It only takes a moment to make a peaceful man a warrior.
-Samuel Butler (novelist)
An unconscious Alexander was lying in his bed in the fetal position. But soon, a strange smell invaded his nostrils, causing him to wake up with a great desire to vomit. Heading to the bathroom, he flushed out everything in his stomach.
Looking in the mirror, he saw large bags under his eyes, a pale face, and his dishevelled hair with dried saliva in his mouth. With lazy movements, Alexander opened the water tap and wiped his face, pouring some water on his hair, and then drying it with a towel he had found nearby.
He soon realized that there was not a soul in his house. The house was still exactly the same as the day before, but the difference was that now she was all alone and a silence hung over the place.
"Mom? Dad?" shouted Alexander, but there was no answer.
"I suppose my father didn't come home again, but where is my mother? Has she gone to the market?" he said to himself, avoiding falling into worry and loneliness.
*BOOM!
Out of nowhere, a great crash was heard near Alexander's house, and he was frightened and let out a gasp.
"What the fuck was that?!"
Running straight up to his bedroom window, what he saw outside his house was on another level of what you might call the "apocalypse".
"Wh-wh-what happened here?" he asked, looking at the horrors of war.
Alexander's house was in a colony near the center of the city where you should see huge buildings, lively parks, and houses with incredible views. But now what was outside his window were burning or partially destroyed buildings; houses totally destroyed in pieces; cars or buses set on fire, overturned and burned to the ground; war tanks destroyed and planes crashing into buildings. The scene looked like a typical zombie apocalypse from the movies.
*BOOM!
*BOOM!
*BOOM!
More explosions were heard outside, a few feet from Alexander's house, causing the house to shake.
"Damn it! Where's Mom?! Is Dad going to be okay?! This is too dangerous..."
In a panic, Alexander could only ask himself that. Thinking about the welfare of his family, he searched the house for any sign of life, to no avail.
*BOOM!
"Ahhhggghh!"
An explosion had occurred just ten feet from Alexander's house, causing the shockwave to destroy the wall that surrounded it. The debris flew out towards the windows and doors, breaking them in the process by the momentum with which it came.
"Why is this happening?!"
The questions in Alexander's head were unanswered, after all this was not a terrorist attack. Looking out the shattered window once more, the smell he had woken up with once again attacked him. The origin of this was the various corpses of people outside his house; the smell of blood and burned or decomposed flesh was seeping into Alexander's nostrils.
Grimacing, he held back his vomiting and proceeded to cover his nose with a piece of clothing on the floor. Fighter-bombers, interceptors, small helicopters with turrets on both sides were fighting an air battle, causing collateral damage like the previous explosions.
Alexander, seeing such a spectacle, still couldn't believe it. His life of peace and prosperity, where the country was at its strongest in history after the disappearance of the stabilizing economic development model, was gone.
Alexander wanted to cry, and nobody would blame him. A young man accustomed to peace, and suddenly waking up in the middle of a war, could be a traumatic event for anyone. Still, Alexander's heart would not weaken in the face of such a situation.
"No... this is not the time for this. I have to find my parents, I don't want to believe they're dead... but it's not safe here anymore, I have to get out of here"
With those words, Alexander took his backpack and ran straight to the kitchen, grabbing canned food, granola bars, fruit, water, a knife, and a gun his dad was hiding in a box in the basement.
He also grabbed a black scarf next to a black sweater, and dressing up in his jeans, sneakers, and a black T-shirt, left the house covering his nose with the scarf.
When Alexander looked out of his window, despite what he saw he could still contain his fear a little, but when he saw the whole scene outside his house, the fear intensified because the landscape was much worse. The usual blue sky now had a strange gray-green color, the deafening sounds of explosions could be heard for miles from where Alexander was, and the bodies were even more than he had observed before.
Holding back the urge to vomit from nervousness and worry, Alexander continued to run through the streets, intending to seek help or information about what was happening. But the further he went, the more destruction, chaos and blood he found.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! What's going on?!" he asked himself in desperation.
Losing himself in thought as he dropped a couple of tears, a huge explosion was heard behind him, and with the shockwave Alexander flew out a few feet, falling onto the hard concrete. The origin of the explosion came from the place where Alexander's home used to be, which was now just a big crater with fire everywhere.
Alexander, with a shooting pain in his left arm, got up as best he could with his weak, trembling legs.
"My...house..." he muttered in a brittle voice.
*BOOM!
*BOOM!
*BOOM!
More explosions began to be heard in different places, and Alexander with a mixture of feelings of fear, dread, anguish, despair, worry, could not move his legs. His mind was focused on chaos and destruction, he was not thinking clearly and only one memory came to his mind: the game he had bought the day before, "World War: Emergency Call".
With his Otaku side thinking about the situation, only two things came into his mind:
1.- Being summoned to a parallel world.
2.- To still be in the game and never have taken off his helmet, even though he swore he had.
In order not to break his mind, he preferred the latter.
"This isn't real...it's okay, this is just yesterday's game! Inventory!...nothing. Status!...nothing yet. Weapons!!"
...
Nothing. Attempt after attempt, nothing appeared in front of him that would give him any indication of being in the game. He now had to accept reality, and he would learn that the hard way.
A pain much stronger than the one in his left arm invaded his right leg, causing Alexander to fall to the ground. A hole the size of a pebble was in his leg with blood coming out of it; a bullet had been fired.
"AHHHGGHGHHHH!!!" he cried out in pain as he grabbed his leg.
"Ha... ha... why...?"
With a small pool of blood coming from his leg, Alexander was panting in pain as he tried to discover the origin of the bullet; but because of the pain, his vision gradually became blurred.
Soon, footsteps could be heard near where he was. From the shadows of a small alleyway, a man dressed in an all-black tactical suit; large, muscular and white in complexion, approached slowly towards the fallen Alexander, while holding a sniper's rifle in one hand.
Smiling mischievously, the man pushed Alexander's face to the ground, causing his body to be completely on the ground. Gradually losing his life as he bled, Alexander looked at the man who now held a hunting knife. The man, smiling like a psychopath, spoke in a different language than Alexander, but he still understood what he was saying.
"Последние слова? (Any last words?)"
"Ghhgh... chinga tu madre (fuck your mother) ... and ¡Твоя мама - мужчина! (your mom is man)"
Having said that to the Russian, the Russian's face turned an angry red, and raising his knife to finish off Alexander, a shot went through the Russian's forehead, spraying his brain matter and blood on Alexander's face. If he had been in all his senses, he would have automatically vomited, but now Alexander's life was hanging by a thread.
The person who had saved Alexander's life was a blonde girl with blue eyes and a pale white complexion, looking at the Russian's body with distaste and apathy.
The girl approached Alexander and examined his wound, and she uttered some words that no longer reached Alexander's ears. He had already lost consciousness.
"Sword base" were those words.