The captain spoke with a sharp military tone, "Who are you? And how did you find this place?"
Ares looked around, still astonished. He hadn’t expected company here, and his first thought was that he had been discovered by Egyptian intelligence.
He replied with a foreign accent, raising his hands in complete surrender, "I don’t know what’s happening here!"
One of the soldiers approached the captain and whispered in his ear for a few seconds then stepped back. The captain’s features changed, and a glimmer of hope appeared on his face. He asked in an astonished tone, "Are you from the European United Nations?"
Ares hesitated, feeling he had been inevitably exposed, "Yes."
The captain ordered the soldiers to lower their weapons, then slowly approached Ares and placed his hand on his right shoulder, a smile spreading across his face as he said with the same tone, "Welcome, European. We have been waiting for you."
Ares was puzzled by what was happening around him. He had thought that once they learned he was from Europe, they would arrest him immediately, but the opposite occurred. They seemed to welcome him with great joy, and some soldiers began whispering among themselves, as if they had been dead and their souls returned to them once more. Ares felt bewildered by what was happening and decided to go along with the situation for now until he understood what was going on. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on novel※fire.net
The captain continued, the smile never leaving his face, "Come with us to headquarters. We’ll brief you on everything. We had begun to lose hope, but it seems we will be rescued."
Ares nodded in agreement, then began walking with the soldiers through the forest.
Ivanov emerged from the same strange tower with numerous questions circling in his mind. Yet the more he tried to think of answers, the more questions arose, so he decided to stop thinking until the full picture became clear.
He walked on his way searching for answers. Forty-year-old Ivanov, broad-shouldered and massive, appeared like a wrestler with his bulky frame and protruding muscles. His hair was blond, his eyes blue, with an extremely thick beard and mustache as if he had slept for several months. His ability was hardening his body with an unknown, extremely solid black substance.
He exited the tower as night had fallen. Looking up at the darkened sky, he inhaled the sweet air he had missed during all this time spent inside the tower. Everything had been strange since he awakened with no memory of how he arrived here. He began surveying the darkness enveloping the place and saw he was in some city. At eye level, he saw buildings—some completely destroyed, others spared from destruction—and could barely make out any details because of the darkness that dominated the city. But the moonlight emanating from the sky lit his path slightly and helped somewhat in the absence of city lights, which were completely extinguished. He looked behind him to see the towering spire extending proudly to the sky. The tower was positioned at the edge of some garden, while it looked proudly over the destroyed city stretched before it.
Ivanov began to feel bewildered by the sight of the destroyed city, not knowing why as his memory remained clouded. The city appeared like a ghost town—everything still, destroyed, and completely silent. No annoying cars, no human voices filling the city. Everything completely dark, no one present. His mind began weaving stories about what happened here: perhaps some catastrophe, or maybe he was in an abandoned place in some country, and if he walked a little, he might find people to inquire about everything.
He gathered his courage and walked among the buildings, examining the completely abandoned shops, cafes, and markets that had survived the destruction. What caught his attention was that they were all left open, not closed, which made his mind lean toward the idea of some catastrophe that caused people to flee.
He began to wonder: "could there be radiation leakage or something of that sort? A war that happened here? A major explosion?", He couldn’t determine anything except that something was happening here, as everything since he awoke had been completely unnatural.
As Ivanov walked through the darkness, a weapons store on his right caught his eye—untouched by destruction. He felt some hope, quickly headed toward the store and entered, finding it enveloped in darkness. He tried to adjust to the darkness but couldn’t see anything, so he moved cautiously, feeling his way with his hands. He stretched them in front of him, touching unknown objects that his mind analyzed and named: table, some boxes, crates, and finally reaching the weapons rack.
He raised his hand, feeling the weapons, finding many he couldn’t identify due to poor visibility. But something small and circular at the front caught his attention. He began to feel a glimmer of hope—his hand had found a thermal scope equipped with night vision. He gripped it firmly, like it was his lifeline, placing it over his eyes. He pressed some buttons on the scope with his fingers, and the vision changed to night vision, turning everything around him green. His vision cleared now, and he could see the weapons well.
He put his hand on an M24 sniper rifle, took it and slung it on his back, also taking other weapons—a pistol and a submachine gun—to secure himself properly, along with some hand grenades and other equipment he might need. The weapons and equipment were old, dating back a century, but he didn’t care about that. Luckily, he found a weapons bag in the store that helped him carry these items. He prepared himself, keeping the scope over his eyes to see the path to the exit.
He turned toward the exit door and looked ahead, finding something standing in front of him. He stepped back in panic until he hit the wall where the weapons were hung, colliding with some and causing them to fall on him, though his massive body wasn’t affected. He quickly stood up, removed what had fallen on him, and looked through the scope again, pointing the handgun in every direction in anticipation, but found nothing. He looked around, his heart pounding from the surprise, examining the place around him, but there was nothing except weapons hanging here and there and some other equipment. He thought he might have been imagining things, but he was completely certain he had seen someone standing in front of him.
He calmed himself, breathed a sigh of relief, and felt his heartbeat returning to its normal rate. He headed outside the store, carefully examining his surroundings and feeling deeply relieved to leave this dark place that had made him easy prey for anything. He examined the path around him with the scope, which had now become his eye that could see in the darkness, and found the carefully paved road extending before him with no one in sight, so he continued his way in the darkness.
As he walked through the area that had not yet been touched by destruction, he hoped to find someone to ease his solitude or to find Sairi, whose whereabouts he didn’t know.
Was he alive or dead? But he trusted that Sairi was alive—he was too strong to die so easily—and felt this might be another ridiculous test. It didn’t worry him; he thought it might be more difficult than before, which would make things more exciting for him.