INTERLUDE 1.a. (Patreon)

I have finals I'm procrastinating on. Lucky for y'all, my procrastination bears fruit, for I am nothing if not a conundrum and a fool unto myself!

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"It has been said, by some individuals in the agency, that what we do is beyond the bounds of our established mission. That whatever darkness we have stumbled into, it is best suited to a higher purpose, to greater authorities, to more specialized institutions. These individuals will no longer be part of our mission going forward. The Agency does not have room for useless assets, much less in these trying times. There are rogue elements barking around every corner and threats on the horizon fast approaching, and I will not have us caught unprepared.

"Make no mistake, we are at war. We have been at war a long time, and your ignorance of that fact is no excuse for incompetence. Get back to your desks, and get to work."

       -Executive Official Of The Board Sarah Matthews, on inauguration to her new role, 1952. 

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The entire building is screaming.

This is unfortunate, as Sam has no earthly fucking clue how to get it to shut up, and, furthering the unfortunateness of the circumstances, Sam had been asleep about three minutes ago.

The first two of those minutes were a blinding and agonizing mess of sensory input as the building, as was aforementioned, started screaming.

Emergency lights Sam was damn-near certain were defunct are blaring carmine-crimson in strobing waves across the hallways as he runs, ears covered as best he can to keep the ear-shattering wail of the alarm from deafening him. It sounds like an emergency alert broadcast, the kind that comes on the TV before they tell you about an incoming hurricane or the president’s about to say something, but warped, distorted as if through a filter until it’s barely recognizable and twice as loud. All Sam can do is run, sprint, dash fucking blindly down the hallway to the only place that might offer any answers.

They shoulder-barge their way through a door, stumbling into the room, slamming against the console, and-

There. A glass case, covered in dust, unopened for fuck knows how long- and a keyhole right beneath it. 

Where the fuck is his key?

Sam scrambles, his hands flailing over his pockets, his lanyard, his bracelet- there. Wrapped tight around his wrist, like it always is, like it’s legally required to be, always literally at hand. He grabs at it like a drowning man and jams it into the keyhole, missing once, twice, forcing himself to slow so he doesn’t break the damn thing- and then at last, managing to correctly connect it. He slams hard to his right, and at last, the shrieking and the blaring and the strobing and flashing and world-shattering everything go quiet.

It takes a lot of effort not to simply collapse bonelessly onto the console and then the floor.

His head feels hot. Like, hot. He brings a hand up to his ear, finding a trickle of blood leaking from it. He finds a similar stream of red from his nose, and tastes more in his mouth from where he bit his own tongue.

Who in the fuck makes an alarm that loud? For what possible purpose? 

His ears are still ringing, his whole body aching from the adrenaline and tension- but he has no time to collapse. No time to stagger over to a seat and remember what it’s like to breathe deeply.

His hearing is not so far gone that he does not hear the phone ringing.

Brrrring.

Just like everything else in the base, it’s incredibly old-fashioned, like a phone you’d hear ringing in a show about the 50s. The sound is sharp and biting, completely free of any sort of digital component.

Brrrring.

Sam turns his head to the right, looking past the console and the monitors, and sees it there. Bright red, even after years of disuse have caused in the paint, and as thick and heavy as any emergency landline out to be. 

Brrrring.

Not a phone. The Phone.

The phone that has never rung once in Sam’s three years of rotting away in this particular shithole.

Walking feels like swimming, moving feels like falling- but he does not let it go to a fourth ring.

“Hello, this is- a- are”

“Challenge: Alpha-Niner-Six-Six-Cappa-Salt-Thirteen-Goodbye.”

Sam blinks. Turns to look around at himself. Looks back at the phone.

“...This is Agent Sam Wittiker. Who is this?”

The Phone stays silent for a while. Quiet, way-back from past the distortion of the connection, Sam’s pretty sure he hears someone sigh.

“Agent Sam Wittiker, is there a binder in a metal cabinet near you?”

Blinking, Sam turns to look, almost dropping the phone as vertigo hits him like a truck from the simple motion. It clatters in his hands, and he almost falls over- but there it is. A little space under the console, one that he’s never actually stopped to take a look at, popped open along an invisible seam.

And there, inside it, is a red binder, colored to match the phone almost exactly.

“Ah- that is, one moment, sir, I-”

He actually does fall over on the way back to the console, dropping the phone to hang from its wire- but he makes it to the cabinet. He has to scramble back to his feet, trying to balance opening the binder in one hand and picking the phone back up in the other, but there, on the second page past a title that he skims past-

“Ah- here it is. Um. Alpha-Niner-Six-Six-Cappa-Salt-Thirteen-Goodbye. Response: the goldfish swims in the cold, under the tracks.”

For a moment, as he stands in the silence and the crackling of the phone, Sam feels deep panic that he lost the connection. And worse- may have just lost his job.

“Response accepted. …Did you memorize the challenge?”

“I- well, I have fairly good memory, sir. Tested high on recall.”

“...mmh. Location and status, Agent Wittiker.”

“Well, sir, this is Colorado Test-Site 3. I- approximately a minute and a half prior, we experienced an emergency alert, which I have acknowledged and disarmed, sir.”

“Colorado Test-Site 3? Can you confirm?”

“I… yes, sir. Colorado Test-Site 3. I’ve been babysitting an empty town for the last two years, sir, I think I’d know-”

Sam shuts up before he says something he’ll actually regret. Worse than he already does. His head really hurts.

“Colorado Test Site 3 was decommissioned six months ago, Agent. Who is your superior officer?”

“I… believe that would be Special Agent Janet Wilson, sir, but I have not had direct contact with her for some time. I mostly just see her name on my transfer requests when they come back. I’m… you’re the first commanding officer I’ve spoken to in a while. If… um. If you are a commanding officer?”

For a few seconds, as Sam cringes in every imaginable way, there is nothing but silence on the other end of the line. The crackling distortion down the line hurts his ears, but he doesn’t dare pull the phone away, lest he miss anything at all.

“How old are you, Agent Wittiker?”

“I’m… not sure that I should, uh, disclose-”

“Does the name Jackson Clark mean anything to you?”

“...I don’t think that I… hm. I… sorry, sir. I believe that Special Agent Jackson Clark was the last officer in charge of this posting. He was placed on medical leave approximately one month before I was assigned to my posting. Sir.”

Sam can’t help but reflect on just how many painful silences one phone call can hold, under just the right circumstances.

“Agent Wittiker. I understand that you may be a bit confused at the moment-”

“Very much so, sir.”

“...and likely disoriented from the alarm and events of the last few minutes. Am I correct in assuming that you have not received a debrief about the installation in which you currently reside?”

“I… I was informed of my duties, sir. Testing-Site 3 is a model town, one of a few, and my main function is to limit access to the town, make sure that there are no civilians on the premises, and keep things clean. And, uh, to always keep my credentials and keys on me at all times. Sir.”

“...that is part of it, yes. Normally, what I am about to say would put the both of us into quite a bit of trouble, and I’m afraid it likely still will, but I’m afraid we’re experiencing a bit of a time-sensitive situation. The installation you currently reside in has some features of which you have not been informed of. I am granting you the rank of Provisional Supervisory Agent, so we can walk past the clearance issue. Now-”

“I’m sorry, but can you… can you do that? Sir? I… was not aware that that was a rank, either.”

“Agent Wittiker. You’ve undergoing a very difficult moment, which is not going to get easier anytime soon. It would aid us both if you do not interrupt me again.”

Sam feels his throat clench in what was supposed to be a “gulp”. Instead, he ends up coughing, trying his best to choke it down.

“Y-yes sir.”

“Good. Provisional Supervisory Agent Wittiker, the next few minutes are very important. On the console where you disabled the alarm, you will find a panel just below the key you used, which should have broken off in the console. Yes?”

Sam blinks, looking at his wrist and seeing that yes, the key did break off in the console. How-

“Go over to that panel, and type in the code on the fourth page of your binder.”

The cord stretches pretty far, so Sam brings the phone with him as he follows the instructions given to him, finding a keypad that he’d never actually needed to use suddenly lit up. Turning the pages of the binder (and, he notices, skipping a lot of stuff), he finds a diagram of the same keypad, with what looks like a table of contents or cipher next to it.

“I, uh, it says that I need-”

“Don’t worry about it. Type in ‘6652899’.”

As soon as he does, the screens in front of the console flicker alight with a harsh buzz of old-timey televisions, making Sam flinch back again.

And then all he can do is stare.

Every one of those screens is tied to a camera, one controlled by the joysticks and buttons on the console before him. Sam spends most of his shifts staring at those exact same cameras, in-between patrols, and he knows what every one of them should show.

Instead, he is faced by a harsh red glow of words, glaring out from pitch-black mirrors.

“I… that’s a lot of red, sir.”

“...There should be a command prompt. Type in ‘/summary’.”

He does, and immediately a dozen of the screens make a sound like a dying modem, loud enough that Sam almost falls over again as his ears scream in pain- but then they resolve, the numbers and words beginning to move. He glimpses words like “diagnosis”, “breach”, “inventory”, and, more than the rest, in all caps, “WARNING”.

And then, the bottom-middle screen, the one closest to the console and thus to Sam, lights up in crimson colors as all the others turn dull.

“Summary: Perimeter Breach at Site-Aleph-17. Site compromised. Contamination Detected. Contamination type: Tiamat-Void. Rating: Epsilon.”

Sam repeats what he’s saying, and once again, silence comes over the line.

“It says the rating is Epsilon?”

“Yes sir.”

“But the type is Tiamat-Void?”

“That’s- yes sir. Whatever that means.”

“...There is a chance that the sensors are faulty. You’ll need to go on-site and confirm. Expect backup to arrive shortly.”

“Backup? Sir, I-”

“Listen to me very carefully. Listen. That alarm only goes off if something very bad has happened. And that very bad thing is a potential security risk to everyone and anyone in, near, or around that area, one that needs to be addressed. If that reading had come out differently, I wouldn’t be sending you, I’d be sending F-53s, but because the sensors are old, the person who maintained them apparently left the job two fucking years ago, and I am to my great and total frustration still more willing to make sure I need to before I pull a trigger, I am sending you. To hopefully tell me that the sensors are fucked, that the weird readings are just a random scrabble, or at worst, something much less scary than what they’re currently saying, and I will send someone to help you. But this needs to be done quick, it needs to be done now, it needs to be done thirty minutes ago, and you’re the person on site. So it’s your job. And if that isn’t encouragement enough, know that I will court martial you, jail you, and personally pay the seven biggest people I can find in that jail to beat you to death for me if you don’t do exactly as I say. Are we clear, Provisional Supervisory Agent Sam Wittiker?”

“...As crystal, sir.”

“Good. Get a pen. There’s a lot you need to do, and not a lot of time, and I don’t like to repeat myself.”