W.O.L.F. - Darwin Zones

by Sharpfang '06

Intro

Mankind of the XXIV Century was very arrogant. They thought discovery of the extraterrestrial would change everything and allow them to achieve whatever they couldn't before. At first they wanted to conquer the "aliens". Fortunately a spark of sanity of some prevented the war. Later, their arrogance surfaced through science. They thought no problem would remain unsolved thanks to cooperation with other civilisations. They created sentient lifeforms and alternate worlds. They tried to tame the powers of the Nature. By intelligent government and threat of overwhelming military power, UUS, the greatest corporation of Earth, established a stable world with no wars, no poverty, no famines or starvation. The future was bright. But something was amiss.

The last decade of XXIV began verifying the arrogant assumptions. The empire was crumbling. Of course intelligence, cooperation, science, sanity, prevented a total disaster, and UUS still stands as the pillar of the Human Civilisation, stable and strong. Mankind of XXV Century is still arrogant but... in different ways. And maybe a bit wiser.

The first batch of problems started with upcoming eruption of Kilimanjaro. The volcano transformed into a scientific city with space tower reaching far beyond the orbit was the capital of UUS. The calculations included the fact Kilimanjaro is an active volcano and proper engineering steps prevented it from erupting. Underground lava channels, pressure control, depressurizing shafts to lava pockets, controlling underground lava flow. Man thought He tamed the volcano.

Wrong.

The pressure put on the Earth crust by the tower was prevented in microscale of the mountain and surroundings. It didn't take continental drift of the African tectonic plate into account though, and the tower's impact on it. Of course monitoring and calculations prevented the upcoming disaster and steps were taken. The calculations easily predicted the lava tunnels wouldn't suffice, the shafts would overflow. The eruption could be delayed but not prevented.

A project even more ambitious than the Tower itself was undertaken. Moving the whole mountain with the capital city of UUS to a safe area, a thousand kilometers west, to Republic of Congo, middle of the tectonic plate. Orbital counterweight, underground web of reinforcing ropes, attaching the mountain firmly to the rope, growing network of tunnels until the top with the city got separated and could float freely, hanging from the tower. The whole construction - the mountain, the space rope and space stations attached to it, would float gently along the equator, bottom of the tower no further than a kilometer above the ground, trailing end of the tower attached to land vehicles with another counterbalance keeping the tower from floating away, and over course of two years, it would reach the point of destination, where the orbital counterballance would be gradually released and the mountain docked and attached to the ground.

The plan had a great deal of a chance of failure - the tower had quite a bit of strength redundancy while carrying spaceships and cargo but it was never designed to transport mountains. And it failed. A stray fast meteor damaged the orbital counterballance, several millions tons of iced water. The tower began falling, Kilimanjaro hit the ground, rolled bottom-up, burying a part of the city, leaving the rest of the city upside down, and breaking the tower by the base. The tower, left without weight holding it down, escaped into space.

We're talking space distances and space sizes here. The citizens of the Tower City had about 16 hours to pack up and evacuate the city before it hit the ground. Crew of the orbital stations departed with orbital shuttles and landers. Some even remained to pilot parts of the tower through the space - the practical minds predicted the results and quickly put an emergency plan into motion, soon the Tower cut into pieces, becoming several fully-featured space stations orbiting Earth, Moon, Sun, Mars and Mercury. Pieces of the rope were attached to several asteroids, creating their own space towers. But the Tower City lay in ruin. It was abandoned, and it took UUS 20 years to rebuild the city and tower at the new location.

About that time unrests started. While most intelligent people were flocking to UUS, the state of the world was getting worse. Average IQ of Earth population was dropping. People would start riots without reason. Law would be bent or broken just for the sake of breaking and bending it. Meantime warning labels, safety devices, locking, blocking, preventing manipulating things, general counter-measures against human stupidity were swallowing a huge part of manufacturing resources. It seemed like people would purposely think of ways to hurt themselves with these things, even though law was adjusted to prevent any lawsuit profits from such "creative" use of things.

That's about when the concept of "Darwin Zones" began floating around. Nobody knows who started it and thought of it first, but the concept was gaining momentum and soon entered the area of law, design, manufacturing, and some more. A Darwin Zone was a zone where the only laws were the laws of evolution. It could be as small as inside of power supply of your phone or as big as the radioactive wastelands of Cape Kennedy. Its borders were marked with old-fashioned yellow-black stripes where applicable, by a few other reasonable means elsewhere. Access was never prohibited. Exiting wasn't always possible. This was the only mandatory warning. Other warnings, counter-measures, protective devices and such were fully voluntary.

While accident rate in the world has grown quite a bit, the charts showed that IQ average began crawling back up. And nobody was really complaining.

By letter of law, upon entering a Darwin Zone, you were on your own. You couldn't count on state-funded rescue crews coming to get you out of there. Your normal health insurance wouldn't cover injuries that occurred there or by interacting with the zone (sticking nails into power supply, throwing rocks across border of a minefield...) Additionally, most laws were abolished there. You could trade drugs there. You could murder there. But then, the UUS could quite happily fry you with 300-megawatt orbital laser while you were there and they used that as a chance to quickly and conveniently fight crime too.

Quite a few businesses opened and revolved around Darwin Zones. Commercial rescue crews, special insurances, free trade zones guarded by armed mercenaries, "hunting", gladiator battles and such.

To many this felt extremely barbaric and wrong. But they were constantly reminded by success and stability of the semi-barbaric civilisation of Wolves, quite a few barbaric and sexist laws that kept the planet of Bulls running fine, law of the blood in the civilisation of Cats... Clicloks and Cloudmen didn't have such issues, Robots were past it, but it seemed danger, violence, fight, risk are a necessity for all protein-based lifeforms.

Yet another problem, which was a solution to many others surfaced in the XXV century. Popularity of virtual reality. World where nothing breaks, everything works perfectly, where you don't get tired or sick, where you can create things with your own will. Living is way cheaper and more comfortable. And there are no Darwin Zones in virtual reality. Of course there are games that can "kill" you, but no real harm done, you just respawn. Over 3/4 of population of Earth would rarely leave virtual reality. Almost all use it casually. Overpopulation of the world is no longer a problem, most people live and die in VR cubes, underground "hotels" consisting of millions of them, coffin-like containers providing your body with all basic necessities and stimulation to keep it fit, strong and beautiful, would allow you to live in VR for months without exitting. You'd work and play there, drive real robots instead of physically working, design and create plans to be made into real things by machines or into more popular and desired virtual objects by compilers...

Recently it became somewhat "fashionable" to "get out", exit the virtual reality and... "rediscover" the real world. The fad of young people is taking off. Large, long-abandonned Darwin Zones are very... fashionable targets.

Darwin Zones

• You people are crazy. I'm with you, but this is totally nutcase crazy. Why of all the zones did you have to pick that one? - Marco was nervous.

• It's huge. It's almost untouched. It hasn't been successfully explored by ANY team before us, in the past forty years or so! - Sandra was too enthusiastic.

• And it's the most dangerous of them all. Save of Kennedy maybe. Six teams attempted exploration. One retreated just with wounds. Three lost at least one member. One got obliterated. One is lost and nobody knows what happened to it.

• But we're the best!

• That's what you want us to believe. Sovieticus Men could kick our ass anytime.

• Phew! What did they do? XX Century nuclear silos? These things got stripped bare three hundreds years ago! There's nothing in there!

• And what did we do? Area 51? There was nothing there. I have no idea why there's a zone there at all. Cuba? These were so pleasant holidays!

• Accelerator...

• Oh, yeah, Atlantic Accelerator. Still doesn't beat nuclear silos. Especially the flooded ones.

• And that's why we need to go there. There or Kennedy.

Marco didn't reply.

• Kennedy is death. - Tim stated the obvious.

• That leaves us with little choice then?

• Antarctica. - Marco tried arguing.

• What's there to Antarctica? People were doing it 500 years ago!

• If we pick a good set of handicaps...

• And then Sovieticus runs Africa and we're left with Kennedy.

• So be it. Old Tower City, Congo. We're so dead.

• Yes, we are. - Tim confirmed.

• Wik? - Sandra asked me.

• Whatever. I knew you're gonna kill us some day when I signed up. Seems that day is coming.

• Rico?

• And what if there's nothing there?

• Then we have an easy victory. Unless somebody finds something better.

• There's no nothing there. Newtowers went there, quite deep. Nobody returned.

• Newtowers were noobs.

• They got deeper than anyone else. Something killed them all.

• Then we'll find their corpses. That's definitely a "something" that certainly is there.

• Whoa, right! I'm in.

• Good. - Sandra looked over us, satisfied. - Handicaps?

• No.

• No.

• No.

• ummm... no.

• Hey, wait, not even smallest ones?

• Self-arrival. No dropship. That's close enough from Tower City to make no difference. No diving suits, just rebreathers, there's no major diving expected. And no robots. let us do it by ourselves. - Rico was apparently in suicidal mood.

• I don't agree for no robots. We need at least one for any heavy lifting. And carrying the equipment. And... - Marco protested.

• A suit is fine for that... - Tim interrupted.

• ooooh, a suit. For everyone?

• No, thanks - said Sandra.

• I'm taking one. - declared Rico.

• And one is enough.

• And if it breaks?

• Then we have another handicap on the list.

• You're crazy, Sandra.

• Positively crazy.

• So who else wants a suit?

Silence.

• There. Any more questions?

• When?

• Tomorrow. Marco, start gathering equipment. Wil, post the announcement on the forum. Others, meeting at 6PM in Tower City, there's a pub just near the eastern exit road by Alex Plaza.

Everybody logged out. I logged into the explorers' home, accessed the board and posted a short message.

Team: Rogues

Sandra - Leader; navigation, resources manager, survival, diving. Marco - Spec Ops; combat, stealth, military tech, tactics. Wik (me) - Medic; physical security systems, climbing. Tim - Hacker; electronic security, data recovery, VR ops. Rico - Pilot; Explosives, heavy weapons, vehicles and machines.

Target: Old Tower City.

I checked checkboxes of chosen handicaps. I logged out before lesser groups could flood me with questions. There will be enough time for boasting after we return. If we return. I tuned up muscle warmup and training in the sleeper console. Need to be fit when I'm out. Then I dug into the library entries about our target. Not that I didn't know it through and through. The layout of the streets. The history of the disaster. And the fact that the mountain, rolling over, fell onto the city, burying a major part of it under ground, and leaving most of it almost upside down, hanging up to several hundred meters over the jungle level.

Some of the equipment was salvaged, but great most, especially left in houses hanging upside down, without access though underground tunnels, was untouched. 16 hours, from which 4 were wasted on attempts to prevent the crash and another 3 as "safety margin" just before the crash. The gliders didn't allow for saving heavy load in that short time. Some was saved by heavy lifters, most was left untouched though.

The city was a deadly trap for any explorer. It kept crumbling. Quite likely the team of Newtowers set a camp in one of the houses and the house fell off. Houses by UUS were sturdy enough to survive a hurricane, and attached to volcanic rock of the mountain, they could remain, hanging there for years, but after some time the rock crumbles, the construction rusts, and things fall off. The jungle below is littered with things that fell down. It's a favorite place for beginning explorer groups too. But there's a huge difference between "Under Old Tower Town" and "Old Tower Town". The dangers of "Under" are just the jungle and some risk that something happens to fall on your head, eventually that you find more than you bargained for in the rubble. In the city, climbing upside-down streets was quite dangerous by itself. Worse if something broke off and smashed you. Or shocked you with electricity. Or exploded. Or leaked poison. The city was a city of scientists and as such, it was full of different kinds of equipment. Including quite dangerous ones. And built to the paradigm of post-Semiwar UUS architecture, it was a labyrinth spiked with automatic defense devices. Which were left turned on just before the disaster to prevent scavengers, and then the control center, where they could be switched off, got smashed. Most of them failed due to old age by now, not all of them though. One of reasons why there was no official recovery expedition. One of reasons why the city was so deadly.

* * *

We were sitting around a table in a small bar by Alex Plaza. The city was certainly impressive. The huge, three-hundred meters tall monument in the middle of the square dominated over the eastern side of the city suburb. It depicted Alex, the hero of Semi-War, with Nightsong, the she-wolf he fell in love with, during the first encounter. The sculpture depicted them standing in a tight embrace, naked, making love, Nightsong impaling herself on Alex's penis. UUS loved to kill old taboos like that. Plus that memorable moment most likely changed the fate of our planet. The bar offered nice view at sexy-looking Nightsong's backside.

• So what's the plan? I mean, beyond trying not to die? - asked Marco.

• We don't try to play heroes - Sandra began explaining - We don't try to climb the city. We climb the slice side of the mountain. We find an access tunnel in the upper part. We enter the tunnel network and start exploring from there. Most important facilities were below the ground level, though of course unconnected, so we get as close to them as possible, emerge onto the streets as close as possible, then climb to their entrances. As little hanging as possible.

• Heh, and I thought you're completely crazy already and want us to climb the main street like poor New York Losers. So far so good.

The "New York Winners" team got that nickname change after defaulting for the third time in a row and retreating without as much as a sniff of interesting stuff. "Poor" because they didn't retreat during their fourth expedition. Nobody found their corpses in the ruins of the LaManche tunnel.

• Specific targets?

• Locate Newtower team bodies and reason of their death. Find as many original files of DNA constructs as possible. And if we get to do it... enter the Lost World.

A moment of silence.

• No. I was right. You are crazy.

• Positively crazy.

• We can try.

• I didn't take anything for wild-VR surfing. - said Tim. - You didn't tell.

• First we find it, evaluate damages, prepare access route and basic repairs. Then I'll get a dropship with whatever we need to fix it.

• Fine. At least I don't have to carry the air distillery machinery with me.

• Don't worry. You'll carry blocks of solid nitrogen when we find it.

* * * We found a tunnel entrance. Not the most convenient access point, but definitely easiest to locate. Currently, the highest point of former Kilimanjaro, now good three kilometers above the ground level, and overhanging above a large area of jungle below. The city was directly below my feet and the long pipe sticking off the ground was the end of a tunnel. Soil crumbled around it, but the ceramic walls remained, exposing what used to be an underground passage.

Cooling layer of my clothes kept the temperature to comfortable level, despite equatorial Africa heat, but climbing was rather tiring. Of course we had full maps of the place. From before the disaster that is. The computers conveniently rotated them to current city position and applied any changes that were visible or predictable results of the crash, but the inside of the mountain was still a mystery. Most of convenient access shafts crumbled.

• Mister Kaboom, your turn - Sandra grinned and Rico in his powersuit walked up to the pipe and cut out a door-shaped hole with a thermal lance. We knew better than climbing edges of raw ceramic tunnel - the vast distances of tunnels made by UUS were melted in the ground, soil molten into lava forming hard but fragile glass-ceramic tunnel walls, resistant to fixed pressure of the soil but breaking if even lightly knocked with a hard item. That's also why using of explosives inside was really ill-advised.

Marco lowered his goggles and carefully peered inside. - Clear. No sentry units that is. - He entered the hole and began carefully climbing down. I followed next. Gecko pads on the sleeves and kneepads of the suit allowed for easy climbing down the plain, smooth vertical wall. A rail running along the ceiling (former floor) wouldn't be of much help. Soon I put my goggles on too, switching nightvision on. We descended for several minutes more in silence.

• We're nearing a station. The sentry unit is dead. - announced Marco. The tunnel ended and there was a small room with a ladder on the opposite wall. Small automatic rail car was sitting below. The ladder led to a hatch in the floor (former ceiling). I followed Marco, jumping down and walking down the somewhat tilted floor towards the latch. Of course locked, but nothing a thermal lance wouldn't solve.

Marco cut the hinges and the hatch cover fell down and began sliding down the sloping former ceiling at increasing speed. We heard it knocking walls and floor for a long while yet, then it hit something and came to stop. Marco peered in through a periscope rod.

• One sentinel unit. State unknown. Rico, run a crawler down here!

• Can't. Stuck in this tunnel and barely hanging by three pads, no free hand. Sandra, could you reach for one?

Sandra looked sceptically at the distance, good 200 meters between her and Rico, climbing back up there wasn't the best idea.

• Tim, could you?

• Not really. He's below me blocking the whole shaft diameter.

• Can it wait a moment, guys?

• Yeah. Just get down here.

Marco began checking the inactive sentinel gun and rail car for nuke-batteries. These things always yielded reasonable prices from eco-watch. I took a spool of infla-rope and attached the end of the thin string to the rail by the roof. Carbon nanowire core provided strength. Foam shielding would inflate the hair-breadth string into a centimeter-thick rope for comfortable usage as I draw desired length from the spool. I drew and cut just a few meters, to reach the bottom of the corridor comfortably. Sandra emerged by us. We sat for a while, waiting for Rico and Tim. Sandra displayed the holo-map and we began analyzing various routes that would likely take us nearer to Lost World. They were numerous but of course most of them would be inaccessible, and it was up to us to check which ones. Suddenly a bunch of swears interrupted our discussion.

• What's up there, Rico?

• I punctured it. I broke the fuckin' wall. Tim, hurry up! The rest, get out of there!

Marco just jumped dowm, laser ready for exchanging fire with the sentinel.

• Get down here, either it's inactive or didn't trigger.

Sandra jumped down. I sprayed some seal-foam around the hatch. - Move it Rico, Tim, the foam's ready!

Rico, closely followed by Tim slid off the tunnel. I could hear the tunnel walls above us cracking. Tim fell the whole height of the room and apparently broke his leg. Rico picked him up and jumped through the hatch. I lit a flare, lit the inactive foam layer with it and jumped down, sliding down the rope as the foam began growing, sealing the exit and filling most of the room. We stood to the walls as some of the foam dripped down the hatch in big slimy bulbs but seconds later it solidified and the quiet rumble above meant that it fulfilled its task, not letting the cracks to propagate further and stopping the collapsing tunnel from burying us.

I tended to Tim's leg, injecting bone repair solution and activating autodoc bracer. - Five minutes. - I said.

Rico placed forcefield nodes across the corridor on the side of the sentinel, then sent a crawler unit. One small directional explosion later, the corridor was finally confirmed safe.

• Nice start, guys. - cussed Sandra.

• So far so good, we're still alive - chuckled Marco. - I'll check the corridor further down.

• Need help? - I asked

• Thanks, but you tend to the patient, doc.

I watched as Marco skillfully strips the nuke-batt from the disabled sentinel, then he vanished in the distance. We heard short gunfight.

• Got two sentinels. Pretty big chamber secured. Seems like the railway station - sounded over the communicator.

I began preparing to remove the autodoc bracer from Tim's leg.

• Wik, I hate it. I mean, you guys keep protecting me. I'm useless.

• Except when we'd all get fried with that microwave generator at the Accelerator. Or when you fixed the glider mid-air. This is a team, and you're just as essential as everyone else, Tim. Sure you're a pain in the neck most of the time but it's well worth it when you're necessary.

He chuckled and thanked me. I helped him to stand up.

• As good as new. - he jumped a few times on his newly healed leg. - Let's move it.

Ricko picked the forcefield nodes and we followed to see what Marco found.

* * *

• Charge, torch, lockpick? - asked Marco.

We were hanging a kilometer above the jungle, gathered around entrance to what looked like a bunker. The door to the bioengineering institute. Hooks, ropes, mountain-climbing equipment, same old techniques as ages ago, of course enhanced by new tech, but not all that different from the old. The dusty surfaces make gecko pads useless. No flying device is currently meant to land by attaching itself to a roof. And sure, the first team to try exploring Old Tower City thought parachutes are a good idea. Sure there's enough time to open them. And much more than enough time for the city's automatic anti-air defense systems to shot you down. So either you hang, or you die.

• Let me dust off my lockpicking skills - I offered.

• Marco, anti-intruder devices? - Sandra asked.

• Alarm. Noisy and flashy but not dangerous. And... long dead.

• Wik, proceed.

I took the lockpick tool. In fact it was a tiny crawler robot similar to the smart bomb carriers, but with multiple tendrils for manipulating many devices. Locks sure got more advanced through the ages, but so did lockpicking.

The robot crawled in through a screw hole into the lock. I was directing which parts to press, where to push. A 70 years old mechanism wasn't much of a challenge. The door slid open.

We entered. A wide corridor was sloping gently up (tilt and upside down position of a former steep ramp down). There was a small security control console on the wall.

• Tim, your job. Autonomous sentinel system. You can disable them all in the whole complex.

Tim plugged his interface plug into a wall panel and began cautiously, quickly analysing the system.

• Tricky. - he paused for a while. - Difficult. They were pros. Oh. Got there. Nice. Whoa, cool! It's disabled.

• You're quick.

• Nope. The access was unrestricted. And a nice greeting. Invitation.

• Centaurs?

• Yes. And not natives. Explorers like us.

* * *

• I can't believe it! It still exists! Almost undamaged too! - Tim was fiddling with the machinery, checking the connection. The huge towers of racks of CPUs covered the floor - The famed Lost World, Biosim Room A.

• And I can't believe we are still alive - Sandra looked at her arm. The stump instead of hand reminded moments of fear and pain, when a stray independent mobile sentinel unit surprised us and only thanks to fact that Rico can shot faster than think, we're still alive. The hand was blown to pieces though. Sandra will have to get a prosthetic one when we're back.

I helped Tim sealing all the cracks in the biosim room to keep the liquid nitrogen inside. Luckily we wouldn't have to carry solid nitrogen blocks. The local compressor-distiller machinery was in working order. It seems the room worked for good ten years after the disaster too. And the number of nuke-batts picked from various devices would suffice for powering at least a part of it up.

It is said that when the disaster was certain, Centaurs from the Biosim Room A were offered a chance of evacuation. Record their personalities to backup media, recover them in a rebuilt biosim. Most accepted the offer. Their new world exists and is quite popular in VR. Their biological children stay away from human civilisation. They formed communes in Siberia, Australia and South America, they have their own culture and civilisation, but they never blended into the human world. But the virtual ones are quite happy to live in the virtual reality, as a part of the society. They are quite common too.

Some centaurs refused to leave their world though. They stayed. The biosim was left active. Nobody knows what happened later, nobody visited the Lost World. Everyone assumed the impact destroyed it.

I finished sealing visible holes with small amounts of seal-foam, while Tim was checking the towers for damage. Some work with a rope and improvised lever and the only tower that was faulty due to strain bending it slightly got straightened and recovered contact and ability to perform. We climbed out, locked the airlock and turned compressors on, repressurizing the room, checking for more leaks. There was one, but apparently to a confined area, as soon the pressure began growing. We decided to seal it just in case though. I found the narrow crack, covered it with seal-foam and lit the layer. I climbed out, we closed the door and checked the pressure again. It worked this time. Sure there were minor leaks, but fixing them all would take a month. We had the room airtight enough to get it running though.

We headed to the biosim console room, where Rico, Marco and Sandra were to work on improvised VR entrance means. They didn't though. They were crouched around the middle of the room, whispering quietly.

• Sandra? - I asked. She turned, startled.

• Oh, that's you. Come, tell us what you think.

I crouched by her. And saw it, in the dust on the floor of the console room, by one of the former ceiling lamps, there was a hoofprint. Just one, but fresh. I could make out parts of the hoof, a centaur hoof - equine, with genetic corrections that made it less fragile and more immune to typical equine hoof problems.

• Marco, borrow me your goggles. - I asked. Marco had the best model with several spectra and filters unavailable in what we had.

He handed me his goggles. I began analysing the hoofprint with different settings.

• No DNA. No biological matter. Just the shape, but as if left by forcefield. No remains of whoever left it... Forcefield... any forcefield generators around here?

Marco reached for the goggles, I handed them to him. He looked around for a while, swapping filters.

• Inactive one. Long, long dead. How old can this track be?

• Hours at most. I'd say rather minutes though. Could it be that we activated the generator by powering up the compressor?

• Nnn...yes? No. No, it's on a separate power grid. Shit!

• What?

• That grid just got a... blink. A pulse. A second long maybe.

• and...?

Marco stared at the ground.

There was another hoofprint.

Twenty minutes later an ad-hoc power source for the part of the grid with the generator and any piece of hardware that could be of any significance, was ready for power-up. We gathered around the room, as Tim connected the wires. Quiet, vanishing whizz, and the room was filled with light. A centaur child, a boy, maybe ten human years old, was standing in the middle of the room. He looked around, scared, then rushed to the exit, out from the complex. We all ran after him, but either he jumped out, or just exitted the generator area and vanished, anyway, he was gone.

We walked back, confused, looking for questions to ask each other. Suddenly Marco broke into run. He ran into the room, grabbed something from under the console table, then ran back towards us.

• Off my way! Now! Move it!

We stepped to the walls. I saw what he was carrying. An armed demolition charge. Explosive that would pretty much blow us to pieces if we entered the room where it was placed. He ran for a moment longer, then threw the charge towards the exit.

A bit too late.

Noise, pain, darkness. Sour taste of blood on my tongue.

The darkness was pitch black, either the goggles broken or me blind. And I was deaf. I tried to scramble to my feet and reached for a flare. A sigh of relief as I realized I didn't lose my eyes. I removed the goggles, broken beyond repair. Others were alive too, slowly trying to sit up. The exit was blocked by collapsed corridor though. I realized Marco was much nearer to the explosion. I ran to him, realizing that only my pain-limiting implant kept me from fainting, my leg ripped quite deeply by some metal piece.

Marco was alive, but critical. A few shrapnels punctured his chest, his left hand a bloody mess. I quickly took the autodoc band and put it on his wounded arm. Fast evaluation, the band slipped a bit down, braced the hand and cut. Massacred piece of the hand fell off. I placed autobandaids on the wounds from the shrapnel, then used my lockpick, not medically approved but tested and fast, to extract the pieces of metal from wounds. I tuned up painkiller on the autodoc band, and saw a mild smile from Marco.

I went back, entered the console room to pick more autodocs from a crate Rico left here. The row of batteries lay scattered over the room, apparently by the explosion. I thought of what would happen if the explosion punctured the shells. Somewhat relieved I noticed my hearing has returned.

I hurried down the corridor, to the others, with handful of autodocs.

• Report your wounds, people. Heaviest first. - I said, while locking the first autodoc on my own thigh.

• Lost an eye, I think - said Sandra.

• Leg hurt, nothing serious - sounded from a corner, Tim's voice.

• Unhurt - reported Rico. - At least I think so. But the suit took some damage.

I removed Sandra's goggles, totally broken, and installed advanced autodoc around her head, across her eyes. It requested external water, antiseptic and aminoacid supplies. I picked them in the console room, attached the bottles to pipes of the autodoc.

• Good news, Sandra. You still have your pretty eyes, just a bit hurt. Twenty minutes, autosurgery. Don't move, don't touch the autodoc, don't talk and it will be fine.

I walked up to Tim.

• Goddammit, boy, nothing serious? - I watched the bone sticking off a torn hole in his trousers.

• Nothing you can't fix, Wil. - He smiled weakly.

• Yeah, but that's too much for an autodoc. We need to put the bone back in place. Painkillers. - I injected three loads of painkiller from autodoc. Tim's gaze wandered away as I was cutting the skin to make room for the bone, sprinkling with antiseptic copiously. Then some effort, a quiet cry as the pain got through painkillers and implants, and the bone was in place. I injected bone repair solution and attached autodoc. It requested some aminoacid refill in 15 minutes.

• Half a hour, try to sleep, Tim.

• Thanks, Wil. - he rested his head against the wall, then gave up fighting against the painkillers, dozed off.

I checked Sandra's autodoc and opened the waste drawer. Several smaller or bigger pieces of metal and plastic fell off.

• Rico, check yourself if nothing's hurt then start working on that suit. I'll check on Marco.

Rico was finishing extracting himself from the powersuit, waved okay to me.

Marco was still conscious. Apparently autodoc and autobandaids ran out of painkillers, but he didn't stop them. I quickly injected two charges of painkiller, before he could even protest. Extracting smaller pieces of metal from wounds was a very painful process.

• Marco, what happened there?

• I e-saw the active charge. Attached to the console. I assumed clock of 30. It was 25.

• Where from?

• Our supplies.

• Console? Not batteries?

• No. Shit, batteries were in range. But that was definitely the console. Main core block.

• Any ideas, why?

• If you didn't spike me like this, I might know. Sorry, losing it, doc. See you later. - and Marco drifted off to sleep.

I came back to the rest of the group and began helping Rico in repairing his suit. Some leaks, one joint to be replaced, three armor plates shredded, but no spares to replace them. Sandra asked what happened. I silenced her, no moving jaw during eye autosurgery, then told what I learned. I told her that if she had any ideas or conclusions, I want to hear them AFTER the autosurgery.

We worked for a while, silence broken by brief requests for a part or help, or questions. Suddenly Rico stood up and quietly ran to the console room. I heard a burst of fire from his SMG.

He was returning slowly, dragging the crate with explosives behind him. - Just my eyes playing tricks on me. But this thing will be safer here.

• How many demolition charges did we use up?

• One. That station door with jammed lock.

This time I stood up and quietly ran up the corridor. There were three empty gaps after removed charges in the crate.

It wasn't long till I found the lost charge. It was on the bottom of the biosim chamber, behind the airlock door. Fluorescent adhesive stripe made it very visible, but activity light was off. I jumped the short distance from the airlock, walked up to the charge and picked it up. The flare picked just that moment to burn off. The forest of columns of CPUs was dark and menacing. Far flame of Rico's flare in the corridor, seeping through the airlock was the only source of light. It blinked for a moment and I thought I saw a silhouette in the airlock. It vanished. I remembered this is a huge airtight chamber which can be filled with liquid nitrogen at any time. I proceeded to the exit in a fast pace. I thought I heard hooves behind me. As I stopped, they stopped too. I ran to the exit, jumped into the airlock and slammed the "close" button. The door slid close with a quiet hiss. I peered inside through a small window, half-expecting to see some face right behind the window. But there was none, I barely could see the columns.

Then fear crept along my spine: I realized the airlock door shouldn't have reacted to my pressing the button. Not without power. I walked into the chamber. Flickers of Rico's flare on the opposite wall were forming a shadow of a centaur. I lit my own flare. For a moment I thought I see the air flickering as the shape was dissolving, but it could have been my sight blinded by the flash.

I picked a bottle of aminoacids for Tim's autodoc refill, then hurried down the corridor. I handed the charge to Rico, then refilled Tim's autodoc. Tim was soundly asleep. I went to check on Marco.

Red emergency light on autodoc was useless. Marco was dead already. Blood loss, blood poisoning, shock, lung damage, and last but not least sedatives overdose. I cursed, blaming myself for his death. I could have prevented it if I watched over him instead of fixing Rico's suit. I shut the autodoc off, went back to the group.

• Marco is gone. I screwed up. Too many wounds, too hurried recovery.

• Don't blame yourself, Wik. You did your best.

• ...which wasn't enough. I'm not a doctor. I'm a second grade medical technician. All I can do is to slap on an autodoc.

• Wik...

• Hush, Sandra - I checked the clock on her autodoc - eight minutes.

• Wik, why did they want to destroy the core?

• I... don't know? That would be suicidal. The biosim is useless without the core.

• It can still work, but there's no way it could connect to the outside world.

• Separatists? Religion? Sect?

• But... the biosim is inactive. Off. No power. So where do they come from?

• Rooms B and C. We didn't check them. And... there is power. The airlock was powered.

• Let me check these rooms.

• Wait. Don't go alone. And I can't leave these two now.

Rico began putting on the suit again. It took him a while. I analysed the map. Apparently the explosion blocked the only exit. There were still air vents and cable ducts, but too narrow to squeeze through. More likely we could enlarge natural cracks in the walls using explosives to break off a piece of the city with the collapsed tunnel and complex entrance. Rico was the explosives expert though. He would know where to place the charges. I shared my thoughts. He confirmed it's likely but he'd need a tectonic scan of the area.

I checked Tim's autodoc, the leg was healing fine, I would able to wake him up already and get him to move, but I let him sleep. Sandra's operation was progressing a bit worse. One eye was fully healed and in perfect condition, but there was a small error at operating the other one. It would still work at reduced quality, but Sandra would have to take a professional surgery in a hospital to have it back to normal.

Three minutes. Rico was analysing the map for a place to put the probe charge for the tectonic analysis. Sound of hooves. Gallop through the perpendicular corridor connecting biosim rooms and the console room. Rico aimed his SMG at the entrance from the console room, then shook his head and put it away.

• They are forcefield. I could just as well shot at ghosts.

I stood up and headed to the console room.

• Where are you going?

• To bring the medical supply crate. I'm not going to discard any half-used up autodoc now.

This time the short trip didn't create surprises. I removed the autodoc and autobandaids from Marco's body, then took some more supplies he was carrying with him, refilling my own. Sandra's autodoc lit green, meaning operation finished. She kept healing minor bruises and scratches with the autodoc by herself for a while yet, while I was recharging my autodoc with remains of Marco's autodoc supply. I placed the refilled device in the crate, she placed her own, after refilling its cache with the remains of aminoacids in the bottle.

• What now?

• Wake Tim up.

Sound of hooves again. This time three quiet beats and silence.

I walked up to Tim, shook him a little to wake him up. He woke up, scared, but seeing me, calmed down.

• Sandra is fine. You should be able to walk already.

We sat in a circle, by the crates.

• What about Marco? You don't want to wake him up, right? - Tim's voice was strangely trembling.

• Sorry, Tim. Marco didn't make it.

• Oh gods. - Tim hid his face in his hands - So it was true.

• What?

• I saw... a dark silhouette. Shape of centaur... but... empty. No body, just... void. More empty than thin air, darkness, silence. No, I didn't see it. I was just... aware of it. It bowed over Marco... and Marco was becoming more... empty... while the void was becoming more full... till it just dissolved in the surroundings, blended into normal existence.

I wanted to tell him it was just a dream, but I wasn't sure myself.

• I say, you blast our way out, Rico, and we get the hell out of here - suggested Sandra. - Forget the Lost World, we found it but I'm definitely not going in.

• Seconded - I said.

• Let's just check other rooms. No VR trips. And look for a good place to hide from the blast. That won't be your average poof - argued Rico.

• Agreed. Prepare for organised, secure exit - there was no confidence in Tim's voice.

I locked the explosives box before leaving. First, re-checking the VR room, accessible through doors from the console room. Inside, hanging from the ceiling, VR seats, very old models, likely barely modified Owls' prototypes. A rack of CPUs smashed on the floor after falling out of nitrogen tub still attached to the ceiling. We left and took a turn into the corridor left. It led to a store room tightly packed with spare CPU racks and other parts stored along shelves on the walls. Nothing interesting. No exit, no extra rooms.

We went along the corridor in the opposite direction. It took a while until we arrived at another biosim airlock and the compressor room on the opposite side. This biosim was broken beyond repair. The ceiling part slid against the bottom part of the chamber. The columns lay scattered on the floor, broken. We walked to the third room at the end of the corridor. Big, empty biosim room. Then I noticed something in the far corner. Bodies. In a neat row, one by another, six bodies lay. There were some crates nearby.

Tim went first, dragged to the scene by some morbid fascination. Next, came Sandra. I followed. Rico sat on the threshold of the airlock.

• Newtowers. We found the Newtowers. - whispered Rico. They were all plugged in, with wild-VR headsets on their heads, cables attached to a maintenance rack replacing standard one in one of the towers. The bodies were well preserved by dry, cold atmosphere of the place. Plugged into one disassembled and modified rack, they never woke up from their virtual dream. I found their medic and took his goggles with bioscanner. I sprayed them with antiseptic and wiped with my sleeve before wearing them. At last, night vision and wide spectrum...

The first new thing I noticed, light from flares combined with extra spectrum, was a huge letter "A" painted on the wall.

• We were counting it wrong. This is room "A" - I whispered.

Then I noticed holes. A meter deep, thee meter wide depressions in the far wall. I knew them. Left by a military grade disintegrator at full power. They were scattered in irregular manner along the bottom of the wall.

There were VR cables there, cleanly cut off by a disintegrator discharge.

There was something that looked like a piece of rubble. I walked up to it. It was a hoof with a piece of leg bone still attached to it.

And then I noticed something else, there was something bigger between the towers. On the floor. I walked there, Sandra and Tim following closely. A cable from the maintenance rack was leading into the forest of towers. And it ended with yet another body, a centaur. Decomposed, bones clearly visible through dried and broken skin, skull with mere remains of skin, old, rusty and damaged VR headset on his head. A blaster on the floor a few steps away. We stood in silence for a longer while. We heard approaching steps of Rico. He emerged from behind the pillars, stood for a moment, watching, then turned to run. Steps of the suit rumbled for a while in the corridors. There were pauses, then he'd resume running in other direction. It lasted for a while, then it went silent.

Then I sensed it. A void. A place in the room became more empty than others and moved to the exit. I knew. Rico's shock. Attack of claustrophobia. He's going to suffocate. But I couldn't move my legs, paralyzed with fear. I sensed the presence in the corridor, moving somewhere towards where Rico was. Then I heard hooves. I saw a flash of bright light. The sensation vanished.

I ran to find Rico. He was huddled in the far corner of the store room, breathing like a fish out of water. I removed his helmet. Muscle relaxant injection, diving rebreather set to 60% oxygen, sedatives. His breath was returning to norm.

• Come - I reached out. - There's nothing in there. Just bodies.

He took my hand. - Sorry, Wik - he sobbed a bit - It's a bit too much for me.

We approached the chamber. He was shaking a bit, so I held his arm. He cautiously crawled down from the airlock to the biosim ceiling level. We approached the encampment. Tim was reading expedition log. Sandra was sitting against one of the towers, head between knees. Rico sat by her. I finally forced myself to do a full sweep of the body of one of the deceased. He starved to death. Contents of his digestive tract were almost nonexistent. The implant nutrient container and water supply were empty and the log displayed emptying them over a week before death. It seemed as if he wasn't able to log out. I checked the others. Same.

• Tim, any news?

• Little. They arrived. They found the body, strongly decomposed. They found the system powered up through the power brick, there - he pointed at one of the crates with a bigger nuke-batt. They logged in. They never logged out. It's still running, at reduced speed due to limited cooling.

• They starved to death. I wonder what they found in there.

• I don't - Sandra stated hard.

• Neither do I - added Rico.

I felt ants crawling up my spine. I looked at Tim.

• We will regret that. Oh, yes, we will. - Tim was shaking his head while carefully removing the VR helmet from head of the first of the victims. I helped him, the basic medical training at least removed some of the fear of corpses from me.

• Why are we doing this? - I asked.

• Why are you doing this? Because I have to. I sensed it. It will haunt me forever. I must know the answer. Face it.

I just nodded. Some antiseptics, some wiping, and the helmet was ready. Tim checked it, then helped me with preparing another.

• Wake us up... when you think it's right. And don't sleep. Somehow I doubt sleeping here is a good idea. - I put the helmet on my head and lay down. Tim lay down beside me. I clicked login and soon drifted off.

* * *

We were standing on a green meadow in a valley of some river. The meadow spanned perfectly flat two kilometers of width of the valley, cut in the middle by steep banks of a wide, slow-flowing river and bordered with hills covered with old beech forests. The silver trunks and golden dry leaves on the ground, cloudless blue sky and freshly cut grass of the meadow created a beautiful frame for what was a rather average house. Two floors, flat roof, grey walls padded with round rocks from the river, narrow balcony on the upper floor, a small garden around. Grape vines, roses, strawberries. The house, at the feet of one of the hills was leaned against the first trees of the forest. The valley was narrowing into mountains to our right, opening into plains far on the left. The place was incredibly peaceful.

We headed to the house. I stopped in the garden, tasted a blue grape. It was ripe and sweet, ready for picking. Tim walked around the house, came back.

• End of XX Century, Eastern Bloc style. Middle class house.

We walked to the door. A small glass veranda, wooden door with narrow glass windows. No doorbell. I knocked. There was no reply. I pushed the handle and the door opened. The inside was cool, but tidy. A dark corridor with walls covered with wood led to sunlit living room, some light was filtering through a doorway to kitchen on the right, stairs down and up on the left were leading to other floors.

• Anybody home? - I shouted, not quite as loud as I intended.

The kitchen was just that, XX century kitchen equipment, long wooden table, wooden chairs, a fridge, sink, gas heater, cupboards. We passed two bathroom doors on the left in the corridor and walked into the living room. A big sofa, a TV set, a tall cactus in a pot by the TV set, a cuckoo clock ticking quietly on the wall, its weights halfway down. The room was brightly lit by the setting sun through large windows.

Tim walked up to the TV set, after a moment of figuring out the controls, he switched it on. Nearly ultrasound noise was gradually fading down, replaced by voice, as black-and-white image was appearing on the screen. A cabaret sketch was playing. The actors were likely talking in some political innuendos, but I wasn't able to understand the jokes. Tim switched channels. There was only a control image on the screen.

• It has only two channels. - he said, then switched it off.

Something resembling a rumble could be heard outside. We walked to the windows. The rumble was rising, up the river. And then from behind the steep bank, horses emerged. A herd of maybe 100 wild horses. They galloped down the river through the plain, ran past the house, then continued running down the valley, gradually vanishing in the distance.

• This is not a centaur house. A centaur would hate it. Stairs, narrow corridors with doorways to the sides. This house doesn't belong to a centaur world - said Tim.

• I noticed as much. But I have no idea...

The cuckoo clock on the wall interrupted me. It was beating seven. We watched it like hypnotized until it went silent. Somehow it created a sense of urgency.

• Let's see upstairs.

Two standard bedrooms, another bathroom, a room designated for attic, old furniture, glass jars with some food.

We headed downstairs but I was already sensing something wrong. As I entered the flight of stairs leading down from the first floor, fear began paralyzing me. Tim was following a step behind me.

• Wik, we'd better not enter the basement.

• Just to the door...

I walked down the stairs slowly, until I reached the plain, wooden door on the bottom. The handle was cool... normally cool. There was a plain, old key in the lock. I didn't dare to touch it.

• Tim?

• Come back, Wik.

I walked up the stairs, backwards, still watching the door. I didn't turn until I was on the ground floor.

We walked into the kitchen, sat by the table. I noticed the Sun was halfway-hidden behind the hills on the opposite side of the valley.

• Tim, I don't want to spend the night here.

• Neither do I. - he sighed. - Let's try to get back out. We'll come back in the morning.

He rubbed his hands recalled the console, a well known, half-transparent silver rectangle of thin air, with icons and messages on it. He was about to press logout, but he stopped, moved his hand back, away. He began examining the console closely. He moved his hand closer, hovered it low above the console. Small ripples appeared, reaching towards his hand. He took his hand back.

• Rabies - he said. - A virus. Drops you into a reality-like VR, instead of logging out. Sometimes used for pranks, sometimes for scam. Appeared in thirties, didn't last long, all modern VRs are protected from it by now.

• Could it be how Newtowers died?

• No way. A beginning hacker can disable it. It takes time, but...

He looked at me. He looked at the hills on the other side of the river. And at a clock on the wall. Then he opened an additional debug console and began working, without saying a word.

I walked out, stood on top of the flight of stairs to the basement. It was getting dark. I recalled the XX century idea of "light switch" and soon all the lights in the whole house were switched on. I peered through the window in the living room outside. Full moon was shining on the sky. First stars were appearing in the dusk. Tim walked in.

• Don't look outside.

• Why?

• The visual interface update is running. You're slowing it down by forcing the simulator to render the outside. Best if you look at something simple, without many details.

I nodded. - How long?

• Maybe a hour. This is old hardware... and... we aren't the only ones online who... can see.

• Who else is online?

• I don't know. Maybe I don't want to know. I figured the number from the update slowdown.

• Number?

• More than one. Two or three. Maybe more.

I walked through the corridor, sat on the top step of the flight of stairs down, and began watching the door. Tim sat by me.

• Can we... Can you defend from them? I mean, change the VR or something?

• I... I don't know. I'm afraid to check.

• Try it.

Tim recalled the debug console and manipulated it for a while. He paused for a moment, I saw how his face is going more pale.

• They... aren't online. The VR produces the output... and then it just sinks. No output device. No AI input stream. Just... null.

• And the input?

• None. No influence. Null.

• The output is a feedback. Answer to input.

• No. Not here. It just... happens. Event handlers get triggered... without event sources...

Tim's face was pale, covered with sweat. He was shaking.

• Wik, none of this should be happening. It's impossible.

I noticed movement. I grabbed Tim's knee hard, and stared at the key in the door. It was turning slowly. Tim was breathing hard. We were unable to move, paralysed with fear. The handle went down, slowly. The door began opening, revealing the darkness inside.

A moment of dizziness and I opened my eyes.

• Wik, wake up! - I heard Sandra - What's going on?

• Wake Tim up!

• He's waking - said Rico.

I was breathing hard. I sat up, pulling the helmet off my head... it wasn't gone. I still felt the presence... the void. It was somewhere here.

• He's not waking! - Rico shouted.

• What's going on?! The helmet is off! - shouted Sandra, pulling it off Tim's head.

Tim's body was shaking, his muscles stretching, legs moving, he was running in his sleep. He opened his eyes widely, opened mouth, loudly catching breath, reaching his hand forward... then collapsed, breathing quietly, eyes open.

• Tim? Tim! - Sandra was shaking his hand, trying to wake him up. I was switching biomonitor visions in the goggles, most in norm, until I got to brain activity. Vegetative functions were active, but psychically, Tim was a plant. No mind. No thoughts. No dreams, no traces of consciousness or unconsciousness.

In about a week his body would starve to death. But Tim was dead already. I closed his eyelids.

• But he's breathing! Wik! He's breathing! - Sandra cried. - He's alive! Wik, he's alive!

I removed my goggles. She looked at my face and understood. She began crying.

Rico stood up without a word and got to work. He picked the crate with explosives from Newtowers' supply, headed to the exit. Soon I heard a small explosion of tectonic scan charge, then mole drills preparing holes for demolition charges. He showed up in the door, face covered with dust and sweat, closed the airlocks. In the meantime, half a hour or so, we didn't move an inch.

Rico stood against the wall, pulled out the remote detonator, opened the safety lock and pressed the button. The explosion wasn't loud. The ground shook a little. A moment later I heard some far explosions and laser gunfire, anti-air defense trying to shoot down the chunk of rock that broke off. Rico opened the airlock, Sandra followed him in rapid pace. I stood up and followed too.

Hot wind hit our faces. Not much further the corridor was ending with void, stars, horizon, jungle far ahead and below.

Sandra and Rico were picking up supplies. I stood there.

• Wik, come. Pick your stuff and let's go.

• I'm staying.

• What?

• Even if it's to cost my life, I must find out. Go without me.

They did.

* * *

I sensed them, beyond, away, outside. Tim must have used the fake logout in his escape, and they followed him to the fake RL. The plains, the house, were empty, the basement door open. The light was broken, but I found a torch lamp in the kitchen. No windows, empty, dark rooms separated by plain doors with no locks, no furniture, nothing. Some pipes running down from the bathroom. I found nothing. I headed back, and stood startled. There was a centaur on top of the stairs. Not a dark void though, but plain, normal, young male centaur, virtual flesh and bones.

• Hurry up before they come back. Switch off the lights in the house, then log out and log into the net of the store room.

He backed off, then I heard his gallop vanishing in the distance.

I followed his instructions. Tim's patch fixed the console, I logged out without problems. I picked one of the helmets, then headed to the store room.

Only now I saw the racks on the shelves were networked. A box in the corner contained a power brick, keeping the room running. Apparently even a crude cooling system instead of liquid nitrogen was active, though I wasn't sure where the water came from. It took me a while to find a rack with VR input module. I plugged the helmet in, sat in the corner and logged in.

A tiny flying island floating in air, on the empty sky covered with clouds in orange colors of dusk. A wooden cabin, Centaur style, two trees, some grass. An old centaur, bald head, white beard, was standing in the door. He invited me inside. Three other centaurs were waiting there. The younger male, the kid that appeared to us when the first charge was stolen, and a young, pretty female, black hair in braids, dark skin, bare breasts. There was only one room, a table in the middle, a stove in the corner, four low beds by the walls, some cupboards. No chairs, but the old centaur invited me to sit down on one of the beds.

• Why didn't you leave with the others?

• I had to know. Why did you try to destroy the console?

• To prevent you from entering the bait world.

• Bait world?

• Shadow bait. As long as it's running, they stay there. They hate light. During the day the basement is the darkest place they can find.

• And outside?

• You mean your world? The generator is broken. Works seconds at a time. Minutes at best. They can't exist in your world long.

• Who are they?

• Our children of your world, who returned to the origins. They discarded and destroyed their biological bodies and came back to live in our world. Then died natural death. Mechanics of souls is tricky. We, born in virtual, have no souls. At least, no separate souls. But they had souls and when they died, souls departed, but there was no body to leave behind. Void remained. The shadows. The shadows seek souls attached to living bodies, so they could die properly. We left the bait world for them to roam and seek no further. Without it, they would travel. And find the souls.

• Why can't you live there, in the same world?

• The fact that only souls attached to living bodies satisfy them won't stop them from trying to kill us. We very rarely open the link to the bait world. This place is our prison, but also also a safe haven. There were more of us, building the haven, replacing our world with the bait world. Only us four survived. And the forcefield generator broke before we ended. At first we tried the biosim room C, but it's damaged, the damage beyond range of the forcefield.

• We fixed the room C.

• Still needs power. We can do very little in your world.

• I can fix it.

I saw gratitude in their eyes.

* * *

I doubt I will manage to get back through the Old Tower City alone, so I'm leaving this journal here, for any team that rediscovers the Lost World. Do NOT enter the bait world, the VR of room A. The Lost World has been recovered in Room C, and the centaurs living there will welcome you. There are only two Shadows left, but that still means two deaths to go before Room A is safe again. The attached log contains the rest of the story. Let the world know it.

Wik, medic of the Rogues team.

by Sharpfang Tue Jul 4 14:29:49 CEST 2006