August 2022
Camp DC Metro
This morning felt like any other morning.
She awoke to the stuffy, stagnant air of her small, dark bunker. That's what you had to call them. The word "room" didn't seem to apply to the holes chiseled out of rock that they all occupied. Hers was one of the first ones made in Camp DC Metro. She had been a young girl. Many wanted to send her to the Communal Area with the other lost children. But she'd come with them, she wasn't lost. So she had been accommodated, given her own quarters.
She raised the light in her lantern and a yellow glow illuminated the cave walls. There was nothing on those walls. It's not like you could just tape your favorite posters to the rock face. If there had been any posters. If there had been any tape.
Her small desk had also been a survivor. Probably belonged to some accountant …or maybe it had come from the FBI. She liked to pretend it came right from their office. When she had been younger, she would sit at it for hours, wearing stolen glasses and pretending to pour over important papers. Covering the scraps in insignificant doodles and writings. He would chide her for wasting paper, but he could never hide his wry grin, even as he collected all the used scraps. She new he saved every last one. After all, she was all they had.
The desk was covered in papers again, but this time they were not the product of some imaginary game. The desk was covered in files. Old files. Rescued files. Dangerous files.
She heard the first sounds of them awakening just beyond the curtain that divided her bunker from theirs.
This morning felt like any other morning.
But it wasn't. This morning was the morning she left. It was the morning she would set out to find him.
Adrian was 20 years old. Give or take a day or two. It was hard to keep track of days passing down here. They saw very little sun. Only now and then, when someone had to venture outside the Camp. Only the Immunes were allowed to do that. Anyone who was dependant on the booster shots never left. There were those who had a natural immunity. The aliens hadn't counted on that. They hadn't counted on a lot of things.
Those who needed the shots never left. Not until today.
When Colonization had begun, when the Viral Invasion had struck, she had been 10. They hadn't arrived for her parents in time. Adrian remembered Dana helplessly kneeling by her father, "I don't understand. It should've worked. This should've been prevented." She didn't cry.
They had to drag Adrian out. She remembered clutching at her mothers body. It felt like sticky glue…from the hot glue gun. Like when they made the witch's hat for her Halloween costume. "It will be more fun if we stick spiders on it."
"They're not coming back Adrian," he'd said, "It's dangerous to stay with them. You've been saved, you're a special girl. You have to come with us." So matter of factly and coolly that it had quieted her immediately. She was frightened then. She'd never seen them before in her life. But they knew her parents. They loved them. She could tell. They would grow to love her too.
She'd only been there a day…maybe even less than 24 hours. Watching her parents turn to gooey masses on the apartment floor. After they'd gotten her out of the apartment and stuffed her into the back of an SUV, Dana jabbed her in the arm with a shot. The Vaccine. The Vaccine that Dana had manipulated and perfected. The Cure. Hope. She could remember the dull ache and the feel of the thick, syrupy liquid as it moved from her arm throughout the rest of her body. Adrian had taken a dose of that vaccine once a month every month since that day.
Some time later, Dana had told her that she'd administered the vaccine to her parents in the days before Colonization. She'd thought one dose would do it. She was wrong. It was the same mistake that caused Dana to loose her mother, her brothers, even her nieces and nephews. From then until now, Dana worked day and night laboring to keep enough Vaccine ready to save everyone else.
They'd developed a system to get the instructions to make the Vaccine to the other Camps. Immunes were sent out in every direction. So far they'd gotten all the way to Miami, and as far west as Las Vegas.
"Like the Pony Express," he'd told Adrian "in the Old West." "Except without the ponies," she'd smiled up at him. Mulder had chuckled and pinched her nose. She'd think of that moment on the days he didn't get out of bed. And on the days she'd hear him mumble softly to a dark and empty room.
No one knew what was happening in the rest of the world. Adrian guessed that this was the rest of the world
Dana and Mulder didn't need the Vaccine themselves. They were Immunes. And if they were Immunes, more than likely any children they had were too. Which was why Adrian was embarking on this journey. It was time.
"It's uncanny how much you resemble your mother." Dana was trimming Adrian's hair. "But your strength, your stubbornness," she'd smiled at their reflection in the dingy mirror, "that you undoubtedly owe to your father." Dana's eyes had gotten a little glassy then. But no tears fell. Adrian didn't think Dana could cry anymore.
Adrian pulled on some jeans and threw on a tank top. She slipped out of her bunker and into the main tunnel. She deftly walked its familiar line. Camp DC Metro was just waking up. Those she passed in the tunnel looked at her solemnly. They all knew. It was up to her now. When she reached Main Camp, she made her way to the Central Office. The man at the desk glanced up.
"My name is Adrian Doggett," she said, "I'm requesting an extended pass."