This is my first fanfic that I've ever written, I hope you enjoy it. I've always wondered why I was chosen to become a Guardian; to defend the Last safe City on Earth against the Darkness. Why me? I guess I should start at the beginning, before I became a Guardian; before all of this happened. I was around during the Golden Age, back when things were peaceful. I was going on a trip with my family to a Cosmodrome somewhere in what is now Old Russia. We planned on going to Mars and we were all excited because none of us have left Earth before, so this was our first time. “I’m so excited to go to Mars,” I said. “We’re excited too,” my two kids, Sarah and Jordan, said simultaneously. “I still can’t believe you managed to afford this trip,” My wife Rebecca said. “Well you know me, I have my ways,” I said. I was the most excited because I’ve always enjoyed space exploration, and I’ve only seen what it’s like on other planets through vids, pics, and some video games. Obviously that wasn’t enough for me and I wanted to see what it’s like in person. As we were getting close to the Cosmodrome, everything went dark and there was this giant red orb of light forming in the sky and then suddenly, a giant ship appeared out of thin air. The moment I saw it, I knew it was not good. As it appeared, it sent out a shockwave that threw me off balance, I couldn’t control my car, and I crashed into the side barrier hard and the hit knocked me out. As I was regaining consciousness, there was fire everywhere and I saw my family, dead. I was the only survivor in that crash. As I got up, I saw something in front of me. When I called out, it turned its attention to me immediately and started walking towards me. As it got closer, it was becoming clearer what it was. It had four arms, strange looking armor, and a strange looking gun. That’s when I realized it wasn’t friendly and it was going to kill me. I started to run away and off the highway towards a hill, which was a bad idea, because it wasn’t a hill, it was an edge to a cliff. That enemy was coming closer and I had nowhere else to run. I didn’t know whether to jump off and hope that I somehow survived, or let the enemy kill me. I didn’t want to go with the latter, and it didn’t look like I had any other options, but before I knew it, the enemy had the barrel of the gun pointing at my head at point-blank range, and he pulled the trigger, killing me right there. That was the last thing I remembered that day. My family died in a car crash, but I survived, only to be killed by an alien. I thought it was game over for humanity. Then one day, I was revived. I saw a bright flash and everything went to black. As I was regaining consciousness, I heard someone talking to me. “Guardian…,” the voice said. Who is this Guardian? Was the voice referring to me? “Guardian?” The voice continued. “Eyes up, Guardian!” As I looked up and saw a weird looking object what looked to me like an inside-out cube with a blue light in the middle. “It worked…. you’re alive!” The voice said, and then I realized, the voice came from the object. I looked around the area to see where I was, and realized it’s the exact same spot where I died, my family was still there, but they were skeletons. “How long have I been dead?” I said, completely confused as to what was going on. “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you,” the object said. “Looking for me? What do you mean? Where am I? Who or what are you?” “I’m a Ghost. Actually, now I’m your Ghost. And you… Well, you’ve been dead for a long time. So, you’re going to see a lot of things you won’t understand.” That answers some questions. He’s a Ghost that’s now mine, I’ve been dead for god knows how long, and he’s been looking for me. I tried stretching, and I found it very difficult, maybe because I’ve been resurrected after being dead for centuries, so I took it a bit slow and found it becoming easier rather quickly. As I was stretching, I noticed I’m wearing some kind of armor that I’ve never seen before and a scarf. “Hey um… Ghost, what am I wearing? This isn’t what I was wearing before.” I asked. “What you are wearing is the armor for the Hunters, you have been chosen to become a Guardian Hunter, but you’re wearing very basic armor,” the Ghost said. “Hunter armor? Well I did go hunting during the Golden Age and I was really good at it, so I guess it makes sense that I’m wearing this.” As soon as I got my bearings, I heard a metallic howl coming from the distance and the Ghost was shaking a little when it heard the noise. “What was that?” I said. “This is Fallen Territory. We aren’t safe here,” the Ghost explained, and he continues, “I have to get you to the city.” “The city?” I was confused. “Hold still.” The Ghost approached me, and quickly disappeared and I look around to see where he went. “Don’t worry, I’m still with you. We need to move, fast,” The Ghost said. “I hope you’ll explain what has happened as we go,” I said. “We won’t survive long out in the open like this. Let’s get inside the wall,” the Ghost said, and that’s exactly what I did. I started running to the wall and navigating around the old rusty cars. I looked around and saw that there were cars that stretched out for miles. How many people died that day? Whoever these Fallen were, I’m gonna make sure that they pay, but I can’t get distracted, the metallic noises were getting closer, which was a clear sign that I had no time to dilly dally. As I got to the wall, the metallic noises quickly ceased, like they wanted me to get inside the wall, leading me to a trap. “Okay… I need to find you a weapon before the Fallen find us.” “A weapon, like what?” “Anything you can use to defe-“ the Ghost paused for a second and started to whisper, “Quiet. They’re right above us.” He was right; I could hear footsteps above us, so I started to walk a bit more quietly. “Hey Ghost, it’s getting dark, can you make a light or something?” I whispered, and Ghost did just that. It made a light over my left shoulder that lighted up the area ahead of me, but not very far, so I continued on slowly. As I entered the dark, I felt this strong feeling inside me, something I never felt before, and it made me scared. I saw something in the wall that was ahead of me and it quickly disappears. My first instinct was to take a closer look, but I remember seeing in the movies that that’s usually a bad idea. As I continued, it started getting harder to see and even Ghosts light can’t reach out that far. “Hang tight. The Fallen thrive in the dark, we won’t. We need more light. I’ll see what I can do.” So I just stood there, waiting, as Ghost looked for something he can use to light up the place, his natural light showed a lot more Fallen, lurking around. He wasn’t kidding when he said that they thrive in it. “Another one of these hardened military systems… And a few centuries of entropy working against me,” I heard the Ghost talking to himself. As he moved farther away, I had that feeling again when I was standing in the dark. It felt like this wasn’t just darkness. I should mention I don’t have a fear of darkness, which made me confused why I’m scared of it now. Something just didn’t feel right about it. Suddenly, the flood lights started turning on, one after another and I can see Fallen everywhere, crawling on the pipes. I saw two red floating robots and it was pretty clear neither of them were Ghost. I saw Ghost flying back to me, “They’re coming for us,” he yelled. He was floating near the hall way around the corner, “Here! I found a rifle! Grab it,” and I did not hesitate to run to him and grab the rifle. It was an old Khostov 7G-02, one of the rifles I’ve commonly seen our military use during the Golden Age, I bet it’s not so common anymore, now is it? It looked very outdated but still looked like it packed a punch. “I hope you know how to use that thing,” Ghost said. “I know how to shoot a gun,” I said. I did a quick inspection to see what it had. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting, just a cracked holographic-like sight and what looks like a tactical light on the side. I tried turning on to see if it worked or not, obviously it didn’t. Other than that, the rifle was in relatively good condition for something this old. There were even a few magazines that came with the rifle too, even better. As I walked down the hall, I saw a shadow ahead and it definitely didn’t look human. So I leaned around the corner and nothing was there. The moment I stepped out, two Fallen enemies came out and started firing at me, and I just started shooting wildly and somehow got them. That scared me so much; I froze for a minute before I came to my senses. I checked to see how many bullets I had in my rifle and I had ten bullets left, so I changed the select fire to semi auto so I can be more conservative about my ammo. As I kept moving I ran into more Fallen and they sent out a lot of soldiers just to kill me. Am I that much of a threat to them? I’m just one guy. I shouldn’t be questioning it now; I need get out of here and get to the city, wherever that is.