Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition

by Brendan Mancilla

  Sounds of waves crashing against the beach, of a child’s laughter, of a newborn’s cry, of serenity and joy and life drowned out the whispers. Seven was hypnotized by the cube and felt his grief tumble away from his heart. Grief for the dead of Haven, for the millions of lives unfulfilled and prematurely ended.

  “Leave it,” Eight ordered. “I can see the door.”

  At the far side of the room, an exit appeared. Its occurrence was a test, a temptation, and Seven conceded to his desire to escape. Offering the cube a remorseful look, Seven continued ahead and was glad to be free of the room with the black boxes. After turning a corner the cube’s light was choked away by the darkness of another endless tunnel.

  Blinded by the dark again, Seven took a step that was no different from the thousands before it, only to find that there was no ground waiting for his foot. He tripped and dragged Eight into the breach by accident. His fall was brief but steep and ended only by a sickening crunch that bellowed in his ears.

  Seven lay still, his body battered from rolling down the side of whatever cushioned his impact. His face was pressed against the dirt, his short breaths kicking up small clouds of it into his face. If he was quiet enough, maybe he would wake up from this ever-worsening nightmare?

  “Seven?” Eight called, plodding along the mound of refuse to reach him. Her voice was enough to reanimate his aching body and he pushed himself upright. They were both alive and, barring a hidden broken bone, they were both uninjured.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he answered. “How about you?”

  “Look at where we are,” she urged him. Seven saw that their fall had deposited them in an arena strangely similar to the one directly underneath Rose Garden’s entrance. This one was several orders of magnitude larger and definitely occupied. Torches that burned zealously circled the arena and their orange light revealed the nature of the tall mound that had kept Seven and Eight from smashing directly into the floor.

  At Seven’s foot lay a chalky, partially shattered human skull. Half buried in the dirt, the skull stuck out awkwardly, loosened from its submersion by Seven’s descent. Across the arena were an incalculable number of skeletons that had been discarded through the myriad of exit apertures in the ceiling of the arena’s domed roof.

  “Who do you think these people were?” Seven asked.

  “Rebel Clones? Descendants? Does it matter anymore?” she replied.

  Stealing one of the torches from the wall, Seven led the way through the only exit on the arena’s floor. Eight stayed at his side but she was distracted by the bone pile, the skulls and rib cages of a thousand decomposed bodies alight with an orange glow.

  “I don’t understand what the point of this place is,” Seven remarked loudly. His dread was tempered by the disdain that pumped through his voice. “These rooms, the tunnel…none of this makes sense.”

  “Do you remember what Nine said? About how the Rebel Clones showed us the horrors of Grand Cross, including Lore Chambers? I think these tunnels and these rooms are the Lore Chambers.” Eight’s words reached him but he was too concerned with following the winding tunnel away from the arena. The torch became his only weapon against another dangerous fall and their progress was slow.

  “Grand Cross was the original cloning center. And even that was in addition to everything else they must have studied. The Lore Chambers must be the rooms where they experimented with humanity and learned about the body and the mind. Maybe this is where they tried to understand it before building it?”

  The torch in Seven’s hand made sure there were no further missteps though the floor remained even and whole. Ahead of the travelers, the tunnel ended in a narrow fissure. As they wedged themselves through the breach’s sharpened edges, Seven and Eight emerged into a broad cavern with jaggedly uneven walls.

  A few clues suggested the artificiality of the cave or else it might have otherwise passed itself off as a natural formation. Firstly, the smooth floor’s perfected finish was too delicate and precise to have formed naturally. Secondly, and most absurdly, was the presence of a gate composed of thick iron slats that barred their way on the far side of the cavern.

  Seven’s torch caused firelight to bounce across the sawtoothed walls and roof, creating shadows that danced around him.

  “We have to get past this thing,” Eight crossed the empty chamber. Bizarre carvings manifested as he followed her, the light from the torch’s flames somehow illuminating indecipherable glyphs etched into the walls.

  On each side of the peculiar gate was a set four wheels that were fastened to thick chains, themselves connected to heavy weights suspended from the roof. The complicated series of weights and pulleys kept the gate lowered and shut, effectively making the cavern a dead-end. Unless they opened the gate, their only option would be to return to the arena and its pile of bones.

  “We have to get through there,” Seven made the unhappy declaration.

  “It’s the only way forward,” Eight agreed, equally as miserable. She moved to the set of wheels on the left; he went to the set on the right. Giving the weights above him a disapproving glare, Seven set the torch on the ground and dedicated himself to spinning the first crank as far as it would go before locking it into place. The task was a slow and arduous one that resulted in angry groans from the chains, their lengths rattling up to the weights that uncooperatively began to descend.

  With the first set of wheels finished and locked into place, Seven and Eight moved to their second set. Seven found himself dreading every successive push, his shoulder tiring with an unwarranted exhaustion. Panting, he forced himself through one motion after another until the second crank was locked. By then, the weights’ descent was beginning to manifest and yet the gate remained shut. Rather than let his weariness overpower him, he and Eight moved on to the third set with a renewed determination. They would open the gate. They would escape.

  Eight followed his example and they began turning the third wheels on either side of the gate. Working in silence, it became apparent that the third wheel would be the worst so far. Seven switched to his left shoulder which, somehow, resonated with the same tired aches that the right did. Sweating, gasping, and wishing for the pain to stop he set the third crank. Eight’s snapped into place a moment later.

  “What…is…this…” Eight asked between gasps.

  “Not…natural…” Seven choked out.

  One wheel remained on each side of the gate. One for Seven, one for Eight. Eight was as drenched in sweat as he was and her pale face made the weariness in her eyes worse. Seven resolved himself to the task of turning the final wheel.

  “Together?” Eight asked.

  “Together,” he nodded.

  They tackled the last obstacle.

  From the moment Seven’s hands touched the fourth wheel his body was wracked by an insatiable yearning for death. His muscles, bones, and blood begged for it so loudly that he thought Eight could hear his weakness. Seven tightened his grip, convinced that his hands weren’t firm enough, but then his arms became a problem. Wherever Seven redoubled his efforts, another different muscle threatened to fail in retaliation. He imagined dying, finding peace as the breath escaped his body, but realized the he would only wake up in Rose Garden and be forced to repeat the journey.

  He nearly gave up. This wasn’t worth the impossible price. Nothing was worth staying in the hellish underworld of Grand Cross. No, it would be easier to just let go. Seven sought Eight, his eyes searching for her, in the hopes of asking her to give up with him. Their eyes met and he saw a spark of determination etched into her defiant expression.

  I’m not going to hurt you—

  Because we are connected—

  Come back—

  Her words spread throughout his body, plucked from the past, and her spark ignited the memories of their excursion together. He remembered meeting her, journeying with her, and witnessing the remnants of a civilization with her. Every moment of the past four days was relived anew within him, the fi
re of defiance consuming him.

  For Twenty. For truth. For her.

  The final spokes slammed into place, sending deep echoes rumbling along the walls, and the gate obediently lifted open. Sunlight blasted through the opening, a tidal wave of it, and angrily pulsed at them. Even though Seven and Eight were exhausted, dirty, and sweaty the sunlight swept their grievances away with benevolence and healing. Great sheets of light surged from a spherical object on the second cavern’s floor, reminding Seven that they were still deep underground. Besides, Haven’s sun did not produce this delicious color. It did not generate the renewing warmth that the underground sphere exuded.

  Eight picked up the device despite Seven’s late warning and when she wrapped her fingers around it as tightly as she could, the light was abruptly cut off. Instead, it continued to rise unabated from the orb’s exposed upper hemisphere. Able to adjust to the lighting, Seven could finally see the stone pedestal sitting at the center of the second cave. Its body was exquisitely detailed with engravings of the sun, the moon, and the stars and at the pedestal’s peak, roughly at Seven’s stomach, were four spindly arms meant to hold the orb.

  “I think it’s time to put it back,” Eight smiled, her kind expression irradiated by the light. It was as if Seven was seeing Eight for the first time: her light gold hair, her shining emerald eyes, and her pale skin that begged for more sunlight. He could only describe her as beautiful, if his voice would start working again, stranded as he was in an awed silence.

  Eight placed the yellow orb into the recess atop the pedestal.

  “And...” Seven dragged out the word, expecting a more exciting reaction. Returned to the throne where it belonged, the orb’s light was marginally lessened—as if absorbed by the pedestal—but the warmth and light were still nothing short of intense. On the walls around them, the glyphs and engravings continued to sparkle and glimmer. Except for the fact that the yellow sphere resided in a new location nothing had changed in the second cave.

  “This place is annoying,” Seven grumbled. He briefly returned to the first cave and retrieved the discarded torch. Beyond the second cave was another unlit tunnel and Seven was determined that it would not surprise him, either. He and Eight departed the second cave, the cave that shone with the light of the sun, and quite some time later they were flooded by darkness once more.

  Seven began to fear that his torch would be extinguished before he and Eight were finished with the tunnels beneath Grand Cross. His fear subsided when a faint gray light appeared in the distance. Seven wondered what other horrors Grand Cross meant for them to see and how he and Eight would survive it.

  They neared the tunnel’s end and stepped through it. When it passed the threshold, the torch extinguished itself as its orange fire flared into nothingness. Gray mist engulfed him, obscuring his view of the distance. Seven’s feet landed on colorless sand and the sound of water reached his ears.

  Eight stepped ahead of him, squinting. Seven dropped the dead torch.

  “What do you think this room is for?” Seven asked.

  “Is this even a room? It feels like…a beach.”

  “Are you starting to regret coming down here?”

  She smiled weakly at him, a ghostly replica of the same expression from the last chamber. “Not if you’re here.”

  He smiled at her in return and embraced the mist with a brave step forward. How could a beach be underground? When he strained his eyes at where he expected the roof to be, he only saw a hazy gray in the distance. Their tunnel had deposited them at the beginning of a stretch of sand that followed the curve of a rocky cliffside. Seven was drawn towards the sound of water, his eyes perceiving it ahead of him through the mists, and he proceeded despite his reservations.

  Eight pointed down the beach and said, “The sand goes that way.”

  “I know. I want to see what’s over here…”

  “I really think we should follow the obvious trail,” she insisted.

  Seven’s feet were already touching the edge of the misty ocean. Icy and black, the ocean stewed in a motionless anger while the impenetrable fog roiled across its surface in every direction. Seven dipped his hand into the water and watched as the black liquid evaporated from his skin when it was raised above his waist.

  “Looks familiar,” he remarked.

  “Looks dangerous,” she hissed.

  Then he saw it. A flash in the depths of the water, far from the shore. However brief its appearance, he knew for certain that he had witnessed it.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Did I see what?” an alarmed Eight asked.

  “There’s something out there! Something is shining in the water.”

  Eight grabbed Seven’s arm with both hands.

  “We’re not doing this again! There’s nothing out there. We need to follow the path. Twenty is waiting!”

  “I need to see it,” Seven rebelled, overwhelmed by yearning. “I have to! You picked up the orb back in the cave. I need to find whatever that is—” From the depths of the dark ocean, something called to him and induced a panicked urgency within Seven. He needed to get out there, he needed to find it.

  “Stop! Turn around!” Eight shouted but Seven was already plowing into the misty ocean without regard for Eight. He was being summoned, being screamed at to retrieve the object from the bottom of the dark ocean, and he could do nothing else but obey.

  With the water at his waist, he saw it again: a gleaming in the depths.

  Seven dove in and swam much deeper, much further, than he thought the object could possibly be. Cold water stung at his skin, the ocean pressing down on him, and Seven swam further into its reaches. There, on the black sand lining the seafloor, was the object he sought.

  Seven dug his hand into the sand and wrapped it around the treasure, his mind inebriated by triumph and oxygen starvation. Seven tried to pull it to him.

  Seven heaved, pulling harder, but the item remained fastened to the sand at the bottom of the dark ocean. His strength was stolen, his whole body trapped, and Seven understood that he was going to drown in the dark ocean beneath Grand Cross. His terror was lulled into a stupor by the hypnotic grip of his deadly treasure and, as his air ran out and his consciousness waned, a barrage of images assaulted Seven’s mind.

  Memories too distant and too disarrayed to make sense fluttered into his mind: the Sphere exploding, waking up in Rose Garden for the first time, standing on the steps of Grand Cross as he died along with ten million others. Death, inescapable and cyclical, held him hostage under the surface of the dark ocean.

  Eight wrapped her arms around him and dragged him upwards—Seven and his treasure were freed but another assault of disjointed memories commenced. Eight’s face in the light of their first true dawn, her voice calling to him across lifetimes, her hands working diligently to bandage his.

  Seven’s face broke through the surface of the water and he gasped. Eight swam back to shore, dragging him along at her side, as she screamed at him. She threw him into the sand at the beach and ranted as she circled him.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you trying to get yourself killed again? If you die here then you’ll wake up at Rose Garden and the only boat with everyone on it is already here, Seven! Everybody is waiting for us to get Twenty!” she shivered through clenched teeth.

  “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I couldn’t stop myself…” Seven shook, an old terror that he didn’t completely understand surging through his body. Why had he forced himself into the dark ocean? What possessed him to abandon his senses like that?

  “What is that?” she demanded, wrenching his hand open and taking the battered hilt of a sword from him. Only the hilt and pommel remained since the blade was shattered at its base and long since disappeared, either into the dark ocean or elsewhere. Neither she nor Seven could tell if what remained of the blade’s hilt had always been black or permanently dyed that color after being submerged in the dark ocean. Savagely warped by time and imbued with the rage of a hu
ndred generations, the hilt nonetheless whispered grizzly secrets to Eight. When she spoke again, she did so with grim certainty. “This was taken from the Sphere of the Builders.”

  “I had to touch it. I had to see it,” Seven shook his head.

  Seeing his torment, Eight’s expression softened.

  “But why?” she begged of him.

  “Because it was my sword. I had to see it again…to see what happened to it…I couldn’t control that impulse, Eight, because it was part of me. It was my purpose…back in the beginning.” A strange but steady calmness infused Seven as he spoke. “My purpose was to fight the Builders but, when I woke up in Haven and they were dead, I found a new set of Builders to fight against.” With sorrowful, baleful eyes Seven confessed to her and the shattered sword she held, “It was me. I’m responsible for this.”

  His remark stirred something within Eight. “What do you mean?”

  “I was the one who put the curse on the Sphere.” Speaking in a voice that echoed with the fear of a hundred generations, Seven decreed, “Beloved, touch not the forbidden lore. A curse of the flesh is in it.” He stared at the wrecked hilt but willed himself not to be lost in the past that it hailed from.

  Eight’s rage gave way to bewilderment

  “We’ve let the past rule us long enough, don’t you think?” she inquired. She dropped the metal hilt into the sand and swept a handful atop the cursed object. Hopefully, it would stay buried and hidden. “Clones. Curses. Wars. They can stay in the ground, with our past, right where they belong.” She kissed Seven on the cheek and pulled him up to his feet. “Come on. We still have to save Twenty.”

  Seven followed Eight’s lead. The beach narrowed until their only option was to enter yet another tunnel at the beach’s end. Seven and Eight left the dark ocean behind as they stepped into the breach in the cliff, delving even deeper into the unknown. Seven decided that the dark ocean must lay within an immense underground reservoir. Artificially crafted with such precision that it was almost mistakable as natural.