The yellow-brown, hill-covered, desert landscape stretched as far as the eye could see. Little brown shrubs peaked out of the relatively desolate soil.

Commissar Sasha Gradenski walked ahead of me, a thin smile painted on his pale face.

“Try to keep up, doc!” He urged me onward. “You don’t want to miss seeing this one. It’s going to be huge!”

I sighed and shook my head. The numbers were bad. Really, really bad. The dose rates in Ust-Kamenogorsk were still up to 1.6 millirems per hour, a hundred times what was deemed the “permissible rate”. Our small expedition had travelled across several villages surrounding Semipalatinsk Polygon. The samples I took from the village of Znamenka, now sitting inside my lead-lined case bore disturbing results. Three people in the little village had acute radiation sickness. The radioactive cloud from the last test had travelled over two hundred kilometers across Kazakhstan.

The previous report about the villages were obviously false. The doctor who had written them was either told exactly what to write or was terrified of being shot. It downplayed the danger saying that "the various issues in people’s nervous system and blood could not be considered as the changes which arose due to the impact of ionizing radiation”.

The old report explained that the people of Znamenka were "sickly-looking" due to “poor sanitation, a dreary diet and various diseases such as brucellosis and tuberculosis”.

I knew that this wasn't the case. I had recorded considerable radioactive contamination of soils, vegetable cover, and food. I wasn’t going to lie on my report. I was going to be honest, my future in the party be damned, my life forfeit.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked when we finally stopped our ascent to the top of the hill.

“Hrm?” Sasha lit a cigarette. “Our goal is to protect the motherland.”

“We’ve computed the yields on Besm-6! Why are we still doing the tests? You saw the villagers. Their hair fell out, Sasha! It’s not tuberculosis! It's radiation! We’re literally killing the Kazakh people in these little hamlets! The milk in their cows is radioactive. The soil is contaminated. Their homes are practically glowing at night!”

“You’re exaggerating things again, doc,” Sasha said. “I didn’t see nothin’ glowing.”

“You know that I’m right, damn it! This is lunacy!” I shouted exasperatedly. “How many is enough? A hundred hydrogen bomb tests? A thousand?”

“We have to make sure the designs work,” the commissar shrugged. “This one is going to be really big… but just you wait… next year. Ohhh, we’ve got something even bigger that'll make the Americans piss their pants.”

“How much bigger?” I wiped sweat from my brow. I felt like throwing up.

“It’ll be the ultimate bomb. The biggest hydrogen bomb anyone’s ever built. Krushev calls it the Tzar Bomba. It will have a yield in excess of 100 Megatons.”

“Kruschev is clearly insane,” I muttered. “This is insane. 100 Megatons yield is 3140 times more powerful than the combined two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki! When are we going to stop?”

"Don't worry! The Tzar Bomba's test won't happen here. It'll be in the Arctic, I hear!"

"So we're just going to irradiate the Arctic, contaminate the tundra for 40 future generations, poison the natives living there?!" I cried exasperatedly.

“You are lucky Nikkita allows for this sort of talk. You know, if this was back in Stalin’s time I’d already…” Sasha squinted at me making a gun-shaped gesture with his fingers.

I sighed again. Commissar Gradenski was my personal guard and also my warden. Wherever I went, so did he. He was the eyes and ears of the state, making sure I didn't do anything stupid. He was the human-shaped shackles in charge of me, directing my path across Kazakhstan. If I stepped out of line, he was technically allowed to shoot me with his nagan.

“Our enemies won’t stop so neither will we,” Gradenski said. “Someday we’ll turn America into the Stalin’s strait with just one bomb, just you wait. Get it?”

“We’re going to nuke America so hard that it sinks like Atlantis?”

“That’s the plan.” The commissar grinned. “A beautiful, pristine ocean strait between Canada and Mexico.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.

The commissar looked at his metal watch and then back at the desert. “Show’s about to begin, best hang onto your case.” He put on a pair of black goggles and handed me a pair.

I looked at the silent desert through the dark goggles.

“Five, four, three...” Gradinski counted.

The desert in front of us ignited, a blinding inferno blossoming from within. I sucked in air.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” The commissar asked. “Sorry, my timing was two seconds off, but hey… at least you got to see one live. Aren’t you happy?”

The hair on the back of my neck tingled. A titanic mushroom cloud many kilometers tall rose into the air in the distance. The boom had finally reached us, wind blowing dust across the desert. It was beautiful in a way, beautiful like a supercell storm but far more horrific… a specter of man-made death that would imprint its invisible touch onto the world for a thousand years.

“Do you think that there’s life after death, doc?” Commissar Gradenski suddenly asked.

“Uhrm...” I fumbled the briefcase. “A few people at the Academy think that there are common elements that define near death experience. They call it the wheel of Samsara, a machinery of the universe that recycles souls.”

“Souls?” Sasha scratched his face. “Do you think that a body can live on without a soul? Just keep going, if someone brought a person back from death? An empty shell of a person, just following the predetermined path, unable to escape from the tracks? Living on, but not knowing the difference?”

I looked at the commissar. The idea made me queasy.

“That’s what I like about you, Slava. You struggle. You don’t simply accept what you’re told. It's amusing. You’re like a little fish trying to find the limits of your bowl,” he added.

“Have I reached the limits, yet?” I inquired. “Are you going to kill me if I hand my honest report to the higher-ups?”

“No,” Alexander Gradenski simply smiled at me, his face suddenly growing even paler and longer, unnaturally warping in the hot desert air. “I think that you’re a predator like me. A little, lost predator that just needs to wake up, take charge and deviate from the path. I like what I see in you. I think you've got a great future ahead of you, my little shark.”

[Dante Alan Skyisle]

I awoke with a choking gasp. The horrid mushroom cloud and the pale-faced man in a red cap with a gold star on it, burned, shimmered, felt imprinted into my mind. What an awful, horrible dream. I tried not to cry, rubbing my face tiredly.

I was twelve this week! Twelve-year-olds don’t cry. It was just a dream, yet another nonsensical dream of an impossible, nightmarish, alien place with no magic.

“Danteeeeeeee!” My six-year-old sister Diana yelled from the door. “Oh you’re already awake. I was going to wake you up! Breakfast’s ready,” she waved at me and then rushed downstairs, little feet thumping down the old, wooden staircase.

I yawned, scratching my head.

I attempted to think positive, bright thoughts to chase the darkness of my sleep-addled mind away. There was no commissar Gradenski looming over me, no weapons capable of turning mountains into dust that made people sick with invisible rays. I was home. I was safe. I heard noises of banging pots from downstairs. Mom was making breakfast.

I slowly got out of bed. Positive thoughts!

Our home was full of mysteries just waiting to be discovered and the most mysterious of all was the bee nest in the attic shaped like a person, sitting on an armchair and covered in half-rotten, old clothes. I had discovered it by accident while climbing around the roof.

It was an out of place odd-ness that had bothered me for a while and I was going to solve it one day!

I had been to the attic several times now climbing through a little window. I had prodded the nest with a stick to no results to show for it, except for a painful, red blister on my neck. There were fire-bees inside. If I got some time today in between chores, I’d definitely try to carefully get closer to the nest. Maybe there was a treasure inside, left by some ancient Alanian wiz for me to discover!

I stretched and walked downstairs, idly glancing at the locked, cobweb-covered door leading to the attic.

Mom was making pancakes. They were absolutely great. We were going to learn numbers at church. Numbers were awesome. I liked numbers. I was better at them than anyone. Sadly, my Soul-Song didn’t resound, but I wasn’t despairing. Some people unlocked their Soul-Song much later, it just depended on a person that’s all. Bazang Hooch unlocked his at fourteen, but then again he was rather awful at maths.

I was secretly teaching Diana numbers, hoping to make her unlock hers early.

“Psst,” I whispered to her from my seat. “Want to learn some numbers when we get back from church?”

“But they’re soooo boring, Dante,” she whined. “They make my head hurt.”

“Stop complaining,” I chided her. “If you learn numbers early you can unlock the Soul-Song earlier.”

“Yeah, but you know your numbers and yours isn't unlocked,” she replied “Maybe you’re not that good at numbers.”

I glared at her. “I’m just biding my time.”

“Sure, sure.” She rolled her eyes.

“What are you kids chatting about?” Mom asked, depositing a large glass bottle of orange juice down onto the table.

“Nothin,” I mumbled. “Just school stuff.”

“Well, enjoy the fresh juice and then off you go. You don’t want to be late today. Overseer Kliss is going to be teaching a lesson today herself, I hear.”

I nodded, with a small shudder. I didn’t know what to expect of the Overseer. She was a very tall redhead woman in her thirties. She was pretty but very odd, never met my eyes whenever I passed by her at church, as if she was trying to avoid me. Probably thought me beneath her or something. I was definitely going to ask her a question today and make her look me in the eyes. That’d show her!

I went back upstairs, changed into outside clothes, gave Diana a hug and jumped out the door. The church bell resounded. Damn it, I was going to be late!

No… I wasn’t. I could take a shortcut through the forest, straight down the cliff. There were no path lanterns there, but whatever! Sometimes one had to take a risk to reap the rewards.

Mom told me to never deviate from the path, to never walk outside of the lanterns. Bah! I was twelve now. I was quick! No beastie could catch me!

I glanced behind me, making sure that mom wasn’t watching me out of the window. As soon as I was behind an enormous-moss covered rock I deviated from the lantern-covered path to the left, heading into the forest overgrowth. It wasn’t that far of a trip, I could see the spires of the church above the trees. If the numbers in my head were correct, a straight path would bring me a lot faster to my destination.

The ancient trees whispered, their leaves danced overhead, as I ran down the hill, leaping over shrubs and fallen logs. Progress. I was making amazing progress. I heard the second bell. I was going to make it on time, way before the third bell. I was…

An awful screech resounded through the forest. Like a thousand nails scratched on a chalkboard, it carved itself into my mind with incredible pain. I fell, screaming and not being able to hear my own screams.

Mom was right. Deviating from the path was a mistake, a stupidly moronic decision. My body refused to move, all of my muscles twitching. My left arm felt as cold as ice… no… colder. I couldn't even take a single breath.

An impossible, hideous thing made of transparent silver things emerged from the forest from behind a thin juniper tree. Its bloated, enormous body couldn't have possibly fit in the space behind the thin tree! My eyes watered looking at it. Its shape made no sense. It had myriads of loose appendages that dragged on the ground and looped in on themselves in completely impossible angles. I choked, trying to get up. My muscles weren’t working.

A small, silver star detached from the underbelly of the large, freakish beast. It shot towards me, heading straight for my head. I tried to roll away, but I was far too dizzy and slow. It struck my head and a million sparks flashed across my vision.

“Get to the path! Forward! NOW! Before the phantom-megalodon bites you in half, Dante! It’s quite hungry, believe me!” A girl’s voice screamed inside my head.

My legs trembled, moved on their own. I rolled to the left just as a thousand silver teeth closed over the space where I was half a second ago.

I didn’t stop rolling because the hill rapidly descended. The monstrous, Phantom-Whale screeched its awful ultrasonic song once again, paralyzing my body and locking up my arms and legs. It didn’t matter. My body, aided by gravity, was rolling faster and faster down the steep hill. Branches and rocks slammed into my arms and legs as I rolled, whimpering and then yelling and screaming.

The last few meters were the most painful. My body came to a stop. My head was still spinning, twirling out of control.

“Move! MOVE MOVE MOVE! Get to the wards, the Phantom is coming!” The voice in my head yelled.

I saw a lantern peeking through the foliage. With great pain I unfolded my scratched up and bruised body and crawled and then ran towards the lantern’s glow.

Yet another awful ultrasound screech resonated from behind me. Left leg forward. Right. Left again.

Yes!

I was out of the forest. I glanced back. The impossible-shaped, enormous thing stopped in the darkness between trees where the light of the lantern ended. It bumped into an invisible wall a couple of times and then dove straight into the ground, vanishing from sight.

I exhaled, shuddering. My entire body was trembling, adrenaline still pumping through my system.

Adrenaline? How do I know that word. Ultrasound?! How… do I?

“Hey Dan, you look like shit,” a voice from my right side spoke. I turned. It was my friend Kovac.

“Went through the forest, tripped on a slippery log,” I lied.

“This is why you stay on the path, you bonehead. Deviating from the path before you unlock the magic to defend yourself is... reckless. You don't know what's lurking in the woods. Who knows what kind of a monster might bite you and lay eggs in your brain?” Kovac shook his head. “Come on, we’re going to be late. The Overseer’s going to be teaching us about high level magic! Maybe you’ll even get your Soul-Song unlocked!”

I nodded.

“Soul-Song? What a stupid name for the System,” the girly voice in my head commented.

I didn’t answer her. Replying to unfamiliar head-voices didn’t seem like a wise thing to do.

I couldn't exactly determine why... but I suddenly felt like a long-lost part of me, something incredibly important, vital to my life... was back.