3034: The Awakening

Questions and Answers

The following morning I am still in the infirmary and still hooked up to the machines. I was stable all throughout the night or so Roland tells me.  The fact that I have slept for over a thousand years still hasn't set in. All this....everything at this very moment seems like its nothing more than a nightmare or some parallel universe I have found myself in. Nicole comes and takes a seat on a small metal stool with a black top for a cushion. Her facial expression conveyed one of sympathy and guilt. As if she had been the one to wrong me in some type of way and I just didn't know it. Her hair fell evenly on her shoulders and along her facial line. Unlike yesterday she wore her hair down. While Natasha still wore her hair up in the tight bun that I had seen. Roland sat at a row of monitors examining each one and writing something down on the thin yellow pad in front of him. As for the moment, everything seems to be ok, or at least as okay as it can be. 

Slight beep echoes in the room and the infirmary door slides open. Revealing the not so nice hard to read expressionless woman I had the not so pleasant of literally bumping into yesterday. She saunters in her shoulders back, her back straight as if she had commanded attention and perfection from anything she does.  Not paying any mind to me this woman as she walks over to Natasha. 

"Anything new about the girl," she asks, Natasha looks from the monitor in front of her to me then to the woman.  

"As of now scans and readings show, her body is infected at least 75 percent. The same readings as previous archives show back in 2020, it seems...." she pauses as if the very words she is saying is slowly cutting into her throat preventing them from leaving her lips. 

"Well," said the woman with a bit of a frustrated tone. 

Natasha sighs heavily before continuing. "It seems that specimen X will continue to grow throughout her system until it kills her." Those words ring in my ears and crash into me as if someone had struck me with a hammer. 

"So that's- that's it then, I am going to die? How many others are there that had the disease?" 

The woman with no name looks at me her face this time gave way to a small hint of worry before crashing back down into her usual emotionless expression. " You won't like the answers if you keep asking questions, questions you might not really want the answer to" her words do nothing more than piss me off, pushing my level from curious and scared to angry.

 " How else am I suppose to know what the hell happened to me if I don't ask questions? I need answers and you will give them to me" I make sure my tone stays even and stern not breaking once even though her face conveys heavy contempt on my lack of respect for how I had just spoken to her. 

She scoffs and cracks her knuckles, "very well girl if you wish, follows me and we will try to answer any questions you may have." She waves over and starts towards the door. Nicole takes off the pads that are monitoring me and wraps a light blanket around me, to keep my backside covered from the opening of the gown I have on. 

Nodding to her in appreciation, I follow after this woman who I now wanna nickname "asshole" for how she simply acts. We walk silently, I am a little behind her hesitant at where we are going and where she is taking me, the others are easy to get along with, they've been very kind to me, unlike this.... ugh asshole. Why does she have to be so hard to read? So emotionless?  She's so frustrating. As if on cue she stops dead in her tracks and I am to busy lost in my own thoughts and feelings that I once again.... bump into her. "Oh.." I stop unsure of what to say, she looks at me and smirks as she turns away and keeps walking. We walk for what feels like hours, of course I know it's not hours, but my body still hasn't recovered fully yet. So even the shortest of walks test my stamina.

Finally, we arrive at another identical door, after lefts and rights and a couple of other doors we make it to our destination. She types in a few digits quickly and the door slides open. Revealing behind it a wide-open room with windows, actual f*****g windows. The sun is slowly creeping itself to its height for the afternoon, the sky is a beautiful light blue with a few white clouds painted into them.  Across the room, there is a rather large desk with different stacks of paperwork, two computer monitors, and average office supplies.  Hanging on the wall is another large monitor possibly sixty-five inches or bigger. There an aquarium filled with some type of life that oddly doesn't seem like the normal fish that one would typically see in an aquarium.  And at the desk stands a man, black hair slicked back a black suit with a white shirt, red tie, and black pants and neatly polished black dress shoes. As we approach he turns to us and he looks at me with a smile. 

"Why hello, I understand you have some questions needing to be answered?  He reaches out his hand waiting for mine to meet his. I hesitate for a moment, looking around I slowly meet his hand for a quick shake. His grip is kind and gentle.

 "Yes, and I need answers, please if you would help Mr..." he cuts me off with a small gesture of his hand. 

"Have a seat Emily and then we will begin. And by the way," he smiles. " My name is Neese" 

I take a seat in a brown leather armchair making sure to stay sitting up straight. He takes a seat in the empty chair across from me. He props his left leg up on his right leg and straightens himself out in the chair. "So, Miss Emily, what would you like to know." He smiles warmly to me. I guess that is the big question 'what is it exactly that I want to know'. I ponder and ponder till finally, I think of my first question.

 " Where am I exactly?".

 Neese brings his hand to his chin, " Emily you are in a rather large industrial type skyscraper, on what used to be Earth. A lot has changed in the thousand years you have slept. And it's important for you to realize, everything you did know you now no longer knows."  I nod in response to his answer. "So what happened to Earth?"  

Adjusting himself again in his chair he looks at me " biological warfare, human beings always ready for a war, ready to cause pain and harm for one's own selfish needs and until that selfishness spread across the globe, killing anyone or anything in its path. Emily specimen X was not just any rare disease that came out of nowhere, it was a bio weaponed released out into the world and killed, we still don't have a cure for it. You, Miss Emily, are the only true living human being left. There is no other human alive."  I look at Neese with my mouth agape and my eyes wide. Wait, I can't be the only human if I am then... then what are all of you?"  He scoffs briefly and his thin smile returns to his lips but doesn't meet his eyes. "We are morphers or a metahuman if the term makes you feel better, some can shapeshift, even make our appearance look like humans or anything else we desire." 

I stand to my feet and start backward, sensing my uneasiness he smiles and this time it does reach his eyes. " Emily we won't hurt you, we are the ones who have kept you alive all this time, we wish to help you, to find a cure"  he gets to his feet but doesn't walk towards me. Instead, he looks at me unsure if he should continue or leave me be.  "We came across your planet in 2025, by that time all of the human race was extinct, we were in need of a planet that could help us survive and your planet was perfect for habitation, upon further investigating we came across these different archives and articles that had stated a mass bioweapon had been released, and they called it specimen X"  I tried hard to not believe what he was saying, however, it was to no avail everything he had said about a bioweapon being released is the exact rumors that had circulated before I was put in my comatose state. 

Thinking back to that time the world was in a mass panic, it was every country for themselves, and all the great world powers had fought with all their might, not caring if it was their own people put in harm's way. When specimen X first began its surge, all the experts and scientists couldn't find a cure to stop it. Whatever this new 'virus' was, it seemed to attack anything living, from animals to plants. Soon nothing could grow and livestock began to decrease as cows, pigs, chickens became sick and died by the thousands. Not long after that, all crops ceased to grow to cause farmers to go bankrupt. The mass food shortage caused neighbors to turn on neighbors until eventually, even our cells started to be attacked. Those of us who fell ill were put in a stasis pod, in hopes of slowing the sickness until a cure could be found. I was the 94th person to be put in a pod. 

I drew in a deep breath allowing air to freely fill my lungs, and leave my lungs as I exhaled. "What of the others, if this is true and you found us five years after this had happened, shouldn't there be other people?" I admit I had high hopes that the answer would be yes, and that I wasn't truly the only surviving human. Neese nodded in agreement, taking his seat again, "that assumption was true, unfortunately, when we arrived every single pod  had been destroyed except for yours, now as to why that is, we do not have an answer"  

Disappointment fills my heart and I lower my eyes, trying to fight back the tears that have started to creep into my them.  He clears his throat and stands again from his chair and walks over to the window. The view is still as perfect as it was when I first entered Neese's office. "We have been here over a thousand years, and when we found you in 2200 that is when our search began to try and find a cure for this disease or virus if you will. We wanted to help you" 

This time he moves towards me as I stand still, the words he speaks are hard to deal with and only make my mind wander and want to ask even more questions. 

" It seems the more you speak the more questions I have,"  he doesn't pause and gets closer. "You dear girl will always have a lot of questions, and a lot of those questions will not have answers."  

The way he replied comes off as him being a bit of a smart ass. Smartass and asshole that the two people I have to put up with now, or at least until I find more information. 

Neese leans in towards me eyeing me with such curiosity almost as if he is trying to read me trying to get ahold of my very own thoughts. 

" Then I suppose I will have to go searching for my own answers to my questions then, however, one more question for you. " I keep it short and brief ." When do I get to go outside?"  

By this time Neese just has on a sly smile and he looks at the woman behind me and then back to me. "Anytime you wish"  and with that reply, the tall strong woman who I have forgotten was even in the room is by my side gently taking my arm in her hand leading me out of the office.  Silence befalls again just as it did on the way to see Neese, the quiet just irks my nerves and pushes my anxiety, wishing she'd at least talk to me or say something to break the ice, is that too much to ask?  Why is she out of everyone else so uptight so isolated? Almost as if she wishes nothing more than to be rid of my presence and off doing something else. Once we reach the infirmary door she releases my arm and types in the code to allow the door to unlock. But, my stubbornness stops me in my tracks and I turn to look at her, "can we go outside? " I ask giving her my best please give me my way look I can muster. 

 And she just stands there no smile, no smirk not even a scoff. By now I don't know if I should be annoyed with her or more curious about this person.  Taking my arm again she leads me into the room and then closes the door behind us. "Tomorrow," she says dropping her hand away from me. And she leaves the room. She doesn't wait for my response or even a protest, the door closes behind her and I realize I'm in the room alone.