Chapter 30 – Epilogue

Her eyes burned like they’d been set aflame. She clenched them tight and trembled as a wretched cough, like bloody gravel, blasted through her throat. Mercifully, the intense light finally switched off with a sharp sound that cleaved against her ears. Everything hurt.

When the blurring and pain abated enough for her to look around, she saw piping above her, dense and pale like twisted bones. She tried to raise her head, but her muscles just tensed back and forth.

Swallowing was a fearful ordeal with her breathing shallow and raspy. With everything else, she felt pinpricks all across her body. And her nose itched like crazy.

Coughing again, she noticed a gray machine hovering above her. It made sounds like a nervous bird and a few arms bent down. It wrapped something around her and then swiveled her one way then another. Out of little projections, it blasted wet puffs that felt cold and slimy where the pinpricks were. It sprayed her several more times before an injector pressed against her elbow with something warm and tingly. It then flashed something in her eyes and left.

What she noticed first was that the pain had receded to an annoying throb. The cough had become a faint tickle. And she could see a little better. She leaned her neck gently around to look.

On all sides, she found white walls like the inside curve of an eggshell. She reached an arm out and paused as she caught sight of that arm. It was bruised all over with little patches which looked like healing gouges. The back of her hand was stiff and mottled like an old burn. On her arm and to her shoulder, she could see her muscles as they flexed and relaxed. Even doing that felt tiring. Her arms were thinner than she’d ever seen them, and her muscles looked so frail. Her legs could barely push against the bed.

She was able to raise a hand to touch her face. She twitched to find her hair long and flowing over her hand. She always had it cropped short. Military. Yeah, she was in the military. But her name felt just out of reach.

A minute later, the machine returned, moved over her, and lowered the walls of her bed. Next to her was another eggshell bed with another machine darting over someone else. Her eyes weren’t able to see far but all she could see were beds in row after row in a gray hallway.

Taking a breath, she reached an arm out and clutched the side of the bed. She clenched her teeth and panted as she tried to pull her body to the edge. Nudge by nudge, breath by breath, she moved until she was on the other side. But there was nothing to hold onto when she got there. Flailing, she felt herself tumble over the edge of the bed until the machine wrapped around her again and caught her before she plunged to the ground.

She pressed against the grip, afraid it would just set her back in bed again. But it tipped her forward and into a sleek, silvery wheelchair positioned at the foot. It was hard to stay comfortably seated in the chair, but it tilted backward for her. By her right hand on the armrest was a small controller. She nudged it forward and the chair motored ahead.

The other beds around her were shifting and the machines were repositioning people. She appeared to be the first up. She pushed the controller right and looked at the foot of her bed.

In etched words, it said, “Processing and Replacement Component 29”. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. It was still challenging to remember. She had an impression of her name, but it was just out of reach.

What memory came first was of the radiant woman in the darkness. She called herself Mona. She said a lot of things. About a rich lady named Simona Hatch. The name felt like something she’d read in a Forbes article online once. What Mona said felt like a nightmare. Plugged into a computer and used like a machine. She gritted her teeth at the words on her bed and turned away.

Mona also told her, “You are connected to a person inside this system. A being of living data. Her name is Marley. She kept your soul safe for you for when you wake up.”

She wasn’t sure what to think of a computer talking about a soul. The name Marley felt familiar. It felt like a relative, someone close. But it didn’t feel like her name. When she didn’t try to think of her name, it finally burst through her clouded consciousness.

Russell. Melissa. Melissa Russell. Corporal Melissa “Lissy” Russell. How could she ever forget? With her name came a rush of memories. Missions in rough fatigues. Riding along in planes. An explosion. Then just bits and pieces. Something…yes. They had her up and talking to a man who rarely smiled.

He gave her a paper, a contract. She had to sign it. Something about benefits for her care and recovery. They sent her somewhere else. Somewhere with not a lot of people. And that was all she remembered.

Melissa pushed herself up in the chair and looked around. Others were being placed into chairs too. Some were protesting, others screaming, a lot of yelling. She nudged her control around and turned to face an adjoining hallway.

Some of the connecting rooms looked like rooms in normal residences with furniture spread about. She rolled around a little and continued on. She approached a black glass digital clock in a wall.

4:50 AM. July 11th. 2056.

The last date she could specifically remember was in 2040. She was born in 2013. A dark shiver raced through her thoughts as she looked back at the year. Bullshit. It had to be bullshit!

Bracing herself against the chair, she nudged it forward until she came to a bathroom area as gray and utilitarian as everything else in this place. She looked at the mirror over the sink and took the deepest breath she could.

Pushing a button below the controller, she was able to raise the chair high enough to see her reflection. She stared and tried to breathe normally. She remembered the scars across her head (shrapnel) from the last time she saw her face, but the marks were barely visible. Her eyes looked the same, but the lines around her face and the patches of frozen gray in her dark hair looked fake. Had to be fake. She was just twenty-seven the last time she went to sleep. She had a friend back home she hoped might become more. She…

She tried to breathe as she felt too shocked to find tears. She splashed water from the sink on her face and dried herself with a nearby towel.

She kept the date out of her head and returned to the area with beds. Simona. Fucking cunt. Fucking bitch. Her and her fucking contracts and turning her, turning all these people into her spare parts. She wanted to fucking choke her with her bare hands. But she could hardly close them without feeling tension and tiredness. Despite that, all the pains and all the weakness she felt were starting to ebb away. She could sit up in the chair if she really tried.

Melissa made her way around to the beds and helped those who were getting into their chairs. This was familiar. Helping. No matter if she was in the Ground Zero rubble of Mumbai, the Blue Zone of Tashkent, or a training base in Istanbul. She felt better this way. And there was something else Mona told her.

She said that her ‘soul’ wasn’t only linked to this Marley. Marley was linked to others, to people waking up. Mona explained to her that she made sure that she and ‘Marley’s friends’ would be among those waking up. She didn’t really get it, but she had some names in her head left by Mona. Umm…Marisa. Nicolas. Olivia?...that one was a bit weird, but she was sure that was it. And then there was one which had several names connected to it or it was actually several people. Seth. Jessica. Marlise. She’d have to try them all.

So, as she was helping and directing people and trying to keep panic to a minimum, she also asked about those names. Did anyone know them? Were the names familiar? Those waking up (she estimated about two-thirds were women) could only offer frowns and shrugs. Most of them seemed younger than her.

Some wanted to find the exit, to contact family. The ripple of fear was that the outside world was a nuclear wasteland, a warning from Mona which they’d all heard. Some didn’t believe Mona. Some wanted to hunt down Simona. Most milled about without any goal in mind. Melissa bumped chairs when she needed to.

Once things had settled down a little and plans were starting to come together, a petite young woman with flowing blond hair in a messy tangle crept over to her in her wheelchair and offered, “Excuse me?...You were asking about a Marisa? I think I remember her.” Her voice had a slight Australian accent.

The blond girl was about a decade younger than her and dressed in the same gray gown they all wore. She called herself “Grace Bell” and recounted what she could. She’d been really sick growing up and was part of an experimental drug study to treat her illness. However, by the time she was in her teens, it had become very costly for her family to pay for. Then, one day, a man with a contract and a special offer from billionaire “philanthropist” Simona Hatch showed up. So far as Marisa, she frowned and offered, “I remember, being a boy actually maybe. And then I was a girl and then it got kinda confusing because she…Marisa, I think…wanted to make boys into girls. And there was a lot of scary stuff. It feels like bits of nightmares.”

Grace recalled a lot more than Melissa did. Marley still only existed as some name she knew she should know, but the rest was inscrutable. Still, Melissa gave Grace the best hug she could offer with how they were positioned in their chairs.

Soon after that, they met up with “Olivia”. She still looked young, about the age Melissa expected herself to be. She sobbed a lot and spoke more like a younger girl than a grown woman. She gave her name as Natalie and asked, “Where’s my mom? I wanna go. I don’t want to be here. Why am I here? I felt all fuzzy in my head when I was in the shower. And then I woke up…what happened?” Melissa felt a dark wince of sympathy and offered Natalie the best hug she could without exhausting herself.

Food soon came from the machines as a squeeze bottle of the most wretched-looking off-white goop. The taste was manageable though and it settled their stomachs. Some of the people waking up were searching for a kitchen with “real food” but Melissa figured they would just be throwing it up as soon as they ate it. Natalie clung to Melissa’s chair and asked an odd question, “Are you my big sister?”

Melissa’s first reflex was to gently answer ‘no’ but she resisted. There was something familiar with the notion. She had to shrug and offer, “I don’t know, but I promise I’ll take care of you.” This brought the faintest shimmer of a smile to Natalie’s face.

Together, they tracked down a woman trying out glasses held in a robot’s claw. She was nearly Melissa’s age with her long brown hair tied in a haphazard ponytail. She introduced herself as Ashley Watson. She spun a story of working part-time as a Freenet reporter. She studied reports of missing prisoners and the Hatching New Lives Foundation. She was charged with corporate espionage, but she got as far as information on a private island in the Hawaiian chain before she got t-boned by a black van while driving home. The rest was a blur. Then, she pursed her lips and said, “Mona told me about Nicolas…”

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She looked nervous and a bit embarrassed as she said, “I remember being strong. I remember trying to help others. I also remember feeling lost and being unable to help despite everything I tried. And I remember having a sister…Jessica.”

Melissa envied her memory. She was still stuck with just a name. Ashley recognized the ‘Marley’ name right away and offered, “You’re not what I expected…” Melissa could only shrug. To her, their group looked like survivors from a prison camp.

They cursed about Simona a while, although Melissa kept it clean enough for Natalie. Still, there was a nagging question on their minds: The outside world.

None of them had found anything marking an exit and the bots, though attending to their needs, didn’t seem to respond to questions. Eventually, Melissa announced, “I’m going to go searching for it. And maybe a radio and some sort of radiation counter.”

Natalie curled up as much as her legs would allow. Melissa reassured her she would be back soon and left Grace in charge.

Up several ramps, Melissa found the others had already started searching as well. One room had a recording area with video equipment she recognized. Waving her hand through the screen, brought up a video of Simona Hatch looking much younger than she remembered her being in photos. Melissa suspected the image was a synthetic avatar blended with a live background. She punched through the image field and Simona’s smirking face to turn the equipment off.

Moving on, she questioned whoever she came across but didn’t have success until she discovered a dusty office area with a wide desk. A redheaded woman was bending near a safe in the wall. Melissa rolled over to help her.

It wasn’t locked, so a few good whacks from the side of the wheelchair proved enough to jar the stuck safe door open. Inside, Melissa finally found the radiation tracker and radio she was hoping for, along with a GPS and a flare gun, among other things. She took as much as she could and introduced herself to the redhead, who gave her name as Rachel (which was all she could remember).

When asked about Mona, Rachel strained a bit but was sure she’d told her that her name was “Jessica”. That was one more found, leaving whoever Seth and Marlise were. Rachel offered to go with Melissa in search of the exit.

Rachel had a warm beauty to her face which put Melissa’s to shame, even though she estimated they were both about the same age. As they rolled down one of the longer corridors, Rachel muttered a bit to herself and started to work out some details from her memory.

She recalled her mother, oddly enough. She made movies. For some reason, Rachel had the feeling she made movies too. Melissa smiled and told her, “You definitely look pretty enough to be an actress.” Rachel bowed her head and offered, “Maybe once. I don’t want to know how I look now. I’m afraid. So many years vanished into nothingness.”

Melissa clutched her hand automatically and said, “You look fine. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m here.” After she’d said it, Melissa frowned to herself. What an odd thing to say! They’d just met. Sure, supposedly, they knew each other through their souls or whatever. But still…

Rachel nodded gently and let Melissa lead the way up a few more ramps until they got to an elevator shaft. It took a few minutes to power up the elevator, but it had enough space inside for both of their chairs to fit comfortably.

It was a long ride up with gray walls showing through the windows. At the top, they looked on in disappointment at a long flight of stairs leading to another corridor. But Melissa wasn’t ready to give up. She pushed her chair ahead as far as it would go, up to the first step and then looked on in surprise as the wheels lifted and shifted to carry her upwards. The progress was slow, but it balanced carefully even when she leaned back.

At the top of the stairs, they found another long corridor heading into a sealed shipping room. Only after breaking a control console were they able to retract the door with an override switch.

The view outside was disheartening: an uneven, bleak landscape before dawn with a haze everywhere. The sky seemed black with only the faintest hint of blue. Melissa held out her Geiger counter. She put Rachel on the radio and flashlight. They moved slowly and listened. Before long, they realized the bleak landscape did have a truck path cut into it as Rachel swept her light along the ground. Furthermore, Melissa began to realize what they were sitting on despite the dim light.

She looked around and frowned as she announced, “This is a lava field…” It was old enough to be cool and stable. She remembered something about a geothermal vent. If this was somewhere in the Hawaiian island chain, like Ashley suggested, then it made sense.

Their chair wheels navigated the dark, hilly terrain without so much as a bump along the way. Rachel sniffed the air and felt the breeze as she said, “I smell the ocean. It can’t be far...”

It wasn’t long before masses of green, tropical plants sprouted from the gray earth. From there, the ground softened and soon became pale sand with a sprinkling of ash. They could hear the ocean and were soon before it.

The waves were deep and dark, but an edge of pink and yellow was beginning to lace the horizon from the rising sun. It was a little easier to see.

The Geiger counter hadn’t made a peep the whole time, but Rachel’s radio was picking something up. They followed the shoreline past a small dock that joined with a dirt path. They could see the silhouettes of mountains behind them in the haze. The haze followed out onto the water.

Eventually, they could hear voices on the radio. A little further and it was perfectly clear. Rachel passed the radio to Melissa, who yelled into the receiver, “Hello? Is anyone there? We need help!”

Trembling, she listened as a voice announced themselves as part of a US Coast Guard watchkeeping station and asked, “Boat at sea? Name? Coordinates?”

Melissa told them, “Not a boat. I’m Marine Corporal Melissa Russell. We’re on an island. I have the coordinates here…” She read them off the GPS a few times to make sure they were correct and added, “We’ve been held captive on a private island by Simona Hatch.”

They could hear scattered talk and static before the voice asked, “Please repeat? Did you say Simona Hatch?” Melissa could sense surprise on the line. Leaning back, she said, “That’s right. Her private fucking island.”

After another pause of static, the person on the other end said, “We’re sending help immediately. Hold on.”

Melissa dipped her head down and asked, with her mouth tensed, “So….how are things there? We were told…they were bad.”

The line was quiet before the question, “How do you mean? The tropical storm? There’s still a lot of cloud cover, but it’s passed. Our birds should be able to land without problems.”

Leaning back in her chair as the tide ebbed and flowed, Melissa said, “We were told about…a nuclear strike…orchestrated by Simona Hatch.”

A soft, “Oh my God…” came through before the main voice said, “How long have you guys been there?”

Sighing to herself, Melissa answered, “Far longer than anyone would ever want. I think I’ve been here since 2040 or so. Is….the current year 2056?”

The person on the other end confirmed that as Melissa shut her eyes and tried not to feel sick. They seemed to sense that rattled her and offered, “What you said…it was in 2041. It was when she became an international fugitive. Intentionally-faulty missile command programming. I don’t remember everything. Closest scare in decades, if not for the folks in the silos who refused to fire. Some of them died. Everyone has been hunting for her. They thought she was long dead. What the hell has she been doing?”

Melissa looked to Rachel and offered only, “It’s a long story...”

“Right…umm…rescue is airborne. Any word on injured?”

“Several dozen people confined to wheelchairs due to decade-long comas.”

The person on the other end was silent a moment before reiterating, “We’ll be there soon!”

Setting the radio down, Melissa looked at the ocean as it crashed against the shore. The sound was calming. In the sky, the bleakness of night had lifted to reveal a deep blue tone to the sky beyond the haze. Looking out, Melissa thought of a vast box above them and her eyes widened.

She gasped and looked over at Rachel. The face was different and so much else but something about the presence, the glow in her eyes... Seth. Jessica. Marlise. Rachel. The names didn’t matter. Here sat her friend.

Softly, on the verge of tears, Melissa spoke the names and the same feeling clicked for Rachel. She looked on Melissa with bright eyes and said, “Marley…”

Though confined by their chairs, they clutched at one another and wept as friends.

They shared what they remembered and even laughed a little. The haze had begun to clear with the bright pinpricks of stars hanging over them in the blue.

Sniffling, Melissa said, “Things are going to change. The people coming to rescue us will try to unplug the others.”

Rachel nodded but said, matter-of-factly, “We’ll just have to protect them and explain.”

Melissa cradled her head and noted, “There’ll be a lot of explaining. My gosh…and my parents, I hope they’re okay. So many years gone forever because of that evil woman.”

Clutching her hand, Rachel offered, “I’m sure your parents are fine. Same as mine. There’ll be so much to catch up on...”

Melissa pressed her lips together. “I’ve missed so much life. So much gone. I almost wish this wasn’t real. I almost wish this was another dream and I’ll just wake up and I’ll be in some triage room on a base and everything will be just like it was.”

Rachel pressed herself closer and said, “I don’t know if this is a dream. It could be. But that would be a shame. Because I’m glad you’re here, my friend, no matter what comes...”

They leaned their heads against one another and watched the sun rise together. They watched the tide flow over itself and curl back. On the horizon, they could imagine the sleek white-and-orange pattern of a coast guard helicopter. Above them in the brightening sky, silently, the stars were winking out.

~The End~