Split vision. Bleary. Light stirs me like many static shocks on every surface of my skin. My head aches out deeply from the core of my mind and seems to bleed into the environment I strain to see. I'm sitting upright. My legs are waking up but barely present. My whole body takes shape in my apperception, and it all stings with catatonia and the novelty of motion. My Sleepod had raised me on a folding backrest. Realizing this, I felt vertigo. It broke my inertia and bowed my back. My knuckles as pale as bone still grip the equipment. Then I inhale. There's a delay from the air entering my mouth to reaching my lungs. Once it hits, my focus snaps into place.
I lumber out into the setting. The sky is wrapped in clouds as dark as dusk and the earth is dry as my throat, it cracks once my boots hit it. The oxygen mask starts to hum and the collar vibrates a little. I take another step, and the scenery freezes. I lose control; my left leg gives out like the string of a puppet's limb being cut, and I stumble to nearly falling. My right knee catches my fall over a rugged stone. The pain turns hot and wet, and I'm sure I'm bleeding. The blurry scenery is still as it was when I was standing, so I knock the headset on the temple with the heel of my wrist, as if that'll get it working. But then the feed refreshes and all I can see are brown clumps and black mudcracks. My knee looks clean, no puncture.
I pick up the sprayer where I had dropped it beside me and notice some antiseptic foam was discharged. I must've pulled the trigger on my way down. The foam is green and bubbly as usual, but seems to be turning gray and solidifying, blending in with the dead earth beneath it as it soaks in the effluvium air.
I stand up arduously with elbows flared. I look around at the scenery I had missed. Behind me is the truck. We had been loaded into a sleeper truck, whose freight trailer contained eight Sleepods stacked bunk style, now all as empty as cracked eggshells on a wasteland.
Beeping. Something starts beeping in my ear and I audibly wince. A voice intrudes in my brain. "Mr. Corbin, do you hear me?"
"Yes," I rasp.
"Good morning. We were having issues with the signal, some kind of interference. Now, please administer your medication before doing anything else."
I notice the ticking now! My collar was subtly pulsating this whole time. No wonder my throat was sore and tight. I force open the snap buttons on my pocket, pull from it a vial, slowly slip it into the port, and it's like a fever draining out of my neck. It beeps in threes and I pull out the empty vial, replace it in my opposite pocket.
The stranger's voice returns, "Good, your vitals are stabilizing. Now, we'll be overlaying your virtual display with a miasmeter. Miasma will be identified in reds and oranges. The hotter the color, the more concentrated the miasma. Only get as close as you need to. Any closer, and you will hear a sound like a Geiger counter, you know that crackling sound for radiation. Treat this no differently."
I nod my head to no one.
"Miasmeter going live now," the woman's voice changes into a man's. Then my view lights up with cold, volcanic eruptions. Immediately in front of me is safe, but further out red freckled the terrain, and the horizon was white-orange as though a sunset had ignited it.
"Too bright. Turn it down," I plead and squint.
"The color grading and brightness are off. Didn't we balance his display?" she scolds through fatigued breath. "Adjusting brightness now," he adds. The colors mellow. "How's that?" he asks in a different, deeper voice than before.
"Better," I sigh.
"Safe to proceed?" it asks in a fourth, hesitant voice. "No, we calibrate now. Did you forget the protocol?" it argues with itself.
YOU ARE READING
MDB: Miasma Defense Bureau
HorrorA civilian, Lloyd Corbin, wakes up in a hospital bed after an unexplained phenomena that's sweeping the world, simply referred to as the miasma, affects him personally. The repercussions of his brush with this epidemic are not well understood, eithe...
