One Mistake

"Access key—" Mary kicked in the door. Steam enveloped her as she entered the reactor. Lights flickered overhead. The rattling clank of her footsteps on the grated stairs penetrated the steam and reverberated off the concrete latticework overhead. After what felt like ages running through the barren corridors, Mary reached the core-access room. The door was jammed open when she arrived.

The reactor core's base was suspended on one side of the room. A humanoid robot walked into a wall covered in various electronic panels and screens on the opposite side.

A loud BANG erupted from Mary's gun. The robot clattered to the ground. The concrete walls echoed the deafening bang of the remaining five rounds Mary fired into its body on the floor. A click signified Mary was unable to shoot the pile of wires and casing as much as she wanted to. She holstered her gun. One of the screens displayed a readout of each fuel assembly in the reactor core. One of the assemblies had been damaged which prevented the others from being powered down. She walked over to the core and removed the damaged assembly. Small, silvery pellets leaked from the cladding and clattered onto the ground. Her device screeched. She checked it.

I will be fine as long as I don't take too long to clean this up.

*Reactor 1 offline*

She dumped the damaged assembly alongside its leaked contents into a nearby tank filled with a clear liquid she thought was water.

A blue-white flash erupted from the mixture. Her device screeched much louder than before. Mary kicked over the tank and ran. The pellets and assembly scattered across the floor, the liquid pushed them further away as it flooded the room. The screeching died down.

Once outside the facility, Mary’s ears buzzed with static as pain shot through the entirety of her body but she pushed onward. “I… can… not… die… here.” She weakly forced out a string of words barely sure of what they meant. Her muscles felt her burning flesh sliding with each movement. She summited the hill, a feat which used most of her remaining energy. Everything blurred, as though a swatch of colors had been smeared against the sky’s canvas. Every ounce of Mary’s being struggled to move even one leg forward. She tripped. Her body ragdolled down the hill. A muffled sound broke her confusion. A blurred face leaned over her.

“Mary!” Lena paused. “Mary!”

Mary coughed. Red specks fell onto her face.

“Mary! Please! get up!”

Mary tried to move but retched instead. Blood pooled beneath her.

Lena was sobbing as she shook Mary. “Please.” She sniffled. “You can’t die.”

Mary could feel her skin being held in place by her clothing. She knew she had already lost too much blood. “I… am… sorry… Lena.”

Lena patted Mary “I...it’ll be okay, e...everything will be okay. I... I just need to go get help.” Lena wore a panicked look beneath her tears. “See you later Mary, I’ll be back with help. Right. I just need to get help from the doctors and everything will be fixed.” Lena waved as she left.

The fox-like creature’s form reconstituted as it walked towards Mary. Mary wanted to speak but her throat refused to listen, even the words in her brain were a jumbled mess. Darkness overtook reality.

———————————————————————————————————————

Mary woke up, she was still in the forest. “Lena?” She looked around.

The fox-like creature appeared in front of her. “She isn’t here, nor would she even be able to see you, let alone hear you if she was.”

A polychromatic orb encircled Mary. She looked down at her corpse. “Is this what happens after death?”

"Not normally. I chose to intervene because I have a favor to ask. I’m not supposed to even be in your world in the first place.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want because right now being dead is not looking like a bad thing?”

“I’m having beef with some…” the creature cleared its throat. Ethereal hands made a pleading gesture. “I need a hero to aid me on my quest to stop a global conflict from destroying nature in a world I’ve been watching over.” The creature donned obviously fake puppy dog eyes.

“Would I be able to see Lena again?”

“Possibly, it depends on how the fates weave their thread, or if I manage to successfully browbeat them into doing what I want for a change, That is of course assuming those old fools are actually capable of predicting anything, they’ve missed quite a few times you know.”

Mary glared at the creature. “I was asking you a yes or no question.”

“Take it from a professional such as myself, you need to lighten up a bit, but to put things more clearly, I will do what I can, within reason, to make sure you will be able to see her again; however, when it comes to the future no promises can be made.”

"If no promises can be made when it comes to the future, how did you know I was going to die?" Her gaze intensified.

"I knew how the facility would react to that device entering it. I knew from reading your soul how you would react to the cards that were already on the table."

"If you knew why did you not do anything?"

"I prefer not to interfere when possible. You know, on account of how I'm not supposed to be here and all."

Mary tapped on the orb surrounding her. A white circle radiated outward from the impact. "Why did you trap me here?"

"It made keeping your soul intact and in place simple." The creature sighed. "Look I know you have a lot of questions, but I need an answer now. Do you want to save nature in another world or not?"

“I will do it, I will do what I can to protect nature.”

“Good girl.” Much to Mary’s chagrin, the creature also patted her soul’s head. “I will now transfer your soul from this world to a less peaceful one. Just treat your new body better than you treated this one, it isn’t easy making a fully functioning human without even the semblance of a soul that you could also put another soul into. Or don’t. It’s up to you and it really wasn’t that hard to do.”

“I have one more question before you do what you are going to do: If you are so powerful, why do you need my help with this other world?”

The creature’s expression darkened beyond what could be seen in the ocean’s depths. Red splotches grew on the creature’s fur. “I was never able to clean the blood from my paws.” A sea of crimson and offal crashed over the two.