The man was slowly tightening his finger’s grip on the trigger. Sam thrust out a single hand and tried to cover the barrel. Even if he had to lose this hand, he would never leave Lou behind.
The man’s face once again contorted into a sad expression. His focus was no longer on the pod, but on Sam’s hand. The man was trying to remember something. That much Sam was sure of.
Who the hell was this man? He didn’t belong to this battlefield. He wasn’t like the other soldiers, who simply continued to slaughter one another as apparitions of this warzone.
The man had something in his head, but it seemed like he couldn’t express it.
There was a crash of thunder, and the stately wooden doors to the chapel blew open before shattering into pieces and bursting into flames. When he saw it, the man screamed something. It was an animalistic roar full of anger and fear. He was howling at the entrance.
Perhaps he was enraged that the pristine spire had been broken, or scared this holy ground was about to be defiled. The only thing Sam could be sure of was that the man was confused. Sam mustered the last of his strength, got back up, and sprang forward. But the man was quicker as he turned and blocked him.
Arm crashed into arm and shoulder rubbed against shoulder. At that moment, a shard of metal jutted out from near the man’s collarbone.
It resembled Sam’s Q-pid and was attached to a chain around the man’s neck. The force of the collision toppled the man over backward.
The shard around the man’s neck burned red. Sam’s own Q-pid emanated heat, almost like it was responding.
Somehow, the fallen man seemed to have lost the will to fight, but as Sam looked into his eyes, they weren’t those of a man who had given up completely and was ready to surrender. If Sam finished him off now, then he would be able to return to his own world. But his confidence was shaken. This man wasn’t dead like a BT.
Defeating him wouldn’t send him back anywhere. This man was after a different kind of funeral.
“BB…”
He wanted Lou. But there was no way Sam would hand Lou over. If this child was neither born nor dead, then there was no reason to hand Lou over. Sam only wished he could have done something so that Lou could have been properly born into the world of the living.
The man reached out. He was riddled with injuries, yet still staggered to his feet and began to step toward Sam. Sam readied his gun with his left hand and defended the pod with his right. But that was all he could do. He couldn’t move forward, nor could he move back.
The man frowned and squinted at Sam as if blinded by light.
“BB. BB… This is all my fault.” The man tried to touch the pod. “I should… I should never have put you in that prison, BB…”
The man was crying. Black tears rolled down his face. The man mustered strength into his arms and pulled the pod toward him. He was so surprisingly strong that Sam toppled forward. The two became entangled and writhed on the church floor. Sam grabbed the man’s neck as he tried to tear himself away, but something coiled around his hand.
Time seemed to flow extremely slowly. The man’s bangs swayed and Sam could see everything in minute detail, from his fine movements and ensuing flying specks of mud to the chain from which the metal shard hung as it broke and flew away from the man’s neck. Sam pushed the man away and attempted to stand. The man was face up and made another grab for the BB.
Sam’s eyes met those of the man. It was like he was being sucked into them. He felt that he would drown in those eyes, which were deeper than any sea. He felt like he was being dragged down eternally, slowly crushed to death by the water pressure of this ocean, never to return to the surface again. Sam closed his eyes as fear took hold.
MOUNTAIN KNOT CITY
He was drowning.
He had been swallowed up by the sea, the source of all life, and now Sam was drowning.
This universe came from a bang. This planet from another bang. When life eventually emerged, what nurtured it was the sea that had cooled down this molten rock. Eventually, life crawled out of the sea and onto the land, where it became a slave to gravity on the frontier known as the earth’s surface and formed new chains of existence.
Then the scorned mother ocean became a vengeful goddess and drowned all the life on that earth. The Beach was her pathway to exact her revenge.
Sam saw a faint light in the distance above. But even as he made frantic attempts to reach it, he couldn’t escape the ocean. No matter how much he struggled, he didn’t get an inch closer to the surface. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Sam could feel himself becoming light-headed. When at last he knew that the ocean was about to kill him, he realized he was inside a nightmare.
When Sam woke up, he was in a subterranean private room.
It was an artificial room built to protect and conceal a human race who had been betrayed by the sea and rejected by the earth’s surface.
The cuff link that was linking him to the bedframe automatically released, and Sam sat up. He wiped away his tears and checked on the BB pod that was set inside the incubator. The display on the monitor told him the BB was once again functional.
“Lou,” Sam called, disconnecting the pod’s connection to the incubator. He cradled the lukewarm pod and called out Lou’s name again. Lou was curled up, eyes closed and mouth tightly shut.
There was no reaction to Sam’s voice. It was like the little one couldn’t even hear him.
“Lou,” Sam repeated.
Lou’s eyes eventually opened at the sound of Sam’s voice. Lou, or rather the Bridge Baby now, looked up at Sam blankly with eyes that still couldn’t quite see yet. Maybe it’s not fully awake from its long sleep yet? Then Sam remembered. No, that wasn’t it. Sam had prepared himself for this. He knew he had to face the facts. At the very least, he had been able to prolong this little one’s life. That was one of the reasons he had taken this mission in the first place. To stop this child dying in vain. And that he had accomplished.
“How’s little Lou doing?” Deadman’s voice came from behind Sam. It seemed they had both returned unscathed from the battlefield. Sam knew he should be happy about that, but he wasn’t quite feeling it right now.
“No response.” Sam knew he was clinging on to lost hope, but he still passed the pod to Deadman to have it examined.
But the pod slipped right through him. The BB seemed to react to that. It looked at Deadman’s hologram and laughed. Or maybe that too was all in Sam’s head, because by the time Sam had glanced at the pod, the BB’s eyes were already closed.
“You saved us. Whatever you did back there returned us to our own world. Lockne and the others found us out cold near Mountain Knot City. It seems like only a minute had passed in this world. You and the BB were brought back here. You’ve been dead to the world for near enough twenty-four hours. You slept for a whole day, you know. Slept like the dead. I’m already back in Capital Knot. Fragile’s Beach has been coming in handy, although I have to say that I don’t like using it anymore. I keep worrying that I’m going to end up back there.”
A small metal plate set on the table caught Sam’s eye. Deadman noticed and changed the subject.
“Oh, that. You were holding it. It’s an old dog tag. US issue. Wasn’t easy prying it out of your hand.”
That was the metal Sam had spotted around that man’s neck. He couldn’t be sure, but he must have brought it back from the battlefield. He picked it up and turned it over. A name was engraved on it, along with a few letters and symbols.
“Clifford Unger, as you can see. I looked him up in our database. Found a match,” Deadman stated. He fiddled with his cuff link and projected the 3D image of a man dressed in a combat uniform.