

THUMP.

Darkness.

His head hurt again. He urged his eyes to stay closed, squeezed them shut in a futile ward against the pain, but he could not win, and he glanced around fearfully. This new place stank, a swirling cloud of rot and mold and the passage of years unmolested. Thankfully there were no bright lights to aggravate his migraine further, though, feeling at the generous lump on his head, it seemed he would be graced with it for a while.

Slowly, painfully, he dragged his good leg over the edge of the dingy cot he’d landed in. It was a familiar, if much faded, shade of green, lit by the dimmest whispers of light from an overgrown hole in the ceiling. An association with the before times, when scores of cots much like this one had lined vast barracks. His feet were planted firmly on the cracked concrete floor, though he could not clearly make out much beyond them. Wincing, he pushed himself upright, the crackling in his spine assuring him that, perhaps not for the best, he was still alive. Perhaps this was a boon, with luck, he could find some supplies and make a break for the outside, where he could continue to… where exactly? He knew it was West but not what it was. This was not reassuring.

While musing, he had started shuffling his way through the gloom, noting the twin tracks he left in the perfect layer of dust, one pristine, one a stuttering line. A filthy home for a filthy soul, his dear old mother used to say. He had always kept everything clean, although recently he had had struggles with the scale of what people wanted swept up, no matter how many mindless sycophants followed his every move. 

He strained his ears in the darkness, attempting to pick up any sound. The echoes of his faint shuffling was the only disturbance in the perfect peace. The place seemed to be fairly small, which meant a doorway had to be nearby, if only he could find the damn wall. No sooner had he thought that, then the wall found him. He groaned, rubbing his cheek. Concrete does not make for a pleasant crash pad, and he did not need more scrapes and bruises.

He strained his ears, listening to the rerun of his escapades echo back at him. The place couldn’t be large, he reckoned. In his blind shambling, he had encountered a door, and stepping through, a deafening sneeze froze him in his tracks. Someone else was here, he panicked, before his itching nose changed the source of panic. No, now what if someone had heard his outburst? Shuffling hurriedly along the wall, his hands encountered a railing. His brows furled in concentration, his skin whispering along the cool metal. 

Panic again. 

The floor had taken its leave, and his foot was already on its way to the down-below. Panic. He grasped desperately at the railing, his body swinging along the length of his arms. Panic. His plastic foot fought desperately for purchase. Panic. There! Deeper than he’d thought, he stood firm on a reasonably sturdy step. Calm down. Calm. Breath. He couldn’t afford too much extra stress, not since he’d left his pills back in his briefcase.

He slowly played out his other leg, feeling where the topmost step should have been. Nothing except empty, stale air. Carefully, he felt his way down the rest of the staircase, stepping gingerly past a couple more missing steps. The solid concrete greeted him at the bottom, and he could have dropped and kissed it. 

He was knocked out of his brief victory by the click of a light. A door, at the far side of the room, sitting slightly ajar. He stood stock-still for a long moment, his shallow breath marking the only sign of life in the still, musty silence. Slowly, he put one foot in front of the other.

Swish.

Tap.

Swish.

Tap.

Slowly, carefully, across the dead air, he moved past the looming shapes, bones of long dead contraptions sprouting high up, up, fading back into the inky blackness. Even the slight light was comforting, although it came with its own set of itches in his fear-addled brain. Was this the Enemy? Was it his former allies, back to taunt him one last time? Perhaps it was extraterrestrials, come to mess with him before taking him as a slave back to their home planet. He’d heard about that happening once, on a radio show he’d listened to as a boy, late at night in a cornfield, before the girl he’d been with made him turn it off. Lord, he wished he remembered her face, or hell, even her name.

The light was on him now, the door so close he could push it open at any time. He drew his thoughts together, merging his mind back onto the task at hand. He inched closer, slowly moving towards the light. He had almost reached it, when his foot encountered a bump. There was a loud snap, and something slammed into his chest. He fell backwards, snapping the trap off its mooring, and falling to the ground.

 There was a dripping coat of blood on his palm. He frowned, feeling at his chest. There was something metal sticking out of his chest. All at once, the pain struck him. He stumbled to his feet, dragging against the wall, trailing blood as he crashed through the door into the dimly lit room beyond.

The long, narrow room was nearly empty, the walls covered in a metal maze of wires, tubes, and pipes leading up into the endless darkness to God knew where. At the far end, a chair, the remains of a person crumpled on it, looking worshipfully towards the darkened heavens. He stumbled towards it, leaving a sticky trail of crimson in his wake. Throwing aside the bones, he sank down, pressing against the wound in his chest.

All at once, the room lit up in a flash of bright green. He winced, shielding his eyes against the sudden optical onslaught. The glow faded, leaving behind a faint, pulsing throb emanating from a small screen in the middle of the wall. Lines flickered across it, their calm pattern at odds with the scene playing out in front of its cold glass.

He looked down, able to see the cause of his pain. A simple bowie knife, standard issue, clean through the ribs. The remains of where it had been fastened to the trap remained dangling from its hilt. He gasped, the movement causing pangs of agony shooting through his body. He leaned back, thinking back to his training. The knife couldn’t be pulled out directly, he knew. He’d bleed out in a heartbeat. Best bet, he might be able to find some medical supplies, stave off the internal bleeding long enough to find the last surgeon in the ruins of this proud land. He wheezed a laugh, sending himself into racking spasms.

His wry merriment was interrupted by a clicking whir. The screen had lit up, bathing his crumpled form in a soft green glow.

> …

> Movement detected in FACILITY 3.

> …

> Welcome back, sir.

He squinted, unsure what to make of the text scrolling by. He coughed. “You… you talking to me?” His voice, raspy from weeks of disuse, filled the room. The fact that it didn’t echo registered faintly in the back of his mind.

> There is no one else.

He let his head drop. ‘No one else’. With that one sentence, his hope vanished. He listened to his slow heartbeat, each thump pumping more blood onto the floor. What now? He raised his eyes back to the screen. “Can you…” a pause for a fit of coughing. “Are you a medical unit?”

> I am experimental prototype Terminal V0.11. I will try to assist.

He fought to focus on the text. “A prototype… why does that sound familiar…?” He wracked his brain for a moment, again dropping his head as fatigue claimed what little strength he had left.

> TerV0.11 scan complete. User has been registered.

A blinding flash caused him to jerk his head away, starting another coughing fit as he fought against the fog enveloping his vision. A movement in the corner caught his eye. A shadowy figure slowly walked out of the murky blackness, looming over his slumped form. He blinked in confusion. The humanoid had no face, no distinguishing features at all. It was bare metal and wood, wires running haphazardly up and down its body. He blinked again, and froze. It wasn’t blank, how could he have thought it was?

“…Sarge?”

“WwWell. Looks like you diidn’t learn anything after all, DID YOoOU, MAGGOT?” The looming figure’s voice echoed as he yelled. “I thought I trained you better than this, boy! Get down and give me fifty!”

He started, his body instinctively trying to upright itself. His legs failed, and he slumped back down, staring at his feet. “I can’t Sarge, I can’t”

“I didn’t raAaise no quitter!”

He flinched. How had he mistaken the person standing in front of him? “Father?” He could see him now, plain as day. He looked around. Faint flickers of a room surrounded him, a crackling fire flickering in the hearth, as shadows rocked in the corner and kicked their feet lying on the floor in front of a puzzle of static.

“I brought you up better’n this, boy! Stand up on your own two feet now and be your own man!” His father leaned in, the sound of rusty creaking following his every move. He examined the knife in his chest. “Oh my.”

The man looked down at his chest. “It… It’s worse than it looks, honest!” his voice cracked faintly.

A snapping sound jarred him back up. “WeEell, I’ll be the judge of that.”

The voice was feminine now. But of course it would be! He was in the field hospital, a casualty of the Big Push. He remembered that now. His nurse leaned over to take a look at his chest. She shook her head, yelling to someone outside of his vision. “Jack, call the doc in here, now!” She looked back down at him, her face flickering between calm and concerned. “Don’t worry now, we’ve got the best surgeon in the country here, hon.”

He smiled, closing his eyes. He had fought for so long, and he could feel the darkness coming to swallow him. The pain in his chest faded to a familiar, dull throb.

“Hey, you still with us?”

He muttered, not wanting this new voice to interrupt his descent. A snapping in front of his face brought his eyes slowly back open.

“TheEere you are, I knew you still had it.” The figure sitting opposite him tried to smile, the worry in his face evident. “The Service is scouring the grounds for where the shot came from, but they’ve got time. What’s important is that you’re still here. Those damn pinkos won’t take another leader from us, not again.”

The man coughed a wheezing cough. This was all too familiar. “Have they stopped the Enemy? Is it over?”

The figure looked away, face hidden in shadow. “That’s why I’m here. The Enemy is almost at the gates. There’s only one option open to us now.” He held out his hand. “Will you give me the burden of the second key?”

His hacking cough lasted longer now, and he could barely make out the figure in front of him. It shimmered, the outline shifting as his vision faded. “Did we win?” he croaked.

“No.” He would have started, but for a lack of strength. “You didn’t” The figure leaned back, his faced cloaked in shadow. “But whose to say we did either?” A short, sarcastic laugh. “That was always your problem, always why you would never beat us. You were never ruthless enough to take the steps needed.” The shadow paused. “All it took was total desperation. A single moment under the needle of complete collapse. Even then, you couldn’t bear that yourself, could you? So cowardly you needed someone else to take the blame, while you sat in your ivory tower, clean of the mud in the trenches below.”

The figure leaned forward, a grin visible in the dark.

“No, ‘sir’, you didn’t win. But you damn well ensured that everyone lost.”

His vision was gone now. Through the veil of darkness, the faint echoing voice slipped into its natural, electronic state, whispering one last taunt.

“Sleep well, Mr President. Sleep the sleep of the damned, the restless soul, forever glorious and free…”