by Mike Kraus
“No, the biggest problem we’ll have is getting to it and getting it started without Tweedledee and Tweedledum noticing.” Nancy stifled a smile at Leonard’s reference, realizing that the broad-shouldered men really did look alike. This, in turn, led to another thought, which wiped the smile from her face.
“What do you think he means, about everyone here being family?”
“I wish I knew. I’m sure some of them are blood relatives, but he called us brother and sister. Whatever organization he has here, it’s strong. There wasn’t an eye in that school that wasn’t locked to him the whole time he spoke, and everyone who saw him when we walked in acted the same way.”
Nancy sighed, frustrated by the contradictions. “If they’re so tight-knit, then why are they so accepting of us?”
A warm voice came from behind Leonard and Nancy, who both jumped at the sound of it. “Because we welcome all those who wish to join our family, and we love them just as our own flesh and blood.”
Turning around, Leonard and Nancy saw the familiar hat and leather jacket belonging to Samuel, standing a few feet behind them with a smile on his face. Nancy sneered at Samuel’s comment. “We don’t want to join your family, Samuel. What do you have to say to that?”
Completely ignoring Nancy’s comment, Samuel continued speaking. “Forgive me for intruding on your time together, but I wanted you to meet a few people who will help you get settled here and started on your tasks. I know it seems sudden, but we are very close to the final battle. No hand can remain idle, no matter how new or how old.” Motioning to Leonard and Nancy to follow him, Samuel turned and walked back down the dock toward the shore.
Nancy and Leonard both rose slowly from the bench and followed him, whispering once more before they were escorted back into the town.
“What do we do, Leonard?”
“Stay calm. Do what he says. We still have enough time to make it out of here, but we can’t do anything foolish.”
Holding each other’s hands, Leonard and Nancy both squeezed as they walked back into town. No longer just for show, they were both genuinely counting on each other for support in the strange and twisted world they were wrapped up in.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden
1:11 AM, April 9, 2038
When the whine in Marcus’s ears started to quickly change in pitch, he thought that death must be right around the corner. Instead, though, a distant voice, seeming to come from miles away, crackled and bellowed loudly as it shouted a warning that Marcus could barely hear.
“Hold on, you two!”
A deep rumble that sounded like it came from the heart of the earth suddenly grew loud in his entire body, vibrating his bones and overwhelming the sound of the nanobots trying to burrow into his head. Marcus felt a sharp tingle over his body as the rumble intensified, then the pain from the nanobots finally and suddenly ceased. His body stopped convulsing and he lay still next to Rachel, her hand in his as they began to breathe once again.
Marcus forced himself to turn over and coughed hard, expelling the now non-functional mechanisms from his lungs. Glints of silver appeared in a fine mist as they left his body, drifting through the air and coming to rest on the ground. Aching, sore and feeling as though he had just been through a meat grinder, Marcus groaned as he pushed himself next to Rachel, feeling a feeble pulse on her wrist. Her breathing was shallow and shaking, her eyes were closed and she involuntarily coughed every few seconds. Marcus grunted as he pushed Rachel over onto her side, trying to help her get rid of the nanobots that were clogging her body.
“Rachel,” Marcus said hoarsely, “can you hear me?”
The sound of Marcus’s voice sent a shudder through Rachel’s body, and her lips opened as she whispered back. “Are we alive?”
Marcus put his head down next to Rachel’s. “Yeah. Yeah, I think we are.”
As if to confirm the fact, a voice came from the direction of the APC, louder than before now that their ears were no longer filled with the buzzing nanobots. “Rachel? Marcus? Can you hear me? Damned thing took longer than I thought to charge up.”
Rachel pointed toward the APC, feebly stretching out her arm as Marcus started to crawl in its direction. His body felt empty, like it had been sapped of energy, and there wasn’t a single part of him that wasn’t filled with pain. Seconds stretched into what felt like hours, but Marcus finally pulled himself up into the front seat of the APC and grabbed the radio microphone.
“D-David?”
“Marcus? Thank heaven! Are you okay? How about Rachel?”
“We’re alive… I think. What happened, David?”
“Doe happened.” Rachel’s voice came from next to Marcus, where she stood leaning against the APC after having pulled herself along after Marcus. “You knew he was listening in, didn’t you, David?” Hesitation from the other end of the radio told Rachel what she needed to know.
“I never wanted you two to be in danger, but I knew Doe had to be monitoring all transmissions from the very start. So… I had to come up with a plan.”
“So Bertha still works, I take it.”
“Well… oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter if he’s listening still or not. Yes, Bertha works. She’s fully operational, but we still have to transport her out of the lab. That much was true, at least. I’m sorry, Rachel, I–”
Rachel cut David off with a loud cough before speaking over him. “David, you did the right thing.” She looked at Marcus as she continued. “It would have been nice to know all this ahead of time, but you did what you had to do. We’re here and we’re alive, that’s what matters.”
“I guess.” David trailed off, still feeling some guilt over what he had done. “You two should get some rest. Doe’s been delayed, but I’m sure he’s got more swarms, wherever he is. We need to get Bertha on the move before he sends more out after us.”
A memory of the blue ball flashed through Rachel’s mind as she remembered the delay the swarm had when it was conversing with her. “Doe’s got to be a long way off, David. It was taking a few seconds for him to reply to me when he was transmitting through the swarm.” Rachel started to run calculations in her head for how far away Doe would have to be to have the transmission be delayed, then she stopped. “Or… David, how many satellites are still operational?”
“Uh, I’ve got one on partial power and one fully restored. Why?”
Rachel hesitated to speak, not wanting to show her hand to the man she knew was listening in on their every word. “Oh, not much. The signal through the radio is just overloaded. I thought you might not have enough bandwidth for it.” She closed her eyes and said a silent plea for David to figure out what she meant, hoping he wouldn’t ask any questions.
Seconds ticked by, then David came back on the radio. “I’ll check it out, maybe one of the relays needs a tweak. Our window’s about to close, but let me know on the next pass whether it’s better or not.”
The radio clicked off abruptly and Rachel checked Marcus’s watch, frustrated when it wasn’t working after the EMP. “What time is it? Quickly!” Marcus fumbled with the ignition switch to the APC and finally got it started, the engine roaring to life after having been cleansed of the nanobots that had been attacking it. Though some from the swarm had wormed their way inside the engine compartment when the EMP hit, and thus were not destroyed by it, enough of the swarm was destroyed that it lost its critical mass. Unable to sustain its basic functions, the units inside the APC died along with the ones outside.
“Ten after, see?” Marcus pointed to the clock, looking back at Rachel expectantly. She put her head against the side of the APC, relief flooding through her. “We had another five minutes, but he cut us off. He must have realized what I was saying.”
A whine from behind Marcus distracted him from Rachel and he turned to see Sam limping forward, licking his nose and looking as disheveled as Marcus felt. “Sam!” The dog nosed Marcus’s side gently and then laid down, half in the front compartment and half in the back. His br
eathing was shallow and coarse, much like Rachel’s and Marcus’s, but he was still alive, a fact that Marcus was extremely grateful for. Climbing into the APC, Rachel hugged Sam, smiling as he licked her face. Marcus watched Rachel’s grin, feeling confident through his pain. He pulled his door closed and leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes as a smile crept across his face. If we can survive the infamous ‘Mr. Doe’, he thought, I think we might just pull this off after all.
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
2:07 PM, April 9, 2038
Trying to keep a smile on her face, or at least not appear to be openly disdainful, was becoming increasingly difficult for Nancy. Samuel had paraded them through the small town for what felt like hours, introducing them to various individuals of all ages, each of them called either “sister” this or “brother” that. Some of the people were clearly related, judging by their facial features and mannerisms, though Nancy was unsure of how many were actually related directly to Samuel himself.
In the afternoon, Samuel sat the two of them down in a small building while a young woman brought out packages of food that Leonard recognized as having been from their APC. Samuel continued to speak boisterously as Leonard and Nancy ate quietly, listening to the man’s ramblings. The meal was interrupted by a thunderous clatter outside and the voices of several people arguing in the street.
Pushing his way through the guards standing outside, a young man – similar in appearance to Jacob – stumbled in, gasping for breath. Samuel stood and led the young man to a seat and handed him a bottle of water. After taking several deep gulps, the man finally calmed down enough to speak.
“I’m sorry, Samuel. I didn’t find any supplies, but I found something else that I thought had to be reported.”
Samuel patted the man’s shoulder and kneeled down next to him, looking him in the eye. “You did well, brother. Tell me, what did you discover?”
Reaching into a leather satchel, the young man pulled out two wallets. Opening each of them in turn, he slid out a pair of driver’s licenses and passed them to Samuel. “I found them, Samuel, both of them. One was dead, but the other… well, I brought him back. They’re tending to him now to see if he’ll pull through. There was another person there, too, a woman they had….” The man trailed off and a look of revulsion passed across his face.
Samuel closed his eyes and sighed as he looked at the pair of licenses in his hand. Bowing his head, he whispered, and the young man bowed his head as well. Taking advantage of the distraction, Leonard and Nancy leaned over, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the pieces of plastic in Samuel’s hand. Nancy’s heart skipped a beat and her stomach jumped into her throat as she saw the photos on the two licenses. He said one was alive! No, we killed them. We killed them both! How could he still be alive?
The unmistakable faces of Richard and Joshua were on the licenses, the two demented criminals who had captured her, James and another woman when she was traveling to the east. During her escape, she and James had killed Joshua in the basement and James implied he had bludgeoned Richard to death during the final moments of their escape. For one of them to still be alive was horrifying enough, but to find that they were somehow connected to the very individuals that had trapped them here in this town was a different level of frightening.
As Samuel and the young man continued to whisper their prayers, Nancy put her lips against Leonard’s ear and spoke softly. “It’s them. The ones who took me before.”
Leonard’s eyes widened, remembering how frightened Nancy had looked when she shared her story with the group in the armory in Richmond. He mouthed “Are you sure?” to her, and she nodded, her entire body quivering in fear. Leonard closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to coldcock Samuel and make a run for it. After another moment passed, Samuel and the young man opened their eyes and Samuel stood up, gesturing for the man to proceed outside. “Tell Lawrence to show you to a bed and a hot meal; you’ve done well, brother.”
The young man hugged Samuel and departed. Samuel sighed and stood up, slipping the licenses into his pants pocket. Sitting down at the table with Leonard and Nancy again, he forced a smile. “Times are difficult for all of us. Two…” Samuel hesitated with the next word. “former members of our family were just found, one of them dead and the other severely injured.”
“What do you mean, ‘former’?” Leonard took point in the conversation, trying to glean as much information from Samuel as possible.
Samuel’s face contorted, but his warm smile quickly returned as he rose and turned to leave the building. “Nothing you need to be concerned with, I assure you. Two wayward lambs who didn’t see eye-to-eye with us, and suffered the consequences of their actions. Perhaps, if he recovers, the one who survived may learn from his mistakes and rejoin the family once again.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to some matters. Once you finish your meal, you’ll be escorted to some areas that need help the most.”
Samuel exited the building without another word, walking quickly down the road in the direction the young man had headed. Nancy burst out with a shout before she remembered that they still had two people listening in on them. The guards both turned and looked inside the door, prompting Leonard to offer a quick explanation. “Sorry about that, my wife is just dealing with a lot. We’ll be finished up here soon.”
One of the guards nodded sympathetically and they resumed their posts outside the door, leaving it halfway open. Leonard and Nancy leaned in close over the table and whispered frantically.
“If one of those assholes survived, it doesn’t matter which one, we need to get out of here now, Leonard.”
“We will, Nancy, I promise. We’ll get out of here as soon as we can. We don’t have an opening yet, though.”
Leonard stood to go out of the building and Nancy pulled on his arm and whispered a final question. The bravery Leonard had seen in her previously was nowhere to be seen, having been replaced by fear at the mention of the men who had held her hostage. “If men like that came from a ‘family’ like this, what kind of chance do we really have to escape?”
Leonard was quiet, unsure of the answer to that question himself. His only response was to take Nancy’s hand as they slowly walked back out of the building, led by their guards to an unknown destination. Far from where they needed to be, and getting more behind schedule with each passing second, Leonard began to feel fear creeping up as well. Not fear from the people who had taken them specifically, but fear that they might not be able to make it to their goal in time.
Final Dawn: Episode 7
Undisclosed Location
Mr. Doe’s face is frozen as he stares at the monitor, recognizing the tell-tale signs of an electromagnetic discharge before they fully manifest on the sensors of his remote nanobot swarm. A rainbow of color and static arcs across the field of view while a low-pitched whine begins to build in the background. An instant later, before Mr. Doe can shield his eyes, his monitor turns bright white, making him gasp. The monitor slowly fades to black, the signal with the remote swarm having been lost.
Mr. Doe doesn’t move for several minutes. For the first time that he can remember, his well-laid plans did not come to fruition, and he is frozen in shock. Blinking several times, he gets up wordlessly from his monitoring station and walks back to his bed, where he lies down without removing his clothing or preparing for sleep. Distracted and disoriented, he lies in the bed for a full hour, staring at the ceiling as he contemplates scenario after scenario, trying to find one that will lead to success.
Mr. Doe’s eyes shift from side to side rapidly as a new plan forms in his mind. He gets up, the idea of sleep long since forgotten, and moves back to the room with the large cylinder, where his nanobot swarm had grown. The container is mostly empty now, its contents long since gone, but a faint glow still shines from the bottom of the cylinder. A small blue mass huddles together in a corner, desperately feeding off of the scraps of radiation left in the chamber, tr
ying to remain functional.
Mr. Doe examines a panel, noting with some disapproval that the number of nanobots in the chamber is less than what he had hoped for. He adjusts controls, increasing the amount of radiation in the cylinder to lethal levels. The reaction from the mass of nanobots is immediate. The swarm rises into the air, consuming the radiation as their lethargy begins to wane. More controls are adjusted, and small amounts of raw materials are deposited into the bottom of the cylinder, ignored by the swarm as they swirl around the center of the chamber.
Satisfied by the state of the chamber, Mr. Doe moves to a nearby control panel, refreshed and invigorated by his new plan. While the small swarm isn’t currently large enough to do any direct damage, his idea no longer exclusively hinges on the success of the tiny machines. Manipulating pages of computer code, he swiftly transplants lines from several different programs into an update for his small swarm, feeding them live software patches as they go about their process of absorbing the immense amounts of energy inside the cylinder.
