The first thing that clouted me was not the ice, not the bullets, not the soldiers. But Ashley’s father. I approached him and knelt by his side when I felt his punch to my nose, with the strength of an iron bar. I crashed into the floor, bleeding. Opaque red blood. Not in various shades of iridescence as that of the Enhanceds. Thank God. And it did not hurt. Not a twig. And not because I had lived through the raw Eugenex burn, not because I had lived through the Bridge, but, because, deep down, I thought I deserved it. Deep down, I guessed I still felt guilty about Ashley. So he was justified in punching me. To vent his wrath at me. I knew it wasn’t right venting off steam against others like that. But what could I do? When I had watched his daughter die in front of me, in front of thousands, and could not do a thing.

He approached me, but Ashley’s mom writhed in agony. I leaned toward her and gave her my jacket, but Ashley’s dad shoved me away and knelt by her side.

“Sweetie, are you alright?”

She didn’t answer.

“Are you okay? Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” he whispered into her ear.

“Cael, come,” she muttered. “I must tell you something.” She coughed. “Step aside,” she then told her husband.

I stepped towards her and knelt down. She whispered her last words into my ear. “Deep down, Ashley—”

I held my breath.

“—despised you.” She shut her eyes forever afterwards.

An ice blast froze my heart. And I felt worse than dead. Ashley despised me. How could she? Maybe her mom lied. Maybe she also wanted to take her revenge on me. But what if that was true? We had argued about her fascination with Eugenex, VirtuaNet, and the Tower of Rebirth, but I never thought she’d loathe me. I guessed I just didn’t want to see the truth.

Ashley’s dad then thrust me aside. “Why must you exist? Is your sole goal to make my life miserable? Is your sole purpose in life to rob me of my family, of my happiness?” He stood right in front of me and said, “Why don’t you just die?” and then clouted my face. But I blocked his punch this time. Because I had not caused Ashley’s death. Even if my mind told me otherwise. I thought he would jab me again, but he leaned by his wife. In tears. Devastated. He snatched my jacket and hurled it outside. His last effort in this world. Because he winced in wrathful pain and clutched his chest, right where his heart was taking its last beats, waning until life left his body. And cold silence led him to the Afterlife. So he and his wife could be with their daughter. Except that they had lived in hatred, in wrath. And I did not know of their fate.

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I prayed for them, and raced for the exit. The door was shutting. I just needed to slide beneath it. I would survive. Even if my heart coiled and my veins squirmed at the thought of me not doing enough; of me forsaking the corpses, forsaking the prisoners who had died. Because I had survived, and they had not. But if my family still lived, I could save them.

Or so I thought.

The door had shut. A second before I could reach it. My foot banged the door. And my mind chiseled that sound in my ears. I tried opening other doors, other exits, but accomplished nothing. My heart pulsed. I dashed to the control room and read the message on the central computer screen.

Facility shutdown process has been initiated.

The temperature would drop to –100°C. That’s what shutdown meant. I would freeze. Had escaped death by drowning. Only to suffer death by freezing. I gazed at the monitors. No one remained. Not Girgor. Not Marko. Not even a soldier. No one was there, only me. And I had no idea how to stop the shutdown process. I fumbled around with the control system but nothing happened. It was locked. I kept trying, trying to save myself, trying to do something but everything was for naught. And panic had begun to set in me, but I just took a deep breath and sat down. Had I died for nothing?

I lay down and gazed at the ceiling. And I saw her, Ashley … Almyra. I wiped my eyes and opened them. There she was, or they were. It was as if Almyra had merged with Ashley, or Ashley had merged with Almyra. She descended from the ceiling and stood still, as if waiting for me. I shook my head and approached her, but she vanished as I stood a quarter of a second away. She didn’t talk to me, didn’t see me even. She was just there, in the background.

Was Ashley fading in the background, in the background of my life? Or was it Almyra? And a frightening thought jolted me. What if Almyra was truly dead? On some level, I had the hope that she’d survived the raw Eugenex blast, along with my family, but what if that was God telling me that Almyra had already died? My guts wrenched, my veins writhed at that thought, and at the thoughts that followed. If Almyra had died, it would have meant that I wasn’t going insane, but if she was alive, then, I must have had Gieves Syndrome.

But I decided to invest my last minutes praying, not worrying about whether I was sane or not, or whether Almyra was alive or not. At least, until I saw something on the floor. Something that would save me. Something that would kill me.

A Eugenex vial.

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