“Do you know where we are?” asked a male voice.

“You—” Suzanne’s throat hurt and speaking was painful. “—were the one who chose, right?” Thinking too. The monotonous sound of waves coming from the speakers embedded in the mattress pounded in her ears.

Her tummy growled. She was famished, but her stomach clenched at the mere thought of swallowing. The glass of water on the bedside table was almost empty. When she brought it to her mouth, she had the disagreeable surprise of finding it filled with whisky.

“Alpha Centauri, no?” continued the man.

“Of course, it’s Alpha Centauri. These stars are our dream destination,” answered Suzanne while massaging her temples with her fingertips. “Do you want me to print some sushi rolls?”

With a last effort, she managed to get up. She had the feeling that her brain was spinning in her cranial vault and she had to lean against the bedside table. The glass rolled along the mattress before crashing to the floor.

She withheld a swear. Her headache intensified, although it was nothing compared to the soreness that paralyzed her thighs and pelvis. The young woman’s eyesight was blurry, but she could make out Thomas in front of her.

“No, it’s all right.” His face was glued to the apartment’s window. His steel-rimmed glasses appeared in the window’s reflection, as did his aquiline nose and the few acne pimples that still persisted across his cheeks despite his almost bygone adolescence. He was naked; as was she, under the white sheets.

In front of him loomed the three suns of Alpha Centauri and its exoplanet. Proxima Centauri B, a sprawling and limitless fictional city planet. On the horizon, beyond the concrete jungle, stretched the Northern Lights created when the solar winds hit the atmospheric shield over the neon lights of Japanese pictograms. Thomas and Suzanne always chose this illusion of the future when they had something to celebrate. They dreamed of exploring the stars and building megacities worthy of humanity’s wildest ambitions and abilities.

According to the paper letter Suzanne had just stepped on, they had both been accepted to Harvard. It would soon be time to finally leave Europe and join the New England drizzle.

But she didn’t pay much attention to the correspondence as she staggered clumsily to the bathroom in pursuit of a Tylenol before resuming their conversation: “You know what I would like to visit first? Because, let’s be honest, we are nowhere near having colonies on Alpha Centauri…”

“Where then?” said Thomas, clearly very disappointed.

“Tokyo. And not with a holo-chamber!”

Silence followed her words. Thomas was the one to break it. “You know that if you wanted to, we could go this very night? I don’t even know why we pay for this crappy program.”

She heard him tap one of the screens as she served herself a glass of water. In these low-end hotels, there were no androids to do it in your place. “What do you mean?” she asked between sips.

The young boy turned around and joined her in the bathroom. He caressed her hips, then headed for the walk-in shower. “Lionheardt has offices in Shibuya. The Quantum Lab. It’s been a while since I went for a visit.”

Suzanne was confused. At first, she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly. Why talk to her about offices in Shibuya? she thought. He had never even left the Old Continent yet. Suzanne closed the tap. Had he just said “Lionheardt”? What Lionheardt? His father was rich, but nothing but a simple London lawyer. He had never possessed a multinational company.

In the reflection of the mirror, she saw her boyfriend’s back. As he turned around, she saw his acne had disappeared. He no longer wore glasses and his features appeared sharper. It was still Thomas. But he had just gained fifteen years.

“Tom?” she said, her voice trembling.

“Yes?”

“We’ve just been accepted to Harvard. What’s with this story about offices in Tokyo?”

Her lover’s face had regained his teenage appearance. He was once again her prodigious high school student.

Tom stared blankly at her. He stuttered: “I think I don’t know where I am.”

Thomas’s body crumbled to the floor with a dull thud like a disjointed puppet. The screens surrounding the room shut off, leaving a tiny bedside lamp and the neon violet of the bathroom as the only sources of light.

Suzanne leaped in the direction of her boyfriend, but he evaporated between her fingers. In his place stood a woman with white skin and brown hair. She was dead. A gaping hole where her stomach should be. She had been shot and the blood had dried. She resembled her like two drops of water. Suzanne gagged once she recognized herself.

As the lights went off, a hand grabbed her and dragged her from behind. It was a metal fist, cold as ice. Suzanne struggled before she got up.

Now, she was sitting at the back of a boat. A small vessel sailing on a foggy lake. In the distance rose the huge towers of a city. They were black and mutilated.

A man guided the boat. He wore a felt hat, a stained scarf that covered his mouth, and tinted glasses. A blade hung from his belt.

Was he the ferryman? Was this the Styx? Was she in Hell?

The man was not alone. He had a companion. A teenager with red hair who also had his back to her. They were keeping an eye on something. The blankets hid whatever that was.

Someone maybe? Suzanne thought.

A wave glided on the water. The man under the hat did not notice it. Neither did the child. This wave originated from the depths of the lake and said: “Where are you?” It resembled Thomas.

“Tom?” Suzanne inquired, her voice still trembling.

“I see you.”

A wind blew from the city. It was warm and humid. The man at the bow put a hand on his hat. The child wrapped his load, but the blankets lifted. Underneath lay a woman. A woman with brown hair and white skin.

“What is that—” choked Suzanne again, as she recognized herself for the second time, stretched only a few meters away.

“I think we have made a lot of progress.”

She jumped. The man in the yellow suit was seated next to her, a smirk etched on his mouth. Once she was over the shock, she assaulted this visitor with questions which he dismissed with a movement of his hand. This only made her angrier. “You! You! You have been following me since—” She had a migraine. The man continued to smile. “Where am I? Where is Tom? He told me to watch out for you,” she resumed.

She was not going to give up any time soon and the man in the yellow suit finally understood that: “Tom? Tom is not my call unfortunately. And I doubt that he has told you to watch out for me.”

“Then—” began Suzanne, confused. “Do you not hear him? Do you not see him, too?”

“I think you should concentrate on yourself,” replied her interlocutor.

“On myself?”

The stranger pointed with his chin at the two men and her inanimate body. Suzanne glanced briefly in their direction. She was afraid of letting this strange man out of her sight. He could evaporate again, like he did in the Alps, so she turned towards him. He was still there, this time pointing with his yellow umbrella at the young redhead who watched over her own remains.

“These people will be able to help you. As for me, my work must continue,” said the Panafrican.

“What job? Who are you?” Suzanne riled, grabbing the man by the collar of his shirt. “Where the bloody hell are we?”

“Your mind is whole and you are alive. It’s all I had to ensure. There are, unfortunately, some incomplete cognitions, but everything will be clear soon enough,” he explained mysteriously. “I still have work to do, you see.”

“You’re not getting anywhere, you son of—”

But the man in the yellow suit had vanished between her fingers. The only thing left of him was the smell of hot chocolate and cinnamon.

She choked before waking up suddenly under the dirty covers. The red-haired boy had turned towards his companion at the head of the boat and had not seen her open her eyes. Alive with a newfound energy, Suzanne felt one of her hands grab an oar.

There’s no way I am going through with this craziness!

Then everything happened very quickly.

When the man in the hat finally came back to his senses, his grimaces testified to an unprecedented headache. Blood had dried on the corner of his mouth. Her blow had been harder than predicted.

“I am really sorry, Sir,” said the redhead who had woken up a few seconds earlier.

“Octave? You crushed my kopf!” stammered the individual under the cap before spitting into the water.

Their language was a mix of German, French, Italian and Romansh. The child’s name was Octave then. She had tied both men as best she could with the few ropes she had found inside the bag of the stranger at the bow. Of course, she had also stolen his sword.

“I am in no better shape, as you can easily see,” the redhead remarked, as Suzanne slid the blade under his chin.

Spitting again, the man addressed her finally: “Happy to see you standing at last. What does this charade mean?”

“Where are we?” asked Suzanne drily, she could already feel her strength weaning.

“On a lake,” replied the man who apparently had decided to be a smart-ass. He changed his mind when she planted the point of his blade on the muscle of his left shoulder. “On Silber-See… Silver Lake! I don’t know what they used to call it during your times. Over there, in any case, is the city of Renaissance. Our destination.”

Silver Lake? Renaissance? My time? Suzanne examined the blade. It was a beautiful and authentic piece, worthy of a museum. What did this all mean?

The city behind her, with its high black towers, was Lucerne. She recognized it because she used to work there. The highest of the two towers belonged to a pharmaceutical lab owned by Thomas. The second, with its round dome, used to be a Swiss bank whose name presently eluded her.

“What do you mean? My time?”

“Sir! She doesn’t know!” said the redhead.

Both exchanged a look. A sense of discomfort settled on the boat.

“Alright. I suggest that you lower this blade for a moment,” recommended the man in the hat.

Suzanne did so. The weapon was heavy. It was hot despite the freshness of the water. She closed her eyes for longer than she had meant to. For a brief moment, her mind had almost slipped away. A sense of panic was overtaking her already. A frozen hand reached from inside her stomach to grip her heart.

Suzanne had this terrible sensation that the next words spoken by her interlocutors would change her life forever.

“My name is Erol Feuerhammer and we are in 3033 A.D.”

Suzanne froze. The icy claws tightened their grip and she lost consciousness.

A trickle of fresh water brought her back from the abyss. Erol and his acolyte, whose name she had already forgotten, were hovering above her. During the short lapse of time when she had lost consciousness, they had managed to free themselves and the blade had been returned to its rightful owner.

“Do you think you can get up without hitting us with our own oars?” asked the man called Erol.

The young man with the scar extended his hand, and she managed to take a seat against the edge of the boat. She wanted to throw up, but managed to hold it in. Afterwards, he offered her his flask. “Are you thirsty? Or hungry maybe?”

“We are in 3033…” murmured Suzanne who had not heard the question. The words of the man with the hat resonated in her mind. “How?”

The man stared at her. Before answering, he ordered his acolyte to take on the oars of the vessel. “You were in some kind of glass casket. A hibernation tank, most certainly. Does that mean anything to you?”

Suzanne searched her memory. It was a difficult exercise, like watching an incomplete movie backwards. She knew about these tanks.

These white plastic chambers, but cryonics? No. That had never been possible. Not for such long stretches of time. Not for human beings. Impossible.

“What is the last thing you remember?” asked Octave.

Suzanne raised an eyebrow. She remembered little. Recently her dreams had been so confused. Some were perhaps memories of the last thing she had done, but she could not be sure. Suzanne thought back to her dream in Tom’s office and the hotel bathroom. Instinctively, she brought her hand to her stomach. There was nothing. No trace of bullets. No blood. “Do you know what year I may have been … put in hibernation?” she asked in the end, once she was able to articulate her thoughts. Suzanne had a vague idea, but that would be senseless. Erol shook his head. The man in the yellow suit came to her mind. He too haunted her present and her memories for some reason that still escaped her. “Did you—wake … or did you come across someone with a yellow … suit—and black skin.”

“No. You were alone underground.”

“Underground? What underground?”

“We found you in a secret compound. Drilled in the depths of the mountain. Under the Dammastock.”

It was a good start. I worked in a lab hidden under the ground. My forced cryonic must have something to do with the Novan-Kamiru. Or rather with… my doctoral degree. Biology and cybernetics. The Lionheardt Corporation. She reminded herself of her conversation with Tom in GrandLyon. Yes. I was working on these organic tissues in a research compound under the Dammastock.

Going back through her memories mangled her neurons. A terrible headache seized her and she had to close her eyes and massage her temples. It was a reflex of hers.

She must have aroused some feelings of pity in her kidnappers, because Octave’s voice was now softer. Erol, on the other hand, held on tightly to his blade while he scratched his nape.

“Listen. We have nothing against you,” resumed Octave with a smile.

In the background, Erol looked at her straight in the eyes over his round glasses. “Octave and I got you out of there. We are bringing you to Renaissance, across the lake,” he said, going back to rowing. “The city has somewhat changed since the last time you must have set foot on it, but there we will be able to find a… a friend of mine. He may be able to help you.”

“Help me with what?” asked Suzanne, letting a teardrop fall for the first time in forever. “Everyone I know must be dead. Tom too.”

“If you are alive, why not this Tom?” added Octave full of hope.

He has a point, Suzanne thought. But it was a slight bit of hope.

“It’s true that if we were able to resuscitate you, why not him or someone else? In fact, who is this Tom? The man in yellow?” asked Erol.

Suzanne raised her eyes to the sky. Some yellow flakes had just landed on her forehead. Curiously, they were not cold. “No. No. He was…”

She didn’t know how to answer this question. Thomas and she had been lovers more than colleagues. The last time they had rubbed shoulders must date back to when she worked for him. Their previous relationship was complicated. But if there was one thing she wanted more than anything in the world right now was to find him.

“He was a friend. From high school, then Harvard. In the United States,” she finally answered once she noticed that her two interlocutors were growing impatient. She asked herself if any of the two recognized the name Harvard. Or even the United States.

“So, you don’t remember where you were before… the—how to phrase this—” Erol hesitated.

“Before the end of the world came and made my saviors one thousand years later look like… homeless people?” Erol and Octave gaped at her. She spoke so fast. They had clearly not understood a word of what she had wanted to say. With a little hindsight, this was preferable. She resumed a bit more slowly: “What happened? And when?”

Once again, Suzanne felt a frozen hand sneaking around her guts. These questions had just crossed her mind. This is not how she had imagined the future would look.

Erol must have guessed that she was in the thralls of a new wave of panic, so he placed his gloved hand on her arm. “It would be wiser to keep all of this for when we get to Renaissance. Herr Marian—the friend in question—he is an academic. A technomancer and a Founder.”

“You mentioned Harvard,” asked Octave. “At Renaissance there is more or less the same thing.”

“Marian will be able to explain everything much better than we can. I will take care to introduce you and we will leave you alone.”

“In fact, what is your name?” inquired the young man.

“It is true that you introduced yourself in a rather cursory and violent manner,” added Erol.

Suzanne cracked a smile. They knew of Harvard. Erol and Octave were curious characters. Although she had almost killed them, they were taking it rather well.

“Suzanne. I remember Suzanne.”

“Well, Suzanne. The only thing I can ask you to do is rest, because we will soon arrive in Renaissance! Look!”

Twin towers overlooked Lucerne. Time had reduced them to two metallic skeletons, but the one belonging to the Lionheardt Corporation appeared to be still in use.

Full-fledged ramparts of stone and steel rose around the lake. Watchtowers punctuated the city wall and a strange banner bearing a hollow tree sprawled over their tin roofs. Erol introduced it as the symbol of what he called the Foundation. But Suzanne had no idea what that might mean.

According to her makeshift guide, Renaissance, its most recent name, was recognizable among all the other cities of this new era because of the immense golden dome enthroned at the summit of the highest hill. Over there, Suzanne was able to make out the old soccer stadium.

What she had in front of her eyes was irrefutable proof. The world. Her world had disappeared, chewed up and spit out in a future that she could have never imagined. But still far from the nightmare she had predicted.

The dome loomed over what the inhabitants called Belleville, the city’s affluent neighborhood. It was separated from the other districts by a second, more rustic enclosure made of wood and barbed wire.

The farther one moved from the center of the city, the shorter and more dilapidated the buildings became. Gradually, wind turbines danced in the wind, supplying electricity through a makeshift network built with whatever wrecks had been available.

According to Erol, the true beauty of the periphery revealed itself at dusk when the neon banners were turned on and advertising holograms riled up the crowd. This description surprised Suzanne, who had expected herself to be venturing into a middle-age megalopolis.

With his hundreds of thousands of inhabitants coming from all the neighboring provinces of the Foundation, the city of Renaissance sparked with life. From the lake, she could already witness the swarming of residents who came and went along the merchant trails that lined the hills.

Erol guided them slowly to the docks. An anarchic jumble of hangars, pontoons, and other factories ran along a canal that meandered along the foot of the dome hill. This place was the city’s seediest faubourg. Its name, the Pêcherie, originated from the infamous smell of rancid fish that emanated from its unhygienic alleyways.

But the foul spectacle offered by the Pêcherie and the other neighborhoods that surrounded the lake, which constituted what Erol called the Ville-Basse, faded little by little and gave way to a more pleasant atmosphere.

A tower made of white stones overlooked the north portion of the canal and the shadow of its pointed roof dominated the shacks of the merchants and the bourgeois who had chosen the serenity of this self-sufficient valley. Children played on the brick quays, young people strolled along the stalls and veterans, according to Erol, recounted their adventures to whomever wanted to hear them. For the first time in forever, she could hear birds singing.

“The Arsenal. It’s my favorite neighborhood,” remarked the redhead, wiping away the sweat beading his forehead.

A few minutes later, the canal became wilder as the three travelers left behind the outskirts of the capital.

“I thought we were going to Renaissance,” worried Suzanne, who saw the last faubourgs of the city disappear, making way to a jungle covered by yellow ash. Soon, it was impossible to see even the top of the Lionheardt Tower.

“We are going directly to the University. The Founders—”

“Those who founded the city,” explained Octave.

“Yes, exactly. The Founders relocated it a short distance away. The surroundings are much … calmer. We will be there soon,” Erol assured her. He was struggling increasingly to articulate himself.

The exhaustion was easily readable on the man’s face. But it was the young boy who seemed to have been hit the hardest. He could barely keep rowing.

Suzanne too was beginning to grow tired of this journey despite the thousands of questions that pricked her mind. But she really needed to start looking for Tom. There was little chance that Marian would be able to guide her on this point, but she had learned one thing about him: he was full of surprises.

“Here we go! This grotesque metal building, behind the stone dam,” said Erol, suddenly pointing to a rusty-red structure that rose over the gray forest.

“A WENC destroyer? You have built your university in the carcass of a Euro warship,” Suzanne declared.

She was very surprised. In their rehabilitation of the ancient flying fortress of the West-European Navy Corp. into the University, the engineers and architects of the future had apparently created a true work of art.

“Some artillery pieces still worked when I was a child,” Erol smiled at her before falling backward in the boat.

They had just hit one of the barges that were stationed next to the banks.

“Sir?” asked Octave with a feeble voice. “Is it normal for there to be no people on the docks at this late hour?”

Erol got up and invited the young woman to join him on dry land. Then he extended his hand to his companion when a violent explosion shook the old warship.