Second Chance

Chapter 80

I manage to stagger out of the burning building with Maria draped lifelessly in my arms. Physical, mental and emotional pain wears down my strength, but I force myself to keep moving forward. In the distance, I can see Morgan and Alex by the truck, calling over to me. With all the energy I have left, I make my way over to them, and lay Maria's body in the back part of the truck.

Immediately, exhaustion slams into me, and I slide down the side of the truck until I collapse to the ground. "Justin, are you okay?" Morgan asks urgently, crouching down to my level.

"Tired." I answer, still breathing heavily.

"Why did you go in there? You could have died! You didn't need to save her." She scolds, and I can pick up a hint of jealousy in her voice.

"I couldn't....leave her....in there." I try to explain, but my words are coming out in gasps that are probably hard to understand.

"She's gone, Justin." Alex tells me, examining Maria's body. "She's dead."

"I know she is." I growl, forcing myself up again so I can look at Maria. "But I might be able to save her."

"You can't save her, she's-" Alex starts, but I cut her off.

"Do you know what this is?" I ask, pulling my memory chip out of my pocket.

She studies it for a moment, then her eyes light up in realization. "Yeah, that's a mind chip. How'd you get one?"

"It's mine." I answer. "Maria made it when she thought I was going to die. If I can implant it into her, she would come back to life, right?"

"Uhhh....maybe?" She answers uncertainly. "I don't know, honestly. I've never used one before."

"Would you know how to do it?" I demand.

"Um, probably, I guess. I don't know if it's a good idea though." She says slowly.

"Come on, if you can fix a tractor then you can use a mind chip." I plead, starting to get really desperate.

"A tractor is not a person, though." She protests. "I can't guarantee that I'll do it right, and I don't really feel comfortable doing it anyway."

"Alex, please!" I cry. "You're the only one who can. Unless you know what you're doing." I whip my head around to stare at Morgan, but she's just looking at the ground.

"I have no idea what the hell a mind chip is. I'm from a very secluded village that has no fancy technology." She answers, with a slight edge to her voice.

"Okay, then you have to do it, because I don't know what I'm doing either." I give Alex an absolutely desperate look that's probably sending all my dignity down the drain, but I don't care.

Finally, she sighs, then says. "Fine, but we're going to have to find a computer store."

—-

I sit in the back of the truck with Maria. Our hair is flying everywhere in the wind, and it's actually getting a little cold. Although, night is fast approaching, so we have to do all of this soon. I'm just hoping this is going to work, and I'll get my love back.

We enter yet another small town, and Alex eventually slows to a stop and parks the truck in front of an electronics store. I hop out of the back, then scoop Maria up in my arms, and bound over to the front door. Alex gets there first, and I look back at Morgan, who is still sitting in the passenger's seat. I guess she's not coming with us.

Alex opens the door and goes inside, and I join her. The place surprisingly looks untouched, which is really good because we need a working computer. We go over to the first one we see, and I gently lay Maria down again.

"Chip." Alex orders, as she opens the lid of the computer and turns it on.

I take the mind chip out of my pocket and place it in her hand. She then sticks it in an opening of the computer, and up pops a bunch of different extremely complicated looking files.

"Holy shit." She mutters, scrolling through the different tabs.

Finally, she comes to a video, and I realize it's 149018 hours long. That must be the video of my entire life, because that's roughly around seventeen years, I think. Alex opens the video, then clicks a link to another page, which brings her to a video editing app looking thing.

"If I do this, then you'll never be able to use this chip for yourself. If you die, that's it. There's no other do overs." She tells me, scrolling through the timeline a bit, then looking over at me.

"I'm okay with that." I say confidently, nodding my head.

"Okay, then I'm going to delete all the footage of you, and focus on Maria. It's going to take time though, so be patient." She warns, and I try to push away that impatient feeling that I already have.

So after what feels like hours of scrolling through footage and deleting about eighty percent of it, Alex is finally done. She puts it through the processor, and after a few more minutes, it's ready. She takes the chip out of the computer and hands it to me.

"Now, I'm pretty sure that goes in the top of her neck, right underneath her hairline." Alex says, finally sounding a little more confident in what she's talking about.

I nod, then crouch down beside Maria. I turn her over so that her back is facing me. I push her hair to the side, then take out Riley's pocket knife and start cutting a slit in the back of her neck. After doing surgery on Morgan, I feel a bit more comfortable sawing into someone's flesh.

Once I'm done, I slide the chip into her neck, then use the string and needle Alex gave me from her first aid kit in her truck to stitch up the slit. Finally, I turn Maria back to face me, and am disappointed to see that she still looks pretty dead.

"Fuck." I mutter, sitting back and trying not to cry again.

"Wait." Alex says, going back to the computer and clicking around for a bit.

I watch what she's doing, and see that there's a virtual on and off switch on the screen. It's currently off, but she clicks it on, and a moment later I hear a loud gasp from behind me. I whirl around in delight, and come face to face with a living, breathing and very much alive Maria.