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Description
The door closed behind us with a loud thud. We were in an airlock, and we gasped for breath as it filled with clean air, filtering out the disgusting Smog. The inner door of the airlock opened to a huge cave, lit only by a few ceiling lamps. The people inside moved to and fro, writing in notebooks and carrying equipment around. A young woman in combat fatigues with long, dark hair greeted us with a toothy grin.
“Penny!” she cried. “We heard you were coming, and I was just about to send you some reinforcements, but you made it without our help! How did you manage that?”
“These guys helped me out, Ms. Reed,” she said while hugging the woman. “They disabled my CAD and got me out of the Labs!”
“Now, I wouldn’t say that,” I mumbled. “Penelope did most of the work…”
“Don’t be modest, kid!” Ms. Reed exclaimed, slapping me hard on the back. “You’ve done us a great favor! I’m Commander Rachel Reed. I keep this place alive and kicking! And who might you be?”
We introduced ourselves and told the woman our story. She didn’t seem as impressed as Penelope had been, just listening nonchalantly and nodding every now and then. She also told us a bit about herself: she was in command of the City Limit Shelter, and was responsible for keeping its inhabitants safe. She had been Penelope’s teacher a long time ago, and had been helping her as well as her friends who also wanted to escape.
We sat down at a row of cheap metal benches, and had a meager meal of watery soup and various non perishable boxed foods. “Sorry, it’s probably not quite what you’re used to,” Commander Reed muttered. “We’ve got it pretty tough out here. Every so often we make a run to an abandoned grocery store and bring back what we can… Usually it’s just the soup, but since we’ve got guests, I decided to break out the Little Debbie snack cakes…” She sighed, staring at her Ho-Ho.
“So,” I asked, “what’s going on here? I mean…” I gestured above, signaling the outside world. “What happened to this place?”
“The Eye happened, that’s what. Yeah, that’s what you saw earlier, and you’re damn lucky you got away from it alive. Thing got here a century ago or so, and just sent the place straight to hell. We think it blew up some chemical plants, and that’s what caused this Smog. There were a few survivors, and they managed to set up these Shelters, but their quality of life was… terrible.” She chuckled. “Worse than ours, if you can imagine that. Bad water, attacking Worms, roving assholes with rebreathers and flare guns who thought it would be fun to steal their stuff… you name it, they had to deal with it.
“Things changed, though, once Dr. Materas came around. He just sort of came out of nowhere, with a story a lot like yours. Escaped from the Evil Eye through that reactor of his, dragging along his poor…” She glanced at Penelope uncomfortably. “His daughter with him. He didn’t have anything, but he managed to get his old laboratory up and running again. At first, he really helped people. He gave them homes, food, and electricity, but the biggest favor he did us was rework our rebreather technology on a massive scale, making the City safe to live in again. He adopted injured and orphaned children, improving their bodies with mechanical parts. Oddly enough, when he did, they became immune to the effects of the Smog, so they got people out of the crappy Shelters and back into the City. He even managed to tame those Worms that were causing such a huge problem for everyone. There were plans for reconstructing the city, as well as purifying all of the air… We had so much hope for that man…”
She sighed, sipping her soup pensively. “He became secluded, though. He chose to perform experiments on his Children, as he called them, rather than help the citizens. He even started to abduct them from their homes, terrorizing people all over… He went mad with power. The Compliance Assurance Devices, which before were only used for dangerously uncooperative Children, were equipped on all of them, and Dr. Materas used them along with the rest of his influence to rule the City with an iron fist. Eventually, though, he just disappeared, locking down the city. We aren’t sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing yet… We’re getting more and more Children into the Shelters, but only because the City’s become such a dangerous place again…” Commander Reed looked up from her soup at us, a confused look on her face.
“Hey, speaking of, how’d you get out of that place so fast? We picked up your signal once you started to hack that door, but you got out way sooner than we expected. Lucky thing, what with that Worm on your ass, but it’s still kind of strange…”
“I’m… not quite sure what happened,” said Penelope, scratching her head. “I was really focused on that ret scanner, and then somebody just pushed me away from it. Next thing I know, the door’s open… Did you do that, Weiss?”
I shook my head. “No, actually… it was Manfred!” As I said his name, he crouched into his chair. “Dude, you really saved our bacon back there! How’d you do it?”
Commander Reed fixed her gaze on him, staring him down. “No way…” She grabbed him by his shoulders, thrusting him out of his chair and in front of Penelope. “Ret scan him, would you, dear?”
The girl shook her head. “What? No, there’s no way he’s in the database. What’s the point?”
“Just do it!”
Penelope rolled her eyes and grabbed Manfred’s head, holding it so they were inches apart. “Hold still,” she said as a blue light flashed out of her right eye. A moment later, she gasped.
“Dad?” she whispered after a long silence. “Is… is that really you?”
“Yes,” replied Manfred, “It’s me.” His face had fallen solemn, and his voice was calm and steady, a radical transformation from his normal state.
Penelope pushed him to the ground, standing over him. Her voice was bitter, and her eyes watered. “I forgot to tell you something before you left. It’s been bugging me, you know?”
“Wh… what is it?”
“I hate you,” she spat into his face. She looked at him for a second, then shook her head and stormed off.
“I’m sorry!” Manfred called to her as she slammed a door behind her. He sighed as he got up from the ground. “Weiss, we need to talk.”
“Manfred… What?” was all I could manage to say.
“No. I am Doctor Edaniel Materas. To put it simply, I have gone insane. More specifically, I have developed paranoid schizophrenia along with a severe case of multiple personality disorder, and unfortunately, my personality is on the losing side. As ‘Manfred,’ as you call him, will be returning quite soon, I would ask that you listen quite carefully, for I won’t repeat myself.”
I looked around at the others at the table, all who were just as speechless as I was. “Um, yes sir,” I said, my mind reeling from his sudden change.
“I have one request for you, Mr. Wakefield. Please, give my daughter a better life than this. I have destroyed the rest of my family, and Penelope doesn’t deserve the same fate. She probably thinks that her current situation is my fault… and she’s probably right. Either way, I can’t do much about it now, so I’m asking you to help her. Will you?”
“Yeah,” I stammered, “I suppose so… I mean-“
“Will you bring Penelope with you when you find your way back home?” It was more of a command than a question.
“Y-yes sir.”
“Good. Now, go and tell her I’m sorry. I must talk to Rachel for a moment.”

Dazed, I left the dining room and walked down the hallway to the bathroom Penelope had locked herself into. I knocked on the door.
“Go away,” she muttered. “You’ve been gone for months, so it shouldn’t be too hard, huh?”
“Hey… it’s me, Weiss. Can we talk?”
There was a pause, and the door opened while Penelope let me in. Her face was red, swollen, and stained with tears. “Yeah… sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you like that…”
“No, it’s alright. I get it. But… why are you so mad at your father? I mean, he looks a bit odd right now, but he’s still your dad, right?”
“Oh, Weiss… you don’t understand. He’s done some bad things.”
“How bad could it be?”
She laughed darkly. “Stealing children from their parents, killing his enemies with the Worms, hoarding a nearly infinite source of energy to himself… it’s nothing. He did one thing that I’ll never forgive him for.” She sighed, staring at herself in the mirror. She pulled a strangely familiar locket out of her blouse and started to rub it.
“He had complete control over me, through the CAD. This was right before he left, when things were at their worst… He told me to get a prisoner from the basement. I brought her out to the courtyard, and she was so happy to see me… but I didn’t understand why… I took out this very gun,” She tapped the pistol that was strapped to her thigh, “And I shot her. Right between the eyes. X 19, Y 423. I never miss.” Her voice had risen to a yell, and tears started to stream down her cheeks. “I killed her! She’s dead by my hands, and it’s all Father’s fault!”
“Who?” I asked quietly, warily.
“Her name was Julie Ross,” Penelope said, regaining a bit of her composure. “She was the leader of the resistance movement against Dr. Materas. She started the movement when he began to abuse his power. She was arrested… while trying to rescue me. Her punishment was to be execution, but Dr. Materas felt that wasn’t quite enough, so he assigned me to the task.” She bit her lip, breathing heavily.
“I killed my mother, Weiss.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered. “I’m so sorry, Penelope…”
“Yeah, well, ‘Sorry’ isn’t gonna do much now. Her blood is on my hands, and it’s Father’s fault. You get it now, right? That’s why I’ll never forgive him.” She said no more, and there was a long, terrible silence between the two of us.
The message I was supposed to give to Penelope came to my mind then. “I know you probably won’t accept this,” I said, “but your dad says he’s sorry, and he wants to make it up to you.” She kept quiet. “He told me to help you get out of here. Anemonae and I have some business to take care of, and if you wanted to come with us-“
Penelope smiled. “Thank you. That really means a lot to me, but I can’t accept your offer.”
“What? Why not?”
“There are people here who still need my help, Weiss. I hope to take over my mom’s responsibilities, as well as my dad’s, and rebuild the city. I think you’ve made that possible, so thank you, but… I can’t leave this place.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
Penelope smiled, regaining her usually happy demeanor. “Hey, Weiss! Let’s get all this off our minds for a sec, why don’t we? Do you want to meet some of my friends?”
“Sure!” I laughed, and we left the tiny restroom.

Later that day, after meeting the Children that had been rescued from the Labs, I found myself talking to Commander Reed again. She greeted me with an enthusiastic salute.
“Mr. Wakefield! Can I ask you a favor?”
“Uh… what’s that?”
She lowered her voice. “They’re on the move. The Worms, that is. We’ve been tracking them, and they seem to be gathering around the Shelter. The last time that happened, we got a nasty little visit from the Evil Eye. I think we might have a fight on our hands, Wakefield.”
I didn’t like where this was heading. “And… what does this have to do with me?”
“Manfred told me you three have some combat experience, and frankly, we could use all the help we can get, especially if we’re getting a full assault from the Labs and the Eye. Now, I know you probably don’t want to help, but if you do, we might be able to get you out of here. What do you say?”
I sighed. She was right, I really didn’t want to fight any of those Worm things, or the Evil Eye, whatever that was. But if they could get us home, what choice did I have?
“Okay,” I nodded, and Commander Reed grinned.
“Good! Now get some sleep! The next few days are gonna be pretty tough, so you’ll need it.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was exhausted. I made my way to the sleeping quarters, fell on a cot, and slept almost immediately.

Description
The door closed behind us with a loud thud. We were in an airlock, and we gasped for breath as it filled with clean air, filtering out the disgusting Smog. The inner door of the airlock opened to a huge cave, lit only by a few ceiling lamps. The people inside moved to and fro, writing in notebooks and carrying equipment around. A young woman in combat fatigues with long, dark hair greeted us with a toothy grin.
“Penny!” she cried. “We heard you were coming, and I was just about to send you some reinforcements, but you made it without our help! How did you manage that?”
“These guys helped me out, Ms. Reed,” she said while hugging the woman. “They disabled my CAD and got me out of the Labs!”
“Now, I wouldn’t say that,” I mumbled. “Penelope did most of the work…”
“Don’t be modest, kid!” Ms. Reed exclaimed, slapping me hard on the back. “You’ve done us a great favor! I’m Commander Rachel Reed. I keep this place alive and kicking! And who might you be?”
We introduced ourselves and told the woman our story. She didn’t seem as impressed as Penelope had been, just listening nonchalantly and nodding every now and then. She also told us a bit about herself: she was in command of the City Limit Shelter, and was responsible for keeping its inhabitants safe. She had been Penelope’s teacher a long time ago, and had been helping her as well as her friends who also wanted to escape.
We sat down at a row of cheap metal benches, and had a meager meal of watery soup and various non perishable boxed foods. “Sorry, it’s probably not quite what you’re used to,” Commander Reed muttered. “We’ve got it pretty tough out here. Every so often we make a run to an abandoned grocery store and bring back what we can… Usually it’s just the soup, but since we’ve got guests, I decided to break out the Little Debbie snack cakes…” She sighed, staring at her Ho-Ho.
“So,” I asked, “what’s going on here? I mean…” I gestured above, signaling the outside world. “What happened to this place?”
“The Eye happened, that’s what. Yeah, that’s what you saw earlier, and you’re damn lucky you got away from it alive. Thing got here a century ago or so, and just sent the place straight to hell. We think it blew up some chemical plants, and that’s what caused this Smog. There were a few survivors, and they managed to set up these Shelters, but their quality of life was… terrible.” She chuckled. “Worse than ours, if you can imagine that. Bad water, attacking Worms, roving assholes with rebreathers and flare guns who thought it would be fun to steal their stuff… you name it, they had to deal with it.
“Things changed, though, once Dr. Materas came around. He just sort of came out of nowhere, with a story a lot like yours. Escaped from the Evil Eye through that reactor of his, dragging along his poor…” She glanced at Penelope uncomfortably. “His daughter with him. He didn’t have anything, but he managed to get his old laboratory up and running again. At first, he really helped people. He gave them homes, food, and electricity, but the biggest favor he did us was rework our rebreather technology on a massive scale, making the City safe to live in again. He adopted injured and orphaned children, improving their bodies with mechanical parts. Oddly enough, when he did, they became immune to the effects of the Smog, so they got people out of the crappy Shelters and back into the City. He even managed to tame those Worms that were causing such a huge problem for everyone. There were plans for reconstructing the city, as well as purifying all of the air… We had so much hope for that man…”
She sighed, sipping her soup pensively. “He became secluded, though. He chose to perform experiments on his Children, as he called them, rather than help the citizens. He even started to abduct them from their homes, terrorizing people all over… He went mad with power. The Compliance Assurance Devices, which before were only used for dangerously uncooperative Children, were equipped on all of them, and Dr. Materas used them along with the rest of his influence to rule the City with an iron fist. Eventually, though, he just disappeared, locking down the city. We aren’t sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing yet… We’re getting more and more Children into the Shelters, but only because the City’s become such a dangerous place again…” Commander Reed looked up from her soup at us, a confused look on her face.
“Hey, speaking of, how’d you get out of that place so fast? We picked up your signal once you started to hack that door, but you got out way sooner than we expected. Lucky thing, what with that Worm on your ass, but it’s still kind of strange…”
“I’m… not quite sure what happened,” said Penelope, scratching her head. “I was really focused on that ret scanner, and then somebody just pushed me away from it. Next thing I know, the door’s open… Did you do that, Weiss?”
I shook my head. “No, actually… it was Manfred!” As I said his name, he crouched into his chair. “Dude, you really saved our bacon back there! How’d you do it?”
Commander Reed fixed her gaze on him, staring him down. “No way…” She grabbed him by his shoulders, thrusting him out of his chair and in front of Penelope. “Ret scan him, would you, dear?”
The girl shook her head. “What? No, there’s no way he’s in the database. What’s the point?”
“Just do it!”
Penelope rolled her eyes and grabbed Manfred’s head, holding it so they were inches apart. “Hold still,” she said as a blue light flashed out of her right eye. A moment later, she gasped.
“Dad?” she whispered after a long silence. “Is… is that really you?”
“Yes,” replied Manfred, “It’s me.” His face had fallen solemn, and his voice was calm and steady, a radical transformation from his normal state.
Penelope pushed him to the ground, standing over him. Her voice was bitter, and her eyes watered. “I forgot to tell you something before you left. It’s been bugging me, you know?”
“Wh… what is it?”
“I hate you,” she spat into his face. She looked at him for a second, then shook her head and stormed off.
“I’m sorry!” Manfred called to her as she slammed a door behind her. He sighed as he got up from the ground. “Weiss, we need to talk.”
“Manfred… What?” was all I could manage to say.
“No. I am Doctor Edaniel Materas. To put it simply, I have gone insane. More specifically, I have developed paranoid schizophrenia along with a severe case of multiple personality disorder, and unfortunately, my personality is on the losing side. As ‘Manfred,’ as you call him, will be returning quite soon, I would ask that you listen quite carefully, for I won’t repeat myself.”
I looked around at the others at the table, all who were just as speechless as I was. “Um, yes sir,” I said, my mind reeling from his sudden change.
“I have one request for you, Mr. Wakefield. Please, give my daughter a better life than this. I have destroyed the rest of my family, and Penelope doesn’t deserve the same fate. She probably thinks that her current situation is my fault… and she’s probably right. Either way, I can’t do much about it now, so I’m asking you to help her. Will you?”
“Yeah,” I stammered, “I suppose so… I mean-“
“Will you bring Penelope with you when you find your way back home?” It was more of a command than a question.
“Y-yes sir.”
“Good. Now, go and tell her I’m sorry. I must talk to Rachel for a moment.”

Dazed, I left the dining room and walked down the hallway to the bathroom Penelope had locked herself into. I knocked on the door.
“Go away,” she muttered. “You’ve been gone for months, so it shouldn’t be too hard, huh?”
“Hey… it’s me, Weiss. Can we talk?”
There was a pause, and the door opened while Penelope let me in. Her face was red, swollen, and stained with tears. “Yeah… sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you like that…”
“No, it’s alright. I get it. But… why are you so mad at your father? I mean, he looks a bit odd right now, but he’s still your dad, right?”
“Oh, Weiss… you don’t understand. He’s done some bad things.”
“How bad could it be?”
She laughed darkly. “Stealing children from their parents, killing his enemies with the Worms, hoarding a nearly infinite source of energy to himself… it’s nothing. He did one thing that I’ll never forgive him for.” She sighed, staring at herself in the mirror. She pulled a strangely familiar locket out of her blouse and started to rub it.
“He had complete control over me, through the CAD. This was right before he left, when things were at their worst… He told me to get a prisoner from the basement. I brought her out to the courtyard, and she was so happy to see me… but I didn’t understand why… I took out this very gun,” She tapped the pistol that was strapped to her thigh, “And I shot her. Right between the eyes. X 19, Y 423. I never miss.” Her voice had risen to a yell, and tears started to stream down her cheeks. “I killed her! She’s dead by my hands, and it’s all Father’s fault!”
“Who?” I asked quietly, warily.
“Her name was Julie Ross,” Penelope said, regaining a bit of her composure. “She was the leader of the resistance movement against Dr. Materas. She started the movement when he began to abuse his power. She was arrested… while trying to rescue me. Her punishment was to be execution, but Dr. Materas felt that wasn’t quite enough, so he assigned me to the task.” She bit her lip, breathing heavily.
“I killed my mother, Weiss.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered. “I’m so sorry, Penelope…”
“Yeah, well, ‘Sorry’ isn’t gonna do much now. Her blood is on my hands, and it’s Father’s fault. You get it now, right? That’s why I’ll never forgive him.” She said no more, and there was a long, terrible silence between the two of us.
The message I was supposed to give to Penelope came to my mind then. “I know you probably won’t accept this,” I said, “but your dad says he’s sorry, and he wants to make it up to you.” She kept quiet. “He told me to help you get out of here. Anemonae and I have some business to take care of, and if you wanted to come with us-“
Penelope smiled. “Thank you. That really means a lot to me, but I can’t accept your offer.”
“What? Why not?”
“There are people here who still need my help, Weiss. I hope to take over my mom’s responsibilities, as well as my dad’s, and rebuild the city. I think you’ve made that possible, so thank you, but… I can’t leave this place.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
Penelope smiled, regaining her usually happy demeanor. “Hey, Weiss! Let’s get all this off our minds for a sec, why don’t we? Do you want to meet some of my friends?”
“Sure!” I laughed, and we left the tiny restroom.

Later that day, after meeting the Children that had been rescued from the Labs, I found myself talking to Commander Reed again. She greeted me with an enthusiastic salute.
“Mr. Wakefield! Can I ask you a favor?”
“Uh… what’s that?”
She lowered her voice. “They’re on the move. The Worms, that is. We’ve been tracking them, and they seem to be gathering around the Shelter. The last time that happened, we got a nasty little visit from the Evil Eye. I think we might have a fight on our hands, Wakefield.”
I didn’t like where this was heading. “And… what does this have to do with me?”
“Manfred told me you three have some combat experience, and frankly, we could use all the help we can get, especially if we’re getting a full assault from the Labs and the Eye. Now, I know you probably don’t want to help, but if you do, we might be able to get you out of here. What do you say?”
I sighed. She was right, I really didn’t want to fight any of those Worm things, or the Evil Eye, whatever that was. But if they could get us home, what choice did I have?
“Okay,” I nodded, and Commander Reed grinned.
“Good! Now get some sleep! The next few days are gonna be pretty tough, so you’ll need it.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was exhausted. I made my way to the sleeping quarters, fell on a cot, and slept almost immediately.