Project Devilgama

2133

It was cold and dark.

He gasped for air, heavily. He heard solid objects pounding on the doors of his house. Those thundering sounds progressively got closer to the bedroom he slept in. He was wide awake.

and could've reached for an old firearm

on the integrated cabinet across his room. But he didn't. He cuddled himself on his side, blanketless. He saw flashes of light seeping through the long cracks in his closed wooden window. He knew why they tried to break into his last resort of hideout. It was all because he never cooperated with anyone that seemed to disagree or oppose him. And he knew every human being would. He would never open that door.

He only didn't know who. Was it the Dogs? The government? Or is it merely another raider desperate for food and water in this devastated civilization?

He gasped for air, heavily. He now heard the solid object pounding on the wooden doors of his bedroom. One hit alone was enough to make the frame wobble. One hit then a moment of silence. But the door had not yet opened. A series of pulsing chirps of something energized hits his ear, messing his mind like tinnitus.

Then, boom! A streak of white light rushed into the darkness, blinding him. It was like thunder had struck the tiny room.

"Move in. Move in."

He felt a sensation on his body but could not point to anything.

"Administered. Target secure."

Two men in hazmat, and radiation masks, grabbed both of his hands, dragging him to a levitating transporter whose door had been swung open. He was half-conscious, dizzy. His body was aching as if he had been beaten up by them despite he hadn't. At least not yet. The men have injected sedation into his body a moment before, forcing him to feel sleepy despite the stream of rushing adrenaline of trying to escape his quaint abductors. The hot sensation of his knee scraping along the rough, sandy ground periodically turned numb.

Now, he could only see the blurry vision of what he can barely do anything about - they pulled him up to the carriage bay of the vehicle. "Are you sure it's the man He wanted?" One of them asked his mate. It was heard as a muffled, echoing sound to Mhaz.

"I would like to confirm," another responded.

The two shut the door behind him. Then all he sees is darkness, and everything heard is nothing but a slight buzz and hum that recede as his eye begins to shut.

The vehicle sped up. They're taking him to someplace unknown.

An hour has passed by.

Mhaz could feel his soul return to his body after an unconscious time that felt like a nap. And he knew that the vehicle is still on the drive, or fly – some Transporters could lift themselves several dozen meters from the ground and cruise like an aircraft. He stood up from the long, black leather seat he lay on, straightening his spine.

He wished to look outside, yet there was no window nor any opening – even the smallest gap, inside this compartment. The only thing that made the moment feel alive is a bar of greenish lamps placed above him, lighting this confined space dimly. He had lost his sense of time, and no tick-tock could tell him.

Outside. He remembered when war raged on this planet, several years ago. World War Three ravaged all countries on the globe with a catastrophic dose of radiation. Huge, fiery mushroom clouds grew on every part of the land, spreading the spores of destruction. The earth is wilting. And everything it takes was just a handful of hateful people telling a pair of men to twist the keys. Then the chain reaction started from silos to silos in the nuclear-bearing nations.

And the missiles don't discriminate. Smaller, Non-Block nations are no exception for the missiles' target. The extinction-level event had turned countless cities into wastelands, the prosperity of humankind into sorrow, and the future, gloom. In the vacuum of iron grip, factions of despicable origins began to sprout from the underground. A dilemma to Mhaz. A disaster to humanity.

He deeply remembered it. All the systematics that led to everything.

He was grateful that he survived until this night. The warheads had never landed on the soil of his hometown. But the sheer shockwave reaches out further than the flaming explosion does. Throughout the days of the heat, he could only hope that nothing would fall and detonate from the sky above. And in the night, wondering if another rough day has time to present itself to him. Another day to wait for the mess and chaos to finally pass by and disappear. And there were also cascades of elements that made things worse; citizens could tell temperature spikes of the messed up climate.

'Seeing' the enormous mushroom cloud was not foreign to him, either. He was inside one of the Coll when a huge shockwave shook him, although he couldn't have a look at the explosion – and he didn't want to. One sight to an active explosion is all needed to get serious eye damage, or worse, permanent blindness. The warhead landed a hundred kilometers from the city, killing fifty thousand people on the receiving end and annihilating everything in its blast radius. Another city to be reduced to rubble. Where's next? Where's it going to land next? He thought in staggering anxiety. His breath gasping wild.

He put his palm to the temple, trying to cover his sight, and pulled his face away from the blast. Then the bright, rising enormity of red and orange blaze was refracted on the shiny linings of the Coll, and the world lit up before him.

He didn't have any life for them to take away. He had lost nothing, as he possessed. He didn't understand their motives for abducting him. Neither who they are. Waiting grew boredom. The long seat felt plenty for him, as he could lay down and continue his night bedtime.

He wanted to sleep although he had just woken up, barely half an hour ago. A night of proper sleep might skip the time, he hoped. He tried not to think about what would happen next when this vehicle arrive at the mysterious destination. His body is in a fetal position for the slight coldness, and his eyes close.