Aeterna Dystopia [EN]

Chapter 1

Alenia let out a disappointed moan as she opened the last wooden crate that she had dragged from the high storage shelf with all her might, only to be greeted by dust along with half-rotten mouse carcasses on the inside.

Hopelessly, she put the lid back on the box, to stand up groaning and putting both hands on her aching back. As an employee of this warehouse, where she was hoping to find some supplies, she would definitely be rather unhelpful, Alenia thought ironically and frustratedly shook out first her left and then her right foot. Even though she had an average height for her age, it was still a very exhausting fight to lift out the dozen boxes out of the high shelves as silently as possible.

As if for a mockery, her stomach again let out a growling noise,which sounded frighteningly close to the impatient rumble of a hungry lion. Hopelessly, she turned slowly around her axis and inspected every corner of the bare hall. Unfortunately the hall has been, similar to the building she slept in, completely plundered. Nothing but a few metal pipes and remnants of the transport machines served as an indication of everyday life, which found daily rest here just months ago.

Suddenly the young woman heard dull footsteps and several voices, which came from the outside side of the wall on the west of the hall she stood in. Carefully, Alenia sneaked closer to the wall, straightened up slowly and peered out of the tall plastic panes of the windows. She had to rise on tiptoe to distinguish the silhouettes of two adult women and one of a man who was mutedly chattering and walking towards an inconspicuous looking second warehouse, which seemed to be connected to Alenias current location through a collapsed corridor to her left.

Letting herself be guided by her hunger, she turned her gaze away from the strangers and approached the door, which through broken Plexiglas panes gave insight into the barricaded passage behind it. Instead of maneuvering through the junk and running the risk of being buried under the rubble, Alenia picked up one of the crates that had previously disappointed her with their emptiness, and used it as a stepladder to access the narrow window above the door. With a powerful jump, she pulled herself up on the frame and slipped through the opening onto the flat roof of the connecting corridor.

From up here, one would certainly have an advantageous view over the city, in which she was staying, wouldn't it be for the dense fog that created an uncanny atmosphere in the area. Meanwhile, the people she had previously observed disappeared in the opposite building, so that Alenia could move unhindered but carefully on the flat corridor roof. She quickly reached the other side and was now kneeling in front of a window similar to the one she just climbed through.
Behind the dirty window she recognized an almost identical hall the first one, but it was equipped with all sorts of temporary tables filled with lanterns, documents and various boxes. Some of them were matte black, made of elegant metal, in which Alenia suspected firearms, others were simple wooden chests. However, unfortunately there were also a handful of the men and women, some of whom were even equipped with bulletproof vests. Without doubt this was a kind of temporary basis for mercenaries, as she quickly concluded.

She studied the space on possible back exits or opened windows, which could possibly serve as an entrance or escape route for her.

She counted two men and three women under the high roof, some of whom seemed to chat, but Alenia could not understand their words from the distance. Her attention got stuck at one of the men approaching a table across the front door. In the middle of the surface sat what seemed to be a flat leather chest, which the estimated mid-thirty-year-old man tried to open inconspicuously, only to be interrupted by a sharp "Hey!" of one of his colleagues. The woman's dark, shoulder-length hair framed her serious face and austere expression as she said something to the man to which he answered by raising both hands as if to surrender with a played expression of remorse on his face and closing the box again with a mischievous smile.