Death Stranding--Death Stranding Read online

  Mama!

  The BB—the baby—cried.

  The woman in the red suit held out her slender arms and took the baby from Sam. Or rather, the baby escaped to her arms of its own volition. It was Amelie.

  Amelie’s eyes were overflowing with tears, too. Tears that were black. As soon as her tears hit the baby nestled to her chest, it began to collapse in on itself, breaking down into countless minute particles. It was just like the way Sam’s blood returned the BTs to the other side. Amelie’s tears returned the BB back to the place where it was meant to be.

  Wait! Stop! Give that kid back to me!

  Sam’s voice didn’t reach her. (Well, I am being held very far away in Edge Knot City, aren’t I?)

  Sam kept screaming in vain until his own shrieks woke him up.

  He was lying face up on the snowy slope and it took him a moment to realize that he must have been out cold and having a nightmare.

  The winds had died down, the snow had stopped, and the clouds had disappeared. Sam propped himself up and wiped away his tears. But they were no longer tears of sadness. Sam’s nostrils filled with a familiar odor. He was right in the middle of BT territory.

  He sensed a strong BT presence. It was so strong that the tears wouldn’t stop flowing. He felt his body break out into goosepimples and his muscles began to spasm and tremble. He broke into a fever. Then came the alternating chills and nausea. He felt like he could hear the breathing of the dead next to his ear, but without a BB, he shouldn’t have been able to hear anything. A handprint appeared right beside him. It formed only one of a trail of black handprints across the pure white snow. The stench of the dead grew overpowering. Sam covered his mouth with his hands and curled up in an attempt to conceal his presence as much as possible, but the trembling didn’t stop. Sam couldn’t tell if he was trembling from the cold or the fear.

  The handprints around Sam multiplied, all different sizes and all going in different directions. Multiple BTs were searching for him. He was surrounded on this snowy mountainside. He felt like an offering being made to them in atonement for some past sin. What an ego. If Sam caused a voidout here, he would be back. But the energy from that voidout would reduce Mountain Knot City to nothingness, along with Deadman and Lockne and Lou. What kind of offering brought such destruction and calamity to the world? Offerings were supposed to be given to maintain peace.

  Although Sam could identify the handprints and presence of the BTs, his heart was still tormented with speculation and suspicion. He never thought being unable to see them would frighten him this much. The empty area on his chest that was usually occupied by Lou felt heavier than ever.

  He grew light-headed as his body begged for oxygen. He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. But the handprints were still circling. Sam used his numb hand to remove the glove on his right. The tips of his fingers had turned dark and bruise-like. It was a sign of frostbite. He sank his teeth into his wrist, felt the warmth of his own blood spurt forth, and spread it thickly over his face. Even though it had been coursing through his own veins, it still smelled foul and only made him feel even more wretched. Still, he sensed the BTs flinch.

  The handprints stopped moving.

  Sam removed one side of the cuff link, exposing the cutter. It was the same cutter that had sliced through Mama’s umbilical cord. Normally, a unit attached to a blood bag would be inserted into a broken blood vessel to maximize the amount of blood drawn. Sam felt a pain like his heart was exploding. Steam rose from the cutter as blood trickled out. Sam groped around for his backpack with his left hand and removed a hematic grenade. It was connected to a full blood pack. Sam had no idea how many BTs there were, or where they were prowling.

  He closed his eyes. If he couldn’t see them in the first place then there was no point in looking. He prayed to his absent BB.

  Protect me, Lou.

  He thought that he heard Lou’s voice in response. Even if he was just hearing things, all he could do was believe in it. Sam threw the grenade, like a separate heart filled with his own blood, overhead toward the voice.

  There was a small explosion and blood rained back down on Sam. The blood hit the BTs, revealing the outlines of their bodies and where they were. They soon broke down into particles, but Sam knew that he would have to do more to get rid of them all.

  Sam stood and advanced forward, brandishing his blood-covered cuff links like a whip. The BTs shrunk back. Sam’s vision began to spin until he could no longer tell what was up and what was down.

  Maybe it was because of all the blood he had lost that all the color began to drain out of Sam’s world, turning it monochromatic. He kept moving forward as black blood scattered across the white snow. He was like a saint, parting tempestuous seas and walking between them toward the promised land. But there were no living people following in his footsteps behind him.

  By the time Sam was sure that he was out of BT territory, he no longer had the strength to stand. He barely had any energy left at all. He used the last of his strength to stem the bleeding from his wrists and stitch himself up with a medical stapler. He followed up by throwing some blood replacement supplements and smart drugs into his mouth, and chewed. He even appreciated the cryptobiote that he found in the bottom of his backpack.

  The cuff links picked up a weak radio signal, telling him he was close to the Geologist’s shelter. Once he had descended the slope, it would be around three kilometers away, but at that very moment that distance felt almost impossible. Sam found himself some exposed bedrock, thrust in a pile, and tied his strand around his waist. He descended the rest of the slope depending on a literal lifeline.

  * * *

  The Geologist’s shelter lay a distance away that Sam would normally have been able to cover on foot within thirty minutes, but he needed much more time than that now. Thankfully, oxygen levels had increased and the snow had stopped falling once he had descended down the mountainside. Since he took a break partway down, he found some of his strength had returned as well.

  The Geologist was a Bridges scientist, and even on the hologram you could see how emaciated he had become. When Sam finally handed over the medicine he had brought, the Geologist was overcome with joy and tears, and could only thank Sam over and over again.

  “Thank you, Sam Bridges. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I was feeling giddy or getting majorly depressed over the smallest of things. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I thought that all these haywire emotions were because I was out here all alone at first, but it turned out that wasn’t the case. It was because of chiral contamination. I always knew that it was a possibility, but I never thought it would actually happen to me. It was a sign that the chiral rays the chiralium was giving off were having an effect on both my body and mental state. It presents very similarly to stress, so that’s what I thought it was at first. At this rate, I probably would have started contemplating suicide, but thanks to you I’m going to get better.”

  Sam could see some slight effects of the chiral contamination in the speed and breathlessness in the Geologist’s speech. Sam wanted to tell the Geologist to just hurry up and take the medicine, but he couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

  “It was approximately 3.8 billion years ago when life first emerged on this planet, and ever since then we have seen repeated mass extinction events of varying scales. Out of all these events, the largest ones are known as the Big Five. They each occurred at the ends of the Ordovician Period, the Devonian Period, the Permian Period, the Triassic Period and the Cretaceous Period respectively, wiping out most of the life on the Earth’s surface.

  “But why does a phenomenon that eradicates all life on this planet occur in the first place? By what mechanism does it take place? And was the Death Stranding the sixth mass extinction event? I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of all these questions together with Heartman and my colleagues, but the only result that we’ve turned up so far is the discovery of a fossil Beach. Do you understand what that means? When an ea
rthquake occurs, frictional heat at the fault line forms a stratum called pseudotachylyte. They’re known as fossilized earthquakes, therefore making this a fossilized Beach. We were looking at strata from the end of the Cretaceous Period, when we found this strange thing mixed in with dinosaur and ammonite fossils. But it’s not something that can be seen with the naked eye. The term ‘fossil’ is more of a metaphor here. We detected the chiralium and that chiralium is what first caused these symptoms.

  “Speaking of chiralium, chiralium was only found after the Death Stranding occurred. It was brought here via the special dimension that we call the Beach. Some of us think that it always existed somewhere, just like the Higgs Particle and dark matter, and we just hadn’t found it yet. This fossilized Beach proves that. It also proves that this isn’t the first time the Beach has appeared on this planet. At the very least, there’s a chance that it also appeared during the extinction event that took place at the end of the Cretaceous Period. We haven’t been able to accurately verify this yet, but we can assume that there is at least some kind of relationship between the occurrence of the Beach and extinction events. By investigating the strata formed during other periods of extinction, we might find other fossilized Beaches, meaning that the Beach is involved in mass extinction events. Are you following me?

  “Look, I don’t really understand the Beach. I know that it is linked to the spirit of each person and that it can be used as paths on the Chiral Network, and I kind of get that it is something that can’t be physically touched, but whenever I listen to the stories of people like you with DOOMS, it almost feels as if the place actually exists.”

  That impression was correct. Sam knew that even he couldn’t explain his experiences on the Beach to other people. The words that people with DOOMS and people without DOOMS used to describe death were different. The way they imagined death was different.

  The syntax they used to describe the Beach itself was different. A gap in perspective that Sam knew couldn’t be bridged.

  The one thing that Sam had followed in the Geologist’s ramblings was that the likelihood that the Death Stranding was the sixth mass extinction event had increased dramatically. If the reward for finally solving the eternal mystery known as death was extinction, would everyone just roll over and accept that? Did death use the fate of extinction as a gag for those who found out its truth?

  “Hopefully, we’ll be able to further clarify the relationship between the Beach and extinction, but that all hinges on you activating the Chiral Network for this area.”

  Sam took out the Q-pid in response to the Geologist’s remarks. He pressed it to the receptor fitted onto the delivery terminal and activated the network. If the Beach had been connected to all those past extinction events too, then didn’t that mean that the Chiral Network, which used it as an intermediary, could have yet another use? Sam questioned as he replaced the Q-pid inside the breast pocket of his suit.

  Immediately after Sam left the shelter, a call registered on Sam’s cuff links. It was Deadman.

 

  There was no way that Deadman could have known about all the crap that happened within the BT territory back there, but his cheery tone still annoyed Sam.

 

  So, the new BB was complete. And Lou was gone. Maybe he should treat it as the new Lou. But just as parents could not replace their children, or other people could not replace lovers or friends, there was no replacement Lou. (Hey, Sam, is that true?)

 

  Sam wanted nothing more than to punch the cuff link, but he couldn’t cancel the call from his end. That made him even more annoyed.

 

  Sam even felt annoyed at how Deadman was trying to make it sound like it was the most thoughtful suggestion ever. Sam was the one out here busting his ass, delivering the cargo and rebuilding America. What was he doing? Sam held back his tirade and simply switched the codec itself off. Then he proceeded down the gentle slope alone.

  It was getting colder now that Sam had entered the long shadow cast by the high peak, but after the extreme cold of the blizzard that he encountered before, this was nothing.

  Once he had climbed this slope he would be able to see Lou again. Or rather, the BB previously known as Lou.

  Complicated feelings welled up inside him as he looked up at the ridge of the mountain. To put it bluntly, it hurt to think that even though he would be creating new memories with the BB, he would have to let go of the old ones.

  Once he had climbed the slope, he could see the distribution center in the distance. He was almost there.

 

  Lockne’s voice suddenly cried out from the codec transceiver on his cuff link.

 

  Sam scanned his surroundings to try and figure out what she was talking about, but there was nothing unusual to be seen.

  The Q-pid that Sam was using was the one that Lockne fixed. Had there been some kind of mistake? As Sam questioned himself, a vivid upside-down rainbow appeared in the southern sky. Even though it was an evil omen that signified a bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead, it was undeniably beautiful. Sam must have seen it a hundred times, so he was surprised by this feeling he was having. In reality, it was a terrible thing, but he was so captivated by it. He was feeling something that he couldn’t put into words. He wasn’t quite in awe of its beauty, nor was he fearful; it was something else entirely. Just as he found it impossible to describe his feelings, he couldn’t stop his tears either. This wasn’t his usual allergic reaction. For some reason he was really moved.

  The transmission from Lockne cut out. Sam tried reaching her again, but no matter how many times he tried, no sound came from the transceiver. Even though he was in an area covered by the Chiral Network, he couldn’t connect. All of this seemed to back up what Lockne had said about the sudden rise in chiral density. Or maybe something had happened back at Mountain Knot City.

  He felt a sudden warmth on his chest, and when he pulled out the Q-pid, its six shards were emitting so much heat it felt like they might burst into flames. What was happening? Sam tried to rip the Q-pid away from his neck, but the Q-pid began to float away as if it was a creature with a mind of its own. It floated off into the air as if it was taunting him.

  The second that Sam stepped forward, led on by the Q-pid, the scenery around him transformed in an instant.

  An unbelievable gale was blowing at Sam from behind. He lost his balance and almost fell forward. He tried to cover his head with both arms to brace for the impact, but it was useless. His body floated. Gravity was gone and Sam was flailing through the air. Next to him, a huge whale was flying as its body rotated around like a drill. The debris of buildings, ships, and cars of varying sizes that Sam had only even seen in picture form, and faceless people that had appeared out of nowhere, were swallowed up in a giant whirlwind and sucked
into the sky.

  CLIFFORD

  When Sam woke up, he found himself in a dilapidated town that he didn’t recognize. It was the kind of town that was built from stone and brick, not the kind of town you would find in America. The area was inundated with the sounds of shells and gunfire, together with the hum of heavy machinery that sounded like some kind of growling beast. The enormous bird that was tearing through the sky and causing the deafening roar above was an airplane. It was defying gravity. It was flying. Sam knew of planes that flew through the sky, but this was the first time he had seen one with his own eyes.

  Sam fled to the nearest ruins to avoid the crossfire. The transceiver switched on and communication was established. It was Deadman.

 

  Sam heard the worry in Deadman’s tone before he had even finished addressing him.

  “What’s the matter? Where are you?” Sam asked.

 

  An explosion went off somewhere in the distance, shaking the ruins. Debris began to fall from the ceiling.

 

  Deadman seemed to be more talkative than usual. Maybe it was to distract himself from his own feelings of anxiety.

 

  “How do you know?”