Rowdy Dead Productions

By David C. Daoust

She sat in the rafters, above the mess below. She was crouched in the shadows; the pit in her stomach, that grumbled her hunger, could only be matched by the void in her chest. The void was formed of the loss of everyone she knew, the loss of Dakota. Suzanne Otomo was alone. As she had been since that white light enveloped her ship.

The light brought them somewhere else, she knew that now, but that was not all that it did. The white light knocked them all unconscious. Suzanne alone was spared, her refraction shield built into her Constable Regalia, protected her somehow.

The rest were collected.

A small army of ‘Wraiths’ had quickly invaded her ship, sorted the unconscious people, and filed them out, one by one. Suzanne had not seen them since. Her ship quickly became a ghost ship, inexplicably void of all power. She could not fabricate food without power.

She was alone, alone and hungry. This was not a thing she had experienced before.

The power to her Constable Regalia was waning. Another thing she had never experienced; the tech of the Onion was always abundant with energy. This new place however, was barren. She could not understand where the energy was going. Even if she powered it all down, it dissipated, all the same.

She found she had to abandon her ship, empty as it was. Though, truly, what choice did she have, but to try and learn more of this new environment and to seek out those she lost? Her first few scouting missions had the benefit of her refraction shield. She found outside her ship lay the darkened halls of a city station. It was like a twisted nightmare version, empty, though a city station all the same.

Suzanne hurriedly sought out the population. What she found was unexpected, though familiar. It was more of those children, hundreds, maybe thousands, small pale skinned children, floating about, surrounded by those glowing spheres, three each. They went about their day, eating and sleeping, mostly just playing.

Suzanne found no ‘adults’. All the children were cared for by the spheres themselves. She found nurseries filled with babies, cared for by droids, it was not so far from a hospital of the Onion, except, of course, the lack of the fully grown.

Desperate, the hunger pains were finally sated only when she began to snag food from unattended plates. She hated herself for it, ‘stealing from children’, even if their food was abundant, this was not an act she ever considered herself able to take a part of, nor any Otomo to take a part of. Someday she would pray for forgiveness, but today she needed to eat.

Day by day, she would scout through the city-station, though again, it was a station the size of a city. Those empty corridors, deemed the ‘Narrrows’ among the Onion’s population, were vast in this emptied darkened version of a city-staion.

Suzanne scouted more and more, yet still no sign of those she lost.

Quickly she found, she was losing power to her suit. She was losing the ability to stealth throughout what she considered to be ‘enemy territory’. She could not stroll through the commissary stealing food, if her refraction shield failed to hide her.

It was with this fear, this threatening hunger and loneliness- that Suzanne began to lose herself. No longer the powerful CEO of Otomo Corp, she was becoming a hungry waif, in a city that did not even know she was there.

Eventually the suit was rendered useless, she stowed it back within her ship. She kept to the shadows, food was ever harder to find. More than once, she was almost seen or heard. She became clumsier than ever before. The children acted as though there was a ghost among them. She took to the rafters, growing ever more desperate.

This is when she began to see a ghost- her sister, Dakota. It was as though she haunted her. Again and again, Dakota’s form would appear just outside of sight. When Suzanne would turn, to catch her, she would vanish. This tore Suzanne to shreds inside. She’d lost all hope in finding where the Wraiths had taken Dakota, the city was just so vast- and so empty.

She doubted even her mind- but it was as she sank into this ‘doubt’ that her faith awakened, a faith in her own mind. She was Suzanne Otomo- she was not crazy. If she saw Dakota, it was because Dakota found a way to communicate with her. That was her thread of hope, born of a faith in herself, distilled in her very being.

Suzanne started to watch all around herself. She noticed the lights that blinked in the otherwise darkened Narrows. She found old monitors that would suddenly flicker- in the past she just thought it was quirky, though as she watched them, she could swear she saw Dakota on the screen.

Suzanne Otomo began to follow the signs around her. Ignoring the hunger, she wandered further into the Narrows, away from the concentrated population of flying children– away from the food.

At last Suzanne came across the Red Faction’s Barrack Ship— they must have been taken as well, enveloped within that light. Though it must have played out different for the Red’s, because the landing station the Red’s ship was currently parked within, was surrounded with Wraiths.

Suzanne recognized it for what it was. This was a Siege. The Wraiths could not gain entry.

Suzanne had assumed that the Snakebots that were assaulting her base when the light took them, had been rendered as unconscious as the humans she employed, though clearly, this was not the case. Suzanne had enough Intelligence on the Red’s tech, to know that not all of the Red Faction ‘bots’ used monoliths. Those barricaded within- must be normal bots. Normal Soldier and Medic Bots, stationed within the Red’s Ship.

Suzanne was invigorated, at last she found something, some sign of something from her previous life.

For the first time in a long time, Suzanne Otomo was not alone.