<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><div style="text-indent:1em;">A prologue:</div></span></span></span><br/>It is night, and a new moon, darkness rules the sky and heart. The clouds hide the stars, the black curtains over the windows shut out all other light, and even the conscience closes its eyes and turns the other way.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Just this one time</span>, the conscience tells itself,<span style="font-style: italic">Then this will all be over and we will be safe.</span><br/><br/>He is waiting in that darkness at his desk, meditating. It is too dark to do anything productive, like take notes or balance accounts, he dare not disturb this sacred darkness. He had removed every piece of technology in the room, his computer his phone, even his lamp. He could not risk interference on such an important night. So, he tried to think of nothing as he had been taught in the ashram. They taught him to fill himself with nothing and curb the desires of his ego. Instead, he waits. He sips a cup of coffee to fend off fatigue, he drank the last black drop and felt sorry that he had not thought to bring a second.<br/><br/>Suddenly the candles burst into flame, yellow vengeful light revealing the room:<br/><br/>It is round, all the furniture (except for his desk) is pushed to the walls and covered in canvas. Atop them sit a hundred candles that have suddenly come to life, they drip fresh wax onto the canvas covers. Their flames are tall and hot.<br/><br/>The wood floor is marred with white markings. The circles and strange symbols would make most men feel uneasy to look upon them, even if they did not know their meaning. What would make them feel<span style="font-style: italic">more </span>uneasy, however, was the ghost standing in the middle of the circle.<br/><br/>Do you believe in ghosts? Well, what else could this be? It is a man, blue and transparent, thirtysomething, hair falling over his eyes, naked, save for a red collar around his neck. The red collar has two chains, one chain is broken, it dangles and jingles softly in a breeze that the living can not feel, while the other tethers the ghost tightly to the center of the circle in which it stands.<br/><br/>It speaks, its voice also seems transparent, somehow.<br/><span style="font-style: italic"><br/>“Everyone is dead! Everything went wrong! So wrong! Everyone is dead and burning!”</span>The ghost clutches it’s face and begins to quiver.<br/><br/>“Calm yourself.” The man speaks with authority, and also serenity. The ghost calms and drops his hands. “Thank you. Focus.<span style="font-style: italic">Breath</span>.” It is a trick, the ghost could not breath, but the ghost is too new to know that. “Do not think of the pain. Think beyond that, before that. What happened before?” He asks, “Aleck,<span style="font-style: italic"> tell me what happened</span>.”<br/><br/>“We followed every instruction, I checked everything thrice, and she checked thrice moreover. Yet, when she made the final strike… pain… I felt pain… I<span style="font-style: italic">feel pain</span>… I’m burning!<span style="font-style: italic">I’m burning!</span>Someone save me!” The ghost began to panic, it tries to run but the chain holds it down, chokes it. The ghost beats itself, as if trying to put out flames on it’s body, flames only it can see and feel.<br/><br/>The man at the desk snaps his fingers, the chain breaks. The ghost vanishes and the candles blow out.<br/><br/>The man is a statue for several long moments. Then he darts for the door. The electric earth-friendly fluorescent lights from the hall make the occultish scene look cheap. Fake.<br/><br/>He leaves it all behind, he does not have have time to put the candles away, mop the chalk, and rearrange his office, he has a much larger mess to clean up. “I need to put out a fire.”<br/><br/>~~~<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><div style="text-indent:1em;">The First Chapter</div></span></span></span><br/><br/>It is dark, night casts or scene in cool bluish hues. Dark clouds heavy with thunder slowly peel away to reveal a spectacular array of stars and the smallest sliver of the moon. The moon and the stars kindly illuminate the dark half of the world.<br/><br/>This place is very old.<br/><br/>It’s stones are cracked, worn away by wind and time. It’s builders, it’s golden age, even it’s name is gone forever. It’s bones remain, a thin skeleton of its former self. These days it is more of a dirt-pile than a palace. This place is<span style="font-style: italic">almost</span>one dirt-pile among many in this landscape, yet, the careful eye discerns the stubborn rocks were stacked by stubborn men. Men who wanted to be remembered forever, and stacked their stones to withstand the cold and unforgiving wind that stripped the earth bare and corralled the dust and memories about.<br/><br/>It’s main feature is a tall mound with three smaller mounds around it arranged like a cross or an x. (I say a cross or an x because there was most certainly 4 at one time.) The steps and walls are crumbling. It is full of holes and fissures. Pieces of it are chipped away and scattered about.<br/><br/>And everywhere bodies.<br/><br/>These are a recent addition.<br/><br/>Tonight there are bones and blood, scorch marks, new destruction wrought upon this forgotten place.<br/><br/>Not all these bodies are human. There are creatures, some long of limb and fang, others furry, scaly, massive, tiny. There is a woman with fins instead of legs tucked under an archway. Her mouth is agape, her throat swollen, she did not die in the first fire, nor the violence that followed. Instead she simply choked on the air she could not breathe.<br/><br/>Not all were dead. Some had survived this calamity. One by one they would begin to wake under a strange starlit sky and the smallest sliver of the moon.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><div style="text-indent:1em;">TO THE WEST</div></span></span></span><br/><br/>They didn’t want to be seen or noticed. They flew in quiet under the fading storm, avoiding a military unity they spotted. They landed to the west of the side. They tucked themselves between two hills then camouflaged their transportation.<br/><br/>Then they began to file out..<br/><br/>“Kid, wait here. You gotta watch our stuff. Call if you hear anything coming.” The boy was given a metal box hanging on a lanyard. The box was the length of his palm and the width of his thumb, it had a button and a speaker, it told the boy the time 1:11am. The lanyard was purple, and printed with the Sarcus-Sip name and logo.<br/><br/>“Icarus, scout. Morgan, take-point. Zes and I flank. Dizzy rear-guard.” Twain gave orders.<br/><br/>The rest turned to the ruins, and walked quietly toward toward the still-smoking mound of ancient-history and new-calamity. They walked under the light of the stars and the smallest sliver of the moon.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><div style="text-indent:1em;">TO THE SOUTH</div></span></span></span><br/><br/>A drone had gone off track, and saw something strange before they lost contact with it. It was somewhere 45 miles north of the base. A zone with zero activity on record. There was nowhere to hide over there, and nothing to look for. The whole think was probably nothing to worry about, yet,<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">protocol</span>duty calls.<br/><br/>So they set out for the lost droid.<br/><br/>The further north they travel, the more static and white noise tangled their communications. Someone might suggest the storm was interfering. There had been a terrible storm last night, and all day long. Yet, it was clearing up now, revealing bright stars, the kind of stars you only see in no-mans-land. They would see the stars and the barest sliver or the moon.