From Darkness

[Manticore]

INTERLUDE

Smoke hung in the air all around, refracting light in strange ways. The world was so… grey. Grey and dark and confusing.

He lurched to the side as everything shuddered one way, and then the other. Faintly he heard distant yelling, as if a man were screaming at him from across a very wide canyon. The sound echoed, and he could not make out what was being said.

His stomach convulsed, and by instinct he lowered his head as he vomited. As he darkened the floor of burnished grey steel, he abruptly realized that he had no idea where this was.

Then, he realized that he had no idea who he was, either. And yet - for some reason, that didn’t matter.

He was seated, leaned against a wall with legs splayed out in front of him. Slowly, he pulled his head up from the pool of vomit at his side and looked into the smoky haze like a diviner attempting to see the future. Shapes shifted in the fog, occasionally there were flashes and loud sounds.

Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing plated steel of some sort. Some sort of armor – darkened with the wet slick of what could only be blood.

It was then that he noticed the insignia on his chest. Stenciled all in white, a half star with fading lines away from the rear… it brought forth an echo in his scrambled mind.

Liberty.

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