by C. S. Nelson
“I’m sure that I’m never going to love anyone more than I love you,” Dustan had said, grabbing her hand and squeezing it in the grass. “You’re always going to be the one.”
As Annie sat with her head in her knees, she realized that she had been naïve. It had been nothing more than puppy love, just what happened to everyone when you fell for someone in your early teens. He had made promises that he couldn’t possible keep, so he had decided to break them all through his own choices. Her life no longer mattered to him. She had spent months avoiding thinking about him, because it hurt her too much. The boy that she was supposed to be with forever, as he had promised, had moved on more quickly than she ever could have imagined. And now here she was, faced with the reality that Summer’s request for her death was more valuable to Dustan than Annie herself.
“I’m so sorry, Annie,” Zed whispered.
Subconsciously, she had hoped that when the ship arrived to take them home, everything would go back to normal. He wouldn’t have to act like he was trying to impress anybody. His partners would begin to leave him alone. He would beg for Annie to take him back. Annie raised her head and looked at Zed.
Why was she doing this to herself? She had sworn to kill Summer in order to get Kevin on the ship with her. Kevin, the man that truly loved her. The man that would never have cast her aside so readily. He was the kind of person that Annie deserved to be with. Dustan deserved to be alone.
“There’s no reason to apologize,” She said, her voice cracking. She had promised Zed to never shed a single tear over something so silly. Dustan had proven time and time again that he was not trustworthy. “I don’t know why I expected anything different,” she admitted.
“Humans are forgiving in nature,” Zed shrugged. “It doesn’t matter how many times someone has let you down, your species always maintains this hope that there is good within them somewhere. Maybe that’s why you let our world go to shit so flippantly. Always believing in yourselves and your ability to improve your actions. But you never did.”
“It’s better to be hopeful than to be without any,” Annie said. But she had learned her lesson. She would never trust in Dustan again. In fact, if she were ever given the opportunity, she would kill him herself.
“We don’t trust unless we’re given a reason to. And that’s worked for us just fine the last couple million years.”
“Then why did you trust me?”
“I wish I could tell you, Annie,” Zed laughed. “I’m still trying to understand how I got myself into this situation.”
Annie laughed too. They were freezing cold. Zed’s body was failing him. She was sitting next to him unable to do anything. She had just been betrayed by one of the last people that she thought she could trust. And it was all funny. “You know, a few months ago, I didn’t think I would last a week as a ranger. I thought I would go out just like Anthony…my soul being trapped in a soul su-...sorry, a silver person. I didn’t believe that I could ever be the person to take a life. Now look at me. I’m a wanted criminal. People have been ordered to kill me on sight. Not just people, every person.” She looked at all of the buildings surrounding the one that they were leaned up against. People sleeping in their beds, soundly, without fear. Waiting excitedly for the ship that they thought would bring them back to Mpho, that was actually just going to put them through a whole different kind of hell on a new world. So unaware of what was going on around them. But they were happy. For a moment, Annie was envious of their ignorance. “Every person left in the human race, as far as we know, wants me dead. Tell me Zed, how did I get myself into this situation?”
They both laughed again, and Zed put his hand on Annie’s knee. He felt so warm, now, on such a cold evening. Annie rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m so thankful that I met you, Annie,” Zed whispered.
Annie closed her eyes and tried to imagine where she would be now without Zed here to help her. Dead, probably. If not by the soul suckers, by the people within the Shield. If not by someone catching her and killing her in the last few hours, then by Dustan. Annie wouldn’t have been able to survive without him. She still didn’t understand why he had sacrificed so much to be able to help her. “You’re my savior,” she admitted.
Zed gently caressed Annie’s face with his hand, and kissed her softly on the forehead. For the first time in a long time, Annie felt relaxed. Then she opened her eyes again and found herself staring at Zed’s human body, covered in his alien blood. If she didn't do something soon, Zed was going to die.
Annie pulled herself away from him, standing up. “We need to get you help, now,” she said.
Zed threw his hands in the air. “I feel fine, Annie.” He smiled at her calmly, which made her feel even more nervous.
“Stop!” She insisted. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“So you can explain to them why I’m bleeding blue?”
“So that you don’t die…” Her voice trailed off. She knew it wasn’t an option. She didn’t know what else to do.
“Annie, I’m in pain, but I’m not going to die,” he said.
“And what happens if we get attacked by somebody? What if I need you and you can’t do anything because your bones are broken?” She crossed her arms. He was still lying on the ground, propped up against an old brick building. He looked so helpless.
“Then I guess I’ll die,” Zed laughed. “But let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.”
Annie rolled her eyes at him. She was ready to pull him up and carry him again. But there was nowhere that was safe. Annie was so cold. The ends of her fingers were so numb that Annie was sure they would fall off. She couldn’t feel her nose anymore. Her thighs and buttocks had frozen through her tight ranger pants. If they stayed outside, Annie didn’t think she would make it through the night.
“Annie?” she heard from behind her.
Annie spun around, pulling her gun out of its holster and pointing it out in front of her. She didn’t see anyone, but she was sure she hadn’t imagined her name being called. She turned slowly, looking into the dark shadows and crevices that surrounded her.
Kevin stepped forward, out of the darkness. “What are you doing out here?” He was wearing the same long black slave robe that covered his entire body, pulled up over his head. He threw back the hood, revealing his shaved head, hollow eyes, and sunken cheeks. He looked just as cold as she was.
Annie lowered her gun. She almost didn’t believe that he was standing in front of her. She squealed, leaping forward and attacking him with a hug. He was so warm beneath the robe that she would have been satisfied if he had never let go. Annie grabbed his face and kissed him over and over again with her cold-as-ice lips. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she whispered into his face.
Kevin wasn't as enthusiastic as Annie was. “I never thought I would see you again, Annie,” he mumbled. Annie couldn’t get past his cheeks, which had once been full and rosy, and were now just skin stretched over cheekbones. His skin was pale and thin, and somehow looked like he had lost substantial weight since the day before. He was being starved.
“I have so much to tell you.” She backed away. “But first, we’re in desperate need of help.” She pointed behind her to Zed, who was still slumped against the wall.
Kevin squinted through the darkness, then scrambled backwards. “What the fuck is that?” he gasped. There was so much fear in his eyes that Annie almost forgot he had once been a powerful soldier.
“His name is Zed. And he’s my friend.”
“Annie, he’s a soul sucker.” Kevin gulped. “How…how did he get in here?”
She pulled it away, no longer feeling as safe as she had a moment before. “He’s the only reason I’m alive right now. He’s helping me.”
“Soul suckers don’t help humans. They kill them. How did he get in here?” Kevin grabbed the side of the brick building to try to keep himself from falling over. All the color had drained from his face. He had never been this close to an alien without fighting fo
r his life before.
“I told you last time I saw you, the Shield is breaking down. There are holes, massive holes. He got in. And it’s only a matter of time before the others figure it out. The ones that want to hurt us. But Zed isn’t like that.”
Kevin shook his head in disbelief. “These creatures have destroyed us. They are the reason that our entire species is dead, Annie.”
Seeing Kevin, full of fear instead of bravery, made Annie so upset that she needed to bite her lip to keep from crying. Where had the boy gone that she had fallen for only weeks before? What had this Shield done to him? “If you aren’t going to help us, you need to just leave,” she said. She stared at him sternly, trying not to reveal how much it hurt her to say that. This hadn't been the reunion with Kevin that she had been hoping for, but she didn’t need to explain herself. Zed had kept her alive this long. It was her turn to do the same. She understood Kevin's fear of Zed; of a being that he didn't know or understand. But it hurt her to know that he didn't trust her judgment.
"I don't want to leave you alone with the sucker," he said.
Annie shrugged. "I'm more safe with Zed than I am anywhere else in the Shield."
Kevin sighed, looking off into the darkness. He looked so empty. “What sort of help do you need?” he asked through gritted teeth.
She smiled. “Zed?”
“A couple of my ribs are broken. I need a cast, and some medicine. But we can’t go to the hospital for obvious reasons.”
“Is there anywhere that you can think of?” Annie begged. “Even just a place we can rest overnight?”
Kevin exhaled, stepping towards Zed timidly. “I know of a place. But you aren’t gonna like it.”
Chapter 22: To the Death
“Do you remember the people in our graduating class that didn’t get placed in any career?” Kevin asked, as he slowly put his hand under Zed’s arm, treating him as though he were contagious.
Of course she did. She remembered the disappointment, the fear. A more depressing fate than ending up in the rangers. Nobody ever saw them again. It was as though they had never existed at all. “Yeah?”
“The breeders experiment on them. Under supervision of the president and Summer of course. They believed that there could have been a solution. You know, some kind of vaccine or a physical barrier that could prevent the soul suckers from killing us. I heard that they were promised all kinds of rewards from Mpho if they managed to figure it out. But they never managed to.”
Annie felt sick to her stomach. Human experimentation. Subjects being chosen based on the results of one test. “What kind of experiments?” Annie asked. She thought for a moment about Barry. No one could understand why the administrators would waste someone’s life so readily as they had done on testing day. It was because their lives didn’t matter. Nobody truly mattered in this place.
Kevin was silent for a few seconds. “I’ve only seen a few since I got removed from the rangers,” he said. “They weren’t very nice.” Annie looked past Zed, who was collapsed, and eyed Kevin. “In one they gave them a drug that put them to sleep to see if you had to be conscious for it to work. In another they put a bag over their head, but the suckers tore through it so quickly, they didn’t even have a chance to call for help. You can’t even recognize a couple of them anymore.”
It made Annie feel sick to her stomach thinking about the people she had grown up with being tortured in such a way. “That’s disgusting,” she mumbled.
“They used me in one,” Kevin continued. Annie’s heart sunk looking at his face. “When I got demoted from commander. I’m not sure if it was an experiment or just a punishment. But I know what they’re capable of.”
“I am so sorry, Kevin,” Tears welled up in Annie’s eyes. “I never should have put you in that position.”
Zed momentarily raised his head. “What do they do after we’ve taken their souls?” His head dropped again.
“They force the suckers to give it back.”
Zed coughed. “That’s barbaric. It’s torture.”
“I’m more concerned about the humans that we’re keeping captive as part of an experiment than the suckers that are being forced to spit their food back up,” Kevin snapped.
“Keep us out of your disgusting experiments.”
“Does it matter? The world is ending.”
“Guys!” Annie snapped. This new information was undoubtedly upsetting for both humans and silver people alike. But Annie couldn’t let the two of them fall out. They needed Kevin’s help if Zed had any hope of survival, and the way Kevin was acting, probably due to the horror he had just been through, was making her uneasy. He was behaving like a person that she didn’t know, not someone who loved and cared for her.
“Here we are,” Kevin said, stopping them in front of the hospital. They were lucky it was the middle of the night. During the day, aced rangers guarded the hospital, as it was one of the safest and most boring jobs in the Shield. There hadn’t been a hospital emergency in all the time that Annie had been alive. At night, when the visiting hours were over, the doors were locked and the guards went home.
“You brought us to the hospital?” Annie asked, trying to mask her own frustration. “They won’t help him.”
“We aren’t going into the hospital. We’re going into the basement.”
Zed chuckled hoarsely. “What is with you humans and hiding every important room underground? Why not just…lock a door or something?”
“Isn’t it better if no one knows about the location of the room and so, doesn’t try to break into it in the first place?” Kevin retorted.
Annie sighed. She didn’t like this side of either one of them. “Maybe if you stopped keeping so many secrets from each other you wouldn’t have this problem,” Zed countered.
“I’m sure your species is absolutely thrilled to know you’re spending your days with my girlfriend instead of with them.”
“Kevin, Zed!” Annie barked. “Enough!”
All three of them stood in silence for a few moments before Kevin dropped his arm from Zed’s side. All of his weight shifted onto Annie once again, who’s body ached and was so cold; she swore she was going to drop dead at any second if she didn’t get indoors soon. Kevin stepped over to a dark door meters away from the entrance, that was marked ‘maintenance’. He pulled out a key, and fumbled around in the darkness for a few seconds before the door fell open.
“Let’s go, sucker,” Kevin said as he put his shoulder back under Zed’s arm. Together, the three of them walked through the maintenance door.
When the door closed behind them, it was so black that Annie’s head felt compressed. She reached out with her free arm, grasping for a wall, but didn’t feel anything. “Kevin?” she asked. Her voice echoed.
“Yeah, one second.” She could hear him fumbling around. He flicked a light switch and the room lit up in bright, artificial light that reminded Annie of the meeting room. The lights buzzed above them. The room was underwhelming, just a long, thin hallway. It was all white. There was another door at the end, which was marked ‘Do not enter’. Next to it was a keypad. “There are plenty of medical supplies down here. Ever since the careers were dissipated, nobody really comes down to check on the test subjects. The experiment is over. So if you need a place to hide, or something, this is where you can go.”
“They’ve just been abandoned?” Annie asked. They walked towards the door at the end of the hallway.
“Until the ship arrives. Ever since I got punished, my new job has been to come in and feed them every night,” Annie watched Kevin’s face. He looked as though he were going to cry and vomit at the same time. This was a continuation of the punishment, a reminder every night of the pain he had gone through and what he could be forced to go through again. She could see in his eyes that the continued torture was working. Kevin was a broken man. “But a lot of them are dying. They probably won’t make it.”
“We’re just letting humans die?” Annie was horrified. Their
species was endangered, on the verge of extinction, and they were letting humans die underneath the hospital.
“It’s not like they were going to contribute to society anyway,” Kevin shrugged. “They were the worst of their classes. They had no abilities to help the group in any way. So we used them to further our knowledge in science.”
“Without their permission,” Annie added. Kevin was just repeating whatever bullshit had been told to him by the president and Summer Henderson and whoever else was responsible for doing this to him. There was something in Kevin’s voice that she didn’t like. He was defeated.
“I’m sorry, aren’t you on the run from the law?” Kevin snapped. “Is now really a time to be questioning society’s morality?”
Annie remained silent. She didn’t know what to say, there was no rationalizing with him. He was brainwashed now, angry at the world. Entirely different from the man who had scooped her up in his arms and told her to do what she had to do. Now, it seemed, the most important thing to him was to follow the rules.
When she didn’t respond, Kevin realized that he had upset her. He cleared his throat. “The password is 2295. The year that Summer was born.”
“Might as well just base a religion off her, while we’re at it.” Annie rolled her eyes. What was it with this place and being so obsessed with a woman who didn’t give a shit about any of them?
“I used to feel that way too, but she’s special.”
Annie and Zed both exchanged looks, bursting out laughing. She couldn’t help it. “You cannot be serious,” Annie snorted. Kevin was visibly hurt and Annie stopped laughing. She didn’t want to set him off, but was completely perplexed as to why Kevin was showing any sort of respect towards Summer Henderson now. He was hard to read now.
“No, seriously,” he said defensively. “I’ve overheard all of the meetings with the breeders. The only reason the ship is arriving to take people home is so that they can retrieve her. I don’t know what it is that is so important about Summer, but she’s why you’re going home.” Kevin typed the password into the keypad and the door buzzed open in front of them. “You are going to need to brace yourselves. This is not a pretty sight.”
