Our Manufactured Reality

Chapter 25: Inevitable

The walk to the compound was brutal.

It wasn't physically brutal though.  I mean sure, there were twists and turns at every corner, and we had no idea how to prepare ourselves for the looming fight ahead, but the walk was just brutal.

I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take her empty words. Harper and I had waited too long, I think we both had just drifted too far apart. And I know it sounds cliché, but I just couldn't take Harper anymore. I think I'd grown to like her too much, and it was tearing me apart that I couldn't put it into words.

I only had two options: Let it go, and spend eternity wondering what could've been, or blatantly ask her how she feels.

I smashed my boot into the ground. Ugh! Do I ask or not? Corey's footsteps were suddenly slowing, and the path was beginning to clear. It had only taken us a day to get there, but we had marched all night. The sun was beginning to peek through the trees now, and I was not looking forward to exerting more energy.

I knew that I really didn't want to ask Harper how she felt, yet not knowing would be an even worse fate. The "what ifs" would be my downfall.

Therefore, I mustered up the courage and debated when to tell her. If I tell her now, one of us could die and be separated from the other. But if I don't and one of us dies, the other would spend a lifetime not-knowing.

Still, if Harper didn't like me anyway, and I died, she could live life without... guilt.

I couldn't let her feel guilty if I died in this battle. So I promised to spare her that. It was the most likely scenario that she didn't like me at all, therefore, I would tell her after and try to avoid her for the fight.

~~~

"You ready?" Alex asked as he clutched the familiar scrap of steel; both of us had managed to bring limbs from the  machines with us.

"Only one way to find out." I sighed, repeating my catchphrase.

"Yeah, I guess so." He chuckled to himself. My turn of phrase didn't hold the same significance between us as me and Harper.

The door creaked open, and we were suddenly all inside the steel vault of a lab. For some, it would be their tomb.

We all reached for our flashlights, and clicked them on, the taps echoing through the halls as the corridor lit up. Where are we? And more importantly, where are they? It was the strangest idea to consider that the robots were not here yet. That they may have planned to come later, or that we had simply beaten them to the punch.

No. I sighed. They have to be here. There's no way they aren't. They're just... waiting...

We wandered through the halls as a pack while trying to reach the pod's housing. The walls looked more empty than before. I remembered them being barren and gray, but not lifeless and foreboding. Everything here seemed to be the color of nothingness... of hopelessness... if that even is a color.

Not only that, but after being outside for so long, the whole hallway seemed smaller, more constricting. Instinctively, I looked back to check on Harper. She was fine. As cautious as me at the moment.

I looked away before she could see me staring.

We reached the pods with a surprising amount of ease. With Corey at the front, he motioned for me to approach-- I was now the only one with a chip to get us in.

I found the familiar blinking dot immediately, and it felt weird to be linking it with my arm again. All this time, I'd been searching for a way to get as far from this place as possible, to get answers. And now here we all were... back to the place it all began.