A New Day

Emma was determined to have a good day.

Yesterday's chaos was behind her, the emergency alert, the panicked rush to the Safehouse, that strange feeling she refused to acknowledge.

Today would be different.

Today would be normal.

She pulled into the far corner of the employee parking of Stellar, planning to use it as a free parking spot, wincing as her tires crunched a bit too loudly on the gravel. 

Today had to be a good day.

Yesterday's shift had been a nightmare after she'd finally been able to leave the Safehouse. She'd arrived four hours late for her shift, hair disheveled, still shaken from what she'd felt, or thought she'd felt, during the emergency. Marcus had been livid.

"Some of us don't have the luxury of hiding in Safehouses all day," he'd snapped, as if the Level Two alert had been her personal inconvenience to him.

Only Melly's intervention had saved her job. Sweet, confident Melly, who'd charmed Marcus into a grudging forgiveness with her easy smile and gentle reminders of Emma's otherwise perfect attendance record.

"You owe me," Melly had whispered afterward, bumping Emma's shoulder with her own. "Tomorrow. Shopping. No excuses."

Emma smiled at the memory. Melly had been her friend since childhood. And in addition to her sister, Melly had been her constant, her anchor. The three of them all survivors of the fall of Colony 219. Though Melly's story had a happier ending than Emma's and Lily's.

The memories surfaced unbidden, the screams, the darkness, the weeks spent in the bunker beneath their elementary school. Emma and Melly had been only eight, Lily eleven. Their parents had been in a different sector when the infestation hit. "We'll find your parents," the rescue workers had promised when the kids were finally rescued. They never did.

But Melly's parents had been found, pulled alive from the wreckage of a collapsed building three weeks after the evacuation. Emma could still remember Melly's face, tear-streaked and radiant with joy, as she was reunited with them.

Emma had never been jealous. How could she be? Even at that young age, she'd understood that Melly's good fortune didn't diminish her own loss. Instead, it had given her hope, a reason to believe that good things could still happen in their broken world. In fact, Emma found she preferred it somehow when others had good things happened to them. She got to believe that good was still possible in the world without the terror of worrying of having it stripped from you again. Maybe this is why she clung so tightly onto Lily, the only family she had left.

Emma let out a sigh while looking at herself in the rear-view mirror. She adjusted her dark brown hair and looking at her reflection forced herself to smile.

Let's have a good day. She thought.

In an attempt of living the mantra looking good means feeling good, Emma had put an effort into looking nice today. She had worn her cutest white dress, a form fitting cotton number that came down to her knees, and pulled her hair back into a simple low bun. At twenty-three years old, Emma was slightly embarrassed that she didn't seem to have a knack for putting together an outfit the way that her sister and Melly did. It had never been a problem before because she could always just ask Lily for help. The only reason Emma even knew this dress was her cutest white dress was because Lily had deemed it so.

As the months went by since Lily's disappearance, she would find some semblance of contentedness more and more these days, not "peace" exactly, but rather just a lack of the constant anxiety, and then something would happen like a gut punch. As if a fist with the words "Your sister is gone" would come barrelling at her, and before she knew it, she was emotionally keeled over. Today, it happened as she opened her closet door, deciding what to wear and realizing she had no clue what to put together. Instinctively her body wanted to turn to the hallway behind her and shout "Lil's can I have some help?" and then, the gut punch. 

Looking away from her reflection in the rear-view mirror. Emma put the car in park and turned off the engine. Her next move should have been to exit the vehicle but she found herself just sitting there. One hand holding the steering wheel and the other holding her keys.

Perhaps she wasn't getting more content. She thought instead that her perpetual panicked state after her sisters initial disappearance was being replaced by a deeper solemn feeling. A heaviness that was weighing on her chest. She didn't know how to explain it exactly; she didn't really understand it herself. It was a feeling and a thought at the same time. A feeling like her body was getting heavier to move. Like the weight of gravity increased ten-fold and suddenly even the hair on her head felt heavy and she'd drop her head slightly under this imagined weight.

And the thought? The thought was like a voice deep in the back of her mind that said.

"Lily is gone and she's never coming back."

It was harder now, six months later, to justify that this was just some strange mistake and Lily would be back on the Ministry of Defense base, laughing it off and telling her some story of how she ended up lost in another colony.

No, instead with each passing day, Emma was losing hope. Her sister who had preached of 'doing the right thing' and 'helping others' had disappeared in thin air and for what? Had she had the chance to save anyone the way that they themselves had been saved once before? At least if she knew that much Emma could feel a little content that her sister had made a meaningful impact. Rather then this frustrating state of knowing nothing.

All of Emma's attempts at probing the Ministry of Defense for information were futile. After weeks of constant calling, e-mailing, and showing up at the office. She was eventually met with a Commander who advised her to stop, and threatened her with arrest if she continued. 

"Lily was sent away on a mission." He had said. A mission he was not able to divulge the details of, and that she was classified as missing-in-action, likely dead. Coldly, as if he wasn't delivering soul crushing news, the Commander told Emma plainly there was no search for Lily and that Defense policy was simply that after twelve months, the agent would be classified as dead. This was proceeded with a warning that if Emma's harassment persisted, she would be arrested. What Emma understood from this, was "we're telling you she's dead, and we want you to stop bothering us about it".

After that meeting, Emma stopped calling, and stopped her probe with Defense. What more could she do? She was powerless in this situation and against the Ministry of Defense. Floating City's most powerful jurisdiction of government.

She stopped doing many things after that meeting. Whatever flame had existed in her spirit before dwindled and eventually flickered out. The heaviness creeped in and would come in waves, like a light phasing from bright to dim.

There was no light in Emma's life without Lily.

Still, even after the interaction with the Commander. Emma still refused to believe Lily was dead. The last shreds of hope she had left kept her believing there was a chance Lily was alive. Partially because there was logically still a chance, missing-in-action meant they didn't have a body, and partially because she wasn't sure she could live with the alternative. The two had planned out their lives together. Tomorrow without Lily was not a tomorrow she wanted to see. So, to keep herself together, despite what any official at the Defense said, she kept that hope in her alive.

Emma let out a deep breath.

Lily, what happened?. She thought.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

A sharp tapping sound from deep in her skull jolted Emma from her thoughts. That strange prickling sensation crawled up her spine again, and she violently shook her head, as if she could physically dislodge the feeling.

There it was, that tapping again.

"Not today," she muttered, gathering up the empty coffee cups and food wrappers that had accumulated in her car over the past week. Shooing out of her mind the thoughts of Lily, and anything else that was starting to creep up. Pouring all her focus into her sudden fascination with cleaning the car.

"Today is normal."

Emma stepped out of her car, arms full of garbage, and found herself instinctively standing at attention, back rigid, chin up, as if awaiting inspection. Her body and mind seemed to be operating on different frequencies, a disconnection that had been happening more frequently lately.

"Um, at ease, soldier?"

Emma blinked, suddenly aware of Melly approaching from across the parking lot, an amused smile on her face. Melly wore her dark hair in a stylish bob that framed her heart-shaped face, her eyes bright with humor. Even in simple jeans and a sweater, she carried herself with the confidence Emma had always admired.

"Just, uh, cleaning my car," Emma said, feeling heat rise to her cheeks as she gestured awkwardly with her handful of trash.

Melly raised an eyebrow. "Clearly. And the posture is part of the cleaning process?"

"I was stretching. Backache." The lie was transparent, but Emma couldn't bring herself to explain the strange compulsions that had been seizing her lately. Not even to Melly.

Before her friend could question her further, Emma dumped the trash in a nearby bin and linked her arm through Melly's, pulling her toward the shopping district that occupied the same upscale plaza as Stellar.

"Let's go. I promised you shopping, and shopping you shall have," Emma declared with forced cheerfulness.

Melly didn't resist, but Emma could feel her friend's concerned gaze. Melly knew her too well, had seen her through too many crises to be easily fooled.

"What's been going on with you lately?" Melly asked, her voice gentle but direct.

Emma hesitated, her steps slowing. "I've just been thinking about Lily a lot. Her birthday's coming up next week."

It wasn't completely a lie. Her sister had been constantly on her mind. Almost every night, Emma would pull up her phone and read the last message Lily had sent six months ago:

"Good night!!!"

Three exclamation points, so typical of Lily's enthusiasm for everything.

What Emma left out was that these strange feelings had been bothering her too, the prickling sensations, the moments of disconnection, the flashes of awareness that felt alien yet somehow familiar.

"I'm sorry," Melly said, squeezing Emma's arm. "I should have remembered. Do you want to do something for her birthday?"

"Maybe," Emma replied vaguely.

Suddenly, a flash of that feeling struck her again, sharper this time, but gone in an instant. Like lightning behind her eyes.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"What's wrong?" Melly asked, noticing Emma's sudden tension.

"Nothing," Emma said quickly, pulling Melly forward with renewed urgency. "Come on, we gotta hurry if we want to enjoy the day. I heard that boutique you like has a sale. Maybe even we could afford something." She attempted to joke. 

But deep down, in a place Emma wouldn't acknowledge, that fleeting sensation had carried a message as clear as if someone had whispered it in her ear:

Run.