"nnnn." Lee slowly opens his eyes and is blinded by the brightness of the sun beaming into his eyes. The shock makes him snap to attention but loses his balance due to having just woken up and falls to his knees. He remembered being in a cave just a second ago, more specifically an old abandoned mine, but even more than just being in a cave, it was also supposed to be midnight. As his vision slowly returns, he tries to look around and notices Kasey, David, and Sarah lying on the ground, they are out of uniform and their equipment is missing. He noticed the same thing about himself as he tried to stand up once more, as the usual extra weight was missing.
"What happened?"
He limps slowly to where Kasey was, Kasey was heavily injured and was bleeding out. He had a massive chunk bitten off his arm just a few minutes ago but it was gone, like it never happened in first place. Lee checks his subordinates vitals, they are normal. He tries to wake him up, "Reid! Wake up!" .... "Reid! Private Kasey Reid!" He pleads but nothing happens.
"Haaa, seriously what happened?"
He looks around and sees 10 giant marble pillars in a circular formation around them. They looked like the the kind of architecture that you might have seen out of ancient Greece or Rome. There was also a coal brazier on top of each pillar and one the ground next to each on. They were all burning.
"nngh, Sarge?"
Lee sees David slowly sitting up, "Greenway, thank god. Kings and Reid are still unconscious. I am not sure where we are. But more importantly, our equipment is gone and its daytime. Do you have any idea what happened?" Lee rattles off, as David slowly stands and looks around.
"No..... What is this place? Sarge, tell me I am not imagining this....."
As Lee looks up, he notices something that should be impossible. His mind goes blank. [That is not possible, what? Why? How?] were Lees thoughts. There was 2 suns, one small red one and another larger light blue one, plus there was what appeared to be 3 moons that were all right next to each other. One was a greyish, silver like earths moon and was about the same size too. The second one was blue and green. It looked like looking at a picture of earth from space and was slightly smaller than the first one. While all of that was would have been enough to send anyone into a frozen state, they didn't even notice those at first. All they could see was the last one, it was black with red glowing stripes all through out. The size was comparable to about twice the size of all the other visible objects combined. In fact, it appeared to be so enormously large that it was possible that the black and red moon was the main planet and they were one of its moons. Though Lee nor David never made that connection. From the perspective of a human born on earth, that was impossible and while they were looking at the impossible. It wouldn't be something a normal person would think of, even given all the time in the world, of which they have had very little to try and comprehend what it was that they were seeing.
"Wha....." Lee snaps back to reality as he hears Sarah's voice and looks over at her. She is staring at the sky as well. She falls over onto her rear end, "Wha.. Wh..." She was panicking. Lee crawls over to her and gets in her line of sight, "Kings, calm down. I need you to focus, we do not know where we are and have lost all of our equipment, do you remember anything? The last thing I remember was that door...." As he says this, all three start to see strange images flash through there head. It was as if they watched what happened as a still frame movie but internally and not with their eyes. Each image burned into their minds. What was even weirder was that it was from the third person or from the perspective of someone else. They could see themselves along with everyone else as they stood in front of a giant door, maybe 20 feet tall and 50 feet wide with symbols they would never recognize. The door was cracked slightly and as the frames moved slowly forward, the symbols started to glow. It didn't appear from right to left either. It appeared to be random. Once the last symbol lit up, the next frame showed the door open instantly and a extremely bright light completely bath them in its glow until they were no longer visible. The images stopped.
Normally a person would forget small details but it was like each image that was shown could be recalled perfectly. It was so detailed in fact that they could recall the exact order of the symbols that lit up and the shape of each one.
All three of them were confused, lost, even a little scared, but more than anything they had one simple question, 'Where are we and what just happened?'
◇◇◇
"What was that?" Kasey remarks as he slowly gets up. "What a wild dream." He whispers out loud. He looks around but gets a bit confused, no one was around and he was in a forest. He does not understand where he is was nor how he got here. All of his gear was gone and he was under a tree. He tries to remember what happened but he can't. The last thing he remembers was being ordered to get on a helo for his first mission. He also remembers that strange dream about a door, some symbols, him bleeding out but from his perspective it was only a dream. It appeared like it did for everyone else but for him it was jumbled and incoherent. First off, he was losing so much blood, plus his arm was borderline missing however in reality his arm was fine. Secondly, he appeared to be unconscious and it was from a third person perspective. To him who was unconscious at the time. He could not make heads or tails of what happened.
"Reid?"
Sarah was the first to return as Kasey was standing up. She had been out gathering some fire wood. Group and solo survival skills were an important part of Special Forces school. Most who went through were already fairly good survivalist's to begin with.
"Praise the lord! You're finally awake!"
Sarah Kings was heavily religious but she was the only member of team C to believe in any kind of god. She was Catholic. She was very open about it but unlike the perception of most Christians, she would never try and force that on any one else. She would often be carrying a cross with her dog tags but just as how those were missing, so too was her cross.
"What do you mean by 'finally'?"
"You have been unconscious for over 2 days now. We appeared randomly on top of a small mountain in what appeared to be a strange ritual site. We have been taking turns carrying you as we slowly trekked down the mountain. There was a dirt path leading down, so we followed it."
"What are you talking about?"
Kasey was already confused but now he was even more confused.
"We do not know where we are. Listen, I need you to relax for me. It was quite a shock for us too. Come over here to me."
"I don't understand," He says as he walks over to her. Sarah gives a small smile at seeing Kasey walking on his own again but he does not notice. Once he gets up to her, Sarah grabs his head and turns it upwards towards a slight clearing through the tops of the trees. He had the same reaction as everyone else. [That is not possible, what? Why? How?] He just about fell over but Sarah had grabbed his shoulder to help support him. She sat him down to let him process it, grabbed the firewood from the ground and moved it over to small pit they had been preparing.
They had stopped to camp because night seemed to come on very quickly here. It was only dusk for maybe an hour before being almost completely dark. David and Lee had gone on ahead to scout the area. To put it bluntly, they were starving. They needed something to eat and quick. All of their food rations were gone like the rest of their equipment. They did not know what the wildlife was like, nor did they know what plants were edible or not. They had found a couple of bushes with red berries on them but agreed that it was probably not safe to consume unless they got desperate. Fortunately they had not ran into any predators, and while some might say it was fortunate and others unfortunate, they also had not run into any living creature. The forest path continued on and on with out any end in sight. Their hunger pains made traveling and carrying a whole person an even more difficult task. At this point they had to have travelled at least 20 miles but alas, to no avail. Now that Kasey was up, they might be able to make a lot more ground.
◇◇◇
Lee and David had gone on ahead to see if they could find anything that could help them. A person, food, anything. After about an hour they decided to turn back. As they approached camp, they could see the fire burning.
"Greenway, we need to find a way to wake Reid. If he doesn't wake up soon, it will become too much of a burden to keep carrying him. Of course, we can't abandon him but we are going to have to find another way to get him safe."
"As much as I want to disagree, I find it hard too."
They continued to talk about ways to wake Kasey up until they got to camp and saw him and Sarah chatting at the fire.
"Reid!" The first to notice him was David as he ran past Lee and sat next to him.
"Are you okay? What do you remember?"
"I do not remember much. Kings explained the events that happened. I find it so hard to believe. Plus I am extremely hungry."
"You and me both kid."
Kasey Reid was 20 years old. David was 28. He was quite a bit older than him. Sarah Kings was 24. She had just reenlisted again.
Lee joins in with the usual authoritative voice, "Now that Reid is awake, we can make some more ground. Everyone get some sleep. We will be moving out as soon as possible in the morning. Oh and Reid now that you are awake, you are first up to be on watch, then me, then Greenway, then Kings. Wake me in a few hours," as he goes to lay down.
While his tone seemed harsh and unnecessary, the others had a deep respect for this man. He had received numerous Medals of Bravery while saving as many comrades and subordinates as he could. By all accounts he should be dead by now. He does not need to relay his relief at seeing Kasey finally wake up, they all already knew it.
They ignored his command for a bit to keep talking and while he knew this, because he could hear them, he let it slide. Its been a roughly couple of days and if this was something they needed to relax a little bit, he was not going to stop them. As he fell asleep, he thought, 'Thank god he's okay.'