Chapter Text
You step away from the screen with a sigh only when the rays of the setting sun fall on your keyboard.
You’ve been working from home for over three years now, far from civilization and the noise of cars. All around you are trees, fields, mountains, and lakes—a magical place for a quiet person like you. Of course, there are also wild animals, like that bear walking along the overgrown road that you happened to spot through the window this morning. Or the piercing song of cuckoos on a power pole. Or the large puddle where hundreds of tadpoles were swimming, which you spent several hours catching to transfer to a larger tank when the puddle began to dry up.
It almost felt like paradise. Just like those quotes on the internet about people and their oneness with nature.
Your finished work is displayed on the screen—work that, strictly speaking, you should have proofread, edited, and submitted one more time. You were always praised (or scolded) for being overly meticulous and a perfectionist. But what’s in your blood can’t be eradicated.
Finally getting up, feeling your legs tremble from sitting still in one place for so long, you save your work and head to the kitchen. The coffee was running low, so you brew some tea. You whip up a couple of sandwiches and head outside to sit on the porch and breathe in some fresh air.
After you’ve finished your dinner, you decide to stay outside a little longer, closing your eyes and thinking about what’s to come. You make a grocery list, adding electrical tape, headache pills, and colored pencils. You type everything into your phone and notice a message from your brother in your notifications.
You don’t open it.
You don’t go back inside until it starts to get cold. You bolt the door, draw the curtains, check that everything is turned off, and lie down on the old bed—the one against the wall.
For another half hour, you stare at the ceiling, trying to chase away the gloomy thoughts. It’s almost midnight, and you’re starting to drift off when, out of the corner of your ear, you hear a car pass your house and drive deeper into the forest. It sounds like a whole truck, which is quite unusual for these parts, but you’re too tired to pay it any mind.
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Of course, trees and grass grew in the depths of Hadal Blacksite—but not for beauty’s sake, rather for their own repulsive purposes and ideas. Supplying the entire complex with oxygen, taking people’s bodies and lives in exchange for their own existence—they were anything but ordinary pine trees from the surface.
And even though the trees in Hadal Blacksite were gigantic, they were planted one by one, and their appearance didn’t evoke the feelings Sebastian Solas was now experiencing as he looked out at an entire forest of pine trees for the first time in more than ten years.
It had been a very long time since Sebastian had felt small.
It was as if those years of torture, experiments, and torment hadn’t turned him into something alien after all. It was as if this living wall didn’t care in the slightest whether he was a human being or whatever was left of him.
For the most part, that was precisely why he’d been advised to live somewhere off the beaten path, away from people and their opinions. When the scandal that had rocked the entire Urbanshade died down, he was told he was completely free. His name had not been mentioned since the day he escaped from the underwater facility, taking with him hundreds and thousands of compromising documents and “research reports.”
He spent more than half a year on the surface, but not as a free man—he was kept there so that those same scientists could scan and examine him. “It’s for your own good,” they said, “no one knows what could go wrong with someone like you.”
Sebastian endured it for P.Ai.nter’s sake, for his own sake, and to expose Urbanshade. Although he knew he would never again be able to trust people in white coats.
Only when his nerves began to give out, when the procedures dragged on for too long, did they finally let him go. On the condition that they keep monitoring him, of course. Someone like him would never be let go completely again.
But now he could put that out of his mind. He’d been given a place to live and a monthly check for a couple hundred dollars, which also included a percentage of all the interviews and research he’d provided—research that would continue to occupy people’s minds for many years to come.
The truck that had brought him here was parked by the gate, its headlights illuminating the area. The guard pulled a flashlight and some keys from somewhere, unlocked the gate, and stepped onto the grounds first. Sebastian heard him click the door lock and call him inside. Pushing aside thoughts of how unusual it felt to have soil beneath his feet instead of concrete, he climbed the creaking steps to the threshold.
The guard, who had been checking something inside the house, came out to meet him, holding out a hand clutching a dark cylinder—a walkie-talkie. Because of his claws and his size, Sebastian could no longer use certain things properly, so they’d found replacements for a few basic items—such as a phone—just for him.
“The area is clear,” the guard began, as if reporting to mission headquarters—which was probably true—“The house is equipped with everything necessary for daily life, including internet.” “The nearest settlement is six kilometers from here. The nearest neighbors are one kilometer away and pose no danger,” the man pointed to the walkie-talkie in Sebastian’s claws, “Please do not ignore our communications.”
He handed over the keys, turned around, and walked down to the gate, stepping over Sebastian’s tail and fin. The driver—presumably a security guard as well, since he wasn’t just an ordinary civilian, was he?—had already unloaded the boxes, set them by the fence, and was smoking a cigarette a short distance away. They talked for about a minute, got into the truck, turned around, and Sebastian was (finally) left alone.
...Although, no, not alone.
Walking over to the unloaded boxes, he picked up the largest one. Carefully, like a mother with a newborn, he squeezed through the doorway, set it on the table, and tore open the tape with his claw. He took out an old, bulky computer and a power adapter, plugged it in, and pressed the power button.
The boot screen, the password, wallpaper with green grass and a blue sky. A couple of seconds of silence, and suddenly a drawing program opens on its own.
The invisible artist’s hands draw a crooked little face. A voice from the speakers says:
- Are we home yet?
- Yes, kid, — Sebastian replies to the computer. — We’re home.