Hello everyone, hope you are doing well. When I started publishing this story, I never thought that people would read it or enjoy it. Now, about a month and 30 chapters later, I'm happy to see I was wrong. Huge thank you to all of you. I know have the full story written and just need to translate it.

Please enjoy and thanks for reading.


"Jesus, it's so damn cold."

The first room of the cryogenic lab was a large room full of computers and strange equipment. The floor was covered with a small blanket of cold mist or smoke from large tubes near the walls.

Elliott snapped his teeth and walked around looking all around him, as if an alien was about to come out of the floor or the walls. Damian was cold too. After all, they were in a giant freezer.

"I thought you fought in Alaska. Wasn't it cold there during the war?" asked Damian, who remembered how cold he had been during the simulation.

"Yes, but running around trying to save your comrades or avoiding a 500 kilogram shell, is the perfect counter to cold."

"That I can believe."

Seeing Elliott's questioning eyes, Damian told him about his encounter with the Outcast and the Battle of Anchorage simulation.

"Sending people into a video game instead of putting them through three months of training, no offense, but I find that hard to believe. I mean, it's just as crazy as being back here trying to escape from an alien ship."

"I can assure you it's true."

"Yeah, what amazes me is that you agreed to face all this crap on your own free will, while I got my name drawn in the lottery and sent over there."

The room they were in led them to an airlock full of computers and pipes, probably routing and regulating the cooling mist. On either side, large bay windows opened onto smaller rooms.

Damian stepped forward discreetly and glanced through one of the windows. On the other side, he could see several aliens working around the cryogenic chambers. Some contained humans, some contained feral ghouls.

"What are those aliens doing in there?"

Damian looked over his shoulder and saw that Elliott was crouching in front of the other bay window and was probably watching the same spectacle as he was.

"Looks like they're making an inventory of everything they have frozen on their ship," Damian replied, looking through the window again.

The cryo-pods would come out of the ground and the aliens would observe the frozen person or ghoul inside for a few moments, then press a button and the pod would disappear back into the ground before another one took its place.

"What do we do?" asked Elliott.

Damian thought for a few seconds and saw a switch next to him. A small dial was just above it and indecipherable characters were scrolling by. Damian pressed the switch and looked out the window.

Several cryo-pods came out of the floor at the same time and opened. The aliens looked around them and before they could figure out what was going on, four feral ghouls pounced on them, tearing the fragile bodies of the aliens to pieces.

"Press the switch on your side of the glass if there is one," Damian ordered.

Elliott pressed the switch and several pods came out of the floor of the room he was watching. Again, feral ghouls left their cryogenic stasis and attacked the aliens. The ghouls finished shredding their prey and would start to eat them or wander through the room, just as they would in the metro tunnels on Earth.

"What are those… Things?" Elliott asked.

Damian joined him and watched with him the feral ghouls who seemed to enjoy the corpses of the aliens.

"We call them ghouls. When the bombs fell, those who couldn't find refuge in a Vault turned into these decerebrate zombies. A small portion of the ghouls are still normal, in the sense that even though their bodies look like walking corpses, they are still human inside. Others, are ferals and will attack anything on sight, whether it be a human or an animal."

Elliott didn't understand it all. Damian could see that his face was turning green as the ghouls were devouring the alien corpses.

"Let's not stay here," said Elliott, who was about to vomit.

Damian agreed. He managed to lock the door leading to the room the ferals were in and resumed his search for the generator.

The airlock where they were, opened into a corridor. At the end, they could see a large room. Damian pushed Elliott into a small room, a control room with a bay window. The large room was crawling with aliens, and Damian noticed laser turrets on the ceiling.

"How are we going to get through?" Elliott asked.

"It looks like this room serves as a storage area for the cryogenic pods. We could do what we did, free the captives, but I doubt there are only ghouls in those chambers."

Damian looked around. He couldn't see any switches to activate the chambers. One of the computers seemed to be connected to the turrets. If Damian could recalibrate the weapon's targeting system, they'd be able to pass through more easily.

"Cover for me," he said to Elliott.

The soldier nodded silently and pointed the barrel of his gun at the door. Damian pressed a key on the computer. Several lines in an indecipherable language appeared on the screen. Damian selected the first entry. He looked up and saw that the turret appeared to have deactivated. He selected another option and heard a detonation in the room on the other side of the glass. He looked up and saw that the turrets were starting to fire in all directions.

Chaos seized the room as the aliens sought safety while the automatic turrets fired continuously. Some were destroyed by a few aliens fast enough to fire back, but within seconds all the aliens were killed.

Damian glanced out the window and seeing only dead bodies with smoking holes in them or small piles of ash scattered everywhere, he deactivated the turret and smashed the terminal by banging on it with the butt of his rifle.

Elliott stood by the door. He opened the door and looked inside. The turrets were stationary. He gave Damian an interrogating glance. The soldier ejected a bullet from his rifle and threw it into the room. The copper cartridge fell to the metal floor in a small jingling sound. The two men nervously observed the turrets, and, seeing that they were not moving, entered the room.

Damian noticed a small staircase leading down to where the boxes were stored.

"All this racket must have attracted attention," Damian said. "Let's see if those cryo-pods are occupied."

Elliott nodded his head. They went down the stairs and inspected the room independently. The pods were either empty or filled with feral ghouls. Damian found the only chamber occupied by a human. He was wearing an Enclave uniform. Damian pretended not to see him and left the man in cryogenic sleep.

The corners of the room were occupied by shelves where the aliens had stored items recovered from their victims. He heard Elliott's voice behind him.

"I couldn't find anything. What about you?"

Damian took a quick look at direction of the frozen Enclave officer.

"Nothing, let's continue."

The storage room led them down a long corridor that led to a small control room with two doors. A bay window allowed them to see the room on the other side. A small group of aliens were there, bent over human corpses, lying on surgery tables.

"What the hell is that thing?" Elliott whispered. "It looks like a… Surgical room."

He came a little closer and Damian heard him hiccupping in surprise and horror.

"Oh my God!" cried the soldier.

He put his hands on the top of his head and looked at the bodies, horrified. Damian approached in turn. A shiver ran down his back as he saw that the bodies were all open in the stomach or that some of their limbs had been cut off. One of them also had no skin left on his face.

At first Damian thought Elliott had just realized that he probably could have ended up on that autopsy table and that his nerves were failing because of it, but Damian noticed a tattoo on the arm of one of the bodies. A military insignia surmounted the words "108th Infantry Battalion". He looked at Elliott who had walked to one of the command consoles.

The soldier flipped a switch and cryogenic mist jets came out of the floor and ceiling. The aliens rushed to the exits, but their limbs froze and broke off, causing them to fall to the ground. Just before they froze, Damian heard them squealing and whistling in their incomprehensible dialect. One of the aliens threw himself on the glass and started banging his fist on it. His face showed the closest thing to an expression of terror and he froze within seconds. Rigid, he tilted backwards, and his frozen body shattered as he hit the ground.

"So, you bastards, how does it feel?"

Damian let Elliott express his anger. The cryogenic steam jets stopped and after a few seconds, they were able to enter without risk of freezing in place. Damian stood back and watched Elliott gaze at the dead bodies of his fellow units. The soldier put his hand over his eyes and walked to the door to leave the room. On the way out, he crushed the frozen skull of one of the aliens under his boot, which broke into several small pieces of ice. He opened the door and stood still for a few seconds before rushing inside. Damian rushed in behind him. He feared that in his anger, Elliott would throw himself headlong into a final confrontation with the aliens.

He found him standing in front of two cryogenic pods. Damian approached and saw two men in uniforms similar to Elliott's.

"Are they members of your unit? Damian asked.

"Yes," said Elliott. "Sergeant Daniels, and Private Beckett."

Elliott observed his companions for a few moments.

"Do you think you can get them out of cryogenics?" Damian asked.

"Yes, well... It might be a little more complicated than when you released us."

Elliott made his way to the control consoles and monitors scattered throughout the room. He mumbled to himself and after a few minutes he pointed a lever at Damian. Damian operated it and he heard the pods open.

The two soldiers got out of there. They looked around them and massaged their eyes. Sergeant Daniels saw Elliott and frowned.

"Elliott... Where...?"

"I don't have time to explain everything, Sarge. We've been abducted by aliens. It's just the three of us now. Basically, we need to destroy a generator that's located in here."

Elliott briefly explained the situation to his companions. They seemed surprisingly calm and didn't seem shocked to hear about the aliens. He then turned to Damian.

"You should go back to the others," he said. "The faster we destroy these generators, the faster we'll be able to leave this ship."

"Are you sure?" Damian asked.

"Yes. We're going to destroy that generator and we'll meet you later."

Damian nodded.

"Be careful," he said, before turning back to the engine room.

Damian entered the engine room a few minutes later. He found the others gathered in a circle on the observation deck. In the center, an alien was huddled up and was looking frantically at the humans with its hands raised. Damian approached and overheard bits of conversation, each one wondering what to do with the alien. Paulson cut short the conversation and drew his gun. The alien uttered a shrill squeak just before Paulson put a bullet in his skull. The cowboy then pushed the corpse off the gangway with his foot and spat at it after it crashed below the reactor.

"What's going on here?" Damian asked.

Everyone turned to him. Sally made a small pout and Damian noticed that she was holding back tears. Toshiro was as inexpressive as usual and Somah looked indifferent. Paulson had a mixture of rage and satisfaction on his face.

"The aliens attacked us. This one couldn't manage to escape with his friends, so I shot him," Paulson replied, putting his revolver back in its holster. But wat about you? Don't you have a generator to destroy?"

"Yeah," said Somah looking behind Damian. "Where the hell is Elliott?"

"We found members of his unit and managed to revive them. They decided to destroy the generator on their own, and to not waste time, I came back here to help."

"Yeah, okay, let's get to that hangar," Paulson said. "The soldiers and Somah can take care of those robots when they get back."

The cowboy walked away. Damian looked at him out of the corner of his eye before turning to Somah and Sally.

"Is everything all right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Somah answered in a neutral tone. "We wanted to eventually take this alien hostage, so they'd give us some breathing, but Paulson drew his gun and blew its head off. I don't know what the aliens did to him, but he hates them more than all of us combined. How about you guys?"

"Yeah... I think we can all be thankful we weren't put in those cryo-pods."

Damian briefly recounted what he'd seen to Somah, who seemed uncomfortable.

"Do you think you can hold this place until we get back?" Damian asked.

"Oh yeah, don't worry," Somah smiled. "The samurai is doing great with his sword and we even found an M134 minigun with Sally. If the aliens come back, they're in for quite a surprise."

Damian nodded. He gave Sally a reassuring smile and walked away to join Paulson.

"Are you ready? Damian asked.

Paulson mumbled an answer and walked through the door to the hangar and Damian followed him with a sigh.

After crossing a hallway, the two men arrived in a large room filled with computers and consoles.

"Holy crap..."

Damian turned his head to the left. Paulson was standing by a railing. In front of him was a huge room. In the center, a circle was dug into the ground and Damian could see light. The circle was surrounded by a dozen metal pylons. On each pylon small discs of different sizes emitted blue light. Damian was about to speak when he heard a noise coming from the circle. The alien ship he had seen crashed in the Capital Wasteland had just appeared in the center of the pylons. The flying saucer was floating softly and swaying toward the pylons. Just before touching them, arcs of energy erupted out of the pylons in a great cracking sound and the alien spacecraft moved back to the center of the circle, as if it had just been pushed by an invisible force. The ship swayed between several pylons before it stopped moving, just floating slowly.

On the walls of the hangar, Damian could see balconies like the one he was standing on. Small groups of extraterrestrials were busy on consoles or chatting and waving their arms.

Paulson put his hand on Damian's shoulder and pointed to one of the balconies.

"I don't know about you, but if I were one of those little green bastards, I would have set up my generator here. If this is the spot that overlooks the whole hangar, that must be where the generator is."

Damian nodded silently. He watched the hangar looking for a way to access this balcony. The control room where they were located was on a corridor blocked by an electric field like that of the cells. The only way was to go down into the hangar, go around the ship and hope to find a stairway going up to the generator.

Damian and Paulson snuck into the hangar. As they walked past the pylons, Damian felt the hairs on his neck and arms bristling.

"I don't know what these things are, but it's better not to get too close to them," Paulson whispered nervously looking at the pylons.

After crossing a hallway, they came to another control room. Three aliens were working on a console. Damian waved at Paulson and they entered the room, shooting at the aliens. Damian heard footsteps in a hallway. He saw two other aliens heading towards them. He aimed his rifle back up and fired. The first alien collapsed to the floor in a squeak. The second alien was shot in the chest, but the bullet ricocheted off the wall and continued on into the wall. The alien raised its gun and fired at Damian who had just enough time to hit a wall. The energy discharge grazed him, and he felt the heat of the ray on his face.

The alien was covered by this strange veil that distorted its silhouette. This mysterious technology acted as a shield and seemed to deflect the bullets. Damian fired again. He saw a shock wave on the veil enveloping the alien, as if he had just thrown a pebble into a lake.

The alien continued to advance as if nothing had happened and fired successively at Damian and Paulson. Damian managed to shoot a third time. This time he noticed that the alien staggered when the bullet hit his shield. He switched his rifle to automatic fire and emptied the rest of his magazine into the alien. The energy shield wavered more and more and finally collapsed. The alien collapsed forward with a squeak.

Damian and Paulson approached with caution. The alien was dead. On his wrist, Damian noticed a small silver metal bracelet with a single button. With his foot, he pressed the button and the veil that had wrapped the alien moments before sprang from the bracelet and covered the corpse. The energy shield sizzled for a few seconds before shutting down.

"What do you think it is?" Paulson asked.

"Some kind of shield or armor. At least we know how to get rid of those who wear one."

They kept moving forward and finally made it to the main control room. From there, they had a clear view of the hangar and the ship. Two robots, the same ones Damian had seen in the boiler room, were in their maintenance box, a ball made of bright steel bars.

The generator room was in the back of the control room, behind a force field. Damian and Paulson approached. The lights sizzled for a few seconds and they felt a small tremor.

"It looks like the soldier and his buddies blew the first generator. It's up to us to blow ours," said Paulson.

Damian nodded. He pushed the switch on the door and an alarm began to sound.

"Damn it," Paulson nodded. "What the hell did you do?"

"Nothing! I just wanted to disable the force field!"

They approached the balcony and saw several aliens entering the hangar, accompanied by robots. The aliens began firing at Damian and Paulson, who flattened on the ground. Damian could see that several aliens were taking the same path as they did.

"The bastards, they set a trap for us!" Paulson cried out.

The laser discharges ceased and Damian heard several aliens running towards them. Paulson raised his revolver and took them out without much difficulty, yelling at them and insulting them in the process.

Damian spotted a control console in front of him. He pressed one of the buttons at random and out of the corner of his eye he saw large electric arcs shooting out of the pylons. The aliens nearby were struck by lightning. Their small bodies lit up and they were thrown into the air and crashed into the walls.

"Jesus, what are those things made of? Thunder?" shouted Paulson while reloading his revolver and looking at the electric arcs.

Damian put his hand on the console and swept it from right to left, pressing as many buttons as he could. The pylons went off one after the other, frying the aliens and their robots, tipping them into the hole under the ship, throwing them against the walls or blowing them up in a small green mist. Behind him, Damian could hear the cowboy's shouting and gunfire.

"Look out! The generator room!"

Damian looked over his shoulder. The force field that blocked access to the generators had disappeared. Damian swung and aimed his rifle.

Silence fell again. The alarm had stopped ringing and the air was filled with the smell of gunpowder and energy weapons. A small groupe of alines had come out of the generator room and had tried to attack Damian and Paulson from behind. Paulson reloaded his revolver and approached one of the aliens, before touching it with his feet, to check if he was dead. They entered the generator room cautiously, verifying that it wasn't another alien trap.

"Let's destroy this thing so we can get it over with," said Paulson after checking to make sure they were alone.

Damian nodded. He activated the generator and the cooling circuits slowly came out of the device. He and Paulson destroyed the generator. The lights in the hangar sizzled for a few seconds before they came back on.

"Two down, one more to go," Damian said as he looked at the smoking remains of the generator. "Let's go find the others."


Hope you enjoyed. Until next time.