"Chomp... chomp,"
Clyde continued devouring his prey ravenously, his hands digging relentlessly into the enemy’s carcass as the surrounding area turned red with a pooling, ever-expanding lake of blood; the soldiers fell back, almost all of them covering their mouths, while some even turned around and ran to vomit up their stomach contents, unable to stomach the sight. Naturally, Clyde paid them no mind, even though one of his wings remained turned toward the soldiers to watch them with the eyes on its surface.
As he relished his prey, "blam," "ting," a bullet suddenly struck his wing, as if Clyde had shielded himself with it; quickly turning his head toward the soldiers, his mouth drenched in blood, he spotted a soldier who seemed to have accidentally pulled the trigger, immediately dropping his rifle and raising his hands, his face pale with sheer terror, and Clyde could see from afar that the man was trembling, given his razor-sharp vision.
Yet that sudden gunshot unwittingly snapped Clyde back to his senses; he turned his head sharply to stare at his blood-soaked hands, feeling the chunks of flesh still moving inside his mouth and looking at the mangled, unrecognizable remains of his enemy, whereupon panic instantly greeted him without delay,
"W... what? What am I doing?" he asked in his head.
Then Clyde turned his gaze back to the soldiers, who appeared to flinch and aim their weapons at him, before looking down at his hands once more,
"I... need to get out of here," he said inside his head.
Clyde glanced toward the pods holding Monica and his mother, then turned to look at the pods holding Tyler and Kate. He looked back at Monica’s pod, his hand reaching out toward it, but he quickly clenched his fist, turned around, and leaped high into the air; "blak," he took flight on his wings, heading toward the exit.
Meanwhile, the soldiers seemed to breathe a sigh of relief once Clyde was gone; a commander stepped forward and removed his beret, looking at the shattered pod, the unrecognizable beast carcass, and the pool of blood that made his chest tighten just looking at it, his face darkening as his jaw set tight, before a soldier approached him,
"Commander Ryker, there’s still a weak signal nearby, Team B is heading there now," the soldier said.
"Good, that means the signal we sent to wake them from the simulation wasn’t in vain; search quickly, and once we rescue those who woke up, we leave immediately before those Nephilim come to this facility," Ryker said.
"Yes, Commander... but... what was that thing just now?" the soldier asked.
"Who knows... a monster... or... something we created and forgot... let’s move, we don’t have time," Ryker answered firmly.
"Sir, yes sir," the soldier replied.
They turned and prepared to run, leaving the area behind, after which the only sound left was the echoing march of boots through the cavernous, warehouse-like room, before everything fell quiet once more. Meanwhile, as Clyde flew outside into the pitch-black darkness, he looked down at the building he had just left, a colossal warehouse facility roughly one hundred and fifty feet high with massive doors clearly not built for human scale.
The building was enveloped in a dome of bright, milky-white light laced with multicolored sparks. Clyde then looked around, the eyes on both wings expanding his field of vision,
"W... what is this?" Clyde asked in his head.
Apart from that glowing building, the surrounding area looked like a ruined city, skyscrapers half-collapsed, roads cracked and split open down the middle like craters, and building debris clogging every street, devoid of any signs of life. The massive city, which looked like it had once been a metropolis, was clearly abandoned long ago, with thick vines climbing the ruined structures, giant trees bursting through the concrete sidewalks, and several severely rusted car frames covered in vines, their original colors lost to time.
Clyde looked up at the sky, seeing it filled with stars and a gorgeous aurora blanketing the world. Amidst his bewilderment,
"Na... na... na,"
He heard the same hummed melody once more, a melody he knew so intimately yet had forgotten; as he hovered in the air, his mind began to race, thinking back to his life with his mother, Monica who always came to wake him up in the morning, and Tyler and Kate who were his close friends at school, all of it feeling like someone else’s memories that had never actually happened to him; he pressed his hand to his chest, a strange sensation stirring inside him, especially as he listened again to the song echoing continuously in his head.
His memory flashed back to the silver-haired little girl whom he had promised never to forget, no matter what happened.
"Right... I don’t remember what happened because to me, I was living in that world with the people around me... I didn’t forget Celes, her face is still vivid in my mind... now I have to get away from here," Clyde murmured.
"Boom,"
Clyde flew at breakneck speed toward an undecided destination. Once he was far enough from the facility where he had been held, he landed atop a ruined building that remained largely intact, despite being piled with debris from neighboring structures.
"Thud,"
He landed heavily, then walked slowly toward the rooftop ledge and sat down against it. Hugging his arms, he curled up, looking utterly lost even though his face remained hidden by his helmet-like form; he then looked down at his hands, his skin now jet-black like a sleek suit and covered in blood,
"What... am I? Why did the world completely change... where is this really? Was my whole life up to this point just an illusion? I don’t understand any of this," Clyde asked in his head.
Question after question flooded his mind, but the answers were nowhere to be found, and the confusion only made his head throb. Eventually, he fell silent, curling up and wrapping his arms around his legs. Unbeknownst to him, his body slowly shifted back into human form, and the pair of wings on his back folded away smoothly into his spine.
Clyde looked down at his hands again, which had returned to normal human hands with natural skin, no longer pale gray like a corpse as before. His heart beat at a normal rhythm, no longer pounding violently as it had earlier. But he felt a whole new sensation, fullness; not the fullness from eating everyday food, but a different, indescribable kind of satisfaction, as if an unknown hunger within his body had finally been fed, leaving him deeply contented.
"Strange... this is really strange... that melody I knew... I can’t hear it anymore... that digital voice I heard earlier is gone too... what really happened to me, and where am I now," he thought inside his heart, feeling significantly calmer than before.
After that, he looked back up at the dark sky filled with stars, where the vibrant, colorful aurora stretched out like a glowing curtain veiling the heavens.
"Where... am I really? Is this... Earth? If this is Earth... where did I come from?" Clyde asked himself deep down.
He stood up and looked out over the vast expanse of the ruined, dark city before him, only to suddenly realize something; looking at the landscape, he recognized the city ruins in front of him, yes, those ruins were the very city where he had lived, long destroyed and reduced to rubble. Goosebumps spread across his skin as the realization struck, and a shadow of dread washed over his face,
"This is my city... the city I’ve lived in all this time... the city where I went to school, and lived with my parents and Monica," he thought, trembling.