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The last plasma bomb goes off just as the blast door swings shut. Your second-in-command, [[George-27|Naming]], seals it tight, the rusted bowels of the old mining complex creaking.
You lean against the wall, your heavy armor creaking, too. You can't remember the last time you took it off. You try not to imagine what you must smell like.
"You think it'll hold?" Kelly-63 asks, stretching as she slumps down onto the floor and lets out a bellowing sigh.
"It'll have to," George-27 says.
[[You take stock of your surroundings.|Taking Stock]] In the training academy, you were just given numbers. It was more efficient, they told you. Helped you all work as a unit. The names came later.
[[Back|Start]]The room was an office of some sort, buried deepn in the mining complex. It was clearly designed to withstand some heavy shit--the blast door and, presumably, the surrounding walls, are all a few inches thick and made of solid steel.
Inside, you can't even feel the tremors of the aftershocks caused by detonating bombs this far underground. You can't hear the roaring, gutteral death sounds of the Takers.
You don't miss either.
The walls are a uniform gray, though some particulate in the air gives everything a blue-ish tint. A single, flickering lamp, protected by a grate, is affixed to the middle of the otherwise featureless ceiling.
The room is, on the whole, about the size of a small living room. On one end is [[a desk|Desk]], barely standing. On the other is a [[bookshelf|Bookshelf]], nearly empty.
[[Nothing else.|Silence]]
Maybe five minutes pass before 27 goes over to the desk, peeking in the drawers, testeing out the ancient wooden chair that's somehow still standing. A computer, of a make and model you're unfamiliar with, gathers dust atop it.
"I wonder if this thing still works," 27 says. He begins examining it, running his gloved hands over its chassis like it's an alien bomb. He presses every button to no avail.
Each click echoes in the office bunker like a gunshot.
"Piece of shit," he says. He slaps the monitor lightly, forgetting his own strength, and barely scrambles to keep it from falling off the table entirely.
[[Back|Taking Stock]]After a quick perusal, Kelly-63 lets you and 27 know that nothing on the bookshelf is worth reading.
Its wood, surprisingly sturdy and intact after years inevitable moisture accumuluation in the dank mine, holds nothing but technical documents, workplace documentation, and 5 books of something called the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Editions A, B, C, D, E, and Q.
[[Back|Taking Stock]] You're not used to quiet. In the ARTEMIS Program, your body was rebuilt into a weapon with which to fight The Takers. Most days, you never stop moving. Fight this, kill that, blow up one mothership or another.
Honestly, you don't remember much of it right this second. It blurs, and the you that fights feels disconnected from the you that's here, now, resting on frigid steel and watching the fireflydust turn the air blue.
You do anything long enough, and it becomes routine. Muscle memory. [[A big blank--|Blank]]
No.
You'd rather not think about that.
Instead, [[you listen.|Hands]]To your body, churning machine that it is.
Your muscles have been tense for hours. Your legs ache. A grazed plasma burn, cut through your heavy armor, aches against your side. Your mouth tastes like kerosene. And your hands--
Your hands won't stop shaking inside your gaunlets. They shake like they're trying to send a message in seismic wave patterns. They shake so hard it hurts. Skin squeezed too tight against the polyfiber padding around each finger. The hint of silicone and sweat.
<<timed 10s t8n>>[[You listen.|Kelly]]<</timed>>To Kelly-63's single tapping foot.
<<linkreplace "A memory:" t8n>>A memory: You first met Kelly when you were almost seven years old. <em>63</em>. During rec hours, she would chase the other trainees around the paved blacktop, shrieking like a banshee. She would grab them when she got them, pull them by their shirts, wringing their breath free of their throats until they begged for mercy.
You always kind of admired her for that.
<<timed 10s t8n>>[[You listen.|Light]]<</timed>>
<</linkreplace>>
To the absent hum of the light fixture. Is it electric, you wonder? Where is the power coming from? You thought you destroyed the primary generator hours ago.
The fireflydust catches the glimmer as it floats, looking like snowdrift. It's beautiful. And probably toxic. You take a deep breath in.
<<timed 10s t8n>>[[You listen.|Breath]]<</timed>>To your own breathing. Every breath contains the hint of a voice within it. Yours creaks like an unused hinge.
<<timed 10s t8n>>[[You listen.|Nothing]]<</timed>>To nothing. Blindly absent, cobalt luminescence fading into haze the color and shape of a swamp near where you grew up for only a handful of years before you were taken in the night by the bag men with their awful chattering footsteps the same footsteps the Takers have in your dreams.
To dream emptiness, that constantly folding place where your thoughts are no longer yours like your family your eyes your body your fingers your choice to give or take life or death or goddamned anything not even the bloodied dirt under your fingernails or
To your breath. Center here. Like you were taught. In. Out. Awake. Not awake. No difference, here.
You close your eyes. Time slips.
[[...|Interruption]]When 63 speaks, it hurts.
"How long are we going to stay here?"
You don't know how much time has passed. You look at the walls again, examining the fine weathering in the sheet metal. The flecks of rust.
You look at [[the door|The Door]]. Another memory. From before the military, before ARTEMIS and guns and an endless race to war.
You were four, maybe. Waiting at the doctor's office, inside one of those pastel white examination rooms they have. Some painting of a sailboat on the wall, just askew.
After the nurse left, you remember waiting for the doctor for what felt like an eternity. You sat quietly, nervous but still. In hindsight, it could have been only minutes, but it felt like hours.
Eventually, in the thick sludge of quiet, you began to wonder if the world outside the examination room existed at all. Like maybe you'd open the door and there would just be nothing.
[[...|Decision]]Kelly and George wait for you to reply. They're patient. They've been trained to be patient. Besides, you never were much of a talker. Maybe that's why you were put in charge.
You try to remember your next objective. The Takers followed you into the mines screaming bloody murder, and you fragged as many of them as you could. Blood and guts, blurred and mashed. But now?
Something about a hidden passage and a superweapon. Anti-mutagen plasma catalysts. You don't know.
The door stands like it's waiting on a train.
"It's up to you, Boss," says George.
<<choice [[Leave|Leave]]>>
<<choice [[Stay|Stay]]>>When you chose George-27 for your unit, he smiled like a proud son. He nodded, pretending to be wise but just coming off as young instead.
"I won't let you down, sir," he'd said. When you rise to your feet now, you are a deluge of heat come to breaking. Your muscles breathe ready. He stands with you, a gleam in his blue eyes in the second before his helmet is secured again. No facial features, then. Just a blank glass plate, like a one-way mirror.
"We go," you tell George-27 and Kelly-63. You cradle your firearm in a ready position.
You sense the blue haze move and fade around your enhanced bodies. You try to forget you know what snow looks like just when it starts to fall.
When you unlach the door, it protests like a human sacrifice before swinging, inexorably, open.
[[End|Credits Page]]You raise your hand to your temples and smell the rubber.
"We stay," you tell your crew. "A while longer."
You feel the hiss of the coming quiet, the alkaline tremor of the closed door. Sleep eats at you like acid, washing away, hungrier than you've ever been. A malicious idea of an eternity.
A faint blue light shines, even after you close your eyes.
It's welcome.
[[End|Credits Page]]Radiant Array
Story by Radiant Array
(aka Jake Muncy)
Thanks for playing! You can check out my other interactive works at or check me out @jakemuncy on Twitter.
I'd like to dedicate this story to Vered, who gives me strength. And a thanks to Laura Michet, who's given me Twine pointers, and to Porpentine, whose interactive word portraits made me want to make my own.