The familiar electrostatic hum of cheap lighting and the soothing slosh of water, a strong odor of rust, then sensation; presaging… pain. Pain, bitter and robust, dragged Millie from the depths. Not the worst she’d known - but it was up there. It pulsed from her leg with every heartbeat, writhing up her body; a snake swaying to the cardiac rhythm. Heat burned in her muscles but it was the sort that spoke of slow recovery, not oncoming death. The least of her pains was the ache in her face, but it was the one that drew from Millie her first tentative movements. Her hand came up, gently, tenderly, to probe at her swollen nose. She winced, and someone responded - a surprised little chirp in the darkness. No, not dark, her eyes were just closed - she felt no desire to change that.

Gently guiding her hand from her face, Paul said. “You’re safe.”

She recalled the awful nightmare. That phantasmagoria of horror and madness was so clear, so vivid in her mind - it almost felt real. What had they pumped into her this time to conjure up such visions of madness? It felt like they’d had to operate on her again. Well her nose was broken so she must have fainted, maybe had another seizure? Had she finally been hit with a little cardiac arrest? The doctors said that wasn’t likely for at least a couple more years but…

“Millie, can you hear me, can you speak?” continued Paul, the normally amiable man sounding unusually wrung out.

“Mhyeah… S’hurts…” slurred Millie, as she let Paul dab her face with what felt like a wet cloth.

The bandaging around her head and leg felt strange, they weren’t applied with the usual precision. Her bed felt oddly elevated and lacked its usual downy softness. The blankets she was under were wrong; too thin and rough…

‘Why am I naked?’ she thought to herself.

“Not surprising, you’re pretty banged up.” Paul sighed, “Just glad you’re still with us.”

Had it been that close, had she almost carked it? Forcing her eyes open Millie saw an unfamiliar ceiling. When she rolled her head a mortuary cabinet dominated her vision, the remorseless steel edifice reminding her of the… Chichen Itzas, the emergency shelters. Her heart hammered, the burning grew worse, she started hyperventilating. No… oh no…

She was snapped out of a panic spiral by Paul grabbing her face - firm yet gentle - and turning her to look at him. He looked nearly as bad as she probably did - sallow and swollen with massive black bags granting weight to bloodshot, cloudy blue eyes. Brown hair plastered to his head in oily rivulettes.

“Breath. Focus on that. Breath - in and out.”

Millie did as instructed. It took a minute, but she collected herself - her head flopping back to stare at the roof as exhaustion filled the gaps from which panic had fled. The cog of her will turned, grinding steadily at the barrier that separated the impossible from the true until it became naught but dust. She accepted the frigid reality: the sky had broken, the world had ended, billions - billions - had died. A catastrophe on a scale that no being on earth, of those relative few that remained, could ever truly comprehend. As stated by common dramatic axiom: Nothing would ever be the same.

Paul spoke as Millie settled down, “Don’t move, just rest.” He paused briefly, then continued. “There’s fractures in your leg, or some ligament damage in the knee, or both - I can’t be certain. All of the imaging equipment down here is broken, pretty much everything is really; except the backup generator, the lights, and the refrigeration - thank god.”

When Millie didn’t respond, Paul continued, “Andrew’s fine, sleeping, a little bruised from when he fell down the stairs after everything…” Millie turned again to face Paul only to see his face cast towards the floor, brows furrowed. “Well,” He looked back up, “I don’t actually know what happened at the end there. It lasted less than a second and then everything was fine - do you remember it? You passed out right after, or maybe during I think.”

Millie found that she did remember it - that horrible moment where it felt as if all reality had turned itself towards her utter annihilation. She remembered the deal she’d made, the voice… How did she remember anything? Had she read a little too much into the terminology the voice had used: ‘Acquisition’? Something to worry about later, when she wasn’t stewing in pain and confusion - for now she would simply be grateful.

“Yeah.” Millie muttered, voice nasal and hoarse. “I remember.”

“Well either way it looks like your plan, whatever it was, worked.” Paul said, looking back towards where the stairs must have been. “Something like those ‘shelters’ invisible walls sealed us down here. Either we can’t see through this one, or it’s pitch black outside.” Paul paused, swallowed. “Or there’s nothing out there. Nothing at all.”

Paul made a sweeping gesture towards the rest of the room as he summoned up a false ease for Millie’s benefit. The morgue was, Millie supposed, everything a morgue was meant to be. Stainless steel and ceramics dominated a functional facility of metal tables, gurneys, and wooden cupboards filled with an assortment of medical supplies. There was something deeply antiquated about the place: An old-school wall phone dangled miserably from its cord near a vintage looking trashcan marked for bio-waste. Across from the corpse cabinet was a half-full complex looking blue-tiled sink from the 50s. A broadly built woman in a knit checkered cardigan stood in front of it, systematically filling an assortment of containers with water.

“Oh! Sorry.” Said Paul, following Millie’s gaze. “That’s Olivia, one of the hospital morticians. Apparently when everything started happening she decided to hunker down here. Everyone else must have run for it.”

Olivia either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the attention. She continued the mechanical process of filling up the containers, her repetition precise even as something about her demeanor struck Millie as vague and unfocused.

“She hasn’t said much, she’s… I mean. It seems stupid to say - but she’s taking ‘it’ hard.”

“What?” Croaked Millie. “You mean the end of the world?”

Paul’s eyes were wet and pleading as he asked, “You don’t really think...?”

Millie gulped, throat dry, gesturing towards one of the containers of water. Paul, seeming relieved to have an escape from that train of thought, quickly fetched it for Millie. The sensation of that lukewarm tap water flowing into her, revitalizing her brackish blood, was amongst the most wonderful she’d ever known. After Paul helped Millie take a few more careful sips, she waved him back a bit - taking a deep breath with a suddenly-usable throat.

“Yeah, I do.” Said Millie, firmly.

“Bu-”

“What else you gonna call that nightmare? A ‘bolt from the fucken’ blue’?!”

The sharp cut of pain across her still-dry throat alerted Millie to her rising voice. It was good that it had, as judging by the embodiment of misery wilting before her, Paul hadn’t needed Millie’s ‘assurance’.

They stewed in silence for a time, neither meeting the other's gaze, Olivia serenely bottling away. Andrew, rubbing sleep from his eyes, appeared through a previously-unnoticed doorway. No longer basically naked, he was wearing a pair of too-small sweatpants and an even-too-smaller ‘Hootie & the Blowfish’ sweater. It was enough to dispel the gloom, at least for a time.

“There’s better ways to let us know you aren’t dead, Millie.” He said, grogginess unable to conceal his delight.

Millie waved limply at him, happy for the distraction. “Hey. Diggin’ the new look, man.”

Andrew’s only response was a concerted effort to pull the hem of the sweater below his belly button. When he finally realized the impossibility of this task Andrew just stood there, the shame of his stupid defeat plastered over a bruised face. He looked as if he was going to burst into tears. Millie made it halfway to a giggle, sounding quite a bit like a dog failing to vomit, before cursing and slapping a hand over the golf ball sized lump that had colonized her nose. Even Paul, stooped with the entire world’s weight, managed a faint curve of the lip.

A simple moment of humanity proved an immeasurable balm; enough for this trio born of circumstance and eventually their reticent fourth to gather around and start perhaps the first conversation of its kind. ‘The world just ended, we’re alive, what now?’

First they discussed the matter of necessities - starting with what they had. Water, for now, wasn’t an issue: The taps had been working for nearly a full day after the countdown finished and Olivia maintained the wherewithal to collect as much as she could while the late arrivals were recovering from their flight. Turned out Millie had slept for nearly twenty two hours.

Power came up next: One of Dignity’s many emergency generators was down there with them and had enough fuel stored to keep the basement and first floor of the hospital going for the government-mandated ninety-six hours. With the first floor destroyed and most of the electronics in the basement inoperable the group assumed they’d be able to keep the power going for a long while - though no one had the confidence to put forth anything specific. Olivia monosyllabically clarified that the morgue cabinet and other temperature control systems would be an issue: They’d draw more power than everything else in the basement combined. Both the power hogs would just have to be culled. Olivia was tasked with stalling the decay of the decanted corpses for as long as possible, and for when that eventually failed, find a way to dispose of them. Finally they made the easy decision of only keeping the generator on when they were awake and generally just being stingy with the lights. All told the group was pretty confident they wouldn’t be stuck in the dark anytime soon.

Last of what they actually had in the possessed-necessities category was clothing and shelter: Plenty of room to sleep, linens to bundle in (if you could ignore their previous purpose), and a whole range of ill-fitting fashions straight out of a mortuary locker room. Not much to worry about here other than the possibility of Andrew shuffling about in makeshift togas.

The next conversations were more sobering - what they needed, but didn’t have. Andrew, of course, was quick to bring up the food situation. He’d already run an ‘inventory’ and things were dire. There were some packed lunches and late night snacks stored about the compound, but that only amounted to maybe a dozen and a half meals at most. The only other supplies were the snacks in Millie's bag: some baggies of cooked vegetables and fruit, a few handfuls of nuts and a box of rice crackers - hardly a feast. Andrew complained bitterly about the contents of Millie’s stash, who tried to play along with a line about how her stomach would use anything it was armed with in an attempt at storming her intestinal tract’s bastille. It didn’t do much to lift the mood, which only soured further when Olivia tilted her head in a very particular direction. They all stared at the indicated cabinet, contemplating Olivia’s ghoulish proposition.

“Least they’re frigerated.” snarked Millie.

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“No way. Absolutely not.” said Paul, flatly.

“Do we really got a choice?” Questioned Andrew.

“Sure we do.” Rebuked Paul. “We can choose to not be cannibals!”

“You say that now, but what about in two weeks? What about four? ”

“We’ll… figure something out.”

“Figure out what? We’re stuck down here, maybe forever…” Andrew trailed off, growing pensive, having finally evoked the dire possibility that had been lurking in the corner of all their minds.

Millie broke the brief silence, “If we’re dying down here anyway I’m with Paul. And you two’ll agree once you think it through.”

Millie waved a hand towards the mortuary cabinet, continuing. “We’ll need to keep ‘em fresh as long as possible, yeah? Well then that means we’ll have to keep the generator goin all the time. Unless there’s stuff in those cabinets that’ll preserve thawed corpses while keeping ‘em edible?”

Olivia shook her head in the negative.

“Right, so, that means generator on - and lights off. Only way to string out more power for the fridge. Otherwise by the time we’ll really be hungry enough to eat ‘em they’ll be bad anyway.”

Andrew raised a hand in proposition, “We could dry the meat, start some fires.”

“No.” Stated Olivia, shaking her head. “Dangerous.”

Paul clarified, “There’s lots of flammable chemicals down here that we really don’t want near open flames, and whatever we have that’s safe to burn wouldn’t last long anyway.”

“Cool, great.” Continued Millie, flopping back prone onto her gurney with a sigh. “So that means, if we do this, here’s the picture of our final days: Cold, eatin strips of raw long pork in the dark, wondering who’ll be the first refresher for the rations.” Millie raised her hand, “That’ll be me, by the way. If we do this I'm runnin a scalpel across my neck the moment you aint looking.”

Things lapsed into awkward uncertainty after that, with no one sure how to continue the planning session. It took Andrew calling for a snack break and everyone splitting one of Millie’s clammy baggies of roasted carrots to get the ball rolling again. Paul, leveraging the food-logistics skills from his nurse work, decided to take charge stretching out what little they had for as long as possible.

Paul brought up oxygen immediately afterwards, surprising the others with what seemed in retrospect an obvious issue. They all vividly recalled that terrible instant before their mysterious reprieve and it had involved, in part, suffocation. It was evident that the basement had been sealed when the hospital collapsed, which according to Paul, had occurred shortly after their tumble into the morgue. Millie, being unconscious at the time, had missed her nearly-fatal spill - prevented only by a last second turn that had transformed Andrew from Millie’s likely-crusher into her life-saving cushion. Andrew blithely brushed off her effusive apologies. Pressing on, Millie attempted a description of what she’d seen in the sky during her run to the Chichen Itza. It proved frustratingly inadequate; but was enough for the group to assume something catastrophic had happened to the planet’s atmosphere. They fell into a pensive silence, considering their options.

Millie’s thoughts were elsewhere. As she’d scrambled to adequately conjure what had been happening throughout the damn galaxy, if the cosmos doing the salsa were any evidence, she’d noticed something missing. A gap in her memories, a few seconds of nothing: She remembered the flight back to the hospital, seeing that family - dead now - huddled in the car, Andrew reaching the door, and then it all blanked out - a void in her recollection. Her next memory was of pointing limply toward the morgue, magnitudes more exhausted and confused than she’d been before the blackout. It took some willful effort but she brushed the issue aside for now, their situation too tenuous to allow for self-interested distractions. But the realization that bits of her memory were indeed missing resolved Millie to thoroughly comb her brain for more anomalies when circumstances permitted.

Andrew only made the situation worse when he broke the silence with a question regarding how exactly the generator was ventilating. In a fresh new panic Andrew and Paul practically fell over each other in a rush to the generator room. Millie, bound to her gurney for the foreseeable future, had no recourse but to wait for their fate to be divined. The much-relieved pair returned a few minutes later - it appeared the fumes were venting just fine according to some monitering equipment in the room, which, of course, led to the question of ‘how’. Either way, if the exhaust from the generator was venting properly they could probably say the same for what they were exhaling. Paul made sure to clarify that this did not mean they could assume they were getting fresh oxygen through whatever means the smoke was escaping. Luckily the basement was pretty big so there would be plenty of oxygen trapped down there with them - Paul suspected the air would be breathable for at least a few weeks. Even with the somewhat-good news Paul was growing increasingly frustrated at the impossible ventilation situation. Where was everything venting if the building had collapsed on top of them, and how? A hospital basement filtration system wasn’t normally designed with depressurization in mind - which they were still assuming is what had happened to the planet’s surface. Millie decided that now was the time to bring up a conversation she’d been avoiding - a small price to pay to stop Paul’s broken-physics-brain-spiraling.

“I… think I’ve an idea how that’s happening.”

Paul gave Millie a rather skeptical look, but Andrew and even Olivia seemed keen to hear what she had to say.

“I uh.” Millie scratched at her nose, immediately regretting it. “Kinda made a deal.”

“With who? What sort of deal?” replied a bemused Paul.

“Yeah, so - you all got that voice in your head, right?”

“Right.” returned the chorus, excepting Olivia; she just nodded.

“And did it, uh, say anything about ‘memory acquisition’?”

“Hey, yeah - you too?” Replied Andrew, tapping the side of his head with a meaty finger. “Seems weird something like that would ask permission but I, heh, ‘politely declined’.”

“It asked me as well. But, I mean - you’d have to be a real idi-” Paul paused mid-statement. Judging by his expression there was a sugar glider wearing lingerie hanging off Millie’s forehead.

“Yeah… I did.” Admitted Millie, shooting for sheepish with her smile but hitting shit-eating instead.

“Wow. So. How’s the brain doing then?” chirped Andrew.

“Not bad. I’ve found a missing bit, but it seems all the stuff I need to be me is still rattling around in there somewhere. Got you all fooled if it aint.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Got bigger problems, obviously.”

“Why’d you even do it!” Shouted Paul, who’d finally pulled his jaw off the floor.

“Easy man, chill. Told you I made a deal.”

“With the… voice?”

“Yup. Figured it was the bargaining sort when it negotiated down after being rejected the first time - turns out I was right. It gets my memories, we get a place to survive whatever was about to happen - easy deal.”

Paul fell back into contemplation after that. Wheels visibly turning in his rectangular noggin. He glanced around the room, as if looking for something. Olivia, brows furrowed, made a birdlike tilt of the head.

“Huh. Well thanks. Figured you as the self-sacrificing sort when you did what you did for that kid.” Andrew said, presenting his fist to Millie. “Even so, I can't imagine that was an easy risk to take.”

Millie made another gagging-dog-snort, “Snkt. No~ it wasn’t. But I didn’t really have much to lose, so - ” she returned Andrew’s fistbump, “ -here we are. Kid’s name’s Lucas by the way.”

“If your story is true shouldn’t we all try to make deals with this… ‘voice’?” stated Olivia - the first full sentence Millie had heard her string together.

Paul enthusiastically continued Olivia’s train of thought, “Yeah… that’s the solution, isn’t it? If the rest of us do it right, we may be able to trade our way to some sort of sustainable long term existence down here. As it stands it looks like all Millie got us was shelter and short term survival.”

“Geeze man, I guess I’ll try a little harder next time I’m forced to conduct mental negotiations with a nigh-omnipotent alien narrator while the fuckin’ planet explodes around me.”

Paul waved Millie off apologetically, “No, I didn’t mean it like that. You saved us all, really, thank you. But what we’re doing here is trying to figure out something longer term, and there it is - here’s the answer.”

Andrew countered, clearly uncomfortable, “I don’t know Paul. Memories don’t seem like the sort of thing you give up just because it’s…” Andrew trailed off, fishing for the right word.

“Expedient.” Supplied Millie.

“Right, yeah, that.”

“But it’s like you said, Andrew: There’s absolutely no telling how long we’ll be stuck down here. It really could be forever, or at least the rest of our lives. It’s pretty clear we’ll be out of food before the month, if we’re not lucky enough to suffocate first.”

“But that's time - a whole month of it.” Said Andrew. “Like you said: Maybe we can figure something out.”

Paul paused to consider his response, and Millie cut in to speak, “We don’t know if the thing’s still keen to barter.”

“It isn’t.”, came the immediate reply from Olivia.

When the others leveled their gazes at the taciturn woman she quietly stared back, Paul eventually breaking the stalemate with a hesitant probe.

“You’ve… already tried?”

Olivia nodded.

“And it… didn’t respond?”

Olivia shook her head. Paul looked between Andrew and Millie helplessly. The former rolled their shoulders and took the torch of the interrogation.

“Well, what did it say?”

“Denied.” Olivia raised a hand in limp mockery of quotation marks. “Unable to perform auxiliary tasks at this time.”

Millie pondered, “That’s a different rejection than what it gave me. What’cha ask for?”

“Anything.”

“Hah, okay… In exchange for what?”

Something about Olivia’s response, her slackened jaw and glassy eyes, sent a needling chill up Millie’s spine.

“Everything.”

Paul and Millie shared a glance with one another as Olivia seemed drawn away to some distant illusion. This person was not stable. Andrew, blissfully unaware, sat up on one of the metal tables with a snort.

“So much for that plan. All the better I’d say.”

“Well maybe ‘at this time’ means it’ll be willing to negotiate later?” Paul considered.

“Sure.” Millie said with a strained smirk. “Once we’re all desperate enough to offer the same, ah, ‘generous terms’ Olivia did. It’s what I’d do.”

Leaning back in surprise, Andrew muttered. “Damn Millie.”

Paul just nodded in agreement. “No, she’s right. This ‘voice’ either lacks the power or the will to ensure our survival. That means there’s something it wants from us - or needs - considering the effort it’s already put in. It’d be good if we could figure out exactly what that is.”

“I’ll handle that.” Said Millie, raising a hand. “I’m the only one that’s managed to deal with it, and there’s not much else I can do right now anyway other than think.” She paused, pointed at her bag. “Unless anyone is down for some go?”

Andrew and Paul scattered as if the indicated bag had suddenly started to tick. Olivia stared at the bag for a moment, then a briefly-hopeful Millie, and walked off without a word. As the others prepared to attend to their assigned tasks Millie held a small hope in her heart for the future: Eventually, they’d cave and play a round.