C. Adams: Version 2.0

Though her eyes darted around somewhere in the air between them, Birdie nodded. “Yeah,” came out as almost a whisper. And then she straightened and looked Reesy in the eye. “Yes, I understand,” she said, with conviction.

Reesy looked skeptically at the woman in front of her who seemed to be putting on a brave front. “You okay?” Birdie nodded and gave a small smile. Reesy hopped down from the dresser, “Your journals are in the bed-side table drawer. It’s all we could find that you might have wanted to bring with you. Nothing else from your old life could come.”

“My journals?” Birdie cocked her head to the side. “How?”

“You’d be amazed how easy it is to get to someone’s personal belongings when a family is mourning.”

“There aren’t many left to get past,” Birdie interjected.

“There are some clothes in the dresser; stuff to sleep in and a few things for during the day,” Reesy was quick to change the subject. “They’re nothing near fancy, but there’s really no point down here. Once you’re top-side, that’s another story. Jodie and I will take you shopping,” she smiled and headed for the door.

“Jodie?”

Reesy turned as she stepped over the threshold into the hall, and looked back at her. “My wife,” she smiled. “You’ll like her.”

“Your wife?” Birdie considered, for a moment, the only two people she’d met since her waking. “Does rebirth turn you gay?”

Reesy laughed, “Oh god. If you weren’t so adorable, I’d punch you for that.”

“I’m sorry…” she shook her head, embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” she smiled, then raised her brows. “Do you wanna kiss me?”

“What? No!” Birdie looked at her, incredulously.

Reesy shrugged, “Guess you’re not gay, then.”

“I- I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“I was gay before I came here,” she told her. “So was Jodie and Emmett.”

“That was such a stupid thing for me to ask. Please… can you pretend I never said it?”

“Said what?” she smirked.

Birdie let out a relieved sigh. “Thanks, Reesy.”

“Goodnight, sweetie,” she said, pulling the door closed.

Birdie listened to Reesy’s footsteps as they led away from the door, until she couldn’t hear them anymore. She looked around the small space that was her room for however long she had to stay underground. Small spaces usually made her anxious. But she’d been holed up in smaller places on stake-outs when she worked with the DEA. There was a way out, and she wasn’t alone down there. She told herself that everything was fine. As fine as it could be, anyway. The craziness of the day helped to distract her, anyway. She stood and made her way to the dresser.

Reesy hadn’t been exaggerating when she said the clothes were nothing fancy. A robin’s egg shade of blue seemed to be the only color for everything in the drawer; even the day clothes. Ironically enough, she just then noticed that the gown she was already wearing was the very same color.

Birdie pulled out a set of night clothes. The inexpensive cotton didn’t give her much hope in them being comfortable. But the tank top and long pants fit as though they were made just for her. After laying her discarded gown on top of the dresser, she made her way back to the cot and opened the side-table drawer.

There sat her two journals. She hadn’t touched either of them in years. No one really knew about her journals. She’d had the first one since high school. She so rarely wrote in them. Only when something really big happened, whether good or bad, would she think to open it up and write. She was probably in her mid-twenties when she’d run out of room and had to buy another. Her last entry was when she’d made the decision to move to Dagsboro. Since then, they’d sat in a box in her closet, where keepsakes that didn’t need to be out could be kept.

She pulled out the most recent journal and got as comfortable as she could on the cot, adjusting the pillow against the wall so that she could lean back on it. Her silver pen was where she’d left it in the middle of the book on the page she’d made her last entry. She opened to the page and grabbed the pen, preparing to make a new entry.

March 14, 2013

Two days ago, I died. A boy was afraid and shot me in the chest. Today, I was reborn. Either that, or this is some strange dream and I’m in a hospital bed stuck in a comfortable coma. In which case, this entry won’t even be in my journal, so there’s no reason to apologize for it.

Shifting slightly on the cot, something fell out of the journal and into her lap. She picked up the white square of paper she knew was the back of a photo, and flipped it over. It didn’t take but a moment to realize where in the journal the picture had fallen from. It was of her and Brian, taken probably a decade ago at a family reunion. This was before drugs were even a part of his vocabulary. He looked good.

Birdie smiled sadly, absentmindedly running a finger beside the image of his face. She still missed him every day. Looking at that picture made it all come back to her in a rush; the memories of when he’d still been alive, and the ones from that day in his apartment… finding him.

Quickly, she stuck the photo back into the journal and closed it up, swiping a tear from her eye before it had a chance to fall. She shoved the book back into the drawer and sank down into the bed on her side, willing herself to give in to the exhaustion.

March 25, 2013

This marks the end of day ten in what I’ve come to call the dungeon of Pritchard’s Island. I’ve endured plenty of boot-camps in my time. But I suppose rehabilitating from death should probably qualify as the toughest.

The gaping wound that used to adorn my chest, is now just a scar. It’s only been less than two weeks since I was shot, but it’s true. Emmett says, soon I won’t be able to see it at all. It’s kind of amazing, actually. A touch frightening at the same time. Apparently death is also the fountain of youth for Proprietors.

I learned that Proprietors were, in my own words, a mistake. Some crack scientists hired by the government in the late 1700’s were instructed to create a serum to essentially turn a man into soldier material. Like, super-soldier material, really. There was a controlled group of something like thirty men who were part of the trials. At first, they thought this scientist was a fraud, because nothing happened to the men. The guy got all crazy on them. His lab burned down with all of his work and notes, and he ended up disappearing. But I’m thinking they actually might’ve killed him.

That aside, those men started to get killed on the battlefield. Then they’d wake up in a wooden box while being brought back to their homes for burial. That’s when the military officials decided it was necessary to hide them. There’d be no way to explain the men being brought back to life, aside from witchcraft, in which they’d end up burning them at the stake.

Long story short, not all of the men were able to be contained. The ones who hadn’t died on the battlefield were allowed to go home. I guess they figured that they could come and collect them if they died. They didn’t get so lucky with all of them. And over the centuries, the soldiers they labeled Proprietors were able to elude the military personnel that had been ordered to keep track of them. They obviously went on to have families, their children known now as second-generation. Of course, not all of them had families right away, which explains why I was born just over thirty years ago. The fact that these people are immortal, in a manner of speaking, means they could’ve waited as long as they wanted.