Subject 21

I watch the sunset bleed.

Its outer edges drip like molten gold, and I hear the hiss of steam before I ever see the clouds rising from the arctic snow.

“Told you,” Raens says. He stops short of me, slings his rifle over his shoulder and folds his arms. He surveys the sunset like it’s a regular occurrence – an everyday thing. “There’s a reason this place is under lockdown.”

“So it’s true,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “No one’s left for three years.”

“Not a soul.”

The military base doesn’t exist.

Not officially.

It’s a rusted out corpse of abandoned hardware, a veritable graveyard of fallen soldiers and crumbling structures. Hidden twelve miles deep in the jungles of South America, there’s no reason anybody should be here. None. So why did I find a woman half-dead on the ground?

It’s a question I want answered.

She’s sitting across from me. Her eyes are downcast, her blouse is torn and her copper cheeks are flecked with spots of red. I don’t know if the blood belongs to her or somebody else, but I figure by the end of this, I’ll have a pretty good idea.

KNOCK.

That’s how it begins. A single knock.

It isn’t frightening. Not at first. It seems perfectly run-of-the-mill, closer to annoying than terrifying.

Knock. Knock.

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you,” I say, crossing the apartment to look through the sightglass.

There’s nobody there.

I twist the doorknob and glance down a vacant hallway. There's nothing. No one. It’s just peeling wallpaper and stained carpet as far as the eye can see.

“Huh,” I mutter, scratching my head. “Could’ve sworn....”

Back inside. I fall onto the couch, cozy up with a blanket and unmute the TV. There’s a news program on. Something local. It’s about a boy that fell into a well, some kid named Timothy, who survived thanks to the efforts of a barking dog and some passing hikers. The reporter is calling it a miracle. She’s calling it a Hollywood movie come to life.

Knock. Knock.

“Hello?”

“We keep it at the end of the hall,” Dr. Driver tells me. She’s pushing a flatbed with screaming wheels down an empty corridor. “Its official designation is Project 42, but we mostly stick to calling it the Aberration.”

“What are we bringing?” I ask, eyeing the box on the flatbed.

Her eyes flick down. They pass over the cargo and then back to me. “It’ll be easier if you see for yourself.”

“When?”

“When the time comes.”

The road stretches a million miles. 

It’s just me, the black top, the dead of night and the Nevada desert as far as the eye can see. I’ve been driving for hours and I haven’t caught so much as a glimpse of headlights. And really, that’s just the way I like it.

Over the radio, Kansas is singing about dust in the wind. They’re serenading me, keeping me company while I stare at the asphalt and fight my subconscious to the death. My thoughts are eating at me. Memories. Regrets.

I figure this is just par for the course on long drives. If you spend enough time alone, then sooner or later, you’ll go looking for problems. That’s life. It’s human. And right now, I’m tearing myself to pieces over leaving. Was it right? Should I have stayed?

Things to think about. 

The radio crackles, and for a second, the music becomes a fractured mess. The lyrics stutter. The guitar strings are all over the map. I think maybe it’s just that I’ve been driving so long, so far, that I’m starting to lose the station’s signal. I give the radio a smack, and Kansas comes back. 

All we do

Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

I hum along, my arm hanging out the window, thumping the door. The wind’s in my face, my hair. It tastes like freedom. It tastes like a new beginning, an escape from all the mistakes of my past. 

And all your money won't another minute buy— 

The radio fuzzes. Steve Walsh's voice enters freefall, lost in the static as it becomes something churning.