Stuck

by Samantha Durante

  Movement on the screen drew Alessa’s notice – Isaac and Joe had reached the utility room.

  The nuclear cell in the center of the room – usually a swirl of purple-blue light – was smoldering a worrisome shade of orange. The room glowed like the interior of the sun, the alarms flashing bursts of white a few times a second like meteors popping and sizzling on contact with the intense heat.

  With seemingly just as much fervor, Joe burst through the door and leapt toward a large red handle on the far wall.

  He wrapped his clawed mitt around the handle and pulled it down, hard.

  Everyone held their breath, waiting for the power to extinguish, the alarms to stop, some confirmation that disaster was averted.

  Nothing happened.

  49. REDEMPTION

  For the first time since entering the room, Lizzie looked up from the table. She watched the screen in dismay as Joe frantically jiggled the handle up and down, up and down, with no effect.

  Alessa’s eyes searched the Draftsman’s face. “Why isn’t it working?” She was frantic.

  Eyes wide, the Draftsman shook his head. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  And then Lizzie saw it: directly across the room was a second red handle, identical to the one Joe had pulled.

  “There’s a second handle,” Lizzie called out. “See?” She pointed it out on the screen.

  Everyone’s heads whipped around, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

  “I’ll radio down and tell them,” Alessa stated, putting a finger to her earpiece.

  But there was no answer.

  “They probably c-can’t hear over the alarm,” the Economist whimpered.

  “Okay, I’m going down,” Alessa decided, making towards the door.

  “I wouldn’t,” the Doctor called out, “in your condition.”

  Alessa stopped in her tracks and swiveled to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The Doctor eyed her for a moment as if making up his mind, then said, “The curve of your back. Blemishes on your skin. An instinctive hand on the belly. I may be wrong, but… aren’t you expecting?”

  Lizzie’s jaw dropped as she watched realization settle over Alessa’s features.

  “The radiation – it’s not safe for the fetus,” the Doctor explained.

  Alessa started to stutter out a reply, but Lizzie didn’t give her the chance to finish. “I’ll go,” she insisted.

  Alessa swallowed and nodded. She looked just about as shell-shocked as Lizzie had been feeling.

  Lizzie squeezed Alessa’s arm in support as she raced out the door.

  Panting as she made her way towards the basement, Lizzie pushed herself harder, focusing on getting there as fast as possible. She was determined to pull something constructive from this ruinous day.

  Exiting the stairwell a few moments later, she found Isaac pressed against the small glass porthole in the door, watching in distress as his brother sacrificed his life for nothing.

  “Isaac,” she called, reaching him. “There’s a second handle. Look.” She pointed through the window at the other lever on the opposite side of the room.

  They both banged on the window in unison. Joe looked up and followed their gaze to the second handle.

  Though the radiation was already clearly affecting him, he dragged himself with surprising speed across the room and pulled.

  The power cell glowed as bright as ever and the alarms continued to shriek.

  Joe tried again.

  Isaac cursed.

  And then a sudden flash of intuition told Lizzie that these levers needed to be pulled together to activate the manual shutdown. The only problem was, Joe couldn’t possibly reach them both at the same time.

  Time came to a standstill as Lizzie peered through the glass. The blaring of the alarm faded away into the background, replaced by the sound of her own heartbeat thudding through her ears.

  She took it all in. The burned-out reactor, the metal visibly distorting now as the molten nuclear core glowed an ominous shade of neon tangerine. The haze of smoke filling the room from the top down, shrouding everything in a graphite mist. Joe’s increasingly vehement manipulations of the handle, each stroke as useless as the last, his strength waning with every prolonged second of struggle.

  No, she thought. This can’t be the end.

  She thought of her mother, of everyone in Raptor, of all the lives that had been cut short in service of the Engineers’ well-intentioned but misguided plans. And then she thought of the tiny life just beginning to take shape inside Alessa.

  She looked at Isaac, the unnatural glow of the reactor reflecting off the brilliance of his kind but deeply troubled eyes.

  And suddenly it was like viewing the world from 30,000 feet, the past and the future and the ever-fleeting present all woven together into a greater tapestry, her own life only a single drop in an ocean of humanity.

  But a single drop, she realized, could make all the difference between a flood contained and a dam overflowing.

  And all at once, Lizzie knew exactly what she had to do.

  With one final, savored breath, Lizzie abruptly pushed Isaac aside and burst through the sizzling door. She rushed into the crackling heat, ash and ember stirring in her wake as she dove for the first handle.

  Locking eyes with her, Joe yanked the other lever simultaneously.

  A loud CLICK pierced the space, then the dying drone of the slowing whir from the reactor.

  From opposite ends of the room, Lizzie and Joe slumped in unison against the wall, overcome.

  Her gaze lashed to Joe’s, their eyes spoke of gratitude, and of respect.

  And then, the next moment, of goodbye.

  EPILOGUE: HOPE

  Alessa could see Alex standing beside the heavy drape, waiting for Carlos to begin the proceedings. From the crowd gathered in the square, she watched the emotions flit across his face: anxiousness, eagerness, guilt, pride. But, most of all, grief.

  It was finally starting to hit them, all of them. Yes, the war with Paragon was over. But the people they loved really weren’t coming back.

  Though Alessa, for one, hadn’t had much time to dwell on it. She’d been more concerned about a particular loved one who was yet to come… and with every passing day, the gnawing terror in her heart grew. All she could do, paralyzed in the face of her mounting dread, was pray for some kind of miracle.

  A brief screech of feedback sounded from the mic, followed by a throat clearing, and then Carlos’s buttery voice flooded the plaza.

  “Thank you all for joining us today for the dedication ceremony.”

  Carlos stood beside Alex, dressed in a crisp military uniform, looking very official but at the same time, also very approachable.

  He’s a natural, Alessa thought to herself, observing his open stance and reassuring expression. The leader Paragon deserves.

  She wished she could feel as generous towards herself. She hadn’t even been able to muster the courage to tell anyone what she knew. Especially Isaac. And she hated herself for it.

  At the podium, Carlos took in the solemn crowd and cleared his throat once more before continuing.

  “There’s been a lot of change around Paragon the past six weeks. A lot for all of us to process. And there’s much we’re all gonna need to remember, even when it’s hard.

  “There are many heroes that led us to today. Many people who fought for our freedom, and died fighting. Many more who were innocents, and paid with their lives anyway. Every person standing here today bears scars. We have all lost too much.”

  Alessa couldn’t argue with that. She ran her fingers unconsciously over her belly, and her heart clenched with the knowledge of how much more she still had to lose.

  Carlos ended his pause with a meaningful look in Alex’s direction. “Today, we honor them.” Carlos nodded at the drape, and Alex reached his hand out to grab it.

  A murmur of anticipation spread through the crowd, and then, as Alex execut
ed the reveal, an appreciative gasp.

  Beneath the cloth stood a gorgeous carved marble statue. Larger-than-life figures stood regally in the center, their backs pressed together in solidarity, arms linked – a likeness of the Stuck, and a tall, striking woman, with thick flowing hair that Alessa knew shone golden in the artist’s mind.

  Her heart clutched at the tears welled in Alex’s eyes.

  And in her own mind, the Stuck’s eyes radiated in brilliant blue.

  Beside her, Isaac squeezed her hand, and she knew he was thinking the same.

  After allowing a few moments of silent reflection, Carlos proceeded with his address.

  “This monument will remain here, in the center of Paragon, to commemorate all who sacrificed to bring liberty to our colony.”

  Quiet applause rose up from the gathered assembly.

  “As you know, those who perpetrated the violence that hurt so many have been apprehended, and have given us, your newly elected interim government, their full cooperation in the transition. We’ve been working ’round the clock to free all citizens of any manipulations they’ve been subject to, informing them of their safety from the virus, and empowering them to choose whether to remain in Paragon or set off in search of a better life elsewhere. We are honored that so many of you have decided to stay.”

  Alessa and Isaac were part of the team – led by Alicia, who’d thrown herself into her work to deal with her devastation over Sato – that was helping to wean the average citizen off the psychiatric drugs and reverse the effects on anyone who’d been subject to the stitch. It was slow going, but so far people seemed to be adjusting pretty well to their new reality – most were just grateful to finally feel like themselves again.

  Thankfully, since the rebels had taken over, there’d been no further mishaps with anyone mutating from the stitch. And sadly, all of the Stuck who’d rallied behind Joe and worked with the rebels had succumbed in recent weeks to the devastating effects of radiation poisoning, just as Joe had foreseen. Peering up at the monument, Alessa was glad that they would be remembered as heroes instead of monsters.

  Carlos spoke for a few more moments, memorializing the various groups who had contributed to the Engineers’ takedown and helped facilitate the transition in the weeks since. The Stuck, various members of the rebellion – Regina especially – and even the cooperating members of the Ruling Class got mentions. Alessa’s heart filled with pride when he acknowledged Janie, Isaac, Lizzie, Joe and the rest of their crew.

  As the newly elected leader of Paragon, Carlos had embraced an ethos of transparency, a welcome change from all the secrecy that had marked the colony’s past. Accordingly, he’d divulged everything they’d learned about the virus, the vaccine, the stitch, the resistance, Paragon’s history – all of it – to the general public. And though it was as hard for everyone to take in as it had been for Alessa and her friends as they’d uncovered all the sordid details over the past few years, people seemed to appreciate his candor. It won him a lot of esteem amongst those who chose to stay in Paragon, and Alessa could feel it in the crowd around her.

  The only thing that they hadn’t yet made progress on was the one thing Alessa needed the most: finding a way to protect the babies. Even with Josephine’s blood samples and all of Paragon’s equipment and the knowledge of the Doctor – who Alessa had sworn to secrecy about what he had so deftly intuited – it just wasn’t coming together.

  And it was becoming harder and harder to hide her own condition from everyone else.

  She still couldn’t believe it’d taken her so long to realize herself. Of course, she’d had some inkling, but it had been so easy in the upheaval of the preceding months to dismiss the subtle changes in her body – even her missed cycles – as the result of stress, radiation poisoning, malnourishment, anything other than the one thing she couldn’t face it being.

  And, as Alessa could now wholeheartedly attest, denial had been a much more comfortable place to reside than the all-consuming anxiety of truth.

  Just as Carlos seemed about to wrap up, a strange sound issued from the distance, startling Alessa from her thoughts. The steady whup whup whup whup was growing louder by the second and sounded somehow familiar, but in the moment, she couldn’t quite place its origin.

  Isaac looked just as puzzled to her right, but on her other side, Janie suddenly grabbed Alessa’s wrist. “Less, is that… a helicopter?”

  As the words left Janie’s mouth, the noise suddenly resolved in Alessa’s brain and she realized her sister was right – it was a helicopter. No wonder it’d taken her a minute to place it; Alessa hadn’t seen or heard one since before the outbreak.

  Glancing around, she saw that others had reached the same conclusion. Many people’s faces were plastered upwards, searching the sky.

  From the podium, Carlos registered the same mix of hope and disbelief as everyone else. And as the source of the sound finally broke into view over the horizon, he held up a silent hand to maintain order, and directed the crowd to one side of the plaza, creating enough space for the newcomers to land.

  The square grew very quiet, the onlookers collectively holding their breath waiting for the chopper’s blades to slow and its door to open. The helicopter was unmarked, Alessa observed, wondering where it could possibly have originated.

  Carlos stepped forward to receive whoever would emerge.

  Finally, the door slid to the side, and a group of three uniform-clad officials stepped out. Alessa was too far away to read their insignias, but each of the trio had the straight, jet-black hair and shapely almond eyes that usually marked citizens of their former enemies in the Eastern Allies. Her heart clenched in anticipation.

  “Greetings!” Carlos called out, friendly but cautious, his arm raised in a wave.

  The helicopter rotors were still whipping dust around the plaza. The visitors acknowledged Carlos with a wave, then ducked down and hastily jogged away from the quieting aircraft.

  Before they got too close, Carlos held out his arms in warning. “We are so grateful to see you,” Carlos explained over the noise of the chopper, “but it’s not safe for you here. The virus that devastated our planet may be anywhere here – we are all immune.”

  The visitors stopped and looked at each other. Alessa couldn’t quite read their expressions, but she didn’t get the sense that they were especially concerned about the virus. Instead, they seemed relieved – maybe they hadn’t expected Carlos to be welcoming?

  The helicopter rotors finally came to a rest, and the dust and racket settled.

  “Thank you,” one of the three said, his speech only faintly accented. “We, too, have been vaccinated. We are safe.”

  The second official, a woman, stepped forward. “We come representing the Confederation of Eastern Nations. We are all survivors of the global epidemic who have unified under one flag. We are thrilled to find others here.”

  The third official, another man, spoke up. “Three months past, we detected seismic activity that seemed indicative of a nuclear explosion.” Alessa did the math quickly in her head – he must mean Raptor.

  “Airplane travel was deemed too risky not knowing the conditions for a landing,” the female official explained, “so we came by ship, hoping to find other survivors. Our crew is docked a few hundred miles offshore.”

  A murmur of excitement spread throughout the crowd, and Carlos approached the trio and shook their hands. “It sounds like we have much to discuss. Welcome.”

  Before they could retire to more comfortable quarters to converse, though, there was a flurry of activity behind Carlos and Alicia emerged from the crowd.

  “Wait!” she shouted. She looked flustered, but there was a glint in her eye that Alessa had not seen since the peaceful days at Raptor, before everything fell apart. “Before you go,” she called, breathless, “you said you’re all vaccinated? Where is your vaccine from? And, more importantly, does it work on infants?”

  The visitors seemed puzzled at the urgency of h
er questions, but Alessa knew she couldn’t bear to wait. Everything they had all been working toward hinged on this.

  Alessa’s whole body thrummed in anticipation.

  “At the outset of the viral outbreak,” the first official replied, “one of the old governments received an anonymous transmission with details of an existing vaccine which had some limitations. After several iterations from our joint biomedical teams, we successfully modified the vaccine to be suitable from birth.”

  Alicia’s face flooded with relief. “Thank you,” she choked, her voice quavering with emotion.

  The crowd broke into cheers as word spread of their good fortune.

  Alessa was so overcome that her ears buzzed as the weeks of silent tension she’d been holding in her muscles finally released. She could no longer hear what passed between Carlos and the visitors, but she watched as he clapped a hand to one of their shoulders and, grinning broadly, led them away.

  Feeling a bit dazed, but in a good way, Alessa turned back to Janie and Isaac.

  Janie, as she often did, somehow put words to Alessa’s thoughts. “…Did that really just happen?”

  Deion, who’d been standing beside her, laughed and pulled a tight arm around her shoulders. “Things are looking up!”

  Isaac also looked stunned. “Seems so…”

  Josephine tugged Isaac’s shirt. “Does this mean I don’t have to give blood anymore?”

  Isaac smiled down at her. “You are done with needles.”

  Jo whooped and did a celebratory dance in the street as Alex poked his way through the throng to join them.

  “What I don’t get, though,” Deion wondered aloud, “is who sent them the information about the vaccine?”

  Alex shrugged. “Lizzie told me once that the Draftsman had regrets about the outbreak. Maybe it was him?”

  Janie nodded at Alex. “Could be. I’ll ask him the next time I’m at the prison. Amazing job on the statue, by the way.”

  Everyone congratulated Alex on the unveiling, and he mumbled his thanks, uncharacteristically humble; his thoughts seemed a million miles away. With Lizzie, Alessa guessed.