Death Stranding: The Official Novelization, Volume One

EPISODE II – BRIDGET

—BB, can you hear me?

There was a voice. Someone was staring. There was a light behind them, so it was impossible to make out who it was. Sam couldn’t ask them who they were. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. His arms and legs were bound. He couldn’t get free. Tears were running down his cheek, but he couldn’t even wipe them away.

—BB, I’ll protect you.

Sam heard a voice and opened his eyes.

He sat up with a start, trying to drive away the nightmare he had just been having, but slumped back down helplessly as he felt a pull. There was a dull pain in his right wrist. He was in handcuffs. The other cuff was attached to a bedframe. He tried to yank his arm free, but all that did was worsen the pain in his wrist. The cuffs weren’t going anywhere. He wiped away the tears running down his cheek with his free hand.

He took a deep breath and looked around. He was in a room that he had never been in before. He had no idea why he was there and he certainly didn’t know why he was chained up. No matter how much he twisted, he couldn’t even sit up.

His exposed arms, back and chest were covered in the handprints of the dead, but these were merely a sign of his repatriation from the Seam. What worried him was the injection marks on the insides of his elbows.

He knew it was useless, but he gave his right arm a shake. The metallic clanging of the handcuffs against the bedframe echoed around the room.

“Oh, you’re awake. So how does it feel? To be back in the world of the living?” a voice suddenly asked him. The man was wearing a long red jacket and was built like a barrel. Sam spotted a cuff on his right wrist.

He hadn’t even sensed the man entering the room. The man approached with footsteps that were far too light to belong to such a massive body. Sam looked up to see a forehead lined with large horizontal scars. They didn’t make his face unpleasant, though. Perhaps it was because of the gentle light that filled the eyes behind the man’s glasses.

“Don’t worry, I’m a doctor. Well, a coroner. Originally.”

It clicked into place. His shiny red jacket must have been his medical uniform. When Sam looked a little more closely, he could see something that resembled a stethoscope hanging around the man’s neck.

The man held up his cuffed hand and twisted it in one smooth motion. The action was so quick and natural that it made him look like some kind of magician. The cuff attached to the bedframe opened in response. Sam could now at least get up from the bed, but the other cuff still hung from his wrist.

As he sat up on the bed, Sam examined the cuff and then the man more closely.

“Call me Deadman. I’m well acquainted with the dead. Not like you, of course. Contrary to the name, I’ve never actually died.”

Not flinching under Sam’s stare, the man called Deadman held out one of his hands. Sam ignored it. He couldn’t touch someone’s hand like that. Moreover, he couldn’t think of a single reason to shake this man’s hand. Especially when he was responsible for cuffing a sleeping man to a bed. Instead of a handshake, Sam decided to try removing the other cuff.

“I would advise against that. I’m no expert, but I can assure you it’s for your own protection. See.” Deadman rolled up the sleeve of his jacket and showed Sam his own cuff, as if he was trying to indicate that he and Sam were in the same situation.

“So, I’m a prisoner?”

“These aren’t handcuffs, they’re cutting-edge devices that keep us all connected.”

“Us?” Sam repeated back. Deadman gestured at the wall behind him.

Sam turned around and came face to face with a symbol of a spider’s web stretching across the North American continent.

“Oh. ‘Us.’”

“Yup. Bridges.” Sam thought he caught a hint of pride in Deadman’s voice.

“Humanity’s best hope for the future—or avoiding extinction, if you prefer,” Deadman muttered, showing Sam the badge on his lapel. It was the same as the motif on the wall.

“Right. Where am I? What time is it?” Sam asked.

Ignoring the question, Deadman raised his hand again in the same swift movement as before. He removed one of the cuffs and showed it to Sam.

“Watch me. Try pressing it against your skin like this.” Deadman clamped the cuff back around his wrist and encouraged Sam to imitate him.

Sam placed the cuff back around his own right wrist. He felt a pain pierce his skin for a split second and let out a yelp.

“That just means your body’s got a good connection to the cuff link. Look, look! The cuffs will watch over you twenty-four hours a day. That is to say, we will. We’re here to help.”

A monitor floating in the air displayed Sam’s vitals, including his temperature, pulse, blood pressure and brainwaves, along with the date and time.

“What the hell… Two days?”

Sam had never slept this long after returning from a voidout before. Someone must have done something to put him out for longer.

“During that time, we took the liberty of collecting fluid samples from you,” Deadman explained, unabashedly. Sam touched the needle marks on his right arm.

“You’re a repatriate. That makes you very special.”

There wasn’t a sliver of guilt. Deadman didn’t even try to hide the curiosity in his voice when it came to Sam’s unique ability to survive voidouts. His manner was more like an academic than a doctor. Did he also know that if Sam’s body was damaged for any other reason, his ka would not be able to come back to this world, nor would it be able to pass on to the world of the dead? His ka would be forced to eternally wander between the two. Nobody could understand how frightening that thought was, certainly not this man. This man who had drawn Sam’s blood and other fluid while he was passed out in a coma just to satisfy his own curiosity about Sam’s anatomy—nothing more than an academic endeavor.

“What happened to the CD guys?”

“Central Knot was obliterated in the annihilation. Place is a crater.”

A light flashed in Sam’s mind and he bit his lip. The voices of Igor and the driver filled his memory and Sam hung his head in shame.

“The only ones to get a continue were you, for obvious reasons, and your broken Bridge Baby.” Deadman made the whole thing sound utterly mundane. He must have known all about Sam’s DOOMS. That would have been par for the course if he was part of Bridges, though.

“Is it alright?” Sam asked.

“It’s been marked for disposal. Didn’t work anymore. Why keep it?” Deadman replied.

They disposed of it even though it had returned from the other side?

Sam couldn’t fathom what the hell they were thinking.

Deadman stared at the ceiling, lost in his thoughts.

“We lost everyone. Igor and the driver from Corpse Disposal. Most of the Implementation Team and Second Expedition Team. Every soul in Central Knot City, including HQ. All of the area around where you and the others caused that BT to voidout is just one huge crater. The light and shock from the voidout reached all the way over here. Capital Knot City may be close to Central Knot City, but we never expected something that intense.” Deadman removed his glasses and rubbed the corners of his eyes. “We’re at our base in Capital Knot City now, or should I say our new headquarters. Sudbury seemed the logical choice. But our Implementation Team has been decimated, and there’s only so much they can do in two days. Things here are a mess. Fortunately, the director and his support team were out of town at the time, so the chain of command remains intact.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself that things were still okay. Central and Capital were the largest cities on the East Coast and happened to lie adjacent to one another. It was a miracle that Central was the only city to get annihilated.

“I hate to do this so soon, but I have a job for you.” Deadman’s expression softened, and the haggard look on his face disappeared as though it had been an illusion. Meanwhile, Sam was still lost for words. The BB, Igor, Knot City, and the Bridges Implementation Team were all gone, and once again he was the only person left behind.

“This pattern is from when you repatriated?”

Deadman had circled behind Sam and was making no effort to hide his curiosity. But putting aside everything that had happened while he was asleep, Sam couldn’t hate this man, despite himself. Normally, Sam would have kept the other man at a distance and given him nothing but silence, but for now he let Deadman inspect his handprint-covered body. Maybe it was some kind of atonement he could offer for those who had died. The numerous handprints all over Sam’s body were a record of his crimes and punishment—an endless cycle of death and rebirth.

There was most likely a new mark somewhere on his back where Deadman was looking. A brand to remember the voidout and his subsequent repatriation.

Deadman reached forward with the probing manner of a doctor, but Sam withdrew his arm as soon as he sensed the life emanating from Deadman’s fingertips. It was an animal reflex, the instinctive behavior of a creature trying to evade capture.

“I see…” Deadman nodded, neither angry nor surprised. “Aphenphosmphobia? No wonder you were out there alone. Where no one could touch you.”

Sam gave up on finding a reply. He was alone. Not only was he rejected by death, but he couldn’t even stand the touch of the living.

“I’ll try to be more careful, Sam.” Pulling his hand away, Deadman pointed to the trolley in the corner of the room. “So, the job is an urgent delivery.”

Laying on top was a small attaché-case-like briefcase.

“I need you to bring the president some morphine.”

“What president? America is gone. You talking about the mayor of Central Knot?”

“No, no, no, no. Not the mayor. America lives on, Sam. The president is in the final stages of cancer—in critical condition—but there’s still time.”

“Why me?”

“Look Sam… Do as I ask, and I promise it will all make sense.”

“Why don’t you do it?” Sam asked.

Deadman shrugged, shook his head, and smiled at Sam.

“Because I’m not really here.”

Deadman approached Sam. The large lines across his forehead stretched out across Sam’s vision. The traces of the bulging stitches on his clothes, the hair roots and peach fuzz along his hairline, and the faint layer of sweat on his skin were all visible. Still, Deadman walked straight toward Sam. Sam tried to move his body to avoid a collision with the man, but there were no traces of all the things that made a person human, their breath, their odor, their body heat. None of the things that a man with aphenphosmphobia like Sam tried so hard to avoid. So, he really was a dead man. He only really understood afterward.

Deadman’s body passed right through Sam.

There was a hint of pride in his voice, like a magician who had managed to trick an entire audience, when Deadman began to speak again from behind Sam.

“Apologies. This is just a hologram. I’m actually over in the Isolation Ward. In the big triangle building.” Deadman signaled toward the other side of the room and approached the trolley.

“Here is the morphine.”

Deadman reached out as if to pick up the case, but was unable to grab anything.

“Bridges hereby enters into a contract with Sam Porter.”

It was all an act. Sam shook his head and glared at Deadman.

“Come on, you’ve got morphine there. What’s this about? Tell me the truth.”

Where did this act begin? Sam was asking himself. Who wrote it? How far has it come to fruition?

“The truth, Sam, is that America’s last president wants to see you in person.”

Sam wasn’t surprised.

“Are you really about to say no?” Deadman asked.

Someone extremely close to the president was pulling the strings. Sam was sure that if he went along with it, not only could he meet the president, but the mastermind behind all this.

Sam decided to follow Deadman’s instructions. That way, he would be able to see if Deadman really was some kind of magician. Sam picked up the container.

“Very good. I’ll see you in the Isolation Ward.”

Deadman nodded. His large body seemed to defy gravity as it floated upward. The outline of his long red jacket lost its form and expanded. Then the body burst into a thousand pieces and scattered through the air. Only his smile remained in the void as he disappeared. Sam Porter Bridges left the room to deliver the case. To accomplish his duty as a courier.

CAPITAL KNOT CITY // ISOLATION WARD

Deadman stared silently at the room on the monitor. Now that Sam had left, there was no one else there.

He sensed someone stood beside him. There was no need to check who it was. The man who was waiting for Sam was stood beside Deadman, watching the monitor.

Sam would be here soon, following the rail laid down by Bridges to deliver his cargo.

Unfortunately, Deadman had no idea what Sam would be thinking as he walked to the Isolation Ward. But it didn’t matter. He’d have plenty of time to find that out later. He could get to know Sam then.

It was three years ago when Deadman was first brought into Bridges, and he first heard the name Sam Porter Bridges spoken about in hushed tones between the upper management of the company. He was the one and only Man Who Delivers.

He was a repatriate who could survive voidouts, the worst calamity to plague mankind. Deadman had also heard that if Sam lost the ha that would be repatriated back into this world, then he would be doomed to wander the Seam between worlds forever. In other words, his soul would never pass onward to the world of the dead. That made him immortal in a cruel sense.

Deadman had heard the rumors about Sam. But he had only ever heard of him in terms of a mythical vaccine in the face of the extremely mysterious Death Stranding phenomenon. Deadman understood that. He was just a figment of the imagination of a person who was desperate for someone like Sam to be real. But the Bridges members insisted that he existed. If he was indeed real, Deadman wanted to meet him. He wanted to study him, to understand him. If he could understand him, then he could shine a light on the connection between the living and the dead. It could help the man given the working name of Deadman make peace with himself.

He was very much looking forward to their first real meeting. His brief appearance as a hologram didn’t count.

“Sam is here,” Deadman told the man next to him, as he left the monitor and exited the room. He needed to make the preparations to greet the porter.

Doctors and nurses clad in red uniforms crisscrossed the elevator hall. Deadman could hear them talking about the condition of the president as he walked past. As he headed toward the hall, Deadman found himself straightening his jacket. Sam would be here soon. Eventually, the display told him that the elevator had arrived.

“Sam, it’s me. Deadman.” He held out his hand as Sam exited the elevator, but quickly caught himself. “Sorry! My mistake.”

Sam ignored Deadman’s apology and presented the suitcase.

“I’m afraid the president’s condition has deteriorated.” Deadman took the case and inspected the contents. The ampoules of morphine were arranged neatly. “Thank you. This will help to ease the pain… and allow her to speak with you in these final moments.”

Sam’s expression clouded over.

“Her?” Sam exclaimed.

“The first and last female President of the United States. Surely you remember her? She raised you.”

Sam remained silent. Deadman thought this might happen, but an uneasiness that he couldn’t explain hung in the air.

This man was Sam Bridges, right?

Sam should have known that the current President of the United States was a woman, and he definitely should have known that she was his mother. So, what was with that dumbfounded response? Maybe he wasn’t Sam, but someone else? Or did he want to deny that he was Sam?

Deadman led the way to the president’s office.

His handcuff reacted to something in front of the door and permitted them to enter. Deadman ushered Sam into the room.

Welcome.

Someone had gone to great lengths to recreate the Oval Office in the basement below the Isolation Ward.

It was an elliptical holy ground that had witnessed generations of people dedicate their lives to the office of the President of the United States. It was a place where successive leaders, led by their ideals and the world around them, had worked themselves into the ground. It was an altar for the highest-ranking sacrifice that this godless country had to accept. In the middle of the room was a bed covered with a dome.

Deadman moved to the side so that Sam could see. Sam gasped behind him. Deadman nodded toward the bed.

The room was dazzlingly bright, with large windows stretching almost to the ceiling behind the bed, flooding the room with light. Another man stood beside the bed, his back to Sam.

“That’s the president’s right-hand man, the director of Bridges,” Deadman whispered into Sam’s ear.

As if he had sensed their presence, the man turned around. Even though he had long withdrawn from active duty, he still had the body of a soldier. His face was covered with an iron mask, dark and skeletal.

“Die-Hardman?”

Sam and Die-Hardman had known each other far longer than Deadman had been on the scene. Deadman approached the bed and checked all the medical equipment organized around it, from the ventilator to the EKG and AED, before turning his gaze toward the patient. Dozens of tubes extended out from the frail body on the bed—a breathing mask, a drip, cords monitoring vitals like pulse and blood pressure. She looked like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web. Or perhaps she was more like a golden orb-weaving spider, right at the center of its own magnificent web. She may have been fragile, but she was a leader reconnecting the rest of a country on the verge of extinction with strong and delicate threads.

“Sam… I never thought we would be meeting again like this. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Behind him, Deadman could hear Die-Hardman speaking to Sam.

“What’s it been, Sam, ten years? Look at us—a bunch of deathless freaks, meeting like this…”

Die-Hardman waited for an answer, but it never came. Only the rhythmic electronic noises emitted by the ventilator and EKG pierced the silence.

“Yeah, well, good to see you, too. President’s waiting.” He moved closer to Sam, his voice a low growl. “It’s your mother. Bridget. She’s a bit out of it, but I know she’ll recognize you.”

Deadman adjusted the bed, raising it so that the president was sitting up. Her eyelids fluttered open slightly.

As the president grimaced, Deadman whispered into her ear.

“Madam President, we’ve brought Sam.”

The president smiled weakly. Deadman beckoned Sam over, who finally approached the bed. The president let out a pained sound. She lifted her frail arms and attempted to remove her breathing mask. Deadman tried to convince her not to, but a nod from Die-Hardman stopped him in his tracks.

Deadman gently removed her mask.

Her voice was little more than a croak, as if she was using all her willpower to squeeze it out from the depths of her throat. Her face had grown even paler in these few moments since waking.

“We’ll leave you two alone,” Deadman whispered into the president’s ear. He left her bedside to make room for Sam.

“Sam. I knew you’d come back,” Deadman heard from behind him as he and Die-Hardman exited the Oval Office.

No one was left in the room but a son who had just returned from the world of the dead and an aged mother who was about to depart for it.

CAPITAL KNOT CITY // PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE

“Are you doing alright?” the president asked. There was less life in her eyes these days. She had a gentle smile on her face, but her gaze was unstable and roaming. She tried lifting her arm, searching for Sam. Sam backed away from the bed slightly, unnerved by the thin and fragile-looking limb.

The president closed her eyes. All Sam could hear was the beeping of machines and the president’s ragged breaths.

A sudden movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. An antique quill sat in the pen holder atop the president’s work desk. Sam felt like he had seen it somewhere before. The feather of the quill was swaying rhythmically and its movements seemed to match the timing of the president’s breathing exactly. She breathed in and then out. The feather moved up and down to that exact rhythm. Sam was transfixed by it.

“Yeah, I know you hate me,” admitted Bridget.

The quill suddenly became still.

“Amelie—”

“Amelie?” Sam asked.

“You remember Amelie went west. Took her three years to cross. She’s trying to rebuild the country.”

Sam couldn’t bring himself to look at Bridget. He focused on the quill instead.

“Still going on about that, huh?” Sam muttered.

“You’re the one I wanted to send, Sam. Time’s running out.”

The president was having trouble inhaling her next breath.

“Sam, help Amelie.”

Sam was urging the quill to start moving again.

“She needs you,” Bridget pleaded.

Sam shook his head. But the president couldn’t see.

“You can make America whole.”

Finally, it clicked. Bridget had told him about the quill before. It was the quill used by the Founding Fathers when they signed the Declaration of Independence. The gravely ill president had inherited it from her forebears.

“Sam, if we don’t all come together again, humanity will not survive.”

“We don’t need a country. Not anymore,” Sam countered.

“We do. Alone, we have no future.”

A broken, whistle-like sound came out of the president’s throat. Her eyes were tightly closed as she tried to endure the pain. Sam averted his eyes. He didn’t want to see her like that. He wanted to grab the quill and snap the antique in half.

“No, America’s finished. Bridget, you’re the president of jack shit,” Sam snapped.

The president’s eyes gently opened and she looked right at him.

“Sam! Listen to me. Lis… Ah…”

Sam felt a burning pain in his left wrist and jerked backward in surprise. But Bridget was clinging to him. Despite her condition, he couldn’t get her off. The pain of her touch seared his wrist.

“Sam!”

Her voice reverberated around the office and she wouldn’t let go. Sam’s aphenphosmphobia was turning his left arm a dangerous shade of crimson. He twisted his body, crashing this way and that to try and wrestle his hand free. Bridget was falling out of the bed and the cords and tubes attached to the medical devices all disconnected with a pop.

The stand that held the drip crashed forward onto the desk, hitting the quill. The ominous pen that still seemed bound to Bridget was surely broken…

But it wasn’t harmed at all. The pen that had immortalized the pledges of the founding of this nation had survived, would continue to survive—to commit the future dreams of the nation to paper, too.

Bridget had fallen on top of Sam. She was crushing him. Not just with her touch, but the weight of the nation behind her.

Sam couldn’t support her any longer and fell backward. Bridget was clinging to him with the strength of someone in the prime of their life. Bridget’s face was illuminated by the light streaming into the room. She crawled toward him, black ink pooling beneath her from the tubes ripped from her flesh. She reached for his wrist, her fingers brushing his skin.

“So you are willing to help me.”

“No, I—”

Sam tried to rip the cuff away from his wrist to shake Bridget off, but she smiled at him. It was a look of understanding. The cuff was a symbol of Bridges and proof that he had sworn to rebuild America. But he didn’t want it. He shook his head. Bridget’s smile was fixed as her gaze sunk to the floor.

A photograph had fallen onto it. It was the same photograph that Sam had almost lost in the cave. There, between an awkwardly smiling Sam and a woman whose face had been worn away by the timefall, stood a younger Bridget. The dying woman recognized it, and put her hand on Sam’s chest. She tried to speak but her eyes fluttered closed one last time and she collapsed to the floor. Sam could have sworn that he’d heard Bridget thank him.

He was still unable to let go of the past. At least, that was how Bridget seemed to have interpreted the photo. Her mind had been made up. This was the president’s Oval Office. The sacrifice who determined the path of the country was the master in here.

—I’ll be waiting for you on the Beach.

Sam heard a voice. He searched for its source, but the panicked screech of the monitors echoing around the room drowned out every other noise. He didn’t hear the voice again, only the machines and the incoming commotion from the door.

The device on Deadman’s right wrist suddenly began to vibrate violently. A biometric warning flashed up on the monitors. When he looked up, the door was already open, and the director was already running through. Deadman rushed in behind him. The large window was covered in black and the dome that had once straddled the bed to protect it was lying on the floor like an empty shell. The work desk was thrown into disarray. On top of the desk, the pen still stood upright, perfectly poised. There was no noise except the harsh warning beeps of the machines.

“Madam President!” Die-Hardman shouted out to Bridget, who was still draped over Sam. Sam raised his arms into the air in a daze. He looked like a soldier making a plea of surrender.

Die-Hardman lifted up Bridget’s body and rushed it back onto the bed. Deadman, along with the nurses who had rushed into the room behind them, began to attempt to resuscitate her. He placed the breathing mask back over her face and started up the AED. He kept calling Bridget’s name into her ear, but there was no response. Bridget’s body began to transform into a state that Deadman knew all too well. She was going cold. Her ka began to separate from her ha.

All around him was the sound of sobbing.

Looking up, Deadman saw his fellow Bridges members gathering around Bridget’s bed and grieving for her. They had assembled from locations far and wide to stand at the deathbed of the last President of the United States of America.

America had fallen. It had fallen before the very eyes of her freshly repatriated adopted son.

The son was sat with his back against the wall, looking stunned in Deadman’s direction. Bridget’s still-fresh handprints covered his exposed arm. They were simply marks from the physical rejection that Sam’s body had shown her still living flesh, but they were the only traces left of her life now.

“Listen. No one can know that the president is dead. If word gets out, Bridges is finished. Now, what happened here does not leave this room. Do you understand?” Die-Hardman whispered to Deadman urgently.

Deadman nodded and looked back toward Bridget. Her death would be celebrated by those who had no interest in rebuilding America. Bridget had been the great backbone to those who still believed in this country. If she disappeared, everything would collapse. The lights flickered. The dome of the bed contorted and disappeared. Then the desk, the sofa, the carpet… Then the portraits on the wall went, the elegantly curved border of the window and the gently blowing curtains. Even the finely crafted door. One by one they all disappeared.

In their place was a cold floor and walls that dully reflected the light. Even the bed had been stripped of decoration and transformed into a functional and basic medical bed.

The only remnant of the president left in the room was an American flag that drooped from the rafters.

That was fast, Deadman thought to himself. The moment the president died, the hologram that had been projecting the veneer of the Oval Office shut off. The holograms of those who were located far away disappeared too, and the place where the men were now stood had turned back into a standard hospital room. Although now it felt more like a morgue. They had to be quick and dispose of the body properly. Even if the dead body in the room used to be the president, she would receive no special treatment. Death came to all human beings equally.

Deadman was in charge of disposing of the body. He couldn’t even begin to mourn the president’s death until he had finished the prescribed disposal procedure. He gave some instructions to his staff and then attempted to contact the Corpse Disposal Team, but Die-Hardman took charge.

The director bent down in front of Sam and looked him in the face.

“Sam. Before she died, the president made a contract with you.” He was quiet, but the tone of his voice told Sam that he had no choice in the matter. Sam glared at the director.

“What are you talking about?”

“As a member of Bridges you’re going to work with the rest of us to rebuild America.” The director pointed at the cuff around Sam’s right wrist. Deadman may have been the one who had fitted it onto Sam while he was asleep, but the director was the man who ordered him to do it—Deadman was very aware of his role in the events that led them all here.

“You think you can recruit me? Like she tried to?” Sam tried to break free from the cuffs. The director nodded.

“Well, she succeeded,” Die-Hardman replied.

Just as Deadman had suspected. The director already knew this would happen. If that was the case, Deadman knew that he also had a duty to fulfil as a member of Bridges.

“Director, the cancer spread throughout her entire body,” Deadman said. “Harvesting organs is out of the question, and there is no need for an autopsy. Her body needs to be cremated before she necrotizes.”

“Cause if we don’t, this place’ll turn into another crater,” the director replied, his eyes still fixed on Sam. Deadman nodded and crouched beside the director.

“Listen, Sam. We don’t have any porters right now.”

Sam frowned at Deadman.

“Igor is gone, too. All the other CD teams were annihilated in that last voidout.”

Sam looked away. Deadman kept pressing on.

“But the president’s body has to be burned. This is no ordinary transportation. This job has requirements. DOOMS. Repatriate. There is no one else that we can ask. No one else who can even do it. The road from Capital Knot City to the incinerator was compromised in the voidout. Now, the only way there is on foot, through the mountains. But the chiral density there is off the charts. It’s got to be BTs.”

“So me. Why?”

“Sam, you’re already on the clock,” Deadman replied, pointing to the cuff on Sam’s wrist. Sam raised his right arm and tried to smash the cuff against the floor, but all that followed was a dull echo. Sam raised his arm to try again, only for the director to grab it.

Sam’s arm immediately began to turn red. The director continued to speak, acting as though he hadn’t even noticed.

“Now get it done, Sam Porter Bridges.”

“The president was a symbol of American reconstructionism,” Die-Hardman said as they placed the president’s body inside a body bag.

“She worked tirelessly to bring the nation together again. And without her, there would be no Bridges. She deserves a funeral with full honors. But we can’t give her that. If she dies, America dies.”

“Without her, Bridges will cease to be,” said Deadman.

“Her cremation must be carried out with the utmost secrecy.” Die-Hardman’s voice was taut.

“Even if we pull it off, what then? Who’s gonna take her place?” Sam voiced his opposition. “Face it. America’s history.”

Nothing had changed since the last time he was here ten years ago. They still embraced the same slogans with the same religious zeal. Their persistence riled him up inside.

“Sam, America isn’t dead yet,” Deadman argued.

Sam raised his eyebrows. Hadn’t Die-Hardman just said it himself?

“He just said that it dies if Bridget dies.”

“She may be lost to us… but we still have an America worthy of the presidency.”

“Sorry, what?” Sam pressed Deadman, but the director admonished Sam in return.

“Let’s not get into it now. What matters is that we’re going to finish your mother’s work and rebuild America as she intended. That’s the reason Bridges exists. So take the first step, Sam, and deliver the president’s body to the incinerator.”

“That’s right, Sam. She may be the president, but if we just leave her then her body will necrotize like any other.” Deadman continued to make his case.

“We cannot let Capital go the same way as Central. You’re the only porter here now,” Deadman said.

Bridget’s dying words replayed in Sam’s memory. If we don’t all come together again, humanity will not survive… I’ll be waiting for you on the Beach.

Deadman lifted up the body bag. Together with the director, he loaded the body onto Sam’s back.

It had been almost two hours since Sam departed Capital Knot City. He had just crossed a river and his work pants were sticking to his legs uncomfortably. His pants were supposed to be waterproof, but constant use had taken its toll and worn them down.

If Sam could keep this pace then he would be at the incinerator within a few hours. Normally, he would have transported a corpse by truck, but the crater caused by the recent voidout had completely destroyed the road. There was no choice but to transport it on foot. He had also been forced to go alone so as not to attract any attention to the death of the president.

The cuff link on Sam’s right wrist began to vibrate. It was a codec call from Deadman. Sam couldn’t help but groan.

Deadman and the director called this cuff a device. They claimed the gadget wasn’t meant to restrain Sam and they had only fitted it so they could remain in constant communication. Yet he couldn’t remove it. No matter how the pair tried to explain it, this cuff was nothing but a chain to keep someone in check.

They obviously didn’t give a damn about Sam’s circumstances. They may have carried the moniker of “Bridges,” but it was clear they only cared about where they were coming from, not who waited on the other side. Sam decided not to respond.

“I know.”

This may have been the first time he had to take the route between Capital Knot City and the incinerator on foot, but it was by no means his first foray into the area itself. There had been an increase in the number of jobs to the Capital and Central areas in recent months. The East Coast of North America had once been the political and economic center of the United States. It’s the reason why Bridges had established their base there, around the home of the presidency. To Sam, it was a place that held many painful memories, but also gave him nostalgia for happier times in his childhood. Back then he could never have predicted what cargo he would have to transport through here someday.

Sam kicked out at a nearby stone. If they were going to force him into transporting this body, they should have mentioned any possible problems earlier. He hated their hypocrisy. They were pretending to protect him when really all they had done was enslave him.

“I know where the BT territory is. I also know a way to get around it. I don’t know when Bridget is gonna necrotize, and frankly, that isn’t my responsibility. All I know is if we’re not lucky, then that’s it.”