Никогда не умереть!

[Shiola]

“I guess my world was going to end somehow.”

((P023 - Evan Keane - Start))

Evan had awoken in an office, haphazardly bundled into a thick sleeping bag along with all of his winter clothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d awoken in different clothes than he’d gone to sleep in, but usually that was a pleasant surprise after an altogether different occasion.

After realizing the relative warmth of the sleeping bag was preferable to the temperature outside of it, he’d spent what felt like a few minutes staring up at the ceiling and trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

He had been on some pretty powerful psychedelics a few days ago. Sometimes he’d woken up and not been able to remember everything correctly, but that usually faded after a cup of coffee and some water.

Even then, the fuzzy not-memories were rarely so detailed and traumatic, and usually had some element of whimsy in them. Rarely did he awaken and find a tiny dictator was really, actually living in a nearby lamp, plotting a wee little coup. It was never more than a silly dream or a fun story that friends told him the next morning.

Then there was the PDA. He could feel the device strapped to his arm, though this one at least didn’t have needles in it. Evan would’ve known if something like that was supposed to be given out on the island, and it certainly wasn’t his idea. A few minutes of casually flipping through it had confirmed it was the real deal. There was a map. Supposedly he was in the old House of Culture, which the faded propaganda on the walls made clear enough.

Something about positioning himself in space, piecing it back together - it threw him off. The next few minutes were hard to recall.

He knew he’d emerged from the sleeping bag, folded and rolled it up as tightly as he could, and immediately began taking stock of his belongings. Automatically enough he didn’t remember every action, but aware enough to make conscious choices. After pushing aside the desk and creating some space on the dusty floor, Evan had opened up both of his bags and laid everything in front of him.

They left the laptop with all of his files on it. Anything important was backed up to the cloud, and he supposed it was all useless at this point. Still, he had a few movies on there that would be nice to watch if there was any downtime.

Downtime? Really?

Evan shook his head. No, there was no point in keeping it. The computer had found a new home inside the desk drawer of this Soviet administrator’s office. If this was all some terrible joke, he could fetch it later. It, and anything else that he didn’t need ended up in the numbered duffel bag. There was enough space in his hiking backpack for the necessary supplies, and fuck those people if they thought he’d be a number. It could stay in this musty old office.

For the most part, they didn’t take all of his shit. The pills and alcohol were gone, but they left his cannabis and the pack of cigarettes he’d brought. He didn’t even smoke tobacco, but he’d hoped to trade them for a couple minutes’ time with some of the workers on the island. Folks always had a lot to say when you went out for a smoke.

“None of those people were real.” Evan muttered.

Or if they were, they’d been part of putting all of this together. Who had he been talking to for months? He’d written seminars on the legacy of Soviet environmental policy for this. Someone actually helped him edit it, knowing what was about to happen?

That they might not have known was almost a more unsettling possibility.

Something didn’t feel right, physically. Evan felt queasy, and a bit dizzy. A few minutes must have passed where he’d just stared at the wall. A chill brought him out of it, and he’d kept going.

He was wearing layers now. He’d not woken up with layers. At some point, he must have decided what to do with his clothes.

Most of the clothes were worth keeping. It was cold, and only going to get colder. It was important to layer when you slept somewhere without heat. Plus, not everyone would’ve packed good wool sweaters. They were issued a fire-starting kit, though there wasn’t an abundance of fuel on the island to burn, as far as he knew. At this latitude, the thickest vegetation were stout arctic shrubs and moss. People were going to have to start burning parts of this place to stay warm.

Burning it all down was a nice thing to imagine. Setting things on fire usually helped distract him from self-destruction. Evan played with the feeling of rage a bit, gauging how much he could allow himself.

It was too much to feel right now, and he habitually checked his phone instead, as he usually did when he felt that deep sort of anger. Social media gave him a different kind, a sort of shallow annoyance that was easy to channel energy into.

Of course there was no service, but it had the time, at least. Evan made sure it had the correct timezone before they’d left. Supposedly it was early, though with the weird sunlight here it was never easy to tell. It certainly felt like he’d not gotten any real sleep. Evan opted to keep the phone on his person. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like the right thing to do. There were pictures on there he’d like to take a look at from time to time, he figured. Motivation was maybe not easy to come by. Reality was a bit frayed. Reasons to stay alive were always welcome.

What was real, here? Hard to say. They successfully deepfaked everyone. It was obvious they’d been watching them for months just to get it right. No doubt the kidnapping would go off without a hitch. So it was definitely an experiment of some kind, and they definitely didn’t give half a damn about anyone’s human rights here. If everything they’d done up to this point, besides the video they’d shown, was all they ended up doing - Janus-Hayes could never afford to let anyone find out about this.

From all he could remember, it was just the monster that seemed in question. Nothing like that was real, as far as he knew. They could’ve faked the video, although it sure didn’t look like it. The blacked-out document on his PDA seemed to point to it being some sort of life they pulled out of the permafrost. That seemed far-fetched, too.

So did all of this, and yet they were here.

They needed to see how it would react to people in a live fire situation. So they were guinea pigs.

Or, they wanted to see whether anyone would kill each other just because Sycamore spun them a good story.

He wasn’t sure what to believe. It was pretty easy to assume that Harrison, Coleman, and Donato were probably still dead, though.

She’d told him about the mountain lion, once. It was terrifying, and she survived only because she knew not to make any sudden movements or it would give chase. A guide chased it off just in time. Even though it scared her, she still described the experience as transcendent, almost. Carla loved animals. The way she reacted in the video was exactly what he expected.

Evan saw that side of her the first time when she’d met his roommates’ cat. She’d come by to check in on him, and stopped in the middle of their conversation as soon as she saw it, in order to say a proper hello and give it head pats.

Thinking about that must have made him cry, a bit. He had crusties at the edges of his eyes and it felt like he’d been crying. He didn’t remember doing that. It must’ve been between looking at his phone, and realizing they’d left him his guitar. It was still covered in patches, still lingering inside of the ancient leather case he’d long refused to part with. Carla asked him about those patches once, when she’d come by to see how he was doing. After she’d pet the cat. He told her about every single one. They all had stories. Some of them hurt, too.

Right next to the guitar, there was one hell of a rifle.

Evan spent a while looking at it, which felt better than thinking about dead people.

Ruger No. 1 Rifles were pretty cool. From what he’d read and seen on the internet, the single-shot action meant they could be hand loaded with all kinds of powerful rounds and be trusted to stay in one piece. At first glance it seemed like any other hunting rifle, but weighed more than he expected. On opening the action, he couldn’t help but notice how wide of a bore it was. The side of the barrel made it clear just how much gun they’d given him.

.460 WEATHERBY

The cartridges were massive, and the raised belt on the brass made it clear just how much of a beast this thing was. They’d issued him a belt of the torpedo-like rounds, and a couple boxes to boot. Ten thousand joules at the muzzle, with a bullet that weighed about as much as a shotgun slug going twice as fast.

More like .460 Absolutely-Not-Fucking-Around.

No doubt it was absolutely punishing to fire. Guns like these were the kind that old men liked to think would make them feel like young men; until they pulled the trigger, and became suddenly aware of all of their limitations. The homoeroticism of gun culture was always a little amusing when it resulted in fully absurd weapons like this.

Ah, the lauded .460 BDE - for hard, real men who love to cock hammers and pump stout rounds into well-lubricated receivers. This gun is only for guys who like to go out into the woods and fire real hot, heavy loads after they get a little too drunk with their pals.

Truthfully, it was exactly the kind of weapon you’d use to kill a polar bear. Or something like it.

This thing should have a cool name. Daemonjager, or Witch Hammer. Like a good metal band name. I’ll think about it.

It wouldn’t leave his possession.

Either the Chimera was real, and they wanted him to have a fighting chance, or they really wanted him to think it was real. Neither reality was especially appealing. In either case, there would be more than just the Chimera to deal with. Other so-called prototypes, and everyone else trying to survive on the island. The mercenaries, too. Evan knew where he stood; either he was going monster-hunting, or a couple of chuds in ski masks were about to learn what it felt like to have their plate carriers get caved in by an elephant gun.

The picture of what Janus-Hayes was trying to do was clear. It was twisted. As far as he could tell, there were a few paths they expected the "Participants" to walk. They might band together, kill the monsters, and pray that Janus-Hayes was lying when they said there was only one ticket home.

They could fail, get eaten by monsters, or killed by the mercenaries.

Or, some would strike out alone, let the monsters and the rest of them kill each other, and clean up whoever or whatever was left.

In a sense, the test was kind of obvious. People liked to nurture fantasies of striking out alone as an individualistic badass. That ideal permeated their culture from top to bottom. The thing was, in virtually every case of societal collapse recorded, it was groups who really survived such circumstances. Those who struck out selfishly were more often destroyed by forces beyond their control.

They didn’t need to test this. It was in the human story that had been written down for centuries. It was in so much of what Evan had spent his graduate courses writing about. What had this Dr. Sycamore seen that had convinced him otherwise?

Whatever they told themselves, it seemed clear from everything Evan knew - the cruelty was the point. It was hard to imagine what they could show him that would convince him otherwise.

He looked back at the guitar. Where he expected to feel pain, there was only a vacuum. It was too fresh, and it was too dangerous and too fucking cold for him to feel what he needed to feel right now. There was no way he was going to leave it behind, even if it was awkward to lug around with him. They wouldn't force him to leave music out of his life.

There were the tears again. Evan wasn’t sobbing outright, but his eyes were wet and his body was reminding him that a normal person would’ve been freaking out way more right about now. At least there was something resembling right now again, though. Things had started to fall back into focus.

He’d put the cigarettes in his coat pocket, next to the case of joints and a lighter. At hand, where he needed his vices to be.

“Look at me go, getting my shit back together. Good job, me.”

If everything he’d read about prisons and warzones were true, cigarettes were for this kind of thing. If he made it out of here, he’d eat his vegetables and do all of the good, friendly drugs and only drink at funerals and make sure to run every day. For now, the cost-benefit analysis was in nicotine’s favor. The smoke curled up towards the ceiling as he took several nervous drags from the cancer stick. It took some of the stress with it.

When he stopped dissociating, when the anxiety was manageable, then he could see all of the pieces. There were things he could do. Things he knew he’d have to do. Things he wouldn’t do. As long as he wasn’t sitting around waiting to die, he still felt like a person. Crisis gave all of those crossed wires and broken parts of him something to do.

In a sense, looking out at such a bleak, stark reality made it easier to fight off the demons in his head - after a fashion. There was a lot that needed doing if they wanted to eke out some kind of victory here, and he knew he had it in him to try. He hated that. He wanted to be able to accept the really great argument for taking the 460 Weatherby express straight to the Void.

It was a little appealing.

Sharp pain in his index finger let him know he’d been spacing out again, as the cigarette burned his skin. Evan hissed, and dropped it to the floor. He’d barely smoked it. The pain was better than thinking about being nothing, though. Feeling things was always better than not, in the long run. It was the short term where it fucked him up.

Evan sighed.

“Shit. Okay, no dying.”

The problem was, he’d done too good of a repair job on his scarred mind to feel like he could take that route. Not yet, at least. Not while fighting was still an option.

It was too cold to just sit here, anyways. There were things to do. Better things than check out while thinking about checking out.

He could look into those warehouses by the docks. See if he could find the one they’d left the professors in. The place must’ve been a wreck by now, and there would be evidence of what had happened. If it passed the smell test, that would inform the rest of the day. Find friends, and shelter. Hunt that thing down, and any other mutant horrors they came up with. Then the goons at the Airstrip were next.

It was no use getting ahead of himself. First, he needed to shoot something. Partly to finish the job the cigarette hadn’t, and partly to know exactly what it was he was bringing to the fight.

Evan looked around the old office. They’d clearly tidied it up to take pictures of it, and he’d seen rooms like this with better lighting and people working in them. From the looks of things, they’d probably set up a photoshoot and nothing more. Still, it was full of posters and old artifacts of the island’s former inhabitants.

His eyes settled on a conspicuous piece of stone, sitting on a small table in the corner of the room. His eyes lit up, and he smiled.

For the moment, he could at least pretend it was Dr. Sycamore.

((Evan Keane continued in Change of plans. I do need a gun.))