by Nolan Oreno
Saul shook his head. “That's what you refuse to accept, just like the rest of them. Time is what we don’t have. The longer we wait, the quicker we lose track of our mission. Time is the most important resource we have. Who knows how long this colony will last until a revolt, or a mechanical malfunction, or a storm comes to wipe us out. We’re in uncharted territories here. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow or even the next hour. We can’t wait around for them to be ready, we need to be ready now."
“Ready for what exactly?"
“The restart."
“You honestly think things can go back to normal, just like that? Things take time, time that we do have, believe it or not. We’re young. And we still have a chance, they had a chance, if you only let them prove themselves, instead of spying on them, distrusting them, raping them, and killing them."
“It wasn’t supposed to go how it did," Maven sympathetically added from the background. “She liked me, Janya. She would always talk to me, try to help me when I was feeling lost. I- I think I fell in love with her, in a way. I thought she wanted it-"
“Enough!" Saul screamed, uncoupling the nail gun from his suit and lifting to Hollis. “Where is she!"
Hollis steadied the spear in his hands.
“Tell me now, or you die," Saul screamed again.
“Leave," Hollis said. “There’s nothing for you here."
“It’s my child!" Saul yelled, shaking the gun. “It’s my fucking child, not yours!"
“No," Hollis returned confidently. “It’s mine."
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Three nails propelled themselves across the space between the two parties. Two struck Hollis’ exposed skin, one lodging itself into his upper left thigh, and the lower center of his chest. He reeled over in pain, falling to his knees.
“Autumn, if you don’t come with me this next one goes into his forehead!" screamed Saul into the gardens core, fast approaching the downed man.
“The baby is mine!" screamed Hollis again, leaping to his feet in a burst of energy and jabbing the spear into Saul’s chest plate.
The attack was effective at pushing Saul back, but it produced nothing more than a slight scratch on his exosuit. The physical exertion was too much for Hollis’ injured body to bear, and he stumbled to the ground beside Saul. Quickly, Hollis lifted himself again, and taking advantage of Saul’s moment of shock, limped towards the treeline.
Pop. Pop.
Two more nails were shot at the stumbling man. One missed, the other dug itself into the heel of his right leg. Hollis faltered again, but kept his pace, making it through thick bushes of the central garden, leaving spattering of wet blood on the leaves. He threw his body against a tree, catching his breath for a moment and bracing against the pain that rippled through his body.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Leaves rustled around him, but all missed. Hollis pushed off the tree and staggered forward to the central clearing, leaving a path of blood to be followed like an animal in the hunt. Hollis met another tree trunk with his right shoulder and rested there for a moment, catching his breath and checking his wounds. The nails were deep, but not deep enough to do any significant internal damage. He was lucky they missed his head and struck less vital sections of his body.
“Saul, stop!" It was Autumn’s voice. It was to the left of him, through the bushes.
Hollis turned and pushed forth in pain. He parted a hanging vine and entered the rows of hydroponic aquifers. There, between the aisles of bubbling water and vegetation, he saw Autumn geared up in her armored exosuit. Emerging from the bushes nearby was Saul, his gun in hand, and rushing to come face to face with Autumn.
“Stop!" Hollis screamed.
Saul turned to him, lifting the gun to halt him from coming any closer, and then turned his head back to Autumn. “Is it true?" he said. “Is it his?"
“It’s true," she cried.
Saul let out a sigh of emotional defeat. “No," he repeated. “No. No. No.”
For a handful of seconds, there was no more action between the three. Autumn’s cries echoed around the dome, Hollis waited for the final nail to lodge itself into his heart, and Saul let the newly acquired information soak in.
“No," Saul repeated one last time, much calmer in tone.
He lowered his gun from Hollis’ direction, dropped his head, and turned away from Autumn. “Okay. Okay, then you’ve made your choice," he said stoically, looking around the garden in acceptance. “You can finally be one big happy family, just like you always wanted.”
Saul cleared his throat, nodded to each of them, and then he left suddenly, joining his comrade by the doorway. They exited the facility far less dramatically than they entered it.
Waiting for no longer than what was necessary to assure Saul was gone, Autumn rushed over to Hollis and threw her arms around him, soaking her white armor in his red blood. Her cries softened as he slowly unlatched her helmet, revealing a face of fear and confusion, but most importantly, a face of relief. The two kissed, skin to skin, and embraced all that they had not lost.
“You’re safe," Hollis whispered to her, grunting as she inspected his wounds.
“We need to get you cleaned up," she said to him.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re bleeding badly.”
“I just- I don’t understand," Hollis said. “Why did he leave like that? He had us. He won.”
Almost immediately following the comment, the humming of the generator that powered the greenhouse ceased to a silence. Absolute quiet overtook the scene, leaving Autumn and Hollis frozen in the dark.
“What's happening?" she asked fearfully.
The whirling sounds of the gardens ventilation system died down to an eerie stillness
and nothing more could be heard aside from their own accelerating breathing. Hollis looked around expecting to see Saul in a violent return, but there was no sign of him. Instead, all Hollis saw was a dim orange glow in the distance between a thicket of leaves. The glow grew bigger and brighter as time ticked on.
“Put your helmet back on!" Hollis demanded in a panic. “Hurry!"
The crackling of fire filled the soundless void. The once singular glow had multiplied rapidly without backup power to activate the sprinkler system to impede it. The glow leaped from leaf to leaf like a living lifeform with the intent to colonize the entire space. Autumn fumbled at her helmet as she locked it back over her head, isolating herself from the thickening smoke that swelled around them. As her lungs took in clean air, Hollis’ took in the polluted air of his gardens destruction. He coughed and staggered forward, still bleeding onto the heating grasses at his feet, and he quickly found himself disoriented from the strength of the nearby blaze. The toxins from the burning of his psychoactive plants began to take hold of his mind. Autumn saw him faltering and took him under her arm, guiding his weakening body from the wave of the fire. The smoke thickened, making it difficult for Autumn to see through her blackening visor as soot collected on the screen. Still, she pushed ahead, knowing the general area of the main entrance to the garden. She cleared aside clouds of ash with the sweeping of her arms while maintaining Hollis’ broken balance. Together they burst from the gardens internal brush and found themselves in the open space of the outer circle.
Luckily, the entrance, or in their case exit, was just where she had suspected. She laid Hollis down where they were, safe at the moment in the clearing, then she rushed to the door. Taking off into a full sprint, she nearly rammed herself into the door upon arrival, being difficult to decelerate in the awkward exosuit. She managed to stop just before impact, and regaining balance, tried the keypad, revealing itself lifeless as well as all the other electronics in the area. Thankfully, the manual locks were designed to counter an electrical failure. Autumn grasped the mechanical turn-handles and pushed. Nothing. She tried again, putting her entire weight on it for maximum leverage, but again nothing.
“Come on!" she screamed, attempting the handles again, but
having the same effect.
Frantically, Autumn peered through the glass porthole on the door, and through it saw the resistance she was confronting. It seemed that Saul and Maven had activated the manual counter locks from the outside, used only for extreme cases of containment, thus proving to be impassable on their end. Hollis and she were trapped in the glass dome, with fire and without life-support systems. This would be where it all ends. The very place where, a few hours earlier, she felt alive, was now where she would die.
Terrified, Autumn turned back to Hollis who was turning about the grass in painful agony, extracting the lodged nails from his body. The fire was closing in, now having taken over the entire middle of the garden and illuminating it like a lantern in the night. Flames continued to consume all plants and life encountered, soon to consume Autumn and Hollis if nothing was done. She could feel the increasing heat even through the temperature regulated and air conditioned armor of her exosuit, and she could only imagine what extreme heat Hollis was experiencing in his exposed state. Concerned for his well-being, she ran back over to him as he was extracting the last of the nails from his thigh.
“Hollis- the door, it’s locked from the outside. I can’t get through," she cried.
Hollis tossed the blood painted nail to the grass at his side and sighed. "I know."
“So what are we going to do?! The fires coming!"
Hollis was oddly at peace while looking around at the approaching flames, studying his gardens death in an almost academic manner. It appeared time had slowed down for him, and only for him, as if their situation was not as urgent as Autumn professed so loudly. They had all the time in the world.
“Hollis!"
“You’re going to be okay, Autumn," he said stoically. “You’re going to get out of here."
“What are you talking about?" she urged.
Hollis stood himself up, bearing the pain. He pointed away from the flames to another place in the garden. “There, do you see it? That’s your exit. It’s something no one knows about but the builders of this place and myself. Come on."
Slowly, he made his way to the place in question with Autumn at his side. Once there, Hollis fell down to his knees and lifted an overgrown fern from its roots. A large clump of dirt and soil was gutted from its basin and revealed a shallow metal frame beneath. It was a hatch, just big enough for one.
“This is an emergency maintenance hatch that will lead you through an underground tunnel. It’s not oxygenated, so make sure you keep your helmet on at all times. At the end of the tunnel, you’ll see a ladder that will lead you to another hatch. Make sure you strap yourself to the ladder as you decompress, then you can exit onto the desert plain safely. You’ll be a few hundred meters from the garden. Once you get outside, you need to get to your Crawler as quickly as you can, but make sure you’re unseen if they’re still outside, which I’m sure they are."
“Hollis-"
“Then, when you’re in your Crawler, go straight to the valley. Go to the forest," he said, beginning to break his strong demeanor. “I want you to give birth to our baby there, okay? I want that to be the first thing our baby sees in this world, nothing but the trees and you.”
“Why-" Autumn cried. “Why can’t you come? Why only me? There has to be another way. A way both of us can take." The fire was drawing nearer.
“You’re the only one who can survive out there," he said sympathetically, stroking the side of her helmet as tears wet his ash coated cheeks. “Saul took everything. My suit. The backup suits in the garden and the colony. I won’t survive one minute out there, let alone make it out of the emergency tunnel. It’s better this way. It’s the only way."
“No. No why. Why can’t I stay with you? Why can’t I stay?” she mourned.
“You’ve got something better for you out there," he smiled through sad eyes, pointing beyond the glass walls. “The forest is waiting."
“But it’ll mean nothing without you."
He took her helmet in his hands and rested his forehead on the glass visor. “I’ll meet you there, both of you," he whispered sweetly. “And this time I won’t be late."
They stayed like that, for as long as they had, until the flames were nearly licking their backs. Eventually, Hollis had to push themselves apart. He unbuckled the hatchway and lowered Autumn into the tunnel’s entrance against her complaints. The cold and dirty air fought against his skin as the hatchway remained open, but he kept it open long enough to see her safely descend the ladder. He then smiled for her, and she beaconed for him, but without a moment's hesitation the hatch was shut. Now, with the only escape sealed, Hollis was locked alone in the dying garden. He turned back towards the fire, in awe of its greatness as it lifted itself high above him.
In watching the flames, Hollis decided he would not accept the fate of the garden as this one. He staggered around the domes edges to the facilitie’s control panel. He walked along the many machines until he reached the life-support system, taking note of all the functions that could have prevented the flames if it were not for Saul’s sabotage. Fortunately for Hollis, there was one fail-safe that still operated, unknown to Saul. It was dependent upon manual activation- a carbon dioxide flood. The lever idly remained pointed downwards, awaiting his guiding hand. With a deep breath and an overwhelming sense of absolution, Hollis wrapped his fingers around it and closed his eyes.
“I’m ready," he said to himself, and to anyone that might be listening. “I’m ready to go home."
Then, upon his relief, Hollis lifted the latch upwards, and he basked in the change of air as everything around him was torn from its stalks and stems into a whirlwind of emptiness. As the fire quickly disappeared in the overwhelming evacuation of the oxygen, so too did he. But before Hollis faded away completely, he found himself in a different garden, one still very much alive, with Rosa beneath the tree, and the warm rain cleansing and mending his once red scars.
Part Twenty-Three: Entropy
The emergency lights guided her to the end. In between the flashing of the lights, the tunnel was drawn into an absolute dark, and she was forced to continue forward in a blind stumble. Into oblivion she threw herself because she could not afford to stop. She refused to stop. Her shoulder plating scraped along the sides of the tight shaft as she hurriedly pushed herself forward, ducking exposed piping and stepping over ventilation. Don’t stop, she was reciting to herself in her disoriented mind. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.
Don’t stop for him.
Autumn’s foot tangled with the other, and she fell forward. She impacted the ground without any brace for the fall. Her helmet's visor smacked on the metal flooring, bouncing back briefly into her forehead, knocking her nose against the glass, and sending her into a dizzy state. She shrieked in discomfort but made no attempt to reposition herself once she settled on the floor. She remained tangled into the shafts wiring, panting and sweating, gulping at the artificial air inflating her suit. Her O2 tank informed her it was only one-third full, limiting her to a measly 6 hours of air.
She slowed her breathing but still gave no effort to lifting herself upright. Her body’s energy was as depleted as the oxygen tank, having nothing left to give to her. The tunnel narrowed and darkened, its end seemed to grow farther and farther away, and Autumn decided to move no more. The shadows swelled around her lifeless form like vultures with empty stomachs, and then a profound quiet followed.
Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud.
Autumn’s adjusting ears could suddenly hear the skipping of the dual-beating hearts inside her. One after another, in succession, the hearts jumped like a flat rock thrown parallel to still water. She was not one heart, but two, and although she thirsted for the end of her own pulse, there was still the other that must continue, no matter what. Selfish thoughts could destroy everything Hollis and the others had given their lives for. Even if Hollis’ sacrifice was fueled by the false dream of a possible escape to a fertilized valley, there still might be an alternative salvation fo
r both of her hearts: The city.
There was no longer anyone she could trust at the Hub, but to her benefit, just recently the building crew finished directing the backup oxygen supply to one of the Refugee Settlements finished towers. Perhaps she could find safety in the rubble. If anything, it would make it harder for her to be found, considering all the spaces she could hide there. Yes, that was her only possible salvation. It had oxygen. It had places to hide. But how would she get there? How long could she survive before she was found?
The tunnel trembled and dust motes shook from the beams above. The garden sounded as if it was collapsing upon itself above her. All worry aside about her undetermined future, Autumn first needed to stand or else she would never leave. She could figure out a plan later when there was less risk of her being buried alive. So she did just that, wrapping her fingers around an exposed wire and pulling her broken body upwards. Her knees ached and she stumbled again, but this time in the right direction. Autumn found herself running, as best she could, to the tunnels end.
At the end was a rusty ladder rising high into the shadowed ceiling. A moment's pause, another rumble from above, and Autumn began to ascend. One rung after another, without looking back, she climbed into the tight vertical space. She had to pause to stabilize herself when the tunnel rattled around her but continued at a modest speed during the calmness in between. After a minute of this, she reached the top, which materialized itself as an old steel valve protruding from a small hatch. With one arm wrapped around the ladder's rung, she used her other to turn the valve. It was stiff at first, unmoving, but with enough force began to budge.
The hatch drew itself upwards, revealing a starry night sky. The air from the tunnel was sucked upwards and she held onto the ladder so as not to fall. The two sides equalized, and Autumn heaved herself towards the stars, fighting through falling sand and pushing with the force of her body. Once fully out of the hatch, she rolled over onto her back and took gulps from her dwindling oxygen supply. What would have been a walk in the park without her exosuit was made exhausting with it on. An additive of sixty pounds can do that to any menial task.