Drak

The dimly lit bunker hummed with a deafening silence.

Only soft pulses of electricity heard, and then my breath, sharply in through my nose.

The darkness of my inner world bringing daydreams as my eyes relax while closed.

Mushroom clouds are always in the distance. Growing.

I'm running.

There's a temple far off. I feel such a strong pull to know what's inside.

But I also get distracted, there's a shimmering to the side of me that I glimpse in the corner of my eye.

I know before I even look.

Gold.

I feel drool drip down my chin as I turn towards it and run even faster.

I'm halfway there when suddenly a metallic roar crashes from above, landing right in front of me in a vicious roar and fireball.

Out of the curtain of flames heating my entire body emerges the head of a gunmetal dragon with red eyes, and a mechanical roar that I feel to my bones.

I snap out of my meditation with a violent jerk. My eyes open, immediately focusing on the candleflame a few feet ahead.

Suddenly the urge to read my journal arises, after a deep breath I stand up from my spot and walk over to the presidential conference table, now kitchen table. Still shaking off the dragon.

I ruffle through a few stacks of notebooks to find my journal that I've neglected for at least the past month.

The first entry, a whole four years ago, June 2072.

My parents and I had just found the Commune where thousands of survivors were living together in this anthill-like underground system.

We lived there for the next year but found that there was a top-down power structure implemented to keep everyone 'happy and orderly' that was almost no different from the systems of the world before.

After we found out of a collective of influential families that were plotting to have us kicked out we decided it wasn't for us.

Luckily no one had rediscovered our base in that time and it was exactly as we had left it.

Almost exactly as it still is.

The next year was stressful because the Commune was one of our last resorts to make an attempt at community.

Having a lack of space and resources to be able to contain more people ourselves hurt as all our brainstorming just fell through.

There would be a few drifters here and there, nomadic types. Also a few families that reminded me of the Gypsies my parents told me stories about from their home in Romania.

They would spend a few nights with us, we'd give them radiation treatment if they needed it, offer them parts or refurbishing. My father was a biomechanical engineer that helped design many of their installed cybernetics and enough of the knowledge transferred over to help with most of their tech.

I learned a lot from watching and helping my dad help these people.

Most of all was that there are few things that feel as good as helping someone else feel good.

Unfortunately this goodwill didn't come without consequences.

After a couple years of guests we eventually became a pit stop for people on their way to and from the Commune.

The news of us spread far enough to where their circle of leaders heard about us.

And suddenly we were enemies.

We already had layers of defense, including turrets, lasers, traps, lead and concrete steel-enforced walls, along with our own arsenal of high tech weaponry.

About twenty layers of heavy reinforcement before making it to our living room door, just over a mile into the ground.

And then you'd have to deal with us.

The Commune sent out a militia designed to take us down that went about five layers deep before losing so many soldiers they had to turn back.

This only put a little bit of brakes on their efforts, but poured a lot of extra fuel to their already engulfing mission.

I shut the notebook aggressively.

My hand shoots up to the pendant around my neck as I try to hold back tears.

The heart-shaped locket has a picture of us three standing in front of our first home, me as a baby.

That home would be reduced to a pile of dust in the wind along with most of the homes in Washington D.C.

The picture was a lifelong capturing of their blissful ignorance before they had to become warriors. My most precious treasure.

I feel the small knob that opens the locket, half-tempted to press it.

A second of delay is enough to convince me, and for the first time since my father gave it to me the locket cracks open, revealing a tiny square piece of paper inside with a cartoon anvil on it.

His words suddenly echoing in my mind, "When you're ready, you will have no doubt in your mind."

I definitely have doubt.

I close it slowly and feel a tear roll down each cheek.

Why am I so scared.

How long will I have to feel so alone.

I sit with my head draped for a few minutes, letting the silence seep back in.

Suddenly a loving whisper rises up out of it.

Mom.

From the last time we spoke.

"Whatever happens, baby, I will always love you. And I want you to remember, everything that we did was for you."

This snapped the last straw of resistance I had left.

All the water my eyes can hold comes pouring out, I cry so hard that my inhales sound like I'm drowning in air.

I feel so overwhelmed in love, in grief, and in missing the way things were. Crumbling to the ground, quivering in lonliness and exhaustion.

My immersion in my pity is interrupted by an ice cold snout pushing into the back of my neck.

I look up to see a confused robot dog, with his head tilted inquisuitively and a soft whimper coming out as he nudges me again.

I wipe away the tears and snot with my sleeve as I sit up and turn towards him.

"Hey Goddard, I'm alright buddy. Just feeling sad."

I go to pet him but before I can even make contact with his head his tail triples its wag speed and he jumps up on me and licks me all over with his large felt-tongue.

A smile cracks on my face and I can't help but fall over with him chuckling.

Just as I catch my breath and feel everything settle, alarms break the quiet, flashing lights fill the bunker.

I race towards the control desk to the feed of motion detecting cameras that are littered all around the facility.

A few of them seem to be getting triggered, which usually means something alive.

It still makes me shiver a bit to see the horizon of destruction on the surface cameras, it seems like it only gets worse.

There.

My eye goes straight to a waving fabric that's slowly moving across the landscape.

I zoom in revealing a body shape underneath the fabric thats slowly moving against the wind, not far from the entrance to the bunker.

A quick moment of hesitation, "What if it's.."

But my better senses prevail and I run towards the exosuits.

I slip in mine, fastening the lock-in helmet and gloves and then head to the surface elevator.

"Goddard!" I yell, and he wastes no time, beating me in.

I feel my heart picking up speed as we hurl upwards, the undertone of not being on the surface since my last escape into the bunker resting heavily on my mind.

I can feel the surface nearing.

My palms sweating.

The elevator starts slowing its ascension before opening to the airlocked chamber two doors from the surface.

I run past the sanitization room, and can't help but flashback to crumbling on this floor as I run past the dried pool of blood from a few months ago.

A shiver of goosebumps waves across my whole body.

I pick up speed, eyes centered on the keypad.

I punch in the code.

3 3 6 9 1

And the massive vault-like hangar door comes to life.

Desert-esque winds waste no time forcing their way in.

The whipping dust is disorienting, it takes a few seconds to let my eyes and nerves adjust.

Going to my Exosuit's wristscreen I change my goggle display into half-thermal.

The landscape is now segmented into auras of colors, a sea of purples, blues, oranges, and deep violets.

I look for body-shaped red or bright yellow.

A few moments of scanning reveals nothing, they must have thermal-resistant gear.

Or I'm totally missing them.

I slow down my scanning.

A few hundred feet to my right I see a flicker of blue that reminded me of the fabric I saw.

Its them.

Their steps are even slower, dragging.

I start running, Goddard alongside me.

They drop to a knee, I go full-throttle, forcing buckets of air out of me.

I'm only a few feet away when they fall to their side, grabbing at their throat.

I pick them up, much lighter than I thought.

We hightail it to the bunker.

Collapsing with them as soon as I make it in through the massive opening, "Goddard, door!"

He presses the button on the keypad with his nose and the door shuts.

The room fills with steam before filling up with air.

I take my first look at this person, they're wrapped in some sort of fabric that I don't recognize, similar to the cloak.

But they only have a crude goggle and oxygen mask setup, with radiation burns on the parts not covered.

I waste no time in taking off the mask and for a moment I'm awestruck at how beautiful this person is.

But more importantly, she's unconscious.

"Medkit, boy."

Goddard opens his storage compartment and I take out a deradiate serum and oxygen pump.

A few seconds of her chest rising and falling is all it takes for her eyes to fling open and she starts hyperventilating before gripping my arm tightly.

I take the tube out of her mouth and hold her hand while she takes a few minutes to regain her breath.

Once she does, I feel her softly squeeze my hand back, and see her eyes fixed on the ceiling start to water.

She closes them and hoarsely says, "thank you", before letting the tears drop.

I carry her back to the elevator.

And realize she's fallen asleep before we've gotten halfway down.

Looking at her face it's clear that she's had a hard journey.

I lay her on the bed with a glass of water on the nightstand and make my way over to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.

Still in total disbelief.

I look at her cloak I draped on a chair and remember the square.

It's time.

Taking my coffee, I sit on the couch across the room.

Opening the locket once again and carefully grabbing the paper on the edges I take a close look at it, Goddard at my feet gives me a queer look.

"Here goes", I take a deep breath and lay the tab under my tongue, feeling the chemicals dissolving with it.

This is a medicine that is possibly the last of its kind my dad told me.

One that is so powerful and transformative that it calls those to it only exactly when they are ready for it.

Too soon or too late, then it could have adverse effects.

He said it gave him answers that drove him to continue on.

To try.

And to try his hardest.

Before now I was losing my will to try.

I feel my entire body begin to breathe, colors are starting to become much more vivid, almost alive.

I can feel it now.

This is only the beginning.