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Graham's thoughts were a tempest.
He had chosen this, for better or for worse. Yet still his mind raced, seemingly intent on keeping any chance of sleep at bay. Memories of that night just three days prior replayed in rapid succession; his encounter with what remained of the Rocky Mountain Relay, the incursion of Epsilon-06, and his own betrayal thereof. He turned the events over in his mind, scrutinizing every detail in an attempt to make something new out of what had already happened, as though seeing it from another angle would somehow better the outcome.
What if he had just followed orders? Would he be back in his warm bed at home instead of huddling in this stranger's shack? Or filling out an incident report in some stuffy office space? Would he have been able to live with himself if he'd gone through with the alternative and shot those old men? He shook his head.
They had been cautiously threading their way through labyrinth of the Rocky Mountains since their escape, mindful to stick to the densest woods they could manage. Harry had done his best to apply all the bushcraft at his disposal, but the gunshot wound Eric had sustained had become infected, slowing the group's speed. Eric needed medicine and rest, neither of which their group could easily come by.
It was on the evening of their second night on the run that the trio stumbled upon a small property nestled on a mountainside, tenantless for the moment, by Harry's assessment. The modest, single-story house stood high against the side of the valley, a short chain link fence lining what couldn't have been more than a half-acre of land, hemmed in by a dense, winter-choked forest. A thick lining of dead leaves and pine needles clung to the corners of the yard, which held little more than well-weathered lawn chairs and an ancient fire pit. Some spattering of official notices were pasted to the front door, most rendered illegible by the elements. A crumbling suggestion of a driveway wound away through the trees towards the main road further down the great slope.
The locks, as well as the interior of the house itself, proved unremarkable save for a godsent stock of supplies and medicines. A calendar in the kitchen placed the homeowner's return more than a week from then. The three quickly collapsed and settled in for the night.
The old couch now creaked disagreeably beneath Graham as he turned over, still unsuccessfully trying to lull himself to sleep. Eric rested uneasily on the pull-out bed across the living room. A makeshift bandage gripped his arm firmly to staunch the persistent trickle of blood.
Just outside the back door Harry sat tiredly but attentively as he watched and felt the surrounding woods for signs of pursuit. The midnight air stung Harry's lungs with each breath, and the cold seemed to creep through his clothes in a way so persistent as to be almost personal. He cast a glance at the fire pit. He wanted nothing more than to light a fire, to banish the malicious cold, to bask in the warmth of even a small flame; but for a man of Harry's years and experience, he discarded the thought the moment it arose. A fire in such barren woods as these— on a clear winter night, no less — would be a beacon to anything for miles around declaring their exact location. The house was poorly insulated, but its meager heat and his own thick clothing would have to suffice between the three of them. Regardless, the snow had already begun to melt, decorating the yard in darkening patches of white; it would be a warm New Year's soon enough.
Harry's thoughts drifted to Eric, sleeping fitfully inside. He had done what he could to treat his friend's wounds, but a fever had begun to set in. Eric needed medical help, and soon. In this state, his chances without it were less than ideal, never mind them having a chance of escape in the event any Foundation goons should happen upon them. Harry was pulled from his thoughts as the back door quietly squeaked open. Graham slipped out, bundled beneath a thick blanket and his winter clothes.
"Can't sleep?" Harry asked.
Graham shook his head, pulling over a lawn chair and settling down beside him. "I just still can't… I never expected… "
Harry nodded, his gaze locked forward.
Graham leaned forward. "This is what it felt like all those years ago, isn't it?" he muttered. "The confusion, anxiety, dread. I kn-know I did the right thing, but…"
"We all felt the same all those years ago. It just takes time to process. But while it's not exactly a walk in the park, but Eric and I have managed to stay out of the Foundation's reach for decades."
Graham let out a shaky breath. "I have intel though, even level-four clearance one project, the Foundation won't let someone like me just slip away that easily. My credentials are definitely revoked by now, and they'll have probably upgraded our containment priority, and–" He stopped for a tense moment. "God, there's just this pit in my stomach. Feels like I'm about to throw up."
Harry closed his eyes and creased his brow. "Graham, can you feel that groundhog sleeping in its burrow down there?"
"What?"
"Five hundred feet to your right. Sound asleep, just barely strong enough for me to feel. Do you know what that means?"
Graham rolled his eyes. "What, six more fucking weeks of winter?" he snapped.
Harry smirked. "It means I'll be able to tell if they're coming. You read our file, you've seen how many times we've managed to give the Foundation the slip."
Graham relaxed a little. "If you say so. It still feels like I have to throw up, though."
"Give it time, but if you really feel the urge, please aim away from me." A twinge of humor lingered in Harry's voice. Graham managed a deflating exhale. He yawned and pulled his bundle tighter as the two of them sat together in the silence. The darkness of the night lulled Graham to sleep, gradually softening the edges of panic and anxiety that prodded his mind.
Harry looked up through the spiny, naked branches. An angry storm brewed on the horizon, but for now it was cloudless. The starry vault of the sky spun slowly overhead as he silently traced the constellations. Out here, the spectacle was unmarred by the electric lights of modernity. The Milky Way stretched out across the vastness like a prodigious arm dragging forth the coming sunrise from beyond the edge of the world. Harry let his mind drift as he drank in the stars, thinking back to that night by the springs when this had all first begun. It was the same sight back then. Cold and cloudless, brilliant beyond brilliance, and hardly any different now than it was then.
Harry sat as the sky spun on, attended only by wind, memory, and the rhythm of his own solemn heart.
It was a sudden movement that stirred Graham from his sleep. He could tell that time had passed, but couldn't tell just how much. Bleary-eyed, and beginning to fill with an awakening sense of urgency, blinked the veil of sleep from his eyes and gauged his surroundings. The sky had lightened to a dim, pallid green as morning grew nearer. A thick blanket of clouds smothered the approach of dawn otherwise. A light rain was just beginning to fall, accompanied by a deep peel of thunder in the distance. The scene outlined the form of the man beside him, suddenly sprung to attention. The earlier gentleness of the old man's stature had vanished utterly. The rugged figure of Harry Yount rose beside Graham with a renewed grit, like a switch had been flipped on inside of him. The man seemed to tower above him like a nimrod of myth sensing its mark. Though judging by the hard lines writ across Harry's face, Graham could tell they were not the hunters this time.
"Shit," Harry muttered. Graham bolted to attention and the two of them slipped back inside the house.
"What the hell, did they find us already? It's been—" Graham's voice froze in his throat as a strange, almost icy tingle wash over his body. Eric sat upright on the pull-out beside him, finger placed over his mouth in a gesture of silence.
A large man stood in the entryway of the house. His rugged face was marked with clear lines of rage at the sight of them. He was dressed in a camo-print hunting jacket, worn denim jeans, and rugged boots, an outfit that simultaneously screamed "back early from a hunting trip" to Graham while reminding him vaguely of Rambo. A rifle sat gripped in the man's hands, the barrel gleaming ominously even in the warm light of the house.
"What the hell is this?!" the man yelled, raising the gun at them. "I told you bastards to fuck off!"
Harry breathed, reaching out and feeling their surroundings. The storm had disguised the man's approach. The earlier precision of his senses had become muddled with the presence of the thunderstorm. The electricity of things nearby felt uncertain and obscure, almost drowned out by the immense energy roiling in the sky. The sensation felt to Harry like trying to see through a window during a downpour. It was a hazy image at best, but it seemed to just be the four of them. This man was alone.
Harry held his hands up. His own gun sat tucked in his waistband beneath his coat, but he had no interest in drawing blood if he could help it. Either way, he figured he wouldn't be faster than the finger on the trigger before him. "Sir, please, we don't want any trouble."
The man narrowed his eyes, his grip tightening around the stock of his rifle. "Like hell you do! You think I don't know an eviction when I see one? "
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Eviction?"
Graham's thoughts flicked back to the county notices they had seen affixed to the front door. He hadn't paid them much mind, but now the words carried a new weight. Casting a glance to his side, Graham noticed stacks of unopened mail on the side table, many stamped with red-inked notices reading "URGENT," and "EVACUATION." Not quite an eviction, but in a similar vein.
"Don't act dumb with me, I know how you county bastards play. This is my land and I'm not fucking leaving over some damn dirt samples or whatever story you've cooked up."
"Sir, we're not from the county. Please, my friend is hurt. Nobody was home, and we were only staying the night bef—"
"I know better than to listen to a single word that comes out of your mouth. You're getting the fuck out of my house!" he roared, stepping forward. The man thrust the butt of his gun forward. Harry moved to dodge, but the several days of travel had taken their toll on his reflexes, and the strike grazed him along the side of the head. He stumbled and fell to a kneel. The man grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out the front door, seemingly oblivious to Graham and Eric's presence.
Graham cast a look to the pull-out bed. Sweat poured from Eric's face. The old man gridded his teeth with exertion, his eyes focused on the man before them. As the struggling pair passed out the door, Eric relaxed with a quiet gasp, and the icy tingle Graham had felt across his body abated. Graham still didn't completely understand how Eric's anomaly functioned, but he did understand that they had been kept hidden. Eric panted and pointed to the kitchen, finding the breath to speak after a moment.
"Gun. Kitchen. Go," he choked out with a cough. "Don't kill if you can help it."
Graham stood for a moment, his body buzzing, whether from Eric's anomaly or his own adrenaline, he couldn't tell. He snapped back to himself, rambling an affirmation to Eric, and rushed to the kitchen.
Outside, the man threw Harry down into the grass. A gasp escaped Harry as a large rock found his sternum on landing, knocking the wind from his lungs. The rain was coming down hard now. He turned over, struggling to regain his breath. His eyes rose to meet those of the man, nearly blind with fury. His gun was held aloft, finger held fast upon the trigger. The man yelled something, gesturing wildly. A crack of lightning overhead sent a throbbing jolt through Harry's mind. His senses were being overloaded between the panic in his diaphragm, the roar of the rain, the crackling thunder, and the shouting man. He was utterly overwhelmed.
He tried to steady his nerves to only partial avail. A flare of electricity spiked somewhere nearby. Movement flickered along the edge of his senses. He could feel another signature approaching, separate from the man before him. Hope at the thought of Graham's intervention quickly collapsed into dread. Graham and Eric were still in the house. This signature was approaching from the woods, and fast.
A bang resonated through the yard. The gun remained held high. A warning shot. The next one would not be so kind. The rain stung Harry's eyes as he tried to blink away the blur in his vision. The man lowered the end of his rifle closer to Harry and prompted something in the tone of a question. Harry's scrambled senses couldn't make out what was said. He floundered, attempting to stand. The man reacted with a shout of alarm, bracing himself and leveling the gun at Harry. Graham burst through the doorway. Something shot forth from the woods.
A blur of motion, an earsplitting bang, a spray of crimson. Then nothing but the sound of rain and heavy breathing. Harry struggled to his feet, fueled by adrenaline and finally finding his breath. His eyes darted around the scene. The gunman laid sprawled on the ground, unconscious, his rifle now half-buried in the muddy slush that has begun to pour through the yard. Graham stood over him, breathing heavily, pistol gripped in his hand like a club. He opened his mouth to speak but found his attention gripped by what lay at Harry's feet.
A woman, what was left of her features hidden beneath a veil of dark, blood-matted hair, lay crumpled in the slush. She was young, probably in her mid-twenties by Graham's guess. He drew breath sharply as his gaze moved to her face, half of which now mingled with the flow of snowy mud. Her gray hoodie was stained with a sickening splash of dark red which ran from her neck all the way down to her denim jeans and worn-out sneakers. Everything about her seemed so tragically out of place in the middle of the scene. A sickly scent of iron rose from the pooling blood, detectable even through the downpour. Graham suppressed a wave of nausea.
"Are you okay?" he asked hoarsely.
Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the gruesome display. "Who the hell is she?" he asked.
"No idea," Graham replied. He felt a pang of sadness mixed with something like guilt. "She just came barreling out of the woods."
Harry looked to treeline. "I felt a flare somewhere up that way," he said, pointing to the ridge at the top of the valley. "Then something— her — making a beeline for here." He stood up straight, regaining some of his composure. "She seem like the Foundation type to you?"
Graham shook his head. "Not in the slightest, and I seriously doubt they'd send someone after us dressed like this." He turned away, trying not to look. "Should we, you know, bury her or something?"
"We shouldn't touch her. Especially if the Idiots come round, I don't want them thinking we did this. They've got enough of an excuse to be after us as is, adding suspected murder to the mix would only give them more incentive to ramp up search efforts. Although…" Harry stepped across the yard and fetched a faded, blue tarp from a pile of junk lying against the house. He flicked the leaves and dirt from it, and gingerly laid it over the woman. The sound of the rain upon the tarp was nonetheless sharp and almost piercing to his ears. Harry turned toward the house.
"We should get out of here while we have time. If there are any on them around, or even just law enforcement for that matter, they sure as hell heard those gunshots. Get Rambo here inside."
The two carried the unconscious man inside and placed him on the couch. Eric was already up and packing their supplies. Graham lingered in the doorway, examining the signage. Most of it had been faded away by the elements, but newer postings remained legible. Graham leaned in as he read. His eyes widened in alarm. He ran inside and grabbed an envelope from the pile of mail, ripping it open and examining its contents. His mouth went dry.
"Harry, Eric, we need to get out of here," he said starkly.
Eric looked over. "What's wrong?"
Graham held the letter up to the other two. "There's an evacuation order for this whole valley." He swallowed. "Landslide susceptibility. Says here that the surveys indicate only one or two more rainstorms before this entire hillside ends up at the bottom of the mountain." He cast a glance out the front door. The rain continued to fall.
"In a downpour like this, it could go any minute." Harry looked at the unconscious man on the couch. "Bastard thought we were forcing him to evacuate, eh? You'd think he should be a little more thankful. Shit. Guess he's coming with us. I don't want him on my conscience."
The rain had slightly abated as they finish securing the last of their belongings. Graham's ears perked up. "What's that sound?" he asked as he turned to Harry whose face had gone white, his eyes locked on something outside the door. Graham turned just in time to see the corpse in the front yard sit up and manually realign her jaw. The missing half of the woman's head began to reappear, accompanied by the sound of flesh pulling and rearranging. New hair unraveled smoothly from her scalp as it reformed. She wiped a streak of blood from her mouth and opened her eyes, her gaze falling on Graham.
"Well that's something for first impressions," she said, sounding more inconvenienced than upset.
"What the fuck," Graham exclaimed.
The woman rolled her eyes. "Come on, don't act like you've never seen regeneration before. I know the Jailers are holding at least three others like me at Site-17."
"What are you…?" Graham paused before throwing back his head in a sigh of something approaching annoyance. "Oh, are you shitting me?"
Harry eyed the woman uneasily. "The hell's this, Graham?"
The woman suddenly turned to Harry, face lit up in amazement. "Good, you're still alive! Oh?" Her attention shifted to Eric, standing behind them with a look of confoundment on his face.
"That isn't Eric, is it?" The woman began to stand up, the blood vessels in her neck finally retreating beneath a freshly-formed layer of skin with an unsettling schlorp. She looked down and examined her person, her face souring at the sight of the chunks of herself staining her clothes.
"Are you kidding me?" she exclaimed exasperatedly. "Do you have any idea how much of a pain it is to get brain out of cotton."
"Out-fucking-standing." Graham said. "Of all things, the Serpent's Hand is the first to actually catch up to us."
"The Serpent's what?" Harry asked, now visibly confused.
"They're a sort of anti-Foundation group with a particular interest in the supernatural and people such as yourselves," Graham replied.
The woman brushed the muddy leaves from her hoodie and crossed her arms. "Oh, come on now, don't make it sound weird, I'm not looking to exploit you or anything. I just came to talk."
"About?" Harry asked.
"A proposition," she said, a faint smile drawing across her face. "We've had our fingers in more than a few of the Foundation's surveillance channels, and there are those of us that have been keeping up with you. For all these years you've just barely managed to avoid the Foundation, and I'm sure you know that you won't be able to keep it up forever. By yourselves, that is."
"You don't know that," Harry snapped.
The woman held up her hands defensively. "I'm just calling it as I see it. All it took for me to find you was listening in on some Epsilon-06 comms, checking out Google Earth, and working off where you'd go from there. Odds are the cavalry isn't too far behind. Plus, with this nerd and that nasty wound of Eric's slowing you down, I can't say much good would come from another run-in with them."
Harry frowned, slightly loosening his grip on his gun. "So what do you propose?"
"A change of scenery, firstly. Between this lovely weather, and those gunshots that 'o six definitely just picked up, none of us are safe here," she said. "Before we can talk specifics, we have to get out of here."
Graham stepped forward. "So what, you've got a getaway car nearby?"
"Even better."
"I feel something," Harry interjected. "Its hazy, but something big incoming from the southeast, probably up the driveway. Might be a van of them."
"Ooh, that was fast," the woman quipped. "Now do you want to keep arguing or get the hell out of here?"
"There are more, southwest and east, closing fast," Harry rambled. Graham turned to Eric, who nodded curtly.
"I'll carry Rambo," he sighed. "Lead the way."
They began quickly picking their way up the slope towards the ridge, with the woman in the lead. Harry carried Eric on his back, the rain stinging his eyes as he trudged onward. Graham balanced the unconscious man over his shoulder as he forged ahead. The mud was thick and dragging, and twisting roots hidden beneath threatened to topple them with every step.
"What's that sound?" Graham huffed. Suddenly, a deep, low groan became audible behind them.
The four of them turned just in time to see the hillside below fall away. A deafening roar of splintering wood and crumbling rock resonated throughout the valley as the cascade of earth dragged a vast swath of land downward. The house collapsed as the ground gave way beneath it. The forest itself moved almost in unison as the trees each dropped away into the chaos. In seconds, all that remained was a prodigious scar upon the mountain, a blank spot bearing nothing but mud, rock, and a mangled mass of wreckage along the valley floor. It was over almost as quickly as it had begun, the incredible scream of earth quickly dropping back into the vast gulfs of the storm. Nothing moved beside the rain. What terrain was left seemed stable, for now. Then amidst the silence— the solemnity almost —that followed, the sound of shouting.
"They're still on our tail," Harry shouted. "Still some incoming from the east. That landslide stalled out the rest but we have to move!"
Ahead, the woman hopping atop a boulder on the hill. "We're almost there!" she yelled. A deafening bang rang out from behind them, and the woman fell from the rock, landing face-first into the mud. Clutching what was left of her shoulder, she bit her tongue and continued forward.
"Sniper!" Graham yelled.
"No shit!" she yelled back.
Graham pulled himself and the man over a fallen tree and heard another bang, followed quickly by a bullet passing just inches from his leg. He stumbled forward a few more feet before planting himself behind a large oak and catching his breath. The man weighing him down certainly wasn't helping matters. The frigid air stabbed his lungs with every gasp he took, but the adrenaline and panic coursing through him made him hardly take notice. Taking in one last icy gulp, Graham kicked off of the tree and dashed forward. Harry, Eric, and the girl were already several yards ahead and almost to the ridge.
Pushing off of rocks and trees as he ran, Graham slowly gained speed, nearly catching up to the rest. Harry forced on with unexpected momentum before him, his and Eric's forms flickering slightly. Eric clung to his back, teeth gridded, whether in pain or concentration, Graham couldn't tell.
Ahead, the woman achieved the crest of the hill and ducked behind a vast conifer, gesturing to the rest of them as she vanished from sight. Graham could now hear shouting from behind them amidst the sound of more rounds being fired. Eric and Harry soon reached the apex and hurriedly stumbled over, leaving Graham and Rambo mere feet behind them. He pushed forward, just clearing the ridge as another pop rang out from behind.
Suddenly Graham was on the ground, some part of him throbbing with an excruciating pain. The unconscious man rolled off of him and settled to the side, worse for wear, but bullet hole-free as far as Graham could tell. Graham himself was not so lucky. He could feel warmth pouring out of the fresh wound in his shoulder and instinctively clutched the area, which only worsened the pain. He shifted to look at the tree. Harry, Eric, and the woman were gone.
The panic that began to creep over him was quickly quashed by confusion as he saw a head poking out from a narrow gap in the side of the tree. The head swiveled towards him, and the woman's face lit up. Her arm emerged from the gap and gestured for him to come. "He'll be fine, this way, quick!" she urged.
Graham wrenched himself to his knees and peeked over the ridge. Beside a pine just fifty feet away crouched Henrick Alpin, the leader of Epsilon-06, rifle in hand. Several more agents hustled in the distance behind him. Graham ducked behind the ridge and took a deep breath.
"Come on, Alpin! We don't have to do this!" Graham yelled. He sank to his hands and knees and crawled towards the tree. The sound of sloshing footsteps started from over the ridge, accompanied by a rough, booming voice.
"We are this!" Alpin called.
Graham tried to ignore the blazing pain in his arm and approached the opening, stepping up and grabbing the woman's hand. To his left Alpin emerged over the crest, gun leveled with the ground. He paused for a moment, puzzled at the sight of the woman extending out from the tree. Graham pushed towards the opening in that gracious moment afforded to him by the spectacle.
One moment was almost enough.
Alpin fired off a round at the woman's arm which burst with a shower of blood, causing her to recoil back into the tree. Graham's balance gave way and he crashed down on his back, knocking the wind from his lungs. He lie there, clutching his shoulder, coughing and sputtering profusely. He lifted his head between spasms and looked to the tree, his foot just inches from the opening.
Alpin crouched beside the unconscious man, feeling for a pulse. He exhaled, seeming relieved, then turned toward Graham. The man planted a heavy, mud-crusted boot on his chest before producing a small radio. "Target Aleph has been apprehended, five-seven-hundred subjects still unaccounted for. One civilian on me, needs medical. One possible additional anomaly nearby, properties unknown, arboreal characteristics suspected."
The coughing faded as Graham regained his breath, though the pain still caused him to groan instinctively. Alpin looked him over. "Ah, you'll be fine, we weren't shootin' to kill anyway, and Lopez can patch ya up. Props for saving the civi, but the directors won't be so delighted with all this."
He moved his foot and lowered his gun, shaking his head. "I just don't understand why you would throw it all away over some old men," he says. "Hell, just a few days ago you were helping us track them!"
"I'm tired of pretending like we're the good guys," he muttered. "Harry was right," he sighs. "I'm just disappointed it took me so long to realize it."
Alpin approached the tree, probing at the gap with his rifle. "We don't do this for the virtue of it, kid. You should know that as much as the rest of us," he said, turning away and walking towards the crest of the hill. "The wellbeing of a pair of old men isn't worth compromising our system for. Far greater sacrifices than them have been made before in the name of the greater good." Alpin was silent for a moment. "The fact that you thought this could all work out is… disheartening. Raise the white flag, burn the uniform, do what you will. None of it matters to the world we have to lock away," he said as though he were scolding a child.
Graham continued to wriggle in half-faked agony, very slowly inching closer to the tree. He cast a glance down and saw his foot at the mouth of the opening. He craned his neck to look back at Alpin.
"Consider my uniform up in flames, then." Graham extended the rest of his leg into the gap and pushed himself into the opening.
The darkness inside the tree seemed to wrap around his ankle, his whole body immediately lurching towards the gap. A potent dizziness washed over him as he dragged along. Alpin yelled and started towards him with an outreached hand. Just before he passed through, their eyes met, and for that moment Graham thought he saw a look of disappointment in Alpin's eyes.
The dark passed over him and the world around Graham dissolved.
Five hundred miles away, the end of the world lay sleeping beneath a trillion tons of scorching rock. It was unmoving, as it has been for millennia. The unimaginable pressure and blistering heat of the Earth's interior were of no concern to it, nurtured as it has been in the mantle's seething embrace since long before the first of mankind had ever dared to even walk upright. Here it had lain, its massive body cradled in the heat, indifferent to the roiling world far above. Its unbeating heart was silent, attended only by the deep and endless churn of the asthenosphere.
Suddenly, something like the faintest breath of instinct hailing from some impossibly far depth invisibly signaled a shift. It was a change almost too small for words, so immeasurably minute that even the currents of semi-molten pyroxene and olivine that abounded remain undisturbed. The tiniest fluctuation, a shimmer almost, radiated along the entity's massive body, beginning at the head. The impulse hovered, then shot away, jumping synapse to synapse with speed defying the conventions of biology, flying down the creature's miles-long spine, and coming to rest at its heart in an instant. Muscle fibers that had lain dormant since the Pleistocene tensed, contracted, and expanded.
Over and over, the long-silent heart trembled, the creature's searing blood quickened, and the calamitous chain of fate began to unfurl.