"An Old Friend" (Nature)

“Well then Doctor Keith, our latest guest appeared to have recognised you. Anything you want to tell us?” The one who had been using the flashlight asked him. “No, I have never seen her before in my life. She’s just in mindless shock,” Keith was quick to defend himself. “I’m warning you Keith, lie to me, and it will cost you your life, or Cora’s. Understand?” He was very intrusive of Keith’s personal face – so close that he was picking up on his bad breath. “I understand, Doctor Khan. I apologise for the inconvenience,” he bowed his head as though it was a law in this place. “Good. Now that we are on the same page, come down to the champagne bar. Some of our friends over in the other wing have successfully completed a heart operation. They’ve invited us to join in celebrations.” Khan put his arm around Keith as though nothing had happened between theme just now. “Of course, I will be there, sir.” He looked slightly terrified, but also tried to look casual to avoid any further threats from Khan.

“Fabien? What are you doing up there?” Gwen shouted up to a rooftop, which for some reason Fabien was lying down on with a pair of binoculars. Looking down, he shushed her. “Hang on, I’m coming up!” She trotted up the stairs on the side of the building.

Upon reaching the top, she crouched down next to him, “What do you see?” She asked him, as he handed her the binoculars, “Look at the camp. You can’t miss the big glaring error.” It took her several seconds to notice, but after properly scanning it, she saw what he was referring to. “Soldiers? How is it that possible?” Despite the inferno which had ravaged the place the previous night, there will still living soldiers, residents and agents walking around. Some perfectly fine, others injured. “The big glaring error is that people are still alive. But it’s worse than that, look at what’s missing,” he tried to align his pointing with the binoculars. “The safe? It’s open, but it’s empty…” She lowered the binoculars, realising what this meant, “The bomb. Someone has it…”

Breakfast was rather quiet. Supplies in the kitchen were running low – Seymour’s group were planning on another supply run – it had gotten to the point where breakfast was just cold cans of soup. Around the table, no one said anything, but they all exchanged mischievous looks at each other. “So Elliot, when are you leaving?” Seymour taunted him, “How lovely of you to welcome us into staying, my French friend.” Olivia watched them exchange daggers at each other. “Perhaps you may want to consider leaving later today! I hear the weather outside is going to be rather nice.” He reached his hand under the table, over his knife, “I hear there’s a forecast of coloured rain, quite the contrast to nice weather I think.” The taunt made no sense to Seymour, “Coloured rain? What colour might that be?” Elliot pulled his knife up and leapt across the table, pressing it under Seymour’s neck, “Not sure. Possibly Red, just like blood.” He merely pushed Elliot back to the other side of the table, “Well, how phenomenal.”

Olivia stood up and snapped, “How much longer are you two going to be at it for? We are living in a world where have to stand together! We can’t be taking stabs at our own allies in both a metaphorical and a physical sense!” The two men looked at each other daringly for a few moments, then began to smirk, their smirks turned into light laughter, before they burst out into an enormous fit of laughing. “A metaphorical… And a physical sense! Stabs!” Seymour laughed so hard he began to cry, as did Elliot. “Hey Seymour! Look at Abel and the others! They haven’t got a clue what we’re saying! Look at their blank expressions!” Again, they continued to laugh intensely. While Olivia smiled, she had only intended for them to shut up, not the extreme opposite.

Gwen and Fabien continued to watch the airfield – or what was left of it anyway. Not much was happening, most people were either leaving or trying to rebuild. “Every time I take the binoculars down, I swear the base gets further away,” Gwen remarked. “It’s quite some distance from here. That’s how we can’t away with those two idiots laughing,” Fabien referenced Elliot and Seymour whom they could clearly hear giggling even from the rooftop. “Do we tell them about this? That there’s still people at the air field?” Gwen checked with him, “Nah. There’s no point. They’re not exactly gonna come after us, are they?” Nevertheless, she continued spying on them.

Upstairs, Olivia was searching around her room. There were several objects which gave her an insight into the owners of the mansion before the apocalypse. Items such as a basket of cuddly toys indicated there was at least one child living there. Eventually she stumbled across an old photo frame hidden at the back of a drawer. Picking it up, she made a startling discovery. There were three people in the frame: A mother, her son, and a father. The strangest thing of all was the fact that the man in the photo was very familiar – it was Seymour.

At the table downstairs, Elliot and Seymour were still cracking jokes to each other. The light-hearted mood was ruined when Olivia stormed in. “Seymour,” she approached him, “You told us that you only came to this place after the apocalypse, right?” He nodded in confirmation, “Well yes, why?” She showed the photo frame to him, “Tell me that the man in this photograph isn’t you.” Rising to his feet, he gently took the frame from Olivia, appearing to emotionally freeze up while looking at it. “Why did you have to find this?” It touched Seymour deep inside. “Why did you lie to us?” Olivia was unnecessarily stern. “Sit down,” he pulled a seat back for her.

“We all have parts of our past we wish to forget,” he began, as Elliot and Olivia looked between each other. “The woman in this photo, she was my first wife. She left me a long time ago. One day, she just took off. Walked out of the house, and out my life. This photo was taken in… 2008 or 2009, I believe. We were on holiday in America. The boy in this photo, he is – was – my son.” He swallowed hard, and began to tear up, “I remarried another woman. But, things just didn’t work out there. I took custody of our son, and I’ve lived here for the past nine years. On Day Zero, something happened to him. He became rabid, like an animal. He was something inhumane,” Elliot’s look turned from remorse to realisation, for these are the very descriptions he had used to describe Vincent, “What happened to him?” He had to ask, prompting the tears to roll from Seymour’s eyes. “He started having an attack. His mouth was foaming up. I had to…” He didn’t need to say anymore. While Olivia felt extreme sorrow for him, Elliot was making a parallel. “So that is how this all started after all…”

They both looked up at him, “Your son, his death, the reactions. I’ve seen the same thing twice before. Firstly, with Vincent, then secondly with the head of Reed’s father. The reactions were exactly the same in all three cases. Vincent must’ve been fed the parasite perhaps, and it burrowed up through his head into his brain. If you were living here, Seymour, you’re not far from where the parasites were being kept. Is it possible that somehow one infected your son? Even more worryingly, is this how more than seven and a half billion people died three years ago? Leaving only the remaining five hundred million of us, the lucky ones, who weren’t invaded… Is that really how this all could’ve began?” Seymour stood up, “I’m going to find out! I should’ve destroyed that place years ago! But now, it’s dying, thanks to you Elliot,” he for once didn’t mean that in a sarcastic way. “I’m ready now. It’s time to demand some answers…”

Sitting up in her bed, Annabelle was still trying to work things out; Keith was here, but how? And why was he acting so strangely? She heard the door opening again, noticing it open slightly ajar – it was Keith. He snuck into the room, checking to make sure no one had followed him, before closing the door again. He lightly sprinted over to her. “Still don’t know me?” Annabelle was annoyed with his strange behaviour. “Look, I can explain it. Once I do, I hope you’ll understand.” She looked at him firmly, “Well? I’m waiting for the answers!” He sat down on the adjacent bed, checking one last time to make sure the door wasn’t open.

“We didn’t get very far, after we left London, before our car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Beth… Well, she wouldn’t stop complaining about everything. I raged at her, I told her that if she didn’t like the situation, she was welcome to go back to the ruins of London.” He stopped there, but Annabelle wanted the entire story, “What happened next then?”

“She went through with my threat, or so I thought. I woke up the following morning, but she wasn’t in her tent. There was no note, no bag, nothing. She took everything she had with her. I felt really bad about our argument. I couldn’t just let her run off and never have the chance to make things up again… So, I went back to London to try and find her. When I arrived there, I noticed someone outside, someone crying. When she looked up at me, I recognised that it was Erica’s daughter: Cora.”

This revelation caused Annabelle to look at him in shock, “Cora? She’s alive?” He nodded, but his face said a different story, “She is alive, but she’s not doing too good. I’ll get to that part in a minute. I just need to know right now though, what happened to Erica? Is she alive too? Tell me, so I can tell her the next time I get to visit.” Annabelle nodded happily, “Yes. I spent the past year with her. Erica’s alive.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “Now please, continue with your story.”

“I asked Cora if anyone had come back to London in the time passed. She said no obviously. She hadn’t seen Beth; she hadn’t seen anyone return at all… So, rather than wasting time looking for someone who didn’t want me to find them, I took in somebody who did need and did want my help. Cora and I spent the next few weeks on the road. I had hoped to find Beth again, while Cora had hoped to find her mother. Of course though, we never found either of them. So then we set course for the coast. We thought maybe that would be a good idea, living near the open sea is an easier way of living – you know what I mean, fishing, water supply, and so on so forth… But then one day, we saw a cargo ship. A rather large cargo ship, traversing the coast. It was stopping up near one of the harbours. We just had to investigate, regardless of the danger posed.” Annabelle was beginning to work out where this story was going, “And this place, the place that we’re in. I’m guessing this is that boat, isn’t it?”

Keith nodded reluctantly. “At first, we thought the people on board were nice people, they welcomed us on, fed us, gave us a place to stay. But the longer we stayed, the more we realised this place a dark secret. One day, that fact really hit home. I woke up, and Cora was gone. At first I thought she must’ve pulled a ‘Beth’ on me and just disappeared – but she hadn’t. Doctor Khan, the one who was in here with me just now, he said the hospital needed staff. That’s what this place is, Annabelle, it’s essentially a boat-hospital. He said, if I ever dared to leave this place, he would kill Cora in front of my very eyes. So ever since then, she’s been kept in an isolated area. I’m pretty sure she’s been driven to the point of insanity. I can’t act against the staff here though! They’re all malevolent and merciless. If I got overwhelmed, which I would, they’d kill her anyway, and all this would’ve been for nothing.”

As sorrowful as Annabelle felt for him, she thought he had slightly digressed, “So why does this mean you have to pretend that you don’t know me?” He looked at her intently, “Don’t you get it, Annabelle? They only need one person I care about in order to keep me working. If they have both of you, they can kill either you or Cora just for the fun of it, if they wanted to. You have to keep this act up, Annabelle, please. For Cora’s sake.” Understanding his predicament, she nodded. “Alright excellent. Oh and one more thing before you go, what big things have I missed with whatever group you’ve been with?”

She sat even further upright, “Nothing too much really. We’ve been living along the French coast for the past year, then we were reunited with my mother. We lost people along the way though. Vincent was killed, and so was Andy…” Now, it was Keith who looked sorrowful, “I am… Sorry to hear that. Who are the monsters that killed them?” She looked up at him regretfully, “Me, and Elliot.” Instantly, Keith looked at her, worried, “Ah. Um, scrap the ‘monsters’ part.” But she wasn’t annoyed at him, “But you’re right, Keith. You’re absolutely right. We’re all monsters in the end. Deep down inside. Just like the people who run this place… But Keith, I’m here now. I’ve done things, I think I can do those things again. I’ll get you out of here, and Cora, I promise.”

From out of the shadows, Khan stepped out, sarcastically applauding. “How very brave of you my young friend!” Both Keith and Annabelle looked at each other fearfully. “You have confessed to lying to me, Doctor Keith. You know the cost of that, don’t you?” As Keith got up to beg, Khan put his hands out, “No point in begging now my friend. The damage is done. I have already sent for my comrades to bring her here. I would like to demonstrate to your friend, Annabelle, how we do things around here…” -The title refers to Keith, as this is the first time Annabelle has encountered him since London.
 * The title could also refer to Cora, who has not been seen since 1x12.