A Wave from Space

Mercy of Death

"Mike... Let him go."

Should I be relieved to see Doc alive? He looks like a technological monster. Just like Derek, he is shaved bald, with signs of multiple brain operations. Electrodes come out of his implant and are planted all around his head. They are a lot more than it's normal for an implant, even a modified one.

His face, no longer calming and warm. He had the same unreadable expression as Derek. Two long vertical red lines on his neck at the place he cut his jagulars. The wounds were freshly stitched and I can see inside the red flesh and the white of the artificial veins.

"Mike please. Nobody here is going to hurt you. I won't let them hurt you." His voice though remains as i remember it. If I just close my eyes I can pretend that nothing has changed.

He starts walking towards me calmly. No.

"Stop." He listens to me and waits to see if I have anything to say. I don't. I can't think.

Familiar faces all twisted by machines and wounds. John, his palms covered in blood up from his wrist. Jenny, her forehead replaced with medical plastic. Hank, his neck was cut on one side and repaired just like Doc's.

Every one of them bald and with implants. I can't help imagining the electrodes touching their brains. I imagine them forcing them into my brain as well. I feel sick.

Dozens of them are in the room, but if everyone on the Hub was turned into a puppet, there must be at least a hundred of them outside the room. Doc takes another step.

"If you think I won't have the guts to kill him just because they turned you into one of them, then you are not the Doc that knows me." He stops again. They care about Derek for some reason, but now is not the time to solve the puzzle. I need to escape. No. We need to escape. I can't leave Maria behind.

"Now Derek, we are going to take two steps back, you are going to reach for Maria's hand restrains and unlock them. You try anything, you die. Any one of you tries to walk towards us, he dies. Are you ready? One, two, three." We step slowly back, the knife is pressing hard against the base of his skull, ready to push it in, on the slightest provocation. He doesn't give me any reason. He releases Maria.

"Mike I-" Doc starts to say but I shut him up once again. I have to make sure that Maria understood everything and that she can escape with me.

"Maria? Can you walk? Can you understand what is happening?" Maria doesn't say anything. Instead she laughs. It starts with a low chuckle and ends up as a full laughter. Everyone is looking at her. My hair stand up. It's eerily out of place. But before I can tell her to stop freaking me out, her laughter turns to screaming and crying. I can only compare it to a mother losing her child. She is wailing loudly and pulls her hair. It's Doc that breaks the silence.

"Maria, it's ok. It's really not what we thought it was." Maria stops screaming, but tears still run down her eyes. She looks at Doc for a few seconds and then she spits on him. I'm almost amused by her ability to hit him from 10 feet away. That is the Maria I know alright. She doesn't resume crying after that. I venture on trying one more time to see if she is in a condition to escape.

"Maria, look at me. We are getting out of here right now. We have this fucking asshole right here as a hostage. We are going to make it."

"Oh Mike. Mike. I'm so happy I'm not alone when I do this. I'm so grateful that you saved me from this fate. I wish I got to know you better before all this."

"Hey, we can become best friends if you want. But first we have to get out of here." The others stay out of our conversation. I guess they don't want to piss me off any more.

"We have nowhere to go. There is nothing we can do..."

"Mike" says Paul "Let me go get her, she is about to do something very stupid."

"No. Back the fuck away from her, send everyone outside, lock the door and step away from it. She will feel better when she is not feeling trapped like that." To my surprise Doc does what I say and the others leave the room. "Maria, please. We can try the other complexes, we-"

"All complexes are down. They can turn you into a slave who would kill even his own family if you were ordered to. We won't get far and I can't risk turning to them. There is only one way out."

"Mike, I need to get her. Now."

"Doc you're not helping. Maria stop. I won't let them hurt you. We will get out of this as ourselves. We can expose what happened here and they may stop the transmission or change the orders or whatever. We can do whatever you want. Just don't die here, like this. Don't let them win." She laughs at that.

"Stop the transmission? What do you think is happening here Mike? No, it doesn't matter. Believe what you need to believe. Just don't let them get your brain and don't believe any shit they'll give you. Many of us did that mistake."

She is looking around for something to do the act. Thankfully Doc moves over to guard the table with the scalpels. Why does he care if she lives? Don't they have enough test subjects yet?

I should say something, but I can't find the right words. Maybe she is right. Maybe I'm selfish to risk her becoming a slave to the implant, just so I can feel better about protecting someone.

"I'm sorry you have to see this. I hope you do the right thing. I'll wait for you on the other side."

I don't even have time to tell her to not do it. She bangs her head against the wall hard. She yells out in pain, blood trickling down her eyes from a bloodied mess on her forehead. Doc darts to stop her. I don't tell him to stop. I'm too shocked by what I saw to do anything but observe.

He tackles her and tries to force her on the ground. But Maria fights like a wild animal. She bites pieces of flesh off him trying to get his tendons to disable him. With her fingers she tries to find his eyes to blind him.

Finally she manages to push him away enough to have another go at the wall. Maybe it was the adrenaline running in her, but this time she hit the wall with even more power than the first time. And then she stopped. Some of her beautiful blond hair had been caught in the bloodied spot on her forehead. Doc went over her and she didn't fight back.

But she wasn't dead. Her eyes were blinking, trying to get out the blood. I call out her name. She opens her mouth to answer. But only incoherent babbling comes out. She doesn't show any awareness of herself or her surroundings. She is no more. A few seconds later, she stops breathing.