Arknights: When Hunters Meet (A Tacet x Projekt Red novel)

Chapter 3 - Of Life on Terra

There were many weeks where I trudged almost continuously through the desolate but beautiful white landscape.

It was peaceful, and I felt my soul invigorated by it. And in turn my body felt that it could endure so much more. But also because of the gift that would keep me alive far after a normal man would have died of exhaustion or lack of food. I was gratefully surprised when the land started showing far northern woods of pines.

At least plant life still endured in this world. And in those woods I would find sustenance to my surprise. Wildlife. Animals still existed more or less of what I remembered them to be, for the most part.

But it was to be to my utter astonishment that I would find recent signs of civilization. Of the wrong kind. I would be having flashbacks once again. It was a seizable village that I first found. Desolate, partly burnt down and abandoned. But the bodies... I gazed upon them and I was utterly stupefied.

There was a mound of corpses in the middle of the village. They were people... with animal features. They were the spitting image of what the geneticists of my time wanted to create! How could this exist in this day and age? The world was cleansed, but slowly it sank to me that life, somehow, found a way to survive. Yet it would not explain all this.

These people were never achieved! They were never perfected in the laboratories of old! All that the research of old created were monsters. Along the innumerable bodies in the pile I noticed many completely furry ones that still retained a human form at least. These as far as I could tell were of a bear people.

All this looked like a classical purge by a ruthless authority in power. The bodies were shot and slashed, but every skull had at least a bullet hole in them. I searched the houses and found some much-needed food and drink. I perused the few books that I found, and I realized that they were in the old language of Russian. Or at least some version of it. In my time I learned too little of this language and thus the books were useless to me. Except for a few phrases that shed very little light. ''Ursus'', this was mentioned in many books. Was this a religion? A national tale? The name of these strange people? Maybe it was none, or maybe it was a bit of everything.

I did not dare start a fire in the normal fire pits. Less I caught the attention of the makers of this deed upon the village. Instead, I went to the basement of one of the houses and started a flame just enough to warm some food and a pot of hot water. I could finally ingest something warm into my body and wash some off the grime off.

So, civilization still existed. Or something of it. What I've seen so far made me think the circle of the past was running around again, with or without humanity. I didn't doubt that my kind was no more in this world. For some reason I felt it. Whenever I spoke to Joshua I felt it. This was just a new kind taking its place.

''It's a brave new fucked up world and I should see what I can make of it.'' I thought to myself.

Leaving that bleak village the next day I followed what seemed like a large mass of footprints. It lead to another settlement only after a few hours of walking. Only this wasn't a settlement I realized as I came closer. It was an abandoned prisoner camp. This, the same as the village, looked run down and partly burnt. Unlike the first place this one had nothing to offer. All that wasn't nailed down was taken. The corpses here were all clad in an unknown type of uniform.

The difference being that these were all males of good conscription age. All of them of the same bear race. They were not neatly piled as the ones in the village, but they laid everywhere. They were more gruesomely butchered. Hacked to pieces, pummelled to a pulp or seemingly burnt, though all was frozen now. In stark contrast there were several bodies who seemed to have been ritually set ablaze, just outside the opposite side of the camp to the entrance.