My Immortal

Chapt 5: Kiran's 97 Years

Kiran:

A week after being kidnapped from my home, forcibly abandoning my beloved on earth, the second round of bombs landed. I watched them decimate my home. I felt my heart break as each flash indicated an explosion, more and more death and damage.

I was forced into the Tech department, working on the various life support systems. With a background of both electronic and mechanical technology, I was one of the more relied upon techs. There were a few people that I had gotten somewhat close to in the two years before the 'incident'.

A good man and engineer named Loudoun Griffin had noticed my degrading mental state and had offered to be a sounding board if I needed it. We became friends. I told him about the life I had left behind, he shared that his wife was allowed aboard, due to her condition. She was pregnant with their first child, a son. I was there when the baby was born, a strong, healthy boy, they named Warren. They named me godmother of the boy. His green eyes reminded me of my love. I fell in love with the boy as my own son.

Two years into my forced exile, I snapped. A man named George Kane, the head of security, made a comment about LGBT women being in the military, and I tried very hard to keep my cool, but his follow up to that statement had me seeing red. I attacked the man, breaking several bones, his and mine alike. I was hauled to the lock up area, assigned a cell and told that I would have my case reviewed at the end of my sentence. I spent a year locked in that cell. At the end of the year, I was brought in front of the governing body. Standing across the room was Kane.

It was a simple question they asked me. Are you sorry for what you have done? I laughed, Sorry? Not a chance. He had it coming and I would do it again if he made the same comments in front of me. This was apparently the wrong answer. I was told that because I was unwilling to apologize, my crimes would be bumped from simple assault, to capital assault. With a capital charge, I was now to be executed by floating. They took me to one of the air locks near the lock up. Shoving me inside the airlock, I heard the door hiss shut behind me. I looked back at them as they pressed the button that I would take my life. The outer door opened, the air rushed out, spilling into the vacuum of space. I felt my body leave the floor, but I grabbed on. I pulled myself into the airlock, to the amazement of the guards watching and myself. Once the outer door closed, the guards grabbed me and threw me back into the cell.

The rest of the Ark was advised that I, Kiran Snyder was executed by floating, due to a capital crime. I was ignored for nine years before good old George decided to try again. Once again he failed, and once again I was thrown into my familiar jail cell. Another nine years, another floating attempt. I had figured out that something about surviving a nuclear detonation had given me some kind of resistance to death. How extensive of that resistance, I had no idea. It took another five years before I was told good old George had died and his annoyance of a son, Thomas, took over. Thomas tried to float me another two times in his tenure, before he too died, and his son, Alexander took over.

I had been locked up for fifty-four years at this point, older than anyone else on the Ark, nearly guaranteed at the age of eighty-two. Even in my 'advanced' age, I still looked like an early twenties woman.

Alexander came to see me a few times before he attempted to kill me. It was a nice change in his family, but I knew he would be just like his father. I laughed loudly as the outer door opened. By this time, I had learned how to lock myself to the airlock floor, a talent I had come to learn in my cell. I found that walking along the ceiling rather cathartic in a weird way. Once more I was thrown back into my cell and I was left alone.

A solitary existence that I had been living for the last seventy something years had taken its toll. I spent my 100th birthday thinking about my beloved. Thoughts of life on Earth overwhelmed me more often than not. I thought of Mako. How I would ask her to marry me, what our wedding would look like, where we would go for our honeymoon. Would we adopt children or would we try to have biological children? Would we have retired from the military and found a little house on the coast, or perhaps in the mountains. Live a solitary life with only use once the children grew up and had families of their own? How had my godson, Warren, done. Was his family name still there? Did he or his family ever think about me? When had my dear brother Loudoun passed?

So many questions left unanswered by a simple twist of fate.

A decade went by, I sat forgotten in my cell. Just shy of my 111th birthday, the door opened and I found myself face to face with a woman, dressed in gray clothes, white arm band on her left arm.

"Doc, what can I do for you?" I asked, wondering what she was doing here. I had never been seen by a doctor since the original doctor the first time I was floated.

"Prisoner 2, you will be silent while the Doc is in the room, unless she asks you a specific question. Do you understand these orders?" The guard at the door spoke. I hadn't bothered to ask or learn his name, despite him delivering my rations once a week.

"Sure." I answered, rolling my eyes. There was nothing he could do to stop me. Any injuries he inflicted would be gone in a few hours. There was a distinct lack of air in my cell already, more likely due to an issue with the oxygen system, but I could care less. I could survive Space, what did I need air for?

"Prisoner 2, how old are you?" The doc asked, her tablet in front of her.

"It's currently July right?" I asked, and she looked at me. It took a second for her to respond but she nodded. "I turn 111 on August 11th. So 110 and change."

The Doc looked at the guard for a moment before writing something down.

"What's your name, doc? I gotta have something to call you besides Doc." I asked, just wanting a name to go with the face.

"Dr. Abigail Walters." She answered, her voice clipped.

"Nice to meet you Dr. Walters." I offered her my hand. She looked at it for a moment before taking it. I shook it gently and dropped my hand after a few seconds. "I'm not violent.... To the innocent anyways."

"You were locked up for capital assault." She spoke up, not bothering to look at me.

"I was locked up for defending the LGBT community and LGBT soldiers like myself." I countered. "That aside, Georgie-Boy was a dick. He deserved it."

Dr. Walters looked at me on that, arching her eyebrow. She motioned for me to sit on my bed, grabbing her kit from beside her.

"I'll be drawing blood to run some tests. Failure to comply with this, or any fighting with me, will result in disciplinary actions. Do you understand?"

"If I say no to you drawing my blood... Guardy-Boy gets to beat the shit out of me, force my compliance, and you get what you want anyways." I shook my head. "Take what you want, I'm too old to deal with this."

Dr. Walters did as she wanted, drawing nearly two full pints of blood before leaving the room. The guard, however, decided to leave me with a few parting gifts. Once he was satisfied with the beating he inflected, he too left.

Another few weeks past before Dr. Walters was back, this time with a few toys.

"We will be hooking you up to a few machines to get a baseline reading. Once again the same rules apply."

"Just a heads up Doc. You might notice my cell has a KEY. No electronic locks, the lights are always flickering. I tend to mess with electronics." I offered the information I had learned several decades before. "I wouldn't want to screw with your machines."

"Warning understood, however, you will comply." Dr. Walters shoved me towards my bed. She quickly strapped me to several machines all at once. They seem to work for a few minutes before going haywire.

I jerk as one of the machines sends a solid zap to my ribs. "You may wanna get them off me now..." As I finished speaking one of the machines started smoking.

She quickly removed the machines and left, the guard once again leaving me with a few broken ribs and a broken nose.

That was the last time I saw Dr. Abigail Walters. I would see her again, but in a different light, with a different last name entirely. She would sully that last name, one I had come to love.