Hitori Nojima: Death Stranding: The Official Novelization, Volume Two

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.”