We left the common highway almost two hours ago, meandering through the twisting side streets of the underground network, getting farther and farther away from civilisation. By the time I woke up from my nap, Parker had switched places with Newton, carrying out the last few minutes of our drive to the location. We had turned off the concrete tunnel and into a smaller dirt cave.

“This road leads through a mountain side,” Leila explained to me. “The new site for the Cryo-Tube is just near the exit.”

The road was lit by small electric lamps that lit automatically as we neared. But otherwise, we went at a slow speed to avoid bumping into things in the dark. Slowly, a soft blue glow appeared at the end of the tunnel and grew larger as we approached. The rumbling of the wheels on dirt suddenly stopped as we travelled over a new patch of smooth, concrete road. And then, the vehicle burst out into the light of the open cavern.

A wall of falling water formed the west wall of the cave, bright teal light shining through the gaps with splash back from the falls reaching even the windscreen of the van. A large truck was already there with the same burly men from the station unloading the Cryo-Tube from the vehicle.

Leila slid her door open and Parker and Newton followed suit, getting out of the van. Realizing we've arrived at out destination, I unbuckled and preceded after them.

“Where are we?” I asked generally, staring in wide-eyed wonder at the cave as I stepped out of the vehicle onto the makeshift concrete road.

I noticed a few concrete pillars, artificially built around structural points of the cavern. Water dripped from stalactites on the ceiling onto moss filled mounts on the ground. The cave walls glittered with specks of water that had made their way from the waterfall wall.

Parker came up to me and led me by my elbow. “We're on the outskirts of Tikika. Somewhere near the border to the Wilds. It's far out enough from the safety of the city that The Forum won't think to look for you here.”

“And what are we doing here?” I asked, starting to follow without his lead. He let go of my arm as we joined up with Newton and Leila.

“This is going to be where you sleep for the coming years,” Newton answered. “We're using the power of the waterfalls to power the Cryo-Tube. There's a generator built into the mountain and will be hooked up to the machine. The entire room we'll house you in is made of stainless steel alloy. My design, naturally. It'll last for quite a long time,” he finished rather proudly.

Together, we headed towards a large, double steel door embedded into the wall of the cavern, following behind the muscle men and Cyro-Tube. The group in front stopped just short of the door and Leila ran up to the left of the monolith.

Sliding open a hidden panel, she revealed a number pad embedded into the arch of the gate. She typed in a series of six numbers, distinguished by the beeps which, to this day, I have no idea what they do aside from making an annoying noise, and the large metal door rumbled open, sliding aside and showing the darkness within like an opening into a new universe or a threshold to outer space.

Leila directed the workers, “Move it in and hook it up to the generator.” The men nodded and moved to work, followed by Parker and Newton going in to help, though I was not sure what a limping doctor could do in that situation.

I walked up to her, “This is where I'll be?” I stared into the dim room, lit only by the slowly fading light outside.

She replied, “We're out of the boundaries of the cities. This is just one of the places in nature we found that still blocks out the mist, thanks to the waterfall.” She turned to me with a hopeful smile, “This cavern is actually at the edge of the mountain basin that we passed by on The Winter Train. The water of the falls comes from the snow that melts there. Poetic, I think.”

“Yeah.” I looked down to my prosthetic legs, thinking of all the things that were lost in my journey there. “But isn't it a long drive? How are you guys going to wake me up again.”

A downcast look covered her face as I said that, and I knew immediately the answer.

I continued grimly, “I'm not waking up again. Am I?”

“No.” She shook her head, tearing up. “Not to see us again at least,” She sighed deeply, wiping away the tears that swelled in her sights. “You still have five days left in your life. It should be enough to get you back to the portal if you could find some sort of transport. Even a bicycle would do.”

I was dumbfounded. I stared at her and she tried to evade my gaze. But after trying to hold back, she broke and began to cry uncontrollably. I held out my good hand, gently wrapped it around her head, and brought her into my chest, where she cried into without holding back.

Between sobs, she muttered, “I don't want you to go.”

“I know.” I nodded into her. Yet, I replied, “But I don't have a choice any more.”

Her head bobbed up and down in agreement, and I knew she understood my position then. “I'm so sorry, dad. I made you choose this.”

“You don't have to apologize to me. Ever. Not ever in your lifetime.” My voice creaked as my body attempted to cry. Yet, the cyborg part of me prevented me from doing such a simple action of life.

Newton walked up to us, and his eyes shone with the understanding that the news had been broken. “We're ready for you,” he told me. “Whenever you are.”

Slowly and extremely gently, I tried to pull my daughter away from me, but she refused to budge as her cries turned into pained sobs. Seeing the struggle, Newton came up and lend a hand, managing to tug her apart from me.

I looked him in the eye, “You take care of her.”

And without missing a beat, he replied, “To the end of her days.” Leila turned to cry into his arms.

Not knowing what else to say, I could only turn away from the couple and step into the darkness, the glow of the Cryo-Tube's interior lighting the only thing guiding my path forward.

Standing beside the machine, Doctor Parker, awaited me.

“Doctor,” I greeted again.

The man with the limp and cane replied with a wise tone, “You can still walk away from this, Milton,” reminding me of the choice Leah Hullway gave me just a short two days before.

Dejectedly, I replied, “I can't anymore. People have died for me now. If I walk away, I would be stepping on everything they stood for.” I laughed and could hear my mechanical fist clenching in self hatred. “Which is a bit screwed up if you ask me. Since if there was ever a time when I wanted to quit, today would be that day.”

“I know. And I'll say again, you can still walk away from this.”

I smiled at the old man and hugged him. “You're the good friend I never asked for.” I patted his back approvingly. Our silence was my answer to him and he seemed to have understood. I stepped back and asked, “You know, I never knew your full name.”

He smiled back. “Greene. Greene Parker.”

“Good. Good name,” I replied. With a heavy heart, I turned away from him and slowly, I climbed into the machine which hummed in anticipation of me. “Well Doctor Greene Parker, I will never forget you.”

“Yeah. You'd better not,” he said with a cheeky grin. Turning away from the machine, he headed off to the light of the outside, his silhouette like a hero walking off into a sunset.

From the door, Leila ran in, her steps clacking behind her. And for a moment, the image of the little girl running up to me for a hug flashed across my mind, right before her auburn hair flew into the Cryo-Tube behind her as she embraced me within the confined space.

She croaked through tears, “I love you. Dad. I love you so much.”

I hugged back. “I love you too.” I cursed my eyes internally, for at that moment, I wished I was blind again. Since at least then, I could still cry. “Remember Hillbury?” I ended as she unwillingly back out of the machine.

“Yeah,” she replied with a sad smile, her face illuminated by the glow of the Cryo-Tube. “Favourite-test place. Ever.”

With that, the glass door closed quickly and silently between us and the preservation liquid began filling up the Cryo-Tube. The sloshing of the water as it entered were louder and more prominent than I've ever heard them before, as if the machine was crying on my behalf. The world darkened around me as the anaesthetics took its effect.

I thought of all the people I've lost and was about to, the image of the faces burnt sharply into my mind. My wife and daughter. My father and mother. Golph and Matthews. Leah and Parker. My son-in-law, who I've only met once. My grandson, John, who I will never meet. And all the nameless, faceless strangers that gave their lives to get me there. For a moment, right before darkness took me, I thought I felt a tear rolling down me cheeks. But of course, that was not possible. I can't cry. Nor can I feel. Without my prosthetics, I would not be able to walk, write, or even see. I was as much of a nothing as the darkness before me.

Then light burst into my eyes. Gunshots and explosion blasted and echoed off the walls around me as the glass door of the Cryo-Tube exploded. I was washed face first out the machine with the gush of blue liquid, falling like a rag doll to the ground, somehow missing the larger pieces of the shattered glass from the machine.

My head spun from the sudden awakening as I watched blood from my nose mixed with the pooling liquid. I tried to push myself onto my feet but my left arm, still asleep, gave way. My robotic right though, pushed full force and I was spiralled onto my back.

“Get up!” I could hear a female voice shouting for me. I turned my head left to see rubble of steel and stones scattered around the chamber floor while light from the outside drew jagged shadows across the ground. “Get up, old man!

I turned onto and over my limped left arm, knuckling my right to push myself awkwardly up. I grunted as my muscles strained from the act, not out of pain but simply a reaction of the body from the twisted position. My entire body weight leaned into the mechanical arm and my head pivoted on the ground. But being disoriented and without the ability to feel, I could not gauge my physical position and was left stuck halfway between a worm and a snail.

“Oh for fuck sakes,” the female cursed.

A shadow covered my left side as the woman raised my sleeping arm over her shoulders, lifting me to my feet.

“I got him!” she yelled. “Let's get out of here!”

I looked up to the entrance. The once thick steel doors were blasted wide open, with half a dozen men and women dressed in brown dirt camouflage garbs and wearing gas masks standing to the sides of the entrance, both inside and out of the chamber. From an assortment of guns, they fired brightly lit tracer rounds towards the – and again, I can't believe I'm saying this – six-legged metal robot spiders.