Chloe wanted to scream in frustration. Her friend was dying while she watched and waited, afraid to leave. Chloe tapped her hand and tried to connect but she knew it wouldn't work. No messages. No words from the outside world.
She wedged pillows behind Susan, propping her up and willing her to breathe. Felipe tried to tempt Susan with heated up meal boxes. Chloe held a glass to her swollen lips and begged her to drink, if only a little. They held Susan's hands and they waited, Chloe taking herself away to another place where the four of them ran around the compound, squishing the sand through their bare toes, swimming in the underground lake, hiding away a dingo pup where the teachers wouldn't find him. But they did find him and they took him away.
And now they were taking Susan away. Her breaths rattled. They were shorter now. The effort too much. She opened her lips. "Clone - me." Soundless words. Then the effort fell away from Susan's face and she stopped trying to live.
"Susan?" Chloe said, cradling her face in both hands. "Susan?"
"She's gone," Felipe said.
Gone. That shouldn't be possible in the Immortal World. People didn't disappear.
Chloe felt too heavy to move. But she did move. She bent down and kissed Susan on the forehead then pulled a hair from her dead friend's head. A life line. She reached up and snapped another from Felipe.
"What the hell?"
"Just in case."
"There's no point, Chloe. They're re-cloning her right now. A new Susan will be here in the morning."
This news slapped Chloe back down into her chair. She sat as the thought swirled through her brain, refusing to be understood. "That's what Morgan meant," she said, at last. "So I've been here before? You saw me die too? And Henry?"
"No. You two haven't been here. At least not in the last seven months."
Where had she been?
Chloe clutched the hairs and walked out of the pod, into the night that smelled of salt and sage and life. The moon hung low in the sky, pocked and pregnant. Her twin winked back from the water, distorted by the waves.
Thanks so much for reading.
The song in the header is called 'Moon Over Ocean' by incognito101420. I think it's beautiful. Let me know what you think.
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Immortal Mistakes
Science FictionThis is what Chloe remembers. She isn't sure if this is what happened but she's given up trying to work that out. It doesn't matter after all. If this is what she remembers, this is what happened. When her best friend Henry's brain explodes inside h...
