May We Meet Again Update

MWMA Ch. 15 on FFn

MWMA Ch. 15 on AO3

MWMA Ch. 15 on Stars

MWMA Ch. 15 on Wattpad 

Everything was secured and Charlie was in the command center, preparing for our departure. I was strapped in, squeezed in between Carlisle and Aro's orphaned son, Demetri. Demetri's hand was in mine as I tried not to cry. To be honest, it was a losing battle with tears welling. I stared, unseeingly at the bulkhead in the surgical bay.

"Swan to Ark Station, thrusters will deploy in T-minus five minutes," Charlie's disembodied voice said through the intercom system. "Make sure everyone is strapped in." There was a pause and he let out a breath. "May we meet again …"

"May we meet again," I whispered back. "We will find each other again, Charlie." My eyes fluttered shut as tears streaked down my cheeks, the battle lost. "I love you …"

Carlisle took my hand, squeezing my fingers. "We'll figure out a way to get Charlie down to the Ground. I promise you," he murmured. "We did not spend hours and all of our blood stores to put him back together for him to die of hypoxia."

"How can we do that? It's not like there's rockets to get up to the outer ring when we get down to the surface," I hissed angrily. "He's going to die up here."

"We have the most brilliant minds on the Ark, we can figure something out," Carlisle soothed.

"T-minus one minute," Charlie announced. "Ren, hug our baby girl for me."

"I will," I replied, even though he couldn't hear me. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine Charlie in the command center, preparing the Ark for its final departure and descent to the Ground. As the engines roared to life, I slipped my arms around Demetri, providing him comfort when all I wanted was my husband's arms around me giving me comfort.

"Ten … nine … eight … seven … six … five … four … three … two … one … launch," Charlie counted.

May We Meet Again Teaser

 Everything was secured and Charlie was in the command center, preparing for our departure. I was strapped in, squeezed in between Carlisle and Aro's orphaned son, Demetri. Demetri's hand was in mine as I tried not to cry. To be honest, it was a losing battle with tears welling. I stared, unseeingly at the bulkhead in the surgical bay.

"Swan to Ark Station, thrusters will deploy in T-minus five minutes," Charlie's disembodied voice said through the intercom system. "Make sure everyone is strapped in." There was a pause and he let out a breath. "May we meet again …"

"May we meet again," I whispered back. "We will find each other again, Charlie." My eyes fluttered shut as tears streaked down my cheeks, the battle lost. "I love you …"

Carlisle took my hand, squeezing my fingers. "We'll figure out a way to get Charlie down to the Ground. I promise you," he murmured. "We did not spend hours and all of our blood stores to put him back together for him to die of hypoxia."

"How can we do that? It's not like there's rockets to get up to the outer ring when we get down to the surface," I hissed angrily. "He's going to die up here."

"We have the most brilliant minds on the Ark, we can figure something out," Carlisle soothed.

"T-minus one minute," Charlie announced. "Ren, hug our baby girl for me."

May We Meet Again Update

MWMA Ch. 12 on FFn

MWMA Ch. 12 on AO3

MWMA Ch. 12 on Stars

MWMA Ch. 12 on Wattpad

“According to Sinclair, the outer most parts of the Ark will most likely be where it breaks apart,” I said, reading off the tablet. “Take everything from these storage containers and bring them down to the promenade. These are medical supplies. They need to be tacked down to protect the contents inside.”

“Yes, Dr. Swan,” said Angela Weber. She held her baby in a sling, picking up a smaller container.

In the madness, I gave her baby a booster of its pain shot, along with the medications Bella had promised her. I was sitting on the floor, taking inventory of what we needed to take as opposed to what we wanted to take.

“Dr. Swan, we have some bins of extra clothing,” said a male voice. “Keep?”

“Yes, keep. We don’t know when or if we can make new clothes. Those can be brought to the dining hall,” I explained. “Thank you.”

“No problem, Dr. Swan,” he said, grabbing a few guys to carry the bins to the dining hall.

I worked for another hour until my communicator chimed from my pocket. Pulling it out, I saw a message from Charlie to meet him in the command center. I handed off my task to Alec, who had just come from a shift in medical and went to the command center. The surviving members of the council were already there, gathered around the center console with Sinclair. I walked over to the console, giving my husband a kiss on the cheek and nodding to the rest of the council. “When are we going to begin our descent?”

“We need one more orbit to line everything up. We’ll be landing about five miles from Mount Weather. At least, that’s where we project where we’ll land,” Sinclair explained, pointing on a map.

“And the Ark?” Charlie asked.

“After we disengage from the center ring, we’ll use thrusters to push us into the atmosphere. I’m not going to lie … it’s going to be a bumpy ride, but we’ll have control. I’ve linked the command center and the thrusters to a console in medical to allow me to pilot the Ark down to the ground. My main concern is, of course, where the Ark will break apart,” Sinclair frowned.

Dr. Alec Foster

Chancellor Charlie Swan

Dr. Carlisle Cullen

Esme Cullen

Commander Marcus Blake

Dr. Renee Swan

Chief Engineer Sinclair

May We Meet Again Teaser

 In medical, I was working alongside Carlisle to patch up and fix the survivors. Broken bones, lacerations and contusions flooded medical. There were a few severe injuries, which we monitored closely. To be honest, we didn’t want to perform surgery when the gravity was on the fritz. The engineers, including my husband, were working to fix the Ark, but it was a fruitless endeavor.

It was beyond all repairs. Also, the computer engineers and security officers were trying to break Aro’s encryption code, but it was a fruitless endeavor at the moment. We couldn’t do anything until we had complete control of the Ark.

“Time of death,” Carlisle muttered, closing Daniel Hale’s eyes, “Thirteen twenty-five.”

“Damn it,” I sneered, shaking my head. “I thought he had a chance.”

“A pulmonary embolus dislodged and traveled to his brain,” Carlisle answered grimly. “It was a ticking time bomb, only a matter of …” He covered the body with a sheet.

Sighing, I walked over to Daniel, murmuring a prayer of peace and goodbye. His wife had died in the initial destruction of the Ark, thanks to the departure of the Exodus ship. Daniel, despite being battered and bruised, carried his shattered wife to medical, only to collapse in grief when we pronounced her dead. He never regained consciousness, joining her in eternal rest.

The lights flickered before coming on fully, along with all the computer consoles.

The comm system beeped and a voice filtered through the Ark. “This is Chief Engineer Sinclair. We’ve broken through encryption and have gained eighty-five percent control of what’s remaining of the Ark. Chancellor Swan and Vice Chancellor Cullen, please report to the command center.”

Carlisle looked at me, taking off his surgical gear. “I’ll get Dr. Foster to come down here and help with the injuries,” he explained. “When you’re done, get Esme and join us in the command center. You’ve got about an hour or two until you get everyone here.”

“Go,” I urged, practically pushing him out the door.

He left and I worked with the nurses to treat the wounded. Alec came in with Esme with more injured. We worked together to help them, but we were quickly running out of medications and farm station, which held all of our medicinal herbs and such, was one of the casualties of Aro’s madness.

Chief Engineer Sinclair

May We Meet Again Teaser

 Seated next to my still recuperating husband, I looked at the agenda for the council meeting. It revolved around Aro’s involvement in what happened to my husband and why he was injured so egregiously. We still couldn’t find proof, a link that Aro was behind this assassination attempt.

Aro was still confined to his quarters, but we’d interviewed his wife and child to see if they had any information. His wife, Sulpulcia, refused to answer any questions. She claimed spousal privilege. That might have worked in the old world, but those rights were no longer recognized. So, she was placed in the prison and her child, a ten-year-old boy named Demetri, was placed in Carlisle and Esme’s care.

Charlie wearily called the meeting to order. He was easily tired because he hadn’t allowed himself time to heal. “I know call this council meeting to order. The items on the agenda revolve around Vice Chancellor Aro Volturi. Do we have any new information regarding his involvement in what happened the day I was shot?” Charlie asked.

“Vice Chancellor Volturi worked closely with Warden Pike and the more conservative members of the Ark. We’re working with members in the command center to trace their steps prior to Warden Pike’s and Officer Halsted’s execution,” Marcus explained, arching a brow at Charlie.

“I know I reacted hastily, but he was going to float my wife,” Charlie snarled, pounding his hand on the council table. “Halsted was going to rape my daughter and my wife! They needed to pay.”

I bit back my spiteful retort. Charlie was ready to float our daughter. He only acted after he heard about what Halsted was going to do, thanks to the recording that Edward made.

There was a chirp on my communicator. I pulled it out, seeing a message from Esme. Charlie doesn’t look good. Too pale. Should he be handling all this stress?

“Charlie,” I interrupted, placing a hand on his arm. His skin was clammy. “I think that we need to investigate further before we can continue searching for proof that Aro had a hand in your attack. Your pulse is racing and you’re running a fever. You need to appoint a Vice Chancellor to take over in case something does happen to you.”

“Are you speaking as my wife or as a member of the council?” Charlie asked.

“I’m speaking to you as a physician,” I pressed. “You have a couple of options for Vice Chancellor that we’ve provided for you. You’re worthless to us if you’re dead and there’s no one to succeed you other than Aro Volturi, who will surely kill us all.”

“I second Dr. Swan’s concern,” Carlisle pressed. “Who is going to be Vice Chancellor?”

“Looking at the votes from when Chancellor Swan was elected, you came in third, Dr. Cullen,” said Eleazar Sartori, the representative from Farm Station.

“Fine, Carlisle, you’re Vice Chancellor,” Charlie said, waving his hand. He blinked up at me and I saw his exhaustion in his dark brown eyes. He huffed out a sigh. “Do we have a motion for …”

“I move to appoint Dr. Carlisle Edward Cullen to become Vice Chancellor,” Marcus said.

“Second,” Eleazar nodded.

“All those who approve?” Charlie asked. We all raised our hands. “Opposed? Abstention? Okay … congrats, Carlisle.” He leaned back against his chair, looking much older than his forty-five years.

May We Meet Again Update

MWMA Ch. 2 on FFn

MWMA Ch. 2 on AO3

MWMA Ch. 2 on Stars

MWMA Ch. 2 on Wattpad

“We need to figure this out,” Dr. Renee Swan growled, scrubbing her face. She looked so drawn, exhausted … all because I was doing my job. I should have left well-enough alone. This is your fault, Cullen. All your fault. Renee shot up, stopping my self-loathing. She paced angrily, clenching her hands into tight fists. “In three months, my husband is dead set on floating my daughter. On killing our child. All because he wants to make an example of her.” Her voice cracked with her hands flying to her face. “I can’t lose her. I can’t lose my sweet baby girl.”

“What did she say the last time you were granted a meeting with her? When you were last able to visit her?” my father asked. Renee choked out a sob and my mother scurried over to her, hugging her tightly. My father was getting frustrated, blinking to me. “Can you get Renee in again? It’s important for Renee to talk to Bella. We need more.”

“I’m trying, but the warden is a staunch supporter of the Chancellor,” I explained. “What Charlie Swan says is law according to Warden Pike. If Bella is in solitary confinement for her own protection, she is in solitary confinement. No outside visitors or interaction with the other prisoners.” When I worked in the prison, I visited Bella and each day, she lost more of the life in her eyes. It sparked slightly when I brought her food, but that flash of emotion was hatred for me.

Yeah, I don’t blame you for hating me. I hate me, too. This is my fault.

“I cannot believe Charlie,” Renee snapped, shrugging off my mother’s embrace. She stomped to the window and stared, sightlessly outside. Crossing her arms over her chest, she continued, “Our quarters are quite tense. I’ve taken to sleeping in Bella’s room. It’s the only way I can be close to her. He tried to convince me to come back to our room, but I said that I wouldn’t come back to him until he acted like a father and not as a Chancellor when it came to Bella. If I could, I’d leave him. But, he’s more concerned about fucking optics.”

“I miss Chancellor Molina,” my mother muttered, sitting down on the couch. “She had compassion. Hell, it was her compassion that prevented my death.”

“Because you did nothing wrong, my love,” Dad said, caressing her cheek. “You were attacked by an animal who got his just desserts. He hurt you and took away your choice. He paid for what he did to you with his life.”

“If Charlie was in charge, he probably would have floated Esme,” Renee grumbled, crossing back to the table, and picking up the tablet. She angrily swiped at it, shaking her head. “Ugh! We’re missing something. Bella told me to look at the oxygen scrubbers and the correlation between the increased hypoxia cases. What did she see that we’re not?!”

“What’s hypoxia?” I asked, my ears flaming with embarrassment. “I’m not a doctor and …”

“Apologies, son. Hypoxia is where you’re not getting enough oxygen to your vital systems,” Dad responded. His eyes scanned his tablet, trying to make sense of the numbers on the screen. “But, according to the computers, the scrubbers are working fine. I think?”

“It’s all gibberish to me,” Mom said, shaking her head. “I can teach simple algebraic equations, but that is …”

I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Let’s back up. What are the symptoms of hypoxia? And what happens to a person who has to deal with this condition long term?” I pressed. “Obviously, Bella is concerned about this if she’s adamant that something is wrong with the oxygen scrubbers and recyclers, causing hypoxia or whatever.”

“Symptoms include headaches, shortness of breath, a bluish tint to the skin, cough, confusion, and a slowing heart rate. If it continues for some time, people can lose their sight, with decreased blood flow to their extremities, causing them to turn gangrenous and, if untreated, they will eventually die,” Renee answered. Snapping her fingers, she looked back at her tablet. “Wait, let’s look at the trending cases of hypoxia. Where are they all located?”

“D-Block and E-Block,” Dad answered, reading from his tablet. “The inhabitants who are furthest away from promenade.”

“And the quarters that are packed to the gills,” I offered. “There are two to three families living in a room half this size.”

“I think I get what she’s trying to say,” Renee said. She pulled up another file on her tablet. “Holy shit, the oxygen scrubbers and recyclers are not providing enough oxygen to those locations on the Ark. It was buried deep within the environmental systems files. Carlisle, you wouldn’t have been able to see it. Hell, I wouldn’t have been able to see it. I had to use Charlie’s access codes.”

“The Chancellor’s office is covering this up,” I frowned.

Council Chamber

Dr. Renee Swan

Edward Cullen

Dr. Carlisle Cullen

Chancellor Charlie Swan

Prison aboard The Ark

Alice

Emmett McCarty

Jasper Whitlock

May We Meet Again Update

May We Meet Again Ch. 1 on FFn

May We Meet Again Ch. 1 on AO3

May We Meet Again Ch. 1 on Stars

May We Meet Again Ch. 1 on Wattpad

“This cannot be right,” I grumbled, reading the reports about the oxygen recyclers while in my quarters. I swiped on the tablet, putting more dates for more data. “No!”

“What is it, Bells?” Rosalie Hale asked. She blinked up at me, her hazel eyes swirling with concern. She was my best friend. Her hair was long and blonde, shimmering like liquid gold. Her body was slender, but sexy. She did not look like an engineer, a trained mechanic, her job on the Ark. She looked like a … what were they called? Oh, right, a supermodel from before the bombs. “You’ve got that look.”

“What look?” I asked.

“That look where you’ve got the furrow between your brows and you look like the world is about explode,” Rose snorted. She arched a perfectly sculpted brow. “Talk to me.”

“Take a look at these oxygenation levels across the Ark,” I said, pushing the tablet to Rose. “Not to mention the CO2 levels in engineering section.”

“These numbers are not good,” Rose muttered. “Have there been an increase of … what’s that called where you don’t get enough oxygen?”

“Hypoxia,” I answered absently. “When I’m on shift with Dr. Cullen or my mom, I haven’t seen any increased patients with hypoxia. But, I’ve been working in the lab with Alec. We’re working with farm station to improve fertilizers, increasing the yield of the crops.”

“Can you access the medical records? You are a doctor in training,” Rose said, scowling at the reports.

“I am, but I cannot access a patient’s records without their expressed consent and only while I’m working on them. The only people who have access to everyone’s medical records are my mother and Dr. Cullen because they’re in charge of the medical ward,” I explained. “Do you have any ideas why the numbers are so shitty?”

“The oxygen scrubbers are nearly a hundred years old, Bells,” Rose said. “They need massive repairs and overhauls, but we don’t have the means to fix them. We need to space walk in order to fix them, but the suits are falling into disrepair. The best suit has an oxygen supply of about an hour. The walk would take at least twenty times that length to repair the scrubbers. To put it simply, there are too many people on the Ark and the Ark is falling apart.”

“If you had the materials to repair the oxygen scrubbers and we increased our production of crops, could this be fixable?” I asked, biting my lower lip. “I mean, this is our home.”

“This place is a rust bucket that was on its last legs when the stations linked together on Unity Day,” Rose deadpanned. “We’ve been putting band aids on bullet holes. This place is hemorrhaging in broken systems. We don’t see it much here, but on the lower levels and in the prison ward? Environmental systems are working overtime to keep the corridors heated and artificial gravity functioning. It’s in those sections that … people are dealing with low oxygen in their systems. What is called again?”

“Hypoxia,” I frowned. “What can we do?”

“We don’t have to do anything. This is for your father and counsel to figure out,” Rose argued, swiping my tablet from my hands. “We have bigger fish to fry … like the Unity Day celebration with all of the council members and their families. I’ve been eager to lay my eyes on some fresh meat.”

“I thought you were with Tyler Crowley,” I said.

“We broke up,” Rose huffed. “I caught him with that skank, Jessica Stanley. If she didn’t have the birth control shot, she’d be pregnant a hundred times over. He was pounding into her like an animal, and she loved it.”

“Ewwww,” I shuddered, wrinkling my nose. “This is why I’m single and plan on staying that way.”

Dr. Bella Swan

Edward Cullen

Rosalie Hale

Alec

Alice

Dr. Carlisle Cullen

Esme Cullen