[COMPLETED]
[WATTYS 2022 WINNER]
James Quinn can't die. Actually... that's not true. He's died many times - somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 - only to be reborn as himself to live his life over again.
For millennia, he's had to endure this c...
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October 25, 2009 [17]
Martha wandered through the cave. Or was it a maze inside a funhouse? It must be both? Because she could hear the moaning of Joe's ghost but also carnival music, while mirrors, warped to obscure her image, lined the stone walls.
As she continued down the winding path, a red glow steadily grew until she was blind to anything else. Suddenly, a giant white spotlight burst through, illuminating the wall in front of her.
Within the spotlight and sitting on the ground of the cave was Sammy, the child Martha had saved in the zoo so many lives ago. He was exactly as she remembered, save for his size – even sitting, she could tell he was ten feet tall, if an inch.
"Beckett."
Then she saw that he was cradling a monkey – no, a Silverback gorilla, proportionate as if fully grown but shrunken to fit the boy's chubby arms. The tiny gorilla hooted, pointing to something on Martha's left. She turned to see another funhouse mirror, squeezing her reflection beyond recognition.
"No, no, no. Shhh," Sammy corrected the gorilla. "That's a secret."
"Beckett."
But the gorilla continued to point and hoot at the mirror. Martha looked again and it began to straighten, the waves in the glass flattening to her line of vision until the image of Robbie Drake became clear and unmistakable. Martha's heart raced as they stared into one another's eyes. She walked to the mirror and Robbie followed perfectly as if-
"Agent Beckett!"
Martha opened her eyes to another red light, but instead of a cave, she sat in the cabin of a military transport flying over the Pacific and toward Hawaii's main island; instead of staring into Robbie's carnivorous eyes, Junior Agent Nan Rochana, black hair slicked and tucked into the neck of her black, kevlar enforced bodysuit, stood expectantly.
"You told me to wake you when we were twenty minutes out," Nan said.
"Thanks," Martha yawned, rolling the tightness out of her neck.
"I do not know how you can sleep, considering where we are headed."
Martha smiled. "With enough practice, you can make your brain do almost anything you like."
"Well then. If we survive this, you will have to teach me."
"We're going to survive, Nan," Martha assured.
Nan's concern was, without a doubt, justified. This was going to be dangerous and Martha couldn't actually guarantee her safety. But what else am I going to say? Nan was, after all, a first-lifer, and as Martha advanced further into immortality, she had to remind herself of their fear of death, more and more often.
