Interstellar: Exploring The Cosmos With My Anomaly System
Chapter 41: New Perspective

Chapter 41: New Perspective

Fiona who stood on the balcony, her head nestled in her arms, watching as the flying cars went by her.

"You can never get a clear view of the sky anymore..." She muttered to herself, her fingers tightening around her arms as she recalled the memory thirty years ago... the universal blip that put everyone at a standstill...

"Im so incompetent—" She muttered to herself, her nail digging into her arm as if she were punishing herself. "I should’ve been up there with them... maybe then—"

Fiona’s voice cracked, her knuckles whitening as she pressed harder into her flesh. The neon glow of the city below blurred into streaks of red and blue, mirroring the static in her mind.

"Hey, Fiona!" Takashi called out to her, Fiona’s head raising to see the man, walking by her side to watch the littered sky. "So you’re finally up,"

Fiona nodded, looking up to the stars with him. There was a moment of silence, one she never heard in his company, it was almost unsettling, watching his fiery red hair flow in the cold night breeze, a soft nonchaotic smile on his face.

"Why’re you so...calm now—" She pondered finally, cutting the silence between them above the sound of buzzing cars.

"I’m not..." He muttered his voice dropping an octave.

Fiona looked up to him, his words confusing her even more despite what she saw before her.

"Truthfully, I want to die..." Takashi muttered, leaning back against the edge of the balcony, his grip tightening around the bar even as his head leaned up higher, finally getting an undisrupted glimpse of the moon.

Such grim words coming from such a hopeful smile, it would’ve thrown anyone off.

"Though If I die, and I do nothing, then what did the people that died before me even give their lives for," He muttered, looking at Fiona who stared at him, "Besides, who’s to say they’re really even dead, you know?"

"No bodies were found, even as the mechs fell from the sky," His lips waver at the ends, as his bangs covered his gaze. "So maybe...actually–nevermind,"

He shook his head, as if dispelling the thought right away, the thought of false hope terrifying him more than acceptance.

"Where’s Elliot, we have a job to complete!" He announced he turned to Fiona, shifting the topic immediately.

"Already?! But we just woke up!" Fiona argued, irritation lacing her voice at the sudden news.

"No rest for us, it’s been like that since we enrolled in the police force!" His hand stretched out to Fiona waiting for her to take it, with a soft sigh and a roll of her eyes, she took it. Colliding their fists together reluctantly.

"I guess so..." She sighed,

Takashi looked confused to her words, Fiona folding her arms tighter as if guarding herself as she say it, muttering more to herself than to him. "Well..."

Elliot sat in a blank room, his head hung low, casting his hair as curtains to his face. There was much to be desired, but have everything you need, a bed, a sink, and a mirror, where he would stare endlessly at himself.

He let out a shaky breath, his hand instinctively reaching for his neck. Hiding something that’s not there, or rather, was there.

"Your job is to kill all anomalies! For the betterment of humanity!" Words echoed in his mind. His eyes were wide awake, yet so, so tired. His breathing stumbling upon itself.

"They don’t remember..." Elliot muttered to himself, his leg shaking, repeatedly tapping his heel against the white tiled floor. "They don’t remember it..."

"Why—" Tears started to flood from the boy’s eyes as memories came into his mind.

Shots of him as a child, watching on as a boy get’s skewered from behind a glass wall, the boy watches with indifference, the light of the laboratory hitting his glasses in a way that hides his gaze. His hand was held as he watched, a light comforting squeeze pressed against his palm as he looked up, seeing a man whose face was blurred out for him, all he remembered is that his expression was kind, though he didn’t know what that meant—

"You’ll never be like him," He muttered, his words carrying more of a threat than kindness. "You my boy, no my son..."

The doctor kneels down to him, his gentle, soft hands; that of a man that hadn’t done physical labor in his life, caressed the boy’s face. Guiding his eyes away from the scene that’s taken place before him, even as the boy’s scream pierce his ears.

"You’ll be the savior of humanity... I just know it!"

[Subject 07 has been neutralized,] an eerie voice chimed. The doctor raised his head to meet the image of the boy once more, seeing his body sprawled out against the table, his eyes dead as a fish’s.

"Do you feel sadness?" The doctor pondered, watching as blood leaked from his open wound and tapped against the pristine white floor, tainting it with gore.

Tap, tap, tap,

"No..." Elliot choked, his gaze no longer looking at the boy, but fixated on the doctor. Hearing the last breaths of his friend leaving his lips.

"Even though he was your friend?" The doctor questioned, Though his words didn’t come from surprise, or shock, rather, it came from a routine it felt like a test.

"He was an anomaly, nothing more..." He responded. The boy’s glasses are still hiding his gaze. "We were never friends..."

Tap, tap, tap,

"Good," The doctor praised, his hands ruffling the young boy’s hair, hair longer than it was now, the strands now ruffled and moving to the side, revealing a number on his neck, the number four.

Tap, tap, tap,

’He’s not your friend...’

Tap, tap, tap,

’He’s not your friend!’

"He’s not my friend, he’s not my friend, he’s not my friend, he’s not—" Elliot’s tapping is getting worse and worse, his heel getting sore in front he repeatedly hits, "He’s not, he’s not, he’s not..."