Despite the warmth of the day, Piper wrapped herself tight in her favorite knit shawl. It seemed with every passing day, she became more and more and more useless. Her wizened body barely managed to keep herself sitting upright anymore.

  Her son-in-law had brought her down to the garden with him while he worked. She had never imagined that she would live to be so old that she would become a burden. When had she become a thing that needed to be cared for, rather than the one doing the caring?

  After all she had done, all that she had gone through, to ensure her family’s survival and safety, she should have appreciated being able to rest now, to hand over the reins to the younger generation.

  Yet, part of her still wanted to protect them, not just from the troubles of the world, but from the terrible things you had to do in the name of security. The impossible choices she had to make had worn her down more than any physical demand. She deserved to rest, she told herself again. Let others carry the burden of those hard decisions.

  She shivered and pulled her shawl tighter. Alex, her son-in-law, smiled at her from his perch on a ladder, high among the flowering branches of a scraggly orange tree.

  “Are you all right, Gram?”

  Everyone had taken to calling her Gram after her first grandchild had been born. It somehow both pleased and annoyed her at the same time. After so long, she still hadn’t make her up mind if she liked it or not. “Yes, yes I’m fine… it’s just a little cool in the shade.”

  “I could move you into a sunnier spot, if you’d like?” He offered.

  “I’ll just be too hot, then. Don’t worry about me. Do your work.” She commanded, and he obeyed. Perhaps looking a little bemused as he went back to the painstaking task of hand pollinating each blossom to ensure a good harvest.

  It never failed to annoy her that people found her orders to be “cute”, as if she had somehow aged backward and was now an imperious child, too well loved to be put in her place, but also never taken seriously.

  Elsewhere in the garden, a group of children— mostly her own grandchildren, or possibly her great-grandchildren, Piper was never sure these days, listened intently to a young woman explain how to grow and care for the plants. Seed packets and little pots of seedlings lay strewn about them. They would be planting radishes at their young age. Radishes were very easy to grow and children needed to start off on the right foot with an esteem boosting success.

  She didn’t recognize the woman. Not one of her children, too young. A grandchild? Or maybe she was from one of the other families? She sighed. It didn’t matter, and if she asked, she would only forget and need to ask again. It embarrassed her that she could no longer keep track of the people in her community.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Could she be an outsider? When was the last time they had taken in anyone new? Would anybody bother to tell her if they had? She snorted to herself. Of course they wouldn’t. They’d keep the new people away from her because she was a suspicious old woman who would only make a fuss.

  A vague itching sensation at the base of her neck distracted her from her growing frustration and anger at what her life had been reduced to. She rubbed at the spot.

  The false skin there felt ragged and rough with age. Once it had blended into her natural skin seamlessly, hiding the external port of the implant she had received so very many years ago when she had been a soldier at Fort Rollins. So young and full of fire back then. Ready to fight and die, but not understanding what that really meant yet.

  For years she had barely thought of the thing, a relic of a past long gone and better forgotten. Lately, though, the skin around it had become irritated and bothersome. She was sure it couldn’t be the implant itself. That had been dealt with decades ago. They could not risk having live implants after all that happened at Fort Rollins.

  After she had met Miguel. After she had learned what it meant to stand for something. She smiled at the thought of him while her heart ached at the same time.

  Another twinge pulled her from her memories. Maybe she should have someone look at it, make sure there wasn’t some sort of infection or a rash.

  She winced as a sharper pain spread along the base of her skull.

  “Gram, you ok?

  No, she was not ok. She was old, and she was tired, and now she was in pain too. She glared at him until another stab of pain contorted her face.

  It felt like electricity sparking off her nerves as it shot through her skull. Her fingers tingled with the sensation of a thousand pins sticking into them. She needed her daughter, Mirabel. This wasn’t a rash. It wasn’t the patch.

  “Gram!” Alex was already at her side. When had he come down the ladder?

  “It’s not the patch,” she said

  “What do you mean, what’s not the patch?” He looked around for help, or maybe he thought she meant the garden patch. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Get Mirabel!”

  Her head throbbed with every syllable of his shout. Yes, Mirabel, her daughter. She would know what to do if anyone did. She knew about the old implants. Piper had to tell her because she was their doctor, or at least the closet thing to a doctor they had here.

  Old secrets and memories that would have been best forgotten ran rampant through her mind. They would haunt her to the very end, it seemed.

  A familiar sensation, a feeling of disconnect, and otherness, flooded her senses, pushing the memories away. A sense of calm control took over.

  It can’t be…

  She had broken it, ruined it.

  She looked into Alex’s panic-stricken eyes. She wanted to tell him, warn him, but her voice failed her. His lips moved but she could hear nothing but the static in her own head.

  Whatever happened now, Piper couldn’t help, couldn’t shoulder the responsibility, couldn’t make the hard decisions. They were on their own.

  Each breath became more labored than the next. Her eyes slipped closed, and when they finally fluttered open again, the garden was gone.

  Enveloped in darkness, unsteady on her feet, she waited for eyes to grow used to the lack of light. Details emerged, first the blinking lights… red, green, white, yellow, as if the shadows were filled with all manner of electronics, each blinking its power and usage status into the void.

  Next, the space revealed itself to be a large room carved out of solid rock. A cave, maybe, but one that had no passage in or out.

  A silken voice from the shadows spoke. “Hello, Piper. It's been awhile...”