by Richard Dusk
Garrett looked at other people's faces to see if they realize there is an earthquake outside, but no one seemed to be interested in it.
"What about those creatures living up there that Whitkis mentioned? Don't tell me you've got zombies here," Garrett took a folder and opened it.
"Zombies? Oh," Sarah looked unpleased, but not disconcerted with his question. "I'll just say it as it is. As the water quickly flooded other levels, people had no way to get out of there on time. They drowned, and we left them there. Those Whitkis is sitting with are the few colleagues lucky enough not to be among them," she said, and Garrett raised his eyes from the papers. "I said it's just the way it is."
"Many died already, Sarah, but why do you think I can finish Hikls's research? I'm not convinced that I remember anything we could use. Despite, I've got no idea what Hikls did there. It could take months to develop a new device that would be at least a bit similar to CHED and other months to make it stronger than the previous version," he browsed through the pages she gave him.
"Garrett, you've got three weeks at most," she said earnestly, and he began choking on the coffee. Coughing, he wiped his mouth and deeply breathed to calm his throat. "Sorry. There is almost everything to build CHED in these documents and labs, but we're missing a few pages, which makes it impossible to utilize it. Hikls destroyed some to prevent anyone from rebuilding it completely."
"If he wanted to prevent rebuilding it, then I believe he had a good reason to do so."
"Look, Garrett, Ocrosir is not a natural molecule that could occur by accident, and I dare to say that it shouldn't exist in this world at all, but it happened. If it's the reason for everything happening out there due to the properties it has, we must destroy it. We did many experiments to utilize all it offered, but the results came unsatisfactory. It may sound strange, but apparently, only you can finish it. You know how his mind worked, you developed Ocrosir, and you understand its physics way better than all of us down here combined," she leaned closer to him. "I know I'm asking you to do impossible, but you won't be alone to do this. Most of the CHED is already built, but it needs some corrections, finishing touches, and finding a way how to unleash the power it possesses. Please try your best. And if it's not for you or anyone of us in here, do it at least for the girl you came with."
Garrett didn't like the game she played with him about Jillian, but after all, he felt it that way. He wasn't doing this for Sarah, and he certainly didn't care much about his life. But he cared about Jillian's.
"All right, Sarah. I can't promise anything, but I'll try to finish it. I'm going to take a look at this file, and then I want you to give me at least one capable assistant and tell him to prepare everything I'll need. Okay? You'll be the first I call when I find something out, and then we may commence the project. Before I leave you here, I want you to promise me to take care of Jillian," he began packing all papers back to the folder.
"Of course, Garrett. You've got nothing to worry about. She's delightful," she smiled at him and wrote something on the laptop.
With no other words, Garrett took his coffee and folder and left her sitting there alone with a satisfied look. He still couldn't believe anything they've spoken about and felt the pressure falling on him again.
Chapter 13 The Clock Is Ticking
Jillian woke up lying on her left side in a soft, warm bed. She deeply breathed in as much as ribs allowed her to fill lungs with air and traveled with eyes across the softly lighted empty wall to cannula on her hand. Fingers felt like somebody else's, and she could barely stretch arms and clench fists. She had to be lying there for eternity as muscles turned stiff and weak. When she wanted to bend her legs, she couldn't do it.
"What the hell?" she strived to move them.
Muscles pushed and contracted, but her legs didn't move. Something restrained her will.
"No, it can't be. She couldn't…" Jillian snatched off the blanket to reveal iron poles banded to her legs.
"You've got a lumbar corset running down to your feet," said sleepy, familiar voice.
At first, it startled her, but then she turned her head and saw Garrett at the end of the bed. He looked more concerned than before, and circles under his eyes darkened a few shades.
"Garrett?" she whispered, outstretching her arm. He walked around the bed, kneeled down and hugged her. "You've got no idea how glad I'm to see you," she said with apparent relief. "What happened?"
"Good news is that you're not going to sit in a wheelchair as you apparently thought. The bad news is that you were not far away from it," he said seriously and sat down on the mattress edge. "As you fell down with the staircase, a rusty nail sunk into your back. I pulled it out, but it chipped off a piece of your spine. Lizzie found that fragment inside you. It traveled and got dangerously close to nerves. If I had carried you longer, it would sink deeper and probably damage or cut one of the spinal nerves," he said regretfully. "She couldn't take that out as it would require invasive surgery for which she doesn't have the necessary skill, and she didn't want to risk making you a paraplegic. The operation gave a higher chance of worsening it than help you. The piece was tiny and hardly accessible. So she used some filling to immobilize and let it decompose within it."
"What?" Jillian touched her lower back, feeling something firm under the skin.
"You have to lie till tomorrow, which is roughly for the next hour. Lizzie checked you every day, and she said she will let you walk again today."
"Every day? Don't tell me-"
"It has been three weeks, including this day since they put you in here. The operation with everything around took her just two hours, and you would be good to go the very next day, but the fever worsened, and spasms hit your body at night. Blood tests showed a severe infection spreading through your body. The nail or dirt on your skin carried some aggressive bacteria that traveled via the bloodstream to every part of your body. Lizzie had to apply quite strong antibiotics, but you kept waking up with hallucinations, kicked around and tossed yourself, so she used anesthetics as well to save your spine from more damages. Your body was way too exhausted to fight it on its own. So we decided to keep you in the induced sleep for as long as it was needed. At least Lizzie had a chance to accelerate the healing in the right way."
"I was out cold for three weeks? What about your injuries? Your arms, lungs, and the rest of you? You don't look much better than when we came here," she watched him yawn.
"With all the equipment Lizzie has, she managed to heal my arms and lungs in several days. She purified your as well and extracted a few grams of sand you breathed in. Now we are probably as healthy as on the day when it all began. Most of the damages made to us were, fortunately, reversible. The only thing she can't heal is tiredness," he yawned again.
"What are you doing here then? You should be resting as well," she looked around, and her sight fell on narrowed papers lying on the table next to the armchair.
"I thought that I might finish that file in here. Spare a few minutes of the day to see how you are holding on," he said and quickly changed the subject. "Nevertheless, Lizzie said that you have to live with it for a while. At least until it heals. DTI showed no more damages, except the malnourishment and beating from the fall. She fixed your bruised skin and kept administrating medications with base nutrients and substances to boost natural cell reparation mechanisms. You received everything your body needed to restore itself. About three hours ago, she came and unplugged you."
Jillian sighed and punched the pillow under her head to lie higher.
"How will I repay this to Lizzie? And to you? You all help me, and I'm doing nothing," she said mournfully, recalling Lizzie's words that she's full of troubles.
"We do it because we want to. Don't worry about me. Just show some compassion to Liz and be friendly to her. She needs it."
"What happened to her? When I saw her for the first time, she had the whole neck covered with bruises."
Garrett breathed in deeply and glanced at the cl
osed door.
"As you've witnessed, Whitkis is a bit extraordinary. And that almost killed us all."
"What?"
"Sarah said that Whitkis's mental state suddenly worsened one day, and he turned into somebody different. He had phases of immense happiness, convinced about his invincibility and strength to achieve anything he imagined. You saw the way he welcomed us. Overwhelmed by our coming, he believed that we would stop the madness outside together. But then came the worse one, when he became depressed and saw no bright point in the future. When nothing seemed worthy of any effort, and everything appeared doomed to him."
"You speak about him as if he is dead," she said, and Garrett remained silent for a while.
"Sarah said it became more serious every month, and his moods changed almost daily. She realized how dangerous he is and took precautions since he attacked Lizzie," said Garrett.
"Attacked Lizzie?" she said taken aback and tried to sit, but corset didn't let her. "What happened here?"
"They used to lock him in his office, the same one where we met him for the first time. He couldn't destroy nor harm anyone but himself in there. Soldiers took a watch at his doors. But it took a second during the night in which he attacked and killed the guard who came to check him and then ran to the elevator. He stole crystal fiber resonator, access ID, and had plenty of time, which he used to descend to the lowest available floor to crack through Nest's broken inner shell. Then it all happened quickly. Pressurized water ripped the wall and quickly flooded the lowest levels. As the water rose, it forced soldiers to seal several more levels," he sat down on the floor, leaning against the bed while Jillian stared at him speechless. "We couldn't save him. He is drowned somewhere at the bottom."
"What does it have in common with Lizzie?"
Garrett's tired eyes ached, and he shut them to give them a minute to rest.
"Lizzie doesn't want to talk about it much, and I'm not surprised at all, so I asked Sarah to brighten it to me. Lizzie is the first and only victim of Whitkis. His illness showed a few weeks after the events began and lasted till he died. A few days before we came, grave sad Whitkis visited her office and began to taunt her that she can't help him to stop being depressed. He surprised her, but she tried everything to help him. They spoke no more than ten minutes after which she said it will be okay. But he didn't want to hear that answer. He jumped at her and began strangling her. He yelled that nothing will ever be good again, and if we don't die by the hand of nature, then he will be the judge to take care of it. A soldier got there at the last minute when she was almost silent and knocked him out to release his hands. He saved her, but Whitkis damaged her vocals cords. So don't take it personally when she isn't very nice. She still didn't fully recover from that," Garrett looked at Jillian's while she just lay there, not moving or blinking.
She fought with the fact that somebody who was almost strangled to death had to fix her body as if she had fatal injuries, and she didn't even have time to say proper thank you yet.
"What the hell is wrong with people?"
"It's not about one madman, but all. They are still the way they always were. It just didn't have the chance to rise to the surface. Until now," Garrett opened his eyes and sadly smiled at her. "I've always been scared of the day when governments, armies, and laws cease to exist, and everyone will have to take care of oneself. The true human nature I've always expected didn't long in coming. Only the strongest survived. As it was always intended."
"Garrett, people aren't the same as they were before. I liked some things about them, like having friends and so on. But they turned into something different. Killers, hunting each other to survive. You know we can't live like this forever. Not here or out there."
"Yes, you're right. Killers survived, and the less violent rest already died," sighed Garrett and turned to her. "Nobody can stay here. No more than a few days. It will be survival of the fittest. All over again out there."
"What for?" she stared at the wall with a vacant look. "World was bad before, but now it's even worse."
"I kind of hate this thought, but the world is better now. Now we've got a new chance to start all over again. All the shallowness and greediness will be over soon. People didn't deserve this planet if they lived the way they did," he said, and Jillian looked at him with a bit of averse.
"How can you say that?" she said to his cynical words. "Life's a gift."
"Did you like your life before?" he ignored the disdain in her face.
She didn't answer.
"Really a gift? Did you like the world, where they measured the value of your life by the amount of money you were able to produce? Life of scraping machine that remained forgotten in a corner after its usability expired? Did you like the world where people encouraged scoffing and spurning over the helping hand? The world with the undying thirst of being superior and never-ending desire to possess more and more? They bought bigger houses and TVs every day, while people died on the streets from starving. They lived satisfying lives because scientists willingly shared the knowledge they transformed into technological advancement. Do you really think we did deserve this planet? Did we really deserve everything we had? No.
People took everything as a matter of course. The entire human nature is cursed and cares only about its uniqueness in the whole space. We are nothing in this universe. Only a dot in a never-ending vastness, which we'll never be able to explore. Imagine the size of the universe and all the places where you can't live. Our life and planet are a statistical slip, nothing more. We lived in a world with the same daily routine rather than really understand the true meaning of life. Wake up, work on meaningless tasks, sleep, and next day repeat. And be thankful for sleep. You are here to sacrifice your life for something as worthless as is money, and as an expression of gratitude, you can take crumbs to shut your mouth. The bits you paid for with your time to buy the stuff you didn't need to fit into society you didn't understand. It was a life of a robot and a slave.
This world could be anything we would desire. We were capable of building it. It could be a perfect utopia, but instead of that, we were wading through endless, sticky, pitch holding us back with no bright future only because of a few infinitely selfish little men. Everything here functioned only because of inertia it had. The sheep flock, living in the illusion of protection and under commands of dogs stealing our lives, took this world as an unchangeable subject maintained by threatening us with wolves behind the fence on a lookout for easy prey. But now our shepherd dogs are gone, and we are here with people who take every chance to exploit everything and everyone. Even now, they didn't change. Only their options changed. That's why there are people like Zack. They waited for an opportunity like this. To hurt or kill and walk away unpunished. But this opinion is useless now," he took a handful of nuts from a bowl he brought. "This world will end soon. There is not much to do, eat or live for, but at least I will not find myself in my forties lying one fine morning with a heart attack on the stairs in an underground station. This way, I can die with a mind that I really fought for my life and didn't sacrifice it for the man laughing at me from behind the gate of his mansion."
"You are not forty?" she joked to disperse the thoughts from his head as all he said sounded as an undeniable truth.
Garrett looked at her, pretending an offended face.
"I'm thirty-eight. Thank you."
"You are welcome," she said with her typical cheeky smile. "Garrett, I'm not in a state of giving advice, but don't take life too seriously even if it is as it is. You've got only one chance to live it."
"Heh," Garrett chuckled. "My father used to say the same whenever things didn't go well."
"So, you shouldn't forget them."
"Yep, sounds right," Garrett stood up and headed to take his papers. "I'm glad you are all right, Jill, and I'm looking forward to seeing you at breakfast."
"Did you achieve anything?" she pointed at the pile, and Garrett knew there is no point in denying.
"There
's a trip ahead," he muttered.
"A trip? Why?"
"We are going to stop the Earth from breaking apart. At least we'll try to do so. All of this happened because of me. I helped to build a machine that caused the apocalypse."
"You're kidding me, right?"
"No, it's true. The molecule I told you about, Ocrosir, is the cause of everything. We utilized it in one device, but we couldn't foresee the consequences. Diamond made some attempts before to stop it but failed, so I'm searching for the solution. I've found errors in Hikls's calculations and structure of the device he made to stop the events, but..." he shook his head as if he couldn't understand why Hikls built it wrong.
"So you're working since we came? They didn't let you rest?"
"Everything is speeding up. The design of the device Hikls left made no sense. The main power circuits, program, and the pulse generator are deliberately incorrect in the plans. If we built it the same way as Hikls left it, then it would be even weaker than what Sarah said. Therefore, I've made a new four-point focused hyper-field generator, which-" he went silent in the middle of the sentence when noticed Jillian's raised eyebrows.
"Sorry, I forgot. In a nutshell, few soldiers and I are going to sail to Greenland."
"Greenland?" she looked surprised at first but then smiled and laughed a little. "Oh, I got it now. Great joke."
"I wish you were right," said Garrett seriously. His troubled mind perfectly reflected on his figure.
"Garrett, you can't go there. You're just an ordinary man like everyone else. You couldn't cause the apocalypse. No one can be blamed for this," said Jillian concerned.
"Yes, I'm ordinary, but that molecule isn't. Every time I ask, the finger points to me, and I can't step aside. This is Murphy's law in practice."
"Didn't we go through enough already? Don't do this."
"Jillian, I can barely live with myself now. My life is the one no one would desire to live. I need and want to do this to redeem myself at least a bit even though it's hard to achieve."