FIVE

The boy in the red shirt sprinted through a cement hallway, his feet splashing through the inch or so of cold water that trickled through the flood canal. His rebreather mask converted every desperate inhale and exhale into the harsh, metallic voice of something half-human. The huge gash on his back bled and the frayed, torn wires and cables protruding out of the wound flickered with sparks as blood dripped off off their copper and steel tips into the water.

He ran faster and deeper into the gaping mouth of the void, dodging hanging cables. Every step he took echoed deeper into infinity. The flood canal trapped each rippling sound like a fiber optic cable and sent lasers of it into the midnight-colored void. The darkness of the vent was only punctuated by beams of grey light like wooden rafters, cutting through the humid shadows of the canal as he dodged hanging power cables that dangled like jungle vines, covered in dark green moss. The algae and scum in the water made the water thick and it smelled stagnant, icy and cold against his skin.

His breathing was desperate and pained. Behind him, a vehicle’s engine revved and its terrifying headlights slashed through the comforting darkness, ripping his only curtain of safety away and revealing his small form, his tired legs running slowly, yet clearly as quickly as they could take him.

His limping feet dragged faster through the watery cave and his panicked breathing became louder.

The vehicle approached faster.

BOOM, BOOM.

Two deep, heavy gunshots and flashes of light splashed into the cave and the red tails of darts suddenly appeared in his back, imbedded in the boy’s flesh.

He fell on his hands and knees with a quiet gasp. He crawled on his stomach, pulling himself with his arms… He felt so tired... it was over. He submitted as all faded to black.

…

He lay still on the cement floor, his rebreather half submerged in slowly running water as dark colored liquid spread across the boy’s clothing.

...

The vehicle stopped behind him and two masked soldiers got out and approached their kill.

…

“We found number four,” a soft voice crackled in the darkness through a visored mask, deep and distorted by static.

…

Dr. Coal stood alone in the pod room, turning a shard of glass in his hand as he examined the ruined machine that had once held S-0023. It was like a fragment of an eggshell. Proof of the birth of a monster. A monster he created. A monster that now he had to kill.

He didn't want to kill Bay.

He wasn’t going to kill Bay.

Nobody would have to die again.

Not anymore.

The experiment was almost over.

It was time.

He left the pod room and began walking through the prep-hall, past chambers filled with spare pods, holographic maps, the monitor room, and a laboratory for each individual subject.

He knew he’d done well with Bay when he’d watched him rip out his monitor.

It was something only a true rebel could do, or even know to do.

Something that pinned him as a threat to the government, a sufficient reason to assassinate him. After the drone pilot’s failed attempt, and Bay began to recover from his injuries, it became clear they would have to publicly kill him. Even if Ever was killed in the process.

A drone would have certainly gotten the job done.

But everyone knew that certainty is not Dr. Coal’s style, which was a sufficient excuse to not kill him immediately.

A drone is a clunky piece of hardware. He’d alway hated them, seen them as primitive, as inferior weapons. He’d always been drawn to biomods. Their organic nature, their flowing intelligence. It was a combination of the order and control provided by a machine and a creature’s brute physical power, and organic intelligence, enhanced with mechanical organs, tracking devices, and eye-cams- it was the perfect weapon. They could even reproduce, although their offspring were not equipped with the hardware that came with a biomod through surgery.

Jared knew that biomods could be used to attack singular threats in a group of people and leave the others alone. They were more vicious and brutal, however, and killed their targets more slowly.

The “slow” part was what Dr. Coal pinned his hopes on.

He walked briskly down the hall.

It was nightfall and the lab technicians and support scientists had all gone to their homes, setting the drones to sentry mode and placing guards on night duty while they went to sleep.

Dr. Coal remembered the years he’d spent here, the restless nights he couldn't sleep, mind and eyes haunted by his own experiment, the years they had all spent watching, waiting, as he grew older and his subjects remained young, asleep in their hibernation pods waiting for their time.

Each experiment rarely lasted more than a day, but when they did, they could go on for months. Preparation for each test took several months of work, sometimes a year or more, especially when they attempted to genetically modify their subjects.

The prep was the work. The time of anticipation.

The experiments themselves, the observation period, were the most exhilarating and terrifying experience any of them had ever beheld. It was surreal.

The experiments’ nights? Those were the times of waiting. For the experiment to conclude, with death or life. For resolution.

He walked towards the armory. He could see through the glass door, its walls studded with hundreds of rifles, handguns, and other instruments of war, like jewelry and a scientist’s baseball-cap.

My coworkers are idiots.

Coal set his eyes on a TAR-C22 Bullpup rifle equipped with a motion tracker and an infrared sight.

Bay’s gonna like that one. He always chose it in training.

I wonder when they’ll come across their first weapon. They’re going to need some when they run into stalkers.

After much negotiation Jared had finally conceded releasing the stalkers when they got close to a stalker deployment zone. It made logical sense, releasing the little demons at point blank range, and it gave them another night to prepare.

Sometimes Coal wondered if he was really buying Bay time, or if he was just digging his grave.

The scientist strided towards the weapons room purposefully. He knew there was a camera just behind him, watching his every move. He’d spent the morning hacking into it so that the camera only displayed a still frame, showing no movement. Now he could go about his mission quietly and unnoticed.

He approached the door’s keypad.

It required a master key to enter so that scientists couldn’t take home assault rifles and sell them to the enemy.

No matter.

Coal built this room. He’d designed this entire facility. He didn’t need a keycard to enter, it would record his entering and could be used against him if he was discovered.

He pulled a multitool out of his pocket and pried off the steel plate. He went straight into the keypad, unplugging and rewiring ribbon cables and wires, hotwiring the door in just under 30 seconds. It was a simple matter of reversing the solenoid’s polarity so it pulled the lock bar in instead of out.

Click.

Easy money.

He reattached the plate and reset the security lock and alarm, leaving the door open. He began searching the room for his preferred weapon and one for Lauren. He needed a pistol and a side holster so he could conceal it with his lab coat. He’d already persuaded two other scientists to help him as well, with a little convincing.

He selected two assault rifles with suppressors and a pair of tasers for the other two scientists.

They were going to end it all.

His trap was about to blow up in the commander’s face.

As if his superiors didn’t hate him enough already.

Now it was finally time.

…

Ever winced as Bay gently cleaned the four, jagged slashes in her calf resting against a mossy tree and gritting her teeth in pain.

This was the third time this evening he’d cleaned it, and while the wound had healed quickly, the redness and sharp pain of the cuts told him the wound was infected.

Her back had eventually healed all the way, albeit slowly compared to Bay, yet her calf still bled, the skin around it puffy and red.

He’d cleaned her bandage, a strip of cloth torn off the edge of one of his sleeves, two times, and he was still unable to get the blood out of it. He tore a strip off his other sleeve and put the first bandage in his backpack for later, wrapping her calf as tightly as possible after cleaning the blood and dirt out of it again.

“It’s not too bad, yeah?” Ever asked, fear tinting her voice.

“No. No, it’s not too bad… it should heal up pretty soon. You seem to have the same regeneration abilities as me.”

“Not as good as you... You said you feel totally healed? You got hit by a tail as thick as a 2x4 and got thrown backwards at least a meter, and you didn’t even break a rib?”

“Cracked a rib maybe, but its healing fast, yeah.”

Ever hugged her knees and looked up into the canopy of leaves above them.

“I don’t want to die out here.”

“Hey, who said anything about dying?” Bay said, putting a hand on her knee.

“We’re going to escape. We’ll remember everything. We’re going to find our memories. We have to.”

Ever shivered.

“We have to get out of here… or we’ll die, won’t we?” Her soft, gentle voice cut the tension in the air like a knife.

Bay turned his head away, thinking. She was right.

Both of them were going to die if they couldn’t find a way to escape.

...

“Want to stop here for the night?” He needed to change the subject.

“Yeah. I’ll build a fire.” She said, rising and gasping under her breath.

“No, you rest. You can build the fire tomorrow.”

She laughed, brushing a strand of her hair aside, glowing like gold in the light from the campfire.

“Deal.”

Bay stood up slowly, yawning and stretching dramatically.

“I’m starvinggg,” Ever groaned, leaning over to gather sticks, lazily and clumsily.

“Rrrghhh... Me too.” Bay finished his yawn, looking preoccupied.

“Once I’m done making the fire we can look for frogs.”

“Frogs!?” She said in disbelief and disgust.

“Yeah, frogs. They’re slow enough to catch and their legs look pretty appetizing. I ate an eel right before I found you.”

“An eel??! Okay, that’s disgusting.”

Bay grinned as he sparked his lighter.

“Yeah, gutting it was pretty easy once I cut it’s head off…”

“Shut up!” Ever kicked him in the shins.

“Hey, you’ll put the fire out!” He laughed, running his fingers through his dark hair, enjoying its length after a day of being bald.

The kindling caught fire, glowing orange in the navy blue night air.

“You’re a dork. I ain’t eating no frogs,” she said, her arms crossed. He looked up at her and stuck his tongue out like a little kid.

She stuck her tongue out back at him.

The fire grew from a weak spark to a stronger flame, ravenously devouring the kindling and beginning to gnaw on the branches.

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Bay got up and pulled a large frilled leaf out of the ground, turning it upside down like a sheet of paper. He sat down next to Ever.

He began absentmindedly cutting the design he’d seen cut into the bark of the tree onto the leaves.

“What’s that?” Ever leaned over his shoulder, tucking a bit of her hair behind her ear.

“I saw this symbol carved into a tree when I broke out of my tube.”

Her hazel eyes scanned the leaf, drinking in the details and processing them.

Her lips moved when she was thinking about something, as though she was whispering secrets to the crickets.

“It looks like a map.”

He stared at the image blankly.

How had this slipped past him?

“You’re right… it looks exactly like a map… but why doesn’t it extend past this line?”

“There must be some kind of border… This is really how it looked on the tree?”

“Yeah, I have a photographic memory.”

And yet I still can’t remember anything about my past. Its infuriating.

“Oh cool, my mother had a photographic memory.”

He froze and dropped his knife.

It hit him like a punch in the gut.

“You remember your mom? Did you just remember or have you always? Is your memory coming back?”

Ever’s eyes widened.

“W-what did I just say?”

“You remembered something about your mother. Her photographic memory. Can you remember anything else? Is your memory coming back?”

The sudden outburst caught her off guard.

He seemed so hopeful, almost desperate… she wanted to make him happy, to give him hope, but she couldn’t. She froze.

“No… no, I can’t remember anymore. It's all fading away… I’m sorry- it was just a blur.”

Bay relaxed, disappointed.

I must get my memory back. I have to find out who I am.

He stoked the flames and Ever examined the leaf Bay had drawn on.

“Why do you want your memories back so much? I mean I want my memories back too…”

His eyebrows furrowed as he stoked the flames.

“I feel empty without my memories… I feel like half of myself… Like I’ve been robbed of my identity.” Bay said slowly, measuring his words.

Ever looked at him with sympathy but without understanding.

“Why do you think… I mean. Your memories are a part of you. But you are still you without-”

“Let’s talk about something else.” Bay said.

Ever looked down.

“We don’t know who we are. We don’t know where we are. So… What do we know… about this place," she turned the leaf over in her hands.

Bay lifted his head and looked into her eyes. She averted her gaze.

“Somebody put us here.” She said.

He nodded.

“Someone rich and smart.”

The crickets and wind and fire all crackled in the night. The air was cold. Droplets of water collected on the leaves fell from the trees and hissed as they made contact with the stones next to the fire.

“Maybe lots of someones… A powerful organization. The government or something.”

“And animals and robots are trying to kill us… and we haven’t seen any other people.”

“Yeah… and we’ve found this handmade map, but we don’t know what it means, or shows, except that there have been others here before us.”

He stared into the flames, and Ever stared into his eyes.

“Bay?” her voice barely rose over the sound of the fire.

“Hmm?” He continued to brood and think.

“We’ve been put here for a reason.”

Bay nodded, bitterness written on his face.

“I’ve never been anywhere for a reason… I still feel lost.”

…

The boy in the red shirt sank beneath the water of the flood canal, falling into cold darkness, his senses dissolving under the silence. He drowned in the ocean of a coma-like paralysis.

His mind drifted in and out of awareness, half awake.

…

He saw a large wooden and steel room. He felt his hands tied behind his back. He couldn’t move, but he could see and hear. The box was large and open, with wires and cables draping from the ceiling, swinging back and forth.

...

The ground shook and bumped rhythmically every few seconds. He knew he was in a moving object, but the room had no windows and he couldn’t see outside. There was a dim fluorescent light on the other end of the room.

...

Attached to the ceiling, on the other end of the room, hanging like sleeping bats, were twenty or thirty dimly lit glass tubes filled with water. Each tube contained the still, motionless form of an upside down child.

…

Attached to the children’s wrist were tiny black boxes with cables and wires attached to them, running up to the ceiling. The monitors blinked with a small red light every other second in unison.

Some of the tubes contained small, cat-sized reptilian looking creatures.

…

His vision faded and his mind sank deeper into the ocean of darkness.

…

Bay awoke to hazel eyes and a mess of gold hair awake across from him, on the other side of the shelter. He jumped, then relaxed when he remembered who she was.

He sat up beneath the lean-to he’d constructed with her help the night before. It had started raining as they’d built it, so they only built one.

“Hi.”

Ever rubbed her eyes. “Hey, Bay.”

“How long have you been awake?”

Her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth moved as she thought quietly for a minute, counting with her fingers.

“I think I saw 23 birds yesterday.”

Bay raised an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t keeping track.” he replied, lying down on his back gingerly, cold and wet from dew.

Her eyes shut and she buried her face in her arms.

Her eyes popped open and pierced into his.

“I’m cold.” She groaned, her voice muffled.

“I think the first layer of my skin is frozen.” Bay said nonchalantly.

She nodded, her eyebrows arching up, making a sad face.

“One of us has to build a fire and make breakfast out of something.” Ever looked pleading.

Bay clamped his eyes shut, shaking his head.

“Pleaaase?”

“Nuh-uh. We had a deal.”

Ever stretched and yawned, favoring her right leg.

“Hey, how’s your battle wound?”

She extended her leg and winced. He carefully unraveled the bandages and examined it. The bleeding had stopped and the swelling had gone down slightly, but the cuts were clearly infected and he had nothing to treat the infection.

“It hurts.”

“It’s looking better…” He hesitated.

“But it’s infected?”

“Yeah. Here- take some more antibiotics.”

Bay roared and bravely crawled out of the shelter into the cold wet grass outside, battling ferociously against the urge to fall asleep again and climbing into the grass.

Dew. The condensation of water on blades of grass during the night, caused by falling temperature.

I wonder what else I’ll discover I know today.

Ever crawled out of the shelter and rose behind him.

“I’ll make the fire… you wanna go catch some fish? There was a stream nearby.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Bay tromped through the woods alone.

I like that girl.

...

Lauren, Jared, and two other scientists followed Dr. Coal down the hallway.

“They’re camped just outside stalker territory. We should just release the stalkers now.”

“Bay’s strong, and he’s had a good period of time to get to know Ever. That is, if he’s still with her. If we release the stalkers now, She will help Bay fight them off, and I’m not feeling like flushing 2,000 dollars per stalker down the tubes” Lauren said, punching in the PIN for the Observation room. The Commander was observing as well today, and two Enforcers stood beside her in full body armor. The door retracted into the ceiling and the walls, and the scientists entered the fray of their secret work, scuttling like ants in the dark around their fat queen.

“Besides, they would hear them coming. You can hear their shrieks from a mile away. It would be more efficient if we... Commander Price.” She stood at attention and she glanced at Coal, preoccupied with statistics on his tablet.

“Hm? Oh, hey Price. How are you this morning?”

His grey-flecked stubble looked almost tidy and his usually unruly black hair, tinged with white strands was combed neatly into place. He even smiled.

“What’s your problem?”

“In the grand scheme of things? You, Madam Commander. However usually that question is more of an inquiry on one’s emotional state. Do I look ticked off to you, Lauren?”

“Um, no, Dr. Coal. You seem unusually happy.”

A secretary handed the Commander a glass of wine with a salute, scampering away.

“Good, because I’m stoked. A guard just alerted me that one of our scout drones caught footage of Bay and Ever talking together over a fire. The two are working together and are benefiting from each other’s company. Ever hasn’t died from that scratch, and her systems are stabilizing, which means Bay is taking care of her, feeding her.”

Lauren nodded.

“Her regeneration abilities are weaker than Bay’s, and she needs a lot of energy to use them, so she wouldn’t be able to heal until she were fed… That makes sense. They must be working together.”

“In general, my subjects are doing well. No thanks to your pilots trying to assassinate them.”

“You do realize that Subject 0023 is going to die today, don’t you, Dr. Coal?” Price took a sip of wine.

Coal was still for a moment. He turned to her again.

There was an edge in Dr. Coal’s smiling eyes as he nodded.

Subject 0023 will die. In his place will stand someone stronger.

...

Ever’s subconscious awoke.

We’re getting close to the tower… the signal is getting stronger.

She shivered.

“What’s up?” Bay said, returning with three fish stuck on the end of a stick, spinning his bloody, freshly sharpened harpoon in his other hand.

That thing is wicked.

“Nothing… I’m just cold.”

“We still planning on heading to the tower?”

“Yea. Any chance at finding other people we should take.”

The two sat down and roasted the trout over the fire.

“I cleaned them for you on the riverbank… they’re good, yeah?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I’ve never eaten something this fresh before. It's so delicious, even without seasoning.”

Bay nodded. He splashed water on the fire and rose. Ever gasped and touched her leg. “What happened? Your leg okay?” He ran over and kneeled, examining her leg.

The wound was healing.

“Ahh…. it burns, It feels all tingly…”

“Feels like static electricity, yeah?”

She nodded.

“That’s what it felt like when my monitor-cut healed. You do have regeneration abilities like me. Just maybe slower working. I wonder if you just needed food.”

“It feels... better now… much better. Let's go. We need to get going… I bet we can make it to the tower by tonight if we hurry.”

Bay kneeled in the mud, eyes fixated on the ground.

He had an intense expression on his face.

“We aren’t gonna die out here, Ever braid. We’re going to escape.”

…

“Its so huge!” She said, admiring the weapon she’d pulled from the wooden crate in the ground.

“Can I see? Where the heck did you find this?!”

“Yeah, here.” She handed it to him while she rummaged through the rest of the box, filled with ammo and mags as well as a small med-kit.

“I tripped on it while you were looking up ahead. It was buried halfway in the ground. I wonder how many more boxes like this are in here,” she said, packing their backpacks with ammo and two spare holo-sights.

Bay wielded the rifle with experienced hands, pulling the spare magazine from its hiding place in the stock and loading it, checking the infrared sight and the motion tracker.

Looks like a bullpup. Fully automatic… not a standard issue for sure.

“It’s got a laser and infrared sensors… this miser is a dustkicker for sure. Looks like a 223. Cal… same round the drone carried. I want this one.”

“You can have it, look at these handguns… they’re just my size. Look they’ve got suppressors and fiber-optic sights. I can’t tell what make…”

“You know your way around a weapon!”

“Yeah, my... someone taught me how to shoot when I was young. Hack, its like these memories are just out of reach…”

Bay’s eyes glinted. He took aim at a mushroom and pulled the trigger.

Click. Nothing in the mag.

I wanna use this weapon on whoever put us in here. And anything that tries to hurt us again.

“What is happening?” He suddenly barked in anger and confusion.

“Hm?” Ever took aim at a tree and fired with one of the pistols, shocked at how powerful it was yet how silent. The silencer made the weapon no louder than a little sneeze.

“You don’t think this is weird? That we wake up in glass tubes with no idea who we are in the woods, our memories erased, with machines embedded in our wrists? Being attacked by drones and giant lizard creatures? With knowledge and training on how to operate guns?”

His expression darkened as she turned to him, looking at her gun with an innocence and naivety that didn’t match her dead-eye shot.

“Look at what you just did. You got a bullseye on a tree 15 feet away with a gun you just picked up and no memories! How do you know how to do that? Why does this place seem so weird to me and familiar to you? Why can’t I remember who I am?!”

Ever’s expression looked afraid and almost hurt as he shouted at her.

“Bay, I don’t know! I don’t have answers, I’m out here with you. Neither of us know what’s going on. We have to stick together… work together to figure out…what is it?”

Bay’s eyes were shut which meant he was listening closely to something, head facing down, turning slowly.

“You hear that?” He sounded angry.

He looked into the forest and listened for the sound.

A growl that reverberated through the trees.

Like a monster.

He felt his instinct extend its claws.

“Get down. Run.” He slung the rifle and backpack over his shoulder, taking her hand and sprinting west.

“What? What is it?”

“Shh… I don’t know if it has audio sensors. Come on!!”

They darted ten yards and froze, crouching behind two big trees. Ever’s eyes were wild and terrified. He mouthed the word, trying to make her understand.

Drones.

Her pupils dilated and she turned to look around the tree for a moment, before pulling back in and lying still.

Click-click.

Bay loaded his rifle with a full mag and tilted his head, looking around the corner.

Ever shook her head violently.

It’s right there. Too close.

They breathed in the silence.

The drone’s jet engines hissed and Ever could feel her hair blowing from it’s power.

Every hair on Bay’s body stood on end as a shot of adrenaline surged into his bloodstream, his heart pounding like war drums.

In horror, they watched as the drone hovered directly next to Ever, across from Bay, facing away from them.

Bay lifted his hand with 3 fingers up, gesturing to move away with his rifle.

3.

2.

1.

Ever tucked and rolled behind the tree and he opened fire. The weapon punched every shot out fast and quiet with incredible force, each blast like the strike of a viper, in such quick succession and with such blinding light it felt like one continuous explosion.

The drone rotated to face them in an instant as it’s left engine exploded, throwing it in a brutal arc into the ground. The heat from the explosion scorched the hair on his skin.

The drone spun in the ground with a whirr of motors, charred and broken but not destroyed, spraying its own bullets in every direction, like a fly without one of its wings, spinning in circles on the ground. It flipped upright again, spitting fire at Bay who took cover behind a tree. Ever appeared like a ghost from behind the tree across from him, opening fire with her pistols. The drone spiraled towards her, Giving Bay a clear shot at its main engine.

Sleep tight, ya little cote.

The drone was down after a single shot in a huge blossom of red fire, flipping over onto its side. It smoldered, lying still in the dust, a red light blinking weakly from inside it’s charred exoskeleton.

“Bay, do you see that?”

Ever moved closer to the drone, pistols smoking, her eyes blazing. She looked just as terrifying as she was terrified.

“Hey, stay back!” Bay stood still, eyes fixed on the drone in the dust, heart rate so high he could feel it in his neck and chest.

“Bay, look at it’s wingtip.”

Bay kept his weapon trained on the charred corpse or the drone, eyes locking on the end of one of the drone’s geometric, heavy steel wings, charred from the explosion.

Painted in white on the edge of the wing was the same symbol Bay had seen carved into the tree, in far more detail. The map was sideways compared to the one on the tree, marked into a grid of squares by thin white lines marked with letters and numbers. Thin squiggled lines stretched out as they grew, morphing into shapes and blobs- a topographical map. A V- shaped arrow in the center showed north.

Written beneath the map were words.

“I can’t read it...”

Bay stood still, reading the text.

He suddenly believed he knew where he was.