Ascension

Elijah

Lorelei managed to get the soldiers who found us to hear us out. We explained that Indiana was running after Lorelei threatening to kill her. They didn't believe us at first but that is truly what happened. They were going to let us go free but Indiana wasn't waking up. They left him in shackles and let me free.

"We need to talk to Silas." Lorelei tells me under her breath.

I nodded my head and we go to find him. Lorelei is shaking. She tries to conceal it but her gun is shaking in her hand. I continue walking because we have to be professional in our uniforms.

When we find Silas he is in the middle of discussing some issues to other soldiers.

"Sir we urgently need to speak with you in private." Lorelei saluts him.

"At ease Commander." He tells her and her hand slinks to her side.

Silas follows us out of the tent they were standing in. Lorelei leads him to the strange tent on the outside perimeter of the fallen base. She doesn't look at me.

"This is odd. An infirmary shouldn't be this far away." Silas wonders aloud.

"That's the thing, this isn't an infirmary." Lorelei informs him before drawing the door back.

When we step in it seems even more awful to see. The Bright scientists are lying in a pool of their own dried blood. Tomas still is in the center of the room taking the attention off the scientists.

"What in worlds?" Silas muttered as he took in Tomas.

I avert my eyes. I can't stand to see Tomas like that. He looks so awful. It's like his skin was peeling off. His eye sockets didn't have any eyes left in them. Just an empty space where they were gone. Silas is speechless.

"Is that?" Silas asks trying to recognize the almost soldier.

"The kid from my squad, yes." I sighed miserably.

"I'll call Faed to this tent immediately and have him do an autopsy." Silas averts his eyes now too.

Lorelei looks down. It seems she has shrunk into the corner where a large desk is hiding the view of the body. Faed comes in and puts on a hazmat suit. We all get far away from there. I couldn't bear seeing Tomas being dissected like a science experiment. It's a long time until Faed comes back.

"That corpse had some story to tell!" he exclaimed.

I couldn't tell whether he was excited or nervous.

"Did you determine a cause of death?" Silas asks the Doctor.

"I believe I did. You see Tomas looked awful but his temperature of his body was still 93℉. Which means he couldn't have been dead for a long time. Maybe an hour at most, which means the skin rot was happening before he even died. There are only a few things that cause skin rot before death. Mostly disease so I began checking for signs of disease. He was definitely diseased but it didn't match anything in my database. Then I checked the Bright's computer and sure enough I found a man made virus that affects Humans." Doctor Faed rants.

"Holy heavens!" Lorelei exclaimed.

"They made a virus!" Silas explodes.

"My guess is that they knew we were getting recruitments and started designing a biological weapon to wipe us out. Very good plan however now that we have the virus in our hands we can create a vaccine." Faed smirks.

"You can do that?" I interject.

"Sure, in theory." Faed smiles.

I'm not sure how I feel about "In theory". I look at Lorelei and she shrugs. It could be a good plan.

"Faed, go back in there and get a few blood samples to take with us. It is too dangerous to take the body with us back to camp." Silas instructs him.

"But what about a funeral?" I spit out without thinking.

"It's too dangerous to take the body with us Elijah." Silas spits harshly.

Lorelei is deep in thought.

"What if, What if we cremate him? Fire should kill the virus and it's as close to a funeral as we can get." Lorelei offered.

Silas was about to interject when he actually thought about Lorelei's idea and considered.

"Fine. Do that." Silas told us.

Lorelei grins over at me but I still feel sick to my stomach. I walked over to the tree I was sitting at earlier and tried to be alone with my thoughts.

Lorelei came and sat beside me. She didn't say anything, she just sat next to me in silence. Her presence, I had found, was extremely comforting and she was helping things just by being there with me. I'm also glad she didn't talk.

Sometimes I feel I can connect with people more when the are just sitting there, not talking. Lorelei is no exception. When I feel ready too, I reach down and slip Lorelei's hand into mine.

I don't stroke her hand like I used to, I just keep it tucked away in mine. This small act of intimacy brings a little sunlight to my otherwise stormy mindset.

Lorelei lays down amongst the grass. She moves her legs back and forth a little to display her need to move. That's another thing I've noticed about Lorelei. She can't sit still. She has to be moving all the time.

I reach over her to grab my water canister and she flinches when my arm brushes across her. It physically pains me to see her flinch from my touch.

"So pretty." She murmurs to herself as she relaxes onto her hands.

I run my hands through my hair suddenly feeling very timid. Lorelei is so confident and it sometimes scares me. Even the way she lays down on the grass seems very confident to me.

"Yea." I sigh.

I let go of her hand and move it into my jacket pockets. Lorelei finds it again and pulls it out of the pocket I had it in and slips her hand back into mine.

I look over and see starshine gracing Lorelei's face. She almost looks like a child seeing stars for the first time. All her features softened in wonder.

"Do you think it's time we said goodbye to Tomas?" I ask Lorelei.

"I think it's time we let him go." Lorelei agrees.

We have this old story that your spirit is trapped inside your body until the body is put to rest. It is said that the spirit feels the pain of dying over and over again until they finally have the relief of being laid to rest.

When we reach the tent once again Lorelei pulls out a matchbook. I walk into the tent and find a bunch of rubbing alcohol and start to spill it all over the floor.

I avoided looking at Tomas who was looking even more shriveled without all his blood. I got out of there as soon as I could and Lorelei lit a match and threw it into the tent.

Soon the strong smell of smoke was overpowering the smell of decaying flesh. Lorelei sighed as an inferno of flames overtook the tent.