Bridget’s and Amelie’s portraits were projected behind Die-Hardman. Nothing was said about their true self, but they were instead allowed to be remembered how they depicted themselves.
“But we find comfort in the knowledge that their memories will live on in the Chiral Network… and in our hearts. We will always remain connected. There are other heroes in this story.”
Sam put the photo away and began to walk.
“You whose achievements seem destined to go unrecognized. America still needs that hero. Those without whom we would not be here. The name is unimportant. You know who I mean. And for those unsung heroes, I have a message… It was you who brought us together, you who made us whole again. And while you and I will eventually pass on… we will be survived by our legacies—our lives and our memories preserved for future generations. Maybe a day will come in due course when we can stop the Death Stranding with our own strength. For that we must work as one. We must never stand alone again.”
Sam pushed open the Oval Office door and stepped out into the empty hallway. He could still faintly hear Die-Hardman’s speech. Sam wasn’t upset or disappointed that Die-Hardman didn’t mention him in his speech. Now that he had thrown his old mask away, Die-Hardman had to don the new one that came with being president. Sam also had to live with his secrets.
She had embraced him. Then they separated and Sam fell to his own Beach. Sam was a repatriate. It was the first time he had visited his own Beach. He couldn’t tell it apart from the one that Amelie had taken him to. There was no red sky. No red sea. No BTs. Just a quiet and calm Beach. The only thing that remained the same was the shoreline that stretched on and on for eternity.
The baby doll that Amelie had spoken of was cleansed by the waves. Its head was dark and there were marks all over its arms, legs, and chest. It looked sad and worn out, like a kid had finally gotten tired of playing with it. Sam scooped it up, when a slip of paper fell from inside it. Sam tensed up. It was the photo he thought he had lost. The photo of him, Lucy, and the smiling Bridget stood between them. It was the photo she had gone out of her way to print out and write a message on. Bridget had said that it would make it a one-of-a-kind that could never be replaced. After the word “Strand” came the word “Again.”
When Sam placed the photo in his chest pocket, the doll caught his eye. Now it was clean, with no marks. Now it looked just like a newborn baby. An accessory sparkled gold around its neck. It was Amelie’s quipu. The quipu that Sam had given her all those years ago was now in the baby’s hands.
I add a knot when I make a friend, child Sam had told her the day he gave it to her.
Even though he shouldn’t have been able to increase the number of knots on an empty Beach, he did. He wandered around and around, looking for an exit, eventually tiring and falling asleep. Every time he woke up, he added another knot. The quipu was keeping track of the amount of time Sam had spent there. Once the quipu was full of knots, they disappeared and it all started over again. Had Amelie counted her time here in the same way? When Sam thought about how damaging that must have been, his naivety as a child frustrated him.
Once he had cycled through the quipu knots yet again, he began to think that he was trapped in an infinitely looping hell. Just like Cliff’s battlefield and the Beach Amelie spent her life as an Extinction Entity on. If Bridget’s cancer had been divine punishment from the universe, then this was his. With each passing day his belief in that grew stronger, until eventually, it became certainty. There was only one way to get off the Beach.
—A gun won’t help you here. But it still has a role to play.
The revolver was buried in the sand. Humanity would go on, but a load called loneliness weighed down on Sam. The weight of it brought Sam to his knees. Steadying his trembling hands, Sam put the gun to his temple. He could feel the cold of the metal and realized that he was drenched in sweat. He held his breath and squeezed. The sound of the waves seemed distant and all he could hear was the sound of his own beating heart over the top of them. Then… clink. Clink, clink, clink.
Instead of his beating heart, now all he heard was the vain sound of the gun hammer striking an empty chamber.
What an idiot. Sam could hear Amelie smile sadly in his head.
If he had been stuck there forever, what would he have done?
Sam continued walking down the empty hallway. He could no longer hear Die-Hardman’s speech.
“Going somewhere, Sam?” Deadman asked, chasing after him. “Tired of being the unsung hero?”
“No… I’m done is all. She’s gone,” he replied.
“C’mon, wait. There’s something I need to tell you,” Deadman exclaimed, grabbing Sam’s arm. At first, Deadman seemed to have realized his mistake, but his look of horror soon turned to surprise. “Huh. This doesn’t bother you anymore?”
Deadman gradually pressed tighter and Sam grimaced. But they both seemed to know that it wasn’t because he was having an adverse reaction anymore. Ever since Fragile had jumped him back, Sam had a feeling that he might have gotten a little better. But in the midst of Deadman’s grip, he began to feel like he might have completely recovered.
“Now, wouldn’t you like to know how we brought you back from the Beach?” Deadman asked.
Sam didn’t know what to say. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious, but it wasn’t going to help him anymore even if he did know.
After he threw that useless gun back to the ground and began to wander the beach once more, he heard a voice. Familiar voices were calling out his name. He could hear Deadman, Heartman, Mama/Lockne, and even Lou’s cries. They led him to the sea.
—See, you are connected, Amelie whispered. Then someone grabbed him by the legs and dragged him to the ocean floor.
“We were going to use the doll, but we didn’t have one handy. Which was when I remembered something else.”
Deadman fiddled with his cuff link and projected a hologram.
“That what I think it is?” Sam asked.
“Yes. What could be more connected to Amelie’s Beach than President Strand’s umbilical cord? Heartman thought that was why she left it with me in the first place. Unfortunately…”
“It didn’t work,” Sam guessed.
“Yeah, she’d already cut her Beach loose.” Deadman looked at his feet. “It was just… gone. We didn’t know if that meant she’d dragged you into the great beyond with her, or sent you to some other Beach… We were really racking our brains. Heartman and Mama split up and started searching every Beach you might feasibly have washed up on. We looked for a month with absolutely nothing to show for it.”
Sam thought about the disparity between the passage of time in this world and the passage of time on the Beach. How long had he been there? It had felt like a lifetime to him.
“In the end, this is what led us to you.” Deadman reached inside his jacket and pulled out the revolver. “Just when we were about to give up, Die-Hardman reminded us about the revolver. So, we tried to follow it, and it led us to a far corner of your own Beach…”