Epoch of Desolation

True, sometimes curiosity was stupid. Although, how else would he craft up a way to avoid the dangers lurking close to him if he didn’t know what or where they were exactly?

Besides, it was not like he was going to confront whatever had made that sound. His plan was just to silently sneak up on it, find out what sort of savage beast it was, and draft up a completely different ploy than what he had currently to both survive against it and the Jaguar after his life.

On other thoughts, he was not being stupid, he was being logical.

A deep breath, an exhale, and Rain was up on his feet without them protesting as violently as they’d used to some moments ago; he was even a lot more stable than before. He then picked up the fire extinguisher he had reserved as a weapon for himself and held it tightly.

There was darkness all around him, but Rain insisted on pushing forward, each cautious step of his following the guide of his mind to lead his body towards the area the sound had come from—or he felt had come from.

It didn’t take too long before the adventurous teenager came upon a corner to his left, and a sight that forced him to pull in a brief excited gasp which was quickly drowned out by wariness.

His posture perked up instantly, his grip on the fire extinguisher tightening.

Impossible. Rain turned his head around to peer into the location he had just left, then once again returned his gaze to the new corridor he was obviously about to venture into—its far end to be precise. How is this possible?

He was right. It was something unbelievable. Everywhere else was completely dark and devoid of any form of light—besides what little the moon gave off, of course—but to the left of the corridor before his eyes was a room spilling out a dim golden yellow radiance.

Rain’s brows lowered with a purse of his lips. Hesitation tightly grabbed him around his waist in an emotional hug beseeching him not to take any step closer.

Obviously he didn’t heed the request of his romantic partner—he couldn’t. For one, there was something in that mysterious room he was gazing at with pure curiosity; and most of all, there was light.

If he could figure out how that had come to be then his current problems would be reduced by a thousand folds. After all, it would be easier to keep himself safe if he could see where he was headed and what he was battling with. Madness was what it would be if he chose to run away from an opportunity being offered to him on a silver platter.

A sudden thought wandered into Rain’s head then.

He’d been thinking of whatever had caused that crash as ‘something’, but what if it was a person? Someone like him—someone like him who actually had answers.

Rain tingled all over, and before he knew it his legs moved forward.

There had been an indistinct smile on his face fueled by anticipation during his approach, but that was now long gone as he peeked into the ‘mysterious room’ through the left of the tempered vision panels of its double door.

His heart had become a shrunken mess and his expression stony.

Whatever excitement he had possessed was a distant dream now, and in its place lay an overbearing silhouette of disappointment.

The ‘mysterious room’ was a world of desolation. The flickering light from the fluorescent ballasts on the mold-stricken ceiling shone down dimly upon a disarray of chairs and tables, and broken dishes and vases with dried stems. Curtains were rumpled but still covered windows. Signs that the cabinets and vending machines had already been looted in a hurry were visible. And rotten remnants of meals were all over the scratched and worn once-exquisite floorboards.

It was a sight Rain had been expecting. What he hadn’t though was to see a wharf rat nibbling on those rotten meals which were strewn on the floor.

No. No. That wasn’t right. The rat wasn’t just a wharf rat, it was a wharf rat roughly four feet tall with enhanced musculature and an overexaggerated dark gray fur. And on its forehead was a black jewel like premature horn, that could probably be equivalent to a Diamond or better, the size of a baby goat’s.

If it had been any other time, maybe moments prior to when he’d met that Jaguar, Rain would have gasped in part shock and part amusement. But since he knew now that such a thing as ‘Mutation’ existed he wasn’t in any way surprised at what he’d seen. He simply drew an inference on the difference between the Mutations of this wharf rat he was staring at and the Jaguar he was wary of.

Physical and Mental, huh? Maybe there’s even more, Rain told himself calmly.

The Jaguar had had no variations in its build like this rat, so he had concluded that it had been given the wits of humans instead. And since it was the other way around now, it was only normal for him to think that the rat had been blessed with physicality in place of wits.

Of course there was the possibility that he was all wrong and it was all something else. But he’d rather stick to an answer than let questions keep whirling about in his head.

When he was proven wrong he’d shift to whatever the correct answer was then. As of now, he was right.

I wonder though, do the animals select what type of Mutations they want just like I did with the Divisions? It was a brief thought of his that was quickly overshadowed by a question concerning how the rat had made its way into the dining area.

Rain answered himself almost immediately though, by comparing the rat’s situation to his. And the answer he came up with made perfect sense to him.

He had been apparently ‘released from a pod’, so why did he never think it could have been the same for the animals on earth as well?

If he had been in a pod all this time, so could have been the beasts of earth.

A rat is understandable, but why was a Jaguar released from its pod in a hospital? Unless it came from outside? Rain couldn’t find the answer to that, so he just shifted it aside.

He’d deemed it unnecessary to dwell on unanswerable questions, especially if they wouldn’t help solve his current predicament. And on that note, so did he decide to just sneak back the way he’d come, leaving the wharf rat to its feast.

At least he’d seen what to be wary of now, and in truth he was not exactly bothered.

Yes, it was a large rat, but one significantly below him, if he was to say. Compared to the Jaguar, he did not perceive the rat as much of a threat. An extinguisher to its head should weaken it and give him enough time to escape. And luckily there was no survival message from the Plexus. He had no reason to engage.

Hmmm. I wonder, do animals receive the messages too? He smacked his lips together. I wish I’d come across another person. How nice would that have been?

There was also nothing he could do about the light. He’d seen nothing of notice powering it within the dining area, so he had thought maybe the switches of the rooms and corridors were just off. But on his way back to the lounge he’d seen a switch and toyed around with it, and it had not worked.

Maybe it's being powered by something entirely different, Rain deduced as he stood before the plush cushion where he had placed his patient’s gown, the rather risky decision he was about to make taking center stage within his head.

He turned his head to his right and observed the depths of the dark and silent hallway as though it was an eerie cave, causing his heartbeats to increase in tempo.

“Well, I can’t just go back to sitting and waiting to be attacked now, can I?” For the first time since he’d heard his raspy voice while he had been in his hospital room, Rain spoke. Luckily his voice was no longer that way. It was calm and steady now.

He cleared his throat, re-wore his patient’s gown, and discarded the fire extinguisher he had been holding for the one he had set as a makeshift alarm.

The new one he held was heavier than the last, and that was exactly why he had discarded the other one for it.

Rain did a little bit of weight test with his ‘weapon’, then huffed out a sigh after a curt nod.

Yup. This is better for battle.