Chapter Text
Something soft tickled Bryan’s nose. It was cold, and suddenly wet. Very wet. It trickled into his nostrils and he scrunched his nose. His face twitched, twisted, scrunched until a sneeze finally erupted, shaking his whole torso. A string of snot landed across his lips, but he still didn’t move. He blinked. His entire vision was filled with nothing but a gentle white space. For a while he stayed still, staring into the white expansion. His mind was so clear, so calm. Another soft, cold thing landed on his cheek and melted to the touch.
He blinked again. He noticed smaller, white specks slowly drifting in the air above him. Dancing like jellyfish without a rush, descending at their own pace. He opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out; it only takes a few cloudy breaths for one to finally land on the tip. Satisfied, he retracted his tongue, closed his mouth, and savored the taste. The snowflake was expectedly cold, and oh, so refreshing.
”I’m really thirsty,” Bryan realized. He swallowed. His throat was painfully dry; he swallowed more air than the water he just drank. He decided to get up. His bones and joints cried and popped as he leaned forward. “Nothing broken,” he observed, “although…what happened, again?” He wiped his nose and mouth with his sleeve — no, his bare skin. He stared at his clothes: the entire left side of his jacket, vest, and shirt were all tattered and torn, some pieces just barely hanging on by threads. Somehow his pants were in one piece, though there were large holes that lined the edges of the seams that rivaled the pairs he saw at Hollister shops. And, as he painfully recalled, both his shoes were missing.
“My J’s…” he lamented. He wiggled his toes, one of them was poking through his grey socks. Not broken, just sore. He sighed in relief.
He gave a quick scan of his surroundings. The snow on the ground piled up to about a foot and a half, covering the aftermath of the last night’s events. All he could see were round, sparkling mounds of powdery, white snow. A bright red light shined and flickered in the distance behind the snowy piles: EMERGENCY ROOM.
Bryan’s face ran cold. He pointed his head upwards; directly above him were the looming towers of the hospital to where he was previously assigned to deliver a package. They stood over him like two omniscient obelisks watching his every move, his every breath. Debris from the shattered and stained windows occasionally fall among the snowflakes; some are shards of glass, or drops of blood, or — to Bryan’s horror — limbs of people trapped in the building during the great calamity of the night before.
But Bryan wasn’t shaking in fear from the falling debris. He stared with his eyes as wide as humanly possible at the top of the leftmost tower: where there was a large, shining laboratory was a web of swaying, twisting limbs, tendrils of fleshy tentacles splaying in the air, reaching and retracting like a horrifying anemone of flesh and blood. What he thought was the wind was actually the moans of the several mouths opening and closing with little eloquence. Some mashed their teeth together enough times and with enough frequency to mimic the noises of bats in dark caves. The mass of arms, legs, torsos, and faces in the center took the space of the entire floor; Bryan could see some of its lower tendrils slowly circling the perimeter of the floors below. He prayed to the big man upstairs that they wouldn’t reach the ground where he was.
“Might be time to go home,” he muttered to himself. He eyed the tendrils at the top of the tower and registered the rate at which they would move. He’s no physicist or whatever, but it didn’t look like they would reach him if he started walking right then.
And then something occurred to him. He FELL all that way. ALL THE WAY FROM THERE!!! He rotated his wrists and examined himself a little closer: he saw strange scars that twisted and curled up his forearm in ripples and ridges — they reminded him too well of the tentacles that grew out of his arm when he tried to hide his infection from the doctors. Through the gaps in his shirt he saw the scars spread across his chest, stomach, and groin. He felt his back with his palm; yep, they went back there, too. He turned his face to look at himself in the reflection of the hospital’s glass doors. He took a step closer. In the reflection he saw half of his face. The glass was cracked and broken, so he shifted to his right to see the other half without the crack in the way. However, even on a flat surface, he couldn’t register what he was seeing as his own face.
He opened his mouth. He closed it. The face in the mirror opened its mouth, then closed it at the exact same time. He moved his hand and placed it on where his left cheek should be. The figure in the mirror did the same, placing its hand on the pink, bumpy, scarred slab of skin adorned with lines and ridges shaped like used, all-popped bubble wrap. He kept his fingers on that cheek and slowly blinked. His fingertips felt an extra set of eyelashes bat against their skin; slightly below his left eye was…another left eye. It was carved within the wrinkle of his sagging eye-bag, thin and blinking at the same time as the other eyes. He looked to his left, then his right; his vision hasn’t changed in quality at all. Did he get adjusted to this new eye THAT quickly? He couldn’t stop staring at it in the reflection. Its iris was bright red with a glowing yellow center around his pupil. Bryan then noticed that his regular eye’s iris was changed as well: the rightmost half of the iris was deep blue as usual while the other half was as bright red with a yellow center as the extra eye beneath. His breath fogged the reflection, hiding the sight.
“Fuck,” he sighed. “How the hell do I explain this to Michelle? To anyone?”
A roar erupted from above. Bryan snapped to action. He ran to the direction of the street until he spotted something yellow, white and blue in his path. His hat!! He never loses this thing, it seems. He ran, grabbed it from the snow pile, and dusted the snow off with his bare hand. Just as he paused to secure it on his head, a bony hand launched itself out of the same pile. It was as pale as ice, and missing its pinky and forefinger.
”AYIEIEEEEEEE!!!” Bryan yelped, tripping over his heels and falling backwards. His ass landed first, adding to the sore pain of his rear. His surprises in Raccoon City were far from over, it seems.
“FUCK!!” he yelled at the hand. The owner of the hand ascended from the pile, chunks of snow falling off their legs and bare chest as they achingly rose to stand. Like a marionette with no strings, it lifted its head last as if it weighed several pounds more than the rest of its body. Once it finally stood before Bryan, who was shuffling his feet in the show struggling to stand, Bryan saw its head was missing the back half of his cranium. The zombie’s tongue wagged listlessly through the back of its neck instead of its gaping mouth. Its clouded eyes peered at Bryan. The creature wheezed and moaned as it dragged its feet toward him.
Bryan shifted his weight forward and found his footing through the icy snow. He heard the piles around him rustle and shift until several heads, hands, feet, and tendrils burst out of their snowy graves. He backed away until he turned around to face the exiting street and saw several other disfigured corpses blocking his path. He fumbled his hands through his jacket and pants; not a single firearm or weapon was on him.
Bryan was about to submit to his new fate when his stomach started to heat up. That cozy burning from the night before bloomed across his chest. Soon what was fear in Bryan’s mind became resentment; anger towards his situation, impatience with these damn walkers, or whatever the fuck they are, for blocking his way home, and overall irritation for why things never went his way. “Like, come ON?!!” he thought, “ why can’t things ever make any fucking sense?!” His eyes started to burn at the edges, threatening tears.
“FUCK OFF,” he belched, “ALL OF YOU.” Immediately he snapped his head backward in shock and covered his mouth with his hand. That was not his voice, but it was. It sounded like he had a mix of a cold and a chorus of several other people’s yells.
The snarling corpses took notice. As if surprised as well, each of them jerked back and away from Bryan. Some even fell over and slipped on the icy road. Something on Bryan’s left cheek burned fiercely— oh yeah, his new eye. He felt it swelling and throbbing, a few tears slipping out as he continued to watch the walking corpses react.
And react they did; some shrieked, some howled, and some retracted on all fours and scurried away like rats. The others ran off, tendrils waving away in the air above their heads. Eventually Byran stood alone on the street with nothing but ruptured snowpiles and the falling snow. He carefully wiped his new eye with his bare palm. So that’s new, he thought. No gun needed after all.
Now Bryan felt like he was overheating. He peeled off what remained of his shirt and jacket; small wisps of steam rose off the ridged surface of his pink skin. He heaved breath after breath, casting clouds into the air from his mouth. Great, he thought, now I have a fever to worry about. He kept his knitted hat on his head, though; there was no way he would part with it anymore.
He started walking. The cold steps in the snow refreshed his steaming feet and left a trail of smooth, perfectly molded footsteps behind him.
The rising sun peeks through the edges of the trees, breaking into the orange and purple sky in long, stretching rays. Just as he left it two days ago, his street is quiet and bare. The wind howls through the open street and brushes past the parked cars, some missing wheels or doors, and picks up loose plastic bags to dance in the air like puppets. Bryan slouches over, still picking up his feet and dragging them across the gravel until he comes to a full stop.
He turns and stares at the house at the end of the street. As the sun rose higher, the metal of the wired fence shines into Bryan’s face in fragmented specks. The various glass ornaments hanging from the wooden porch jingle and jangle together, welcoming Bryan home with musical collisions. The white paint on the sides of the house is still peeling off in flecks revealing the fading wood underneath. Bryan winces as he remembers the number of times he said he was going to repaint it. He walks forth anyway.
He nudges the sneering garden gnome by the door with his foot, pushing it aside to uncover a small silver key. He kneels down to grab it with his fingers, mettles with it until its correct side is facing upward and lines it up to the keyhole on the blue front door. Thekey sinks in perfectly. Bryan sighs in relief. Thank fucking christ, he thought, thank god we kept the spare key here. He gives it a twist. It doesn’t budge. He freezes. He twists harder. It still doesn’t move.
“GOD,” he exclaims, slamming the side of his fist into the door, “FUCKING. DAMN IT!!!” The key shakes under the thumping of his fist onto the door and shifts downward, making a gentle CLICK!
The door swings open. For a moment Bryan stands with his fist up, about to slam it into the air where the door used to be. He releases it and lets it hang loosely by his side with an audible sigh. He walks into the house.
All the lights are off, but the sun from outside illuminates what he sees as he stands in the doorway. The furniture, rugs, and posters are all there; but to Bryan’s shock the house is completely bare. The navy-blue jacket that she always kept on the stairway is gone. Her cheesy romance books lining the counter near the kitchen is gone. The large philo-something plant she was growing for the past two years that was supposed to be standing by the TV: gone. The ceramic plates she hung on the walls instead of using them to eat with: gone. For the first time since his trek from the hospital, Bryan’s body runs cold.
As if in a daze, he trudges his feet forward into slow, heavy steps. Without looking back, he pushes the door closed behind him with an arm. He reaches the kitchen, seeing more and more bare countertops and shelves with the cabinet doors left open. Only a few cups and shot glasses are left scattered in the cupboards. His eyes land on the only items on the fridge door: a yellow, star-shaped fridge magnet with a Polaroid-style photo propped underneath it.
Bryan’s fingers tremble as he grips the photo and gingerly pulls it out of the magnet’s grasp. Once it’s off the door Bryan uses his other hand to hold the picture before him. Despite using both hands for support the photo is shaking uncontrollably. The colors are fading into black, but Bryan still makes out the smiles shared between him and a taller, dark-haired woman next to him. They’re wearing matching red, white and black jerseys. The Rush game, he recalls. It was Michelle’s first ever NHL night. He worked his ass off to afford tickets, and Michelle surprised him with the jerseys as a thank-you gift. It was one of the happiest nights of his life; he can’t remember any time since when he smiled so darn wide.
A drop of water spills onto the photo’s edge, splashing all over his fingertips. Another one follows. Then another. Bryan collapses onto the tile floor and curls into a ball, hugging the photo into his chest.
“Michelle,” he sobs, voice cracking, “Michelle, I’m so sorry. Please.” He looks up at the crystal ceiling lamp above him. It’s grey, turned off. “Please,” he begs, “Please come back.”
“Little brother,” a woman’s voice calls from the back of his head, “are you still out there?”
Bryan’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest. His arms and legs spread wide in alarm. He raises his head and spins his body around.
“H-Hello?!!” he calls back. “What the fuck?!?” He stands up and peers over the kitchen counter. The front door is still closed. There’s no one else but him in the house.
“Wait- hello??” It’s the same voice, and it’s sounding like she’s calling from behind him. “You can hear me?”
“How did you get into my house?!” Bryan yells. “Did you follow me here?”
“What? No—ugh. I’m not there, dumbass,” the voice answers, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the word. “I’m in your head.”
“Oh. Cool.” Bryan sighs, raises his arms in the air halfway and lets them fall to his sides. “Great. Just what I needed. Voices in my head. Makes this whole situation here even better actually. Wowie.”
The voice snorts. “I’m not a ‘voice in your head,’ I’m an actual person. Unless YOU’RE a voice in MY head.”
“Fat chance,” Bryan slaps his stomach with his empty palm, making a PLAP sound. “I’m pretty sure I’m me. Living and breathing. Whoever you are, and wherever you are, you might’ve dialed the wrong head.”
“Mmmm,” the voice ponders sarcastically, “I’m pretty sure I was minding my own business until you dialed MY head.”
“I’ve never dialed anyone’s head!!” Bryan exclaims. “You butt-head-dialed ME!! I’ve had a shitty ass week, man, but this is the first time I had someone else giving me smack in my own brain!”
The voice laughs. “It can’t have been worse than MY week. I’ve literally been through hell.”Bryan laughs without smiling. “Oh, yeah? Try me.”
“Uh, FIRST of all,” Bryan can practically hear the voice’s owner rolling her eyes, “I just found out that I can read people’s minds. Hence, you know...”
“And that’s bad?” Bryan challenges back. “That’s awesome. Beats having a third eye.”
“Wait, you’re like, a…whatjamacallit…a psychic, too?”
“No, no,” Bryan waves his hand, as if there’s someone there to see him deny their claim. “Like I literally have a third eye. Under my left one. It came free from the traumatic zombie outbreak I just survived.”
“I’m sorry—the WHAT?!”
“I KNOW!!” Bryan can’t help but make a wide grin. It feels nice to finally have someone to share this to. “It was supposed to be a quick urgent delivery – actually, I was about to clock out until this lady asked if I could make an emergency round to Raccoon City. It was gonna pay well, so I said yes. God, I should’ve just GONE HOME. But noooo, just one more round to make a little extra cash. Maybe I was just tryna avoid going home – not important. Anyway, I’m driving to Raccoon City, I hit a woman walking in the middle of the road with my car --”
“You WHAT--”
“The lady hit MY car--”
“That’s not--”
“I was going to the hospital anyway, so I was taking her with me!”
“You work at a hospital?”
“Kinda,” Bryan sinks down in a dining chair and sighs. “I’m a medical courier. Uber Eats but instead of Chinese food I bring hearts and kidneys to hospitals, kinda thing.”
“Oooo,” the voice sounds authentically impressed. “That’s like, almost like an ambulance driver, right?”
“Uh, yeah, kinda. I mean...I don’t get the fancy signals or anything.” Bryan scratches the back of his head. “It kinda sucks. Sucked.”
“Oh,” the voice goes quiet. “So you were delivering to Racket City?”
“Oh, yeah, uh—Raccoon City.”
“Raccoon City, right! With a pedestrian you hit in your car.”
“Okay but!! She was out in the snow in just a sundress! At night! By herself!! All covered in blood and acting...weird!”
“OH,” the voice suddenly gains sympathy. “You shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers like that!!”
Bryan groans. The voice cackles.
“Sorry, sorry, I’ll shut up. Keep going!”
“Okay, so…” Bryan goes into detail about how he managed to enter Raccoon City despite the several obstacles that stood in his way, including the returning creature that amalgamated every other moving corpse he encountered. He talks about the scientist and his bodyguard who tried to help him enter the city but both ended up getting killed and added to the growing monster chasing him, the little girl he tried to rescue but bit his arm (he glosses over the part about shooting her entire face off with a shotgun), and he mentions the falling infected people who jumped from the rooftops of buildings creating a horrifying rainstorm of blood, flesh, and guts. He describes his journey up the hospital: how he was told he had to climb 28 stairs to the laboratory, took the elevator against the doctor’s advice, encountered a monster that puked acid so strong it melted through the elevator, the accumulating monster from before, and an entire maternity ward of creatures beyond Bryan’s wildest imaginations. He slows down when he reaches the part about the laboratory: when the cure for the infectious disease was finally created and his disease transformed his body as he reached for it. He recounts the way his body felt as all his mutations retracted themselves back into his body, as if it was rewinded back to normal, and he puked out all of his infection onto the floor as his body rejected it.
“Then they wanted to do tests on me because they found samples of my blood that was in the puke—“
”Ew ew ew ew ew!!”
”—and they saw that my blood was weird and literally eating the virus away, so now I’m a walking cure for the zombie outbreak I just went through.”
”Yoooo! That’s so cool!” the voice squeals. “You’re literally gonna save the world!!” Bryan’s face heats up a bit.
”N’really. I mean,” he scratches the back of his head, “I wish I could just…go back to being normal, y’know? Like, how do I explain to someone — who’s not a psychic talking to me in my head — how and why I have three eyes and mouths that randomly appear on my skin?”
”Mmmm just do what you did for the past ten minutes, I think?”
”Haha.” Bryan crosses his arms. “Your turn. How was YOUR week more hell than mine?”
”Ugh,” the voice mutters, “just thinking about it gives me a headache.”
”I’ll give YOU a headache if you don’t share,” Bryan teases. “Hmmmm I was just wondering how that M*ckey Mouse Clubhouse theme goes—“
“NO NO— OKAY!! God, I hate that song so much. I hate that you know that specific song, too.”
”Heheh.”
”Okay, so…” Bryan leans back on his chair and listens to the voice’s twisted story of a lovesick friend with a crush on her who became her worst living nightmare. His grin quickly drops into a frown of pure disgust when she details the actions he took to take advantage of her. His body tenses as she describes the effects of whatever drug or object he used; the incessant chanting, the loss of control over her whole body, and the web of ancient magic that clouded her consciousness from even forming a single thought.
She’s really good at using her words to describe stuff, Bryan thinks for a moment.
The voice continues recalling the events after she finally broke out of whatever it was that gripped her mind, and how she couldn’t stop listening to people’s thoughts even if she didn’t want to. She gives the story of a mysterious voice calling to her, likely whoever helped her break out of her trap, and how she discovered that she was adopted. She also gives a brief, yet very telling, description of her dad as she finished.
“So that was my week,” she concludes, “or, rather, the past two days.”
”Jesus,” Bryan exhales, “your dad fucking sucks.”
”At least he’s not my real dad, haha.” The voice still sounds defeated, like the story itself exhausted her.
”Welcome to the Adopted Club,” Bryan jokes lightly.
”You’re adopted, too??”
”Yup. Always knew, too —which, by the way, learning that as an adult is CRAZY. What are you, 20?”
”Ohhhh so sweet. 27.”
”Holy shit. I’m 25.”
”What’s it like to know you've been adopted for all 25 years?”
”For me, not great honestly. Haha. Unlike you, I learned by not getting picked at the adoption center for 8 years. Didn’t even have a name until I was 6. Apparently I had an older sister that was checked in with me on our day 1 who was called Girl A —she got picked up hella fast after check-in — and I was Boy B. Other kids and the workers named me ‘Bryan’ because they felt bad about calling me ‘B’ all the time.
I was picked by a foster family and was passed around from foster to foster, travelling to a bunch of different states, until I landed here in South Dakota. I just…had bad luck, honestly. Four dads got arrested for DA, a couple of parents overdosed, one family got deported, and the next family I went to after that one was caught human trafficking. I was lucky to get out of that one!”
”Holy crap!!”
”Yuppp,” Bryan purses his lips, “but get this: when I was 13-ish, the foster family I had then resigned because the mom ran off to join the circus.”
”Yo- what?!?!” The voice laughs in astonishment.
”Right!!” Bryan actually laughs. His chest feels lighter and lighter, as if he was carrying these stories as weights for all 25 years. He and the voice go silent for a bit. It’s a comfortable pause, the ones between old friends catching up.
But Bryan’s heart sinks. “Hey…do you mind if I let something off my chest for a sec? Something a lil personal?”
”Dude,” the voice responds, “I told you my entire family drama. Spill.”
Bryan leans forward, rests his elbows on the dining table, and hides his face in his hands. He takes a deep breath. ”Now that I think about it,” he starts, “I think that’s why I didn’t want to be a father.”
He breathes again and continues. “I want to be one, and I think I wanted to be one when Michelle first told me, too, but I was so scared of change. And now I realize it’s because my life so far has been so unstable that once I found a steady ground I never wanted anything to disturb it. A baby, I thought back then, would turn everything I had going on with Michelle upside down. And now look at me. No Michelle, no baby, just a third eye and a bunch of weird shit going on in my body. God, even if I did get everyone back, I don’t think I’d be a good father, anyway. I want to be one, but I have no clue or reference of what a good father is even like.”
The voice pauses before she answers. “Unless you’re a fraction like my dad, I think you’d be a great dad, Bryan.”
Bryan huffs a short chuckle and uncovers his face. “Thanks.”
”I mean it,” the voice confirms, “You literally went through hell and you still care about your baby even if they’re not in your life. That’s really big brownie points.”
”Wow,” Bryan smiles. He ponders something. “Would you ever want to meet your real parents?”
The voice hesitates. “Would you?”
”Yeah,” Bryan shrugs, “mostly for closure. A little for curiosity.”
”I’m too mad at them to.”
”Mad?”
”Like how could they leave me? Did they not want me? Was I too much a burden to them that I had to be left to be picked up by the worst family imaginable? All so I could have some guy try to mindfuck me into being his girlfriend?”
”Well, they couldn’t have been able to see the future and see THAT happening. That or your adoptive dad being a piece of shit.”
”I know but,” the voice gives an exhausted sigh, “unless my birth parents died, I can’t find any good reason why they would give up both me and my younger brother.”
Bryan feels something swell inside him. Whether it’s pride, guilt, or something more, he can’t tell which, but he takes a stand against this disembodied voice in his mind.
”Listen, you can choose whether or not you want to see them, but it’s not fair for them to be judged based on what you don’t know. I worked my ass off to get a delivery to a hospital, and my daughter or son or — I don’t know, CHILD— might never know that their dad went through whatever hell Raccoon City was in. Or that he regrets the answer he gave to their mother before he lost the ability to take it back. Or that he loves them no matter what, even if he doesn’t know who they are. All I can do is pray that they and their mom are safe and happy and that they never get to see the shit I just saw. And the worst part? Maybe they might! And I can’t do nothing about it. Just like I can’t do nothing about them hating me for not being in their life.”
Bryan’s lip quivers. Damn, he feels awful. Tears try to well up in his eyes again, but after crying earlier his eyes are too dry to make tears.
The voice finally breaks the silence. “Bryan…I’m so sorry.”
”’s okay,” he mutters back. “I’m just…glad you’re here to listen. Thank you.”
”Likewise,” she responds, “I just realized I’ve never shared a talk as deep as this with anyone.”
“Ha,” Bryan thinks out loud, “you’re almost like what I imagined my older sister to be like. Listening to my problems kinda shit.”
The voice pauses again. “Nikki,” she says, “my name is Nikki.”
”Hi, Nikki, haha.”
”Bryan.” The tone of the voice is serious. She speaks louder. “What adoption center were you first adopted from.”