Page 82 - Expression 2020

I can’t help but wonder how the person on the other side of the walky talky managed to stay alive all this time. Is she
military trained like me? Or is it money? No, money could only help her stay alive for a while, after that she’d need to
find a way to provide for herself, find food, scavenge.
I guess we’ll know her story once we meet her.
I reach the tower. At first, I was unable to spot the while cloth she mentioned, but when I do spot it, I let out a long sigh
at how high up it is. I’ve been walking for hours, I don’t think I have the strength to climb up, what seems to be, 30
storeys.
I turn on my walkie talkie and speak into it, “Hello, whoever you are, I am the foot of the tower.”

“Wait right there. I’ll come to you. You sound exhausted” She said. Her voice sounded clearer than the last time we
spoke. It was probably because of our now close proximity.
She came running down the stairs and as soon as she saw me, she extended out her hand with a big smile on her face.

“Nice to finally see a human face again,” I say as I smile and shake hands with her.
“We’re not alone”, she says. “Come let’s sit for a while and let me tell you what I plan to do.”
As I follow her over to a nearby sofa on the ground floor, I notice how well built she is. She is tall, perhaps taller than
me, and buff with a lot of well defined muscle. Maintaining such physique in a world like this should be impossible
because of the lack of food nowadays. To say that I am presently surprised at the moment, is an understatement.
“Let me start by introducing myself”, she beings speaking. “My name is Amanda Turing. And we-“
“Wait, Amanda Turing?” I interrupt her, in my astonishment. “THE Amanda Turing?”

“Yes,” she says with a smile. “The very popular Patient Zero.”
“Oh My God”, I reply.
“Yes, well, when the war broke out, my mother did the only thing that she had been doing for all her life- protect me.
Without her, even with my powers, I would not have been able to survive the Apocalypse. Unfortunately, my mother
did not make it, but I did. And I started searching; searching for people like me, others who received VX-12, since
we have a higher chance of survival. And I did find a few people in the files of this company, people who might have
survived. But I have no way to communicate with them. My only mode of communication is my walkie talkie and I
have been trying to find a voice on the other end of it for months. See, this tower right here is the ground zero, where
it all started. If I wanted to find answers I would find them here. So I could not move, in search for a signal, I just had
to wait for someone to come to me. And you did. You are not a Super Human like me, but it’s a start.”
After that explanation, I had to take a breath to absorb all the information. After that, I finally asked, “What do we
do?”

She smiled at me and said, “We save the world.”

Olivia Sarkar
12 ‘A’