The Horrors Below

Chapter 27: A Mixed Blessing

     (To avoid confusion, this chapter's events are set 2 days after chapter 26)

     Sammy pressed her hand against the thick enameled glass, letting the agonizing cold of New Earth's oceans seep into her.
     She lightly tapped her index finger on the glass, eliciting an uncannily beautiful shower of bioluminescent, blue-green sparks that rippled from her hand.
     Garland walked up, "I see you're enjoying the fireworks."
     Sammy looked away, trying to hide the obvious blush collecting on her cheeks, "If those were really fireworks, I'd be envying them."
     "Geez, melodramatic much?"
     "I can barely walk, my lung is half terminator, and Stitcher's on the fritz! But you're right, I guess I don't deserve the only thing I've wanted for the past two hundred-and-something years!", Sammy said as she stormed out , not bothering to close the bulkhead to the rest of the base.
     "Melodramatic again.", Garland said to no one.

     Sammy walked through the dank, dead loading dock, the only thing lighting her path to the small pool being her PDA tablet, currently devoid of it's assistance chip, making it almost useless for everything but it's current application. When she finally sat down at the water's edge, there was only one thing that she wanted to do there: sit, let the blush leave her cheeks and the tears well, and cry for the first time since she had become an inhabitant of Oceanus 02. She had come to a realization: her continued life was a mixed blessing at best, but she still couldn't bring herself to end it, she was stuck for now, obligated to see how this plays out.
     Maybe she could muster the courage to confess to Garland...or she could just focus on other things, things that wouldn't set her heart on fire with survivor's guilt...