“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “You have to understand. Things were different on earth then.”
Sweat compounded on her forehead as her eyes tried to read his. She began putting the pieces together as much as she could. “You’re not aliens.”
I smirked. “Nor are we monsters.”
She looked at the ground with embarrassment. Clearly, she had thought hard about what we were, but I couldn’t blame her. At times, we could seem like massively terrifying brutes. All we wanted to do was show her we could be normal.
“You’re human,” she said, eyes suddenly watering. “I’m so sorry. How could I be so stupid?”
Mag shifted uncomfortably. Out of the three, he was someone who dealt with what happened the worst. Chance brought him here. Or, maybe, it was a terrible trick of fate. If everything went according to plan, he could be walking freely on earth without a care in his heart. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “The myths surrounding this place are enticing. Incredible giants, psychological effects, and of course, the idea that, at the center, is a place where all of your wildest wishes come true... the only thing that’s true is the fact we’ve lost ourselves to madness.”
I looked down, but it angered me. I didn’t care how real his statement was. It hurt to hear. “We have evolved,” I said.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Mag quipped. “But we know the truth. Some horrible shit has occurred here. We have to own those experiences.”
Somehow, despite the dark truth, she didn’t leave. Best of all, it didn’t seem like she was here out of self interest. Plenty of people had wandered this terrain in search of some holy-grail-like-object. They were the ones who died with their hearts frozen in their chests. Their electrons would never be able to disintegrate. They were truly lost to the sands of time.
“I’m not giving up on this expedition,” she said, heart so full it made me feel hopeful. “I thought I came here to help earth. I thought this discovery would transform the scientific community, government— the people.”
“The ones with power cannot be bargained with,” Mag said. “And the people turn their backs on the ones in need. You are different because your life started with the image of our suffering.”
For a long time, she sat and wept. I held her, along with the others, and I felt her grief. I bonded with her psyche and experienced her memories as her, the girl I had wondered so often about. I saw how the experience left her groundless. The fear that struck her heart forced her into a world of unknowns. Her parents drifted away. The one lover she had opened her heart to never listened, never cared. She left to find us, and though I was grateful, it broke my fucking heart.
She was the girl who fixed us. But a part of me wished she didn’t have to be. I just hoped we could give back an ounce of the joy she had given us.
“I can’t go back home,” she said, tears falling near her feet. Her mouth tensed as she swallowed, and her eyes wavered between the others and mine. “I can’t go back there to those people. Not after what they did to you.”
I didn’t want to tell her more, but I had to tell her this one thing. “Adeline, you can’t stay here.”
Her expression changed from sadness to defiance. “You can’t make me go back there.”
We had come to the predicament I had been anticipating with dread. I wasn’t in the position to make her do anything, but I
sure as hell wasn’t going to let her kill herself. “The effects of this place are too much strain. You could die,” I said.
“Could? She will die,” Cadmar said.
Frantically, she looked around the tent. Her eyes fixated on the lab tech logo above our heads. “You didn’t die,” she said. “You made it through everything.”
Flashbacks to our horror show. I remember walking into my team’s laboratory with its stark white lighting, the clean smell of iodine and butanoic acid. I remember smiling with absolute satisfaction. We’d found a new energy source. Cadmar had made something from nothing. We all had a purpose. Together, we were going to change the world.
The trials took longer than expected. Test subjects were erratic and ill-tempered. When they stepped into the dark and ominous light, the gateway as it was called, their bodies seized up. Their bones twisted and cracked. The noises were horrible, but the images we were forced to document were even worse. Some of their bodies popped like overblown balloons. Blood splattered and lined the walls. Their entrails expunged from their mouths. Our laboratory, once divine and sacred, was now a horror show.
“I was sure we’d found the gateway into hell,” I whispered, nearly choking on my words. Knowing my words confused her, I continued. “Not everyone can enter. Many tried, but the effects are too strong for some.”
“This is how we know you are different,” Cadmar said. “Strong like us.”
“But we have not completed the proper tests to know if you will be safe,” I added.
“Even if you were, you’d change forever. Like us. You’d lose your mind,” Mag muttered.
“I don’t care. When I’m home, I feel like a tourist. I want to stay here with you. We can make this work,” Adeline said.
She was acting so naive, it was hard to argue with. As a clearly accomplished scientist, she knew the data pointed against her making a home here. But she wasn’t the only one behaving in this fashion. We were just as naive to think we could leave.
“There is a place near here. Approximately thirty-three miles to the south. There is, in fact, an exit there,” Mag said.
“That’s what we assume,” I said.