Recompile

[Albert Wesker]

With no small measure of wariness, Colonel started forward. He had no specific destination in mind, as he had no real idea where he even was to have any destination to plan for. But standing around definitely wasn't going to get him anywhere. At least aimlessly wandering he might find something to clue him in as to just where he was. And right now, in his frazzled, out of sorts state, any clue would be better than the whopping none he had at the current moment in time.

It took him several minutes of aimless wandering, in a mostly straight direction — quite an accomplishment, given the general unsteadiness and meandering shamble he was forced to walk at — before he noticed it. A human might have felt it as the hairs on their neck standing on end, an oppressive feeling suddenly weighing on them. He just felt it as a sudden shift in the air. A subtle one, and one that, had he not already been so thoroughly on alert and borderline paranoid about the otherwise serene surroundings, he might have missed entirely. But it dawned on him, crawling across his awareness slowly, but insistently, until he was forced to acknowledge it.

He slowed to a halt, squaring his stance for the most steadiness he could get out of his weakened body at the moment. He swept his unblinking, pupil-less eyes across the scene before him, noting that only the appearance of scraggly bushes, and some trees in the distance, were the only changes from the empty grasslands of just moments before. Had they been there before? He was virtually positive that last time he blinked there hadn't been a river there at all, much less....any....

His eyes snapped back to the river, peacefully running along not even ten paces to his left. It had most definitely not been there before. It didn't exactly stand out, but it was hard to miss in the otherwise nigh-featureless plains, and would have been all but impossible to miss. And yet he was positive it hadn't been there, not even ten seconds ago. But it clearly stretched back the way he had come from, to the horizon behind him, and onward to the horizon ahead of him, as well.

"What...what in the world...?" he muttered, voice strained as he tried to give emotion to this strange, absurd string of conflicting input running through his logic circuits. It just didn't add up. It was certainly absurd, and confusing, but not what had drawn his attention. It wasn't the source of the uneasy feeling which had only grown steadily stronger, amplified by the impossible landscape he had seemingly stumbled into unknowingly. He felt very much like he was being watched.

Or followed.

He closed his eyes, a very human gesture, as he tried to calm and slow down his thought processes to study them more closely. The less rampant and chaotic they were, the easier a time he would have making sense of it all. He knew only a few things so far, none of which really added up. He had woken here, systems routed to combat and survival, with a damage report suggesting he had apparently been put through a metal grinder, or worse. He couldn't recall a damn thing, prior to his waking, beyond vague impressions and half-thoughts. He was in the Omniverse....this wasn't the first time he had died while here. He'd been doing...something. The aftermath of fighting a dragon...? No...no, that wasn't it. Something else. It was...

Something growled behind him, and instantly every danger alarm in Colonel's systems went off. He knew that growl. He would recognize it anywhere.

Colonel was a soldier. He was trained to never run from anything. Only in the interest of retreating to a more advantageous position, or escorting noncombatants, was he ever permitted to flee. But in that instant, with a very human 'fight or flight' reaction pounding against the forefront of his thoughts, he broke that programming restriction.

And he ran.