Death Stranding--Death Stranding

by Hitori Nojima

  “Thank you kindly,” Higgs whispered, his words coming from the mask.

  It was obvious Higgs was enjoying toying with Sam. Sam knew that he mustn’t take the bait, but he could no longer control his rising anger. He stretched out his arm in an attempt to grab the golden mask and the gas mask behind it. But all his hand managed to grab was thin air. Higgs had disappeared again. With nothing to grab onto, Sam lost his balance and fell forward. His palms hit the ground, but when he tried to lift his hands back up, he couldn’t move them. Tar was oozing from the rock below them. It covered the palms of Sam’s hands like an amorphous creature, coiled around his wrists and bound him in place.

  Higgs was approaching again. As Sam looked up at Higgs from the ground, with his hands tied, he looked like a criminal begging for forgiveness. His face began to burn with disgrace and humiliation. Higgs squatted down and brought his own face close. He grabbed Sam by the hair and with his free hand removed his golden mask.

  His true face didn’t look like the face of a destroyer. In fact, there was a delicateness to it. Like that of a philosopher. Or maybe it betrayed the truth-seeker in him that had eventually been caught up in this doctrine of extinction.

  “Sam Bridges.” A snake-like tongue poked out from between his captivating red lips and licked Sam’s cheek. It was cold, like a kiss of the dead. But Sam’s face was getting hotter and hotter in anger.

  “I’m not the only one wearing a mask,” Higgs said as his hand released Sam’s hair and, with a wave, his golden mask appeared.

  “There’s your boss man, that woman… And… oh, let’s not forget little ol’ you.” Before he had even finished speaking, Higgs was pressing the mask onto Sam’s face. The mask immediately hugged Sam’s facial contours as if it had been made for him. It was like he was wearing another layer of skin. One that had melted the real skin on Sam’s face and fused with it. It covered his eyes, nose, and mouth. He couldn’t breathe. His head felt like it would explode out of pain and anger. The inside of the mask that was stuck to Sam’s skin was cold and clammy. Just like Higgs’s tongue. Sam finally managed to free his hands, which had been stuck to the ground by the tar. He dug his nails into the mask in an attempt to tear it off, but its surface was hard as crystal. No matter how much he struggled, the mask wouldn’t budge. In fact, it was Sam’s nails that got ripped off instead, covering his hands in blood.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. I know it ain’t easy wearing a mask all the time.”

  Maybe it was because the mask was covering Sam’s eyes that it felt like Higgs was speaking right inside his head.

  His body craved oxygen. It began to convulse.

  “But now the mask can come off, right? Both yours and mine,” Higgs sneered.

  A burning pain blazed across Sam’s face as if the mask had ripped the skin away with it. As it came off, Sam fell forward onto the ground. Higgs mercilessly grabbed Sam by the hair and held his face up. He thrust his free hand in front of it. In his fist was Amelie’s quipu.

  “I got this from Amelie,” Higgs stated.

  No. Sam shook his head. He had been the one who gave it to Amelie. Amelie would never give it to someone like Higgs.

  “Mmm… poor sweet Amelie. She’s holed up on a Beach nearby. Tell you what. What say we make it a race, hm? Whoever wins gets to usher in the end of days. Nothing like the eve of extinction to bring focus to the mind. Makes folks honest. There’ll be no need for masks soon,” Higgs said, replacing his own. “But, I wonder—when you look death in her eye, will you blink? If you want to chicken out, now’s the time to do it.”

  Higgs disappeared. A large clap of thunder boomed from the direction of Edge Knot City. Sam could see the timefall continue to pour down on the city, speeding up its demise.

  * * *

  Higgs may have gone, but black clouds still hung over Edge Knot City. The closer Sam got to it, the harder it rained. Sam had heard that this whole area was desert before the Death Stranding. The original coastline of the North American continent had been farther west than Edge Knot City was now, but that coastline had been significantly cut back because of the bigger explosions during the initial phase of the disaster. As a result, one of the manmade cities from the era of the United States of America, which used to be in the middle of the desert, found itself located right on the West Coast. It became the prototype for Edge Knot City. Its original name was Santa Maria.

  The sandy soil was already saturated and, without anywhere to go, the water had begun to form into rivers. Sam had his hood all the way down over his face to protect himself from the timefall, but that solution only offered a temporary peace of mind. All he could do was cover Lou’s pod with both hands and continue to walk. His soaked porter suit degraded more and more with every sheet of rain.

  He was almost at the outer rim of the city. Edge Knot wasn’t like the other knot cities. It had quite a complex structure.

  —It’s the result of conflicting ideologies.

  Sam thought back to something Die-Hardman had said in a briefing. He wasn’t even sure when it had taken place. Sam hadn’t spoken to the director for a while now, and now that Deadman and Hardman had aired their suspicions about the man, he felt like talking to him even less.

  Normal Knot Cities are surrounded by walls. Not only were these walls for protection, but they also formed a feature that clearly separated inside from outside. It was a way of visibly assuring the people who lived there of their autonomy, their independence, and their safety. That’s why the Bridges distribution centers were always built alongside the outer walls of the cities and not inside the cities themselves.

  But Edge Knot was different.

  The people who lived here had inherited the West Coast spirit that had historically prized freedom and independence above all else, and that spirit had once again been demonstrated in how they coped with the aftermath of the Death Stranding.

  It was the cities on the West Coast that were the source of the secessionists. They had developed their own city revival plans, secured their own food and energy provisions, and had built their own distribution system. Edge Knot had its own delivery system and equipment. They didn’t have a problem with Bridges borrowing from it. Had no problems with bringing in goods. It was the same as how trade worked in the old world, anyway. They wouldn’t permit the building of a new Bridges center within the city. It was seen as equivalent to being occupied and colonized by America again.

  Because of this there was no Bridges-owned equipment in the area. However, that didn’t mean that Edge Knot City was made up entirely of secessionists. There were a fair number of people who supported the plan to rebuild America. There was also a fixed number of centrists who sat somewhere between the two extremes. In other words, the city was just like a miniature America of old. Its outer wall was made up of many twists, and in some places even two separate walls. It was like a manifestation of the immediate chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the United States.

  Bridges had only been permitted to build a small facility on the eastern edge of the city, back when support for American reconstructionism had been stronger. Even the name Edge Knot City was one that only Bridges really used. Most people still called it Santa Maria.

  This was the city that Amelie had left for all those years ago.

  Originally, Amelie was a special envoy and was supposed to negotiate with the cities diplomatically, joining them to the UCA if both parties agreed. That was the procedure Bridges was supposed to follow. But Santa Maria had imprisoned her instead. And now Sam was going to have to force them onto the Chiral Network under the pretext of saving her. That was Bridges’ plan now, but it didn’t seem much different from an invasion to Sam.

  Even if Santa Maria had already fallen, forcing it onto the Chiral Network would still be an act of aggression.

  If Amelie’s message was to be believed, the area should have been crawling with BTs. But even if that did turn out to be the case, Sam still wasn’t comfortable with the task he had been given.
Even if Higgs was after Amelie—Amelie the EE—and Sam had to confront the danger that he posed in his attempts to not only wipe out America, but all of mankind, that didn’t mean he could accept what Bridges was up to either. But unless Sam kept on going, nothing would happen. Nothing would change.

  They’d never be able to escape from here. Not from this continent. They’d never exist anywhere but here. There were no more promised lands for them like the ones their ancestors sought and fled to. Edge Knot City was as far as their ancestors from the east could take them. And now Sam was going all the way to that dead-end for Bridges. A different type of anger than when he faced Higgs began to bubble up in Sam’s chest.

  “This is bullshit,” Sam found himself muttering out loud. It was a comment aimed at what man called destiny.

  * * *

  Sam had arrived near the entrance to the city, but the Bridges facility that he was looking for was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps it was because of the chiral clouds blocking out the sky, or the influence of the strange magnetic field of this area, but his compass wasn’t working. Lou wasn’t crying or anything, so he couldn’t have been near BT territory.

  Sam decided to enter a nearby building to get out of the rain.

  As soon as he stepped inside he found himself in awe. Contrary to its rotting exterior, the inside of the building was expansive and magnificent. The walls and floors were clad in faux marble. Pterosaur skeletons hung from the high ceiling. The support that ran through the center of the elegantly curving spiral staircase read: “American Memorial Museum.”

  In the darkness of the entrance hall, Sam could make out rows of exhibition cases. As he stepped closer, he found most of the glass to be cracked and broken and the cases empty. Sam stopped. He thought he could hear voices coming from upstairs. He held his breath and strained his ears, but the noise had already gone.

  Sam crept up the spiral staircase. The first thing he saw at the top was something that looked like a long car. Farther away lay an overturned gramophone like the one Heartman had at his lab. Cameras, projectors, and what looked like circular canisters of film—relics of the old world—were piled up haphazardly.

  Next to those were huge stacks of books. The exhibition cases that lined the walls were full of jumbled collections of bones, both big and small, and fur of animals that Sam couldn’t identify. Farther along stood some bulky, deep-set monitors, along with a board that was captioned “Television Sets.” And beside those was a strange-looking contraption that was made of a dial inscribed with the numbers 0 to 9 and connected by a cord to some sort of funnel-shaped device. Sam read the description card to find that it was an early telephone. He carried on down the hall.

  Sam walked past an exhibit that depicted Native American life, before stumbling on a board that illustrated the concept of the Apollo program. Beside it was a case that was captioned “Moon Rock,” but this also stood empty.

  There was another exhibition about Columbus’s discovery of America and the achievements of Amerigo Vespucci, from whom America took its name. The next exhibition area was a wall plastered with all sorts of images, including prints of red-and-white soup cans, a photograph of a cliff with the enormous faces of four presidents carved into the rock, a picture of a smiling family flashing the peace sign between two people zipped into a duck costume and a mouse costume, and print media that reported on a presidential assassination.

  It was all that remained of the American dream. The American history that Bridget taught Sam about when he was young depicted an America that had already been torn to pieces and scattered to the wind. Would stitching America back together with a thread made from the remnants of the American dream really bring back the United States of America that Bridget dreamed of?

  Sam didn’t think so. If Edge Knot City was a miniature version of America after the Death Stranding, this museum was nothing but a metaphor for the America that had existed before.

  Sam heard voices again. It sounded like they were whispering. They seemed to be coming from the next room. Sam exited the room he was stood in, walked down the hallway, and stepped into the room next door.

  He was immediately confronted by a row of soldiers with their guns at the ready. Sam instinctively grabbed for his ID strand. But they were just life-sized replicas. Sam breathed a sigh of relief and scanned the room. It was full of life-sized mannequins. It was like a forest of people. When Sam inspected the models of the soldiers more closely, he found they all had different equipment and represented different soldiers throughout the ages. Among them was a soldier that looked just like Cliff.

  And there weren’t just soldiers. There were men in suits and cowboys wearing huge hats. There were even some models that looked just like the characters found in movies and comic books. On the chest of one mannequin that wore a red and blue body suit was a symbol of a spider, whereas the mannequin dressed in the black bodysuit had pointy ears. The face of the mannequin that had a star on its chest and a shield in hand was half-covered by a mask. Had the past heroes of the United States of America once worn masks?

  Sam heard a voice from within the forest of people and made his way deeper, under the watch of America’s heroes and cowboys.

  —Sam? Are you there?

  As Sam heard the voice, the mannequins all moved to the side, creating a path.

  There was nothing between them now. Before Sam stood a woman clad in bright red.

  —Can you hear me? Sam?

  Amelie? Why? Sam thought he asked, but he couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice. It felt like being trapped underwater. He couldn’t hear a thing. Then his body became heavy.

  —I can see you, Sam. You came.

  Amelie said that she saw him, but it didn’t look like her eyes were perceiving him. Her body and her eyes may have been turned his way, but she seemed vacant, like a mannequin without a soul.

  —I’m on the Beach, Sam. Our Beach. The one where I was born. Higgs will never find me here. He can’t. So, don’t worry.

  Contrary to what she was saying, Amelie seemed worried. Sam had no idea how she was accessing here from the Beach. Perhaps she was manipulating Sam’s consciousness and speaking to him within a dream. But if what Amelie was saying was the truth, there was no need to be afraid of Higgs. Maybe this dream was just showing Sam what he desperately wanted to be true.

  Wake up, he urged himself. Dreaming about this won’t fix anything.

  —Sam, I’ve kept things from you.

  If this is a dream then wake up! Sam begged. The mannequins had formed a circle around Sam and Amelie. All of them were wearing the same mask—Higgs’s golden mask.

  —I’ve worn a mask for the longest time. Everything Higgs said about me is true.

  All the masks on the mannequins tore away and fell to the floor.

  —I could end it all. Us. Mankind. Extinction. That’s what I am.

  The faces of the mannequins were all flat. There were no eyes, no noses, no mouths. Even the heroes in their masks were the same. Their faces where the masks had been were gone. Even the faces of those heroes that had protected America had been snatched away.

  —But it’s not what I want to be. All I want is for you and me and everyone in this world… to be whole.

  The mannequins collapsed to the floor, each one knocking down the next in a domino pattern.

  —Sam… Promise you’ll stop me. Don’t let me end it all.

  Amelie began to disappear from her feet up. She was disintegrating into fine particles, just like the BTs.

  —I’ll be waiting for you on…

  She disappeared before she could finish her sentence. Sam was left all alone in this room among a pile of soulless mannequins. All alone in a museum that contained the last traces of America.

  Sam’s memories of leaving the museum were hazy. He had no idea how long he had stood in that empty room after Amelie disappeared. It was as if he had sleepwalked out of there. Before he knew it, he was back outside. The timefall was still falling.

&nbs
p; Maybe this museum was the same kind of Beach as Cliff’s battlefield. A fantasy museum born of an anonymous someone’s lingering attachment toward America that connected to this world.

  As if to support Sam’s theory, the doors to the museum closed behind him and didn’t allow him to enter again.

  Sam hadn’t realized when he first arrived, but the Bridges facility that he was looking for was right in front of the museum.

  * * *

  Sam’s cuff link and ID strand were authenticated, and the door opened, greeting him with the smell of dust and rust. Sam was on alert as he entered, thinking how cave-like it seemed. There was no other sign of life in this manmade metal cavern. Bridges staff must have been stationed here once upon a time, but there was no trace of them left. Sam wondered if the staff here had been slaughtered along with the Bridges I members who had accompanied Amelie all the way to Edge Knot City. Sam fiddled with his cuff link and the delivery terminal rose out of the floor. He had been through this routine so many times now. The receptor that would receive the Q-pid was now ready, so all Sam had to do was hold the six shards of metal to it and activate the Chiral Network. The whole continent would finally be online. Sam would finally be able to put down the baggage he had been forced to carry ever since he had transported Bridget’s body to the incinerator.

  The America that she had dedicated her life to would be rebuilt. In this empty room, with no other witness, her dream would finally be realized. But there would be no jubilant applause nor shouts of happiness. Sam doubted whether anyone even wanted it to be rebuilt.

  Sam removed the Q-pid from under his suit. The shards were floating slightly. It would be the last time Sam performed this rite, and he wanted to get it over and done with quickly. Sam held the Q-pid up to the panel. He was overcome by a severe allergic reaction to the chiralium as per usual.

  Now, it’s over. I kept my promise to you, Bridget. But as Sam thought those words, he froze. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Maybe it was because there were so few people on the expedition, or because no sooner had they arrived here than Amelie had been taken. Perhaps the team that had been ordered to install the equipment at this facility had prioritized getting this place up and running first. They probably hadn’t had time to make it look nice or think about security. The interior of the equipment that was usually covered in shielding lay exposed. And inside was the same piece of equipment that Sam had attached to his chest.