A large warehouse overgrown with plant-life stood looming in the early morning darkness. Debris lay scattered all about, causing the street to be nearly impassable unless you traveled on foot for the last few blocks. Brush and vines coated the buildings so thick he wasn’t sure where any of the doors could be.

A faint beep sounded in his ears, and Phil pulled his mobile ARD open.

We are sending out someone to meet you, it read.

Phil heard the rough scratch and cough of someone clearing their voice nearby. His head whipped up and his heart raced, someone stood roughly ten feet off and he hadn’t even heard her approach.

A woman with a smirk on her face looked down at him. Her hair was pulled up into a tight bun, and her eyes twinkled in the dim light from a nearby lamp. A white lab coat hung from her shoulders, it was pulled tight around her chest. In the dim lamp light, he couldn’t make out much more of her appearance, but something about her unsettled him.

“Welcome to the resistance, soldier.” Her voice was a complete contrast to the lovely appearance she kept. It came out stern, rough, and harsh.

Phil recoil from her. No he had to appear strong, it might be his last chance in flesh afterall. He stood tall and faced stared up towards her eyes. His show of brazado fell short though, as his mobile ARD slipped from his hands and clattered to the ground between them.

“I-I’m not a soldier,” Phil said reaching down to grab the fallen device. He had meant to say more, maybe make a statement that could match the defiance he wanted to show, but no, he couldn’t even fake being courageous.

“Well,” the woman began. “today you are. Follow me and try to keep up.”

“What’s your n-” Phil’s words stuttered to a halt as they woman walked through the wall.

How in the hell did she expect him to follow her through a solid wall? Better yet, did he want to follow her? Did he have a choice? Deciding that he did not, creepy vibes or not he would have to see where this took him.

If only he could figure out how she walked through the wall. Slow and deliberate Phil pushed forward with his hands outstretched. He reached the wall and slipped past the solid surface.

A warm tingle was the only thing that signaled to his brain that he was moving through.

Strange.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself he stepped through.

Phil kept his eyes tightly shut until the warmth passed. His eyes fluttered open to a hallway dimly lit with some of the same overgrown vegetation as outside. Plain white walls and a concrete floor boxed him in from all sides, except one. He had no choice but to follow the one the woman now. Stale air filled his lungs and the steady click of shoes against hard floor echoed in the narrow hall as the unamed woman walked onward.

“Quickly now, follow me.” Her voice rang from further down the corridor. He could barely make out her form anymore and hurried to keep up.

For several long minutes, they did a cat-and-mouse routine where he followed her as she walked through walls, and he followed behind. Eventually, they passed through a wall that led into a brightly lit room with chairs all around the wall,  a waiting room of some sort.

“Have a seat and Doctor Vikar will be with you shortly.” And with that, the kindly faced stern woman passed through a set of thick plastic double doors that swung closed behind her.

Phil scanned the room with a quick glance and was shocked to find the door she had left out was the only way in or out. Shocked and feeling closed in he began to run his fingers around the edge of the room for the opening they had entered from the outside hall.

It was all solid.

He went around the walls twice and found that the entire room was solid and none of it gave way to a secret hallway. With eyes shut and panic threatening to overwhelm him Phil sat and struggled to think.

Something strange was going on here. He had never heard of any holographic technology like this; light just didn’t work the way it did in the movies. You couldn’t make light solid, as far as he knew.

A thought occurred to Phil, and he pulled out his mobile ARD device that he had stashed away into his pocket during the long walk, to see if they had added any augmented reality changes to the building, but to his disappointment, the device didn’t seem to work. Perhaps it broke when he dropped it?

“Thank you for waiting, Phil.” A deep masculine voice rang out behind him.

Phil turned to meet the voice and gasped. The man that stood before him must have stood nearly seven feet tall, taller than even Tank. His lab-coat did a poor job of hiding his rippling muscles, being pressed tight around his shoulders and chest. His jaw was blocked and square in a way he had only ever seen in anime cartoons. He had curly locks of black hair that ran from the top of his head in messy stands. And his eyes…

His eyes were golden. The irises of his eyes seemed to glow in the yellow light of the room. Phil blinked dilibrately and looked again. The eyes had settled back to a more normal hazal color. It must have been a trick of the light.

Doctor Vikar raised an eyebrow, but Phil continued to stare at the titan of a man, with his mouth open.

“My parents were one of the first to take part in gene-altering for their child. I know my appearance can be...disturbing, but if you could follow me, we really need to look at those files.”

His voice so smooth, so deep, it didn’t seem possible it belonged to an actual person and not some god of myth and legend.

Phil reached down to his ARD mobile and slipped out the removable memory chip.

“Here you go,” Phil said. The large man reached down and plucked the small memory chip from Phil’s hand. While still marveling at the size of Doctor Vikar a thought occurred to him.

“Several of my friends were taken by the Gisney Corp so we could get you these files. Do you have any way of-”

“I will look into it as soon as we can verify that the files are genuine.” Doctor Vikar said. He wouldn’t make eye contact with Phil as he spoke. The large man shuffled from foot to foot while straightening his lab-coat.

Phil wasn’t good at reading people, but Doctor Vikar definitely seemed nervous about something. He should be careful. Snapping his eyes forward Phil paid real close attention to the surrounding details. The doors opened up into a white-lined hallway. The same bright lights that lit up the previous waiting room lit this new hallway. The walls were barren not even signs showing which way to turn when they reached a fork in the hallways. There was an eerie quiet that seemed to permeate the entire building.

The large man turned right, and Phil hurried to keep pace with the giant's stride. When he finally caught up to the man, he noticed something odd. Neither the first woman or this man wore an ARD. The thin almost invisible ARD shield that covers in front of the eyes of the wearer was nowhere to be seen. Even the ARD core that was placed covering the temple was missing.

Phil had heard of rich folk who could afford nearly invisible ones that sat flat with the skin, but even those were visible if you knew what to look for. This was something else altogether. Phil fingered his dead ARD unit that was inserted into the flesh of his temple.

Not even a scar where their units should be…who are these people, Phil thought.

Phil’s anxiety began to build in his chest as his wild imagination filled in the gaps of what he didn’t know about the people. They could be aliens maybe? Or perhaps this guy is actually some kind of ancient god come back to judge humanity before were all burned up. Or he could be an advanced AI unit downloaded into a metallic body sent here to gather a way to stop humans from escaping their inevitable doom!

“We’re here.” The alien/god/robot said.

Phil’s imagination had gotten away from him, and now he wouldn’t be able to find his way back if he needed to get away in a hurry. They had entered a small office area with four cubicles, each with their own set of computers. Not ARD display units, but actual physical computers with physical screen displays.

“Oh, wow, where did you find this display? Is that an OFD hyper modulation full depth screen? Those things are worth a fortune! They are antiques, and no serious power user would use one, but still! That is awesome!” Phil wasn’t a physical hardware expert, but he knew more than an average user having had to set up an illegal server for himself outside of the corporation's control. He was a sucker for old tech. But a physical display? He could only dream of having something so cool.

“Uh yeah. You know your hardware?” Doctor Vikar said. “Maybe we should have contacted you sooner. It took us forever to get the power output correct on these things and blew at least a dozen before we got it right.”

Phil felt like an incredible weight had hit him. They had done what?

“You. Fried. A  dozen OFD’s?” Phil’s voice was barely audible above the buzz of a nearby AC unit. He quickly did the math inside his head for the lowest price he had seen on one of those displays years ago and the number he came up with almost had him flat on his face.

“Yeah, we didn’t have the luxury to take our time, but I’m sure with a little work or replacement parts someone can fix them.” The large man sat on a dark office chair and pecked away at a physical keyboard. Another artifact of a simpler time that just didn’t get made anymore.

Phil watched the man as he inserted the memory chip and extracted the files. By the looks of it, everything was functioning normally. Footsteps sounded behind him and he turned to see who it was.

The familiar face of the woman that had led him inside entered. Her smile shone with kindness, but it didn’t reach her eyes. With divine grace, she approached the Doctor and took the device from his outreached hand.

“It’s perfect. With these runic formations, we should be able to activate the device.” Doctor Vikar spoke in a whisper, but not so low that Phil couldn’t hear him.

The woman said nothing but nodded her head and quickly left the room.

“We’re sending out a team of our best to try to retrieve your friends. We have their last location reported by their ARD units. We will need at least a day to run a test on the device before we are ready for trials. You will be among the first to enter if we can get things working.”

The Doctor took a deep breath and smiled, and for the first time, he met Phil’s eyes. If he was willing to get his friends back maybe, he might help him get Eve into the program as well?

“Could I ask one more thing?” Phil asked. He shifted from one foot to another, not really comfortable asking for more after this man had already offered to not only save him from the end of the world but also was willing to retrieve his friends.

“You can ask me anything.” The Doctor said. “If it is within my power I will do my best to oblidge. You have done more for us and the human race than you might ever know.” Doctor Vikar’s eyes seemed to shine with a golden light as he spoke and his grin widened.

Strange, Phil thought, he could swear his eyes were actually glowing gold.

“We only succeeded with getting the files because of our AI unit,” Phil said. “She means a lot to me and she is the last thing I have of my si-” Phil’s voice caught in his throat but he pushed through the emotion. “Is there any way we could have her transmitted into the program as well?”

Phil braced himself for the inevitable ridicule and scorn. He had been so silly thinking they would waste any time trying to figure out how to upload a computer AI when there were real lives to be saved. He would just go find a corner and hide until it was his turn to be uploaded.

“Interesting.” Doctor Vikar said. “I honestly have no idea if that is possible. Do you have the program on you? I could run a few tests myself and see if it could be possible.”

Phil avoided the Doctor’s eyes. Stupid question, he thought. Finally summoning up the courage he looked up at the titan of a man staring down at him. He looked so mighty standing above him like that, Phil believed at that moment that if there were any way to get Eve into Haven, this man would be able to accomplish it. He could do anything.

“Miss Starkad will take you to a room where you can get some sleep until we are ready for you.”

***

Phil woke to a sound that had been getting all too familiar as the end of the world came closer. Gunshots and lots of them. Phil did as he had been doing for the last year and rolled onto the ground to, hopefully, prevent himself from being hit by a stray bullet. Instead of hitting his soft carpet like he expected, he was greeted by hard cold concrete.

The events of the night before came rolling into the front of his mind. Why did he hear gunshots inside of this place? He barely got the thoughts out when he heard several more burst of shots closer now than before.

With a slam, his door was flung open and from the light of the hall silhouetted a massive form of a man. Phil squeaked and assumed the fetal position. Closing his eyes tight, a shiver ran through him as he waited for the gunshots to rip through him.

“Get up now!” A voice said. A voice he knew! It was Doctor Vikar.

Phil shot to his feet and ran towards the large man. With a quick sweep of his arm, Doctor Vikar pushed him into the hallway, and they began running.

Bodies littered the brightly lit familiar hallway. Most were unfamiliar men clad in black assault armor. Large plates of bulletproofing, several unnecessary pockets, and big guns. Corporate goons perhaps?

 All the bodies lay disturbingly still, but they didn’t seem to have any gunshot wounds though. Phil’s eyes caught sight of a body face down and stopped short. His body smoked from a huge burn mark on his back.

“What happened to them?” Phil asked. Vikar grabbed his arm and continued pulling him along. Either Vikar didn’t hear him or didn’t care to answer because he continued to drag him along until they reached an open warehouse-like area.

The majority of the room was shrouded in darkness with a few islands of light pouring down towards the warehouse floor. One of the spheres of light in the farthest corner stood a group of half a dozen people wearing white lab coats.

“We are short on time, so listen up and don’t speak.” Doctor Vikar said. He spoke fast, and his brow was burrowed, as his head swung back and forth looking back toward the hallway they came from.

“We sent two of our best to retrieve your friends, but we lost contact with them. They are most likely dead now. I’m afraid your friends have likely suffered a similar fate. We underestimated our adversary this time, and it’s cost us dearly.”

Phil didn’t speak, but a gasp escaped his lips and his hand closed over his mouth.

“They found us. We've been overwhelmed. We have the power to do several transfers, but we aren’t sure it will work just yet, so…” Doctor Vikar’s eyes met Phil’s and his voice softened. “Well if you are willing we would like you to go first.”

Phil wasn’t sure what to think or what to say, so instead he just slowly nodded his head. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well try to get into the Haven program. What did he really have to lose?

“Good, good. Miss Starkad will help you get undressed and into the pod.” Doctor Vikar said. “One last thing. If you do get in, you need to be careful. Haven isn’t like anything you’ve imagined. Death in Haven is true death.”

Doctor Vikar turned to another of the white lab coat worker. “Did you purge out that AI I gave you?”

“It’s still attempting to decode the information. It shouldn’t affect the transfer of bio-matter.” The other man said.

“Right, fine.” Doctor Vikar said. “Phil we tried to send your AI, but it seems to be stuck in a loop not getting past the buffer panel. This tech is difficult to understand, much less manipulate to do things that it wasn’t intended to do.”

Phil jumped from the sound of gunfire in the distance. He stared at the floor and tried not to think about how he was going to be shot to death. His chest clenched and his breathing quickened. Focusing on the large wires that ran all throughout the floor he half ran half walked to the group of lab coats. Raising his eyes, he saw the device meant to transfer humanity into digital form for the first time. Despite the echo of bullets and people rushing all around Phil froze.

It looked like a stone coffin that would be better off holding a mummy than someone hoping to transfer their mind to a digital paradise. The coffin sat on a broad base of gray stone, except that it had wires attached to every opening, even though a few cracks. Was this some kind of sick joke? Did he really do all this to help a group of insane people connect wires to an old stone artifact?

“Quickly remove your clothes.” Miss Starkad said. She spoke with authority, and Phil found himself obeying before he had registered the meaning of the words.

Soon he stood naked as the day he was born in a warehouse that felt much colder and more crowded than he remembered. His hands quickly went to his groin, as a female lab coat walked past him.

“Marks, Rand, get the jelly and cover him completely before we get him into the device,” Starkad said.

Two large burly lab coats approached him. Cold lubricant jelly being spread across his body sending an icy chill through him. One of the two bearded lab coats lifted him clear off the floor and placed him into the stone coffin. The coffin door closed, and he realized he could see through the surface.

Strange. It must be some type of advanced plastic then?

Doctor Vikar’s face appeared above Phil, and his voice penetrated the enclosed coffin as if it wasn’t even closed.

“The scan that prepares you to be transported to Haven is…invasive. Regardless of whether the transport completes the scan will kill you. It must examine every single piece of you down to the molecular level. I’m sorry. I meant to tell you this before, but things have snowballed out of control.”

And with that, the Doctor was gone. The coffin, his executioner, began to move. It lifted him to a standing position, and he found he had a view of everything happening in the warehouse. Flashes of lights, men and women bent over computers fingers pecking away. Wait…flashes of light?

Phil looked closer and could barely make out a large quad of men entering the chamber all clad in black with large guns. And standing between them and the device was just one man. Doctor Vikar. He was glowing? It became progressively harder to focus and his vision began to blur until going completely black.

Stars, fire, and death filled his dreams.