The rain was different in his dreams. It wasn't silver, and it didn't flow upward.
It was heavy, grey, and smelled of North Sea salt and exhaust fumes.
Seven-year-old Fredrik was sitting in the backseat of a black sedan. He was drawing patterns in the condensation on the window—simple, childish shapes of birds and trees. His mother was humming a tune he couldn't quite remember, and his father was complaining about the price of coal. It was a mundane, boring, perfect moment.
Then, the world tilted.
There was no explosion, only the high-pitched scream of metal folding onto metal. Fredrik's head slammed against the door frame. Through the shattered glass, he saw the intersection—the red light swinging violently in the wind. He saw his father's hand, unnaturally still on the steering wheel.
The rhythmic tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine became the only sound in the world.
The scene shifted. The car was gone, replaced by a trench that felt like a mass grave. The rain was still falling, but now it was mixed with the soot of a thousand artillery shells.
"Lorenz! Wake up! They're in the wire!"
Sergeant Miller was standing over him. But Miller's face wasn't right. His skin was the color of a bruised kidney, and his eyes were solid pools of glowing gold.
"You're a ghost, Fredrik," Miller rasped, his voice sounding like gravel thrown against a drum. "You think you escaped? You just traded one cage for another. The mud always wins in the end."
Fredrik looked down at his hands. They were covered in blue, glowing blood.
"I'm sorry," Fredrik tried to say, but his throat was filled with silver-veined leaves.
"Don't be sorry," Miller said, leaning in close. His breath smelled of ozone and death. "Be lethal."
Fredrik's eyes snapped open.
He didn't move, but the safety on the .45 was already clicked off. The dream vanished, replaced by the sharp, clinical reality of the System's HUD.
The silence he had traveled through for hours was gone. In its place was a sound that made his blood run cold: a rhythmic, metallic clicking.
[WARNING: MULTIPLE CLASS I SIGNATURES DETECTED]
[THREAT TYPE: SWARM / HIVE-MINDED]
[ESTIMATED COUNT: 40+]
The forest wasn't empty. The predators hadn't been hiding from him; they had been waiting for the sun to die.
A dozen amber diamonds snapped into his vision, circling the root-cavern. They were low, fast, and hungry.
Fredrik gripped the weapon, his knuckles white. The "Soldier's Ritual" was over. The hunt had begun.
"Alright," he whispered into the dark, his voice a low growl. "What now!, Can't catch a break."