Tragic Backstory!
She wasn’t supposed to be there. She was an investigative journalist, not a physicist. But Johnny was the closest thing she had to family and had been dying to show her his project. So she took some time off work and flew out to middle-of-nowhere Nevada to check out his station. It’d been an expensive project, five years in the making, and even more time spent on research. They’d had two successful trials already, after this one they would finally be able to submit their findings as fact and begin to develop more stations to take advantage of this power source. There were some more science-y ways to explain it, but at the time those all went over her head. All she knew was that some of the brightest minds in the world were there to oversee this final test.
Now they were all dead.
She should be dead too.
When the fail safes failed and everything had gone to shit Ren had been convinced that she was going to die. Screaming sirens and shouting scientists couldn’t drown out the howling coming from the fusion reactor below them. However little she knew about creating plasma, she knew it wasn’t supposed to sound like that.
Then the sirens stopped screaming, and the people started.It had swept through her like fire. Burning through her flesh and bones, through every fiber of her being, through her very soul… and left nothing but a charred husk on the floor.
…
A lifetime later she pried her eyes open, the pounding in her head matching the throbbing in the rest of her body. Everything hurt. Her throat felt like sandpaper and her skin wasn’t much better, everything felt hot and dry and rough and far too much for her senses right now. But all physical concerns faded once her eyes finally focused.All the others were on the ground like her, but they weren’t moving. Worse, most of them were almost unrecognizable, their limbs looked like charcoal, and their bodies contorted in pain. Across the room she spotted him, his corpse staring over her head.
Johnny
Using what remained of her strength she dragged herself over to him, hands clawing into the floor when the rest of her body refused to cooperate. She could feel as her burnt nails cracked on the broken concrete. It didn’t matter. She was already in pain. And Johnny was right there, not responding as she called his name, her voice catching in her throat. She grabbed his shoulder, and a charred piece of his shirt – or was it his skin – fell off. She choked on a sob and leaned herself against the wall, lowering his head onto her lap. She almost couldn’t recognize it. His brilliant green eyes were faded and empty, his hair charred to the scalp, and his face was frozen in a look of pure agony.
Raindrops hit his face… that wasn’t right, even through the broken ceiling all she could see was blue sky. Oh. Ren was crying. Sobbing actually, now that she bothered to notice. She could hardly breathe, and what little air passed her lips only formed his name.
Johnny, she whispered, and it felt like a scream.
Over and over she cried nothing but his name. Her lips cracked and bled and her voice faded but she never let go of his body. Not as her vision began to fade. Not as she ran out of the energy to cry. Not even as she lost consciousness.
When they finally came to inspect the wreckage the rescuers found her there. The only living soul in that building, cradling the body of the man she had considered her brother. Not one burn on her.