A large warehouse overgrown with plant-life stood looming in the early morning darkness. Debris lay scattered, not only beside this and several other buildings, but in the street blocking any cars from getting as far as Phil had on foot. The overgrown brush lay so thick he wasn't sure where the door was meant to be.
A faint beep sounded in his ears, and Phil pulled his mobile ARD open.
We are sending out someone to meet you, it read.
No sooner had Phil opened the message a coughing noise shot his attention away from his ARD. Phil jumped back, dropping his ARD. Fumbling to pick it up he glanced towards the source of his sound.
A kindly looking woman in her forties, if he had to guess, stood barely ten feet away. Her hair was pulled up into a tight bun, and her face wore a gentle smile. A white lab style coat hung from her shoulders, with the midsection pulled tight around her chest. In the darkness of the night, he couldn't make out much more of her appearance, but someone about her unsettled him.
"Welcome to the resistance, soldier." Her voice was a complete contrast to the lovely appearance she kept. It came out the stern, rough, and harsh.
Phil felt himself recoil from her before thinking better of it and standing to face her, ARD in hand.
"I-I'm not a soldier," Phil said. He had meant to say more, maybe make a statement that could match the defiance he felt and show her he wasn't just a coward but worthy of being respected, but no he couldn't even fake being courageous.
"Well." the woman began. "Today you are, now follow me and try to keep up."
"What's your n-" Phil's words stuttered to a halt as they woman walked THROUGH the wall.
How in the hell did she expect him to follow her through a solid wall? Slow and deliberate Phil pushed forward with his hands outstretched toward the wall. Just as he reached the wall instead of the solid concrete wall he KNEW he was standing in front of his hands slipped forward.
A warm tingle was the only thing that left any sign he was even touching anything.
Strange.
Gathering his wits about him; he pushed forward and went THROUGH the wall. What a strange feeling to pass through solid rock, he thought.
Phil kept his eyes tightly shut until the warmth passed. The warmth fell away and his eyes fluttered open. The hallway in front of him was dimly lit and looked like the same overgrown weed concrete as the outside. Plain white walls and a concrete floor boxed him in from all sides but the one the woman walked towards. Stale air filled his lungs as he watched the form of the woman fading into the dimly lit hall.
"Quickly now, follow me." Her voice rang from further down the corridor. He could barely make out her form anymore and hurried to keep up.
For several long minutes, they did a cat-and-mouse routine where he followed her as she walked through walls, and he fell behind. Eventually, they passed through a wall that led into a brightly lit room with chairs all around the wall, a waiting room of some sort.
"Have a seat and Docter Vidar will be with you shortly." And with that, the kindly faced stern woman passed through a set of thick plastic double doors that swung closed behind her.
Phil scanned the room with a quick glance and was shocked to find the door she had left out was the only way in or out. Shocked and feeling closed in he began to run his fingers around the edge of the room for the opening they had entered from the outside hall.
It was all solid.
He went around the walls twice and found that the entire room was solid and none of it gave way to a secret hallway. With eyes shut and panic threatening to overwhelm him Phil sat and struggled to think.
Something strange was going on here. He had never heard of any holographic technology like this; light just didn't work the way it did in the movies. You couldn't make light solid. It made little sense.
A thought occurred to Phil, and he pulled out his ARD device to see if they had added any augmented reality changes to the building, but to his disappointment, the device didn't seem to work. Perhaps when he dropped it, he thought.
"Thank you for waiting, Phil." A deep masculine voice rang out behind him.
Phil turned to meet the voice and gasped. The man that stood before him must have stood nearly seven feet tall, taller than even Tank. His lab-coat did a poor job of hiding his rippling muscles, being pressed tight around his shoulders and chest. His jaw was blocked and square in a way he had only ever seen in anime cartoons. He had curly locks of black hair that ran from the top of his head in messy stands. And his eyes…
His eyes were golden. The irises of his eyes seemed to glow in the yellow light of the room. Phil blinked and looked again. The eyes had settled back to a more normal brown tan color. It must have been a trick of the light.
Doctor Vidar raised an eyebrow at Phil as he continued to stare at the titan of a man, his jaw open in amazement.
"My parents were one of the first to take part in gene-altering for their child. I know my appearance can be...disturbing, but if you could follow me, we really need to look at those files."
His voice so smooth, so deep, it didn't seem possible it belonged to an actual person and not some god of myth and legend.
Phil reached down to his ARD mobile and slipped out the removable memory chip.
"Here you go," Phil said. The large man reached down and plucked the small memory chip from Phil's hand. While still marveling at the size of Doctor Vidar a thought occurred to him.
"Several of my friends were taken by the Gisney Corp so we could get you these files. Do you have any way of-"
"I will look into it as soon as we can verify that the files are genuine." Doctor Vidar said. He wouldn't make eye contact with Phil as he spoke. The large man shuffled from foot to foot while straightening his lab-coat.
Maybe there was more going on here than even he understood. Snapping his eyes forward Phil paid real close attention to the surrounding details. The doors opened up into a white-lined hallway. The same bright lights that lit up the previous waiting room lit this new hallway. The walls were barren not even signs showing which way to turn when they reached a fork in the hallways. And there was an eerie quiet that seemed to permeate the entire building.
The large man turned right, and Phil hurried to keep pace with the giant's stride. When he finally caught up to the man, he noticed something odd. Neither the first woman or this man wore an ARD. The thin almost invisible ARD shield that covers in front of the eyes of the wearer was nowhere to be seen. Even the ARD core that was placed covering the temple was missing.
Phil had heard of rich folk who could afford nearly invisible ones that sat flat with the skin, but even those were visible if you knew what to look for. This was something else altogether. Phil fingered his dead ARD unit that was inserted into the flesh of his temple.
Not even a scar where their units should be…who are these people, Phil thought.
Phil's anxiety began to build in his chest as his wild imagination filled in the gaps of what he didn't know about the people. They could be aliens maybe? Or perhaps this guy is actually some kind of ancient god come back to judge humanity before were all burned up. Or he could be an advanced AI unit downloaded into a metallic body sent here to gather a way to stop humans from escaping their inevitable doom!
"We're here." The alien/god/robot said.
Phil's imagination had gotten away from him, and now he wouldn't be able to find his way back if he needed to get away in a hurry. They had entered a small office area with four cubicles, each with their own set of computers. Not ARD display units, but actual physical computers with physical screen displays.
"Oh, wow, where did you find this display? Is that an OFD hyper modulation full depth screen? Those things are worth a fortune! They are antiques, and no serious power user would use one, but still! That is awesome!" Phil knew a little about physical hardware, having set up an illegal server himself outside of the corporation's control and he was a sucker for old tech. But a physical display? He could only dream of having something so cool.
"Uh yeah. You know your hardware?" Doctor Vikar said. "Maybe we should have contacted you sooner. It took us forever to get the power output correct on these things and blew at least a dozen before we got it right."
Phil felt like an incredible weight had hit him. He actually fell down to his knees.
"You. Fried. A dozen OFD's?" Phil's voice was barely audible above the buzz of a nearby AC unit. He quickly did the math inside his head for the lowest price he had seen on one of those displays years ago and the number he came up with almost had him flat on his face.
"Yeah, we didn't have the luxury to take our time, but I'm sure with a little work or replacement parts someone can fix them." The large man sat on a dark office chair and pecked away at a physical keyboard. Another artifact of a simpler time that just didn't get made anymore.
Still sitting on his knees, Phil watched the man. He inserted the memory chip and extracted the files. By the looks of it, everything was functioning normally. Footsteps behind him made Phil blush as he realized he was still kneeling on the floor and quickly pull himself up.
The familiar face of the woman that had led him inside entered. Her smile shone with kindness, but her eyes spoke of a dangerous individual. With divine grace, she approached the Doctor and took the device from his outreached hand.
"It's perfect. With these runic formations, we should be able to activate the device." Doctor Vikar spoke in a whisper, but not so low that Phil couldn't hear him.
The woman said nothing but nodded her head and quickly left the room.
"We're sending out a team of our best to try to retrieve your friends. We have their last location reported by their ARD units. We will need at least a day to run a test on the device before we are ready for trials. You will be among the first to enter if we can get things working."
The Doctor took a deep breath and smiled, and for the first time, he met Phil's eyes. If he was willing to get his friends back maybe, he might help him get Eve into the program as well?
"Could I ask one more thing?" Phil asked. He shifted from one foot to another, not really comfortable asking for more after this man had already offered to not only save him from the end of the world but also was willing to retrieve his friends.
"You can ask me anything." The Doctor said. "If I can do it for you, I will try. You have given us an opportunity that in the last 12 passes we've never had, this could finally be our way passed." Doctor Vikar's eyes seemed to shine with a golden light as he spoke and his grin widened.
Strange, Phil thought, he could swear his eyes were ACTUALLY glowing gold. Maybe he has a new generation of ARD units that covered only his eyes?
"We only succeeded with getting the files because of our AI unit," Phil said. "She means a lot to me and she is the last thing I have of my si-" Phil's voice caught in his throat but he pushed through the emotion. "Is there any way we could have her transmitting into the program as well?"
Phil braced himself for the inevitable ridicule and scorn. He had been so silly thinking they would waste any time trying to figure out how to upload a computer AI when there were real lives to be saved. He would just go find a corner and hide until it was his turn to be uploaded.
"Interesting." Doctor Vikar said. "I honestly have no idea if that is possible. Do you have the program on you? I could run a few tests myself and see if it could be possible."
Phil realized he had closed his eyes. Stupid. Opening them, he looked up at the titan of a man staring down at him with a grin on his face. He looked so mighty standing above him like that, Phil believed at that moment that if there were any way to get Eve into Haven, this man would be able to accomplish it. He could do anything. Shaking his head, Phil focused his mind.
"Miss Starkad will take you to a room where you can get some sleep until we are ready for you."
Phil woke to a sound that had been getting all too familiar as the end of the world came closer. Gunshots and lots of them. Phil did as he had been doing for the last year and rolled onto the ground to, hopefully, prevent himself from being hit by a stray bullet. Instead of hitting his soft carpet like he expected, he was greeted by hard cold concrete. Wait..what?
The events of the night before came rolling into the front of his mind. Why did he hear gunshots inside of this place? He barely got the thoughts out when he heard several more burst of shots closer now than before.
With a slam, his door was flung open and from the light of the hall silhouetted a massive form of a man. Phil squeaked and assumed the fetal position. Closing his eyes tight, a shiver ran through him as he waited for the gunshots to rip through him.
"Get up now!" A voice said. A view he knew! It was Doctor Vikar.
Phil shot to his feet and ran towards the large man. With a quick sweep of his arm, Doctor Vikar pushed him into the hallway, and they began running.
Bodies littered the brightly lit familiar hallway. Most were unfamiliar men clad in black assault armor. Large plates of bulletproofing, several unnecessary pockets, and big guns. Corporate goons perhaps?
All the bodies lay disturbingly still, but they didn't seem to have any gunshot wounds though. Phil's eyes caught sight of a body face down and stopped short. His body smoked from a huge burn mark on his back.
"What happened to them?" Phil asked. Vikar grabbed his arm and continued pulling him along. Either Vikar didn't hear him or didn't care to answer because he continued to drag him along until they reached an open warehouse-like area.
The majority of the room was shrouded in darkness with a few islands of light pouring down towards the warehouse floor. One of the spheres of light in the farthest corner stood a group of half a dozen people wearing white lab coats.
"We are short on time, so listen up and don't speak." Doctor Vikar said. He spoke fast, and his brow was burrowed, as his head swung back and forth looking back toward the hallway they came from.
"We sent two of our best to retrieve your friends, but we lost contact with them. They are most likely dead now. I'm afraid your friends have likely suffered a similar fate. We underestimated our adversary this time, and it's cost us dearly."
Phil didn't speak, but a gasp escaped his lips and his hand closed over his mouth.
"They found us. We've been overwhelmed. We have the power to do several transfers, but we aren't sure it will work just yet, so…" Doctor Vikar's eyes met his and his voice softened. "Well if you are willing we would like you to go first."
Phil wasn't sure what to think or what to say, so instead he just slowly nodded his head. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well try to get into the Haven program. What did he really have to lose?
"Good, good. Miss Starkad will help you get undressed and into the pod." Doctor Vikar said. "One last thing. If you do get in, you need to be careful. Haven isn't like anything you've imagined. Death there can be true death."
Doctor Vikar turned to another of the white lab coat worker. "Did you purge out that AI I gave you?"
"It's still attempting to decode the information. It shouldn't affect the transfer of bio-matter." The other man said.
"Right, fine." Doctor Vikar said. "Phil we tried to send your AI, but it seems to be stuck in a loop not getting past the buffer panel. This tech is difficult to understand, much less manipulate to do things that it wasn't intended to do."
Phil jumped from the sound of gunfire in the distance. He stared at the floor and tried not to think about how he was going to be shot to death. His chest clenched and his breathing quickened. Focusing on the large wires that ran all throughout the floor he half ran half walked to the group of lab coats. Raising his eyes, he saw the device meant to transfer humanity into digital form for the first time. Despite the echo of bullets and people rushing all around Phil stopped short.
It looked like a stone coffin that would be better off holding a mummy than someone hoping to transfer their mind to a digital paradise. The coffin sat on a broad base of gray stone, except that it had wires attached to every opening, even though a few cracks. Was this some kind of sick joke? Did he really do all this to help a group of insane people pretend to connect wires to an old stone artifact?
"Quickly remove your clothes." Miss Starkad said. She spoke with authority, and Phil found himself obeying before he had registered the meaning of the words.
Soon he stood naked as the day he was born in a warehouse that felt much colder and more crowded than he remembered. His hands quickly went to his middle as a female lab coat walked past him.
"Marks, Rand, get the jelly and cover him completely before we get him into the device," Starkad said.
Two large burly lab coats approached him. Both had impressive beards. Cold lubricant jelly being spread across his body sending an icy chill through him. One of the two bearded lab coats lifted him clear off the floor and placed him into the stone coffin. The coffin door closed, and he realized he could see through the surface.
Strange. It must be some type of advanced plastic then?
Doctor Vikar's face appeared above Phil, and his voice penetrated the enclosed coffin as if it wasn't even closed.
"The scan that prepares you to be transported to Haven is…invasive. Regardless of whether the transport completes the scan will kill you. It must examine every single piece of you down to the molecular level. I'm sorry. I meant to tell you this before, but things have snowballed out of control."
And with that, the Doctor was gone. The coffin, his executioner, began to move. It lifted him to a standing position, and he found he had a view of everything happening in the warehouse. Flashes of lights, men and women bent over computers fingers pecking away. Wait…flashes of light?
Phil looked closer and could barely make out a large quad of men entering the chamber all clad in black with large guns. And standing between them and the device was just one man. Doctor Vikar. He was glowing? It became progressively harder to focus and his vision began to blur until going completely black.
Stars, fire, and death filled his dreams.