No Man's Land

It’s been over two months now since you left the safety of the biosphere behind. It’s hard to imagine how miserably boring your life felt back then and, although you’ve decided never to regret the choice that you made, sometimes you felt that you’d give almost anything for a week of that simple life. Oh yes, nothing but the processors to worry about, nothing but the common cold to fear... Nothing to look forward to.

You snap back to reality as you hear the floorboards creek in the next room. This ancient house held quite a few surprises and it seemed you had yet another one in store. You check the clip of your gun praying to the powers that be to keep you undetected. Three bullets left. No spare clips.

“Great. Just fucking great.” You think to yourself and then shiver as a sweat drop runs slowly down your back.

A deep breath to help you gather the courage and you reach for the doorknob. In a heartbeat the door bursts into a cloud of splinters and you are knocked to the ground by an enormous furred beast. The bear-like animal rushes forward and pins you to the ground without an effort but, in spite of the pain, the foul stench of it’s breath on your face and the creature’s weight making it impossible for you to breathe, you still remain calm enough to press your pistol against it’s abdomen and empty the clip. It lets out a feral roar and strikes with a clawed paw. As you struggle the blow misses your head but the blinding pain in your arm tells you that if you survive this encounter (the chances are thin for the time being) the cyberdoc will have a lot of patching up to do.

You see the beast raising its paw again to finish you off and, as you try to free yourself from its grasp, you close your eyes knowing that one can’t cheat forever and that your time has come. Just then a loud <boom> fills your ears followed by another one and another. The sound echoes in your mind as the creature falls to the floor next to you. Gasping for air you sit up and look in the direction of the door through which you came here.

“You certainly took your time.” You mutter before falling back on the floor with a sigh of relief.

The ceiling seems to be spinning before your eyes.

“I told you to wait until...” your partner replies, obviously upset, before noticing your condition and rushing to your aid. “Shit. Hold on, John!”