On the morning of the day of departure, he woke up a bit earlier. First going to check on the water container, he had set to dry a bit away from the fire. It looked solid enough, but he will have to fill it with water and see if it can actually hold any. That done, he moves on to the task of dragging the flat slabs of stone, he made mental note of on the previous day. He woke up the wolf and made a harness using some of the rope he had. Then picked up his stuff along with some vines.

First, they went to the small spring and had some water. After which he rinsed the insides of the water container he made, before filling it and fixing the cork. To his relief, the water doesn’t seem to be leaking at least from the leaves side of it. The improper fit of the wooden ‘cork’ meant that it leaked a little water when held upside down. Mostly satisfied with the result, they proceed to the boulders and drag them to the lair one by one, tying them to the wolf which easily pulled them through the forest floor.

Once they were all dragged to the lair, he sends the wolf to hunt some food as he sets up the fire pit and waits. Thankfully, he brings an appropriately sized deer this time. After quickly setting the meat to roast, he gets to work in the burrow.

He increased the height available at the end of the burrow and makes a straight groove on its floor from the entrance to the rear, so that he can move the flat rocks by standing them on the side, he makes a rock bed of the entire floor at the end of the lair. Placing all his things that need to be buried in the centre, he brings and surrounds them with 3 boulders. The final, smaller fourth, going over the 3 to cover it up from the top.

[With that, the contents inside are firmly secure even from prying eyes. Now for the final touches, I need to slowly bury everything by bringing down the ceiling.]

He accomplishes it easily enough. He also covers up the entrance with smaller boulders and rocks, before finally pouring over mud and compacting it. Making it seem like it was all part of the mud hill. At least once some vegetation grows over it. To finish it off, he takes off the now roasted meat and removes all the signs of the fire pit and the ditches he dug to bury the food waste, levelling it completely.

Once done, he turns to the wolf to see it sad and sulking as it looks at its, now old lair.

“Don’t worry buddy. I only hid it to keep it safe from others taking it over for when we return. Now it’s time to get some fruit and finally leave this stupid place where it’s nearly impossible to see any distant terrain”

They move on to the fruit area once finishing their breakfast. With the wolf carrying some of the things like rope, his padded Undersuit and the right arm part of the exo-skeleton, while he carries the rest. After carefully picking all the freshest fruits and packing them in wrappings of leaves and grass, tied up with twine, they are finally ready to move without any reservations.

[I’m prepared as I can possibly be. I’m at 100% health and the wolf should recover in another couple days completely but it should do fine as long as we don’t encounter something bigger than it.]

After adjusting the newly added baggage, they set out south west. The direction he was first picked up as a POW onto the intermediate staging platform. Although, he’s not sure how far they must have moved from there, in the worst case, a month or so of travel should roughly take him close to that city. But he is counting more that he would find some other small settlement or any civilization before such a long journey through unknown terrain.

[None of this would have to be this complicated if either I had power in my suit or it wasn’t a broken mess or these stupid trees weren’t so damn tall in this area or I was able to spot some hill or mountain that I can climb to get a sense of position. Every possible thing had to go wrong!]

[And why had no one come to find me yet? It has been 6 days since I lost full contact. Even if my suit comms are roasted, they should have roughly predicted where I fell. Maybe I should leave markings to where I’m going, on the off chance that they come after I leave this area.]

Under such thoughts in his head, the man and the nearly up to his eyes in height, wolf, set out on their way back to safety a bit after noon on that fateful day.

The rest of the day was relatively uneventful as they moved through the closely packed woods, that were like the ones in the fruits area. It took his all to not loose his sense of direction in the dark woods with only a little sunlight to be able to tell the right direction. Fortunately, a little before sunset, he could see indications that the woods are letting up or at least opening into a wide clearing, in the probably west direction, judging by the red sunlight pouring in from that direction.

Unable to contain the joy of getting out of the dark gloomy woods, both the man and the beast pick up pace till they make it to the edge of the woods with a dozen minutes to spare before sunset. It’s more than a clearing in the middle of the woods. He finds a relatively large creek and on the other bank, a different type of forest made of sparse, stubbier trees. He also notices the monkeys, that are usually at the top of the fruiting trees, drinking some water from the creek. He gets a bit closer to get a better look at them because of the blinding sunlight from behind them.

As he approaches them however, his footsteps freeze, and his wide smile slowly goes away as he notices details about the monkeys that he had to have misinterpreted before this. All the monkeys have something clinging on to their back alright, like he remembers seeing. The problem is all of them have it! Even the babies, that are being hugged by their parents now that they have noticed his approach, have it. And it’s obvious that it isn’t another baby holding on to their parent either. The bumps were literal turtle shells.

After the shock wore off and the now, understandably, aggressive monkeys are scared off by the approach of the giant wolf from behind him, he realizes the implications of what he had just seen. It is exactly the kind of problems he couldn’t fight against. He now knows the depths of their experiments’ success. Seething barely contained rage, he turns the gears in his head in an explosion, trying to come up with a way they could contain this.

“FUCK!!!!!!”

[Those Mo********ing bastards! Those filthy green head C**k Suckers!! WTF have they done!!? How did they even gene splice a mammal and a reptilian?! We didn’t even know that it was possible! It can’t possibly be limited to just this. Our ecology is fucked. I sure hope those greedy assholes are finally working their asses to fix this mess.]

After more incessant cursing till the sunset, he finally calms down a bit to think more rationally.

[The rest of the council must surely have this news by now. I’m probably the last to find out, being stuck in the middle of no where for so long. I need to get back ASAP! Arghh…..I’m not sure we even have advanced enough science to fix a mess of this scale. But like hell I’m going to give up now. After all we have been though, I refuse to let my future kids have their TMNT filled with mutated turtle monkeys instead!]

“Come on buddy, let’s make camp here for the night.”

*Next day early morning*

He wakes up early, right before the sun is about to rise. Washing up and having some fruit for breakfast, he wakes up the beast to go find its own food for the day. Sensing his still foul mood, it tries to cheer him up by cuddling and licking him.

“Alright. Alright! Thank you for that buddy. Now go get a hare or something. I’ll roast it for you.”

‘Woof’

With a happy bark, it left and comes back with its breakfast. Once it has finished its meal, they set out once again but now following the creek slightly more south. Hoping to find civilization quicker that way. After half a day of brisk walking with no pause, he takes a rest as he accepts the reality now. Humans always find a way to survive. He’s just sad that the rest of the species, that share this home with them, will have a much tougher time till things are dealt with.

After playing with and petting the wolf, he starts back up, but noticing the soil around the bank of the creek being looser than normal, he decides to keep a good distance from it. After all, there may be pythons or worse, Alligators in the waters. Even if it isn’t a river, he decides it’s better to be safe than sorry. But they make sure they aren’t too far away from it, keeping a constant distance of about 70-100 meters from the bank.

It was looking to be another uneventful second day. After all, what creature dared to show itself before his colossal, mutated wolf, be it natural or green head work? But one did! Or rather, they seem to have inadvertently challenged it in its territory.

A giant bear! He didn’t know south American bears were as big before. Cursing his stupid luck but not overly panicked, he takes up his long spear that is more convenient to attack larger beasts.

The Bear starts the fight with a deafening roar at them, on it's hind legs. It's height over 2 meters, looking imposing and even though he winced at it momentarily, he recovers to be ready to attack, once his wolf grabs the centre of attention with its size. A size that is actually bigger than the bear when both are on all fours. After waiting a couple seconds and the Bear charging straight at them, he turns to find his shaking and terrified wolf that takes off, away from the fight, to his bewilderment. The giant wolf has run off, scared! Momentarily dazed at what just happened, before his honed sense of presence in combat, snapping back his attention to the danger at hand. Only to find an equally bewildered and momentarily stunned bear, stopped in its tracks, looking at the massive figure of a wolf, bigger than it's total size, running away from it. Unwilling to waste the opportunity, he makes a thrust with full force at the bear’s head and successfully takes out one of its eyes, injuring its face a bit. After a fierce fight where he takes advantage of the blinded side of the beast, that is now in panic, and him taking a few flesh deep claw gashes onto his body later, he concludes the fight, but takes a seat besides the now dead bear in silence, digesting what just happened. After waiting for 30 more minutes, almost 2/3rd of an hour after the fight started, the wolf returns, thankfully with all the baggage intact. The man stares at the beast, accusatorily. After a couple seconds of his intense stare, the wolf whines and lowers his head apologetically, coming to his feet and licking his wounds.

‘Hnnn…hnnn’

“No more fruits for you!”

The now apologetic giant wolf winces at his words.

-To be continued