The sound of a beeping monitor, the soft mattress, the unmistakable refrigerated breeze of air conditioning, the stale artificial silence, the muffled shouts of pain produced by anesthesia.

'A hospital?'

That was all Elgan could think of as he gazed at the room's pristine white ceiling. The soft white sheets, the monitors standing at his side monitoring his vitals. For him, it was the closest thing to a hospital he could have wished for. After all the things he lived through in those few days, it felt strange to be here, sitting, calmly, undisturbed.

Undisturbed...

It felt strange. It did feel strange.

Elgan's heart raced inside his chest as his hands approached his face, his fingers running across the bumpy, irregular landscape the right side of his face had become.

'My eye.'

His fingers dug into his skin in an attempt to find his missing eye. Buried bellow his own skin and flesh, he was one-eyed.

'I...'

The question, Why. Was already answered, the reason he was intubated in a hospital bed, on the verge of disability, maybe even death.

His green iris reflected his right arm, or what remained of it. Just like he imagined his face to be, his arm was there, a lump of white skin extending from his shoulder, very vaguely resembled the shape of what an arm should look like.

As his eyes descended down the numb appendage, the sight became increasingly deformed, there were no hands to speak off nor fingers. His attempts to move the limb ended at the height of his elbow, his sense of touch reduced to a sorry approximation of what it once was.

That wasn't the worse either. Those memories...

Surfacing from the depths, the pitiful state of his body revived the last memories his mind recorded. Memories of persecution, a race for his life, anxiety, agony, insanity. All of those emotions threatened to leak back, it was his job to contain them.

Not alone.

His voice raged inside his skull.

'What?'

Elgan's body shakes as he manages to feel a presence close to him, his paralyzed body instinctively contorts to put distance between them, but the wall behind him prevents it. The young man's eye immediately darts towards the other human standing across the room.

Sitting on a seemingly comfortable white chair, a man with pale complexion dressing in doctor's suit, his face completely covered with a flat white mask, only his short black hair visible. His fingers locked in a hologram keyboard coming out of his wrist. A steaming cup of coffee on a small keyboard next to him.

"It seems you are already awake, that was fast. I expected to be here for another hour at least."

His tone was weirdly off, depressed even. I calm down my nerves as I stare back at him, not minding the awkward silence.

"Well, I guess you aren't really in the mood to talk right now. So I'll just say what I have to say."

His shoulders raised in a subtle annoyance.

He touches the hologram screen a couple of times, flickering his fingers, the image displayed by the bracelet grows in size, occupying half of the room's size.

My mouth hangs open slightly my teeth grit. It is not just any image... In fact, It's a very familiar one, the silhouette of Mother Meatball the First, ruler of Wikea. My eye narrows as it gazes in the doctor's direction.

'What does he intend to achieve showing me?'

Careful, I had to be very careful with what I said or did. After all, these people were dangerous.

"Judging by your expression, I guess you do know W208."

With a slight tap, the light in his wrist dims out as the hologram fades, his fingers lock onto each other.

My brain silently analyzed the situation, it was only now that I began to grasp the meaning of danger. It wasn't physical danger that I felt, in fact, it was a radically different concept.

'Knowledge.'

This man sat on a cliff, staring down at me. He knew too much, I knew too little.

'Problematic.'

The doctor prepares to continue talking, however, to his surprise a question interrupts him.

"Anomaly, is that its name?"

He wasn't in an advantageous position, better fix that. A curious expression crawls on top of Elgan's face.

Silence...

A bit of a smirk draws behind the doctor's mask, he leans forwards and readies to spew. Or at least, that was what it seemed. To my utter disbelief, the mysterious man in a medical gown doesn't answer the question directly.

"June, year 2069. Known by most as The Decimation."

He paused, letting suspense get in the air before he continued.

"The nature of the event is not yet fully understood, but approximately at midnight of the first day of the month, a cataclism like no other occurred."

Snapping his fingers a new hologram popped up as the room's light shut off. A model of the terrestrial glove slowly spun around its axis, a red dot appearing somewhere east of Malaysia.

"The epicenter is understood to have appeared in Southeast Asia. Humanity lost contact with all of the nearest countries that same night, ignorant of what was about to come."

The dribbling excitement in his voice sent shudders down my body.

"In mere days, the area affected by The Decimation had already swallowed most of China's territory, half of India and Australia, nearing Russia. Everything it shallowed submitted to silence, nothing answered back passed the veil."

The expansion of the area was followed by the hologram as if following his thoughts, in seconds, the red area had shallowed the planet whole.

He paused.

"In a month, the world had entered a dark age. We, humans, became the prey, anomalies, the hunters."

Before I could say anything, the red layer disappeared shallowed onto points of crimson. Each of them is accompanied by the location's name. My gaze shifted from location to location stuck in a neverending disbelief.

New York.

Sydney.

Paris.

London.

Delhi.

Madrid.

Tokyo.

Shangai.

Sao Paulo.

Cairo.

Dhaka.

Beijing.

Osaka.

Bloemfontein.

Butwal.

Milan.

Rome.

Pretoria.

Minsk.

Moscú.

Sofía.

Zagreb.

Prague.

Copenhaguen.

Helsinki.

Washington D.C.

Las Vegas.

Tallinn.

Lisbon.

Shiraz.

Bangalore.

Kunming.

Mexico City.

Seoul.

Pyongyang.

Harare.

Lusaka.

Accra.

Banjul.

Bern.

Budapest.

Tirana.

Vienna.

Dublin.

Hyderabad.

...

The list continued.

My eyes slid through the unending list of names. My mouth is now open agape, my skin chickening pale, not because of the true magnitude of the events, but of the images that accompanied them. An assault on the once-famous landscapes that each of those locations represented. Lurked by monsters born from the worst of nightmares, brought forwards to reality. Their shapes, forms, their aspects all different from each other. Their chilling stares recorded in second-long videos and caught on camera were more than enough to reap souls.

A colossal mix-breed between a worm and a serpent coiled around the empire state, its mouth hung open like a devilish flower, as if ready to swallow the building bit by bit. The surrounding landscape devastated and collapsed, earth splitting under the tunnels the beast had opened. The serpent threw out, piles of bones mounting up along the building's base.

A swarm of blood-hungry humanoids running four-legged across the roads of San Francisco. Their slender faces were blank, without eyes, without noses, only their mouths dribbled with saliva, and tongues jumped as they hunted after a bloodied little girl, her steps turning slower, she turned a corner, never to be seen again.

A tall humanoid figure several meters in height standing uncaringly on a marble throne, the throne elevated several feet from the ground, its steps leading down decorated with gold and jade. His body covered by a white and black exoskeleton. His authoritative aura was unavoidable, kneeling before him, hundreds of humans submitted to the entity's might like dogs.

They continued going. Images, recordings, audios, recordings.

"The world did really end..."

I muttered to myself. The hologram disappears as the lights turn back on.

"HeHehe..."

The man laughs softly, another uncomfortable silence extending through the room. The masked man backs away a little bit, grabbing a smoke from his gown's pocket, the cigar touching his lips before remembering he couldn't probably smoke inside the room.

"Kid. Does it feel like the world has ended?"

His hands extended lazily to the sides, inviting me to take a look around.

'True...'

Even after that, it seemed the world didn't end. Even after incomprehensible creatures changed the world as we knew it, humanity kept on advancing. Letting the past go, forging itself better and harder. The room Elgan stood in was proof of that. Proof of something, he himself knew very well. Even in the face of unrecognized adversity, in the harshest of environments, when everything is stacked against you.

Elgan's hand covered his mouth, a wide smile opening between his lips as he remembered the hell he himself surpassed.

Some people will inevitably fall, and die. But some individuals, special humans, will survive. No. Surviving was not the word...

'People, thrive.'

"Nah"

Doc's voice released him from his trance.

"Humanity isn't gone, there are very few of us. But we do manage."

The doctor was a good comic relief, wasn't he? I couldn't help but laugh a little.

I was about to raise another question when someone suddenly interrupted. The words entered my head.

- Patrick, need you on medical section A now. Another strike by Sand Surfers, two of them barely hanging. -

Although the white mask remained hanging above his face, the scowl behind the piece of plastic didn't go unnoticed.

He stood up from his comfortable seat making sure his uniform was nice and tidy. His fingers tap his shinning ear lobe until the device turns off. He was about to open the door to the outside but refrained to do so in the last second, he grabbed for something in his pocket.

"This was with you when you arrived, I should return it."

He throws the object at the bed, I grab it with both hands.

"Also, those two should be here soon. Good luck with that."

The room's door slid closed, he was gone before I could say anything.

'What a fast guy.'

Even though he was now alone, Elgan didn't dare to walk around the room on his own, much less slide to the hallway outside. Patrick had said it himself, someone would come soon.

Therefore, he limited himself to looking around the place noticing things he didn't before. Near the door, there was a scanner, probably to prevent patients like him from making a fuzz outside, there weren't any windows to the outside, no fresh air, only a ventilation system hanging in the ceiling. Plus another was another door to my right too, which I could only guess was a bathroom.

| Sshrt |

The white door opens swiftly without almost making a noise. His gaze instantly set across the hall.

- I bet you he is still in com-a- -

A cold mocking tonne makes its way to his head, both soldiers seem to freeze. One foot already set inside the room, the two humans hesitate briefly from entering the room before making up their minds. Both of their stares set on the young man.

'These people... This isn't good.'

People?

These were no ordinary people. These soldiers... were familiar, to say the least.

Elgan gulps down as the door slides closed. The two armed men remain quiet for what seems like ages.

A shiver runs down his body as he glances at the two. Both of their faces covered.

The taller one wearing a purplish reflective helmet, the rest of her suit made of a mildly thick layer of white material revealing her considerably toned and curvy body. A thick light grey scarf wrapped around her neck, a silver-colored handgun hanging from her waist. Though, her firm and menacing stance force my eyes away from her.

I scan the other shorter girl. Her eyes were protected by a simple visor preventing me from distinguishing her facial features, her lower face covered in her rather large white robe, her head covered by a hood. Her hands were covered in long sleeves hiding her mouth.

"He did wake up."