Synopsis
Cold, pale, and in the dark, Fret Greyl crashes back to waking life, inside a 3' x 5’ cylindrical container. She tears off the mask fastened to her mouth and cries out for help. Others are out there, trapped in the same scenario, including her ex, John Schimdt.
From her tiny cell, Fret commiserates with the other captives; together they piece together what happened. A global plague called Coral had been ravaging Earth. This invasive fungus swept from one continent to the next with incredible speed, infecting all living things. Offret had been a parasitologist, obsessed with developing new ways to control the life-form. Her work could have saved millions, but before she could complete it, she was imprisoned by an unknown abductor.
We soon learn that the other captives, however, are willing participants. Each of them signed up for VASE, a life-suspending preservation program intended to slow Coral growth in those affected. And now these guinea pigs, in varying stages of the disease, await the promised cure from the future.
As Offret begins to witness her neighbouring cellmates being released and executed, she sees who’s responsible: a faceless, armoured attendant who seems to run the facility. As more people are taken away, Offret tries desperately to escape. From the inside, she tears apart her container, but it’s a futile act. She’s next up. The attendant takes her to be processed.
From this point on, we witness events through the perspective of a new character—Gold, another armoured attendant. Gold is charged with maintenance and the merciless task of destroying the infected prisoners. As the remaining humans await their death, we learn of how John had deceived Fret during their final days in the old world. Fret had wanted to rescue the human race; John sought to escape it. But he could not go into the future without his love. So he found a way to take her along—against her will.
When Gold comes for John, who’s hopelessly disease- ridden, he isn’t taken to be destroyed like the others. Violating all authority, the attendant risks her own fate and allows him to escape. John soon learns the reason why. His rescuer, Gold, is Fret, now a new hybrid being clad in a Coral-resistant exo-skeleton. In a painful procedure, she encases her ex in the same alloy-based synthetic flesh, forever imprisoning him with his incurable fungal counterpart.
In this new world, Fret and John may both have the fate they once desired. John is granted back his life, but not safe harbour, as Gold exiles her once-lover to the exterior beyond the facility, a Coral-terraformed new world. Now seemingly in charge of the quarantined facility, Fret returns to her true love, studying the godlike, new inheritor of earth.