Atlantis Haven

“I’m coming for you, my beautiful angel. Momma’s coming for you,” Savannah Macias quietly said with determination. Her government badge swung on a chain over the rear-view mirror as she sped down Virginia Beach Expressway on the last day of civilization. Smoke billowed from the nearby city and the overcast sky only added to the depressing gloom of the world.

“If things weren’t bad enough on Doomsday, mere months after the world-ending asteroid was spotted hurtling towards Earth, millions of reports around the globe have come in about children being kidnapped. The kidnappings appear to be random, with all occurring in the middle of the night in North and South America. Not one bit of video footage has been recovered of this phenomenon. With the worldwide rioting continuing on this unfathomable day, martial law has been abandoned…”

Savannah turned off the Holo-News report projected on her dashboard. Savannah didn’t care about any of it. She couldn’t. She had woken at dawn to find her beautiful eight-year-old daughter, Aria, was taken in the middle of the night. Nothing else mattered.

The media had always disgusted her, but it was amplified in recent months as they gleefully covered the end of the world. Although, if it weren’t for the ever present and depressing local news station, she might not have checked on Savannah as early as she did. A quick scramble to Aria’s room had confirmed her fears and it took all of ten minutes to dress, arm herself, and hop in her hovertruck to begin the chase.

Her truck whipped up debris as she spared a brief glance at her Holo-Map, which projected from her dashboard. A red blip showed that Aria was just a few miles ahead near the coast. The salty smell of the ocean wafted in her car and the cries of seagulls pierced the air. A sheen of sweat coated her arms and forehead thanks to the cursed air conditioner breaking down the week before. She reached over to tap the console projection of her device and played the video of last night for what seemed like the hundredth time. Two kidnappers clothed in black jumpsuits with a silver Ø on their right arm had somehow bypassed her locks and alarms. All of the cameras she had registered through the state had been corrupted with faulty footage. Fortunately, her own private cameras had functioned perfectly, illegal though they were. They had made their way to Aria’s bedroom and waved their wrist device over her head. Savannah assumed this somehow kept her beautiful daughter asleep as they wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out the front door. It baffled Savannah at the ease in which they did so, as if the whole world stopped just for those few minutes.

Not every child had been taken, and the kidnappings seemed random, but every report seemed to be identical. That led her speeding toward Virginia Beach as she tracked her daughter’s heart-shaped locket. Thankfully, Aria never took it off, even to sleep.

A loud crunch jolted her back to her present situation. Savannah shot a look at the rear-view mirror and saw a black SUV was grinding on her bumper. The soft hum of the magnetic connection of her truck to the road became strained as she fought the joystick to stay in her lane. Thankfully, few cars were on the highway this early in the morning. With all society crumbling in a rapid decay, there wasn’t much reason to go anywhere. There was no escape from the end of the world. As a result, Savannah hadn’t felt this alive in months. She finally had a purpose again. It was to no longer await death, but save her daughter’s life.

She fought off the SUV in pursuit, keeping them from pulling alongside her. The red blip was located in a shipping yard a half mile ahead of her. The blue ocean slowly came into view.

“I’m coming baby girl. I’m coming,” Savannah whispered fiercely to herself.

She punched in a command onto her projected Holo-Panel and accelerated. A few magnetic disrupted pucks shot out of her bumper and immediately attached to the bottom of the SUV as it sped over them. With a tap of the panel, the pucks flipped the polarity of the SUV’s magnetic system which sent it crashing hard into the pavement. The sound ripped through the air as she sped away, a shower of sparks left behind as her pursuers skidded to a halt.

Savannah navigated the car around a curve as she shot for the off ramp to head to the docks. She wasn’t sure what she would do to reach her daughter. She only knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do.

As she slowed down the ramp, an object crashed through her window which sent tiny pieces of glass showering on her. A brick sat in the passenger seat and she looked up to find a crowd of people in hazmat suits running towards her. Rioters. She pushed her joystick forward and plowed through them. They shouted obscenities as they bounced off her like bowling pins.

“Arrgh! Aria!” Savannah shouted as she burst through the gate of the private shipping dock. Hundreds of shipping containers populated the area, but no people. The red blip showed Aria was in the mix of them. She yanked the joystick back to come to an abrupt halt just short of the magnetic boundary and pushed herself out of the car.

“Holo-Map on,” she spoke to her wrist device. A small map hovered above her wrist of the shipping yard, but it didn’t have the containers. She shot down one of the corridors of containers and made numerous turns toward the red blip on her map. Her heart pounded in her head. It was a maze and she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to leave.

As long as I find her, she thought. The forsaken asteroid could slam into this coast for all I care. I just want her.

Savannah rounded the corner and stopped suddenly. All of the containers to this point had been of many different colors. Ahead of her were hundreds of black containers with a silver Ø painted on their sides. Some were double and triple stacked and they were placed at all angles. The red blip was located somewhere in the middle of them. Her heart sank and she could feel heat rise in her neck.

“No, no! Aria! Aria!” she shouted with all of the strength in her lungs.

Savannah darted forward and pulled open a shipping container. It was empty except for a couple of objects further in, too dark to distinguish. She ran as best she could toward the blip, but felt hope fleeing from her like air out of a punctured tire. It was too quiet for children to be her. As she rounded another corner, someone grabbed her head and whipped her into one of the shipping containers. She instinctively rolled to the side, away from the attacker as a boot crashed into the spot she was just at. As she came up, she saw it was one of the men in a black suit like she saw in the video, silver Ø on the side.

“Where is she? Where is my baby?”

“Gone.” The man said simply in a synthesized voice.

The man charged her and swung for her head. Her government training kicked in as she ducked under and kicked him in the chest when he turned around. She pulled out her gun and quickly shot him in each leg. He dropped to the floor without crying out. He crawled towards her, but she leaped over him and continued her search.

The red blip on her map showed Aria should have been right up ahead. It appeared to be coming from the shipping container directly in front of her. She launched herself into the door and yanked it open. She cried out as she saw it was empty. The Holo-Map showed she was on the red blip.

“No! No, no, no, no, no! Aria!” Savannah shouted in disbelief. She kicked the side of the container multiple times, the loud banging reverberated in the air. Savannah turned around and slumped down the side of the wall. She openly wept as memories of her daughter playing with her flooded her mind. Birthdays passed, seashell hunts on the beach, and other bittersweet memories. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but her shirt was soaked with her tears and she was numb from the waist down.

It wasn’t until a red light sailed through the air and clanged against the floor in front of her that she snapped out of her daze. Panic briefly gripped her as she assumed it was a bomb but the sizzling from the fuse had the familiarity of a flare. She looked toward the door to see someone laying face down on the ground.

Savannah rose too quickly and felt lightheaded as she stumbled to them. It was the man she shot and he didn’t appear alive. A glance outside revealed he must have crawled after her as he left a trail of blood around the containers. The black color of the blood was odd but she didn’t care anymore.

“Why did he throw a flare in here?” she wondered out loud.

As she stumbled back in the container, she noticed something shining in the middle of the container. A few quick steps was all it took for grief to overwhelm her as Savannah realized what it was. She fell on her knees and scooped up Aria’s heart-shaped locket. It was gold with a ruby in the middle. She opened in as tears flooded down her face. A picture of her hugging Aria’s beautiful smiling face greeted her and she collapsed.

Her heart skipped a beat as the metal door slammed behind her. The light from the flare started to wane. A warped sound started echoing all around her and it progressively grew louder. Savannah’s head throbbed in pain and tears formed in her eyes as the horrible sound intensified.

This must be the end. I failed her, Savannah thought as the sound overwhelmed her senses. She felt herself losing consciousness as the flare finally burned out.

Savannah awoke in a pitch dark room with a massive headache. Her mouth was dry and her tongue felt swollen as she tried to get to her feet. After a moment, she remembered she was in a shipping container. As she crawled to one end, the shipping container door lurched open with a brilliant white light pouring in. She cried out and closed her eyes immediately.

“Hello, Savannah,” a soft, soothing voice came from the opening.

“Who are you? Am I dead?” she demanded.

“You couldn’t be more alive.”

“I thought the asteroid hit… I wanted to die… without Aria,” she whispered, tears formed as she mentioned her daughter’s name.

“Oh, it did hit. Everyone is likely dead.”

“Then where am I?”

“You are in a special compound on the ocean floor.”

Savannah squinted her eyes open and saw a silver skinned human shaped android looking down on her with sapphire blue eyes.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

It bent down and looked her in the eyes.

“You don’t have to. Your love for your daughter and diligence in seeking her out has led you here. Welcome to Atlantis Haven, Savannah Macias. You will help us raise the only generation of the human race.”

“The children. You took them all. Where is Aria?”

“We saved all that we could.” The android looked behind him. “Aria, come see your mother.”

Savannah burst into tears as her beautiful daughter, no worse for wear, came around the corner and leapt into her arms.