Chapter 10 – A Grey Old World

Caelum’s last day in the rift greeted him with the calm of a receding tide, as if every possible danger had exhausted itself and left only the aftertaste. He hovered at the hollow’s threshold, staring through torn meshwork shadows as the mist burned away and the first sun—smaller, meaner than the second—pushed its way up the sky like a blood clot. Nothing moved on the roots. Even the floaters, those translucent jelly medusae, had retreated into the boughs. The single sound was the low drone of his own throb, pulsing high in his jaw.

The interface flickered in peripheral vision, a phantom tickling the edge of reality. He summoned the display with a thought, surprised when the text resolved into sharp, jittery text, vibrating with a fresh urgency.

ARC // Assessment • Registration • Certification Interface
RETURN WINDOW: <12 HOURS (EVROPA)
MANDATORY DECONTAMINATION: ON EXIT
MANIFESTATION: PENDING LICENSE REVIEW
RECOMMENDED: MINIMISE ADDITIONAL SCARRING EVENTS

He shoved the last of his gear into his pack and slung it over one shoulder, grunting. The RS stone weighed down his hand. Caelum checked his spot, then checked again, not about to let the decon officers find anything to dock his points over. Not this time.

Caelum forced himself to breathe steadily, focusing on the RS stone in his hand. The rough crystal was warm to his palm, catching the red light. He pictured the energy building in his chest, heat spreading out and down his arm, crackling toward the stone. The heat in his veins was familiar by now. He pushed the current through, using it as fuel, until the stone started to hum low within his grasp.

The stone glowed in his hand, spitting blue sparks that jumped across his knuckles. The air in front of him started to twist, like the world was being pulled thin. A seam of darkness split open, edges flickering with colour, and widened into the gate he’d come through.

He took one last look, then stepped through. The grove’s clean, wet air vanished, replaced by the old world’s dry, filthy stink. Every breath tasted like dust and ash. The green canopy was gone, swapped for rust, concrete, and a layer of chalky grime that even the sun couldn’t cut through.

The return hit harder than going in. Caelum’s boots landed on dead grit and dirty ground. He blinked, eyes stinging from the dust and the sudden light, ears ringing from the pressure change. Behind him, the gate’s after-image remained in the air, a ragged blur that shrank as he walked away.

Enforcer Richard’s face—tanned, creased, inhumanly serene—split into a look that would look friendly, if you’d never been able to read the vectors of authority. “Welcome back to the real world, Cadet.” A hand fell on Caelum’s shoulder, gentle in force, but final. “Real enough to taste, sir,” Caelum coughed. The hand on his shoulder pressed just enough to remind him of the chain of command, of the bright siege of gaze watching from the mobile command vehicle. They wanted him moving, not standing there blinking at the horizon like a mind-wrecked Unmarked.

Richard didn’t say anything else. He pulled Caelum forward, quick and matter-of-fact. The UNIT-3 enforcers were already lined up: two with med kits, one with a black envelope full of vials for the usual debrief and decon, and another, helmeted, gripping a sidearm. Caelum couldn’t help noticing how neat it all was. He’d left blood and chaos in the rift, and now Earth was running the same show, just with props and gloves.

They shoved him into the truck as soon as he crossed the line, crowding him onto a folding cot and stripping his pack and spear away before he could react. He tried to grab for the pack, but it was already sealed up and tagged, probably headed for some lab. The medics didn’t bother with small talk; they just checked his eyes and went straight to his leg.

The youngest medic wore a nexus ring on her finger, the band glowing dull cyan as she went through his improvised bandage. The wound looked worse here, under the intense lights and the cameras: ragged, raw, purple at the edges. Caelum could smell it even through the disinfectant, could taste it in his mouth. The RMA’s foam didn’t cover the stink, but the medic didn’t flinch. She cleaned, cut, and sprayed something that seared like hell.

It took more willpower than he liked to admit not to yank his leg away. Heat beat in his calf, muscle memory itching to kick, but he stayed still. The first sensor cluster pressed chill against his neck, producing a printout, and the older medic snapped it up, scanned it, and shredded it without a word.

The ARC overlay flared up, numbers shifting: heart rate, pulse, hydration, blood loss, infection risk, and then a flood of deeper scans for rift exposure. The RMA didn’t trust any gate, not after the first returnee broke protocol. Rumour had it that there were 14 rift-borne pathogens capable of killing a human. Caelum figured it was more than that, and that half of them were smarter than they let on.

After a period that felt like an eternity, a voice rose through the grunts and groans. The older medic—his badge read “Ilyin”—swept the readout into a disposable bin and peered over the edge of a handheld scanner, blue light shimmering as it tracked Caelum’s vitals. “Start from the top,” Ilyin said, not a request. “Gate conditions, sequence of events, all injuries as sustained.” The scanner’s light increased, a faint whine drilling into Caelum’s skull.

He finally managed to speak, his voice coarse. "Entry was stable, no hostilities inside the perimeter. Walked about an hour into the basin—old mangroves, nothing like the standard vector. Saw a bunch of things: four-clawed crabs, armoured croc, floaters like jellyfish, a six-legged thing with a throat sac, and a pissed-off salamander." He tried to gesture, but the medic pinned his hands and jabbed an alcohol patch into his arm.

“Document the wound,” Ilyin said. The younger medic stretched the skin on his leg so the scanner could get a look. Caelum felt the tug, the raw itch as nanofilm sealed the worst of it. “Good job coming back alive, cadet,” Ilyin said.