Just did a quick update of all the Infinity & Beyond posts and labeled them all with the characters whose voice they’re in.
^That sentence would be a wonderful example of not understand sentences.
That is all.
Six.
Joseph Mackay
I was ready to leave this facility behind me; to put all of this behind me. I kept a tight grip on the girl who was struggling to keep up, pulling her along with more force than was necessary. I checked my watch; there was very little time left.
The soldier who had been helping was right where he said he’d be, waiting in an old jeep. It was rusted and sounded rough but it ran, which was better than most cars in this place. I opened the door and pushed the girl into the jeep before getting in myself. It started moving – kicking up dirt and rocks – before I even got the door closed.
“Less than a minute,” I said over the choked hum of the engine. The soldier didn’t say a word.
As we neared the gated checkpoint, the jeep sped up, the momentum pushing me back against my seat. I braced myself against the door and dash for the impact, which came quickly; there was a clash of metal on metal and the gate crashed to the ground. The men left their posts at either side of the checkpoint, guns drawn and yelling obscenities.
They didn’t have time to shoot a single bullet; a blinding light filled the cracked side view mirror and crooked rearview. I looked back to check on the girl; she had her back to his, kneeling on the seat to look out the back window. The bright flash was coming up behind us quickly, but it preceding it was a shockwave strong enough to knock the men standing by the broken gate to the ground. Even if it didn’t kill them, the blast would have injured them, and no one would be coming to look for survivors.
The jeep rocked as the shockwave came for us next but it was weak enough by that point to keep the tires firmly on the ground. I couldn’t help but get a little excited; it was like a scene out of an old movie. For a second, it didn’t seem real. But as I turned to look at Major Reo, I could see he didn’t feel the same way. Then again, he’d never seen the movies. Even if he had seen them; the look on his face was enough to remind me that a lot of people just died; a lot of people that we both knew very well.
I turned back to the girl cowering in the back seat. She was facing the front again, her legs curled up under her. I hadn’t realized until just then that she was just wearing thin hospital garb. “Are you cold?” I asked, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears that she was trying not to let fall. “Hey, it’s okay,” I lowered my voice to almost a whisper and reached back, resting a hand on hers. “It’s gonna be okay. You’re safe with us.”
And she was. For the first time since I’d met her, she was safe.
Five.
Luca Reo
Getting out of bed every morning was becoming a chore. My body didn’t want to move. As I lay staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself of a reason to go, nothing was working. The glowing red numbers on my old alarm clock told me I was going to be late, but that wasn’t enough, either. Procedure and rules used to keep me going, but now, I didn’t know what was right anymore.
Today I had to make a decision. It was a decision I’d been thinking about all night, and I knew the dark circles and bags under my eyes would show that. It was the decision that was going to change the course of my life. It was a decision that just might give me a reason to stop sleeping with a gun on my bedside table; loaded with the safety off for when the nightmares became too much.
I pulled myself up, every muscle in my body aching. Before even getting dressed, I dropped to the floor and started the routine that I picked up back in my training days. Pushups and sit ups first, then to the bar being held in place by my doorframe for pull ups. It was simple, easy but it worked to get the blood flowing and my mind working.
Mindlessly I went about showering and getting dressed in the same puke green armed forces uniform I’d worn for too long. Every crease pressed and every wrinkle ironed out. I glanced at myself in the mirror as I was leaving and for a moment, I almost recognized myself. The flash disappeared just as quickly and the same stranger was staring back at me; older than he should be, dark circles and wrinkles, with those blue eyes that always made me angry.
I shook the thoughts out of my head and tried to focus on the mission. It was important. It would save lives. But it wasn’t enough to keep my attention.
Reaching for the door reminded me that I forgot my sling with a sharp pain straight up from my elbow to shoulder. I pulled my arm back and winced. “Not the best start to this,” I muttered as I grabbed the sling off the back of a dirty couch and pulled it around my neck, setting my arm gingerly inside it.
The pain was still there even with the sling but by the time I got to the facility, it was forgotten.
“Good morning, Major Reo,” said the secretary sitting behind the chunk of wood that passed as a desk. She smiled – she was always smiling. I nodded briskly and smiled back, but didn’t say a word. This was part of the routine.
I stepped into the elevator and swiped my key card awkwardly with my left hand. All I could hope for as I pressed the buttons to get down the last floor was that my security clearance hadn’t been revoked yet; and it hadn’t. The elevator chimed and started counting down, then up through the basement floors.
Music played through a speaker in the corner, a corny sounding melody. I stared down at the ground to avoid eye contact with myself in the mirrored door.
Another chime and the doors opened. The facility was busy as usual; people hustling through the halls, in and out of doors. Some were doctors or nurses – they ran around with clipboards in scrubs and white coats. Others were army personnel, wearing the same puke green as I was.
I moved through the halls just like everyone else; like I was on a mission and the world depended on it. In a way, that’s what we were doing here; trying to save the world that we knew. That’s what we signed up for. But all these people… I couldn’t save all of them. I wanted to; I had tried to find a way, but it would take too much time and there was too much risk. There was also no telling who the enemy was. Maybe they all were.
There was one person I could trust, though, and he was leaning against a wall, reading a clipboard w hen I spotted him. “Joseph,” I grunted.
He looked up, those blue eyes that I had been staring at in the mirror now staring at me again. “Major. Everything is prepared. Things should go as expected; hopefully a bit smoother than expected,” he said.
I nodded and glanced at the closed door he leaned beside, “Is she aware?”
“Yes,” he replied quickly, then glanced back down at the clipboard in his hand. “We’ve been doing a lot of physical therapy. She should hold up well during transport.”
“Good. I’ve talked to the cont-“
An alarm cut me off. The electrical buzz, fading in and out, warning of imminent lockdown. They know.
“Shit,” Joseph muttered, the words too quiet to hear but it wasn’t hard to read his lips.
“We need to go. Now,” I said over the sound. It was too late to wait. This wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. “Forget everything else, just get Infinity and get out,” I yelled.
Joseph nodded stiffly and disappeared into the door we had been hovering beside. I turned and headed to the elevator, pulling a cell phone and hitting the first speed dial button. It rang once before someone answered; “Change of plans. Purge has started. We’re heading out now,” I was still yelling to hear myself over the alarm.
“Understood,” the man on the other end said simply and hung up. I did the same just as the elevator doors began to close.
Fragment (2)
Staring at the stars was strange. I knew what they were; burning masses of gasses and debris. But I didn’t know how I knew that. Lying on the grass felt familiar; the tickle of the blades against my bare feet, the dew starting to form around me. But I had no idea when I had done this before.
“What are you doing?” Luca loomed over me, staring down with concern.
I smiled up at him; “Looking at the stars,” I said.
The concern still pulled his lips tight and slit his eyes. “Why?” he asked, his voice disbelieving.
Maybe it was strange to him that a monster would enjoy such an innocent pastime. “I don’t know,” I lied.
Then suddenly he was laying beside me, his back against the ground, one hand cradling his head with the other lying on his stomach, his eyes to the stars. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Looking at the stars,” he replied.
“Why?” I asked, mocking.
He looked at me and smiled. “I don’t know.”
Subdomains Working
This is completely unrelated to writing in any way but thought I’d post it here for anyone wondering /coughPhoenix
My brother so kindly fixed the subdomains that have not been working for the past few months! It was an error on my part. I had the settings wrong. So blame me.
That’s all!
Angry
Anger seethes through her skin, tensing every muscle until she’s frozen in place. Her teeth grind against each other; her eyes slit and her brow furrows. She wants to hide. Showing emotion is difficult enough, but this level of unbridled anger is new for her. Deep breaths do nothing to relax her mind and body; they only feed the rage.
“Why?” she asks simply through gritted teeth and lips pulled back into a thin line. The word is heavy on her ears, and she wants nothing more than to hear the answer, but she fears it just as much.
He slouches, cowers and steps back. Her hands – already balled into tight fists – contract, nails digging into her palms. For a while, a thick silence spreads between them, pushing them apart. He hides his hands in his pockets, his eyes steady on the ground, and his shoulders roll in a shrug.
“Look at me,” she demands. Her eyes spark with welled up tears, but she blinks them back. She will not be weak.
He doesn’t listen. His body doesn’t move and he doesn’t say a word.
“Answer me,” her voice drops to a whisper. A scream is stuck in her throat, but she won’t let herself lose control like that.
He glances at her face for merely a second before staring back down at the ground. “I don’t know,” he says. His words are muttered, his voice defeated.
Another deep breath, another surge of rage through her body. Her fists clench, her nails digging in and drawing blood. “Goodbye,” she says.
Four.
(Note: I switched from third to first person at this point. I’m aware of this and it is not an error.)
Infinity
The door burst open, cracking against the door stop on the wall behind it. I startled out of a deep sleep to the unnatural fluorescent lights burning my eyes. Joseph rushed to the side of my bed and began to unhook the IVs trailing into my arms.
“What’s going on?” I asked. The faint sound of an alarm echoed down the hall before disappearing as the door clicked shut.
The nurse – Joseph, I remembered – gently pulled me off the bed and to my feet. “We have to leave,” he said quickly.
“I don’t understand,” I said. Forming the words was still a chore; forming sentences was even harder. It was like my brain was clouded; the words were there, they were just hidden.
Joseph rushed me toward the door, a hand pushing on the small of my back, another on my shoulder. “You don’t need to understand, we just have to leave.”
When the door opened the alarm was even louder; the piercing sound took me by surprise and I sunk back toward the comfort of my room. Joseph urged me on, pushing toward the open door. The hall was much colder than my room; my bare feet tingled against the linoleum floor and goose bumps rose up my bare legs. Suddenly I realized how exposed I was in the thin white fabric of a hospital gown.
His strides were wider and I half jogged to keep up, but my legs weren’t used to such quick movements. The walks around my room were slow and methodical; this was quick and frantic. People in white coats ran passed us in a hurry, clipboards hugged to their chest, their eyes wide and worried. The ringing of the alarm was growing louder and I thought, running down the hall in my bare feet with this strange man, that perhaps it was an alarm clock and at the end of the long corridor I would wake up in a cozy bedroom.
All that awaited me at the end was a door, another hallway, another door. It was like a maze but Joseph seemed to know where he was going, moving with a determined step. His eyes had that anger in them again; that flash that wasn’t a flash anymore. It was steadfast in his eyes and on his face; a scowl that penetrated every part of him. He still held on to me, but even his fingers had grown tense and angry.
My legs faltered beneath me and I fell forward, but his strong grip on my shoulder kept me from falling. He pulled me up and pushed me onward but my legs didn’t want to move. They wiggled beneath me like jelly. “I can’t,” I tried to protest but he didn’t stop.
“If we don’t leave now, you die,” his voice was a harsh whisper.
Using the fear of my own mortality was good motivation and my legs – though still shaky – decided to work again and keep pace with the man.
I had quickly lost track of where we had come from and where we were going; people flew by, the alarm rang, every so often someone would shout something. Doors and hallways passed by and every corner we turned seemed to lead to somewhere brighter and louder.
A beep interrupted the pulsating alarm, stopping it, and a voice came over the hidden loudspeaker that seemed to be in the walls, roof and floor.
“THE FACILITY IS UNDERGOING LOCKDOWN. ANY EMPLOYEE, PATIENT OR VISITOR ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE THE PREMICES WILL BE INCARCERATED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.”
Something about the message sent shivers down my spine and nearly made me fall again.
“PLEASE SECURE ALL PATIENT QUARTERS. DO NOT ALLOW PATIENTS TO LEAVE THE FACILITY.”
The alarm began blaring again as we came to an elevator. Joseph pulled a card from his lab coat pocket and ran the back of it against a red laser isolated by a piece of glass on the wall. A mechanical voice muttered something, inaudible over the ringing of the alarm, and the mirrored doors opened.
The alarm was finally shut out by the doors, just a vibrating din in the background. “Where are we going?” I asked.
Joseph had already pushed several buttons on the complicated panel and the elevator had begun to move. “Out,” he said with finality.
I took the hint and didn’t argue. Another beep came over the loudspeaker; this time, it wasn’t hidden. It was in the corner of the elevator, bulging from the roof like a cancer.
“PATIENT INFINITY HAS BEEN MISPLACED. PATIENT INFINITY IS A PRIORITY SUBJECT. PATIENT INFINITY MUST BE RETURNED TO QUARTERS IMMEDIETLY.”
Infinity. That’s what they had been calling me. I looked at Joseph, who stared into the mirrored wall. The recording began to repeat its previous message; mentioning a lockdown and incarceration.
For the first time since waking up, I caught a glimpse of my own face. It was similar to how I imagined it, paler, but similar. My cheeks were flared red and my hair was a mess, sticking in all directions, held there by weeks of unwashed oils. I stepped closer to the mirror, inspecting every last inch of myself. The reason they didn’t let me look in a mirror was staring right back at me; a red ring around the brown of my eyes.
This is what happened to me here. It made sense now. Frantically, I reached to my throat and felt for a pulse.
Joseph put a hand on my shoulder – it was relaxed, no longer stiff and angry. “You’re alive,” he said. “You were supposed to be the cure.”
Fragment (1)
“I don’t want be,” she said. Her words quivered and her voice caught in her throat. She clutched her arm to her chest, protective, instinctual.
“We can go somewhere else. Maybe to the island?” he tried to reason. Gently, he tried to pry her arm away, tried to see what sort of damage she had done.
She resisted, her strength easily overpowering his own. “No, you don’t understand. I don’t want to be. Not here. Not anywhere. I don’t want to be anymore. It’s too hard, it’s too-“ she broke off, her voice crumbling into a sob that shook her shoulders. She ducked her head, trying to hide the tears now spilling down her cheeks.
Giving up on freeing her arm, he brushed a hand against her face before gently pressing against her chin to raise her face to his. “You’ve been through a lot of shit, I get that. But the world needs you. We need you. You can’t give up, not yet, not now,” his began to run together as he pleaded with her, begged her.
She looked into his eyes, the brown barely visible in the dark. “I don’t want to be needed,” she whispered.
“It’s too late for that. What they did to you… there’s nothing that can make that better. But what you’re becoming? That’s you, Fin.” He took his hand away from her face, realizing it had been there uncomfortably long, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Is it? Because I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I am. I’m not human, I sure as hell aren’t a demon. They changed me,” she paused to take a deep breath. The tears had stopped and the sobs were quieter now. “I saw my file. I saw everything. What they wanted me to be. How far did they get?”
Grimacing and staring down at the ground between them, he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You have to know. I have to know,” she stopped nursing her arm now and reached out toward him, grabbing him by either arm. “Why can’t look you me in the eyes? What are you hiding?”
Clenched fists turned his knuckles white and too-long nails dug into his palms. Still unable to look at her, he told the truth; “They finished. They finished everything.”
Her hands dropped to her side. A drop of blood fell from her fingertip, dropping to the rocky ground beneath her. She heard it; heard it roll off her skin and hit the hard rocks. It was a delicate splatter that made her mouth water.
“Then tell me, Valdez. Who the hell am I? Because from where I’m standing, I’m turning into exactly what they wanted me to be.”
Three.
They had called her Infinity, but that wasn’t her name. They called her that like a title or a number. It was a way to differentiate between the patients. But it wasn’t her name.
More than that, it wasn’t who she was.
The restraints had been off for days now. She no longer felt trapped, even though the door was locked. She spent much of her time sitting, staring, trying to think. Her mind was a whirl of things she didn’t understand. Sometimes, she would trace the edge of the room; walking along the perimeter slowly, a hand gently pressed against the wall. It was smooth, but every so often a slight bump – a bubble of paint or spot of dirt – would catch her skin. The difference was nice.
As she came around to the bed again, she ran her fingers across the coarse fabric of the thin white comforter and the cold metal of the frame. She paused here, her fingers still pressed against the metal. It felt nice. The room wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold, and the cold felt nice.
“Hello, Infinity,” the man with blue eyes said. Unbeknownst to the girl, he had been standing and watching her since she had hit the far wall. “Exercising again?” he joked chuckled.
She tilted her head slightly but her face was blank.
Joseph sighed as he held out a bowl with a grey, lumpy much and spoon in it. “Time for breakfast,” he said.
Infinity moved slowly to the side of the bed, flopping down loudly.
“I know you don’t like it. Give it a few weeks and you’ll get something better,” Joseph tried to reason.
She ate the mush very slowly, her brows scrunching together and her nose wrinkling with every bite. Even after she swallowed the taste stayed in her mouth. She sipped water between each bite to help wash down the sticky substance.
When she was finished, she handed the empty bowl back to Joseph. “Good,” he said, his smile brightening. “Now I think the Doctor has something in store for you today. It’ll be fun.”
She thought about this for a moment before asking, “Why is she…” Words were hard to come by. Sometimes she could create them, or draw them from memory, but sometimes what she was trying to say wasn’t communicable. It was frustrating, but she was patient, preferring to wait for the words to come instead of risking someone not understanding. After a brief pause for thought, she continued; “Just ‘the Doctor’?”
“Well,” Joseph began, treading the topic carefully. He looked away from her eyes to the corner of the room. This intrigued the girl; it appeared as if he had also lost his words. “Identity can be powerful,” he finally said.
Though she didn’t completely understand this answer, Infinity nodded slowly. One day she was sure she would comprehend the cryptic reply.
“Anyway, let’s get you to the lab,” Joseph gentle linked his arm with the girl’s, pulling her along to the locked door for her first trip outside the white walls she’d come to know so well.
Two.
Tears had welled into her eyes and spilled over her cheeks for hours but it didn’t change anything. She was still strapped to a bed in an unknown, empty room, with wires draped across her. Her face had dried now, though her nose was thick with mucus and her skin was tight where the tears had fallen. For a while, she was musing over how stupid it was to cry when one couldn’t blow their nose or wipe their eyes.
Her musings were interrupted, however, as the man with friendly blue eyes returned. “Still awake?” he asked, his eyebrows raised with surprise. “You should’ve been out hours ago.”
She didn’t respond. Her own brow crinkled with confusion as she watched him check and recheck the bank of monitors she was attached to. He reached for her arm, running a warm finger over a small piece of medical tape holding a needle in her vein.
“Doctor, we have a situation with Infinity,” he said into the empty room as if expecting a reply.
“The doctor is currently preoccupied,” came the mechanical voice.
The man’s eyes were suddenly no longer friendly, a flash of annoyances and anger screwed up his face. It was brief, but she saw it. She sunk back into the bed and tugged uselessly at her hands. Seeing this, he smiled again, the fake friendliness flooding back into his eyes. “It’s urgent,” he said simply.
Within moments a tall, middle aged woman entered the room. Her face was defined with lines, but it didn’t take away from her model-like façade. She was thin, blond, and her green eyes made the girl lying on the bed gawk.
The man was checking his clipboard once again when she came in. Her heals clicking against the hard floor caught his attention before she even opened the door, but he barely glanced at her before diving into the problem. “She’s still awake.”
The doctor crossed her arms over her chest and smirked, sarcastically replying “I can see that.”
The man looked up now. As if just realizing who he was talking to, he began to nervously stammer; “What I mean is – she shouldn’t be. I mean, she’s getting the same medication as all the other patients. Her vital signs say she should be asleep but clearly-“
“You’re rambling,” the Doctor snapped. “Clearly the girl is awake. Increase her meds.”
The man began to fidget with his clipboard, “She’s at the highest dose already.”
With an exasperated sigh, the Doctor snatched the clipboard and began running the numbers through her head.
Meanwhile, the girl had stayed still on the bed, simply watching. Her eyes were wide and alert, her mind running through everything going on above her. The woman was at a distorted angle making her tall and intimidating. The man kept looking down so she could see his eyes, and though she hadn’t forgotten the flash of malice that had been there not long ago, the friendly shimmer gave her comfort.
“Hm,” she said, testing her voice. She cleared her throat. It still hurt and was still dry, but the glass of water had helped a small bit. “I’m not tired,” her words were barely above a whisper but in the quiet room they were easy to hear.
The Doctor looked down, her face was shadowed and wrinkled. “Her mind is active?”
“She had tried to speak earlier but I didn’t think-“
“You didn’t think is right, Joseph.” The Doctor slapped the back of his head with the clipboard, the sound of metal-on-flesh echoing in the mostly empty room.
The man – Joseph – rubbed the back of his head and coward as he backed away.
Going from enraged to happy took only a second as the Doctor turned her eyes onto the girl. A genuine smile made her eyes glow. “And you my dear, how are you feeling?”
A moment of tense silence passed between the three individuals. Four eyes bore into the girl, waiting, expecting something. “I…” she began, but paused. There was something more important; a question brewing behind her eyes that needed to be asked. “Who am I?”
