Pain permeated through her body with every sluggish heartbeat, culminating in a rhythmic throbbing within her skull.

Something was wrong. No, everything was wrong. Everything hurt. Everything was pain.

Over the ringing in her ears, she could hear voices. They sounded like fleeting echoes. It was hard to make out what they were talking about but it seemed to her like she had heard the conversation before.

"Communications blackout?"

"Negative, Sir. Just a recall with no information as to why."

That second voice sounded familiar, but strangely distorted. Electronic. The other, she realized now, she had only ever heard in her dreams.

"A recall?"

"Yes Captain. One at a time."

"But other than that, there is nothing out of the ordinary?"

"Accurate, Sir."

"Guess we'd better face the music and figure out what's going on. We're almost home at least. It will be alright."

But nothing was alright.

With a hoarse groan of pain, she tried to force her eyes open. For a moment, she thought she was seeing two figures – one of them appearing strangely headless - standing with their backs to her in front of a large window with a view on the great expanse of outer space. But they were whisked away with the next wave of pain that surged through her head.

Null was on the floor, her cheek pressed against cold steel tiles and her sight partially obscured by her hair. It took her a few moments to realize that this was not the only reason she couldn't see properly. Her right eye was blind.

She wanted to get up, but she couldn't move. She wanted to speak, but neither her voice in the real world, nor the one in her mind, seemed to obey her will any longer.

"So what are we going to do with her now?"

There were voices again now, but this time, they were really there, and not just echoes of a memory. She didn't want to hear them. She wanted to hear only one. But that one remained strangely silent.

"Orders remain unchanged. Take her to the brig... Admittedly, I am somewhat more inclined now to believe that this is truly Amy Larsson," a deep, male voice said.

"She broke into your office, Sir! I can't believe that you'd let that slide!" A female voice, she sounded angry. "Why don't we-"

"We're not discussing this again, Major General."

"But Sir-"

"That is enough, Xenia."

Footsteps approached her, heavy boots clanking on the metal tiles. Somebody bent down and brushed the hair from her face with a surprisingly delicate motion.

"She's... I think something is wrong with her, Sir."

It was the voice who had spoken first. Male. Somewhat familiar. Worried.

"The EMP shouldn't have knocked her out like that."

Her pulse hitched briefly, as if it tried to race, but her heart seemed incapable of increasing its pace. Instead, a leaden feeling seemed to spread throughout her body along with the panic that now took hold of her, as she realized what had happened.

She had been hit by an EMP. They had been hit by an EMP. Along with the realization, the memories came back now. She began to understand the pain now, too. Everything was offline. The life support was affected as well. Her heart was beating at an excruciatingly sluggish and erratic pace, pumping the blood too slowly to properly maintain the rest of the body for long. The mere act of expanding her lungs to draw a breath felt like an almost insurmountable task. And the pain in her head – it was excruciating, a strange mixture of searing hot needle pricks and liquid lead.

It almost dulled out the fact that something else was wrong with her head.

...Lars?

Even inside her mind, her voice seemed hoarse and strained.

No response.

She could feel her stomach churn and every fiber in her body tense up.

No... no, no, no... this cannot be... Not... like this.

Another pair of boots appeared in her narrow field of view.

"You're right, Sergeant," the other man said. "But... we can use that to our advantage. Bring her to the infirmary, keep her cuffed, and let the doctor have a look at her. Might as well strip her while we have a chance."

No. You can't do this to me. You can't. I won't let you!

Somebody turned her over and picked her up, her body slumping like a ragdoll in their arms. She tried to scream with all her might, to get up on her feet and keep them from taking her away, but the harder she tried to move, the heavier her body seemed to get. Everything felt wrong, as instead of speeding up, her breathing and heart beat slowed down more and more. She couldn't see anything any longer, as if a black curtain had fallen before her eyes.

The last thing she heard before she passed out again, was the female voice, laced with disdain.

"Too bad," she hissed. "I had hoped I'd get to pull out those wires from your body myself."

~ ~ ~

Unconsciousness was a bliss.

Now that she felt her mind return to a state of wakefulness - slowly like the sun creeping over the horizon in the early morning - it cast light on all the harsh and ugly truths that she did not want to look at. She wanted to sleep again, sleep forever if need be, just so she wouldn't have to face the world.

Her pain was gone, replaced by an icy numbness that made her feel strangely detached from every motion. But breathing was still uncomfortable. It was as if the air around her was filled with microscopic shards of glass.

She reached out in the darkness, in an attempt to hold on to something, to help her find her bearings, but just about an arm's length in front of her, her hands made contact with a wall. There were walls all around her. A surge of panic spread through her body, creeping torturously slowly through her numb body. She had to get out. She pushed against the walls, until her muscles began to burn under the strain, despite the icy cold. Nothing budged. Desperately, she curled her hands into fists and hammered against them, until finally, with a hissing sound, the wall in front of her just disappeared.

She stumbled out of the icy abyss, and fell to her knees, coughing.

As she forced her eyes open, her sight fell on her hands. They looked like death, her blood vessels drawing an intricate pattern in purple and blue underneath her pallid skin.

"Evelyn!" a voice suddenly called out.

It startled her so much that she cried out in surprise, but her cry came out hoarse and raspy. Sluggishly, she raised her head to look around.

"Evelyn, are you alright?"

Her sight was blurry, and she was blinded by the lights, but she found herself in a bare, white-tiled room. There was nobody in here but her.

"Who... who are you?" she croaked, every word requiring effort.

"It's me, Evelyn. Calliope," the voice said, sounding worried. "Don't you remember?"

"Calliope? What? No... what...?"

With a groan of effort, she turned herself around into an upright sitting position.

"I understand that you are confused," Calliope said. "You have been asleep for a very long time."

She didn't reply. She just stared at the sight before her. Lining the back wall of the room, there stood three white caskets, shaped like coffins but standing upright, with a curved cover partially made of glass. Two of them were dark. The third stood open, and an icy haze wafted out from within, crawling lazily over the floor.

"Cryo...A cryo chamber?" she mumbled with a leaden tongue, "I was in cryo?"

She tried to get up, and while the numbness in her body now slowly began to be displaced by an uncomfortable prickling sensation, her body still felt very stiff.

"What... is this place?" she asked, feeling breathless.

"Don't worry, Evelyn. You are at home. Everything will be alright," Calliope said in a soothing voice.

"No, no, this is all wrong," she said, pressing her palms against her eyelids as vague, shadowy memories began to come back. Grey uniforms, black boots, and a gun pointed at her.

"This can't be. Where is... where is Lars?"

"Who?" Calliope asked. "I am sorry, Evelyn. I don't know anybody with that name."

"You're not making any sense," she said. "I'm not Evelyn, I'm-"

The name she was about to say got stuck in her throat. And suddenly, she could feel something slip away from her. It vanished from her mind like fine sand slipping through her fingers. She was certain that she had been somewhere else before. But she couldn't recall where, or why. She knew that name, Evelyn, but it didn't sound right to her. And she knew that something was missing, but she didn't know what.

Leaning against the tiled wall, she took a deep breath.

"Calliope... who are you?" she asked.

"I'm... well... I'm Calliope," the voice answered.

The words seemed familiar in a strange way, but she had no recollection of when or where she had heard them before. She shook her head.

"This is... wrong..." she mumbled. "I need to get out of here. I need to..."

She began to walk toward the door on weak legs.

"Wait!" the voice called out. "I'm not sure if this is such a good idea. I... I'm not certain if you should go out there."

"Why?" she asked, hesitating for a moment.

"You've been asleep for a very long time, Evelyn," Calliope said, her voice sounding sad and strangely wistful.

She gritted her teeth, and decided to ignore the voice. When she pushed against the door, somewhere, a mechanism clicked, and it opened. She didn't know what she had expected. Perhaps a hallway in a hospital. Perhaps a space ship. But Calliope hadn't lied to her.

Home.

This was her home. And it was in ruins.

The room before her was completely wrecked, as if a tornado had ravaged in it. Furniture had been turned upside down, books had been torn from their shelves, and paintings and screens had been ripped from the walls. The extent of the chaos was devastating, and it left her speechless.

As she finally broke out of her momentary paralysis and stepped forward, she felt a sharp pain as shards of broken glass cut at her naked feet. She looked down on herself for the first time now and realized that she wore a white summer dress. It was splattered with traces of dried blood, and somehow she knew that it wasn't her own.

"Evelyn, please be careful," Calliope warned. "I really don't think you should-"

"What happened here, Calliope?" she asked, carefully stepping over debris as she made her way through the room.

"I... I don't think this is a good idea. You just awoke, I think you should lie down, Evelyn. You should-"

"Calliope," she cut her off. "Tell me, or I will-"

As she turned around the corner, her breath caught and she froze up again at the sight before her. A large window spanned the entire length of the far side of the room. The glass was broken, but not shattered, making the world outside appear as if it was behind a kaleidoscope. But the destruction was evident nonetheless.

Ignoring the shards and the debris that dug into her naked feet and scratched her legs, she stepped closer.

The world outside this room had been turned upside down as well. She could not see far through the dense fog, but all that she could see was completely in ruins. Some buildings were burnt out completely, some half torn down, some partially intact but with their windows shattered or wall panels torn down. The trees lining the streets had fallen over and died, withered into grey skeletons. There were no signs of life outside.

But there were traces of life - silhouettes, white and black images burnt into the walls.

Her legs felt weak all of a sudden, and she put her hand against the glass to steady herself. It was strangely warm to the touch, probably because her own body was still so cold.

"Calliope," she asked, her voice wavering, "What happened here? Where is everybody?"

"I'm sorry, Evelyn..." the voice said. "I'm so sorry. They're... they're all gone."

She stared at the destruction outside and swallowed hard.

"I need to leave," she realized, "I need to get away from here."

"I know..." Calliope said. "I tried to send a signal, but... I cannot reach anybody. All comm links are down. The satellites seem to be inactive. I... I'm sorry, Evelyn. I've failed you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've been asleep for a very long time, too," Calliope said in a low voice.

"I don't understand," she whispered.

Her gaze fell on the back of her hand as it rested against the glass – it was a sickly shade of white, with an enigmatic blue pattern tracing along the veins under her skin. Something about that sight seemed familiar, but off.

A sudden, sharp pain cut through her skull, and she pressed a palm against her temple.

"Something is missing," she said. "Something is wrong."

"Everything is wrong..." Calliope commented.

"No, that's not it," she shook her head and averted her gaze from the window. "There is something I need to remember. It's important."

She made her way back across the room, casting a long look across the debris. On the far side, she spotted something that caught her attention – two picture frames that had been torn from the wall.

"This... this is..."

She crouched down and picked up one of them. It was an X-ray image of a spinal column, twelve of thirty-three vertebrae shattered beyond repair.

"I found a vast space of opportunity..." she muttered, and put it to the side.

Then she turned over the other picture – a picture of the center of the galaxy, captured with an old, terrestrial telescope.

"...just not outside, where I had expected it."

She stared at the two images, white speckles on black, and remembered something else now. Accompanied by another flash of pain, an image appeared in her mind, of an impossible place, and an impossible man, his eyes a black void, but filled with light, like the star-spangled night sky above them.

The brief memory tore at her heart so painfully that she was left breathless for a moment. She couldn't make any sense of it, and it began to slip away again as soon as it had passed, but she retained something important from it.

"I need to go to the beach," she said, and got up to her feet again.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Calliope remarked.

"I don't care," she stated. "I have to go. Where are my boots?"

"You cannot go outside, Evelyn. I am sorry, I cannot allow it."

"And why do you think you get to decide that?" she snapped at the incorporeal voice.

"I am just trying to protect you, Evelyn!" Calliope exclaimed, sounding offended, "Radiation levels outside might still be too high, it's dangerous. Besides, we don't know who or what might be out there!"

"I don't care what's out there! I need to go to the beach!"

She had raised her voice to a yell, and it left her breathless and exhausted. Her body still felt mostly numb, partially tingling uncomfortably, but that wouldn't stop her now. She couldn't find her shoes in the chaos, so she made her way to a door that looked like an exit barefoot.

"I'm sorry... but I need to..." she mumbled, as she reached for the door controls. "I need to find him."

"Find whom?" Calliope asked.

She opened her mouth, but the name wouldn't come to her. It was at the tip of her tongue, intangible at the forefront of her mind, excruciatingly close to being spelt out, but it just wouldn't find the way out of her mouth.

"There's nobody here, Evelyn," Calliope said. Her voice was soft, soothing, and very sad.

She sank to her knees, feeling very exhausted all of a sudden.

"I'm sorry, but... you are alone here, Evelyn. The planet... everyone... they're all dead."

"Then what about me?" she whispered. She stared down at her hands, white laced with blue, and clenched them into tight fists in her lap. "Why am I still here? Why am I not dead?"

Calliope remained silent, but another voice answered. It was her own.

"Who said you aren't?

___________
Author's Note:

Credit where credit is due - the dialogue between Lars and the Captain is  from Chapter 26 of "New Elysium" by Red_Leasia : https://www.wattpad.com/479816258-new-elysium-part-26/page/2