Salvation

I glanced at Connor crouched next to me. He nodded, a half-smile on his face. I glanced at the SEC Bot beyond the rubble in front of us. Its lifeless eyes continuously scanned the surroundings as it stood motionless. I took a deep breath, nodded back at Connor, and the two of us bolted from the safety of our hiding spot, sprinting out away from each other, our paths forming a V from where we’d been safely nestled.

The gunfire from the SEC Bot was instantaneous. Bullets sprayed across my path causing me to dive behind some overturned furniture. The bullets shredded the furniture before stopping abruptly and resuming off in another direction. My temporary reprieve meant Connor was the new target. No time to assess the situation. The plan was to keep moving until Jones took out the SEC Bot or I was dead.

My body sprang forward before my mind had time to object. My eyes scanned frantically for cover as I ran. The lack of gunfire following me made me decide to chance a look towards where I assumed the SEC Bot would be. My head turned just in time to see the SEC Bot about to barrel into me. Instinctively I dove forward, causing the brunt of the charge to hit me in my legs. A sickening crunching sound filled my ears as the impact of steel against bone sent me spinning sideways into a wall.

The SEC Bot turned towards me. It had run out of bullets, which was the reason for the physical attack and my foolish flicker of hope that the lack of gunfire meant we’d won. Before I had time to contemplate my demise the SEC Bot lite up in a shower of sparks and fell over inches from where I lay. Jones stood behind it, gun still raised.

“Connor?” I asked. Jones shook his head, nodding towards Connor’s bullet riddled corpse laying fifteen feet from where we’d started our suicide runs. I sat up and let out a gasp. Pain racked my body nearly causing me to blackout. My leg was barely attached below the knee.

“Shattered,” Jones commented. He knelt next to me and pulled out a med-brace from his pack. I heard myself cry out as the needles pierced my flesh while it wrapped itself around what was left of my leg. The rush of pain killers quickly replaced the pain and I stood up feeling euphoric amongst the crumbling ruins of this once great estate and Connor’s still warm corpse. My body would pay a price later, but the brace would keep me feeling sunny for the next twenty-four hours.

“It better be here,” Jones griped.

“It is,” I said more to myself than to him. I stood up testing my leg and looked around the ruins. Decades ago, this was one of the grandest estates in the land. At least that’s what the Ancient One told us. Now it was a decaying pile of trash, still being guarded by a SEC Bot that had been keeping the estate safe since before the great fall. It may have been the drugs, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at the irony of the deadly machine guarding worthless rubble.

Jones was already searching the area while I had been lost in thought. I picked my way around the room in the opposite direction. Furniture lay about in various stages of decay, along with holes in the floor that dropped into some sort of sub-level. I cautiously made my way up stairs that barely held my weight onto a vast second story. The second story was in worse condition than the first. If sober, I might question the wisdom of what I was doing, but modern chemistry kept me feeling like nothing could go wrong.

As I entered a small room at the end of the hall my eyes were drawn to a large hole in the wall. Underneath it on the floor was a pile rubble with a large metal box sticking out amongst it. The Ancient One’s advisors had told us the golden heart would be kept safe in a metal box, if it still existed at all. I knelt next to the debris, my leg feeling as nimble as in my youth, and lifted the metal box up to examine. The front of it immediately fell off its rusted hinges and the contents of the box spilled onto the floor.

“Jones!” I called out. Amongst the pile of decaying paper and trinkets was a small golden heart covered in ornate carvings. It was tarnished and caked in dust, but beautiful. Whatever meaning the symbols etched into the heart once conveyed had been forgotten long ago. It was common knowledge the Ancient One had been searching for the heart long before I was born. No one knew exactly what it was, but most thought it was the power source for a great machine that could cleanse the Rot that infected the waters, plants, animals, and more and more often even the people. Others believed it powered a great craft that could transport the entire settlement across the hot lands to the safety of the mountain citadels. Although the citadels themselves were yet another rumor. But if the heart was real, maybe the citadels and their advanced technologies were real as well.

I had feared the golden heart was just another story people told to distract themselves from the misery of their lives. Now it was real and with it my salvation. No more living on the outskirts of the settlement near the Rot that crept closer every day. No more starving for me or my daughter. No more living with the constant fear of being attacked for food, supplies, or my body. My daughter and I would be safe, taken in by the Ancient One as a reward for finding the heart and allowed to live in the safety of his castle. If the golden heart also saved the settlement by powering some unknown machine, that was just a lucky byproduct as far as I was concerned.

I turned around to go look for Jones. The pistol in his hand twitched slightly as he pointed it directly at my chest from the doorway. “You don’t need to do this Jones,” I heard my voice say with a calmness that was most certainly drug induced.

“Sorry Molly. I need this. My family needs this.” He paused as if chewing on some thought and added “It’s not personal.” I stared into his eyes waiting for the pistol to fire. Instead, the only noise that came was the “click” of his gun jamming. Without hesitation I brought up my rifle and fired in one motion. Jones fell back out of the doorway, his chest making a gurgling sound as his body choked on its own blood.

“Nothing personal Jonesy,” I whispered. I stayed just long enough to gather supplies I might need from Jones and Connor’s packs and headed home. I travelled as fast as my body would allow, stopping only briefly to eat. When my first med brace wore off, I quickly replaced it with the remaining one from Connor’s pack. It was reckless to use two med-braces in a row. The drugs were likely to stop your heart or cause a brain bleed, but I was still two days from the settlement. I wouldn’t be moving very fast on my injured leg once the second med-brace wore off. I needed to cover as much ground as possible while I was still feeling sunny.

The pain in my knee was crippling once the second brace died. Yes, my bones had been repaired, but you weren’t supposed to use repaired body parts for at least a week after a med-brace for a reason. I didn’t have that luxury. It took me three days to travel the last ten miles. My knee was dislocated, I was out of water, and I had a fever from some unknown infection. If it was only my life at stake, I might have given up. Let myself drop and be done with this miserable existence. But my daughter needed me. I kept moving step after step for her. To distract myself from the pain I pictured myself walking up to the Ancient One’s castle and announcing that I’d found the heart. Me, a nobody from the gutter. I had succeeded where countless others had failed. I played the scene out over and over. The look on the guards faces. The clean air in the castle away from the sewers and Rot of my home. The higher my fever climbed, the more vivid the delusions became. I had been envisioning the scene for so long that when I finally arrived at the great walls of the castle, I wasn’t sure if it was real, or another fever generated vision.

The guards initially tried to dismiss me as a beggar. One of them even considered executing me until I pulled the golden heart from my pack and demanded an audience with the Ancient One. Their jaws hung open in disbelief before collecting themselves and quickly escorting me into the castle and away from public view.

They dropped me on my knees in what I assume was the main room of the castle. It was massive with a large chair carved out of stone against the back wall. A man at least three times my age walked meekly towards me. He stopped inches in front of me and stared. I’d never considered the proper etiquette for greeting this great man, but I lacked the strength to do anything more than sit there on my knees where I’d been dropped.

I placed the golden heart in my palm and held it up for the Ancient One to see. His liver-spotted hands reached out and snatched the heart from my hand. I watched him as a child-like smile crossed his face. His boney fingers traced the outline of it over and over until he found a seam that had been concealed by dirt. Then, to my horror, he split the heart open.

“My beautiful angel,” he cooed. “How I’ve missed you.” As he held the heart up before him, I could see the faded image of a child inside it.

“I thought the heart was meant to save us,” I heard my voice cry out before I could stop it.

“Who told you such a lie?”

“Everyone talks of it since before I was born. The people claim you search for it to save us!” I protested.

“Delusions from simple minds my lord,” came a new voice from the shadows. A young man dressed in lavish black robes came up behind the Ancient One. “These peasants are prone to fantasy. Pay her no mind.” Something evil flickered behind his eyes as he looked at me before motioning to the guards.

“My daughter!” I screamed out. “You promised sanctuary to anyone who found the heart! I claim our reward of sanctuary here in the castle.”

“His grace offered no such reward,” the man in black snapped.

“What does she speak of?” the Ancient One asked. He appeared confused and frailer than when I had first entered the room.

“Nothing my lord,” then turning to me. “She. Knows. Nothing.” He turned back to the Ancient One and spoke soothingly to him. “You look tired my lord. Why not retire to your chamber?”

As I was hauled out of the room, I heard the old man reply contentedly “Did you see that I found my locket? My daughter was so beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“This isn’t over! Do you hear me? This isn’t over!” My screams echoing back through the empty corridors were the only reply as the guards dragged me deeper into the bowels of the castle and away from any hope of salvation for myself or my daughter.