After little Tony’s heart stopped beating, a heavy, leaden silence fell over the examination room.
The medical monitors no longer beeped, emitting only a cruel, continuous, and flatline flat tone.
Eden looked down at his watch and declared in a freezing, almost robotic voice to mask his emotion:
“Seventeen fifty-two.
Time of death.”
The door to the room was thrown backward.
Sally burst inside, her face contorted by tears, screaming with all her might:
“No… no!
Not Tony… He wasn’t even seven years old… No… It’s a lie!
Not my Tony!”
At the threshold, Sophie and Mrs.
Bones heard the terrible sentence.
The world seemed to crumble around them.
“No!
Not my little brother!” Sophie cried out, collapsing to her knees.
Mrs.
Bones, her eyes drowning in tears, joined her hands in a broken whisper:
“Oh no… not this… not again… Why the children first?”
Inside the room, Sally’s distress shifted from sorrow to pure rage.
She grabbed her husband’s shoulders and shook him violently:
“David!
No!
Say something, damn it!
Do something!
You are his father, you are a scientist, you can’t just let him go!”
David remained motionless.
But his gaze, usually so gentle, had turned strangely cold, inhabited by a fierce determination.
He slowly approached the lifeless body of his son, placed his hand on his frozen forehead, and said in a low voice of absolute intensity:
“Come on, Tony… this isn’t over.
You always dreamed of becoming a hero, and your journey isn’t stopping now.
Heroes don’t die in the first act.”
He closed his eyes, clenching his fists so hard his palms almost bled.
“Come on… wake up, Tony…”
Meanwhile, inside Tony’s head, the world had changed.
There was no more pain, no more virus, no more desert.
Everything was an immaculate, infinite, and peaceful white.
In the distance, faint echoes resonated, as if passing through a thick layer of water:
“Come on, Tony!
Wake up!”
The little boy floated in this cotton-like void.
He blinked and thought:
“These voices… I know them… it’s my family… Mom, Dad, Sophie, Mr.
Eden, Mr.
Lamar, Mrs.
Alya, Mrs.
Bones, Mr.
Rick, Mrs.
Katy… and Mr.
Bones… I’m here, I hear you, but… I don’t see you… Where are you?”
Suddenly, the pristine whiteness of the place froze.
A voice, much deeper, heavy and icy, echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, shattering the peace of the realm:
“Ha ha ha… it’s over, kid.
You won’t speak to them anymore.
You won’t feel them anymore.
You won’t see them anymore.”
Tony turned around, searching for the source of this dark voice.
“Who are you?” the boy asked without flinching.
“Knowing who I am will do you no good,” the shadowy echo replied.
The thread is snapped.
I have come to collect you.”
Against all expectations, the little boy did not panic.
He stood up straight, crossed his arms over his chest, and said in a firm tone:
“No.
Mom and Dad always told me to ask for the name of the people I’m talking to.
It’s polite.
So, if you want to keep talking to me, tell me your name.
Otherwise, I won’t talk to you anymore.”
A stunned silence weighed on the white void.
Then, the voice thundered, outraged by such audacity:
“What?!
You dare contradict me, brat?!
Do you even know who you are speaking to?!
I am the end of all things!”
“Oh, I know!
You are Kikikoulou!” Tony said with a big, innocent smile.
“Kikikoulou?!
What kind of ridiculous name is that?
Who is that?”
“My dad told me that he’s the one who comes to get people when they don’t move anymore.
So it’s you, Kikikoulou!”
At that exact instant, the voices of reality rushed back in full force, fracturing the white dimension.
Lamar, Mrs.
Bones, David, Sophie, and Sally were all repeating in unison, like a desperate mantra:
“Come on, Tony!
Come on!
Come back to us!
Come on!”
The shadowy entity let out a sigh of disdain, but the purity of this family’s willpower seemed to push back its darkness.
It slowly receded into the white.
“I fear it is not your time yet, kid… The Calamity core has made its choice.
I will do you a favor and let you go… But since you insisted on knowing, remember this: they call me… ‘Him’.”
“Him?” Tony repeated, intrigued.
“Yes… ‘Him’.
And when you return among the living, run an errand for me: tell Eden that the next one on my list is him.”
In the base’s examination room, the atmosphere was funereal.
Everyone, tears in their eyes, believed it was definitively over.
The parents were preparing to disconnect the machines and leave the room to begin their mourning.
Mrs.
Bones dropped onto a chair, lifting her tear-blurred eyes toward the ceiling:
“God… take me instead… He has his whole life ahead of him, while I have already had my time… Take me…”
Suddenly, the heart monitor went wild, emitting a sharp, frantic beep.
With a great gasp, Tony snapped his eyes wide open.
His lungs filled with air.
Without a single trace of fatigue, he jumped off the examination table, trotted over to Sally, gently tugged the bottom of her shirt, and said word for word in a perfectly clear voice:
“Mom… I’m hungry.”
Sally, her head down, plunged into her grief, answered automatically without thinking:
“Don’t disturb me, Tony, I am mourning your de—”
She froze completely.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull.
Around her, a collective cry of absolute shock tore through the room:
“TONY?!”
“Yes, it’s me!” the little boy replied, hopping on his feet.
Eden, usually so brave, instantly turned as pale as a sheet.
“Oh my god… Tony’s ghost!
Mrs.
Bones asked to take his place, so his spirit has returned to Earth to find someone to take back to the afterlife!
Run!”
In a flash, Eden turned around and started sprinting to find a hiding spot, triggering a general wave of panic.
Mrs.
Bones, meanwhile, remained petrified on her chair.
She thought back to her prayer from thirty seconds ago and murmured internally, terrified:
“I didn’t think God answered prayers this fast… I’m not ready!”
“But no, I’m not a ghost!” Tony protested, pouting.
“We don’t believe you, poltergeist!
Don’t speak, you’ll curse us!” Eden yelled, half-hidden behind a piece of furniture.
“But before, I couldn’t… but now, I speak!” Tony replied, annoyed.
Lamar, who was watching the scene from afar, stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyebrows furrowed.
“Wait a minute… My little Tony… you couldn’t hear and you couldn’t speak before.”
“Before no… but now, yes!
And very well!
The medicine fixed everything inside my ears and my throat!”
Sally, guided by her maternal instinct, slowly approached with her hands extended.
She locked her eyes with the child’s.
The warmth emanating from him was nothing like a specter.
“I feel it… it’s my Tony.
It’s really him.”
“Are you sure, honey?
It’s not a trick by the Calamities?” David asked, still a bit wary.
Sally spun around and glared daggers at her husband:
“Be a man, David!
It’s our son, he’s alive!”
“Yes… I know it’s my little brother too!” Sophie added, being the first to throw herself around his neck.
“Ah yes, it’s really him!
How’s it going, champion?” David said, tears welling up as his stoic armor finally shattered.
They all collapsed into one another, tangling into a family hug of insane intensity, weeping tears of pure joy this time.
Eden stepped out of his hiding spot, straightening his jacket with a relieved smile:
“Mission accomplished.
The Calamity core treatment is a total success.”
Tony gently pulled away from his mother’s embrace and turned toward the leader of the group, his young face suddenly becoming incredibly serious:
“Mr.
Eden… when I was sleeping in the big white space, I met someone.
His name was ‘Him’.”
Eden’s smile vanished instantly.
“Him?” he repeated, a freezing shiver running down his spine.
“Yes,” Tony answered wisely.
“And he looked very mean.
He told me to give you a message for when I woke up… He said that the next one on his list is you.”
Hearing those words, the celebratory atmosphere evaporated.
Eden’s face turned to stone, cold and impenetrable.
Without a word, he turned on his heels and walked out of the medical room to isolate himself in the hallway.
Lamar, worried, followed his lead and caught up with him near the generators:
“Hey, Eden… Don’t let it get to you.
You know how wild kids’ imaginations can be.
The little guy just hallucinated because of the product, that’s all.”
Eden was about to reply, his mouth half-open, when suddenly, the words died in his throat.
The entire base was violently shaken by an earth tremor of unprecedented force.
The security alarms tripped all at once, blaring through the loudspeakers, as the metal walls began to crack under the pressure of a colossal external force.
The truce was over.