LightReader

Chapter 2 - The Settlement

SERA POV

"Don't look at it."

Helena grabbed my arm hard and pulled me away from where the computer sound came from. Her fingers dug into my skin like claws.

"But you said—" "I said don't look." Her voice was sharp, not kind anymore. "That laptop is Council business. You need rest."

My hands still burned. The invisible wires under my skin felt like they were on fire, even though I couldn't see them anymore. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong.

"Helena, what's happening to me?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she forced a smile back on her face—the kind people use when they're lying to kids. "Come. Let me show you the town. You need to understand what we're dealing with."

She pulled me through the camp before I could argue.

New Haven was awful.

Tents everywhere, packed so tight you could barely walk between them. The ground was mud mixed with garbage. Everything smelled like dirty bodies and sickness. People stared at me as we passed—their eyes empty and hopeless.

A little girl sat outside a tent, crying. Her mom tried to comfort her, but the woman looked dead inside.

"Cholera," Helena said quietly. "From dirty water. We've lost two hundred people this week alone. Simple diseases that shouldn't kill anyone anymore."

My brain immediately started working. I couldn't stop it—knowledge just flooded in like someone turned on a faucet in my head.

"Boil the water," I said. "For ten minutes. That kills most germs. And you need to separate drinking water from waste water. Ancient Romans knew this. They built aqueducts and pipes to keep them apart."

Helena stopped walking. She stared at me with that strange look again. "You can remember all that? Just like that?"

"I remember everything I've ever read or learned. Every book, every piece, every lecture." I touched my head. "It's all in here, perfectly clear. I don't know why."

"Eidetic memory," Helena whispered. "Photographic memory. I'd heard stories you had it, but I never imagined..." She grabbed both my shoulders. "Sera, do you understand what this means? You're the only person living who can remember how to rebuild civilization. Everyone else is guessing. But you know."

We kept going. Helena showed me more horror.

The hospital tent was the worst. People lay on dirty blankets, moaning. A man with a simple cut on his leg—it had gotten infected and now the whole leg was swollen and red. Without medicines, he'd probably die.

"I can help him," I said.

The doctor, a tired woman with blood on her apron, laughed sadly. "With what? We don't have drugs. We don't have anything."

But my brain was already solving the problem. "Honey. It's a natural medicine. And garlic—crush it into a paste. Willow bark for pain and fever. Native Americans used these for ages before modern drugs."

The doctor's mouth fell open. "That... that might actually work."

"It will work," I said. And somehow, I was totally sure. "I can show you. I remember dozens of herbal remedies from different countries. We can make simple medicine from plants."

Helena's smile got bigger. Stranger. "You're exactly what we need."

Something about the way she said it made my stomach hurt.

We walked to the edge of camp. Helena pointed at the dead city beyond the walls. "That's the Deadlands. Dangerous. Scavengers fight over scraps from the old world out there. Bodies everywhere. Violence."

I looked at the dark buildings. Somewhere in that emptiness, I'd been found unconscious. Burned. Nearly dead.

"What was I doing out there, Helena?"

"I don't know. You tell me." She turned to face me fully. "Three days lost. Then you appear in the most dangerous place around, barely alive. Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"Everything seems strange to me! I can't remember!"

"Can't?" Helena tilted her head. "Or won't?"

Before I could answer, shouting began near the camp center. People were running toward something.

"The laptop," someone yelled. "It's still working! Come see!"

Helena's face went pale again. "Stay here," she ordered.

"No." I started walking toward the noise. "If computers work again, that changes everything. That means—"

"Sera, STOP."

But I didn't stop. I pushed through the crowd. People were packed around a table where a dirty laptop sat, its screen glowing incredibly bright in the dead world.

A young man in a guard uniform stood over it, looking frightened. "I don't understand. Nothing electronic works. Nothing has worked since the Pulse. So why does THIS?"

I stared at the screen. My hands burned worse, hot enough to make me gasp.

And then I saw it.

Reflected in the laptop's screen—my own face. But there was something wrong with my left eye. A flicker. A shine. Like static on an old TV.

I leaned closer.

Inside my eye, small letters and numbers scrolled past. Code. Computer code. Reflected in my own eyes like... like... Like I had a screen inside my head.

"No," I whispered. "That's impossible."

But even as I said it, the burning in my hands got worse. I looked down.

The circuit designs were back. Glowing faintly under my skin. Beautiful and scary. Lines of light running up my arms like someone had drawn technology right onto my bones.

Helena appeared beside me. She saw the trends. I watched her face change—shock, then recognition, then something that looked like success.

"You have no idea what you are, do you?" she said softly.

"What are you talking about?"

"The laptop works because of proximity." Helena grabbed my glowing hand. "It's reacting to YOU, Sera. To whatever is inside you."

The crowd started noticing my arms. People backed away, scared. Someone screamed.

"She's one of them!" A man pointed at me. "She's a machine! A robot!"

"I'm not—" But what was I? Human? Something else?

The guard pulled out a knife. "Dr. Voss, step back. That thing might be dangerous."

"Lower your weapon," Helena directed. But she didn't sound protective. She sounded... excited. "Nobody touches her. She's far too valuable."

Valuable. Not safe. Not okay. Valuable.

My hands stopped burning. The circuits faded. The laptop's screen went dark again—as dead as every other electronic thing in the world.

But now everyone was looking at me like I was a monster.

"What am I?" I asked Helena. Begged her. "Please. What's happening to me?"

Helena smiled. The kind smile was totally gone now. What replaced it was cold and calculating.

"You're the future, dear. And I'm going to make sure humanity gets every last piece of you."

Before I could ask what that meant, three guards surrounded me.

"Take her to the Council chamber," Helena demanded. "Lock the doors. Let absolutely no one in."

"Wait! Helena, what are you doing?"

"Protecting you," she said. But her eyes said something different. "And protecting everyone else from what you might accidentally do."

The guards grabbed my arms. Started pulling me away.

"I didn't do anything wrong!" I shouted.

"Not yet," Helena called back. "But Sera—do you want to know what else we found when we discovered you in the Deadlands?"

I stopped fighting. "What?"

"Bodies. Dozens of them. Burned. Their brains literally fried from the inside." Helena's smile was terrible. "And you were standing in the center of them all."

The world spun. My stomach lurched.

"I didn't... I couldn't have..."

But my hands started burning again. And this time, I felt something else.

Power.

Terrible, infinite power hiding inside me, waiting to wake up.

And I had no idea how to stop it.

More Chapters