Project Babylon – Prologue 3

Wyatt ran, faster now, more careless than before. He knew who was commanding the advance, and that knowledge gnawed at him, coiling tight around his nerves. It wasn’t just the name—wasn’t just the man. It was what it meant.

If he was here, leading this push, then everything was already in place. Every contingency accounted for. Every move already played out three steps ahead. The battle wasn’t just some reckless insurgent charge; it was a performance, and the Russians had written the script.

Wyatt veered into an alley, breath sharp, bootfalls hammering against cracked pavement. The hospital. Were they aiming for it too? It made sense—securing a medical center was a logical step in an occupation. But this—this didn’t feel like occupation. It didn’t feel like the careful, grinding inevitability of a Russian advance. It felt like something else.

The thought unsettled him, sent his mind spiraling down twisting corridors of speculation.

They weren’t just supporting the insurgents—they were directing them. Pushing them forward with uncharacteristic aggression. It was too fast, too confident. And then there was the boldness of it all. The sheer audacity. This wasn’t how the Russians played war. Not unless—

Unless they weren’t worried about resistance.

Wyatt’s breath came faster, his body moving on instinct while his mind raced ahead, tripping over its own logic. It wasn’t just that they had an objective—it was that they had already won. He was running through a city that was a battlefield in name only. The fighting was still raging, but the outcome had already been decided, locked into place. It wasn’t just war—it was a mechanism. A machine, churning forward, cold and efficient.

And he was caught in it.

His fingers tightened around his rifle. He had to move faster.

The city around him was deathly still.

Beyond the broken walls, past the skeletal remains of half-ruined buildings, war roared like a distant storm. Tank fire thundered, gunshots cracked, but here—here, in this abandoned stretch of alley and dust-choked roads—there was only silence. The civilians huddled in darkened doorways, their eyes wide and hollow, whispering prayers too low for him to hear. Their presence should have made the city feel alive. Instead, it made it feel more like a corpse.

Wyatt pushed forward. The hospital wasn’t far now. He just had to—

A shrill whistle cut the air.

His stomach lurched, instincts screaming too late—

Impact.

The world snapped apart. A flash of pressure, impossibly bright, impossibly loud—then nothing.

Silence.

Then—

White.

A vast, paper-textured whiteness, stretching out in every direction.

Slowly, his senses crept back, dragging sluggishly through molasses. He reached up, fingertips brushing against his own face. Muck. Grime. Blood. His equipment was still strapped to him, his rifle still slung across his back. He exhaled. His breath felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.

His rational mind caught up. Concussion round. That had been a concussion round. But why? Why here?

His thoughts looped, twisted, turned in on themselves, folding like origami into strange, impossible shapes. This wasn’t right. He wasn’t dead—he’d been close to the veil too many times to mistake it. No, this was something else. Something colder. More detached.

He turned.

A woman stood before him.

No. Not a woman. Not exactly.

The shape of one, maybe—tall, slender, silver-haired, with piercing blue eyes that seemed to swallow the light. She wore plain white, unmarked, featureless. And jutting from her head—horns. Twisted, malformed, half-formed things that bent at unnatural angles.

She watched him with a strange expression—curiosity, naivety, something else, something darker, slithering beneath her gaze. Something like hunger.

She smiled.

And the pressure in his skull exploded.

His ears rang—no, screamed—air crushed against him from all sides, the weight of existence itself pressing in—

Wyatt gasped awake.

His body jerked, lungs dragging in air like a drowning man breaking the surface. Dust and debris filled his throat. His hands scrambled against loose earth. The sky above was fractured, blurred with smoke and fire. He was lying on the edge of a crater, the ground still trembling beneath him.

His head pounded. His vision swam.

But he was alive.

And somewhere, beyond the distant echoes of battle, beyond the ringing in his skull—he swore he could still hear her laugh. A laugh made of metal, gunfire and bone over rock.