"Who's there?" the voice barked, shattering the silence with deliberate roughness. It wasn't a question, but a warning. "Come out! Or we'll burn you with this trash!"
The words, spoken in Rethian, stabbed Alex's ears, and instantly, their threatening meaning became clear in his mind, translated by the still-active remnants of Johann's nerves.
Heavy booted feet stepped on the stone floor, approaching. One step. Two. Alex pressed himself deeper into the pile of corpses, his cheek against cold, stiff uniform cloth. Don't move. Don't breathe. But his body, still flooded with the adrenaline of his traumatic awakening, rebelled. An uncontrollable twitch seized his calf, causing a faint scrape against the stone.
It was enough.
"Come out, imperial pig!" snapped the second voice, deeper and weary with vigilance. "We'll give you a quick mercy, if you're willing."
Alex's heart—or something that functioned like one—pounded hard and painfully, a brutal war drum in the strange cavity of his chest. Without thinking, driven only by a profound instinct to flee, he rolled his body sideways. His movement was clumsy, taking him away from the pool of his own vomit that betrayed his location, deeper into the shadows of another pile of corpses. Damp wool and stiff flesh shifted with a slow creak that sounded like a scream in the oppressive silence. The stench assaulted his nose again, but now it was an ally, a blanket of camouflage.
"Corpses don't vomit," grumbled the first voice, now very close. Only a few meters separated them. Torchlight swung wildly, creating giant, dancing silhouettes on the stone walls. Two elongated shapes approached from the mouth of the corridor.
Alex peered through a narrow gap between a stiffened arm and a torn jacket. Two men. They didn't look like the regular army he saw around him. They wore drab woolen jackets and worn doublets that might once have been merchant or peasant attire, now patched roughly and stained dark with what Alex suspected was gunpowder and blood. Worn wide-brimmed felt hats shaded lean faces more familiar with hunger and winter than barrack discipline. There was no uniformity, only the weapons in their hands unifying their purpose.
The taller, wiry man carried a short musket with a cracked muzzle, bound with leather patches. The shorter man, with broad shoulders and heavy, bear-like movements, gripped a stone axe whose wooden handle was notched all over—a versatile tool that could split firewood or ribs with equally terrible proficiency.
Rebels, whispered a knowledge in his head, a category surfacing from the newly acquired memories of Johann. Not imperial soldiers. The enemy.
The wiry man with the musket moved his torch. The yellow-orange light swept across the floor, illuminating the pools of blood, torn cloth, and finally settling on Alex's still-wet vomit.
"See that," he said, his voice flat. "Still wet. Means it's fresh."
They separated, adopting a loose formation born of hard experience, not training. The broad-shouldered man—Alex caught the name "Luke" from their exchange—moved towards the pile of corpses where Alex was hiding.
"Over here," he hissed, his voice raspy like a dull saw. "The stink of vomit is strong."
Alex analyzed quickly, drowning his panic in a deep well in his mind. They weren't a solid team. Just two scared individuals trying to intimidate their target into surrender. But armed fear was more dangerous than trained courage.
Luke Anderson drew near. Alex could see the details of his face now under the drooping brim of his felt hat: a coarse beard unshaven for weeks, small eyes blinking rapidly like a hunted animal's, chapped lips. His breath came heavy, carrying the sour aroma of cheap wine and raw onions. He sniffed the air like a hound on a scent.
Alex held his breath until his chest felt ready to burst. His fingers gripped the wooden stock of Johann's musket until his knuckles were white and ached. Standard operating procedure, whispered the body's military instinct. Take a weapon. Find high ground. Kill or be killed. Meanwhile, Alex's common sense, the project manager thrown into hell, screamed: Hide. Find an exit. Negotiate!
Luke stopped right across from the pile of corpses that was Alex's camouflage. Only a stack of rotting flesh and tattered blue cloth separated them.
"Come out, you rat," Luke growled, his voice low and threatening. He thrust his axe forward, prodding the body of a young soldier lying face-up. The axe blade struck the stiff chest with a dull, sickening thunk. "I could be drinking victory wine tonight, but now I have to deal with a breathing carcass."
Alex felt it—an impulse not his own. A boiling rage, quick and hot like oil spilled on fire, at the insult to the uniform, to his fallen comrades. It was Johann's fury, an emotional trace burning in the shared neural circuitry. Alex bit his own tongue hard, the metallic taste of fresh blood filling his mouth, focusing his unraveling mind.
"Luke, careful," warned the other voice, the one keeping his distance near the corridor, his torch held high. "Could be one of their officers hiding. More useful alive."
"Officer?" Luke scoffed, his voice dripping with bitter scorn. "They were the first to run, Frederich. Left these young lads to die for 'honor' and a promise of debt relief." He prodded again, this time harder. The corpse shifted a few inches with a scraping sound that made the hair on the back of Alex's neck stand up.
Through the gap between the corpse and the cold stone floor, Alex saw them. Luke's crude leather boots, stuffed with dry straw, stood no more than three feet from his buried face.
Now or never.
The survival instinct overrode everything. Logic, fear, hesitation—all vanished. His body moved before his mind finished giving the order.
With a movement more agile than he ever imagined possible, Alex thrust the musket's barrel forward through the narrow gap and struck hard—right at Luke Anderson's ankle.
"GYAAAK!" Luke shrieked, a sound filled with pure pain and shock. His balance was lost. His axe clattered on the stone floor as his hand released it to find a hold that wasn't there.
"OVER THERE!" yelled Frederich, his voice overlapping with Luke's scream.
Alex was already moving. He pushed himself up, using the soft, horrible pile of corpses as leverage. He didn't stand upright—that would make him a target—but scrambled crab-like to the other side of the pile, away from the blinding torchlight. His vision narrowed to a tunnel. Only one objective: distance, concealment, out of this death chamber.
He heard muttered curses behind him, then a quick swoosh followed by an ear-splitting BOOM that filled the room with echoes.
Gunpowder ignited, leaving the sharp scent of sulfur in the already-saturated air of death. A musket ball struck the stone right where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier, spraying sharp stone fragments like secondary shrapnel that peppered his back and shoulder. Sharp, clean, worldly pain. Different from the deep, strange ache of his awakening. This was a warning from his new, merciless reality: hard objects could tear his flesh.
They're shooting. They really want to kill me.
That reality hit him like a sledgehammer, dispelling any lingering illusion that this could be resolved with dialogue. This was kill or be killed, primitive and non-negotiable.
He rolled behind a sturdy, square stone pillar supporting the dark, vaulted ceiling. He was panting, but this body responded with surprising efficiency. His lungs worked like a blacksmith's bellows, deep and steady, pumping oxygen without hysteria. Training, Alex realized. Thousands of hours of drill and weighted runs had programmed this body.
"He's behind the pillar!" Frederich shouted. The sound of hurried footsteps approached.
"My foot, damn it!" roared Luke, his voice full of suffering. "Feels broken! Kill him, Frederich!"
"Get up, you burden! He's just one man, and we have the weapons!"
Alex pressed his back against the cold stone, feeling its chill seep through the damp wool jacket. His hands, moving with near-automatic efficiency, checked his musket. The powder pan was still open. The flint was in place. The weapon could still fire. But only once. And the reloading process—pouring powder, seating the ball, ramming it down—took precious, long minutes, minutes his enemies would not give him.
He stole a glance around the pillar. Frederich was crouching beside Luke, roughly helping him up. Their torch was now wedged in a stone crevice nearby, illuminating the horrific scene with flickering orange light and casting swaying shadows. Luke stood, limping, his face twisted by a combination of pain and seething anger. Frederich, supporting Luke, drew a short sword from his belt—a simple, straight blade of iron with no proper guard, a commoner's weapon.
Two against one. One severely injured. They had melee weapons (axe, sword). He had one shot and a musket that would become a clumsy iron club afterward.
His mind spun, trying to formulate a plan amidst the chaos. The crisis management modules he'd taken were useless. Kill or be killed. Negotiation off the table.
"Listen up, imperial rat!" Frederich yelled, his voice echoing in the acoustically perfect stone room. "Come out with your hands up, and we'll give you a fair trial by the people! Stay hidden, and I swear I'll cut you to pieces and let the crows eat your guts while you're still conscious!"
Fair trial. Alex almost choked on a sudden bitterness. In the exhausted, hate-filled dictionary of rebels, that meant summary execution, or perhaps torture first.
He looked around quickly, his eyes hunting for a map to safety. The guard hall was rectangular. He was near one of the short ends. At the other end was a large, heavy wooden door likely leading to an inner courtyard or a tower. On the side walls, rows of narrow arrow-slit windows, too high to reach quickly. Above, the high, vaulted ceiling was dark, a nest of shadows and cobwebs.
The door was shut tight. Possibly locked from outside or inside. The arrow slits were out of reach. His mind, normally honed for strategizing presentations and logistics flows, was now forced to strategize combat. I need an advantage. Or a distraction. Something to throw them off.
His wildly searching eyes fell on something on the floor, not far from the first pile of corpses. A small, wide-open leather pouch, with several dark brown, round pellets scattered around it like precious crumbs. A powder horn. Belonging to a fallen soldier, torn from his belt.
An idea, wild, dangerous, and probably stupid, began to form in his head. It wasn't a plan. It was desperation pretending to be one.
"Alright!" Alex yelled, trying to make his voice sound shaky, broken, defeated. He forced the tremor. "Don't shoot! I'm coming out! I surrender!" For dramatic, convincing effect, he tossed his musket onto the floor in front of the pillar. It clattered against the stone, the sound sharp in the tense silence. "See? I'm unarmed!"
A long, terrifying pause. Then Frederich spoke, his voice wary. "Go, Luke. Circle around from the left. I'll take this side."
Alex heard the sliding, pained steps and groans of Luke trying to circle the pillar from the opposite direction as ordered. That was what he wanted—their attention split, their movements predictable.
With the speed of a rat, he crawled away from the sound of Luke, back toward the pile of corpses. His hand grabbed the empty leather pouch hanging loosely from the belt of Johann's dead uniform nearby. Then, carefully but hurriedly, he crawled toward the open powder horn. The loud groans and shuffling steps of Luke masked his own faint scraping.
His cold hand closed around the powder horn. Half its contents had spilled, but there was still enough for several shots, or for something else. Shaking but determined, he poured about a third of its contents into the empty leather pouch, making it bulge slightly. He didn't tie it tightly, only twisted the neck and loosely secured it with a strand of rough fiber he tore from another corpse's waist. He made a highly primitive emergency bomb with a dubious fuse.
"We're waiting, imperial pig!" Frederich barked, his voice closer from the other side of the pillar.
"Just… just trying to stand," Alex called back, still moving. He picked his musket back up from the floor. Now, with a strange calm, Johann's muscle memory took over completely. His alien fingers moved with astonishing efficiency. He poured fresh powder from the main horn into the pan and down the barrel. His fingers found a lead ball and a scrap of wadding from a small pouch on Johann's belt, loaded it into the barrel, then took the ramrod and seated it with several strong thrusts. Clack. Clack. The body knew what to do, as if it had done it thousands times in the dark.
But this time, he didn't ram the ball all the way down. He left a little space. He needed something else.
He took a small torch from a sconce on the wall, one that had gone out but whose shaft was intact. Matches from Frederich's pocket? No, he had no time. But he had fire. Their main torch was still burning in the distance.
"I'M TIRED OF WAITING!" Frederich roared, his voice now brimming with impatient anger. "Luke, attack from your side now! I'll take this side!"
It was his chance. They would attack in a coordinated pincer, applying pressure from two sides.
Alex took the risk. He lunged out from behind the pillar, not to run, but to snatch the main torch wedged in the stone crevice, a few steps from where Frederich was preparing to advance.
"WHAT—?!" Frederich shouted, startled by the sudden boldness.
Alex had already reached it. He yanked the torch free and immediately lit the end of the small torch he carried. A small flame caught, then grew. With a strong, javelin-thrower's swing, he hurled the leather pouch—now glowing at the end of his small torch—not towards the rebels, but in a high arc toward the largest pile of corpses in the center of the room.
The flaming leather pouch landed softly among the blue woolen uniforms and stiff limbs.
For one,two seconds that felt like an eternity, nothing happened. Only the bulging pouch lay there, a small fire burning on its tether.
Then.
WHOOSH.
Not a massive explosion, but a burst of flame and thick, billowing white smoke. The pouch ruptured, scattering burning gunpowder in all directions. The fire found perfect fuel: wool dry and saturated with body fat, hair, traces of weapon oil, and perhaps other flammable remnants. It spread across the surface of the corpse pile with terrifying speed, not burning deep, but producing a thick, acrid white smoke filled with the stench of burning flesh, singed hair, and charring cloth. The smell was so piercing and disgusting it made his eyes water. The smoke quickly filled the center of the room, thick and obscuring.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!" Luke yelled, his voice panicked and distant.
"FIRE! HE'S BURNING THEIR OWN DEAD!" Frederich's shout was muffled by the smoke.
The smoke was a perfect curtain, as well as a primitive chemical weapon. Alex was already moving, not running headlong which would make him stumble, but walking quickly and low along the wall, away from the large door which might be guarded, toward the row of arrow slits on the darker, quieter side of the room. The main torch he now carried was the only clear source of light around him, while the light from Frederich's wedged torch became a dim, hazy glow behind the thickening veil of smoke.
He heard raspy coughing and curses. They were disoriented, separated by the smoke and the horror they'd witnessed.
Priority target: the one who still had a ranged weapon. Frederich with his musket.
The smoke swirled and parted momentarily due to an air current from somewhere. Alex saw Frederich's silhouette, standing with sword drawn in one hand and fumbling with the other, perhaps searching for the musket he'd set down earlier. His face was confused and angry. Luke, the limping man, was vaguely visible behind him, closer to the fire, clutching his injured leg.
Alex raised his musket. Once again, Johann's muscle memory took over, correcting his stance with cold precision: feet shoulder-width apart to brace for the kick, cheek pressed against the cold, smooth-worn wood, dominant eye sighting along the simple, plain iron barrel. No rear sight. No optics. Just iron, powder, prayer, and estimation.
He held his breath. His sweaty index finger curled around the cold iron trigger.
This isn't a client presentation. This isn't a training simulation. This act will end a human life, finish a story, create a widow or orphan somewhere I don't know.
Hesitation, a luxury from his old life, froze his arm for a split-second.
Frederich turned, and through a thinning wisp of smoke, his wide, wary eyes met Alex's behind the aiming musket barrel. There was a moment of recognition—Oh, so there you are—then a rapid shift to terror, and finally a crystallization into a seething hatred aimed entirely at him.
"OVER THERE! BEHIND THE SMOKE!" he howled, and without further thought, he began charging through the smoke, ignoring the small fires around him, sword raised high for a killing blow.
There were no more choices. The choice had been made the moment Alex decided to survive.
He pulled the trigger.
BOOM.