Waking up. Sam's Eyes where fluttering, then suddenly, sitting upright frantically looking left and right she looked around.

Dizziness assaulted her head as memories started flooding back.

Coughing and rolling to the right.

Salty water vacated her burning lungs along with the contents of her stomach.

After a couple of moments she laid back.

Waiting for her dizziness to subside she slowly looked around.

Questions started to form from her own observation of her own surrounding and gaps in her memories.

Where am I? Did I survive? Where's the trauma team? She asked herself.

Noticing the cleanliness and disregarding the large monitor on the wall opposite of her, must be some sort of vitals screen, the room she was in, looked like any ordinary hospital room.

Albeit slightly barren of the usually seen decor in most hospital rooms, along side any form of ventilation or windows, noting that she may be inside a new HQ of some kind, another underwater one or underground?

Calming herself, her cold piercing silver eyes now hidden behind her closed eyes, started to fill up the gap in her memories, as she force her body to be relaxed, now knowing that she was safe, time passed and suddenly irritation started to show on her lovely face.

What time is it? What's taking them so long? Don't they know that I need to get back to work? The antidotes won't make themselves.

A lovely smile slowly formed from her usually frowning face.

Right. The serum. She had finally finished it. 5 years of hard work. Countless sacrifices had been made. Inumerable lives had been lost. But now humanity will be saved.

Memories flashed by her head. All the cruelty she had seen and done was for the survival of humankind. All those lives she had snuff out for the sake of progress. All those lives formed into the stepping stone for the survival and betterment of humankind.

She Imagined all the happy faces of the future generation's that she would have saved by releasing the serum to the masses, living in the surface of mars, no longer affected by interstellar radiation, their boosted immunity to help fight off all the evolved form of sicknesses and deformations humanity had suffered all these decades of polution.

Even if those traitors where successful with destroying her lab and research, they wouldn't find any information regarding the serum. What's important was that she had survived and she can recreate the serum from scratch. It may take a couple of weeks for it to be done but it was still better than starting from scratch.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Unbeknownst to Sam the large screen had already turned on. The monitor showed an entity, it stood and looked intently to the young woman laying in bed.

*ping*

Two number appears on screen, one red and one green.

*ping*

Sam's brows furrowed from the sudden disturbance of her peace. 

*ping*ping*

Opening her eyes, Sam was startled the moment she saw the wicked grinning smile the mask had on the screen.

*ping*ping*ping*

"Fuck!!" she unconsciously blurted out.

"Tsk. Tsk. Dr. Flores, I don't like that mouth of yours that's another Mark down on your judgement." the bieng said "well be removing that from your privileges" it smiled.

Sam was confused and wanted to apologise regarding the miss conduct she had shown, not knowing if the entity was an investor of some sort, yet unable to say anything, baffled she tried to do it again, tried to make a sound yet nothing came out of her mouth.

She stared back at the mask in the screen, her mind slowly went to overdrive to find the source of her predicament, she was able to feel her mouth moving to form letters, so was she able to feel the vibrations made in her throat when air is passed through it.

Logically her mind made the conclusion that something is disabling her from hearing sound. Noting that she also stopped hearing the pings.

With glaring eyes. Sam proded the back of her head, going towards her neck, following her spine for any indication of cuts or stiches, in the off chance that they had planted some sort of chip into her spinal cord that could tamper her mental abilities.

Suddenly she is able to hear again. Yet what she hears is laughter. She looked back at the entity on the screen bewildered.

"Hahaahahaahaha, look at all you have done. Thinking so much. But thats not it. There is no chip."

Sam frowned and tried to rebut it but no sound came out.

"Well it seems that the tally had been done. I will be giving out your judgement" it said.

"Your judgement is based on your overall performance in life. good  deeds against your bad deeds which is positive vs negative, that you had done throughout your life" it explained while looking at something off screen " Ah. Such unfortunate of you. You had acquired a lot of negative before your death." it paused Sam noted that the voice was something she had been hearing but from not any single source in the room.

By now Sam was a loss at what had been revealed. This was scientifically impossible, there was no such thing as God, but logically following all the information she had receive, her mind came to one conclusion, this is the AFTERLIFE.

"Bingo! There you go, your actually better and smarter than the rest of your lot." it was now staring back at her and the mask now had a sad crying face etched into it " by the way, you would have gotten a net positive if you had someone who you shared that stuff you had been making, but we'll it's all in the past now. Am I right?" it joked.

*pop*pop*pop*

Turning to the sudden popping sound behind her, Sam saw a red door, her heartbeats suddenly spikes, unexplainable fear surge outwards from the door.

Looking back at the screen she saw the mask now smirking at her. " well then it's time to see what Your punishment is, I hope you get the mild ones like the blank slate." Sam saw a gnarled and dried still smoking hands slowly pushed a box towards the mask.

Suddenly Sam noticed that the rooms ambience changed from clean white to an awfully ominous mix shade of Gray and Red.

The mask now etched with the face of surprise announced " your punishement had been decided, congratulations you will keep most of your memories, but." it paused.

The mask said now smirking as the gnarled hand slowly crawled out of the screen.

Sam leaped out of the gnarled arms way as it slowly drag itself towards the door as red ash and smoldering flesh is left on its wake.

"Tsk" the mask said.

She turned back to the mask on the screen waiting for what the judgement was.