Chapter 3
My world divides into two phases: before the safe, and after.
Before, I’m a knuckle-dragging bundle of reflex and loss, scavenging clues and following the echo of my own name through a bunker that pulses with puzzles.
After, I’m a woman who has heard a voice on tape—thought it was hers, only to realize it belonged to another—and who has opened the safe, returned its evidence, and is left with an aftershock that feels less like victory and more like doom.
Now I lie on the cot, staring at the acoustic tiles, counting cracks and cataloging the slow decay of the bunker’s climate control.
My breath is steady. The safe’s door is shut, hiding its cache of Polaroids, data drives, and the glass vial whose liquid pulses blue whenever I look away.
The tape recorder, spent and mute, lies beside me like a mute confession.
I’m listening to the structure of silence, memorizing it, when the world above me detonates.
A sound rips through the calm. Not a scrape or a sigh but the abrupt, decisive shriek of a steel security door forced open.
Vibrations crawl through the cot, the frame, the very molecules of the room.
Every neuron sparks. I’m vertical before I know it, the cot jolting beneath me.
I hit the floor and roll—something I must have learned decades ago—and by the time I come up behind the workbench, my hand clamps around the first tool in reach: a broad, chisel-like flathead screwdriver.
The corridor is black except for the Geiger counter’s LED blink, ticking with predatory excitement.
I press my spine to the cool steel of the bench, clutching the screwdriver, sweat erupting between my shoulder blades.
Then I hear it: a staggered step and a crash—someone kicking through debris without care for silence.
Whoever’s coming isn’t sneaking. I tighten my grip.
This isn’t a weapon, but it’ll tear open anything that doesn’t expect a fight.
Strobe lights flash in the corridor as a figure emerges—too broad for the frame, swathed in a combat parka scored with dust and patches.
Backlit, the shape holds a rifle—military issue, ugly and utilitarian.
I breathe through clenched teeth as his head snaps in my direction.
A single grunt, a syllable of threat or inquiry.
He steps into the lab, scans the corners, then levels the rifle at the cot and sees it empty.
He whirls to the workbench where I crouch, screwdriver raised like a joke.
His face is weathered—white beard at the chin—but his eyes are fierce, alive.
For a heartbeat we lock gazes, both of us parsing the other, and then he barks a single word.
“Diana.”
It’s not a question. It’s a gunshot in the air. My hand doesn’t flinch, but something inside me snaps. The name crackles between us like a live wire, and when I don’t answer, he says it again: “Diana.” He lowers the rifle a hair, muscles coiled as if expecting me to go for his throat.
I’m weighing my options—charge, feint, plead for mercy—when his face softens just a shade. He’s searching me for confirmation, a password, a spark of recognition.
“Shit,” he mutters. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”
The screwdriver trembles in my fist. I hear that other woman’s voice in my mind—sharp, determined, guiding me to trust my instincts. Right now, my instincts say: stall.
“Who are you?” I say, and my voice is a whisper through gravel. I see the effect it has on him. His lip twitches. He lowers the rifle, slowly, like he’s backing away from a sleeping animal.
He drops into a crouch, bringing his head to my level. “Name’s Jackson Avery. We worked together.” There’s a hitch in his voice, not quite grief but something sour. “Jesus, they really did a number on you.”
He sets the rifle against the bench, but he keeps his hands where I can see them—big, square, and nicked with old scars.
“You, uh—” He clears his throat, searching for a point of reference that isn’t a scalpel to my own amnesia.
“You used to run circles around everyone in this place. Lab queen. Smoked me at chess, twice. Once when you were sleep-deprived and high on adrenaline.”
I say nothing, but my breathing slows. The screwdriver feels absurd in my hand now, but I don’t let go.
Jackson peers closer, his eyes scanning my face like a study subject under glass.
“Not ringing any bells, huh?” I shake my head.
“Only fragments. A woman’s voice on tape, saying I should trust my instincts. ”
He barks a short, bitter laugh. “She’s not wrong. You don’t survive in the Zone unless you trust them.” He gestures at the room, the walls, the rotted-out ceiling panel. “Place is a maze. You used to find every shortcut. That’s why they kept you on, even after… well, after.”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.
I rise, slowly, and he follows suit. He stands a full head taller than me, but doesn’t try to use it.
Instead, he looks at the cot, the safe, the still-warm tape recorder.
His gaze lingers there, and I know what he’s thinking.
I was just listening to a message from my past—a version of me that maybe he misses, or maybe he despises. Hard to tell.
Jackson steps forward, slow and deliberate, like approaching a dangerous animal he’s known for years.
“You had a hell of a temper. Once, you decked me with a pipette rack.” He grins, sheepish.
“Earned my respect, not gonna lie.” He reaches into his parka, pulls out a battered metal canteen, and slides it across the workbench toward me. “Thirsty?”
I don’t answer, but I take the canteen. The water is cold, metallic, but clean.
It stings going down. I set it back on the bench.
He leans on his elbows, careful to keep his posture open.
“Okay, let’s try this: Remember the lab fire in Green Sector?
You blamed me, but you covered for it in the reports.
Said it was a surge from the backup generator.
” His eyes flicker to mine, looking for any sign of a click, a spark.
“Or the time you rewired the Geiger grid so we could sleep without that damn chirp every ten seconds?”
None of it comes back, but something in the cadence of his stories worms into my chest—a sense of belonging, or maybe just the echo of old routines. I can’t tell if I like him, but I know I trust him more than I trust the rest of this nightmare.
I loosen my grip on the screwdriver. “Why are you here?”
He straightens, back to business. “They sent me to check on you. Or what was left of you.” He shrugs. “Didn’t expect to find you up and about. Didn’t expect you to be armed, either.” He gestures at the screwdriver, mouth twisting in amusement. “Resourceful. Always were.”
I look at the tool, feel the weight of it, then set it down on the bench with a quiet clack. “So what now?”
He looks at the door, then back at me. “Now? We make sure you’re ready to leave. If you’re still… functional, we can get out before the next patrol sweeps the area.” His tone is matter-of-fact, but I hear the undertone: urgency, and maybe fear.
I want to ask a hundred things: What happened to the world?
Who’s coming for us? What did I do to deserve all this?
Instead, what comes out is a single, clipped question.
“How long was I out?” He runs a hand over his face, suddenly tired.
“Hard to say. Months, at least. You’ve been in and out.
Some days you’d talk, other days you’d just sit and stare at the wall.
They said it was the memory wipe, but I figured you were just hibernating. Waiting for your chance.”
I process this, slot it into the running theory that my life is one long interval between disasters. “Did I ever talk about the RadShield Matrix?” He blinks, surprised. “All the time. You used to draw it on napkins, on the walls, even on your own arm once. Said it was the only thing that mattered.”
I nod, more to myself than to him. “I need to finish it.” The words taste foreign, but right.
Jackson smiles, slow and sad. “That’s the Diana I know.
” He shoulders the rifle, careful not to point it at me.
“We can go over the rest on the move. I’ve got gear in the next room. I’ll get you patched up.”
He turns to leave, but I stop him. “Wait.” My voice is softer than I expect. “Why did you come for me?” He hesitates, then glances back, a flare of something raw in his eyes. “Because nobody else would.” He lets it hang there, heavy, then disappears into the corridor.
I stand alone again, the silence roaring back as soon as the door seals shut behind him.
My hands are steady. My heart isn’t, but it’ll get there.
I look at the cot, the safe, the tools arrayed on the bench, and know that this is what I am: a survivor, a scientist, a blank slate desperate to be rewritten.
I gather what I need, and follow the sound of his boots echoing down the hall.
The bunker’s corridors are a linear echo of Jackson Avery’s psyche—each turn and threshold bristling with efficiency, redundancy, and the kind of organized clutter that only emerges in the final seasons of a dying world.
I follow him through a route that doubles back on itself, at one point looping us past a generator room I swear we’ve already circled, but Jackson doesn’t hesitate.
He moves like someone who’s memorized not just the floor plan but every creak and shift in the concrete under his boots.