by Sean Platt
Luca tried harder, then passed out.
Luca woke in a large, white bedroom, to see a woman sitting in a chair beside him.
She was friendly looking, with long, brown hair and a giant smile. She was beautiful, and … somehow familiar.
A name bubbled to Luca’s mind. His lips parted as if to whistle the sound and fill his air with a memory.
“Rose?”
“Yes, Luca?” The woman widened her smile as she reached out to touch his head, like Mom did when he was sick. Rose reminded him a lot of his mom; she had once taken care of him.
Luca’s mind flickered through more memories of a life he lived but didn’t. Memories of that other Luca whose family died in an accident. In that life, Luca’s brother, Boricio, was in love with this woman, Rose. She was like a big sister to Luca.
“How do I remember you?” he asked.
“Because you knew me,” she said. “Before someone took your memories.”
“You mean my family is … really dead?” Luca sat too quickly, his head was immediately dizzy. “That really happened?”
“I’m afraid so, Luca,” she softly said.
He began to cry, sad and confused. Nothing made sense, everything was wrong and upside down.
“But I was with my family, and they were alive.”
“Someone lied to you, Luca,” Rose shook her head. “I’m your family, now. I’m all you have.”
“No,” Luca cried. “They’re still alive.”
“Those people aren’t your family, Luca. They don’t know you. Or love you.”
“Stop it!” Luca cried, swatting at her hand. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m trying to help you remember. You’ve felt different for a while, haven’t you, Luca? Like something was wrong, but you just couldn’t place it?”
He nodded.
“And you may have even felt like you did some bad things, right?”
“I did do bad things,” Luca said, thinking of the dead bullies. “Didn’t I?”
“Want to know the truth, Luca? The truth they’ve been hiding from you?”
Luca nodded again.
Rose reached to the floor, then picked up a black, metal box and set it down on the blanket. Luca looked at his lap, vaguely remembering the box that looked like a book.
The box, the vials, and the crazy man.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It’s the truth, Luca. Open it, and set yourself free.”
Luca opened the box to six, blue vials glowing bright.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Take one out. Open it.”
“Open it?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“And do what?”
“You won’t need to do anything other than open it.”
Luca’s hand was shaking, and he felt weird, like maybe he shouldn’t open anything at all. A vague memory flashed, another weird one he couldn’t place — of him handing a vial to his “brother” Boricio. Bad things happened, maybe in a dream, maybe reality, Luca was certain of nothing.
Except that Rose wouldn’t lie to him. She was too sweet. Luca could tell just by looking. And feeling. Luca felt it more surely than he’d ever felt anything. If Rose were his age, he would’ve thought the feeling was love at first sight.
“Open it?” he asked again, just to make sure. The smile on his face felt good.
“Yes, Luca.”
Luca looked down at a black, rubber-looking stopper sticking out partly from the tube.
“Just pull this out?”
Rose nodded, her eyes giant, like she couldn’t wait for Luca to pop the vial. He wondered what she knew that he didn’t, and wondered if it was some sort of magic potion that would make everything OK again.
Or at least get things to make sense.
He pulled the top.
As the blue liquid crept up the sides, Luca jerked his arm from the glass and dropped the vial on his blanket. Blue light blew wider, like melted plastic, then turned dark.
Luca screamed, trying to jump from the bed, afraid of what he had spilled.
Rose held him down, shoving him against the bed with shocking power.
“It’s OK,” she said, leaning closer, again like Mom, but with something that was nothing like his mother’s never-flinching love.
Rose shoved her fingers into his mouth. Luca gagged, nearly puking. He didn’t because she held him down and told him not to.
“Open up and let US in,” she said as black stuff rose in soupy strands around her and inched toward his open mouth.
Luca screamed as he inhaled a Darkness that promised death to the world.
To Be Continued
In Yesterday’s Gone: Season Five
Authors’ Note
Yesterday’s Gone Season Four was the most difficult words we’ve written so far.
Not because the story itself was complicated — Season Three was more tangled by far — but rather because it is our first serial, and because it’s our first serial Yesterday’s Gone comes with the largest group of readers and thus the highest expectations. We love the world, and the thousands of readers who have made our story part of their lives.
We owed it to the simmering anticipation, we had to deliver our best work to date.
But that could only happen after we found the story.
Season Three ended on a nice bookend, closing as many open loops as we could so that seasons 4-6 could have a slightly different vibe, separate from the other three. We knew the story we wanted to tell in broad strokes, and how it would be split between the seasons, but we didn’t know specifics, and of course, specifics are what really matters. The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, and A Bug’s Life are all essentially the same story — the beauty is in the details and telling.
As with all of our stories, getting to the root of what we wanted to say meant finding out what we wanted to see happen for each of member of our Yesterday’s Gone cast. This world holds a ton of story — each character could easily have their own book with the story told entirely from their POV — so we must assign weight to everything we want to see, pull back and look at the series as a whole, and determine what will serve the over arcing story lines, and what will detract.
One of the reasons we wanted to bring these characters home for the second half of their adventure was to show you their lives lived on a normal world, while following up as they attempt to salvage something in the aftermath of what we lived with them already.
And of course, we wanted to set the stage for the epic battle which will close the series over the next two seasons. Since none of our work has yet been committed to film, we don’t get to have DVD extras. Author Notes are as close as we can come for now. For these particular notes, we thought you would enjoy a peek into some of the thinking behind this season’s individual story lines:
BORICIO
Early on, we knew we wanted to see how everyone’s favorite serial killer (maybe second favorite if you’re a fan of Dexter) is now living a “normal” life, as well as how he’s coping with his past. More than that, we wanted to put you, the reader, in an interesting position where you meet one of his victims, Michael Blackmore, the father of a slain girl.
We were curious to see how many readers would suddenly root for the fan favorite, Boricio, to get what he had coming.
The scenes between Boricio and Mike were some of our favorites, and if we had more time, or if this was a TV series, that would have certainly been one of the parts from this season we would have loved to (and certainly would have) extended.
LUCA
Luca was another great character to explore because unlike the rest of our Goners, he has no memory of what happened. And he is unaware that he is an impostor, a boy from another world. He recalls nothing of the other world, (our) Luca, or Will or Boricio, at least not before our season gets started.
Luca is one of the more interesting characters in our catalogue. He is a deeply emotional child. Intelligent, but infantile when
unsure. We enjoyed spending time with a slightly older Luca, not just in looks but behavior.
We wanted to give him emotional conflict, before nudging him into the larger story. Most of us have had issues with bullying, and we believe most people can relate to Luca’s pain in wanting to avoid the bullies, and his desire to make them stop once and for all. As always, things got a bit weird with Luca in the end, and of course they had to for all that’s coming in Season Five.
MARINA
Faith is a consistently explored theme in Yesterday’s Gone, this time we took a tour through the eyes of a new age cult. The founders of both the Prophet’s group and the Church of Original Design believed they were doing the right thing, and that they had been touched by some greater power.
The problem wasn’t that either man was knowingly evil or meaning to start a cult. Both men were misled and deluded by their desire to believe, and attempts to understand something greater than themselves. The greater thing, of course, was alien, not deity.
Marina, like the heroes we knew before this season, was accidentally dragged into the battle between Dark and Light, pulled in by her father’s faith and the things that happened with him that she (and the reader) have yet to understand. We would have loved to have done more with Marina. She’s another example of a storyline that would have been expanded in a different medium. In our massive plans for Season 5 — it will probably be the longest of all six seasons — Marina will have a larger role to play.
BRENT
Brent is one of Dave’s favorite characters, both to develop and write.
In the first three seasons, Brent was written as a weaker character, too whiney. He was sad, and wanted to get home to his family. Survival changed him. Brent is bitter, angry, desperate to prove his sanity. Some of Brent’s new angles are explored through Brent’s relationship with Ed, different on this world from what it was on the other.
We didn’t (exactly) know what would happen with Brent until it did.
Since the beginning, it was important to Dave that we end Season Three with Brent getting home to his family, but in the gulf between seasons three and four, we got to talking about what we wanted for Brent’s arc, and thinking that having him look an ugly (and unexpected) reality in the eye would certainly be painful for his character, but it would be rewarding for us as creators, and ultimately for you as the reader.
MARY AND PAOLA
Mary has always been a protective figure in the series. When we find her this time, she’s trying to move forward from the past, and provide Paola with a normal life.
We were conscious not to make too much of Mary’s miscarriage. She is purposely not dwelling on this part of her past, so we didn’t permit ourselves to either. That isn’t to say this tragedy won’t surface, and play as an issue in later seasons.
Paola is focused on making her life as normal as possible, which, of course, blows up in her face when she winds up pulling a Luca — healing people and rapidly aging when she does. If you’re reading this, you probably already have some idea that Paola will have a larger role next season.
ED
This season, Ed is forced to work for the government again, and soon finds himself in the familiar position of being betrayed by his people. Well, not truly his people, but rather an alien infected Sullivan.
We considered forcing Ed to kill each of our survivors from the original series. He wouldn’t have actually killed them all, but we did toy with having him get to a few.
But that would have turned Season Four into something else, and that something would never have worked as well as we think this does — though we did have fun trying to make you think he would kill Brent. On the one hand, you wanted Brent to stay safe. On the other, you don’t want harm coming to Ed’s loved ones.
As with Boricio, the gray areas are always most fun to explore.
OTHER STUFF
We loved bringing Will back, even if only in flashback, and explaining the ties between the discovery, vials (aliens), and the 215ers.
We also enjoyed writing the random infection scenes with entirely new people, giving hints of what’s to come as this thing breaks out in the coming seasons.
Season Four was tremendous fun to write, and we’re bursting to write Season Five. We’d love to hear what you think. You can leave a review where you bought the book.
WE LOVE TO SEE YOUR REVIEWS!
Remember, indie authors like us do well when readers like you leave reviews.
As always, thank you for reading!
David Wright and Sean Platt
Season 5
::Episode 25::
(FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON FIVE)
“The Beginning of The End”
One
Luca Harding
Irvine, California
October 2013
Beneath a blue sky baked by an Indian summer sun, astringent chlorine blended with the too-sweet scent of coconut suntan lotion and the happy sounds of careless play coming from the two hundred or so children and adults swimming under Luca, who couldn’t feel more out of place.
The water park was thriving with life, and he was teeming with something that could eradicate it all.
Luca stood on the diving platform, staring down at the pool’s surface, trying to calm the paralyzing fear that gave his body a tremble and threatened to send him back down the ladder.
Luca had thought that being at the pool was supposed to help test his ability, and that Rose had brought him to such a crowded place because it would be easy to infect and control others.
People’s defenses are always low when they’re gathered together and distracted by fun.
That’s what Rose had said when she was telling Luca where they were going to go, then again once they got there. But after seeing Luca’s crushing fear of heights, she had decided it was time for an impromptu lesson in overcoming that fear.
“Come on,” a boy called out impatiently from the ladder behind him.
“Jump!” a girl ordered, and added to Luca’s already heavy apprehension.
The Darkness inside him spoke. You’ll be safe.
The Darkness, as the alien had thought of itself, was comfortably nestled in Luca’s thoughts, but unlike Rose it had not taken over his body. Luca wasn’t a mere puppet or host like most other humans the alien had entered. The alien promised that he was a partner, because It found him different than the others. It said It wanted to work with Luca, not just through him. It could have easily forced Luca to leap from the edge of the board, but It merely advised him instead, knowing that given time Luca would make the right decision.
For that, Luca was thankful. When Rose had forced him to ingest the blue liquid full of alien life just two weeks ago, he had thought it was the end of himself. But it had been the opposite: Luca had been changed by the alien’s brother, calling itself The Light. Luca’s memories had been replaced with those from another Luca, from this world. The Darkness lifted the veil, scrubbed false memories away, and proved to Luca that his life was a lie.
His parents were not his parents. Nobody could ever understand him, not what he’d already gone through, or what he still had to survive.
No one could understand him as The Darkness did.
“Come on, faggot.” The boy behind him was getting louder, petty impatience filling his voice. Luca could feel him, halfway up the ladder, staring holes into the back of his head.
Luca flinched with the word, remembering the kids who’d taunted him at school.
Ignore them, The Darkness said. Just focus on the water’s surface. See that it is only a distance of ten feet, and know it.
To Luca the board wasn’t ten feet above the water. It was five hundred, and thin as a reed, slippery, with a ladder that took an hour to climb. If he hit the water wrong, he’d be dead for sure.
It’s a clear drop to the water below, Luca. There is no danger unless you slip. Your desire to retreat is only the fear. You must kill the doubts and whispering fears that will never be
true. If you turn around and scramble down that ladder, you’re more likely to slip and fall, plunging to the ground and cracking your head like a melon on concrete.
Luca looked down at the water, gleaming bright beneath the sun. He felt dizzy, his stomach churning.
“I can’t.” Luca turned from the water. He was about to scramble back down the ladder, even though he could crack his head like a melon on concrete.
But the ladder was blocked by the boy who had been yelling at him. He broke the rules and climbed to the top of the ladder before Luca had dived. He was tall, a few years older than Luca, probably around sixteen. The boy’s face was big and full of zits, his thick brow was low and angry. He made Luca think of a shovel.
The Darkness said: Funny how the angriest of people look the least evolved.
Luca laughed.
“Whatcha laughing at, faggot?” Shovel Face asked.
Luca looked down. Even though The Darkness ran through him, and gave Luca certain gifts, he’d not yet learned to master his new abilities. Part of The Darkness not claiming his body meant that Luca had to tap into these abilities on his own. That’s why Rose was helping him. She was like a coach, like when Luca’s father who wasn’t really his father was teaching him how to fight.
But in the meantime Luca was still vulnerable, and about to get his ass handed to him by a bully at the top of a diving board.
“Jump,” said a voice in his head.
This time it was Rose, who could tap into Luca’s thoughts, seemingly whenever she wanted. Unlike Luca, she was controlled by The Darkness. It was a collective alien with shared memories and experiences, but her Darkness felt different. Better, Luca was certain. His Darkness had changed somehow, evolved for having been in him. Luca wasn’t sure how he knew this, whether he was picking up on thoughts from The Darkness or realizing these differences with his own senses.
