... not the end. - SCP Foundation

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Before

Traffic jam. Of course there had to be a fucking traffic jam. At this time, at this hour. It wasn’t even a Monday.

There always had to be something, she thought to herself, as her eyes darted all across the bustling streets of the city-jungle on a not-Monday, her arms and legs shaking, while she could feel the sweat rolling down her face. The hospital is right there.

Then, without another second to spare, she opened her side of the door, somewhat scratching the hull of a neighboring vehicle, and sprinted as quick as she could to the hospital. She could hear the sounds of a car door being opened and the voice of an angered man shouting back at her.

She ran past women standing at storefronts eyeing the dresses on display, fathers carrying their daughters on piggy-back, the homeless stretching their hands out for just enough to get by through the days.

Some she just ran past. Others she ran into. An occasional rustle of plastic bags, another arm touching hers.

Some gave her weird and curious looks, as she hurried past them. Others continued on with their days, showing the figure of a worried woman no attention.

Out of breath, her lungs finally gave in on the hospital’s courtyard. She caught a few of the glances others gave her. She returned those glances with a repelling expression, urging those people to hurriedly carry on.

Her legs were trembling. Her lungs were working overtime, her breaths deep and rapid, while her heart pounded faster and faster, second by second. With the remaining energy, she pulled herself up and stumbled through the entrance.

*

”Miss? Can I help you with something?” the assistant on the front desk asked, just as confused as the others.

She didn’t gave the lady at the front desk so much as a glance. She headed straight for the elevators.

”Third floor, third floor, third…” she mumbled under her breath.

The assistant stood up from her desk, looking worriedly at the woman looking frantically around at the end of the hall. ”Miss?” She tried again, again, to no avail.

Where was the fucking button? There.

”MISS!”

She hurried into the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind her. Muffled voices of concerned hospital staff echoed through the gap, before the doors finally closed.

Third floor, room twelve. Third floor, room twelve.

Each passing second felt like eternity exacting its punishment upon her, as the elevator made its way up the hospital floors ever so slowly.

The elevator came to a sudden halt, gave off its ding, and the doors slid apart.

She walked at a quick pace, nearly tripping over her own two feet on more than one occasion. The staff already made their way toward her.

”Miss! MISS!”

Room one, room two, room three, room four…

The men and women in their all-white attire, only broken by their discordant choice of shoes, came round a corner, finally making sight with the frantic woman.

Room eight, room nine, room ten…

”Miss! MISS!”

Room—

Four people ushered out of room number twelve. The first was a doctor, tall, dark hair, brown eyes, nearly bald. The second a nurse, short, brown hair, shoulder-long, blue eyes. The other two were her daughters.

”What happened?” she gasped, out of breath, more sweat rolling down her face. She stared at her two daughters.

They only averted their gaze. No words came out of their mouths. The youngest one had trails of tears on her face.

She turned to look at her oldest daughter, desperately longing for an answer. She, too, only averted her gaze, but with a flimmer of hatred reflecting within her eyes. They remained silent amongst the sterile walls of the hospital.

”What happened?” she now asked the short, brown-haired, blue-eyed nurse.

The staff who previously chased her to the third floor remained completely silent and still.

”I’m sorry, Mrs. Ramani,” the nurse spoke, ”It happened five minutes ago.”

It took a few seconds for the meaning of those words to finally hit her. The nurse continued talking, but the words all welled up into a dissonant cacophony of distant mumbling and white noise.

She first stared at the nurse, then at the doctor, then at the hospital staff, and then at her own daughters. First the youngest one, then the oldest.

She stared at her oldest daughter the longest.

Everything became clear again. The noises became more distinct, more coherent.

Tears formed at the corners of her eyes.

Her husband was gone.

*

Now

*

”Where are you going?” Adam asked, quite perplexed.

She put on her coat. ”I’m going home,” Ramani answered. ”Back home to my family.”

”What?!”

”You’ve heard me, Adam. It was nice knowing you.”

”You can’t do this! You swore an oath to the Foundation! That you would protect humanity from whatever might crop up! They said that, and you swore your life for the cause! Secure, contain, protect! Have you forgotten?!”

”Look around you, Adam! What do you want to protect? The ashes of humanity?”

”You’re selfish.”

She didn’t even give him a final glance, as the security door slid shut again.

*

Site-67 was all but gone now. Well, it’s still there, but wherever this desolated wasteland was, it was miles away from the Foundation facility.

Funny, Researcher Ramani thought. I’m still sane. Still sane, even after everything that has happened in the last couple of months. I’m sane, driving my car down the road, amidst withered concrete buildings, broken glass, and a broken sky.

Or perhaps she was utterly insane driving her car down the road amidst the desolate remains of civilization, trying to reach something that might as well have been torn to its individual molecules by one of the many rampaging gods, deities and eldritch abominations loose upon the earth at this point.

Both were plausible scenarios.

She looked down at her left arm, reminding herself why she was doing all of this, doing any of this, and these thoughts started to go under again.

Her car began to sputter, to slow down. She took a look at the meter, half-expecting what came next: No fuel.

Her body was overtaken by fear and panic, but also an instinctual anger and annoyance. Old habits die hard.

She stepped out of her vehicle, opened its trunk, and retrieved a canister of gasoline from it. She had gotten some from the storage areas back at 67 and loaded as many of them up as her car could hold.

It made running out of fuel an impossibility, but also made her car a moving dry stack of hay on a particular hot summer day for any pyromancer, who decided to blow something up for no particular reason. As if the world wasn’t already enough of a trash fire.

As she stood there and refueled her car, her ears began to pick up a distant crackle of cement and asphalt.

Darting her eyes all around, there was nothing out of the ordinary, well, nothing that surprised her.

The sounds became louder. Like droplets of water seeping into stone, wet pops and snaps, which became ever so louder, ever so closer.

Her body tensed up with fear, with a sensation of finality sprinkled on top of it.

She poured whatever was left in the canister in haphazardly, before she tossed it on the barren, rippled asphalt street.

Her hand reached for the handle of the door, before a mass of tiny, white tendrils, bigger than an apartment building, burst out of the rippled asphalt, between the small stores and shops that were arranged in rows all over the town.

The mass of writhing, coiling, twisting foam consumed anything in its path. Ramani couldn’t move. She could just stare at this massive heap of foam and humans, writhing and moaning together in unison.

Before she even knew it, the mass engulfed her car entirely in one swift motion, before the millions of tiny tendrils made their way toward her.

The foam quickly enveloped her legs, before moving up to her waist, pulling her by the chest, before the tendrils wrapped themselves around her neck and head.

She tried to scream. But all she could muster was a quiet sob.

*

…

…

…

…

”There was once a pretty little princess resting within one of the finest chambers of the great castle. One day shAnd you want to tell me that this is the best you couldMommy has someimportant stuff to do atworkTheFoundation is asecret organization that aims toWedieinthe dark so youmaylive in the ligDo you want to know with whattype of bullshit Ihaveto deal with on a regularbasis, Agnes?!You couldnteven begin to graYeahyeah… okay, thanks, DoctorPederson…thankyou… Daddy has to stay at the hospital alittle lonI herebyswear my life to theFoundation. I herebyswear to secure, contain… prote—”

*

She couldn’t remember what happened before. She couldn’t remember what happened next. All she could remember were the barrages of voices, malleable, squishy, roaming around inside her head, talking, no, thinking indistinctly, yet so clear.

Her head ached. Her body felt like shit. There was a piercing, deafening ring within her ears, as her eyes slowly adjusted to her surroundings, like a deep sea fish being fished-up onto the colorful surface of the ocean for the first time.

Once the ringing subsided, her eyes adjusted, she could make out the rough shapes of houses, stores, or rather the remnants of those houses and stores.

The ringing in her ears was replaced with loud squishy, wet sounds, and the stench of rotted flesh made its way into her nose.

Then a couch landed a few feet right of her.

It wasn’t a large couch. Just big enough to seat a parent and her child between, maybe a dog if they squeezed together tightly. The more Ramani stared at the couch, the more the stench built up.

She stared at the couch more intently, and found large bulges of a writhing something underneath, wiggling its way under the surface.

Then the couch started opening its mouths, revealing long, sticky tongues wiggling all around. Pairs of eyes opened up all over it. What seemed like human toes and fingernails began to grow out of its flesh. It was staring right at her.

Ramani recoiled in terror, as she felt the urge to throw up, if there was even anything to throw up in her stomach.

Then another piece of furniture landed beside her. This time, it was a lamp, sculpted meticously out of bone, coated in a semi-transparent, greenish slime.

The couch was groaning something incomprehensible. Ramani looked to where these pieces of furniture were coming from and couldn’t believe her eyes…

The giant foam of millions of tiny tendrils and squishy thoughts was spitting out masses of people, all in states of severe malnourishment, while it tried to envelop a giant tumorous, fleshy growth, hundreds of thousands of meters in diameter.

They were a few kilometers away, yet the clashes of their battle could be felt from afar.

Many of the ejected people fell to their deaths. Some of those people were grabbed by fleshy tentacles and moved into giant ulcers on the surface of the tumorous mass. Soon enough, more furniture was ejected from ulcers on its rear, like meteorites impacting the earth below.

Ramani could do nothing else, but stay and stare.

Her fight-or-flight instinct finally kicked in, and she found herself on her feet, sprinting in the opposite direction of whatever was stretched out over the horizon.

But she found herself not fast enough. As the ball of flesh consumed more and more of the foamy creature, more and more furniture were shot out in all directions, leaving the impact sites craters of blood, viscera and other human body parts.

One of them took the form of a pick-up truck, tongues spilling out, giving out the most twisted of moans, and impacted what was left of the right side of an apartment building.

The entire structure collapsed, as Ramani could do nothing, but watch. The furniture laughed from all of their pores.

*

The room was gigantic in scope, at least able to hold over a dozen of people comfortably. There were a bunch of people dressed in lab coats of various ethnicities, heights, genders and age. Some were delighting themselves at the buffet table, while others were already sitting at their respective places.

Ramani, not particularly feeling hungry, picked a seat somewhere farther back. When a chime played through the PA system, and everyone got to their seats and stood up, she realized that a seat so far back was a rather stupid idea.

She could barely make out the podium, much less whoever was about to stand behind it. She should’ve worn her high heels.

A figure stepped up to the podium. The man was tall, slender, wearing a pristine lab coat, somewhat balding. He quickly disappeared behind the crowd.

The man spoke: ”Humanity, in its present state, has been around for over a hundred thousand years, yet only a fraction of it has been of any significance. So I ask you, what did we do the last 250,000 years? We huddled in caves and around small fires, fearful of the things that we did not understand…” The man spoke these words in a calm, monotonous, seemingly bored voice, the very sound of which nearly brought her fast asleep.

She caught herself slowly trailing off, fixating upon other things in the room. There were a dozen more men and women all lined up in a neat little row, reaching all the way to backstage. There were guards and security staff armed with tasers, ever-so-vigilant for any dangers that might arise, there was an empty seat next to her, and—

”Excuse me, could I get through?” a man asked.

”Oh,” she began, ”of course.”

”Thanks,” he replied.

He squeezed his way past her. The man took residency on the empty seat next to her. He tried to get a better view of the man at the podium, still giving his speech, past the crowd.

”That’s Doctor Charles Octen Gears,” the man said. ”His colleagues call him Cog.”

Ramani nodded, still not getting a good view of the man at the podium.

”Hi, I’m Adam. Krug,” he suddenly said. He held out his hand.

”Ramone Ramani. Pleasure to meet you.” They shook hands.

”Pleasure to meet you, Ramani.”

”You new here?” she asked.

”Oh, yes,” he answered. ”You?”

”Like you, a rookie. You seem to know a lot about this organization already,” Ramani jokingly remarked.

”Well, he was our, well, my guide. Of our group. Who was yours?”

”A lady called Agatha Rights. Nice lady,” she replied.

”What skip did they show you? As part of the demonstration?”

”A pen that could write on its own. You?”

”What, really? I got shown this old computer. I even got to talk to it for a little.” Adam smiled.

”That sounds exciting.” Ramani smiled back.

”Is there anything you’d like to discuss with us?” This Dr. Gears fellow was looking directly at them.

Ramani felt her blood run cold. Suddenly, dozens of people turned behind them to stare at her. She could feel the gazes of each and every individual in the room, pointed straight at her.

”We’re sorry, Mister— I mean, Doctor Gears,” Adam stepped in.

Dr. Gears then turned back to his speech again. ”In time, their numbers dwindled and ours rose. The world began to make more sense when there were fewer things to fear…” The man continued on. Everyone’s gaze was turned to the man at the podium again.

”Sorry about that,” Adam apologized, now more quietly.

”No worries,” Ramani said, equally as quiet. Her heart began to ease up a little.

They were listening to the speech now. Actually listening to the speech now. ”The Foundation is a secret organization that aims to secure, contain, and…”

”Protect.” Adam finished the sentence. He stared intently at this ’Dr. Gears.’

”Secure. Contain. Protect. You are now part of the force protecting humanity that from which it cannot protect itself. Part of the fire that shines ever-so-dimly in the cave. We die in the dark…”

”So they may live in the light,” everyone repeated. Adam’s voice especially was what emanated in Ramani’s ears.

”I hereby swear to secure, contain and protect,” Ramani spoke. She felt quite sleepy.

*

A pounding inside her head. What felt like hours passed in a few seconds. Her senses were numb, sharp. She could feel blood trickling down her forehead. Her lungs were filled with concrete dust.

She tried to stand up, but then gave off an agonizing moan, echoing throughout the cavern of concrete and rebar with traces of viscera from the pick-up truck. She fell to the ground again, onto a muddy puddle. Pain radiated from her left leg.

She remained like this for a few more minutes. Her sobs were drowned out by the chaos going on on the surface. There was an unnatural sound echoing throughout.

There was a notable whirring within the dark confines of the rubble, suddenly.

”Who goes there?”

No response. Of course not.

She quickly leaned against the far side of the small chamber, as her eyes darted across everywhere. It was pitch black, so she really couldn’t see anything.

Until there was a spark.

It was quiet unnoticeable, but in the utter darkness she now found herself in, a small spark was as bright as the sun. Soon, more sparks started flying, with the whirring sound becoming louder and louder by the second.

She had enough of it. In a panic, Ramani let her hands go over every surface around her. She grabbed a small rock, sharp to the touch, and held it over her head. As best as she could, she aimed the rock at the sparkling figure, ready to—

”Woah, woah, woah, woah!” a voice echoed. It sounded young and exhausted, fearful.

”Calm down, lady! Relax! Just… just put the rock down, all right?”

The panic in her eyes was quickly replaced by a new feeling: Confusion. She put the rock down, but still held it in her left hand, just in case. ”What— who the fuck are you?”

”Okay, okay, lady, just let me… let me—”

All of a sudden, sparks went flying everywhere, the whirring peaked at an unbearable decibell level, until everything just suddenly ceased.

Soon later, a suit appeared in front of her, no, had always been there and was now visible to her, illuminated by the sensors around the facial area and a light attached to one of the arms, glowing weakly.

The face plate of the suit flipped open, revealing a young, worn man underneath. He couldn’t have been anything above twenty-one. He winced and coiled in pain for a moment.

”Ow…”

”Jesus.”

”What…?” he asked, out of breath.

”It’s… your face, it's just…” She dared not speak any further. She was already too exhausted.

”The suit… it… you don't need to sleep with it on.”

There was an awkward silence between the two, only broken by the happenings above.

”Why are you here?”

”The same reason you’re here. What I wanna know is how you survived this long without such a suit on.”

There was no answer. There was already too much she— ”What is that?”

”What is what?”

”The suitcase!”

She pointed at a small suitcase on the right of the young man.

”Oh, that is… that is, um… Well, I remember it being… uhh…”

He trailed off. There was something very uncanny about his words coming to a sudden halt.

”What I wanna know,” she began, ”is why you carry a suitcase around, like you’re some tourist at the ends of the world!”

”Well, some guy sent me some messages after I got into the suit. Went by the name of… of…”

He tried his hardest to remember.

”A… A… something, Krug… Mister Something Krug. Let’s just call him that. He told me to…”

”Adam…”

”No, no, Adam wasn’t it… Anyway, he told me something about—”

”His name was Adam Krug.”

”Are you his mother or something?”

”What— No! Okay, I’m Ramone Ramani.” Almost instinctually, she held out her hand.

”Wilson, Pietro,” he didn’t take her hand, ”Look, lady, I dunno what’s going on or if your know name’s supposed to ring a bell for me, but I’m really freaked out right no—”

”Where— do you remember where you got that message from?”

”I dunno! I just hopped into the suit when my site got compromised and then just got sent these messages, talking about some— some ’way to fix things’! There was no return address, if that’s what you’re asking!”

”What was your prior occupation before all of this?”

”I worked at a 7-Eleven.”

Ramani only gave him a look.

”Oh, not that before, okay, well, I was a junior technician at Exclusionary Site-06.”

”You worked at an Exclusionary Site?”

”As a junior technician.”

”What happened next?”

”What happened next? Well, I was working on some of the back-up generators on the site, when suddenly, all of the klaxons go off and we get off through the cafeteria to the evac points. Next thing I know, a swarm of flying crabs with knives as hands start tearing apart everything in sight. Put an extra-stab in each of the corpses just to be sure. I run into the suit, hop in, and now I’m buried several feet under rubble, and a foamy and fleshy demon are duking it out—”

A rumble outside, shaking the very foundation of this place, stopped Pietro in his words. The walls of their little cavern got a little smaller.

Ramani put up her index finger and pressed it up against her mouth. They had to remain absolutely still and silent.

Pietro looked like he was about to shit himself.

*

The rumbling abated after what felt, and probably were, hours.

Entrapped for hours within this earthern tomb, the walls inching closer with every passing second, with every rumble up above.

When the rumbling stopped, the sounds of heavy breathing, rapid and disjointed, filled their small chamber. She couldn’t place it at first, but soon found out that they were coming from Pietro.

”Pietro?” she said, weak and frail, yet still determined. ”Pietro, talk to me!”

”Shit… shit… shit…” it came from the opposite side of their cavern. The flashlight of his suit was dim, barely able to illuminate more than a few centimeters ahead. Ramani didn’t need to see him in order to figure out what was going on; he was hyperventilating.

”Pietro!”

”Shit— shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

He yelled that last part. His words slowly dissolved into incoherent babbling, before she could hear the metal suit clashing and scratching against concrete, followed by his feet moving around frantically in the puddles of water, frantically moving the light around.

”I can’t…” Pietro began. ”I can’t do— I can’t do this!”

His words dissolved into yelling, his yelling into screaming, his screaming into crying. ”I can’t, I— Why did I have to get into this fucking suit?! WHY?! Why couldn’t I’ve just died, like the rest of ’em?! Why, why, WHY?!”

No matter what she said, Pietro wouldn’t stop. Horror overcame her, when she realized she couldn’t help him, that they were buried under how many tons of concrete, and her only companion through all of this was about to die.

She did the only thing she could think of doing. She steadied herself, feeling the rubble shift under her weight, dust settle from the ceiling, and made her way toward Pietro. She suppressed a groan, clenching her teeth as tight as she could manage, as the pain from her leg radiated even stronger now.

The pain was crippling, but she continued on.

She steadied herself on the wall and shook Pietro by the shoulders. His words were barely a whisper.

”I can’t, I can’t, I— I can’t…”

”Listen— LISTEN TO ME! Look at me! Pietro! Look at me!”

She shook him as hard as she could. She read somewhere that that was not the best way of going about treating a person suffering from a panic attack — if it even was one — but she couldn’t think of anything better to do.

”Stop thinking about all of this, and think about, I don’t know… happy thoughts!”

In the dim light, Ramani saw Pietro’s eyes lighten up.

”Happy thoughts…” he whispered to no one in particular.

”Yes! Happy thoughts! Any happy thoughts.”

Pietro’s voice began to grow calmer, less rapid. The life in his eyes returned, as Ramani could feel her soul ease up.

”Damian…” Pietro said, ”my first cat… only cat…” His breathing calmed down. ”Getting my first job… joining the Foundation… discovering I could do something in the world…”

Pietro eased up more and more.

As the seconds passed, Ramani could see the life return within Pietro’s eyes, as his breathing slowed and his mumbling stopped.

He placed his hand, cold to the touch, on Ramani’s hand, reassuringly.

”Thanks,” he said.

Pietro smiled. Ramani returned the smile. Then she collapsed onto the ground, wincing slightly as her shatterd leg hit the pavement.

”Shit… Your leg,” Pietro exclaimed.

”No, no, it’s… it’s nothing really.” She held onto her leg dearly.

”Hold on. Let me… I think I might have something that can deal with your leg…”

Pietro leaned in and pulled out a small object out of a compartment inside the suit. The little light there was reflected on the surface of the locket, intricate patterns carefully etched onto its surface, shimmering in the darkness.

”I recovered it from one of the destroyed Foundation facilities. All I know is that it can heal you… and is dangerous. Probably shouldn’t keep onto it for too long.”

He handed her the locket, so light in her grasp, opened it, revealing an almost blinding orb of light contained within. She held it against her injured leg, feeling the warmth radiating throughout her body. ”Thanks,” Ramani said, already feeling alleviated of her pain.

”No worries,” Pietro replied.

They remained like this for a while.

”So…” Pietro suddenly spoke. It was nice hearing him talk normally again. ”Do you have any happy thoughts to tell?” He looked over at Ramani.

Ramani gave off a light chuckle. ”What?” Pietro asked.

”Oh, it’s… I was thinking about my family. They…”

”Family, huh? You got children?”

”I—” The words rested in her throat. ”No.”

”Well, what about your family, then?”

”No, you wouldn’t want me to say.”

”Lady, we’re trapped under a building, and for all we know, we’re gonna be the last faces each of us is gonna see, so if you have a story to tell, tell it now.”

Ramani smiled, looked down at the ground, then back at Pietro. Her mind was rushed with dozens of thoughts, her indecision piqued by the long silence. Eventually, though, she gave in.

”I…” The words were, again, stuck in her throat. She took a moment to contemplate, before being sure of her choice of words. ”My… mother… she spent too much time on her job. Never came home and when she did, it’d be late in the evening, when everyone was already asleep… She was always gone the next morning.

”My father always got into arguements about this… of why she would return so late and had to go so early, said that her job at… Starlight Crafts & People couldn’t be so serious, so important.

”They thought… they thought that we wouldn’t hear them. But we would eavesdrop. Listen to every word they’d say.”

There was a long sigh, as Ramani looked onto the ceiling. Pietro kept quiet the entire time. ”Then, my father got cancer. It… it didn’t help that my mother wasn’t there for… us.”

Ramani suddenly stopped. Tears rolled down her face, as she tried to not let Pietro notice. He definitely noticed.

”If it makes you feel better, I also had a shitty mother.”

Ramani winced at those words. She looked over at Pietro, but he didn’t seem to notice. She listened to him intently.

”You know, I also had a pretty shitty father… Never was there anything he couldn’t solve with the belt. Kicked my cat to death when I was little. Was into detective stories and— anyway, besides the point. I hated my father, I hated him so much…

”But even with everything that he did to me… and my brother… I always loved him, because, despite everything, he was there for us. Took care of us, kept us fed… My mother just… bailed out before we even got the chance to see her, know her… It’s like… like she gave up on us.”

There was a pause. A long pause.

”Pietro, don’t ever think like that,” was her only response.

”Yeah… maybe you’re right. I mean, what does dwelling on the past do for you?” He said that last part mainly to himself; yet, somehow, those were the words that stuck with her the most.

…

…

…

”How’s your leg?”

She moved her leg around. There was no pain anymore. ”Better.”

”That’s good.”

Ramani clapped the locket shut, plunging the chamber into pitch blackness again.

Pietro rested up against a wall, clapping some dust off his suit and face. There was a distinct clanking sound as he did so. ”So that’s how it is, oh?” He stared up at the ceiling.

”Yep.”

”I’m just gonna rest a little. Suit’s gonna run out of battery pretty soon, I think, or at least it feels like it. It’s pretty tattered up and feels really heavy…”

Something sparked up within Ramani’s eyes. It was a small spark, a glimmer of hope, yet it was enough to spring Researcher Ramani back into action.

”How do you move your suit?”

Pietro looked quite perplexed at Ramani. ”I—”

”How do you move it?”

Still, quite confused. ”Why—”

”A suit like that’s gonna weigh a few pounds; no way for a normal human body to maneuver it like that.”

Despite Pietro’s persistent confusion, Ramani’s mind was blitzing thoughts, zip-zap, all over. Like a snowball rolling down a snowy tundra.

”Ramani, I’m not really sure what’re—”

”The suit must be directly connected to your brain! Of course!” Ramani exclaimed. ”Lift up your arm.”

Hesitant, Pietro lifted up his arm. It was touching the ceiling.

”How did it feel?”

”It… it…” Pietro’s mind was now rumbling like Ramani’s.

”Like the suit moved according to where your mind commanded it to move? Instead of you moving your arm and the mechanics of the suit following with you?”

”Now that you mention it… it does feel kinda weird.”

”Try recording a log,” Ramani ordered.

Pietro’s expression, just grasping something, fell back into the ever-persistent confusion again. ”Wait, you can record on this thi—”

JOURNAL ENTRY 0001-1

”Woah…”

”Try thinking something into the log.”

My name is Pietro Wilson. I don't know what's happening.

Thought transcription is tricky. Sorry, I’m not used to this yet, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

He immediately shut it off. He looked back at Ramani with a look of wonder and amazement. He knew exactly what she was thinking.

”Do you think it’ll work?”

”It must.”

”All right…”

Without hesitation, Pietro stood up, as best as one could within this even tinier space now, and looked back at Ramani.

”Are you absolutely sure it’ll work? Because I’ve heard being crushed to death is one of the most brutal ways to go—”

”Do it!” she urged him. There was no other way.

”All right…” he mutterd to himself. ”Let’s do this thing.”

The face plate of the suit shut tight around his head. Fully enveloped in the absolute exclusion harness, he pressed his hands against the concrete and began to push upwards.

From the noises and locomotion, it must’ve been several dozen tons of rubble that laid on top of them that somehow hadn’t crushed them into mush already.

It should have been difficult. It should have been the most physically taxing thing Pietro had ever, would’ve ever, done, yet it didn’t feel much too different from lifting weights on a bench-press in the gym (Pietro had never entered a gym in his entire life).

He simply thought what the suit should do, and the internal mechanism and resistant materials withstood the rest. Like the suit was an airplane and he was the pilot (or something like that).

Ramani covered her eyes and ears, as she huddled in the corner, hoping that nothing would decide to fall onto her. Besides a few particles of dust, there was nothing too major.

Soon, Ramani could see the first rays of light through her squinted eyes, as Pietro heaved tons of rubble away; she could hear him audibly straining.

And then there was nothing, but the fresh, cold air. When they climbed out of the pit, she could catch herself coughing and breathing heavily, taking as much air in as possible.

When the face plate of Pietro’s suit retracted, he, too, took as much of the surrounding air in as he possibly could. Both remained like this for quite a while.

Pietro helped Ramani stand up.

Then they took a sweeping view over the deseccrated landscape. What little remained of the town before was gone, reduced to nothing, but dust and rubble. The giants once at the horizon were long gone, yet the traces of their battle were strewn out all around them. Then there was the sky, tinted in a deep red, shattered into millions of fragments. And then there were the gods raging farther on the horizon.

Pietro picked up his briefcase from the rubble.

”Where’re you headed?”

”Site-62C. That’s what this Mister Something Krug guy told me,” Pietro answered, staring at the remains of a kindergarten in front of him.

”I guess this is where we part ways.”

Pietro turned to look at Ramani and reached out his hand. She looked at Pietro, the suit he was wearing, the briefcase, then at his hand.

Then echoes of the past started to come up again.

She said the next words with a conscious, sane and sound mind.

”I’m going with you.”

She couldn’t even fully believe her words herself.

Pietro had an expression of concern on his face, which quickly abated into a smile. ”All right.”

Ramani looked down at her arm again. She rubbed the previous message she had written in blue marker away…

Objective: Get to Green Lawn Cemetery

… and replaced it with a new one. At least in her mind:

Objective: Save the world.

Ramani took a few steps forward. She looked back at Pietro, who had an absent expression lingering on his face.

Pietro looked down at the suitcase, quite confused.

”Wait… what was it that we were gonna do again?”

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