He closed his eyes where the tears had sat too long, growing cold against the glassy finish there. They followed the well worn paths that had been set for them, further cooling the skin of his cheeks. He probed his mind for a memory. What did he remember from before the surgery? His father.

The slick of his hair. The tan complexion. The mouth, saying a name. Focus on the name. Focus on the name. Focus. “Darius!” He heard his father’s voice in his mind. It was the night before this one. His father had arrived at the house, and demanded that Darius leave with him immediately. Why?

Darius struggled to remember. Father looked like he was afraid. Normally, he just looked distant, uncaring, angry. This was the first time Darius had ever seen him afraid.

“Darius! Come! Quickly!” he shouted.

Another memory formed as a vision of a landing pad on the roof of their home. An ex-pilot in the cockpit of a private jet. The engines were running, and Darius was being dragged into it by his father.

“Dad, what’s happening?”

“It’s not safe here anymore. I… had to make a choice. I chose you.” The hardness of his expression cracked, and vapors of emotion encapsulated him.

Darius looked at his father, not understanding, not breathing. He cleared his throat. “Dad. Where are we going?”

“The SOLA office. There’s something we have to do there.” He gritted his teeth, regaining his cold composure.

“We?” Darius had a mixture of hope and overwhelming confusion writhing within. There had never been a “we” before.

“Yes.” Practiced statuesque business tone returning to his father. “We are going to the office. It will take a few hours to get there. Now, no more questions. There are ears in that jet.”

Despite the relatively short travel time, the flight felt like an age. Time was stagnant with silent tension, and the wonder of seeing something of the world outside. Darius watched through the window the entire trip. He saw the lights of Miami, the city where his home had been. The dark dusty expanse dotted with the wandering encampments of the Carolinas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Then, the dustlands of Ontario came into view, and soon there was a glowing fluorescent beacon breaching the horizon. SOLA.

As they drew closer, Darius could see lit billboards flanking decaying roads. Small abandoned towns sat like dark skeletal corpses amongst the sand and dirt. As the jet began its descent towards the city, he could see the monolithic buildings. Such tall buildings edging a mass of construction zones. All of them were paneled and framed with advertising and neon, shining through the night itself; awaiting the red morning sun as it crested behind the jet.

The jet landed in a large deserted parking lot outside of the city’s southern limits where an armored Intelligent Flying Vehicle was waiting. In the growing crimson light of morning, Darius and his father were quickly and quietly led across dusty asphalt to the vehicle. A team of medics drew Darius onto one of the seats where they pulled his sleeve up to the shoulder and swabbed a patch of skin with cool alcohol. Then they injected something into his arm, and he began to feel a floating sensation in his head. His father sat in the seat across from them, watching Darius in apparent disinterest.

“What’s happening?” Darius slurred.

Gradius only replied saying, “We’ll be at the office soon.”

The IFV doors shut, and it lifted from the ground moving toward their destination in SOLA’s downtown core. Darius rested his heavy head against the window, peering at the city from an awkward angle. Lights became neon trails in his pacified brain. A skyscraper featured a massive screen encompassing most of its upper floors. The screen faded from black to red, and the face of a woman turned to smile. Unintelligible words glided below her face but Darius could only focus on her eyes. In his wavering mind, he believed she was welcoming him, he smiled for the first time on this trip.

The light trails in his vision intensified, and he felt his stomach dip as the IFV made a rapid ascent up a very large, and fairly new building.

“Is the team ready?” Gradius asked the driver through an intercom.

“Yes. Waiting on the roof as requested,” the driver responded, his voice echoing in Darius's head.

“They’ll have to move fast. We’re late as it is,” Gradius spat the words. Darius had a hard time focusing on his father’s face, unable to lift his head anymore.

The IFV settled on the landing pad. Medics took each of Darius's arms, dragging him toward a small structure protruding from the roof. A set of double doors glided open on the structure. Darius's head drooped forward. Between his legs he saw the rooftops of other skyscrapers below. He wondered how high they must have been.

He felt a hot sensation below the skin of his face, and his teeth began to tingle as the medics pulled him into a plush elevator. His father stood in front, not taking his eyes off of Darius. He said something, but words no longer made sense to Darius's mind.

Eyelids heavy, Darius tried to hold them open. However, the harder he tried, the heavier they felt. The rest was darkness.

In the bunker, Darius thought of his father. The elevator was the last place he had seen him. How much time had passed since then? He now remembered something else. Waking up.

A sterile white room. A sign that read ‘Clean Room A’ on a door. Surgeons were asking him questions.

“Do you remember your name?”

“How many fingers do you see?”

They were dragging him out of the room. A familiar voice stretched to reach him from somewhere. Del Peck? His father’s business partner.

“There’s an old wartime bunker in the tunnel system beneath the building. Take the first right, and the second left. Keep him there for now.”

“What about his recovery? The surgery isn’t c...” Someone began to ask. A gunshot interrupted him, followed by the thump of his body outside of Darius's vision. His head rang with that explosive pop.

“Doesn’t matter,” a deep voice spoke from behind.

Darius's memory were images after this. A hallway, a sublevel door, a tunnel, the end of his IV dragging through the crud of the tunnel floor, the bunker.