V M (NPC) Another Destiny

Hela

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For what felt like the third or fourth time in the span of a few hours, the TARDIS crashed to the ground. On this occasion, her Time Lord companion found himself jettisoned from the now blacked-out space ship.

Landing face-first through a patch of grass not quite tall enough to conceal an adult velociraptor, the Doctor let out a soft, dirt-filed groan as he planted his palms and pushed himself up from the blanket of crushed blades beneath him. As he rose to his feet, the first thing that struck him was the darkness overhead—it was the dead of night and the sky was devoid of stars. The second thing was the scent of summertime in the air—thick, almost oppressive heat that clung to him even amid the wisps of pollen-scented wind that brushed passed his scraped visage. In a strange way, his surroundings smelled almost like Earth, but not in that nostalgic sense he felt when he stepped out onto the green world. This smell felt synthetic… forced, even.

I need new clothes… The Time Lord glanced down and saw three of the toes on his left foot jutting out from what seemed to be a fresh gash in his rapidly decaying Converse All-Stars.

Focus.

The Doctor shook his head a few times as he turned back toward the smoldering TARDIS. The old girl had landed on her side, and with her front doors missing, the Time Lord could crane his neck and see the majority of the console room. Aside from twisted heaps of machine bits and coral, there was no sign of his newfound friend from Nashville.

“Kesha?” The raggedy man spoke softly as he turned his attention toward his surroundings. Tall grass spread out for nearly half an acre in every direction, but beyond that, there were massive trees that only helped to saturate his surroundings in yet more darkness. To the north, he spotted a thin copse of trees that provided a poor veil for something large and foreboding. Straining his vision, the Time Lord’s eyes widened as he realized that it was a house—a mansion, based on its monstrous size—looming ahead.

Bang!

Turning and instinctively dropping into a crouch in the tall grass, the Doctor looked toward the forest. He was discombobulated from the regeneration process, but there was no mistaking the sound of a gunshot. When several more rang out in the following moments, he could quickly dispel any remaining doubt. Somewhere into the forest to the south, he heard howls—almost those of a dog but not quite. He heard shouting—distinct, human voice trying to communicate with one another.

A man in sunglasses was the first to emerge from the tree line—his eyes craning upward before he aimed his weapon back into the trees and fired.

Seconds later, three others came spilling out from the trees. Along with the Doctor, they all craned their necks at the sound of the engine in the sky. The Time Lord tilted his head as he watched the helicopter zip passed them before twisting and making a clear bee-line to any part of the world that wasn’t this one.

“No! Don’t go! ” One of them screamed before someone else started to fire back into the woods.

The group started to run, and despite his lack of information about the current situation, the Doctor found himself starting to backpedal. He came to a dead stop when he saw that the lone woman in the group had a faded streak of purple in her blonde bangs.

“There, Kesha! Run for that house!” The same young man shouted as the group broke into a mad dash from whatever had stalked and hounded them through the woods.

“What?” The vagrant muttered, taking turns looking at the house and then the group of approaching people. As they drew closer, he noticed that they were wearing what appeared to be Special Forces gear or at least something similar. “What?” The Time Lord reiterated; his mouth ajar as he tried to process the situation. After a moment, there was only one thought that came to his mind.

What?

Kesha hooked an arm around the man’s elbow and yanked him along with her dash.

“Time to run again, Raggedy Man.”
 

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On both sides of him, the thick forest seemed alive—the howls of foreign animals piercing through the darkness.

With a grunt, the time traveler and his companion leaped over the small flight of stairs that led up to the structure’s marble patio. Dashing forward, he pulled open the mansion’s weighty front door and took his first few steps into the palatial residence. Behind him, the four people he had seen a moment ago piled inside and quickly shut the door to the outside world.

“What is this?” One of them inquired—his tone deep and masculine as he listened to his words echo throughout the huge foyer.

“Wow, what a mansion,” Kesha muttered as the Doctor turned around to face the armed officers. Although their outfits varied when it came to design and colors, all them wore an insignia on their vests—Special Tactics and Rescue Squad.

“Where did you pick up a vagrant, K?” A second man asked, his voice cold and his eyes hidden behind seemingly (based on the scenario) inappropriate sunglasses. The Time Lord arched an eyebrow at the blond-haired man and took a step toward the jittery, sweating specialists.

“My name is the Doctor, and I assure you that,” before the vagrant could finish, the fourth and final member of the group grabbed his hands and proceeded to handcuff him. “Hey! You didn’t even let me finish, come on now!” The Time Lord shouted, sighing a moment later.

“I couldn’t leave him out there alone with those… creatures,” Kesha spoke smoothly as she flashed the Doctor a look with her eyes that told him to keep calm and carry on with the situation.

“Whoever he is,” the man in the aviators began after turning to face the blonde woman. “That does not change the fact that he was located at the epicenter of a region that serves as the home to all the recent atrocities.” His masked eyes then shifted to the handcuffed vagabond. “You would do well to remain silent, until we’ve got to the bottom of this,” from the moment the Doctor had laid eyes on the pale man, he had sensed something malignant about him. Now, however, any doubt had fled the mind of the Time Lord—these weren’t friends.

“You want to explain what’s going on?” The time traveler asked, turning his head toward the aged man and his companion.

“S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team,” Kesha replied with all the confidence of a career professional. She shifted her blue beret to a more comfortable angle as her eyes danced across the massive lobby.

“We’re with the RPD,” the younger man added—the one who had handcuffed the Time Lord. “We’re investigating the cannibal murders.”

“Murders?” The Doctor asked, glancing over his shoulder at the weary-eyed specialists.

“He’s playing dumb,” the pale man interrupted, fidgeting around as if a dozen separate thought processes were running through his mind. “Stop humoring him, Chris. Our most important objective right now is to locate an escape route. This doorframe was broken before we got here.”

“The Bravo Team?” The bearded man asked.

“That would be my belief, Barry,” the blond-haired man answered. “With Joseph killed by those things, we need to be on our toes more than ever. Based on the chopper wreckage, the other Bravos may be alive, possibly injured. We should dedicate some time to searching down any survivors.”

Bang!

The gunshot sent shivers down the spines of everyone in the room, save the Doctor. Perhaps it was his ignorance, but either way, the Time Lord merely glanced over toward the exquisite double doors on the western wall of the foyer.

“One of the Bravos?” The young man, Chris, asked as the rest of his team took a few steps in the direction of the gunshot.

“Probably,” Kesha answered, turning toward the man in the sunglasses. “Should we investigate, Captain Wesker?”

“Yes,” the man replied in his emotionless tone.

“I’m going with her,” Barry responded, raising his silver firearm to the side of his scruffy face.

“Take that man with you and Kesha,” Wesker instructed as he cocked his nine-millimeter pistol. “If he tries anything, you are more than willing to use deadly force. In the meantime, Chris and I will secure this hall. Understood?”

“Yes, Captain Wesker,” Barry grunted, closing one of his massive hands around the Doctor’s shoulder and shoving him toward the door. Ignoring his antsy captors, the Time Lord furrowed his brow and continued to examine the foyer. There was something vaguely familiar about the dark, crypt-like atmosphere.

Holding their weapons at their sides, the two specialists edged toward the double doors. Dropping into a crouch, Kesha twisted the elegant, golden door knob and pushed open the left door with her free hand. As the door swung open, the pair of armed commandos pointed their guns into the room and hastily made their way over the threshold. Pushing onto his tiptoes so he could see into the chamber, the Time Lord noticed that it was a dining room.

“I thought this place was supposed to have been boarded up in the sixties?” Kesha asked, relaxing a little bit as she took in her new surroundings. When she glimpsed the confused look on her companion’s face, the blonde with the purple

“Ever since the mid-sixties,” her bulky partner replied, picking a china plate up from the enormous table. “But all this stuff…it’s maybe been lying out for a couple of weeks at the most. Barely a bit of dust, when this should be caked in it.”

“Definitely less than thir—”

“So we’re in 1995?” The Doctor suddenly interrupted, walking over to the woman and glancing over her shoulder and down at the dining table. “Oooh, that’s gorgeous!”

“It’s 1998,” Kesha corrected with a faint smirk before poking the barrel of her pistol into the Time Lord’s stomach. “Now keep your distance, you unknown entity,” she ordered with a faint smirk that bordered on sinister plastered across her pale visage.

The Doctor smirked as he glimpsed around the dining hall. “I think the functioning electricity probably also means this place is or was recently occupied,” the time traveler replied as he took a few backwards steps to ease Barry, who had started to walk his barrel-chested self toward the pair.
 

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“Kesha, you better come and look at this,” Barry shouted from the other end of the dining room.

“Come on,” the blonde-haired woman ordered as she reached behind the Time Lord’s back and grabbed the cuffs that bound his wrists. “A little bondage does the body good, Raggedy Man,” she whispered as she playfully manhandled the Doctor across the room. That was, until, Kesha noticed what Barry was crouched next to—a rather large pool of blood.

“Blood,” the bearded man muttered, touching his index and middle fingers into the ensanguined carpet and then bringing the two digits up to his nose.

“One of the Bravos?” The woman asked sheepishly as the Doctor reclined against an aged grandfather clock near the center of the room.

“It could be,” Barry remarked grimly. “Whoever this belongs to may still be nearby,” he added, glancing up at his teammate.

“And injured…” Kesha whispered, turning to face the only other door that lead out of the massive dining room—a small exit likely used by servants during mealtime.

“You should go check it out,” Barry muttered. “I’ll be examining this,” with that, he turned his attention back to the viscous liquid splashed on the floor. Nodding her head, a still-smirking Kesha fixed her beret once again and made her way to the door. She gave a reassuring glance to her companion before winking and twisting open the servant’s entrance. Once she had vanished into the adjacent corridor, the Doctor walked over to Barry and knelt down next to him.

“So, uhh, how’d you guys wind up here?” The Time Lord asked—trying his hardest not to cultivate any more suspicions between himself and the burly commando. Exhaling, the man moved his attention from the bloodstain up to the youthful countenance of the time traveler.

“What did you say your name was?” Barry questioned as the hand with which he held his gun tensed every so slightly.

“The Doctor,” the vagrant answered nonchalantly.

“Doctor W—”

“Eh!” The Time Lord interrupted, wishing he had a free hand so he could motion for the man to stop. “It’s just the Doctor,” he uttered, smiling warmly as the man let out another sigh and made it back to a standing position.

“Barry Burton,” he grunted, running a hand over his thick, red beard as his eyes traveled to the door his partner had gone through. “You don’t seem like the nefarious, murderin’ type, …Doctor,” the middle-aged man remarked.

“Think you could uncuff me then?” The Time Lord said with a chuckle. Barry let out a hearty laugh himself, but before he could reply to the request, Kesha came bursting through the door with a panicked look on her face. Behind her, a bloodied man came shambling through the opened doorway.

“Watch out!” The frantic blonde screamed, stumbling forward as she moved behind Barry and the Doctor. “It’s a monster!”

“Watch out…I’ll handle this,” Barry shouted as he hoisted his heavy revolver with the face of the lurching, drooling man. “Last warning!” The man barked, pulling back the hammer of his weapon. With a moan, the man lurched forward—his outstretched hands reaching hungrily toward Barry’s throat.

Two gunshots later, the incoherent man stumbled forward, two red holes punched through his pallid forehead. A moment later, he toppled onto the dusty carpet and ceased to move as a pool of blood began to spread around his crumpled form.

“What the hell was that?” Barry yelled, turning to face his young partner.

“We should report this to Captain Wesker,” Kesha said erratically—the incident had shaken any sassiness from her demeanor. Nodding his head, the duo and their makeshift ‘prisoner’ quickly dashed down the length of the room and vanished through the wide double doors.
 

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With a faint smile on his face, S.T.A.R.S Captain Albert Wesker made his way toward the backdoor of the mansion. Although one of Spencer’s fruity locks would prevent anyone from normally exiting the house, Wesker’s contact had provided him with a ‘master key’ or sorts.

Gunning down the two virus carriers that stood between him and the door he sought, he fixed his sunglasses and leaped over the decaying bodies. Once he was in the hallway that led to the backdoor, he couldn’t help but start to laugh. After all, everything so far had gone exactly as he had planned. With the exception of the strange man, no other variables had arisen to complicate his immaculate equation.

From communications with his contact, he knew that the majority of the Bravo Team had been killed already. Only Enrico Marini and Rebecca Chambers were still floating around the Spencer Estate, but either one of them could be easily eliminated if they became too much of an aggravation. Chris, Barry, and Kesha wouldn’t last long against the mansion’s undead caretakers, and even if they managed to find their way out, all Wesker would have to do is release the Hunter’s from their breeding pens beneath the courtyard.

Pulling out the small, pen-sized device from the pocket of his vest, Wesker depressed the minute switch on its side and waved the glowing blue tip at the door. A few seconds later, there was a soft click noise, and the door swung open—squealing on rusted hinges. Tucking the tool back into his vest, Wesker stepped through the doorway and closed it behind him.

With a click, the door sealed shut behind him. If anyone else wanted to get out, they were going to have to find the emblem that would open the door. The last Wesker had heard, the emblem had been hidden beneath the graveyard behind the house. It had been sealed away with the caretaker following his mutation into a V-Act. The catch was that the only way into the coffin would be to collect four masks.

“Spencer and his stupid puzzles,” Wesker muttered, stepping out into the courtyard that stretched on for a couple of acres behind the mansion.

***​

“Wesker!”

Barry’s voice boomed throughout the foyer of the mansion as the trio crossed the carpeted floor back toward its epicenter. Unable to find their captain, the broad shouldered man turned to face his companion. “Help me look for him, Kesha. And don't leave this hall for the time being.” The woman gave a quick nod and vanished behind the massive staircase. Standing still, the Doctor listened to the click-clack of her boots on a marble surface behind the grand stairs before she emerged on the other side. “Find anything, Kesha?”

The blonde shook her head, loosening her beret enough to cause some of her bangs to frantically splay out across her forehead. “Nothing. What’s this all about? I can’t figure it out at all.”

“Beats me,” Barry replied with a scowl as he glimpsed up to the second story balcony.

“Now it’s Wesker and Chris’ turn to disappear… I don’t know what’s going on,” she muttered with a scowl as she turned to the Doctor, who could only offer a shrug of his shoulders.

“Well, it can't be helped. Let's search for him separately,” Kesha gave a quick nod as she fixed her beret. “I'll check the dining room again.”

“Okay, I'll try the door on the opposite side…” the woman glimpsed to her companion. “I’ll take him along.”

“This mansion is gigantic. We could get into trouble if we get lost. We should start from the first floor, okay?” Kesha nodded. “Oh, and... Kesha, here is a lockpick. It might be handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you.”

The Doctor furrowed his brow as the blonde walked over and retrieved the little case of picks and tumblers from her associate.

“Thanks. Maybe I'll need it.”

The man turned and made back for the double doors, but he paused to glimpse over his shoulder. “Listen, if something happens, let's meet up in this hall.” Kesha snapped off a quick salute before Barry vanished back into the dining room.

Once the man was gone, the Doctor tapped his foot on the carpet, pulling the focus of his companion back to him.

“May I help you, Raggedy Man?”

“The cuffs,” he replied, eliciting a grin from her as she stepped behind him and, after finagling with the pick set for a few moments, opened the cuffs. Once both his wrists were free, the Doctor started to rub the skin. “‘Master of unlocking’?”

“Hey, I told you, I got a lot of skills.” She rolled up the tools, packed them into a pocket inside a side pouch, and made for the door. “Should we try to find Chris and the Captain?”

The Doctor furrowed so hard he feared for a moment that his eyebrows would collapse inward. “Are just going to avoid the elephant in the room?”

Kesha scowled and glanced up at the balcony and back behind the staircase. “Elephant? Where do you see an elephant?”

“We were in the TARDIS twenty minutes ago,” when the woman tilted her head, her companion continued. “Before that, it was the metal cat? And then an hour before that, it was Nashville? Remember?”

“I fell out of the TARDIS,” Kesha replied after a long pause.

“Bingo!” The Doctor replied as he pumped a fist in the air.

“But…” She reached down and retrieved an ID case from her bag. “I’ve been working on this case for a few weeks now.” She showed him an ID bag that had been issued in early 1996.”

“You were barely nine years old in 1996,” the Doctor pointed out as the woman pocketed the ID and retrieved a handheld device the size of a pocket book. She opened it up to reveal a screen and a small keyboard. It took the Time Lord a moment to realize that it was a PDA. Kesha quickly tapped a handful of buttons and handed the device to her companion.

The Doctor frowned. “Heavy, why’s it so heavy?” The remark was mostly to himself, so he didn’t wait for a rhetorical response before glimpsing at the LCD screen, which contained a long list of detail murders in the nearby forested mountain range. “We’re in these mountains, aren’t we?” He asked.

“Yes,” Kesha replied as she accepted the device back from the Doctor, closed it, and slipped it back into its pouch. “These cannibal murderers might be hiding out in this mansion or somewhere nearby… it’s a large, abandoned estate.”

“Doesn’t look or feel that abandoned to me,” the Doctor replied. “I mean, you met that nice gentlemen with the bloodstains, didn’t you?”

“Don’t remind me,” the popstar-turned-commando muttered as she glimpsed down at her sidearm. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen the field… I can’t believe I froze up like that.”

“The field? Is that what you call touring?” The Doctor replied.

Kesha frowned. “Yea… music,” she replied softly. “But then why do I recall serving in the army for three years?”

“Why are you asking me?”

The woman’s face reddened slightly. “You’re the expert, aren’t you?”

“Touché,” the Time Lord replied as he scowled. He took a step back and sniffed the air around them, drawing a sigh from the woman. “Smells real enough…” With the sonic destroyed and the TARDIS inoperable, the time traveling vagabond was missing some of his most useful tools.

“Let’s find the others, then,” she stated. “They’re real to me, that’s for sure.”
 

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The pair eased their way through the set of double doors that stood on the opposite wall from the dining hall. Almost immediately, they found themselves accosted by a very poorly light room that likely served as a sort of miniature art gallery. At the center of the room, a marble statue of a woman carrying a water basin stared out at them with white eyes speckled gray by a light layer of dust. While the foyer and the dining hall had been adorned with chandeliers and large windows, this smaller room had only two simple windows along one wall and a handful of art gallery-style bulbs installed on a metal track along the ceiling.

“Nice art,” Kesha muttered as she pointed her sidearm toward an image of a young woman dressed in clothes that placed her at the top of the social order and sometime before the Second World War. The woman moved around the statue at the epicenter of the exhibit room and tilted her head toward a small shelf that had been pushed up against a curtained exit. “This place was built by some eccentric businessman back in the 1960s… it was supposed to be a guest house for the Umbrella Corporation.”

“It’s very inviting,” the Doctor muttered as he glimpsed a dreary yet beautiful image of scenery that didn’t seem Appalachian. Was this even Appalachia? He recalled that, despite similarities, the place felt synthetic… as if someone had crafted the entire landscape and its décor from images.

Or memories?

“Translocation, perhaps?” The Doctor whispered softly too himself. There didn’t seem to be any lingering traces of transmat particles or magic in the air, and he was pretty spectacular at detecting those types of things, even years after the fact.

The time lord traced a pair of fingers along the edge of the painting frame. It felt like mahogany.

He leaned closer, until his nose was nearly pressed against it. Yep, there was the scent of mahogany.

After making sure Kesha was preoccupied glimpsing into the hall behind the dresser, the Doctor flicked his tongue on the frame. Dust, but beneath that, it was mahogany.

An excellent facsimile, at the very least.

A sharp scream tore the Doctor from the oil painting. Spinning on his heels, he caught a glimpse of his companion-turned-commando as she stumbled backwards from the corridor. As she fell, her hip clipped the short dresser, which she must have pushed out of the way to maneuver around. The Doctor took a few steps forward and turned his focus to the nearly pitch black corridor, where he immediately caught a whiff of decaying tissue. A beat later, he heard a soft groan as a disheveled figure came shuffling forward from the darkness.

Jolting forward, the Doctor lunched and flung himself, shoulder-first, into the dresser. Pain flared in the joint but the surprisingly heavy piece of furniture slid back to where it had been, momentarily cutting off the approach of the shambling, groaning man.

“J-just like the last one,” Kesha stammered as she shifted into a crouch. The woman had her gun drawn, and the knuckles around the weapon were bone-white.

“Not a monster, though,” the Doctor muttered as the man reached the dresser with a thud and took a few shambling steps backwards. “Definitely human, just like the last one.”

“But then what’s the matter with him?” Kesha whispered as she rose to her feet and edged herself closer to the time traveler.

The man behind the dresser groaned wearily as his head lolled sideways toward the sound of the woman’s shifted voice. For all intents and purposes, it was as if the eyes were little more than an assortment of cataracts. Dried blood stained the lower half of the man’s face and his hands, yet this wasn’t the most unnerving part of the scene.

“He’s necrotic,” the Doctor whispered as the pair edged toward the door that would lead them further into the mansion. Kesha’s eyes fell to the exposed portions of the man’s arms, where it was clear that his flesh had gone gangrenous and even seemed to have fallen off in parts.

“His flesh is rotting off,” the woman plainly stated. “How the fu—“

“Language,” the Doctor whispered as he reached for the doorknob behind him.

“But his right ear is gone!” Kesha blurted out, and the Time Lord could clearly see that, rather than an ear, the right side of the man’s head was a grotesque amalgam of chewed flesh and skin. Raggedy bite marks were present near the margins, and a long enough strip of flesh was gone to expose some of the molars. “How is he even alive?”

“Doesn’t seem like magic or voodoo,” the Doctor muttered. “Might be an infection.”

“So you’re saying he’s a zombie?”

The Doctor scowled. “That’s a very blanket statement rooted in superstition and prejudice.” The woman’s face contorted. “This very well could be the victim of a terrible sickness…”

“Fine, you’re saying he’s a virus carrier.”

“You know he probably had a name?”

Before a response could come, the decomposing figure lurched forward and collapsed over the hip-high dresser.

“You want to go introduce yourself?” Kesha asked as she made for the door.

“I’m okay,” the Doctor muttered as he followed her into the next room and shut the door firmly behind them.
 

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From the dimly light exhibit room, the pair slipped into a corridor with a high ceiling and a lovely row of large windows to their right. Opposite the large windows was a wall decorated with clearly outdated wallpaper that stood in sharp contrast to the large black and white tiles that covered the floor. Display cases not entirely dissimilar to the one that the virus carrier in the previous room had fallen over dotted the wall to their left.

THUMP!

The sound of the infected person smacking against the door caused the pair to jump slightly, with the Doctor reaching for a sonic screwdriver that wasn’t there and Kesha drawing her sidearm once again. When the door failed to give, they heard an almost frustrated wail of hungry from the other side.

“Can’t work a doorknob, it seems.” The woman whispered as the Time Lord gently put a finger on the barrel of her gun and lowered it for her. “You know,” she spoke softly as she holstered the weapon. “I don’t recall feeling this jittery before… I think you being here is throwing me off a little.”

“My existing and being here with you is conflicting with the false memories and backstory implanted into your brain when you fell out of the TARDIS.”

“I’m not going to disappear like Alex P Keaton, am I?”

“Let’s avoid your parents just in case,” the Doctor muttered. He then promptly furrowed his brow as he took a few steps away from the door. His eyes had caught something beneath one of the display cases, and he dropped down to his hands and knees to peer beneath the cabinet. After reaching a hand underneath the heavy mahogany construction, the Doctor pulled out a small black object that seemed to have a slightly unnatural luster to it. “Who conceals a polished handgun clip under the display case?”

“Crazies?” Kesha replied as she took the clip and stuffed it into a pouch she wore on her hip. “Or maybe it fell down there when someone was retreating through this hallway?”

“I suppose,” the Doctor muttered as a flash of lightning bathed the room in a momentary glow and cast the shadows of leafless trees upon the high patterned walls. “Something just feels off about all of this.”

“We’re trapped in a mansion filled with zombies, and you just noticed that there’s something wrong about this situation?”

“Not like that,” the Time Lord replied as the pair reached the point where the hall took a ninety degree turn. Out in front of them, the hall ended with another heavy-looking oak door. “This place is real, yet it’s also…” It wasn’t very often that the time traveler found himself stumbling around in his vast brain space for the correct words.

Before those words could come, the two of them were both startled by the sound of wood and glass splintering under a heavy impact. Their eyes instinctively shifted to the door they had passed through, but even at this distance, they could tell it was wholly intact. A second dull thud and subsequent outcry of wood and glass pulled them to the nearest of the large windows that lined the outer wall of the hall. It took them both all of three seconds to see the two large spider web-like cracks where something that struck the window. On three sides, the wooden pane was likewise stressed to the point where it was splintering apart.

“Run!” The Doctor shouted as whatever lurked outside came crashing through the window amid a half of glinting shards of glass.

The pair went lunging through the door, and from the relative brightness of the chandeliers, they stumbled into another dimly-light hall. Behind them, the door had barely clicked shut when something crashed into it with far more vigor than that of a virus carrier. Short claws scraped violently at the door, which violently shuddered on its hinges but failed to yield to whatever sought its destruction. A beat later, the pair heard the distinct growl of a large dog, but the creature must have stalked off to parts unknown, because it didn’t bother to try and force its way a second time.

“More dogs.” Kesha mumbled as she turned to look at a metal door that stood on the wall next to where they had entered. Beyond that nearby door, the rest of what the corridor contained was unknown, as the hall turned sharply ahead of the twosome. Walking over to the door, the woman reached into her pouch and retrieved the little bundle of tools that Barry had given her earlier.

“You don’t want to see what’s in the rest of this passage?” The Doctor whispered as he walked a few steps passed the woman. Standing at the turn, he glimpsed down and saw the rest of the hall seemed empty. Light from sconces mounted on the wall flickered over a few more doors and windows, but other than that, the only threatening thing in this room was the wallpaper and some bizarre-looking paintings. “Seems clear to me.”

“I’m not big into locks,” Kesha whispered as she jiggled the knob of the metal door before feeding one of her tools through the keyhole. “Makes it harder to get away if we get yet another monster crashing through a window.”

“Who knows, they might come up through the floor this time,” the Doctor said without turning to face the young woman’s wilting glare.

“Almost…” Kesha mumbled as she felt the pick start to catch on the mechanism. “I had no problem doing this a few hours ago,” she added as the lock turned over with a satisfying, metallic click. Unfortunately, the door also took that moment to swing outward, and the crouching, petite popstar-slash-commando was yanked forward by its heavy weight.

The Doctor heard a click, a yelp, another click, and then the muted sounds of various curses all in the time it took for him to pivot on his heels and jog to the metal door.

“What happened, Master of Unlocking?” He muttered as he tried the doorknob. Despite what had befallen his partner, the door was once again locked. “I thought you unlocked it?”

“I did!” Kesha shouted through the heavy door. “I don’t know if the hinges are weighted weird, but it opened and pulled me with it… I lost my balance and fell before I could catch it.”

“Undone by a door.”

“Shut it! Can you open it?”

“It’s locked again,” the Doctor muttered as he put a little more gusto into his attempts to crank the handle. “You still have your tools?” He asked as he glimpsed at the bare, wooden floor but found no sign of the metal doodads that helped the woman undo locks.

“Yes, but there’s no keyhole on this side. Can you do anything from over there?”

The Doctor looked down at his torn pocket and sighed. “I have nothing,” he spoke softly as he looked down at the doorknob. There weren’t any clarifying markers that denoted some sort of hidden trick to get it open any other way. “Are you safe? Where are you?”

“Outside,” Kesha whispered, her voice barely audible through a small grate at the center of the door. “You know, where the skinned dogs roam around.”

“At least you have a gun?” The Doctor offered sarcastically as a thump on the door told him that Kesha didn’t appreciate his efforts to defuse the tension with humor. “Can’t you just shoot the hinges, though? Isn’t that the American way to solve this problem?”

“Says the guy who talks like he’s from nondescript, small-town America.”

“Valid point,” the Time Lord replied as he jiggled the doorknob one last time before letting his hand slip down to his side. “Can you get around to where that dog came through the window? I can trick it back in here, and then we just need to outmaneuver the shambler in the other room.”

“Negative,” Kesha muttered after a long pause. “The fence is too tall, too pointy, and entirely too rusted. I don’t feel like getting tetanus trying to scale it, and it’s not far gone enough that I think I could knock it down.”

“Windows on your end?”

“Nothing inside the fenced area,” the woman replied quickly. Around the corner, there’s just an old boiler and some gardening supplies.”

“I’ll look around on my end,” the Doctor spoke as he turned away from the door. “You should stay where you are… you might wind up being safer out there.”

“Yea, until the zombie wolves get me.” The reply came.

“Just don’t do anything to attract attention to yourself, and I’ll be back as soon as I find some way through this door. There has to be a key for it somewhere.”

“Hurry up, because it’s chilly out here.”

“Isn’t it July?”

“It’s nighttime!” Kesha growled back before thumping on the door.

With a smirk, the Doctor big the woman farewell for now and walked deeper into the hallway. A few feet removed from where he had momentarily lost Kesha, he found a simple wooden door that led him into a bathroom. Stepping inside, he found the light switch and winced momentarily as a few separate lights flickered a few times before remaining on. Like the hallway behind him, the bathroom was poorly illuminated, but there was enough light for him to see the clawed bathtub, a large sink, and what had to be a toilet tucked behind a partial wall.

“Of course it’s full,” the Doctor muttered as he took a few steps toward the ancient tub and saw that it was nearly filled to the brim with opaque, brackish water. “That will be a hard pass,” he added as he walked around the tub and glimpsed at what seemed to be a simple yet outdated toilet. Like the tub, the toilet had the appearance of something which had seen its last cleaning a few weeks prior.

Returning to the center of the bathroom, the Doctor paused in front of the sink. Grime dotted the marble counter, and the walls around the large mirror likewise sported signs of uncleanliness gone unchecked.

“Nothing in here,” the Doctor muttered to his reflection as he rested his hands on one of the cleaner sections of the counter.

“What did you expect?”

It was a nearly perfect replication of the Doctor’s voice, and since it hadn’t come from his own thoughts, he quickly craned his neck. His eyes fell to the bathtub, but no bubbles issued up from the murky pool of filth.

“Back this way.”

The Time Lord turned back around and saw that his reflection—his now bearded reflection—was smiling at him despite the fact that the Doctor’s lips were twisted up in an expression of unease and confusion. “I can’t recall having been struck in the head lately.”

“Nah, no CTE for you.” Again, the voice was like the Doctor’s but not quite. It was the same accent, but there was an extra layer of weariness to it. “Tell me you have already noticed how bizarre the situation you’re in has grown. I know you’re still post-regeneration, but I don’t think it would mess with that giant brain of yours too much.”

“Something’s off, yes,” the Doctor muttered. “Are my clothes really that tattered?”

“Yes, you look awful. You’d be better off being bare-chested, because someone’s going to shoot you thinking you’ve one of those things groaning and shambling around the mansion.”

“Good point,” the Doctor muttered as his ‘reflection’ smiled back at him. When he did, the Doctor noticed that his reflection had straight teeth, which prompted the Time Lord to tilt his head.

“Yea, a few years ago. Sorry, I didn’t update your visuals, but it also seemed weird to have the Doctor have a beard. Better to go with the vintage look, as I’m sure you’ll understand eventually.”

“Who… what are you?” The Doctor inquired as he stepped away from the countertop.

“I’m you… but then again, I’m not you. You are me, and then again, you are not me.” The not-Doctor in the mirror smiled yet again and ran a hand through his hair, which was a bit unkempt and overdue for a trim. “My name is Alex. I guess you’d say that I’m your writer.”
 

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“Writer, eh?” The Doctor asked with a cheeky smile as he glanced around to make sure no one was concealed in the room in some manner. Even the space under the sink was free of anything (aside from some old cleaning products that clearly had seen very little use in recent history.

“Deadass,” the man said before cringing slightly at his own word choice. “I mean, yeah, I’m the writer. The keyboard jockey, you might say.”

“No one would ever say that.”

“Touché,” Alex shot back. “Is this the part of the narrative where I’m supposed to do something to prove that I reign omniscient in our little personal sphere of the Crossroads?”

The Time Lord shrugged his shoulders. “Why do you look like me?”

Alex furrowed his brow. “You’ve got that swapped. You’re me. Or you are what I was, once upon a time. Like a snapshot in history, you know? You’ve lost track of Kesha, haven’t you? After you stumbled into her sometime in 2010, isn’t that what’s going on? You crashed on Joe’s zoid world before plans fell through and you wound up here.”

“Very observant,” the Doctor muttered as he leaned to each side and traced his fingers along the edge of the old mirror. Nothing felt out of sort, and he couldn’t smell anything out of place in the old, slightly unclean bathroom. “We were separated by creatures of some kind.”

“Zombies? Or the dogs? They’re all infected with a virus that spilled somewhere on these grounds.”

“Virus? Are we in danger?”

Alex shook his head before glancing at something to his left, prompting the Doctor to steal a look, as if the Time Lord expected anything more than empty space. “Just don’t get bitten or scraped open by one of them… the virus is still hot in the blood.”

“So why are you in the mirror here? Did I fall and smack my head on the toilet seat? Are you my jumbled subconscious trying to guide me through the dangers that face my companion and me?”

The man’s brow creased yet again. “There’s a key in the bathtub. It’s a little key on a brass ring, and it’ll open the door that your companion is stuck behind.”

The Time Lord looked over at the tub of water and scowled. “Smells like a trap.”

“Only in the remake.”

“Pass.” The Doctor said with a manic smile as he creased out his ruffled scraps of clothing and waved at the man in the mirror. “This has been great, but I need to go looking for a way through that door or a safe way outside.” With that, the Time Lord sauntered off and exited the room, leaving a flummoxed Alex standing in the mirror. The weary-eyed man looked at the tub and sighed when he caught the faint glint of the cord that could be used to yank out the cork.

“Well that went about as awful as I expected it to go.”

“Told you that you should have just changed the door into bricks or something. You’re not good in this role, you should have let me do it.”

“Oh shush it, this is my narrative. Get out before I break you like one of Jimmy Smith’s many glass body parts.”
 

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The Time Lord found himself back in the dim corridor. As the door to the bathroom clicked shut behind him, he let out a long sigh. Truth be told, he knew that something had been wrong ever since his regeneration. Something about him just felt … off. It was as if space-time had somehow warped or torn around him, leaving him with a perpetually feeling of otherness, as if he hadn’t belonged in any of these locales.

“Well I know for sure that I don’t belong here,” he muttered as he glanced around the dark corridor. If he was beginning to hallucinate entire conversations with mirror-people, that meant he was still suffering from the worst of the regeneration sickness. As he mulled over his mental state, the Doctor was suddenly startled by a thump from the door he’d taken into this corridor.

Dangers are still around… Fo-cus.

Stumbling away from the door, the Doctor ran a hand through his unkempt head of hair and walked toward the window on the far wall. As far as he could tell, the mansion was surrounded by deep and heavily forested mountains, but the grounds around it seemed to be extensive. While his exact view was a bit obscured by what appeared to be decades of grim and lack of maintenance, he could still see that there was some type of garden area behind the house. Perhaps he’d be able to find some type of way outside if he pressed a little further into the house?

The Time Lord walked back to the heavy steel door and rapped on the thick metal, hoping to draw back his companion who was trapped on the other side. Unfortunately, the glittery popstar-turned-commando didn’t knock back, even after a solid five minutes had transpired. The Doctor frowned as he pressed his face against the steel and tried his hardest to project his voice through the material. “Kesha! … Kesha!”

Nothing.

“Fiddlesticks,” the Time Lord grumbled as a heavy, wet thump on the nearby door nearly made him slam his face into the door. “Have to press on, I guess,” he muttered as he turned to look further into the corridor.

Weaving his way down the corridor, the Doctor paused at the first door he came to and gave it a jiggle. It was unlocked, so he pushed it open and braced himself for whatever was going to come lunging at him next. When he was greeted by nothing but warm, aged incandescent bulbs, the Time Lord let out a sigh of relief and passed into the square room. None of the room looked particularly pleasant, with the white plaster walls appearing flaked and in dire need of repair. Each of the walls was adorned with weathered-looking wooden frames of some kind. Were they supposed to house pictures or tapestries of some kind?

While he quickly noted the plain door in the far corner, his eyes were then drawn up to the high ceiling. A solid fifteen feet up, the ceiling seemed to be the plainest thing the Doctor had found in this mansion. It appeared to be little more than a slab of uneven concrete lashed to the adjacent walls.

“Well that doesn’t seem out of place or anything,” the Time Lord muttered as he moved over to the nearby wooden door and tried the knob. Once more, he found himself delighted that there wasn’t a lock, so he stepped over the threshold and found himself in what appeared to be a living room. On the wall to his right, the Doctor spotted a quaint little fireplace beneath a large tapestry depicting what appeared to be a coat of arms of some kind. In the corner just next to him, a potted plant was in surprisingly non-dead condition, despite the fact that other parts of the house looked to have been unmaintained for decades.

The center of the room was dominated by a coffee table that was low to the ground and decorated with some random knickknacks. A sofa was on the other side of the table, and for all intents and purposes, it appeared to be in good condition as well—yet another contrast with some of the other bits in the mansion.

On the far side of the room …

Oh, that’s certainly nothing fishy.

Making his way to the left side of the room, the Doctor kept his eyes glued to the long firearm that appeared to be mounted in front of a plain-looking wooden picture frame. As he drew closer, he saw that the shotgun was resting on two metal hooks.

“You’re very shiny,” he muttered as he poked the gun. It wobbled atop the claws, which did little to change his initial observation that this wasn’t normal. The Doctor had been to America plenty of times, so he knew lots of people liked to just have random guns on their walls or shining behind glass cases. Usually, those guns were supposed to be ‘historical’ or have some significance beyond simply being metaphors for male genitalia.

In this instance, this just appeared to be a run-of-the-mill shotgun that someone would take with them to hunt … well, whatever it is that people hunted with shotguns. Birds? Rabbits?

“Yuck,” the Doctor mumbled as he put his hands under the gun and leaned in a little closer. At this short distance, it looked like their were grooves of some kind that the hooks sat into. Again, none of this appeared to be normal, but then again, he was also in a mansion infested with zombies. “Yippie-kay-yay,” he whispered as he plucked the firearm up and away from the hooks.

With the weight gone, the hooks did what he had expected them to do—they slid upward a couple of inches. Somewhere in the wall, the Doctor even heard what sounded like the grind of decades-old gears. “Now what?” The alien asked aloud as he glanced around for some sort of indication that he had made a terrible decision. As far as he could tell, everything seemed to be in order. There didn’t appear to be any hidden blow darts or swinging guillotine blades prepped to rain down on him.

Turning around, the Time Lord noticed that the tapestry above the fireplace had come loose on one end. As he drew closer, he saw that there appeared to be a short message inscribed on the wall.

Are you sure about this? -A’.

Frowning, the Time Lord turned to the room’s exit and made his way into the square room. He made it halfway to other door when he heard the faint click of a lock behind him. As he turned to look at the other door, he heard an identical click from the entryway back into the hallway. Hustling to the hallway door, the Doctor found it locked. As he jiggled the knob, he heard once more the sound of aged machinery grinding to life as flecks of dust flittered down all around him.

“Oh … bollocks,” the Time Lord whispered as he glanced up to confirm what he already knew.

The ceiling—that plain as day, far too high, and entirely out of place ceiling—was slowly starting to descend. Jogging back to the door to the living room, the Doctor tried the lock and found it unresponsive as well.

“No no no no,” the alien vagabond muttered as he twisted and jogged back to the hallway door. He gave it a solid rapping before smushing his face against the wood. “Hello? Can anyone hear me out there?” Overhead, the ceiling had already descended a few feet, and the rain of plaster flecks was only continuing to intensify. With the butt of the shotgun, the Doctor knocked on the door again. “Anyone? Help!”

Suddenly, a gruff voice came from the other side. “Kesha? Is that you, Kesha? What happened?”

Frowning, the Doctor pressed against the door. “No, it’s the Doctor. Is that Barry? Barry Burton? Can you help me? The door won’t open.” The Time Lord looked up to see the ceiling was just a few feet overhead now. “Quick,” he added, unaware that his voice had cracked as he started to crouch away from the encroaching ceiling.

“Stay away from the door! I’m gonna kick this door down!”

The Doctor barely had the time to back up before the brawny man on the other side kicked in the door, which splintered as it crashed against the wall.

“Quick!” Barry shouted as he motioned with his hand for the alien to escape the deathtrap. “This way!”

Wait – was there supposed to be another way?

The Doctor raced forward, crouching to avoid the ceiling as it reached the open door and started to crush it. As the Time Lord stumbled back out into the hallway, the concrete death trap seemed to accelerate sharply, and with a thud that seemed to shake the entire mansion, it settled to the floor.

Brushing the dust off his raggedy clothes, the Doctor looked at the burly, bearded man and smiled. “Barry, th—”

“That was close,” the man interrupted. “You were almost a …” And then, the man furrowed his brow, as if the words had just slipped away from his tongue at the last moment.

“Flapjack?” The Doctor asked.

Sandwich.

“Sandwich!” Barry finally concluded as he looked at the concrete trap that had nearly smashed the man.

Aware that he had heard the disembodied voice but unwilling to accept that he had, the Doctor merely smiled. “You’re right! Thanks, Barry, for saving my life.” The man nodded, but there still seemed to be something off about him … as if he wanted to say more but could not. “But, Barry … didn’t you say you were going back to the dining room to do some research? Why on earth are you here?”

“Uhh,” Barry mumbled. “I just had something I wanted to check,” he added dejectedly before suddenly perking up once again. “Now! Let’s get back to searching for the lost captain and Chris, shall we?” With that, the man suddenly started to walk away, as if that was the most appropriate way to conclude a conversation. Before he could vanish around the corner, the Doctor managed to will more words out of his own mouth.

“Thank you, Barry.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He muttered as he dismissed the other man with a wave of his hand and vanished.

One Barry had disappeared around the corner, it was like some weird weight lifted off the Time Lord’s shoulders, and he found himself confused that he hadn’t noticed it during the conversation. How had he not picked up how stiff they both sounded? As if they were reciting canned bits of dialogue? Was he still suffering from post-regeneration brain or had something befallen Barry and him?

“Wait, Barry!” The Doctor shouted as he raced to follow the man. Despite trailing him by only five or ten seconds, the Doctor found no sign of the gruff, muscular police officer. Had Barry gone that silently through the door into the hallway with the dogs? There had been no gunshots or sounds of fighting…

The bathroom?

The Doctor glimpsed at that door and shook his head immediately.

No, not in there. Not risking that. Need to clear my brain.

Backdoor, remember?

“I was on my way to the back do—” the Time Lord scowled as he glimpsed around the dimly light hallway. Something was messing with his thoughts again; of this, he was certain.

Yet, he had been on his way to find a backdoor to the house.

“Fo-cus, Doctor,” he spoke softly as he glimpsed down to see that he was still holding the shotgun. “Yea, no thank you,” he muttered as he set the gun on a nearby end table. “Someone else can use you.”

With that, he set off for the far end of the hallway and to discover what lay beyond the last unopened door.
 

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… “Puzzles?” The Doctor scowled as he traced his hands around the indentation in the wall.

So close!

After being saved by Barry, the Time Lord had found his way through one final dark, damp hallway before he’d run across a room filled with paintings and crows. Filled with a bunch of various pieces of art and some unique lighting switches, the time traveler had ultimately left the room without investigating too much. Why?

A railing of some sort ran the length of the room’s high ceiling. Said metal railing was home to a number of crows that, despite their predicament, seemed absolutely comfortable perched up there and occasionally cawing as they observed the raggedy man who had quickly started to wilt under the scrutiny of their beady, pustulant eyes.

Unwilling to try experiment with what was clearly another sort of puzzle, the Doctor had exited the room and made his way to the last unlocked door in the hall. After stepping around a corpse slumped against the wall, he had stepped out of the almost oppressive mansion and into a room that was some sort of open-air walkway. While he had initially relished in the cool, fresh air, the Time Lord had felt his spirit wane when he realized that the breeze came from small, grated slits atop stone walls.

“So close.”

And thus, the Doctor had found himself at the end of the pseudo-outdoor corridor, and his focus had been pulled to the recess in the wall that housed what was obviously the home for some sort of large medallion, coin, or decorative plate of some kind.

The nearby door was firmly locked, and an inscription on a nearby steel plate painted the obvious picture: ‘The defiler of the accursed tomb.’

Despite the fact that there were no other marks on the slotted mechanism, the Doctor could see the door had been opened recently, because there were some marks on the stone floor that implied something door-shaped had been dragged briefly across it and unsettled what was otherwise a somewhat grimy floor.

With the metal door firmly locked, the Time Lord knew his options were limited to a few different flavors of one of his least favorite activities.

Backtracking.

***​

A few hundred feet beneath the confounded Time Lord, a man with slicked blonde hair and sunglasses watched his every movement. Although he had initially been infuriated by the presence of the unkempt vagrant, he knew that his contact had some sort of vested interest in the bizarre personality who seemed to know one of his operatives. Moving slowly, he pushed her chair away from the row of computer monitors and pivoted it toward the door.

“You dragged yourself over her all by yourself?” He muttered with a cold smirk as the elderly woman scowled at him from the doorway.

“You and William could barely handle closing down the Training Facility, and you expected me to just nap while you botched this far more precious task?” The woman’s British accent made everything that came out of her mouth all the smugger and more venomous, but Wesker could do little to deny the fact that, despite her advanced age, Professor Baxton was one of the most brilliant biochemist he had ever met. There were more than a few days where her seemingly vast wealth of knowledge would put even Birkin to shame.

Despite their friendship, Wesker always loved to see the wonderchild put in his place.

It had been Professor Baxton who had first noticed the leakage of Epsilon following what had otherwise been a routine surgical procedure on the T-002. It had been Professor Baxton who had tipped off Wesker and Birkin to the containment failures in the old training facility run by the late Doctor Marcus. It had been Professor Baxton who had remained safe and sound while the facility, mansion, and the entire surrounding complex had descended into anarchy.

…it had also been Professor Baxton who had known about Wesker’s ‘outside contacts’ and his plan to leverage the developing situation to betray Umbrella and enrich himself in the process. Truthfully, the only thing that the old crone had failed to grasp was the trump card that Wesker had secured from Birkin after their last meeting at the facility.

“Where is the Doctor?” Baxton muttered after hobbling her way over to the station with the use of a cane. While the woman’s body was pallid and emaciated, her eyes burned with the vigor of someone a third her age.

“There,” Wesker said, pointing to a screen that contained the camera feed from the small graveyard nestled behind the Spencer Mansion. “He solved the puzzle in the gallery, but he doesn’t have the arrowhead to enter the crypt.”

As the leader of S.T.A.R.S Alpha Team observed the feed, he felt one of the woman’s hands settle on his shoulder. A beat later, he caught her scowling out of the corner of his eyes as her finger suddenly dug into his shoulder.

“That’s not him,” she seethed as she dug her nails through Wesker’s uniform.

“Hands off,” he growled as he jerked away from the now irate woman. “He calls himself the Doctor, he’s dressed in a raggedy suit, and he talks utter nonsense.”

Professor Baxton shook her head. “No. It’s a ruse. The face isn’t right,” she snarled and looked at the man. “Is he British?”

“American,” the blonde replied as he adjusted his sunglasses. At that, Wesker saw Professor Baxton start to grind her teeth. “This man matches the visitor you said we’d locate in the forest… down to the shoes.”

“His face is wrong,” the old crone rasped. “The Doctor isn’t some raggedy Yank.”

“So, he has an accent? What does it change?”

Professor Baxton slammed her cane into the ground. “It changes everything, Albert. Space and time are wrong. This changes everything.”

Wesker scowled as he spotted something in another one of the cameras. Was that Enrico Marino? Still lurking around the compound? “I have my own business to deal with,” the cold blonde replied as he stood up from the terminal. “Keep the doors locked,” he muttered as he gave a parting nod to the gray-haired woman.
 

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The Doctor grimaced as he traced the impression in the stone.

Another puzzle.

This time, it was a clear relief of an arrowhead amidst an engraving of a cherub with a bow and arrow.

“Who designs this stuff?” The Time Lord grumbled as he stepped away from the ornate relief and glanced back over his shoulder toward the mansion. While he had managed to solve the riddle with the stained-glass paintings, his ‘reward’ had been the entire wall sliding away to reveal a graveyard-filled garden behind the foyer of the mansion. After taking a few steps into the ‘fresh’ air, the Doctor had nearly tripped over what seemed to be a rubberized death mask that was missing its mouth. That mask was currently tucked into the back of his mangled trousers.

At this moment in time, it didn’t take an advanced degree for the Doctor to understand the mask would serve him no good right now. unless he could chop it into an arrow-sized piece. After all, it was clear that whatever lay behind or underneath the gravestone-esque slab would be unlocked once he found the missing part of the stone engraving.

Bang!

Flecks of stone sprinkled the Time Lord’s face as a bullet crashed into the relief, narrowly missing the cherub’s head by a similar margin. Something incomprehensible sputtered out of the man’s mouth as he spun and rapidly came to the realization that he was trapped. On both sides of the tomb that rested below the angel relief, the outside world lay beyond a wrought iron fence that he didn’t think he could scale before someone shot him several more times.

Before he could commit himself to some frantic course of action, another gunshot rang out from the haze that lay back toward the mansion. That solitary shot was fired by the heavy thud of combat boots and a sputter of retaliatory gunfire. Against anyone else’s better judgment, the Doctor went rushing back toward the mansion, picking up the sight of someone scaling the wrought iron and diving into the absolute darkness that stretched beyond the barrier.

Before the Doctor could finish assessing what was going on, he heard the second set of boots approaching from the other direction. Half-expecting to be shot, the time traveler was relieved when he heard the voice of his companion.

“Did you get a look at who that was, Doctor?” Kesha muttered as she gave her gun a quick once-over before jamming it back into its holster and gesturing toward the nearby door. “We should get out of line of sight of whoever that was.”

A few moments later, the pair found themselves right back where they had started this topsy-turvy night—the foreboding foyer of the Spencer Mansion. The gloomy chamber, illuminated every few moments by a distance flash of lightning, had lost whatever elegance it may have impressed upon its visitors. Instead, all who still drew breath within the mansion recognized this chamber for what it truly was: a gaping maw, swallowing whole any and all wayward souls unfortunate enough to have been trapped within it.

“Are you all right?” The Doctor spoke to break the silence as he looked at the haggard condition of his companion. The young woman’s S.T.A.R.S. uniform had been scraped and shredded in more than one place, and her poor beret looked as if it had been mauled.

“I’ve seen better days,” Kesha spoke softly as she gave herself a series of once-overs before brushing down some of the erratic strands of shredded fabric. “I managed to scale a railing and make it up to this open air porch,” the woman pointed up to one of the many poorly light corners of the foyer’s second floor balcony. “Metal door over there, but there was a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Two.” She muttered as she adjusted her gloves before finally sagging down onto the carpeted stairs with a muted thump. “One of my teammates was up there.”

“How was he?”

“Dead,” she retorted. “From the body, he had been peeked to death by birds.”

“That’s…” the Doctor paused to shudder at the thought of being mauled by birds. Thanks for making that particular horror so mainstream, Alfred.

“It gets three thousand times worse,” Kesha said with a faint chuckle as she sagged backwards. “I told you he was dead, right?”

“Yes.”

“Until he wasn’t.”

As if waiting for that cue, there was a distinct thud of something heavy crashing against metal up in the darker recess of the balcony. The Doctor snapped up to his feet, and over what was now a pitter-patter of rain outside, he distinctly caught the sound of a desperate lamentation, muted behind a steel door.

Kesha waved the man to sit back down against the stairs. “I shot him four times, but I guess that fourth shot hit his cheek instead of his eye.”

“That’s awful,” the Doctor muttered. “How are you feeling? You said he was your teammate?”

“His name was Forrest. Forest Speyer. He was one of the better ones. Responsible for vehicle and weapon maintenance. Consummate professional… bit of a perfectionist, if you ask most people. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

“So he did all of that?” The raggedy man asked, gesturing to the shredded state of Kesha’s uniform.

“This?” She muttered with a chuckle. “No. After I shot him, he stayed down for a while. The porch up there had a few herbs and some stored tools.”

“You dug through a bunch of mangled tools?”

“Nope.”

“Then what?”

“Remember my theory about how Forest was killed?”

“The birds?”

“They were crows. And they came back for seconds.”

The Doctor shuddered before his fear was replaced by more pressing concerns about his companion. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you badly?”

She shook her head almost immediately before tapping her chest. “Padded undershirts,” she pushed up her uniform sleeve to reveal a second sleeve underneath. “I’m sure I’ll have some bruises, but nothing got through. You would have found me with a bullet in my brain if that had happened.”

The Doctor frowned. “Even if it was an infection, we can’t be sure that these people are still contagious.”

Kesha rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen the movies, Raggedy Man. All it takes is one bite from those things, and you’ll turn into one of them.”

“We can’t rule it out,” he replied. “But this is science, so we also can’t rule out the fact that sometimes, people are naturally resilient to all kinds of infections and viruses. Just because something happened in Night of the Living Dead doesn’t mean it happens in this version of life.”

“Dawn of the Dead.”

“No, it’s clearly nighttime.”

“The film I saw was Dawn of the Dead.”

“The one in the mall?”

“What other Dawn of the Dead do you think it is?”

The Doctor, in his travels through space and time, had encountered about a hundred thousand permutations of that film, but this wasn’t the time or the place to get on that long of a tangent. “What’s the plan of action? You didn’t run across any of your colleagues in this hall before you heard those gunshots, did you?”

“No, and I couldn’t get a clear look at who was shooting at you, which puts us back to where we were an hour ago.”

“Clueless and borderline hopeless?”

“Aye.”

“Bollocks,” the Doctor muttered beneath his breath as he stared around the foyer.

“That doesn’t sound right with your accent.”

The Time Lord scowled. Amid all the confusion and chaos, he’d forgotten that his regeneration had managed to render him far more twangy than normal yet not twangy enough to be charming. If he couldn’t have been Southern, couldn’t he have at least had some of that Midwestern or Northeastern twist?

“Where do I sound like I’m from, anyway?”

Kesha shrugged. “Someplace boring and bland? Like… western New York or Missouri or something. You got nothing going on.”

“Neither do you!” In all fairness, the woman from Tennessee spoke with a zero out of ten on that particular scale.

“It’s called a performer voice!” Kesha spoke in heightened tones that were laced with Southern hospitality. “People don’t think I speak in autotune and yodels just because I sing that way, you know.”

“Autotune?”

The door to the second-floor patio shuddered on its hinges, which snapped the pair of bickering companions from their spirited discussion. A moment later, the double doors that had led to the east wing waiting room were likewise smacked by a dry, decaying form that wailed in frustration.

“No one went through that way,” the Doctor whispered as the two slowly stood up and started to make their way toward the western side of the balcony. Without addressing it, the pair had both understood that their best option was to head toward the side of the house that didn’t have a bunch of actively rattling doors.

“Lead the way,” the Doctor remarked as he pointed toward a pair of hefty double doors that would take them to the balcony of the dining room. The remark got a quick scowl from his haggard companion, but before she could open her mouth, he pointed to her hip. “You’re the cowgirl in this equation, not me.”

“Heh,” the musician-turned-commando muttered as she tapped her gun. “You bet’cha,” she remarked with a Southern inflection as she ascended the remainder of the carpeted stairs. “Yee haw,” she added with less enthusiasm.
 

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The Doctor stumbled through the darkness of one of the mansion’s twisting corridors. While there was occasionally a flash of outside lightning, the absence of such phenomena rendered him nearly blind in the passage. Somewhere out there in the dark, he smelled the distinctly unpleasant scent of decaying epidermis, but without the telltale groans of the infected, he felt mostly safe stumbling his way through the hallway.

Somewhere in the distance, a bolt of lightning provided the line of sight the Time Lord needed to see that the hallway turned up ahead of him. Separated from his companion since their arrival at the house following a crash in the woods, the alien traveler knew how important it was to find her. While she was a trained professional, he didn’t want her to think for a moment that he would abandon her to whatever misbegotten science was at place in this old place.

She has to be somewhere … there weren’t many entrances to this place that aren’t sealed tight.

Making his way around the bend and up to the door, the Doctor tried the handle and felt a small amount of relief when it turned with little protest. As he pushed open another of the mansion’s heavy wooden doors, he nearly recoiled as a small consisting of old compost and bitter chemicals washed over him. Pinching his nose, he edged into the room and immediately noted that there was only a single outside-facing window, and it was barred shut.

The source of the stench was a rotted plant that must have grown out of control at some point. Fetid and withered vines alike splayed out across the floor of the little greenhouse room, with a fountain near the far side of the room still sputtering out something that smelled too complex to be simple water.

“Who thought gardening was appropriate this evening?” The Doctor asked aloud as he inched his way closer to the rotting remains of the overgrown plant. On the other side of the fountain, there was what seemed to a large decorative slab in the form of a shield on the wall. Based on the lack of dust at its center and some parts that had clearly been disturbed by fingers, it was clear that something had recently hug from its center.

“Caretaker?” The Doctor frowned. The mysteries of this mansion were plentiful, and that was even before you started considering the origin of the formerly deceased staff. Another possibility was that one of the other commandos had seen something valuable and decided to take a trophy.

Or perhaps some kind of weapon?

His frown was still fairly deep as he stepped back around the fountain and made his way toward the front end of the room. As he neared the glass wall, his ears picked up something faint and melodic trying to fight its way through the barely translucent interior wall of the greenhouse. Edging closer, the Doctor put first and eye and then an ear to the decades-old unclean glass. He could see nothing but dark shadows, but his ears picked up the faintest hints of …

“Moonlight Sonata?”

Making his way back to the door, the Doctor slipped into the dark, brown hallway and charted a path back toward the interior of the house. On his way through these passageways, he distinctly recalled popping his head into a large, saloon-style room that feature a piano and a bar as its central features.

As he made his way back toward the tea room hallway, the Doctor noticed that one of the doors was open. At this point, he could audibly hear the piano playing, so he figured he’d have a moment to investigate since that bar had only appeared to have the single entrance.

“Curiosity…” the vagrant of time whispered as he slipped in through the ajar door and saw that he was in someone’s former bedroom. The former was a given, since the defining feature was the decayed corpse of a man slumped in the closet on the other side of the bed. From the doorway, the Doctor could only see the tattered pantlegs, but there was a smell of blood and gunpowder that still hung loosely in the air of the bedroom.

“Anyone alive in there?” The Time Lord whispered as he nudged the door shut and maneuvered around the king-sized bed that dominated the center of the very rustic, very vintage bedroom. Unlike the majesty of some of the mansion’s large rooms, this one stood out for how down-to-earth (or whatever planet this actually may be) it felt.

That is, of course, aside from the fetid and freshly bloodied corpse slumped in the closet. As the Doctor crept closer, he spotted an open journal on the desk across from where the body lay. Although he couldn’t spot the upper half in the darkness of the occupied closet, there didn’t seem to be any threat, given the fresh blood that had pooled out down around the slain man’s ankles and feet.

“What happened here?” the Doctor muttered as he diverted his focus to the diary, which he quickly took a few moments to sift through. Given Occam’s razor, it seemed that the dead man in the closet was responsible for taking care of animals. While the first parts of the journal were a rather pedestrian account of maintaining the ‘Spencer Estate’, the author quickly started to mention researchers in the basement, strange experiments, and some type of chemical spill. The man detailed some type of sickness he endured that eventually rendered him unable to write coherently, with his final remarks in the text being…

“Itchy tasty.”

The Doctor frowned as he folded the book closed and tucked it into his jacket. He turned around and gave a somber nod to the dead man before heading out of the room and proceeding back toward the sound of the piano in the bar.

Slipping through the doors once more, the Time Lord breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his companion seated and casually rattling off a very skilled rendition of Moonlight Sonata. He made his way over to her, but when he got without a few yards, she suddenly jerked up out of her seat. Her gun veered up just the time traveler managed to throw up his hands.

“Jill, it’s me!” He shouted over the fading tones of the piano.

The woman relaxed immediately at the sight and sound of the strange British man she’d met outside the mansion. “You can’t startle me like that, especially after the woods. I had to crawl over some fence outside, and there were str—”

The woman was cut off by the sound of stone gears grinding in the walls nearby. The pair craned their necks to see that a portion of the wall near the back side of the bar had opened up to reveal an additional storage space.

“Where are we?” Jill muttered as she held her weapon at the ready and slid off the piano bench.

“The piano and the secret passageway isn’t all that more confusing and mysterious than anything else we’ve encountered so far,” the Doctor chuckled as he and the woman crept toward the space, which seemed to be position behind the greenhouse-esque room where the Time Lord had encountered the dead plant. “The bigger mystery is what possessed you to sit down and play Moonlight Sonata in a mysterious mansion filled with the reanimated dead.”

“I thought you might hear it and come. You or the others in my team.”

“But who else could have heard it? There’s more to this place than just those sad zombies.”

Inside the room was an ornate decoration that housed a gilded crest.

“I think that matches the one in the dining room…” Jill muttered. “Up above the fireplace.”

“What fun,” the Doctor said. “More puzzles.”

***​

“Do you hear that, Kesha?” The Doctor whispered as he stopped mid-step and tried to squint his ears to better determine the noise. Was that downstairs? Basement?

“Sounded like something collapsing,” she answered. “But this place is massive… it could have come from anywhere. You don’t think this place is going to fall apart?”

“I wouldn’t be terribly opposed to that idea,” the time traveling vagabond remarked.
 

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William Birkin paced around the lab facility.

Something was not right.

While Wesker and he had overseen the destruction of the Training School, there had been reports in the last twelve hours of instances of ‘cannibal attacks’ on the streets of Racoon City. Albert had already departed for the Spencer Mansion and the Arklay Laboratory that lay beneath it. Their last meeting had been on the outskirts of town, with Birkin discretely passing along the experimental virus he had engineered for Wesker’s personal use in the event that the situation spiraled out of his control. Knowing Albert, William doubted there would be any hiccups that the sneering scientist couldn’t snuff out.

Yet, these incidents were not something either of them had noticed or even accounted for in the timelines they had devised for their ‘exit plan’.

Birkin, who had been plotting against Umbrella for weeks, had been responsible for a number of maintenance and containment issues at a number of subterranean Umbrella facilities. Despite this disregard for the fates of many Umbrella workers, he would have never been so foolhardy as to leak anything directly to the surface, even if his wife and daughter were also immunized to the t-virus. Even so, he’d heard reports of hospitalizations starting to increase and a few more arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct.

As a result, he’d already opted to accelerate his plans. After all, he’d technically completed the ‘final’ synthesis of Golgotha earlier in the day. Originally, he had intended to privately analyze the samples and run a protein retrosynthesis regimen, but that was something that he could also do from the safety of underground military laboratory. Unable to get ahold of his business partner out in the mountains, William had crossed the proverbial Rubicon by calling in to arrange ‘the transfer’ with his contacts in the United States military. With any luck, their contact team would be in touch with him soon, and Birkin and his family would be able to abscond from Racoon City before the situation above started to circle the drain.

“Are you all right, Dr. Birkin?”

William, who had spent the last three hours holed up the main synthesis lab, twitched at the sound of a human voice among the hum and thrum of machinery. His first instinct had been to go for the gun concealed in his lab coat, but he quickly calmed himself as he recognized the voice of a coworker who he could trust.

“Dr. Wong,” Birkin replied as he blinked a few times at the sight of the disheveled man. Wong, who had a sister working in the Arklay Laboratory, had been a bit lost over the last few days. A middling researcher and someone who lacked the corporate mindset, Wong was unthreatening to Birkin and Wesker’s agenda.

“Dr. Birkin,” Meng Wong looked as if he hadn’t slept in a few days. Then again, Birkin’s only sleep had been a two-hour nap brought about by a small dosage of zolpidem, and aside from that reprieve, William and Annette had avoided sleep in lieu of small doses of amphetamines. In one way, it was desperation as they tried to escape the closing jaws of Umbrella. On the other hand, it also felt like some nostalgic throwback to earlier days in medical school and thereafter… crammed over microscopes and mulling through computational data into the waning hours of twilight.

Annette herself had only recently returned from a sojourn to the surface, where she had provided some sort of interview to a reporter. He knew that the meeting hadn’t been what she had intended, because she’d paged him immediately to meet her. She was back in the facility, but he couldn’t pull himself away from Golgotha until he was certain it would be safeguarded against Umbrella.

“Can… can I help you, Dr. Wong?” William said after a short period of silence where he’d almost forgotten that the other scientist had interrupted his watch. “I’m very busy.” A sideways glance revealed that the samples had been successfully transferred into the travel ampoules.

“Something’s going on,” Dr. Wong finally remarked as William partially turned his attention to transferring the steel capsules that contained the viral samples into the titanium travel case. “I’ve heard some … strange chatter on the shortwave radios.”

“Military?” William asked in about a nonchalant manner as he could muster given the situation.

“Not to my knowledge,” Meng answered. “It sounded like USS.”

William, whose back remained turned to his peer, scowled deeply at the mention of the acronym. Umbrella security? Here?

“Are you certain?” He asked as he casually slipped two of the vials into the interior pocket of his lab coat before buttoning it closed. “Do you know where?”

“Somewhere in the sewers, but that was before I made my way down here. I can’t imagine they’re too far out from here. What do you think they’re here for? The reports from the surface? That incident with the water treatment plant?”

“It hasn’t been a great handful of days for Umbrella,” Birkin remarked as he closed to seals on the case and turned around to see that Meng seemed… amused? “Are you quite all right, Dr. Wong? Have you heard from your sister lately?”

“Have you heard from your daughter? Or your wife?” The response came as Meng started to back up toward the exit to the P-4 Laboratory. “Or your contact in the military who likely wasn’t aware that Umbrella has moles everywhere?” Meng was gone before a clearly unhinged Birkin could accost him, but even as the door slid shut, William’s brain was running overdrive as a dozen different things started burning through his brain.

Annette.

He grabbed for the pager with hands that were already tinged with sweat. His fingers rapidly hammered out the coded SOS signal they shared as he heard the thud of footsteps in the adjacent hallway. Stuffing the pager into his pocket, he scrambled over to his desk and nearly threw the drawer against the wall as he went for the gun he had kept concealed there for years. That made its home in his right hand as he scrambled back over to the machine and punched in the last few commands to release the attaché. Heart beating in his ears, William mashed the lockdown button for the lab, but something on the screen flashed to show that the lockdown system had been disabled just recently.

Frantic as the sounds closed in on him, he scooped the case of G up into his left armpit just as the ceiling suddenly collapsed as a soldier dropped down into the center of the room. A moment later, the entrance to the lab swung open as two more soldiers filled in and leveled their weapons at him.

“Doctor Birkin, you’ll come along with us quietly,” one of the masked USS agents intoned as the faceless team of soldiers subconsciously slid into ready positions.

“You think I didn’t know you were coming?” William, voice wavering even as he attempted to stare down his assailants, shouted. “This is my life’s work! I’m not handing over anything!”

“We have our orders,” another of the soldiers remarked as the wide-eyed, almost rasping scientist moved his eyes between the group of them.

“We’ll ask you one more time,” the one on the end replied, pulling William’s gaze in that direction just as the soldier on the opposite end of the formation seemed to lean forward. That motion in his periphery wrenched the manic scientist’s focus, and his hand that held the pistol jerked just enough in response to trigger the central soldier in the formation to pull the trigger on his assault rifle. Two other soldiers reflexively fired for a brief moment, and in a spray of bullets, William Birkin was sent crashing against the viral synthesis machine.

“Stop! Hold you fire!” The leader of the fireteam barked as the guns fell silent just moments after the attaché case crashed to the ground next to a still and bloodied William Birkin. One of the other team members moved forward to check on the doctor as the team leader turned to confront the soldier who had fired.

“What were you thinking?” The masked soldier rasped. “Our orders were to bring him in alive.” The team leader grumbled beneath his concealed face as he strode away and hailed their handler on the radio. “We’re in, Sir, but we had a snafu. Target resisted, and we had to take him out.”

The other soldiers relaxed a little, even though they knew that their team leader would berate them in private.

“That’s correct, Sir,” their leader replied to a voice only he could hear on his comm. After another pause, he spoke aloud for the others to hear once again. “Roger that. Just the samples, then.” With that, the team leader gestured and another one of the soldiers scooped up the attaché case with the samples of Golgotha. “Let’s move!”

The soldiers rushed out through the P-4 laboratory, leaving behind what they perceived to be the corpse of William Birkin. Once they had left, another figure slinked into the room.

Dr. Wong made his way over to his dead colleague and rolled him into his side. He slide a hand into the man’s coat and grabbed one of the samples. As he was pulling it free, a suddenly sputtering Birkin weakly grabbed at his wrists.

“D-d-doctor Wong?” Birkin wheezed as blood continued to dribble down the corner of his mouth. “What are… what hap—”

“It seems like someone ratted you out, Dr. Birkin,” Meng seethed with an uncharacteristic malice as he wrenched the samples away from the dying man. “And overrode your little lab safety measures.”

“Wh-why?, Duh-doctor Wong?”

Doctor Wong sneered as he stood up and pocketed the metal capsule. “You’re not the only one trying to escape here, Birkin.” The scientist brushed down his ruffled lab coat before adjusting the tie that held back his long, black hair. “And for the record.”

The man stepped forward and crouched one more time in front of his former colleagues doubling and blurred vision.

“The name isn’t Wong. It’s Tsung. Shang Tsung.”
 

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The teenager sighed as his alarm started to trill on the nightstand.

“I hear you!” He rasped as he tried to fling his spare pillow at the infernal device and only managed to succeed in knocking it onto the floor, where its constant vibrations kicked up yet more noise.

With a grunt, the sheets were kicked down near the foot of the bed, and the lanky adolescent slumped his way out of bed. He stooped halfway to the door to scoop up the alarm clock, scowl at the time on it, and crank the alarm off for another twenty-four hours.

“Another day, another des—”

A bolt of lightning outside the window caused the black-haired youth to cringe momentarily as he made his way over to his closet. A few moments later, he made his way to the door, clad in his eternally fashionable ensemble of blue jeans, white undershirt, and black t-shirt. Although it was summer outside, he preferred the layers, like the majority of heat-resistant teenagers across the world. Most days the temperature dipped below eighty, he’d slap on a black hoodie, for when he really wanted to be invisible. Even better? A black cloth mask and his air pods, because some days he just had zero interest in interacting with his teachers or peers.

Not as if much of it mattered. He’d missed one of out every three days of school and still maintained As or high Bs in all of his courses. Very early into his freshman year he had ‘figured out’ that his school was fairly easy to ‘play the system’. And in the event that he couldn’t easily finish the watered-down curriculum at his public school, he’d simply play the ‘SEL’ card and get additional extensions or excusals.

After completing his morning rituals in the bathroom, the teenager stumbled down the stairs and paused at the bottom of the landing as he glanced at the time on his phone. He had planned to attend today, but it was ten passed seven and the vibes already felt like they were starting to deteriorate.

“Who am I to argue with the vibes?” The teen replied as he made his way to the kitchen to find a small plate of waffles and a glass of milk. Next to the plate, a post-it note had a simple message scrawled on it. “‘Go to school, SJ. Will call attendance office at 8.’

“Cheeks.” He groaned as he crumpled up the little piece of paper and tossed it into the nearby wastebasket. “Almost makes me not want to go.” Unfortunately, he knew his OG wouldn’t appreciate him taking a day off after expressly telling him to make sure his ass got there on time.”

“I can always dip after 1st period…”

***​

The bell had rung a few minutes ago.

With a dull thump, the heavy side doors of the school closed shut as SJ casually walked away from the establishment of learning. A glance down to the watch clipped to his beltloop told him it was ten minutes to ten o’clock, which meant he was probably good. If he could hustle, he’d probably be able to find the street vendor a few blocks away.

“Fuckin’ churros,” he mumbled as he paid one last cursory glance to the cinderblock prison of learning. “Deuces.”

No big loss. The class he had attended—science—was always a fucking drag. His teacher was prone to these rambling tangents, and the curriculum (if you could call it that) was something that more affluent schools did at the elementary levels. Despite his complete apathy to the education establishment, SJ wasn’t a dumb kid, and he was fairly certain he could have finished the contents of the entire physics syllabus in a less than a grading period.

The only benefit to the class? It was one of those sections where most of the class was girls (something about sequencing or cohorts or whatever), and while some of them were ‘yeugh’, there was enough eye candy in there to keep him awake for the eighty-minute block of time. Both the gabby blonde and the sarcastic goth girl were high on his list, and while he thought the trope was a bit overdone, he had to admit that the teacher—for all her droning and dead eyes—wasn’t half bad. Perhaps she’d been bright-eyed at some point? Teaching, especially in this city, had to be awful.

After buying a churro, SJ dipped off the main route and started to cut his way to the north. The sun was high in the sky, which meant he’d likely have a nice view if he could make it to ‘his spot’. On days like this, he enjoyed ditching school, grabbing snacks, and slipping through the old gates at the lakefront. When it wasn’t beach season, the two tall towers on the beach were unmanned (and unlocked), and when he was up there, it was tall enough that no one could really spot you, unless they were flying overhead or standing on the rooftop of the hotels that lay across the four-lane street.

As he climbed up the ladder, he paused once and grimaced at the sound of a police siren. When it was clear to the adolescent that the wailing was heading away from him, he continued his ascent. Much to his chagrin, he found the hatch secured with a chain and padlock. Fortunately, it must have been a cheap chain, because it broke apart after a few frantic yanks from the teen.

Damn, I’m lucky. He watched the chain fall soundlessly to the sand below as he pushed the hatch up and away. In typical adolescent fashion, he ignored the fact that no seventeen-year-old should be able to break apart any type of chain link. Once he was up inside the observation tower, SJ closed the hatch and slipped the little bracket over it. He didn’t have much interest in being surprised by visitors, and he had to assume most non-city workers were dumb enough to think the hatch could be locked from the outside.

With a sigh, the teenager walked over and sat down on the little bucket seat that provided the best view of his hometown’s most iconic ‘landmark’—Toluca Lake.

“She’s extra foggy today,” he spoke aloud to himself. It was July, so it was a bit strange to see such a dense layer of fog off the lake, especially in midday. As he was scoping out the horizon, he noticed that the fog was actually drifting inland.

Sitting up from the chair, SJ went back to the hatch, unlocked it, and lifted it up just enough to see down to the sand. Instead of sand, he saw that the ground was virtually invisible beneath a couple feet of fog.

“No fucking way that rolled in that fast…” He had watched the chain hit the sand just a minute ago.

He shut and locked the hatch as he lifted his eyes to the side of the tower that overlooked the town. Much like the beach, the town was choked in fog.

“The fuck kind of freak weather is this?”

In the distance, an air raid siren started to drone. While SJ had heard those go off a few times over the last few days—the recent crimewave in parts of the city had triggered a few big sirens—this was the first time he felt genuinely unnerved by the sound. It almost made him physically nauseous to hear it.
 
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