Into The Shine

You open your eyes. Yellow light bites into your retina, snapping your eyes shut.

You’re floating in the dark again. The soft voice of your daughter calls out to you.

“Father, come quickly. I want to show you something!”

Carefully this time, you open your eyes slowly, giving them time to adjust.

The space around you shimmers in the morning light.

Rubbing your eyes gently, you sit up in your bed. The intensity of the light slowly diminishes. Turning your right hand over slowly, you make a mental note of the apparent lightness of your body this morning. You prepare for the crisp coolness of the hardwood floors beneath your feet, but instead, find a surprising warmth. You move your toes up and down as you stretch out your arms. Bones creak and pop as you stretch.

Your daughter's voice is stronger this time as she cries out to you from the next room. “Are you coming, or not?!”

You shuffle into the hall, sluggish. You suddenly become aware of the sense of something pressing against the inside crevice of your elbow. The sensation ceases as you make your way through the doorway into your daughter's room.

The bright pink paint on the walls screams into your skull giving you a slight headache. You approach your daughter as she sits at a small purple desk. Her back is to you. Her brown hair is bathed in light from the window, making it appear blonde. Her hands are busy as she fiddles with something in front of her. You touch her shoulder. She turns to you.

Your daughter's face is featureless, blurry, and it startles you. You curse and shake your head, closing your eyes. When you open your eyes, your daughter's face has reappeared.

“You said a naughty word.” You kiss your daughter on her forehead and apologise. She holds something out to you and you take it into your hands. It’s a gold heart shaped locket. You pull open the locket and there is a picture of your daughter inside.

“It’s not a great picture, but it’s the only one I could find. Happy Birthday.” You fasten the locket around your neck and kneel down. You squeeze your daughter softly and kiss the back of her head.

“The light burns.” You gently push your daughter back, revealing her face, her skin starts to sag and liquify. Her melting face becomes more gruesome, and you can make out her skeleton beneath the gooey mess that was her face. Your screams are swallowed by a thunderous explosion that rattles the entire room. Glass figurines crash to the floor and shatter as a blinding light fills the sky eventually washing away everything in the bedroom.

--

A consistent beeping sound gradually built to a piercing crescendo. Ben opened his eyes but saw only darkness. He noticed a tiny dot of light to the right and left of his peripheral vision. Reaching for his face, Ben found a boxy device strapped to his head over his eyes. He pulled it off. Light filled his vision. Ben rubbed his eyes and waited for his eyes to adjust to the flood of fluorescent light.

The beeping sound throttled Ben’s brain as he scanned the room. The beeping was coming from a monitor that was attached to an IV bag, which was in turn attached to a vein in his arm. Ben clicked the power button on the monitor to turn it off and pulled the needle from his arm. Holding some gauze he grabbed from a nearby counter pressed against his arm, Ben continued to scan the room.

The room’s sterile white decor was desecrated by splatters of gore and blood. There were two bodies lying on opposite sides of the room smattered with blood. Ben felt a throbbing pain near his temple. Reaching up, he put some pressure on it with the gauze he had used for his arm. When he withdrew the gauze it was soaked in blood. He grabbed some more gauze from the counter and applied some pressure to his temple. Ben grabbed a clipboard near the cozy looking recliner chair where he had been seated, as he attempted to stop the bleeding.

NAME: Benjamin James Lintner

AGE: 38

BIRTHDATE: 04/12/2028

ID NUMBER: M93877W

SIMULATION INTRODUCTION DATE: 08/02/2066

Subject entered Simulation 629A on 08/02/2066.

Partial mind wipe implemented after simulation egress reached 92%.

Following PMW, simulation egress is now 10%.

Subject is stable and egress is minimal and manageable.

Ben placed the clipboard down on the counter. The rest of the paperwork seemed mostly nonsense to him. Ben’s head was throbbing. He grabbed the roll of gauze and firmly wrapped his head to stop the bleeding.

The room was quiet, but Ben’s mind was a frenzy of sound. Memories were hazy, like trying to look through a smudged window. His daughter was with him when they made their way south to the address he picked up on his shortwave radio. He closed his eyes focusing on her face, but the details were fuzzy. Ben reached for his neck but found that there was no locket. Had there ever been a locket? Did he really even have a daughter?

Yes. Ben was sure she was real. He couldn’t picture her face, but he could still feel her tiny warm hand in his. She was here somewhere.

Making his way into the hall, Ben found more carnage strewn across the expansive walkway. The hall stretched on for what looked like many nondescript miles to his left and his right. Feeling a slight pull to his right, which could have been something subconscious or something imbued by his hazy mind. Ben took no time to dissect his instincts, as he made his way to the right.

The fluorescents hummed and flickered. Ben walked.

--

The Shine Purifies - The words were written in crimson on the metal wall in a messy scrawl.

Ben wondered not what the words meant, but how someone in his place might try to understand them. A useless endeavor. A distraction from his mission. Ben walked on.

The buzzing of the fluorescents vibrated Ben’s skull like a chainsaw cutting through metal.

Ben opened a random door. Blood and bodies. Ben called out down the hall.

“Hello?” Ben’s voice dissipated slowly, replaced by the screaming of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the overhead lights.

Feeling helpless, Ben fought the urge to slump to the ground and give up.

“Please...over here.” The voice was weak but close by. Ben moved swiftly towards the sound.

A man was covered in blood and slumped against the back of a metal desk. He was sitting up and alert. Ben knelt down. The injured man was pale.

“I need a doctor.” The man rasped weakly.

“That seems unlikely.” Ben checked the man for injuries, but there was too much blood. This was beyond any remedial first aid. “I’m sorry.”

The man tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Ben slapped the man gently on the face.

“Hey, stay with me. I need to find my daughter.” Ben reached over to another body and took off the dead man’s jacket. “Here, try to apply some pressure to…” Ben looked at the man’s shredded bloody mess of a chest, “Well just press it anywhere that hurts. Where’s my daughter?”

The man laid the jacket on his chest but made no attempt to apply pressure. “They took all the children...killed the rest.”

“Who’s they?” Ben put a little pressure on the jacket.

The man coughed up some blood into his hand. “The...Shined.”

“The shined, what?” Ben gently smacked the man gently across the cheek with one hand while keeping pressure on the jacket with the other.

“The Shined...took the kids.” The man wiped some blood from his mouth.

“What is “The Shined”?” Ben wanted to shake the man to sanity but fought the urge.

“The ones that stayed above.” The man’s eyes were suddenly full of life as they widened into a look of extreme dread. Ben could feel the presence of someone at his back, and as he turned something slammed into the side of his body and the world went inverted.

--

Through broken eyes. It’s done. Outstretched bloody hands. A fight. Blood will dry. Strength came from a place inside, far off, shuttered by a haze. Unseen. It could only be felt. Both sides fought hard. Victory is just a door prize.

--

A large man is splayed out on the ground, unconscious.

The injured man had called these things: “The Shined”. Ben did not care for that name.

Amongst the blood, the face and body are covered with oozing, festering sores. Skin grey. Back hunched. Frail, but also thick and sinewy with muscles.

Ben wiped off his bloody hands and wrapped a few new wounds with gauze. He managed to render the giant man unconscious, somehow. Finding some heavy straps, Ben secured the mutated monstrosity’s arms and legs. Now he waited for it to regain consciousness.

While he waited, Ben managed to scrounge up some supplies. He filled a backpack with some MRE’s, water bottles, and first aid supplies. On one of the bodies, he found a small pistol and tucked it into the back of his pants.

Shortly before the injured man Ben had stumbled across succumbed to his wounds, he directed him to a bank of lockers that held personal effects. The man also gave him a code to get outside, even though he strongly advised against it. Ben had searched hard and fast. By the time he pulled the gold heart shaped locket from a box, the injured man was dead. Ben placed the necklace around his neck. He popped open the locket and studied his daughter's face, filling in the holes in his memories.

“Once the Shine has purified you, you will be a worthy comrade.” The mutated man’s mouth cracked into a bloody smile.

Ben knelt in front of the mutant. “Where did they take the children?”

“The children will be purified and introduced to the Redeemer.”

“Where?” Ben smashed the mutant's nose with a swift punch.

The monstrosity spat blood onto the cold steel floor. “The Shine is endless. It is everywhere.”

Ben sighed and stood up.

--

The flesh is sick. Rotted. Ben saws. The smell is like meat marinated in sour milk left out in the sun. Ben is determined and strong. The smell of searing cauterizing flesh makes Ben retch, but he is never deterred.

Ben steps back to admire his handy work. The mutant is now nothing but a head and a torso. A slab of rotting meat to guide Ben in the infected world above. Ben straps the backpack of supplies in front of his chest and secures the straps to the mutated torso guide onto his back.

“I am envious of your impending purification. We will be one. I will guide you to your rebirth.” Ben can almost feel the mutants grinning from behind him, and it makes him shudder.

A seemingly endless winding staircase leads upwards. Ben and the torso begin to ascend.

At the top Ben inputs the code that the injured man gave him. The gigantic metal doors slowly slide open. Ben slipped on a pair of sunglasses he found amongst the personal effects. Even with the sunglasses, the sunlight outside is nearly blinding. Ben takes one last quick look at the picture in his locket.

“I’ll find you. Everything will be fine.” The uncertainty of his words sting nearly as much as the blistering sunlight.

“The shine will make everything fine.” Ben elbowed the torso’s head.

Ben could see his daughter’s face now, and he could hear her voice. He stepped out into The Shine and started walking.