“Winter here—?” Mercy repeated, her shoulders slumped. “Flynn, what’s wrong with me. This isn’t… me. Wait, I remember now, I remember it all now…”
“Hey, it’s OK, it’ll get better, we just need to give it time, be patient, let nature take its course. The medic said it was—” Flynn stopped, his body tensed.
Mercy narrowed her eyes, “Said what Flynn? Tell me. What did he say?”
Flynn looked away, frowning, “Nothing Mercy. It’s nothing really… he’s not a doctor—”
Mercy turned Flynn’s face towards her. She stared into his eyes and her voice softened, “Tell me what he said Flynn.”
Flynn closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “He said you have post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD. He says we all have it to some degree… except—” Flynn paused.
“What?” Mercy said.
Flynn’s face crumpled, “Except yours seems to be worse—”
Mercy absorbed Flynn’s words, processing the information. She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
“But he says your body is healing real fast. He thinks it’s something to do with the biotech inside you. Barnes and Dimitri are still hobbling around after the beating they took but you, you’re way ahead of everyone else, your bruises are almost gone, your arm is back to full strength, you’re almost one hundred percent—”
Mercy closed her eyes.
The biotech. The parasite. It’s still inside me, it’s like a weed, its roots run deep. The fucking NSA’s legacy. It’s in me, Flynn, Rose and Tawny… and Annalise—
“Do you remember when you asked Constantine if we could get the biotech removed? Back on the aircraft carrier?” Mercy said, finally.
Flynn nodded, “Yes—”
“And Constantine said if we captured DC, her people might be able to use the Cobalt Biotech facilities to reverse what the NSA did to me, you, Rose and Tawny—”
“Yes, she said something like that, I remember—”
“Well, DC is now nuked. So that’s not going to happen. Me, you, Rose and Tawny… and Annalise have these NSA parasite things living inside us. Are we linked to the NSA cloud? Are we linked to Mitchell’s uploaded consciousness somehow? Are we ever going to be normal again? Free again? Can we get this shit removed from us? Can we make it go back to the way it was? I want us to be normal again Flynn. I want a normal body, I want a future without this fucking… biotech—” Mercy’s voice cracked, she sobbed into Flynn’s chest.
Flynn held her tight, closed his eyes and said nothing.
The next morning dawned cold. Mercy woke early and dressed, leaving Flynn asleep in bed. She checked her watch; 5:23 am.
Another bad night. I feel haunted, it’s like there’s a ghost in me. The ghost of what I used to be, of what I want to be again—
Mercy left the bunkhouse and crossed what used to be a carpark, to the lodge. Rose and Brody were at the long table, drinking coffee. The wood stove was lit and the room was beginning to warm up.
“You’re up early,” Mercy said.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Rose replied.
Mercy noticed the dark rings under Rose’s eyes, “Yeah, I know the feeling.” Mercy poured herself a cup of coffee and crouched down in front of the stove, absorbing its warmth. She took a sip of her coffee and stared through the stove window into the flames.
Nature’s TV—
“Winter’s on its way,” Rose said, “the trees are bare, there’s a cold wind running through the mountains—”
Mercy closed her eyes, “I keep thinking of all the people who helped us get here; the kids we fought with, the kids who died—”
“I know,” Rose said, she paused, “after winter, spring comes. New growth, all that good stuff—”
“Yeah Rose, but I want that good stuff now. I’ve seen so much bad stuff. I’ve got so much darkness inside me, it’s like a poison eating away inside me. I need a fix, a cure—”
Brody shifted in his chair, “We’ve all got our own shit to deal with, some make it, some don’t. Just get through each day as best you can. That’s all you can do.”
Tawny opened the door and headed to the coffee pot. She spoke without looking at the others, “I just bumped into Jethro, he said he’s managed to repair the radio you guys captured from the island. Barnes is with him now, I thought you’d be interested—”
Brody stood up and stretched, “That Jethro’s a wonder kid when it comes to tech, not much use at anything else though. I’m going over to see what he’s managed to do—”
Brody left the lodge, allowing some of the morning chill into the room as he opened the door. Mercy shivered and cupped the steaming mug in her hands. Tawny sat at the table and the room returned to silence.
“Do you think about it? The future I mean—” Tawny said, after a while.
Rose shook her head, “That way lies madness—”
Mercy sighed, “The only way I’ve got through… all of this, is to only think of now or maybe the next twenty four hours. I’ve never stopped long enough to consider the future, about life, about plans. It all seems so pointless, so hopeless… the way the world is—”
“What we need is news, hope that there’s progress somewhere,” Rose said. “We need the bigger picture. We’re in the dark. We ain’t heard from Constantine, we’ve no idea what the Resistance is doing, even if there’s a resistance left. After we saw DC nuked… I don’t know… something changed. I lost hope—”
Tawny looked up, “That’s it right there. Me too. It’s like we’re coming down from a big high, all this running and hiding and killing. We’ve gone from a hundred miles an hour to a complete
