Flashpoint

Flashpoint

Interlude:

'Ghost of St. Petersburg'

Olivia shouted through grit teeth, as the bullet slammed into her shoulder. She swung around, pressing her back to the battered wall, and controlled her breathing. It was just a dream, after all. Just ignore it. This pain isn’t real. Push past. Do it. Do it.

Slowly, her arm began to respond again. In another moment, she was able to raise her rifle, and begin firing over the wall again. She did so, but blindly, still trying to figure out what was wrong.

I’m lucid, I know I’m dreaming, just like usual, but my control is terrible. It took far too long to heal a simple wound.

She heard a cry from over the wall, as some nameless, faceless opponent bought it. Her rifle clicked empty, and she reloaded, wincing as a hail of return fire chipped away at the edge of the wall above her.

This sucks, I’m outta here.

Pausing for a moment, she decided to just wake up rather than trying to switch to a different dream. She gave her mind that particular little twist, and…

Uh...

A grenade going off nearby broke her out of her stunned trance. She glanced around, then ran for the door opposite her position, ran through the abandoned house, across an alley, around a few corners and through a random door, finally collapsing in the kitchen of a small apartment.

Shitshitshit is this what most people feel like when they dream what do I do?!

A mass of footsteps pounded by the back doorway, and she melted into the wall, waiting for them to pass.

Okay, think. I healed my shoulder, this is definitely a dream. Can I do anything else?

She focused, trying to modify her weapon into something with a bit more kick, but it stubbornly stayed the old, battered Kalashnikov she’d carried when this fight had actually taken place.

That’s right. This is the evacuation of St. Petersburg. This...wasn’t all that bad. Maybe I just need to get to the end to wake up? That’s how these things work, right? Of course they say pain wakes you up too, and I just got shot...

She checked over her weapon, her ammo, and then-

“Wrayburn, where the hell are you?!”

Olivia froze in shock at the sound of a long-dead friend. “M-Mikael?”

“No, it’s the ghost of Joseph Stalin.”

Huh. Guess my subconscious is a snarky asshole. She realized she had abandoned her post, but thought about it, and realized it didn’t matter much in the long run for this fight. “I’m on Fifth. I, uh, had to relocate, my cover was toast. What’s the situation?”

A burst of static, then, “We’re okay for the moment. We’ve tagged enough of them that even these fanatical bastards are holding, and I just got word: the evac shuttles should be here in twenty-five.”

“Okay. Where do you want me?”

“We’re going to reform closer to the landing zone. We still need to protect those civvies. Get up to Seventh and Potato and hole up in the bakery there.”

“Copy that.”

***

What. The. Hell.

It hadn’t really bothered her that the walk had seemed to take forever. Dreams do that, right? Annoying, but not a big deal. She just found Seventh, then turned towards the landing zone.

She had assumed she misheard Mikael when he said ‘Potato’, because even if there was a “Potato Street” in St. Petersburg, it sure wouldn’t actually be called ‘Potato’, right? Yet, there it had been, not a word, but an actual picture of a potato, embossed onto a battered street sign. There’s that strange subconscious sense of humor, right?

But now, she was taking a good look at the...’bakery’. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, and certainly unlike anything she would ever have thought to find in an old Russian city. The walls were wood, but they and the roof were done up to look like gingerbread and frosting. It was incredibly realistic, and cheerful, and was making her stomach growl, but she didn’t want to enter just out of sheer stubbornness.

I clearly need a vacation. That’s what this is telling me. I need a break, before the rest of me goes off the deep end.

She sighed, grit her teeth, and entered the giant confection. The interior was cheerful, even in the gloomy darkkness cast by the perpetual cloud cover, and there was a lingering scent of carbohydrate and fruit filling. Mindful of her stomach’s complaints, she swiped a cupcake that turned out to be green, and took a bite.

What.

It was sweet, but tasted of...grass?! Timothy, to be exact.

Wait, why do I know what Cat’s-Tail tastes like?

She chewed and swallowed the bite, staring down at the rest of the cupcake, then tossed it away, giving up. Glancing around, she took up position behind a glass-fronted display case, from which she could see out the front.

She didn’t have to wait long.

***

“Mikael, where the hell are you?!”

Running around a corner, she winced as the last of her grenades went off, and heard a mixture of yelps and growls from its victims.

Dogs.

Mixed in with normal human squads were packs of large, misshapen dog creatures. They were even communicating with each other and the human squads, grunting out semi-intelligible speech.

Where in the world am I getting this stuff from?

She tried to think back to what had happened before she went to sleep, but she couldn’t even remember going to bed. They had jumped blindly, crashed, and...a fight? She had flashes of a unicorn, but then it was a pegasus. Useless. She ducked into a store, and slipped in back.

“Mikael? Anybody?”

It felt like she’d been at this for hours already, and she’d already retreated twice.

“This is Olivia Wrayburn. Is there anybody on this channel?”

The building where she recalled the civilian evacuees being stashed was two blocks behind her. Empty, no defenders, just a couple of magazines for her rifle. Then the building had been blown to hell by artillery that the Determinists hadn’t even used at St. Petersburg. Her rifle had since taken a shot meant for her gut, that warped the chamber, rendering it useless.

She pulled the magazine from her 1903--five shots left.

This dream is heading swiftly towards the bad kind of ending…

Then she froze, as a pack of dogs pelted past the door, followed by a squad of humans moving at a more sedate pace. One of them glanced inside, somehow not seeing her, then turned back to the street and lit a cigarette.

Too easy. On the one hand, I feel like my mind is playing games with itself. On the other hand…

She ghosted up behind him, and slammed the butt of her pistol into his temple, yanking him back by his collar as he collapsed.

Ooh, more grenades.

***

Olivia shivered on the rooftop, as another artillery barrage took out the better part of a block to her east. It felt like she’d been in this dream--no, nightmare, definitely a nightmare--for months, years even. The murky nighttime sky was... worse than she'd remembered, seemed to creep in from the edges even when she wasn't looking. In a way, she was tireless here: barely need a break, not truly needing to eat or drink; yet she felt like she was going mad from the constant vigilance and fighting and the pain of over a dozen wounds, painstakingly healed.

Then the troops had pulled back to a degree...and the occasional spattering of artillery turned into a near-constant hail. The city was swiftly becoming nothing but burning rubble.

She had decided at this point that she had only one more thing to try, and then she’d just run for the hills. In reality, the entire city had been surrounded by fanatical soldiers and automated turrets, but maybe here it was different. Still, before that, she’d decided to make her way to a radio station.

As another city block was demolished, she finished her patchwork and quickly turned the system on. The emergency radio was set to record her voice, then broadcast it at several common frequencies through the station’s large, rooftop antenna.

“Anyone out there? Anyone not a Determinist?” She hesitated. “Or hell, this is my mind, right? I’ll even take a Dt at this point. Or lemmie talk to a doggy, whatever! Just...please, I’m tired of this. I’m so tired. I just want to wake up.”

She released the transmit button, and let the radio do its work. Two minutes. Five minutes.

“Please, anybody. Come in.”

The building across from her had a repeating pattern in its faded, 60s-era exterior tilework. They repeated every seven tiles in one direction, four in the other. She blinked, realizing she’d been staring into space for at least ten minutes, then further coming to the realization that she hadn’t broken out of her trance earlier because the bombardment had stopped.

Maybe…?

Then, she heard it begin, and turned her gaze to the south. It was like being on the wrong end of a fireworks show. Every damned piece of arty they had in their southern line was firing. She didn’t need to guess where they were aimed.

Just triangulating my position, then. Huh. Well, I guess we’ll find out if getting reduced to my constituent atoms will finally kick me out of this.

She sighed, and rested her back against the antenna boom, staring up at the incoming tracer shells, hearing the ever-louder whistle as they approached. Then she looked aside, noticing that the Moon had finally found a break in the clouds. It was full, and incredibly bright, but-

“Ahaa! I’ve finally found you!”

Before she could even turn towards the ringing female voice that had called up from below, a pulse of sparkling bluish light expanded from its direction, forming a dome. She gawked as it expanded, torn between watching it and running to find the speaker, when the incoming shells began to strike the dome, erupting into an enormous constellation of hellfire.

She watched it bloom for a moment, then shook her head and dashed to the edge of the roof, frantically looking at the streets below. She heard a startled gasp to her left, and glanced its way in time to see an sparkling, ethereal cloud of shadows and starlight dart around a corner.

“Hello?! Who are you? What the hell just happened??”

No response, just the thundering background of high explosives. She sagged against the lip of the roof.

“Please? Are you there? I...I know you’re just a part of my dream, but help me out here. I’m tired, and I just want to do whatever I have to in order to wake up.”

Nothing...but now accompanied by a strange feeling of hesitation. Then, another dome of blue light expanded from a point behind the building, a few yards away from where she’d seen the mystery cloud. When this light touched her, she felt a strange tingling.

What th-

She gasped, and felt a strange clarity, as if a blanket had been pulled off of a certain part of her brain. It felt...normal.

She closed her eyes, gave her mind that particular little twist, and-