Life-After (26 page)

“
I am broken!” I screamed. “I don’t know who I am anymore, why I’m here.”

I laid my head on the ground weakened, defeated. For me there was no reason to go on. While I felt I could continue the fight I could not find any reason to do so. I believed whatever may have come of my efforts would just had lead to another manipulation.

“
He wanted to tell you himself.” Clara began. “He doesn’t know everything about your past, but he knows you are important?”

I looked up from the ground at Clara. She had wiped the tears from her eyes and took in a deep breath. Her hands were no longer shaking and her voice changed from one of fear and uncertainty to one a person of faith would have. She believed what she had said with all her being that much I could tell.

“
Who..?” I asked. “Who knows I’m important?”

“
The man who saved me, who saved all of us...” Clara replied. “Henry Flag, he told me you were the one who could free us all.”

The man I had come to hate was to be the man who could put an end to my suffering, to all our suffering. I did not want to believe it and yet I knew that was exactly what Richard would have wanted. There was no other choice. I reached my hand out to Clara to help me to my feet.

“
Then take me to him.” I said calmly.

As we headed deeper into the night I felt the raw energy inside my body return. It felt the same as when I encountered Richard in the life stream. The energy was strengthening me as if renewing my resolve for one final task. I did not know where Clara would take me or what I would find, but there was one thing I knew for certain. If Flag did not give me the answers I needed I would unleash the rage inside off me and give Richard exactly what he wanted.

16

Clara and I had been walking for hours throughout the night. We had left the city and were heading out into a desert. The moonlight had dimmed. It seemed as if the night was getting darker the further we walked. I could not help but wonder why there would be a need for day and night in the afterlife. I could only come to the conclusion that like the decimated city we had just left it was all part of the manipulation process. We had to believe we were on earth and everything was as we knew. It would be the best way to get us to accept it and in turn control us.

The energy inside me was still present though not as intense as before. My flesh or whatever my body was composed of however was still weakened. With my arm over Clara’s shoulder we had walked through the darkness without saying a word to each other. My feelings had dulled, not only had the anger faded, but all other emotions as well. I knew my words had hurt Clara and though she said nothing I could see it in her eyes. The problem was I was not concerned about that.

I had always wanted to keep my emotions in check but not to the point that I could not care about others or feel true happiness and love. What Richard had done was to take everything I believed, everything that I knew and distort it. The result was that I could not trust anything from my past and could only focus on the future. Without a base to look back upon the feelings and emotions that came from them could also not be trusted. In the end love, hate, happiness, sadness, anger was unnecessary. There was something I had to do and that was all that mattered, everything else was to be disregarded.

The realization of that brought me back to my training. The Alliance wanted its soldiers to focus on the mission and to, at least temporarily, put all else aside. Once your mission had succeeded then you could focus on other things, but while you were tasked with a job only the job mattered and nothing was to stand in your way. I assumed Richard had tasked me for something, but I could not even be sure of that. Everyone I had encountered considered me special with a specific destiny I had to fulfill. My question to myself was, is my destiny to help or to harm.

The night was cold and though I could not see a thing Clara continued on into the darkness as if she was locked on to a homing beacon. Her eyes also told me she had been tasked. She had told me it was her who asked to find me and bring me home, but I wondered about that. Perhaps she was specifically chosen because she was one of the only people I would follow. As far as I was concerned we were all pawns. I was tired of playing and wanted the game to end.

“
I need to stop.” I said to Clara.

I rested against a large rock and stared out into the night. There were many thoughts and questions swirling inside my mind, but I could not pick just one to isolate. Clara did not say a word. She stood silently staring in the same direction we were heading. There was a feeling inside me that once we reached our destination there would be little time for talk. If I wanted to say something then that time would be the best.

“
I’m sorry.” I said softly. “I won’t lie and say that what I said was just in a moment of anger. I don’t know what is real anymore. This right now could be another illusion. Maybe you have been in one reality long enough to accept it, but what if it is ripped away like mine was. What would you say? How would you feel?”

Clara slowly walked behind me and leaned against the rock. I turned my head to see her staring up into the sky.

“
To survive here I had to come to the realization that everything that has happened was real.” Clara began. “When my parents died a part of me wanted to wash away their memory. It was too painful to think about them, all the love they showed me, all they sacrificed for me. I told myself that it would not be disgracing them to try and forget. They knew I loved them, why continue to think of them now if it caused so much pain.”

She took in a deep breath and turned her head towards me. The faint moonlight shimmed off of the tears falling from her eyes. Tightness in my chest reminded me that I did care, not just for the suffering of others, but the pain Clara was feeling inside.

“
The pain I felt also reminded me of the love they gave me.” Clara continued. “I could not separate the good from the bad and it reminded me that the pain I went though helped to shape who I was. Regardless of what was a true event and what was implanted it is what we do with it that matters. I was not going to drown in the pain Richard caused me. I turned it into fuel. I used it to strengthen me to find a way out of this.”

Her words made more sense than anything I had thought through on my own. The reason the military used virtual training for its advanced soldiers was so they could experience the pain and learn from it to make them stronger. Even if Richard exposed me to those false realties to break me it was up to me to either become broken or turn the tables and gain strength from it. The energy that had built up inside me was just that, my power, my strength.

“
I thought the correct thing to do was focus only on the now and disregard the past.” I said. “I was wrong. There are memories, feelings within me of our time together. Real or created they are still there and even though there were bad times, there were much more good times.”

Clara walked around from behind me and placed my arm around her shoulder.

“
Faith is the confident belief in a person, thing or idea.” Clara said. “I have faith in myself and in God. I know together we will find a way out. I also have faith in you, David. In my heart I know you loved me and I still love you to this very moment. I know you do not share my religious beliefs, you never have. But, if you can just have faith in yourself then you’ll find the strength to continue and achieve any goal you’ve set for yourself.”

Once again I could feel the warmth from Clara’s body. It had been so long I had forgotten what it felt like. As we continued on into the night I came to the realization that the warmth felt just like Sara’s. It was love that I was feeling. It covered my entire body like a blanket. Wrapped in its aura I knew what I had felt with both of them was true. Knowing that made the night a little bit brighter. It was then I realized where we were.

In the distance I could see the towering mountain that was blocking out most of the moonlight. I should have realized where we were earlier, it made so much sense. From my point of view everything happened there and it was when I walked though its massive steel doors that everything began. We had returned to that place.

“
Naxum Research…” I gasped. “Your base, where everyone is, it is in Naxum Mountain?”

“
Flag needed a place that was familiar.” Clara responded. “This was the best place for him to continue his research while saving whom he could.”

Clara’s words froze me in my tracks. I stood frozen staring ahead. In none of my other experiences had Flag ever worked at Naxum Research.

“
He worked at Naxum? I asked. “I thought he was part of Alpha Medical?”

“
He told me he did.” Clara responded. “I took him at his word.”

We continued on and as we drew closer to the entrance I thought more and more about what I thought I had known of Flag. Everything about him that I believed could have been a lie that much I was willing to accept. It was possible that Flag held information that Richard wanted to keep from me and so he made sure that I would come to distrust and hate him. Either way I would find out soon enough.

We arrived at the gates of Naxum Research just as the sun was rising behind us. The grounds just outside the blast doors were littered with damaged and destroyed vehicles. The security gates hung in disrepair with many of them lying broken on the ground. Just outside the guard tower a small graveyard with six graves sat in the shadow of the mountain. I could not help but stare at them thinking about the possibility of a second death.

“
You said something to me when I first awoke.” I said. “You said it wasn’t safe, that we had to move. These graves, they were never here when I worked at Naxum.”

Clara walked over and kneeled down near one of the graves. She closed her eyes and ran her hand across the makeshift cross that had been placed there made from tree branches. I walked up behind her and looked down at the grave. It was then that I could see a name carved into one of the pieces of wood.

“
Who was Renee?” I asked.

“
She was a young woman I helped rescue.” Clara began. “Henry told me when he brought me here that though Richard himself could not reach us he could send his minions to attack.”

The entrance to Naxum while in disarray was still confined well enough to defend against a forward attack. I took notice that there had been modifications done in an attempt to reinforce the perimeter fence. I had not realized it before but the destroyed vehicles were aliened to serve as a bottle neck for any attacking force.

“
Richard’s minions..?” I asked. “So he’s attacked before?”

“
Yes.” Clara responded. “The attacks only happen when we pulled someone out. When Flag and I retrieved Renee we were attacked by soldiers, at least that what’s I thought they were. They were nothing more than shells. They look like humans, but there were made of energy. Luckily they seem to be forced to act and respond as if human.”

Clara stood from the grave and began to walk towards the guard tower leading to the entrance of Naxum research. I paid closer attention to my surroundings taking note of shell casings scattered across the ground. Near one of the damaged vehicles was a dried blue liquid-like substance. I knelt down to take a closer look.

“
It’s what our blood looks like now.” Clara said. “Flag told me our bodies went through an energy-to-matter conversion process. This allows us to function as we did when alive. We still have internal organs as we did when alive which is why we breathe and can get tired or hurt. Our blood is a concentrated form of life energy. Flag calls it plasma-based on the theory of ectoplasm.”

For so long I believed everything that was happening was about me. Seeing the blood of others splattered across the desert I understood that it was not just about my life, but about the souls of all the humans who had died. If anything death was to bring peace, but peace was not what I had found in the afterlife.

“
Renee was killed by Richard’s minions.” I said. “So you can die even in the afterlife.”

“
They attacked us as we were heading here.” Clara replied. “We did everything we could, but they were specifically after her. Their bodies just like our human bodies react the same way to trauma. We were able to use guns against them, but Renee was struck several times by their fire. We killed them, but Renee died before we reached here.”

I turned to look back towards the grave. It was conceivable that if I was able to feel the warmth of Clara’s skin and the fatigue from stress on the body that I could also die. Richard had a fall back plan.

“
What happens...?” I began to ask.

“
There is no body beneath the ground.” Clara answered. “When we die our bodies return to energy and disappear. Henry believes our life energy returns to our point of entry when we first died. That means it comes under Richard’s control again. We tried to search for her energy signature, but we could not find it. Once we die in here we are lost forever. That’s what I believe.”

I understood now why we were placed in a replica of Maiden city. It was a place of despair and war. It would cast a gloom over anyone who experienced any time there. While I did not know if it was Richard’s doing that put human souls in an earth like afterlife. I did understand better now what the other Clara told me. Our minds would easily adapt to a world similar to our own and because of our human-like bodies we would be susceptible to human frailties.