Season 2: Memories

"*Touch the dark,*"
—Tagline of *Memories*[src]
**Season 2: Memories** is the second season of *So Help Me God*, a rewrite of the miniseries of the same name as part of *Strain Zero*. It is split into two parts consisting of four episodes each and will be followed by *Season 3: Monsters*.

After a larger group moves into their home and establishes a community, the Capitol survivors led by Eden struggle to adjust to the new order imposed upon them.

## Plot

*In less than a week the once-peaceful lives of Eden and Sasha have been thrown into a melting pot of violence and revelations. Their home has been taken over, transformed into a bustling colony that aims to provide a beacon for lost survivors. Armed with just a few reluctant allies, Eden and Sasha will be forced to navigate a world of schemes, plots and power struggles to reclaim what was once theirs...and, perhaps, seize something of their own.*

## Synopsis

### "Colony"

With Eden out cold, Sasha, Sergei and Nancy are powerless to stop Alpha Force from breaking into the Capitol. Aurora and his soldiers check all the rooms and orders the muerto corpses to be removed and burned. Eden and his group are bound and locked inside a storage closet while Alpha Force starts settling in.

Twelve hours later, one of the soldiers collects Eden from the makeshift cell, informing him that Aurora wants to speak with him. Eden is bound against his wishes and marched through the Capitol; already, most of the furniture and decorations he and Sasha had collected over the years has been removed, as have the mounds of dead muertos. Eden is forced up the stairs until Dylan intervenes, demanding that Eden's restraints be removed. Dylan escorts Eden the rest of the way, revealing that Aurora has made his office in Eden's bedroom. Aurora asks that Dylan and his guards leave, allowing him and Eden to talk in private. Having calmed since first meeting him, Aurora reluctantly gives Eden some answers: having enlisted in the U.S. army shortly before the outbreak, Aurora was instructed via broadcast to build Alpha Force from a secure location before setting out to build a safe-zone. He describes how his group has been on the move for months since leaving their original base, and were told that Sacramento would be a safe place. Upon entering the city that saw smoke; realizing it was a controlled fire, they headed toward it and struggled to navigate the collapsed streets before reaching the Capitol.

Despite Eden's demands that they all leave, Aurora states that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few: the Capitol has the space, infrastructure and symbolic significance needed to build a successful colony. In an attempt to make peace, Aurora offers Eden a choice: either he and his group can become citizens of the Colony, or they can leave and settle elsewhere. Aurora points out that Alpha Force is well-armed, well-organized and well-supplied, including ammo, medical supplies and engineering equipment. To demonstrate, he mentions that engineers have already got the showers working, something Eden and Sasha could never fix. He gives Eden and his people twelve hours to make their decision.

Eden rejoins his group in the basement and relays Aurora's offer; Sergei and Nancy agree to Aurora's terms, but Sasha remains defiant. She demands to speak with Eden privately; in the next room, she asks him to use his newfound abilities to chase Alpha Force away from their home. Shocked by her request, Eden argues that he doesn't even know how his abilities work, having learned about them not 24 hours ago, and that he will not hurt anyone. Frustrated by his answer, Sasha tries to leave, but Eden, in a sudden show of aggression, grabs her tightly by the arm; he coldly states that they have to be smart and bide their time, and that their moment will come. Losing feeling in her arm, Sasha smacks him, forcing him to finally let go; Eden breaks down in tears, unsure what is happening to him, before slipping into another hallucination.

Sat outside the university where he will eventually commit his massacre, Arthur and an unidentified man discuss the roles that "the family" has assigned for them; Arthur remains silent about his task, while his friend describes being sent to the "Underchurch" as a "preacher". The man holds Arthur's hand and says that he hopes they will meet again.

Eden wakes up from the memory to hear Dylan at the door; Eden says his group will agree to Aurora's terms, on the condition that all the rooms in the basement will belong to his group only. Dylan smiles and says he will see what he can do.

Three days later, the Capitol survivors begin their integration with Alpha Force. Eden and Sergei help with the construction of a secure wall around the Capitol gardens, which are being turned into a farm. A group of soldiers destroys Sasha's flower beds to make more room for crops and assault her when she tries to stop them. Eden grabs his bat and comes to her defence, but is hopelessly outmatched. He briefly considers using a set of nearby sheers to kill himself and "activate" his abilities, but stops short of grabbing them and walks away, ignoring Sasha's angry glare.

### "Pull Your Weight"

A month passes after the incident in the gardens, and the Colony continues its growth. Alpha Force's broadcasts have attracted survivors from outside Sacramento, expanding the community's population to almost a hundred. Most are confined to tents in the Capitol gardens, while the entire basement remains taken up by Eden, Sasha, Sergei and Nancy, as per their agreement with Dylan and Aurora. Soon, the lack of space begins to stoke tensions, and some of the colonists petition Aurora to open up the Capitol's lower levels. To make everything worse, supplies start going missing, both from the community stock and from personal stashes.

The noise of the Colony inevitably attracts muertos; Eden and Nancy volunteer to lead the clearing crew, leaving Sergei and Sasha to help out around the Colony's farm. On a routine assigment outside the walls, Eden, Nancy and their team discover a large column of muertos trapped in a side alley between two apartment buildings; instead of leaving them to eventually escape, the team decides to deal with them now. The fight is difficult in the tight space, but they clear half the muertos in less than an hour.

Back at the Colony, Sasha takes a break and uses a private moment to cry about the loss of her garden. Amidst her sobs, however, she hears banging and cursing inside a shed nearby. Checking it out, she finds a woman named Andrea, the Colony's radio operator, who for the past month has been working on a long-distance radio with the aim of contacting other large groups in California. Sasha reveals her father was a radio host and used to bring her into the studio; the two women bond over Andrea's long-distance project.

In the midst of their success, however, Eden suddenly has another hallucination, this time of one of the muertos delivering a strange sermon. Eden is rooted in place whilst the muerto in question approaches to attack; Nancy pushes him out of the way but is bitten on the left hand. Eden snaps out of it, kills the muerto and drags Nancy back into the street. He prepares to mercy-kill her but she demands that he cut her hand off to stop the infection spreading. Without a clean blade, Eden is forced to snatch a team member's double-barrel shotgun while Nancy wraps her belt around her forearm. Eden counts her down and fires against her wrist, blasting her hand off.

Sasha and Sergei hear Nancy's scream as Eden and their team carry her back to the Colony. Dr. Foye operates on Nancy immediately, cleaning the wound while running an "Overlord Protein Test". The team members put the blame on Eden, revealing he paused in the middle of the fight. One of them, however, stands up for Eden, revealing to Aurora that no one else bothered to help Nancy until the danger she posed was dealt with. The rest of the team comments that "of course the freak" would support Eden. Aurora announces a haitus on treks outside the Capitol square and Eden thanks his sole supporter; he reveals his name to be Victor.

### "Unleash"

In the middle of a wrestle, Eden is shot in the chest and falls to the ground, dead; the amused soldiers agree to wait for him to reanimate so they can mount him on the wall as a warning. Eden quickly gets to his feet, but not as a zombie like the soldiers expected; as before, his eyes and veins have turned black. The soldiers shoot him a second time, but he shrugs it off despite the bullet hitting a lung. He smiles and flies into a rage, stomping one to death and murdering the other with his bat. Covered in blood, he addresses the horrified crowd and shows them his healing bite wound, causing Dylan to order everyone to stand down. Eden walks over to Dylan and demands medical attention before collapsing.

### "The Best Offence"

Eden is carried into the office of doctor Foy, who puts Eden under; having seen his attack, she decides to put him under permanently, but not before investigating further. A few hours later she reports to Dylan about her findings: Eden's internal organs, including his heart, are far smaller than they should be and covered in a myelin-like sheath, just like the muertos she has previously dissected. In addition, his heart is beating just four times a minute and his stomach contains undigested food from weeks ago. These findings, coupled with the sheer number of surgical scars across his body, suggest that he shouldn't even be alive. Dylan asks Dr. Foy to make sure Eden wakes up.

Eden wakes up in a makeshift prison cell, confused about the bandages over his chest. He demands to talk to someone, only for Dylan to walk in. He announces that he wants to talk calmly, and reveals he talked Aurora out of killing Eden while he was asleep. Dylan seeks to understand how Eden can be shot and stand back up - an act itself which is no longer strange in the post-zombie world - yet retain his intelligence, speaking ability and unnatural strength. Eden reveals that he only learned about his abilities a week ago, maybe less. Dylan describes in detail the examination Dr. Foye performed on him while he was unconscious, including the protein sheaths previously only found in zombies, and deduces that Eden must be a zombie-human hybrid, as difficult as that is to believe.

Dylan finally reveals that Aurora has called for Eden's execution, as have most of the Colony. However, a few are supporting him, believing that his healing bite could be the key to fixing everything. Dylan makes him an offer: amnesty for his crimes in exchange for his help on an "expedition". He explains that many of the colonists are sick from drinking contaminated water, and there is not enough antibiotics to go around; plus, there are not enough medical supplies to support the Colony's growth.

The supplies they need can be found in Martin Memorial Hospital on the outskirts of Davis, west of Sacramento. Unfortunately, the entire building is full of muertos from the roof to the basement; a small team could enter from the roof and fight their way down to the bottom, collecting supplies along the way, but until now this plan was unfeasible. Dylan believes that Eden's hybrid nature could be the secret to clearing out the hospital. Seeking redemption, Eden accepts.

## Episodes

### Part I

 8
 9
 10

### Part II

 12
 13
 14

## Characters

### Main

* Antony Eden: an amnesiac survivor and former test subject working to discover his past
* Sasha: the sole survivor of her family and Eden's partner
* Sergei: the leader of a group that sought refuge at the Capitol
* Nancy: a hardened shooting champion and Sergei's best friend
* Marcus Aurora: the commander of Alpha Force
* Dylan Emerson: a member of Alpha Force and the civilian leader of the Colony
* Jeremiah: a figure from Eden's troubled past

### Supporting

* Jade Foy: the Colony's doctor
* Victor: a reclusive member of Alpha Force
* Andrea: the Colony's radio operator

## Trivia

* This season begins twelve hours after the conclusion of *Season 1: Monuments*.