Blackness.

I am alone.

No.

No something is here.

No, not yet.

I have been here before.

I know this.

Something is out there.

Coming.

Yes, something is coming.

I am afraid.

I am angry.

Blackness.

## ## ## ## ##

Blackness.

Pain.

I am groggy.

My head feels like it is full of cotton wool.

I begin to become more aware. I have been through this before. I think.

Yes, I have I know this.

Slowly more thoughts come and I begin to become to terms with my situation. I am still alive and in a hospital. Still, things are jumbled and hazy when I think.

I can hear around me the tell-tale noises of a medical facility. I can hear the sound of the devices most likely attached to me. I can feel what I think is a bandage across the top of my head covering my eyes. I cannot move much. Pain comes when I try. I can feel all my limbs.

Listening to the room for a bit longer I can make out the faint sound of movement and conversations. I try to move again but I am so weak. It feels like all of my limbs are made of lead. I stop from exhaustion. I might have attracted some attention.

I hear a door opening. Footsteps approaching.

“John, can you hear me?” I know that voice, I think.

“Yes.” I croak trying to speak.

“Page Doctor Helena that Operative Harrington is awake.” The voice says to me. I hear someone else leave the room. “Here drink this.”

My head is lifted and straw is directed to my mouth. I suck. Coldwater follows down my throat like pure bliss. My head is returned to the pillow. I quickly begin to gather myself. Trying to remember why I was here.

Then I remembered. I remembered it all.

Blackness.

## ## ## ## ##

I wake up.

My eyes are closed.

My mind is foggy.

I remember. Again.

This time I stay conscious.

I remember the whole thing. The pain, fear and exhaustion. Up until my final throw of the dice. Then not much.

It’s all very confusing. I feel cold.

The bandage is gone from my eyes. I open them onto a hospital room the decor is very familiar. Depressingly so.

I am at the UKZC medical facility. That means….

I survived.

Emotions flood through me. And my eyes are damp. There is a lump in my throat and my chest starts to heave. The spike in my vitals is registered on my monitors.

I survived. I did not expect to. I was ready not to.

To be honest I should not have.

It is late in the day and sunlight is flooding through a window covering the lower half of the room. I am in a bed attached to God knows how many machines that display my vitals.

Just moving my head is like an Olympic event. I am exhausted just with this little action. I have discovered that I am not bandaged up at all. I can freely move my fingers and toes. Again, I quickly get exhausted by this small thing.

The room to the door opens and a male nurse enters. I know him from my other visits. Cannot remember the name.

“Awake again I see.” The quick moves over to the bed. As he comes over, he taps down on an e-pad he is holding.

Not even asking he supplies me with water that I greedily slurp down. He is checking my vitals and his e-pad.

“Doctor Helena is on the way.” He tells me. I nod or try to.

“Don’t try to move you are going to be extremely weak.”

No Shit Sherlock!

He turns and leaves the room. Alone again I try to take stock. This is hard as moving just a little is nigh impossible.

Eventually, I stop and try to relax. This however brings back the memories. With them emotions. My body starts to react again. The beeping around me starts to increase.

Before I start to spiral my door opens again and the good Doctor Helens arrives. She is not alone. With her comes another a vaguely recognise. An older man in a tweed suit under his white lab coat.

They hurry in and quickly consult with my monitors.

“Welcome back to the land of the living John.” Helena says to me.

“Ok.” That was all I can say.

“You have been out for some time. Your injuries were bad John. We almost lost you a few times there.” She continued. I process that. I feel that my near-death experiences are getting far too familiar. That worries me.

“The good news is that you are healed apart from a few new scars of course.” The man in tweed said. Doctor Helena looks sharply at him but then back to me.

“Doctor Holland is correct all your injuries are healed.”

Eh?

“You are wondering how? Well John you have been held in a medical coma for the last four months.” Doctor Helena told me.

Four Months!

“Like I said you were badly injured and the resulting infection almost got you. So, when we stabilised, you it was decided to put you into the coma to allow your body to recover.”

“You are going to be in physical therapy for almost as long. You have lost a lot of muscle mass. I know this is a lot so we will leave you to process this and let your mother know that you are awake.”

They again look at my monitors and then leave.

Four Months!

I was still getting to grips with that.

## ## ## ## ##

A little later I was sitting up as the bed I was in had been raised to allow this. Any movement was a massive feat for me at the moment. There was a table with a drink in front of me with a large pad set up to allow me to watch. A news feed was playing showing what was going on in the world.

I had finished a very lengthy and emotionally draining video call with my mother. She had complained and cried but was happy that I was awake. I could not help but notice the increased stress lines on her face and grey hair. She was happy that I was not going to be going back into service for quite some time. She had wanted to come down but I had managed to talk her out of it.

The news was being upbeat about the state of the world. I noticed the scale of maps showing zones were now regional not national when appearing. That is telling in itself.

“Looks like our sleeping princess is awake.” Came a voice from my door.

“Fuck you.” Weak I know. But at the moment was the best I could do. Henry strolled in laughing.

“Bruv. You look like shit.”

“Feel like it.”

He pulls up a chair and sits down next to the bed.

“Screen off.” This shuts down the pad. I turn my head to look at him.

“Not looking to hot yourself.” His smile was there but so were the signs of weariness. His south London accent was more noticeable when he spoke.

“Just back from a dive. Been missing you out there Bruv.” Now alone with me he visible slumped from tiredness. “Since you went down things have been all go and then some.”

“That bad?”

“Yeah. Got a lot of newbies in and lost a couple of the old boys and girls.”

I didn’t say anything that I didn’t need to.

“Heard they going to try to debrief you tomorrow.”

“Shit! Already.” Fun times tomorrow.

“Yeah. Overheard the bigwigs talking. So, I thought the best slip in and see old Johnny boy before that to get the low down.”

“Eh?”

“You know what was out there when we parted.” Looking at him I wondered if it was curiosity or fear that made him ask. Or maybe both?

“It was what we feared and worse.”

“Bruv! A level 4?”

“Yes. Fucked me up go. Was damn lucky to survive.”

“The other teams never found it when closing the breaches. What happened?”

“Managed to take it out.” I told him.

“You’re shitting me!” He exclaimed loudly. Sitting up so fast he almost came out of his seat.

I laughed weakly at this reaction. This however attracted the attention of a nurse who chased Henry from the room. Protesting all the way. This made me feel better in many ways. The effects of the Grave Chill had largely passed when I was in my coma. They were not completely gone and I was feeling down. The super dose I had received from the level 4 had done a number on me I had discovered.

I could still feel its lingering effects even now. I had a slight chill in my body that I could not avoid. One of the monitors showed my body temperature was slightly lower than it should be. The clouds of depression hovered at the corners of my mind. Making the job of moving far harder and being less willing to.

Experience had taught me that moving and doing things was the best cure to fight the effects but being effectively bedridden was the issue. The nurse returned and fussed around checking things before leaving me alone again.

“Screen on.”

The pad can back to life with the news feed.

“The European Union have increased the Euro Corps budget in a meeting in Berlin. This was the expected outcome of the meeting. What has surprised observers is the scale of the funding increases. The new budget was an increase of 300% for the member nations. With commitments from all of greater military integration and cooperation. This will many analysts predict that Euro Corps will become the mainline military for the whole Union within two years

With the chaos in The United States making NATO an unreliable institution this has been hailed by many on the continent as the only logical decision. With the spike in zone activity across the world, many nations are displaying the signs of stress.”

The news piece ended with the anchor taking over and presenting a puff piece.

“Screen off.” I was not interested in any more news.

Things were not good as I had figured. The only thing that united humanity as an outside threat was the old saying. Well, the zones were proving that somewhat correct. Many nations were working together and sharing intel trying to solve the problem. The US, Russia and China were the outliers. They trying to go alone because of pride or internal issues or a mixture of both.

Britain/Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and Japan were the least affected major nations by the zones at the moment. The rest of the world was being affected to different degrees. Global supply chains had been diversified after the pandemic over a decade ago so things were holding together for the moment.

That could all change if things continue the way they are. I hope that we can get on top of things before then. The darkness in my mind doubts it.

The nurse comes back and lets me know that Henry was right and that I can expect a debriefing team tomorrow. The Government likes to get the debrief done as fast as possible to have the recollections fresh from the operative involved. Adding the fact that I have encountered a level 4 threat and maybe the only know operative I am aware of that has survived. I was going to in for a long day.

I realise that I need to pee. I contact the nurse station. One of them comes in and when she finds out what the issue is tells me not to worry. She tells me the catheter will take care of it. It is then that I discover I have a tube in my dick.

WHAT THE FUCK!