Follow The Heart

The men continued to shout as I jumped over upturned roots and rolled under low hanging branches. The rhythmic bounce of the heart-shaped locket against my chest matched the resounding beat of my heart, staccatoed by the pepper of gunfire and the piercing air of flying bullets. They still trailed far behind me, but there was a whole army of them; all of this over an innocuous necklace. ‘Was all of this worth it?’ I pushed the thought out of my head as quickly as it had entered. ‘Of course. It’s everything.’

Ever since the Atomic Water Wars, the life-supporting fluid had been the scarcest and most valuable resource on Earth. As the amount of freshwater dwindled, the major world powers turned on each other. The result was an almost completely decimated planet and catastrophic loss of life all across the globe, with a few thousand survivors desperately walking the balance between resource gathering and radiation exposure. At one point, scientists claimed they had discovered a method of purifying water, hoping to put an end to the conflict. Unfortunately, the wheels of politics are slow and oiled only by optics, so mutual destruction remained assured. Neither the rich nor poor, well-connected nor social pariah were spared, causing a realignment of the class structure. Now there were only two groups; a mercenary-filled militant group and everyone else.

“Dammit!” A bullet struck the tree next to me and splinters of wood collided against my face, a hot, stinging reality check. Thrown to the side by the blast, I tried to turn the momentum into a roll but my sense of balance was shot. I slammed hard against the cold, moist soil of the forest floor and blacked out.

After the war, as generations of survivors scraped by, nature had slowly taken its home back. Humans now had a way to begin to rebuild what they lost. Greenery slowly reclaimed the land and natural resources replenished, albeit more slowly. With nature doing what it has always done, without humans hurting it as we always had, there was a chance. With nature, no human footprint, and this locket.

“Find him!” “Just get the locket!” They were close enough now for their voices to rouse me from my unintended nap. These men are a part of the new upper echelon of society, translated: the ones who got to the best guns first when we started re-exploring our new world. Right after securing weapons, they moved on to what remained of the research facility that had been pioneering the purification process and quickly turned it into a militant compound. They sought to find any of the remaining data and use it to monetize drinkable water. If they were the only ones who knew how to purify it, they could charge for it. If you can’t pay, you don’t get water, you die.

I could see the lights from their flashlights, white halos growing bigger. My head had mostly cleared, so as slowly and quietly as possible, I reached out, dragging myself along the damp dirt. As soon as I pulled, a searing hot pain cleared whatever fog may have still clouded my mind. I put a hand to my face and it came away a mixture of blood, sweat, and mud. I was bleeding more than I realized but I couldn’t stop. All of humanity was counting on me to keep this locket out of the wrong hands.

Years ago, those wrong hands succeeded in replicating the purification process. One of the engineers working on the project did not share the same reprehensible goals as the rest of the mercenary militia. She began crafting an escape plan, supposedly storing the data needed to perform the process inside a heart-shaped locket and sending it to her family. It was accompanied by a letter explaining her plan, the locket, and what to do should the worst happen. That was the last she was heard from. She was my mother. Since then, my family has protected the locket with our lives. As we studied the data contained in the locket, we had to adopt nomadic methods to remain undetected. My family and I moved with a small caravan of other survivors we had grown close to over the decades. At this point, we were all family. Despite everyone’s help, our research was still painstakingly slow. We have no choice but to keep going though. The locket is the only thing keeping us out of slavery to these killers.

I could hear their footsteps now, rapidly crunching grass and twigs as they hunted their trophy. “I found blood! He’s gotta’ be close!” I knew escape was impossible, but that didn’t mean I was giving up. I brought the locket up to my lips and whispered an apology. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” I put the necklace into my shirt, inhaled deeply, and bolted. Five seconds went by, then ten, then twenty. Their voices began to diminish and their lights dimmed against the trees. Suddenly I was on my back, nose screaming with pain. As my vision went black for the second time that night, the last thing I saw was the silhouette of a man, still clutching a rifle, and the sheen of his teeth peeking through his sinister sneer.

My eyes opened, vision still hazy, nose dripping blood. It was clear I was not leaving this place. I was stripped bare, my knees against a cold, stone floor and my wrists bound by chains. The angle of the chains and their fulcrums forced their victim down, knees pushed against the unforgiving floor, and arms stretched down and out, resulting in a hunched posture. It was as physically uncomfortable as it was symbolically shaming. An armed mercenary stood at either side of me, looking down at me with obvious smugness. We were in a small limestone cave, likely used for interrogations, and in front of me stood another mercenary, with pristine equipment. This guy was apparently an officer of some kind to these killers. He regarded me with a look equal parts distaste and amusement. From his outstretched hand hung the locket. After evaluating my surroundings, I hung my head, ready for whatever end I may meet.

“Was all of this worth it?” he asked with a gruff, grating voice, holding the necklace up to look closer as it spun and caught the light. “Was this little piece of jewelry really worth all the death, all the running?” He began to circle around me, still eyeing the coveted prize. “You know, I’ve been trying to figure you people out. You’re just like us, at the ground floor of an insatiable demand with a market that will always be open. Yet, you’ve decided to go around trying to figure out how to give it away.” The last three words spat with revulsion, the concept to give anything away without gain seemingly a reproachable act to him. I continued to hang my head, not interested in his gloating session. “This is where I always get hung up,” he continued, too caught up in his own thoughts to notice my lack of interest. “I can’t figure out why. Why the hell would you want to give away something that could make you rich?” Despite my conviction to remain stoic, I snorted. A hand quickly struck the same side of my face as the wooden missiles from the shattered tree had. My vision blurred and I struggled to remain conscious. “Still funny?” he chuckled as fresh blood started running down my face, jaw, and surely at this point, broken nose. I licked the blood from my lips and spit to the side, aiming just next to one of the mercenary’s boots. This didn’t sit well with the grunt, and he returned the gesture with a swift kick to the shoulder, popping it out of its socket. I cried out involuntarily, a sharp pain shooting through my back and shoulder. The authoritative mercenary took a long look at the kicker, intention shrouded by an unchanging visage. Suddenly, he lifted a pistol he had surreptitiously relieved of its holster and fired. It landed in the middle of the kicker’s forehead, dropping him dead on the spot. I was frozen. “Don’t ever touch my claim again,” the officer mercenary proclaimed over the dead man, more a warning to the one still alive. These men were truly monsters. It was at this point I realized there was no chance of me leaving this cell. I had nothing left to lose.

“So why?” the mercenary continued. “Why do you live in fear, doing nothing but running, just to meet an end like this?” He gave a long pause, blood still pumping from his victim's head. I couldn’t help it, I started laughing. It began as a small, nearly silent chuckle that progressed into a full-throat hysterical fit that left my entire body sore, half from laughing and half from the chains and limited movement range. As this fit progressed, the officer mercenary became more and more visibly enraged. “What the hell is so funny!?” he demanded, all humor leached from his demeanor. For the first time, I spoke. “You actually think all of this was over a stupid locket?”

The silence that filled the chamber was wonderful. I was a POW in an interrogation chamber with armed hostiles, and there was not a sound to be heard beyond the occasional drip of blood from the cadaver’s hair, plopping into the pool that had collected around it. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, the officer calmly responded. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, tone barely revealing any semblance of interest. I couldn’t help but inwardly gloat at this midnight hour. “You swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker, all these years…” once I began, I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. “This was the plan the whole time. You were so fixated on this one thing, this one process, one locket; you didn’t think about what could be. You and your people forced us to the edge of civilization, to the absolute end of habitable land. Impossible for you to know, that led to our salvation. After studying the data in the locket for years, we realized we would never be able to replicate it without a research facility, the last of which you took over and fortified. So we were forced to look elsewhere, to find new ways to accomplish what was once only achievable in a lab. This with our forced expulsion led to our salvation.” It felt good to let it all out, to finally take the upper hand after years of running. “We found a way to purify water long ago. This little trinket was just to keep you busy.”

Another wonderful silence. Eventually, I started again, “In the new environment of ebbing radioactive fallout, forced to the edge of society, we discovered a new organism, one capable of things previously unheard of due to its radioactive nature. With a bit of research and this organism, we were able to accomplish what was once only achievable with advanced equipment and the most sophisticated programming. We haven’t needed this locket in years. We just needed to make sure you kept your attention on it.” The silence grew heavier; the enemy's demeanors had clearly changed. “While you were busy chasing my blood family and that necklace, the rest of my family spread the technique in every direction. Along with a message; ‘Be ready to take our world back’. While your forces have been occupied chasing me, we have built a resistance. You will not rule this world through control and fear. We will liberate it from you and make it a better place, to keep humankind from making the same mistakes we have throughout history. So let me ask you,” I finally raised my head, looked my captor in the eye, and couldn’t help but smile, “was all of this worth it?”