Shaking. Forgetting to do things. I didn’t want to think that she had reached a breaking point, but if she had, then she had lasted a lot longer than any of us should have. We both stood, and I guided her toward the corridor that led amidships. Michael watched.
“She alright?” he asked.
“Yeah, she’s fine,” I said. “Just a little shook up.”
“Just try to relax,” Michael said to Anna. “You’re a superstar. That was good flying back there.”
“Not just good,” I said. “Amazing.”
Anna didn’t give any reaction. The three of us left the bridge and headed for the anteroom. We were never supposed to leave the bridge unoccupied while the ship was in flight. It was a hard and fast rule both Makara and Ashton hammered into us. But I wasn’t going to leave Anna alone up here, and we had to take care of the situation with the Community. I made a mental note to have Ashton in that pilot’s seat as soon as possible.
Makara’s voice came from my radio.
“Alex. What’s going on? I saw that ship take a dive again.”
I reached for the radio. Now, my own hand was shaky.
“We’re fine. Everyone’s fine. Elias is dead. Really dead this time.”
“Yeah. I saw him take a tumble from the ship. Can’t get any deader than that.”
I turned to look out the windshield, catching sight of Gilgamesh dropping gently from above. Its nose was pointed toward us, allowing me to see Makara at the controls. Julian sat in the copilot’s seat.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You go through all the trouble of getting me a new ship after crashing the first one, and then you almost wreck this one? This isn’t good, Alex.”
“I’ll take the blame for this one,” I said. “We have a slight situation with the Community that Ashton alerted us to, so we’re headed that way to see what’s going on. We could probably use your help again.”
“Alright. Julian and I are coming on board. This boy needs a lot of work before he can be a trained pilot.”
I wondered why Julian got pilot training before I did, but I remembered that Makara seemed to have a thing for him. Maybe that was why she chose to have him come on board rather than Michael earlier.
“Alright,” I said. “I’m leaving this bridge hanging, but I plan on sending Ashton to the bridge as soon as I can. Anna needs a bit of a break.”
“Copy that. Meet you amidships.”
With that, I walked the rest of the way to the anteroom.
Chapter 19
We walked into a scene of chaos. The New Angels had formed a ring and were doing their best to restrain panicked Community members. The loudest among them was Lyn.
“We want out!” she shouted.
Something had definitely changed about the women. The inhuman quality to their eyes had fled, replaced now with panic and fear.
With Elias dead, some sort of spell had been lifted.
The women jostled against the New Angels, but they were strong and they were armed. The Community women had been stripped of their weapons and many of them were in tears. I had no idea what to do about any of it.
Every head turned when a click sounded from the blast door. Gilgamesh was docking. A moment later, the door opened, revealing Makara and Julian walking into the anteroom, followed by Nathaniel, a bearded man we had met after finding the Exiles near the Great Blight, and another man named Chris, the blond-haired Raider who had guarded Silver Arched Bridge that spanned the Colorado River. I still remembered that night, Makara and I racing across the desert in our Recon, trying to reach Char and Raider Bluff in order to save Samuel from the bullet he had received.
“What’s going on?” Makara asked.
The Community members ceased their panic, staring at Makara blankly. Lyn stepped forward. But what she said was far from expected.
“We…just want to know where we are. What’s happening. How…”
Lyn didn’t finish. After a moment’s silence, it was clear that Lyn had asked the question in all seriousness. I looked at each of the Community women. None of them had any idea where they were. Could Elias have actually brainwashed them to the point where they would not remember anything?
No, not Elias — the xenovirus. Elias had been controlled by it, and apparently, so had all these women. But with Elias dead, somehow the virus had lost its power. Elias had said he was the intermediary between Askala and the Community. With the intermediary severed, these women would be free once more.
The only problem was, they didn’t remember a thing.
“You are aboard the Aeneas,” Makara said. “The day is December 24, 2060.”
Lyn looked at Makara, uncomprehending. She looked at all of the New Angels for confirmation that this was true.
“No,” she said. “The year is 2045. I remember…the fires. The screams. I remember…”
“What you remember,” I said, stepping forward. “Is the fall of Bunker 84. This happened fifteen years ago, when Elias took control.”
“Elias,” Lyn said.
I looked into her eyes to see if she remembered anything about the man who had led her for fifteen long years.
“I feel…different. I can’t explain it, but…I feel that time has passed, like waking from a dream…”
“That’s because time has passed,” Ashton said. “Fifteen years of time.”
The other Community members stared, similarly shocked. They looked to Lyn to figure this out for the rest of them. From the sidelines, I saw Deborah and Ada, watching. Their eyes appeared completely lucid. They had not been under Elias’s spell. Maybe Deborah and Ada were genetic anomalies, able to resist the version of the virus that infected Elias.
“Something is different,” Lyn said. “I can feel it.”
She trailed off, looking at each of the Community members.
“I don’t know most of these people…and the ones I do know look…”
I could see from her blue eyes that she could scarcely believe it. I finished her thought for her.
“Do they look older?”
Lyn shook, and finally nodded. “I see now that you are right, as hard as that is to believe. I’m not sixteen. I’m…thirty-one.”
“Fifteen years,” Makara said, shaking her head. Her eyes were disturbed as she looked at the women under guard. “You remember nothing from the past fifteen years?”
I could now see that Elias’s powers had not merely stopped at the physical. Of all the incarnations of the xenovirus I had seen, this by far had to be the strangest. It was a strain that likely did not exist anymore. It had developed in isolation, back in 2045, where it had infected Elias at Ragnarok Crater when he had been taken there by the recon team from Bunker 83. I thought of the Howlers or any other form of Radaskim xenolife. They all obeyed the Voice — Askala. Askala was able to communicate directly with Elias in visions and dreams that Elias had shared that with the Community. These women, along with Elias, had not transformed into Howlers. They had retained their full human form. Yet, they had all blindly obeyed him — as much as anything infected with the Radaskim version of the virus would obey the Xenomind, Askala.
It wasn’t just the women who were directionless. It was the children as well. They stared blankly ahead. If my theory was true, then they had lived their whole lives as agents of the virus. How much would they remember? Would they remember anything?
“I still remember all of the things I did,” Lyn said, finally. “I just can’t remember why I did them. The emotions…they are all gone. The memories bring up nothing.”