The Point of No Return – Dead to Rights
Gathering gear takes very little time and there isn’t a need for some of it any longer.
Timberlen can’t believe he never saw it coming. He hadn’t been able to see the forest, for all the trees.
He stuffs the night vision gear in his backpack and puts his food rations on top. It would be daylight soon and he would need the food first. As he fits the pack on himself, a loud inhuman shriek fills the air.
He would have to watch out for this as well. It sounded hungry.
The mission
Still feeling angry with himself, he decides to walk the open terrain until daybreak. The celestial view was comforting. He feels the effects of the bio injections beginning. It’s the atmosphere of the planet, reacting with the bio enhancements.
He would be in pain very soon, and this will last until the changes are complete, therefore he needs shelter soon.
This world is not for humans. The atmosphere alone is harmful to anything with a human genome. The natural inhabitants weren’t remotely close to humans. They were the enemy.
Walking is harder now as he ascends a small ridge. The skies are breathtaking as he walks under the heavens.
He feels the tears beginning and bites them back, there is no longer time for fear. He trembles as another shock of the bio treatments, wreaks havoc with his body.
One day from now he will be finished evolving and will be ready to pursue the mission. He wonders briefly if any of the others made it through graduation, and then forgets about it. No one who graduated was going home anyway. This was a one way deal.
Dead to rights
Once he is in open country he allows his stride to become more relaxed and he tries to focus while gazing skyward. As dawn nears he will have to dig in for the day’s changes, when they begin.
He isn’t concerned about the enemy troubling him during the day. The enemy isn’t corporeal in light. Only darkness.
The night vision gear helps before the bio changes are complete. Once he has adapted to his new form, he will not need night vision gear. He would then seek the enemy as he was being designed to do.
A sudden shock of pain rips through his head as he is looking skyward. The jolt of pain knocks him to his knees and he holds his head in his hands, as he sways back and forth, likewise willing it to pass.
He is still holding his head in pain, as he is knocked the rest of the way to the ground, consequently, he lands face first in the dirt of this world. He is back up with his weapon drawn, immediately.
His assailant also has a weapon, and it’s aimed at Timberlen. Timberlen has been ambushed, and the assailant has him, dead to rights.