𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬

CHAPTER 18: CELL SYNTHESIZER III

Seeing the vandalized and broken "Welcome to Pittsburg" sign was something I'd never think to be actually welcoming. The car was in pieces, the gas was almost over, and nothing around seemed to be of any help, but, at least, I had arrived. It's been a week since I and Nate went on different paths, but it felt like years. I still wasn't sure of what "we" meant, and I was scared to be lying to myself and to him.

But that wasn't the moment to think of that. I took a deep breath and parked the car near an abandoned hotel. As soon as I left the warm car, I felt the shock of the cold air of Pittsburg, instantly noticing why Marthio chose this place to be his secret lab. It was 100% empty.

After checking the hotel for Gluttons, I peeked inside for a closer map of the place, and I was lucky to find one at the reception. It was dusty and mostly blank due to the age, but it worked, so I didn't mind at all. I just needed to find the biggest hospital in the place. Big enough to fit in a Cell Synthesizer.

As I roamed around with the car, I thought of how organized were the people who made these machines. I mean, I didn't have much knowledge of the old world, but I did know they weren't something usual. And to build one of those while the world was dipped in shit? I hated doing that, but I had to congratulate my father.

It wasn't hard to find the biggest hospital, but it was going to be hard to get inside of it. The place was filled with Gluttons. There wasn't even a place to park the car, so I just left it there, taking everything with me. I peeked around the street corner and saw the swarm of monsters roaming around without motives.

I took a deep breath and started walking towards the medical center. With the infected prions in my, my smell was enough to mask my presence, but the Gluttons would know I wasn't one of them if they saw me, so I crouched and started minding every single one of my steps.

Whilst hiding behind the abandoned cars and the other debris on the parking lot, I arrived at the door of the hospital. Made of glass and without any protection, I opened it and moved in thanking that none of them saw me.

It was very dark and seemed way too clean to be abandoned, so I grabbed my bow and put my ears to work.

It kept on getting weirder and weirder. The floor wasn't dusty, not a single door was open, and there weren't any bodies or resources to be found. This place was definitely taken by someone, and my suspicions were immediately confirmed when I heard steps far away.

Without losing a second, I hid inside of a random room filled with cleaning products and sheets, hoping that no one found me.

"...about her? We're safe!" said a female voice, oddly familiar.

"We're never safe!" answered a male one, very familiar too. "She took our family from us, and she won't hesitate in taking us too," he sighed. "We'll never be safe in this world,"
I knew those voices. I knew I did, but I wasn't remembering where from. It was a long time ago since I heard those, but they were marked with fire in my head.

"Joe, we can't live like this!" she argued.

"I'm sorry, Lie, but in order to live we also need to survive,"

I gasped out of surprise. In fact, I gasped a little bit too loudly, and the exact face I imagined appeared right in front of me, opening the door. A male deer, very high and strong, and behind him, a girl, also a deer, with a gun pointed to me. I could see by the surprise in their faces that they also remembered me from months ago, in that store where we argued for three gallons of water.

Our weapons were still pointed by each other, and it took a lot of time until one of us spoke anything, so in the meanwhile, I analyzed them. The male deer, Joe, apparently, was very much alive, and the arrow I put through his chest wasn't there anymore, obviously.

"Hi," I started. "Sorry for shooting you back then,"

"It's you," he said.

His expression was impossible to read. Now it was obvious he could remember me, but what would he do with me... that was a mystery. I still didn't let go of my bow, keeping it steady and armed.

"I didn't know you were here, I'm sorry," I started. "I'm just looking for something,"

"Yeah, so is every fucking person in this country," he said. "Put the bow away,"

I sighed, noticing my defeat, and obeyed. I put my weapons away and gave him my bag. He passed it onto the girl, still pointing his gun at me. He motioned for me to follow him with his head, and so I did.

The hospital was taken good care of, I could see that it was clean, mostly, and didn't look destroyed like the outside. It was almost unsettling. I was surrounded by a destroyed world most of my life, and now I was meeting these restored places.

"You're still mad about that time?" I asked, trying to forget the landscape.

"I know you didn't mean to shoot, but you could've helped,"

"Yeah..."

And the subject died there.

Joe guided me through the hospital until we got to a kind of reception, where they made a living room. I saw the other three people sitting in chairs and couches, they seemed to have stopped talking as soon as we arrived.

"Oh shit...," one of them said, a possum.

"That's him," the lynx went along.

I hated when people already knew who I was. It made me feel they knew an important thing that I didn't. But I knew nothing in that situation was favorable for me.

"Marthio?" said another voice.

But there was one more person there. When I looked at her, my heart dropped to the bottom of the earth. The paws I was holding up fell as well as I felt the grips of hate and guilt that held my heart weaken a little. I doubted reality for a second, but the name she just said made my beliefs change in point one second.

The face, covered with the rusty fur of Maya Yami was staring right back at me.

I quickly took my facial cover off, the shock in her face was even bigger. I saw big and salty tears leave her eyes as she ran towards me and hug me. I didn't know what to feel. Happy? Sad? Angry? Confused?

I didn't know, but the first thing I did was push her away. She was confused too, as well as anyone in the room.

"What... is happening?" asked the deer girl.

"Six years," I said. "Six. Years. And you were alive,"

"I... I'm s-,"

"No," I cut her off. "You're not. If you're skilled enough to survive a neck break, you can go after your child!"

"Child?" asked the possum.

That situation was unbearable. I didn't know how to react to anything. I didn't know what to do, how to do it, and even why I would. The only thing I knew was that I was leaving instantly.

"Give me my bow back, I'm leaving," I said to Joe.

"Wha?" he answered.

"Mace, please,"

"Give it to me," I repeated slowly.

"And let you kill everyone here?"

A few seconds of silence passed before I was full of that shit. With a single "fine", I walked past him. He was still holding the gun against me, so the shock of me not being even bored by it must have stopped him from shooting. I walked back the same way I came in, leaving through the front door.

A Wanderer came to try and attack me, so I just grabbed it with my infected arm and pushed it to the ground. I punched it again and again, until it was dead, and then kept punching. Only when its face was a mass of meat and blood, I stopped.

And then, I started crying. I cried because she didn't come back for me, I cried because I killed half a country only because her death broke me. I cried because I had realized only now that it wasn't my father who turned me into a monster. My urge to kill, my anger, my regret, my guilt, it all came from her death.

It wasn't my father who had turned me into this beast, it was my mother.

This was happening too fast, way too fast. I was taken out of my balance. What should I do? Nate would know. He always knew how to deal with people. That never was my forte.

The other Gluttons started coming nearby, but a gunshot drew their attention towards another place, leaving me alone. I looked in the direction of the shot and saw her, at the top of the hospital, holding the gun that had just saved me. She looked at me as well, guilt covering her face.

Remembering Nate, I decided to finish this as soon as possible. Standing up from the bloody body, I went back in. The walls were agonizing and asphyxiating now, the clean characteristic they had meant nothing to me anymore. Because those halls were the same she was in.

When I came back into the living room, she was there too. I picked my face wear again and put it back on. I didn't want her to keep staring at my face. I had only one question for her, and it was:

"Where is it?"

She hesitated before answering:

"What?"

"You know what,"

She sighed, looking away. Her eyes met the deer behind me and signaled him to give me my bow back, and so he did. The tension the others had was suddenly replaced with a very big confusion.

"The big red door, end of the hallway," she pointed with her head.

I simply nodded and followed her path. A few whispers could be heard behind me as I simply ignored the presence of the person who left me alone for six years.

As I passed through the door, I saw an old cassette player attached to a TV. Very similar to the one we used to have at home. Next to it, laid, a simple tape filled with dust, meaning that no one had moved it in the past years, with "Mason" written on it.

I knew this was from him. I simply did. He knew I was coming, he knew what I was going to do. He knew everything even before I left home. With an even bigger anger in my heart, I picked the tape up, blew the dust away, and put it on the player. I remember the basics from the TV at home, so it didn't take me long to turn it on.

The face of my father, a skinless cat with the same attributes as mine, appeared on the screen. Only then I noticed I had no idea how he looked like, because every time he was at home, I was looking down to the ground, never having faced him once.

"Hi, Mason," the recording said. "I know you must... not like me right now, but all I did was for a good reason," he paused for a second. "I'm not going to stall, I was bitten two hours ago. I'll stop being able to form full sentences in a while and... well, you know. The day I'm recording this is...one week before I left home for the last time, and I'm sorry you had to go through everything to get to me,"

That was not the Marthio I remembered.

"I know you hate me, I made sure you did, because I've done terrible things, and I'd be disappointed if you ended up like me," he sighed. "Just... putting some thoughts out. I know what you're here for. The cure. The solution to all the problems in the world. The death cure. I'm sorry to say this, but there is no cure,"

That took the rest of the balance in me right away.

"We can't create life," he said. "It's impossible to make bacteria that can prevent the Prion from taking our body. All my attempts were a complete failure, and they ended up useless, just like everything else I did. The records of the cure are fake. I made them all up. The thing is, this machine I designed is useless. There is no such thing as a Cell Synthesizer III, I made it up so I could explain it to you, loud and clear. You must've noticed that your mother is missing an ear. She was bitten there, a long time ago, but I cut it off quickly, so it wouldn't make her sick, but she was still infected. A minor amount, close to one prion had entered her body, but, for some reason, she didn't turn. The Prion was still in her bloodstream, we could sense that with the alterations of the blood patterns. We simply didn't know what happened, maybe it was just too little to be able to do something. A while after, she got pregnant. You were born with 8 months, an early comer, and I noticed he had passed you the prions. Her blood tests were normal, and yours were altered. But it also didn't infect you. A baby, still forming, wasn't affected by the curse of this world,"

I still didn't understand where he was going.

"After a short while, your blood tests were normal as well. The prions had disappeared. But how? How were you able to completely wear off the enemy? You, as a fetus, developed yourself while infected, you adapted yourself to the prion, making it impossible to infect you. It was a miracle. Your proteins were immune to the effects of the prion. You don't have bacteria, your entire body is immune. Your proteins are stronger prions than the Esuriit Comed. Of course, if a lot of prions enter your bloodstream, they'd overtake your proteins for a while, but when you start to develop higher immunity, they'll fight it back, just like they did when you were a kid. There's no Cell Synthesizer III because YOU are the Cell Synthesizer III,"

I did not believe a single word he was saying.

"The injection I just gave you was Vitamin D, so you could think I did something with you. The truth is... I'm a failure. You can't save anyone. All I wanted you to do was forget about me, forget about everything I did to you, go live your life,"

"No!" I yelled.

"I'm sorry," it said as if it was talking to me.

"I didn't want this!" I yelled. "I wasn't looking for a therapy session with my deceased father! I don't care what you say to me and I know you won't even answer, but you just can't do this to me and everyone else!"

I flipped the tables and broke the vials at the laboratory.

"I don't care if it cost your life to plan this, I'm NOT following this path!"

"And with that being said, I hope you understand my message, Mason, I'm your father, and you're my son, but in this situation, I'm not asking as your father. I humbly beg of you that you keep on going with this plan. So, I ask... as the first of them, to what's left of us,"