Act III: Period

The cold snap bit every part of my body despite being protected by a thick leather coat. I soldiered on the steep hill no minding the excruciating hunger I am feeling after only drinking a few drops of water for two days. My body trembled, my eyes yellow, some of my toes were frostbitten, it will only be a few hours until I become a frozen relic of the past, but my adrenaline stopped me from retreating.

I arrived at the city, but it was all the same, collapsed skyscrapers blocking some roads in the cities, dead bodies of people in some bunkers groceries and restaurants already looted for foods. I went towards the police station to look for droids that may still have their reactors intact and working but I only found bones, frozen malnourished bodies, preserving their last state when they were still warm and breathing and droids, too damaged to loot for anything.

It was another two hours when I felt that my body is in its last leg. The surroundings become blurrier as time pass, the wind continued to howl, but I haven't accepted my fate yet so I hid at a wooden closet inside the rubble to give my worn body a fighting chance against the cold and experience at least a few more minutes living.

I opened my eyes, though everything was still blurry, at least it became warmer. I shrugged the idea of me dying in the cold and went out of the closet and was welcomed by a brightly lit room and a droid wearing a butler uniform.

"Welcome to bunker number zero one four. May I know your name, master?" the human-like voice of the droid asked me.

"Schmidt.", I replied after calming my nerves.

The droid after asking many questions, many more personal than others introduced itself as a butler droid and was named by its former masters as Sebastian. It seems that this droid was programmed to welcome who may have wandered in the bunker.

"Is it just me who wandered here?" I asked while following the droid inside a tall hallway.

"I will answer your question after you eat and taking your medication, Schmidt.", The droid replied in a serious tone, grabbing a wheelchair and giving me the signal to sit with his eyes.

The droid lead me to a big dining hall and asked me to sit. Thirty minutes passed and I started feeling the pain that the cold snap masked but the sweet aroma of food embraced my nose, taking away my mind from the pain and my stomach growled like a wild lion intimidating its prey, it will be the second time I eat a warm meal since that incident. He came out with a serving table and put the hot meal on the table in front of me.

"Enjoy your meal, Schmidt."

I ate the juicy and fragrant chicken leg to the bones, the light, and crunchy stir-fried green vegetable, and the sweet taste of orange and mangoes invigorated me. My body regained most of its energy thanks to the hefty meal. The droid gave me a couple of pills and water after the meal.

"It will help ease your pain, treat your scurvy and malnutrition, and antibiotics to prevent you from getting infections."

I gulped all the pills and asked him, "Where are the others?"

"You are the third one to enter but I am afraid I cannot tell you where the two went. I lost communication with them long ago."

"I thought I was dead. How di I get here?"

"The system detected a spike in activity in the quadrant four of the city ruins so I commissioned two military drones to find you and a cargo drone to pick you up before the temperatures drop to negative forty-five-degree centigrade."

"Why am I still in the closet when I woke up?"

"The droids are out of service and the drones are not geared for a human rescue so the system secured you inside the closet and transported it whole."

"Why go too far for me? I am a nobody.", I asked the droid doubting its motive.

"You have an identical genome of about eighty percent to the primes. So I am obligated to take you in, besides your stay here is not free. After you recuperate you will be trained and tasked to help me maintain the facility's reactor, droid, and farm modules."

"Can I go in and out?"

"Yes. You will be provided with a shield generator, a communication device, and a protective suit when you go out, but you do not have the required authorization to invite other organisms or people inside the facility except if he or she has a high enough genome compatibility. All incompatible organisms will be placed inside the nearby bunker."

"Wait... you said primes again and again. What are primes?", I said still attempting to get more information as I can but he just answered, "Primes have high compatibility to the genome sequence from ninety to ninety-nine percent. Other informations are highly classified and you have no authorization to access them without a primes' permission."

I asked some more questions but many of them were left unanswered, most of them about the facility. I asked if I could go out now, but the droid stopped me because of my untreated wounds and frostbitten limbs. He amputated the frostbites, installed robotic prosthetics as a replacement, and stitched all the open wounds then gave me a dose of sleeping pills to help me sleep.

I slept for three straight days and after a month of rehabilitation and training, I was back to my old self. Thanks to the system powered by a huge fusion reactor, the garden, where the food is grown, and the animals inside the farm are doing great. My blue eyes regained their white cornea and my vision became clear, my skin from yellowish pale became pinkish-white, my gums bleeding due to scurvy never looked healthier and my teeth started to grow again. I am starting to love this place more and more every day, it's like living in paradise.

Having repaired most of the droids and other broken machines in the facility including the elevator to its past glory after being destroyed in a quake last week, I prepared myself to venture out of the city and accomplish some chores for Sebastian. I put my protective suit, which Sebastian claimed that it can protect me from anything including a nuclear blast, and strapped a portable fusion generator powering both the suit's heater, the shield generator, and comms gave me the assurance of a safe walk, out in the ruins. I grabbed an M27 in the armory, took out a fusion-powered car in the facilities' underground garage, and finally heads out in the city.

It was my first time going out of the facility, so my preparation might be a bit overkill but its better to be ready, something might still be alive and hostile out there. I searched around the ruins with the aid of the drones, hoping that someone might still be alive. I dug some rubble and went into buildings and bunkers, but just like when I first arrived, it was desolate of life, neither animals, insects nor plants are alive. I was just about to go back after looting some destroyed droid for parts when I heard a large explosion towards the coast. I took a hard turn and hurried to the bright flare that marks the location where the object crashed. I saw a triangular pod floating in the distance and activated the car's submersible mode. As I neared the space pod, I can see burn marks that it sustained on re-entry and a logo that reads NASA, an organization that fell after the Reich invaded the Soviet Union's western ally, America. I opened the hatch on the other side and inside was a woman wearing a bulky white suit with a glass helmet. The suit also bears NASA's logo and bearing its wearer's name, A. Sanchez.

Her suit's bio-monitor is out so I took her out of it and put her at the sub. Her pulse is weak, she is barely breathing, and her lips are becoming blue. I gave her CPR for a few minutes and thankfully, stabilized her condition. She was breathing but became unconscious after saying something about a failed mission. I patted her pale face hoping to wake her up but to no vail, so I tested her if she can come with me in the facility where I can treat her better.

I was astonished. The result was ninety-eight percent. She was a prime.