AFTER HUMANITY

Chapter 8: Mara

The archive room was beneath the main laboratory.

Elias found it after hours of searching.

Thousands of recordings filled the walls.

Most were damaged.

Some were unreadable.

Others contained names.

Subjects.

Experiments.

Failures.

Then Elias found one file.

MARA VOSS.

His hands began shaking.

He activated it.

A girl appeared on the screen.

Twelve years old.

Dark hair.

Small face.

Fearful eyes.

Mara.

His sister.

A scientist stood outside a glass chamber.

"Do you know where you are?"

Mara looked around.

"Eden."

"Do you know why you're here?"

She shook her head.

The scientist smiled.

"We're going to make you immortal."

Mara began crying.

"I don't want to be immortal."

Elias stopped the recording.

He couldn't breathe.

He had spent his entire life believing his sister had died.

Now he was watching her suffer.

He played the next recording.

Mara was older.

Sixteen.

Then nineteen.

Twenty-four.

Twenty-nine.

She never aged beyond that.

The final recording was dated decades after the Collapse.

Mara sat alone in a dark room.

She looked directly into the camera.

"Elias."

His entire body went cold.

"If you're seeing this, Eden failed."

Mara looked toward something outside the frame.

Her expression changed.

She was afraid.

"And if Eden failed..."

A metallic sound echoed behind her.

Mara turned.

Something huge moved in the darkness.

"Elias..."

She looked back at the camera.

"Don't trust the Ascended."

The recording distorted.

"Don't trust the people who created us."

Static filled the screen.

Then Mara whispered:

"Because they're awake."

The recording ended.

Elias stood motionless.

Noah looked at him.

"She's alive."

Elias nodded.

"Somewhere."

Lena said nothing.

Elias turned.

"You knew."

Lena looked down.

"I suspected."

"You knew she survived."

"I knew there was evidence."

"You should have told me."

"I was trying to protect you."

"From what?"

Lena looked toward the archive.

"From the truth."

A sound came from the corridor.

Footsteps.

Slow.

Heavy.

Elias raised his rifle.

The door opened.

Nothing stood outside.

Then Mara's voice came from the darkness.

"Elias."

He froze.

"Mara?"

Her voice came again.

"Come alone."

Noah looked frightened.

Lena grabbed Elias's arm.

"Don't."

But Elias was already moving.

He entered the corridor.

At the end stood a woman.

She looked twenty-nine.

Exactly as she had in the final recording.

Elias stopped.

The woman smiled.

For one impossible second, he saw the twelve-year-old girl from the hospital.

"Mara?"

She nodded.

"I'm sorry it took so long."

Elias couldn't move.

Then Mara whispered:

"Because I wasn't the only one waiting for you."

Behind her, something moved.

Hundreds of pale eyes opened in the darkness.