What Memory Remains

Alice lay sleeping soundly, completely oblivious to everything around her. Sade tossed and turned, yet was equally out of it. The conductor was in the next room over, his feet propped up on a nearby bench with his hat covering his eyes. All minds were soundly in slumber, except for one.

The stature of the Rainmaker easily dwarfed the two of the Minerva agent and the little girl. He breathed raggedly through his mask as he stood in tenuous preparation for what he had to do. Yet, the more he prepared his mind for it, the harder it was to carry out. Of all the years of doing NOSRAD’s bidding, he never had to kill a child before.

“My God, she looks just like Bethany,” he pondered. The blonde hair, the cherub-like cheeks. It was strange to think, but killing her would feel like he was murdering his own daughter. Things were hard enough to do as it was. Thoughts of walking away seemed agreeable, but the last conversation he had with Krane a week ago stuck out in his mind.

“I know you don’t always agree with the moral implications of your assignments, but if you don’t agree we’ll simply stop treating you. And your daughter’s never going to see you again. Do you really want that for yourself? Going the rest of your life without seeing her because of how you look?” He had said.

“You made me this way,” he retorted.

“We saved your life! You wouldn’t be able to see her at all if it wasn’t for us! I know what we ask isn’t always easy, but if you want to be cured you need do your assignments. Besides, I’d hate for an accidents to happen with your daughter or your wife.”

“Ex-wife. And if you touch either of them….”

“You’ll fall apart, Luke. That’s what you’ll do. Why you’d spare her is beyond me. Seems like she jumped to someone else the minute she was told you were dead.”

“I”ll….”

“You’ll what? Get your family killed by killing me? I don’t suggest that at all Mr. Overton. Now I understand your concerns with everything, but you have to do the assignments , so do it and everything will be fine.”

He had destroyed almost an entire wing of the facility that day. Krane and NOSRAD, they were nothing but a bunch of manipulative cretins. Preying on people in need like this. How many others had they baited with their lies?

It was his idea for NOSRAD to tell his wife that he was dead. According to the information Krane relayed, there was a funeral and everything. Since he had opted into surgery with NOSRAD, they told her that his body was donated to science and therefore she couldn’t see it. It hurt when he saw the look on her face through the two-way mirror when she found out. As much as it hurt, with all the assignments he had to fulfill and not truly knowing if he’d ever be cured, it would be better for them to move on. There was no need in them waiting around for something that may never happen.

Besides, after killing so many people, he was feeling very much dead. The only hope he had was to be cured and see Bethany again.

“If I still have this ability after all this, you’ll get what’s coming to you Krane you pious bastard.”

With much trepidation, he decided that he couldn’t look at her. Seeing her sound asleep like some fallen angel, it just felt too wrong to see her die. He took a big step backwards and was now outside. Trembling, he took in a deep breath.

“Forgive me,” he thought somberly and raised his hands to the sky. An immediate downpour of rain fell towards the train car and moved directly inside, filling it with water at an exponential rate. As he concentrated on maintaining a wall of water to block the entrance, he could barely make out the faces of Sade and Alice fighting to get out. Their faces contorted as they struggled to breathe, and he solemnly shook his head no.

Unable to look them in the eyes, he picked up the train car with a layer of water on the bottom and lifted it to the level of the tree line and let go. The train car plummeted to the earth in a crash of metal and debris. Amongst the ruins, he saw Sade lying in a pool of water with blood covering his face. He walked over to finish him off when he realized a piece of metal shrapnel was sticking out from the side of his head.

After moving some of the rubble aside, he found Alice who shockingly only had bruises and scrapes but was otherwise unharmed. She was breathing, very shallow but breathing nonetheless. She seemed to be in shock. Hating himself, he stood over her and looked down. Her sanguine blue eyes looked back, begging the question of “why?”

“I’m sorry.” He said, and reached down to put his hands on her neck. Her eyes widened in horror. “There’s no other way….don’t look at me like that.”

He began to squeeze, and she struggled against him, and suddenly she coughed up a large amount of water, and gasped. He stopped, suddenly wanting to hear her voice for some unknown reason.

“Who….who are you?”

“It doesn’t really matter at this point, does it?”

“Why…are you doing this?”

“I have to.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I do. Please, don’t make this any harder. I hoped you’d be dead already. I didn’t want it to be this way.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

She suddenly began to kick and claw at him, and he tried to hold her still.

“Don’t do that.”

Suddenly she knocked his mask off, revealing his infected and bloated face.

She began screaming.

“Stop it!”

She continued.

“I said, stop it!”

She screamed even louder, and he wrapped his hands around her throat again and began choking out her screams.

“I’m sorry….. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” he repeated over and over until she went still.

“I’m s-“ He sobbed, his tears mingling with the water that appeared out of his pores. Wanting to die himself, his shoulders heaved with his wracking sobs as he held her in his arms, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the cicadas’ lullaby.

* * *

Zenapharr rode his horse down the railroad tracks, his eyes kept keenly watching ahead for any telltale signs that he could be getting close to the train. He knew the speeds they traveled weren’t that much faster than a horse, and if he booked it he could catch up. He had found the horse in Prague, which he remembered upon arrival was his original destination.

He stopped by the hospital to see Dr. Pennington, but found that he was dead. Although they weren’t one hundred percent for sure, the hospital staff assumed that Pennington had thrown himself out of the window. As his memory came back, he recalled how troubled Pennington was after his son’s traumatic demise. It made sense, but all the while he knew there were people in NOSRAD who probably wanted him dead.

“Hell, I wanted him dead not long ago,” he thought. It wasn’t a complete surprise when it came down to it. The only thing to do now was to find Sade and Alice, and he did remember them leaving on a train. So he found the train station in Prague and had followed by the tracks on horse ever since.

The stars out here in the country were so beautiful. That was one thing he did enjoy at the NOSRAD facility was that gorgeous view. Being located away from all the pollutants of the city had its advantages. From what he remembered, pollution was even worse before The Great War.

Back then, everyone had machines called cars, which were like small trains that ran without tracks. They used a fuel called gasoline, but all the nuclear bombs from the Great War caught fire to most of the oil reserves and destroyed the Planet to the point where obtaining fossil fuel was no longer viable. People looked into the option of using steam engines for cars again, but with so many other concerns with repopulating the world and reestablishing society, it never happened.

Naturally, some forests were able to come back on their own while others were cultivated. Despite the efforts and successes in restoration, there were still many areas of the Planet that remained a barren landscape, a permanent reminder of mankind’s struggle for power. Most of the plains were arid and dust, and he knew that he was making progress as he came upon more and more trees.

Before long, he was in a forest that he recognized as Lanier. It was one of the few successful cultivated forests in the region, and yielded many benefits for the surrounding cities. The only drawback was the growing population of goblins that seemed to tirelessly breed there.

He remembered one of his first missions in training was to annihilate a horde of goblins that had ransacked travelers near another forest. They had killed an unprecedented amount of the foul things, but six months later they seemed to spring back. This time around they were much more hesitant to bother passersby. Zenapharr had ensured that by giving their leader a visit on his own private mission.

Not far into the forest he felt rain begin to pelt him and his horse, and he caressed the horse’s neck as he could sense it was making her uneasy. They continued on through parallel to the traintracks until he heard a loud boom that shook the earth. His horse bucked him off, but he landed expertly on his feet. In a flash he was able to catch the fleeing horse and it took a moment to ease her down long enough to tie her to a nearby tree.

“It’s okay girl. I’ll just be gone a moment.”

During the wrangling of his horse he saw no lightning to accompany the thunder. The sound seemed to be further ahead, so his curiosity led him over to the source.

Straying a bit from the tracks, he went through the groups of trees until he came upon what was apparently the source of the sound. A large hole formed in the ground, with two indentations in the middle that pushed down further than the rest. This was definitely no thunder. There were no scorch marks or any heat that accompanied the large hole. It looked like a person crashed into the earth and landed on their feet.

“A very large person,” he thought to himself. How odd.

Looking around the circumference of the hole he found a set of footprints to validate his theory. Whoever this person was, they were huge. They were somewhere around seven feet, judging by the huge stride in the footprints. He unsheathed his katana to face whatever this adversary was. Anything that could crash to the ground like that and still be standing couldn’t mean well.

He went back to his horse and followed the footprints by horseback, and soon realized the prints seemed to be following the traintracks. After a couple of miles more of trekking the footprints ended, and they were completed filled in by a puddle of water.

“Curioser and curioser,” he wondered as he kneeled over the last prints.

Just as he was about to saddle up, he went on full alert at the snap of a tree branch behind him.