Yes

The prospect was tempting indeed and though he tried his best to rationalize what each path could hold; The Survivor felt a pull within him. A swell of emotion that wanted to manifest as a scream, a cry, anything really. Instead, it took the form of him hastily reaching out and grabbing the stone. As his fingers enclosed its cold surface, he felt a surge of energy unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.

He’d spent most of his adult life getting shot at, blown up, and watching his fellow men die. There was an awful, gut wrenching high that came with those experiences. As horrifying as it was, training and a horrific, insidious inoculation had hardened him to the sound of 7.62 rounds cracking overhead followed by the panicked screams of a man who had just shown him a picture of his newborn son, now doomed to never see his birth father. He had watched a man was sawed open by the barking rounds of a Mk 48. He’d seen a man detonate a suicide vest at a bus stop and heard tinnitus meld with a mother’s screams as she held what was left of her daughter. Each **** and each firefight presented a double-edged sword. It was a sick reality but the abject horror of war often gave way to an adrenaline high that nothing he’d done stateside could compare too. Well, until now. The sheer ecstasy that encompassed his body sent sheets of sweat down his brow and **** his face into a grimace as he contained the urge to vocalize the ecstatic pleasure and agonizing pain. He felt his legs give way and buckle underneath him, bringing him to his knees for the first time in years as he began to white knuckle the stone.

“Please!” The Survivor cried out, now clutching his prize to his chest. The voice was everywhere now. Reverberating not just around the walls of the enclosure but in the deepest parts of The Survivors very soul now. The sensory overload was unbearable and as much as he wanted to cast his new souvenir off, to wake up, and to be done with this hellish dream, some small part in the back of The Survivors mind knew that the only real way out at this point, was through. He could feel lances of something searing itself into his mind and although every muscle in his body screamed for him to claw it out, he knew that it would be no use. Instead he let the pain wash over him and as it came in waves, he sent it below. Pretending it didn’t hurt wasn’t enough. This was something that must be felt. Something that was meant to be endured. The Survivor reached into his mind, hurtling past his conscious and sidestepping the buffeting winds of agony like a matador would a charging bull until finally he teetered on the abyss where memories of the desert lingered forgotten until sleep ushered them forth to the surface like pus from an infected wound. The irony stung almost as bad as the physical pain. The only place that felt safe was looking into the inky depths, one step away from capitulating into the abyss. Here, he was home. Here, he was powerful.

He wasn’t sure if the realization made the pain stop, or vice versa, but soon everything was quiet once more. The strange creature was still standing like a statue, its featureless face bobbing up and down as it wheezed for breath. A pitiful existence. One that would soon be unnecessary.

“What would you have me do?” He asked, his voice now cold with the resolve of a warrior. The voice let out a loud, protracted sigh. The silence before it answered was agonizing and as it enunciated its bidding to achieve this Utopian dream, one that they both strived for, The Survivor wished he had known what kind of toll this mission would take.

“There will be more like you in the coming days. But there is one in particular who stands in our path. The boy named Sam Doyle. Show him the error of his ways. The time will come when your paths will cross. When it does, kill him.”