[35] There Is Only One Good Ending

Over the next few days, I crossed paths with more of Eden's remaining inhabitants.

Most encounters were uneventful. People exchanged directions, rumours, warnings or food. Some had formed small shelters inside gymnasiums, subway stations and apartment buildings, while others simply stayed wherever they had found safety. Fear had shortened the distance between people. Strangers became neighbours within days. Families took in people they had never met. Someone with medical experience could become indispensable overnight.

Most didn't quite know what to make of me. A woman travelling alone attracted concern first, suspicion second. Some offered me food or a place to stay. Others asked about my family, or who I had been travelling with. Very few seemed comfortable with the answer that I was perfectly fine on my own.

Pressure created moments of carelessness. I had learnt that much from criminals. Given enough of it, people stopped hiding what mattered to them. For some, that meant generosity. For others, desperation stripped away something less pleasant. And a few seemed almost relieved that nobody was around to stop them anymore.

Those people felt rather more familiar. Their motives were usually simple enough. Food. Weapons. Territory. Control.

Occasionally me.

Most of those encounters ended quickly. I remembered the Doctor's words. There was no reason to kill them when disabling them was enough.

The more interesting groups were those who had begun rebuilding something around themselves. Some shelters developed rules almost immediately. Others formed around hierarchies of strength.

And then there were the stranger ones.

I began seeing the same markings in places that had no obvious connection to one another. Painted across shutters. Scratched into walls. Hung from makeshift shelters in scraps of cloth. At first, I assumed they belonged to another survivor group, but that changed when I started hearing the same phrases.

Different people, different shelters, yet the wording barely changed. Some spoke of being "chosen." Others spoke of a baptism, a rite performed after joining that supposedly let them pass among the infected unharmed.

That was enough to catch my attention. I started following the markings whenever they appeared. The trail eventually brought me to an old commercial building, where a woman's frightened voice carried from somewhere inside.

There was another voice with her. A man's.

I followed it to the back, and saw that he had her pinned beneath him.

The Lumen Stylus struck him behind the head before either of them noticed me.

He collapsed across her.

The woman screamed.

"He's unconscious."

That didn't help. I pulled him off and stepped away, giving her enough room to scramble toward the wall. Her clothes were torn, her breathing uneven, and for several seconds she seemed almost as frightened of me as she had been of him.

"I'm not with them," I said.

It took a little longer before she believed me. Once she had calmed enough to speak, I asked about the markings, the baptism, and the man who had attacked her. But she knew less than I hoped. I pointed her toward one of the shelters I had passed earlier, and she left without looking back. 

I waited for the man to wake. He was confused to find the woman gone and me standing there instead, but his suspicion faded once I showed enough interest in his beliefs to convince him I wanted to join. When his attention wandered elsewhere and he tried his luck, a brief contest of strength corrected that misunderstanding without spoiling the impression.

After that, he was considerably more respectful, and willing enough to bring me to the people who could properly induct a new believer.

The church wasn't far. From the outside, it looked ordinary enough, apart from the same markings I had been following across the district. But the inside was different. Curtains divided portions of the nave into smaller spaces. Mattresses had been pushed against the walls. Personal belongings were piled together beneath tables, some of them clearly taken from people who were no longer there. A large basin had been placed near the front, its rim stained with something dark and unpleasantly familiar.

There were more people than I expected.

Some sat quietly between the pews with vacant expressions, murmuring the same phrases beneath their breath. Others moved when instructed and stopped when told, carrying food, washing blood from the floor, tending to people who looked too exhausted to stand on their own. A few bore fresh cuts or bruises they seemed strangely unconcerned by. Nobody paid much attention as I was led through them.

The smell beneath the incense was worse. Rot. The incense itself burned everywhere, too much of it.

I breathed in carefully.

There was something mixed into the smoke. Nothing particularly sophisticated. Enough to dull someone after prolonged exposure, perhaps making exhaustion and suggestion easier to exploit.

Primitive. Every citizen of Halcyon received basic resistance treatments against crude airborne agents from childhood. Whatever they were using here barely registered beyond an unpleasant pressure behind my eyes.

They probably had no idea someone could simply resist it.

The man spoke constantly as he led me farther inside.

Their preacher had understood the truth before everyone else. The infected were punishment made flesh, and those who accepted the new order would be spared long enough to repent. But survival itself wasn't the goal. True repentance ended in death, willingly given for the cause.

Humanity had already failed. The world could only be cleansed once everyone responsible for corrupting it was gone, beginning with those who refused to believe.

As he spoke, I noticed more of what the curtains were hiding. People restrained to beds. Others knelt beneath watchful eyes, knees reddened against the floor and their legs trembling whenever they shifted. One man stood bleeding from both palms while those around him praised his devotion.

None of them seemed particularly distressed by it. Everything people had owned before the collapse belonged to the congregation now. So did their labour. And, apparently, their bodies.

The man who had brought me here explained all of it with the same casual reverence, though his eyes told a different story.

I had seen something similar before: a case involving several ritual killings and a religious sect that had convinced its members suffering was a form of purification.

Not a fond memory.

I kept smiling through his induction.

By the time he finished, I had shown enough fascination.

"These revelations... they came from the people leading you?"

"They did." His gaze travelled over me again. "If you're sincere, I'm sure... they'll want to meet you."

"Then, I'd like to serve closer to them."

"Ohhh... I'm sure they'll be very pleased to receive you. Follow me..." His eyes lit with barely concealed desire.

He seemed pleased by my enthusiasm and led me past the main chapel, then through another corridor, finally stopping outside what looked like an old pastor's waiting room. The walls were thicker here. Even standing beside the door, I could barely hear anything beyond it.

He knocked, received an answer, and opened the door for me.

Two obese men lounged inside, soft around the middle and dressed more comfortably than most of the people outside. Two women knelt before them. Their attention shifted to me almost immediately.

The man who brought me lingered at the doorway.

"Once she's received... may I share in her guidance?"

One of the men laughed.

"If your devotion remains strong."

"Of course."

Satisfied, he left, the door closing behind him.

The two men looked me over openly now, their broad bodies sinking into the seats beneath them.

The incense was stronger in here, thick enough to cling to the back of my throat. The two women barely reacted to it, or to me. Both looked exhausted, their clothes rumpled, their expressions dulled into something distant.

One of the men leaned back in his seat. "Come closer."

The other smiled. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Everyone feels ashamed at first."

"Shame belongs to the old world," the first added. "Once you let go of it, everything becomes easier."

Neither woman so much as looked up.

The second man reached toward me.

That was enough. The Lumen Stylus moved twice. Two holes opened through their heads, and both men collapsed into their seats before either woman could react.

One of them gasped sharply.

"Quiet." I pointed the weapon at them.

She covered her mouth.

I looked between them. Up close, their exhaustion was even clearer. Bruises marked their arms and legs, and neither seemed steady when they finally stood.

"...You can leave."

They stared at me.

"The door isn't locked."

That seemed to reach them. They gathered what little clothing they could and hurried out without another word. I turned back to the room. There were papers scattered across a table, several communication devices, keys, bottles and a handwritten ledger. More than enough to justify coming here.

I had just picked up the ledger when something struck the back of my head.

White flashed across my vision.

I hit the floor hard.

One of the women had come back. The other caught my arm before I could recover, dragging me down as the first raised what remained of a broken chair.

...Careless.

I had assigned them the role of victims too quickly, letting old assumptions do the thinking for me.

Worse, I had been doing that more often since coming to this world.

Another blow caught the side of my head.

The room lurched—and for a moment, the church disappeared.

'You're heavy.'

'Hehe... Already complaining?'

'Only because... you're making me wait for an answer.'

Someone was carrying me on his back beneath an open sky. My arms rested loosely around his shoulders, my cheek against him.

An answer. My answer was...

The words surfaced again before I could think about them, following the echo of the Charlotte in that memory.

"...Doc...tor..." 'Hey, Doctor.'

He turned slightly.

I leaned forward, and our lips met.

The memory vanished as quickly as it came.

My eyes opened against the floor.

The Lumen Stylus moved.

Two sharp cries followed as the Stylus pierced their legs, sending both women down before they could pin me again.

I pushed myself upright.

"...Why?"

Their answers came between sobs and prayers.

Even now, neither seemed to consider leaving.

One of them reached for a shard of broken mirror.

She lunged. The Stylus passed through her head.

The other seized a vase and came at me before the first body had finished falling.

A second strike ended it. Silence returned. Four bodies lay inside the room.

I looked at them for a moment, but my attention drifted elsewhere.

My fingers touched my lips.

That was... real.

A wave of dizziness interrupted the thought. Something warm had already soaked into the back of my clothes. I reached behind my head and felt blood beneath my fingers.

This wasn't finished. There were still people inside, and I hadn't decided what to do with them. But my head was in no condition to make that decision now. There was another door at the rear of the room. I pushed through it and found a narrow passage leading out behind the church.

Everything after that blurred together. Streets. Buildings. Infected drifting into my path. Anything that wandered into my path fell almost automatically as I searched for somewhere close enough to stop. Eventually, I found an empty room in a building nearby.

I locked the door behind me, made it several steps inside, and felt my legs finally give way.

I fell onto my side.

...The position felt strangely familiar. I pulled myself onto the nearest bed and dragged the blanket over me.

As my consciousness faded, I returned to gentler moments.

The Doctor smiling at me. Long evenings spent beside him while he worked. Meals shared without ceremony. His hand finding mine as though it belonged there. There were more of them now, far more.

I tried to remind myself that they were dreams. That thought only made them clearer.

The harder I held onto reason, the more the memories answered. I saw myself laugh with him. Tease him. Fall asleep beside him. Wake with his coat over me. I saw happy conversations I had never remembered having, quiet mornings where neither of us seemed in any hurry to leave.

I knew what he was going to say before he said it. I knew how I would answer.

A proposal I already knew I would accept. A ceremony surrounded by familiar faces. His hand around mine again, this time with a ring between us. And afterward, somewhere far from everything that had occupied our lives before, days that seemed to belong only to us. Waking beside him. Wandering unfamiliar streets together. Sharing meals we didn't need to rush through.

And that night, discovering another kind of closeness entirely. The nervousness, the warmth, the embarrassment giving way to pleasure as I entrusted myself to him completely. For the first time, I remembered what it felt like simply to be a woman beside the man I loved.

For a while, there was nothing else. Just the complete life of Charlotte Holmes, playing out before me like a film reel reaching its end.

It should have stopped there.

Instead, the reel seemed to rewind, cruelly pulling apart everything that had been precious to me. To us. Familiar moments returned. The same people, the same choices, the same beginnings.

Only this time, something changed.

Then something else. One life became another. The paths split, and what had once ended in warmth began leading somewhere darker.

...And then I saw the endings.

The Doctor dying.

Again. And again. Different places. Different circumstances. Sometimes suddenly. Sometimes with enough warning that knowing only made it worse. Other memories ended without his death, but somehow that wasn't always better. People disappeared. Plans failed. Someone close to us died, and whatever future had once existed quietly changed with them.

In some memories, the Doctor simply wasn't there anymore.

"No..."

I curled tighter beneath the blanket.

They were dreams. They had to be.

But I remembered how each one felt, every life more vivid than the last. Each ending cut deeper as I mourned lives I had somehow lived again and again, only to lose them in different ways. The grief arrived before the scenes finished playing. I knew who would die before I saw it happen. I knew which conversations would be the last.

At some point I stopped knowing whether my eyes were open. The room around me returned in fragments. Darkness. Morning light. Darkness again. I drank water once. Or perhaps I only remembered doing so.

Time passed somewhere beyond the blanket while I lived through years that had never belonged to me. Except they had. That contradiction became harder to maintain. Eventually, the memories stopped branching.

They began moving toward something final.

The Doctor disappeared.

There was no body. No answer. No proof that could be accepted as an ending.

Only absence.

I waited for him.

Everyone did, at first.

Days became months. Months became years. The people he had gathered remained, but something had gone out of them. They continued because there were things left to maintain, promises left unfinished, people who still needed them.

But the centre was gone.

One by one, they disappeared too.

Some died fighting.

Some through accidents.

Some simply stopped caring whether they survived at all.

I remembered funerals. Empty rooms. Names that became increasingly difficult to say aloud.

Ten years passed.

Ten years without him.

By the end, even grief had become exhausting.

I saw myself older. Quieter. Sitting alone with medication scattered across the table.

I knew what came next before she moved.

"No..."

She swallowed more than she should have.

I felt the dullness spreading through her.

Through me.

She tried to stand.

The room tilted.

Her body struck the floor sideways.

The same position. The same angle.

The same cold surface beneath her cheek.

...So that was why it felt familiar.

Her breathing became shallow.

Her eyes remained open for a little while longer.

There was no revelation waiting at the end.

No grand final thought. Only exhaustion, and the slow spread of nihilism until even continuing to live felt stripped of meaning.

One name remained when everything else had gone quiet in my mind.

Doctor.

The memory ended... and my eyes opened.

For a long moment, I couldn't move.

The unfamiliar ceiling above me slowly came into focus.

My face was wet. My chest hurt.

But there was something else beneath all of it now.

Something almost unbearable in its simplicity.

All those lives, all those versions of me, all that waiting and losing and reaching for him again and again—it felt as though they had carried me this far only to push me toward the same conclusion.

He wasn't gone. Not here.

My lips moved before I could think.

"...Doctor."

A breath caught in my throat.

'''''''"...So you're here."'''''''