There was no mistaking it. It was him.
“He was US Army Special Forces. Fought in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan.”
Sam hadn’t heard of any of those places, but he assumed they had all once been battlefields, too.
The hologram of the man looked tougher than the one Sam had met on the battlefield, and whose head contained only the most basic of thoughts. He was brimming with youthful brute strength. He seemed sure of himself. There was no sign of the sad expression he had shown on the battlefield.
But what did Lou have to do with any of this?
“Well, that’s all I’ve managed to dig up so far,” Deadman conceded.
Sam nodded back at Deadman and placed the dog tag in his pocket. It was an important clue linked to Clifford Unger, and the key to unraveling his connection with the BB.
Clifford’s hologram disappeared and silence descended upon the room. In the middle of it was the BB. Both Sam and Deadman stared at the pod, searching for something to say.
“Sam, I owe you an apology.” The first to speak was Deadman. “Lou was the name you were going to give your own baby. If he’d have made it. I should have pieced it together sooner.”
Sam sighed. It wasn’t like it was a big secret or anything, but Sam never made a point of talking about it to anyone else. It was only natural for Deadman to find out about it if he was already looking into Bridge Babies and the origins of Bridges, as well as investigating Die-Hardman.
“I found some records from ten years ago. Something about the sudden death of a young woman in a small town on the outskirts of Central Knot. An ex-therapist by the name of Lucy. Nobody knew until it was too late. It caused a voidout. Her husband was a member of Bridges. He even had DOOMS. He tried, but he couldn’t get to her in time. The whole town was wiped off the map… leaving nothing but a big crater. And him. Because he was a repatriate.” Deadman looked at Sam as if he was gauging his reaction. “People wanted answers. Did the man hide his wife’s body on purpose? The only survivor was the only suspect. He was easy to blame, and people did. And pretty soon they were blaming Bridges, too. The man felt responsible. So he left. Lucy had been pregnant, poor woman.”
Sam watched Deadman take a deep breath at the end of his sentence and responded with a sigh of his own.
“They were going to name their kid Lou,” Deadman continued.
Sam bit his lip and said nothing.
“I didn’t just fish that out of the database, though. Bridget told me. Once her condition deteriorated and she could sense the end was drawing near, she told me about all the things that were off the record.”
In other words, stories that had been embellished based on Bridget’s and Deadman’s subjective whims. They weren’t reality, and they weren’t anything that Sam was interested in hearing.
“It wasn’t you who Lucy met last before she committed suicide. It was someone else. I truly believe that. Bridget said the same thing. But on record, you’re officially the last person she met. I don’t know if Bridget was covering for you, or if you didn’t tell her the whole truth about what happened. All I know is that she was sorry to see you go. She used to talk about how you didn’t have to cut ties and walk away.”
CENTRAL KNOT CITY OUTSKIRTS
Lucy had just concluded her first therapy session with Sam Strand. It was not held at the patient’s request. Sam’s adoptive mother, President Strand, had approached her in the hope she might help her son overcome his aphenphosmphobia.
Sam was an intriguing case. His reluctance notwithstanding, he recognized that his condition had and would continue to cause him much distress. Lucy suspected it was rooted in a childhood trauma, but unfortunately, she had only just scratched the surface, and couldn’t even begin to speculate what it might be.
Like many of the Bridges core team members, Sam was a DOOMS sufferer. Unlike them, however, he was also a repatriate. Whether or not this was related to his aphenphosmphobia, Lucy couldn’t say, but he would hardly be the first to manifest phobias as a result of his abilities.
As an infant, Sam lost both parents and was adopted by President Strand. Owing to her stress and time-consuming responsibilities, Lucy could only presume that she was unable to afford him sufficient attention, which is to say that a distant relationship with his adoptive mother may have been a contributing factor. Sam was still very reluctant to talk about himself, and as an intensely private person it would take time to build trust and convince him to open himself up to her.
Progress has been slow, but Sam finally started to open up about himself. However, his recollection of early childhood was confused and contradictory. He had difficulty distinguishing between genuine memories and reoccurring dreams. Sam even claimed to have met his stepsister Amelie on the Beach several times while quite young. An impossible claim, to say the least.
Lucy was only a little older than Sam, but she was born before the Death Stranding—a fact that tended to affect the way people thought about the Beach. In her professional opinion, the Beach was a figment of their collective imagination. A shared delusion. But people born later were more likely to take its existence as a given. She wondered if they found comfort in the belief because it helped to explain phenomena like BTs and repatriates like Sam?
Similarly, her theory was that Sam’s manufactured childhood memories of the Beach were his way of coping with the fact that neither Amelie nor Bridget spent much time with him. She believed this to also be the reason he still clung to the dreamcatcher Amelie gave him even now, as an adult. You could call it his security blanket. It could also be the key to overcoming his aphenphosmphobia. If Sam were to emotionally distance himself from Amelie, it could reduce his resistance to physical intimacy. She decided to propose this approach to him in their next session.
It came as no surprise when Sam was unreceptive to Lucy’s suggestion and rejected her assessment of his relationship with Amelie. He asserted that he was not dependent on her or Bridget, and even went so far as to question Lucy’s credentials as a psychotherapist. His pronounced resistance to the idea only served as further evidence to Lucy of his dependency. Nevertheless, there was little she could do if Sam was unwilling to explore the possibility, other than continue to share her observations and hope that he eventually changed his mind. For the time being she decided to focus instead on Sam’s feelings toward Bridges and his place within the organization. Given that it was founded to support and protect his adoptive mother, and that the other core members had DOOMS like he did, she thought there was something to be gained from the discussion. His growing responsibilities within Bridges due to their expanding mandate and his abilities as a repatriate surely put him under greater pressure, and she wondered if his enthusiasm for their mission was sincere.
Based on their time spent together so far, she believed he may have embraced his role because it helped him to cope with the feelings of isolation—that he pledged himself to an impossible endeavor because it was preferable to living and dying alone.
Lucy decided a different approach was required, and so she requested a meeting with the president. Discretion was vital, as any information which might suggest she was receiving mental health treatment could be exploited by her opponents. The meeting was listed as an interview in official records—though she was more than willing to offer her services, had they been requested.
She opened by asking about Sam’s childhood, to which the president responded with an immediate and heartfelt apology. Her frankness shocked Lucy. Bridget expressed deep regret for her failure to engage with him, physically and emotionally, as she felt a mother should. At times it felt as though she was apologizing to her son by proxy. Her candor was as impressive to Lucy as it was appreciated.