A new day sprout in a lonely aircraft navigating the skies

  Paul needed quite a time that day to get up from the bed. He had been trying to get some more sleep for a while, because it was Saturday and so he didn’t have any morning duties.

  Today, he didn’t specially well. He had dreamt of that same scenario again. It had been his daily life since he remembers.

  A destroyed parade. The agony of the bystanders. Buildings that one day had the glory to call themselves skyscrapers reduced to ashes. Echoes of a civilization that one day hoped for prosperity and peace. Yet there he was, surrounded by unknown faces, in their last moments of life.

  The visions were blurred. They came and disappeared frenetically. They recapped like a movie, every day of his life. He tried to extend his hand to reach them, but the images got further.

  But they all had something in common. He heard the name of someone unknown. Someone special. He heard them like if the words were directed towards him—

  “Christa, please, save us!”

  “Christa, one day I want to be a hero like you”

  “That girl, Christa, is a demon”

  “She’s dangerous. She’s a monster”

  He heard all sorts of people talking about that person. He saw faces that he didn’t know, praising, caring, judging and cursing her. He saw grotesque monsters, formidable allies and tragedies beyond his understanding. And then he saw something for a blink. Blue eyes shaped like shattered stars. And then in disappears.

  Was this the echo of a past life? Some old fairy tales he was told before he lost his memory?

  Hero or Monster, he didn’t understand, because…

  Who are all those people,

  Who is Christa.

  “Airis, can you search the name Christa in the database?” he asked the electronic quasi-omniscient intelligence.

  “[Entry: {Christa} not found in the current Database…]”

  She paused for a second.

  “[Correction: Access restricted. Information is corrupted or does not exist]”

  He kept silence.

  And then close his eyes again.

  After not being able to fall asleep again, he finally found strength to abandon his night friend. Although he would have had to do it anyways in a few minutes from there, when Airis used to activate a horrible sounding alarm to awake him. He got up and looked onto the window. And again, something reminded him that he was not normal. What were those weirds marks on the sky? Only he could see how they tarnished the blue sky into a tangle of disorder. A view that shattered his soul from its roots. He then asked Airis to deactivate the windows. He put his thoughts aside and embarked on a new day.

  Paul quickly brushed his teeth and put on the first the clothes he found on the wardrobe. He washed his face and then stopped to look at himself at his reflection in the mirror for a moment. He put his bandages and left the room. It had been two weeks since he completed mission #42, and now meeting Kana at the room’s aisle was becoming fairly common.

  “Good morning, Kana” he greeted her first. She was distracted trying to close her door. He took a glance at her. She was wearing her common casual clothes, a sweatshirt and comfy trousers, but had done up her hair with care. He couldn’t deny she was pretty, as Airis once stated.

  “Oh, Paul, good morning” Kana replied pleasantly surprised as she realized his presence.

  “How are you feeling. Is your Stigma okay?” He asked the same question almost every day, yet he liked to confirm nothing new was around.

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  “Nothing new. I don’t feel any pain or nuisance. Doctor checks maintain me stabilized, or so she says” She explained sincerely. Paul could not feel any hint of lying or hiding, and he was very confident in trusting her.

  “Alright. Have you got your breakfast already?” He asked, hoping they could have some time together.

  “Oh, sorry, I have already gone earlier, just came back because I forgot my phone” She apologized leaning a bit. “By the way, I bumped into Celine there by coincidence. She’s actually kind of sweet when you know her better”. She added with a tone of enthusiasm.

  “Really? It is hard to make her open up to you… if she ever does at all” Paul was surprised at Kana achievements, leaving him speechless. He tried to relieve the small number of times he managed to hold a conversation with Celine of more than 2 or 3 phrases. He concluded that, outside of their love of chocolate discussions, they could be counted with the fingers of a hand.

  “I mean… I just talked to her about how Airis personal classes were being quite harder than my old school… and that I was happy it was finally Saturday and could slack off…”

  She kept talking about how since arriving at the Aircraft, she had been taking those personal classes from Airis to no lose time in her education, and specified an unnecessary number of examples of hard concepts the intelligence had introduced to her. Paul started to get drowsy, wondering why would she talk about all of that stuff if the topic in question was Celine, until she finally went to the point.

  “Anyways, at some point she asked me what a school is like, and we engaged in an actual two-sided conversation—”

  “So, if I did understand well, do you need some extra classes, Kana?” That electronic cyber-demon of alarms, classes and lack of privacy interrupted with her usual soft voice.

  “Hey, don’t sneak into other people private conversations!” Kana complained heavily, shouting and tilting her head everywhere, as if Airis was a physical person hiding somewhere.

  “I fear it is impossible to deactivate that setting” Airis joked. “Now listen to me, Doctor has established a meeting in 1 hour at the conference room. All passengers are required to assist. Remember to be punctual” Airis cut her signal, leaving the pair alone again.

  “That’s not the usual Eli, I wonder what she is up to…” Paul looked meditatively at the window. “Well, I need to have breakfast before that so I’m afraid is a goodbye.” He added in a sudden burst of rush, running while she waved goodbye to Kana.

  He arrived the dining room, empty as expected. Took a cup and filled it with milk from the fridge. The coldness at which it was stored travelled from his fingers to his feet. Paul opened the microwaves and put the cup to heat for five complete minutes, remembering that the usual scold he would get every day had decided to abandon him today. He then looked for the cocoa, which Celine always left for him opened in the table, finishing the combo with a pack of processed biscuits. When the timer ended, he retrieved the burning hot cup of milk with his bare hands. He finally added the mix all together, to form his favourite morning delicacy.

  He took a considerable sip of his creation— “Too cold” —he thought, yet he still enjoyed the sweetness of the chocolate with milk, giving him incomparable sugar pleasure. When he finished, he rested his head on the table, hoping to scratch some more minutes of recess. Unfortunately, it was not long before that cyber-demon activated the reunion in 5 minutes alarm.

  He speeded trough the corridors of the ship, reaching the conference room just in time. He didn’t really care about not being late, but he knew the consequences of it would take the form of infinite eldritch alarms from his lovely cybernetic caregiver.

  He silently took a seat at the left situated chair of the room, next to Lena. Celine was sitting in the middle of the table, and Kana to her right. Doctor Elizabeth was standing behind the desktop, holding her tablet. She looked at her clock and then scanned to confirm that everyone was present. Paul felt a hint of discomfort in the atmosphere. Kana was visibly nervous, kicking the legs of her chair in a cyclic rhythm, while Lena tried to hide her own by crossing her arms and looking down and he himself couldn’t take off himself a sense of unease emerging from his stomach. The only one that remained calm was the usual Celine, void staring the blacked-out screen. Finally, the doctor broke the almost everlasting silence.

  “Aight.” Elizabeth cleaned her throat. “I have gathered you because we’ve confirmed important news about the old on-going mission #36”. Paul sighed in relief over the recent news. “Airis, proceed with the report”

  “Captain Alice sent a strong Corruption signal yesterday around 2 AM ship hour. I sensed the waves and deciphered the message at 2:43 AM ship hour. The message proceeds as follow:” Airis made the screen turn on and displayed message live.

  *SOMETHING WENT WRONG*

  *SEND HELP*

  Paul almost got out of his chair. His feeling of unease returned more intense, as the concern on his old friend grew. Paul looked around. Everyone else sit there in silence. They were speechless. Except Kana, which her face only told that she was feeling completely out of the mood.

  “Excuse me, can someone explain me what is going on?” Kana asked, pledging to God in his thoughts that she didn’t get scolded.

  “Alice is the captain of the Rescue Team. She’s been on a special mission for around 3 months in a designated secret location” A comprehensive doctor answered immediately. Kana then remembered Alice name, which she had already seen in the nameplates of the rooms.

  “Eli” Paul interrupted. He stood up and violently knocked the common round chair, visible concerned. A deep friend of him was requesting help. Alice. The person he looked up the most. “How is it possible that she’s in trouble? She is the strongest of the team on par with Celine”

  “Well, cryptic as always, she didn’t provide further information” Doctor looked at the ceiling, as if something was just about to hit her head” If I had to make a guess, although mission #42 proved that communications with Airis can be lost in standard Corruption conditions, there is a reasonably probability that…”

  Something clicked in Elizabeth head. She smiled mischievously, as if something she had been waiting for decades was about to finally happen in front of her eyes.

  “The third angel has awakened”.