A/N
So far no reviews but a lot of hits on the story, I guess I'm doing alright then so here's the next chapter I hope it is as refreshing in writing as it is in plot if that makes sense.
Introduction
There's something I never mention to other soldiers while I was at XCOM. You see I have this gift per say. I sometimes have a restless sleep and I repeat events in the future. I see snippets of things that could be or should've been. I never try to save anyone, because I fail every time. I might save them but I lose something else. Whether it be a piece of equipment or another person. I used to try over and over again. Missions where whole teams are wiped out. I try to save them only to wind up bringing back suicidal soldiers or I just prolong the inevitable . I can never win. The only times this ability helps is when I choose the numbers over my friends. I gave up trying to save people instead I save numbers.
I purposely sacrificed people to save the day. I foresaw operation riptide, but it was the first time I got a detail wrong. Sable was suppose to survive and then push me away with a psy attack. She was suppose to sacrifice herself not me. She was suppose to be the latent psy warrior in hiding not me. I didn't see the dream I dreamed of either. The confusion the morphing of shapes and everything else. The fading of a world. I don't understand and still don't. Now, I'm hanging in a weightless void. At least I think I am, I know that it's dark. I cannot see anything or feel anything. I have no weight and I have no value.
Is this death? A dark nothingness that extends in all directions and has no start or end. A place where I hang only thinking and dreaming of things I have no place and hold over. What was reality no more than a dream before I wake in the nothingness called matter? I continued to hang there in suspension. I was nothing and everything at the same time. The only definitive fact I knew about my state was it was filled with contradictions.
Then the world started to reform in a complex series of pain. Everything hurt my eyes were burning. My skin felt like a large bruise covered me. My mouth was dry as if no water was in me. My organs pressed against my ribs or muscles trying to escape. I felt like I was a balloon filling up with air before I popped. Then a rush I felt release sweet release no pressure only pain and a needle going into my vein.
Awakening
I woke up in a lose way of saying it. It was more along the lines of I stirred a little trying to get comfortable then felt a blazing pain shoot into my eyes as I felt the dryness of my eyes and the tenderness of my eyes reacting to some light hitting my eye lids. I slowly brought my hands up to cup my eyes and get rid of the light only to find my hands slow and incapable of the agile deftness I once had. I moved my hands too quickly with too much strength... A more scientific way of saying I slapped my face with my right fist because my left arm was no doubt asleep underneath my body. I yelp or groaned in pain I couldn't really tell what noise I made as I stirred and kinda wormed my way to a wall.
I slowly regained my motor function as I gently and carefully rubbed my eyes as a crappy attempt to spread moisture in my eyes and relieve the burning sensation. A few seconds later I was fine and moved my hands away and opened my eyes for brief periods of time to adjust my eyes to the bright lighting. Soon, I saw what was right in front of me. It was large and rectangular. A wall if we want to get technical here. The bright lighting I soon found was actually red overhanging emergency lights. I slowly took stock of my situation.
I patted myself down without moving my neck. Starting with my neck first I checked for a broken bone and then moved my way down to my whole body. While nothing was broken I was more than aware than my body took a beating and A would feel sore and B no doubt had some minuscule form of a fracture somewhere.
For all intents and purposes, I was alive and that's all that mattered for the time being. I checked my gear like how I was trained. A quick rap on my armor plates and two solid thuds as noise later I knew my IBA was fine. My arm and thigh armor was fine. My custom made boots that reached my knee caps were fine with the segmented knee cap armor just dandy. No surprise there, I was more than glad to see the actual camoflauge material was doing just fine. My combat gloves I lost but hey better than my hands. My helmet was also gone... It had to be the helmet the $1,000 helmet. I was slightly pissed at the thought having to pay for that. I touched my knife to feel it's hilt and the knife sheath firmly mollied in my IBA straps. I then reached for my trusty rifle.
... If I could just reach it. I placed my hand all around me to find my rifle teacher nothing. I started to run my hands all over the floor desperate to feel the grip of my rifle. I soon grew frantic just checking the same spot over and over hoping it would appear. I scanned the room slash hallway I was in to see it barren. I'm talking about sci fi movie barren with red lights eerily glowing with zombies on the way type of barren. Now as the calm cool collected soldier I was I did what was only trained for me to react.
I flipped out I slammed my fist on the wall behind me and punched it hard. A small voice in my mind allowed me to punch the wall without breaking my hand but it still hurt naturally. After the ninth punch I was shaking and shivering. I felt a damp droplet fall on my cheek. Then another, another and soon a stream flowed slowly but steadily from my eyes. I was crying silently. My heart was broken. I loved that rifle. A type of love only one who fought a war could. I cleaned my rifle from basic training until the aliens attacked FT. Sill enmassed and was forced to go to the front lines. I qualified with that rifle at the ripe age of 17. I held that rifle taking more lives than some people have dated in those months of endless missions. I named her Ava which someone told me meant beautiful in German.
Now Ava was gone, she left me like Snake, Taki, Snail, Dozer and the other soldiers on the memorial wall miles underground forgotten. I lost my security and my friend. I cried all of this over 9.5 pounds of metal and plastic. I was fucking pathetic. Airborne qualified, war vet, and a 'baby killer' cried over something 'easily' replaced.
I don't know how long I sat there in self pity. Tears falling down my face. I started to hiccup I remember that much and I stopped crying once my hiccups went away. I finally pulled myself together. Albeit very slowly. I had nothing on me to keep me alive besides two granola bars. A camelbak with it full so maybe 3 liters. I also had my knife made of 5 inches of alien alloy plus a small cross guard and hilt. It fit perfectly in my right hand forwards and backwards. It was also my only weapon besides my body.
I slowly got up stiffly. My body ached and back hurt more than after a spar with Castillo. I rose up standing my tall 5'9 back straight and eyes forward and wiped my face clean. I might be in a city or mine. I didn't understand the dreams or anything else what I did know was this wasn't the alien ship. This wasn't somewhere I've been. If this was the after life, I knew my duty. Marines regrouped in hell. An airborne ranger was born to fight in hell to protect heaven. Worst comes to worse, I was going to link up with the marines in hell and show Satan why you don't collect airborne rangers as prizes.
I walked down the hallway until I just plodded along lost in my thoughts. I soon found myself with the way out and went that way. The place I was in was filthy. The hallway I awoke in was dirty with a haze in the air I noticed a few minutes after getting up. I soon realized it was no doubt forgotten because once I left that hall way everything just felt dirty.
I walked knife holstered and with quiet steps. I figured I would face whatever it was head on and could easily hear any footsteps. My own created a steady echo that joined the other noises of the hallways better termed sewers. God it stunk. It smelled worse than a many things I could think off the top of my head. I just want to spare the gross details to avoid dwelling on those said things.
I walked alone wishing Dr. Shen could make some high speed alien armor with a HUD. I mean shit a fully enclosed suit with an air filter sounded pretty nice right now. I tried to keep my mind off the smell first thinking about what has mask would help the most right now. I soon started to plod along imagining a different future for the sake of entertainment. One where we failed our mission and XCOM fought a desperate guerilla war lasting another two or three years fixing my mistakes. Gene warriors becoming forgotten sciences.
I also imagined a life without becoming a gene warrior. A life where I was with my mom. I wasn't placed for adoption. Instead, I lived with my mom on a small plot of land. I worked hard with a farmer just down the road since I finished my moms rice field quickly because I worked as hard as an ox like the year I was born.
I would have a life long friend and we would be the talk of the town. People would gossip how we would be happily married if I only just proposed. I was too shy and would sneak out to see her and her beautiful almond eyes and fair skin. I would run my hands through silky black hair and watch the stars as we talked. I would love her and she would love me both too shy to admit our feelings even as we stole kisses under the night sky.
I would smile then the day dream would end. Slowly, I would imagine the aliens coming and I would rise to fight them leaving that beautiful woman. I would often find my way back to XCOM or another leadership role and eventually die for the cause. I could never forgets happy ending. My mind would wander into another impossible battle to sacrifice myself.
I tried so hard to change it but in my heart I knew what I really was. A child who somehow was never aborted. A adopted child with white parents. A suicidal outcast and a great soldier. I was a product of a pact between a demon and ancestor. A living sacrifice to always protect the beautiful land. I was everything to become nothing.
At that though I emerged from the sewers and saw what awaited me. I saw chaos. Through a small little hole in the cars, Xenos, a market, and crime running rampant around me. I saw blue skinned strippers. Frogs that spied. Lizards that bullied and reptile like humans meander through this chaos. I saw humans beg plead and get rejected. I saw four eyed freaks openly hurt my people.
Humanity was slaves. I saw a few better off humans but they all bowed to a xeno in the end. Humans were merely puppets like those used by sectoids. Weapons were used to threaten humans and rob them of what little they had.
I saw a group of those four eyed freaks walk near me. I knew they would walk past the little perch I had. I was behind some boards old and decaying no doubt a building just forgotten that it blocked the way of myself. I saw from the upper left corner. I knew from a glance this sheet like metal was easily breakable from the brittle appearance. That little hole showed me so much.
My hand reached for my knife silently pulling it from the sheath. I need not to test my blade already away any force of this blade would cut through human bone, muton skull of ll varieties, sectoids much armor and sectopod plates. These aliens possibly couldn't survive this.
That group pulled near. I heard noises of undeserving xeno. I knew they were wanting in the need to meet Lucifer himself. The hole soon had no view of the market. Instead the casual glances of the xeno crew unable to peer into the darkness that barely hid me. I felt my second heart pump the unnatural chemical coundpounds into my veins. My enchanted muscles coiled in anticipation. My eyes seemed to slow down time by noticing every small detail. Neurons fired at an unnatural pace as my body prepared for the kill.
I could punch the wall and let it easily go through and start my bloody path through this market. I would save those humans and kill the xeno easily. I was GOD. The Xenos didn't know it. The market place oblivious to this death. A snatch grab and push and a heart would be severed. For those reasons, Marcus let the group pass.
A ranger fought like his environment. A ghost of a tree falling and killing someone. A hatchet that came from the bush itself. The fear in the darkness that all humans felt. XCOM also taught him prudence outweighed virtue of your actions. Holding the fire back could help you identify the cancer of the problem.
Marcus let his body tremble in anticipation as he waited. After the four eyes in blue armor left, Marcus turned around to walk down the maintenance paths now understanding where he was a little better. Those brief seconds already told him more than a injured prisoner at least in comparison to the risks and trouble.
Earth was a lost cause with unidentified aliens in it. Humanity also was under the heel of the aliens by the unseen power of the aliens. They may have high positions but in the end the Xenos led this shit. There was flying cars and rifles to be had. The aliens had inferior looking training and arms meaning there was no doubt a stronger military presence. Marcus could only guess what they looked like. Ammo was held in red magazines from how he saw it.
There were a lot of assumptions on what he thought. Marcus dabbled a lot in sci-fi novels and already placed time travel as the main cause. He quickly agreed to this because heroes always seemed to deny this possibility until they were told by some alien doctor and his crew.
Marcus was no fool. He traveled time, dimension or galaxies maybe all three what was clear was one thing. Humanity would not be oppressed. The mission was the same. Protect humanity and kill Xenos.
So off he went, Marcus looked high and low to find a way into this world without making a lot of noise. He left behind small marks to determine location and trap areas he would make later on. Marcus already knew he would have to fight an endless war until more humans joined him. Marcus refound a reason to fight again like he always did. Omega would soon learn to fear the ghost and others would say that name in quiet reverence and others would seek him out. Macy's HD a reign of terror for longer than Aria could stand even if it helped her. Omega gained another rule. Beware the ghost of area 67 for the hunter resides there.
A/N
All right a shorter chapter and a filler. Thank you my reviewer Reichtangle. I hope I spelled that right. Your review made me feel super motivated to go do something German. I'm still trying to decipher the meaning of your review. I hope you uys enjoy.
SITH
