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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Why I Am Legend Has One of the Most Frustrating Endings in Science Fiction

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Last March, confronted with a pandemic none of us had expected or understood, many people found themselves rewatching Stephen Soderberg’s Contagion. Whether out of morbid fascination or as a guideline to what we might see in the future it quickly topped charts on streaming services. A year on and another pandemic movie has made it into Netflix’s top 10 – 2007’s I Am Legend, a horror sci-fi starring Will Smith as Dr. Robert Neville, who thinks he’s the last man on Earth after a virus has wiped out most of the population. Directed by Francis Lawrence, who would go on to make the Hunger Games sequels, a new adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel had been in the works at Warner Bros. since the mid ‘90s, with various talent attached, including Ridley Scott and Michael Bay as directors and Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star.

At its release the movie was praised for Smith’s performance but criticised for an overuse of CGI and a weak third act, but rewatching against the backdrop of 2021 what really sticks is how much of a wasted opportunity I Am Legend was. This is an hour of an excellent film, then 30-odd minutes of rubbish.

What you might remember of I Am Legend is this: cool empty New York stuff, Batman V Superman logo on a building, Will Smith talks to mannequins, the dog dies, CGI zombies, the end. But it’s so much better than that (until it’s not).

The first hour of I Am Legend is incredibly sparse. Virtually silent except for flashbacks, Dr. Neville is alone and talks only to his dog, Sam, and to mannequins he’s placed around shops and the street to try to emulate real life. New York is deserted. Each day when the sun is at its highest point, he waits at a meeting place he’s broadcast on the radio for other survivors to find him. Each day he is disappointed. His routines are down pat. He and the dog eat well from food scavenged during the day. At night they lock down and stay silent, hidden from the initially unseen threat outside. Neville is immune to infection but not to being killed by the creatures that keep him locked away at night, and on whom he experiments during the day. Neville is trying to find a cure using his antibodies, testing first on zombie rats and then on the infected human subjects he keeps chained up in his underground lab. He keeps failing. Is he really trying to save humanity? Or does he just want someone to talk to? Perhaps the two things are the same.

Forget zombies, I Am Legend is an exploration of the pure horror of being alone – it’s resonant as all hell in the current climate where we know that hordes of other people exist but that they pose an actual threat of death. That loneliness is so acute that talking to a dog or a shop dummy – or indeed a plant, your computer, the TV – seems completely legit. Neville’s struggles with socialization once Alice Braga’s Anna is in the picture feel entirely authentic and familiar – has he gone slightly mad from the loneliness and isolation, the film posits? In 2021, have we?

Keeping the CGI baddies in the shadows is a wise move, and even though they really haven’t aged well, in the first hour there’s still scope for a few decent scares. The best comes when Neville is caught in a trap set for him by one of the creatures – a trap which mirrors one he himself had set earlier to capture the latest of the infected he’s experimenting on. Hung up by a foot with the sun rapidly fading, when Neville wakes from his concussion he is in a serious rush to save himself with his faithful friend Sam barking in panic below him.

When it’s him and the dog, Smith is brilliant. Sam (played by two dogs – Abbey and Kona) is also excellent. And at the end of this sequence when the dog dies, bitten by zombie hounds and euthanized by Neville, it is genuinely devastating. Forget Marley and Me, this isn’t canine grief porn – instead the moment a grief stricken Neville goes to the record shop and talks to a mannequin, begging her to “please say hello to me,” is deeply upsetting. Smith does some very heavy lifting and it really holds up. Neville has hit rock bottom. Without Sam there’s nothing left to live for. Neville heads out into the night on a kamikaze mission to take as many creatures with him as he dies. The end. Except it’s not.

Instead, the film is completely ruined by the deus ex machina arrival of another survivor, Anna (Alice Braga) and her son Ethan (Charlie Tahan) who rescue Neville. Anna says she believes God sent her to find Neville and take him to a survivor colony she thinks exists in Vermont.

Anna’s arrival is no doubt supposed to provide hope and redemption in the final act after the incredibly moving end of the previous act but ultimately it does the opposite. Her random appearance undermines the three years Neville has endured. Neville has lived with the frankly torturous concept that he was the last man alive, but instead he’s faced with the possibility of a survivor community that somehow she has managed to track down while he has not, and the thought that for three years (or however long he’s been sending his own broadcast) survivors, in all likelihood, did hear his missive but never responded. His strength and resilience, his battle to stay sane, these were nothing, there were other people who could have found him, or he them, all along. Bad luck Neville, you spent three years trying to find a cure when you could have just had a chat with God (or worked harder on your telecoms). Bleak for him but in this version he becomes a martyr of sorts.

Anna and her son arrive and trigger a mega zombie showdown in the house. In a stroke of luck, Anna’s arrival has coincided with the latest strain of antidote actually working, so when Neville, Anna, and her son barricade themselves in the lab, Neville is able to extract a vial of the cure to give to Anna and then sacrifices himself so she can escape the creatures. Neville is killed but the cure is safe and arrives at the encampment with Anna, his life’s work wasn’t futile, and Anna gives a speech essentially saying how much of a legend Robert Neville was.

Yep, the title of the film has been completely reinterpreted from the original text here to mean “I am a total legend!” rather than the much much darker meaning found in Richard Matheson’s wonderful novel.

In the novel Robert Neville’s foes are vampires and other than the traditional vampire weaknesses – garlic, sunlight, stake through the heart, etc – they are intelligent, articulate, and human-like. In Matheson’s book Neville meets and becomes involved with a woman whom he discovers is a vampire sent to spy on him; the race of infected have managed to treat and control their symptoms and are forming a new society, while he’s been hunting them down. And the woman’s husband is one of the vampires Neville has killed.

The book ends with a dying Neville realizing that, to the vampires, he is the bogeyman, the stuff of nightmares, as vampires themselves were once to humans. He will become a legend, not because he’s a great man, but because in his extinction he will be a cautionary tale and a mythical figure to a newly formed society.

The director’s cut alternate ending of I Am Legend gives more of a nod to Matheson’s book – it’s better but it’s still not great. In this version the alpha male zombie who set the trap for Neville is bashing his head repeatedly on the locked door of Neville’s lab where Neville, Anna, her son, and his latest test subject, a female, are barricaded. Through the glass, the alpha male makes the sign of a butterfly (a call back to a gesture Neville’s daughter makes earlier in the film) to indicate the butterfly tattoo the female has. Neville understands finally that the “darkseekers” have their own relationships and community. The woman is the alpha’s partner. To the darkseekers, Neville is the monster, who has been capturing and torturing members of their group. Behind him is a photo wall of each creature he has experimented on and eventually killed. Willing to sacrifice himself so that Anna and her son can escape, he is now at the mercy of the alpha. In fact, when he apologizes and returns the captured female, the darkseekers show Neville mercy and don’t kill him. In this version Neville, Anna, and her son travel to the survivors’ community together and Neville lives.

This ending works better and gives more resonance to certain earlier scenes – the alpha male exposing himself to sunlight after the female is captured, the trap alpha uses on Neville matching the one Neville used on the female, the scenes of Neville experimenting on the female causing her excruciating pain – the final beats still don’t land. The outdated CGI renders the creatures so far away from humanity that the emotional resonance is lost. “Sorry about torturing your missus,” doesn’t have quite the impact it should and the existence of the community in Vermont, far from feeling hopeful, gives a sense that Neville has just wasted the last three years.

Neither ending properly gets across the significance of Matheson’s title, and the inclusion of reference to Bob Marley’s album Legend only muddies things further.

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Lawrence’s I Am Legend is so nearly a brilliant, thrilling, troubling exploration of loneliness and isolation and it could have had a gut punch ending which remained faithful to the book had they gone for something other than the CGI zombies. Instead it’s a movie which builds to an electric crisis point and then throws it all in the bin with unnecessary new characters, a religious message, and a faux happy ending that no one needed.

I Am Legend is available to stream on Netflix (US) and Sky and Now TV (UK).

The post Why I Am Legend Has One of the Most Frustrating Endings in Science Fiction appeared first on Den of Geek.

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blueyesandleatherjacket · 6 years

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Ghost of you, 6/?

Volume: 1.

Number of parts: 6/?.

Pairings: Human!Nine x Rose; Human!Ten x Jack; Clara Oswald x Olivia Baxter (OC).

Synopsis: "Despite the fact he knew he was done, he was fighting against the virus. He didn’t want to lose that already lost fight and he was clinging to the memories of his friends, to the memories of the wife he loved so much. His change lasted longer than it should have because he was struggling."

A/N: I've started writing this fiction last year after I had a particularly weird dream (as usual) and after I wrote the prologue, I've put it aside to work on other stuff. I've gone back to it not so long ago and decided that it would be the fiction I would post next, after not posting anything for a while. I must have watched I am legend and Game of thrones way too much to come out with something like this but I hope you will like it. I am not a scientist, nor did I have a particular knowledge of sciences. I do my researches on the internet like everyone to make sure everything is as close to the reality as possible. I have a literature degree only. Writing is what I do and it makes me explore next fields, and learn new things.

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” - Kahlil Gibran.

CHAPTER 6:

Second day of October 2017. Day 1746 since the infection. Maxence Spitz video log. Take 2. What I’ve feared finally occurred on this day. We’ve been wandering in the town all day, knowing we wouldn’t see anyone. The lightwalkers don’t come out anymore, they’re all remaining hidden behind solid closed doors and blinds, hoping it will protect them against the virus, against the madness. The virus has mutated again and people have gone violent. The town is ravaged by fires and vandalism. It will become harder to restock the centre of researches with food and supplies. You have to find that cure in the days to come or you will all die from hunger and God knows what else if you have that chance of not being infected. Now, it’s either you find that cure, or you let the world fall into this madness. Or you let the world destroy itself until there’s nothing left. Humanity was a plague and Mother Nature is making us all paid. The nightwalkers came out while the night was falling. They were already out while it was still twilight outside. They are less bothered by the light now. They are cleverer than we thought they were. They knew we were coming. They set up a trap for us and we’ve run straight into it. One of them bit my neck, here. Xavier died to take me away from them. Allegro killed some. Adam ran away with Louise and Danny. It’s a chance. In normal circumstances, they would have been punished for this, but I don’t blame them. I would have run away if I’ve had the time to. This is my last words as your leader. I’ve sent Emily away with the rest of the team and ordered her to put the whole building in lockdown to protect all of you. I’ve named Tegan Smith as my successor and Jack Harkness as his second in command. I trust them both to the cure you are desperately looking for. I feel it, the noctiagus. It’s spreading in my body. It’s in my veins, burning every single nerve inside me. You probably can’t see it well but I know it. My eyes have turned black. Allegro has stayed with me. He locked me into the room of this sort of bunker we have found so I could record this last video for you. I’m gonna film my whole change into a nightwalker so you can have as many leads as possible for your researches. I’ve asked Allegro to lock me in the crate and to bring me back to the lab. I’ll be the living specimen I was supposed to catch. Jack has sacrificed Peggy for his new lead. I’ve been sacrificed for this mission and I’m giving you myself for your researches. I’m sorry this had to end like this. I believe in all of you. You’ll find that cure without me. No matter the time it will take. Goodbye. The rest of the video was just hours of the agony Maxence had gone through. Despite the fact he knew he was done, he was fighting against the virus. He didn’t want to lose that already lost fight and he was clinging to the memories of his friends, to the memories of the wife he loved so much. His change lasted longer than it should have because he was struggling. He still fought Allegro when the captain of the team came to lock him in the crate but the pain he was in prevented him from winning once again. He was locked in the crate with his camera to continue his long agony until he was brought to the building three days later. The battery of the camera had died some time ago but it had held on long enough to film the entire change, to see Maxence turning into a nightwalker because of a mission he was given. Rory and Mickey had managed to go to the cages unnoticed despite this hour of the day. Everyone should be out in the labs to work but no one was there. The tension was though. It was the calm before the storm. It was too quiet for something not to happen later, for the storm not to rage when the tension would reach its climax. In a way, it was good for the two men. They could work without the glances of everyone on their backs. They unlocked the airlock and went through it to the first cage. They entered the code and the door slid open for the two men to come in with the crate. They put it down on the ground. Their prisoner had calmed down now that they had reached a room lighted with UV lights. All along the walk, he had been kicking against the plastic and groaning loudly to protest. Or to express his pain. The two men looked at each other, wondering what they should do now that they had taken him to the cage. They couldn’t leave him inside the crate. They had to free him. But what if he attacked them? Rory glanced inside the crate. His boss had his eyes closed and his translucent skin was red on his face. Intolerance to the light they said. No wonder why he was protesting if it was burning him. He seemed inoffensive, almost dead. Some people were dying from the virus. Was he…? No, he was breathing. Slowly, too slowly, but he was breathing. Someone would connect him to the system to check his vital signs 24/7. He was their Guinea pig until the day he would either die or heal. Heal being the better option. Rory knelt down and dialled a code on the keyboard of the casing that was on the crate’s side. There were a couple seconds of wait before it beeped positively. The lid was unlocked with a click and Mickey stepped back when his colleague opened the crate. Rory took a step backward. Maxence didn’t move at first. The two men were on alert. They couldn’t keep their eyes off their boss but they really should leave this place. Mickey was opening the door when Maxence blinked and sat up in his crate. Rory felt like he was watching the ghost of a man he once knew as the tall man was extracting himself from the crate. He made no move to attack any of the men present with him in the cage. Instead, he tilted his head on the side to observe Rory, as if it was the first time he ever saw him. But he remained still, not trying to charge like Peggy had done with Jack. Before the situation could go wrong, Rory grabbed the empty crate he closed, never taking his eyes off Maxence, and dragged it toward Mickey who had finally opened the door. They locked the cage, walked through the airlock. They left the crate in the airlock, just in case, and left the pressurised sterilised place before they removed the upper part of their suits. “There was this woman I’ve always been in love with,” started Rory, standing in front of Maxence’s cage. “She was called Amy. It was short for Amelia. Amelia Pond. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. We were seven when I’ve told her that I’d marry her when we would be adults.” “She said you were crazy, slapped you and ran away?” “Pretty much. But I’ve never given up.” “And so? Has she given in?” “Unfortunately too late,” murmured the man. “I was asking her to marry me when I noticed her eyes. She used to have the most beautiful green eyes I’ve seen in my life and that night, they were gone. I could see nothing else but a dark empty void. She didn’t even know she was infected.” “I’m sorry, mate.” “I did my duty. I reported her to the authorities. They have a list of all the infected people. Of the ones that were reported anyway. I don’t know where she is now. I just hope she will hold on until a cure is found.” They both kept silent but their thought was the same as they watched Maxence wandering around his new place: they had lost their best asset to this war against inhumanity. Sure they had some of the most brilliant minds here, but they were all related to Maxence in their own ways and seeing him in this condition would upset them enough to influence their work. Rory had found the strength of leaving his Amelia behind for this cure, would Rose and all the team find that strength too? “Who’s gonna be in charge now?” “Maxence must have thought about this possibility. He has chosen someone he can rely on.” “Like his own wife?” “I don’t think he’d be biased. My mind would be on Jack.” “T is brilliant too.” “Yeah, but he’s not strong enough for this responsibility. Colin could be.” “Certainly not!” exclaimed Mickey, horrified at the thought of Colin Appleton as a leader. “He’s too much of a sociopath to be given any responsibility.” “Anyway, it’s not like we have an opinion to express on the matter.” Whoever had been chosen for this heavy responsibility of leader, both Mickey and Rory would have to do with that. They were giving orders to their own teams but they had to obey to the leader of the place which once had been Maxence. The two men left the room and walked back to their duty.

Rose, my dear Rosie, my so beloved wife… Before you start cursing me and swearing that you’ll slaughter me as soon as you can get a hold of me, know that I haven’t chosen to go on that suicide mission. I always refuse the members of my team to go outside for any reason. I do that to protect them. This rule applies to you and to me as well. But I’ve gotten this call after the situation in London got worse. The government wants answers and someone has to go and get them outside. The responsibility falls upon me. It is a direct order from the Prime Minister and I can’t disobey it no matter I hate it. I never meant to lie to you but I didn’t want you to worry about me being outside. My focus would have been troubled and it is important for me not to worry about anything during this mission. My only focus has to be on catching this living human specimen. I don’t need to tell you how terrified I am right now. You can see it on my face, in my body language, in my eyes. You’ve always been good at reading me like an open book. My Rosie, I know you don’t want to hear these words but I have to tell you all of this now, through this video. Just in case I wouldn’t come back. Just for you to know. First of all, it’s really not against you but I name Tegan Smith as the substitute leader of the team. You and Jack will be his seconds in command. I trust the three of you the most. All the signed papers are in the last drawer of my desk. You won’t have any problem with everyone. I’ve planned it all. Just in case. Second, well, this part is only for you. My dear Rosie. The woman of my life. If it’s the last time I ever get to speak to you, I want you to know how sorry I am. I wish I had found this cure years ago so we could have gone back to our little life, so I could have given you the children you’ve always wanted. I’m sorry for failing my mission, for having myself infected, for giving up on you. It is all against my will. Just know that I will forever love you. I’ve promised you. I’ve promised to live you for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. I’ve promised to love you until the end and if I lose myself, if I get infected, I’ll hold on to the strength of my love for you to survive in the jungle of nightwalkers. If I never make it back to the lab, don’t forget me but, please, do not mourn me too long. Build yourself a new life and be happy as much as possible. I’m asking you a lot, I know that, but I don’t want you to grieve forever. As hard as it is, please, live on and remember me. I love you. Rose didn’t know how many times she had watched his video. Enough to have her eyes burning as if she had washed them with methylated spirit. She had cried all of the tears she had in her. Her head hurt but she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen that was displaying the last images of her husband. She would never see him again. He was somewhere, outside, in the middle of the nightwalkers. He was probably one of them too. It broke her heart to think about him that way. She pressed pause and the image stilled. She observed his face, his blue eyes, remembered his voice. Her fingers touched him through the screen. The window was cold but she was feeling the warmth of his skin through her memories. That was what made her take this decision. She left Maxence’s office and locked it behind her. She hid the key in her office and ran to the equipment room. If Maxence couldn’t go back to her, she would go and get him. She found a black combat dress that suited her and pulled it on without waiting. She was lacing her boots when she heard a noise that drew her attention. She turned around but saw no one. She could still hear the noise though. Someone crying. She followed the sound, trying to be as discreet as the boots were allowing her to. At the very bottom of the room, huddled in a corner, she found Adam, Maxence’s assistant. He was still wearing his combat dress. Had he been hiding there since Liv freed him from the tent? The young man was very upset and was hiding for the others not to see how shaken he was. Sure that if his own friends saw him like this, they would make fun of him though they had no idea what he had seen outside. “Adam?” The young assistant hiccuped and raised his head to see who had found him in here when he thought no one would. He wasn’t relieved at all to see Rose. How could he face her when he had seen her husband be killed right in front of him? “Miss Rose?” His voice let her know that he had been crying for a while but she made no comment as she knelt down. He sniffled and wiped away his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his combat dress. “Have you been hiding there for three days?” “Where can I go? Mister Maxence…” “I know. I’m going out to get him back.” “What?” Adam’s eyes grew big as he looked at Rose. “No. Don’t go outside. Don’t. They’ll kill you!” “Adam.” She was determinate. She would go outside and bring her husband back. “This place can’t work without him. He recruited us all. He’s the cornerstone of this building. If he’s gone, everything collapses. I have to find him.” “I’m sorry, miss Rose. I’m really sorry.” Adam broke down again and hid his face in his knees. He couldn’t hide this from her. He had been part of a secret mission and he wasn’t supposed to talk to anybody else but Maxence and since the boss would never be back, he couldn’t talk to anyone. But he couldn’t hide this from Rose. “We fell into a trap,” he murmured between two sobs. “It was the end of the day and we hadn’t found any clue of where the nightwalkers were hiding during the day. We wanted to find one and take it by surprise to bring it back here. It was the safest way to do it but…” He sobbed harder, reliving the scene again and again. “We haven’t found anything and we were coming back to safety. But there was this kid crying in the middle of the street. And mister Maxence… you know how he is. He knew we only had a couple of minutes to go to the van but wanted to help this kid. He told us to stand still and went over the kid.” He stopped speaking. The tears and panic were suffocating him. However, Rose needed to know more. Adam was delivering her the truth. She was afraid but she needed to hear it. She put her hands on his shoulders and shook Adam lightly. “What happened Adam? Tell me. What has happened to Maxence?” “The nightwalkers, they are cleverer than we thought and… they can come out earlier. The sun wasn’t down yet and they were already lurking in the shadows.” “Faster, Adam!” “The kid was infected. None of us had noticed it. When mister Maxence picked him up, the kid bit his neck brutally. The guards, they tried to intervene but the nightwalkers were surrounding mister Maxence. He yelled to us to run away, to go back to the building as more infected were attacking him. He had no chance. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Rose’s heart sank. She had wanted the truth and she had it. Her husband would never be back. He was infected. Going after him would be useless. He wouldn’t recognise her. His brain was dead. Her knight was dead and there was nothing she could do to save him. Finding the cure? They had no chance without Maxence, and the antidote they had synthesised showed no results so far. Jack was keeping them updated but Peggy’s condition hadn’t improved or gotten worse over the last three days. The results weren’t official as Maxence hadn’t confirmed them although everyone knew that Jack was a trustworthy and brilliant man. It meant that even if she could find her husband out there, she had no way to bring him back to her. She was alone to face the rest of her life and that’s an idea she couldn’t bear. Body and mind entirely numb, she stood up and left the room. She wandered in the building like a ghost. She didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to talk with anyone. She had had a little hope that Maxence could be alive and it had just been crushed down. Screw this man and his will of saving everyone! It had cost him his life and it was shattering her into pieces. The pain in her heart was such that she fell to her knees in the middle of the corridor she was walking in and she yelled to the top of her lungs and she cried over the loss of her only love.

Colin was unhappy. He had been told that Martha had been absent just for a couple of days because she had a cold and couldn’t work. Whenever you were sick, you had to stop working until you fully recovered. It was to avoid any sort of contamination of the possible antidote, to avoid the virus they were working on to grow stronger by mixing with another one as simple as a cold. It meant that Martha Jones would be back to work soon and that Colin would have to leave her lab to go back to the stuff maintenance. He was working on a cure of his own in a free lab. He had noticed the flaws in Rose and Clara’s work and was fixing it whenever he got time but he couldn’t test it on Peggy. Jack wouldn’t let him close to his precious pig. Colin had to find another Guinea pig. They didn’t have any animal left in the basement. All the rats were gone, the monkeys hadn’t survived. But Maxence was bringing a living specimen in. This was getting interesting. The tests were all done and the quarantine was over. It meant the specimen was between their walls. Colin headed to the underground labs where were the cages set for the human specimens. He needed to see it by himself. He needed to see if that dumbass Maxence had had the courage of going out to get this nightwalker. Obviously he had since one of the cages had been activated. The uv lights were on and the rest of the room was in the dark. The scientist walked to see the face of the infected that had been brought inside. He couldn’t help the smirk when he realised it was Maxence himself. That idiot had gotten infected. It would be a great pleasure to work on him. Colin knocked on the door to get his boss attention. Maxence out of the game, it made him the leader of the place. They had been recruited almost at the same time. It made him more legitimate to the job of leader than any other of his colleagues. He smirked wilder. Maxence walked to the glass wall Colin was standing in front of. With the last results of the tests, the man knew that the noctiagus was turning the infected into complete idiots and he expected Maxence to try and walk to him despite the invisible wall between them. However, even in his stupidity, Maxence seemed to remain clever. He stopped a few centimetres away from the wall and tilted his head on the side as if he was trying to remember who was the man before him. He really looked like the idiot of the village. He knocked on the wall to respond the scientist, his hand covered in dry blood because he had hurt himself by hitting the crate repeatedly. His face was covered in red marks that were turning into small white blisters, almost invisible on his translucent skin. He could die of an infection if it wasn’t taken care of. How ironic would that be? Surviving outside and dying from a tiny skin infection? Oh, how much Colin would laugh at that! “I really like how the wheel is turning right now, dear friend.” His voice was pernicious. He appreciated the show before him and couldn’t hide it, nor could he hide his nastiness. “You, in this cage and me, in your place. If you expected to have a special treatment because everyone is your friend out there, you’re wrong. You’ve humiliated me by pushing me away and you’re gonna pay for that. Do you hear me, idiot? Your life is gonna be hell from now on.” To prove his point, Colin reached for the control panel of the cage and pressed a couple buttons, changing the settings. The uv lights were replaced by normal lights. Maxence’s reaction to this change was immediate. His pale skin turned to red and he threw himself to the ground where he crawled under the camp bed to protect himself from the sudden burn he was suffering from. Poor creature was harmless at the moment and Colin was enjoying this more than he should be. It was a human being he was torturing after all. Even if he didn’t consider nightwalkers to be human beings, they still were. When he heard footsteps coming his way, he faked a panicked expression while he tried to bring the settings back to their normal state. He knew them by heart but it was more funny to see Maxence crawling like a worm to avoid the light. “What are you doing here?” Jack’s voice was so cold that everyone else would have frozen in fear but not Colin. He kept faking the panic and played his part. He was good at it but he needed the right audience. With Jack, it could not work. Especially since the argument they had had earlier. “I was passing by and I saw him turning as red as a beetroot. There has been a bug in the system and I can’t get the right settings back.” Colin stepped back when Jack approached the control panel and let him put the settings back to normal. Maxence was relieved when the uv lights were back and his whole body collapsed to the floor, welcoming the coldness of it with great pleasure. “Briefing. In five. Better be there, Appleton. I don’t wanna see you around this cage again or I’ll put you inside with him.” “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” “Bet on it.” Jack pointed to the closest exit of the room and Colin followed this direction. For now, he was obeying. In a few, they would all obey him. He couldn’t wait. He headed to the conference room where most of the team was already gathered. The briefing was as brief as the name was telling. They were just informed that a living specimen was brought back by Allegro. They didn’t give names. Only the persons who would work on the specimen would have his real identity. The others would just work by a number. There also was another information that filled Colin with rage. As Maxence was declared dead outside, a new leader had been designed. Tegan Smith. Fucking poofta Tegan Smith had been picked by Maxence before he went away on that mission. And Tegan Smith would have Jack as his second. He was so enraged at this decision that he chose to leave the room before the end of the briefing.

Rose hadn’t gone to the briefing. She already knew what would be told. It was Jack who had found her crying and yelling in that corridor and he had only confirmed Adam’s words. Maxence was infected, but he hadn’t been left in the streets. Allegro had brought him back, on his order, and he was now locked inside a cage downstairs. Of course she had wanted to see him and when she was in front of this cage, she broke again at the sight of her dear husband, huddled on the floor, badly burnt by the lights. She had no tears left now and she was alone with a man who used to be hers. And she was angry. Very angry. So, when Maxence looked up at her – he was checking if it wasn’t that cruel guy again – she burst out. “What the hell has gone through that stupid mind of yours to go outside and not tell me? Do you have any idea of what has gone through my mind when I couldn’t find you? Do you know how worried I’ve been when the lockdown was pronounced? When you didn’t come out of this tent? Have you even thought of me, Maxence, when you obeyed that fucking order? If you had, you would have told me! That’s your fault all of this! If you weren’t so clever, you wouldn’t have been the leader and they would have sent someone else! What am I gonna now without you? Have you thought about the lives you were sacrificing when you didn’t check if that kid was infected? A kid in the middle of a street while night is falling. Even Adam knew it was a trap! And you’ve fallen into it head first. What now? Hm? How are we supposed to do without you?” She wanted to break again but she didn’t have that strength into her anymore. If she was selfish, she would have gotten into that cage and let him infect her but he needed her to find a cure now that he was in here. She was watching him, his burnt skin, the bite in his neck not looking nice, as he walked to the glass door to face her. He needed her cares and she couldn’t get close to him like she normally would. Did he even know who she was anymore? A knock on the glass pulled her out of her thoughts. She looked up at her husband who was staring at her, his hand on the glass wall. He pointed to it, to make her understand what he expected her to do. It surprised her. Nightwalkers weren’t known to take decisions or to interact with lightwalkers. Everyone thought they couldn’t but they were cleverer than expected. Rose placed her hand over Maxence’s on the glass wall and remembered the warmth of it against hers. She sniffled and he smiled to her. At that moment, Rose forgot everything. She couldn’t see the burns, the bite, the translucent skin. She only saw her husband and his smile. He was infected but somehow he hadn’t lost himself and knew who she was. He was making her understand that he was still there despite the virus eating him out. “Oh, Maxence, what have we done to end up like this?” she murmured. Maxence couldn’t hear her since she hadn’t pressed the intercom button. He acted like he had understood though. Rose closed her eyes briefly, her hand still over his. He knocked on the wall again. It sounded like a song. Their song. She pressed the button, quietly hummed it along his knocking so he could hear it. Her watch was ticking the seconds away but time wasn’t existing anymore for her. She was just taking advantage of this moment and making sure she would remember it later when he wouldn’t be himself anymore. She had no idea how long he would hold on to his identity, how long he would remember her and their relationship. So she kept humming the song to the rhythm of his knocking and when she couldn’t hum it anymore, she just moved her lips silently as she recited the lyrics again and again. “I’ll be back in five.” She suddenly ran out of the room. This wall was already too much for her so she pulled out a hazmat suit, borrowed a complete first aid kit and ran back to the lab. She went through the airlock and came into the cage. Maxence turned around to face her. Her latex gloved hand found his burnt cheek and he leant into her touch, much to her rapture. She didn’t care that he wasn’t her Maxence anymore – even if her heart was aching at the loss – a part of him was still there and that part needed her. So, she was gonna take care of him like she had always done and she didn’t mind what the others would say to her…

To be continued...

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In the next chapter:

There was no one in his office when Jack arrived there. The lights were off. Tegan wasn’t there. He must have chosen to hide somewhere so no one would see him being completely hysterical with anxiety. Jack wondered why Maxence had chosen Tegan as his successor. He must have known that Tegan didn’t have the shoulders for this. He was a great man with a great intelligence but he wasn’t very authoritarian. How would he be obeyed? Good thing Maxence had thought about Jack and Rose to help him deal with it. Naming Tegan was showing him a huge proof of confidence and maybe that was what Tegan needed to get some maturity. But first, Jack had to find him and force him out of his shocked condition. Where was he hiding?

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