The Beacon

Em woke to the light, as always. She got to her feet shakily, reassessing her surroundings.

Nothing new. Grey skies tinted by the constant falling of ash all around. The ground was cracked and warm to the touch, red-brown rock and clay for miles in each direction.

Occasionally in her endless trek, Em had come across pieces of glinting machinery, scattered bone, once what even looked like the reclining figure of someone else, slouched against a crumbled brick wall. But the ash was inches deep over the prone form and she knew without brushing it free that no life remained.

Mostly though, it was empty and barren, the twisted remains of buildings gutted of anything of meaning. All she had was the light, searing across the wasteland from somewhere in the distance.

She’d been following it since she could remember first waking, a pounding in her head and her limbs barely able to move. It flashed, bright white and blinding, across fathomless distance, exploding in her eyes with almost too much brilliance for her to handle, before fading out again for a space of long, tenuous seconds. But it always came back, rhythmic and sure, guiding her on.

The only other thing she had was the locket, a small gold heart on a fine chain. When she’d woke for the first time, she’d found it clutched in her right hand. The chain was broken, but she’d carried it with her anyway ever since, occasionally looking down at the worn letters, flipping back the broken clasp.

There was a picture inside, that of a young blonde woman with beautiful curling hair and dark, arresting eyes. Me? Em had wondered, running a hand down her face. There was no way to really tell, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the image. On the front of the locket were engraved two letters: E.M. Em had, subconsciously perhaps at first, began to refer to herself this way. It helped her to have a name, some scrap of identity.

These things gave her a purpose. Somehow, she’d grown to combine the mystery of the locket with the steady pulse of the light on the horizon. If she could just reach the latter, she would find out about the former.

She knew that there was no proof that this was the case, no proof that anything meant anything at all. But she really had nothing left to lose, and when Em cracked open her eyes for what felt like the thousandth time, she knew she was getting close.

She’d begun to see on the horizon what looked like a crumbling tower tilted to one side. The light seemed to be trapped in the top of it, throwing itself repeatedly against the walls of its prison.

Em was excited, but she was also scared. Now that she was almost upon it, it occurred to her that she’d never known what she’d do once she got here. What if there was nothing here at all aside from the light, what then?

She was about to find out. Another sleep and waking later, Em found herself approaching the tower. The light no longer accosted her vision- it shot beyond her out into the distance from whence she’d come. She could see now that there were gaping holes in the side of the construct, through which she thought, for just a moment, she caught a glimpse of movement.

She stopped, within an arm’s length of the tower, and stared. A piece of shelving stared back at her from the inner wall, cans of strange liquids and solids- some broken or discarded, others rusted and shut- strewn about its length. There was no more movement, but now she could hear a sound, a soft static rushing coming from the other side of the wall.

Em came closer, peering in. There was a woman there, sitting at the base of a set of spiral stairs. She had her back to Em and at her feet was a small black box. It was here that the hissing sound was emanating from. As Em watched, she reached down and pressed a button; the static noise stopped. Without turning around, she said, “Hello?”

The sound of her voice exploded over Em, raining through her. It touched something in her center; she clapped a hand to her chest. It had begun to hurt, and this was a new pain. She stepped back, partially hidden in the shadows.

“Please say something if you’re there,” the woman said, then, under her breath, “Please be there.” Her voice had a rusty, unused quality to it. She turned around.

Her face was filthy but her eyes were bright, undaunted. Her dirty golden hair was held up, away from her face, but Em still recognized it. It was the only face she’d recognize, the one she’d thought her own.

This was the woman from the locket.

“It’s safe here, you can come out,” the real E.M. said. There was an undertone of desperation to her voice; her eyes, dauntless as they were, looked sad. She thinks she’s going crazy, Em realized.

“How did you find me?” The locket woman tapped the black box. “I’ve been trying to get a signal but there’s nothing. I thought all the other bases must be gone. Was it the lighthouse? I thought if I camped out here, there was a chance someone would see the beacon. It’s a stroke of luck that it works, actually.” She stopped, the desperation growing in her beautiful eyes. “Won’t you please show yourself? Are you even there?”

Em couldn’t stand the brokenness in her tone; it did something to the mess in her chest. She came out from around the wall.

The woman’s eyes widened, her face breaking out into a grin. But something went wrong; halfway through, it slipped from her mouth as if it had never been. She took a step back.

“No,” she said. “No. Not you. It’s not possible.”

Confused, Em took a step forward. You know me? she tried to say but the words stuck- she was voiceless.

“Your sensor is broken,” E.M. said. A fact. Em’s hand went to her chest and felt the indent there, the very place the new pain had originated. “You can’t be- we shot you down- I saw it happen. We got you. All of you. We destroyed you.”

Something dark coursed through her words and Em felt it directly in that indented portion of her chest. Like excitement, but perverse, inverted. Something about that word: destroy.

She lunged forward, and E.M. fell over the tattered remains of her skirts, hitting the stairs. She was up in a shot, running up the spiral steps, but Em was fast, and she caught her just as she came out on top.

They stood on a small, round balcony, the brief, blinding pulse of the light in its cage at its center illuminating them both.

“Let go,” E.M. said. She was afraid, but that darkness was still there; upon touching her, Em could see it all, feel it festering at the center of her, wanting- needing - to be cut out.

And then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she remembered it all.

She remembered this woman’s hands on her face as she opened her eyes for the first time. There was no hate in them then, only wonder, as she breathed one word: “Perfect.”

She remembered the people around her talking as she slept, cords running through her, infecting her with warmth.

“They should be ready to stand on their own soon. The sensory perception is incredibly advanced.”

“We’ve already tested with a few criminals. They’re strong. So strong.”

“Are you sure they’re safe though?”

E.M.’s voice: “Of course they are! The institute knows what it's doing, we’ve studied the signs of sociopathy extensively. They will find the wrong-doers and dispose of them before the crimes have been committed. We’ll have our world back. The safe world our grandparents talked about.”

“Well, then,” an older, authoritarian voice broke in. “Let’s begin.”

And then Em was out in the world- marching through crumbled streets and buildings, searching out the darkness, the whirring instrument in her chest leading her on. She could feel it lurking in everybody she passed, some stronger than others. And when she found it, she destroyed it.

She destroyed it, and destroyed it, and destroyed it, until it got harder to find, until the pool of bodies got smaller.

But she was very perceptive- she and all her siblings, who walked the streets with her, a united front. And they soon found the trickier bits of darkness, those hiding deeper down. They were everywhere, those dark seeds, sprinkled in everyone. Her sensor started to pull in every direction, building urgency the more the people remaining fought in their diminishing circles. Everywhere hate, everywhere distrust, everywhere thoughts of violence.

Destroy, destroy, destroy.

Leave only the pure, they’d been instructed, but there was no purity here. Not in the hard eyes and faces of their makers when they started to close themselves off, not in their fearful eyes when they got into their air crafts and ejected the cannons. Not as their blinking targets centered on the chests of her siblings, blowing them down.

So it was that when scientist Erika Mercer’s craft swept down to take the life of her own automaton, its hand grasped for her neck, and she saw an emotion in its eyes she was sure had never been programmed there.

Betrayal.

Someone pulled Erika back to safety, their craft gaining speed, and she fired blindly, emptying shock waves into the space in front of her where the thing had been, receding already into the distance. She put up a hand to her stinging neck, expecting to come away with blood, but all she found was an empty place where her locket used to be.

The memories receded. Em stared at the frightened woman in her grasp, her hard, defiant eyes.

You made me. It was an accusation. This time the woman seemed to hear.

“It was a mistake,” she whispered, “and we’ve all paid for it now.”

Em felt her hand twitch, loosening her grasp for a fraction of a second, and Erika Mercer took her opportunity. She turned and ran. She didn’t stop when she got to the edge of the balcony; she simply lifted one foot, stood there for a second outlined by the pulsing light, then leaned forward into the grey sky and was gone.

Em rushed after her, but she knew when the dark urgency in her chest stopped, it was already over. Her mother’s body lay with arms splayed out, broken on the earth below. Em considered, then took the locket out, letting it drop down after her. She wondered what her own body would do if she took the same leap. It would survive, no doubt, just as she’d survived successive shock waves to the chest. She was made of strong stuff.

The feelings should have ended- her sensor was only there after all to perceive others' emotions, not to feel her own. But the feeling that rose up in her now was all her own, and unnameable. Downstairs, she thought she could hear the radio come on, the buzzing static interrupted by a fragmented voice. “Hello? Hello, is anyone there? Hello? Erika?”

Em ignored it. She turned to the pulsing light, letting it fill her vision, and slowly sunk down beside it, nestling up against its hot glass cage.

The warmth spread through her, numbing the edges of her pain, bringing her back to that dark, beginning world, the cords running through her as she listened to their voices, feeding her a soundtrack in the blackness, singing the safety of being unborn.

{a/n: Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please drop a heart below! Tips are hugely appreciated but of course not necessary. xx RAIST }

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