Death Stranding: The Official Novelization, Volume Two

EPILOGUE II

The ground underfoot was frozen and hard. But the blades of grass that covered it were soft, like they were newly grown. A young Bridget had said that the sand on the beach she dreamed of when she was young was made of the corpses of coral and shells. But this ground was made up of the rotting corpses of living creatures, too. After the Big Bang, the small amount of matter that remained that didn’t come into contact with antimatter came together to create this world. If it had come into contact, it would have disappeared. This world existed because something didn’t reach out in return.

Sam crossed a river that froze him to the bones, circumvented a cliff that looked like it was about to collapse, and struggled up the slope of a hill. Cryptobiotes wriggled out from the shadow of a rock and floated idly in the air. If it hadn’t been connected to the world by the Beach, this strange creature would never have been discovered. It would never have been preyed upon by humans, either.

Right in front of him was something that Sam had never seen before. He stopped. It was a dull white, rod-shaped object. Slender like a stick. It didn’t look human. No matter how humans died, it was unlikely they would leave bones behind. Whether it was a voidout or incineration, no trace of humans was ever left behind now. They weren’t returned to this world. Nor were they eaten by animals, other than the BTs. They were completely erased from the circle of life on this planet. Eventually, all trace of them would wither away and they would disappear.

Sam licked the bone. It tasted of dusty earth. Humanity didn’t return bones to the cycle of life and death, instead they remodeled them into tools of aggression and destruction. Humanity had made its own system and become the rulers of this world. But that too was about to end.

If I survive until that time comes, will I see her again? Will she be there waiting for me on the Beach?

It was impossible.

Sam flung the bone away as hard as he could. Being so light, the bone didn’t even follow a curve, it just dropped to the ground. It felt like someone was telling him that it was never going to reach beyond the clouds. It was of this land, of this earth.

As Sam reached the top of the hill, the incinerator came into view.

The inside of his nose began to hurt and his eyes began to water.

This wasn’t an allergic reaction. They were tears of mourning. Tears that the living shed in tribute for the dead—for they could not lay the dead to their eternal rest where they belonged, but, for their own protection, had to incinerate them into nothingness. Sam understood that now.

He was still outside the facility. To enter, he would have to verify his identity.

Should he go in? Should he go back?

The inside of the pod was dark. Sam couldn’t tell what kind of condition Lou was in.

Not knowing whether he was doing the right thing or not, he pulled out the cord and connected to Lou.

His mind exploded.

—This child’s special.

—This child will be the bridge that connects us all.

Sam heard a muffled voice and opened his eyes. Everything around him was blurry when someone’s face swam into view. No, that’s not right. Water flooded into his mouth as he tried to open it. It tasted like the sea. It ran down his throat and filled his lungs. But he wouldn’t drown. He hadn’t been born yet. He was still a creature of the sea.

—This is all my fault. I should… I should never have put you in that prison.

Even from within that pod filled with amniotic fluid, he could distinguish Cliff’s voice.

—And the second all this is over, I’m gonna take you wherever you wanna go.

“Don’t hesitate, sir. This is the only chance you’ll get.”

This wasn’t the first time Sam had seen the revolver that Cliff had just been handed. It was the gun that Amelie had given him on the Beach. The gun he had tried to blow his brains out with after he lost all hope. Cliff checked the cylinder. This time it was fully loaded. John silently left the room. He only had five minutes.

Cliff opened the cabinet and took out one of the stacked towels, wrapping it around the gun. Then he found a cushion and turned toward the bed. This bed was no ordinary bed. It was a manmade cocoon composed of light metals and reinforced plastic and electric circuitry. Or a manmade coffin. The sleeping woman within was half-dead.

“I’m sorry, Lisa.” Cliff pressed the cushion to Lisa’s face and the gun into the cushion. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him. I promise you.”

As he bent down to kiss her, he saw the black and blue bruises. The marks that had caused her brain death in the first place. Cliff didn’t know what had driven her to do such a thing. He had shut those memories away.

“I’m sorry.”

How many times have I said those words to her now? And how many times am I doomed to repeat them in the future? Cliff wondered as he squeezed the trigger. He turned his face away and heard two muffled gunshots. The instruments connected to his wife hid her death and carried on spoofing vitals as if she was still alive. He had five minutes to get everything done.

The face got closer and closer to Sam as Cliff cradled the whole pod in his arms.

“ВВ. Can you hear me?” Cliff asked. Sam’s world shook, but it didn’t feel unpleasant. “Can you hear me? It’s Daddy.”

Cliff opened the door to the room and exited into the hall without making a sound. Even though Cliff had walked these corridors plenty of times before, tonight they felt like a labyrinth. But this Orpheus wasn’t trying to take back his lover. He was trying to reclaim his son.

There should still have been a little time before the guards made their rounds. Cliff advanced straight toward the end of the hall, looking left and right as he went. As he took a left toward the entrance, alarm bells went off in his head. Several soldiers were headed his way from the right. But they hadn’t spotted him yet.

Cliff immediately went back the way he came and held his breath.

Three soldiers passed by silently. He couldn’t go after them. He had to stick to the plan. Cliff headed to the right, the direction from which the soldiers had come from. He had three minutes left.

He decided to sneak into a separate building from the adjoining hallway. But the door was locked and made of reinforced glass.

He gave up and considered his options. Should he use his original escape route? Or take a detour and head straight for the exit? Before he could decide, one of the options was taken off the table. He could hear voices at the end of the hall. They were getting closer. It sounded like a doctor and their staff.

If he acted casual, maybe they would just walk right past him. It was still one minute until the alarm alerting them of Lisa’s death went off anyway. His temples were covered with sweat. Cliff realized he was nervous. His hand that gripped his gun and his arm carrying the pod were both trembling slightly. This had never happened to him before. He had always managed to give any kind of danger the slip. He wasn’t afraid of death. But once his son was conceived, death became much more of a worry. Even if he wasn’t afraid of death himself, he still couldn’t allow himself to die.

That in itself had dulled Cliff’s judgment and forced him to resign from active duty.

It was no longer Cliff but the impending alarm that decided his next course of action.

The doctors were heading back in the direction they had come, but from the opposite side came the sound of several sets of footsteps.

Cliff put his hand to the door in another attempt to open it, but from the other side of the glass came several guards with their guns at the ready.

“Freeze!”

The laser sight attached to the soldier’s gun was dancing around Cliff’s chest area. Cliff held up his own gun in his right hand and pressed it against the pod. The sound of the gun scraping along the side of the pod traveled through the amniotic fluid, but Sam wasn’t scared.

“Drop it!”

The call for Cliff to put his gun down was echoed throughout the hallway. But Cliff made use of his trump card and kept the BB hostage. The soldiers backed off as he glared at them. Then, the commotion from the other end of the hall grew louder.

“Stand down!” a soldier shouted, but Cliff was already off running in the opposite direction. He heard a soldier fire on him.

His left shoulder grew hot. Lukewarm blood dripped down his arm. The pod was also covered in it and Sam’s view of the world was stained red. It was the same red that he saw in the sky and in the sea on Amelie’s Beach.

Sam had unconsciously yanked the cord out of the pod.

A pain blew through his shoulder like he’d also been shot. His body was covered in sweat. It was that vision again. In it, Sam had played the part of both Cliff and the BB. But Cliff was already gone and Lou had grown extremely weak. Why was he seeing that now? Something had made him see it. Maybe Lou was trying to reconnect with him. While one part of him hoped that was the case, another more logical part of him knew that he shouldn’t get any more attached. It was the same logic that knew that Lou shouldn’t be kept in the gap between life and death forever.

That pushed Sam forward.

The incinerator gave off the same sour scent of decay as always. This place was the end of the road. It was where all traces that someone’s body existed in this world disappeared. To the living, this was the world’s end.

Sam remembered when he first met Lou. How Igor had entrusted Lou to him, and how he had repatriated from the Seam. He remembered going against the command to incinerate Lou, and the first time he tried connecting to Lou. He and this kid had come a long way together.

If it wasn’t for Lou, Sam never would have made it to the other side of the continent and back. Even though Lou had exceeded the usual one year of service life, Sam had relied on Lou to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Of course, Sam was mad that the Bridge Babies were used as communications mediums and that they were sacrificed as the cornerstones of American reconstructionism, but Sam had done the same to this child.

Had Sam really thought about what was best for Lou? He’d just blindly believed that because Lou was a kid, still just a baby, the BB needed protection and guidance.

But he was the one who had been protected.

The incineration apparatus rose from the floor.

The reason why it resembled an altar to Sam was because he wanted to remember the months and years he had spent with Lou as something special. For Lou, he wanted to transform the incinerator from a place of simple erasure to a place where he could preserve those memories for all eternity. This was to be a ceremony just for them, not for the American nation, so he removed his cuffs links.

—In that state, there’d be nothing to stop you from removing them. If you did, the UCA wouldn’t know where you were or how to find you. You’d be invisible.

Sam decided to trust in the help that Deadman had given them.

He put his cuff links on the altar. He was going to erase the Sam that belonged to Bridges.

He put the pod on there, too. To free Lou.

Sam could hear thunder. The sky suddenly darkened and the smell of rain filled Sam’s nostrils. If Sam dealt with Lou here, then at least Lou wouldn’t be cursed to wander around with the rest of the dead. If the kid couldn’t live in this world, then the least he could do was send Lou on to the next.

—Want to go home?

The one who was asked and replied with a no was a young Sam.

Then this kid—

The altar groaned as it began to sink back into the floor.

“I screwed it up. I’ve ruined everything.”

Sam was looking down on Cliff. He was squatting down on one knee with his back to him. The blood pouring out of his left shoulder was staining the back of the jacket a dark red. Cliff stood up with a groan.

“I’m sorry, Lisa…”

Muttering Lisa’s name in what sounded like delirium, Cliff turned back toward the door, leaving bloody footprints as he stepped forward. With a firm grip on the pod, he closed the door behind him and shot at the security panel twice to break it. Then he turned toward Sam. Cliff’s face was flushed as though he was suffering from a high fever and his eyes were welling up, but he didn’t see Sam. The only other person there was Lisa, under a blood-soaked cushion. Cliff passed straight through Sam and clung to the bed. Sam realized that the only part of him there was his ka. He was the only one aware he was stood there. No one else seemed to notice.

Sam could hear a noise outside the door.

“In here!”

Someone banged on the door violently. The dull thuds echoed around the room. They pounded again and again and again. Eventually, the thuds turned into the sound of metal on metal. Together with the metallic grinding sound of the engine cutter, the door began to groan.

Cliff seemed unaware as he sat slumped in front of the bed.

Are you going to give up here? But Sam’s thoughts didn’t translate into words. They never reached Cliff.

“BB. Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’ll always be with you,” Cliff reassured the BB, trying as hard as he could to make sure that he was hearing his message.

“This room is off-limits. No one goes in.”

Sam could hear a voice behind the door clearly trying to get the situation under control. He knew that voice. It belonged to John. The sound of the cutter stopped.

“But he’s in there, sir. I saw him!” a man protested.

“You saw wrong. Now, check the other way. Go!”

John dismissed any resistance from the young soldier and sent him on his way. The commotion withdrew like the tide. Sam heard John breathe a sigh of relief on the other side of the door. Now’s your chance. Run. But Sam’s wish and John’s actions didn’t help Cliff.

“No. Open it up. He’s inside.”

The command came from the President of the United States of America, Bridget Strand. John and the guards scattered. Special forces followed Bridget’s commands and broke down the door, surging into the room.

Bullets flew through Sam as he opened his arms wide in a bid to cover Cliff. They simply ignored that he was even there and flew straight into their target. Cliff’s body was thrown to the ground, where blood began to pool beneath him. Yet he still continued to talk to his BB.

“When I found out I was gonna be a father… I was so scared. Scared of what it would mean… I had to be there for you and your mom… no matter what. I couldn’t just go off and get myself killed anymore…”

Images flashed in the back of Sam’s mind. A smiling Lisa rubbing her large belly. Cliff’s back as he walked away. And Lisa tying a piece of rope around her neck with trembling hands.

“I couldn’t leave you all alone. I couldn’t,” Cliff murmured.

The soldiers stood still, guns still pointed in Cliff’s direction.

“Get offof him! Now!” John commanded as he broke into the ring of soldiers that had surrounded Cliff. In his hand was the gun that Cliff had dropped under the soldiers’ fire.

“I had it all wrong… all wrong.” Cliff was exerting so much effort to take each and every breath. Yet he still talked to his BB. “Being a father… didn’t make me scared. It made me brave. I’m sorry… sorry it took me so long…”

“Captain, look at you.”

Cliff noticed John and lifted his head. His bangs were dripping with blood and sticking to his forehead. He pushed them out of his face and cast his gaze downward once more.

“Don’t make the same mistake. Be yourself… Be free,” Cliff finished.

As though his last ounce of strength had finally left his body, Cliff’s beloved pod rolled to the floor.

Before John even had time to reach out for it himself, a special forces member rushed over and scooped it into his arms. This was the end. All Sam could do was stand and watch, dumbfounded.

John was crouching down in front of Cliff. It was like he was protecting Cliff, despite the fact that he no longer had any value to them now that the BB had been retrieved. That’s when Bridget shouted.

She was cradling the pod the soldier had passed her when her face turned pale and she stared at Cliff. John gasped and the soldiers became nervous. There was nothing in the pod.

“Captain—I need you to hand it over,” John pleaded, his voice trembling. The naked BB was cradled in Cliff’s arms. A puddle of amniotic fluid was dripping down from the pod and spreading across the floor.

“Let it go—please,” John repeated, pointing his gun at Cliff’s head. Cliff looked between John and the gun and grimaced. Or maybe it was a smile. Sam couldn’t tell.

“Shoot him, John,” Bridget commanded coldly. But Sam could sense some quivering in her voice, too. Sam tried to protect Cliff. He crouched in front of him, opened his arms wide, and covered the end of John’s gun with his hands.

“Shoot him!” Bridget commanded again.

John’s arms were shaking. Sam was glaring at John, but all that was reflected back in John’s eyes was the face of a blood-soaked Cliff.

He couldn’t do anything here. He couldn’t control anything. He was so powerless. It must have been the same as how Amelie felt, only having a soul. He was overwhelmed with frustration at only being able to stand there and watch.

“I gave you an order! Shoot him!”

John’s trembling finger squeezed the trigger.

“They told me your name was Sam Porter…” Sam heard Cliff’s voice behind him. He turned and Cliff nodded. He saw Sam. “But you’re Sam Bridges.”

All Sam could hear was Cliff’s voice. Everything had stopped. John’s finger was still on the trigger. Neither Bridget nor the special forces operatives moved. The only ones moving in the midst of this frozen scene were Cliff and Sam.

“My son. My bridge to the future.” Cliff cradled the baby and stood up. He staggered a little, but he seemed to be full of energy now. He was looking Sam straight in the eye. “Without you, I was just like any other cliff. A dead end. No way forward. Nothing but an obstacle—looking on at the world that people like you were trying to build. Dividing people was the only thing I was ever good at.”

Sam was still crouching by Cliff when Cliff reached out to him.

“But not you, Sam. You bring people together. You’re their bridge to the future… and mine. Come on, Sam. Stand up.”

Cliff’s hands were covered in scars and wrinkles. They were the hands of someone who had been through war. They were both strong but delicate. Even though they were stained with blood, they weren’t dirty. Cliff passed the baby he was cradling in his arms to Sam. It was so small that it looked like it would fit inside the palm of his hand. It was soft and warm. Sam could feel its heart beating. Its little heart was beating away strongly. It synchronized with Sam’s own heartbeat.

“Is this me?” Sam asked.

Cliff nodded and hugged Sam. Sam could smell cigarettes and blood. It was the smell of a father.

It was only slight, but Cliff squeezed his arms around Sam a little more tightly.

The paused time began to play again.

Sam heard two gunshots. And Cliff’s body twisted twice.

His grip loosened. When Sam looked, the baby had disappeared. All that was left in his hands was blood spatter. Cliff was staring into the distance. Sam was no longer reflected in his eyes. So much blood was pouring out of the right side of his chest. The baby he had been holding was covered in it, too. The heartbeat that had just synched with Sam’s was no more.

“Oh God, not the BB too.” How could John play innocent like that? Sam looked up.

John was holding the gun, but Bridget’s overlaid hand had pressed his finger on the trigger.

Cliff’s body slumped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The baby’s body rolled to the ground alongside him.

Bridget ran over to the baby screaming something and scooped it up into her arms. As Sam stared at his own dead body, all he could do was stand there.

Sam watched the lid to the incinerator casket close and the whole thing sink into the floor. It was burning his cuff links. His connection with America was burning away. Now that his right wrist felt lighter, he used it to pick up Lou. A puddle of amniotic fluid was spreading out across the floor.

The cross-shaped scar on his abdomen burned. That same mark that had formed when Sam Bridges was brought back to life before he was even born, that had been left behind when Amelie had restored Sam’s ka on the Beach, was throbbing violently.

Sam hadn’t been able to burn Lou, after all. Sam knew that his talk of returning this child to the land of the dead and doing what was best for the child’s wellbeing had all been bullshit. Just a lie he had told himself. He knew that from the start.

He just wanted to feel this child’s skin. Just like Cliff had held Sam as a baby, how Amelie had held him on the Beach, Sam wanted to hold Lou. Maybe it was a one-sided cruel love. Sam couldn’t promise Lou what that love would bring. But Sam knew that he couldn’t burn Lou without a hug.

Now his wish had come true—no, he made it come true. But Lou didn’t respond.

Lou felt warm. But the breaths and heartbeat that Sam felt were shallow and weak.

“Lou!”

His persistent calls for Lou were just like those Cliff had made.

“Lou!”

Sam rubbed Lou’s back and tried to massage arms and legs that were so thin they looked like they could snap. Sam had no idea if he was doing it right, but Sam kept calling Lou’s name, hugging Lou close and rubbing the small body to stop the ka from separating from Lou’s ha.

—Want to go home?

Where had Amelie meant when she asked me if I wanted to go home?

Where had Cliff tried to take me when I was a baby?

Where am I going to take you, Lou?

Where do I want to show you?

It’s too early to go to the world of the dead. You haven’t even been born yet. Let’s not head to the realm of the past where everything is settled and finished, but toward the future with infinite possibilities. But right now, the only choice that lies in that future is for you to come into this world. So wake up, Lou. I’ll anchor you here.

A vague umbilical cord of particles formed at Lou’s abdomen. It was a sign of necrosis.

So, this kid would never be born into this world after all.

If I’m not with you, Lou, I can’t begin anything either. Even if you don’t want to live with me, I want to live with you.

Even as Sam’s tears dripped onto Lou’s face, Lou was still trying to return to the world of the dead.

No, Lou.

Sam closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at Lou’s umbilical cord. As he stood there holding Lou, unable to do anything but cry, he knew that he was the stupidest man in the world.

The dreamcatcher that hung by his chest caught on something. Sam looked up. Lou’s eyes were open. In Lou’s right hand was Amelie’s quipu.

Lou had returned.

Before Sam had the opportunity to shed any more tears, Lou began to cry out loudly.

Lou screamed out to the world: “I’m here.”

Lou was crying, trembling all over, to shake off the border between life and death and tear away the shackles that bound the BB between them.

“Welcome back, Lou. Louise.”

As Lou screamed her lungs out, Sam kissed her on the cheek. He felt her tears on his lips. They were the tears of a living, breathing child.

Sam left the incinerator to find that the rain had cleared. A rainbow drew a beautiful arc over the ridge. It wasn’t the upside-down rainbow Sam usually saw.

The blowing winds brought with them a scent that Sam had never smelled before.

Sam looked back over his shoulder toward the incinerator and began to walk back the way he had come. But what lay before him now was a new place that he had never been to.

Let’s go home.

Sam heard a familiar voice that he knew from long ago, somewhere before.