Death Stranding: The Official Novelization, Volume Two

An explosion went off somewhere in the distance, shaking the ruins. Debris began to fall from the ceiling.

Deadman seemed to be more talkative than usual. Maybe it was to distract himself from his own feelings of anxiety.

“How do you know?”

Without even commenting, Sam launched into a new line of questioning.

“Are there any landmarks nearby? I’m coming to get you and Lou. And then I’m going to kick that guy’s ass. Then we should be able to go home.”

But Sam wasn’t certain of that. That just happened to be how events transpired last time, but he had to do something or they would never get out of here.

Sam only understood about half of what Deadman said. “Is he some kind of architecture nerd now, too?” Sam muttered, heading outside.

Sam picked up an abandoned rifle that lay in the ruins of the building. It was lighter than the one he had picked up in the last battle and looked easier to use. It had been over a hundred years since World War Two, but Sam couldn’t believe how refined guns had already become. Come to think of it, it was around this time when nuclear weapons had first been developed as well. Humans had been creating tools to destroy each other for a long time, it seemed.

Sam soon found the building that Deadman had described. The one that had the silhouette of a forest. If Sam had understood correctly, then this was it.

It was indeed half rubble, just as Deadman had said, but the entrance wasn’t blocked.

Sam passed through the hallway and headed down the stairs into the basement. As Sam looked at the bulletins posted along the wall, he realized this must have been some kind of public building, but none of the postings were in English, they were all in German, so he couldn’t be sure.

All of a sudden, Sam was almost knocked to his feet by a powerful crash and violent tremors. He was left barely standing with a hand on the wall for support. Just as he thought it had calmed back down, he began to hear the intermittent explosions of shells followed by screams. It seemed like the location of the battleground had shifted.

He pushed on an iron door in the corner of the basement that was partially covered in green rust, and entered a tunnel. The space was filled with the stench of stagnant water and the tepid air seemed to coil around his body. In the background he could also faintly smell the scent of blood and gunfire. Sam heard another explosion and the tunnel shook once more.

“Deadman! Where are you?!” Sam’s voice echoed loudly. It was like he was surrounded by a thousand invisible Sams, shouting in unison.

“Sam! Over here!” Deadman shouted.

Sam continued down the tunnels, following the sound of Deadman’s voice, and eventually found him clinging tightly to an iron grille, calling out Sam’s name. Under one of his arms was the pod.

“Sam! Over here! Quick!” Deadman urgently beckoned. Sam calmed the agitated Deadman and shifted his gaze to the pod. Regaining some composure, Deadman held the pod out to him through the iron bars.

Sam couldn’t help but murmur Lou’s name as he took the pod back, but there was no response from Lou, who seemed to be asleep. Sam said Lou’s name once again, but the BB only cried out in displeasure after having its sleep interrupted.

“The little one should be working again. Let me see.” Deadman grabbed the pod back. Sam thought he was going to make some adjustments to the pod or something, but Deadman simply cradled it in his arms and gently swayed. He was rocking the BB. The BB stopped crying and Deadman looked at Sam triumphantly, but Sam didn’t say anything. Luckily, the awkwardness of Sam’s displeasure at how Lou had forgotten him and become attached to Deadman was dispelled by the sound of an explosion. It sounded like a bomb had been dropped. The whole tunnel shook, and fragments of brick fell from the ceiling. Nearby, Sam heard soldiers asking someone to identify themself. Deadman held the pod close as if to protect it.

“Maybe this is a special Beach for soldiers who died in battle. A maelstrom of their bitterness and regret,” Deadman muttered, handing the pod to Sam. “If this is the same place as last time, then maybe the key to getting home lies with the same man you met last time.”

Sam mounted the pod on his chest. A nostalgic weight returned.

“You should wait here,” he told Deadman.

Sam connected the cord to the pod.

“So? Do you still share memories?” Deadman inquired.

Sam silently shook his head at Deadman’s question. The BB inside the pod had an innocent expression on its face, like it had just been born. It seemed this kid had forgotten everything after all.

The Odradek booted into life with a groan. The sensor was spinning rapidly and soon formed into a cross shape.

That man’s face flashed across Sam’s mind.

The kid may have forgotten Sam, but it still reacted to the man. The Odradek was pointing in his direction.

“You know, Sam, I’m starting to understand why BB is so important to you,” Deadman said, looking at the pod. “It’s just a tool. Life and death are supposed to be irrelevant. But we’ve got attached to each other all the same… Haven’t we?”

“Kid’s not just a tool. Name’s Lou,” Sam replied curtly.

Even if the BB had forgotten all about Sam, its name was still Lou. Sam stroked the pod and began to walk in the direction of the sewer exit.

Bells were ringing. They sounded like church bells.

But as they rang out across the battlefield, their purpose wasn’t to return the souls of the dead back to heaven, but to inspire them to fight and bring them back to life.

The bombers that controlled the skies dropped bomb after bomb after bomb, but the church spire remained unscathed. Like devoted followers fearing the wrath of God, each time the bombs fell anywhere near the spire, the bombers changed course. All the missiles and shells being thrown through the skies completely missed it. It was like someone had commanded that the bells weren’t to be silenced until all the dead, with their lingering attachment to this world, had been resurrected.

All those people had died before they even had a chance to realize it, at the hands of weapons designed to kill en masse. If life was a sentence, theirs had been interrupted partway through and left without a period to wrap everything up neatly at the end. And they were coming back to look for it.

Numerous filthy dolls in the shape of babies hung from a giant spider’s web that spanned the spire below the swaying bells. Some had their heads caved in, others were missing limbs, and some had bellies that had burst open. One of the dolls began to shake as if it was having a fit. With each spasm, a single eyelid jerked open and closed. It was like the doll was frantically pleading for something but unable to cry.

In response to its silent wailing, the man who lay across the center of the web awakened.

He had found the period at the end of his sentence.

The thread coiled around him unraveled, and the man gracefully descended out of the web.

And now it begins again. Someone was speaking. It’s finally time to put an end to this story of yours that was so cruelly interrupted. Flames erupted overhead as if to celebrate the man’s awakening, and the spider’s web began to go up in an inferno. Embers poured down like rain. The man placed a cigarette between his lips and let the rain light it. He breathed the smoke in deeply before letting it all back out and smirking.

Cliff had found him.

As the tobacco smoke diffused and disappeared, four soldiers took their place around the man. All were fleshless. Only bone. The man flicked the cigarette away and raised his arm up high.

Then he brought it back down, silently commanding his soldiers. Go forth. Take back the period that was snatched away from you. The man watched the soldiers move out. Capture the child and bring the man who won’t let go of it back here.

Once Sam had escaped the sewer, he was immediately greeted by bombs. They were showering down from the bombers above. They were still a distance away from the spot were Sam was standing, but the thundering sound of explosions still pierced his eardrums and the tremors shook his insides. He had to find that man. When he checked the direction that the Odradek was pointing in, he could see a church-like structure.

It had a strange appearance. Despite the fact that its foundations had been mercilessly decimated, the spire thrusting up into the sky wasn’t damaged in the slightest and stood firm. Sam didn’t know a lot about the structure of buildings, but even he knew that was unusual. The foundations were dust, yet the spire alone was still standing there. He wasn’t close enough to get a good look, but he couldn’t make out a single chip or crack. There wasn’t even any soot from the flames all around. In this place where anything and everything was an offensive target, destroyed and defiled, this tower alone was sanctified and protected.

And the Odradek was pointing right at it. That was where the man was.

But Sam had no idea how to get there. Bullets were flying all around him and there was no end to the bombing in sight. Flames scorched the sky and the shrieks of soldiers were constant. This was just like the time before. Sam was on a battlefield where the dead killed their fellow dead. Where the means of the massacre was on an even grander scale than the original battleground.

When Sam gazed up at the silhouettes of the bombers and checked the weight of his rifle, reality hit him.

Sam flitted from shadow to shadow, between broken barricades, disorganized sandbags, toppled-over tanks, and ruined buildings that dotted the cobbled streets, paying careful attention so as not to get caught up in the battle. Even though he could hear the final wails of agony from soldiers on all sides, he hardly actually saw any of them.

The thought of nuclear weapons suddenly crossed his mind. How just one bomb could kill countless people en masse and wreak destruction over an absurdly large area. Maybe this battlefield was far away from other people. Maybe it was a battlefield that didn’t involve humans, it was just one they died on. Where people killed one another at a distance, rather than staring their opponents in the face as they fought toe-to-toe with fist or gun. Where they died without the opportunity to understand their own deaths. It was a battlefield where all that remained was the never-ending absurdity of it all, stagnating like sediment.

The battlefield was an endless, absurd cycle.

The only way to put a stop to that cycle would be to make the dead aware of the fact that they were dead. Just as people in the world of the living incinerated the bodies of the recently departed, to deprive their soul of a place to wander back to and give them their period at the end of their sentence.

If this war and this battlefield really had existed in the past, then humans had been mass-producing BTs for a long time. Maybe voidouts and the Death Stranding were disasters of mankind’s own making.

Sam’s footing slipped as the thought distracted him. He placed a hand on the wall of the building and steadied himself. When he looked down at his feet, he found that puddles had formed in the empty spaces left by missing cobbles. Sam tutted at his own clumsiness and carried on forward. That’s when he realized that what had pooled at his feet wasn’t water, but blood. Sam wondered how many people’s blood it took to form a puddle this deep. He was submerged up to his ankles.

Sam tried to pull his foot back out, but someone’s hand was clamped around his ankle. It was trying to drag him back into the puddle.

Sam slapped at the hand that was now pawing at the barrel of his rifle, and used all of his might to yank his foot free.

—BB.

A voice calling out for the BB resounded within his head.

The puddle of blood began to swell and something appeared. Its helmet was slick with blood, its hands stained red, and blood was gushing from the end of its rifle. A skeletal soldier had shown itself. Without a moment’s hesitation, Sam sprayed bullets at it with his rifle. As it shattered to dust it was engulfed in flames and disappeared.

—BB.

Instead of wails of agony, Sam heard the voice of the man.

Then he felt a sharp pain shoot through his right leg. He had been shot. When he turned around, three skeletal soldiers were lying in wait. All three of them were pointing their rifles at him. The next one to fire was Sam. He may not have hit any of them, but at least they flinched, and while they did, he was able to make his escape into the shadow of a truck. There was a burning pain in Sam’s leg where he had been shot, and it felt like it had swelled to several times its normal size.

The moment that Sam peeked out to see if the coast was clear, he was met with gunfire. It was the same soldiers as the time before. The Odradek’s sensor backed up his theory as it flashed from white to orange. He could tell from Lou’s uneasy jerks, as well. It might not have been the time or place, but Sam felt relieved. This kid might not remember him anymore, but they were still able to connect like always.

—BB.

The top of the truck began to burn alongside the sound of the explosions. Hand grenades were being thrown inside. Dragging his wounded leg behind him, Sam mustered all his strength to escape. Trucks exploded one after another. He could feel hot winds and impact tremors on his tail. Lou was terrified and crying out. Choked by the black smoke, Sam searched for a place they could hide. The buildings lining the road were all piles of rubble, and didn’t look like they would be able to conceal them at all.

Driven forward by the bullets, Sam finally found a building with a red-brick facade. The glass was shattered and only the frame remained, but the original entrance still stood. Sam entered its dim interior. Part of the wall had collapsed, shelves had fallen down and several pieces of furniture were toppled over. There was no sign of anybody. A coffee cup and a cracked plate sat on the table. The open newspaper featured a black-and-white picture of a town ablaze and a headline in large German letters.

Sam sensed a presence outside the window and hid in the shadow of the table. It was one of the skeletal soldiers. Luckily, the soldier didn’t seem to have realized that Sam was in there. As Sam decided to just let the soldier pass, an explosion shook the building.

Fine rubble fell from the ceiling, making a clattering sound as it collided with the cup on the table below.

The radio in the bay window suddenly switched on.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high—

It was an English song. An old song that Sam had a feeling he had heard somewhere before.

There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Oh, somewhere over the rainbow—

As if it heard the song, the skeletal soldier turned back and looked in Sam’s direction. It didn’t have any eyeballs, but those empty sockets saw Sam. From where Sam was hidden under the table it should have been impossible for their eyes to meet, but still, they saw each other. Sam immediately shot at it.

Then he turned on his heel and ran out of the exit at the back, finding himself in a narrow alleyway just wide enough for one person.

He could see the church spire in the sky, which was punctuated by tall buildings on both sides of him. The Odradek was still pointing in that direction. There was no way Sam could get lost now, so he began to run. It sounded like the aerial bombing campaign was still in full swing as several bombers darted by, streaming bombs out of their bellies, and vanished. Explosions sounded all across the town as it crumbled into rubble and went up in flames. This confusion was a good opportunity for Sam. It could have hindered the movements of the skeletal soldiers somewhat. The church spire was almost upon him. It was just a little farther until a gap in the path. A soldier flew out from the buildings, and when Sam turned around he could see one standing behind him, too.

He was cornered. He dropped low and tackled their legs as he dodged their fire. Even though they were only made of bones, each one of them felt like they weighed just as much as an adult human. Sam snatched up a handgun from one of the fallen soldiers and shot it in the chest. Several ribs shattered into dust and a small flame blew out from where the heart should have been. As Sam looked on, the flames spread, engulfing the rest of the skeleton.

Next, he shot at the soldier approaching from the rear as it charged forward, firing without pause. Every bullet went wide as the gap between them shrank. Sam’s opponent seemed to have run out of ammunition as he tossed away his rifle and brandished an army knife. Sam aimed at his undefended chest but missed. That was his last bullet. All he could do was dodge the flailing knife and lunge at the soldier’s chest. Their bodies entangled, but the moment they hit the floor, the soldier’s helmet slipped off with a clunk onto the cobbles below. More than half the soldier’s skull had been blown off. It was strange enough that these skeletal soldiers were able to move in the first place, but for them to be so animated in such a broken state felt even more ominous to Sam. The very bone that should have held their brain in place was missing, yet they fought as if still alive. As he held the soldier down, Sam saw his chance.

Skeletal arms pounded Sam’s back. It felt like he was being hit with steel. In fact, the pain was so bad that it knocked the wind out of him. His grip slackened for a moment, and before he knew it, their positions were reversed. The soldier was straddling Sam with one hand around his neck and the other balled into a fist, attempting to rain punches down on him. Sam dodged the fist as he rammed the ammunition clip clutched tightly in his hand into the soldier’s chest. Another rib broke.

The soldier stopped moving. Sam thrust the clip at it once more with all the strength he could muster. The bones crumbled and disintegrated into fine particles. The particles gave off the red light like embers, eventually setting fire to the soldier’s chest.

It let out an inhuman scream of agony as the flames engulfed it and it disappeared.

Sam brushed away the fallen sparks and stood back up, before leaving the alleyway and continuing toward the church.

The church bells were ringing to an insane rhythm.

Unlike the exterior of the church, its interior was in a sorry state. The arched roof was riddled with holes and the heaven depicted there broken. The stained glass had melted muddily and the pews that had once seated the churchgoers were charred black from all the fires. The air was filled with the stench of decay, which quickly enveloped Sam. On the altar right in front of him lay an offering of a small whale on its back. That was where the smell was coming from.

The Odradek showed that the man was here. It had formed into a stiff cross shape and stood unmoving. Lou wasn’t crying, but still seemed to be trembling with fear.

Something fell on the altar. It bounced off the whale’s exposed belly and rolled to Sam’s feet.

It was a doll. But its eyelids were opening and closing furiously as if it was having a fit.

—BB.

Sam turned in the direction of the voice to find the man standing there.

“Give me back my BB,” he said.

As soon as the man opened his mouth, the sound of a gunshot rang out. The bullet grazed Sam’s shoulder before lodging itself in the altar directly behind him. The bullet had still caught him with enough force to throw his balance, and he crashed backward with it. Blood trickled out from the tears in his uniform.

Sam clutched the pod containing Lou with both arms, as if to hide it. The blood from his shoulder wound trickled down his arm, dirtying its exterior. The man looked down at the unsightly form of Sam, clumsily sat on his ass against the altar. The man’s expression seemed to flicker for a moment. Sam thought he could see a flash of sadness, but it soon disappeared.

“Give me back my BB,” repeated the man, almost as if muttering deliriously. He slowly lifted his arm and pointed the gun toward Sam. But for some reason, Sam didn’t feel the same bloodlust that he had felt right after the man first appeared.

“Let it go…”

The man’s tone was vague. It was like he was remembering something. Sam glared at the barrel of the gun and shook his head. He couldn’t leave the BB. He had no reason to hand it over. Lou didn’t belong to this man.

The man was slowly tightening his finger’s grip on the trigger. Sam thrust out a single hand and tried to cover the barrel. Even if he had to lose this hand, he would never leave Lou behind.

The man’s face once again contorted into a sad expression. His focus was no longer on the pod, but on Sam’s hand. The man was trying to remember something. That much Sam was sure of.

Who the hell was this man? He didn’t belong to this battlefield. He wasn’t like the other soldiers, who simply continued to slaughter one another as apparitions of this warzone.

The man had something in his head, but it seemed like he couldn’t express it.

There was a crash of thunder, and the stately wooden doors to the chapel blew open before shattering into pieces and bursting into flames. When he saw it, the man screamed something. It was an animalistic roar full of anger and fear. He was howling at the entrance.

Perhaps he was enraged that the pristine spire had been broken, or scared this holy ground was about to be defiled. The only thing Sam could be sure of was that the man was confused. Sam mustered the last of his strength, got back up, and sprang forward. But the man was quicker as he turned and blocked him.

Arm crashed into arm and shoulder rubbed against shoulder. At that moment, a shard of metal jutted out from near the man’s collarbone.

It resembled Sam’s Q-pid and was attached to a chain around the man’s neck. The force of the collision toppled the man over backward.

The shard around the man’s neck burned red. Sam’s own Q-pid emanated heat, almost like it was responding.

Somehow, the fallen man seemed to have lost the will to fight, but as Sam looked into his eyes, they weren’t those of a man who had given up completely and was ready to surrender. If Sam finished him off now, then he would be able to return to his own world. But his confidence was shaken. This man wasn’t dead like a BT.

Defeating him wouldn’t send him back anywhere. This man was after a different kind of funeral.

“BB…”

He wanted Lou. But there was no way Sam would hand Lou over. If this child was neither born nor dead, then there was no reason to hand Lou over. Sam only wished he could have done something so that Lou could have been properly born into the world of the living.

The man reached out. He was riddled with injuries, yet still staggered to his feet and began to step toward Sam. Sam readied his gun with his left hand and defended the pod with his right. But that was all he could do. He couldn’t move forward, nor could he move back.

The man frowned and squinted at Sam as if blinded by light.

“BB. BB… This is all my fault.” The man tried to touch the pod. “I should… I should never have put you in that prison, BB…”

The man was crying. Black tears rolled down his face. The man mustered strength into his arms and pulled the pod toward him. He was so surprisingly strong that Sam toppled forward. The two became entangled and writhed on the church floor. Sam grabbed the man’s neck as he tried to tear himself away, but something coiled around his hand.

Time seemed to flow extremely slowly. The man’s bangs swayed and Sam could see everything in minute detail, from his fine movements and ensuing flying specks of mud to the chain from which the metal shard hung as it broke and flew away from the man’s neck. Sam pushed the man away and attempted to stand. The man was face up and made another grab for the BB.

Sam’s eyes met those of the man. It was like he was being sucked into them. He felt that he would drown in those eyes, which were deeper than any sea. He felt like he was being dragged down eternally, slowly crushed to death by the water pressure of this ocean, never to return to the surface again. Sam closed his eyes as fear took hold.

MOUNTAIN KNOT CITY

He was drowning.

He had been swallowed up by the sea, the source of all life, and now Sam was drowning.

This universe came from a bang. This planet from another bang. When life eventually emerged, what nurtured it was the sea that had cooled down this molten rock. Eventually, life crawled out of the sea and onto the land, where it became a slave to gravity on the frontier known as the earth’s surface and formed new chains of existence.

Then the scorned mother ocean became a vengeful goddess and drowned all the life on that earth. The Beach was her pathway to exact her revenge.

Sam saw a faint light in the distance above. But even as he made frantic attempts to reach it, he couldn’t escape the ocean. No matter how much he struggled, he didn’t get an inch closer to the surface. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Sam could feel himself becoming light-headed. When at last he knew that the ocean was about to kill him, he realized he was inside a nightmare.

When Sam woke up, he was in a subterranean private room.

It was an artificial room built to protect and conceal a human race who had been betrayed by the sea and rejected by the earth’s surface.

The cuff link that was linking him to the bedframe automatically released, and Sam sat up. He wiped away his tears and checked on the BB pod that was set inside the incubator. The display on the monitor told him the BB was once again functional.

“Lou,” Sam called, disconnecting the pod’s connection to the incubator. He cradled the lukewarm pod and called out Lou’s name again. Lou was curled up, eyes closed and mouth tightly shut.

There was no reaction to Sam’s voice. It was like the little one couldn’t even hear him.

“Lou,” Sam repeated.

Lou’s eyes eventually opened at the sound of Sam’s voice. Lou, or rather the Bridge Baby now, looked up at Sam blankly with eyes that still couldn’t quite see yet. Maybe it’s not fully awake from its long sleep yet? Then Sam remembered. No, that wasn’t it. Sam had prepared himself for this. He knew he had to face the facts. At the very least, he had been able to prolong this little one’s life. That was one of the reasons he had taken this mission in the first place. To stop this child dying in vain. And that he had accomplished.

“How’s little Lou doing?” Deadman’s voice came from behind Sam. It seemed they had both returned unscathed from the battlefield. Sam knew he should be happy about that, but he wasn’t quite feeling it right now.

“No response.” Sam knew he was clinging on to lost hope, but he still passed the pod to Deadman to have it examined.

But the pod slipped right through him. The BB seemed to react to that. It looked at Deadman’s hologram and laughed. Or maybe that too was all in Sam’s head, because by the time Sam had glanced at the pod, the BB’s eyes were already closed.

“You saved us. Whatever you did back there returned us to our own world. Lockne and the others found us out cold near Mountain Knot City. It seems like only a minute had passed in this world. You and the BB were brought back here. You’ve been dead to the world for near enough twenty-four hours. You slept for a whole day, you know. Slept like the dead. I’m already back in Capital Knot. Fragile’s Beach has been coming in handy, although I have to say that I don’t like using it anymore. I keep worrying that I’m going to end up back there.”

A small metal plate set on the table caught Sam’s eye. Deadman noticed and changed the subject.

“Oh, that. You were holding it. It’s an old dog tag. US issue. Wasn’t easy prying it out of your hand.”

That was the metal Sam had spotted around that man’s neck. He couldn’t be sure, but he must have brought it back from the battlefield. He picked it up and turned it over. A name was engraved on it, along with a few letters and symbols.

“Clifford Unger, as you can see. I looked him up in our database. Found a match,” Deadman stated. He fiddled with his cuff link and projected the 3D image of a man dressed in a combat uniform.

There was no mistaking it. It was him.

“He was US Army Special Forces. Fought in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan.”

Sam hadn’t heard of any of those places, but he assumed they had all once been battlefields, too.

The hologram of the man looked tougher than the one Sam had met on the battlefield, and whose head contained only the most basic of thoughts. He was brimming with youthful brute strength. He seemed sure of himself. There was no sign of the sad expression he had shown on the battlefield.

But what did Lou have to do with any of this?

“Well, that’s all I’ve managed to dig up so far,” Deadman conceded.

Sam nodded back at Deadman and placed the dog tag in his pocket. It was an important clue linked to Clifford Unger, and the key to unraveling his connection with the BB.

Clifford’s hologram disappeared and silence descended upon the room. In the middle of it was the BB. Both Sam and Deadman stared at the pod, searching for something to say.

“Sam, I owe you an apology.” The first to speak was Deadman. “Lou was the name you were going to give your own baby. If he’d have made it. I should have pieced it together sooner.”

Sam sighed. It wasn’t like it was a big secret or anything, but Sam never made a point of talking about it to anyone else. It was only natural for Deadman to find out about it if he was already looking into Bridge Babies and the origins of Bridges, as well as investigating Die-Hardman.

“I found some records from ten years ago. Something about the sudden death of a young woman in a small town on the outskirts of Central Knot. An ex-therapist by the name of Lucy. Nobody knew until it was too late. It caused a voidout. Her husband was a member of Bridges. He even had DOOMS. He tried, but he couldn’t get to her in time. The whole town was wiped off the map… leaving nothing but a big crater. And him. Because he was a repatriate.” Deadman looked at Sam as if he was gauging his reaction. “People wanted answers. Did the man hide his wife’s body on purpose? The only survivor was the only suspect. He was easy to blame, and people did. And pretty soon they were blaming Bridges, too. The man felt responsible. So he left. Lucy had been pregnant, poor woman.”

Sam watched Deadman take a deep breath at the end of his sentence and responded with a sigh of his own.

“They were going to name their kid Lou,” Deadman continued.

Sam bit his lip and said nothing.

“I didn’t just fish that out of the database, though. Bridget told me. Once her condition deteriorated and she could sense the end was drawing near, she told me about all the things that were off the record.”

In other words, stories that had been embellished based on Bridget’s and Deadman’s subjective whims. They weren’t reality, and they weren’t anything that Sam was interested in hearing.

“It wasn’t you who Lucy met last before she committed suicide. It was someone else. I truly believe that. Bridget said the same thing. But on record, you’re officially the last person she met. I don’t know if Bridget was covering for you, or if you didn’t tell her the whole truth about what happened. All I know is that she was sorry to see you go. She used to talk about how you didn’t have to cut ties and walk away.”

CENTRAL KNOT CITY OUTSKIRTS

Lucy had just concluded her first therapy session with Sam Strand. It was not held at the patient’s request. Sam’s adoptive mother, President Strand, had approached her in the hope she might help her son overcome his aphenphosmphobia.

Sam was an intriguing case. His reluctance notwithstanding, he recognized that his condition had and would continue to cause him much distress. Lucy suspected it was rooted in a childhood trauma, but unfortunately, she had only just scratched the surface, and couldn’t even begin to speculate what it might be.

Like many of the Bridges core team members, Sam was a DOOMS sufferer. Unlike them, however, he was also a repatriate. Whether or not this was related to his aphenphosmphobia, Lucy couldn’t say, but he would hardly be the first to manifest phobias as a result of his abilities.

As an infant, Sam lost both parents and was adopted by President Strand. Owing to her stress and time-consuming responsibilities, Lucy could only presume that she was unable to afford him sufficient attention, which is to say that a distant relationship with his adoptive mother may have been a contributing factor. Sam was still very reluctant to talk about himself, and as an intensely private person it would take time to build trust and convince him to open himself up to her.

Progress has been slow, but Sam finally started to open up about himself. However, his recollection of early childhood was confused and contradictory. He had difficulty distinguishing between genuine memories and reoccurring dreams. Sam even claimed to have met his stepsister Amelie on the Beach several times while quite young. An impossible claim, to say the least.

Lucy was only a little older than Sam, but she was born before the Death Stranding—a fact that tended to affect the way people thought about the Beach. In her professional opinion, the Beach was a figment of their collective imagination. A shared delusion. But people born later were more likely to take its existence as a given. She wondered if they found comfort in the belief because it helped to explain phenomena like BTs and repatriates like Sam?

Similarly, her theory was that Sam’s manufactured childhood memories of the Beach were his way of coping with the fact that neither Amelie nor Bridget spent much time with him. She believed this to also be the reason he still clung to the dreamcatcher Amelie gave him even now, as an adult. You could call it his security blanket. It could also be the key to overcoming his aphenphosmphobia. If Sam were to emotionally distance himself from Amelie, it could reduce his resistance to physical intimacy. She decided to propose this approach to him in their next session.

It came as no surprise when Sam was unreceptive to Lucy’s suggestion and rejected her assessment of his relationship with Amelie. He asserted that he was not dependent on her or Bridget, and even went so far as to question Lucy’s credentials as a psychotherapist. His pronounced resistance to the idea only served as further evidence to Lucy of his dependency. Nevertheless, there was little she could do if Sam was unwilling to explore the possibility, other than continue to share her observations and hope that he eventually changed his mind. For the time being she decided to focus instead on Sam’s feelings toward Bridges and his place within the organization. Given that it was founded to support and protect his adoptive mother, and that the other core members had DOOMS like he did, she thought there was something to be gained from the discussion. His growing responsibilities within Bridges due to their expanding mandate and his abilities as a repatriate surely put him under greater pressure, and she wondered if his enthusiasm for their mission was sincere.

Based on their time spent together so far, she believed he may have embraced his role because it helped him to cope with the feelings of isolation—that he pledged himself to an impossible endeavor because it was preferable to living and dying alone.

Lucy decided a different approach was required, and so she requested a meeting with the president. Discretion was vital, as any information which might suggest she was receiving mental health treatment could be exploited by her opponents. The meeting was listed as an interview in official records—though she was more than willing to offer her services, had they been requested.

She opened by asking about Sam’s childhood, to which the president responded with an immediate and heartfelt apology. Her frankness shocked Lucy. Bridget expressed deep regret for her failure to engage with him, physically and emotionally, as she felt a mother should. At times it felt as though she was apologizing to her son by proxy. Her candor was as impressive to Lucy as it was appreciated.

The president told her that her daughter Amelie had mostly taken care of Sam in her absence. She glossed over the details, but she divulged that Amelie also had DOOMS, and claimed that she would often take Sam with her to play on the Beach.

President Strand loved her son. Lucy’s meeting with her confirmed that beyond any doubt. The question was whether or not Sam perceived his mother’s love. Both Sam and the president talked about the Beach as though it were a real, physical place, but Lucy remained convinced that it didn’t exist—that it was a shared delusion, and that Sam and Amelie’s so-called “visits” were mental constructs. Sam would not necessarily be convinced of this—especially if it had been “planted” in his mind… But such an explanation would fit with his claims that he had never been able to visit the Beach of his own volition.

What if, subconsciously, Sam had developed an attachment to or longing for the Beach—one that paralleled his feelings toward his sister and mother? Furthermore, what if they had all become, in essence, objects of veneration? Upon further consideration, it wasn’t so hard to imagine. President Strand was an exceptional woman who exhibited panromantic qualities—as did her daughter, Amelie. This was surely one of the reasons why they had been able to commit themselves so completely to the cause of American reconstruction, their one true love. Sam, on the other hand, Lucy diagnosed as demisexual. His sexual desires were strictly limited to those with whom he had formed an emotional connection—excepting family members like Amelie, of course.

It was only natural to regard those more highly with whom he developed an intimate emotional connection. For children, this could lead to veneration. Yet there was also an inherent contradiction in this, for divinity is distant by nature, even as we yearn to grow closer to it. Lucy came to the conclusion that this contradiction was at the root of Sam’s aphenphosmphobia.

“What the fuck?!” Sam exploded in rage when she told him her theory. “I’m a repatriate. A fuckup whose soul gets bounced back from the Seam every time I die in a horrible explosion!”

Lucy had decided to share with Sam her working theory regarding his condition. She was prepared for some resistance, but the intensity of his anger was surprising. He glared at her as he reframed her assessment as wild speculation that he had been brainwashed by a cult. It was the first time Lucy had managed to coax such a powerful emotional response from him, and while she found it a little frightening, she did her best to remain professional, welcoming the breakthrough and the reduction in the distance between them. That was how she presented professionally, but a part of her was delighted by his aggressive response.

Emboldened, she pressed him further, until she finally told him to snap out of it. To renounce his fantasies about the other side.

For an instant, she thought he might explode in anger again, but instead he grew quiet, and after a long moment rose to his feet and left the room without saying another word. She feared she may have pushed him too hard…

Sam turned up for his next appointment, right on time. He looked calmer than usual, though that might have been wishful thinking on Lucy’s part. He’d been thinking a lot about their last session, and how it had ended. He said he wished she was right, about the Beach, and what it meant to be a repatriate. That he appreciated the time they’d spent together—that Lucy had spent listening to his stories.

“It isn’t all in my head, and I can prove it,” Sam said as he pulled out a syringe. Sam was calm, but Lucy wasn’t. Then he stuck the needle in his chest.

It all happened so fast. Lucy froze in her chair as Sam went into convulsions, eventually falling out of his seat. She ran to him, then, as he was laying on the floor, motionless, removed the syringe and performed chest compressions. But it was too late. Lucy sat there, next to him, for what felt like an eternity… And then he opened his eyes and sat up, still wearing that same calm expression. There was another handprint on his arm—a fresh one.

Sam was awake now and began to talk.

“I’m a repatriate,” he said. “Every time I die, I get stuck in-between, and then come back.” He was searching Lucy’s eyes now, reaching for the words as much as they were struggling to come out. “That world won’t have me, and neither will this one. I’m only free to come and go when I’m with her. With Amelie…”

There were tears in his eyes. He looked so lonely. Lucy started crying, too. She’d taken his hand in hers without realizing it, but he didn’t pull away. Lucy squeezed, and he squeezed back.

He needed someone he could be close to, be intimate with. Someone outside his family. Someone who wasn’t Bridget, or Amelie. Someone to whom he could reveal the whole of himself, someone who’d devote themself to him. Her. Sam smiled and nodded and they held each other for a very long time.

A few days after the incident in her office, Lucy tendered her resignation. A classic case of countertransference—the therapist getting emotionally involved with their client—and there was no way her professional pride would permit her to continue working. She felt guilty, of course. There was a permanent shortage of therapists, and many of her clients would struggle to find help elsewhere. But after what happened with Sam, she didn’t see any other option. She’d already come to terms with it. What she was doing for Sam more than made up for it. She’d never normally use this word, but she really did believe his aphenphosmphobia had been cured. He’d shown so much progress that, absent an extremely traumatic experience, she doubted his symptoms would ever return.

To Lucy’s surprise, the president didn’t have any problems with their relationship. If anything, she was pleased. It meant that she’d soon be joining the Strand family, together with this new life growing inside of her.

Their baby was doing well and they’d been told they were having a girl. Sam had already picked out a name for her—Louise. Lou, he liked to call her. He talked to her a lot, touching Lucy’s stomach, telling Lou to grow big and strong.

Bridget was delighted when she found out, and suggested that they take a family photograph—Amelie was out of town, so it was just the three of them blushing and smiling. And that same blush, that same smile, when they received the printout, along with apologies for being old fashioned. There was a funny little message on it—“Be stranded with love”—handwritten and signed. “It’s unique now. You can’t digitize or copy it,” Bridget told them.

Lucy was twenty-eight weeks gone. The doctor just checked them both out and said they were doing fine, but she wasn’t so sure. Lately, she’d been having the same terrible dream every night.

When she opened her eyes, she would be all alone on the Beach. She was lonely and afraid, so she would start to wander around, looking for someone, anyone. She always spotted Sam and Amelie, standing at the water’s edge, their backs to her. Relieved, she’d call out to them. Amelie’s hair shimmered in the gray light, but when she turned it was Bridget’s face, twisted with sadness and pain. She spoke.

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

Lucy woke herself up with her own screams.

“What do they mean, Sam?” Lucy asked, but Sam never gave her an answer. She began to feel like she was trapped in a cage of questions with no answers.

Everything had gone wrong. She couldn’t understand it. She was a therapist, a good one, but even she couldn’t make sense of the nightmares, or what was happening to her…

Lucy grew more and more weary. That’s when Bridget visited and saw Lucy’s face.

“They’re not nightmares,” she stated matter-of-factly.

Lucy felt Lou stirring inside of her as Bridget continued.

“I’m sorry, I had no idea this would happen. Lou’s special. Lou has Sam’s blood, and through her you’re bound to the Beach. You don’t have to be afraid, though. You cured Sam—made him whole. You gave him a life to live for, to protect. Made him a part of this world. The world is a jumbled mess with life and death all mixed up, but Sam might be the one to make it whole again, like you made him whole. Without him, our fate is sealed; but with him, there’s still hope for a future. The Beach exists within each of our minds, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a figment of our imagination. It has value, purpose, and in time… you will understand.”

Bridget gently squeezed Lucy’s hand.

She took Lucy’s hand, like Lucy had taken his on that day a lifetime ago. She smiled and squeezed.

There Lucy was, on the Beach. Everything she had seen in her nightmares, she saw in that instant. Somewhere inside her, Lou was laughing. And then it all fell into place.

Sam’s birth, his family, the Death Stranding. For the first time she saw how all the pieces fit into a terrible truth that she didn’t want to believe, but couldn’t deny. She saw her part in it, too, and little Lou’s.

She remembered those funny little words on the picture. “Be stranded with love.” And she was.

Lou’s kicking woke her up. She was alone, still half-asleep, so everything around her looked askew. It was that all-too-familiar feeling of the waking and dreaming being tangled up. But Sam and Bridget and Amelie must have led even more muddled lives. A reality between life and death, between this world and the next. Because of all this chaos and confusion beyond imagination stranded on their shore…

“Help me, Sam,” she begged internally.

She took the pills on the table next to her all at once. She tried to make sense of it, but this was never her world. She was born into an older one, one without a Beach, where the dead stayed buried and life moved on. She was shaking so hard. She didn’t think the drugs were working. She had some syringes loaded with sedatives. She thrust one into her arm, one after another, until she ran out.

MOUNTAIN KNOT CITY // PRIVATE ROOM

“I’m sorry, Sam, I didn’t mean to go digging up your past. I just wanted to understand. I just wanted to understand the connection between you and Lou,” Deadman explained, lowering his head at Sam, who didn’t know what to make of Deadman’s frank apology. It made him feel like the dick in this situation for being so furious, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. It was him who had attached the phantom of Lou to this BB and acted like he was atoning for the life he hadn’t been able to save. He was irritated by Deadman’s prying, but he couldn’t blame him for it either.

“Seventy percent of my body is harvested from cadavers. I was a coroner before I became a member of Bridges. I know the dead, but I’ll never be able to know the Beach.” Deadman crouched down and looked into the pod at the BB, who had begun to sleep.

“Have you ever heard the tale of Frankenstein’s Monster, Sam?” he asked.

Sam had heard of the story. In fact, it had been Lucy who told him it. (Are you sure?) She explained to him: “The reason that humans want to be makers is because we are ashamed of being mere creatures. Our creation myths were formed because we wanted to be more than that. We wanted to be special. The Beach is the same.”

“I’m artificial,” Deadman explained. “Grown from pluripotent stem cells. And when that vita spark didn’t manifest in all my organs, they replaced the defective ones with those of the dead. People born the traditional way have Beaches. You have one. BB, too. But I have no such connections. No ka. I’m a dead man. No mother. No afterlife. No Beach. I never even had a birthday. I’m a soulless meat puppet.”

As Sam looked up and met Deadman’s gaze, he noticed that Deadman’s eyes were full of tears. He couldn’t believe it. This man had feelings. He was capable of independent thought. He was brimming with curiosity. He must have had a soul. (Silly Sam. Consciousness and the soul are different.)

“You see now why I’m so obsessed with it all? It was why I looked after the BBs, too. If this kid is just some piece of equipment, then what am I?” Deadman tried to touch the pod, but his hand slid right through it. “The battlefield, now that was an awful Beach. But strangely, I didn’t hate it. Because I knew you were coming for me. I’ve never felt that before. Connected to someone. Anyone.” Deadman turned his head as if to ask Sam for affirmation of that connection.

“Look, Sam. I sometimes think about this. If the Beach is linked to individual people, doesn’t that in itself mean that the Beach doesn’t actually exist? Doesn’t it mean that the Chiral Network and that Beach of Fragile’s that I use to jump from place to place is all just a delusion? That the only reason they form part of our reality is because we all share the same delusion inside our heads? That would make what we call connections extremely fragile. But it would also make things so much easier for me. It means that I wouldn’t have to come up with these justifications about Frankenstein’s Monster or cadaver organs.”

Huh? Was that confession just before a big pile of bullshit? It all made Sam’s head spin.

“You don’t need to look so grim. I know that I don’t have a Beach and that I can’t even sense it. I don’t have DOOMS. That’s the one thing that makes me the same as other people. But I still couldn’t stand it. I didn’t feel like I was alive. I was jealous of you.”

As far as Sam was concerned, if Deadman wanted his DOOMS, he could have it. It was because of those abilities that he had lost Lucy and Lou. An uncontrollable urge welled up inside him. If Deadman hadn’t been a hologram, he would have hit him. (Despite your aphenphosmphobia?)

—You didn’t have to cut ties and walk away.

Sam froze at Bridget’s frail voice. He looked warily around the vicinity like a frightened hound.

But all he saw was the look of puzzlement on Deadman’s face.

“That’s what Bridget used to say,” Deadman said. Had Sam misheard Deadman’s voice? Or were they sharing the same delusion? “Bridget was right. I truly believe so.”

“I didn’t cut any ties. They were never there to begin with,” Sam snapped back, afraid that he would hear Bridget’s voice in his head again. The hoarseness made him feel even more strange. It had been ten years. After ten whole years without contact, as Bridget lay there dying and Amelie was trapped on the other side of the continent, she had begged him to help. But what her lot called “ties” were nothing but lies. He couldn’t blame that frail woman for everything, though. He was here of his own accord. He was the one who hadn’t been able to bury the past. He hadn’t changed since the day he had been unable to protect Lucy or Lou.

But simply blaming himself like that was a distraction from what really mattered. He knew it. That’s why he was afraid to look Deadman in the face. Deadman probably saw through everything.

Sam couldn’t tell how Deadman was interpreting this long silence.

“I thought we had ties,” Deadman muttered, severing the connection. The hologram disappeared. The space he had been occupying suddenly felt all the more empty. It was the same feeling Sam had back then. When all he could do was stand dumbfounded in the middle of the crater that had been gouged out of the earth. Where that city had once stood. When he remembered the ruins of the satellite city that Lucy and countless others had been snatched away from, he had the same feeling that he had when he thought back to Central Knot City, and how he couldn’t save them either, despite taking Igor’s BB. The actions of the invisible dead who were purging man from this earth kept Sam grounded and stuck in the past. Even if he stretched out his hand, begged them to give him sweet release, his prayers would never be answered. He would only ever be sent right back where he started.