Authors' note (4/11/2020):

The story takes place after GoW2 and then diverges into an AU.

After the flooding of the Hollow, survivors have retreated to an island far from the mainland. But events attempt to draw them back. Marcus discovers that his father played a significant role during the Pendulum Wars. In struggling to come to terms with it, they stumble onto information about the beginnings of the Locust War. Dom, meanwhile, has problems reconciling with the loss of his children and now, his wife. Undergoing severe PTSD, Delta Squad doubts that he's the man he once was and begin to wonder if he's more a liability.

Published this on the site in 2009. Can't remember whether this was before or after GoW 3 came out, but either way, this joint piece of work is the culmination of ideas that we wanted to see - mostly in its written form since there's only so much a videogame can accomplish. (Unless you're Knights of the old Republic, in which case, you're a god amongst mortals.)

This is going to be a WIP, so you're bound to notice inconsistencies as some scenes have been moved around to suit continuity better. Do forgive us that.

Came back to this one because it needed to be wrapped up and it was nostalgic and fun to revisit. Chances are that it'll get buried underneath more deserving stories, but some things just need closure.

I will be slow at updating the story on this site, but this story is also up on AO3 under the same name, and chances are that I'll update more regularly on there.

Circa 3010

Pendulum Wars

Kubrick Clinics and Laboratories

"Dr. Wright? Dr. Wright?" called out the woman from the entryway.

Dr. Wright's head swiveled in her direction. She stared at him as sat at his laboratory bench with a number of open notebooks and his trademark beaker of black coffee. Jesus, he looked older than she remembered, she thought. And given that she'd simply been away for a month – that was saying something. But it wasn't simply his hair that had aged – that was one constant that had remained since the beginning of the project – the gray replacing the black had noticeably spread; akin to a web of silvery roots growing and expanding along his head. But his frame appeared to have withered too, taking the smoother contours of what was left of his youth with it.

"It's not as all bad as that, is it?" chirped the man, slightly irked that she found him so adversely noticeable. Eliza was an open book, and him; not so much. He'd imagined that the earnestness which with he'd worked, the energy and the precious time he'd sacrificed for the project was still there. Surely it burned brightly in his eyes. But instead of recognizing it, she simply stood in the doorway like a child who'd just emerged from touring the local freak show. And the fact that she irritated him got on his nerves as well. He'd thought that he was beyond the judgment of others. But like a fly in the proverbial ointment, it seemed that a teaspoon of insecurity was attempting to contaminate the sterile apathy he'd managed to cultivate over the years.

When it came to their competing fields of knowledge, he was miles ahead of her. With a doctorate in molecular genetics, biology and anthropology together with decades spent working in both the public and private sector, she didn't, and couldn't, hold a candle to him. But when it came down to negotiating the overgrown paths of scientific collaboration, policy and politics, he'd unhappily found that he played William Joseph Hammer to her Thomas Edison. His colleagues, purely out of politeness' sake, had allowed him to serve as both a lead scientist and as one of the five project coordinators, but that had only lasted for four months.

From the moment he'd entered graduate school, he was celebrated for his innovative concepts and breakthroughs he'd accomplished in the STEM territory. He had used these talents to capitalize, with a degree of humility, on participating in and creating think-tanks that served universities and later, industrial employers. Until one day capitalizing with humility turned into capitalizing with entitlement. He was accustomed having people turn a blind eye to his eccentricities and it was this expectation of indulgence that clashed with his newer, and much more socially cooperative, role.

It had begun with minor disagreements, and somewhere along the rocky trail of petty squabbles, he'd found that a colleague's lab had had three of four grants approved and his, for the first time in a long while, had been rejected. Never mind that his collaborator's group's studies were (unknowingly) closely tied to that of ongoing military research, and never mind that Sera was beginning to shake with mild tremours of war which saw a jump in defense spending. He had been overlooked. And despite all the evidence, he'd taken it personally. He had then come to the decision to go on sabbatical, which then led to the deliberate decision to withhold crucial data he'd already generated. Data that would have saved their field years of effort and time. The story got out eventually, of course, and his fellow advisors had finally found a leash with which to restrain him. They took some of his toys away, removed him from the board and demanded that he play nice with his collaborators or he'd be relegated to the role of an assistant professor in a community college for the rest of his life.

And then they replaced the position of lead coordinator with the relatively young military scientist, Doctor Eliza Solomon. Which was why he was constrained to the familiar environs of his laboratory sans the usual state-of-the-art-equipment, and she was traveling between groups, gathering and consolidating information. Information they'd produced using his ideas.

Perhaps that was why she treated him somewhat reverentially. She knew he was the driving proponent behind their progress, but while the others selectively ignored this fact, she never seemed to forget it. He'd supposed that he should have been grateful, but he always enjoyed having power over the ersatz sycophant rather than the genuine one. He found that the former usually held a position of power that could be leveraged to his advantage. The latter belonged to the Igors of this world and were beneath his notice. Well, when he wasn't affected by their adulations anyway.

And Igor-Eliza, unaware of the sporadic petty resentments he held against her, shook her head – glasses nearly falling off the bridge of her nose – flustered and embarrassed. "Oh...no, sir. Of course not."

"You're a poor liar."

She shut her eyes, abashed and a trifle mortified. Dr. Wright waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Doesn't matter. I've just been more preoccupied lately. Too much to worry about without having to think about acceptable grooming standards in society."

"I'm sorry to hear about your wife, doctor." said Eliza; extending an invisible olive branch to appease her superior's temper. "I – well, I never thought they would re-take Hyrme. The city was well fortified."

Ah, Ofelia. Why do they always seem to think your loss would shatter me? After a year of alleged marital bliss, they'd drifted apart, each content to lead separate lives for two decades. He sighed. He supposed he'd better show a modicum of grief. "Yes. Very tragic. Who could've expected it?" There. Not entirely demonstrative, but at least he made the effort.

"Yes sir – of course. But I am sorry nonetheless. And if there's anything you need..."

Dr. Wright grinded his teeth. He had no reason to be agitated by her words, but he had enough cantankerousness in him to go around for days. He nodded – the only acknowledgement he could think of to give the discomposed woman. And then, "Why are you here?"

"Dr. Erlich's group has finished the sequence analysis and comparisons."

"On what? The rat cell lines? I told them to have it analyzed in the embryonic tissue – didn't I... They're finished already? Why wasn't I notified earlier?"

She wasn't sure which question to answer first. "Yes, sir. They wanted me to tell you in person. This isn't exactly the sort of news you share by telegram."

Who the hell communicates by telegram these days, woman? "Did the protein misfolding conditions hold?" questioned Wright. "Did the repetitions yield similar quaternary structures? Remember, the little fuckers love coming into being, but they hate being alike."

"Yes, sir. Under the conditions you'd specified, both isolated groups have yielded identical prionic structures."

At this, a gleam of hope, curiousity and interest played across Wright's eyes. The same eagerness carried through to his voice as well. "And what about stability in the live samples? The rats?"

Eliza smiled, pleased and relieved to see him happy – if only for a brief moment. "All grown into adulthood without any marked genetic defects. Uncontrolled tumour-like proliferation has been eliminated. And I can even safely say that in rodent models, diabetes has become a disease of the past. Neuritic plaques in our more geriatric patients are dissolving over time as well."

"Good god," Wright muttered reverently. "The irony. Curing Alzheimer's with the agent that causes it. You're watching evolutionary karma unfold, Dr. Solomon. Sure, we had to poke and prod it our way a bit. But for the first time in a long time it's happening in our favour." He allowed himself a loud chuckle.

"Except there is one thing, and I – "

"– except for what?" interrupted Wright, unable to contain himself.

"Our models are especially aggressive. We can't keep the males in the same cage. We first thought that they were in heat or experiencing an equivalent behavioral episode, but not anymore. The females aren't as docile either – but they're not nearly as bad as the males. We also observed rapid hair growth. Basically everything that is keratin-based; the hair, claws...show a remarkable rate of development."

"You don't say..." murmured Wright, grinning.

She saw no reason for him to be pleased. But after a year of battling between the ends and the means by which to reach it, Doctor Eliza Solomon had realized that none of it was relevant to her. After all, she wasn't the one doing the research. She was simply a coordinator. She facilitated communication, organized meetings, why, she was almost an administrative assistant. And as long as a currency still functioned in this economy, war-torn as it was, she still needed to put food on the table.

"I...well, yes. Of course. And despite this, the board believes that with the urgent context of our situation, an expedited response is required."

"Human trials," muttered Wright. And then furrowed his brow at her. "Why not go ahead then? Why come to me? I'm just the ghost writer."

"It wouldn't have been right, sir, to move on without your blessing. I voted for a quorum of fifteen. I won by one vote, formed the quorum and now I'm here. We've got fourteen yeas. You're the fifteenth. The project won't continue without your say-so."

He drummed his fingers along the epoxy laminated countertop. A decade ago – this rapid progression would never have been possible. There would be protests among the ethicists in the scientific community, organizations of repute would have withdrawn any funding for the project and it would have come to a deadening halt. All theories would have remained just that. Theories.

But the Pendulum Wars had changed all of that.

Their victory-starved military were desperate. And, like all desperate, drowning men, they would fight for hold on dry land even if it meant crawling over a shore of corpses. Reasonable ethical restraints functioned well within a civilized society that nurtured its scientists as it did its artists, philosophers and philanthropists equally. But when a significant threat to that civilization emerged, morality blurred until it finally split into a violent separation of black and white. Us against them. It all came down to survival now. From an army defending their country, to a sergeant defending her platoon to a parent defending their child. Deafening and timeless and always, heartbreaking.

So the red tape was done away with. The road blocks were removed. No more lengthy spells of thumb-twiddling for committee-reviews and approvals from all manner of non-governmental institutions. The schools and the businesses and the foundations had dissolved to make room for a military government. And only their word mattered. Did your small-scale model yield reproducible results? Yes. Then get the hell up off your ass and mass-produce this sucker so that we can win this thing and go home.

Leave it to the next generation to pay the debt of conscience. If soul-sacrificing is what it takes to ensure that there is a next generation, then so be it.

"Tell them we have a quorum, Eliza. And that my answer is yes."

"We have a limited supply of cryogenic embryos, sir. We can do one round of experiments, but in order for us to get where we want to be, we need a larger," she struggled for a moment to find the right word, "...stock."

Unfazed, Wright thumped his fist on his knee. "Leave that to me. Go ahead and get this ball rolling. You'll need adolescent resources. We may not have the time for anything younger. I have some old connections I can reach out to. Maybe I'll be able to secure some resources for you."

She nodded, smiling nervously, and walked away.

Hours later, after several urgent phone calls, Wright sat in the same chair, staring at his computer screen. A lengthy list of names gazed back at him. He began his documentation. And then, in an unusual act of inauspicious emotion, not lacking in the dramatic, he titled it The Orphan's Sacrifice.

3025

Fifteen years later

New Hope Research Facility

Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. The nurse, although she preferred to call him her reaper in an attempt to be theatric, helped her lean against the soft pillow, and then placed a hand on head. "You ready?" he asked.

She nodded.

He took a long, thin tube, connected to a respirator that forked into two sections which were part of a mask that would cover both her nose and mouth. He linked the contraption together and quickly inserted the necessary segments through the permanent hole they'd bored in her throat to reach her windpipe during her tracheotomy. Intubation was a familiar ritual and he did it with a cold efficiency that made her feel like she was part of the machine itself.

He was alright really, for the most part. Unassuming, gentle and kind. But her interactions with Carl and the other orderlies were almost always confined to her illness. There was no inane chit chat about life, about boys, about nothing. There were just her diseased spasms, and his attending to them. She was certain then, that no matter how long the gods kept her weak heart thumping, when her time came, theirs would be the last faces she would look upon.

After adjusting the elastic that held it in place, he stood upright again and smiled kindly down at her.

"Give it a minute," Carl said. "Try to think of something relaxing – like a waterfall."

Now when was the last time she had ever seen a waterfall? she thought, annoyed. The puffs of the ventilator as it inhaled and exhaled along with her were more soothing, and the fact that she preferred a cold, sterile instrument that chirped impassively at her to an elegant force of nature was bleak enough. Never, she replied to herself. And she had doubts that she ever would.

Carl gently stroked her thinning hair, glanced up at the closed door that led to an open hallway before speaking. "They don't like us talking with you kids, you know that? Now how did they put it exactly? Social distancing, that's right. We encourage social distancing, and it's as much for your sake as it is for theirs." He scoffed. "I was working on my nursing degree, you know? Then this shit hit the fan. I needed to survive and this place...this place was too good to be true. Found that out after a goddamn week of being here. But just because I hate it here don't mean that I hate you too. And I talk with whoever I want to goddamn talk with." He winked at her.

Her eyes narrowed, and he recognized that a smile must have formed underneath the mask.

"Can only do this with the door closed, okay? Can't be throwing bricks at you while those fancy white coats are waltzing down the corridor else they'll see me here with you and switch me out for someone else. A lot of the other guys? They don't care. Now don't go hating on them. They gotta survive too. Probably got families of their own, problems of their own. A lot of them weren't raised to watch out for each other. Just their own. They don't have that quality bedside manner that I got."

She shook silently and closed her eyes. He realized that she must have been laughing. Well there's a first. "Now don't overdo it else you'll break a rib or something."

His pager beeped at his side and he examined it.

"Being summoned again, kid. I know, I'm sorry. Can't sit up with you this time. But remember, anything bad happens and I'll be right back faster than you can say noodles. Hang tight. Gotta see to this one thing and I'll be back as soon as I can."

With a hiss-click, the door shut behind him and she was left alone again with her thoughts. They were hackneyed in how circular they were. If she had the strength, she'd reach under the mattress to retrieve the packet of sleeping pills she'd squirreled away right this minute. For what, she didn't quite know. Or perhaps she didn't want to know. She just didn't want to be alone.

Some days her thoughts evolved into a turbulence that made her want to thrash and scream. And other days, she was simply too exhausted to respond physically. But they were there always, reflecting back up at her if she peeked into its mirror. And tired or no, they waited patiently for her to slip in their direction. They waited to tell her that that she had no future, no family, no friends. Sure, Carl was okay. But no matter what he said, his duty was to keep her here. Their claims of wanting her treatments to succeed turned more opaque by the week. Either the treatments were failing or they were lying. Were these people leading her to salvation or damnation? But worst of all, her doubts waited to tell her that she had no control over her own life. Why, they waited for her to ask? Because her life did not belong to her.

This was going to be one of those days.

She awoke with a start, yanking her mask off, her endotracheal tube with it. Half a minute after her reflex gag settled down, her door opened and Carl stumbled in, alarmed. Damn, she thought angrily. She must have made too much noise.

"Ruth? Why'd you pull off your mask, honey? Relax. Calm down..." he said, coming to her side.

And then without warning, she lashed out with her feet – still entangled in the bed clothes – kicking him in his stomach. The blow must have been quite powerful, for he was pushed a good several feet from the bed. The mask was on the floor now, and with determined strides she came near him.

Carl lay on his back, too disoriented to push her away again. She took advantage of his vulnerable position and pinned him to the floor with her weight. She struck him hard on his right cheek, and then, without pausing, she did the same to his left – but with her opposite hand. She kept on the violent pattern of blows, until she felt herself being dragged away by powerful hands.

She had no fear, no remorse is was just a blur of anger. No shame that is, until she saw the bloodied man before her – lying unconscious on the floor. Words began to make sense again, and everything around her seemed to quiet down into normalcy.

Until she felt a biting jab on her arm before the dark edges of her vision overtook her, and all became silent.

3026

One Week Later

New Hope Research Facility

His forehead lay pressed onto the cold window pane in his office, and his eyes were closed. He remained standing in this fashion for several moments. Opening his eyes, he saw past the steady rivulets of water running down the glass outside, and wished that for once, could the weather throw a little fucking sunshine his way?

He berated himself instantly. Why should he deserve it, anyway?

It was all too easy to buy into a dream when the world around you was turning into an unrecognizable hellscape. He hadn't exactly idolized the parents of this project and establishment, and he possessed wisdom enough to grasp that their tremendous ambition had come with a price, but only now did he begin to accept that it was a heavy one. One he no longer had the stamina to keep bleeding for.

He remembered Dr. Erlich's and Dr. Wright's public speech over a decade ago. It called for Sera to pull together during the Imulsion War. Not just figuratively, but literally as well. Before they'd been introduced by the military, a general had demanded that all of Sera's academic and industrial institutions remove the barriers of competition and cooperate and win, or perish, broken and alone – those were the general's words, not his. And they were going to ensure that the latter wasn't a simply a figure of speech; six-figure fines for not assisting and sharing pertinent data would be imposed on a monthly basis on each non-participant.

Dr. Erlich spoke next, his tone more nuanced and less belligerent. They'd finally stumbled on a potential scientific breakthrough that was only secondary to the discovery of imulsion. The opportunity to cure a handful of diseases and develop weapons that would see them through this war with far less casualties than their enemies. It was finally a chance for the martial defense of mankind and its academic counterpart to become one and move towards a single goal. Eventually, it would not just benefit Sera, he said, but soon other nations – even their opponents – would come to see the light and join them to pull humanity farther into the future.

Imagine your father, Erlich had given as an example, a shell of himself, mentally crippled by the onslaught of Alzheimer's. Imagine that after four to eight months of treatment, he not only regained more of himself, but his memories as well. Or a child with leukemia whose prognosis miraculously lengthened from two years to fifty. These weren't the promises of sideshow preachers, he'd said. The difference here is that they could deliver. And they had the data to prove it.

It hurt a little, to recall the goosebumps he'd felt during these declarations. It was human nature to focus on the profits and not consider the losses until they finally hit. He'd just lost his job as a postdoc in a lab who'd seen all funding fall through due to the war. His idealism remained, however, and Dr. Erlich and Wright had pointed him in the correct direction to put it to use. It would have taken a great degree of stoicism to remain unimpressed and unmoved after realizing what they had the capacity to accomplish. But if he knew then what he knew now of the cost, he wouldn't have just been unimpressed and unmoved – he'd have been horrified.

He was jolted from morbid reverie by the voice of a child being accompanied down a corridor. He couldn't quite tell what was being said but at least they weren't crying, and that was a relief in more ways than one.

But long after they'd passed, their voices – cries of pain, cries of laugher – haunted him. Subjects one through twelve and – no, he reminded himself – they had names. Joshua and the others had often experienced heavy, laboured breathing. Their weakened immune systems have given way to sporadic bouts of lung infections. He could hear their grating breaths in his head; often due to the development of chronic bronchitis or tuberculosis caused by different mycobacterial strains – as little hollow intakes of air. Like unplayable, deformed wind instruments.

And the breathing difficulties were only the beginning.

The hair loss began around five to six years of age; they looked like veteran cancer patients who had undergone several treatments of chemotherapy. But of course, it wasn't cancer that was killing them. Their own bodies had turned traitor. And he had helped bring that about. He, and the other scientists – past and present. If, hypothetically, there were to be remunerations in the future for all the...discomfort they'd caused, they'd be paying out the nose for several decades, if not, a century or more. With all the cutting and pasting of the genome they'd undertaken, a lot of these products would very likely be passed down each filial generation. And God only knew how far it would go, and what effects it would have.

He remembered the skin discoloration as well. Melanin production – the pigment found in mammalian tissues – was dangerously low. The children could not risk going outside. Exposure to the harmful UV rays of the sun without sufficient melanin could result in mutations, skin cancers. He recalled many a day where one of them would gaze longingly through tinted windows, rubbing their aching joints unconsciously, and ask to go outside.

No, you can't, the orderly would answer, not unkindly. You know what will happen if you do.

Some of them insisted on it, one short day in the sunshine could surpass a lifetime spent within closed doors, they believed. But they weren't the ones making decisions. They weren't calling the shots.

We were, he thought. Because we knew what was best. Because father always knows best.

Turning his eyes away from the window, he stared at the framed photograph on his desk. He picked it up and studied it; obvious tenderness in his eyes. In it, he was smiling, his arm around a young disheveled boy of around seventeen. The boy's blue eyes were striking – discernable even from a distance, and it held all the hopes, dreams and anticipation that youth could bring. He was wearing his uniform, with badges impeccably pinned to his suit, boots shiny and new, a clean-shaven face – everything in place except his hair.

The man laughed quietly, and ran his hands through his own unkempt, dark hair, briefly musing on such similarities. He gazed at himself in the photo and wondered if his son would realize how much he'd changed. But he couldn't help but feel that for all his efforts, his son remained the better man, and would be ashamed of him if he knew the truth. He'd finally decided. He would see to it that the sins of the father would not be passed down to the son. Or at the very least, he could own these mistakes and see to it that his son did not feel responsible for them.

Putting the photograph down, he picked up a small tape recorder on his desk and turned it on.

"Marcus. Kid. I don't know where to begin. If you were here, you'd say that the beginning was a good place. But, like everything else in life, it's more complicated than that. So I'll try to be brief before I chicken out. If I'm good at anything, it's that."

He paused and took in a breath before continuing.

"You remember when you were eleven and you scraped your knee out back? I think it was after the neighbourhood barbecue. Yeah, the first and last barbecue I'd ever gone to. I left early and came back home. Had some work to wrap up in my study. You came back in later – I don't know what time it was – you were crying and blood was running down your leg. I got up from my desk and saw you staring at me from the living room. You stopped crying and I...I just stood there. And then I shut the door on you. I didn't have the time and I was hoping mom would be back soon and she'd take care of you. I told myself that the work I was doing was for you and mom. And I also promised that the next time you hurt yourself, I'd dress your wounds myself and take you out to the movies afterwards.

"What I didn't realize is that when I closed that door, I also closed myself off to you. Next time led to more next times and it was after you'd graduated that I knew what I had done. This isn't just an apology and while I'd like your forgiveness, I understand if you can't bring yourself to do that. In your place, I'd have told my dad to screw himself and gone and lived the rest of my life without him. But the thing is, life catches up to you. And when it does you're rarely going to be plagued more by the times you did something embarrassing than by the times you phoned it in. My job, as your father, was to put you first. But I didn't. I phoned it in and I'm sorry."

Now would be a great time to stop. To apologize a few more times and tell his only son how much he loved him. The odds were in his favour that Marcus would never find out everything about the project, never mind his role in it. Better that Marcus think him a bad father than a mass murderer. He just wanted to be free, to turn tail and run and leave all of this behind. But these demons were of his own making and everywhere he went, they'd go too. What a shame that real freedom and truth worked hand in hand. Here goes nothing.

"When Helen Cooper refined the lightmass process – I was ecstatic. Well, more relieved than ecstatic. I thought that this – a renewable source of energy – not nuclear, not cold fusion – was our saving grace. You must understand, son, that it was a virtuous act. That we had good intentions. But I suppose altruism – for all of its benefits – is not immune to corruption. Some were a lot more susceptible than others though.

"I never could understand why Sera didn't work with our developing neighbours. If we took that imperative first step – we'd have written the guidebook on how to make friends of your enemies. We would have shared, and shared alike. But, you see, Marcus, near-sightedness was our undoing. Self-preservation demanded that we stockpile imulsion; I believe we coveted it unlike any other resource in the past. We also underestimated the smaller nations. We were so busy patting ourselves on the back that we couldn't see what we had deprived them of. The irony of it is how they banded together to create their own coalition, and knocked us off our pedestals by excelling at the one thing we couldn't. Working together. You don't know how close they came to obliterating us.

"But then they got desperate and we got lucky. I suppose desperation begets desperation, and this is where my work comes in. We needed something greater than imulsion, greater than lightmass bombs to squash our enemies.

"I...hope you can forgive me for what I did...for what I'm about to tell you. And the correct response here, on your part, is shame. We...mom raised you right, so I wouldn't expect anything less. Which is why I, coward that I am, hope I'm not with you when you hear this. I couldn't bear it. We tampered with nature, Marcus. We were...are...playing god. And we were arrogant enough to believe that we'd come out of it winning.

"At the beginning, the pitch was great. The data was lacking in serious flaws and we were given all resources on hand to get where we needed to go. I wasn't told the whole truth, but I wasn't green enough to ignore the catch, even though we couldn't see it, it was there – and I should have walked away. I should have turned my back on it all. But I was too full of myself to resist the opportunity to do this kind of work.

"Dr. Samson told us that it was time for an era of peace. And that to make peace, sacrifices were necessary. He wasn't wrong but it's so much easier to sacrifice a piece on the board when it means nothing to you, isn't it? So we bought in. We were given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to prove our mettle. We wanted...we – oh, God, what have we done, Marcus? What have we done?"

His voice broke down, and he paused the tape. How could he tell his only son that he had helped destroy his future? How could he bear the shame of it?

Tomorrow, he told himself. I can finish this tomorrow. I haven't the nerve for this anymore.

A few days later

He brought in the platter of food as silently as he could. Glancing sideways at the solitary window, he noted that the first rays of dawn were already prying their way inside the room. The sun cast its rays upon a heavily stocked bookshelf, and was expanding further inwards – just touching the foot of the occupied bed tentatively. He laid the platter to rest on a small end table, and drew the dark curtains across – abruptly shutting out the light. A momentary spasm of thought or conscience roused him; he remembered how the other rooms weren't even allowed the luxury of curtains – the windows were framed by cold, rigid steel shutters. But she was an exception to the rule. Come to think of it, he wondered sadly, she was an exception to a lot of rules.

"Ruth?" he called out softly, as he began to open a small carton of milk, pouring it into a glass. "You up?"

No response.

Carl sighed. "We've been through this already, kid. I'm a big boy, and this isn't the first time I've had the shit kicked out of me. Grew up on the nasty side of Hyrme and went to night school six days a week. Anyway, I'd rather be beat up by a friend than by a group of junkies."

"Friend?" came a small, sheepish voice.

"Yup. Friend. Everything that happened? Water under the bridge. We're good."

She emerged from underneath her blanket. "But I'm sorry. I...I feel like it's not going to go away. Or stop." She sat up slowly, grunting as she did so. The arthritic-like pain in her joints could not be assuaged in the mornings, she had learned. Each movement her body had to make was conducted delicately. She thought of herself as an explosive device in a cheap action film; her mind being the bomb disposal unit and her body an unstable mix of flammable chemicals that could go off at any second.

Her slow and steady movements did not go unnoticed by Carl, and he smiled wanly. "You want the cortisone shots? I got some Valium here..." he reached into his pockets, pulled out a small, translucent bottle of pills, and presented it to her. "Other times, I wouldn't give them to you, but you've had a rough few weeks."

Ruth shook her head. "No thanks. I don't think steroid injections or sedatives are particularly...receptive to my condition." She sighed. "You know what, though?"

"What, Ruth?"

"You'd think that Dr. Doom would have put two and two together already. He sticks me with the needles and then hours later I have an episode."

He shrugged nonchalantly, remaining silent, arranging the food on her bed tray.

She continued. "I think he knows. I think he does it on purpose and he keeps track of it; he must." her voice tapered off into silence. She caught Carl looking at her patronizingly. "Oh please, Carl," she said, "I'm fourteen but I'm not an idiot."

"Never said you were."

Ignoring him, she went on. "He's no more trying to cure me than, than –" Ruth paused to find the appropriate words, "– than we are when we drop lightmass bombs on the bad guys."

"Dr. Samson isn't Dr. Doom and that's a weak analogy, Ruth. He's trying to help you kids out. You don't bump into a cure in the middle of the night on your way to the john. Your medication has to go through numerous rigorous trials – it's the harsh truth – but it's the truth nevertheless. They're working their asses off to help you guys out. Give you a second shot at a normal life." he explained.

"Like the normal life he gave Adele, you mean?" asked Ruth, looking him squarely in the eyes.

He remained silent, and his brows furrowed in confusion. Adele's death had had a particular impact on Ruth – who had not been close to any of the other children. Carl had surmised that she had taken to Adele's unassuming nature, and the fact that she had asked nothing from Ruth save for companionship. It was a friendship that was short-lived, however, as complications from her treatments worsened, leading to her eventual death.

"They did what they could," muttered Carl quietly.

"They murdered her!" exclaimed Ruth, her voice rising. "They kept increasing the dosage even though she was getting sicker! They were studying how her body responded to increased levels even though it was the medication that was killing her!"

Carl sucked in his teeth and let out a breath. "Adele died because her heart was operating at thirty percent of its capacity," he paused briefly, as if considering something. "Besides, how did you come up with that bullshit conclusion anyway?"

"She told me. She showed me." Face red, Ruth reached over to her bedside table, and despite considerable pain, her hands fumbled around in the drawer, eventually pulling out a modest little notepad. "She was smart. She wrote down everything whenever she could. And she hid it from Samson. And the other nurses. And then, when she knew she wasn't going to make it, she gave it to me."

Carl swallowed and grasped the notebook with a wary hand. "Why are you showing it to me?"

"Because, I don't know, you're different from the others. Or that's my hope, at least. Or maybe because I don't want to end up like she did. I'm sick of being attended to by doctors telling me what's in my best interest. I want to be in control now even if means I won't live long. I want to die the way I choose to die. But before I do, I want to go out to the movies and eat some popcorn. I wanna sit on the steps and count the cars that go by. I wanna lose some money in a bet, I wanna learn how to drive. I want to fucking live. Let's face it," she laughed sardonically, "I'm not going to die of old age. But I just...want to die on my terms."

With that, she fell back into her pillow – exhausted and spent. As she stared at her food before her, her voice grew low and defeated.

"Keep it. Show it to your Dr. Samson. Burn it or read it or whatever." She shut her eyes and tried to catch her breath. "Besides, how can I leave this place anyway?" She let out a bitter laugh. "I can't even walk to that door without falling over."