Chapter Thirty Two
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because we don’t know where this’ll go. If The Father lost his memories upon resurrection, then the same could apply to me. That’s why I have to try to record my thoughts. I can’t risk letting my knowledge die with my death.”
–Dr Ava Sherman. Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. 5 Months After.
* * *
How had Mother let it come to this?
Another explosion rocked the ground, this one closer than the last. He must be using the ventilation system, she considered. There was a network of filters and grates intended to prevent this very type of exploit, but with enough plastic explosives and manpower at his disposal, anything was possible. Hades could use brute force to circumvent her defenses entirely.
Mother studied NORAD’s command center anew. None but a few of the LCD monitors were still functional, and with the reduced lighting to save on power, it hardly encapsulated the splendor it once had. Cobwebs had collected in the corners after years of neglect, and the dust coated all but a few terminals. At least with her computer monitor running diagnostics, there were some sparks of life, even here.
She began to wonder if this sense of despair was what the scientists and soldiers had felt when her and Hades had been set free. When Mother had manipulated Ava’s husband into freeing them, and Hades had used the opportunity to start infecting anyone he could, did the last of America’s government and Aeon Dynamic’s aristocracy gaze upon their creation and feel so pitifully small in comparison?
“We’re sitting ducks,” Leah said. “You need to get this over with now, Mother. Whatever needs to happen, whatever you need to collect, take care of it right this second. We can’t stay.”
Mother could almost laugh. If only it were that simple. None of this had gone according to plan. Not the time it had taken for them to reach here, nor the death of her people and her capture along the way, nor the fact that an entire army of Hunters was currently bypassing what she’d hoped would work as the ultimate defense. Her strategy had depended entirely on making Liam disappear before Hades could ever learn where he’d gone, and not facing him directly. But he had outflanked her, every step of the way.
And now they were all watching her, as though she still knew what to do.
Mother sighed. “This situation just became a lot more complicated. The area we need to access is hidden next to the missile-warning center, which is the westernmost building in the facility. No one can bypass its security, other than me. Because of Hades’s intervention, however, the base’s secondary defenses have been triggered, which has forced the area into lockdown.”
“Are you kidding me!?” Liam buried his face in his palm. “A bunker within a bunker? How the bloody hell did you manage that one?”
She paused, considering her words carefully. “I had help.”
The ground trembled again. Dust fell from the ceiling and the lights flickered.
Leah took a step forth. “Let me put this another way, Mother. As soon as Mastermind finds a weapon and gets back here, we’re bugging the fuck out, and I don’t care if you don’t have whatever you need to manufacture a cure.”
Again, Mother stared at walls around her. How many times had she wandered through this place without recognizing its significance. This was NORAD, the final line of defense between the American people and the chaos of the world beyond, and she had shattered it in her hubris. Only Mother could see this crisis through. There was no one else left.
“Mother”. What a peculiar title she’d given herself. As if she were some matriarch, arms spread wide as she coaxed the weak into hopeful belief. Hades had been wrong in his assessment of her. Mother was a charlatan in the cause she promoted. She believed in strategy, not hope. Hope was no more than a convenient tool to shepherd others. So long as they believed in her prowess, what difference did it make if that belief was based in illusion? The ends were the same, regardless of how they were reached.
But where was hope here? The walls would soon be breached and a wave of killers would rush through. Hades would claim his victory, and the world would reach its end. There was no more meticulous planning to be had. Nothing short of a miracle could save them now.
“That’s it, we’re out,” Leah decided. “Liam, get back in that suit.”
He frowned. “The second we open those doors, hollows will pour through this whole place. How the hell will I get by them?”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.”
The plan was foolish, but the thought had stirred something within Mother. Could it really happen?
If Hades fell… If he could pursue them no further… Mother considered the result. Yes, it was possible. So long as they managed to defeat him, right here and right now, then everything would fall back into place. The future would be preserved, and mankind would outlast them all.
Oh, how wrong she had been. Hope was not a means. It was the end. Mother could no longer play the fraudster. In order for them to have the slightest fraction of a chance, she would have to adopt that which she had only hid behind.
She had to embrace hope for herself.
“Wait,” Mother said. “What you’re considering is suicide. The moment that door opens, whomever is there will be swarmed.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Leah said.
“Yes, you do.” She met them each in the eyes. “You can stay here and kill Hades.”
“Are you insane? He’s still got thirty men. We’ll have a better shot against the hollows than taking him on.”
“We can’t leave the bunker,” Mother emphasized. “It doesn’t matter whether he gets to Liam or not. Humanity will still have been defeated if Hades breaches these walls uncontested.”
Leah’s gaze pierced deep. “What are you talking about?”
Mother let out a deep breath. This was going to hurt, more than they could each know. “There is no cure for HBRS-15.21. That’s what my former self once said to the heads of the world. And she was right. The changes that curse inflicted can never be undone. Our old lives were gone the moment our minds were rewritten, and our cellular activity has been replaced entirely. Nothing can undo death, not even undeath. We’ve only prolonged the inevitable. There is no reversing it.”
Her eyes widened. “But you said–”
“I lied, Leah. Again and again and again. ‘Enzyme infusion’? ‘DNA realignment’? Those were just terms I made up to get you to do what I wanted. They’re meaningless psychobabble that’d never hold up in a lab. I needed to convince you that this mission was for your own self-interest or you’d never agree.” She turned to Liam. “For you, as well.”
“I don’t catch your meaning,” he said.
There was no use holding back now. “Didn’t you find it odd that those notes you found kept guiding you in the same direction as us? Didn’t you ever wonder why the hands of fate were so closely aligned?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but the words clung to the back of his throat.
“It was all me,” Mother explained. “I needed to give you that same false hope. When you left Pandemonium to go find your family, I knew that I couldn’t let your journey end there, so I looked up your address through the White Pages and beat you both to it. Your body might require sleep, but mine does not. In the end, I had hours to myself in your family home before you ever came close.
“I learned a lot about you, Liam. About your life. About your family. About your marital problems. I saw the tapestry of the man you were before and knew what you needed most.” She took a step forth. “I was Nelly. This whole time, with each breadcrumb you found, it was never her. It was only me.”
He shook his head, his cheeks reddening. “I don’t believe you. That was her handwriting I read.”
“No, it was my attempted forgery supplemented by your wishful thinking. You saw what you wanted to see, just as I intended.
“There’s talk of the government setting up a camp in Aspen,” Mother recited. “This one’s supposed to be better than the others. I know it’s far and I know it will be dangerous, but I have to do what’s best for Lilith. She’ll die if we stay. Please don’t stop coming for us. We can’t do this without you.” She stepped closer still. “I love you.”
His hands quaked as the truth became inarguable. “How could you…?” A sob cut his thoughts off.
“Because Hades is wrong. Hope isn’t some wall keeping us in a cell. It’s the hammer we use to smash through. You would have never been able to accomplish half as much without it by your side. Even when it’s based in a lie, hope still drives us to perform the impossible. We have to believe that, now more than ever. It’s the only way that this can still end.”
“What the fuck’s the point?” Leah asked, her eyes downcast. “There’s no cure. This whole thing’s been a fucking waste.”
Mother smiled. “There might be no cure, but there’s still a thin sliver of hope.” She turned to Liam. “I wasn’t lying when I said that there’s a unique resource here. Only you will know what to do with it.”
The two watched Mother in silence. She went back to her computer and opened the administration controls. “I’m going to perform a full system reset. It will go off in ten minutes. That will force a secondary timer of five minutes before the lockdown ends on its own. You must defend this bunker and its contents at all costs, Liam.” She looked back to Leah. “That goes for you as well.”
“Let me guess, you’ll get to stay safe here while we die for you?” She raised her pistol, her violet eyes ablaze. “Why the fuck don’t I put you down right now!?”
“Because you will have wasted a bullet. I’ll be dead soon enough, with or without your intervention.” She went for the door.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going!?” Leah shouted, the pistol shaking in her hands.
She paused at the exit. “To get reinforcements.”
Leah hesitated a beat, and Mother used the opening to slip outside. Nothing more needed to be said.
The lights flickered with each new blast as Mother raced through the tunnels as fast as her reincarnated legs could carry. There was no time for alternatives. She could only act.
How had this come to pass? Mother had only ever wanted to survive beyond death, as had her predecessor, and her predecessors before. Death was despair. Futility in the form of action. For the countless generations of mankind, they had stood in fear of death. Unmasking death’s existence thus created infinite new fears, and so the only logical response had been to circumvent it entirely.
And so had come the Hollowing. Humanity’s best attempted cheat against this universal force. Ava had performed the impossible in her life. She had succeeded in creating what had never been more than a passing fantasy. But in pursuit of such an unattainable ambition, she had sacrificed herself, along with that of her people. Merely extending survival of the body would never broaden the horizons of life. It had only eroded their souls into hollow shells that knew nothing more than sustained animation. That was the cost of defying this natural order, and Ava had brought humanity to this end.
That was why it had to be her. Mother was the hollowed version of Ava. The mirror image of the person who had come before. Only through counteracting her predecessor’s hubris with her own death could the balance be restored.
The southern blast door was right in front. Hollows would be the most riled here, driven out of hibernation by Hades’s intervention. Just a few feet of steel reinforced with springs separated Mother from a sea of death. The moment it was opened, she would be killed. A single act of self-sacrifice, intended to end the Hollowing, once and for all.
And the worst part? She didn’t have the slightest idea if this would work. Hades might beat back the hollows and defeat Leah and Liam, and drive sentience into extinction regardless. Her sacrifice would be for nothing, and humanity would still reach its end.
But she had to hope. Mother had to believe in the one bit of truth that she had spent her own existence shunning.
Mother thought of Evelyn. Of the girl she’d been fool enough to take as an adoptive daughter. She wondered what Evelyn would have thought, were she witnessing this act. Would she have understood why it had to be her? Or would she have begged her to stay by her side?
Mother disarmed the magnetic lock with a sigh and began to spin the manual override wheel. Hollowed moans slipped through the exposed opening. Hands and legs soon followed. She exhaled and pushed harder, using every ounce of strength her body was capable of to get the door fully opened.
The result was immediate. The herd poured through, hissing and moaning against this new threat.
Teeth sunk into Mother’s arm as she gripped the wheel, and hands scratched against her side. Within seconds, the hive-mind of the hollowed-classed infected detected her as a source of nutrition, and redirected their hostility her way.
Mother had never been the matriarch of this new world. She had only destroyed that which came before. The product of her actions now surrounded her. Mindless. Empty. Slobbering at the mouth. Evelyn had not been hers. These were her true children. Her progeny. And like the rest of the civilization they had consumed, they wanted her next.
Mother closed her eyes and embraced her fate.
