The air was hot, humid, and sticky like the inside of a sauna.  His skin felt oily and his hair, greasy and damp.  In a state of semi-rest the man could feel little other than his overburdened limbs, the saturated air, and the shallow pool of lukewarm substance he lied in.  As if awakening from a deep slumber his senses returned to him, one at a time.  He could smell the overpowering stench of decay around him.  It smelled like rotting carcasses in a fetid bog.  Intermingled with the rot the smell of a strange metallic substance also wafted throughout the air.

Mobius cleared his throat, and as his lips parted he could taste copper and grit.  His breathing came labored and heavy, each exhale accompanied by a more insurmountable burden on his chest and legs, each inhale a triumph over the odds.

As his sight returned to him the first thing Mobius saw was the sky.  Although it was not the stormy cumulonimbi that swirled around a raging vortex that his eyes were assailed with.  Instead, it was a serene, yet insidious canvas of crimson and titian nacreous clouds.  The sky seemed motionless, every cloud formation, every cirri intertwined, latticed together into an unnatural display.  As the operative blinked the crust out of his eyes he struggled to raise his head and survey his surroundings.

Far to the west the setting sun perpetually bathed the land in the last throes of daylight.  Night was promised, but not yet here.  The sun, brilliant as it was, was like some sacred thing far in the distance.  It’s corona much alike a holy aureole of a revered saint.  Mobius averted his gaze to the endless expanse around him.  This was not South America--not as he remembered it.  Although the city he and Pawn fought in was likely destroyed it couldn’t have been reduced to this.

Slowly, the agent propped himself onto his forearms and grimaced as pain wracked his chest.  Mobius eased himself to a sitting position and raised his hands to view his gnarled hands.

[i]Broken wrist, and knuckles from the looks of it.[/i]

He tried to tap into ANITA so that he could get a look at his bones but she didn’t answer.  He new that there were quite a few broken to begin with.  As he watched the liquid he sat in sift through his fingers that was when it clicked in his mind.

[i]Blood.[/i]

He leaped to his feet, crouching, and steadying himself with his good hand, though his body protested with several waves of pain that he ignored.  Pools of blood and scraps of carnage dotted the landscape around him.  In the distance around him he could see what looked like several large ships, of a make which he did not at all recognize.  Closer to his vicinity were no bodies, but there were weapons stabbed into the earth as if the area were the aftermath of a battlefield.

As he slowly and shakily raised himself to a standing position Mobius looked around.  His gun, his canisters, his beacon, his clone, and his suit were all gone.  He felt as if he were running on instinct, at this point.  Over the past day his mind had raced with scenarios, and now only his training kicked in.  He resolved that he would go to one of the ships to seek shelter and a device to beacon help from.

Just as Mobius began to hobble forward, the Sun in the far distance shifted--in color more than in position.  The massive celestial body incarnadined. For a moment, Mobius felt as if it were a gateway, a lens, or some sort of eye watching him in the distance.  He froze for a moment to look at it as its corona faded away into a perfectly round, red ocular.  

A familiar voice spoke behind him,

“You’re a damned fool for coming here, mutt.”