Futuristic under the water, we die

[kindaemissary]

a countdown. a life. a partner.

In a different universe, humans are plagued with the need to find their soulmate once their timer starts counting down. Avery and Anderson meet randomly in a packed place, and their lives begin to change once the clock starts moving forward for the first time. In a race against time, they must overcome odds and find each other before they fade away into dust.

​

 

[kindaemissary]

[IMG='width:238px;']https://www.rpnation.com/gallery/untitled.38495/full[/IMG]

Name: Anderson Richard Riley
Height: 6'1
Weight: 176 lbs
Age: 18 years and two days
Brief Biography: Growing up in the boonies, Anderson cultivated a love for the land growing up and developed labor skills that would make any city man squawk. As a skilled gardener, Anderson has been helping his parents keep their family farm intact after the death of his grandfather about a year ago. Due to his parents always being worried about his ultimate future, and possible demise, he received his bracelet at the tender age of 12 and has been wearing it since. Anderson's watch was customized for him with his initials engraved onto the back.
Personality: When dealing with problems at home or helping his family, Anderson is very good at putting on a brave face and pulling himself together. Externally, that is. He's an internal mess of existential dread and anxiety most of the time, but he's good at fabricating that part of himself so that the outside world can't see how troubled he truly is. His biggest worry in life at this point is that he won't beat the timer, and he'll leave his parents behind to pick up the mess.​

 

[final girl.]

Name: Avery Fallon Barnes
Nicknames: Ava; Avie; Barnes;
Height: Five Foot Five;
Weight: 100 pounds
Age: Seventeen (going on eighteen)
Breif Background: Born the child of a female prostitute and married senator, Avery was the product of an ongoing affair, which ruined the lives of both her mother and father. Her father was fired from his high estate and her mother was left abandoned and heartbroken by the man she once loved. Avery was given to her grandmother and has been living with her since. She was gifted her bracelet once she had turned sixteen and has been wearing it since. The watch is nothing too fancy, and the hands seem to travel backward, well, that was until she turned eighteen, and it started moving forward. || her watch/bracelet
Personality: Avery is very cool, calm, and collected when it comes to stressful situations. She puts a tremendous effort into the things she does and often seems opinionated and belittling to others who don’t know her. She tends to be more realistic and frank opposed to the other dream filled hopeless romantics that she considers her acquaintances.

 

[final girl.]

AVERY BARNES
Location: London Subway Station
Outfit: x

The city of London, Canada, was heavily covered in a thick, adamant layer of snow, to a point that small children could be found buried underneath the mounds of snowflakes. Speaking of snowflakes, flaking through her dirty blonde hair, Avery Barnes trudged forward with her feet to the pavement, facing against the raging, bitter wind. She mumbled something about not being able to feel her fingertips, even through the large wool gloves. Her breath could fog any window and her skin could freeze water particulars in the air into ice.

There was little excitement in Avery’s day, as she was forced to enter the arctic world of the Christmas month, and on her birthday, no less. Her grandmother, Eliza, was all too dismayed to ask her granddaughter to purchase frozen peas for the casserole they would have later tonight, but Avery had agreed to the task. There was only one main outlet in the city, which was located miles from the warm and cozy townhouse. Of course, in the fear that she would crash and possibly injure others in the process, she was not interested in driving across the slippery roads full of tanker trucks and snowboard blowers. To add Avery to the mix would be a disaster. She would somehow wake up from a temporary coma with her car warped around streetlamp.

Her route of transportation?

The subway.

As unappealing as it seemed, there were no rats sitting through trash bins, nor were there homeless begging for money for their families. The government wouldn’t allow such pollutants, as they called them, to destroy the peace of their city. This cruel system was just the top of the iceberg to a horrific heirachy of death and destruction. It can’t be that bad, you’d think. That is, until you watch innocent people crumble to dust. This is what the governer of London liked to call, The Timer.

This timer was unlike any other. Once a mother gives birth, the newborn will have a chip placed into their brain by certified doctors for what they liked to call, testing. These chips supposedly destined your future soul mate, and once coming of age, your tale would begin. In the small city, your other half would be selected and given a specific age in which to meet. Once doing so, the timer gives the two to find each other in the course of seventy-two hours before...

Dust.

I never told you it would be pleasant, did I?

Subway card in hand, Avery tapped her foot against the cold tiled floor, awaiting her turn to slide the plastic piece through the slot to earn permission to enter the station. It was an odd process, to have to wait to be served, to be waited on. Her patience was something that she had a plethora of, luckily. There was nothing that could ruin her, not now. For even when she had almost been tripped by an older man strutting away from the booth, she had stopped him from helping her up and collected herself rather quickly. It was no large scene, but watching a girl stumble over herself in an organized line was just a horrible as her being a single rat in the subway rifling through old bins full of decaying consumables.

Once straightening up, Avery swept the hair from of her eyes and behind her ear, sliding her card through the slot before asking, “One ticket to the east side of London, please?”

 

[kindaemissary]

[IMG='width:495px;']https://www.mtlblog.com/uploads/ce125c87681bc21bf526b0b30a22726a4b6f4507.png_facebook.png[/IMG]​

Anderson Riley wasn't a big fan of the cold or the snow or the holidays, but he pulled himself together every winter because if he got too down around his parents, they'd probably pester him more than they already did. Seasonal depression just layered on top of his already intense existential dread, and he wanted to burrow a hole into the earth and finally reappear when it was warm again.

So no, he wasn't excited to be heading out of town during what was supposed to turn into a snowstorm by nightfall. He was already exhausted, (he was always exhausted), and running all of these out of town errands for his parents was going to put a damper on his evening, especially if he ended up getting stuck somewhere due to the weather.

In the winter, their family shop sold canned and pickled goods, mostly, but his mother made sure to pull out all the stops and keep a healthy rotation of baked goods on the counter. Breads, pies, and cookies decorated most of their shelves around the holidays, and then once they opened in the morning, it seemed like they flew right off the shelf. It was a repeating duty every night for him and his mother to sift flour and wait for bread to rise as his father manned the wood stove in their little general store.

The nights and days were cold, but the sun at least continued to shine bright. Anderson kept his favorite winter sweater in an every other day rotation with his abundance of flannels. Sunglasses on, he walked into the subway station, and they fogged up as he pulled them off.

The winter was the least of his worries, though.

He had turned 18 two days ago, and his mother was very excited. Soon, his watch would halt to a stop and start moving forward for the first time. He'd finally meet his person, his chosen, his soulmate. And while all of that was very exciting, it had to pan out perfectly for it to be a good thing. If something happened, if he was a moment too late, everything would be over.

Bleak, black darkness.

That wasn't too thrilling if Anderson was being honest with himself.

The subway station was packed, and it made sense. It was the holidays, almost, and the transportation center was a hub for trains, subways, and buses. Every single person in London that wanted to travel today had to go through here, and it was just a tad overwhelming.

Just breathe, he told himself. It was easier to say than do.

He reached forward with his subway card and gave it a slide. "One train ticket to Toronto, please."

Anderson took a deep breath and pocketed the train ticket quickly and marched away from the booth. He'd have to wait for about half an hour before the train was ready to depart, so he made himself somewhat comfortable on a bench near platform 8A.

Under his sweater sleeve, his watch had already moved forward four minutes.

 

[kindaemissary]

​

Anderson was a dweller. He dwelled. No more the pertaining circumstance or aura around him, he'd find something to worry about. Luckily, he was one to keep his worries and overthinkings to himself, but that didn't diminish the fact that no matter what the situation was, he'd begin to worry.

There wasn't a lot to worry about with making the trip out to Toronto. He had to get a certain type of sifting flour for his mother and return soon enough for her to use it this evening for tomorrow's batch. It was about a two hour train ride to the Northeast, but it wasn't too bad. He had head phones, his cell phone, and a book on tape that he had been meaning to listen to when he wasn't so busy. At least today, he'd have around four hours to put a good dent in this book before returning back home to the crazy.

No, the only real thing that could go wrong would be coming into contact with his soulmate.

When he was a child, the stories were all cute and happy with happy endings. There were no stories that told of the tales of those who didn't make it time. Those who perished into dust before their loved ones' eyes. Those who didn't live a few days past their eighteenth birthday. And Anderson was already two days past, and that was making him more anxious than normal.

Almost anxious enough to not hear what the young woman asked next to him.

Almost.

"Oh, it's across the way. A few stops down."

She had bright hair, big eyes, and had quite a petite figure. They were probably around the same age. He wondered if she had met her soulmate already. If her timer had stopped, and her future had begun in full swing. Maybe she had days left, like him, and were just waiting for the end of the world to come crashing down around her.

He pulled himself from his thoughts and pointed towards a large Christmas tree a couple hundred feet away. "It should be near that tree," he offered. "I think all of the subway stops are on that side of the building."

Anderson didn't like the subway. He'd rather ride in a public transport bus, or even a school bus, if it meant that he didn't have to go underground. His train to Toronto might have been underground when it left and entered the station, but once it began moving, it was flush with the earth with plenty of windows to see out. No claustrophobia, no weird dark spots in the middle of the day.

And the trains had food options that even the nicest subway couldn't offer.

"Short trip?" he asked. "Since you're using the subway."

 

[final girl.]

Avery nodded, following the young man’s finger in the direction of a large, faux snow-covered Christmas tree. It was decked in festive ornaments and had lights large enough to blind the United States just south of them. Even after the holidays, the tree always seemed decorated for whatever the occasion was. During the spring, there would be large paper maple leaves scattered about the pine branches. It was a sight to behold, really. Something Avery had grown up with.

Not only did the tree represent the traditions in life, but also the turning of a new leaf. The government had been in turmoil for quite some time now, but just thirty years ago. The Soul Mate System was created. Guiding those to that one perfect match they had dreamed of, yearned for. But, with little information to run on, and even less time to find them, only the most keen and alert participants would succeed.

It was a system Avery had tried to get behind, but with the fear she would fall in love with someone not assigned her soulmate was... heart wrenching. There was so many things she wanted to do, to see, to experience. It was skimming across her fingertips, begging the days to quicken until she would turn that magical, cursed number. Eighteen. And now in doing so, she was more stressed than she had ever been before. The constant nagging of her grandmother didn’t help.

She couldn’t name how many times she had thought up her dream prince, as Avery would call it when she was younger. Dancing around the house with her imaginary partner, clad in her grandmother’s large clothes and pearls, she thought herself to be a fairytale. Occasionally, she would dance with her grandmother, listening as she spout off stories of how she had fallen in love before the government was involved.

She’d been delusional.

How? Well, that had been years ago, really. She had grown older than what she had been. There was other things to be done, casserole ingredients to be delivered. She blinked at the boy for another moment longer, feeling like it was rude to stare at a complete stranger.

“Thank you, I’ve only been underground once, really,“ Avery continued, swinging the cardboard grocery bag farther onto her shoulder, inching closer toward station 2B. “As for my trip, I suppose that forty-five minutes of lazing about is short.”

 

[kindaemissary]

​

Anderson had always thought that life would have been easier if he had a sibling, but now that he's older, he doubted that it would help. It would give his parents another helper, for sure, but there was always that chance that one or both wouldn't make their deadline in time and then she'd be out both children.

It would have put a lot less pressure on Anderson, now, because he was always so worried that everything at home would fall apart without him. His Aunt Margaery had died before he was even born, and his mother didn't have the chance to grow up with her older sister. Anderson was mostly scared of giving her that same pain all over again.

Most of the soul mates that Anderson knew growing up were in love, became parents, and raised a family together. There were a few, though, that didn't quite end up fulfilling their romantic destiny. There was a "couple" at his school - they were both teachers - that had never had children, and, if the rumors were true, had separate rooms. He worried that that was the future in store for him.

"I've taken the subway a few times," he offered. "But it's not that clean. I'd rather take a bus."

Anderson was pretty bad at small talk, but he managed. He'd have conversations with strangers if he had to, but they were mostly customers at the shop and they pretty much just talked about what they wanted to buy or where something was located in the store.

"At least your ride is pretty short," he said. "I'll be bored for a good two hours on my way out." He looked at the ETA screen ten or or feet away, and felt relief with his train arriving early. Toronto train boards in 7 minutes.

"I should probably get my stuff together." Anderson gestured towards the sign and pushed his coat down into his duffle bag. It wasn't a long trip, but the weather this time of year was uncontrollable, and he didn't want to be stranded up there with nothing clean to wear for days.