“Where are we going?” Was Marie’s first question.
“I don’t know yet,” he answered. The girl looked at him with a puzzled look on her face.
“Jesus, kid. When somebody wakes you in the middle of the night you should be asking ‘what the fuck’, not where he’s going to take you.”
“Well... What the fuck?” Marie asked hesitantly. She obviously wasn’t quite awake yet.
“Shit hit the fan. It’s time to get going before it rains down on us.”
“Legacy?” Now she visibly perked up.
“How the hell do you know about it?” He asked genuinely amazed. The whole ugly truth about the viral threat was closely kept away from the students.
“I heard Jean talking about it with the professor the other day. It really is happening?”
“Yeah. Legacy is happening. And whole lot of other things. Gather your stuff, we’re going to find a suitable fort to hole up and wait for it to be over.”
“Okay...”
It struck him when they were sitting in his truck, waiting for the garage doors to open. The mother of all déjà-vu’s. Marie was sitting next to him, sneezing and sniffling, trying to get her sinuses and lungs to cooperate after a brief explosion to cool night air. Her pitifully small backpack lay at her feet, and he was feeling a bit down all of a sudden for some reason.
At some time, at some place they had done this before. They had taken off in his truck, driven for a while. She had been sick. Really sick. The kind of ‘you’re going to die’ –sick. He had been sick. The kind of ‘you wish you’ll die soon’ –sick. They had been driving towards Alaska and then...
As soon as he almost managed to grasp a hold of the fake memory it disappeared, leaving him feeling slightly uneasy and uncertain. Alaska? Why the fuck would he chose Alaska of all the possible places? He shook his head, then another strand begun to uncurl, portraying images of things he hadn’t really lived through, but perhaps at some time, at some place somebody had done all those things he now saw.
Silver. Everywhere he looked he could only see silver. The girl on his lap was now struggling, trying not to cough, and there was blood on her lips, her breath reeked of it...
“It says no parking here...”
He stared at the piece of paper, trying to remember if he had written it. It was his handwriting, but what the hell were Techno-mages?
Stryker, laughing. Pointing at him, then suddenly lunging forward and pushing him back, towards a portal. Huge silvery disc swallowing him, darkness shrouding his vision.
Waking up. Hurting. Lungs bursting from the sheer amount of viral particles. Throat aching, screaming for relief. Can’t cough. Shouldn’t cough. You kill them all if you so much as breathe out now...
CARRIER
When he came to, they were still sitting in his truck. Garage doors were open and the engine was running. Marie was staring at him.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“Got a bug up in my gears, nothing to worry about. Ready to go?” He asked, trying to shake off the chills that raced down his spine.
“Fine and dandy. If we’re going to sneak out, we better hurry before anybody begins to wander why the lights are on at this time of the night.”
“We’re not sneaking out. I left a note to the Professor,” he said. It wasn’t a lie per say. He had left a note. He just hadn’t seen the need to include their departure to it. The professor would notice soon enough that they were missing.
“So... You really don’t have anything planned?” Marie asked. They were sitting at a gas station just outside of the city. They had bought a map and Logan had circled few locations from it.
“I do have a plan. To get as far away from everybody and everything as we can get. It’ll take a while, but... These places would be okay, but the problem is, that we need some sort of a shelter from the weather. And we need to be able to defend it, too.”
“That would rule out a camper, right?” Marie asked. For a brief moment he had been considering a camper, but she was right. It was easy to move, easy to relocate, but the past experience had shown him that those things were death-traps on wheels. They’d need something more solid. Underground bunker equipped with fully developed and active security system would be ideal, but he had a nagging feeling that those weren’t just lying around, waiting for suitable occupants.
“A camper could do for now. But you’re right. We have to find something better. These places...” Logan said, tapping the few circled dots on the map.
“These places are as remote as it gets. That means that there’s no shelter from the weather, or possible attacks, but there’s a good chance that nobody comes looking for us from there.”
For a moment they both mulled over their options.
“You said that Legacy isn’t the only threat for us. Attacks? What’s going on?” Marie then asked.
“I’m not sure. But I have this funny feeling that somebody is after me. After us. Professor thinks that we’re dealing with some sci-fi shit. Alternate universes or something. And I have been getting these weird blackouts. Almost as if I’m remembering something that hasn’t really happened to me, but it may have happened to me at some other place or time... Shit. Does this make any sense to you at all, kid?” Logan asked. Marie stared at him for a long while.
“I think so... I... I have been thinking that I’m going crazy. Or that I’m daydreaming, or... I sometimes get the feeling that I should be very ill. Or that I should be very afraid of something... I haven’t told to anybody, because it feels so strange, and... I’m not crazy?” She asked hesitantly. Logan shrugged his shoulders.
“If the professor is right, we’re no crazy. Just knee deep in shit.”
“That’s... That’s good... I guess.”
“This doesn’t look too bad. Roof is leaking, but you can fix it, right?” Marie asked, eyeing the small shack they had found. It most likely had been used by lumberjacks at some point, and when the nearby sawmill had closed off the lumberjacks had left, too. Now it was just a shack in the middle of nowhere with a leaky roof and walls that needed insulation for the coming winter.
“I don’t know about this... Where there’s a road there’s bound to be other people, sooner or later...” Logan ventured, leaning against the doorjamb and resting his gaze on a dirt track leading through the forest.
“We have been on the road for well over two weeks already. We checked all those other places. There’s nothing more left!” Marie shouted, suddenly aggravated. He could smell her fear. He couldn’t blame her. On the road they had seen first signs of Legacy. It hadn’t been pretty. And unfortunately she was right.
At first it had been simple. Driving around and staying in motels. Eating from diners scattered along their path. Then one day it had begun. More often the motel was closed, diner burned to crisp, and lately they had passed several trucks that just sat on the side of the road, some of them intact, most of them looking as if they were raided.
Legacy had arrived, and people everywhere were busy hiding from it and gathering supplies to fare over the worst.
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