When he awoke, Red_Two found himself shivering, laying down on his stomach, on a soft, albeit cold, bed. He didn't feel a blanket over him, and he could feel a cold breeze on his feet, but not his legs. Without opening his eyes, he slowly inched his right hand towards his torso. He felt the intersection of two lines of bandages. An engulfing warmth surrounded his hand, and moved it back to his side.
He was alive. Red_Two blinked his eyes open slowly, looking down at his pillow.
"I know you're awake," an unknown voice rang, slightly high pitched, light and cheery, definitively male, and speaking in English.
"I'm awake," Red_Two replied, voice slightly raspy, turning his head towards the right, in direction of the voice. He was on a bed with white pillows and sheets, with a bedside cabinet and chair next to him.
On that chair was a man with an average build, matching his own, in a lilac shirt and dark blue trousers - part of a matching suit with the shiny, light blue tie - with a white lab coat completing the look. Red_Two squinted upwards to the stranger's face, as he leaned forward, and took the offered straw in his mouth, sipping small gulps of water.
The stranger's ocean eyes were big and bold on his face, perfectly matching his long, dark brown hair, strands falling to frame his pale face. Red_Two found himself staring at him, as he placed the half full glass down, back onto the bedside table.
The ocean-eyed stranger was the man who had found him on the cliff. This was the man whose arms he was ready to die in. Red_Two flinched, eyes snapping wide open, and swallowed.
"I'm sorry if you're in any discomfort," the ocean-eyed stranger began, looking off to the blank wall above Red_Two's head.
What was he apologising for? Red_Two was ready to die back there. He was ready to die. He gulped.
"You can adjust the painkillers you're receiving if necessary. I'm also sorry about your new haircut. Dr Johnstone, the chief medical officer here, ordered it to be cut, so she could operate and remove the microchip in your back safely," the ocean mind explained kindly, eyes returning back to Red_Two's.
Red_Two found himself confused under the attention. Why was he even given care? What time was he in where this was normal? It had to be at least before 2100 AD, when the Great Drownings happened.
Why was he even here? Ocean eyes or not, the stranger was a threat, even if nobody had ever looked at him, without ulterior motives. He was apparently an injured stranger found on top of a cliff with a strange machine on his chest.
But what was the point in doing anything? Was there a point in anything? The time machine was obvious in what it was. It was just a matter if anybody fiddled with it. If so, then he would be locked away in another Sýnnefa. If not, he didn't have any believable excuses.
Red_Two realised that he had not answered the stranger.
"It- it's fine," he managed to stutter out, sweating under the attention, looking away to the white blanket.
He saw the metal bedframe was painted grey.
"I was needing a haircut for a while," he mumbled out, ready to close his eyes.
"I see," the ocean eyes man replied, smile in his voice. Red_Two glanced up. Those ocean eyes crinkled in the corners whenever the man smiled. Red_Two looked down again and closed his eyes, hoping he would leave.
He was too kind. He wasn't used to this at all. He was feeling sick and his stomach was rolling.
"So, what's your name?" the ocean-eyed man finally asked. Red_Two screwed his eyes shut and lamented his lack of range in movement.
Wait, if he was just getting a microchip removed from his upper back, why was entire torso bandaged?
Red_Two snapped open his eyes, and looked up his arms. His hands were unwrapped, but his arms, torso, and legs were bandaged, his right leg and foot in a cast. Did those injuries come from the time machine? Or maybe from the laser? Where did he get them?
He began to shake. He clenched his teeth, and right fist. If it was the time machine, every single journey would cripple him, and he could never escape.
The ocean eyes of the stranger widened as he stood up, and leaned over to the bedside table, pressing the emergency button. He looked over to Red_Two, and crouched down to be eye level.
"Hey, you don't have to tell me your name. It's fine. You're safe here. You don't have to tell me anything you want to," he cooed, smiling at Red_Two.
The panicked man in question, wanted to scream, then cry. This wasn't about his name. This was about his injuries.
"My name is Red_Two," he gritted out, teeth no longer so clenched, but new tears in his eyes. He had to be calm, and learn where he was, how he was injured and bide his time. Then maybe he could get his revenge…
But he didn't want revenge. He didn't want to go back. He didn't even have a plan other than steal the time machine, go back in time, and stop Sýnnefa from ever forming. All his planning had been placed in stealing the time machine, and the consequences of him failing to leave his current place in time.
He took as deep a breath he could, and choked.
"Where am I?" he croaked, quietly but hotly, trying to conceal as much panic as he could by forcing his limbs to loosen. The ocean-eyed man looked at him with a thoughtful expression on his face. He smiled brightly and looked at Red_Two as if he was the only person in the room.
"I'll tell you, I promise. But first, I want for us to do something together. We're going to count to five while breathing in for five seconds through our noses. Then, we're going to breath out for five seconds through our mouths. We're only going to do this for a few minutes. I promise. Then, I'll answer your question," the ocean-eyed man soothed, as calmly as he could, taking Red_Two's right hand, and stroking it.
He used his other hand to enunciate his exaggerated breathing motions as he sucked air into his lungs. He paused, grinned brightly, and gasped it out again, seeing Red_Two's growing half-exasperated look. "It doesn't work if I'm doing it on my own. You have to do it with me," he explained patiently, as if Red_Two was some sort of child.
Red_Two's eye twitched, but he played along. He breathed in as the ocean-eyed man did, and breathed out as he did, counting the numbers one to five in his head, quietly ignoring the fact that he didn't have to, but was doing so regardless for the ocean-eyed man.
It struck him during those few minutes that this was the first time somebody had made a promise to him with the intention to keep it. He remembered those friends, his mother promised him, that he never made in the gorge twenty years ago. He felt stupid for drawing such a comparison and placing this ocean-eyed stranger in such high esteem. He was just being nice.
It also struck him that if he could just see his injuries, he would be able to discern whether they were a consequence of the time machine, the microchip, or the lasers. It was topical, and should be easy enough to find out, particularly if he was to be questioned. Remembering the cast on his leg, he knew his injuries were varied enough that at least some questions would involve individual, specific injuries.
He jumped when the ocean-eyed man poked his hand, then gave another sunny grin. He was joined by a lady wearing stricter uniform than him and looking as if she had been transported straight out of a hospital. Red_Two noticed for the first time the door leading into the room on the wall on his right, and the giant, cliff facing window his feet pointed to.
He knew he was being erratic, and panicking, with ideas, and emotions flying everywhere in his head. He had too many goals, too many needs for a dead man. He didn't know what he was doing. He needed to stop, think, and just do something.
Her skin was dark, and she looked stern and professional, almost reminding him of somebody he had met once before. He couldn't think of a face, but a name at least with the letter 'H' sat uncomfortably at the tip of his tongue.
"My name is Dr. Linda Johnstone, Professor Emmet's colleague here. You have been asleep for two days," she said in a clipped tone, reminding him more and more of somebody he couldn't remember, and had left behind.
Red_Two looked up at her, and gulped, unsure on how to fill the silence. What was he supposed to answer her with?
"I-" he attempted to start, before shutting his mouth, unsure. He blinked a few times, readying himself. "Where am I?" he asked, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible, to avoid angering the scary doctor.
She glanced, looking down on the ocean-eyed man, at Professor Emmet, disapprovingly and looked back at Red_Two, boring into his eyes.
"You're on the Fourth Island Military Research Facility for the Republic of Archés. The island itself is called Sýnnefa."
The bedframe was grey."Oh,"Red_Two stopped moving. He stopped breathing.He was in Sýnnefa. In the past. Back when it was a small island.The bedframe was grey.He could still carry out his revenge. He could kill all the people on the island and prevent the future of happening. He could save Gryaz. He could save his mother and father. He could save the dead man in the library, and the second mechanic. He could save everybody. He could stop all the deaths from happening, and stop the gorge from being destroyed. He could save those deferent, purple mountains from being levelled. All he had to do was kill everybody.The bedframe was grey.But he couldn't kill. He couldn't hurt. And he didn't want to hurt the ocean-eyed man, the man he was preparing to die in the arms of, after waxing beauty about his eyes. He had a crush, didn't he.The bedframe was grey.The bedframe was starting to go black. The whole world was g
"Should I kill you?" echoed Red_Two's hollow voice, as Emmet strolled the room with breakfast, balancing a tray of two porridge bowls and spoons on one arm. Despite the entire night of tranquiliser induced sleep, Red_Two looked exhausted, pulling himself out of the blanket shroud he had made himself, like life itself was a taxing effort.Emmet laughed, then smiled brightly at him, shutting the door, filing away the comment to analyse later, during his mandatory nanobot project shift.He twirled around to place the tray on the table. "I didn't know what fruit you liked, so I put a little bit of everything in here, then added honey to sweeten the pot, and get your blood sugar levels up," Emmet explained cheerily, bouncing over to pull the curtains open, flicking open the window to let the morning sea breeze run amok.Red_Two shivered and pulled himself under the blanket hoping to shield himself from the cold wind, and the world. Emmet turned back to him and watche
"So, what do we do now?" Emmet asked, looking down at his half empty bowl.Red_Two struggled in his arms for a moment before looking up at him, still appearing somewhat dead. His eyes were still wet, red rimmed, and in pain.To Emmet, his eyes were like mercury, reflective and clear, and so different from the drab grey of the bedframe.His mouth moved to attempt making words before sealing shut. He had retreated into his mind, where Emmet couldn't follow him. Emmet tightened his arms, bringing Red_Two into a proper hug. He just wanted to learn all he could about him: his story, the world of the future, and what he was going to do in the past.But, if the world was that painful, Emmet wasn't sure if he even wanted to know.Away on their tiny island, cut off from the rest of the world , it was almost possible that they could ignore what was happening outside, but now, that wasn't possible. He placed his hand over Red_Two's head."Why do you wa
When Doctor Johnstone arrived to fix the damage of the hug, she first glared at Emmet, accusing and without saying a word. This time, Emmet was sure that she was going make good on her prior threats to put laxatives in his coffee.Doctor Johnstone had resewn the torn stitches on Red_Two's upper back and then tightened the bandages to the point of restricting his movement, pulled out his IV and had conducted her tests, silently, unreactive to any of the duo's attempts to stutter out apologies.The whole process took twenty minutes. Twenty long, awkward, silent minutes where not even the howling wind outside dared to disturb her.Red_Two looked down, despondent at upsetting her. She had moved him back to his original position whenever he shifted to alleviate the pain of his cramping legs, unrepenting, regardless of his apologetic expression.Emmet sat still on his chair, with his own legs crossed in solitude for the full twenty minutes, taking every opportu
Emmet Islington, much to Red_Two's surprise, turned out to be the facility director, and the head scientist, and had been neglecting his work: hours on the nanobot project that had been neglected; papers and reports had piled up on his desk, and the many spreadsheets on his computer needed to be reformatted with graphs, and summaries.He also had the best office on the island. A single door leading into a rectangular room with a set up of sofas and a coffee table in the centre, flanked by two walls chock full of books, and desk at the far end with a computer with a fancy swivel chair, the computer screen facing the final wall: a sheet of shining, translucent glass looking out over the cliffs of the island and directly into the sunset.Unfortunately for Emmet, swathes of piled papers had overtaken and drowned both his desk and coffee table in the three days of his ignored work."What've you been doing for so much work to be here?" Red_Two asked incredulously from
When the atlas was suitably modified, and Red_Two's initial rage and sadness had run its course, he placed the book down on Emmet's desk gently, and handed Emmet his pen back even more so, looking down off to the side. His throat made a quiet noise, before he turned back to the bookshelf and looked down into his lap.Emmet now properly looked over the atlas: lace names were crossed out with new, unfamiliar ones replacing them; full swathes of coastal land was scribbled out, presumably underwater and new borders were drawn on, particularly centred around mountainous areas. He was surprised to see particular rivers swollen up, and new lakes and estuaries where there were previously none.He looked back at Red_Two, his face crumpling. Pain medication or not, the man was sat hunched over, back shaking and soaked with sweat. His hands were laid limp at his side on the floor, fists unclenched, but elbows and wrists wobbling regardless, telling him all he needed to know.
Red_Two wasn't sleeping, Emmet noticed. Black bags hung under his eyes, in stark contrast to the slow recovery of the rest of his body. The more he seemed to heal, and the less grey his skin was, the more exhausted he seemed, though that didn't dim his excitement in the morning when he first entered the office.When Emmet had handed him his medical report though after their little façade of a deal, he had just stared at it, not even reading a single word, as Emmet had analysed his new map, mentally traced possible etymologies of the new place names, and guessed at the events which would occur in the future that would keep Switzerland mostly intact but would massacre England into a collection of tiny states. Even as he placed it aside, and begun battling through his piles of paperwork, Red_Two had not moved.His inner world must be at least rich, Emmet had mused, before scolding himself for his insensitivity. The man was suffering trauma, and he was making jokes
The falling rocks entombed his family, community, and all he knew. His ears were deafened by the colossal crashes and his eyes by the humungous dust clouds. He couldn't hear anything or see anything, and he felt as if he was coughing up blood, trying to free his throat from those all-encompassing streams and plumes of rocks and dirt, hellbent on suffocating him. He watched his home fall into a giant heap of dust, crushed under his own weight. He looked up towards the cloudy, grey skies, and saw a swarm of tiny, grey dots under the cloud cover. He needed to rescue his family. He stood to sprint towards them, only to see the first of the burning, red flames to fall from the sky.He awoke. The sun had not arisen. He laid awake, blanket thrown aside, for the rest of the night.The morning, his forth day at the facility, the newly named Jasper had learned over breakfast from under the glaring, wrathful eyes of Doctor Johnstone, occurred just like
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi