Chapter Text
They said the mountains were healing. That the fresh air, the endless green, the winding roads, those were the kinds of things that stitched the soul back together. I didn’t really get what that meant. I was twelve. I didn’t know what my soul looked like, much less what it needed.
But I liked the sound of the trees brushing against the wind when I would climb to the top of them. I liked the way the sunlight filtered through the clouds like something holy. Though I didn’t like that my little sister kept falling asleep on my shoulder and drooling all over my hoodie while I fiddled with my cassette player.
Dad was driving, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping against the dashboard to some Frank Zappa song he liked but I didn’t. Mom sat in the passenger seat with a map spread across her lap, arguing about whether we’d already missed the turnoff for the cabin.
“It was that last left,” she insisted.
“We haven’t passed the river bend yet.” Dad said, keeping his voice calm. “Trust me, it’s ahead.”
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“That was a different bend.”
I rolled my eyes and pressed my headphones tighter to my ears. The music was fuzzy, tape hiss louder than usual, but I didn’t care. I was twelve, the world was a mix of summer and static, and I had a whole week off from school, screens, and the city.
It was 1978, and everything felt golden.
We had been planning this trip for a few weeks now. Dad wanted a family get-away from his work. Though he never told me and Sarah what he did, he told us it was important stuff though, and we would know when we were older.
“Vik, give your sister a nudge before she chokes on her tongue.” Dad said, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.
“She’s fine.” I said, but I gave her a little shake anyway.
Sarah mumbled something incoherent, wiped her mouth on my sleeve, then passed out again. I grimaced.
“Gross.”
“Be nice.” Mom said without looking up.
“Not my fault she sleeps like a wet rag.”
“Still.”
We were about three hours into the drive from New York up through the Adirondacks, heading toward a rented cabin that didn’t have a TV or radio, because ‘nature builds character.’ Dad said. I didn’t mind. I’d packed my comics, some snacks, and a slingshot I wasn’t supposed to have. Everything a kid needed for a week in the woods.
The sun was dipping behind the mountains as we climbed higher. The sky turned sherbet orange. Pines stretched up on either side of the road like we were being funneled into a forest cathedral. The air smelled clean, sharper somehow. Sarah finally woke up for real, rubbed her eyes, and started singing a song we’d made up on a previous drive. It was something dumb about peanut butter and raccoons.
I joined in, even though I hated how off-key I sounded, because it made her laugh.
We were loud, happy.
Then everything went quiet.
And then he was there. No sound. No warning. Just a man standing in the middle of the road.
Dad saw him at the last second, his entire body jerked, hands white-knuckling the wheel as he slammed the brakes. The tires screamed. I felt my stomach twist like it was being wrung out. My breath leaving my lungs as I hit the seatbelt hard as momentum yanked me forward.
“SHIT!” Dad yelled.
Mom shrieked something I couldn’t hear over the roar.
We should’ve hit him. There was no way not to.
But we didn’t.
Dad swerved.
And the world flipped upside down.
The car left the road like it had wings.
One moment we were screaming down the mountain. The next, we were in the air. Floating. Weightless. Then gravity slammed us down.
The car spun. Trees snapped. Metal howled. Glass exploded in all directions like a thunderstorm inside the cabin.
I was weightless.
Then I wasn’t.
Something hit me hard, maybe it was the roof, maybe the seat in front of me, I don’t know. My legs folded the wrong way under the impact. Crushed between the seat in front of me and the floor. I heard a sick, wet crunch, but it didn’t register. Not yet.
Time slowed. The colors bled together.
The world went sideways.
Then it stopped.
I blinked. Smoke coiled from the vents. The windshield was shattered. Blood trickled down from somewhere on my scalp.
I heard Mom faintly calling my fathers name. I heard my sister sobbing. I heard the engine ticking like it was trying to restart itself. I remember the coppery tang of blood. The smell of gasoline. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe right. Just sat there, blinking through the haze and smoke, staring at the crumpled dashboard like it might speak.
“Vik…tor..” someone whispered.
It wasn’t Mom. It wasn’t Dad. It was my sister, Sarah.
“I can’t… I can’t move,” she whimpered.
Pain lanced down my spine. My vision blurred.
I turned my head. Sarah was next to me, crumpled against the door, eyes wide and wet. Everything spun. I wanted to reach for her. Say something. Be the big brother I was supposed to be. But my legs were gone, not off my body yet, just useless.
“I’m here.” I said, or tried to. The words came out like gravel.
I tried to move. My arms barely worked. My legs. Oh god my legs.
Unrecognizable. I looked down and saw bone where flesh should’ve been.
I don’t remember screaming, but my throat hurt later, so I think I did.
I looked back at Sarah.
She wasn’t moving anymore.
“Sarah..?” I rasped.
Nothing.
The next part is foggy. There was fire, I think. Or maybe that was just the way the smoke danced in the light. I remember trying to call for help, but my voice wouldn’t work. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.
I tried to crawl forward, to move in any direction really. Blood soaked my hoodie. I screamed again, hoarse, feral. The metal walls of the car were suffocating.
I didn’t even notice the footsteps at first. Didn’t realize someone was coming closer. But the wreckage shifted. Metal creaked.
And then I saw it.
No, not an it… Him.
The man in the road.
He stepped through the wreckage like it didn’t exist. Like none of it mattered. He was huge. Not like a giant, just built , like stone carved into a man. His face was blank, not cruel, not kind. Just empty . Like a doll that could walk.
But it wasn’t his face that I saw first.
It was his arm.
Shining. Mechanical. A metal monstrosity where flesh should’ve been. It glinted in the morning sun like it was proud of what it was.
My brain didn’t want to understand. Couldn’t understand.
Then the man kicked in what was left of the rear window. Glass scattered like ice. He crouched beside me, motion smooth and fluid.
He didn’t say anything at first.
His eyes scanned the wreck like he wasn’t even seeing people. Just objects. Debris. Assets.
“Target eliminated.” he said into a mic on his shoulder. “One survivor. Waiting for orders.”
A beat, then came his monotone voice. “Copy.”
Then he reached out, not with the metal arm, but the other one. His flesh hand.
His grip was rough. My body screamed. I felt my legs shift and the pain hit all at once like a tidal wave. My body wouldn’t budge, it felt like he was going to fully rip my legs off.
He stopped pulling for a second, using his metal arm to push the seat that was crushing my legs off of me.
He managed to get it off with a loud screech across the floor of the car. Without the seat, I had a clear view of what my mangled legs looked like.
One femur jutted out through shredded jeans and torn skin, the white bone gleaming against blood that was already drying dark around it. The shin on the left side had been crushed inward, like someone had taken a hammer to it, skin ballooning around bone fragments that pierced through in jagged angles.
My skin split open around splintered bone, muscle torn and twitching. My right foot dangled sideways, completely wrong. Blood soaked everything, hot, thick, metallic, and the pain was a roaring, blinding thing I couldn’t outrun.
He started to pull again.
I blacked out for a second, then came back, choking on my own breath.
“Please.” I croaked, barely audible.
Something flickered across his face.
Then as quickly as it came, it was gone.
The pain was unbearable. As my crushed legs shifted, I screamed—raw and wild, more like a wounded animal than a boy.
But he didn’t stop.
Didn’t offer comfort. Just moved with the brutal precision of someone following orders.
His touch was cold as him metal arm brushed against my chest as he lifted me free of the car like I weighed nothing.
“Vitals weak.” he said aloud, probably to the person on the other end of the mic.
He carried me effortlessly, my body limp in his arms, blood smearing his black uniform. I stared up at the sky, gasping through the pain, and felt the wind against my face as he moved.
That’s when I heard it, the sound of helicopter blades.
Not far.
We emerged from the trees into a small clearing, where a dark shape loomed behind a screen of brush. A matte black chopper, quiet and sleek, like it wasn’t meant to be seen. Men in gear I didn’t recognize moved like shadows around it.
The soldier moved straight toward it, not speaking to them.
I was still in his arms when he stepped up into the open hatch.
The inside of the helicopter was cold. Metal floor. Medical gear strapped to the walls. Someone tried to approach, a man in a mask, but the soldier barked a word in a language I couldn’t understand, low and firm.
The man backed off.
I was losing blood fast. I could feel it. The cold sinking into my bones. The world getting quieter.
But I didn’t pass out yet.
Not until I looked up, one last time, into the face of the man holding me.
And saw nothing behind his eyes.
Only the glint of the sun on his metal arm.
And then darkness swallowed me whole.