Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER)

vanished.
    The world’s gone, but someone will always salute.
    Ed used to find comfort in that brand of order. Hell, it helped him lead a group of Guardsmen on Black Island — soldiers who he saw earn their stripes on some harrowing missions into the center of the city’s slippery black heart. But now that Ed was away from a leadership role, he found himself thinking back on the past few years, and how power created two things above all else: corruption and sheep.
    Dolph stopped in front of Ed and Brent. He looked them up and down with cold blue eyes. His badge read, “Jung.”
    “Is this them?” he turned to Lisa, his voice edged with Swiss.
    “Yes, sir.”
    He turned his back and said, “Come with me.”
    Ed and Brent followed with Lisa behind.
    They were led through a set of double doors, down a long rock-walled hall, then into a large cargo elevator.
    The doors closed and the elevator began its descent.
    Jung stared at the elevator doors, confident enough to keep his back to the pair of variables, Ed and Brent. Ed wondered if he was really that confident, or if it was Lisa beside him that set the strength in his shoulders?
    The elevator felt like it descended forever, the temperature growing noticeably cooler as they dipped deeper into the mountain.
    The elevator finally came to a stop, then opened to a wide white — and brightly lit — sterile looking hallway that looked like a cross between Black Island’s underground facility and a hospital.
    Several gray doors lined either side of the hallway, though none had windows. Each had a single blue square with a number written in the middle.
    Ed and Brent were led to a room halfway down the hall. As Jung stepped in front of the door it automatically slid open, revealing a large office with an impressive mahogany desk and a bookcase loaded with several volumes. Despite its fineries, the walls were an ignored shade of white.
    A tall red leather chair was behind the desk, facing the back of the room. Two smaller brown leather chairs sat in front of the desk. As Ed entered, the chair spun around and a bald man in black greeted them, smiling. Other than his lack of hair, long scar, and the black patch covering his left eye, he was a spitting image of the man Ed had been sent south to find — Boricio.
    Boricio’s eye widened, as if he recognized one of the two, if not the both of them. But the moment passed almost immediately and he instructed everyone to leave his office except for Ed and Brent, who he invited to take the seats in front of him.
    “So, I hear that you’re looking for me?” Boricio said, presenting the photo Ed was surprised to see Lisa still had.
    “Well,” Ed said, “that depends. Are you from here or there?”
    “ There? ” Boricio asked, though Ed saw in his eyes that he understood the reference.
    “I’m looking for the Boricio from my Earth,” Ed said.
    “Ah, so you’re not from here?” Boricio asked.
    “No,” Ed said.
    “That would explain why you don’t remember me.”
    “Remember you?”
    “Well, if you’re here from Black Island, I’m guessing you’ve met your twin, right?”
    “Yes,” Ed said.
    “And he sent you to find the Boricio from your world? ”
    “Yes,” Ed nodded.
    “Interesting. Did he tell you why?”
    “No, sir,” Ed shook his head. “But I got the feeling that they said he had something to do with October 15.”
    Boricio smiled weirdly, then swallowed, “You sure they didn’t mean me?”
    “They said he was from my world,” Ed said. “Why? Were you responsible for this?”
    “Not directly, no,” Boricio said, answering the question as though the taste was new to his tongue.
    Ed wondered why Boricio was telling them the truth, assuming he was.
    Ed asked, “What does that mean, not directly ?”
    “It means I don’t feel like talking about it,” Boricio said with a sudden glare. “Common denominators are that all of us are looking to find this other Boricio, but I’m curious, Mr. Keenan, did your Wonder Twin tell you anything about me? About October 15? Anything at all?”
    “Like I said, I didn’t even know about you. I was told to find the Boricio from my world. I was, and am, on a need-to-know basis, and either they didn’t know what happened, or didn’t feel I needed to know. All they told me was that we, most of the people at Black Island, were from my world. We all got sucked over. And most of the people on this world either vanished or were killed. That’s the sum of