Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story [Complete]

The Deep End

She groaned.

"Just give it up already," the girl said and shrugged. "You're dead. Be glad there's this much left of you, at least."

She waved her hand dismissively, and the girl disappeared like a cloud of smoke.

Her presence made her irrationally angry. She was far from giving up, in fact, the more the girl talked, the more determined she became to find a way out. She knew that she had lost something very important, but it was not her life. Even if it was true that she was dead, it didn't change the fact that she had to find a way to go looking for the part that was missing.

With a sigh, she went back to the living room. As she turned around the corner, she spotted a figure standing before the window and stopped dead in her tracks.

"What the-"

It wasn't Evelyn.

The man didn't turn around. He continued to stare out of the window, standing still with straight shoulders and hands clasped behind his back. A flash of pain surged through her head, and she saw an image before her for a split second. Two people, in front of a different window – the sight beyond was nothing but infinite black, filled with stars. And it made her remembered something. She knew this man, although she had never really met him. She only knew him from her dreams.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked, rubbing her aching temples.

"Helping you out, apparently," he said.

"Very helpful," she remarked, staring at his back as he just stood there, motionlessly. "If I'm confabulating stuff now, why couldn't it be something more useful? Like a crowbar. Or a bomb."

She heaved a sigh, and plopped down on the remains of the couch. She stretched out and stared at the ceiling, were several panels were about to become loose. She wondered what would happen if one of them came off now and hit her in the face. Could she die if she was already dead? Fall unconscious in a dream? Could that be a way out?

"Not all problems can be solved by blowing them up," the man remarked.

"...most of them, though."

He turned to cast her a glance over his shoulder as she said that. She only caught a brief glimpse of his face before he turned back to the window, but she could have sworn there was a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Once he had turned back, she mustered him, from his dark buzz-cut hair and grey uniform down to his boots. There was something familiar about his look, something that unsettled her. But she knew this man, somehow, and she knew that she could trust him.

"You do remember why you're here, don't you?" he asked her.

"No clue, really," she answered with a shrug. "Evelyn claims I'm dead, but... I don't really believe her."

"What do you believe, then?"

"I believe... I need to find... someone," she said, crinkling her brow as she tried to remember.

She knew this man, to an extent that she knew that he was a captain. But she didn't know his name, couldn't remember who he really was, or why he was important.

"Wow. You don't even remember his name?"

There was equal parts mockery and offense in the Captain's voice now, and he turned around to look at her, arms crossed in front of his chest. She blinked at him in surprise, and for a second she thought he was referring to his own name. Suddenly, she could see his face clearly, and she saw something in his eyes – they weren't lightless like those of so many other uniformed men she had seen. They were filled with a fire, a determination of the kind that could set worlds ablaze, and ignite that same spark of life in others.