The desert stretched endlessly before Diego, but it wasn't the desert he remembered. Gone were the familiar rolling dunes of 1946, the scorched earth of his childhood. Instead, the world around him was slick with chrome and steel, strange shapes twisting in and out of the horizon like a living city that breathed and hummed. Skyscrapers gleamed under a sickly red sun, casting jagged shadows on the ground. The air was thick with a humming noise, almost like the background hum of machinery—constant, mechanical, oppressive. It smelled of oil, smog, and metal. And there were no horses.
Diego pulled the Gyro Sphere tighter against his back, its metallic limbs extending as it adjusted to the pressure of his spine. His legs still throbbed with pain, but it was dull now, more like the background noise of his life than anything immediate. He looked down at his gloved hands, clenching them into fists as the confusion set in.
Diego: (sighing heavily, muttering) "Gosh... where the hell am I heading? What is this place?"
He glanced around, bewildered by the towering structures and flashing neon signs in languages he didn't recognize. The buildings around him seemed alive, shifting subtly—walls breathing, windows blinking like eyes. It felt like the whole city was watching him. He could feel it.
Diego: (grimacing, shaking his head) "This isn't right. I'm supposed to be going to Kuwait Mansion... I was heading to confront my father."
His voice trailed off, his mind racing to catch up with the impossible reality around him. His father. Amir Kuwait. The mansion. The confrontation that had haunted him for years. All of it felt so distant now, like a half-forgotten dream. And the world around him—this futuristic nightmare—was nothing like the dusty roads he'd ridden before.
Diego: (panicking slightly, speaking to himself, louder this time) "Wait. I'm not even in 1946 anymore! Right—I'm in some other dimension! That's it. I've lost my damn horse! And now I'm stuck in some hellscape that doesn't even make sense!"
He sighed again, though this time it came from a deeper place, somewhere inside him that still longed for the companionship of the Stallion. He missed the horse in a way that surprised him. After all the bickering, the sarcasm, the bizarre existential conversations—they'd had a connection. A bond that was now broken.
Diego shuffled forward, his boots clattering awkwardly against the sleek metal streets. He felt like a relic, a cowboy out of time, stranded in a place that had no use for him. His leather coat was tattered, worn by years of riding through the dust and dirt of the Old West, but here, it felt like an artifact—something ancient and irrelevant.
As he moved deeper into the strange city, Diego noticed people. They weren't like the people he remembered from his own time. These people were weird—tall and slender, their skin almost translucent with metallic veins running just under the surface. They moved with an eerie precision, like puppets on strings, their faces expressionless as they went about their day. Some had mechanical limbs; others had eyes that were faint blue or green. It was like the city had molded them into something half-human, half-machine.
They moved in perfect unison, their steps synchronized, their movements devoid of emotion. Diego paused momentarily, watching them go about their strange routines, wondering how they fit into this twisted dimension.
Diego: (thinking, his brow furrowing) "I assume Dad created them. They have that... look. Like they're not real like they're... toys. Puppets. But no, Mikhail and I were different. We were personal creations—his sons."
There was bitterness in his voice as he spoke the word "sons," the weight of years of rejection and expectation settling heavily on his shoulders. Even here, in this bizarre place, he couldn't escape the shadow of Amir Kuwait. No matter where he went, his father's influence was everywhere.
