[ENDGAME] Stage 4; Allegory
The clouds dissipate, and only then do the people below realize that they had never been clouds, by the ashen offal generated by so many bioelectrical creatures in the sky. The atmosphere is a seething, crackling mass of solid Entropi. They bump into one another, passing through and generating wide arcs of lightning, seeming like the whole racial
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Faye climbed out of her tunnel, shaking her head to clear away the cobwebs, trying to piece together how she had come to be there. She'd been outside, hovering near the door of Building One, anxiously watching the sky and smoking a cigarette. The strange clouds had cleared, revealing a sky seething with Entropi. Faye had sprinted for her room, barely making it to the entrance of her tunnel before... a jarring sensation, almost like a physical blow, and then... she'd been enveloped in an indescribable tactile experience, pliant, smothering, electric... and that sound....
She shook her head again. She must've passed out. And now... shouldn't there be a battle raging?
Wary and suspicious, Faye drew her weapon- for whatever good that would do her- and sidled over to the window, looking out. She saw nothing, no people, no Entropi in the sky. Her brow wrinkled. "...How long was I out?" she murmured.
Deeply concerned now, Faye walked hastily towards the door of the building, breaking into a jog as she approached the portal. She burst outside, gun at the ready... and still she saw nothing but the silent buildings surrounding her, and the waste beyond. Unbelieving, Faye broke into a run, boots pounding on the pavement as she searched for someone, anyone... but each passing minute only confirmed what she already knew. The Drafted, the Entropi, even the crash-landed Keepers, they were all gone. The compound was empty.
"No no no no no no nonononoNONONO!!!" Faye cried out, desperate, as she stumbled to a stop, her lungs heaving and her heart bursting. "SHIT!!" Where was everyone?! Had they all died? Had the Entropi won? Killed them all and left again? ...Or had the residents won, somehow, impossibly, won and... and left? Sent home by the Warden? And Faye, overlooked, left behind? "NONONONO!!" This last scream twisted into a sob; Faye sank to her knees, still clutching her gun, and, alone in Neocontra, she did what she so rarely did in the presence of others- she wept.
Faye sobbed bitterly for some time, giving voice to her despair, releasing the pent up stress of many days sleeping poorly and waiting anxiously for the Entropi to come and kill them all. Eventually, however, her sobs quieted and her tears dried; when she had calmed herself sufficiently, Faye stood, wiped the wetness from her face, and considered her next move.
"They're gone," she told herself. "Whether they left or they died, they're gone, and you're stuck." She took a moment to swallow this bitter truth, then moved on. "Say they got sent home... maybe someone, the Warden, will come back?" She thought this through carefully, then discarded it. "Possible, but not likely. ...Shit." Faye gnawed on her lip. "What's left? ...I could try to hike it out of here. ...That's... a pretty bad idea. Shadow says Europe is empty. ...Maybe... maybe there's something left, somewhere? ...That's a pretty big maybe. And it's a pretty big world." Faye sighed. "...Other options? ...Fuck-all."
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Taking a deep breath, Faye ran over her options again. No matter what she did, her chances of dying were pretty high. But her best chance was to look for people. Even if she died of thirst or starvation or exposure in a few days, at least she'd be trying.
Faye returned to her room, grabbing one of her backpacks and filling it with as much food and water as she could carry. She strapped her wool and mink coats to the outside of the pack, then hauled it outside. Next she went to the park, where a few twisted, denuded trunks were all that were left of the magnificent trees that had once grown there. She ripped off a sizable branch and returned to her pack. On the edge of town, she inscribed in the dirt her name and the intended direction of her travel. She reached for her PDA to check the date, and found it gone.
"That's odd... where did I put it?" Faye murmured. She thought hard, retracing her steps, but she came back to the same fact every time- it ought to be in her pocket. It was always in her pocket.
A sudden suspicion sent her reeling. Somehow, this tiny discrepancy seeded an explosion of doubt. Is this real?! Faye thought furiously. The first time, when the Keepers came, my first encounter with Entropi... the hallucinations. They felt so real... could this be another one? She couldn't for the life of her think what the purpose would be... why not just kill them outright? But the Entropi had never acted in ways that made sense. Think, Faye, think. Does it add up? Is it likely? "...At least as likely as everyone disappearing while I was passed out, and me being the only survivor, or the only one overlooked," she decided. "Or more likely, even. ...So now what?"
She thought for a time, chewing on her lip and staring a hole into the dirt. More and more she thought it likely that this was all just an Entropi mind-fuck. "But so what? I can't wake up from it on my own... or I don't know how to. I can't control what they're doing to me while I'm dreaming, if this is a dream. And if it isn't, I could starve waiting to wake up. ...Hell. It's not like I've got anything better to do."
Faye nodded to herself; she'd hoof it anyway, just in case. She guessed at the date, carving it into the ground with her stick. Then she shouldered her pack and struck off to the south, trailing the pointy end of her stick through the dusty earth as she went. She would go south until she hit a coastline, then follow it east.
...Or, she'd starve to death. Or, she'd wake up. Whichever came first.
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