AUTHOR'S NOTE: An additional two minutes to the end of Edge of Tomorrow as Major Cage explains to Sergeant Vrataski how the Mimics were defeated and what might happen with them next.
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FIND ME
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"What do you want?" Sergeant Rita Vrataski fumed, unimpressed with her visitor's gold oak leaf clusters or smug look. Being the so-called 'Angel of Verdun' allowed her some privileges that went beyond rank.
Major William Cage suddenly realized he didn't know quite where to begin. The woman he had spent countless days with, the one who had trained him to fight, the one he had fought the Mimics alongside didn't know anything about him, who he was, or why he was even there. If she recognized him at all, it was as the public relations face of the war seeking new enlistments to fight the Mimics. All he could do was laugh at the absurdity of it all. The echoes in the hanger. The facsimile mimics now idle about the perimeter. He had been here before. Hundreds, or perhaps a thousand or more times. In every other instance, however, the Mimics were still occupying much of Europe and the impeding Unified Defense Force invasion was still scheduled for the next morning. He and Rita hadn't had time to do much else but train and memorize what to do next in getting off that beach and getting to the Omega. It wasn't his muscles that were being conditioned to be a better fighter, for each day he would wake back up just as he was now. It was his mind that had changed. His memories intact, his skills honed. And of course yes, he had inevitably fallen in love with her, but she had never let herself become interested or involved. After all, her memory reset each day, forgetting him all over again.
"Major?" Vrataski prompted, a hint of curiosity now.
Cage smiled. "Rita, can I call you Rita?" he began, but didn't wait for her answer. "Rita, I'm gonna tell you a story. It's gonna sound ridiculous at first, but the longer I talk, the more rational it's going to appear."
Rita bristled a bit and crossed her arms, but something held her back from wiping that smile off his face with her fist. "Go on," she replied skeptically.
"I was like you at Verdun."
This got her attention. There was only one other person who believed her about Verdun, and the chain of command thought they were both crazy. There was a million questions she wanted to ask, but she decided to ask the most obvious one first. "Was?"
Cage nodded and then gestured about the hanger. "I came here every day," he said. "To train. To learn how to fight. All with the expectation of tomorrow. All those tomorrows, when we hit the beach at Normandy to a slaughter and defeat. I don't want to remember all the times it took us to get off that beach and into the interior, all the times I watched you die, but we eventually made it."
"We were looking for the Omega," Rita interrupted. He had her full attention now.
"We were looking where the Omega wanted us to go," Cage continued bitterly. "To get back its power of when to reset the day. Just like Verdun, the Omega was never really where my visions said it was."
Rita shifted onto her other foot. In her darkest thoughts she had suspected as much. Verdun had supposedly been a great victory, but it rang hollow. All that effort, all the deaths, and yet the Mimics had continued to advance and the Omega had survived.
"And so we went to General Brigham's office at UDF headquarters," Cage continued. "It took us a while, many more resets, but we eventually talked our way into getting Doctor Carter's device, and then used the device on me to get into its mind and find the true location of the Omega."
"Paris," Rita guessed. The electrical surge that morning in Paris was all over the news. The Mimics were now dead. It couldn't possibly be a coincidence.
Cage nodded again. He seemed pleased she was understanding and anticipating his story. "The problem was, after that last time, I was out. Just like you, I had lost blood that was replaced with someone else's and was out of the loop. We knew where the Omega was, but we only had one chance to stop it. We had to go in before the invasion, this very night in fact. Just a handful of us to destroy the Omega."
But here he was. The day must have reset. Something didn't quite make sense. "There must be a part of this story you're leaving out," Rita observed.
Cage shrugged. "Not much more to it. None of us survived. None of us expected to survive. We were the last two left, and when I pulled the pins and dropped the grenades onto the Omega, you had already been killed and an Alpha was about to kill me. I had nothing left to lose."
Rita narrowed her eyes. "And yet here we are," she said, giving voice to her previous thoughts.
Cage laughed again. He looked about the hanger. "One last reset," he said. "For a brief moment, before I died, and I suppose before the Omega died, I was again in the loop. I was thinking of you. I was thinking of what I would do if I was given another chance. I was thinking of a world free from the Mimics where I could be with you." He sighed and looked into Rita's eyes. There was pain and sorrow but also hope in his eyes. "And then I woke up. I was out of the loop again, and with the Omega dead there are no more resets. This is all we've got."
Rita cracked a smile. She could very well imagine what Cage wanted. To her, she had just met the man, but from his perspective, he has spent a great deal of time with her. She knew exactly how he felt for she had lived it as well. Remembering each day, but everyone around her forgetting. How much did he know about her? "How long?" she asked.
"Too long."
"Days? Months?"
Cage shrugged and swallowed hard. He looked down to his feet.
"Years?" she said and then nodded slowly. That was it. She finally uncrossed her arms and placed her hands on her hips. Major William Cage. She recognized him from the propaganda pieces advertising the war. They used her Angel of Verdun persona to recruit more victims for the Mimics. What had led him to be on that beach in the first place where he killed an Alpha and started his own resets? She discovered, quite to her surprise, she wanted to find out. She wanted to know him as deeply as he obviously knew her. The war was over and she could finally get back to her life. "William, can I call you William?" she said with a grin. "So what now? Are you imagining the two of us have a future together?" She tried to sound incredulous to the idea, but was only half successful.
William smiled again, sensing the change. He took a deep breath and exhaled. "Oh Rita. The first time we met, tomorrow on the beach, you told me to find you when I woke up," he finally said. He reached out his hands and Rita took one step forward and took hold of them. "It's been a long day getting here, but here I am."
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Author's note: This is a great movie, and while the ending is okay and you can imagine what happens next, it's not quite satisfying.
I wanted 3 things settled: 1. Knowledge that Rita accepted Cage's story and they had a future together, 2. A clear sense that this was the last reset and Cage did not have the Omega's power, and 3. A recognition that all of Cage's training was not physical but mental (in that he would reset into the same physical body each day with the same strength and physical ability)
There's supposedly a sequel in the works tentatively titled Live, Die, Repeat and Repeat. I suppose to get the first movie settled in my head before that comes out, I wrote this short piece. Hope you enjoyed.