Ryan moaned to awoke in a pool of blood, the darkened room acted as a blanket that shadowed the gore. His face and clothing were drenched, chunks of flesh fell as he sluggishly rose to his feet.
He felt around while he tried to figure out what happened. ‘Ha, glad to see you are still here.’ Ryan joked to himself as he picked up his modified KRISS Vector. He raised his left hand and tried to conjure a ball of light, only for him to fail. Perhaps this place doesn’t have any magic? Nah, I could just be tired. He reasoned.
The room lit up when he turned on the flashlight attached to his vest. He was surrounded by the bodies of his torn apart comrades. Their insistence decorated the floor, their entire chest cavities eviscerated, and their faces mangled and distorted like they were clay.
The room also looked odd; the wallpaper was different from what he saw when he entered the house. Besides being cobalt blue, the wall was green with a flower pattern. From the decorations and the bookshelf full of Polish literature Ryan couldn’t understand. He believed that he was in the study room.
The soldier frowned when he looked at his dead friends. Ryan was fond of them; he remembered their birthdays and every insignificant detail about them. Like Brian’s obsession with Transformers or Kylie's collection of 1940s advertising posters. He loved them like they were his family, but he couldn’t allow himself to cry. They all knew of the dangers; death was just part of their job. So, he just played it off as a factor of life, even if it ate away at him at times.
‘Ah, there you are.’ He happily said before he put on his cowboy hat after he shook blood and parts of a lung off it. Ryan wasted no time as he scavenged for supplies from his dead mates. Taking a Remington shotgun, some ammo, a flare, but most importantly the data slate next to the Obelus. A large and heavy magical device that detects the magical energies in a given area to determine how much magic was used, why it was used, and other phenomena. The Obelus was a valuable piece of kit, one that gave valuable readings on what the monster was and how they could kill it.
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The data slate was something else. It was a black box in case the team could not carry the Obelus out of the facility. It was impervious to damage, it could be wet, struck by lightning, thrown into a furnace, or shot at and the data within the device would not be compromised. The only payoff was the data slate could only be read from computers with the means to read the hard data. Anything without the proper software to read the data slate would cause the computer to brick as a form to prevent the data from falling into the wrong hands.
Though that was secondary to his survival, there would be no point knowing about the importance of the data slate if he couldn’t deliver it to the Order. From what Ryan could remember, he came inside the house to investigate a monster presence and gather some data. He thought the attack was an hour ago, to him it had to be. He remembered shooting but wasn’t sure at what or if they did kill the monster that attacked them. Though from what Ryan could tell, they didn’t kill anything. Nor could he understand why he was alive.
Ryan set up a long-range radio, he slammed the battery in and the headpiece crackled as it picked up a weak signal. ‘Heresy, this is 511. Message over.’ The radio crackled again, and to Ryan, it seemed his message didn’t get through or no one was replying. ‘If anyone can hear me. I am Agent Ryan and I request an evac immediately. I’ve got the data slate from the Obelus, and the machine detects a way to defeat these new creatures. If anyone can hear me, please respond.’ The headpiece crackled again, but no one would reply to him.
Without much to do and knowing that the room isn’t safe. He stepped outside of the room and into the hallway that looked nearly infinite. Ryan shone a torch down each side, but the light couldn’t reach five metres in front of him. He reached into his left pocket and pulled out the blood-soaked blueprint of the house. Well, I’m not going to unfuck myself out of this haystack.
He put the map back into his pocket because it was useless to him. The blueprint didn’t have a study room, most importantly, it didn’t even have a long hallway. Ryan knew he was in the hands of the creatures that lived in these halls, in a realm of their own design.
