What Memory Remains

“We’re here,” Alice heard Sade’s soft voice as she awoke. The moonlight filtered into the small train car as Sade sat her up. She rubbed her eyes, mentally straining herself to become alert. Crickets quietly chirped outside, and it wasn’t helping.

“Already?” Alice said aloud, and Sade responded with a simple nod.

“We’re only a few blocks away from the hospital. Maybe we can find some answers there from Dr. Pennington.”

As Sade helped her down from the train car, Alice couldn’t help but notice a mark on Sade’s arm. It showed when he bent his arm and his rolled-up sleeves shifted up some. She nonchalantly kept watch to get a better view, but said nothing of it.

The two silently made their way down Bradston St., taking in the sights of the moonlit city. For a smaller town, Prague still kept the feel and pulse of a larger city. Enough people mulled about from tavern to tavern, and some shops were even still open. Sade’s sword was at the ready, as even the smaller cities had their share of vagabonds. Yet, it wasn’t the idea of being robbed that bothered Sade. Something else seemed to be on his mind.

“Sade, how old are you?” Alice asked.

“Haha. Shouldn’t you be able to tell.” He tapped his forehead.

“I don’t like to do it unless I have to, or if someone gives me permission.”

“Fair enough. I’m 25. Very accomplished for my age, though. “

“Why did you join Minerva?”

“Why? For a child, you ask interesting questions.”

“You just don’t seem like….all the others.”

“What do you mean?”

“The men from Minerva that visited NOSRAD…they’re different from you. All business, super macho, and cold. You’re different.”

“Well, I guess you could say I’m one of a kind.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Okay, okay. Well, I just wanted to make a difference. I know that people can do some really bad things in life, and so I wanted to be someone who could stop the bad people.” As he said this, Alice noticed his jaw hardening and his eyes narrowing in concentration.

”Be more specific, please.”

“I thought you said you didn’t read my mind.”

“I didn’t. After you read minds for a while, you can kinda figure out when people are lying or not just by looking at them.”

“Well, I’m not lying.” Sade lifted his eyebrows in a challenging manner.

“Then you’re hiding something.”

“Fine.” Sade felt flushed, being outsmarted by such a smart kid. “I grew up in a bad part of town. I saw a lot of bad stuff go down, in and out of my own house unfortunately. The worst of society right there all the time. It bothered me a lot, and I decided that I wanted to do something about it. “

“Does it make you feel better? Doing what you do?”

“Sometimes.” At this answer, Sade’s eyes looked to the stars in thought. “You know Alice, there’s something that you’ll learn when you get older. Things…just change.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well…a lot of things you think are clear-cut seem to become more and more vague. Only shades of gray instead of black and white, you know?”

“Like right and wrong?”

“Yes. And the thing about the law is….sometimes you have to choose between what you know is right and what the law says is right. The longer I do this, the longer I wonder if what I’m doing is even right.”

“You sound like an older person.”

“Hah! You’re right.” Sade’s eyes turned back to Alice in wonder at her.

“From the mouth of babes,´ Sade thought.

“Where did you get your scar?” Alice said, and Sade stopped in his tracks.

“What?”

“Your scar. The one on your arm. How did you get it?”

A flash of emotion erupted in Sade’s eyes, and Alice couldn’t tell whether he was going to cry, yell, go silent, or do all three.

“We’re not going to talk about that.”

“Please? I just…”

“WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT, OKAY?!” The look in Sade’s eyes changed, and for a moment it scared her.

“Let’s….let’s just keep going.” Sade nervously straightened his sleeves, barely regaining his composure.

An awkward silence stalked them all the way to the hospital. As they approached the entrance doors, Alice couldn’t help but notice that Sade looked even more on-edge. There was a hesitation, a definite apprehension to the way he walked inside. His demeanor didn’t change until they approached the front desk.

“I’m here to see Dr. Pennington. I’m a friend.” Sade requested cooly.

“Okay. Let me check.” After rifling through some papers, she informed them he was in room 512. With a smile and a nod, the two made their way through what seemed a slow night at the hospital. As they awkwardly stood in the elevator, Alice decided to break the silence.

“Do you think Dr. Pennington knows something?”

“I’m really not sure.”

After another moment, Sade suddenly turned and kneeled down to Alice’s level.

“Hey…look. About earlier. It’s just…..the scar….it’s something I’m not ready to talk about yet. You understand, right?”

“Yeah, okay...” Alice said timidly, thinking back to the look of anger in his eyes.

“I’m….I’m sorry okay. Still friends?” Sade put on his best smile he could muster while still in the midst of his emotional confusion, and Alice smiled back.

“Yeah. Friends.”

“Alright.” Sade ruffled her hair and stood up. As the elevator opened and they began to exit, Alice gently placed her hand in Sade’s and held it. As they made their way down the hallway, something about the way that Alice so easily forgave him made him feel very …vulnerable. He was glad when they reached Pennington’s room so he could talk business again.

“Well, look who’s still alive,” Sade chided as he walked in. Pennington’s eyes went wide in shock and he started to scramble out of bed. “What are you doing?!”

Pennington stopped for a moment and met his gaze, seeing there was no malice in them.

“You’re not here to….”

“Kill you? Whose side do you think I’m on?”

“You work for Minerva, don’t you?”

“I do. But perhaps not the way you think.”

“I see. So what do you want?”

“I have some questions for you.”

“Okay,” Pennington collected himself, and resided back to his bed.

“We’re here to get some more answers about NOSRAD. We even have one of their subjects here.” He indicated to Alice, who just smiled so hard it looked silly.

“Wait…you’re the clairvoyant, aren’t you?”

“That’s me!”

“Obviously you’re not my enemy. They’d never let a subject wander this far.”

“They wouldn’t. I remember you and by the way, I’m a person. And if you don’t answer the questions we have I’ll pull it out of your head whether you want me to or not.”

“Play nice, Alice. But that’s right, she’s quite good. So tell me anything noteworthy about NOSRAD that I might otherwise not be aware of.”

“Well, you already know most of everything. I take it you’ve had people planted in the facility, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, so no need to mull over all that. The biggest thing you need to know about now is the Extraction Initiative.”

“Now this, I have not heard of.”

“It’s very exclusive. I was helping with the early stages of it. What I do know, is if it gets any more out of hand that it already is, then we could be in for something big.”

“What exactly is it?”

“Well, it started as a process of extracting one’s magical abilities. Because of such controversy between the North and South continents over magic, some people have expressed interest in a way to completely take the ability out altogether.”

“And you found a way to do this?”

“I did, but at first there were problems. The last I worked on it, it would cause major health problems for the patient. Because magick is something within someone it affected them physically as well. I was very close to complete extraction, but I needed to minimize the negative side effects. Before I could reduce the side effects they handed it over to other scientists to work on. I was so distracted by the Lazarus Project, I almost forgot about it.”

“So what did they accomplish with it?”

“Complete and total extraction. But what I didn’t find out until recently was that they weren’t just trying to find out how to take magic out of the subject…they were trying to transfer their magic to someone else.”

“What? Why would you do such a thing?”

“For the exact opposite reasons! You don’t want magic, and someone else does. So why not transfer it over. And they accomplished it , but with dire consequences.”

“What is that?”

“It kills the subject.”

“Let me guess…they don’t tell the participants.”

“Exactly. And just like Minerva, NOSRAD always has ways of covering their tracks. They also have the media on their side because of their generous ‘donations’ they always make. But what they’re planning to do is even more nefarious.”

“And what would that be?”

“Krane wants to build an army. I’ve only been able to get bits and pieces of everything, but as far as I can tell, I think he may want to start a war. And with more people on his side with magic, along with having the most advanced technology at his disposal, there’s no telling what he could be capable of. And seeing how manipulative he is, I’m afraid to know.”

“Start a war? But how?”

“I don’t know yet, but the sooner he can be stopped the better. There are more NOSRAD facilities around Nostromos, and I can bet you the ones where he’s practicing the Extraction Initiative are hidden. I unfortunately do not have any information about those. And if there was any, it would’ve been in the facility that burned down.”

“You know about that already?”

“I have my informants as well. I figured I might as well be apprised of everything while I’m just lying here.”

“Alice, check him.” The little girl nodded and focused her thoughts into Dr. Pennington’s. She saw files, faces, and facts all transferring from his mind to hers in a matter of seconds. The look of concentration left her face, and she nodded to him.

“So fascinating,” Pennington smiled. “I wish I could have performed more tests on you. You were one of the most interesting subjects we had.”

“How would you like to live the rest of your life thinking you’re a 5 year old girl who likes lollipops?” Alice’s face suddenly turned ugly, catching Sade off-guard.

“Hey, easy. No one’s doing any more tests,” Sade calmed her. “And you….you’re not as bad as them but…..sheesh. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got work to do. I hate hospitals, anyway.”

Disgusted, Sade led Alice toward the door. Pennington gave Alice a sneer just as she was turning out the door. In return, she flashed a picture of the doctor’s deceased son in his mind right as she left. Pennington recoiled in horror, and held the bedsheets up to his face. It was only late into the night before he got to sleep.

Hours later, after Sade and Alice left, an ominous group of rainclouds made their way over the hospital. Within minutes, a torrential downpour began, accompanied by a loud clap of thunder that jumpstarted Dr. Pennington from his sleep. The haunting image that Alice had left in his mind was fresh again, and he pulled the cover over his head, emotionally the age of a child at this point.

A shadow suddenly appeared through his sheets and he felt a large hand pin him down. The hand was so strong that he could scarcely move no matter how hard he struggled as another hand muffled his cries. A deep, rumbly voice spoke to him.

“Dr. Pennington. Yell, and I’ll snap your neck. Have you seen the girl?”

“Who? Wh-what girl?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. The blonde girl with Sade, Alice. Have you seen them?”

“Well, I might have….” Water suddenly poured through the sheets, covering his mouth and nose tightly. This continued for what seemed like forever as he felt like he was drowning. When it stopped, he desperately sucked in mouthfuls of air.

“Let’s try this again.”

“Yes, yes! They were here earlier tonight.”

“How long ago?”

“About five hours or so.”

“Good. Now I know I haven’t gotten ahead of them. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Oh, no pr-problem haha. You know, I was just thinking...”

The hand grabbed him by his gown through the sheets and sent him hurtling through the air of his open window, and he was soon plummeting to his death. In the last seconds before he smacked into the ground, he was able to look up to see a creepy masked man peering at him from the hospital window. Just as he was hitting the ground, the face seemed to disappear into the night.

Ten minutes later, a nurse screamed as she looked out of the window of room 512 to discover the lifeless body of Pennington lying in the streets. Right beside the empty bed where Pennington had once rested was a trail of gigantic, wet footprints.

* * *

At ground zero where the NOSRAD facility once stood was now only a pile of rubble and ash. Workers were tirelessly clearing debris out and attempting to restore some sort of normalcy to the disaster. Sade’s informants had gone for the night, and only a handful of people remained for the shift to finish the clean-up. As they moved the rubble around, a worker noticed something very peculiar under the lunar sky.

“Hey, Edgar. Check this out.” He motioned his friend over and pointed to a particularly dark spot of ash on the ground.

“Yeah, it’s a pile of ash. So what?”

“Watch this.” He touched his shovel to the pile, and upon contact the shovel immediately began to glow red from the heat. They could even feel the wave of heat emanating from it.

“Whoa…how it could possibly be that hot? The fire’s been put out for hours.”

“I know. I’ve tried moving it around, but there’s no embers in there either. Real weird.”

“Huh, maybe we should…”

At that moment, the earth near them shook briefly, causing them to back away from the aforesaid pile of ash. The pile sifted around on its own and leveled out on the ground. The ground suddenly stopped shaking and there was a dead silence. Both men held their breath, awaiting another quake.

At that moment, a voice inaudible to the human ear whispered a single word.

“Arise...”

To the men’s utter shock, a hand covered in ash shot out of the ground. It was soon joined by another, and a person hoisted themselves out of the earth. Both workers fell back, crawling as they thought it may be a denizen of the dead being summoned.

Whoever it was stumbled forward and had to kneel for a moment to catch their balance. The black ash covering the person from head to toe, making their features indistinguishable. All they could surmise was they were tall and lean.

“Hello?” One of the men hesitantly asked. The unknown man seemed to be catching his breath, only able to stare back at them with intense, deep green eyes.

“Yes?” The stranger responded quizzically.

“Oh….thought you were….I don’t know….a zombie or something.”

“I….I suppose I’m not then.” The two workers looked at each other at this response, and laughed nervously.

“Geez, you’re just some guy. Who are you? And why did you come out of the ground like that?”

The ashen man looked behind him at the hole in the ground and returned his gaze to them. By the look in the man’s eyes, he was just as puzzled as they were.

“I-I……I’m not sur how I got there.” The man scratched his head for a second in thought, and the ash that came off revealed a tuft of blue hair underneath.

“Okay….so who are you then?”

The man looked around again, reached down to his neck and grasped at an amber stone around his neck which he stroked for a moment, then looked back at them with earnest eyes and said.

“I don’t know….”