Chapter One: Peace in the woods.
>2017 was a good year indeed, 2018 was an unforgettable one. And now I face 2019. What a happy accident it was that I decided to seek out learning of the Ruskie language in 2017, and applied myself to the subject matter quite eagerly and quite vigorously.
>The day of February ninth started like any other. A machinist with a penchant for guns who lost his damn mind waiting for something to happen in his life because he felt no pulling force to guide him to his desires, though he felt them very intensely, decided to wake up and start the day. 
>I pulled myself out of bed and decided immediately what to wear for the day. I brushed my teeth and grabbed a shirt and a set of fatigues. 
>My clothes for the day on, next came the belt, the holster, and the SiG 1911 came out from the crack between my mattress and headboard, and went into the holster on my hip. I tied on my work boots and headed into my garage. I didn't have work today, for whatever reason. It was far beyond me to question, as it only meant more time for personal projects to my well trained ears.
"Now... If I were an asshole, I could TURN this on the mini CNC mill and save some time and workholdings. But then again, i could just turn it on the lathe and I don't have to then indicate in the fucking center, which is more of a pain in the ass than a scalding hot coffee enema. Now where did I put that .375 end-mill?" I deliberated as I debated myself semi lucidly for the better part of an hour, trying to figure out the best way to machine the part to the required self imposed two thousandths tolerance. It was a pretty good morning, the sky was gray, I'd go on a patrol of the woods eventually, maybe when the weekend came I'd leave the house and stay outside until the next workday came. 

>The sound of metal being cut rang through the house for four hours. I stood for four hours straight as though I didn't notice it. It wasn't an unusual thing for me anymore. Ever since I took the first course in 2016 I enjoyed standing while I worked, feverishly focusing on the piece of metal being cut to size. It was now eleven in the morning and I was a couple hours ahead of anyone who might know me to call me, probably getting to work now, they wouldn't need to call me though. Life was boring, especially when they had their own small worlds to explore. 

>It's time... I walked out of the machine shop and grabbed my rifle. A Tikka T3 with a basic tactical scope on it, it wasn't all that special, but it was accurate. I decided it was time to stalk the woods.
>A long walk in the woods is exactly what I needed. Well. Snow. A long walk in the snow. I decided that I was in a rather rare comfortable silence. I always talked to myself when no one was around to make an effect of two voices exchanging when I was alone... but now? It just seemed so unnecessary, like it would ruin the peace of the forest. I could reflect later, right now I just enjoyed the silence. The sound of nothing, a calm wind of maybe two miles per hour made a sound that couldn't be described as anything but silence. in fact, if it weren't for the howl of the trees, I wouldn't have noticed. 

>Rustle
>I turned sharply and quietly, scanning the terrain for something someone. Animals?
>in the distance a lone deer looked at me, scratched his antlers on a tree, and jogged off as though he just saw the bad neighborhood and decided to take another route. 
"Just another denizen of my peaceful little world... could use some company though." I thought to myself, careful to internalize the monologue rather than wander aimlessly through the forest giving my best impersonation of an escaped mental patient with verbal spasms a prominent symptom of some crippling neurotic tendency.

"Oh look, a puppy!" I thought to myself as I turned around and saw a small dog like animal sitting in front of me, it looked about thirty to forty pounds. It was an awfully small Husky for the bulky appearance of that body. It was staring at me like I was the strangest thing it had ever seen, then it approached me and sniffed my boots. In my mind I knew this was a coyote, and was watching for the first sign of aggression to give me an excuse to give that motherfucker a ride he'd never forget.
>He just looked at me, tilted his head, and began walking away. What black magic I had with animals was pretty amusing sometimes, I don't know why, but animals have always been unusually patient with me, cats would let me rub their bellies, every dog was a lap dog... apparently coyotes didn't mind me. Hell, even other people were usually happy to see me, and were, if not kind, ambivalent towards me, but often believing me to be the friendly enough type on first seeing me.
"Well. With the my old friend mister vicious animal flying the coup, maybe I should head home." I thought to myself as though I was even considering any course of action but. Coyotes are assholes. Even if one wouldn't mind me up close, they're not exactly the most friendly animals, and I wouldn't want to have a dog AND land infested with these things. They're not good for the hunting... or the walking at night.
>I began a walk that lasted a few miles back home and sat down for some whiskey. At two o'clock in the afternoon the phone rang. 
>"Hello? Mike? It's Sarah! We need you to report in, we have a special assignment for you."
"Who? Fuck, I'll be right in."
>*Click* 
"Well... What the fuck does vulture hawk want with me this time?"

	Chapter Two: What Could Go Wrong?
>"Mike, we're here. Prep for fastrope."
"Good, we meet them about six and three quarter kilometers heading 280 from Benoy. You got the coords in the GPS. should be a somewhat complicated mission, but nothing we haven't handled before."
>"So, since you know where we are... where is here?"
"Chechnya, we're about three kilometers south of our RV, we meet some Russians in the forests to the west of Benoy and head toward it from there. we have support consistent of-"
>"we're at the drop point, rope out!" came the pilot's voice over the intercom.
>The fastrope and the subsequent departure of the helicopter that ferried us in was quick, we ran our equipment check. Suppressed rifles, six mags each, no spare ammo, suppressors... check on all. 
"Time to review the plans, form up and take a knee."
>The team forms up on me and drops to a knee. Jim, the eldest member of the five man team was a tall skinny man, he kept a clean shaven face and his mucky gray hair gave away his age, which was probably getting up there. Not that he couldn't operate the FUCK out of a motherfucker's skull. His son Peter, also an experienced operator, wasn't exactly a mirror image, he was in fact shorter, and had a sharper face with a goatee. 
>Dick was the shortest man of the group, at the age of 32 and the height of 5'7" he was the last person we expected to bring along, but he would certainly maintain his share of the workload of killing Chechens, particularly the ones we were after. Last and probably least was our radio tech. 
>Jessey had a tall stature about her, but beyond that she was a slender woman, she could handle herself against an average strong bastard and could shoot, but she was primarily a radio tech, which all but singled her out for this assignment. She'd stay behind if we could help it. Her role was to be a noncombatant.
>The plan was simple enough, We meet up with the russians, replace the equipment we brought with us with Russian gear, since this would make the assignment's discrete nature easier to maintain. The Russians WERE the only ones here who were SUPPOSED to have a presence in Chechnya, after all.
"Alright, simple shit. We head three kilometers north to the Rendezvous point and meet up with the russians, there we trade these weapons and gear for Russian equipment. We strike the compound at the southern end of the town, then we make our way the fuck out to the east across the frozen river. questions?"
>silence.
>We began our walk to the RV and waited for sunrise

Ten minutes earlier. At the Rendezvous point.
>"Where are the Americans? They should be here by now. I didn't HEAR any gunshots."
>"They're probably late, can't imagine it's QUICK to get into a forest unnoticed by air in this part of Chechnya. Lyudmilla, Katyusha, take a recon to the south, see if you can stalk them in."
>I set out with Lyudmilla and started to the south, ensuring that I was as quiet as I could be, but also as fast to advance into the forest. after forty minutes I happened across a patrol in unfamiliar gear. they obviously weren't chechens, they were too quiet, too white. They wore night vision goggles, which were a budgetary rarity for this part of the world. Even more, the goggles weren't small like ours. they were compact and low profile in a way, but not of the half size our russian goggles tended to be. They had to be Americans. As I observed them, their features became vaguely apparent, the one who had the look of a leader among them had a clean shaven face and glaring eyes, his hair, visibly protesting the direct headmount he wore for his night vision goggles was a weird gray in the goggles, unlike the rest of his squad, who had the more familiar shades of gray hair I associated with brown and black hair commonly seen among the russians... Was he blonde? next was a man with a soft old looking face that gave a friendly air, then a man with a sharp and hard looking face and a rather peculiar beard, another man with a clean shaven face which looked at ease but alert, his sharp facial features betraying no emotion, head on a swivel, much like the leader. There was a woman among them, carrying a radio and scowling at the ground. 
>The one who looked like the leader snapped his fingers and pointed to the shorter man, the only other who was visibly alert, motioning them to continue to press ahead. The shorter of the two gave a nod that could only be described as knowing something the rest didn't, and turned to walk away with the rest of the patrol.
>The tall one stayed behind, facing toward my general direction, walked up to a tree and started to take a leak.
>As he looked down I took the opportunity to give myself maximum concealment. After I was as small as I could make myself, I watched him look around as he pissed, then he scanned just past me and stopped as he zipped up. staring at the spot as though he saw something dreadful. I turned my head to look, then back to him, staring now, at my position. though I couldn't see his eyes, his lips gave a questioning expression, as though he were actually asking if someone was there. He started for five seconds, then turned and walked off in the direction of the rest of his team. I lay in wait another three minutes before starting after him. I stalked along the path silently until I caught up with the team, Lyudmilla looked on at me with an inquisitive look on her face, which prompted me to look on at the group and realize why. Where was the fourth man? I signaled Lyudmilla to stalk onward with them and decided I'd make it my business to find the man. As I scanned and Lyudmilla stalked the team onward toward the RV, I was greeted with the most terrifying sound since the conflict in dagestan. Silence. 
>Even the fauna of the forest seemed to hold their breath as I scanned for him... where could or WOULD he have gotten off to? Did he really see me watching him? 
>I stood and crouched, doubling back to search for him, maybe he'd gotten lost and went east? Was he planning to use his limited american supplies, meant only to get them to the RV in the event of running into a patrol to attack Benoy? 
"Сумасшедший ебут" I muttered to myself
>As I stood to stretch I heard a noise from my right, I turned to face it, so quiet in the silence of the forest but so loud... nothing.
>I felt something brush under my hip.
>Oh shit. 
>Foundhim.jpg
>"Утро." I heard the voice say as a hand swiftly clamped over my jaw and the force of a kick and sweep dropped me from my feet
>I struggled against the body that had dropped me to the ground, no matter how I tried, I only managed to tire myself out and render myself near unconscious.
>Whoever he was, he was in control of the situation. 
>As I fell to short of energy to struggle, he loosened his grasp on me and whispered. "
Meня зoвyт Mихaил, Ho вы мoжeтe нaзывaть мeня Maйк. Bы cлyчaйнo нe oдин из pyccких нe тaк ли?"
"So you're one of the americans? Vulture Hawk?"
>His reply came as a release and helping me to my feet. "Yes. And you are?" He finally answered in English.
"Ekatarina. I'm with VDV. You can call me Katyusha... if you really want to. And you're Mikhail?"
>"Well, Michael if you really want to, or Mike." He answered His Speech pattern was odd even for Americans. My Brief stays in Nevada saw me handled by many folks from all over america. people who spoke the lowest of vernacular to the highest of diction.
>I even met the bald guy on the internet who talked shit a lot to the point that there were legal punishments when he threatened to shoot people. But I've never met a person who spoke like this guy. I imagine wherever he's from, the denizens never get out and he's the exception, or they must remark that he's from elsewhere.
>"So. Why were you stalking us?" He inquired 
"We were told to meet you at the rendezvous point, so we waited, and didn't want to risk getting shot at, so we decided that quietly scouting toward you and following you safely back would be the best course of action."
>"Cyмacшeдшиe лoхи." He muttered to me. That genuinely hurt.
"That's hurtful. How can you talk to a woman like that? Why are you Americans so crass?"
>"Is that not what you were calling me about forty-five seconds ago?"
"I suppose so. Why don't we pretend some of those decisions weren't made?"
>"Sure. Why not. And while we're at it, how about we forget my little prod at you?"
"Sure. let's start over. I'm Ekatarina."
>"I'm Michael. Wanna walk to the RV?"
"yes. The others must be there now."
>As we walked I looked over to Ekatarina. I can't lie, The girl was easy on the eyes. Even with PNN-21K mounted under a ushanka, she had a face with unmistakably feminine and soft features. Her Monocular was on her left Eye, allowing me to see at least one of her eyes, unmistakably green as emeralds, and in the backscatter of the nightvision unit, just as reflective. 
>Her hair, bleach blonde, almost to the point of actually being white, was tucked into her jacket. 
>We walked in silence, scanning off into the landscape when i noticed a few things. She wasn't armed, she was smiling a soft and contented smile, and occasionally, when she didn't feel my eyes on her, she glanced over at me. 
"We're close. but I'm not sure where they are."
>"I can hear them. Just up ahead." she said cheerfully, taking my support arm into the crook of her own, guiding me forward as I lowered my rifle.
>"Ah, I see Katyusha's made a new friend!" A sharp faced man in a white helmet, black mask, and rather unfitting camo uniform said, slightly raising his voice. He extended an arm to me, presenting a PNN-14M to wear instead of my american made NVG's. 
>After putting on the new NVG and stashing my equipment, he handed me a new belt that contained a few mags and a Makarov PB, the integrally suppressed variant of the original Makarov PM-9.
>"You're getting a VSS for this, here's your chest rig." he said handing me a chestrig to go over my plate carrier, Ekatarina took my hand and just... dissappeared. In her place was a Vintorez. 
>I've got time to ask questions. why the fuck not.
"WHattheFUCK? Where'd this rifle come from, where'd Katyusha go?"
>"Right there, american. Don't tell me you've never dealt with a Weapon spirit before."
"If I have, I've never seen it."
>"Well, the weapons with geists tend not to do well with conscripts, so if we can't get them to volunteers, we try to get them to foreign mercs with penchants for guns. you'll see why."
"I though they were made up."
>we started the hike to Benoy. watching as the darkness of the early hours of the morning turned to the pre-dawn twilight. We'd still need the night vision goggles, despite their lacking rendering of depth of field. 
>Gotta admit though. These are some fucking COMFY goggles. they're tiny, weigh nothing, the Russians really know what they're doing. Sad these weren't imported in 2014. 
>Now if only there was a helmet mount... or a head mount that didn't look like it called for a ball gag. compromises I suppose.
>as we reached the southern end of Benoy, we looked on at the ranch with the red buildings. it was patrolled by a team of chechens. Furthermore, we had just the right amount of time to strike. twilight had ascended upon the hill tops, however, in this little valley, it was still dark, only the sky beginning to just barely show through the terrain the refracted light of a sun blocked to the ground, but only just barely exposed to the clouds. 
>we advanced on the compound.we were across the road that went north and south through the small stretch of "town" when we saw the first sentry. 
>he was to step off duty in mere minutes when the sun came up, however there'd be no one to step off when we were done. And no one to relieve either. 
>I gestured to Dick to scan for further enemy activity in the area, Then I told him to stay back with Jessey and provide overwatch and support calls if need be.
>Next I gestured to Jim, Pete and the three Russians to move across the road. I flipped the selector to auto and took aim with the laser attached to the suppressor sleeve via a round clamp with a rail attachment reminiscent of a scope ring, and fired a burst of automatic fire , which struck its target across the road, dropping him in his tracks, and placing him into a violent coughing fit until he finally sputtered in his own blood, to a halt. and off to the long sleep.
"Move forward! Двигaтьcя впepeд!" I vocalized in a low sharp voice just barely capable of intonation.
>The entry team moved to the gate and penetrated the grounds of the compound, scanning for more sentries, firing two or three bursts which were answered with a *THWACK* and a quiet *thud* 
>Jim signaled Dick and Jessey to form up as we began moving on the farm houses. it was time to split up to cover the four buildings in the compound, two red houses at the front of the property, the larger one to the center, and the smaller to the north, with a shed and a smaller guest house on the south west end of the compound. I began assigning teams.
"Jessey and Dick, you search the shed and the guest house to the south, 
Poccиянe, вы ищeтe мeньший дoм нa ceвep., Jim, Pete, you're with me on the big house. We're meeting up directly east of the big house at the end of the fence,Mы вcтpeчaeмcя нeпocpeдcтвeннo к вocтoкy oт бoльшoгo дoмa в кoнцe зaбopa." 
>"Understood, on task." Everyone rang out in sharp whispers. 
>twenty seconds later, we were breach banging the big house. I threw the flash into the door and swept in, Jim and Pete in tow, branching off, firing one burst between the two of them, Pete stopping to cover the stairs while Jim and I swept the whole of the downstairs.
>I stooped to a closed door and kicked it in, a Chechen on the other side struggling to bring to bare an AKM, a look of terror and desperation filling his eyes followed by an intense facial contortion as I ventilated him, then one of agony and disconnect as he struggled to will himself to breath or move anything below his pectoral muscles, to no avail.
>I swept the rest of the downstairs and began the process of making my way up the stair case when Pete fired a burst through, stepping to concealment as I swept the corner and saw the culprit.
>struggling to bring a mak PM to his left side, I quickly squeezed a four round burst into him, emptying the VSS, and switching to the PB.
>Jim advanced up the stairs and tapped my shoulder to signal that he was crossing me, I used this time to holster the mak and reload. 
"Throw a flash to the right, I'm gonna take a room to the left."
>"Got it." Jim said as he pulled a flashbang off his vest and chucked it ready to go to the other side of the floor.
>POP
>I rushed to a room on the other side of the hallway, checking for it to be clear and chucking more flashbangs to the end of the hallway, and making a rushed but thorough clearing of rooms to the left north side of the floor while the Chechens at the south were being kept, or rather mowed down.
>The rooms were clear except the one at the end of the hallway, I made a mad dash into it and found myself colliding into an angry Chechen coming to bare on Jim. I forced him back against the wall and started beating him, slackening his shooting arm, which was reaching for a makarov, before getting a blow to the gut from his left.
>I headbutted him and pushed his arm behind my hip with his shoulder going in the same direction, elbow impacting my hip outstretched and on the opposite of its axis of articulation. dislocating the elbow and causing him to recoil at me.
>He began a charged push against me that put us at the other side of the room by the entrance, which overlooked the hallway, I just managed to get loose causing him to smash his face against the wall, I punched him at the base of the skull and just then I heard a long burst from a VSS ring out, interrupted by a louder unsuppressed burst.
>I reached for my makarov, but saw plaster shaken loose as I reached it, and a spatter of blood appear in front of me. 
>with only shitshitshithsithsit going through my mind, I threw a left hook at the Chechen to incapacitate him and force myself to fall out of the doorway
>as I fell I reached my makarov and fired an entire magazine into the hostile, ensuring to get his head. 
"FUCK!" I yelled, getting up and throwing a frag to the end of the hallway.
>I heard English screams to take cover. answered with a deafening explosion. I felt the entirety of the house shake, stumbling me to my knees against the wall of the room.
>I looked up and all the windows were blown out, I saw an opening in the entire house's side at the end of the hallway. there was no fire, since the explosion was so powerful that it had snuffed any fire that might have been present. I managed to carefully stumble to my feet. looking around the room. There was blood on the walls, even the one I had just been leaned against. maybe his was splattered on me. I looked to the corpse of the man in the room. he had eight holes in him of similar size and one of much larger size. I stumbled down the hallway, where Jim was just then beginning to stir, having evidently been rendered unconscious by the blast.
"Was this a bomb house?" I asked myself out loud. A voice pierced the ringing in my ears.
>"looks like it."
>I looked over, seeing Ekatarina, covered in dust, blood and Bruises. a prominent splash on her chest. 
"Are you okay!? You're covered in blood!" I exclaimed in terror as I looked at her
>"What... it's not mine. Just... stay calm."
"What do you mean stay calm? You're covered in- agh." a sudden ache told me what was wrong. that wasn't his blood on the wall across from him.
>I'm hit just blow the shoulder and inward, luckily just missing my liver. 
>cough.
"oh, blood. of course, it missed my liver by it's got my lung." 
>breathing is getting just a tad bit less easy. the blood isn't helping.
"at least there's a medic here."
>breathe in.... Breath out. 
>breathe in, cough up blood, breathe in again. Fuck Chechnya.
"yay, the medkit's coming out of the pack. now if it wasn't so damn cold."
>I was the obedient patient for a few minutes while they patched me up, the plastic wrap came on and words like pneumo-hemothorax began flying around and soon I was being carried across the frozen river at a quick pace, my nightvision being taken off to remove the burden from my head and neck.
>"Пpocтo дыши, дopoгaя, нe cдaвaйтecь нa мeня." I heard from Katyusha, visibly shaken as she helped drag me at a brisk pace across the river. 
>I watch as the terrain moves around me, and the morning twilight, refracted off the clouds above, begins to come into view over Benoy. 
>I just need a rest. Then I'll get back up and push on. breathing won't be that bad if I take a nap.
"YA ne mogu borot'sya, seychas snova. YA nadeyus', chto Katyushi ne budet slishkom bespokoit'sya."

	Chapter Three: The Restless Soul And Broken Mind
>Sarah sipped at a glass of rum as she waited for a report from the team.
"Come on! They should be done any second now!" She groaned in frustration. 
>controlling operations from virginia was always a "fun" little task, she wasn't on the ground with the team and was essentially on duty to wait for a call to tell her that the job was done. There was little else to do but watch boring tv, eat, or drink, which she did in some moderation, as she was a lightweight.
"Michael should be calling aaaaaany minute now. He's got to. even if he was muted by a shot to the throat he'd still call. why's he dragging his heels?"
>Sarah leaned her head back and rubbed her temples, looking pensively at her secure phone.
"Any minute now. Fucking dullard."
>The phone began to ring and flash.
"Speak OF THE devil." she said, picking up the phone and pressing a button to patch the line.
"Hello, you've reached Sarah Keel." she stated in her monotone voice, feminine but deep, and devoid of any enthusiasm.
>"Sarah, it's Dick, report is as follows.-"
"Why isn't Michael on the line!? Put him on!"
>"We'd do that, but all you'd get is groaning and delirious murmers of slurred Russian. Report is as follows. Task one is complete, we are awaiting exfil with two casualties! Peter is concussed after an explosion blew half the house up, and Michael's shot through the right lung, slowly slipping to Hemo-pheumothorax. We can keep decompressing his chest cavity until extract shows up, but the hemostatic agents aren't completely effective. We can probably keep the sucking chest wound from collapsing his lung and killing him, but I'm not sure we can keep him from bleeding out until then."
>Sarah was silent for a minute. In shock. 
>"Hello? Are you there?"
"Yes... I'm here. Has the exfil team been advised?"
>"Yes, they've been advised and a medical team will be ready for them."
"Good. Anything I can do over on this end?"
>"No." Came the answer from the phone.
"Then our business here is done. Contact me when you find out what hospital he's at and if he makes it."
>Click.
>Sarah sank into her chair and leaned backward, looking to the ceiling as she reflected on the situation.
>She felt hopeless. Michael always seemed friendly enough to her, he seemed a nice enough type, unlike many of those she worked with in this profession. 
>She didn't know how she felt about this. His death wouldn't be the end of the world to her. But it would be sad. And that's what tugged at her to do something, but with nothing she could do, she decided it best to try and forget about it until morning.
>Sarah awoke the next morning in a puddle of vomit. She'd eschewed the bar entirely, choosing instead to go home and drink herself sick.
>For the first time in a while, she'd set out to do exactly what she'd ended up doing. The notable last being recruiting a young conscript who showed a tenacity for killing hadjis into Vulture hawk security solutions. That young conscript had been Michael.
>She thought about the precious memories of her relationship with Michael, never that far, never too close. He'd projected a friendly and even warming presence in many of his social situations, people who worked with him joked that he was a machine that could switch instantly from the field to the real world and become behaviorally uncrecognizable to even his friends.
>"Sure..." she thought, "...There WAS a time when his awkward, friendlier than normal attitude toward me, slightly lacking in his normal passivity had seen us accused of an inter-professional relationship, which brought both of us to review. Evidently his answer to which if the stories were told truthfully being 'I don't make advances, I make off color jokes and dead bodies.' But even though they asked if the two of us would like to be set up, to which he answered with a firm no, we were still good friends."
"I wonder where Michael is at this moment... he didn't call in last..." 
>She was silent for a second, then headed off to vomit and in her hung over state, check the phone. 
>The pain in her head had given her a friendly fog, which helped her not to remember why she was so upset she had to drink like she hated her liver. That would change when she checked the phone.
>A text message from Dick was the only notification on her screen. It read, "Mike's gonna live, his lung had to be surgically closed and sewn shut, the stitches will dissolve eventually, the bleeding was staunched as well, and he'll be in a medically induced coma until he can breathe on his own again."
>A week passed and Sarah found the excuse she was seeking to go check on Michael, she did, after all, worry about him. She was one of the few who did.
>The news had reached her that he was in a military hospital having his chest depressurized as is standard in these events, and due to a short, but violent bout of consciousness, in which he managed to terrify a nurse and almost begin a violent interrogation before being sedated once more, he'd be kept in a coma until he couldn't come to harm by simply waking, and would be left to wake alone, to avoid any further risk of a violent awakening.
>She was heading to Mozdok, where, for some unknown reason above her paygrade, Mike and his team had been relocated. Officially, she was there to give an in person handler's assessment of the team. Including the now critically injured team leader. She began her trip to the airport in the morning.

>Ekatarina had finally managed to take some time off from the armory, she was being stored there, but as a geist, she had special rights to things like leave when she wasn't needed, which made today a perfect time. She strolled down the streets of Mozdoc, happy for some time out, but worried for who was to be her new owner.
>She had learned that he was in the military hospital after a pleading conversation in which she persuaded Jessey, the team radio tech to tell her where he ended up, so she could check up on him. 
>She walked into the hospital, where she immediately caught a sideways glance, but was dissmissed by the onlooker as she approached the reception desk.
"Excuse me, Could you help me find a patient?" she asked
>"Name and date of admission, type of injury may help"
"Michael Berdan, he was shot a week ago. so... the twelth."
>"I've found him, he's in the ICU, fourth floor, room 226." 
"Thank you."
>With that, Ekatarina set about finding Mike's room.
"222, 224, Ah. 226"
>She knocked on the door, and dawned a warm smile.
>she opened the door and sang out briefly
"Mikhail, dorogoy! I hope you've been well-"
>she stopped there as she balked at the dormant creature in the bed. She'd at least expected that he might resemble something near to "alive" after a week.
>He was in some of the usual equipment. telemetric sensors were hooked to his chest, where bandages and seals were located, a vacuum apparatus and lung tube maintaining ambient pressure in his chest cavity. 
>There were some unusual lines administering what appeared to be drugs at a slow consistent pace. Bags with nondescript fluids in them, and names that were long and difficult to pronounce.
>A passing doctor happened to glimpse her, he walked in the open door, and picked a spot somewhat distant from her, so as not to startle her with proximity, and waited to be acknowledged. 
>Ekatarina eventually turned to look at the door, and saw the doctor there.
>"Are you a friend of his?" He asked mildly.
"Yes." She answered, clearly let down by what she saw in the dormant husk on the bed.
"What's wrong with him?"
>"Ballistic trauma, he's been shot in the lung. he's lost a lot of blood, and he reached us passed out with a collapsing lung."
"I didn't mean that, it's just that I'm in the VDV and have a few friends who had similar injuries, but the thing is, they were awake a week after starting treatment, and they weren't administered drugs this long after surgery."
>"Oh, that. Feel free to stop me if you have questions. He had what we call anesthesia awareness. After the surgery, he woke from the anesthesia, which we suspect wouldn't have happened if not for the movement of the gurney, and started to thrash against his restraints, calling out in broken and slurred English and Russian. Then he got an arm free, and we gave him a sedative. he grabbed a nurse and the sedative took as he got the other arm free. we decided the safe thing was to keep him in a coma until he can be active without high risk of injury again."
But...why would someone go off like that from waking up?"
>"There are a few explanations that have been theorized. For example, it could be combat fatigue, or it could be a fear reaction from the restraints, maybe a traumatic experience in a similar setting I'd like to show you something about him, if I may."
"What is it?"
>"Well, it could be that his reaction is rooted in a similar experience particularly when he was young. please, come here." The doctor motioned for Ekatarina to approach Michael's right side where he stood, and she obliged.
>"You see, I would speculate that he broke his arm at a young age and had a similar experience waking up during or after a surgery." The doctor said as he picked up Michael's right arm, which was free of IV lines, and bent it over his body to expose the side on which the Ulna was present.
>"As you can see, there is a scar on his right forearm just over the Ulna. Please, see for yourself."
>Michael's arms were a light bronze color, evidently from long days in the sun, repeated daily for years, he had several moles, present on both arms, and in the middle of that darkened skin was a streak of purest white, pale, unpigmented. it was a patch of skin which was depressed and deformed as though boiled off and reconstituted. It had a length equivelent to about a third of his forearm, and was a quarter inch at its widest point.
"What could have caused this?" Ekatarina asked
>"Judging by the total lack of pigmentation, the roughness of it, the fact that his right ulna sticks out from the muscle layer somewhat more than his left, I would say he was young, and snapped his forearm right in half, the bones tearing open, and sticking out from the skin in the location of the scar. I would guess by size, shade and pronuncitation of said scar, that it likely happened between ten and thirteen years ago. He may have had his arm surgically repaired, then woke up during transport to his room, paniced by the arm cushion, or during."


"So... Tell me if I'm picturing this, a young Mikhail, here, at the age of... how old is he?"
>"His chart says 23"
"23?! He's 23?"
>"If the information we've been given is accurate, yes."
"Man, the years have NOT been kind to him." Ekatarina said in astonishment
"Let's get back to the subject. So, tell me if I'm imagining this correctly. Young Mikhail, between 10 and 13 years old somehow snaps BOTH the bones in his right forearm, they stick out of the ulnar side of the forearm, so he goes to the hospital, undergoes anesthesia, then wakes up after the surgery, paniced... because of s cushion?"
>"well, the arm cushions used to elevate broken arms are essentially foam arm clamps. It seems entirely possible to me that he wakes up disoriented in strange surroundings with strangers all around, and wants to get loose, but his mind, reeling from his body being damaged is uncomposed and he thinks something has trapped his arm, and he needs to get out of it or come to harm, not realizing he's in a hospital, or that it's keeping him from further possible harm, but only that it's got his arm and he wants it back."
"Oh, so he thinks something bad has his arm, panics, then probably passes out a few seconds later when they hold him down until he can't fight them anymore, and that's it."
>"Not to put too fine a point on it."
"So he finds himself in the same situation and goes back to that same reaction," 
>"I think a familiar, friendly face would do him wonders when he wakes up."
"I doubt that'd be me."
>"You came to visit him, didn't you?"
"I met him a few hours before he got shot."
>"Well, you've met him, you're acquainted, and that's what counts. waking up in a place you don't recognize around people you don't recognize can be a scary event. Would you be willing to come back in a few days and spend some time with him when he comes to?"
"I'd be glad. What day should he wake up?"
>"Five days or so. Saturday I guess,"
"Thank you, doctor."
>The days passed and Soon Sarah had been in a condition to take her report of the team on the ground in Mozdok. She had found the team to be satisfactory, performing well. The report was all but a formality. Who she really wanted to see, was Michael. 
>He was probably dead or fine in her estimation, there could be no in between. 
>she eventually meandered into the hospital, and managed to find her way up to visit him. upon seeing him she froze. She couldn't put her hand on it, but something about Mike in his current state was distressing. She reeled again and again in her mind that he must be fine, just asleep (more true than she knew at the time), so, she went off on her way. She couldn't stand to see Michael this way. He'd be awake and more pleasant to look at eventually.

Saturday February 24, 2019 
>Ekatarina set out for the hospital.
>Her pale skin and green eyes were clean and bright, the grime of previous adventures having been washed off. She wasn't in her usual VDV uniform today, she was on leave, after all. 
>The woman walked dreamily to the hospital, where the man she cared for was finally to awaken. she signed the visitors list at the reception desk, and walked up to his room.
>A doctor stopped to adress her in the hallway "Can I help you ma'am?"
"I'm here to visit Michael Berdan, I was told he'd be waking up today?"
>"Oh, yes. he's in 226, would you like me to take you to him?" 
"No, I've got it. Thanks."
>Ekatarina walked into the room Michael was kept in, greeted the doctor, who told her that he'd just taken him off the drugs and to expect him awake within the hour.
>ten minutes passed as the sensors began to show a gradual pickup in his vital signs. oxygenation climbed steadily, heart rate rested around 70. As his vitals spiked, he eventually started breathing faster, but they weren't the breaths of someone who was awake, they were the breaths of someone was waking from a nightmare. 
>What kind of nightmare was pretty obvious.

November 2017 Somewhere in the bayou.
"Private Berdan reporting as ordered, sir!"
>"Private, this is major Shon, she'll be taking you with her into the dead zone. foliage is too thick to see into, and we gotta keep this shit nice and quiet. Phosphene gas or not, we gotta keep it down."
>"Follow me, private." she said, leading me into the foliage of the deadzone. it was a 300 yard circle of foliage, the canopy of which couldn't be penetrated by FLIR somewhere in the dripping wet vagina of the world, the bayou. The fauna were... unpleasant to say the least, everything was wet, and prolonged exposure to it leads to high chance of infection. but if being hot as fuck in this humidity was bad, I don't know how to describe the misery of being in sweatshirt temperatures of 60 degrees in this humidity. everything you did was answered with sweat. the purpose of sweat of course being to help your body radiate off the heat... which it isn't actually getting. 
>Oh the gas mask... the fucking gas mask.
>As we walked into the zone we spotted them. 
>they spotted us just as quickly and opened fire. I fired two long bursts and had dropped my magazine to reload when I saw the canisters launch up
>major Shon and I turned to run, and I heard her give the order to retreat, seemingly pronouncing the word "RETREA-" 
>I was out of the swamp with two straps from my gasmask rotted out of the rubber, one of which had been inside the seal, causing just enough gas for a mild irritation to seap into my cheeks.
>I reached the captain who put me at her disposal, and sat down, tired wet, cold, the mask still constricting my breaths. 
>I didn't want to answer when they asked me where Major Shon was.

present day
>Everything is spinning. seriously. I'm not too sure that I won't vomit. The room is moving really fast. there's someone sitting in here with me. She's wearing a lot of blue. 
>everything is stopped now. I feel... fine, minus the hunger. After opening my eyes, I could finally see out of them, the room felt solid, and a doctor walked by, finally at a speed that wouldn't be described as eight times fast forward. I looked to my left and saw Ekatarina sitting next to me. 
>Her face bore a warm smile, and she wore a blue dress. A strange thing, it was the kind of dress you might expect a farm woman to wear in the early twentieth century. It spoke not to sexually attract, as it wasn't skin tight, and revealing, save for the shoulders, which were bare with short sleeves on them, nor did it speak to professionalism, since it lacked the tight and covering, but at the same time revealing curves and dull colors of such apparel. It spoke simply to innocence and being cute. 
"How have you been?"
>"I'm womderful now that you're awake." she said with a smirk
"How long have I been out?"
>"Almost two weeks."
>I looked up to the roof and formulated my next question
"Where have they gone?"
>"well, I don't know where they are. Jessey said that they would be there when you check out and take you back to the safehouse."
"Would you like to come with? Otherwise we'd be short a beautiful woman." 
>"I wouldn't miss it."
>The door cracked open, and two people walked in.
>"Вот он, мисс." said the one who was clearly the doctor
>"Спасибо." said the woman. She looked familiar, but I hadn't seen her in a while, clearly.
"...Sarah?"
>"Don't Recognize me?" she inquired, a smirk on her face that could cut glass.
"I almost didn't."
>"And who is this? I never took YOU for the type that'd be getting Lady callers, ooh la la! And such a cute one at that!" Sarah teased
>Ekatarina's cheeks assumed a rouge of their own, far exceeding that which I now knew to be on Sarah's face.
"Well, what can I say? The ladies love me. Ekatarina, this is Sarah, Sarah, Ekatarina." I said, the thought "Yeah... only I get to call her Katyusha." echoing through the back of my mind as I said it.
>"Pleased to make your acquaintance, I do hope you'll take care of Mike, poor guy could benefit from having someone around to care for him. You would not BELIEVE the stuff that man did when he thought no one was going to care about what happened to him."
>"Oh yes? I saw him wrestle a Chechen to the ground in a doorway fully exposed to other angry Chechens, and that's why he's here. What more insane things could he have possible done?" Ekatarina dryly spoke, casting a sidelong look of exasperation and a little concern in my direction.
>"Ever heard of Phosgene gas?" Sarah probed, a little at her, and more so at me.
>"I've trained much over it, their isn't much to do but run."
>"Oh, he ran, alright... INTO it, that's why his cheeks have that permanent red that goes horizontal along the bones and vertically down the jaw." Ekatarina turned to me, and noticed that the red pattern where my cheeks had been irritated was still there, confirming Sarah's story. Ekatarina was taken aback.
>"Michael! When did you do this?" she said, with a glare, those Jade Eyes digging into me like carbide drills.
"November of 2017. I don't need more flak for obeying orders, they wanted the guys with it dead, they wanted it kept QUIET God DAMMIT! So they hand me off to Alexis and and she takes me into the fucking area, and we succeed only in starting a shootout with them and Alexis just fucking DIES turning to run, So I just get the fuck out with what skin I can, IT'S NOT MY FUCKING FAULT OFFICERS ARE DUMBSHITS WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT A FUCKING JDAM IS! SO DON'T YOU COME CRYING TO ME ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO ALEXIS, BECAUSE I DIDN'T MAKE THE FUCKING DECISION!" 
>I came to the end of the line of thought and realized as I sat quiet to catch my breath that I had been yelling, not only that, but that Sarah had shrunk from me, and although Ekatarina hadn't shrunk, her presence had contracted from her glare over me. The breaths came. In and out, In and out, In and out. 
>Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
>I looked over and began listening again to hear the beeps and sirens of the monitors, at least they were slowing down. heart rate 90 wasn't exactly normal for a seated and resting person. The two women in the room were recovering from what must have been fright, and Sarah began to speak.
>"When you say Alexis... you mean Alexis Shon?" 
"Yes. Whole lot'o good her helmet did her when the bullet went under the rim and into the base of her skull."
>"I thought it was an IED... this whole time it's been..." she trailed off, drooping into a chair and submerging into thought. Ekatarina looked on with wide eyes, but also something on her face... was it empathy? 
>"You don't go a few years in these professions without SOME demons haunting you." she said, turning to me. "Did they ever get their justice?"
"Self inflicted. Phosgene gas eats right through gas masks. We found Alexis and the terrorists a mile or so down the river after the better part of a week. Badly withered, mostly naked. Her mop suit, plate carrier, undergarments. It doesn't matter to phosgene. It just eats right through and dissolves. Especially in what hellish amount they used. As soon as the canisters went out I knew they were gonna die. They couldn't live right in the middle with all those canisters going off, we were distant enough that had she not caught one in the medulla she'd have seen it eat through her mask and maybe cause minor injuries. but the people who killed her? No, at the least they'd have had delayed effects if they'd fled. But they'd die of the effects, they stood their ground and dissolved alive."
>"Blyad." She muttered, evidently wincing at the distasteful nature of the image.
"Представьте себе, видя в них засохли, как это и голый." I said to her, causing her face to lose it's color and go pale(er) at the image of the naked and withered bodies.
>Sarah finally stood up from her chair and spoke up.
>"Hey. I know you're being discharged tomorrow, and I'm still gonna be here for a while, would you two like to come stay with me?" 
"I'm not sure, Katyusha, what do you think?"
>She perked up as she was addressed, and renewed warmth came to her face. "Well, after you check me out of the armory tomorrow, I go where you go, and Sarah does seem a wonderful sort, so.. Da! I'd love to stay with you."
"Well, then it's settled, we'd be delighted to stay with you."
>"Good, I could use some company."

	Chapter 4: Now And Then
April 28 2014
>Michael walked into the school, going for his locker, I can't say he looked happy or excited as he usually did when he got back to school. For him it meant socializing with friends and what probably amounted to a much needed break from utter silence at home or a vexing family life, not this time though. He appeared to be physically ill, all color drained from his skin, a visible shake after every few breaths, likely the result of his senses being assaulted by something distasteful. His eyes even looked worse, sunken into his unusually grayed out face, eye sockets that were usually imperceptibly darker than the rest of his face at a glance now appeared to have been rubbed full of ashes.
"Good morning Michael... you look terrible."
>"How bad?"
"Where to begin? Your skin is grayed out, eyes sunken into ashy looking eye sockets, your breath smells like anti freeze, and your voice sounds like you've got a knife stuck in you."
>"Well, that makes sense... It's been getting worse since I left the house this morning, I think I'll go home and get some rest."
>With that, a half dead looking Michael walked off to head home. 

May 7 2014
>"Hey, Sarah, have you seen Michael around lately? I'm kinda worried about him." Alexis asked
"No. He's disappeared and it's like no one has his number."
>"think he's okay?"
"I don't know. Some of his classmates are speculating that he caught something and he's a goner, some of those who've known him forever say he's overdue for another bout of being too sick to just tough it out and come to school. Suppose we'll find out eventually."
>Michael returned a few days later. He had his color back, which was nice, but he also seemed to lose all respect for something. Something about him for the next year said that he thought of things in a very crass way, and that whatever forced him to be as tolerant of others before had been reduced to dust.
>"Michael, where have you been?" came the alleged question from one of his teachers
"Hospital, next question." came what was said to be a very dry remark.
>We met up again the next year, and after graduation in 2015, we'd part ways until 2018, when I hired him on for vulture hawk.

February 26 2019
>Looking at Sarah, it was plain to tell that she was reflecting on the old days. Maybe back in high school, when she was still young at heart. We've both changed from then, five years or so will do that to you. I was a young anti social man who lived in the social life and retreated from it. Now I'm not as young, I'm gregarious and I live in the middle of nowhere, running to social interaction where I can find it. Not an improvement, but certainly a reversal. I don't really like to think of the past. All those people, all those great memories I can never relive and all those great people who died in shitholes foreign and domestic. Austin bought his in an invasion of LA, Trevor went out west at Brussels, Alexis caught the big one in a shitty section of the bayou. If I had anything in the world, I had my current company. I like to think more about things that happened after I accepted a bid for a conscript removal transfer to the PMC.
>The people I met there at least had more of a proclivity toward not dying. The only remnant of those days was Sarah. She'd known me back then, and she could testify to my change.
>It was weird to think of that. A kind of intimacy that even Ekatarina would, and could never have, despite seeming more and more expectant that I'd take her as a lover or something. Maybe I should. It would certainly cut through the loneliness of the plains, even the subliminal element that always resides in the back of the mind when I'm around friends.
>"Michael! Ekatarina! dinner!" Sarah called.
>as we sat for our meals, I noticed a rather chipper look on Sarah's face.
"You look... unusually happy tonight. Tell me, who's the lucky guy?"
>"No such luck, I'm afraid." she smirked, prompting Ekatarina and I to cast each other a sidelong glance.
>"I saw that! You two are so cute together." 
"Why does that sound so familiar... so foreboding?"
>"Ch-ch-ch-ch, Ha-ha-ha-ha, Keilly-heh-heh-heh." Sarah responded in her best impersonation of those echoed whispers from the friday the thirteenth movies
"So where have you been the past four months or so?"
>Sarah responded with a very summary reply, as did all of us. 
>"I've been in Virginia handling your team, then I came here to handle your team even more. You?"
"You've probably seen every place on the file, There was a small trip to Afghanistan to assassinate some rich asshole in the hills, Turkey for the bombing at the Ankara munitions plant just before we went to war with them. Not much else to tell. we provided security for a little while in South Africa for a nationalist politician, then we ended up here. Ekatarina, you do anything in the last four months?"
>"Well, I sat in crate for a while, then I was taken out of crate, into the VDV armory I went, next thing that actually happens is I'm out in forest, stalking through snow And suddenly I hear 'utro' and this guy's on top of me." 
>"Michael, you dog!" Sarah giggled.
"Hey, I saw a stalker, and I was gracious enough not to engage with knife swinging." I retorted
>"speaking of dog, he smells like one." Ekatarina chided playfully. 
"Well, I've been out for a few hours, I suppose it's time for a shower."
>"True, didn't expect that they'd take all night to let you out. At least you won't have to walk around naked." Sarah said with a chuckle of what I detected to be... nervousness? How cute. 
"You'd looove that wouldn't you?" I replied drowning in sarcasm.
>Sarah shrank a little, Ekatarina prodded "You're blushing!" which of course prompted Sarah to turn a whole new shade of red.
"Katyusha, I think that's a new record." I stated dryly as I finished my plate, looking over to Katyusha I saw her staring at me, a smile of contentedness on her face, her eyes resting on mine. 
>"Get a room you two!" Sarah yelled as she reached for a bottle of vodka. If there's one thing you can count on her to do, it's get shitfaced.
>I got up, put the plate in the sink and went to take a shower. Funny thing about showers. They give you time to think... 
>Oh if only my friends had survived, if only my hometown hadn't been glassed in mid 2018, if this had turned out differently, but alas it didn't. It couldn't. I couldn't do anything about it. Darius, Alexis, Austin, Justin, keilly and even Brittany, who was vaporized when the NKA started their short lived and ill fated invasion of south Korea. thanks to Chinese and Indian involvement in a burgeoning war, in which Russia actually sided with NATO, the world could boast not only the destruction of party cities like Bangkok, Shanghai, Mumbai and Seoul, but being about three billion chinks poorer. Fucking crazy times we live in. 
>I exited the shower, having washed myself of twelve days of filth and none of the memories that came back from time to time. Ekatarina passed me on the way in, casting a sympathetic gaze I tried to avert.
>I got dressed and walked to the kitchen for a drink, lord knows I needed one. 
>Sarah was at the table, vodka bottle in hand, pouring what I guessed was her third shot or so. "Wanna drown your memories?" I just looked at her and sighed "I thought so. Take a load off. What ails you?" she remarked, as dryly as a drunkard scorning a nagging wife.
"All them people, All my old friends. Pour me a drink." I said, flipping the second glass, already present on the table."How'd you know I'd want a drink?"
>"we're cut from the same cloth. You don't WANT a drink, you NEED a drink. It's not hard to understand you, in fact, the reason many fail is because you're deceptively simple. You can't relate because there was nothing to relate about. You... breathe, I guess, and that's where the similarity ends." by now I had knocked back two shots and was pouring a third. "You have interests and hobbies like everyone else, but much like they don't machine, or play guitar, or understand much of guns, you don't care much about watching sportsball on TV, or playing some video game for thousands of hours to develop a build to make a character who takes a prohibitive amount of hours to render playable. You don't care about soccer or football, hell, your interest in baseball even ends at A game, with little or no regard for seasons or even the next or last game. I do the same shit. I know how your brain works."
"You understand me too well for my likiing" I said after my fifth shot, amused at the fact that... well, fuck! She did!.
>"You might want to shlow down." She said, evidently beginning to slur after her fourth shot.
"Yeah... how long you been working on the vodka? about fifteen minutes? You shouldn't be drunk yet."
>"Fuck you, tall son of a bitch." she chuckled taking her own fifth shot.
"Lightweight." I said, watching her down her sixth shot, and slide me a shot across the table. She's a coordinated drunk, I'll give her that.
>"You're already drunk?!" An angry looking Ekatarina demanded from the hall. Her supple bosom and hips only obscured from our view by a towel that looked as though it was ready to fall save for the crook of her left elbow keeping it on. Would have been a pretty sight with the athletic curves that towel appeared to hide.
"Well, six shots in about ten minutes and six in about twenty-five for her... I'm going to feel it, and she's gonna black out."
>"Well maybe YOU aren't completely useless, but I'm taking her to bed. Were you even planning on saving some for me?"
"who else was gonna finish it with me? she's ready to pass out and I'm just a tad drunk." 
>"Shots?" She asked with the greatest exasperation I have ever witnessed a half naked woman exhibit "What it this? First time drinking? Michael, you stay here." She said, guiding Sarah out of her chair and down the hall toward her bedroom.
>With that I leaned over  the counter and thought of the last conversation I had with Austin.

>There was my best friend. His exuberant face with freakishly hyper eyes lit up like always.
>"Mike, if you get back from Kazakhstan you have to go to that bar I told you about, that place is fucking awesome."
"And where are you off to?"
>"I'm heading off to LA to shoot me some democrats."
"Give'em hell. Hey, you ever get back out of the domestic conflicts on the coast, you come find me, just North of this pissant little place in Kentucky called Argo, can't miss it."
>The boarding call rang out.
>And just like that, he was off to the coast, where he'd be KIA when a rogue Airforce reserve unit strafed his MRAP with a 20MM. They killed so many good men over that shit hole city. I was glad when they nuked it after they surrendered.

>I heard someone lean up against the counter to my four o' clock. She started to work on the two thirds full bottle of vodka, draining all but a quarter before approaching me silently. 
>"I know the look of consternation." she said, pulling my right shoulder back to win my gaze from the empty space in front of me. "It always follows tragedy, and it always leads to undue regret. I may not have known you long, but I know you didn't cause their deaths."
"I know that. I can no further bring them back than I can recover the time I was in the hospital. Just a thing I do once in a while to remember my world. It just hasn't been the same the last year."
>"What's happened?"
"Well, my hometown was nuked by LA, most of my friends are dead from being vaporized in that blast or dying in random places all over the globe. Point of fact, that lightweight you just put to bed in there is one of, if not the last remaining people I know from my hometown."
>"Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
>"You must be tired. Come with me."
>Katyusha took my hand and led me to the bedroom, where she put me in bed and put the blankets over me."I have some things to take care of." she said as she departed the room and turned off the lights. 
>I tried to sleep, but even with the alcohol in my body I couldn't turn it off. There was a feeling that everybody was gone from the world.
>I opened my eyes to feel a presence hovering over me, then felt her creep into bed next to me. I reached out found Ekatarina, I pulled her to me and kissed her before snuggling up to her and falling asleep. Never before had the embrace of sleep been so welcoming.
>I woke in the morning to the feeling of a vise clamping around my head and an unpleasant burn in my eyes forcing them closed. I looked to the ceiling 
>Maybe six shots in four minutes, and then helping Katyusha finish the bottle wasn't such a great idea. It was fun though...
>I glanced down and yup... she was there, her head and shoulder rested on my own shoulder.
>How to proceed? I decided Sarah, an infamous lightweight was going to be asleep a few more hours.
>I started to pull the covers over our heads when i felt her stir and heard her groan. "Mikhail, lyubovnik, do we HAVE to get up?"
"No."
>"Good, lets snuggle, then." she said, burying her head in my shoulder and hooking her leg around mine while I pulled the blanket over our heads, and went back to sleep.

	Chapter Five: An Unusual Feat.
March 5, 2019.
>"Michael? You in here?" Sarah inquired hopefully.
"Yeah, I'm here What can I do you for?" 
>"I've received an interesting offer from vulture hawk for your services, and the ONLY reason I even bothered to ask you, rather than sending you to it right away is because it's... Yeah, it's a bit to handle and your team will be pulled out of Europe to do it."
"What do you mean by 'A bit to handle,' you usually don't hesitate to send me after relatively heavy tasks."
>"Well, this one's not so heavy on the labor or risk, but I want to know if you think you can handle it. Basically, they want you to lead an expedition into California, all the way to the coast. See what roads are in tact, and train some new guys accompanied by yourself and your team, so... Sierra Nevadas to San Francisco in ten days with a round trip."
"The question isn't IF I can handle it, but rather, if I want to... Fuck it, a nice trip through the valley and ending out at my 'favorite' city of shit. I'll take it. Who knows, Maybe there'll be some mutant animals. What support could I expect in such a case though?"
>"um. None. Remember those rumors that the area from the mountains in the east and the hills were covered in a blanket of hot air that flir couldn't penetrate? They're true. We can't see through the constant hot cloud cover, and the surface, though explored all the way inward to Merced and Madera, about as far in as our hometown, capitol of Meth Death and Auto theft, is only mapped pre-nukes."
"I see, and what's the purpose of this operation again?"
>"Training FNGs to operate in zones, though this would probably be worse than any zone in which they'll ever actually operate, save for the inside of a mushroom cloud."
>Ekatarina's voice came from the other side of the house "Did someone mention zones?" prompting Sarah and I to exchange a glance and stifle a giggle at the mention of zones by a Russian.
>"So, anyway, with the area being so toxic that expeditions inward have found no HUMAN life, you still want the job?"
>The door flew open, the cute Russian girl that is Ekatarina standing in the doorway with a grin of anticipation. I knew my answer.
"Yes, I'll do it."
>"Well, with that settled, I'll call the office and tell 'em we're gonna be on the next company plane in a few days."
"Great, now if you'll excuse us, Sarah and I are going out for a day on the town. Not every day you have the chance to see a place like Mozdok."
>"Have fun, you two."

>With Michael and Ekatarina gone, Sarah went about making the arrangements.
"It's Keel, I got Michael to accept the job, his team will be training the new recruits. In California."
>"Good work, I can sleep easier knowing those recruits will have an evidently proficient operator to watch over them in the smoke pit."
"We'll be on the next company plane, though I'm not sure why of all people, with all reasons not to, Michael would take this job. He wasn't exactly thrilled with the place when it WAS there."
>"You know him better than I do, having known him when he at least resembled a young man."
"Which makes it all the more confusing. When you say 'resembled,' you're mistaken. He NEVER resembled a young man. At school they called him 'Daddy' because he would frequently display an aged demeanor, sometimes people questioned whether he or the teachers were older."
>"Well, until I see something in contravention, I'll bet that whatever lens he sees this through won't be a problem. If he has some personal business with the place, I'm sure he'll either take care of it in a way that won't be of detriment, or he'll put it off."
"Right. He didn't exactly like the place, to put it lightly. My bet is that he has a stop planned in sacramento and some demolitions training in planning for what USED to be the capitol building."
>"Hey, if he wants to sweep the now defunct state house and then wreck the place, let him. He might just give our guys some rather useful training for when they need to demolish a large building. They can't be Mercs forever."
"Right... But if I know Michael, and I do, there's either peace, or some deep seated desire to inflict upon what remains of the state."
>"Looking at his file, I'm guessing it'll be something discreet. Something we'll never find even with close examination. Sound about right to you?"
"That sounds like him. It'll be something either obvious to someone in the loop, but impossible for someone who hasn't seen the whole picture, or it'll be something no one else will ever understand."

March 15, 2019.
Sheridan Nevada.
"Alright, You the new guys?"
>"Yes, sir."
"Here's the deal. They want us to go into that smoke pit and train for operating in zones, alongside that objective, we also have the equipment, and opportunity, should we desire, to fulfill our secondary objective of being the first expedition to fully penetrate the smoke pit, coming out the other side in San Francisco."
>"But that shithole is full of faggots, sir!" A recruit stated.
"Not anymore. they weren't evacuated and the smoke kept pouring over the altamont until they all died from smoking twelve packs a day."
>"So... it's a ghost town?"
"Now you're using your head. Anyway, there's a contract for scientific research that we'll be conducting. Essentially we head to San Francisco, see how many people may still be alive there, what state of decay they're all in because they're all dead, and then we come back round trip to claim the reward for the company. On the way, we practice combat procedures in full mop and operation in irradiated and otherwise antibiotic areas. This is both radioactive and chemically toxic, so there's that."
>"Sir, what kind of radiation and what kind of chemical issue are we dealing with?"
"Good question, Recruit, step forward, you get to introduce yourself early."
>The new merc stepped forward and spoke "I'm James Cruz."
"Well, James, to answer your question, we are expecting large amounts of alpha particles, which can't penetrate bare skin save for in openings such as the the mouth, eyes, nose, urethra and asshole. Or cuts in the skin, those are also common ingress vectors for alpha particles. Your MOP suits should protect you, however, you can't wear them non-stop. Eventually you have to eat, something you can't do in the masks, as well you still have to dispose of bodily waste, which, while possible to do in the MOP suit, will eventually have to be cleared from your suit if you shit yourself. Chemically, we're dealing in every plastic, carcinogenic metal and chemical compound, oil smoke from the FUCKLOADS of cars that got vaporized in the small-ish yield thermo-nuclear blasts, building materials, including the old school asbestos in some small number of older residences, and of course, the oil wells on the east side of the altamont hills. They used to do some drilling for oil there, but the nukes just fucking ignited it and burned it off. Mesa vista on this side of the sierra nevadas, a town we are going through a couple miles into California's former border, had to be evacuated when smoke started pouring on them from the mountains. it's since stopped, but the residents don't want to repopulate the town. Aside from that, we may or may not come across some reactors that have been blown up in the conflict between leftist strongholds like where we're going, and Good conservative Meth farmers like where we might pass through. If we DO encounter these reactors, simply limit exposure to them, they give off Gamma, Beta, X-ray, and various other types of Ionizing and neutron radiation. the only thing that COULD shield you from them, is several feet of dense materials, such as steel, or lead. Be advised, though lead is good for this, don't count on it. You're far better off just walking past the rock giving off the soft green glow. Further questions?"
>"What, if any fauna and flora are we expected to run into?"
"This woman gets it, everyone. This is the kind of question you need to ask in the zone. To answer... I don't know. Anything that was indigenous to California. Squirrels, coons, maybe some dogs, they're everywhere, and when I lived there, we had a huge problem with fighting dogs abandoned by mexican owners, they'd be independent enough to survive out here, if anything. I'm not a botanist, so I don't know what to expect in terms of plants. Further questions? No? alright. Lets wait for the rest of my team to arrive."
"equipment check!"
>"Good!" came the call from each team member. We mounted up into an APC and began a drive toward the middle of the state.
"We're crossing the line now, in just a little we'll be passing through mesa vista. then we go over the hills. Before any of you gets the idea, don't bother trying to tell from sensations of movement where you are. it doesn't work and just makes you motion sick."
>as we passed through the west edge of Mesa Vista I buttoned up the driver's port.
"Hey, Dick, Jessey, I need someone in the gunner's and commander's seats. Oh, we don't need to worry about street legal because we're just gonna crush every fucking car in our way. Hope you like this, because it'll usually be a lot tighter and more crowded, hotter too! usually eight soldiers to an APC and then a three man crew. You'll all pretty much eat and sleep in here for the duration, as well you'll learn the ways of operations in the zone, though usually the zone isn't a combined threat area like this."
>"so what WON'T we be doing in here?" Dick finally sounded off.
"Hopefully shitting, though if you do, you'll almost certainly be cleaning yourself outside, pissing, infantry operations, extermination of enemy assets, getting the picture?"
>"Yeah, sounds about right."
"Dick, I know you had CBRN training, but did they ever train you to do all at once?" I asked, grinning at the visors to look out of the vehicle.
>"Nope, we didn't predict literal zone operations in fucking California. The only thing that could make this shit harder would be if there were actual anomalies."
>"What makes you so sure there aren't?" 
"Jessey, don't make me shit myself."
>"What? What if there are?"
"Jessey, we don't have SHIT to detect anomalous physics in this APC. If we die in an anomaly, I'm strangling you in hell."
>"Don't worry about that, Michael, I'll take care not to let you get radiation poisoning." a voice said in my mind.
"who was that?" I mutter to myself under my breath
>"I wouldn't worry about it." came the voice again. 
>Funny thing about voices in one's head. They never quite sound like who they resemble, and as such, can be hard to pick out.
"Scan the terrain, I want awareness all around the vehicle, if something catches your eye, I want to know, if you see any animals larger than a dog, I want to hear all about it." I said as we entered the midst of the hills, and descended into the 'smoke pit'
>Eventually we were in the valley, and I called for a sensory check.
>"I've got nothing but squirrels and some weird birds." Dick sounded off
>"Wait a minute. I got a bear sized quadruped, 7 o'clock."
>My instincts told me this would be a good opportunity for some removal. I stopped the APC and shut down the engine.
"Distance on that bear?"
>"It's not a bear, but it's about four hundred yards off."
"All to mop 4, we're going hunting."
>masks, gloves and overboots came on, pressure checks began.
>I dropped the ramp and we exited the vehicle.
"Jessey, you're on point."
>Jessey began leading us to the the area we saw the bear quietly, we eventually saw it. it was indeed a bear, but it was bigger than any California brown bear I've ever seen by about a two to one margin.
"All fire on signal. Three. Two-" the bear changed from a gray to a pale white and began charging us
>Firing occurred
>The bear died without incident, but if fell at my feet, and only after having a fuckload of lead pumped into it.
"So... I'm guessing they're immune to pain, aim for the brain case I guess."
>"Shhhhhh." someone said.
>I listened, closer, and closer. The ringing eventually subsiding to reveal a "Ruuuuughh" sound
"There's more of them. I think we should get back to the APC."
>I began a jog to the APC, looking around for anything to come, nothing had come... Fine with me.
>As we reached the APC I corralled my team and students into the back of the APC, closing the ramp as I went to the drivers seat and purged the air.
"I want a three sixty scan, I want the turret up and active, try to give them singe shots from the cannon!"
>"Roger that, beginning scan."
"I think we're safe in here. This shit's not even a little over yet." A pause took me, just to remember what I saw, then back to it. "Anything on the scan?" 
>"Nothing, they're not coming or they know how to hide from FLIR."
"Only half of those are unsettling. Think they'll follow us?"
>"No." 
"Who wants to name these animals?"
>"Shitbags!"
>"Fuckstains!"
"Enough. Let's continue on. We can rest at nine at 2100 hours."
>And so we continued west for another six hours until we deemed it to be time to stop.
"Get some rest, we're picking up at five."

	Chapter Six: Ride The Storm
>"Merna, do you really think you can get that close to him?"
>"I don't see why not."
>"Look I know you're pretty, and he seems to relax around you, and all that, but I've never seen him let anyone in."
"Not very perceptive, Keilley. He DID."
>"What do you mean?" asked Merna
"There's nothing TO see. at least, nothing that would continue if you hooked up with him."
>"Huh?"
"He's autistic. An aspie if I'm guessing right. He has a few pleasures he's obsessed with, and probably a couple that don't surface because he doesn't have the opportunity to practice them."
>"How do YOU know this?"
"I know a few of his friends who go back five or six years. They say he used to be quite an archer, a couple who've known him since he was six or so say he used to be all about airplanes."
>"I never knew that. I liked him, but he just kinda... drifted away."
>"Ladies, please. hold the fan club meeting somewhere besides twenty feet from my right ear." Michael said, handing a slip of paper to Merna as he walked by, carrying his boots and an FAL as he walked on to whatever thing of importance in his world he was attending to. 
>Merna eventually did hook up with him, though it didn't last too long. The circumstances weren't murky, if they were clear to anyone, they were clear to me. Michael killed her. 
>Michael never showed remorse when he killed, and those he killed, he had to kill. The fact that he had to remained true even for Merna. But his streak of remorselessness for the killings ended with her. 
>God I still shudder sometimes to imagine the face of defeat he made after she made him do it. He'd let her in, fully, and they'd had a fling, and even a romantic relationship for a time. And then she did THAT, and left him different. Paradoxical that he became a MORE open person after it. I guess one man can only contain so much before his mind changes. Even Mike.
March 16 2019
0530 hours
"Wake up, motherfuckers, we're gonna have to be oscar mike in thirty."
>"where to today?" 
"We're moving toward sacramento and maybe scouting the ruins. Hope everyone's got their share of explosives and their PSQ-20B."
>We started driving the highway at six in the morning, intermittent sightings of moving fauna becoming more and more evident as we got down into the valley, where the cloud layer was thinner, and more oxygen was available.
>we eventually reached sacramento and stopped at the ruins of the statehouse after sunset. shit was... wrong.
>after a full scan, I ordered MOPP 4 and opened the APC, the team activating their PSQ-20's and dismounting.
>"advancing to the state house" 
>"I got something!" Sophie whispered, her voice barely controlled, on the edge between a whisper and a shriek
"where?"
>"8 o'clock."
"Hang on."
>I looked on toward the creature, it looked... human. I made it out to be eight feet tall, it was a lanky, gawky thing, it stood hunched, it looked on at us as though we were a new guy in town, and then turned away and went back to rummaging through something, like we weren't worthy of view, let alone attacking. My senses told me it was 'the one in the pinstripe suit', as I'd heard described in an old internet podcast called 'we're alive.'
>"What to do?" Ted asked
"I think it's the leader of the zombies... or a skinwalker. lets just see if we can bypass it, if it approaches, dome the motherfucker."
>"fuck."
>As we advanced I kept my eyes on the creature. it stood, attending to its own business 
"Fuck that thing creeps me the fuck out."
>"What strikes you about it?"
"Ever listened to a podcast called 'We're Alive?'"
>"Sergeant Michael Cross survives the zombie apocalypse with Saul Tink and Angel... what was his last name?"
"Not important, but you WILL get the gist. I think that could be the one in the pinstripe suit."
>"Oh. That."
>as we entered the statehouse we began to see thermal signatures pick up, though, none larger than a squirell. 
>suddenly.jpeg
>A human figure appears in front of us, everyone picking it up on the DSNVG's, which by now were set to full thermal overlay.
>It approaches, and then gives us a wide birth as it edges past us, Sophie toggling her helmet light and flashing the spot where the signature should be standing, a mere fifteen feet away.
>Nothing.
>The figure looks directly at me, evident by the curves, a woman, placing her hand on her chest and then reaching out to me.
>"Is she..?"
>I froze, confused by her apparent lack of presence, but solid detection on thermal.
>I felt her hand caress my cheek, despite having to have gone through or removed my gas mask to do so.
"What's going on? Who are yo-"
>Flashes 
>I saw the life of a young girl go by, I saw excerpts from my own appear, always when someone was talking to me, then I saw them. Occasions when I took her out, when we had a spark between us... Then I saw me, from the outside.
>I saw the small hands grip my throat, and forcefully apply pressure, teardrops falling on my cheek as my eyes opened and the curtain of defeat draped across my face as my hands came to the throat of the person choking me and applied pressure of my own.
"Merna. I should have forced you to carry on. I shouldn't have killed you."
>there she was as clear as day before me. her pale skin, black hair and dark eyes in disarray as she sobbed and begged.
>"I'm s-s-sorry! please don't kill m-me!" she said
"Don't be. You had your problems and even moving you away from the blast I couldn't save you. I'm The one who should be sorry."
>A voice pierced the silence around us, everything became black and green and shrouded in darkness and a thermal overlay again.
>"Michael!? MIKE!"
"Huh? what happened?"
>"The heat signature touched you and you started talking to someone named Merna, and then it floated off after you apologized."
>A voice echoing in my mind called to me
>"Michael? Can you ever forgive me for what I did?"
"I already have." I said aloud.
>"So you won't kill me?" the voice asked, barely away from a stammer.
"I... I alr-ready have." I stammered out. tears welling in my eyes "Can you ever forgive me, Merna?"
>"I do. One request. In time, let her in. She needs you more than Sarah."
"I will, Merna. I will."
>"In time Michael, all will be healed."
>And with that, Merna had departed. 
>"Mike's gone haywire for some reason, students, move BACK to the APC and secure it, I'm gonna see about getting the haunted here back to it without him killing us."
"That won't be necessary, Jessey, I'll go on my own, you wanna drive? we could be in the bay area reporting our details by morning, and on our way back tomorrow night."
>"I'll drive, I slept most of the way here anyway." Dick said. 
"Much appreciated."
>"Hey, are you alright? You seem kind of drained." Jessey asked
"I'm... tired is all." 
>"Look Michael, I'm not in command here, but I think we should consider canceling the expedition. That heat signature touched you and you started talking to whoever Merna is about how you shouldn't have killed her. It's one thing if there's a few mutant creatures, but it's something else entirely when people start talking to ghosts."
"For what it's worth, I'm considering it already. I can tell you and Dick this, but I need you to keep it to yourselves. can you?"
>"I fucking swear."
"I lived here. Not in this city, down in Modesto, or Methdesto as we called it. Until I was twenty one, and this city, this building, was the epicenter of my strife for most of my life. Even now it's only been a couple years since I left. I came here with the intent of defiling this place. It was to make all those years worth it. Having gotten peace from someone in my past... it just doesn't seem worth it anymore."
>"No explosives then?" 
"I couldn't see then. But it's already defiled. let's leave."
>as I exited the building I remember where the skinwalker was and discovered nothing. Looking ahead I saw the team in cover overlooking your friend and mine, a skinwalker, standing in front of the APC.
"What are you waiting for?"
>"The skinwalker's blocking the way."
"Fuck. It's like you people are retarded. Dome the motherfucker."
>I walked up toward the skinwalker and tapped its shoulder. It looked at me, a soft red glow from the eye, a faint smile on the face
"Hey, what's up?"
>"I wouldn't worry about it."
"You know. I agreed with you once, I did something bad because I couldn't react to it. It's haunted me until just now. Do me a favor, go stand over there." I said, pointing to the north.
>"Whaaaat have you DOoooone?"
"I wouldn't worry about it."
>"You monssssster."
"Got any better insults?" 
>"What you've done issss unforgivable."
"What else is new? Get out of here, skinwalker."
>The creature walked off, clearly disgusted by my callousness.
"ON ME!" I yelled as I waved the team up to the APC. All approaching wide eyed as they stared at me.
>Taking one last look back at the statehouse I noticed a small flame had sparked and was stoking itself on the ruined structure. A weary smile on my face, I piled into the back of the APC and took my seat as we continued on our way.
>I woke up in san francisco the next morning, Ekatarina, for the first time in a couple days, in her Human form, sitting across from me, a deeply analytical and scrutinizing look on her face.
>"So. You're awake." She said with an icy scowl that could freeze the sun.
"What's wrong?"
>"What did you do?"
"What do you mean?"
>"You started talking to some woman who wasn't there, profusely apologizing for killing her and then you spoke to that THING as though it were just some man on the street you needed to move. I'm not taking another step with you until you tell me what all that was about."
"Suppose you were gonna find out anyway. So it was 2017, and California had a schism. Los Angeles had essentially ruled with the help of the bay area and the coastal region that the state was to secede from the union. This however didn't sit with the rest of the state, the valley, the hill people. The rural folks. However, this didn't matter at all, since the areas that supported it had all the pull down at that building my little haunting happened in. Intuition told me that this was going to happen any day now." I said, gesturing at the small world around us as I said the last bit.

June 2017
>"I hope this shit doesn't go south."
"Merna, it already has, get your shit together, we're running east tonight."
>A radio crackling in the room. "The city of Los Angeles has fortified itself and the California government in exile has issued a decree of war on the united states, launching several mid range missiles at government troops maintaining quarantine around LA, In related news, LA has also declared all cities in the valley to be traitors to the cause, and will attack them with nuclear warheads acquired from their ally San Diego and it's naval installation."
>"Fuck, Michael, how long do we have to get out of the state?"
"Three in the morning is when it all rolls off the cliff. Otherwise we can only hope they don't do it. 
>The government had invaded, finding no resistance inland, and only running against it on the coast. The coast had for the most part been captured. The only reason LA stood was because those who WOULD fight for california, ran straight to LA to consolidate. I knew they wouldn't last long against any real threat. So they'd kill us all to vindicate their cultural marxism while they got their heads blown off.
>We drove silently to two thirty in the morning, when we started discussing good cities to escape to. As we drove through the hills we saw the flashes in the sky over the hills. 
>"Fuck. They really did it."
"Yeah. They fucking did it. The fucking madmen."
>"I know this is gonna sound fucked up, but I have the perfect song to play for this event."
"Play it."
>Merna produced a phone and with a few strokes of the screen, plugged the phone into the car's audio, and pressed play.
>Dr. Ron Paul - The Happening
"Hahahahahahaha, Merna, have I ever told you I love you? I feel like I don't tell you that enough."
>"I know you do, though it probably has something to do with you being fucked up and callous about California's gun laws. It's okay. I have my own problems with the place."
"Yeah?"
>"Yeah, but with those flashes, about half of them were just incinerated, and the other half will probably be incinerated when LA gets a nuke."
"If my parents could see me now. I'm kinda glad they left me with the house when they moved to Idaho."
>"Wait, they moved and LEFT you, YOU of all people in California? That's cruel."
"Yep. If they could see me now, being what was once called a right wing extremist and driving out of the state on my own with a girl more religious, and less puritanical than me, probably to the most degenerate city outside California, with the express purpose of rejoining the Trump Reich and resuming a rich life of winning. It's like we're in upside down world."
>"That's nothing. Imagine MY parents, and sister when they realize their younger daughter and sister is running away with 'that psychotic blue eyed devil with all the guns and probably a reich flag.' That they spent so much time preaching about."
"Did they forget they're ALSO paler than I am? I mean, you could pass for being white as snow if you wore shades."
>"True, though how they KNEW about you is a mystery. I never told them."
"I know exactly what it was. Your sister saw us talking to each other freshmen year."
>"You've never met my sister, have you?"
"looks just like you but at like 120% scale and with a more pronounced bone structure in the face."
>"Like skeletor?"
"Basically."
Present day
"We drove on into Nevada without hassle. two days later, we were in Utah. Five days after that I woke up to her straddling me with her hands on my throat. Trying to strangle me to death, tears in her eyes, and when I tried to snap her out of it, she just tightened her grasp."
>"So what did you do? What chance did you give her?"
"I tried to close the gap, I tried to get her hands off my throat. All it did was make her tighten her grasp. once I saw it was pointless, I just... strangled her."
>"That was a fucked up story, Mike. Tell me. What was this place like before it became another zone?"
"Easier to show. This was the last thing ever broadcast on the news in California." I said, handing her a phone with a video saved on it and pressing the play button. 
Present day
"We drove on into Nevada without hassle. two days later, we were in Utah. Five days after that I woke up to her straddling me with her hands on my throat. Trying to strangle me to death, tears in her eyes, and when I tried to snap her out of it, she just tightened her grasp."
>"So what did you do? What chance did you give her?"
"I tried to close the gap, I tried to get her hands off my throat. All it did was make her tighten her grasp. once I saw it was pointless, I just... strangled her."
>"That was a fucked up story, Mike. Tell me. What was this place like before it became another zone?"
"Easier to show. This was the last thing ever broadcast on the news in California." I said, handing her a phone with a video saved on it and pressing the play button. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDGp_AnUAQs
>It took all my will to keep a straight face while Ekatarina's contorted in confusion. Because, as absurd as it was, that WAS the last thing ever broadcast on California news.
>"How long was it like this?"
"Only the last couple months, but as things went in this place? It was beyond inevitable."
>"Well. I can't hold a past like that against you. Should we join the rest of the team?"
"Where are they?"
>"Just a block down, clearing buildings"
>Ekatarina and I walked to the team and joined the training.
>we began looking for any signs of life through out the city. finding nothing. We came to a building that looked to be a department store. 
>As I looked at the decrepit interior with two years of dust on it.
>We slowly combed through the building's interior until- crack
>I jumped back as something came out of my peripheral vision and smashed through the wall next to me.
"FUCK" I said, violence of action coming to shroud my mind from my consciousness.
>I flicked the fire selector across the trigger guard and let loose a burst of 9X39 into the throat of whatever it was, causing it to collapse on the ground.
"Contact! Sound off!"
>The sounds of gunfire erupted around me, while one by one check in's began
>"What the fuck are these things?"
>"Ferals or something!"
"Blood suckers?"
>"Skinwalkers most likely." came over the radio, as a long rip from a MK48 punctuated the air with wave after wave of compresing air jarring the skull of anyone in the building.
"Whatever they are, just fucking kill them." I said, releasing a couple rips from the VSS into two of the charging creatures before I realized the gun was dry.
>I swung the rifle onto her sling and pulled out the Mak, planting another two in one of the charging creature's skull.
"You know, these things are pretty frail for skinwalkers."
>"Probably horribly scared people who've been surviving off whatever they can scrounge and recently ran out."
"I ain't helpin'em. I'm almost out to the street"
>I reached the street and looked around as the team started pouring out of the building shooting behind them.
"Sound off!"
>four calls of "present" came to my ear. 
"Dick, Jessey, James, Ted. Where's Sophie?"
>"She sounded off inside before they started attacking!" Ted spoke up.
>"What do we do, Mike?" Jessey asked, knowing that it was iffy to go in
"We're going back in, we gotta reconnect, rescue or retrieve her."
>As I topped off the Mak PB and reloaded the VSS I heard a shot and one of THEM. Either she or it was dead.
"Everyone top off, where SHOULD she be based on our dispersion?" I said, walking toward the door, fingering the selector of the VSS to semi.
>"Mid left!" came the call from Dick, who'd had his eye on the students
"Team, disperse left, maintain line dispersion, Dick, you're on point, Ted, Jessey, James, and I'll bring up the rear, keep it about ten feet from person to person."
>The team entered the building shooting at a few of the creatures charging from the right side of the building, culling them in short order.
>In just a matter of twenty seconds they'd stopped and we advanced.
"I want a staggered line combing the store."
>as we assumed positions in the chain, we walked over the corpses, mostly dark and charred, or at least we'd hoped that was the case.
"Anyone got anything?"
>"I got black and charred...Ferals, yeah, ferals. Nothing else." Ted Reported 
"Dick, what's your status up there?"
>"All is fine on point, dead ferals everywhere, no sign of- found her?"
"What's her status?"
>"I think she wants us to be quiet." Dick whispered over the radio "I'll try to ascertain the situation."
>I looked about the place, and saw Dick was at a corner with Sophie in a doorway that overlooked room we were in, she was flashing a finger over her diaphragm, signalling us to be quiet.
>Looking on I saw Sophie signalling Dick to peek around the corner, to which he obliged, visibly recoiling, to whatever hellish creature was in there. I looked to Sophie, pointed to her, and took out a magazine, then put it back in the carrier before flashing a "1" "2" and "3" hand signal, communication the desire for her Mag count.
>Sophie pointed to the empty mag well of her MK-17 before waving a gloved hand to me with a curled thumb and set of fingers meeting across from the web.
>I keyed the mic and whispered into it.
"Fuck, she's out of ammo, I think her radio is broken too. All, retreat to the vehicle, Jessey, come here and get my rifle."
>As the squad filed out of the building, I Firmly thrust Ekatarina into Jessey's chest, prompting her to balk at me as though I was using an arm growing out of my chest to molest her.
>"Just what the FUCK do you intend to do, cowboy?" she whispered as sharply as she could muster
"I'm gonna have fun with this one, now GIT." I said, pushing her with a hand between her shoulder blades toward the entrance, waiting a second, then catching Dick by the shoulder as the others continued toward the vehicle.
"Dick, if I'm not radioing in ten minutes from now, or walking back with Sophie, I want you to continue on mission back to Nevada."
>"I can do that, but are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"Let's take a look at it."
>I looked around the corner toward the hell that awaited me, and was surprised.
"Yeah, make that twenty minutes, synchronize watches. Set. Check. Mark."
>"I'll be waiting, psycho." Dick said as he walked out, taking a last look at me. 
>I signaled Sophie to run as soon as I started around the corner, to which she gave a no can do, and pointed to her leg. Well, I guess if I don't kill this fucking thing, she's about as fucked as Hot sweaty Betty in the back of a whorehouse Cadillac.
>If those fucking things were Ferals, I can definitely see this fucking thing being a skinwalker. 
>It stood about nine feet tall, not that it was easy to discern as it bent down over a feral and eating chunks out of it. The sounds it made were just barely audible from the end of the hallway, though it DID contain those wet popping noises I'd come to associate with live or freshly dead flesh being torn a sunder.
>Let's do this. 
>I rounded the corner cocking back the hammer of the Mak PB and firing two full mags into it. 
>It tackled me, knocking away the Makarov, as I reached for the knife. I thrusted the knife into its gut and knocked it on it's side, getting another stab into the chest before it pinned my arms to the ground and loomed over me. closing on my face.
"FUCK YOU!" came the hate filled screech echoing through my mask.
>I felt an impact on my knee and saw the face of the skin walker contort as it shifted away, an arm staggering away from mine. Freeing it.
>A punched the skinwalker across the and hit the top of its neck at the base of the skull, shifting it to my side, I grabbed my knife out of it's chest and used the pommel to bash it over the head, incapacitating it long enough for me to get up.
>The creature got up and launched a punch with a sadistic grin. At least we agreed on facial expression.
>A flying arm was intercepted by a knife slicing through the radius bone of the creature, causing it to recoil as it desperately clawed at my MOPP suit.
>The creature screeched as it held it's wrist, half severed and spewing black goop.
>The knife traveled with force as it found its next target between the radius and the scaphoid, cutting through nothing but tendons as the left hand of the creature was quickly severed, an act that was met only with the most blood curdling, or sexually arousing screech that had ever come from an animal, depending on the presence and degree of your sadistic tendencies.
>The next target of the knife was the creatures throat, as the blade sank into the throat, the creature's cries of agony only fueling a deep sense of satisfaction on my part, as I reared for the next strike, into the skinwalker's throat. 
>The cries came froma screech, to a yell, to a pained whimper.
>I made my next strike, reducing the creature's whimper to a dry rasp.
>I brought the creature's eyes to meet mine.
"I'm the terror here, skinwalker." I announced as I sank the knife into the base of the creature's skull, the glow of evil leaving the skinwalker's eyes to be replaced by a lifeless expression of final horror, as the creature crumpled onto the floor.
>Checking my watch, I realized I had fifteen minutes left, but my radio was broken in the scuffle.
>As I retrieved my Makarov and holstered it, picked up and pocketed the mag I dropped, it occurred to me that my MOPP suit was compromised. I also remembered why I'd just fought that fucking thing. 
>I walked over to the doorway and extended a hand to Sophie, to which she recoiled.
"What's this about? I'm not gonna bite you."
>"I saw what you did to that thing, and I'm not sure you aren't worse."
"Oh shut the fuck up and take my hand." I said, offering a hand "Come on, I'll get you back to the APC" I said as I put her arm on my shoulder.
>"What the fuck kind of psychopath are you?" she asked.
"I don't know. There's no way I'm letting this knife into the APC outside an evidence bag though."
>As we reached the APC, with seven minutes left to go, I signaled to Dick to help out with Sophie. 
>"What the fuck was that? What did you do?" Ekatarina asked, evidently pissed at being handed off.
"I didn't want you to see that."
>"See what- Are you okay? You're compromised"
"Worst case is light burns, Jessey, get me an evidence bag, Dick, put her in the APC. James, Ted, make yourselves useful and tend to her, but before you do, rub her MOPP down with Charcoal."
>"What's the damage?" Ted asked as he pulled the charcoal out.
"She's got a bum leg, I want that assessed, could be a sprain, or a break. Either way, she has to come out of that MOPP. Where's that evidence bag?"
>"Right here!" Jessey answered, handing me the bag. "What are you putting THAT in there for?" she asked as I put my knife into it
"I'm sure they'll want samples of what I just killed, we're already reporting ghosts, and Feral... people, I guess. May as well report over sized humanoids and give them a genetic sample. How's that medevac coming along?"
>"We've got her secured, we're ready to get the MOPP off after we purge."
"Good work. All aboard! We're making a break back to Nevada."
>The ramp closed behind me and we purged the air. Beginning the trip back to Nevada.
"How many extra suits do we have?"
>"One per person, but I don't think Sophie's getting into one again any time soon."
"I bet she'll think this is normal and never agree to another operation in a zone again."
>Ekatarina was about ready to adress me, a none to thrilled look on her face. "
Ктo-нибyдь здecь гoвopят Poccии?" She asked to no one in particular.
>The air was silent.
"Hиктo здecь нe гoвopит нa pyccкoм языкe, нo ты и я." I answered, a look of relief washing over her face at the apparent lack of reaction on everybody in the vehicle. What we said meant nothing to them.
>"Пoчeмy ты пpocтo пepeдaть мeня, кaк этo?"
"Я нe хoчy, чтoбы вы ... Этo."
>"
Чтo этo былo, чтo вы дoлжны были yбить? Пoчeмy oнa oкaзaлacь в лoвyшкe?"
"Кaк cyщecтвo из пocлeднeгo гopoдa, нo бoльшe. Meнee yдoбнo."
>"Maйкл, кaк вы ceбя чyвcтвyeтe?"
"Чecтнo? Пpимepнo нa пoлпyти yдoвлeтвopeны."
>"
Я имeл в видy физичecки, нo дaвaйтe идти c этим. Чтo этo?"
"Кoe-чтo oб yбийcтвe, чтo вeщь былo пpocтo ... Хopoшo."
>"Hey, Mike, I know you and Ekatarina are real fond of speaking Russian to each other, but could you speak English? The students are visibly agitated." Dick uttered in exasperation.
>Looking over the students, who I could tell Dick hadn't looked at since we departed, I could see he was more than right. They were fearful to the point that it hung in the air.
"What's the matter, students?"
>"We don't know what's up with Sophie's leg and she's having pain issues." James stated.
"Dick, should we give her the good lolipop?"
>"The WHAT?" Ted exclaimed as he scowled on at me.
"It's an analgesic in lolipop form, you suck on it and it gives you an opioid dose, because you have to suck it to get more, as you lose consciousness you can't use the same force to suck it, and the dose flattens out. It's basically overdose proof Morphine."
>"Yeah, give her one. See if she vomits."
>Dick gave Sophie a fentanyl lollipop to suck on while we went through the task of getting her from San Francisco to Sheridan without exposing her to the excuse for air that now inhabited California. 
>"Excuse me. Michael?" James probed
"What ya got?"
>"Are we in the wrong line of work?"
"Well, I can't tell you that, man. I've been here only about a year or so myself, though I DID receive some NBC training that gave me a rough tutorial about operating in a zone during my conscript days before policy changes allowed PMC's to offer contract terminating recruitments to military personnel. Aside from ending my short stint in the army of about seven months, not much has happened since."
>"You were conscripted?"
"Yeah, I was found and eventually turned over to a military taking in draftees for a war in the Middle east. It ended a short time after, but I was still in, I went out on a couple little killing details stateside to deal with some hadjis, then about this time last year I was offered employment with vulture hawk, for which the army would discharge me."
>"So, you're one of the military loaners who got bought out?"
"Yeah, but anyway, there's a theme here, and I'll try to get to it, rather than drone on. Whether you're in the right line of work is for you to decide, and as you find the things that you risk for this work. Wife, kids, family, those kind of things. Granted, it's a good way to provide for those things and people, as well as yourself. It's NOT a safe way, however. Depending on where you go and what you do, there's an inherent risk in our line of work. Years of this job turn many who go down the same road into few. It's not a hob for the faint of heart, or the remorseful. I can only tell you this from what I've observed. Everyone in this vehicle with the NOTABLE exception of myself has handled themselves very well for being in a zone. I can't tell you if this is the right work for you, but you have the skill to do it."
>"Any advice to give on how to weigh it all?"
"How old are you?" I asked like an old man.
>"I'm twenty-five." James answered 
"I'm twenty-three." I answered, taking some pleasure in the shock on the older mans face, as he realized the beaten down man he probably placed somewhere in the thirties was in fact, younger than him.
>"So, I guess I should know this by now."
"Probably not. You learn this through experience with your peers. I've seen people weigh many times on this. People who left loving wives, children, whole lives behind them. Sometimes they didn't want to do it, sometimes they didn't get a thrill out of it. Some of those people are rotting right now. They should have left. It's up to you to ask yourself,'Is the money really worth it?', 'Who am I leaving behind if I get killed?', 'Is the risk worth it?', 'Do I really WANT to do this?' And other questions of the like until you arrive at the conclusion that you either want to quit and find another way to make money, or if you love this shit."
>"What about this job draws you?" James asked, almost as though he felt he had room to ask since he was the elder. I'd let this one skate.
"I like the blood pumping, being outside and doing something, I get to work with people, I get a nice outlet for my violent tendencies, the money's good. For me there aren't really many downsides save for the potential to get maimed and physically disabled."
>"But what about all the things you risk by doing this?"
"They aren't a factor. I've got no wife, no kids, no one in the running for wife." I said, noting a feeling of a set of eyes boring into the side of my head. "...maybe someday." I amended.
>"So, you don't have much to leave if you die and you actually enjoy the job?"
"I got a lot of stuff to leave, outside of work I can pretty much get whatever I want, but not many people will be crying if I don't come home. And you have to consider that. To the highest degree, it's determined by what or who is waiting at home."
>"What's this lollipop made out of? It tastes like dirt and wood." Sophie asked, evidently focused on the good lollipop for the last few minutes.
"It's hardened heroin."
>"How long do I have to suck on this?"
"The whole point of the Fentanyl lollipop is that YOU control the dosage, suck it till your leg doesn't hurt as much."
>I felt a familiar presence burning the side of my face, I looked left to see Ekatarina gazing at me, a thoughtful smile on her face and a set of welcoming eyes meeting me.
"What?" I asked, unable to help but don a friendly smile
>"Oh!" She said, a surprised look crossing her face "I was just. Tы вeдeшь ceбя, кaк мyдpый oтeц кaждoгo."
I sighed, a guilty grin on my face. "That's more true than you know."
>In another two days, maybe uneventful days at that, we can be back in Nevada.

	Chapter Seven: The Soft Spot
>Sarah sat bored, reflecting as usual, the date of march eighteenth twenty-nineteen had been a dreary one, maybe her favorite operative would be back in two days. Maybe. She muddled at how dull life would be without dear, sweet Michael to order around from place to place. Eventually she started talking to herself, eventually she just walked into the psychologist's office to talk about it, if only to have someone to talk to.
"Hey, got a minute?"
>"What's on your mind, Miss Keel?"
"I need to talk to SOMEONE, and I've been obsessing over one of my operatives."
>"Oh, my. Color me shocked. Is it the infamous Michael Berdan?"
"How would you figure?"
>"The rumors still circulate around the office, despite both of you flatly denying them."
"It's not like that."
>"Well, I reckon you've come in to talk to me about what it IS like, so have a seat."
"Thank you."
>"So, what of the one man horde?"
"He's just so... interesting. In many ways, he's admirable, in many other ways, he's just... kind of sad. His world view is odd, the kind of questions his actions bring to the table are enough to raise gossip, but having seen the sad truth behind some of them? God damn, man! Remember how gossip used to go around about all these vile, despicable things he does in private to prepare himself for work spurred a brief investigation?"
>"Yes, as I recall, the rumors were unfounded."
"I know the WHY. He does nothing in private. Not that he doesn't have pleasures, he just... doesn't... a lot of the time. I know, I had to head up the investigation. He's got a machine shop and guns and a computer and just a few hobbies, which he really likes, and then he just... sits. He does them for so long and then he just sits, sometimes he cries but he'll pretty much always frown when he does it. Seriously, probes into his personal life reveal no contact from outside the company, when he goes to bars, if, that is, he pretty much avoids eye contact and leaves after a couple drinks."
>"Now we're getting into something interesting, I'd have never figured someone so gregarious for the lonely type. Perhaps he craves some sort of intimate companion? Perhaps he doesn't know where to look and we're as close as he gets?"
"Yeah, maybe. But what drives someone like this? You see him just looking as though he's suffering at home and you'd think there HAD to be some kind of end, Some reason for him to keep doing this! But no, that look of despair on his face when he got home said it ALL, I'm telling you man, this guy's interesting if not downright disconcerting."
>"Why does this concern you?"
"I don't know. I just see him, and so much about him is just... I understand how he thinks, I see it in the way he acts, but... the more you dig, the more you understand, the harder it is to rationalize. Lonely? Don't talk to anyone until you HAVE to. Bored? Sit.
Hobbies? Do them for a while, then sit. He thinks in straight lines, but when he's alone he doesn't act in straight lines."
>"An introvert?"
"An extrovert when he gets here, though. What's really messed up is when he gets here for a briefing on an assignment and he looks like he's been rescued from a deserted island after years of isolation."
>"When you put it that way, it makes more sense WITH the information you've given about his personal life."
"Some more fucked up things. Ever notice how he looks when he GETS HERE?"
>"How so?"
"It's the fucking weirdest occurrence with him. He shows up looking drained, anemic, pale of skin, hair obviously out of order and soaked down with water from the sink, almost looking like he's ill. He shows up like this from a cool comfortable environment, then he goes out to the cold, the hot, the abrasive. He comes back looking healthy as a horse, skin cleared up, color restored, and happy as can be, hell, I bet he comes back from this current assignment and he's got a fucking grin a mile wide, and looks like the IMAGE of health, save of course for a few high intensity chemical burns that give him cancer and somehow he survives that, then he comes back like some sort of fucking demigod."
>"Are you telling me he delights in harsh and strenuous environments?"
"Are you fucking listening? I've seen him. Personally. I've seen him take off on walks in hundred and ten degree heat, looking discomforted by AIR CONDITIONING, then walk over an hour with no water or anything, to come back looking happy and healthy, his hair, previously bedraggled, now in a messy but stylish pattern. I'm telling you he'd fucking THRIVE in them. Hell, I even accompanied him on one such walk, he got home soaked in sweat, but he'd left looking as though some sickness were draining him of life, and came back without zits and a picture of health. I'm telling you strenuous environs only seem to make him happy and healthy where others would break down."
>"REALLY. Where did we get this guy? If that's a question you can even answer."
"Oh I can answer that one, he came from fucking California, he was on the way out AS THE NUKES WENT OFF. Even before that he was an anomaly, all the things I've told you about him? They were true even before that. And the most STARTLING contrast between business and leisure with this case? Can you guess it?"
>"I'm guessing it's his overall demeanor."
"Oh you nailed it. You FUCKING nailed it. I ever tell you I've sheltered him a few times? After assignments? Safe house and things like that?"
>"No, It's rather unusual for handlers to personally safehouse with their operatives. Let alone one out of a team."
"Yeah, yeah, guidelines later. I've seen footage from his helmet. You know, when we were in high school, he had a navy sticker on his door. Some girl gave it to him when he was little, and he kept it because he wanted to be a fighter pilot and fly the planes off the carrier. He also had a much more relevant poster on the wall of his bedroom. More apt to describe him. 'Apply violence. Not everyone can do it.' It said. Well let me tell you, the day I found out about that poster was the day I found out he could definitely apply violence."
>"He... assaulted you?"
"Not quite. Some people broke into the house, held myself and this other girl at gunpoint, demanding valuables. He was in the shower at this point. APPARENTLY with an FAL, because he came out, dick swinging in the wind, completely naked, and shot two of them from the top of the stairs."
>"That's not a pleasant image."
"Gets better, two of them scramble into the den, down a hall, they don't know how to get to the garage, and he cuts that route off from the other end of the hall, it's kill him or die trying to get out through the garage. One peaks out and thrusts his hand, a hi-point in it, of course, out to fire at Michael. Mike shoots his hand and then as he staggers back, shoots him in the throat and bayonets him, meanwhile this little guy, probably one of the robber's younger brothers is just fucking screaming for mercy."
>"So what does Michael do about this?"
"Michael's is NOT the face of Mercy. He spared the kid, to be sure, but he made a LESSON out of it. He buttstroked the kid with his FAL, and escorted him to the lawn, where he put him on his knees, and calls the police saying 'We got a bunch good boys who dindu nuffin, come get the one that isn't DEAD before I blow his fucking head off.' So here he is, STILL NAKED by the way, his screaming having woke the neighborhood, on the front lawn with a hostage, basically. Until his dad comes out with an M1A and he walks back into the house. I saw that fucking face and let me tell you. He would have done it. He would have slaughtered that kid and never thought twice about it. Police? Parents? Me? No one would have stopped him if he felt like it. There was only PURE. UNADULTERATED. HATE. In those eyes."
>"Is his helmet camera like this?"
"There's more clothing and less mercy, but yes. He can apply violence with the best of psychopaths. Or the worst. But then there's how he acts around HERE, he can handle crowds that shoot at him, but not crowds that socialize with him, he always just shrinks into the middle of crowds of people. But one on one? He can be really candid one on one or professionally. If they're people he socializes with, he seems less confident, really awkward, but the ones he works with? in command, in charge, on top of it. Hell, getting to know him was easy enough when I safe-housed him. In action he's as violent as they come, but in leisure he's..."
>"Spit it out, don't trail off, you've got me on the edge of my seat."
"Polite? Most certainly well mannered, tries, or is, as I'm not really sure if it's an effort for him, to be unimposing, trying not to overstep my hospitality. Sometimes it's concerning."
>"So, an utter barbarian or a quiet guest. A most precarious fellow. I wonder if his mind has some self damaging tendency."
"Potentially, he seems to concede self awareness to others if you get him drunk enough. He seemingly knows what he thinks and not how he feels in many situations."
>"Really? How so?"
"I'll give you the example of how I learned his world view. Tell me, what word would you use to describe things that are pleasant? Things that people generally try to seek out so they don't die sad and alone?"
>The psychologist shrugged as he thought about it "Fun? Warm? Happy? I'm just guessing at what one would think on a subject of the like." Came the answer, his face, for the first time actually indicating investment in this conversation.
"Well, you get a guy drunk and talk to him about such things and he'll be more open about it. Michael is no exception. He IS however of a different perspective. The word he used is 'soft.' 'Soft,' is the word he chooses. He describes the happy things that people do for pleasure or validation from others as 'soft.' He views life as the journey toward a soft spot, where one doesn't HAVE to be hardened as they are on the face, where there's someone with whom they are in private, whether they're present or not."
>"I don't see where you're going with this, this is a fairly common view of life. Much as many view the cycle of children becoming parents, just with a different adjective."
"To be honest I don't either, now that I think about it, I don't know why I'm so fixed on telling someone about this. Something tells me he's gonna do SOMETHING off, even by his standards."
>"What would make you say this?"
"I remember him in high school, college. He had trouble with the intimate relationship thing. He always had. His old friends said it was because he was thin skinned and got bullied a lot, so he grew a thick skin when everyone else was getting sensitive. I heard years ago from a girl who liked him that he was rather sharp with others when they started getting all sensitive about the 'issue' of bullying, even as far as making some people cry. According to her, when others confronted him about it, he asked where those same people who cried at a slight were and where that sensitivity was when HE was the one getting prodded constantly. Of course it was a rhetorical question, since it was just an excuse to call them out for being hypocrites. More than ANYTHING, when people started to bemoan things he got irritable."
>"What brings this memory to the front, again?"
"I'll get to it. So, last assignment he had, I had to go assess his team, and him once he got out of the hospital. Well, this woman's there watching him, turns out, he got that fucking rifle on the assignment and it has a geist. I housed him when we were staying in Mozdok, the geist too. I saw the way they look at each other. The way they act. I know exactly what she wants. He probably wants it too. The last time he managed to fall into that soft spot it wasn't pretty. Granted, different circumstances, but I don't know if he'll fall back into a soft spot. He has a hard time with that. Pass him the rifle and tell him to kill, throw him into the sun, shove him into a grinder and he'll go happily and confidently, come back better than he went. Woman tells him she likes him, tries to get close or even intimate with him? Asks him how he feels? Watch how he draws a blank, how he turns from a confident rock of a man to a sputtering puddle of uncertainty. How he awkwardly tries to slip away. For what reason nobody knows. His problem is that he's been turned into such a hard skinned creature that he generally doesn't recognize when he's found the soft spot and tries to get away from it."
>"So you think he's gonna run himself into the ground?"
"Wanna put odds on it? Nine outta ten he doesn't recognize it, or doesn't know how to get into it. He doesn't know how to express... affection I guess. Not to humans anyway."
>"Sounds like he has a problem with rejection. If he keeps it together and gets rejected, it's not so bad, but if he opens himself up and gets rejected, he probably thinks from experience that it'll feel like getting torn apart, if the information you've given me is accurate."
"Shit. That makes more sense than I'm comfortable with."
>"Would you like me to put some kind of sanctions on him? An evaluation?"
"Not yet. He'll be slow about any mental deterioration in my opinion."
>"Ok, I've heard nothing here for the time being about Michael. Though you could do with some reflection on why you seem to watch over him so much."
"Yeah, yeah. Stow it." She said, walking out of the office.

March Nineteenth Twenty-nineteen.
>"Michael, can we talk in private some time?"
"Probably in a day or two. I don't think it'll be today though. I don't suppose we can just put all the children to bed" I said as I looked motioned to the students and other operators who were visibly amused by my addressing them.
>"Da, I suppose you're right. Well, we'll talk about it at some later time."
"Don't worry. I'll make time for you. I promise."
>Ekatarina smiled at this. I can't say it didn't make me feel good.
>"Hey, Mike, You like Iron maiden right? I found something on the radio I think you're gonna like!" Chimed Jessey from the commander's seat as she turned the radio. I knew it wasn't long now. We'd be in Nevada again soon and we could be done with this hell hole, this... zone.
March twentieth twenty nineteen. 
>Finally back into Nevada, Ekatarina and I checked into a hotel for some time alone, Finally. 
"So what was it you wanted to talk about yesterday?"
>Ekatarina, my dearest friend looked at me with a distress on her face that could only mean to me that this would be a hard question. No other outcome could be expected.
>"I wanted to ask you something. How do you feel?"
"About... Us? Them? Something in particular?"
>She looked at me with a face that pleaded for an answer. I tried to speak, not to be decisive, but to answer genuinely. The words didn't come easily.
"I love you." I finally managed to get out. Some things just don't come naturally at first. 
>"Я тoжe тeбя люблю!" she said, running to me and wrapping her arms around me, the smile on her face was worth the discomfort of saying those three words for the first time. I never knew why, but when they meant something, they always hurt to say the first time.
>As I embraced her she looked up at me, and cocked her head and asked me "C тoбoй вce в пopядкe? Baшe лицo блeднoe!" 
"Пepвый paз, кoгдa я гoвopю эти cлoвa кoмy-тo вceгдa oчeнь пyгaющим." I answered, practically FEELING the color return to my face.
>I finally fell into place. I felt like I was finally happy as I lie down with Katyusha for the night. I couldn't help but hear the sound of a song long since forgotten. A calming little refrain about a love for a woman who would take care of the one who took care of her, the one who'd grant unconditional loyalty to the one that granted his trust to her. It must have been at least decades since. 
>A different era. A land long gone. And in a way, She reminded me of her. Not Merna. A young woman from the RWS who'd taken care of me, who'd loved me... who'd cast me off all those years ago to leave for England. I knew at least that Katyusha was different. She wouldn't cast me or my many brothers and sisters to them. Not like she did.

	Chapter Eight: Out of Series?
>I had always been the (mildly) autistic man I am. Though I had, since the age of twenty, managed to shake some of it off, the tendency of pushing those around me, particularly those I wanted some intimate relationship with, away as they tried to get close to me. I never knew why I did it, but I noticed it heavily. And to a heavy extent, it took a toll. One thing I HADN'T managed to shake off however, was a set of memories. They hadn't been things I'd experienced in my time since I was born, and they seemed to go beyond my time, to ages I hadn't reached, like when I could remember being twenty two years old and looking as though I was fifty in nineteen ninety five, though I was fourteen in two thousand nine when I first saw it. 
>These memories never appeared in my dreams, they were purely a waking affair, and they ranged to a beginning in nineteen seventy four, in some factory testing range, and then to being carried by a man. Peter Stafford was his name. He carried me through to nineteen seventy-six when I eventually got circulated to the Rhodesian Women's Service and issued to a woman named Jennifer. I'd never known until I was nineteen whether these were memories, pure bombastic hallucination, or dreams made up in some fever that had occurred in my mid teenage years. Then I knew they had substance to them. Hanging out in clubs full of men an women just like me, who'd had rack numbers painted on their asses and maybe a serial number in their left hip. I was a case of not having those serial numbers. My skin was always leathery, though, the night I realized I had some substantial connection to those memories, it was because of years of walking in the sun... back then it was a layer of paint that helped me blend to an arid and half dry environment. I guess I was surprised. A weapon there when I needed it, though it wasn't until AFTER the incident that I realized that I hadn't seen that FAL ever before.

February twenty sixteen.
>I walked into the bathroom, threw a fresh set of shorts and a towel into positions where I'd get to them after my shower. Today was special I was going out with a few friends, which had been a rare treat in my college days, when I had devoted much of my time to machining, and the classes that taught it.
>I was rinsing myself off when I heard a bang, and a scream from downstairs. 
"FUUUCK."
>I stepped out of the shower, not turning it off, to mask the noise of my movement, I dried my feet on a rug in the bathroom and hands on a towel, then grabbed the FAL that rested against the sink.
"I don't have an FAL... Do I?"
>I racked a round into the chamber and stepped out, and around the cabinet that formed a corner between me and the downstairs front room of my house.
>Rounding the corner I saw two women I knew, Sarah Keel, and Jordan Flemming. Then I saw the thing that brought my already boiling blood to a vaporstream. Blacks holding them at gunpoint.
>slotfloppies.jpg
>I immediately put one each into the heads of two of them and then saw two run across my view to the main room, but vanishing behindcover before I could shoot them. 
>As I made my way toward the back of the house and cleared corners I realized they had gone down a hall and into either the den or the garage. I didn't know which, because my ears were ringing, surprisingly enough not bleeding. 
>I rounded the hallway and saw a black hand with a problem solver in it thrust out, I fired, striking the hand and blasting it open, then I saw a head and shoulders appear, which I fired at, striking the link between them, before I advanced down the hall and bayoneted him, much to the terror of the whimpering voice I could vaguely hear echoing in the world of EEEEEEE That I had entered.
>I beat him a little then forced him onto the lawn at gunpoint where I called the police before realizing my nudity, as my father took over watching him. 
>I guess they assumed I got the FAL secretly.
>The FAL disappeared and I didn't see it again for a couple months when I realized I could will it into existence and out... It never held any real meaning to me in my absence of understanding. At least, not until reports started surfacing of people who WERE guns, some of whom could manifest both the form of a human and that of a gun at once.
"So... Those memories... I'm. Fuck. I'M a gun... somehow."
>After a month or two of research I came to the conclusion that these... waffengeists as people called them generally could own themselves. In these feverish memories I'd eventually just wondered off, out of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in 1979, not that it resulted in much good, seeing as I was just looking into a mirror one day and the next thing I remember is my third birthday in the mid nineties. 
>Then one day I came across the passage I sought in the skripture of the murderkube.
>"The only weapon that may own itself is man, and the weapon that is not man, but owns itself shall transcend its nature to the estate of man." It said in blood soaked letters. The only question that remained to me was how much I should ever exploit the ability to will an FAL into existence, if ever. 
>I decided never unless I had no other option. 

March 21 2019.
>I was in the shower that morning when I heard Ekatarina wake with a start, luckily just as I had rinsed off. I turned the shower off and stepped out, covered by a towel, to greet a confused looking Ekatarina, who... held an FAL. I had forgotten I willed it to me to inspect its condition.
>"Mikhail, what is this?" She asked, a great deal of consternation in her eyes.
"Oh. That's me. Though I haven't thought of it as myself, and more as a possession for the past... three years since I summoned it." I said as I placed a hand on it, smiled, and willed it to disappear. 
>Her face was that of a hopelessly lost child as she thought of what to ask.
>"You're a geist too?"
"I can only be me alone, or me and the rifle. not the rifle."
>"How? How can you do this?"
"I don't know. I guess I owned myself for about fifteen or sixteen years, sneaking around the united states, and then... next thing I knew I was a three year old with parents and no memory of what came before until I was fourteen. I realized I could summon the rifle when I was nineteen. Never could be only the rifle, but the way I'm used to BEING... I'm not an R-1 anymore. I'm a person who can summon an R-1 at will. Though I don't typically do it, since I'm used to just operating as a regular human."
>"So... You were on the other side in the Rhodesian bush war then?"
"The other side being the Rhodies?"
>"Yes."
"Yeah but... don't tell anyone. It'd be a shitty time getting researched and prodded for the purpose of gaining understanding of a new kind of geist. There's a reason male geists are rarely reported, even more that if there are any others like me, there don't seem to be reports of them."
>"I'll keep your secret, Michael. To me, you're a human." she said, her voice signalling all the understanding and tenderness in the world
"Thanks. It means a lot to me."
>"Oh, my big scary Michael is really a softy under all that leather he calls skin." she said teasingly
"Yup, tell you what, go take a shower, get dressed, and we can go get breakfast and hit the rifle range before we start our for Kentucky." 
>"Sounds like a plan. I'll be out in a minute, darling."
>As Katyusha returned from the shower and searched for what she considered to be an appropriate set of attire for a day at the range, she pulled out a set of tan fatigues, complete with a tank top and a fairly plain over shirt, and a simple green dress, holding the dress over her body and transposing it with the fatigues. "Which one, dear?" She asked 
"The fatigues." I said, warmly.
>"Don't like dresses?" She asked as she began folding the dress
"On the contrary, it just doesn't seem like a great choice in the middle of the desert."
>"Well, I can see why you'd think that- What is THIS?" She said as she leaned over to set the dress into the suitcase
"What is it, honey?"
>"Put this on" She said, pulling out another green garment This one was roughly the same color, it was like darkened olive green and had long sleeves with a turtleneck. 
"Do I really have to put on the green sweater?"
>"I think it would look nice on you. Is there something wrong with it?"
"There's nothing wrong with it... it's just that I don't wear it."
>"Put it on." she said, throwing the sweater at me.
"The things I do for love." I said, anticipating the rolling of her eyes and a giggle, instead greeting a look of concern.
>"Michael, why don't you wear it?"
"Turtlenecks aren't really manly, granted there's nothing against looking nice, but I don't really wear this sweater except in private, when I need something warm and all the other hoodies are sweaty. So there's really not many people alive who've seen me wear it."
>"Would you wear it for me?" She asked with a hint of... that couldn't be anxiety could it?
"Sure, I'll do it for you. Now come here." I answered. 
>She came to me and sat in front of me on the bed, looking into my eyes
"You don't have to be nervous around me."
>"I'm not. I look into those blue eyes and... that's odd. They were green a few minutes ago."
"They grayed out when I was twenty."
>"I see all your tenderness and wonder how someone who acts like you can be so kind."
"Years of unpleasantness. I don't like to let it back into my private life, but when I'm doing the business, it's just another task of the job. Let's go."
>Katyusha and I got into a car and started down the road towards the waffle house, then down to the range.
>"Do you mind if I put on some music?"
"Go ahead."
>Katyusha began fiddling with my my ipod and scrolling through songs until she finally found something that caught her ear. This one brings back some memories. A good pick for the last peaceful day in Nevada. 49 broken hearts. Barry Saddler. Such a nice song.

	Chapter Nine: In The Ether.
March 27 2019
>Things have gone well since I brought Katyusha to the Kentucky homestead. Though I wonder what role Katyusha will take or reject. A lover for sure, but a wife? Maybe, though certainly not the one who waits at home. I could live with the thought of putting myself in danger. I could live with the thought of putting her in danger if I was in the same. I couldn't however, bring myself to the acceptance of the worst outcome of those acts. With my finding of her, I had finally escaped a lifetime of silence. I wasn't going to have her destroyed, especially if I was living on. I wasn't going to be the one to die and leave her rusting in a field somewhere, nor was I particularly apt to accept the possibility of dying and leaving her to whoever found her, and inherited the issue of a grief stricken geist who may or may not speak the language.
>Still, she seems to have settled in pretty well. She has nothing but love for the landscape, and the lifestyle of rural Kentucky. She seems to enjoy the forest, though she has nothing but contempt for the coyotes, understandably enough. They could be rather shitty to have around the house, cunty little creatures liked to get into the trash cans and drag shit all over the place. Still, gotta admire that look of pure hatred in her eyes when she sees them.
>As I looked about for the coyotes I finally heard her voice. "Michael! Breakfast is ready!" Came the voice echoing through the woods.
"I'll be right in!" I yelled. 
>She was a very conservative woman by the standards of some of my recently bygone years, but it was the best way for things to be in my estimation. In the previous years, I'd spent a fair amount of time avoiding the hair-dyed and the effete men who fled to the left for a fashionable excuse for their lack of manhood like the plague. I was more than happy to have a conservative woman in my life. I could live with a woman who wears dresses and acts feminine. If she'd leave the being a man part up to me, I'd continue as I'd happily done for years and leave the being the woman part to the women, such is how I feel the world ought to be ordered.
>As I reached the door I was greeted by the smell of freshly made pancakes blended with the smells of bacon and eggs, A beautiful blonde haired woman with green eyes in a blue dress, with a white apron, and a cheery smile. These aren't typically things I see at five in the morning, but I could get used to this.
>As we sat down for breakfast, she went about shedding her apron and sitting down with her own plate, as adorably as any other thing she'd done since we met. Shame I'm gonna have to potentially break up the happiness with some perturbing suggestions.
>"You know, Mikhail, You're gonna have to wake up a few hours earlier than THAT if you intend to sneak out into the woods like that."
"Sneak out? I kissed you on the forehead while you were stirring up."
>"Is that so? And what was so urgent that you had to go into the woods to attend to it at five in the morning?"
"Just had to go out. Stand in the middle of nowhere with no one around, and think."
>"Oh? And what are you thinking about in the woods at five in the morning? Are you unsure about-"
"Decisions. Big ones. I haven't quite settled on them, but I can predict what choices I'll be making from here."
>"Do you normally get up so early for such things?"
"No. But these are abnormal things. Changes to the whole future for me. You're along for the ride, so I was a little hesitant to suggest it to you while I was just coming up with ideas."
>"So, tell me then, what stirs you at this hour? I know you're not the sunrise type."
"Well, now that I have someone to cry for me if I don't come home again, I have to consider the things that I told that youngin' about in the APC a few days back. About whether I still want to do all this PMC shit, stalking the world playing Running gun. I kill people for money as it stands. Sometimes I do the odd job like the one in California. I will say, the skies of Sacramento were cleaner than I last remember seeing them."
>"Is that some kind of sick joke?"
"For those at the table FROM the hellhole known as California, it's barely an exaggeration. In any case, I don't want you to come to harm because I made the decision to keep doing what I'm doing when I don't have to. And I don't want to be the one to die and leave you rusting in some field, nor do I wish to leave you to the sand people, Africans or Chechens. I'm frankly not sure who'd be worse, and don't intend on finding out. So I'm faced weighing my options, which of course leave me inclined NOT to keep playing soldier of fortune at the potential expenses of life and limb or worse."
>"You think there's something more costly than your life and limb, cowboy?"
"To me? Yes. The very same thing that spurs me to think about this course of action. In any case, I'll have to stop working for vulture hawk, either by dying, or by quitting."
>"So you intend to retire from mercenary work? What will you do?"
"I was thinking that going back to the machine shop would be a good course to follow. I went to college for it before the nukes wiped California from the map. In fact, I have a shop in the house that I use quite frequently."
>"So, you intend to give up shooting people and go to work in a machine shop, live a peaceful life and all that?"
"I suppose that'd be the way to put it."
>"That'd be so wonderful. Sleeping in the morning, not worrying about getting shot at, less of the inherent risk." She said, a smile crossing her face. "I wouldn't have to worry about my darling husband going out and catching a burst from an AK or getting blown up by a dirty Chechen, and getting picked up in a field by some terrorist."
"Husband, huh? Well, I suppose that decides the second thing."
>"Second thing?"
"I was thinking about that as well. What role you'd be taking. Since you put it like that, and I think of it, if you claimed to be my wife, I'D believe you."
>Her face showed a tint of red as she realized her slip. "Y-yes, that could be done. Лаки большой рот дурак!" She managed to get out, cursing herself in under her breath, momentarily forgetting that I could understand her.
"Расслабьтесь. Я не вижу никаких оснований, что не может быть правдой." I said to her, trying to reassure her.
>Her face grew redder and she took a deep breath, before the color of her face returned. "You really mean that?" she asked with a hopeful smile.
"I mean it. It'd be irregular of course, but being that secretly, we're BOTH rifles, and such things have been done before between rifles and people who aren't rifles, I see no reason a man rifle couldn't marry a woman rifle." 
>A comfortable silence descended over the table as we finished breakfast. We did the usual things a couple in the middle of nowhere would do on a day off. Watch the sunrise, go back to bed, have a picnic, laze about the house and cuddle. 
>I certainly wasn't the first man or rifle, which ever side of the line I was on, to agree to marry a rifle. I had remembered seeing examples as far back as the year 2016, but I certainly didn't see it coming until this morning. I never anticipated it would be such an appealing idea.

	Chapter Ten: Physical Pleasures.
>"So, Why can't we retire immediately?"
"Because I can't terminate my contract until payday. And some other things."
>"Michael, please? You can quit now, can't you?" She said, grabbing me and pulling my to her by the shirt. I looked down to Meet the most intense gaze she'd ever given me, incidentally followed by a pleading pout. "Please? I promise if you do, we'll both be chafed for the rest of our lives."
"That's not it, Katyusha. While it's tempting, and we'll probably still do that, company policy means that resignations take a month or so to process. In short, I've already quit, We're just caught up in paperwork 'till the end of the month."
>"So You just want to get in a last few contracts?" She asked,, dripping with sketpticism.
"If only I could be free of it today without massive penalties that would sideswipe all the plans I've made for our life after this."
>"How so?"
"Let's just call them legal and financial."
>"Well, what contracts can we take to minimize risks for that?"
"I've taken the liberty of having Sarah send me a few contract dossiers for that. I've got a couple that come straight to mind. One is a mid risk contract that involves some clearing of holdouts in the now mostly depopulated middle east, and another involving the use of aviation assets to provide support for a team while they call in targets."
>"Those two are the best?"
"Good pay, relatively low risk. I've got enough time and money to do these, and then, retire from merc work in april."
>"Well. I guess we could work on that. which one should we take?"
"I'm thinking the latter. It just seems so appealing."
>"Why?"
"I get to Fly an A-10C." Truthfully how the company got an A-10C and kept it in good condition for fucking shit up and pulling G's is beyond me.
>"You know how to fly that thing?"
"When I was a kid, it was the coolest thing in video games. A study sim that made you learn how to ACTUALLY use the A-10C. If you read the manual, it was impossible to fuck up."

	April 4 2019 10 AM.
>Ekatarina and I stood on the parking area next to an A-10C receiving the last of its armaments for the coming flight.
"She's a beauty alright. And I'm not just talking about the plane."
>"Well, you're only getting in one today. You got your Makarov?"
"Yes. The PB is ready to go."
>"And the challenge reply card?"
"Memorized. Look, I know, it fucking sucks that I can't bring you with me, but I can't fit you in the cockpit in either of your forms."
>"That's not it."
"Then what IS it?"
>"Look at me, stupid American cowboy." She said sharply, almost at a hiss. Drawing my eyes immediately. "You said you were done with this. I know I can trust YOU, but something about the ground team makes my skin crawl today. I don't trust them, they've been acting like scheming vermin all day. Look, I know you'll think something up, if they won't put me on during your return trip, don't come back, you understand?"
"Now that you mention it, something does seem off, but I don't think they'd do that. But... yeah, I'll think of something. I'm not leaving you to them if some shit goes down."
>"Ok, would have been sad if you didn't come to my rescue anyway. Three o'clock, twenty seconds." She said with a deep sense of agitation in her voice. I looked over to my right to see Sarah approaching 
>"Sorry I'm late, I know it looks like you'll be stepping about ten minutes late... Why am I not surprised that you know how to fly this thing, Mikey?"
"Probably because as much as I've changed, I've only stayed the same the last ten years or so."
>"You've been briefed?"
"Fly to the waypoints, check in with JTAC playboy and play the Game."
>I climbed into the cockpit for startup.
>A familiar hiss came to my ears, and as I had remembered from any time I heard it, it gave way to a huff and then a smaller hiss. This sound always gave me some form of physical pleasure, and brought anxiety in my mind to a halt. 
>As I began the process I needed for the task at hand, I waited for the highest, loudest hiss of them to start, because the sooner it was over, the sooner I could enjoy the sedate hissing of the engines. 
>It was a skill trained into me voluntarily to use this machine, I enjoyed it, and if left unchecked, I could be liable to fall asleep after startup when the APU shut down and left me with the sedate hissing of the engines, which always invited a calm, and a tendency to unwind, right there in the cockpit... until I throttled them up that is...
"Alright, lets keep thinking of thorns and pain until this fucker starts off the ground." I said to myself optimistically.
	
	11:24 AM Command tent.
>Sarah and Ekatarina sat about in the command tent. Sarah decided to break the silence.
>"Hows Mike been at home, same old gloomy self?"
"I don't see how that's your business." Ekatarina answered, her irritation well masked behind a noncommittal tone.
>"He's one of my operators, maybe just a cog in the machine, but being a team leader, he's an important cog."
"He's been very happy since I've seen him at home."
>"I know THIS one's none of my business, but did you two..?"
"Like animals." Ekatarina said in the most flat and uninterested tone of voice she could create.

	11:42 AM
>Commands started coming through the radio and issuing simple attack orders, less in line with JTAC nine lines, and more on par with "See this, reference that, break the other thing."
>"Hey, Uzi, we got a compound over to the west, 2 clicks out to the northeast, heading 065, you can't miss it."
"I've got it. I'll put some dumb bombs in there."
>I extended for the pass and set the DSMS for the two bombracks that held MK82's, and made the pass, a couple 500 pound dumb bombs landing inside the compound and emptying my stores of all but two mavericks, a full load for the gun, and a couple AIM-9s.
>BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP 
>I looed at the RWR and ready the symbology as being that of a manpad.
>Deploy flares, maneuver, spook missle. repeat.
>As I found the source of these ancient stingers, I decided the proper course was to fire up that oh so sexy GAU-8.
>GUN ARM 
>PAC 1 (first stage of the trigger pull)
>BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT 
"Ah, I hate my job!" I said to myself, laughing at my own reference to something obscure even to me, somewhere behind years that would drench me in blood and terror, someone had said that exact thing.
>I watched as the people launching the missiles were disintegrated by high explosive 30mm, and pulled up to go to loiter.

	2 PM
"Playboy, this is Uzi, Playtime is zero mikes, checking out."
>"Roger that, Uzi! Good luck out."
	3:30 PM
>I landed on the field and dismounted the A-10 in a rather mundane fashion, meeting Sarah on the parking area.
"Wheres Ekatarina?"
>"She's in the command tent. Come on, she's waiting."
>As we reached the command tent, I saw Ekatarina struggling against a guard and a set of restraints 
"Katyusha NO-" I manage to get out before feeling a rifle butt hit the side of my head and a prick at the side of my neck while a boot pins me by the chest. Everything is... getting... dark.
Chapter 11: Tribulations.
>I awakened to the feeling of my head in a vise and the sound of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ringing through my head. 
>Time to ask the important questions... why did I agree to this again? Oh yes, Money. Can I see anything? There's a pale figure moving back and forth not far from me, if I have to guess, looks like a woman in a short skirt pacing, but I can't focus my eyes yet. Range? Five feet maybe?
>There's a draft in here... and something scratchy but... soft? And it's moving in strokes or thrusts, back and forth... 
>Five seconds had passed.
>My eyes focus and I come to alert.
"What the FUCK!?" The first thing I actually hear came, my voice reaching my ears echoing up my skull. Realizing the real answers to my earlier questions about personnel in the room. A woman in a short skirt, ranged not at five to seven feet but two feet at the most, literally straddled on top of me.
>I try to headbutt my assailant only to have my neck slammed back by something as she arches her back, clenching her jaw and shuddering, a muffled moan traveling through my bones to my skull.
>As my throat strained and I coughed she bowed her head over me. I finally caught her gaze when I stopped coughing.
>"Ooh, you're a cute one, I love when they struggle." She said with a savage expression on her face "You haven't figured it out yet? Ooh, poor little Michael, You're at my mercy. You didn't HONESTLY think we'd leave your neck unrestrained HERE of all places, did you?" She said as she stood off of me, rolling her skirt down in the process.
>After she pulled her panties back up she turned to me, her dark brown hair shrouding her eyes down to her cheek bones. "If you struggle again I'll turn on the lights, would SHE like to see you like this?" She said, stepping to the side, revealing a tinted window, Ekatarina on the other side, wide eyed with a face of terror.
>"What's that, baby? I can't hear you, you gotta speak up. Unless of course you WANT her to see you like this." She said in a mocking tone, as though speaking to an injured child.
"No."
>"Good, then it'll be our little secret." She said as she tapped a keypad near the door, opening it with a great deal of ceremony while she exited and pressed a button to close the door behind her, with a final. "I'd pull up my pants if I were you." before the door swung shut and a set of visually impressive locking lugs extended into the apparently several ton door.
>My restraints unlocked seconds later.
"Where am I? Why am I here? Why haven't they killed me already?" I mused to myself as I pulled up my pants and put together what just happened.
>Ninety seconds later the lights came on and I was in front of the window looking on. What had happened? Why was she spooked? It couldn't be the obvious. Weren't VDV trained to resist interrogation? The look of terror on her face seemed to subside to one of anger and hopelessness.
>Then it occurred to me that I was Naked from the waste up and had several scratch marks on my chest, none of which had come from her... those ones were on my back. As well, I had several that had appeared to actually be from a knife being dragged across my chest. come to think of it, felt like it too.
"I know where I am! Fuck! ARE WE IN THE TRUTH PIT?" I yelled to the no one in particular I figured was likely monitoring the room.
>A voice came over a speaker in my cell. "Yep."
"So, when does it become apparent why I'm here?"
>"Probably when you ask."
"Ask who?"
>"Careful what you wish for, Berdan."
"I've sent dozens of people here, haven't I?"
>"Yup, You've been something of a faceless legend around here for some time. If you give us what we want, whatever it is, you'll probably be free to go."
"This doesn't sound good. Legend has it I could be here indefinitely."
>"You mean fact. Don't worry, Alice likes you. you don't want to be one she doesn't like."
"If that's what she does to the prisoners she likes, I shudder to imagine what she does to the ones she doesn't."
>"Nothing."
"Oh so that was special treatment. I've heard rumors about this place from the people entrusted with escorting people here, but damn, I thought Alice was the torturer or something."
>"She is. But occasionally she sees a prisoner she likes every few months. You'll find out in time."
"So rapey Alice is gonna be my interrogator?"
>"Yup."
"Oh, that's cute, she thinks she can make me bond with her by raping me while I'm restrained and half conscious." I thought to myself, placing a hand on the glass and looking on at Katyusha. "But how to get to her-"
>"Gas him." I heard as a stream of vapor started pouring into the room from the top. 
"Not again. Maybe it won't be so bad this time."

Time: Unknown
Date: Unknown
>I found myself in a dimly lit room sitting down, this time restrained by handcuffs, I looked up at the feeling of a warm hand stroking the stubble of my jaw. The tearing sound of the bristly hairs flexing and releasing under the skin of a soft hand.
"Sarah? What the FUCK is this about?"
>A hand rubbed my inner thigh, drawing my attention to Alice. "Oh, I can tell, I'm gonna have some fun with you two." she said, glancing over to Ekatarina, who was tied to the opposite wall about fifteen feet away.
"What do you want?"
>"Well, we want to know what THIS is." Sarah said, pulling out an evidence bag with a heavily bloodied object in it.
"It's a knife."
>"That's not what I want. You should probably stop the smartass act or I'll let Alice at you again."
"You were here the first time? You sick cunt, I swear to fucking god, I'll fucking kill you."
>"Ooh, I LOVE when they play their parts, can I keep him, Sarah?"
>"I'll fucking kill you, sabaka." Ekatarina growled from behind clenched teeth to Alice.
>"It's nothing personal. All you have to do is tell us what's on the knife and you two are free to go."
"Blood."
>"From WHAT?"
"'From WHAT' you ask, as though I know, you saw the helmet footage, I presume, you have about as good an understanding as I do."
>"Then why do the logs list them as SKINWALKERS?"
"The idea was to jokingly assign them a name and let the scientists deal with it."
>"You see, this doesn't explain a few things, How did you know you could take that thing? Why with a pistol and a knife? Why aren't you insane like all other cases of contact with this?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
>"You're the only one who was exposed who hasn't gone insane. Dick was committed on the 25th, Sophie was committed and managed to kill herself on the 28th, previous expeditions have never shown exposure to these things without insanity following."
"So We're the only two who haven't started pulling out our hair and swinging from the ceiling fan? Is that it?"
>"Yes. Because of these two notable facts, you two being sane after more than a week, and the fact that you killed one of them without flinching is enough to gather a great deal of attention young man. Why did you think previous expeditions returned halfway through the state?" A third figure stated entering the room.
"And who are YOU? The company shrink? OH FOR FUCKS SAKE, YOU TOO?"
>"Yes, Michael. I'm the psychologist. Now... Keel, is it REALLY necessary to have Alice present for this? This is an interrogation, not a rape."
>"It's not?" Alice asked, evidently disappointed.
>"We turn a blind eye to your 'activities' so long as you don't cost the company money, and your particular appetite for control has saved us money, though I don't think it's gonna work on mister Berdan. You can go now, or I could have some documentation sent to corporate if you'd like." He threatened. Alice left the room gesturing to Ekatarina and I with her tongue, grabbing nothing but scowls from prisoners and psychologists alike. The only person not visibly angered by her presence or the manner of her exit being Sarah.
>"Now, Mike. We can be nice and cordial, you can explain at least how you knew you could take on that thing and why you figure you might not be insane, or we can arrange to have you two picked up and taken to some institute for scientific research and dissection, but of course, not before leaving BOTH of you to Alice for her own amusement for a few months beforehand." Sarah prodded. "She really seems to like you, and it's taken some pretty heavy convincing thus far to keep her from going after dessert over there. I can't guarantee that for more than another couple days if you don't cooperate." She added, nodding her head toward Ekatarina.
"If I'm telling you this shit, I want your WORD. If you let that fucking cunt ANYWHERE near Ekatarina, you're digging your own graves."
>"Fair enough."
"Humans don't just see skinwalkers and stay sane. Then again, it could be that everyone else who did it was insane to start with and just lost their composure when they saw them."
>"All 126 of them?"
"Well if that's the case, possibly."
>"Whole expeditions have been wiped out by this, take the issue seriously or Alice is coming back and starting on Ekatarina first." The psychologist stated.
"Stranger shit has happened. Ever heard of the Dyatlov pass incident?"
>"No. Elaborate."
"Nine Russian hikers set up camp in the mountains, they all flee their tent undressing as they do so and freeze to death, the one woman on the trip is found with her tongue gone when they eventually DO find them. No one has yet explained to any satisfaction what happened to them. I think these might be the same type of animal. People see them, their minds unravel, probably owing to some inherent trait of all human psyches."
>"Then why is it that you and that rifle saw it and neither of you is insane. She's a rifle so we can chalk that up to observed differences between-..." The psych paused with a look of consternation on his face.
>Sarah looked upon him in disbelief, figuring what leap he'd made.
>The psychologist looked to Sarah, who looked at him as though he didn't even need to say the next sentence for the preposterous nature of it to fill the room.
>"No, he isn't. He can't be." Sarah stated.
>"How do you know?"
>"I've known him since he was a teenager, he's aged so much since then, weapons don't do that, not unless they will it, that'd be the most elaborate ploy I've ever witnessed, he had PARENTS, AND FAMILY, he has a sister, and a common last name with everyone." Sarah began listing
>"Michael, is what she's saying true. You're not..." He trailed off cuing me to answer.

With a sigh I answered, noting the alarm on Ekatarina's face as I started out. "It's not quite what you'd expect in that it's not a yes OR no on that. It's both."
>"You... Huh? You know, I told you I'd bring back Alice-"
"Uncuff me, I'll show you."
>This would work wonders either way. If I was lying, they'd bring back Alice, who'd likely give me an opening to break out at a later time. If I was telling the truth, They'd either take me at my word, or uncuff me and give me the opportunity to use the R1.
>"Fuck it." Sarah said, releasing me from my restraints. I summoned the rifle and brought it to bare on the psych.
"See. I told you I'd show you. I've lived up to my end, now will you live up to yours?" I said, raising the R1 to his clavicle.
>"Well, given this power, we can't go public with this. A male geist's psyche withstanding a skinwalker isn't remotely news worthy. We'll have to let you two go free." 
"Can you release Ekatarina then?"
>Sarah walked to Ekatarina and released her from her restraints before recoiling and falling to the ground coughing.
>A small part of me remaining from before the zone wanted to ask what gives, but I decided against it, since I knew well what side I was on.
>"We apologize for the misunderstanding." said the old man.
"Who's fault is this?"
>"I take full responsibility. You understand what we thought."
"Yeah. That you could make money."
>Sarah led Ekatarina and I out to the front where a helicopter waited, flying us to what was supposed to be the outpost that people coming and going from the truth pit were interchanged at.
>"Look, Mike. For what it's worth, I'm sorry I put you in there."
"I'm retiring from the company, in case you didn't know. If I ever see you again, I'm not gonna be as merciful as Ekatarina was in the interrogation room." 
> Sarah hung her head in shame for the betrayal she had partaken of, and the objects of that betrayal. She'd have to live with my lack of sympathy over her trapping me for what was to be physiological experimentation. Only by the grace of the need to cover this up to avoid damages to name did she still have her head, which I was fully prepared to ventilate in a violent escape.

>A voice came from the cockpit that shook everyone from their stewing in anger, shame and indignation.
>"Birdstrike! RPM is fucked! WE HAVE TO AUTO ROTATE, EVERYONE GRAB SOMETHING AND HANG ON!" came the scream from the cockpit.
>The helicopter began to fall under us toward the now highly accelerated dirt. 
>"Brace for impact!" came the shout from the cockpit.
>In an instant I felt myself out of control, forces of acceleration giving no effect on me, but for the forces of impacts tossing me about the cargo bay of the the helicopter. 

>I finally came to a rest, opening my eyes would have been too much effort, this day, seemingly in the middle of it, around noon when we left would have to be put on hold until I could catch my breath.

	Chapter 12: From The Ether/The Hard Earth.
>I woke up and looked into my surroundings, I found I was in a dark surround with only a silvery stream shining into what had to be essentially a metal box. I felt fine, save for some scrapes and scratches, which didn't bother me. 
"Где я? Я буду проверять на членов экипажа и пассажиров"
>I slowly crept around the darkened cavity checking on crewmembers first, finding only cold corpses, layered in congealed blood and pale skin turned gray, eventually I got to the passengers, finding first, a woman still fastened to her seat. 
"Я не знаю, почему, но ты меня сердится." I said to the pale vessel that once contained a soul and a living mind, evidently having left her sometime about twelve hours ago when she apparently broke her neck, collar, right shoulder, and a few other bones that aren't important to the situation.
>I moved toward the back to find another passenger, this one still living, if unconscious. He had greasy dirty blonde hair that had clearly turned green since his last shower, his chest rose and fell rhythmically, slowly, but surely. He was covered in scratches and bruises, having evidently been tossed around the cargo bay in the impact.
>I gave him a quick once over and decided he was likely in good enough condition that he'd wake up at some point, before searching out an exit, and dragging him through it.
>We, rather I, set up camp about three hundred yards away, the ground was cold and semi hard, I pilfered some shelter halves, a Makarov PB, a box of loaded 9X39MM rifle magazines, a few loaded 9mm pistols of various types, some survival rations, and some basic MREs from the wreckage. From a couple timepieces I scavenged from the wreckage, I gathered that it was 11:48 PM of the 16th.
"Как я сюда попал? Где я? Может быть, он мог бы сказать мне, если он не спит." I say, looking at the unconscious man. I decided to check him for identification, finding what I was looking for in his dogtag on his neck. I found I couldn't read the tag, since it seemed to be in... English?
"Английский? Где в мире я?"
>I could go back for the rifle or I could get some sleep. So I'll get some sleep. 

	6:24 AM 
>I woke up to the sun beginning to light the sky. The air was frigid. Come to think of it, how would that man feel right now if he was awake?
>I looked to where I had set him and found to my surprise he wasn't where I had left him.
>I scanned the horizon and saw nothing.
>"Sleep well?" Came a voice from behind me
>As I turned to meet the voice I saw the man I had dragged out of the crash sitting behind me against a tree, the calm gray eyes meeting me with a rueful half smile.
"Кто ты?"
>"I'm Michael, don't you remember?" he answered.
"Михаил?"
>"вы забыли вы говорите по-английски?" He finally understood.
"Я не говорю по-английски, вы должны иметь меня путать с кем-то еще."
>"ХА! Они дали вам конфузоры." he answered, as though he wasn't surprised.
"Конфузоров?"
>"Лекарства, которые ухудшили память, они стираться через некоторое время, но вы даже знаете, как вы сюда попали?"
"Мы были в аварии вертолета, были не мы?"
>"Да, но что-то пришел раньше? Или эта маленькая живописная картина ваш мир?"
"Я ... Я не помню." I said, realizing there was something to this maniacal tapestry he wove with his words.
>"Вы будете помнить каждую вещь в течение нескольких часов, но вы хотели бы краткое объяснение?" He probed.
"да"
>"Мы были освобождены из тюрьмы под названием яма правда."
"Почему мы были там?"
>"Я убил животное. Они хотели бы знать об этом."
"Почему так срочно?"
>"Со временем, вы будете знать. В любом случае, мы не безопасны. Мы должны уйти, прежде чем они придут к нам." He said, rolling up a sleeping bag and making a pack out of a shelter half. 
"Who will come?"
>"Ah! Good, I see English has come back to you." 
"English... So I do speak it."
>"To answer your last, Mercs. Now, they don't send out search teams to RESCUE the prisoners in the event of a crash. I've dealt in this area before. The people from the prison don't get any communication from the outside and it's entirely unheard of and is never logged when a prisoner is released from the truth pit. How long have we been crashed?" He asked, evidently not concerned with my comprehension of the backstory
"Since about ten yesterday morning to noon yesterday, judging by the state of decay on the corpses."
>"So that's about 16-18 hours. We'll eat later, for now we have to move, help me pack up."
"So what DO they send out the search teams for?" I asked, packing my sleeping bag, into the shelter half and making a pack out of it, handing him half the MRE's and survival rations as I packed."
>"Like I said, not prisoners. Not rescue in the first place either, they can't have crew or prisoners escaping and telling someone in the world what happens in there, what's available. That's why in the contract you give up the right to life if you deviate from course on the way between class E facilities and their external checkpoints. Hand me those mags." he said, as he was finishing packing the food and water.
"But why? I couldn't find the rifle they work in. Do you have it?"
>As he heard this remark his face stretched into a smile that seemed to say 'If only you knew..." or indicate that I was being silly before flexing to a thoughtful expression on how to justify taking them. "If we leave evidence, they'll know someone was here, I'll take them." He stated after what seemed to be five seconds of thought.
"Where will we go?"
>"To that Hill." he said, pointing to a hill in the east and beginning to walk, keeping his head on a graceful swivel.
"So... Do you know where we are?"
>"I managed to take a look at the pilot's charts while you slept. If that hill in the east is PRECISELY the one I think it is, we'll know exactly where we are."
"And what does that mean for us if you can figure that out?"
>"Well. There are certain facts of life. We're in the clear because no one going into the truth pit as a prisoner ever comes out, and we aren't on the aircraft manifest. in short, if we get out of the area, don't get picked up by the search teams, we'll live. it's not uncommon for the aircraft heading in to have unarmed crews and no survival supplies, so they won't think too hard about a few missing pistols, emergency rations, and the like. In fact, from having taken a few people there myself, they don't even manifest prisoners going in. We were never in the truth pit, we never went through the exterior checkpoint, basically, the truth pit has never, does not, and will never exist." He explained as we continued through the woods. "Furthermore, no one who's been stationed there is aware of the existence of such a facility, nor would they be disposed to discuss such a facility if it did in face exist." He amended in a scratchy voice that seemed to reflect a grizzled veteran having come to the full state of disillusionment caused by the darkness of his profession.
>The walk continued on for eight hours until we stopped at the foot of the hill, the ground inclined at a shallow angle.
>"Here seems like a good place to stop." He finally said.
"About time you say something, Mikhail. Aren't you hungry?"
>"Yes, but that could wait while we got our asses clear of the wreck and I wanted to get FAR away from that shit before I even thought of food."
"What would be the response time on those search teams?"
>"They wait a day, so they're probably getting there right now. Gives the crew more of an impression that they were hard to find and that the rescue team worked hard to get to them. Then they gather the crew together before they shoot them and stuff'em in bags."
"How do you know all this?" I inquired, sensing I might regret getting an answer as I pulled out the survival rations.
>"Well, katyusha. To answer your question, I was on those parties once or twice or maybe ten to fifteen times. These fucking idiots they trust with helicopters are more often quiet people than competent pilots. They take many risks that are beyond retarded, like trying to fly the helicopter through a canyon like a plane with a good thrust to weight ratio. Only helicopters can't pull like planes can, their operating principles don't lend themselves to that at a good speed like a hundred and fifty. That one came from the lone survivor of a wreck caused by a pilot in a huey trying that, which was good until he got a few pulls into the joyride and the 'Jesus Nut' snapped, sending it into a shallow impact in the side of a hill. Speaking of, the one we're climbing SHOULD be 'Big Frog' summit. if so, we'll be surrounded by towns we can reach tomorrow or the day after. If it is, we should be able to see McCaysville about nine miles out."
"How long to reach it?"
>"Probably a good day or two. If I'm being honest, Everything aches. It's been a hell of a day."
"You're not wrong, Dorogoy. I started out of the wreck dragging a perfect stranger I'd never seen before. Now I remember everything. What did Sarah mean in the pit?"
>"Huh?" he said, his face falling into a frown of introspection and sorrow.
"Why the face? Michael? Are you okay? What's wrong?"
>"It's just a... everything before the zone seems so far away. Before the draft, the zone, the company. Everything from a time but a couple years past. Every ONE I knew. They're all dead. I just... hadn't thought about it until now." He said, the frown contorting ever deeper as he thought into his past, the calm gray eyes that seemed to change color inside the iris every time he changed a shirt changing to red outside the iris, as all that connected him to the root of his identity, the base that his world had built on receded before his eyes into mere memories.
"I know. It's happened twice now, hasn't it? The beginning of your world and everyone associated with it, every meaningful fragment of it, has finally been ground to dust." I said, embracing him. I could empathize with him. The same thing that had happened to him in Rhodesia, and once again in California had been what happened to me in the soviet union, an odd experience to say the least. Even if one did struggle in the place that made up the core of their world, it was always a hard experience when a geist or a person realized they'd lost all link to the place from which they came. Whether they loved the place or wished they'd dropped the bombs themselves.
>I felt it again. The loss of the backdrop. Things were looking... well, I can't say where yet. But I can say that I certainly have a great deal of leverage over where that is. 
"It hurts to lose the backdrop. That's undeniable. But, Katyusha?"
>"Yes, Michael?"
"My commitment to you still stands. I've got all the leverage in the world right now."
>"That was... quick." She responded, apparently surprised at my sudden snap out of despair.
"I'm getting out of this, we're gonna go back to Kentucky and live in peace. We're gonna stake the claim as it were, and we're gonna get out of this whole 'shooting people' business."
>"I don't doubt you, Michael... but I've got to know. What did Alice do to you in there? Why were they threatening to let her do it AGAIN?"
"She was fucking me while I was still drugged."
>"So you're trying to salve a guilty conscience."
"No, at least not for THAT reason. I got my satisfaction when I cunt punted her on the way out. It's certainly not fair to you, I admit that. Not getting to beat the shit out of her with the confusers and all, but if it's worth anything I DID get an extra kidney punch in for you. My chief displeasure at the moment is that I've put us in a dangerous situation and haven't lived up to my commitments." I said to Ekatarina, finishing a survival ration and drinking from a canteen. "My only question now is if you still want to stay on the ride. I know I was supposed to be retired by... what day is it again?"
>"The 17th."
"...Yesterday, and NOT in a fucking facility that doesn't exist for almost two weeks. Can you forgive me for my failure?"
>"That failure is not your own. If I felt your loyalty and commitment were in question, knowing what I know now, and knowing you as I've gotten to, I'd have walked the other way already. You have my loyalty as I have yours. Now, with that said, let's get to the peak and makes some distance between US and IT before it's dark and we have to bed down."

"Probably the best Idea I can think of, we're at about what will be the edge of their search area in something like twelve hours." I concurred, creaking from every joint as I shambled to my feet.
>Inside two more hours of hiking Ekatarina and I had managed to reach the summit, enjoy a few intimate minutes together as we took a quick break from hiking to look over the landscape, and began our search to the east for what would be a good concealed camp site.
>"So, McCaysville? That somewhere they told you to flee to if you got lost?"
"No, I just noted it one day, must've been my twelfth search party, when I volunteered to fly the helicopter so those fucking idiots wouldn't crash it and get ANOTHER search party our there." I explained.
>"You look like you've got something in the back of your mind. Some other issue coming to you, or is the last several days enough?" Ekatarina prodded playfully.
"You're awfully flippant for someone trapped in the forest with me." I answered, a burst of levity being just the right dose in the moment.
>"I'm not stranded here with you, you're stranded here with me." She answered, allowing a heavy Russian accent to slide out as she uttered the second half of the sentence, her voice dropping significantly between words.
"If THAT'S how it is I'd ask you to wait a day so they don't hear my joints clicking."
>"Helicopter crashes have a way of aging people. So what were you thinking about?"
"What our course of action would be when we got to town, how would we get back to Kentucky? Seemed a bigger problem for a minute."
>"You need not worry about that. We can worry about the task at hand for now. Finding us a spot to sleep before the sun sets in a couple hours."
"Why before then? How about we go until the valley starts to get dark."
>"We were fine last night when you were unconscious and I was asleep under a shelter half."
"You mean when the death patrol wasn't POSSIBLY looking for us? I was unconscious since the crash up to about five this morning. I'll take the first watch on the hide site."
>"No you won't." She answered 
"Oh yeah? There a reason for that?"
>"Because you're going to be snuggling with me in the shelter and out of sight of thermal sensors that might be on any passing helicopters."
"That's a pretty good reason."
>"Glad you think so, what time is it?"
"Four thirty-seven in the afternoon."
>"lets keep going and stop at five. We can set up the shelter, eat, look at the stars, and we can go to bed, start out when the sun crests the hills."
>We marched on, putting what I figured had to be at least two miles between us and the mountain. Ekatarina and I stopped in a small depression in the side of a canyon to set up the shelter, where I finally began to realize a couple things about my situation. First was that something, or rather someone was in urgent need of investigation, and second, was that I didn't know her last name.
"Hey, Katyusha, come here!"
>She came to me as I sat down on a rock protruding a couple feet from the steep ground.
>"What do you need?"
"Come sit on my lap, I need to take a look at you."
>"Here? I love you but is this really the place to get frisk-"
"Not that kind of look, now come sit on my lap."
>The geist obeyed, sitting on one of my thighs and looking at anything in the forest that might have moved an inch as I unbuttoned her overshirt and removed her undershirt, revealing a bare set of shoulders, chest, stomach, set of flanks, and back, sporting two C-cup breasts and an extensive set of scratch marks on her skin and bruises likely caused by the crash.
>"Is this the place to do this?" Ekatarina protested as I thoroughly inspected her left arm, using her right arm to cover an exposed pair of pink nipples.
"Yes. Now turn around so I can check your other flank."
>The geist obeyed as I raised her right arm in my hands, rotated it in my hands, and gave it a good once over, paying attention to inspect her right flank.
"Does anything on your upper body ache?"
>"No aches, but I can feel the scrapes." She answered from behind her now red cheeks. "How do I look?"
"Appetizing, but you're also covered in scratches and scrapes, and I haven't even gotten to your legs yet. I imagine your gun form will need to be refinished." I answered, making sure to give her left breast a couple light squeezes as I gave over her undershirt before buttoning on her overshirt.
>"That's not how it works with geists, remember? You've been through it, have you not? Damage to the human form doesn't manifest on the rifle, but damage to the rifle manifests to the human." She answered as though I should know this.
"Tell me, Katyusha, do you remember how the finish was on that R-1 rifle that day after we came from the zone?"
>"The joints were tight, there was one notable scratch on the pistol grip, what's the point?" 
>I willed into existence the rifle in question, joints worn loose to a noticeable wobble, receiver, hand guard and grip scratched to the point that they practically made up a camouflage pattern of their own. "Боже мой!" She said, gently taking and inspecting the stricken rifle.
"Maybe the rifle is bound to the human form since I ascended, but this seems to happen every time I get injured and summon it. The damage goes away as I heal up." I answered, amending "I guess I never really had damage as a rifle, at least, none that I can remember. I did get refinished once, though I never changed between the finish getting messed up and redone."
>"Michael, are you in pain?" She asked with what even I could easily discern as being genuine concern.
"It's a weird kind of pain. it's the kind of pain you know won't stop so you just get tired of feeling it and tune it out. I feel it, but I just don't care that I'm feeling it."
>"Maybe I should be inspecting you. It seems like YOU'RE the one that could use some maintenance and attention." She said, quickly reversing the roles and taking my shirt off, clearly aghast at what had to have been a fair number a scratches, scrapes and bruises littering my body.
>"Does anything ache?" She asked sarcastically, expecting to be met with levity.
"I got no energy for aching. It's gonna be dark soon, and we gotta make a shelter, but before we do anything like that, it occurred to me that even though we've been at this for a month or two, I don't know your name."
>"My dear Mikhail, what do you mean? It's Ekatarina, you've been calling me by it the whole time." She said as she unpacked survival gear.
"Not your first name. Your last."
>"Last name?"
"You know, like mine is Berdan, the president's is Trump, Sarah Keel rotting in a body bag by now, anything like that?"
>"I've never though about it this much. I don't suppose I've ever had one really. I think if you want to think of me as having a maiden name, let it be Vintorez." She answered with consternation written on her face, clearly now pondering why it was that geists never seemed to have those names.
>"You didn't have a last name either?"
"Suppose a rifle coming out of a factory in South Africa in the seventies didn't need a last name when they didn't even give me a serial number, proof marks or inspection stamps."
>"How did quality control work?"
"I think they just cut defective parts up on the spot."
>"So... When did you get your first... eh, sir name?"
"I had to get into the states in the early eighties. So I adopted the name of the last person who I was issued to as a way to forge the paperwork and become an official citizen. So I lived in the states for about fourteen or fifteen years as Kyle Stafford before I woke up one day in ninety-eight as Michael Berdan, with a set of parents and relatives."
>"Tell me if this hurts." She said, prodding a bruise with her finger, snapping me back to the fact that she was looking me over for serious injuries.
"Not too much. About as sore as you'd expect from a bruise."
>She started prodding at various injuries on my body, eventually satisfied that she'd failed to find anything critically injured.
>"I never thought sunset would be such a menacing sight." She said, glancing off into the hill before giving me a kiss on the forehead and buttoning on my field shirt. "Maybe when we're done here..." She trailed off 
"It'll get better. For now? We wait."

	Chapter 13: From The Ether/The Clear Sky.
>The rotor blades chop the air in the midst of night, waking Ekatarina and I from our slumber, her head raising itself from its slackened position resting on my shoulder. It grows louder and sends a mild bass through the ground, our bodies and our shelter.
>"Just die down already. Go away!" She exclaims meekly, sliding her arms and legs under me, wrapping around and hooking onto my back as they roll me to my side and clutched down.
"Shh, young soldier. Don't be afraid, I'm here" 
>As the rotors come to a steady hum, beating the ground, Ekatarina buries her head in my chest, clutching her arms down on my ribcage hard enough to compress it, her hands clamping down on my field shirt, legs hooked around my thighs and heavily contracted. I rest my head on hers and wrap my arms around her, holding her tight.
"Shh, my young soldier. Don't be afraid, I'm here." I say in a hushed tone.
>The rotor chops in the air fading into the distance with an occasional stutter of staccato bursts that followed a general purpose machine gun. Streaming, fading into the distance. Minutes pass before Ekatarina finally releases her grasp on me.
"Are you alright, sweetie?"
>"Yeah. I'm uh, I'm fine." She says as she pulls her arms away and shakes her limp hands, having evidently white knuckled my back. 
"What fucking time is it?"
>"11:28. You know, Mikhail... I wonder if here's a good spot."
"I know what you're thinking. It would be cold, maybe the friction could keep us warm while we do it. Be a cold night after."
>"All the more reason to cuddle afterword, dorogoy." Ekatarina says as she begins to unbutton my field shirt.
"You know alllll my weaknesses don't you?" I say, planting a kiss on her before going to work on her field shirt.
"Oh, Mikhail, I won't take no for an answer." She says, shedding her undershirt and pulling mine off before going for my pants.
>In seconds we collapse into a thrusting, writhing heap of lust, pants pushed to the knees and locked together at the hips, occasionally kissing to silence Katyusha's moans.
>Eventually Katyusha pulls my head to hers and locks lips with me to muffle a scream as I make a few final thrusts before we go slack and disengage our hips before cuddling up and drifting to sleep.

	10:52 AM. April 18, 2019.
>I wake to the sensation of being crumpled up and ground down as though I'd been abraded all over by a grinding wheel in a machine shop, The temperature, by this point in the day approaching the sixties, feels frigid, likely the result of being soaked in sweat after a day of hiking, then another layer preserved by the balmy and moderately cold air, and brought on by a night of thrusting, grinding and scratching.
>Ekatarina and I are starting to show the signs of being in a survival situation to a small extent. Bad breath is one thing, but flexing, gritting teeth is another sensation that becomes inescapable after being stranded a couple days with no toothbrushes, furthermore, we'd likely develop lower body acne or some kind of infections if the present situation continued for too long, almost never having removed our pants over the last two days, and having kept our clothes soaked in a steady layer of sweat for the last twenty four hours.
>When things get unhygienic, they start to create minor nuisances that can be ignored entirely with negligible effects. That doesn't stay the case forever, as negligible will turn to moderately serious as fast as it turns from nonexistent, and much more rapidly to dire or irreversible from there. For now, the most pressing concern other than our supplies is our feet. We left our boots on when we sheltered down for the night out of habit, further compounding the problem. I estimate that we could probably cover five of the remaining seven miles today allowing us to stop at five again today, this time, though, we'll have to make sure to take off our boots or we'd risk immersion foot, and soon after, on the way to town, trenchfoot. 
>Nature calls, as is the case in the morning when your body has something to throw away. I gently nudge Ekatarina, her face wrenching into a cute little squint, then finally, her eyelids slowly open as she gradually exposes her beautiful green eyes to the light of the day, shooting under our shelter in a desert tan beam that gave off a soft iridescent glow shining on to us.
>"What time is it?"
"10:58. Almost 11."
>"Where are we?"
"Georgia. Seven miles west of McCaysville. At least I figure those are the distances."
>"Why am I so sore?"
"I'm not THAT good am I?"
>"Yes, I think you are. I'm a bit sore. How about you?"
"Like a crumpled beer can. Let me up, nature calls."
>Ekatarina rolled off of me with a pout that might as well have voiced the implied "Do we HAVE to get up now?" and waited for me to rise.
"Don't ask, I don't like it any more than you do, but we HAVE to get up, rescue ain't comin' and we aren't getting any closer to transport back to Kentucky or getting out of this forest alive by lying down and cuddling all day." I said before making the first movements of my body in about ten hours, coming off the ground bare from the waist up with a sound that could only be described as a crunch.
>"Did that hurt?"
"Little better than yesterday, but still plenty sore in the joints." I said, crawling out of the shelter and walking a few dozen yards away to take a leak and empty my bowels, the sounds of my joints popping growing less steady and more sporadic by the step until I reached the 'right' distance and the sound of joints crackling in protest of my activity ceased. 
>I came back to the shelter to find Ekatarina finishing up my pack and pulling her undershirt over her head.
>"I got your half of the gear packed. think it'll be today or tomorrow?"
"Depends how much you wanna risk immersion foot. If we stop at the edge of the mountain range in five miles or so we can get the boots off and let our socks dry over night. Or we can risk it and go all the way and get to town this evening." I said as I pulled on my undershirt and went to work buttoning on my over shirt.
>"well, there's no point in getting there if you can't keep up."
"Now how do we justify being lost in the mountain range?"
>"We were hunting and our truck turned over. That should work, right?"
"At least they gave me back my shit, A trip to the DMV would be ALL I need after we get back to Kentucky."
>"We've both seen some shit, Mike. But the DMV? I think it's safe to say that would be our most harrowing escapade yet. And that's on top of what, This, the skinwalkers, the zone, That ghost that was literally documented on camera, Hell, maybe more rough than Chechnya."
"Can't really say the reward wasn't worth it then. You're here, even if it did cost me some time in a hospital."
>"Who'd have thought 'utro!' would be the scariest word I'd hear in my life?" She said with a visible shudder that seemed to travel up her spine.
"Well, lets get on the road." I Said as we began an easy day of hiking. 
>We have enough food for perhaps one more day, then we'll have to walk into town and earn tomorrow's breakfast.
>We were going at a good pace and making a surprising amount of progress for our states of soreness.
"Worth the aches?" I ask, seeing Katyusha adjust her stride in order to walk more easily, resembling a mild limp.
>"Yeah. Worth it. Speaking of our situation, you'll clean me when we get back, right?"
"Yeah, I'll give you a good cleaning. I'm sure you'd do the same for me."
>"Would? Judging by the sound you made getting up I'm gonna have to."
"Fair enough. Man, how did I get out here?"
>"You shouldn't have come here, stalker. In any case, how will being sent to that place effect your relationship to the company?"
"It won't. As far as they're concerned I wandered off after my last contract and haven't contacted them since. I'm free to continue my current course to resignation at my leisure when we get back. They know Sarah was at the pit, as handlers often head there to personally interrogate prisoners, and as far as they know, we were never there. We just wandered off to take a vacation in South Africa and haven't checked in since. In so many words, it won't"
>"I wonder, tell me, Michael. Do you ever just not give a shit to the point that being out here doesn't bother you?"
"Anyone can do that at first, but trying to resolve the problem of being out here without dying is much easier when you don't wait until your fucked to give a shit. We're probably doing that right now. I just try to appreciate the things out here we'll never see again. It's a fleeting experience. Enjoy it, 'cause time doesn't cycle back around, the second time is never as great, and we'll never be back here for our entire lives if we get out. Just like we'll never meet for the first time again, you'll never hear the word 'utro' without having a flashback again."
>"Flashback is a bit strong, more like fond memory... of being terrified."
>we made a surprising pace, and reached the town around sunset, since we had an hour or so left to traverse the flat valley to town, where we bought new clothes, stopped into a motel, ordered our first meal no to come out of a brown plastic vacuum sealed bag in two days, and finally cuddled up in a sleeping bag to avoid the motel bukake that comes from sleeping in a motel bed. The next day we got bus tickets and started an uneventful journey back to Kentucky.

	Chapter 14: Washing Hands. 
>Ekatarina and I arrived home two days later, April 20 2019. I cleaned the VSS, then took a shower, Ekatarina making sure not to let me clean any part of me.
>The night pressed on, we made dinner, ate, and then retire to the bedroom, This time not to have sex, but instead to merely enjoy each other's presence, our bodies finally clean and newly softened again, in a proper bed, as we cuddle up to sleep.

	April 21 2019. Time undetermined.
>Ekatarina woke to a bed that was soft, but cold. She looked around and found that Michael was nowhere to be found. She rose to investigate.
>As Ekatarina probed the house she came to the conclusion that Michael had undergone some special effort to make himself scarce without her notice, but to what end remained an entirely nebulous idea to her.
>"Why would he do this? Just get up and leave at this hour, where would he go that couldn't wait until morning? Could HE wait until morning? Guess not, seeing as the bed where he should be is entirely cold." She mused to herself, stopping to consider if she should go out and look for him. "Is he out in the woods thinking again? Maybe I could track him if he is."
>She looked out the windows to see if she could find any tracks, greeted by nothing, save for a steady stream of vapor spewing from the truck's exhaust pipe.
>She thought to herself about the strangeness of it all, no tracks in the thin snow were to be seen, but the truck had been run. 
>"Why would he drive out, then back, but not come back in? Is he doing something outside? Something quiet?" 
>Ekatarina decided to look at the scene from another window.
>As she looked out she saw Michael standing motionless save for the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the slow and steady streams of vapor occasionally leaving his face.
>He stood there like a man possessed, staring at the moon through gray eyes which seemed to reflect the silver tones of the moon's soft glow directly at her in a white glare. Some small animal came to his side and sat. Staring with him at the full moon.
>"We don't have any dogs... do we?" She pondered for a moment, before she came to the frightening realization that it was in fact a coyote. She watched in terror while it just sat there, even letting Mike pet its head.
>He appeared to be reflecting, at least, until blood started dripping from his right arm.
>Ekatarina watched in horror as the blood soaked his sleeve and the coyote sniffed the snow where it landed before snarling at him, flinching as though it had been beaten before running away. If only that had been the end of it.
>Ekatarina sprinted out into the frigid temperatures to find Michael soaked from scalp to knee in blood that seemed to have a higher quantity than was in the human body. 
>Her composure crumbling as Michael fell to his knees, glaring at the moon through the gray eyes that had been the only feature of his face not to become caked in blood, now running from his scalp, soaking his face.
>"Michael! No!. Please Don't leave me!" She screamed, grabbing him and gathering his body up in her arms, tears streaming from her eyes as terror overtaking her for the first time in her thirty two years. "Please stop..." She pleaded, sobbing into the glaring heap she struggled to cradle in her arms.
>The blood soaked her arms, seeming to stream out in endless quantities as she realized the ground around him had become soaked solid with blood for a five foot radius, yet he never stopped staring at the moon, a noncommittal face with calm gray eyes now resembling a blood soaked glare. "What happened to you?" Ekatarina asked sobbing over the heap in her arms, glaring directly at the moon.

>Ekatarina felt her heart collapse as the heap in her arms finally slackened and the head that had stayed up through the bleeding, soaking the ground for five feet in any direction finally dipped, going limp.
>"Пожалуйста вернись! Пожалуйста, не умирай!" Ekatarina whimpered into the blood soaked hoodie on the corpse. The silver tones of the moon now only reflecting on a lifeless set of clouded eyes in a set of skin turning pale by the second.
>She heard a growling, but she couldn't care. If it was a coyote here to maul her and kill her, so be it. 
>The scampering of the paws started toward her, causing her to brace for a mauling only by doubling down, cradling Michael tighter.
"It won't do." Came a voice, as the growls of a predator striking began.
>Ekatarina was frozen, Caught out of reach of the decision to either defend herself or look toward the voice.
*Crack* 
"YIPE!" came the sound from the coyote as Ekatarina looked on, a flash assailing her focus. 
>She looked down, seeing a hand covered in blood, solidly clutching a SiG 1911 and becoming Bare under what seemed a disappearing coat of blood.
"It simply won't do. I'll have to make a better one." The voice, now familiar outside the cloud of violence.
>"Michael!? What the hell is going on, why are you covered in blood?"
"What blood?" He asked, confusion flowing in his voice.
>She looked down to see that she was cradling Michael as she had been in the previous minute, but the blood that had soaked him was gone. His clothes dry save for where he was in contact with the snow.
"Let's get you inside. You must be frigid, I need to make a better one, it just isn't doing anyone any good to stay out here." Michael said as he sat up and took Ekatarina under the arm, taking her to bed.

April 21 2019 8AM.
>I wake up and my first thought is to go to the garage and start the forging, I want to finish it quick so Katyusha doesn't catch on to what I'm making.
>I decide to try and disengage myself from Katyusha again like I did last night, but to no avail, as I find she is clamped onto me, tightening her grasp every time I try to move. Her face clasped into a grimace. Since I'm stuck here for a while, I suppose I should ask some questions to the no one in the world who could answer them.
>I think to myself, what happened to me last night? Why was it as though every wound and injury I've ever experienced in my life opened up at once? How did I bleed that much? How am I still alive? Would Ekatarina believe it was just a nightmare? How much of it did she witness?
>...Did that coyote die? Oh shit, she's waking up... hope she doesn't want answers. 
>Katyusha raised her head and gazed at me. Her eyes welling for a brief moment before she clamped herself onto me even tighter and buried her head against my chest, breathing rapidly, apparently trying to reassure herself that what happened last night was only a dream, or that I was actually here, and just some vision of the afterlife.
"It's ok, I'm here." I say, being sure to stroke her hair and try to reassure her.
>"What the fuck happened? You were staring at the moon and then... and then..." She trailed off, beginning to sob.
"Shh. Yup, you seen some shit alright. Seems to be going around."
>"You mean I'm not losing it?"
"No. Not alone at least."
>"I. I saw you just... Start bleeding for no reason. More than any one person can bleed at once."
"I was there. It was like every wound I've ever suffered just opened back up. Then... didn't. Before that I thought I saw Jennifer Stafford, just like the last time I seen her in seventy eight. Pointing to the moon with a black toothed grin."
"It was all so long ago, seemingly so far away, and then for that moment it was all then and there. Now it seems so meaningless, so trite. Even the scars seem to run less deep than they did."
>"Will we ever be able to live in peace? What did you mean when you said 'It won't do?'"
"That. You don't need to know about that yet. It may sound crazy... but I think we might have finally reached our peace. At the least, I have."
>"What makes you so sure?"
"I'm not sure how, maybe it's one of those things people know that just ain't so, but I just know that whatever came to me last night's left me for good."
>"You know, you sound really confident about that."
"I've fought skinwalkers, commies, muslims, plenty of animals and whatever those fucking things were charging out of that store where Sophie got trapped, we escaped from the truth pit and evaded the search teams. If something was going to kill me, it'v done so already. Or that's how I figure it."
>"So how do you want to play it?"
"Well, I'm gonna call the neighbors and tell them I have some time free, ask who's hosting the neighborhood party this month. We can go out and catch up with the neighbors, they'd probably be happy to see me, since they haven't caught up with me in... Fuck, it must be eight months by now. You can meet some of the people around here, settle in a bit more."
>"I'm not sure I'd fit in there." She said with a timid face.
"I was a shutin once, Katyusha. It didn't do me any favors. Would you do both of us a favor and trust me when I say it won't do you any favors either?"
>"Shut in?" She asked, a hint more of the subtle Russian accent running through
"A person who shuns social interaciton. I did it because it was all scorn and derision when I was young. I'd like you to meet the neighbors so you have someone to call if you need help while I'm away. At least think it over. I have a project to attend to. Will you be okay in here? I'll be just down the hall if you need me."
>I proceeded down the hall to the garage and my waiting personal machine shop, beginning work on my surprise...

2:43 PM 
>I walk in from the shop, the fruits of my labor hidden in my pocket. 
>"You were in there a while, what were you working on?"
"Well... The physical part of the project..." She looked at me with confusion. "In time. I gotta shower and get the metal smell off me."
>"Don't be too long. You've been in there six hours already, I'm starting to miss you!"
"That reminds me, We'll have to talk about something when I get out."
>"Why not now?" She asks
>I approach her and when I get within four feet she stops me "That's why!" She says covering her nose "Take a shower, it's like dirt and blood but stronger!" 
>I came back from my shower a few minutes later to find Ekatarina having made use some drinks with fruit in them.
>"Mikhail! Come, sit with me, I've made us some kompot."
"I wasn't in the shower THAT long. How did you make that?"
>"You didn't smell it when you came out of the garage? I've been at it for an hour."
"Dirt and blood I think were your exact words."
>"What did you want to speak to me about?"
"Well. We've been talking about it and how it would be all informal and all, but I thought... If we're staking the claim I could at least make you a better ring than a store would have." I said, reaching out for the glass of kompot, flicking the shiny hunk of metal with dull but shiny orb embedded half way across the table to her.
>"Bozhe moi! Da! I don't know what to say except yes."
"Say nothing of it. It's a labor of love."
>Looking the ring over for the first time she noticed the rough diamond I'd embedded because why the fuck not.
>"Holy shit... You really DID make this... What were you doing in north africa?"
"Hehe. heheheehe. hheheheheeheheehehehee" The laughter came and continued, harder to stop that it should be.
>"Michael? You're making me uncomfortable."
"hahahaha. In time, I guess. To be honest I'd forgotten entirely."


>4:17 pm
>It hadn't been long since I'd given her the ring of titanium when we arrived at The Pearson residence, where Josh and Maggie were hosting the neighborhood party. It was a tradition in this rural community to hold a party every month so everyone for a few miles could gather. We lived a rural life out here, and it would have been a lonely one at that if not for the effort the community made to come together and get to know their distant neighbors. 
>"Oh my god. Mike! You son of a bitch, get in here, Maggie will be thrilled" Josh said, pausing for a second with notable surprise on his face as he saw her "And you've got yourself a lady! Hey Maggie! You owe me five bucks!" He said, yelling into the house at Maggie, likely still in the kitchen preparing the drinks for the party.
"Ekatarina, I'd like you to meet Josh Pearson, he lives here with his wife Maggie, Josh, this is Ekatarina."
>Josh put on his best behavior as he invited us into the house, his wife Maggie appearing out of the kitchen with a tray of cocktails in hand. Maggie spoke "Hi there! I'm Maggie Pearson, I see you've already met my husband Josh, and you are..?"
>"Ekatarina Vintorez. Though you may want to learn only the first name." Ekatarina fired back, finally starting to show her social side.
>"So that's what it takes for Mike to bring a girl around to show us. What a prude." Maggie prodded half to me and half to Josh.
>"Yeah, a real square, I'm sure Jenny's gonna be crushed."
>"Michael? What are they talking about?"
"You're the first woman I've brought to one of these parties." I explained hoping to deflect the questions about Jenny.
>"Michael, you KNOW that's not what I'm referring to, so first, who's Jenny, and second, Really?"
"Jenny... Well you'll meet her but she's basically a slut who keeps making passes at me. And yes. Really."
>"I'm honored."
>"Drinks?" Maggie offered
"yes please." Ekatarina and I said in chorus
>As we sipped at our booze Jenny walked in the door on the arm of Chris Jenkins, knocking on the door frame as she passed the portal, catching sight of us. "Well son of a bitch, just when I give up you come crawling back." She teased 
"Jenny Hansen, a sight for sore eyes as always. They're getting sorer by the second."
>"What kept you so long? it's been eight months- Who is THIS lovely young woman?" She started in a scolding tone.
>"Hey! Ease up there, Mike may be into the conservative type... and a prude, but that's nothing to hold against him." Chris chimed in, casting an imposing air onto Jenny, perhaps prompting her to behave, perhaps warning of disciplinary 'action'
>"Please, everybody have some drinks!" Maggie finally added, breaking up the mounting probability that Jenny would find out how to get Ekatarina to do something... professional. 
"Just like Ma used to make" I remarked sarcastically, gulping down the mixture of alcohol and whatever else.
>"Sure, if you're a degenerate." Josh answered.
"You see, the communications failure is that you think I'm joking."
>"I never took you for the illicit hooch type." Josh stated
"It wasn't illegal, I was just young."
>"You hear about the new neighbors?"
"No, who're they?" 
>"These two guys moved out here, bought a farm, father and son, I guess they're looking to set up a family farm for when the son finds a wife."
>I thought about that general profile for several seconds before Ekatarina finally intervenes. "What?"
"Just sounds familiar."
>"MICHAEL! You don't mean THOSE two do you?"
"What odds would you place on it?"
>"There must be at LEAST a hundred thousand people who fit that description. Speaking of which, who spilled fruit juice in the vodka?"
>This brought out a hearty laugh from Maggie, who mixed these so called "alcoholic" drinks.
>a knock came on the door, as two figures walked in, an old man easily 6'6" with a Jerry reed like presence about him and a man of 6 feet with brown hair.
>"Well I'll be damned I wasn't expecting YOU to be here. How you been, old man?" The tall one asked.
"Jim, Pete? You're the new neighbors?" 
>"The very same! Oh, the company asked me to bring you this parcel and that they'd be happy to provide a positive reference anytime in the future." Pete said, handing me a yellow envelope.
>I opened it to see a folder that read "Personnel file: Michael Horton Berdan" with a comically large red stamp that read "RESIGNED."
>"Think of it as a 'clearing of the air' on the company's behalf." James offered as I slid the folder back into the envelope.
>The party eventually moves out onto the balcony, and I eventually find myself alone with Ekatarina. "So. What's in your dossier?" 
"lets read." I said opening the folder and looking in. "Michael Horton Berdan, date of birth unconfirmed, claimed 1-18-95, operations logged around the world, ooh, they put some surveillance on me in september. Not much else here, a profile of exploitable psychological traits, lonely type, familiarity bias, etc etc."
>"They put surveillance on you?"
"Yup, says here they determined me to have a prior degenerate stint with social but not religious reform. Antisocial tendencies, notable acceptance rate of relatively high risk contracts, no confirmed living relatives. Good to know I could keep at least THAT a secret from them."
>"You don't trust them with the knowledge of your family?"
"Would you?"
>"I don't know. You were wise not to."
"They even have a record of when I sent the psychologist an adaptation of the 'We Wuz Kangz' copypasta." I said, letting out a chuckle as she took the folder and started reading it off.
"HOLD UP NOW
>Revs up Ford
SO WHATCHA TRYNA TELL ME
>goes all in at a poker table
IS THAT WE
>downs half a bottle of gin
ARE CURRENTLY IN
>snorts 20 lines of cocaine
SOME KIND OF A
>shoots loaded .38 into the air
TEXAS PSYCHOBILLY FREAKOUT, IS THAT WHAT THIS IS?
>shreds on rockabilly-tuned electric guitar"
>A look of utter confusion crosses her face as she reads off the references to which she is not acquainted before she continues to lean on me while she reads the entirety of the file in a matter of minutes, checking my hands at the evident mention of them often bearing some kinds of scrapes, scratches or other scathing from an unknown source.
>"If this file is any reflection, you've changed since we've been living together."
"In some ways I suppose. It's been a hell of a couple months."
>The party went on, and soon it was time to go to sleep. We drove home the next morning and burned the dossier they'd given me.

July 25th 2019 6:34 PM
>I walked up to the house and opened the door, greeted by the sound of Ekatarina running into my arms.
"Good news! They gave me a machine!"
>"That's wonderful! What a change it's been."
"Looking at us now you'd never guess we were both literally guns, and one of us was a mercenary just a couple months ago."
>"It's peaceful save for the coyotes."
"Eh, they'll keep their distance. Unless of course you wanted to kill them so we could have some actual pets like dogs or something."
>"Can we?"
"You know, unsurprising as it might be, when I was little I had a dog named gunner."
>"Can we hunt the coyotes?" Ekatarina said giving me puppy dog eyes that couldn't be denied.
"Okay, we'll do it this weekend. but for now lets just sit down and relax a while."
>Time would go on to prove I was capable of the peaceful life without the constant misery of empty idle time consuming me. In fact, with Ekatarina, it couldn't be described as anything but happy. Maybe I'll have adventures in the future... but for now, I can survive a lengthy bout of peace with my new wife by my side.