Eternal Winter

Lance sat at the table, the same Pretorian sitting in front of him. Lance was tinkering with code on a laptop resting on his knees. Lance grunted in frustration and pushed the top down and tossed the computer aside to his workbench. It had been weeks since Lance had somehow gotten the Pretorian to wake up. Long days, he had wasted away many nights trying to get the stupid thing to wake up… again. Lance rubbed his eyes, yawning. After retrying what he had done the first time he got absolutely nothing. He kept trying, over and over. He changed the battery, and in fact, he changed out most of its parts but still got nothing. Next, he moved on to change certain things in the coding, but that quickly proved fruitless.

“Hyrum?” Lance called out to the air.

“Yes Sir?” Hyrum responded.

“How long has it been?” Lance asked.

“It has been twenty-nine days, four hours, and roughly seven minutes since the Mayday project,” Hyrum answered.

“Great,” Lance said sarcastically as he rolled his eyes. “I’m done. This isn’t working. Run diagnostics on it one last time, if you come up with nothing, then…” Lance sighed, “Scrap the project. For now, if you need me, I’ll be laying down with Alloura.”

“Understood,” Hyrum said.

◈ ◈ ◈

“Sir? Sir, wake up! Sir, there is a possible security breach. Wake up!” Hyrum’s voice rang through Lance’s head, the second time. He woke up startled but a little glad Hyrum had woken him. The same dream of shshsh being killed burned fresh from the nightmare. It happened over and over again when he only wanted sleep.

“Huh? What is it, Hyrum?” Lance asked, blinking his eyes awake.

“There is a woman in the airlock, sir,” Hyrum said.

“What?! How’d she get in?” Lance asked as he jumped out of bed and threw on a shirt.

“I let her in, Sir,” Hyrum said.

“Why would you do that?!” Lance yelled. He ran down the stairs and flew into the workshop, tripping over a cord and a wrench. He flung open the door to the observation room and stared in shock through the one-sided glass into the airlock.

“She claims she knows you, Sir,” Hyrum said casually.

“What? How do I know her?” Lance asked under his breath. He studied everything about her that he could see. She was pretty, thirtyish, near his age. She was familiar. She had an hourglass figure, with long light brown hair. She was pacing the airlock, her hair flowing behind her. She had taken off a leather jacket, that looked like his, and set it on his sled. Her cowboy boots were covered with slush from the snow outside.

“Wait, how is she alive without a protective suit?” Lance asked. “Hyrum, scan her, check her pulse, brain, and heart. Find any radiation, if there is any at least.”

“Sir, she had a protective suit on. The origin of the suit is unknown.” Hyrum responded.

“What?” Lance said under his breath. “Alright, Hyrum, open a channel into the airlock.”

“Yes Sir. Would you like to be visible?” Hyrum asked.

“Uh… yeah sure,” Lance answered as he rubbed his eyes.

“Ok, opening the glass,” Hyrum said. The woman then turned and stumbled back.

“W-who are you?” The woman asked.

“Doesn’t matter, who are you? You broke into my bunker. I am in charge here. You will answer me.” Lance commanded.

“My name is Angela.” She said. The name rang a few bells throughout his brain. He narrowed his eyes at her.

“How did you get here, Angela?” Lance asked, gritting through his teeth.

“I’ll tell you, but first who are you?” Angela asked.

“My name is Lance,” Lance answered. Her eyes started to tear up. Lance was confused. “But that doesn’t matter.”

“L-lance? Is that you? Of course it’s you, out of all of us you would be the only one able to survive something as crazy as this.” She said as she giggled madly and rubbed her forehead wiping off the sweat.

“What do you mean? Should I know you?” Lance asked as he turned. “Hyrum, run a background check on her.”

“Who’s ‘Hyrum’?” Angela asked suspiciously as she tried to look behind him to try and find more people. “Is there someone else there?”

“No.” Lance scowled “He’s my AI.” Angela gently laughed and said,

“Ah, well, we know each other because we went to college together. Little hurt you forgot about us.”

“Who’s ‘us’?” Lance asked.

“Wow. You forgot about it all, huh? I guess Special Forces could do that.” Angela signed.

“H-how do you know that? I never told anyone about that.” Lance said as he stepped back. “What do you mean?!”

“Well, this is a bit embarrassing, but we dated for over five months.” Angela giggled as she brushed her hair behind her ear.

Lance led Angela to the spare bedroom to the right of his, saying; “My bedroom is next door if you need anything.”

“Thank you for everything, Lance,” Angela said, looking at the ground. Lance could’ve sworn she was blushing. He made his way to his room to check on Alloura, making sure she was safe for the night. Then walked to the workshop where Mayday lay, limp since he left.

“Hyrum? What’s the probability I will be able to get Mayday working again?” Lance asked in a small voice, scared of the answer.

“I don’t know Sir. It all depends on whether or not you decide to work on him again with no distractions.” Hyrum answered.

“Welp, I guess I’m not getting any work done then,” Lance said sarcastically. “I’m heading to bed now. Run more diagnostics on it and watch it. Good night Hyrum.” “Good night Sir,” Hyrum responded as Lance exited the workshop and walked up the stairs. He paused at Angela’s room, where the door was at a crack. She was standing there, examining the decorations. He watched, fascinated. Lance shook himself, he was gawking. He made his way to his room. Alloura’s ears perked up as he entered.

“Good evening honey, how are you? Feeling good?” Lance said as he scratched behind her ears and sat down. She started to growl at the door. “What’s wrong? Oh, are you scared that that woman is going to try to hurt me? Oh please Alloura, she… isn’t.” Lance paused and looked away.

“You still talk to dogs like they are people, eh?” Lance jumped at Angela’s voice. Angela smiled softly as she walked in and shut the door behind her. “Sorry, I scared you, but I need to talk to you.”

“About what?” Lance asked as he slipped back into still scratching behind Alloura’s ears.

“About what happened after you went into the Special Forces.” Lance looked away quickly. “I know you can’t talk about anything on the missions, but what happened? You were always this fun, loving, social, super loud guy, but now you’re quiet, you live on the side of a mountain, and you talk with a dog!” Angela laughed.

“A lot happened to me and the men in my squad. Most of which is too painful to talk of.” Lance winced. “But if what you say is true, I wish I could tell you.”

“What do you mean by ’if what I say is true? Do you not remember anything?” Angela asked.

“Yeah, I don’t remember a lot of what happened in my life before the Special Forces.” He scratched the back of his head. “All I do remember is that I was in the Detroit Homicide Police Force, then I was undercover, and then the Secret Service,” Lance said as he looked away.

“I am so sorry that happened,” Angela said as she walked over to hug him but Alloura growled at her.

“It’s ok. She won’t bite you, she’s just a big ol’ sweetheart. Yes, you are! Yes, you are!” Lance said as he rolled Alloura onto her back and started to rub her belly.

“Can I pet her?” Angela asked with a small smile on her face.

“Uh, you can try, but she never liked people,” Lance said as he covered her eyes. Angela reached her hand over and started to pet Alloura. He could see that it was the softest thing Angela had ever felt in her whole life.

“Well, thanks for this. I’m going to bed. Good night.” Angela yawned as she got up and walked out of the door.

“Good night, see you in the morning,” Lance called to her. He looked down at Alloura. “Missie, you need to be nicer to Angela. If what she says is true, you need to be nice, she might be staying here longer than we thought.”