Callisto

Jespar Alone (pt. 2)

He double-blinked. "Say what?"

"You heard me, or is your hearing going too, Gramps?" She giggled.

"Newsflash, baby," he growled. "I'd rather die than let him get it. Who the hell knows what they'll do? That crazy motherfucker'll burn the world all over again."

She sighed as she rose and made her way over to the wiped-down lab table, so smooth and without blemish, even as she'd been forced to cut open so many creatures of the wastes above on its surface. They always made sure to keep it clean. Hide the horrors of the past. Learn nothing from them. Maybe that was the human way...

...No, she thought. I'm not having it. I'm going to show him that some of us are worth something.

"They could find another like you one day," she said suddenly. "It's not inconceivable. Nothing up there is. But we won't be giving them any time to think about that. Because once they find a replacement, we're dead."

He watched her as she began to pace to and fro, her fingers poised on her chin as she stretched the limits of her mind for possibilities, chances, and probabilities that led to an acceptable outcome.

He hated when she acted like this. But then, that was the mark of the scientists. She was always playing the long game.

"But if I give them what they want," he sighed. "We're dead anyway."

"No," she retorted, her eyes full of world-ending fire. He would have staggered back if she didn't fix him with such intensity that he felt his skin begin to crisp under her gaze and her conviction.

"No, Jespar," she said again. "You'll tell them exactly where it is, but you won't tell them what's waiting for them there. They'll see for themselves what lies at the heart of the Dead City. Then they'll come back here licking their wounds, probably enraged, and screaming their heads off like hellhounds. And that's when you'll tell them that it's you that they need. They'll be forced to take you with them, but you'll insist on a condition."

He listened to her with wide, unbelieving eyes as she told him the plan, and he realized again that all humans harbored at least some malice in them somewhere.

"Nicole," he all but whispered. "You realize you're asking me to send people to die."

"People will die no matter what happens," she said, holding his face in her hands. "How many more do you think will die if they find Callisto?"

His head sagged into the ground, and he wished he could have just felt the dry, dead dirt beneath the concrete floor he'd trodden on all his life.

"Jespar," she said, trying to hold back any emotion. "This is the only way."

He smiled. The long game.

"You really think this will work?" he asked.

She looked into his eyes again, deeply. "Didn't you say you trusted me?"

He looked back as only he could, and it was almost as though, then and there, he could see the whole sorry mess that was to come being played out in front of him, like the final act of a poorly written comedy.

...

A pair of eyes shot open and blinked rapidly to dispel the darkness of the elevator shaft"s depths. Their owner gasped with shock at feeling the solid ground beneath his paws and the general lack of pain that he was currently experiencing. Then, he remembered who he was and got up from the ground to shake himself off.

He was getting fed up with dreams. Why were they becoming more frequent now? Could it be that the closer he came, the more vivid they were?

Was this Callisto's doing? Or was it something else entirely?