by Greg Ramsay
Chapter 25 – After
The glass of Barton’s new grave glistened in the remaining light cast by the South Dakota sun. A blackness showed through the glass unaffected by the light. Deep in the pit, the gooey remains of Barton writhed, most of it impenetrably sealed in the glass. A small portion managed to separate from the mass and seep into the earth beyond. As Lia and her companions made their steady journey north, the vile substance slowly made its way north as well... toward the fresh, unguarded bodies of Gunnery Sergeant Suzan Black, and Private Bob Grant.
Slowly their bodies were torn up from the ground by claws formed on their own hands. All that remained to prove there were once graves there, was strewn dirt and two tiny uniform tunnels that bore toward the bodies. With a gurgling roar, Black and Grant, now Barton One and Two respectively, raced after Lia with menacing inhuman speed. A shrill crying roar blasted from their mouths as they ran.
Lia drove at the head of the convoy solemnly, unsure of what to do next. Her body ached strangely. What’s going on? she thought. The black void world slammed in her conscious mind as her vision failed. REMEMBER! the warped and strangely familiar voice yelled. The voice screamed at her ceaselessly and so violently, she didn’t notice her armour had taken over. Her body drove the Hummer into a roadblock, stopping her friends abruptly. She stood there on the road barring the way to the driver’s side of the Hummer.
Meanwhile John and Steele tried in vain to get through to her. Their words barely registered as anything more than the annoying music of crickets amongst the screams raging in her skull. Unbeknownst to her friends, they weren’t alone. John and Steele turned to the heavy sound of footsteps just in time to be impaled by Black and Grant’s blades. Their dying eyes pleaded to Lia for help while Lia stood unfeelingly indifferent. She couldn’t even hear their screams over the Leader’s rage; all she could do was obey her reflexive needs in a desperate bid to retake her mind. With no control over herself, her armour receded away.
So when all four of them charged her, there was no way she could fight and nowhere to hide. As if on autopilot, she engaged them while their blades bit into her gut, back, and sides. REMEMBER, the distorted voice screamed just before her armour exploded into life, violently tearing the remains of her friends, including Wanderer who busted through the window to defend her, to shreds almost instantly. Slowly the tendrils receded into her body like a marionette withdrawing its frayed strings. When the last bit of their bodies was absorbed into hers, a shock like a thunderclap shattered what remained of her already tired mind.
Lia screamed shrilly, collapsing to her knees in pain worse than any migraine before she abruptly blacked out. Sweat beaded on her skin while her eyes rolled back like she was having a seizure. In her mind Lia could see it all in vivid detail. She could remember the lives of her friends as though she’d lived them. She focused on Black’s memories first. She could see her and her boyfriend in a military Jeep taking a trip out of the base when they were attacked by shifted.
She watched the fight that forged Black as a person as if she was her, feeling the pain and all. Even more severe pain marked the end of the memory while the image of Black with her katana faded to a brief glimpse of a lab with a black-bladed monster in a tube. Still left seizing on the ground, Lia was forced to watch all the suffering her friends had already alluded to, only to see warped alternate versions of them in some clinical hell. To her dismay that wasn’t the end.
Next thing Lia knew all her memories of her time wandering the wastes began to quiver and fade like fog in the wind. She screamed inside of herself trying to drown it all out. Finally, her body stopped convulsing. Lia rose despite herself, still a detached program in a puppet body barely able to see through the turmoil in her brain. It took all her remaining faculties just to bear witness to her arms ramming her own katana into her guts and tearing her apart in a desperate bid to end the pain. All she could think was REMEMBER! REMEMBER! REMEMBER! REMEMBER! as her desecrated body fell face first into the ground. The last thing she saw was her katana rending itself apart back into kynari form. Her remaining energy still contained in the failing blade, enveloping her like a pyre before her vision went black for good.
Chapter 26 – Disturbing and Confusing Truths
Suddenly the world was awash with painfully bright light. Lia’s eyes stung as though she hadn’t used them in years. When her vision finally focused she saw her face, reflected in cylindrical glass, staring back at her. She gingerly turned her head to get a sense of her surroundings, taking in everything very slowly because her body felt foreign to her.
To her horror she was trapped naked in a giant vertical tube structure with her entire body covered in wires of some scientific nature. Quick examination of her sterile clinical surroundings revealed the same was true for her friends, though they were considerably less human. The shifted infection had completely morphed them into warped cocoons, similar to the images that flashed in her mind. She screamed in confusion because everything felt insane; she felt trapped, and was terrified beyond her limits. Her body shook and broke into sweats, while distantly she could hear a monitoring unit raising alarms about her condition.
Suddenly people adorned in hazmat style suits with tinted visors, the same as those she found in MiraiCorp, rushed in practised grace into the room to surround her. Lia didn’t care about her indecent state; she was too confident for that. Instead it was all she could manage to shake off the sense that they were going to warp like what happened with her friends.
“Hello, my dear. You’ve recovered at last!” a familiar distorted voice said gently through a built-in speaker.
Lia froze in spite of herself. “Barton?!” she managed to weakly stutter incredulously. She could almost feel his smile through the helmet as he removed it and his gloves with no regard for the anxiousness of his cohorts.
“One and only,” he said with that same soothing tone, now lacking the self-righteous tone he’d maintained before. Lia stuttered, trying hard to will her vocal chords to output one of the many questions she wanted to scream. “Don’t speak love, this will make everything right.”
Lia watched horrified as the nails on his index and middle finger turned into small black blades which he proceeded to violently ram through the glass of her enclosure, along with most of his hand, to stab her through her artery. Her vision went black as his tendrils oozed gently through her. Once more she stood lost in the familiar void world. Suddenly her memories of her time with the spec-ops team during the months they’d convoyed together surged back, only to be replaced. She could see all her friends alive and well. She remembered they helped each other through Spec Ops training, campaigned together ceaselessly until they’d become the best of the best, and finally were abruptly stationed to guard MiraiCorp’s main office headed by one Dr. James Barton... her husband.
Lia could feel her whole understanding of life fade away. Memories she thought were shared with John so recently were actually of her past with James. Not only that, they gave birth to a second daughter. They named her Tory. Her mind fixated on her daughter’s image, seeing the girl she failed in the desert disappear from her memory like a figment of her imagination. All her fighting and suffering of late gradually faded from her conscience like lies borne of madness. When his forced mental reprogramming finished, Lia’s eyes snapped open to see Barton smiling.
“Better love?”
“I...” Lia said still shocked.
“Easy, start slow, easy Mrs. Emilia Barton. That’s it. Let’s start with an easy one.”
He gestured and his lackeys pulled her free of confinement like a doll on a shelf. Lia stood on her unsteady feet.
“Now can you bring out your alpha armour for me?” Lia looked at him with profound confusion, but he understood. “You’ve been in a PsychoLife simulation world. However, it wasn’t all fake. Focus, find the ‘Leader’ within, it’s time you know the truth.” Lia did as he bid because the painful nagging sensation in her mind that once haunted her now ab
ated, leaving her convinced her current reality was real. She looked deep inside herself, but what she found was not what she knew, instead it was something new. Before her floated the Leader mask, but now it felt safe, rather than intimidating.
Hello me, The Leader growled, his normal voice had changed, now a warped version of her own.
What the...? Lia asked, befuddled.
Embrace me, her warped voice replied.
Lia walked forward and slowly and, as if on instinct, the mask rotated. Her face met it gently. On contact she could feel her body erupt with power. Her armour surged over her body as though it missed embracing her. When it finished forming, she felt nothing less than immense power and complete confident control. The Leader was actually her, they were one, and had been the entire time! Lia stood in shock; her recent past felt more like a bad dream. Now only questions remained as she gradually put the pieces of her life back together. She looked at Barton with a mixture of relief and pain.
“James...” she said. Barton’s face broke into a relieved tearful grin.
“There she is at last, my hopes answered. My Lia has returned to me healthy and whole.”
Lia was momentarily confused. “Wha...m” she started to say before another rush of memories flooded her mind. “We were sent on a covert mission to secure a downed alien craft. Myself, John, and the others were tasked with recovering whatever we could. When we did, we were to return it to MiraiCorp... to you and your team... but.” The memory of her and her team being overtaken by an alien substance fired from the craft as aliens escaped beyond their reach, flashed through her mind. Lia remembered everybody wiping it all off, annoyed. Her exposure had been minimal compared to the others.
“But...” James finished, “That wasn’t the end.”
“No,” Lia shook her head violently as it all came back to her. “We managed to recover some alien entities and tech, brought it all back, no problem. You created version one of the L strain from it.”
Barton gave her a sad look before elaborating, “We’d long since destroyed the ozone layer, coupled with the chemicals in everything, we only signed our death warrant via super-cancers. The L strain, or Lia strain was meant to cure it all... I pushed the strain through clinical trials and approval red tape all to save Tory...” Lia’s eyes widened in pained recognition.
“She had an unstoppable resistant form of cancer that was worsening. Only PsychoLife kept her alive. You’d cured rats, apes, and pigs with the L strain... you were so sure it could save her.”
James’ tears ran unabated as if apologetic. “It did for years! She became the figurehead of a new future for our species until the strain began to mutate her.” Lia shook violently with the memory despite herself. “I’m so sorry, love. We tried with every bit of ourselves to make the cure stick, to make her whole again.”
Overwhelmed, Lia just stood there.
Barton looked at her sadly then continued, “Later I realized enhancing it with modified human DNA strengthened the compatibility between human hosts, and the DNA I originally extracted from the alien substance you’d been exposed to. By then too much time had elapsed; Tory was too far gone, and the L strain, which had been widely distributed as a last hope for a species dying word-wide, was ironically finishing us off... For a time, love, it was worthy of your name. It saved everyone!” Lia stood with one hand braced against her PsychoLife pod as more of her past flashed back to her.
He paused with a guilty sad look on his face. “So you and I decided to take the updated strains and become guinea pigs in the hope of finding a way to save Tory, didn’t we?” Lia asked, looking forlornly at a smaller dark mass in a pod not far from her team, previously obscured by the others.
Barton nodded sadly. “Indeed. Her and all others, if possible. During the process of resequencing, your teammates began to succumb to an infection borne of the substance that you were all exposed to. The infection was eating them inside out, changing them similar to how the L strain acted... all I could do was upload them into the PsychoLife matrix so their bodies could be suspended, but even then...” Lia looked at her team knowing no words were necessary.
“You tried James.” Barton cringed in regret.
“Soon after you started exhibiting symptoms, I took one of the updated strains, hoping to spare you, should it go awry. But it didn’t... after a week all I did was get stronger, get instincts, abilities, I couldn’t begin to understand. Meanwhile you stubbornly guarded us against the growing shifted force.”
Lia froze. Memories recounted that not everyone was turned into cocoons like her team. Massive armies of gradually changing people rushed at MiraiCorp as more rioted through the streets like animals. As weeks passed, everyone from police to military to grandmothers were black armoured monsters all obeying alphas. “The alphas!” Lia exclaimed suddenly. Barton nodded.
“Were shifted that evolved through natural selection by consuming lesser shifted.”
Concerned, Lia looked around their surroundings like a predator searching for weaknesses in her prey.
Barton sighed. “Worry not, this base is way more secure than I made it in your PsychoLife recuperation world. Having the desperation of worldwide governments, their unlimited budgets, and military contracts at your control, makes you, those you vouch for, and your once proven dream cure-all something worth guarding. I managed to convince you to come inside to safety before your infection began to take over your body. By then, even with your willpower, your mind was fraying. So I injected you with the Prime L strain I’d recently finished; leaving the rest to the military units stationed outside while I focused everything I had on you...”
Lia looked simultaneously angry and sad. “So you’ve never come under attack since bringing me in? You’ve never experienced any significant mental breakdowns?”
Barton looked surprised, but curious as to what she was alluding to. “Initially when the military and police still patrolled outside sure, given this company was rightfully seen as the cause, however there’s no one left to fight. At least not since the shifted can’t seem to sense us this far underground in a self-sustaining hermetically sealed lab. Why?”
Lia gripped his shirt angrily to his shock. “Then why James... why take my memories? Why make me hate you to the point I killed you repeatedly?!” Barton’s eyes widened for a moment.
“Well... you didn’t take well to the perfect or Prime L strain initially. Your mind was barely holding on. I could tell from monitoring you inside your PsychoLife simulation that it would be best to suppress your memories until you were ready. But of course you needed a goal that would gradually force you to come to grips with your new power as well as this reality. So I made a world with implications that MiraiCorp had answers, and had my team push you toward the clues regarding shifted. I didn’t anticipate your mind creating the Leader persona, but overall things progressed nicely.”
Lia gave him a lethal dirty look. Barton looked away reflexively in response before quickly continuing, “You took well to your abilities despite your own mental turmoil. Once you resolved to find this place, as I knew you would, my subordinates inserted your teammates into your simulation ahead of your path as instructed. Their memories were altered so they’d accept you without pushing your fragile mental state, even with your... gifts. Knowing how caring you are, I knew if you had people to protect in the madness and a general goal you’d have focus.” Lia looked at him like she’d been played, not releasing her grip on him.
“Continue,” she demanded, unsatisfied. Barton nodded.
“Of course, that wouldn’t be enough reason to help you connect with yourself, only to drive you to fight on. So I put your memories of us into John to help further your investment.” Lia smiled slightly at the recollection without interrupting. Barton noticed, but continued as if he hadn’t. “I rotated in and out of your simulation to guide you behind the scenes, planting ideas in your head. I was overjoyed every time you questioned your reality. Though it was clear you couldn’t follow through
alone. So I kept pushing you harder to remember with direct intervention. I desperately hoped through all this you’d bond well with the strain despite your existing infection and, of course, you stubbornly succeeded. All that was left for me to do after that was to be a worthy antagonist to help ready you for an apocalypse I accidentally created...”
She released Barton, still reeling slightly, but trying to maintain her composure. “I’ll bet this is the damn aliens trying to wipe us out. Sure I don’t blame them since anybody who can observe would know our species is just shit leading lesser shit.” She paused to steady herself. “That being said... Fuck you for playing with my head and using my friends and our DAUGHTER like disposable toys for my recovery!”
Barton bristled visibly then mustered his resolve. “Fair enough... I knew they’d all want to be there for you no matter what. So selfishly I did use their minds, their very selves, for your sake, but it was that or leave you alone with no reason to bother recovering!” Barton said with sincerity and guilt, slumping over with the weight of his actions.
Lia’s eyes grew dark. A tense silence followed. Barton wondered if she might kill him. Instead, Lia allowed herself to cool off before coldly continuing, “Maybe it’s egotistical, but it appears we’re the only ones who can save the world from the first time we tried to save it...”
Barton laughed nervously despite himself. “Well to do that we’ll need these,” he said, gesturing toward a table on which sat their kynaris. “They’re based on alien tech you obtained. It appears they respond to our DNA specifically. I noticed when blood from one of your wounds made contact with it, it started reacting to your energy. I’m not sure what they were for originally, but you’re certainly familiar with how we can use them.”