Mat planned to drive the sword all the way through the brain of the fish and slice sushi out of the rest of it. So much for the plans when you are riding a river on a piece of timber and have a bad shoulder and a thick wooden shank in your stomach. Because all he ended up doing is hardly penetrate the skin of the beast around its long snout, then drove the sword swiftly toward its left eye as the beast twitched violently and jumped out of his sword’s way.

He only had time to lift his hand up again as another of the river monsters came from below. He instinctively tilted his body to his right hip as the jaw of the fish went into the bloodied timber that held his abdominal wound just a split second ago.

Its teeth either got stuck in the timber, or it just liked its flavor so much because the fish did not let go of it. Mat used that second to strike the fish between its eyes, but again with not enough strength to kill it, only to piss it off, so much so that it suddenly decided to dive down, and find safety in the darkness, taking with it the whole piece of timber and Mat still wrapped around it.

It’s strange what stress does to a person. There, facing death by either drowning or being eaten alive as if he was oversize fish bate, in a split second he understood the essence of his own life. He needed to live. He really needed to live. Not just for himself. If he was to die, millions of beings would die with him. Thirty-some million if Pia’s info was right, the whole planet.

In an instant, he remembered all about why he was sent here.

After the planet’s connection with the Core went dark, together with tens of thousands of sensors they had around the planet, the administration sent a bunch of missions to the plant to find out what has happened. He was mission No. Three.

He was told if he was not able to re-establish the connection with the Core and find the roots of what has happened, the Core had decided to put the planet in quarantine. At first, he thought that might include a bunch of space ships circling the planet making sure nothing comes and leaves. But, just before he left for a planet, he found out what it actually meant.

A deep, hoarse, and fraught by old age voice came from a figure hidden by a long dark cloak, a figure who seemed to have purposely placed himself behind him as he rode the otherwise empty elevator to the departure zone.

“I think you should know this before you leave,” the voice told him and nudged him not to turn around as he tried to do just that. “Looking at you I doubt you understand the gravity of the situation, so I think you need to be told. Someone or something from out of space has infected the planet so that our network there cannot be operational. This is the third planet that it happened on. The first two times, we considered it a very strange anomaly, but this shows it has structure and plans to spread even further. You see, I consider that it chose Planet Zarnia for a specific purpose. It’s a doorway to Enoma Great nebula that is the home of six hundred and fifty different worlds. So, when they told you that they plan to quarantine the planet, they meant to, most likely, release the swath of asteroids on it that would kill most likely ninety-seven percentage of all the living beings on it. So, if you fail, you will not be back. Just wanted to put that into perspective.”

Back then when he heard those words, it made Mat’s mind spin in horror. All the implications. Obviously, the mysterious strange did not have a clearance to tell him those things, and even more obvious was that Mat did not have a clearance to know what ‘guaranteeing might actually pertain to.

Now that he remembered those words, his mind did not spin but became more focused than maybe ever before.

I eat fish, so no damn fish is going to eat me!

Mat moved his left hand to get hold of the sword and then shoved it with all his force inside the belly of the beast. The beast wiggled with the force of a raging bull, unseating him from the log that catapulted itself toward the water’s surface. Mat fought with all his strength to hold on to the sword handle, trying to cut it down the beast’s belly, driving the blade left and right, not happy how much of the belly he opened up till the water around became murky with beast’s blood and guts.

Only then he tried to pull the blade out, but it seemed to have stuck inside a bone. He tried harder, already feeling his lungs burning, but the sword did not come out. The fish stopped wiggling and slowly started to pull him down into the darkness. He thought for the second time that day to let go of his sword but did not need a little voice to tell him anything and he resolutely said, ‘Hell, no!’

Something rubbed against his leg, nudged his back, and he saw teeth of other beasts all around him, circling and ready to bite into anything that seemed to have meat on.

He crunched against the dead body of the fish, making himself small, and then pulling with his legs, back, his whole body, he freed the sword of the body of the fish and kicked with his legs as hard as he could to go up.

With his burning lungs, he kept on kicking with his legs, hoping that the other river monsters would be too eager to eat one of their own than to follow him. He stared at his blade, the three-inches thich fishbone he tore out of its body still stuck in its blade.

What kind of creatures do they have here? You could make a sturdy weapon of that bone.

He expected one of the beasts to catch him by the feet, so he kicked in panic on and on, if for nothing else than to kick it in the nostrils if it gets that close.

When he broke the surface of the water and got in his first breath, he tried to lift himself up and find the timber that held him so well before. But it was of no use, and he had to settle on one that flew next to him but was so small that it almost did not help him at all.

“Are they coming at me, Pia?” he asked as he nervously glanced at the water below.

Our senses are not picking anything coming your way. They seem to be in some kind of a frenzy fifteen meters away from you.

“Good. They’re in an eating frenzy, eating one of their own. That’s really good then.”

Not so good with your wound starting to bleed more. I would not be able to stop the bleeding now even if I put you under. You will lose another pint of blood in less than two minutes. Hypothermia will settle in twenty minutes.

“I need to get out of the water,” Marv said and started to swim toward the shore.

You will need to make a fire as soon as you get out.

Holding his sword and bad arm over the two feet of timber, he used his legs and left arm to move himself to the shore.

When his legs started to burn so bad that he thought he could not take another kick, he asked Pia for the health update just to get his mind off the pain.

Health: Forty Percent

Stemina: Twenty Percent

"What else?"

The amount of nano-h-cells still available is only twenty-two percent. I can take the reserve cells that I have moved to your brain’s gray matter to try and heal the damage you suffered there with a hope that would permit you to recover your memory.

"No, don’t do that. I need those memories back. Keep those there, and I think I am already feeling the bottom of the river under my boots. Now, I will need you to keep me warm. Keep talking to me even if I become quiet."

Mat, I do not know if you have noticed it, but we have seen ruins of a castle of some sort about a quarter of a mile up.

“I think I’ve seen some white stones scattered around,” Mal said as he dragged himself out of the river to its muddy bank.

He looked around and all he could see was flat earth with not even a timber on it. It was all scorched to the ground.

Those stones were part of a larger structure. I saw patterns there. You might be able to find shelter among those stones.

“I agree, Pia. I think that’s our best bet. How long do you think it would take me to get there?” Mal asked as he stepped on the bone of the fish still stuck in his sword and finally wrestled his blade free.

It would be fifteen minutes on account of your blood loss and your leg muscles being worn out from swilling. Start your steps slow, but you will gain speed.

“I already have.”

Just remember not to stop because then it will be that much harder to start again.

Mal did not know if he needed to think about that, but he needed anything to occupy his mind and push the pain away.

“How much daylight do you think we have?”

Half an hour. We are, by my estimates, in late Fall here. And at the rate the sun was setting down, you will not have many minutes of light. Also, do not count on starlight too, as the air will get cold, and the warm water of the river will definitely intensify the fog. So, I’m afraid that we will not see many starts tonight.

“Keep on talking, Pia, keep on talking. Keep me up, keep my mind occupied, because each step is like a fucken'-”

On the account of all the unknown threats around, even the possibility of pale-skinned humanoids pursuing you, it would be wise to start a fire in a hidden, confined space so it would not be visible from far around.

“Yeah, I agree with you there. That would be very wise. I just hope that whatever torched all these earth here left at least something for us to burn. Or else, you and I will both be powered down permanently.”

At this present rate, you will die before the morning. I have enough battery to last for another fifty years, saving with me all the memories of you.

“Oh, thank you. It makes me feel so much better knowing now you will remember me for fifty years."

During that time, I imagine the date will be found by other agents.

Yeah, but… remember what that hooded guy told me… if I don’t find a way to report by the deadline, they will torch the planet down. No. I think if I go, your battery will serve you nothing.”

I understand.

“Do you remember the date of the deadline? I think they gave me like 365 days if I remember it completely.”

That is true. I have excessed your memory. It is so.

"How much time do we have then?"

By my calculations, less than seventy.

“Oh, that’s plenty of time. And I thought we needed to worry,” Mat said and then unexpectedly shrieked in pain as he almost fell over the stone buried in the ground. “Keep stepping on the soft ground. The mud is too soft. Stones are too hard,” he told himself before Pia could do just that.

With the last of sun rays on his back, Mat soon had a chance to see the first signs of the stones that lay scattered around. “You know, I think I know what this is.”

What is it, Mat?

“It’s not a castle.”

No? But such big rocks, they must have been used for some kind of defensive structure.

“Good guess but no. This is the Monastery of Erminux, or whatever is left of it. I was supposed to come here and make the contact with Oliver Roxion, the High Priest, the First of the Mages, the guy that was supposed to run this compound. He was the Core local contact, our agent. And something tells me, I will not be making any contacts here.”

They walked in the silence for a while, thoughts running through his head.

“I really need to remember what has happened during the last two hundred plus days. Why can I not remember any of it? The other memories seem to be fine. When you have a chance, run a full diagnostic on my neural pathways. See what you can find.”

I have already run some partial scans. Your near-term memory has been impacted. But to run the full scan with the nano-h-cells all occupied, it would take me at least a week of time to do. I would not even be able to tell you what is wrong with us till I do that.

“With us?”

Yes. You know the backups of your memory that I should have stored are gone as well.

“Yeah, I guessed that much myself. And what could have done that?”

A lot of different things.

“And I thought your backup system was supposed to be safe?”

It is as safe as the Core knows how to make it safe. It’s safe from natural elements. Even the strike of lighting cannot erase our memory circles. But… other factors can.

“Like what factors?”

There are artificial nano-cells that can erase or damage our cells.

“N-viruses?”

Exactly.

“Damn. I heard about them. Do you think that’s what we might have here?”

I cannot come to that conclusion. No evidence of it yet.

“But those are artificial, must have been introduced to this planet on purpose then? Just like that guy has told me. Then, they might have been right at the Core to want to contain whatever was happening here. Imagine if such a virus was to spread through the universe. The end of the Core, no?”

The probability of that is extremely low, too low to logically consider it. Also, there are other things that can mess with my circuits. A certain types of electro-magnetic blasts.

“If that’s what happened, that would have explained the explosion. And look, look at the pattern of those stones. Some of them have simply exploded! And it seems to me that we have finally found the epicenter of the explosion, didn’t we, Pia?”

Yes, I think we did. It seems to be the Monastery.

“This is going to be painful. I am going to have to climb over these rocks. Here it seems to be one of the gates into the monastery.”

The timber of the cracked gate is not burned. That might offer you enough for a fire.

“That timber won’t burn well. It got treated not to burn. That’s why it did not burn in the first place. But I’ll take a handful anyway. Maybe that will be the best we’ll be able to find.”

The night came fast as Mat made it inside the destroyed monastery, piles of white rock scattered around. He found where a wall of a house did not seem to have collapsed completely to the ground but was left leaning at the angle against another half-destroyed wall, leaving a space that he could sneak inside.

“This looks good,” Met thought. “Maybe I can start a fire here.”

He almost dropped the wood and his aching body to the ground but then saw the stone floor ending with a few stairs going down.

“Well, if that takes us to the basement, that’s even better,” he said before he made the first step and understood how painful that might actually be.

“Feeling the stones,” Met said as he leaned against the wall. “It’s still so warm. Whatever happened here was very recent. Yet, I did not see any bodies, not even a mouse around.”

Another step, another shot of pain. Yet, he had no time to lose, so he continued downward. Only after fifteen steps when the ground was not found did he understand his folly.

“Should have stayed up. How long down can this go on? And what if it all caves down on us?”

The wall you are leaning against seems rather sturdy. I cannot give any guarantee to the roof though. It seemed to have partially collapesed at certain places.T

“I know you can’t. But I don’t think I have the strength anymore of going back up now, so down we go.”

It took another twenty steps down, now completely emerged in the darkness, when he noticed the steps finally ending. On the side, his extended right hand felt an iron post where he hoped the torch might be.

Luckily he was right, and in a minute with a spark-starting iron from his pocket, he lighted it successfully.

“Holy shit!” he said as the fire revealed piles of stones scattered all around. He was lucky and had moved down around what must have been the only standing wall around.

Met slowly moved onward, passing next to what seemed to have been a smashed door.

“Good,” he said with satisfaction as he saw leaning against the wall a neatly stacked pile of chopped logs ready to be lighted. “Finally some good luck,” he said, suddenly feeling very dizzy and insecure.

He steadied himself as suddenly things started to spin around.

Warning! Your blood pressure has been dropping, now is 60 over 40 and you’re in danger of-

“Wait, Pia… do you hear that?” Met asked as he tried to steady himself.

Yes.

Met turned to the darkness to his left and listened carefully.

That’s when he heard it, a distant, yet unequivocally woman’s voice calling to him. “Help, please, anyone, help me.”