The year is 2056. I recall the events clear as day. My mother is making preparations for a coming storm, in this same home, decades ago. She senses something is wrong.
“Will he ever come back?” I ask her.
She does not respond. She kneels on a knee and pulls me close. Her warmth, I will never forget. It was in that moment, I did feel at peace. The look on her face tells me that she can hold no promise. The future is not set. She wants to comfort me, to lie and tell me it will be alright, but this is not the way she raised me.
“Yes.” Her mind is made up. Be it a lie, be it the truth. No uncertainty. Pure determination. I look outside to see the window. The sun is setting. The clock moves a tick on the wristwatch she gave me.
2062, it is the day of my father’s international meeting. He will establish peace treaties between the civilly hostile factions. We are seated in a standard transport vehicle. Only the AI driver with us.
“Father.” I look to him as I see the same setting sun like the one I saw years before, “Good luck.”
He smiles. A sadness shines in his eyes. The clock moves a tick.
2068 comes by. I am in a test room along with other patients. We are forwarding the cause of science as volunteers for genetic empowerment. Everyone in the room has a general sense of nervousness. Only one of them is at peace. She catches my attention but her eyes say the same sadness I saw in his.
I ask her, “Will you be alright?”
She looks at me, sure and determined – “Yes.”
When I see her like that, I see the other woman who cared for me.
‘Adria’, she tells me. Adria is her name.
A glimpse of 2080 shines in my mind’s eye. My son, Josh, is angry. As I watch him throw a tantrum over the death of his mother. I can only stand here in silence at our home. The clock ticks again and the sun outside – begins its retrograde again.
“You could have done something! You could have saved them! You could have saved them all!” The tears on my boy’s face does not spare me the dagger that would seep into my heart.
There are no words I can tell him. No comfort that would be acceptable, beyond an obvious lie. The sun outside makes me wonder. In this time, I stand here as I would stand in 2093.
Shifting through old documents to discover bits and pieces, patchworks of the messages my loved ones left behind. Warnings, to-do lists and acceptances of their fate. Night time has left me. Day is here. My mind moves like the stroke on the clock. Another time goes by. I see what I’ve lost and what could have been.
I see the time in 2080, the last time I will speak to my wife. She is still as beautiful as she’s always been. She may be bedridden in the hospital, but I fathom no care for appearances.
“We did it.” She tells me, “Together, we did it.”
Adria taught me how much my family legacy meant to her, an outsider. She was willing to carry it on. Willing to do what I stood away from. The setting sun outside makes me wonder if I had been there for her the way I should have. Had I fought hard enough for the proper civil rights for those labelled too dangerous for society?
I hold her hand and reminisce in a time long gone as she fades away.
2072 flashes again. It is the night that I take Adria out to see the stars. She has more interest in them than I previously thought. She asks a peculiar thing, ‘Will we repeat history?’
I am frozen in the memory. I do not recall responding. Only looking. Could the interest be in the question or in the most beautiful woman I have ever known? Even then, Adria wanted me to change things. She supported the legacy, the baggage that I carried. She’d support it to the end.
2093, I find the old, scarred breather. It provokes a long gone past.
2062. The ride is smooth. Too smooth. The comfort doesn’t make any sense, in such a politically hostile world. I see my father’s smile. He knows what’s coming. I know he knows. Why can’t he tell me?
“Colin…”
A half a second of the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in this lifetime and then all goes white, until minutes later I wake up with a breather on my face in the middle of the desert. My father is carrying me back to civilization. He is mortally wounded. He can’t make it that much further. He falls to his feet and I roll out of his arms.
“You have to make it Colin… You have to make it…”
My head falls to the side. I am losing consciousness. Last thing I remember, is the sun…
It’s… setting…
2056. My mother is taking me to work. She tells me it’s no longer safe for us to be at home. Something could happen at any time. She never looks me in the eye.
All she tells me is that it will be ‘Fine’, it will be, ‘Alright’. Trust her. She has a plan. She always finds a way.
Few steps outside our door and I catch the setting sun blind my eye for half a second. When vision returns, my mother is frozen still. Her hand gripping mines.
“Colin.” She whispers in the deepest sense of hurt, paranoia and outright rage, “I love you.”
“Mom?” I struggle to understand what is happening. I only see shadow figures in front of her. About a dozen of them. They open fire. She’s hit once. She’s hit twice. Bleeding, she pushes me away and attaches a wrist apparatus to my arm. In an instant, I am gone.
This is the last time I saw my mother in the flesh.
2093 comes back to me. Hours go by after my arrival. Now, here I am, looking at the same sun outside the window I’ve seen too many times before. The legacy of my family. The tale of my life is composed in losses and what could have or what should have been. Could I have helped my mother? Could I have warned my father? Could I have saved my wife?
Now that the world will end in less than a week, I question myself.
‘Will I repeat history?’
A shuffle in the wind catches my attention. Immediately my hand unlocks the safety on my gun. I turn around and point it. No one’s there to my naked eye.
“But I know you’re there.” I say confidently.
She uncloaks from her invisible barrier. I cannot deny who it is. The creamy white skin, blonde hair and green eyes with her out-of-this world’s dress attire comes at me with no mistake.
“Colin.” She calls to me gently, “It’s time.”
ACT FOUR
Reawakening
2093, Inside The Valkyrie’s Anamnesis
Suspended in a loop, drawn and tossed about in a world of colors, feelings, imaginations… delusions, untruths, truths… lost and gone. Unable to perceive. Unable to come to terms with it. It was his face but it wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him. I know it wasn’t him. Blood everywhere. I’m bleeding, I’m losing. Determined and I have to live. Determined!
Fire everywhere. At least I got my child away. He’s safe. He’ll be safe. I’m sorry. It crosses me I’ll never see him again. Can’t see him grow up. Won’t see him play with his toys, hit that rebel teen age, have a wife… have a kid… I won’t see it.
“Ianna!” A man calls me out of hiding. His voice is spellbinding. It’s him. It has to be him. Seven, it’s you? I… how? Why didn’t I feel you approaching?
“It’s alright. Everything is going to be alright.” He comforts me.
The other men aren’t firing. They wait for us to embrace. His warmth is strange. I want to believe it’s real, but… why is his hair red? And his eyes… why are…
Pssffkkk!
A silenced shot always remains the greatest heartbreaker. Blood oozes from my stomach. I take a step back and see his face. It’s not him. It was never him.
Maybe I wanted it to be him. I’ve lost myself trying to fight Zero all these years that I’ve twisted and wretched my memories. Deluded myself after I was gunned down and dragged back to its lair. Forced to sleep for whatever experiment it wished to do to me.
Zero made me relive that moment a thousand times over.
How many times do I see it happening, over and over in different ways and different outcomes. How m
any times did you try to comfort me? Wrap me in your embrace the best you can. Even if it’s just an imagination, you used your power to keep my mind safe from it. All I have in here is you. And now, after so many years, after all my will to fight has been beaten into a pulp, I feel you slipping. Why?
‘I’m still with you Ianna…’
I know. You’ve always been.
‘But soon you must wake up. You know this is not the real world.’
I don’t know if I’m ready to face what’s out there… alone.
‘You have to. You must find new strength. You must… come find me… and we’ll set things right. Once and for all.’
How do you know? How do you know this isn’t real? Please, I don’t care how many nightmares I have. I don’t want to lose you again. Even if it’s just your whispers. I’ll take that. Let me have that. Why stop it? Damnit! Why! We can’t!
Zero will win again. Zero always wins… If this is what we can have then why Seven, why break it? Please, can’t you see? All our fighting has been ceaseless.
In the end we’ve accomplished nothing. Let’s at least have this… Please… no… why? Speak to me! Speak to me!
‘I love you Ianna.’
Stop it! Don’t… No… no, no, no! Seven!!
Don’t… NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Ugh! Yargh! AHHH! The pain! The pain! No, No!!
Where, what… I can’t breathe. I can’t see.
Everything is so loud. I can hear everything.
Bad taste, no taste. Throat tightening.
Heart racing. I’m alive? What? What.
“I can’t see! I can’t see!” I speak because I know someone’s there.
“Effects of an elongated hypersleep. It’ll wear off.”
Who’s voice is that? It sounds… alive. It sounds real. It doesn’t sound like your whispers Seven. Who is that? Hello? Are you there? Seven! Seven! My sight. I can’t see anything… I don’t know where I am. I feel so alone. I’ve never felt this alone.
“Welcome to 2093, Lady Valkyrie.” That man speaks again.
Two thousand what…
Wait… No…
All this time…
It can’t be, it can’t be…
The Offspring in The Crimson Spear’s lair
Josh had been staring out of the bars of his holding cell for a whole day. It didn’t come out to the onlookers yet, that is, saying that Josh was boiling inside. A raging tempest ready to burst, but not yet. First he had to get answers and to do that, he kept himself as calm as possible.
‘Heather. I can’t stop thinking about you. Wherever you are, I promise, I’ll come get you. Wait for me. I promise, I’ll get out of here. I’ll make it right. I’ll make everything right.’
He talked in his head like she could hear. Maybe she could. Josh kept her secrets as best he could. Heather was telepathic, just like his mother. He thought about how his father went wrong, how Colin handled knowing about Adria’s telepathic capabilities.
‘Never’, Josh murmured bitterly in his head, ‘Never making the mistakes of my fathers.’
“Oy.” The orange-haired guard came in again, “Time to go sugarcakes. She wants to see you.”
Josh nearly gave into his anger right there. The way the escort taunted him made him felt, almost irrelevant. The information alone that everything Josh had rebelled for or fought for, was simply organized by a greater power? The thought that he was thrown into a haze and a veil of confusion made him felt angry, and it all started with his forefathers.
The escort walked Josh down the hallway. He wondered what his name was then he remembered a bit of backchat between his ‘favorite’ escort and another guard. Rogers, he thought was the name.
Josh had been starving. They didn’t feed him much. Only enough to keep him living and even worse, he lost track of the time. He could’ve been there for days, who knows. All that went through Josh’s mind in his imprisonment was reminders. Reminders of the mistakes he made and reminders of the mistakes his kin.
“Right here.” Rogers stopped him and pointed the way to a door at the very end of the hallway. Two strapped-to-the-teeth guards stood at the entrance door. They were in warsuits, prepared for whatever ambush could possibly come their way. Whatever they were protecting, it was not just important – it was the thing these men would sacrifice their lives for.
Rogers showed them his wrist ID and then they let him through with Josh.
‘Not sure what to be expecting now. The room was dimly lit white. The old guy from earlier stood with his arms crossed looking at me in disappointment. Not sure why. Then I saw her.
The Valkyrie.
Her eyes. I don’t think I’ll forget her eyes. The stories they were reaching out to tell me…
Her face, so dragged, so sad. So… serious. Unforgiving, she reminded me of the old greek goddess, Nemesis. Pushing her feeling aside, she gave off a cold demeanor and underweight, she probably hadn’t eaten in forever. And despite all that, she was as beautiful as my grandfather described in his books.
But what happened to her? Does she know me?’
“Sit.” She commanded Josh to the only chair in the room. Josh obeyed the command. He never met his ancestor before, but if anyone had to be trusted or at least, he thought enough to be trusted, it had to be her – right?
Josh didn’t know if to speak. The mere fact that he was here in her presence sucked the words clean out of him and for only a second or two, he forgot about Heather. Valkyrie’s presence was dominating. Her aura, even as dim as it might have been now, was still not lost. She was magnetic.
“Do you know who I am?” She asks him
“Yes.” Josh replied with a hint of surety, “You’re The Valkyrie. My grandmother.”
‘A twitch in her facial expression revealed something I wasn’t sure how to process. I know she can tell that I am of her blood. I know she can see it. Help me ancestor. Help me…’
“Can you tell us what you remembered when you were captured?” Valkyrie’s tone remained neutral. She didn’t show Josh any signs of favoritism and by all means, he suspected that she and the rest of Crimson Spear had been looking at him as a possible threat. He wondered why they had kept him alive if that was the case. Even worse, he wondered why she showed no love.
“I don’t recall much of it. Some tossing and turning, I remember needles, the tests, the blood samples, the… I remember wires…” Josh stopped himself midway through his sentence because memory started flushing down his head. It wasn’t the kind he was expecting you see. This started troubling him because now he realized why his ancestor might have been so cold.
“Wires…” He slipped on the word again as he saw himself like a lab rat being experimented on, tossed and almost tortured as he screamed for help but no aid.
‘How did I forget about this?’ He kept wondering to himself.
“No, no, no… No!” Josh couldn’t believe what was coming back to him.
“Grab him.” The older man, Valkyrie’s right hand commanded the rest of the guards. Josh began panicking. The sight of his ancestor remaining neutral, watching this happen terrified him to no end. He couldn’t believe she was just watching this happen.
“Ancestor!” He called out desperately, “Help me!”
But Valkyrie watched. She sat there and stared. A small tear forming in her eye.
Josh tried fighting against the men in the room but he proved powerless. They tased him and then each guard grabbed him on both arms. Soon it’d be three to one against him with Valkyrie unsheathing a combat knife too.
‘Why! Why! Why?!’
Tears streamed down Josh’s face. He never thought this is how it’d end. He screamed and fought as hard as he could for his life, but in the end, her knife entered his chest. Cold, he could feel the life leaving him and the blood gushing out of him.
Josh’s head hanged from the mortal wound. Silence emerged, until he realized, he was not dead… As a matter of fact, he wondered if he was actually hurt. Valkyrie pul
led the knife out of him, reached inside his chest and clawed open his skin to reveal a cyborg endoskeleton. She stepped back in horror and a deep seeded rage began boiling in her.
“Zero Sphere…” She whispered under her breath.
Suddenly the ground shook, the lights went off for a second and the alarms blared across the base. Everyone in the room became instantly alerted. A hologram transmission appeared behind Valkyrie. It was Seven, but not the Seven she knew, it was the ‘Red Seven’ that came to Colin a few days ago.
“Attention Crimson Spear. You are now under attack. Resistance is futile. Please stand by while we eradicate your terrorism. Regards, Zero.” Red said before vanishing to evade a response.
Valkyrie growled in anger. She stormed to the door of the room, intent on going out there and killing him herself. They asked her what to do with Josh – “Watch him. Rest of you come with me.” She told one of the guards, “And if he’s dead when I come back and you’re still here? I’ll kill you myself.”
Fire and brimstone; that’s what was inside that woman’s heart. Valkyrie hadn’t entered a state this dark in years.
‘Don’t let the beast out.’ She used to remind herself. Now, she wasn’t sure she could keep that promise. All the years of suffering and enslavement, all the years of fighting for the right reasons, only to have it thrown in your face. To have your family practically cursed. Seeing how Josh was turned into a cybernetic organism drove her over the edge.
How many more times does her bloodline have to suffer the same fate?
She told her men to grab her the biggest gun they could find. They warned her she wasn’t in shape. They told her that she’s not fit for combat yet. She didn’t care. All she wanted was revenge. She wanted blood. Nothing would get in her way. She commanded her men to get to their stations and begin defensive countermeasures against Zero’s forces.
Zero Sphere: A Space Opera Thriller Page 13
