Trapped with the gods: Chapter One: Part One

This is going to be my first really big project. I have divided the chapters into parts, so that I may deliver weekly installments.

Chapter One, Part 1 of 3

3:00 A. M. July 25th

The Docks of Ostrov Nyx, Western Russia.

I don’t...you do...bad...everyone...no one...agh!

There it is again. Every time I wake up, the young girl says to me, “I don’t, you do, bad, everyone, no one”. I’m not quite sure how it comes about. There is no girl by my side. I have no women in my life, I could not remember her. Is that what love does? I certainly wouldn’t know. I don’t feel like getting out of the cot anyway. No one really does. They just wait until the sea knocks them off. It was that train of thought that made me realize that the sea could hardly be felt, and no others snoring were to be heard. I brushed my dark hair away from my face and sat there on the thin cloth. It took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that we must finally be docked on Nyx Island. Long trips tend to do that to people, I mean, locking sea schedules in place. It wasn’t my first boat trip, but it was the first successful one.
But suddenly light, blinding light, muffled voices in deep Ukraine accents. Yells began to erupt, and instantly a silhouette lumbers through the blinding light and reaches out. Before I can react he contacts hard, I feel my ribs strain and my breathing fail. The light isn’t so bright now, nothing is, and I can’t really focus on it, and then something else hits the back of my head. Again, it takes me a while to realize that it was the floor. You see, this is why I hate mornings. And why can I never think of these things in situations I can tell them...

This time, the light isn’t so bright when I open my eyes. All I see is a grey slab of concrete on top of me... no, the concrete is high above me. I’m being held down by something else. Although there’s no light, there’s a loud, droning noise. Continuing with my pattern of slow reaction, I understand it’s a voice. Being punched in the diaphragm is pretty hard to set people to sleep, the impact must have been pretty intense. Unfortunately, kidnappers accept no excuses. When I finally gathered myself enough to move, I turned to my side to see a tall, thin man in Israeli military garb. This was a huge shock to me at first, there was no way Israel could have already found Nyx. But I examined him closer then, and saw the green beret and American boots, I was just confused. He stopped his calm ranting, but then just paused for a while.
“Well? Where are they?”
For that I had no answer. Assuming he was speaking from the beginning of my conciousness to now, I had probably missed a lot of information. It probably wasn’t hard to guess what was happening considering my past experiences.
We had been taken prisoner by a Ukrainian militia hidden among the settlers to Nyx. Considering Nyx had only been recently discovered, and the coordinates had been kept under lock and key by the newly-resurrected KGB, the only likely explanation was a rat on the fisher Hoss, the very ship that beached on the rocky island only three months ago. They reported to an outside source, and it was probably distributed throughout the world, save to the “humble” citizens of the ever-so eager Neo-soviet nation. They got here at the same time we did, pulled out their concealed weapons and decided that the time was right to throw each and every one of us sorry Russians into the arctic ocean.
But what was confusing was the way the soldier was clothed. Many different uniforms combined... it was possible they were replicated and the whole thing was just meant to throw people off the trail of the Ukrainians. Of course, that would mean they had disregarded the fact that they had extreme accents. Whatever the answer was (and I certainly didn’t know) he was demanding one of me right now. It might have been my personal urge to be heroic, but the first thing I said in a clear, tight tone was,
“What, you want to know where we buried the treasure?” followed by a sharp steel toe in the ribs. Sharp pain was absent; numbness, perhaps. His sharp face was comparable to a hawk with the squinting, hateful glare he cast under the shade of his British cap.
“Don’t think you can fool around without consequence. You follow the rules of no other man now. Whatever your precious Rorte told you back in your little Nazi wannabe joke of a state, that gets you killed here.” His voice contained no tone whatsoever, not even malice. I myself was taught that technique, make your prisoners devoid of all sense that you were human. Make them think they were the only person with a mind. Some repressed memories of the German army came back to me clear as day. Stalingrad, 1942. My spine went ice cold. Ice cold like that morning...I shook myself of the thought.
Ceasing my thoughts for a second I take my first good look around. On my arms and legs were black shackles with no chains, just clamping to the ground itself, and it felt like they were eating at my limbs like little piranhas. Against my back was the cold ground, and although I couldn’t see it I recognized it as the permafrost-imbued soil I had travelled across for most of my life. From the light streaming in to my left in the absence of a wall I could make out various similar figures walking about the apparent encampment I was held in. They all wore similarly strange combinations of armor and weaponry, and no one could really tell they were from the same faction (and maybe that was the strategy). Several sturdy-looking huts made from wood and reinforced concrete stood outside in a line, and I assume I was in a similar one. This man, my captor, was just staring at me intently, as if he expected me to get up and stroll out of here at any second. Seeming to have no intention to do so was my objective, for the soldier deep inside me that I had tried so hard to forget was urging me to fight. I had to quell it by convincing it that I was certainly in no position to fight, even if this Ukrainian man was unarmed (which I doubt he was). Come to think of it, if he was carrying a concealed weapon and prisoners didn’t know it, then the intimidation factor was missing there, but the risk was (albeit unknown). If someone were to attempt a breakout without knowing the captor had a gun, he would be shot without expecting it. These people were expecting it, they wanted an excuse to shoot us. We were expendable.
I don’t quite know who “we” was. For all I know, I was the only one captured. All the other huts had doors sealed with rough concrete slabs. Nothing was consistent among the outside, except the placement of the buildings themselves. I was definitely reminded of the cities we would set up in the Russian army. We only went in to two or three major invasions, sure, but they were lingering images times ten. We would wreck the whole city and build bare ones out of the rubble. It showed power, they told us, to have pitiful remains rather than a flat plain of grey and red dust that my...companions...would have liked to turn them into. However, I could tell that these were different. These huts were build to last, made out of scraps of re-enforced concrete with bronze ties twisting out and bound together in knots as if it were string. Somehow, my thinking speed had increased dramatically. I wasn’t even under any kind of pressure (except an unsavory glare from the hawk-man) and I had deduced this so far, and I continued (after these milliseconds of self-evaluation) and assumed that either they either have divine strength on their side or they brought machines with them specifically for the tying of metals. They meant to do exactly this when they came here; but if they could be so prepared as to do this, then why couldn’t they just bring the equipment for proper huts? Suspicious, very suspicious.
But what could possibly be compelling them to do less? To have the illusion of an easier escape to aid in “accidentally” slaughtering all of us?... oh no. That’s it, that’s it, that’s...no. No that isn’t it, that wouldn’t make sense. And here I thought that the mind of a soldier could avoid despair. They are giving us too much breathing room. Hell, I don’t know! Maybe they’re just reading my mind and doing exactly what they think I will think of-
“y...yes.”

...

...who said that?
“Did you say something?” I imagine I had quite a puzzled look on my face when I ask this.
“That is strange. You are driven to insanity weeks ahead of schedule, hehe.”

It was only then I realised that I recognized that voice, that voice that had accompanied me throughout all my life. That stuttering, vague voice that advised me of things I could not possibly fathom.

That young girl had entered the waking world...