The road had been bare for the past hour, just a dirt path in the desert of Pakistan. As a result, I had become bored with the task of driving and was paying only the minimal amount of attention to the straight and empty path as the Foxhound rolled along. The voices behind me all blurred together until one of them directed a question to me, snapping me out of my daydream of a beach vacation.
"What do you think Omega," Rose asked.
"Huh," I said.
"Why do you think Alpha was dropped," Rei asked.
"Alpha was let go at the discretion of Lieutenant Crank and only a select few know why," I replied.
"So in other words, you know why but you won't tell us," David, the final member of our squad, said.
I turned and looked at them; Rose with her pale ass skin that would never tan, mixed with her pale blue eyes and long brown hair, Rei with his mixed shade of brown and a pale only a few shades lighter than Rose's skin, accompanied by light green eyes and closely shaved black hair, and finally David with a tan that we all knew was natural even though every one else spread a rumor that it was spray-on, topped off with a head of red hair that was only slightly longer than Rei's and a pair of eyes so dark they were almost black.
"If you have a problem with the orders from Crank go take it up with him," I said, turning back to the road and adjusting the mirror, catching a glimpse of my tanned skin, black hair, and silver eyes.
"Aww, come on Eli, tell us why our old buddy Alfie was let go," Rose said, grabbing my shoulder and hauling herself up into the passenger seat, exactly where Alpha used to sit.
"Don't call me that," I replied, "I haven't been Eli since I enlisted."
"Please, you can't just leave behind eighteen years of your life and run off to Pakistan," she argued.
"Oh yeah," I replied, "then tell me why I'm he-"
That was when the world exploded. Something slammed into the side of the jeep, flipping it once, twice, three times despite it's massive weight, finally coming to a rest on its top. I felt cuts on my face and arms and there was blood running from my cheek to the crown of my head and dripping onto the top of the jeep. I closed my eyes and tried to force away the pain, trying my best to ignore the shouts of my squadmates and the gunshots. I heard everything die down and then my door was wrenched open, spilling sunlight into the front seat through all the dust and cracked windows. A gun went off right next to me and for a second I though someone had shot me until my head hit the roof. Someone pulled me out of the jeep and I could faintly hear voices arguing around me, snippets of words reaching me.
"...concussion, probably won't last..."
Rose, definitely.
"...keep following the road or..."
Rei, probably, or David.
"Hey, O, get your ass up. Don't you dare fall asleep out here, we'll leave your corpse for the bugs," David said, right in my ear.
I cracked my eyes open and weakly shoved David away, squinting so the sunlight wouldn't hurt my eyes too bad.
"You still alive Omega," Rei asked, his head coming into view.
"It takes more than that to kill me," I said, smiling weakly at him. "So what exactly happened?"
"Some bogies tried to raid the jeep. Hit the side of it with a rocket and tried to mow us down while we were disoriented," Rose spoke up, looking around the desert that surrounded us.
It was then that I noticed the jeep was gone, along with any bodies from whoever attacked us.
"So where did you guys drag me," I asked, slowly sitting up.
"We decided to continue following the trail. No use walking back to HQ only to whine about a failed mission," David said.
"Yeah..." Rei said. "Omega, what exactly is our mission?"
"I suppose there's no use in keeping it from you now. We were supposed to be going in and attacking a small compound hidden in the desert and while you guys were preoccupied with the frontal assault I was supposed to sneak away and snatch something," I said.
"What was it," Rei asked.
"It's something called 'Project Dimension' and while I don't know anything about it, the higher-ups are scared enough about it to send a small troop out to collect it," I answered truthfully.
"So we're just a distraction," Rei said, only half joking.
"Yep," I said. "Now help me up because we're not allowed back to HQ without that project."
Everybody suddenly stopped and everything was quiet until David asked, "What do you mean 'not allowed back'?"
"There was kind of an added incentive," I offered, "they said we're not allowed to come back unless we have the device and if we do so then we'll be considered traitors."
"WHAT THE FUCK ELI," Rose shouted at me, suddenly in my face, "YOU'RE JUST WILLING TO RISK OUR LIVES LIKE THAT?!"
"You think I had a choice in the matter," I asked, "they were orders directly for the top and when they offer you orders you'd damn well better get them accomplished."
"See, this is why we need Alpha," Rose muttered, "he would have said no."
"Well maybe that's why he got dismissed," I shot back.
"Is that really why he got kicked out," she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"...no," I admitted.
"Right then, why don't we get going, we'd better find that thing soon because we've got about a day's worth of water," Rose said, offering a hand to me.
I gratefully accepted it and grunted as I was pulled up, the world spinning for a few seconds. My sight calmed down and I began trudging after my squad, deeper into the desert where we would no doubt die.
We had been walking for a good four hours now, stopping twice to cool off under a tarp we pinned up, by the time we actually saw the base. It would probably be more accurate to call it a small warehouse though. We stopped to make a plan before we continued onwards, although that was when the mirages started, trees and rock beginning to form around us. At least I thought it was a mirage until I walked into a rock and stopped.
"Wait, is anyone else seeing this shit," I asked, kicking the rock. I could faintly see both the rock and the grass under it, and if I focused enough I could just make out the desert floor, almost as though two places in the world were overlapping and neither one was exactly here.
"You're not the only one," David admitted, moving towards a tree and rapping on its trunk. "This is so weird."
"It works in our favour though," Rose said, "because we have both cover and the tempurature's dropping rapidly."
It wasn't until she said it that I took notice of how cool it was.
"Maybe it's Project Dimension," Rei said, peering through the trees at the base. "We'll find out soon enough, we've got a mile left before we arrive at the base."
I nodded and we all started off towards the base, using the trees as cover from whoever was looking and the sun. We arrived soon enough and paused on the edge of the forest, looking at the clearing between us and the base, about a couple hundred feet. I gave my squad a silent command to hold and I crouched down, peering around the trunk and looking at the structure. No guards patrolling as far as I could see, but that didn't mean shit. I slowly made my way over to the warehouse door, using the few obstacles there were as cover in case there was a gunner hidden somewhere. I made it to the door without incident and I opened the door partially. I looked in and saw an empty warehouse, other than the opposite wall. I turned back and motioned for my squad to come on, giving them instructions to patrol the area and leave one of them to guard the door before moving into the warehouse.
It was quiet except for the hum of machinery and the sounds of my footsteps on the stone floor as I made my way to the console on the other end of the room. I began to mess with some of the machinery, wondering just how I would explain to my superiors that it was too big to bring back. I was just deciding on something when I felt something hit the back of my head and everything went black, one though drifting in my mind as I faded.
He has a concussion.
I woke up, much to my surprise, and opened my eyes to find my squad staring at the remains of Project Dimension and arguing heatedly. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, pausing as my vision took a second to clear, revealing not hands, but hooves.
"That's not possible, run the satellite scan again David," Rose's voice said, snapping me away from my personal problems.
"Rose I've ran it eight times, we're not on Earth anymore," David said.
I noticed that Rei wasn't there and I opened my mouth to ask about him, my voice getting caught in my throat as I caught sight of my reflection in the pool of blood around me. I didn't look like a human anymore. I had a snout, much like that of a horse, and a head of black hair that was longer than I was used to and was seemingly stuck in a fashion that stuck straight out over my head, much like the brim of a snapback hat. My eyes were brown instead of what they had been, and I found myself rather liking the warming colour, until I snapped out of my admiration, thinking about what exactly happened to me.
"Guys, I'm a horse," I said at last.
David and Rose turned to me, David giving me a look of disbelief while Rose lifted her gun and aimed it at my chest.
"Eli," Rose asked, "is that you?"
"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Eli," I asked.
"But...how, I mean you're dead, I saw your body, I took your pulse, hell that's your blood you're sitting in," she said.
I quickly scrambled up, checking myself for any signs that I was dead. Pain receptors work, there's still saliva in my mouth, and my dick seemed to respond well enough to the thought of Rose in bed.
"Well sorry to disappoint you," I said, "but everything seems to be working just fine. So what exactly happened?"
David picked up a bat laying by the console and said, "Someone took us out with a bat and destroyed the machine."
"Where's Rei," I asked.
"Seeing how far it spread," Rose said.
"Seeing how far what spread?"
"When the machine blew it locked us on one location. In short, we're not in Pakistan anymore."
"We're stuck in the forest."
"Bingo, and from what David says it's not on Earth."
"But that's..."
Rei busted in then and said, "Guys, the forest ended, but not in Pakistan."
"And so that's how I got here," I said, finishing the start of my story.
"You expect me to believe that," my interrogator asked.
"No," I answered honestly, "but that doesn't make it any less true."
"Right, well I've heard enough for today. We'll send out a team to check for the warehouse tomorrow morning to see if your story checks out," she said.
"Don't bother," I replied. "For starters it was in the Everfree Forest, no telling what that forest would have done to the building, and the second point I'm going to make is that we blew it up."
"Why?"
"You'll find out soon enough."
"None of your story is making any sense."
"Welcome to my life."
She gave a sigh and looked at me one last time before she got up and exited the room, leaving me alone in my cell as I thought of what I'd been through.