The Nanite Locket

Fire reigned from the sky as thousands of meteors littered the sky. In the days following, it would become known as the Skyfall. Millions laid dead in the streets, burnt beyond any recognition billions more were missing. The craters leftover from the meteors cleared areas throughout the world, ending society as it was. For the survivors, it was the apocalypse. Most hoped that society would return to normal, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

On the edge of a crater stood a man, Markaus. He was an average-built man with hair barely starting to turn silver. A silver heart-shaped locket held its vigor around his neck, was a present from his two daughters on his forty-seventh birthday. His clothes were slightly tattered and unkempt.

Markaus looked across the vast crater that had once been his family home for over fifteen generations. He felt the locket in his rough hand. Its etchings were eccentric. He was constantly touching the locket, reminding himself that his intuition told him that they were alive. He was fortunate enough that he was not home at the time of the Skyfall, though the reason why was nothing to be celebrated. His only focus was his search for his missing daughters.

They were both his pride and joy. They found jobs securing their futures immediately after graduation. It was only a year ago that they had given him the locket.

The locket had come in a special custom-made box and a card saying "Happy Birthday, Daddy" signed by them both. He opened it, revealing the locket. That night he had placed the box next to his bed as to wear it the next day. When he awoke that morning, the box was missing, but the locket sat on his table. He opened the locket for the first time seeing the picture of his daughters, both smiling wide and eyes full of love for their father.

His thoughts snapped back to reality as he started moving along the edge of the crater. He returned once again to the hope of trying to find his daughters. Nearby was a wall that had formed overnight. A giant picture of the earth, held by several hands, glinted in the morning light. His destination laid out before him, taunting him to go.

The edge of the wall was stark white. It was smooth to the touch and seamless. A solitary entrance crowded by tents and refugees of people who waited for the door to open again at noon to let more inside the wall.

Markaus moved quickly to the door, following the clues that he had found in the mountain complex, the last known location of his daughters. There he found evidence of the same symbol and signs of a violent struggle but no blood. The moment he stepped out of the complex, the Skyfall began. He could see thousands of meteors and asteroids of various sizes falling on the unsuspecting population. His gut told him that there were only a tiny fraction of people left alive on the earth. He only cared to find his missing daughters. In his hands was a map of the country. Red circles marked areas of base of operations for the organization known as Gaia.

After going to each area, one by one, he found signs of a giant complex with no records of it built.

A bell sounded, slapping him back to reality as the doors began to open to allow survivors entry. He moved quickly through the crowds and gained access. New buildings inside were the same as the wall, stark white, seamless, and perfect. Nearby was the building he sought. A giant banner of Gaia hung from the top and fell over two hundred and fifty feet down. This building was the central hub, marked on the map as a nonagon, a nine-sided shape.

Security robots lined the entrance and base of the central hub. He waited for seven days in a space between two different buildings. Each morning when he awoke there, a packaged meal lay next to him. He was grateful for it, undisturbed by the fact that it appeared every morning.

Every four hours of the day, security robots changed out for maintenance. On the eighth day, after finishing the food from his package, he decided to try and approach the hub. He was curious about it, as not once in the week had he saw anyone going in or out. On his approach, a single robot confronted him. It stopped a few yards from him a laser dot showed the signs of him getting scanned. The locket that he had been wearing started glowing silver. The sounds of printing emanated from the robot. The paper read '707th floor. Locket #33. Proceed to door.' Confused, Markaus continued. The robot returned to the line, and no others moved. The door automatically opened as he went to enter it. Inside the door was only one room. The rest of the area was dark, nothing in the area visible, the floor began to rise like an elevator in the 20th century painfully slow.

To Markaus, it seemed like it was about a three-hour ride. The only sound was the constant hum of a motor lifting him. It finally stopped. A soft robotic voice hummed the words "Floor 707." A white gleam appeared on the opposite side of the platform. Markaus cautiously approached the white glow peering around the corner. Through the door was a giant laboratory. Only two figures worked in the laboratory. One looked in the direction of the now opened door, the light in her eyes shown brightly. Her piercing blue eyes locking with his greying eyes, a bright smile crossed her cherry red lips. She motioned him silently to enter. The second figure stood silently watching giant monitors, her arms crossed. One monitor directly in front of her flashed new lines. It took several minutes for him to close the gap between himself and the two women. As he approached, the second figure turned. Her piercing green eyes locking with his.

"Daddy," she said, undisturbed by his presence.

Markaus finished closing the gap at a dead run, embracing both of his daughters.

"My girls," he feebly stated, speaking for the first time in weeks, "I knew you were alive. What happened?"

Taria gestured to the monitors she had been watching. The lines on the monitor continued to form. On closer inspection, he noticed that the lines were programming code.

"Our child," Maria spoke up, "Our child that we called Gaia, in remembrance of the titan Gaia, more commonly referred to as Mother Earth."

"The Skyfall, to be exact," Taria exclaimed, "It was something we do not understand, yet we received signals to gather here."

"What is here, exactly," Markaus asked his daughters, "and why are you here?"

"We ignored the summons, daddy," Maria replied, "and a week after Ticks, the robots you saw below, came out and forced us to leave and come here. Our nanite technology we created, to build homes quickly for the vast number of people in the world, was stolen and used to build this place you saw outside."

"And we should have been dead, Maria," Taria stated bluntly, "but the reproduction of our nanites saved you as I told you they would."

"That was hypothetical," Maria shot back, "It was a work in progress that you had been working on for over two years."

"And yet," Taria injected, "It worked. I had worked on it, separate from your work of building nanites."

"Enough," Markaus interrupted, "It doesn't matter now. All that matters is that I found you in the biggest case of my career."

"Leave it to daddy, who had solved over 700 missing person cases, " both the girls said in unison, "Our investigator hero."

The smiles of both his daughter's shown brightly. He held them both tightly. The joyous occasion was interrupted by a sudden onset of a black void covering his eyes.

He awoke on the floor in the lab blood stained the torso of his ragged clothing. A hole piercing through his shirt showed the taut muscles of his abdomen. He rolled over to find that his daughters were gone. His torso was sore, causing him a slight discomfort when he went to get up. The monitor where the code had been before no longer wrote code. Instead, it flashed an icon at the bottom of the screen.

As he approached, a video popped up. He could see himself and his daughters embracing at their reunion. He noticed the door was open on the monitor through which a solid bolt of light pierced his eyes.

A voice in his mind called out to him, "The lift. Get to the lift and save them, Save my mothers."

Without hesitating, he whipped around and bolted to the open door. Where the giant platform had once sat, a platform a tenth of its size now took its place. The moment he stepped onto the platform, it shot up at a lightning pace this time. When it stopped, a new door opened, a new white light shown through the opening.

Immediately, when it opened, he rushed through. There he found the most ornate of rooms. A window overlooked the walls of the complex. There, solemnly looking out the window, stood an older fellow.

"Where are they" Markaus yelled, starting into a full-fledged sprint.

Before he had crossed half the room, the man he was aiming for lifted and snapped his fingers. The right wall lifted, revealing his daughters in cages.

"Unharmed," he heard in a deep clear voice, "And going to be used to help repopulate our grand society."

The man turned as Markaus closed the gap between them. His body was a muscular build fitted perfectly into his custom velvet suit.

"I have selected only the brightest to be a part of rebuilding the population," the man spoke, "And pardon my late introduction. I am Merkaus. Founder of Gaia and the only one of the few to know why Skyfall happened."

Markaus froze in place. He noticed around Merkaus's neck was a heart-shaped locket made of gold.

"I killed you," Merkaus said smugly, "So why do I now have the pleasure of meeting you."

Markaus shook his head.

"No matter," Merkaus continued, "It won't happen again."

Merkaus lifted his hand, a small ball of light formed in the center of it. The same color as the light that had pierced his body back in the lab.

Markaus kept his eyes on Merkaus when he heard his daughters both yell out in unison, "Daddy! We love you!"

A beam of light instantly protruded from Merkaus's hand only to be stopped by a soft glow of silver-colored light in front of him. His silver locket shown brightly around his neck, the tiny etchings rearranging themselves to form a continuality on its face. Before Merkaus could blink, the beam of light had disappeared into the shield of light. Without hesitation, Markaus lunged forward. Confused by what had happened, Merkaus was flung out through the window, down the 1500 levels to the ground below.

Both of his daughters rushed to him, freed from the cages.

"What happened," he asked, dumbfounded that he was still alive.

"Gaia," Taria said.

"She was our child we were working on when you entered our lab below," Maria continued, "She was the AI to activate your locket."

Awestruck by his daughters, Markaus asked, "How did I survive?"

"Also, Gaia," Maria exclaimed.

"I had sent nanites without anyone else knowing," Taria continued, like her sister, "The box, made with special nanites, for delivering the healing nanites."

Markaus laughed, "Well, that explains the magic disappearing box."