Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's a still night, when the signal comes, though the sea, as always, is far from quiet. It has something to do with the cliffs, apparently, though the exact explanation escapes Eiffel. Either way, it means the sea roars, really roars, echoing all the way up to the base, perched atop of the rocks, strangely amplified by the shape of the cove.

He asked the Commander if you ever got used to the noise, back when he started out. She'd shrugged, said she'd only shipped out a week before, she'd let him know when she'd worked it out.  He'd been surprised. Something in Commanders Minkowski's eyes made it look like she'd been on Amchitka for months already. She looked tired - tired and cold.

Eiffel shivers, the memory of it sending a chill down his spine, a chill that has nothing to do with the temperature inside the radar shack, where a combination of an oil-burning stove and thick, asbestos-filled walls keep the temperature at a nice, liveable 65° F. It's fine - heavenly, really, compared to the -40 F darkness outside - and he does his best to remember that as he unhooks the radio mike and hails the one person whose job is unquestionably, without a doubt shittier than his.

"This is OS Douglas Eiffel, broadcasting from Hephaestus Base, I repeat, this is OS Douglas Eiffel, broadcasting from Hephaestus Base. Hera, do you read me?"

Her voice is crackly, like it always is, with the merest hint of an accent, all but undetectable, but American for sure. It completes the list of all the things Eiffel knows about the asset otherwise designated Hera. She's female, she's generically, unplaceably American, and she's holed up on some mystery base even less hospitable than Amchitka. Holed up all alone, Eiffel's beginning to suspect. Certainly it's only ever Hera who answers his hails.

"Clear as day, OS Eiffel. Clear as day."

There's the barest hint of a smile in Hera's voice. Eiffel gets it. It's ironic, see, given that their "day" is down to just seven hours, and seven gloomy hours at that.

"Roger that, Hera. And what's your status, may I ask?"

A sigh - the most he ever gets from their tight-lipped asset.

"Same as ever. Still working on-" a pause as she remembers just how highly classified her work is, then another sigh. "Well, still working. You?"

Eiffel shrugs. Pointless, because she can't see him, of course.

"Commander Minkowski found my last packet of cigarettes. Otherwise nothing to report."

A sympathetic noise, then a moment of companionable silence.

"Ready to begin, OS Eiffel?"

He sighs.

"Sure, why not? Everything fired up on your end?"

A click, then a slight humming sound.

"Affirmative. You?"

Eiffel flicks the corresponding switch on his desktop, holding his breath until the screen flickers to life. He smiles, once it's done, relieved - there'll be no repairs today, at least.

"All clear on my end. Good to go."

A hum, and Eiffel sets the scanner up, checking the clock as he logs

"19th July. First scan, 2100 hours, 36° from true north. Result..."

He waits for the ping.

"Negative. What an unexpected surprise."

A moment, until the corresponding ping sounds through the radio, faint enough that he almost misses it over the sound of the waves outside.

"Confirmed from Point X" Hera chimes in, and Eiffel makes a tick where he's supposed to.

He turns the dial.

"Scan two, 2100 hours, 72° from true north. You feeling lucky, Hera?"

A snort, he thinks, followed a ping from his equipment.

"Result, negative. Better luck next time."

Another ping.

"Confirmed."

They make it through the first round of scans like that, and then they've got an hour to kill until the next lot - a whole hour to get paperwork done, or to talk, or to watch out for a Russian invasion fleet on the horizon.

"You know we would have picked them up on the radar, right, OS Eiffel?"

He shrugs.

"Can't be too careful these days. Maybe they've learnt to dodge radar beams."

He wonders how long it will take Hera to-

"OS Eiffel, as a communications specialist you've got to know that that's not how radar works."

And there it is. Eiffel smiles, despite himself, shrugging.

"Either way, vigilance always pays - that's what Commander Minkowski says, right? Wouldn't do to have me distracted by reports when there's the real and imminent threat of the Reds invading this God-forsaken rocky Frigidaire."

A snort from the other end.

"How dutiful."

Eiffel shrugs.

"What can I say, I'm a true patriot."

The hour passes easily, after that, and they're almost down with their second round of scans when it happens.

"Scan four, 2200 hours, 252° from true north. Result..."

Ping.

"Negative. What a surprise."

He fills the details in, waiting for confirmation - confirmation that doesn't come, at least not at first.

"...Hera? Can you confirm?"

Silence, for a second, then the sound of Hera reaching for something, knocking something over wherever she is - probably reaching for the headset.

"I... negative, OS Eiffel. I cannot confirm. Awaiting further information."

Eiffel's breath catches when he hears how tense Hera is. He'd assumed it was an equipment malfunction, but for Hera to spund this worked up...

"What are you seeing?"

A huff of air.

"I'm seeing nothing, Eiffel. Nothing. But I've got a radio signal, localized, like somebody's broadcasting, out there in the ocean.

Eiffel frowns.

"Can you patch us in?"

A frustrated noise.

"I'm trying, but it keeps cutting out."

"And nothing on radar?"

A negative noise, and Eiffel checks his own screen again, runs the scan again - nothing.

Silence for a moment, then, as Hera works, and Eiffel's more conscious than ever of how noisy it is outside, how violently the waves are crashing onto the cliffs. It sounds like shellfire, he thinks, then wishes he hadn't.

"Should we tell Commander Minkowski?" he finally asks, at the same moment that Hera finally patches them in, just for an instant. Eiffel hears voices, he thinks, but distorted, twisted into something that's almost recognisable, until-

"Tell me what?" Minkowski barks, and Eiffel almost falls off his chair.

"Commander! What a surprise, I didn't think-"

"Tell me what?" she repeats, and Eiffel gestures towards the radio desk.

"We picked up a weird signal," he begins, lamely, but it's already stopped. He frowns.

"Hera?"

A sigh over the radio.

"I lost it. Sorry, Commander."

Minkowski frowns.

"Anything approaching?"

Eiffel shakes his head.

"No, sir."

Minkowski's lips form a line.

"Then I don't see what the problem is. We are here to watch out for battleships and bombs. Is there a Russian fleet on the horizon?"

Eiffel shakes his head.

"A nuke headed our way?"

Another shake, and Minkowski sighs.

"Then I fail to see why it matters - probably an equipment malfunction. I came here to check if you'd finished your quarterly report. You do remember that Command wants it tomorrow, right?"

Eiffel shrugs.

"It's in the works, Commander. Just putting the final touches on it, you know, getting the style right-"

"Getting the style right?" Minkowski repeats, and Eiffel nods, swallowing, as the Cmmander pulls something out - something familiar.

"Then why did I find your style guide in the mess earlier, OS Eiffel? Still in its packaging?"

He swallows as she places the offending item on his table, scowling at it like it's personally offended her

"I, uh, I was gonna-"

Minkowski cuts him off.

"I don't want to know. You have until morning to get it done, Eiffel, signal or no signal."

Eiffel opens his mouth to object and Minkowski shakes her head.

"None of that, Officer. You've got your orders - what are they, again?"

He sighs.

"Finish the report."

Her eyebrows rise, and Eiffel swallows.

"Finish the report, sir."

"Good. See to it that it's done."

And with that, she's gone.

Eiffel and Hera finish the rest of the hourly scans quickly, with minimal talking. The signal, whatever it was, does not make a repeat appearance.

Once they're done, Eiffel picks up the style guide. US Navy Style Guide, the booklet says, sure enough, and then authors' names appearing underneath the title, small enough that they're hard to make out. Pryce and... Crichton? Curtis?

With a groan, Eiffel opens it up, flicking through for the relevant section. It looks about as boring as he expected, and for a second his mind drifts away again as he glances out into the loud, icy dark.

There's something out there, he thinks, listening to the waves like he'll hear it with his naked ear. He doesn't buy Minkowski's tale of an equipment malfunction, in any case - Hera's too good for that.

He listens to the waves for a moment longer as they roar, crash, crackle-

"Got it," Hera cries, a smile in her voice, and Eiffel realizes that it was the radio crackling. They listen with bated breath as it calms down, voices cutting through the static, but strangely pitched, not quite clear enough to make out, but so familiar-

And then it's gone again. Eiffel lets out a shaky breath.

"Still nothing on the scanner?"

A dissatisfied hum from Hera.

"Nothing. It's weird - you'd think there would be some infrastructure, at least, if they're broadcasting from the sea. A ship, or a platform, or something underwater."

Eiffel purses his lips, thinking.

"Can you get a more precise location for the signal?"

He can't, not with the equipment he has. But he's been on watch with Hera for long enough to have deduced that her equipment, wherever the hell she's stationed, is a damn sight better than his, so if anyone could do it-

"Got it," she cries, then a pause, sudden and unexpected.

"What?" Eiffel prompts.

Another few seconds' silence.

"It's getting closer," Hera admits, finally, quietly, and Eiffel swallows.

"Okay, how fast are we talking?"

Another pause.

"Fast. Like, faster than a ship, fast."

A moment as they process that, and then Eiffel's about to say something when another crackle of static interrupts them.

"There it is again," he cries, and he can hear Hera lunging for her instruments, before-

"There what is, OS Eiffel?" Minkowski's voice says, all reedy and tinny, and Eiffel realizes it's his walkie-talkie. "You'd better not be chasing that signal again."

Eiffel's just about to make his excuses when the Commander makes a shushing noise.

"Look, that's not why I'm calling. I'm calling because we've got a situation with Dr. Hilbert."

Eiffel frowns - is Dr. Hilbert still up? And if so, why?

A tired sigh from Minkowski, like she can read his mind.

"I don't know either, Eiffel. But his lab just recorded a drop in temperature of 80° F, and he isn't responding to my calls."

Eiffel frowns.

"Really? Let me try on mine."

He changes the channel.

"Dr. Hilbert? Do you copy? I repeat, Dr. Hilbert, do you-"

A crackle again, and then, miraculously-

"Yes? Is that OS Eiffel?"

The doctor's even less intelligible than usual, his accent masked by a loud chattering sound - his teeth, Eiffel wonders?

"Dr. Hilbert!" Minkowski interrupts, her relief palpable. "What happened? I got an alarm - the temperature in your lab just crashed."

A hum, as if the doctor only just noticed this.

"S-so it has. V-v-very interesting."

"Interesting-" Minkowski splutters, "You are at risk of hypothermia, if you stay in there much longer, Doctor!"

An affirmative noise on the other end.

"Unf-f-fortunate side effect of c-c-current experiment, yes. Needs cold temperature, n-n-needs rigorous observation. Solution is s-s-simple."

Eiffel can almost hear Minkowski grinding her teeth.

"That's not how this works, Dr. Hilbert! Do you have a suit on, at least?"

"A s-s-suit?" comes the reply, like Hilbert hadn't thought of that. "Might have been good idea, yes, c-could h-"

But whatever Hilbert was going to say is lost as there's a thump on the other end of the line and then silence, just the sound of the sea.

Minkowski and Eiffel wait for a second, then a second longer, until-

"Damnit, Hilbert," Minkowski swears. "Well, I guess there's not much you can do, Hera, but OS Eiffel? How do you feel about suiting up and breaking into the lab?"

He groans. The snowsuits are easily his least favourite part of the job - puffy, stuffy and bright, they're cumbersome and they're ugly, and worst of all, they're communal, which means that they never fit, and they always smell.

"I would love to, Commander, but I've got an important quarterly report to write - I believe my commanding officer wanted it finished by morning, was that right?"

A huff.

"OS Eiffel, so help me God-"

"We're experiencing some power issues over here, Commander, I think we're losing yo-"

He flicks the walkie-talkie off.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Hera asks, finally, and Eiffel chuckles.

"You clearly haven't met Dr. Hilbert in-person. Our pet turncoat manages to get himself popsicled on a semi-regular basis, and it hasn't killed him yet." A pause, like something's just occurred to him. "He might be immortal, actually. Some kind of Russian vampire. It would explain... a lot."

An unsettled pause, as the sea roars on.

"Look, Commander Minkowski has things under control - she always does. In the meantime, how're you doing with whatever that thing is heading towards us?"

A pause again, before Hera speaks, broken up by the odd burst of static as she adjusts her equipment.

"Not great - I've got a reliable lock, but I can't quite pick it up. Still nothing on the scanner, too, which is odd."

Eiffel swallows, looking out of the window again as if he's going to be able to see whatever it is, looming on the horizon.

Is there some other noise, behind the waves? For a moment he could swear he hears... something. A rumbling, grinding sound, not quite the same pitch as the rest of it all. He thinks back to what Hera said - getting closer, faster than a ship - and swallows, a chill running down his spine.

He jumps when Hera finally speaks.

"It's strange - it's not actually on a radio frequency, more like..." she trails off. "Aha! Gotcha!"

The static settles down, voices cutting through for the first time, and Eiffel knows that sound, it's a song.

"-everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. Where everybody knows-"

He can't help it, he laughs.

"What?" Hera asks.

"It's Cheers" he breaths. "The TV show, Cheers. Hundreds of miles into the Pacific, stuck on this miserable speck of freezing cold Alaskan dirt, and we're picking up frickin' NBC."

A moment as it sinks in. The theme songs ends, and some dialogue comes through - not immediately familiar, but Eiffel's not watched the show in a while.

"How is this possible?" Hera whispers as Sam and Diane chat away. "We shouldn't be able to receiv-"

Eiffel shushes her and she stops.

"Don't question it. It's weird, it's inexplicable, it's more than a little bit creepy. But, and this is key, it is not a battleship, nor is it a nuke, and as far as secret Commie superweapons go, beaming reruns of hit US TV shows back at us seems like a stretch. So, having established that whatever we were stationed here to scan for, this is not it, I say we kick back, make ourselves some metaphorical popcorn and enjoy the reminder that life still exists beyond this miserable rock. How's that sound?"

A conflicted noise.

"I don't know how long the signal will hold-"

Eiffel cuts her off.

"All the more reason to enjoy while we can - now shut up, I'm trying to figure out who's speaking."

A pause again, then a muffled thump from outside, like somebody in a thick snowsuit struggling with a heavy lab door. He can almost hear Hera's concern above the conversation that's playing through the radio.

Eiffel sighs.

"Yes, yes, I know. Once it's done, I'l go help the Commander, okay?"

A hum, satisfied.

"Great, because I think I've worked out what episode this is, and it's a doozy!"

And that's that, the two of them, God knows how many miles apart, listening to a show from even further away broadcasting on a frequency that shouldn't exist to an island that, at least on paper, doesn't exist, but whose waves, nonetheless, are deafeningly loud.

It's cozy, almost. Norm complains, and Minkowski swears, and the Russians continue to mind their own business, and life goes on, for better or for worse.

Eiffel wonders, just briefly, if anyone else in the world knows how it feels. Then the scene changes, and he's too distracted to care. Everything else will take care of itself for a few more minutes - for now, he'll just enjoy the show.

Chapter Text

If you asked Eiffel later, he would tell you that it was Aunt Renée's fault, her and her dratted meteorological optimism.

"Oh, there's not a chance of snow, honestly, Douglas, where do you get these notions?"

"The wireless said the snow's all over in the south-west, Douglas, I'm positive we shan't need a carriage."

"Well I, for one, intend to walk to Reverend Hilbert's. It's good for the constitution, plus it builds the appetite. If you wish to take the carriage, that's your business, I'm sure."

She'd given him the Look, when she'd said that, and Eiffel had realized, with a sinking feeling, that whatever she said, he would not be taking the carriage. If his fifty-three-year-old aunt could brave the wind and tramp three miles across the fields before supper, then there was no way on God's green earth that he, Douglas Farnaby Eiffel, twenty-three years of age and more than commonly robust, was going to get out of it, not unless he broke a leg or something similarly drastic.

He was seriously contemplating the idea right up until the last minute. Zeus - his valet, the nickname given both for his God-like ability to solve all of Eiffel's problems, and for his occasionally stormy temper - would surely be amenable, given his often-stated desire to box Eiffel's ears, kick him in the shins or otherwise deal him out a jolly good thrashing. All that was keeping him from doing so, the man had stressed, was his keen sense of Decorum and How Things Ought to Be Done, neither of which would permit the valet to act upon his more violent impulses, at least for the time being.

Privately, of course, Eiffel had his doubts as to Zeus' capacity to carry through on the threats. It wasn't that the valet didn't have the temperament for it; on the contrary, the man was almost as formidable as Aunt Renée when the mood took him. No, it was more an issue of physique. Zeus was a slim, slender man; Eiffel had often remarked that there was something almost womanly both in his build and in the finely-boned structure of his face. That, combined with the soft, high tenor of his voice, likely explained the man's otherwise terrifying demeanour; a lesser man would surely have been teased into a much less public-facing career immediately upon reaching adolescence. He would have become a lighthouse-keeper, perhaps, or a librarian. A hermit, possibly.

Either way, Eiffel was still considering asking the man to break his leg right up until the last minute, when Zeus, inexplicably cheery, came through to announce that he would be accompanying them to Reverend Hilbert's in order to pass onto his cook a recipe for nettle wine. The Reverend's wife, you see, had passed away some years ago, and apparently the late Mrs. Hilbert's nettle wine, which was still renowned in the village both for its potency and for its fine flavour, had been sorely missed up at the Parsonage. Thus, when Zeus had mentioned, last Sunday, that he was making some nettle wine of his own, the Reverend had requested the recipe.

"Well that is well and good," Eiffel huffed, put out not only by the now inevitable prospect of a three-mile walk before dinner, but also by the fact that he had not yet been offered even a drop of Zeus' nettle wine, "But are you sure you wouldn't prefer to take the carriage?"

Zeus frowned.

"Why on Earth would I want to do that? Walking is good for the constitution, sir. Plus, it builds an appetite."

Stymied, Eiffel had retreated to his room to pick out an outfit, nothing too flashy - it was just Reverend Hilbert - but something nice, nonetheless. If he was going to ruin an outfit tramping over stiles and through puddles, he wanted Aunt Renée to at least feel guilty about it.

He began to regret his choice not three minutes after they had set out. The dress shoes he had chosen were utterly impractical for walking in, the jacket, while elegant, provided minimal protection from the elements, and the bowtie was all but strangling him. Zeus, in his sturdy boots and his worn but clean black Ulster, looked particularly smug at the sight.

"Quite a bracing wind today, isn't it, sir?", he remarked, his breath misting up, and Eiffel could have thumped the man, only then Aunt Renée would have thumped him, and that was not a prospect Eiffel welcomed. He gritted his teeth and nodded, and the three of them spoke no more, working their way over to the Parsonage in silence, and the whistle of the wind and the greyish-white of the sky providing a bleak backdrop to the whole affair.

Naturally, they were within sight of the Parsonage when the snow began to fall, first a wisp, then full flakes not a minute later, gathering comically on Aunt Renée's hat. Much longer, and she'd have been indistinguishable from a wedding cake, Eiffel thought as they arrived and were welcomed inside. Taking stock of himself, he grimaced; he'd intended to rumple his suit somewhat, but this went far beyond what he'd intended. The jacket was sodden, and badly creased, and he wondered, as Zeus gratefully shrugged off his overcoat, if this was what people meant when they talked about karma.

They made the usual small talk - golly, that snow came on fast, didn't it? Quite unusual at this time of year, I do hope the roses survive it- before settling down for dinner, after a quickly-dismissed suggestion that the three of them ought to return home.

"Nonsense," Aunt Renée had shaken her head, looking haughtily out the window, as if the weather had personally disappointed her. "The snow will go off soon, and Sarah has spent so long cooking, it's only fair that we stay. Unless, you think it better we leave, Reverend?"

The man in question shook his head and it was decided; they would stay for dinner and go home when the snow stopped. For stop it most certainly would, if Aunt Renée had any say in it; to continue snowing, at this point, would be an effrontery.

Dinner was, admittedly, delicious, and Eiffel was almost ready to concede that Aunt Renée might, just possibly, have had a point about the walk building a healthy appetite. Reverend Hilbert, of course, was as taciturn as ever, but Eiffel thought that was rather a point in the man's favour; unlike every vicar he had ever met, Reverend Hilbert was not one for sermonising, at least not outside of Sunday morning. Instead, his life beyond of his spiritual and pastoral duties was one of quiet, private study. A bookish existence, one that Eiffel would not and could not have pursued himself, but a worthy existence, nonetheless, Eiffel felt.

He wondered briefly, as the man responded to some question of Aunt Renée's, if the rumours that flew around the village were true, that Reverend Hilbert conducted experiments in his free time, that his cellar had been converted into some sort of laboratory into which the man retreated, in the small hours of the morning, in order to attempt All Manner of Strange Things. This latter phrase was always pronounced under one's breath, with a significantly raised eyebrow, as if to imply that these Things, whatever they were, were not something that a respectable man of God ought to be looking into. Eiffel, automatically inclined to like anything the village remotely disapproved of, found this highly intriguing - another point in the otherwise unnerving man's favour.

They were finishing up desert - a marvellous plum cobbler - when Hilbert looked out of the window, frowning in consternation.

"What is it?" Aunt Renée enquired.

"Nothing," he replied, his accent, as always, infuriatingly faint. Eiffel had listened to the man every Sunday for almost as long as he could remember and still he couldn't place it. It sounded by turns Russian, French, American, Spanish, Welsh, and it drove Eiffel mad.

"I was just surprised," the Reverend continued. "The snow is still falling. I do hope you can get home - you walked over, did you not?"

A nod, and for the first time Aunt Renée looked somewhat worried. They finished their dessert, and conversation slowed to a halt as they all took turns looking out of the window, then pretending not to have.

"Say, how about I go and check if the roads are clear," Zeus suggested, finally. "You can all enjoy a drink, and I shall let you know if the snow is really as bad as it looks."

The agreed that was a capital idea, and Zeus was thus sent out while Reverend Hilbert poured them all a brandy.

"The last of the brandy I have in, as a matter of fact," he remarked, uncorking the bottle and pouring them all out a measure.

They sat and talked some more, until the sound of footsteps startled them almost put of their seats - Zeus, visibly shivering, an unusually grim look on his face.

"Well?" Hilbert asked, turning expectantly to the valet.

"No use," he shook his head. "It's been falling thick and fast all evening, there are snowdrifts so high, even master Eiffel would sink into them over his head."

Drat, that was a blow - even Aunt Renée looked somewhat dismayed at the prospect of losing her beloved nephew in a snowdrift.

"Could we take the back lane, perhaps?"

The valet shook his head.

"Snow's even deeper out that way," he grimaced. "And some of us are less than optimally dressed for it."

Eiffel almost spluttered at the unnecessarily pointed look Zeus shot him there - after all, it wasn't like the valet was any better dressed. If Zeus' account was to be believed, after all, nothing short of Arctic exploration gear would suffice, so unless the valet had brought snowshoes and a reindeer-skin anorak to their soirée, Eiffel would thank him to keep his opinions to himself.

Vexed, he almost missed the next thing Aunt Renée said, her tone imperious despite - or perhaps because of - the way her meteorological prognostications had been proven wrong.

"Well, it seems we shall have to stay the night - I suppose the Parsonage has a guest room?"

Reverend Hilbert seemed as taken aback by the proposal as Eiffel was, and almost as dismayed, but he couldn't very well refuse, and so it was quickly decided that Aunt Renée would take the guest room, where some of Mrs. Hilbert's old clothes were still in storage. That left Eiffel in the living room, with its moderately sized but well-stuffed settee, Zeus in the old servant's quarters, up in the attic.

"Unheated, since I no longer keep a servant," Hilbert shrugged, only vaguely apologetic, "But I can provide blankets, so the temperature should remain within tolerable parameters."

Eiffel had to smirk at how the tables had turned on his trusty valet. Tolerable parameters, eh? Zeus looked less than reassured by this. That said, it did seem to be the only course of action, at least until the snow died down, and thus, after another half hour or so of conversation, they all took another brandy before retiring, Eiffel pouring himself a generous measure. Aunt Renée noticed, of course.

"At the rate we're getting through that," she remarked, her lips tightly drawn, "There shan't be any left tomorrow."

But there wasn't much more she could say, not in front of the Reverend, and Eiffel did not feel a whit of guilt about it. After all, he was done with gambling, really and truly this time, and all the young people of the village were tragically, happily married - who was Aunt Renée, in light of that, to rob him of his solitary remaining vice? No, Eiffel would have as much brandy as he liked, he thought, finishing his glass in one defiant gulp before sloping off to assess his sleeping situation, not entirely reassured by Reverend Hilbert's assurance, as he left, that it would be "quite as comfortable as any of the church pews."

Much of the rest of the night, after this, was spent tossing and turning, Eiffel trying in vain to figure out a position where both his head and his legs were comfortable. The blankets Reverend Hilbert had provided for him itched, and there was a clock ticking somewhere, distractingly loud, and worst of all, his dress shirt, even worn unbuttoned at the collar, was simply too stiff to serve as a nightshirt. He would never be able to sleep like this, he just knew it - and so, it was with quite some surprise that Eiffel woke up, the next morning, unaware of having fallen asleep in the first place.

With a burst of energy he threw off the blanket and ran to the window, noting, in an absent-mind way, the crick in his neck as he threw back the curtains, holding against hope for clear skies and green grass - or, failing that, a thin, settled blanket of thawing snow.

Alas, what Eiffel saw, upon opening the curtains, was neither of those things - instead, the snow was still falling, and heavily too, to the point where he could no longer see the Parsonage's garden wall, so deeply was it buried.

"Drat!" he cried, followed by another word, less becoming of a gentleman, but entirely warranted, he felt, given the situation.

"Hmm, quite," a voice replied, faintly amused, and Eiffel spun round to see-

"Reverend Hilbert?"

For it was he, dressed and looking surprisingly composed - not for the first time, Eiffel was reminded of the rumours surrounding him. Was this the face of a man who had been up for hours already, getting up to All Manner of Strange Things down in the cellar? Eiffel felt a shiver run down his spine.

"It's early. Did you... uh, did you sleep well?" Eiffel tried, more to fill the silence than anything.

A pause as Hilbert considered the question.

"My night was acceptable," he nodded, and Eiffel tried not to read too much into the careful way the Reverend had dodged the question.

"It's still snowing," Eiffel added, when the Reverend seemed content to just stand, silently. "In case you were wondering."

"Apparently so," the man simply said, and that was that - Reverend Hilbert, a man of few words at the best of times, was even less talkative in the morning, it seemed. This did not bode well for breakfast, Eiffel thought, as he set about straightening the settee cushions and re-buttoning his shirt, aware, the whole time, of the Reverend's watchful, eye.

Half an hour later, he realised that, while he had not been wrong, he had somewhat underestimated the scale of the problem. Aunt Renée, it would seem, had been quite deflated by her night in the guest room, and while it would normally delight Eiffel to see his aunt looking so rumpled, he couldn't help but miss her usual chatter, which, while occasionally a nuisance, did at least liven up situations like this. Zeus, meanwhile, appeared impeccably groomed, but equally uninclined to make small talk - and thus, with only Eiffel and Reverend Hilbert in the mood to make conversation, breakfast was very dreary indeed.

The day continued in much the same pattern after breakfast. The snow continued to fall. Aunt Renée borrowed a book off Reverend Hilbert and set to reading, the occasional crinkling of paper the only sign she was still present. Zeus disappeared to the kitchens, having decided that if the cook could not get in because of the snow, he would be more than capable of whipping up a decent lunch. As for Reverend Hilbert, he withdrew to his study, muttering something about hymnals.

This just left Eiffel, who had never cared for reading, and who could cook about as well as he could ride a unicycle or speak in fluent Mandarin - which was to say, not at all. Desperate for something to do, he took to pacing, and, when that annoyed his aunt, to making up scenarios in his head, fanciful daydreams where he was an explorer, or an aviator, or a sailor among the stars, visiting other planets and meeting strange, unnatural beings. Aunt Renée soon tired of this as well.

"Douglas, I am telling you, if you cannot think quietly, it would be best not to think at all. And honestly, other planets? I don't know where you get it all from, I truly don't."

That pearl of wisdom being imparted, Eiffel stopped with the daydreaming and took to drinking, which hardly annoyed Aunt Renée less. Still, Reverend Hilbert had left the brandy out, had even implored them, before he left, to help themselves, should they so wish, which Eiffel did.

Thus the day passed in a haze of tipsy discontentment. Lunch was served at the correct time, and Zeus was sent out again to see if the snow had cleared, or even stopped, which it hadn't. Tea was the served, after which Eiffel had the bright idea of going out himself, convinced - perhaps by the brandy - that his suit jacket would protect him from the worst of the cold.

It didn't, and he was still cold when dinner was served - a dinner hastily put together by Zeus, which was, naturally, not a patch on the spread they had enjoyed the previous evening. All four of them were well and truly out of sorts, by this point, and as the Reverend looked outside, shaking his head and muttering something about snowdrifts, Eiffel felt his heart sink, anticipating another night exactly like the last. They would drink a brandy, retire to bed, and yet again he would be condemned to a night of discomfort and irritation.

Only that wasn't quite right, he realised, noting, with a surreptitious glance, that the brandy was almost empty. There was enough for a drink and a half, perhaps. Two at the most, and surely Aunt Renée and the Reverend would take priority, leaving none for Eiffel. The thought of this was intolerable; the nightcap had been the only remotely appealing part of yesterday evening, and when he thought about sobering up only to spend another evening on that dratted settee-

Well, it was at this point, emboldened by the brandy circulating in his bloodstream, that Eiffel did something rash.

It was easy at first, almost too easy. A few words about the snow letting up and all three of his companions were at the window, away from the table just long enough for Eiffel to get up, dash across the room and make a grab for the brandy. Snatching at the bottle, he caught Aunt Renée's attention, which in turn caught the Reverend's, but Eiffel was quick, and before they could stop him, he was off into the depths of the Parsonage, dashing through the hall like he knew where it led.

Passing through a particularly sturdy-looking door, he finally found what he was looking for - a lock. He fumbled with it, Zeus' heavy footsteps and Aunt Renée's cries echoing behind him, and finally he'd done it - it clicked into place, and he was safe in - well, where was he, exactly?

He looked around, as much as the light filtering in underneath the door would allow him, noting the wooden steps downwards, the brick walls, the musty smell. Was this Reverend Hilbert's notorious cellar? If so, it was a trifle disappointing - although it did seem to have electric lighting, which Eiffel, even in his intoxicated state, realised was unusual for such a functional space.

"Eiffel? Douglas!" his aunt cried outside, but he ignored her. There were other voices, too - the Reverend sounded surprised, Zeus, who knew Eiffel somewhat better, merely resigned.

"You can't barricade yourself in there forever, sir. You know that, right?"

Eiffel huffed - he knew that, of course, but he rather thought Zeus was missing the point. He couldn't barricade himself in forever, certainly, but he could remain there until the snow stopped. That way, he would have the brandy to himself, and he wouldn't have to put up with their company any longer - two birds with one stone, and the sleeping situation could hardly be worse than the settee, could it?

Tuning their voices out, Eiffel reached for the light switch, hoping against hope that it would illuminate something on which he could sleep. What was illuminated, however, as the lights flickered on, was less than helpful - the best thing he could see was a heap of sacking, although the wheelbarrow had some potential. In any case, a secret laboratory it certainly was not, and Eiffel didn't know if that came as a relief of a disappointment.

"Well, I'm just going to bed down in here," he shouted, with more conviction that he really felt. "No need to bother me, let me know when the snow stops."

That elicited a few more threats from Aunt Renée, and even a muffled objection from Reverend Hilbert, who seemed more confused than indignant, certain as he was that the cellar was not a fit accommodation for a house guest.

"The cellar isn't heated, it must be terribly cold, no?"

It wasn't the warmest, now the Reverend mentioned it, but Eiffel wasn't going to let something like that stop him from drinking the brandy and sleeping down there, not now he'd committed to it.

"But this is ludicrous," Aunt Renée was saying. "You've got to see, you are being quite ridiculous, Douglas, and when the snow stops, we shall be having words."

He snorted.

"Very well, but the snow, as you can see, has not yet stopped, so if you would kindly leave me alone down here until such a time, I would be much obliged."

A sigh, and then it was Zeus' turn.

"If you come out now, we'll forget all about this, sir. It's been a difficult day, and I'm sure the Reverend will understand - if you come out with the brandy."

He shook his head, then, realising that they couldn't see it through the locked door, reaffirmed verbally that no, all things considered, he would not be coming out.

He was prepared for some more objections, at this point; what he was not prepared for was Reverend Hilbert's calm, ambiguously-accented voice.

"Very well, then, we shall do this your way. A shame, but I'm sure we shall manage to winkle you out somehow."

There was a sadistic note to his voice, almost as if the Reverend relished the prospect of a siege, and Eiffel wonders what, exactly, the Reverend had planned. Whatever it was, it did not seem to take effect immediately. Indeed, when Eiffel pressed his ear up against the door, it sounded like they had all gone - off to plot against him, no doubt.

In their absence, Eiffel went down and settled into the cellar, quickly fashioning himself a rather uncomfortable seat out of sacking before uncorking the brandy. He'd better ration it, he thought, looking glumly at the meager quantity remaining. A sip now, though, he could allow himself that. Hilbert was right, he realised as he did so. It was rather chilly down in the cellar; already, he was thinking longingly of the blankets he'd left upstairs. Still, he had to hold out, for the principle of it, if nothing else.

Time passed, although Eiffel was not sure how much time, as his pocket watch seemed to have gone missing in all of the excitement. More than an hour, he was sure. Two hours, perhaps? Either way, the cellar, he had decided, was exceedingly dull. Not only was there no secret laboratory, there didn't seem to be much of anything down there, except a handful of gardening equipment, some old burlap sacks and a pile of crates which, upon inspection, seemed to contain old curtains and linen. Other than that, the cellar was empty. Empty and silent.

Only that wasn't true, Eiffel realised a few minutes later, as he caught the faint but distinctive sound of conversation, out in the hallway. Slowly, he crept over to the door, careful not to give himself away, and pressed his ear to it.

"-  should do it. First he will cough, then his eyes will burn, then, when the burning dies down, he should be left wih a terrible thirst."

Eiffel gulped - none of those options sounded promising - and missed whatever Hilbert's interlocutor said next. The Reverend's response came through loud and clear, however.

"Why, we simply pour it under the door, like so. That way it-"

But whatever came next, Eiffel never found out, as a trickle of something hot came out from under the door, steaming and smelling faintly like Christmas - ginger, he thought, as he jumped back, surprised. But why would Reverend Hilbert-

Then Eiffel took a breath in, and the reason for the ginger became clear as his nose and throat started to burn and Eiffel began to cough violently. Scrambling backwards to avoid the fumes, he felt himself fall to the floor, tears forming in his eyes as the room filled up, it seemed, with an unbreathable, burning cloud. Any sensible man would have caved - Eiffel, however, having never been so unfortunate as to belong to that most tedious of demographics, simply curled up tighter, reaching for something - anything - with which to make it stop.

In the end, he used his jacket, pulling it up over his face as a sort of mask until the noxious cloud dispersed. It did not help very much, but it was enough, and with its help, he managed to withstand the assault. Reverend Hilbert, unfortunately, seemed entirely unperturbed by this; as Eiffel stopped coughing, he heard a chuckle, almost as if the Reverend had enjoyed his little foray into chemical warfare.

"Very well, Mr. Eiffel. I see I shall have to get a little more creative. See you in, oh, let's say an hour?"

And with that, the man left, his footsteps echoing up above. Eiffel swallowed. Round one to him, it seemed.

Some more time passed, tediously slowly. Hilbert had been right about he thirst, Eiffel realised, and treated himself to another swig of the brandy. It didn't work particularly well - his mouth was still dry afterwards - but the burn of the alcohol at least gave him the temporary illusion of warmth.

An hour came and went, at least by Eiffel's reckoning, and nothing happened. He wondered if he ought to be worried by this. Then, a full half hour after he had been expecting it, the lights went out. Fumbling his way up to the switch, he tried to turn them back on, but had no luck - Reverend Hilbert must have cut the power to the cellar. Well, good for him, Eiffel thought, resolving, if he had to sit in the dark, to at least get some sleep.

That plan, however, was scuppered the moment the music started, deafeningly loud - Gilbert and Sullivan, if Eiffel wasn't mistaken, but two different songs, played at a similar volume, on two different gramophones. Surprised, more than anything, that Reverend Hilbert owned not only one but two gramophones, Eiffel groaned.

"Really?"

Another chuckle from outside, followed by a voice - Aunt Renée, this time, although whatever she was saying was somewhat lost behind the music.

"- jolly good hiding, and it will serve you right," she concluded, during a momentary lull, and then Eiffel could hear them leaving, the gramophones still playing behind them. He sighed, then closed his eyes. With two tracks playing, it was hard to even tell what opera the music was from, and every time he thought he recognised the song, one or the other of the gramophones would change track and he would lose the thread of it again.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, the racket stopped, and Eiffel let out a sigh of relief - a relief which would, however, prove short lived, for as soon as he felt he could actually get some sleep, the lights came on, brighter than before, making him wince.

"Can't let your eyes used to the dark now, can we," came Hilbert's voice again, more smug than any vicar had the right to sound. "By the by, you haven't moved any of the crates in there, have you?"

Eiffel frowned.

"No?"

The Reverend made a satisfied noise.

"Good, good. Would have been a pity."

And he was gone. Eiffel frowned, shuffling over to get a closer look at the crates. Upon further inspection, however, they were exactly as boring as they'd been earlier. Regular wooden crates, full of drapes, cushions and tablecloths. Finally, Eiffel leant against one, just to see what happened. To his surprise, it shifted easily. The floor beneath was a different colour to the rest of the cellar, and the boards lay strangely, too, almost like - no, exactly like a door, set into the cellar floor. Reverend Hilbert had a cellar beneath his cellar?

There was nothing for it - Eiffel quickly threw his weight against the other crates, shifting them aside to reveal more of the door, complete with a small brass handle. The Reverend's words echoed in his head all the while: "Would have been a pity." What would have been a pity?

There was only one way to find out, and so, curious despite his better judgement, Eiffel reached for the doorhandle, pushing it down, down, down...

What happened next would remain hazy in Eiffel's memory until the day he died, filed, in the great library of his recollections, alongside such momentous occasions as Binky Norcross' twenty-first birthday, or, in years yet to come, Zeus' retirement party. All those times, Eiffel had been forced, the next day, to piece together what had happened from scraps, creating a narrative from the fragments of memories - memories which, in this particular instance, were very strange indeed.

There had been noise, he thought, and heat? The light had changed, as well, flickering on and off, and changing colour, and at some point there was a ladder - had he gone down through the trapdoor? If so, he didn't recall what was down there, but he did remember climbing up again, his hand tingling after touching something... something... but here, Eiffel's memory would fail him completely. He was drinking the brandy. The boxes had been put back. The lights were out again. The music was playing. Eiffel was singing. Now he was talking to himself - or was somebody else with him? He was daydreaming about space again. Now he was in space for real, looking at the stars, looking at one star in particular. The star was red. The star was blue. The star was a lightbulb and the lights were back on, horribly bright, and a strange woman was talking to him - except it wasn't, it wasn't at all, it was Zeus.

It was this realisation that finally brought things back into a sharper focus, like when a wireless was finally tuned correctly. Eiffel felt an immense surge of relief at the valet's voice, the first thing in hours that Eiffel knew to be well and truly real. No figment could imitate Zeus' blend of professional composure and poorly-concealed truculence, after all, of that Eiffel was firmly convinced.

"- absurd, sir. We both know you cannot stay down here forever, especially now the snow has stopped."

The snow had stopped? Zeus paused and Eiffel realised he must have said that part out loud.

"It's beginning to thaw as we speak, sir."

Eiffel looked around, taking stock of where be was. He was curled up under one of the sacks, the empty brandy bottle sat next to him and the crates back where they had been earlier, more or less. The light was on, but even with it on, he could see daylight filtering in under the door.

He groaned.

"Aunt Renée is going to kill me, Zeus. She's actually going to kill me; I hope you have a eulogy prepared."

Zeus chuckled, and it was a dry chuckle, nothing like Reverend Hilbert's. Eiffel could have kissed the man.

"Indeed I do, sir, although I hope not to need it for a good many years. Your aunt, you see, has sent me down here to negotiate a truce. You leave the cellar, you return the brandy to Reverend Hilbert and we all return home; the snow has cleared, after all, and I believe your aunt wishes to speak to you, posthaste."

Eiffel groaned. This truce was sounding more and more like a surrender with every word Zeus spoke, and once the valet stopped Eiffel explained this, in no uncertain terms.

"- and anyway," he tacked on, aware of how petulant he was sounding, "I shan't be returning the brandy, as I appear to have drunk it."

A magnanimous sigh.

"Well, on your head be it. But if I could give you one piece of advice, then, sir?"

Eiffel frowned.

"What?"

A pause.

"Step back from the door."

He just had time to do so before the door exploded inwards, flying off its hinges with a resounding crash. Behind it stood an apologetic-looking Zeus, alongside Aunt Renée, even more rumpled than before and distinctly unimpressed, and Reverend Hilbert, who had clearly, while Zeus was speaking, been hard at work with a screwdriver. As Eiffel watched, the Reverend put the screwdriver down, looked around the room, his eyes flicking first to the empty brandy bottle, then to Eiffel's disheveled state, and finally, most damningly, to the crates.

"Enjoying your stay, Mr. Eiffel?"

Eiffel gulped, but said nothing. The Reverend chuckled.

"Yes, as I suspected." He turned to Aunt Renée with a thin but genuine-looking smile. "Well, the road should be clear now, and I believe your nephew has learnt a valuable lesson from the whole affair - am I correct, Mr. Eiffel?"

Eiffel nodded, too worn out to speak, and Hilbert nodded back, a calculating, almost approving glint in his eye. Then it was gone, buried Hilbert's usual veneer of taciturn efficiency and vicarly respectability.

"Well, I shan't keep you here - I'm sure you have business to be getting back to. And Lady Minkowski, if I might suggest something?"

Aunt Renée raised an eyebrow.

"Don't be too hard on him; confinement can drive us all to make some..." his eyes flicked back to Eiffel, "Unwise decisions. I'm sure you understand."

There was a nod from Aunt Renée, followed by some murmured pleasantries, and then they were off, the three of them gathering their belongings and setting off through the snow, Zeus taking the lead and pointing out the worst patches of ice, while Aunt Renée brought up the rear, Eiffel sandwiched awkwardly between them, aware of his aunt's disapproving glare against his back

He was in the doghouse, he suspected, and rightly so. Still, it was worth a shot-

"I think Reverend Hilbert spoke very wisely, as we left - you know, about the confinement, and the, uh, the unwise decisions. One does tend to overdramatise things, somewhat, when trapped indoors - why even you, Aunt Renée-"

He stopped as Zeus' shoulders twitched minutely. A warning? Or a sign that Eiffel was onto something? He decided to continue - in for a penny, in for a pound, after all.

"Well, don't think I didn't notice you folding dog-ears into the Reverend's book, a habit I know for a fact you cannot abide. Why, what else could that be but malice, a malice borne of confinement, which, I would wager, had you been the one forced to sleep on a settee in a miserably stiff dress shirt without even a reliable supply of brandy, would have driven you to act every bit as rashly as I did."

A few seconds passed, and Eiffel risked a glance behind him. Had it worked? Had he escaped the doghouse? Alas, it was not the be - his aunt looked, if anything, more angry than before, as she shook her head with a dignified but irritated huff.

"I suggest, Douglas, that you ought to get used to stiffly starched shirts and no brandy - for that is all you shall be getting for the foreseeable future, until you learn to better tolerate it. As for the confinement - well, confining to your room for as long as the snow holds would certainly be a rash move on my part. But as you so eloquently said, being stuck inside can lead people to... overdramatise things." She looked him straight in the eye, before shrugging, a victorious smile on her lips. "Food for thought, Douglas, food for thought."

She turned back to the path, having said her piece, and Eiffel sighed. It could have been worse, he guessed. Aunt Renée wouldn't really confine him to his room, after all - that particular threat rang as empty now, aged twenty-three, as it had aged thirteen when he had learnt to climb out of his window. The brandy, too - well, he had rather expected it, honestly. The shirts, though, that would be a bother. He wondered if Zeus would lend him one of his, or if the maid who did the laundry could be charmed. Surely, if he got there before his aunt...

And thus the three of them trudged homewards, Eiffel's schemes becoming more convoluted by the minute as his aunt walked on behind him, blissfully unaware, and as Zeus, one step ahead in both the literal and the figurative sense, wondered, not without a certain resignation, which, if any, of his shirts might fit Eiffel, and whether, in a pinch, nettle wine might prove an acceptable alternative to brandy.

He suspected it wouldn't, but he also knew that Eiffel, chafing, again in both the literal and the figurative sense, against his aunt's chosen punishment, would put a brave face on, however vile the brew. And nettle wine, improperly brewed, could turn out vile indeed. Slowly but surely, a smile crept over the valet's face, the smile of a man who had just been handed a loaded gun.

He was going to have fun with this one...

Chapter Text

From: [email protected]

To: all staff

RE: Progress meetings

Dear all,

This message has been sent as a reminder to all staff that routine biannual progress meetings will be taking place with Alexander Hilbert, beginning 09/06/2024. An email should have been sent to you detailing the time and location of your individual slot; if this is not the case, please do bring this to your line manager's attention.

As always, the goal of these meetings are simply to check in on the progress you have made over the last few months; decisions regarding your workload, salary and/or future employment at Goddard Technology will not be affected by whatever you report to Alex. Employees should be advised, however, that the meetings will be recorded for future reference.

Please bring with you:

• A detailed summary of all projects you have been involved with within the last 6 months.
• An itemised list of any expenses incurred in the same period.
• Samples of any work you feel exemplifies Goddard's values of Excellence, Efficiency and Effectiveness.
• One Certificate of Fitness to Work (CFW) plus any related documentation (doctor's notes, exemption forms, proof of insurance).
• Anything you believe might otherwise support Goddard Technology in their assessment of your value as an employee.

If you have any questions about this, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Best wishes, and best of luck,

Hera

Head of Human Resources

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

To: Actual goddess

you know it's literally just me and renee youre emailing right

I don't know what you mean, Doug

Anyway, haven't you got programming shit to do?

eh it'll keep

dont *you* have hr shit to do

Nope I came in early and finished so I get to go home and then I have tomorrow off 😊

ph screw you and your effective working habits

😊

wait dont u have one of te thingies with alex tomorrow

The progress meetings?

yup

I dont have to have one, he said so

no way

Yes way

how????

Idk I guess he trusts me to actually do my job?

And he doesn't trust me and renee?

Apparently not

wtf how tf is that fair???

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I guess some of us have earnt that trust more than others

what does that mean

...wait

u told him what happened to the coffee machkne didn't you

hera?

hera!!

oh come on

To: it's pronounced RenÉE, not RENée

ugh can you believe alex is making us have progress meetings

Um, yes?

no btu seriously can you believe it??

Yes, I can, Doug. Goddard's a major company, of course they'll be asking Alex for proof that it was worth buying us out.

ugh your no fun

i bet you have your progress report already drafted

Uh-huh.

wait

you dont do you?

reneé??

is that why ur leaving me on read is it because your pulling an all-nighter to get the report done

renée!!!!!

Oh, for crying out loud, Doug, stop messaging me!

If you must know, I did finish my report, and now I'm home getting ready for date night with Dom.

how are u home already??

I came in early to get stuff done.

ffs why is everyone in this company a morning person

See you tomorrow, Doug.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: Alex?

Hey Doug,

Have you seen Alex around? I need to run something past him but he's not in the office.

Best,

Renée Minkowski

Project Manager

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

From:[email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: RE: Alex?

Uh no? Have not seen our resident mad scientist since yesterday.

Doug

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: RE: RE: Alex?

Wait! Found him!

1 attachment

[Photo]

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: RE: RE: RE: Alex?

Oh my god, did he sleep there?

Best,

Renée Minkowski

Project Manager

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Alex?

Idk but should I wake him up??

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Alex?

NO!!!!

Best,

Renée Minkowski

Project Manager

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

To: actual-goddess

ur gonna be so mad

???

guess what u missed today

[Photo]

... is he asleep down there?

yup

That can't be comfortable

nuh-uh

and you know what's even better

What?

he sleep talks!

[audio recording]

Weird

Wonder what "decima" is (desima?)

not a clue

could be code, could be a weird russian sex thing

you never know with that man

Well, I'm glad he finished working on his pet robo-assistant, at least

wait alex finished with FERN?

Yeah he said he was staying behind last night to put the finishing touches on, check for any bugs

Said he'd stay awake until he was done so he had something to show Goddard tomorrow

crap

What?

i said I'd do the groundwork for some ux stuff for FERN

and that id have it once he was finished

which I dont

Ah

Ask for an extension?

with our progress meetings today?

Mmm try and do it before then?

no can do

Well I don't know what you can do then except maybe hide from Alex under your desk until he gives up and leaves you alone

...u think that might work?

NO!!

Doug?

Doug!?

Ffs Doug, hiding from Alex won't work, just ask for an extension already

Doug?

Google

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Search | I'm feeling lucky

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"Dust particles and dust-containing macrophages collect in the lung tissues, causing injury to the lungs. The amount of dust and the kinds of particles involved influence how serious the lung injury will be. For example, after the macrophages swallow silica particles, they die and give off toxic substances."

Call Management | 15 mins

Missed calls

12 missed calls

To: it's pronounced RenÉE, not RENée

hey i was busy reseraching sth just saw your calls

is everything okay?

No, Doug. Everything is very mchu not okay.

ooh a typo from little miss punctuates-her-texts

must be serious

For God's sake, could you just call me?

no can do sorry

trying to stay silent

hoping if the office is quiet enough alex will think ive left

Why would you want that?

Never mind, is your computer handy?

couldn't fit it under the desk so I'm on a tablet

Wait, what? Why are you under a desk?

Never mind, just get out and log onto the system

why?

Just do it!

not until you tell me why

I need you to check something.

okay?

There's something wrong with FERN.

I went on this morning to see what changes Alex implemented last night and I got error messages keeping me out.

But like, weird ones.

weird how?

[Screenshot]

🤣🤣🤣

hooo boy

nice one renee

???

didnt think you had a sense of humor but thats good

I'm not making this up Doug!

sure sure sure I believe you

I'm telling the truth!

ypu know the screenshots actually pretty convincing

but "stop poking around in my code" is kinda cliché

not quite "im afraid I cant do that, renee" but still xliche

This isn't a prank, Doug!

I don't know what Alex did to FERN but I think she's gained some kind of sentience.

well go bother alex about it

I would, Doug, but I went to the bathroom ten minutes ago and since then my key card hasn't been letting me back into the office

Or out of this corridor at all

I just get a weird blinking red light on the card reader

[Photo]

ooh

nice detail

very spooky

the rogue AI locked you out 😱

Look if you're not going to take this seriously, please go get Alex

He's not answering his phone and I can't physically get to him

hmm lets see

no

Please, Doug!

no!!

or did you miss the part where I'm avoiding him

which you should be doing too btw

or did you meet all your quarterly targets?

(Renée is typing)

oh shit

OH SHIT

this is you avoiding him

why renee I didnt know you had it in you

im almost proud

It is not!

Don't be!

oh but I am

and sure it isnt 😉

ill just be fetching alex for you then 😉

dont worry I think the trip up to his office will 😉 take 😉 hours 😉

Stop winking at me!

I mean it!

Doug!

SOUGH!!!!

Caller ID

Renée Minkowski

Accept | > Decline

Caller ID

Renée Minkowski

Accept | > Decline

Caller ID

Renée Minkowski

Accept | > Decline

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: Meeting

Dear Doug,

Just an email to remind you of your appointment, which was scheduled to begin 15 minutes ago. If there is some issue with the time slot, please let me know and we can reschedule.

Warm regards,

Alex

Head of Research and Development

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: RE: Meeting

Dear Doug,

Are you currently in the office? You're not down as having clocked out, but I just went down to check and couldn't find you. Please reply when you see this email.

Warm regards,

Alex

Head of Research and Development

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

CC: [email protected]

RE: RE: RE: Meeting

Dear Doug,

Since we seem to have had some crossed wires with our appointment, I propose we postpone it until tomorrow, same time, same place - unless we run into each other before then, of course.

I'd also like to remind you that you should sign out if you are clocking off early in future, for fire safety reasons if nothing else.

Regards,

Alex

Head of Research and Development

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: what have you done now?

Doug, why am I getting copied into mildly passive aggressive emails from Alex? You didn't actually hide from him did you?

H

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: so what if I did

It worked didn't it? And anyway Renee's hiding too and she's being way less mature about it.

E

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: it's my day off I shouldn't have to deal with this shit

I don't care what Renée is doing and I struggle to believe she's being less mature than you are right now.

Look just go find Alex and get it over with. He won't kill you for being a little behind on things.... probably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

H

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: fat chance

Real reassuring, how about I don't do that?

Anyway there's something I said I'd help Renee with first - it sounded important. So if Alex copies you into any more emails you can tell him I'm saving the world from a rogue AI.

D

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

RE: go tell him yourself

^^^^^^^^^

(Maybe come up with something more believable though -  even I know AIs only exist in bad sci-fi)

H

Hephaestus Solutions

Staff Intranet

Please enter your username and password to log in.

Username: doug.eiffel

Password: *************

"FERN - final version"

Authentication Required

Please enter your credentials to manage or edit this file.

Username: doug.eiffel

Password: *************

Sorry, your username or password is incorrect, please try again.

OK < | Cancel

Username: doug.eiffel

Password: *************

Sorry, your username or password is incorrect, please try again.

OK < | Cancel

Username: doug.eiffel

Password: *************

Sorry, your username or password is incorrect, take a freaking hint, Douglas.

Now get out | Cancel

To: it's pronounced RenÉE, not RENée

nice touch messing with my login but dont u think youve taken this whole skynet-lite thing a little far

Oh now you're talking to me

uh yeah bc i decided to actually take you seriously and you locked me out of FERN

guess that's what I get for trusting you

wont make that mistake again

I didn't do anything to lock you out of FERN

haha real funny

No, I didn't because I am also locked out

[Screenshot]

See?

oh

shit

SHIT

Yeah.

you were serious

No duh.

i really thought you were avoiding alex

shit

what do we do now?

I've got a plan, dont worry

famous last words

Can you get to the server room?

uh probably

lemme see

goddamnit

What?

[Photo]

same door issue as you

Ah

Okay

Let me think

Can you reach the ceiling panels where you are?

if I stand on a desk sure

And do they push up still?

uh... yup

where is this going

dont tell me im about to star in die hard reloaded: mcclane v. GLaDOS

I don't know what that means, Doug

But if you can use the vents to get into the server room you could

I could what?

half that last message cut of

renee

renee?

everything okay?

Your message was not sent. Tap "try again" to send this message.

Try again <

everything okay?

Your message was not sent. Tap "try again" to send this message.

Try again <

everything okay?

Your message was not sent. Tap "I am a moron" to continue making poor decisions.

I am a moron

haha very funny VIKI

Your message was not sent. Tap "You really want to aggravate me?" to continue making poor decisions.

Go ahead, make my day

Google

How to climb through vents

Search | I'm feeling lucky

"So yes, it is possible to crawl the air ducts in theory, but in practice there are a lot of possibilities to seriously hurt yourself. You can bump your head onto a duct sealing, and there are also a lot of week sections that you can fall through and suffer major injuries or even death."

Google

How to climb out of a third floor window without falling to your death

Search | I'm feeling lucky

"Climbing out of a third floor window is extremely dangerous and should not be attempted except in extreme circumstances. A fall from that height could lead to broken bones, paralysis, or, most likely, death."

Google

How to get your scary boss' attention by banging on the walls really loud

Search | I'm feeling lucky

It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search - change your search terms or filter settings to try again.

From: [email protected]

To: all staff

RE: Progress meetings - UPDATE

Dear all,

Due to the ongoing AI situation, Alex has asked me to inform you that progress meetings have been cancelled until further notice. This measure, he hopes, will let us all focus our time and attention on tracking FERN down and neutralising her before she gets out into the wider world.

Goddard Technology, meanwhile, would like to remind you that word of this cannot be allowed to get out. Any journalists, investigators or other unknown individuals in or around the premises should not, therefore, be approached or addressed, but should be reported to reception immediately.

Finally, I would like to extend our gratitude to Renée, who, as you can see, has finally got our email up and working again, and to Alex, who has got us access to our main company login. Doug, feel free to let us know when you've worked out the card readers, preferably before Renée tries out her vent plan.

All the best,

Hera

Head of Human Resources

Hephaestus Solutions

Subsidiary of Goddard Technologies

Chapter Text

"Tossed about on the deep seas, cast adrift in a windswept, briny wasteland, will our intrepid explorer finally find what he and his companions have been seeking for so long? Or will he sink into oblivion, his rotting carcass food for the strange, eyeless beings that haunt the deep? Find out, in the next episode of Dr. Eiffel, Marine Geo-"

"Eiffel, cut it out!"

The radio crackled menacingly and Doug groaned.

"Just livening things up, Minkowski."

"Well, could you liven things up after you've dropped the sensor? The sooner you're back in the happier I'll be."

Her voice was tense, Doug thought. Understandable, given what had happened to the last vessel they'd sent out. Doug shuddered. Maybe he would try silence for a bit.

Finally, the GPS beeped. 50 meters. He looked over the edge of the craft, down into the inky grey waters below, squinting until -

"Good news, Minkowski, I think I've got it."

A greyish-green patch, just a shade lighter than the surrounding ocean - a mix of basalt and rhyolite. It didn't look like much from the surface, not if you didn't know what lay below it, the massive, craggy oceanic ridge, of which this unassuming shelf was only the highest peak.

Doug took another GPS reading, just to be sure, then radioed it in.

"Yup, can confirm that I am above Point W. Ready to set and drop the sensor once you give the go-ahead."

Another crackle, before Minkowski was back.

"Affirmative. Drop it."

This was it. His hands shaking slightly, Doug calibrated the sensor, making sure to correctly input the measurements he'd taken on the way out.

The theory was that these would help the sensor drop down straight, tiny motors within the sensor providing minute automatic adjustments which, along with a touch of steering from the remote that Doug currently had strapped awkwardly to his side, would steer the sensor down, landing it perfectly and precisely on top of Point W.

It was a job that required precision, skill with a range of bathymetric tools and a certain amount of situational judgement - and again, Doug had to laugh as he thought about how Dr. Minkowski, until that very morning, had been intending to send an unmanned craft out to do it. It had only been once he'd cornered her at breakfast, armed with an honest-to-God PowerPoint explaining all the ways this was likely to fail, that she finally conceded and let Doug take the research boat out.

"But be careful," she'd warned him, "And make sure you send us a GPS ping every five minutes. And bring extra flares!"  Hah. As if Doug needed reminding what was on the line, what could potentially go wrong.

It had started two weeks ago, when an unmanned vessel, sent out to survey and scan for marine life at a point retroactively dubbed Point W, disappeared without a trace. An expensive piece of equipment, its disappearance was alarming enough, but even more alarming was the footage it had transmitted back to the Hephaestus, which seemed to show nothing out of the ordinary - until the very last second, when a dark shadow passed overhead, fast enough that Dr. Minkowski thought it might have been a camera malfunction.

Swiveling the camera up, unfortunately, had revealed - well, they weren't sure quite what it had revealed, only that it was big, and that Dr. Hilbert, their deep sea expert, who bore an uncanny resemblance to the bizarre, freakishly-specialized creatures he studied, had never seen or heard of anything like it.

"Fascinating," he had simply hummed to himself, an unreadable look in his eye, before retreating to his lab space, muttering something about checking his back-issues of the Journal of Deep-Sea Biology, leaving most of the work of actually investigating the thing to him, Dr. Doug Eiffel, the ship's resident geologist and as such the least likely person to actually figure out what the thing was.

Dr. Minkowski had failed to see the problem with this, of course - apparently a fractionally lighter workload plus prior experience with the autonomous survey equipment trumped having any actual knowledge of what their hypothetical sea monster might be. Plus, once all but one of their remaining unmanned vessels had, despite their best efforts, been summarily obliterated by whatever it was, Dr. Minkowski said she wouldn't feel comfortable handing the clearly cursed side-project off to anyone else.

"Oh, but you're absolutely fine with leaving me the potentially dangerous, budget-destroying hell-Kraken," he'd objected, when she said that, of course, but the Chief Scientist had just shrugged.

"I figured you were already invested," she said, and the worst thing was, she was right.

All of which led to this - Doug, his hands shaking, finishing off the set-up on the device that with any luck would afford them a more informative glimpse of whatever the thing was that had shredded the rest of the equipment they'd thrown at it.

"And it's in," he confirmed, finally, once he was done and had dropped it. Now all the was left to do was a bit of steering with the remote, and -

"It's settled," he smiled. "Should be getting data through now."

"Nice work,"  Minkowski said, the relief in her voice almost tangible. "Now get back."

"Aye, aye, Captain," he joked, waiting for the-

"Hey! There's an actual captain on this ship, and I'll remind you that it isn't Dr. Minkowski!"

And there she was.

"Captain. I didn't know you had ears on this mission."

A lie. The Captain listened into all missions undertaken off-ship - she was nosy like that. In this case, though -

"Dr. Minkowski asked me to listen in. Said I'd need to be in the loop if anything went wrong."

By which she meant, "if we need to come back and fish your mangled corpse out of the ocean". Buoyed by such reassuring sentiments, Doug decided to shut up and hurry back to the ship.

He was making steady progress, he thought, could just make out the individual portholes on the Hephaestus again, when it happened - a sudden, violent jolt to the left, like something had struck the side of the boat. Doug's eyes scanned the craft for damage - nothing apparent, thank God.

His hands trembling even more than before, he flipped the switch on his radio, then toggled it to "constant transmission". Something told him he'd be wanting Minkowski and the Captain on speed dial in a few minutes.

"Uh, any idea what just tried to tip my boat?"

A pause, tense and unhappy.

"Negative," came the Chief Scientist's voice, finally."From where we're sitting it looked like you just pitched over out of nowhere."

Doug swallowed.

"What're the odds that it was just a really weird wave?"

A grim silence.

"Forgive me if I don't take you up on that one," came the Captain's voice, at last, and Doug winced.

"Yeah, I wouldn't eith-"

The boat rocked again, even more violently than before, sending the contents of the boat flying.

"Eiffel?"

"Doug!"

"Dr Eiffel!"

God, his radio - where was his radio? Finally, he found it, its familiar orange casing peeking out from underneath one of the maintenance boat's benches.

"I'm... I'm okay, I'm still on board, just a little wet. That was - well, it was definitely worse, that time."

An audible sigh on the other end as he secured the radio to his life jacket, wedging it inside a loop of webbing that probably was meant for something else, but did the job just fine

"Thank God. Oh, thank God. Thought for a second-"

But Eiffel's attention was elsewhere.

"Eiffel? Eiffel!"

"Still here, Dr. Minkowski. Just wondering if the sea's looking a little... choppy from where you're sitting, or if I'm imagining things."

A pause and he could almost see Minkowski frowning.

"It does look unsettled, now you mention it. Do you think..."

She trailed off and he took the opportunity to scan the waves forming around him. They were definitely stronger than before - not quite the waves you'd get in a storm, but getting that way, and that without a cloud in the sky.

Could something be whipping up those waves? With a sinking feeling, he remembered Minkowski talking about how orcas sometimed worked together to churn  the sea up around their prey - could this be a similar situation? Was Doug an unsuspecting seal, just waiting for the jaws to-

BAM!

- the water was up his nose, it was coming in his mouth, was he facing upwards or downwards, was that the surface up there, please God let it be the surface, it had to be the surface, just a few meters more and -

Air flooded into Doug's lungs, sweet and painful and wonderful, and he just had time to blink before he was under the water again, his eyes crunching shut as his arms flailed and he seized onto something solid before breaking the surface once more.

"Eiffel! Come in, Eiffel! Eiffel do you copy? Are you there? Eiffel?"

Somehow his radio was still attached to him, still transmitting. Huh. He leaned in towards it, making sure to speak as clearly as he could over the noise of the waves.

"I'm here, I copy. Do you read me?"

Another sigh - the Captain this time.

"Yes, we read you, Doug. Are you okay?"

Was he okay? Doug took a second to take stock.

"I'm... I'm in the water," he stammered out. Might as well lead with the bad news."The boat's broken up, whatever it was smashed it to bits. I managed to grab a piece of the hull, by the look of things, I'm floating. But things are still pretty rough out here, I'd appreciate a rescue round about now."

A thoughtful hum, then a reassuring voice.

"Okay, that's okay. We're working on a plan, we can see you, and we're gonna get you back onboard. Alright?"

Funny, he could hear somebody shouting for Dr. Hilbert, in the background. Probably thought the man would have some thoughts about how to approach deep sea hell-beast they seemed to have angered. As if any of them knew what it wanted from them. Hah.

"Alright, Doug?"

The Captain sounded concerned - she probably thought he was going into shock, and to be honest, Doug wasn't sure she was wrong. Drawing a shaky breath, and tightening his grip on the hull fragment, he tried for the most even tone of voice he could.

"Just dandy, Cap. Got an estimate yet when my ride's gonna get here?"

Minkowski was saying something in the background, and he strained to catch it, but she was clearly on the move, looking for something as she spoke.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch tha-"

The Captain sighed heavily.

"I've got the ship on a course that will bring it as close to you as is safe, but whatever storm that thing whipped up means we can't get close enough to get a line out to you. Not without risking you getting smashed into the side of the ship, or sucked into the engine."

Right, that didn't sound great.

"It's okay though, because Dr. Minkowski's going to go out with the other survey vessel, the one that didn't get all smashed up."

Doug frowned. Why wouldn't she take the - ah. The boat. The boat he was currently clinging to amid the roaring waves. Gotcha.

"It doesn't take a passenger, but she's going to wetsuit up and cling onto it while Hilbert steers remotely, and hopefully they'll be able to reel you in."

Nice - there was only one flaw.

"And if whatever it is attacks her, too?"

"That's what she's got the harpoon gun for."

Right. The harpoon gun. God, and he'd laughed when she showed him it. Called her Dr. Ahab for a week. He'd apologise if he survived this. Hell, maybe he'd invest in a harpoon of his own. Dr. Ishmael had a certain ring to it.

"Makes you sound like a comic-book villain," the Captain chipped in, sounding concerned, and Doug realised too late that he'd said that last bit out loud. Memories of his first research voyage flashed unbidden into his mind, the strained voice of a supervisor who had reamed him out for messing around above decks, listing off the symptoms of hypothermia. Ten minutes in the water, he'd said, you get confused, your speech gets slurred, you get sleepy and your mind starts to wander... had he been in for ten minutes already?

"Closer to twelve," the Captain said, sounding even more concerned than before, and it was enough to snap Doug back to the present - just in time for Minkowski to check in.

"I'm nearing your position, can't see you yet."

Unsurprising, given the still-turbulent water around him. Whatever had sunk the boat hadn't made a repeat appearance, but things were still pretty rough - luckily, Minkowksi didn't sound too thrown.

"Did you manage to save any of the flares?"

Doug scanned around him - the emergency flares should have been zipped into a pocket attached to a floatation device, so as long as he hadn't drifted too far -

"Affirmative," he nodded, thanking whoever was out there that it hadn't been further away before fumbling with the zipper, pulling out one of of the red flares.

"You ready for it?"

An affirmative hum from Minkowski.

"Just remember to look away."

He would have rolled his eyes if he'd been less busy swimming - even in his potentially-hypothermic state, he knew that. Rule one, when using flares: don't stare at the flare.

Hah, that rhymed, he thought, then remembered the thing about getting distracted.

"Okay, then, here goes" he said, screwing his eyes shut as tight as he dared before pulling the tab.

The waves calmed, just for a second, and in the brief moment of quiet he heard it ignite, heard it hiss as its light tried to seep in through his eyelids.

"Gotcha," Minkowski cried, victorious, and he could hear real-life Minkowski faintly alongside radio Minkowski, and it was so beautiful he could have cried -

And then something brushed against his leg, quick and muscular and cold.

Shocked, Doug's eyes flew open and he screamed - screamed because of the thing, and because he'd dropped the flare, and more than anything because of the horrible, searing, blinding light that was brighter and purer and more painful than anything he had ever imagined, and he couldn't even get away from it under the water -

"- Doug? Doug! Do you read -"

"-Eiffel? Where are you? What just -"

"- so close, you've got to be nearby - "

Snippets of words were reaching him, he knew, but it wasn't enough, his mind was elsewhere, he couldn't- couldn't quite - it wasn't -

"Are you on structure? Eiffel, are you on structure?"

Huh. That got through clear enough. It was Minkowski - only it wasn't Minkowski, not quite, and what the hell was she talking about, anyway?

He tried to reply, but the waves were too much, he kept going underwater, and whatever she said next was lost until -

"- still alive, then he's probably closer to the ship. Research suggests marine predators less likely to pursue injured prey near human vessel - "

Oh, Dr. Hilbert had finally arrived. Nice.

"Roger that, Hilbert. Heading towards the Hephaestus."

Wow, Minkowski sounded stressed.

"I still think this course of action is inadvisable. Chance of Dr. Eiffel being alive much slimmer than chance of you crashing into  -"

"Shove it, Doc."

Doug frowned, wondering if he should say something. He probably should, right? There were less waves here, or maybe he'd just got his balance, and if his head was above the water enough to follow the conversation -

"Uh, hi, guys?"

It wasn't super eloquent, but the response was immediate and loud.

"Oh my God, you're alive!"

"You disappeared for like, three minutes, we thought you'd drowned!"

"Where even are you?"

It was a great question - Doug couldn't see anything.

"Don't know, c'n't see anything."

Wait, why couldn't he see anything?

"I, uh...", he stammered, "I th'nk I looked at a flare."

That sounded about right - it didn't seem to reassure Minkowski, though.

"You think you looked at a flare."

That's what he said , wasn't it?

"Okay, no need to get huffy with me."

Minkowski didn't like it when he was huffy. He should apologise.

"'M sorry," he tried."D'dn't mean to say that."

It mustn't have worked because the next time Minkowski spoke, she sounded infinitely less happy than before.

"Eiffel, this is important. How are you keeping afloat? Are you swimming?"

He frowned. How was he keeping afloat? His hull piece had gone somewhere, so what else was left except -

"Life j'cket," he muttered. "Sw'mming with my life jacket on. 'F you can call it swimming."

It certainly wouldn't be winning him any awards. What had his gym teacher always said? Head down, lines clean, kick with your legs, arm over...

It was funny, that gym teacher had been a sadistic jackass, but his swimming tips were solid - so why couldn't Doug do it? It was like his arms were made of lead, and his hands were claws, and his legs were shaking too hard, but not in the right way -

"You're hypothermic," came the Captain's voice, calm in the way it only ever was when things were really, properly bad. "Just try to float, if you can't swim. Arms out wide, feet up, deep breaths if you can."

Huh. Arms out wide, feet up, deep breaths. Like lying on a lilo.

"Just like lying on a lilo," she agreed, a slight tremor in her voice. "You're doing great."

Doug wasn't sure about that, but he was enjoying floating, kind of. He was right, it was just like lying back on a lilo - except for the goddamn whistle digging into his neck. He could do without that.

A pause, just for a moment, like something momentous had just happened.

"You've got a whistle?" Minkowski sounded excited.

Well, yeah. Big, plastic, currently stabbing him in the neck every time a wave came along.

"Blow the whistle, Eiffel. You hear me? Eiffel? Blow the whistle, hard as you can!"

Ugh, why was Minkowski so bossy all the time?

"Eiffel, we do not have time for this!"

Yeah, yeah.

It was surprisingly hard to get the right bit of the whistle into his mouth. Probably not designed to be used blind, part of him thought, idly. And hey, why was he blind? He hadn't always been blind, had he?

Finally, he had the whistle in his mouth, after a few near misses with his chattering teeth. Drawing the deepest breath he could, he blew, a shrill, piercing note cutting through the radio's noise.

"Again! Blow it again!"

So he did, and a few times more for good luck, until-

"Got him."

They'd got him. That was good news, right?

"It's very good news, Doug. The best."

Huh. Cool.

"I'm on my way towards you," a sharper voice cut in. "Should be about a minute, you can manage one minute, right?"

It was a good question - could he?

"You'd better," the voice interrupted, with a note of finality, and that was that. He'd better manage one minute. Right. Yes. Okay.

He repeated it to himself again, just to hear it. You'd better manage a minute, Doug. You'd better. He wasn't sure why that was important, but it was, here in the dark. He'd better manage a minute, he had to manage a minute.

"Good, good. Positive mindset scientifically proven to improve odds of survival."

Okay. Good to know, Russian dude. Spasibo.

"Didn't know you knew any Russian."

He didn't. It was from... a film, perhaps? Or a video game?

"Great. Half dead from hypothermia, and he's cracking references. At least we know it's definitely him."

Hah, and the Chief Grouch was back. A pleasure, as always.

"Hey, I'd be a little nicer to the woman saving your sorry ass."

Okay, oka - wait, why did that sound different?

"Because I'm here, I've got you, you monumental dumbass."

Oh, that would explain why swimming had just gotten so much easier.

"We're just gonna clip this harness to you, okay?"

There was something on his chest, she was fastening something to his chest.

"Mmm-hmm, and then I'm gonna hook you up to this."

A reassuringly solid clunk.

"And then we're gonna take a nice ride onboard and straight to the medbay. How does that sound?"

It sounded... nice. Yeah. It sounded nice.

"Good, then off we go."

"Winch engaged"

"See you soon, Doug."

And then they were moving, pulled firmly and inexorably along. He was cold, and he was tired, but he was going to be okay, and so, as everything faded away, Doug smiled, unaware that somewhere, unknowably far below, something was smiling back.

Chapter Text

June 16th

My darling Anne,

How alarmed I was when I returned today to find, waiting for me upon my dresser, not one, not two, but three letters, written in your dear hand! Immediately I was struck by the conviction that some terrible harm had befallen you, or your mama, and so overcome was I, that it was with some trepidation that I opened the letter at all.

Thank the Allmighty -- my fears were swiftly allayed! No great calamity had befallen you, I was to learn, except the anxiety inflicted upon you by a negligent father -- for which I can but offer my most sincere apologies, and my solemn assurance that had circumstances as unprecedented as they were exigent not conspired against me, I would have written much sooner.

Nevertheless, I am writing now to reassure you all that I have indeed arrived safely at Hephaestus Hall, and have received the warmest of welcomes from Lady Minkowski. Renée - for so she entreats me to call her, our acquaintance being of such long date - has shown almost an excess of care for my wellbeing here, and already I feel that my stay, despite a somewhat inauspicious beginning, will be a fruitful one, as I set about the task for which I was summoned here.

Aside from this happy news, however, it transpires that there is very little for me to report back to you. Hephaestus Hall, as you know, is located a considerable distance from its closest neighbour, and further yet from the nearest town. The company I keep here has, as a consequence, been limited; besides Renée, my principal companions have been the housekeeper, Hera, and another guest at the house, Dr. Alexander Hilbert.

Both are unusual company, Hera being a servant - although, had I not been introduced to her as such, I would have presumed she were mistress of the house - and Dr. Hilbert a queer fellow, Russian and uncommonly educated, yet somewhat lacking in the social graces prized in more urban circles. That is not to say that he is unpleasant company; more than anything, it rather means that Dr. Hilbert is no company at all, for summoned to the house for much the same reasons as I, the doctor seems content to keep himself to himself once our daily work is done -- a strange habit, but one I suppose he is entitled to.

Thus are my days spent, and thus they shall likely be spent for the foreseeable future -- for already I feel, in my heart, that my stay here will, for better or for worse, be an extended one. I know this will not please you, and yet I implore you to have patience and, above all, to know that your father loves you very much, and looks forward to the day he shall see you again.

Pass my regards to your mama, if she will hear them, and be sure to write back soon. Also, if you would send on a selection from the novels I left in my private study, I would be very much obliged; I have little time for reading, but Lady Minkowski has, in private conversation, done Mrs. Radcliffe a great disservice, a disservice which much, by all means, be redressed.

Yours affectionately,

Father

June 24th

My darling Anne,

I write again to inform you that all is still well at Hephaestus Hall, and that my novels arrived safely despite the somewhat unreliable nature of the post in these parts. Unfortunately, Lady Minkowski made it clear to me, upon their arrival, that her comment of a week ago was not intended as a veiled request to borrow the novel in question, nor any of Mrs. Radcliffe's works, which she would insist on describing, summarily and quite incorrectly, as trash of the most whimsical kind.

Despite this rather rude dismissal, I can report that the novels have found a place for themselves at the foot of my bed, where their familiar jackets are a welcome reminder of home, and this being the case, I truly lack for nothing -- except, perhaps my pipe, for I have run out of tobacco and to my great misfortune, nobody else at the house smokes. As such, there is no supply of tobacco, and given the considerable distance between us and the nearest tobacconist, it thus seems highly unlikely that my pipe shall see any use this side of Christmas! Truly, an intolerable burden, and I should not know what to do about it, had Dr. Hilbert not announced- miracle of miracles! - that he was in fact working to create a synthetic tobacco substitute, a curious compound which, inhaled, ought to have much the same restorative effect as snuff.

But look -- here I am, writing to you about tobacco and snuff, when I am sure a young lady of repute such as yourself can have no great interest in such things! It is true that the nature of my work here does not permit me to share with you many details of my daily comings and goings; this does not, however, mean that a man ought to bore his daughter with talk of snuff!

No, since it seems I can neither be informative nor amusing, I must simply strive to be brief, and to say what must be said in a succinct, economic manner. So, all is well at Hepahestus Hall, and our work continues apace. I miss you dreadfully, and your mama, and most of all, I miss my pipe -- and that is the last I shall say of the matter!

Yours concisely,

Father

June 28th

My dearest Anne,

In my last letter, I professed most sincerely that I would make no further mention of Dr. Hilbert's false tobacco, but now, sitting down to write, I find that little else of note happened this past week; but for the memory of Doctor Hilbert handing me a package of snuff over breakfast, in every respect equal, if not superior, to the kind one might buy in London, I might easily believe that I fell asleep last Tuesday and spent the remainder of the week in some peculiar trance, waking only in order to pen this letter.

I know, rationally, that this is impossible. Hera assures me, for instance, that I conversed with her at length only yesterday, while Lady Minkowski reminds me, when asked, that we spent this afternoon discussing repairs together. Both these conversations feel distant, however, like the memories of another man, and when I try to seize upon the precise details of the moment - the texture of a cushion, the scent of the flowers on my vanity, the sound of rain against the window pane - it is as if a fog has entered my mind, not dissimilar to the fog dreams are shrouded in, once one has awoken.

Doctor Hilbert claims the fog is likely to develop into a fever. Naturally, I objected to this assessment; while I am not by nature a boastful man, my strong constitution has always been a point of some pride, and as such, it would be uncharacteristic for me to be taken sick at this juncture. No -- the fog must have some other cause.

Hera, who has just come in to air the room, and who has a most disconcerting way of peering over my shoulder as I write these letters, says that for the sake of honesty, if nothing else, I ought also to tell you that I have developed a cough -- a weak, tickling cough, I would add, but a cough nonetheless. I would remind Hera, however, that there are many reasons why a man might develop a cough, a great number of which are linked not to ill health, but rather to an excess of dust. As long as she does her job, then, I am sure that my symptoms, such as they are, shall remain mild and manageable.

I would say more on the matter, but already I feel the fog returning; I shall end this letter, therefore, and write another when my head is clearer, as conclusive proof of my wellbeing. Until then, as always, know that I am thinking of you, and do not concern yourself unduly for my health -- by the time you receive this letter, after all, I will no doubt be as well again as I was upon my arrival at Hepahestus Hall.

Yours lethargically,

Father

30th June

My darling Anne,

I do not mean to alarm you, but I feel since I last wrote that the fog in my brain has worsened considerably, and I am afraid this may be the last time for a while that I am lucid enough to write -- so write I must, and you shall have to pardon my shaking hand.

Everywhere I hear noises, see ghosts. I rush to answer a knock at my door only to find nobody there, and when I turn back, the room has changed, its furniture miraculously rearranged while I was in the hallway. Other times I hear doors slamming, voices around corners, footsteps where there ought to be none; yet other times my mind drifts until I am sure I am somewhere else entirely, living a life wholly different to my own. I do not know if I wake or if I sleep; either my reality has become excedingly dream-like, or my dreams excedingly real.

Renée says I am feverish, that I imagine these things. She has given me the day off from work, has demanded that I rest -- and yet I feel, all too strongly, that she would have been better putting me to work. At least then I would have had somebody to talk to.

Hera reminds me that she has not abandoned me. Strange, I had almost forgotten she was here -- and yet, she has been here all along, has been very good to me. How did I forget that? She wishes me to tell you that I am being cared for, that Doctor Hilbert, too, is overseeing my care. Apparently we spoke earlier today; I have no memory of the exchange.

I see my snuff box is again full, however, so perhaps the doctor did pay me a visit. His snuff is excellent, quite like the real thing and more than commonly potent. I have been indulging since breakfast. Your mama shall be ever so disappointed when she finds out; I wonder that you have not taken it off me yet, Anne, unless you are avoiding me because of the fever. Is that why you hide from me? Or have you finally forgotten about your wastrel father? I would not blame you, but I did think you kinder than that.

No, I am uncharitable, you are right, it is better you stay away. Under no circumstances do I want you to catch this fever, no circumstances. Better to let it run its course, better you stay safely away from this strange place, with its strange light, and its strange walls, and its strange --

My dearest Anne,

Curse the day I agreed to come to this God-forsaken place and curse the day I left you and your mama. I wish I had never come, truly I do. If you only knew --



My darling Anne,

You are right, no, of course, you are always right. Truly, Mrs. Radcliffe could not invent anything half so terrible, and the thought of you coming here fills me with such dread when I think about it that -- no, better you stay with your mama, better you know nothing of Hephaestus Hall, that you stay out of the whole affair --

July 6th

My dearest Anne,

Doctor Hilbert informs me it has been almost a week since I last wrote to you, a delay for which I can only apologize. In my defence, I am told I attempted to write to you on at least three occasions -- and truly, looking back at what I wrote, I cannot say that it would have allayed your fears a great deal.

Either way, to avoid the same mistakes I shall keep this letter brief, sticking purely to the facts, which are as such: I have been unwell for a week with a fever and a cough. I believed, initially, that it was nothing to worry about -- and indeed, I am still very much of that opinon. Doctor Hilbert informs me, however, that Lady Minkowski has ordered that I be confined to my room, in the hopes that a period of bed-rest might speed my recovery.

I had hoped Lady Minkwoski might come and tell me this herself, but the doctor has given me to understand that Lady Minkowski is otherwise occupied, and that lengthy conversation would, at any rate, be too taxing for me right now -- indeed, it was with some reluctance that he allowed me to write this letter, even, fearful that the mental stimulation might trigger a relapse.

The worst is, I believe he may have been correct; already I feel my energy fading, and so, while my judgement is still sober, I shall end this letter with the assurance that your father, although unwell, loves you very much, and will soon be back to full health.

Yours convalescently,

Father

July 11th

My dearest Anne,

It has been several days since my last letter and still you have not written. Could it be that you have forgotten your father? Could it be -- but no, I feel in my heart that there must be another explanation. Perhaps you have not yet received my letters, perhaps even now you sit at home, perfectly ignorant of my condition, wondering why I have not written -- an unfortunate, yet ultimately understandable, situation.

As much cannot be said for Lady Minkowski and Hera, whose negligence can scarcely be blamed on an unreliable post-chaise. No, their absence would seem deliberate, for in three days neither one of them has visited, nor have they passed me any messages. This leaves me in the sole company of Doctor Hilbert, a man whose ministrations I am swiftly beginning to tire of.

The issue is not one of competence; while he is not primarily a medical doctor, Doctor Hilbert assures me that he is eminently familiar with the human body. No, the issue is rather that the doctor, experienced as he is, entirely lacks the reassuring manner proper to a physician. Listening to my chest, for example, he does not tell me how I am doing in relation to yesterday, but rather he presents me with a list of symptoms I might expect to experience in the next few hours, the knowledge of which, naturally, causes more alarm than the symptoms ever would have.

It is, as you may imagine, infuriating, and combined with the great number of questions the doctor insists on posing every time I am lucid, I am sure you can understand my irritation -- especially when the questions have so little relevance! This morning, for example, the doctor asked me, quite exhaustively, about the snuff he had made for me: how much had I consumed, how often, how much time had elapsed between my snuff consumption and the onset of my symptoms, etc. He was quite rigorous in his questioning; if I did not know better -- but no, such a conclusion would be quite absurd. There is simply no way --

I apologize, but I must go. I hear the Doctor returning, and I fear he will not be happy to see me awake and still writing. Back to my bed, then - I shall write again soon, the haze in my brain permitting.

Yours, with some frustration,

Father

July 14th 

My darling Anne,

Another three days, and what was, the last time I wrote, a suspicion, has solidified into a near-certainty: for whatever reason, I am deliberately being denied communication with the outside world by none other than Doctor Hilbert, a man who I fear may have been dosing me for almost half a month with poisoned snuff.

A drastic conclusion -- but what else am I to believe? The lack of letters, the absence of visitors and the multitude of suspiciously particular questions together lead me to a sole conclusion: Doctor Hilbert, for reasons known only to himself, has been poisoning me, and now seeks to hide his murderous actions by cutting me off from society, completely and without recourse. He takes my letters, but does not send them; he takes my messages, but does not convey them to their recipients.

It is a desperate situation, and one from which I see no obvious means of escape, for when, on shaking legs, I stumbled over to the door, I found, to my horror, that it was locked, the key nowhere to be found. The window was my next thought, but there, again, I had no luck -- it was bolted, and even had it not been, there is a drop of at least thirty feet below the sill.

Unable to physically escape the room, then, my thoughts turned to how I might get a message out of the room. Signalling through the window was an impossibility; Hephaestus Hall is simply too remote for such a plan to be practicable. No, my best bet, I thought, would be to sneak a letter out of the house -- and it was at this point that Doctor Hilbert returned, and was so alarmed to see me out of my bed that he immediately insisted I return, briefly going so far as to restrain me there with straps to prevent me from further harming myself in my delirium.

Admittedly, my fever did at that point return, and it is only today, free from the restraints, that I have felt well enough to enact my plan. Writing this letter as a cover, you see, I intend, as I seal it, to knock my inkwell over onto the bedcovers. This shall force Doctor Hilbert to call for one of the maids, to whom, as she is stripping the bedclothes, I shall hand both this letter and, alongside it, a second, more furtively-written letter, addressed to Lady Minkowski, detailing the nature of my imprisonment here, and imploring her, in any way she can, to liberate me.

If you are reading this letter, it means my plan has worked, and I am, in all likelihood, free, in which case I shall write again anon. Until then, tell your mama that I am safe -- for even if I have not escaped, I have resolved to no longer take Doctor Hilbert's medicine, a step which, it is to be hoped, will improve my condition greatly, no matter the outcome of my scheme -- for I am in little doubt that the majority of it is nothing but poison  administered in order to prolong my convalescence, and as such, I know I shall be better off without it, escape or no.

Yours hopefully, 

Father

June 14th

My dear Renée,

I do not have much time to write, for Doctor Hilbert, while permitting me to write to other acquaintances, seems expressly to have forbidden me from contacting you. Already, he has torn up two such letters, and failed to deliver three more -- this, then, is my last hope, and I implore you to read it and take immediate action.

Doctor Hilbert has taken me prisoner, confining me to my room, all the while claiming that I an suffering from a terrible fever -- a fever caused by the very snuff that he himself gave me, some weeks ago.

I do not know what, if anything, he has told you of this. Perhaps Doctor Hilbert has hidden the nature and gravity of my condition from you, or perhaps the he has taken the opposite approach, and has told you that I am already dead and cold in my grave, taken in the early stages of the fever -- is that why you do not visit?

It is of little importance. Either way, I beg of you to liberate me, and put an end to Doctor Hilbert's tyranny, for the sake of the work we have to achieve, if not for my own sake -- for I fear I shall not be able to withstand another day trapped in this room.

Yours urgently,

Douglas

July 15th

Darling Anne

I write this letter knowing that you will likely never read it -- for it is unlikely, even many years hence, that anyone should think to take up the floorboards of this room, and the likelihood that the letter's hypothetical finder might then be both able and willing to deliver this letter to you is infintesimally smaller. Still, I must try, if only so that you might know what became of your father, know that even in the end, in the grasp of Doctor Hilbert, he loved you and was thinking of you.

But I get ahead of myself, and you are surely confused; you know nothing of Doctor Hilbert except what your father once told you, namely that he was a queer, Russian fellow, strange yet ultimately harmless. How foolish I was -- how naïve! Doctor Hilbert is anything but harmless, for he has me trapped in this very room, where I am doubly captive, imprisoned both by the doctor's terrible machinations and by a recurring fever, brought on, no doubt, by Doctor Hilbert's treacherous medicine -- medicine which I have not taken for some days now in an act of defiance which does not, unfortunately, seem to have lessened my fever, or in any way lengthened my periods of lucidity.

I have made several attempts to escape, and came close, on one occasion, to getting a letter out to Lady Minkowski -- but alas, it was not to be! For the doctor, it seems, had already taken precautions to prevent such a message from being delivered; that very evening he tore up the letter in front of me, and took away all of my writing equipment, save for a pencil and this sheet of paper, both of which I managed to hide within the frame of my bed.

I am writing this letter, then, as a final message, and as a warning, which I would ask you to convey to Lady Minkowski, if she is yet living: do not trust Doctor Hilbert. Do not need his advice, do not accept his help and, above all, do not take his medicine. Lock your door at night, and be wary of sudden noises and a strange mental cloud that will not lift -- for that is how it begins.

By the time you read this, I fear I shall be long gone -- for this very morning Doctor Hilbert announced that my time had come, and that by nightfall, I would be in a better place. It was a terrible enough pronouncement when it was freshly made, but now, as the clock strikes eight, it sends a shard of ice deep into my heart, freezing my blood in its veins until I am as cold and stiff as a cadaver -- the irony of which is not lost on me.

I feel -- but I hear somebody coming, their footsteps heavy on the stairs, and I fear my time is almost up. Just know, Anne, that I --

July 16th

Dearest Anne,

I write to you a free man, healed at last of my sickness -- a rare form of influenza, if Doctor Hilbert is to be believed, transferred to me, in some obscure fashion, from the tissue samples he had me transport up to his rooms almost three weeks ago now.

This discovery has excited the doctor inordinately -- from what I have gathered, the incident has confirmed some theory he had on the transmission of infectious diseases. A consolation, I suppose, if a rather paltry one; almost a month of my life has been lost to a strange, mind-consuming fog, but at least my suffering has been of benefit to the scientific profession at large.

But here I go again, writing to you of matters you are already acquainted with, for Lady Minkowski assures me that she has kept you informed of my condition, even as the risk of infection prevented her from visiting me in person. It was the least she could do, she explained -- and let it not be said that I am not grateful, even if I do question the wisdom of leaving me in the sole care of Doctor Hilbert, a man whose bedside manner, for all his physiological expertise, is severely lacking. Why, for a while I truly believed -- but no, I do not wish to distress you, so I shall spare you the details.

All you must know is that I am well -- well enough, at least, to leave my confinement and take up work again. I tire somewhat more quickly  than before, but the doctor says that will pass, and I am also told that the hallucinations, alarming as they are, ought likewise to clear up in the next few days.

In all of this, Doctor Hilbert, it must be said, has acted only in my best interest, and in the interest of the other occupants of Hephaestus Hall; it is thanks only to his stringent quarantine, after all, that I was healed and that a wider outbreak was prevented. Hera says there might be a lesson in this -- you will forgive me, however, if I spare myself the work of teasing it out, tired as I am from a lengthy illness that is, at least in part, the fault of our resident doctor and his pestilential laboratory.

No, I, for one, am too exhausted to think much more on the matter; my bed is calling, and who am I to resist such a compelling summons? I shall write again once I have rested, but until then, I ask only that you remember me to your mama, and that you remain vigilant against Greeks bearing gifts -- or rather, against Russians bearing snuff. An unlikely danger, to be sure, but you know what they say, forewarned is forearmed.

Yours drowsily,

Father

Chapter Text

Hera warned him on the phone, that's what Doug thinks, as the lights go out. He told her Alex was messing with the electrics again, and she warned him, Doug, he's gonna blow the fuses, you know how crappy just about everything in this house is, and I'm hours away still.

The silent implication - I'm hours away still, and I don't trust any of you guys to fix the electrics - would have hurt more if it hadn't been entirely true, Doug thinks. Of the four of them, Hera, on her way back from visiting relatives out of state, really is the only one who knows how to fix shit - Doug's always been more a computer guy, and Renée's math degree is equally useless when it comes to circuitry and wiring. Alex, at least, understands what the wires do, Doug supposes, and it is technically his house, but he's not sure that counts for much when Alex is probably the guy who fried their lights in the first place.

"Renée?" he calls, but there's no response.

He sighs and tries again.

"Alex?"

Nothing, and that's more than a little weird - the house is big, sure, but not that big, one of them should have heard him, surely?

Images flash though his head, suddenly - Alex passed out from an electric shock, Renée desperately attempting CPR on their absolute moron of a genius. Doug swallows and tries again.

"Hey? Anyone there?"

That gets a response, thank goodness, a muffled shout from somewhere upstairs that sounds like Renée. She sounds aggravated. "Are you in the dark right now?"

"Yup, power's out down here, too," Doug shouts back, and the next thing he hears is the thump, thump, thump of feet on hardwood stairs - they should really get those carpeted, a different part of his brain thinks. Add it to the to do list.

Finally, Renée appears. As far as he can tell in the gloom, he's caught her just out of the shower, because her hair's still wet and she's got a towel wrapped round her shoulders to protect a shirt that she clearly threw on in a hurry.

"You're dripping," he points out, and is rewarded with a scowl for his troubles.

"I was in the shower, of course I'm dripping."

She's shivering, and Eiffel winces.

"The water heating cut off?"

A curt nod.

"Cold as ice - at first I thought it was the boiler again, but if all the power's off..."

She trails off but Doug knows what she means - if the water and the power both got messed up, then Alex might have really screwed them this time. And speaking of their absent housemate-slash-technical-landlord-

"Any idea where Alex is?"

A shrug.

"I think he said something about going out to the store? Said he wanted to pick up wine for this evening."

Which means he could be anything from half an hour to four hours, going by his track record. Doug groans and Renée nods.

"Yup. Though I guess it rules him out as a cause for whatever this is, at least."

Doug nods, then frowns, thinking better of it.

"Does it, though? Remember with the WiFi?"

Renée makes a face. It had taken both them the best part of two weeks to work out what the issue with their already patchy Internet was, not realizing that Alex, out of town on a month-long secondment to some research facility over in Germany, had hooked them up to some weird, faulty prototype router, which he'd just forgotten to unplug before leaving.

"You want to check his room?" Renée blurts out, just as Doug is about to ask her to do the honors.

"Not really?" he tries, and is rewarded with an silently judgemental eye-roll.

He sighs.

"You know I hate going in there. I'm always afraid I'll get myself irradiated, or set off a bomb, or something."

It's a joke, but Renée doesn't smile. The truth is, neither of them are sure what their housemate actually does for his mysterious employer - all they know is that whatever it is, it doesn't quite bring in enough money for him to maintain the crumbling old mansion he inherited from an elderly uncle. Hence the housemate situation. Apart from that, they've got nothing - the man's as tight-lipped as they come, and if he brings work home, he doesn't do it in the lounge.

Renée stares at him some more and predictably, that's all it takes for Doug to cave. With another heavy sigh, he gets up, heads through to Alex's room. The door gives when he opens it, so it's not locked, at least.

The room behind the door is cluttered, to say the least, every surface covered in files, diagrams, bits of what looked like deconstructed hard drives. It's a mess, but a weird workspace mess, not the kind of lived-in mess that Doug has, and that Hera and Renée try, with varying degrees of success, to avoid. More concerning, though, is the smell, a sort of ozoney, electrical smell, centred on - well, Doug isn't sure what it is, but it's about the size of a microwave, it's hooked up to the mains and it's smoking gently.

"Uh, seems like our bomb theory might not have been that far off the mark," he shouts back, more to alarm Renée than because he really thinks Alex is making a bomb. Gingerly he approaches, taking a good look before nudging it with his foot. It doesn't explode, or shock him, so after a minute or so he figures he's safe to unplug it before heading back through to Renée.

"Definitely Alex's fault," he confirms and she pulls a face.

"Why does he have to do this tonight, of all nights?"

Mark shrugs, but he knows how she feels. They might not have started out as close housemates - more like a bunch of college acquaintances who all happened to live in the same area and couldn't afford places of their own - but surviving a whole year in Alex's death-trap of a house still felt like an achievement, enough to justify an official whole-house anniversary dinner. It was the first thing they'd organized together, as a group, and the prospect of spending it sat in the dark fiddling with fuseboxes is hardly an enticing one.

"I checked the fusebox while you were doing that," Renée volunteers, almost like she van read Doug's mind. "No dice. I flipped everything back that I could, but as you can see, no power."

Of course, he thinks. Because when is anything in this house ever simple?

"Phone Hera?" he suggests. Really, that should have been their first port of call, except -

"Tried that. No phone signal."

Doug stifles a groan. The signal's pretty patchy, so it's not a shock, but without WiFi to fall back on, it does mean it's just the two of them, at least until Alex gets back.

He checks his own phone, just in case there's signal, but no, his signal's just as unreliable as Renée's, so they both just end up standing there awkwardly, wondering what to do next.

"I... uh, I think we have candles in a cupboard somewhere?" he ventured, just as Renée frowned.

"There's a backup generator down in the cellar, I think?"

They both looked at each other for a second, thinking the same thing. Renée's the one to say it, though.

"Shotgun getting the candles."

Doug curses and Renée looks like she's trying very hard not to smirk.

"I guess that leaves you the generator, then?"

He curses again, then moves to object.

"We don't even know if Hera and Alex got that thing working yet! Couldn't we just - I don't know - get some candles, light some candles and wait for the others to arrive? I mean, it's possible that this'll all sort itself out if we do that."

A grimace.

"It is possible," Renée starts, all tentative, and already Doug can sense a but coming. He raises his eyebrows and she sighs.

"But have you noticed how cold it's gotten, since the power cut out?"

Doug frowns. Sure, it's a little cool, but that's what you'd expect in early December, in a huge old house without working heating.

"We layer up," he shrugs. It's a pain, but hardly the worst thing ever. Renée looks grim though.

"We're still working off most of the residual heat from when the power was on," she points out. "Which means it's gonna get colder. Like, a lot colder. It's below freezing out there."

She looks at Doug significantly and he frowns.

"Meaning?"

A frustrated sigh.

"Meaning our pipes are going to freeze, which means no water and probably a burst main once the heat comes back."

Ah. Shit.

"Yeah," she nods. "So we need that generator running. Otherwise we're back to where we were in August."

Back to several months of water leaking through Doug's bedroom ceiling, weird smells in the downstairs bathroom and green scum occasionally bubbling up through the kitchen sink. Only they'd be doing it in the freezing cold this time. Fan-freaking-tastic.

"Couldn't we at least go sort the generator together?" he tries, changing tack.

A sympathetic shake of the head.

"No can do. There's still no working lighting down in the cellar, you'll need someone up here to tell you if it's working. Plus, I don't trust the generator not to trip the fuses up here all over again."

Doug grimaces, but she's not wrong.

"I'll say, for the record, that I hate this idea," he groans and Renée snorts.

"Noted."

A thought occurs to Doug.

"How're you planning on letting me know it's working, anyway? It's not like you can call me, and shouting's not gonna carry if I'm in one of the back cellar rooms." Because Alex's house is ridiculously fancy like that, and has multiple rooms' worth of cellar.

Renée grins when he says it, though - this one she clearly has an answer to.

"There's an old dumb-waiter, goes all the way down. If I speak into it, up at the top, whatever I say ought to echo right down. Hera and I discovered it last time we ventured down there," she adds, by way of explanation, and Doug can't help it, his eyes wide.

"And you were gonna tell me about this-"

"Never," Renée shakes her head firmly. "We thought about it. But when just about every scenario we came up with ended up with you either stuck in it or with a broken neck at the bottom, we figured it wasn't worth the trouble."

Doug bristles a bit at that, but experience suggests Renée isn't wrong, so there's not a whole ton of objections he can make, really.

"Okay, so I go down and you - what, you just wait for the lights to come on before hailing me via the old rickety creep-o-phone?"

A shrug.

"I might try and turn the water off at the mains, while you're down there. That should forestall any burst pipe issues, at least."

She doesn't sound certain of that, but Doug's not about to call her out, because the cool, competent façade Renée's managing to project is more reassuring than he'd care to admit, and he'd really hate to spoil it now, so instead he nods.

"Sounds good," he murmurs and heads for the cellar, feeling a touch more confident than a minute ago.

Renée's got this, he tells himself, as the old oak door creaks open and the uneven steps down stretch out in front of him. He'll need a lit candle before he ventures down, he thinks, and sets about looking for matches.

Renée's got this, he reminds himself yet again when she reappears at his side, a long, tapered candle in hand. It's white, and dusty, and it's firmly ensconced in an honest-to-God silver candlestick, like a Clue prop or something. It lights, though, and that's what matters.

"Renée's got this," he actually murmurs to under his breath as he steps through the door, lit candle in hand. She look at him funny then, and Doug wonders if she heard. He doesn't wonder for long, though, because the next thing he knows there's a cobweb half in his mouth, and it's all he can do not to cough and splutter and accidentally blow the candle out. That's what he gets for letting Renée distract him.

"I'm gonna go turn off the water now," she shouts down, once he's halfway down the steps. Her voice echoes a bit already, and Doug shivers at the thought of being down there alone.

"Sure," he shouts back, with a confidence he doesn't feel, and he's rewarded with the sound of footsteps heading away.

God, I wish Hera were here, he thinks, and then he repeats it out loud, because why the hell not? Talking breaks up the silence, right?

"Or just makes it creepier," he muses. "One spooktacular basement, now with flickering candlelight, bonus cobwebs, and one rambling madman talking to himself in the corner."

He shakes his head as he gets to the bottom of the steps, noticing how cold it is down there. His breath isn't quite misting up, but it's a close-run thing, he'd bet.

"Talk about a chilly reception," he jokes, then regrets it when he just gets silence in response.

"Okay, note to self, spiders clearly not big stand-up fans."

He holds the candle up, casting his eyes around for the generator. It has to be around here somewhere, he thinks.

"Then again, the cellar does go most of the way back under the house," he announces to the spiders. "Could be-"

He cuts himself off. Was that -

No, it can't be. He's the only one down here, so how could there possibly -

Then it comes again, a sudden, indecipherable whispering noise.

"Renée?" Doug tries, but there's no response. He's not surprised - if nothing else, whatever it was sounded much closer, like it was here in the cellar with him. He shivers.

"Cool. Not freaky at all, no-siree. Just your regular old cellar whisper, no biggie, happens all the time, I'm sure."

A second goes by and he's about to go back to looking for the generator when it happens again - a whisper, so close he could have sworn someone was standing right behind him.

"Who's there?" he cries, spinning round, the candlestick raised as if to protect himself from whatever it was - except there's nothing.

"Okay," he tells himself, and he's definitely freaked out now. "Okay, okay, okay. It's nothing. Probably a draft, you've encountered drafts before, nothing to worry about."

A creak, as if to prove him wrong and he tells himself it's the house settling.

"That's a thing houses do, right?"

The spiders don't answer and Doug sighs.

"Yeah, okay, I hear you. Time to go find the generator."

He makes his way through the cellar. There's even more dust, the further in you get, and Doug suddenly remembers that Alex used to store stuff down here. This back bit must be further than he'd gone, though, because the dust doesn't look like it's been disturbed in years. There's clearly not been any kind of breeze down here.

"Really testing my draft theory, huh?" he jokes, laughing nervously, then immediately regrets it.

"I mean, not that it couldn't still be a draft. It could just be getting in elsewhere and echoing. That's what I'm hearing, that's all."

He swings the candlestick round again, but still there's no generator, just a pile of crates, half covered by a tarpaulin.

"Mysterious boxes, check," Doug hums. "Ooh, ancient filing cabinet, also check," he adds, frowning as he spots it. Walking over he rattles the handle, but it's locked, the key nowhere to be seen. Long since lost, he assumes.

Just as he's about to try and force it, there's the noise again, and he spins round, hoping to catch whatever it is - but again, there's nothing to be seen.

He shuts his eyes for a second, trying to focus on the sound while it lasts. It's weird, it's not just air moving, he realizes. There's an up and a down to it, almost like intonation, and the pitch keeps changing. It's almost like someone speaking, he thinks, and as soon as he thinks it, he can so nearly make out words. Just a second more, just a bit closer-

Then it's stopped as quickly as it started, the cellar silent again. Doug waits a few more seconds, but it's gone, and for a second he wonders if he might have imagined its voice-like quality.

"It's not that far-out," he says. "Humans look for human patterns. Clouds look like figures, rocks look like faces, toast looks like Jesus. It's not surprising that I'd hear a human voice in some weird house noise."

There's a beat and he just knows the spiders aren't convinced.

"It's not, " he insists, more strenuously this time, and he's about to add a counterargument when the noise comes back.

Except it's different this time. Closer, Doug thinks, his breath catching. More solid, perhaps, and the vocal elements are clearer - hell, if he listens a little harder he can make it out-

"Doug? Doug! Is everything okay down there?"

He lets out a shaking breath he didn't realize he was holding. It's Renée, her voice echoing through the dumb-waiter. Of course it is. Nothing spooky, nothing freaky.

"Yup," he shouts back towards the dumb-waiter, trying to sound blasé. "Everything's a-okay, just looking around for that generator." He shrugs, even though he knows she can't see it. "Sorry about ignoring you before, your voice just sounded really weird at first."

A moment's silence, and Doug can almost see Renée frown.

"I've been outside turning the water off, Doug. I wasn't talking to you before."

She sounds genuinely confused, and something about it just adds to the chill that runs down Doug's spine. If it wasn't Renée speaking to him...

"Doug? Everything okay?"

He swallows uneasily.

"Yeah, pretty good, except for how I think we might have a ghost."

An audible double take from up above.

"Come again?"

"I think we've got a ghost. Just trying to work out if it's more of a Casper-Ghostbusters situation or more of  Paranormal Actitvity-Amityville Horror situation. Or more of a Patrick Swayze Ghost situation, I guess, but that feels like a long shot, you know?"

A noise, as if to object.

"Doug, now's not the time-"

But he cuts her off.

"You think I want to star in the Haunting of Hilbert House any more than you do? Because spoilers, that story does not end well!"

A sigh.

"Just get the generator up and running. You know how to do that, right?"

He rolls his eyes. He's never had to do it for real, sure, but he did do some research before moving out to a decrepit old house miles from civilization. Just because he usually sweet talks Hera into sorting this sort of thing doesn't mean he's totally incompetent.

Not that he can be bothered telling Renée that right now, so instead he just turns round, checking the next bit of the cellar, where, sure enough -

"Found it," he shouts, carefully setting the candle down on a nearby piece of furniture, and from there, it's pretty simple. Check the fuel - because thankfully there does seem to be some fuel in the ancient device's tank - open the valve, turn the choke on, turn the ignition on, hunt around for the pull cord.

It takes a while, and the whole time, Doug's listening out for their ghost, wondering if it'll come back one more time, but finally, he finds the cord - it's rusty and grease-stained, and whatever color was once on it, it's clearly rubbed off.

"Anything to add before I fire this up?" he throws out, more to be polite than because he really wants the ghost's input. There's no response, thankfully.

"Okay, here goes."

He pulls the cord and the generator coughs, coughs again and stills.

Damnit.

He tries again, but no luck, and then he tries again.

Same result.

"Come on, come on, come on," he urges it, trying for a fourth time.

There's nothing, for a second, and then, just as the generator finally sputters to life, he hears it, distorted and echoey, but somehow more audible with the generator starting up in the background.

- you're not the first -

And then the generator is working in earnest, and Renée shouting down something about the lights, and Doug's phone is buzzing with several texts and about five missed calls from Hera, who's apparently back ahead of schedule, and bumped into Alex at the store and immediately got into an argument with him about the experimental battery he left charging in his room.

"- the damage that thing could do, you're lucky it didn't set the house on fire, and the worst thing is, he wasn't even picking up good wine, so I hope you like industrially-produced paint-stripper with your anniversary dinner -"

Doug tunes it out, distantly happy that dinner can go ahead at all, but all the while his mind is elsewhere.

You're not the first?

It could mean anything, he thinks. It could mean nothing. It could mean he has an overactive imagination and a justified fear of dark, dusty cellars.

He tells himself it's that, it's nothing weird, and then Hera's asking if she should pick up popcorn, maybe they could watch a film after dinner? Or does the electricity still need fixing?

"No, no, it seems fine," he reassures her. "Popcorn sounds great! You got a specific film in mind?"

And with that Hera's throwing out a few suggestions, quirky, arthouse movies, Doug countering with the latest big superhero flick. Renée will suggest a drama, he knows, something weighty and worthy - unless the wine's really bad, and then it'll be a musical. And Alex is already chipping in on the other end of the line with documentaries he saw recently, and really, who wouldn't want to round off their week with a spot of molecular electrochemistry?

The debate takes up all of Doug's brain space, and soon the cellar incident's in the past, chalked up to paranoia and half-forgotten, a mystery for another day.

Somewhere, deep below the house, where nobody's listening except the spiders, a sigh can be heard, old, exasperated, and oh-so-tired.

He's not the first, she thinks. And at this rate, he won't be the last.

Chapter Text

Our tale begins with two old friends,
One a paladin lawful and good.
She led the party, she slew foul beasts,
She did everything just as she should.

The elven cleric, au contraire,
Was chaotic, brazen and bold.
A maverick, she kept us alive,
But rarely did as she was told.

This all came to a head one summer's day,
When finally, the leader, she did say-

"I swear to the seven gods, if you finish that line, I'll smash your lute up myself!"

Hmm. Dramatic, but Eiffel wasn't sure it scanned. Still, if Renée insisted, he thought, striking an exploratory chord.

I swear to all the seven gods,
If you sing one more note-

"Oh, for crying-" Renée shook her head, cutting herself off. "I'm serious! Bad enough you feed half the continent tall tales about our every dungeon-dive, now you're going to make a whole ballad out of one tiny disagreement I'm having with Hera?"

Eiffel rolled his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure it stops being a disagreement when it lasts longer than three hours, Commander." A shrug. "Anyway, people are always asking for more songs about what we do between quests! I'm just giving them what they want!"

A snort from behind him, and Eiffel spun round, startled.

"Hera! Aren't you supposed to be-" he cut himself off before he could finish that thought, rephrasing a bit more diplomatically. "You're done with the wards already?"

Hera rolled her eyes.

"Nice try, Eiffel. But why not just cut to the chase and accuse me of forgetting them?" A huff. "At least the Commander tells me straight-up when she thinks I'm incompetent."

Well, that was just unfair, especially given how often their cleric did forget to ward their camp overnight. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could say anything, Renée was shaking her head.

"And there you go again, making assumptions! Hera knows best! Hera knows what everyone's thinking and saying! Hera's in the best possible position to judge us all, thanks to her improved clerical wisdom and heightened elven perception!"

The cleric's nostrils flared.

"Oh, I'm sorry, we're bringing build into this, now? Puh-lease, Commander, if you'd just remove the stick from your ass for one minute - or wait, sorry, no, I forgot. You can't, it's a class feature."

The insult hit, and before Eiffel could get another word in, they were off again, the Commander's irritation with the bard apparently forgotten.

He sighed as the row turned into a shouting match, and tried to tune it out. He was getting better at it, he thought - hardly surprising, given how long they'd been going at it for. Still, at least now he had something to distract himself with.

He reached for his pack, fumbling with the straps, and sure enough, there it was, exactly where he'd tucked it away that morning, a slim but satisfyingly weighty package of letters. Smiling, he undid the seal, glancing around before pulling out the first letter, a short message in a vaguely familiar hand.

Dear Eiffel,

I hope this letter finds you in good health, and your instrument well-tuned.

Hmm, promising start, if a little formal. His eyes skimmed over the next few lines, jumping over the pleasantries to get straight to the point.

I am writing, as you may have guessed, to inform you of an upcoming event that I hope you might be interested in -

An invitation! Almost unconsciously, Eiffel found himself smiling in anticipation.

- here at the Laughing Kite in Greymead, where we so enjoyed your presence last autumn.

He sighed, his momentary excitement spoiled. It wasn't that the Laughing Kite was a bad tavern. The owner was as honest as the day was long, and the clientele were an affable bunch. But Greymead, for all its many virtues, was a small place, its people used to bartering. Eiffel would be lucky to come away with coppers, if he took them up on the offer, and they knew it, hence the grovelling at the start.

He scanned the rest of the letter, but it continued in much the same vein it had started in, its contents hardly a surprise: the village had a wedding coming up, the tavern was expected to be full, they'd appreciate the services of a bard. Bed and board would, naturally, be provided for the entire party.

Eiffel pulled a face, knowing full well what that was code for. Bed and board meant sleeping in the hayloft and playing for tips, and the worst thing was, he knew he'd probably do it anyway, because the party, despite his best efforts, was in dire need of coin.

He got to the end of the page and flipped the letter over to read the last couple of lines, scribbled hastily on the back.

If interested, please respond by Midsummer at the latest. We look forward to hearing tour latest compositions.

Yours,
Milen

Ah.

Crap.

Midsummer.

As in, the Midsummer that they pointedly didn't celebrate three days ago after Renée had dragged them all on yet another pointless side quest.

Well, maybe next time, Eiffel thought, crumpling the letter up and reaching for the next one, a short but carefully folded note.

To Eiffel of the Nine Strings,

I wouldn't normally do this, but when Caelor said he sometimes took messages for you, I couldn't resist.

Okay. So far, so good, he thought, with a smile.

You don't know me, but I've listened to all of your songs. I request them whenever a bard passes through, and I know all the lyrics by heart - honestly, I feel like I know your party, so closely have I followed their adventures.

Eiffel grinned, his suspicions confirmed. Fanmail! He ran his eyes greedily over the rest of it, hungry for praise.

Either way, when I heard you were on your way towards Redthorn, I knew it must be fate - I'm from that very town! As such, if you need somebody to string your lute, call at the Griffin and ask for Rosie - I'm sure we could make some sweet music together, if you get my drift...

R

The letter ended suggestively, and Eiffel blinked at the turn it had taken.

Well, then.

He turned the letter over and a second scrap of parchment fell out. Picking it up, he found that somebody had drawn on it, a picture of him, he thought, only he was -

Well, then.

He glanced over his shoulder, then tucked the letter and the drawing away into his doublet, feeling more than a little dirty. Wouldn't do to let Commander see that, he thought, visions of the paladin trying to smite a piece of paper popping into his head.

More cautiously, he flicked through the rest of the mail, giving each letter a cursory once-over just to check there were no other surprises lurking there.

There wasn't. Indeed, the other letters were pretty boring, as far as he could tell. There was an angry letter from a merchant in Riverrun, demanding money they didn't have for shoddily-made armor they'd already dented, a note about a ghast terrorizing villages out east, and what looked like a court summons, which Eiffel quickly shredded.

All that left was one letter, a heavy vellum affair addressed to Hilbert the Unwise, full wizard name and all. That could only mean communication from colleagues at the Conclave, and Eiffel made a mental note to pass it on immediately  - the only other time he'd hung onto a wizard's mail, it had exploded in his saddlebag, and he didn't want a repeat of that, thank you very much.

No, might as well go find Hilbert right away. He was supposed to be taking a look at the artifacts they'd recovered a few dungeons ago, right? Eiffel turned -

Only to spot the wizard in question coming straight towards him, an oddly determined set to his mouth. He was barely blinking, Eiffel noticed, and in his hand -

"...Is that the Sword of Eshkoreth?"

No response, but as Hilbert drew closer, Eiffel was pretty sure it was the Sword of Eshkoreth - he could see the glint of emeralds between the wizard's fingers, and he just knew if the light were brighter, he'd be able to make out the vines delicately etched into the blade.

Eiffel frowned.

"Uh, didn't we decide that thing was cursed? Because I distinctly remember I wasn't allowed to touch it, so if you're saying it was fine all along and I could've been using it, I swear to  -"

"Eiffel," Hilbert cut him off, his voice like gravel.

"I, uh... yes?"

A pause, heavy and awkward.

"Is everything all right?" Eiffel tried, after a few more seconds had passed and it became clear the wizard wasn't going to expand on this.

No response, and then -

"Eiffel."

The wizard really didn't sound happy. Eiffel's frown deepened, wondering what could have upset the usually stoic man this much.

Then it hit him, as the distant sound of Renée and Hera's screaming match floated over to them.

"Is this about Hera and the Commander? Is it bumming you out? Because between you and me, it's kinda bumming me out too. Gods, I don't even know what started it, but you know what they're like."

Silence for a second, and then, with a bone-deep, plaintive weariness that would seem to confirm Eiffel's theory -

"Eiffel."

The man in question sighed sympathetically.

"Yeah, me too, man. Me too."

A moment of companionable silence - it was probably the most human interaction Eiffel had ever had with Hilbert - before he had a thought.

"I uh, I wanted to ask, how're things going with the artifacts, anyway? I guess the sword's okay, at least. Unless it's not and you're taking it to melt it down or something?"

A puzzled look from the wizard, like Eiffel had just said something very stupid.

"I would never melt down the Sword of Eshkoreth. The Sword of Eshkoreth is a treasure beyond compare. It adds, and does not take away, but bountifully it multiplies its gifts."

Eiffel scrunched up his nose, thinking.

"It gives you a bonus to your attacks?"

An irritable scowl.

"No. The Sword of Eshkoreth is no mere weapon. It is rot. It is growth. It is the cycle of life itself, manifold and relentless."

A pause as Eiffel tried to figure that one out.

"So... it restores your HP? Or it does necrotic damage? Both?"

A growl from the wizard, deep and guttural.

"You do not understand. We hoped you would understand."

A sinking feeling was rapidly settling into Eiffel's stomach.

"Who... uh, who's we, Hilbert?"

No response. Right. Cool. Very cool.

"Uh, okay, that's ... fun. I, uh... how about you just sit tight here for a moment and I go get the Comman-"

A shake of Hilbert's head.

"You do not understand but you can still help us."

Eiffel took a step backwards.

"Yeah, uh, you see, the thing is, I'm not really sure that's such a-"

"You will help us."

Hilbert's eyes were flashing with anger as he spoke, his voice a hoarse rasp, and somewhere in the corner of his field of vision Eiffel could see Hilbert's hand curling into the right shape for a fireball.

The bard swallowed.

"Okay, uh, noted. Yes. Sure. Happy to help. I ... um, what can I do for you, Hilbert?"

A pause, before Hilbert's hand uncurled, his anger apparently abated.

"We require power. Magical power."

Eiffel frowned, confused.

"Pretty sure as our wizard, that's your area of expertise."

A dissatisfied grunt.

"More power needed. We require the Orb of Tel-Kazar."

Ah. The Orb of Tel-Kazar, the most powerful artifact they owned. It could power cities, it could smite armies, it could kill a king from half a continent away - if you could figure out how to activate it, which none of the party had yet managed, hence why it was currently gathering dust in the bottom of one of Eiffel's packs.

Still, it probably wasn't a good idea to let Hilbert's new friend get its hands on the thing - if indeed whatever it was had hands - and so Eiffel went for a theatrical "you got me" grimace.

"I, uh, I'm afraid you're too late," he winced, trying to look apologetic. "I know we agreed to get it appraised and split the money, but I, uh, I kinda needed rosin and a new jerkin back in Malgorad, so I might possibly have pawned it?"

Hilbert's eyes narrowed and Eiffel shrugged.

"I figured I'd be able to go back for it before it got sold, but then the Commander took us all the way to Bergrath, so it's... uh, it'll probably have been sold by the time we get there, sorry."

A pause as Hilbert digested this information, and then -

"Good job I prepared Teleport this morning. Retrieving the Orb should be simple matter. Thank you, Eiffel."

And without further ado, the wizard turned and walked out of the world, a faint pop signalling his departure.

For a moment, Eiffel could only sit there, stunned by the unexpected turn of events. Then he came back to his senses, just in time to spot Commander Renée barreling towards him.

"Commander! Just the person I-"

"Not now, Eiffel! Can't you see, there more pressing matters at hand, namely that our cleric is an obstreperous, flighty liability who won't -"

"Commander, I really don't think-"

"Oh, sure, take her side why don't you? I bet you think I'm being "unreasonable" too, right?"

Eiffel shook his head placatingly.

"I'm sure you're not, Commander, but-"

"Damn right, I'm not! A party leader has every right to know in advance what spells her primary healer is preparing, especially when said healer has a history of forgetting to prepare heal, you know, the spell that is literally the whole reason we hired her!"

Eiffel winced, opening his mouth to interrupt, but Renée was on a roll.

"And don't even get me started on the warding, it's a miracle she hasn't gotten us all killed in our sleep! But when I bring that up, it's just "Oh, but my superior elven senses would wake me from my superior elven trance long before my superior elven magic would have had any effect anyway." Hah, just like they did with the hobgoblins who nearly slaughtered us last week - oh, wait, no, sorry, you were asleep for that one, my bad."

Eiffel frowned. It hadn't been Hera's finest hour, admittedly, but placing the blame solely on the cleric's shoulders seemed a little unfair, especially when-

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Renée snapped, turning on him like she could read his mind, "Not you, too!"

Her eyes flashed and Eiffel took an instinctive step back, alarmed, before raising his hands in what be hoped was a placating gesture.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, look, I'm not arguing with you, Commander. Hera can be a little unreliable, and her approach to spell prep has landed us in trouble before. And I get that her whole haughty elven "I do things my way" shtick can get real wearing real quick, but really-"

"I'm sorry, my what shtick?"

Eiffel spun round, his eyes wide.

"Hera! What a - I, uh - I didn't see you there."

A furious glare, as icy cold as Renée's had been fiery hot.

"Evidently."

The bard winced.

"I, uh - wait, how much of that did you hear?"

A roll of the cleric's eyes.

"Enough."

Crap. Okay. Time for some damage control, then.

"Then surely you could tell that I don't agree with the Commander. Not really."

"Wait, you don't?" the Commander's eyebrows reached new heights and Eiffel spun back round again.

"I, uh - I mean, sure, no, I kind of do, except... uh, except when I don't?"

Silence, and now both of them looked equally unimpressed.

"What's that supposed to mean, Eiffel?" Hera asked, at last, and Eiffel swallowed.

"It... uh, it means that I mostly - pretty much always, really - trust you to do your job-"

"So you agree that the Commander's overreacting?"

Eiffel winced again.

"I mean, overreacting's a strong word, but I can absolutely see where you're coming from - nobody likes being micromanaged at the best of times, and we both know how the Commander gets-"

"How the Commander gets?!"

He spun round again.

"By which I just mean that you're obviously concerned for our wellbeing, as leader of the party, and -"

Hera snorted.

"Sure, that's exactly how you put it yesterday, Eiffel - oh, wait, no, I think the phrasing was "overzealous mother hen meets self-righteous drill sergeant." Did I get that right?"

"No, but I -"

"Oh, so this is a regular topic of conversation for you two, is it?"

Renée looked even angrier than before, if that was possible.

"No?" Eiffel tried, but Hera's eye-roll gave him away. "Well, not much," he amended. "Barely ever."

A huff from Renée.

"You know, if I talked like this about my commander back when I was earning my commission, I'd have been brought up on insubordination charges, I hope you know that."

Eiffel slumped, resigned to the familiar lecture, but Hera seemed to have reached some sort of breaking point, as she gave a slightly manic huff of laughter.

"Oh, go screw yourself, Renée. I know this is
hard for you to get your paladin head around, but there are actually folks on this continent, myself and Eiffel included, who did not, in fact, sign up for your over-militarized holy war bullshit. And the sooner you can get that into your fragile human skull, the better."

A stunned silence for a moment as they all digested that.

Then the silence was shattered as the two of them started arguing again in earnest, Eiffel all but forgotten - and right on time, too, because if he wasn't mistaken, he was receiving a sending.

Staggering a few steps away from the others, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the voice that was suddenly echoing round inside his skull - a familiar mountain accent, raspy and clearly irate.

"We know you did not pawn the Orb. You stand in the way of the Sword of Eshkoreth. You are an enemy of life itself."

Perfect, just what the situation needed. Eiffel sighed and began his response.

"The Orb wasn't in Bergrath? Weird, maybe I remembered wrong and it was one of the other nearby towns? Better check them all, just in-"

Case.

Damnit. How come he could never get the word limit right on those?

Either way, Hilbert must have understood, because a response came through almost immediately.

"We see through your lies. The Sword of Eshkoreth will have its due. Your corpse shall be returned to the soil when we return."

When we return. Interesting. Presumably that meant Hilbert didn't have another teleport spell prepared, which meant Eiffel had a bit more time - at least one long rest's worth  - to convince Renée and Hera to set aside their differences and unite against whatever was controlling their wizard.

That was assuming Hilbert had no other way to travel, of course. Still, even if he did, there'd be time to reply to his sending, right?

"You, me and the sword are gonna have to agree to disagree there, bud. The whole dying thing? Not really my style."

Well within the word limit, he though, with a sense of satisfaction. Now he just needed to get the warring spellcasters back on side and all would be well.

Taking a breath, Eiffel turned.

"- clearly a trap, but no, protocol says we check it out, so of course our fearless leader just has to go barreling in to save the day, gotta think of the greater good."

"Yeah, well maybe I wouldn't have had to make that call in the first place if our cleric hadn't repeatedly failed at basic perception checks - perception checks she ought to have had advantage in, might I add!"

Eiffel winced.

"Guys?"

They ignored him. Great.

"Guys!"

Nothing, and Eiffel wondered if he could still do that cantrip that amplified your voice - he'd never actually used it, but if he remembered -

"GUYS!!"

Well, on the plus side, it certainly got their attention - theirs and that of just about anybody in maybe a five mile radius.

"Note to self," Eiffel murmured, as Renée shot him a murderous look and Hera rubbed one of her pointy ears in what looked like genuine pain, "Amplify voice really lives up to its name. Sorry about that."

He made an apologetic face, but neither of them seemed particularly appeased.

"What could possibly be so vitally important that you had to deafen half the party to tell us?" Renée asked, after a few awkward moments, and Eiffel remembered why he was getting their attention in the first place.

"Oh, right. Yes, well, I thought I should just point out that while you two were busy with your little tiff, Hilbert the Unwise, very much living up to the name, by the way, has gone and gotten himself possessed by some sort of...  plant demon, I guess? Which I figured you might want to know about, given-"

But Hera was cutting him off.

"I'm sorry, our little tiff?"

Eiffel rolled his eyes.

"Yes, because that's the relevant part of what I just said. Look, Commander-"

He turned to Renée for support, but the Commander looked equally unimpressed.

"No, I'd like to hear that again, too. Our little tiff?"

She was giving him a look, and Hera was too, and all of a sudden, Eiffel was struck by the unfairness of it all.

"Yes, your little tiff," he replied, caught off guard by the anger in his own voice, "Because that's what this is! A tiff! And while you've been having your tiff, our friend Hilbert has fallen under the thrall of a plant monster and is as we speak working to turn us into compost! So you'll forgive me if I don't particularly feel like playing referee in the most pointless grudge match of the century between my commanding officer and the woman who routinely brings me back from a death save! That is not a conflict I want to take a side in - and quite frankly, it's a conflict I shouldn't need to take a side in!"

A pause, and for a second he thought it had worked, that they were going to put their differences aside and go stop Hilbert - an impression he was disabused of as soon as Renée opened her mouth.

"You don't want to take sides? That's rich, coming from someone who's so clearly on her side!"

Hera snorted.

"My side? Yeah, right. Or did you forget the part where he accused me of being untrustworthy? I believe a "haughty elven shtick" was mentioned-"

A huff from Renée.

"Right, because of course that's what you'd fixate on! Can't tolerate an insult to your illustrious heritage! But hey, have you stopped to consider that that might not even be the issue? That maybe - just maybe - Eiffel's issue isn't that you're an elf, it's just that you're inept!"

Hera threw her hands up, clearly exasperated.

"And there you go again, putting words in Eiffel's mouth, because gods forbid you actually listen to either of us!" She shook her head. "It's a sign of insecurity, you know? You're afraid of any opinion you can't immediately wrap your short-lived paladin head around, and I, for one, am sick of it. And I'd be willing to bet Eiffel is too, except I, unlike you, don't presume to speak for him!"

An angry sort of silence, and then Renée was speaking, low and dangerously calm.

"Well, if Eiffel's opinion is so important to you, why don't we hear it?"

Hera frowned.

"What do you mean?"

A look from the Commander that did not at all reassure Eiffel.

"The Amulet of Truth," she said finally, her voice even. "You still have it, right?"

A look of understanding between the two of them, and then Hera was reaching for one of her many pockets, pulling it out - a small, surprisingly nondescript pendant, inscribed with all manner of ancient runes.

"Now, wait a minute-" Eiffel began to object, but a glare from Renée silenced him as Hera handed him the amulet.  He rolled his eyes.

"I am not putting this thing on, I hope you know that," he shook his head. "Because last time I was under any type of truth compulsion, I ended up in jail and -"

He cut himself off with a scowl, his mental walls snapping into place just a second too late.

"Right. It's a touch thing, not a wear-the-amulet thing," he huffed. "A little warning might have been nice there, just for future reference."

Hera looked genuinely apologetic, but Renée wasn't going to be distracted.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Eiffel of the Nine Strings," he replied, without hesitation.

"Profession?"

"Bard and professional adventurer."

"Worst song you've ever written and why?"

"The Ballad of Pryce and Carter. Thought setting the damn thing to music might help me remember it, ended up with a epic-length dirge, and why is that even relevant?"

A shrug.

"Had to check it worked."

And Eiffel should have thrown the amulet away then while he had the chance, except-

"Are you on my side or the Commander's?"

Trust Hera to sneak that in there. Thankfully, if there was anything bards could do well, it was words.

"Yes."

A groan from the cleric and the Commander. Nice going, Eiffel.

"Whose side are you on in this particular argument?"

Nice try.

"My own."

"You know what I mean - out of me and the Commander, whose side are you on?"

Well, this one was too easy.

"Yours. And the Commander's. We fight for the same side, remember?"

Renée was pinching her nose like she had a headache, Hera looked ready to throttle him, and Eiffel had never felt so smug.

"Of me and Hera," Renée rephrased, "Whose side, in this particular argument, are you on?"

Crap.

"Both of you," Eiffel said before he could find a smart way to dodge it, and as he said it, he suddenly wondered why he was trying to dodge it at all. Not often you got official permission - no orders - to speak freely, and hey, reprimanding him for anything he said under the magical influence would be a dick move, wouldn't it? He could essentially say whatever he liked right now, with little to no consequences...

He smirked as he held the amulet up, as visibly as possible.

"Okay, no, actually, fine, since you want the truth, here goes. Hera, I think you're unreliable and yes, kinda haughty, and I can totally see why the Commander's busting your ass about it. And yes, Commander, I think your style of leadership, while suited to other paladins, doesn't work in a mixed party. You're overbearing, controlling and more than a little patronizing, and Hera's right, it bugs me. But," he continued, again waving the amulet around to emphasise his literal inability to lie, "Beyond that, I think that both of you, faults aside, are some of the strongest, smartest, most principled people I know. You're infuriatingly stubborn, terrifyingly determined and alarmingly effective - when you work as a team, against evil. Which, may I remind you, is what we do here. We don't fight chaos, Commander. Nor do we fight law, Hera. We fight evil, and right now, the most immediate evil is cackling and rubbing his hands together and plotting our imminent, botanical demise - so what're you gonna do? Are you gonna keep arguing over nothing? Or are you gonna go stop him? The choice seems pretty clear to me."

Silence, and surely this time-

"Overbearing?" Renée spluttered.

"Unreliable?" Hera repeated.

Eiffel rolled his eyes.

"You know, I really-"

And then came a flash, blindingly bright, silencing him. Lightning, the part of Eiffel's mind that wasn't flinching away in fear supplied.

"Better," came Hilbert's voice, strangled and strangely distorted. "Your humanoid whining offends the Sword of Eshkoreth. Tongues clearly an evolutionary mistake, like feet. But mistakes can be corrected."

Lightning flashed again as Hilbert kept talking, and in the light of it, Eiffel could see Renée staring at him, a look of tentatively impressed surprise on her face, like - oh.

"You thought I was making it up?" he spluttered, his eyebrows rising in bewilderment. "Why would I make something like that up?!"

And to her credit, Renée did look like she was about to apologize, until -

"Wouldn't be the first time, Eiffel," Hera shrugged, cutting her off. "What do you need, Commander?"

A thoughtful look.

"You think hold person would work on a vine monster?"

A pause.

"Only one way to find out, I guess. You still got your crossbow?"

A nod.

"Of course. You hold him, I shoot?"

"Sounds good."

The Commander turned.

"Eiffel?"

He sighed, already reaching for his lute.

"Let me guess, bardic inspiration?"

A tight smile - we will be having words later, that smile promised.

Still, for now, they had more urgent matters to attend to.

"Bardic inspiration," the Commander confirmed, nodding.

Eiffel nodded back, and Hera's hands were glowing, and the Commander had a bolt nocked and ready, and just like that they were off, working together as smoothly as they ever had.

Bardic inspiration, then, he thought, striking a chord. But what could he play?

And then it came to him, and he couldn't help it as he picked up the familiar tune.

But in the end our two old friends,
Will learn to get along.
'Cause fighting's bad, but a curse is worse,
Tis the message of this song.

So, if some agreement cannot be made,
All you need is one accursed blade!

Somewhere on the other side of the fight, the Commander was glaring at him. Hera too, by the look of things.

Good, Eiffel thought, with a smirk.

You see, old Hilbert, unaware,
Had made a fatal mistake.
He'd touched the Sword of Eshkoreth,
And now the damn thing was awake!

The battle continued, and the song went on, and somewhere, deep down inside, Eiffel suspected it would work out. Renée and Hera would solve their issues, Hilbert would be defeated, all would be well, in due course.

Now, what rhymed with "insufferable"?

Chapter Text

Dear reader,

It is a strange position you find yourself in - you have no doubt opened the Times, or the Telegraph or the Illustrated, only to find, instead of the racing results you were searching for, a most curious editorial, written not by a politician, lambasting the policies of the opposition, nor by a member of the clergy, lamenting the moral failings of society, nor even by a businessman, complaining about the declining state of the economy.

No, instead you have stumbled across a column written by myself, Douglas F. Eiffel, a man known in respectable circles solely for his somewhat unusual occupation - an occupation, however, in which the reading public has reportedly shown a great interest, as a result of which I have been asked to pen, however briefly, a response to a select few of the questions that have been wired to us, here on the Amphitrite.

Thus, in no particular order:

Do you miss your family?

A preposterous question, which I shall not dignify with a published response.

Are scaphanders cold?

Exceedingly. Imagine, if you will, an brass coffin, submerged for several hours in icy water. Now place yourself inside that coffin. Remember, if you will, that the space around you is constantly being refilled with oxygen gas via a hose, as a result of which there is a steady flow of chilled air around both of your ears.

If you have successfully imagined this, I am sure you understand why I prefer to remain inside the Amphitrite proper. Hypothermia is neither enjoyable nor conducive to effective deep-sea survey work.

What surface food do you miss most?

An excellent question, to which there is no single answer, so limited is our stock of food at present. I miss steamed puddings, and roast beef and trifle, of course. But these things have a tendency to pale when one is also without such staple ingredients as pepper, sugar, tea, eggs and bread, to name just a few of the every-day commodities we have run out of.

As such, I would say the food I miss most is simply any food not composed, primarily, of biscuit, salted pork, oatmeal or peas. Or lemons, which we unfortunately must suck in order to ward off scurvy.

What would happen if you were injured onboard the Amphitrite?

Another excellent question. One would think that our surgeon, Doctor Hilbert, would be my first port of call, in such a case. However, given the good doctor's wide range of terrifying medical tools, his utter lack of a bedside manner and his disconcerting excitement at the sight of blood, I believe that such a course of action would in fact be unwise.

No, if living a thousand fathoms below the surface has taught me anything, it is that most injuries can, in fact, be treated with a combination of iodine, patience and tight bandaging - some medical advice for you right there, reader.

What if the Amphitrite sprang a leak?

We should evacuate into the Amphitrite's bathyscaphe which, in an emergency, is more than capable of bearing us back up to the surface.

What if the bathyscaphe then sprang a leak?

We should all quite rapidly drown, I imagine.

How does one "take care of business" onboard the Amphitrite?

One hires an accountant on the surface and sends him instructions via telegram, if Commander Minkowski's example is anything to go by.

Is it possible to cry under water?

It is not only possible to cry under water, I would say that under water is the ideal place to cry. If nothing else, one need not worry about a conspicupusly blotchy face, nor must one go to any great lengths to stifle the noise of it.

Furthermore, there is something about the inky darkness of the depths that inspires a certain existential terror, which will either put your tears into perspective, in the grand scheme of things, or will hasten them on their way, allowing you to get your weeping over and done with in a much more efficient fashion.

These questions being answered, dear readers, I hope that your curiosity regarding our subaqueous lifestyle has been satisfied. If not, do wire us any remaining queries - I cannot promise to answer them, but if nothing else, operating the telegraph machine provides some welcome variation in my daily routine.

Yours, then, most faithfully,

Douglas F. Eiffel

Chapter Text

Once on a winter's evening, in the attic of an old, twisted house at the furthest away end of an old, twisted street, there hid a boy, hunched behind a heavy, leather-bound traveller's chest.

He wasn't a particularly tall boy, nor was he a particularly short boy, and so he fit behind the chest, but only just. His feet stuck out the back, and his elbow stuck out the side, and his rumpled hair, of which he had quite a lot, stuck out the top, the effect of which would have been quite comical, had anyone been there to see it.

Fortunately, nobody was. Douglas knew this, because he could hear everybody else in the house; a quirk in the design of the building meant that sounds easily carried through its walls, all the way up to the attic. Douglas could tell, for example, that Hera and Alexander were holding a hushed but urgent-sounding conversation, somewhere on the south side of the house, while Renée, it seemed, was still looking for him in one of the bedrooms. She sounded rather frustrated.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, where are you, Douglas? You must know I'll find you eventually!"

Douglas, who knew nothing of the sort, rolled his eyes. It was bad enough that his older sister wanted to torment them all with the music she had so carefully saved up for all those last months, but expecting them all to sing along? It was nothing short of cruel.

A couple of minutes passed, and Renée's spluttering grew fainter as she moved back downstairs. As she went, Douglas let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Renée had forgotten about the attic, it seemed, an outcome that Douglas could probably have predicted, given how rarely they went up there nowadays.

So smug was he, at this small victory, that he almost missed it when the trapdoor leading into the attic began to swing upwards, tilting on its hinges until a head emerged, dark-haired and wide-eyed.

"Pssst," the head hissed sharply, breaking the spell. Douglas jumped up, as quietly as he could, craning his neck to see who it was.

"Alexander?" he whispered, when he'd done so, crawling out from behind the chest. "How the devil did you get up here so quietly?"  It had been quite a scramble for Douglas, after all, and while Alexander was Douglas' superior in many things, stealth had never been one of them. Surely his late father's ward must have knocked at least one book down, clambering up the bookcase?

"I'm wearing house shoes," Alexander shrugged by way of explanation, and Douglas sighed, wishing he'd thought to bring his house shoes. If nothing else, they'd have kept his feet a bit warmer.

"Very well," he conceded, somewhat peevishly, before frowning in Alexander's general direction. "But why are you bothering me at all? I thought you and Hera had a plan of your own."

A plan they hadn't wanted to let Douglas in on, if he recalled correctly.

"Well, Hera's a rotten turncoat," Alexander huffed. "We had it all worked out, and then she decides to tell Renée everything in exchange for a better part in the musical extravaganza."

Douglas was hardly surprised. Hera, while not a fanatic like Renée, was still more musical than either of the boys, and as such, Douglas had hardly expected her alliance with Alexander to last. No, as far as he could tell, the defection had been but another move in the strange, one-sided game of chess Hera seemed constantly to be playing against Renée, in a bid either to outshine or possibly to impress the older girl.

Not for the first time, Douglas was glad that he was a boy, and thus categorically exempt from such complex power struggles.

"So, you want my help, now that Hera has abandoned you, is that it?"

Alexander shrugged, or at least, Douglas thought he'd shrugged; it was hard to tell in the attic's dusty half-light.

"I could probably pull it off without you," he admitted, his tone infuriatingly even, "But your father always said that two heads were better than one, and besides, I know for a fact that you know the contents of the pantry better than I do."

Douglas frowned. It was true that he knew the pantry well - a result both of his natural curiosity and of his proclivity for midnight snacks - but he failed to see how that was relevant.

"What should that matter?" he asked, and Alexander smirked.

"Do you remember the Christmas before last? Your father was quite insistent we play charades, your mother was set against the whole idea, and do you recall what happened next?"

Douglas remembered it only too well, the way his mother had suggested they retire and take a brandy before playing. The children might enjoy a hot cocoa, she had suggested, and their father had smiled indulgently; he never had been able to refuse his wife anything, and a brandy and some cocoas were hardly unreasonable at Christmas.

Well, one brandy had quickly become two, and after two brandies, the children had found their father telling them far-fetched tales of unlikely exploits funded entirely by Goddard and Sons, and of voyages to far-off lands that Douglas only knew as names in dusty old almanacs. Charades, of course, had been entirely forgotten.

A clever ruse, although its relevance to this particular situation still evaded Douglas. Unless - but no, surely Alexander wouldn't make Renée drink their father's brandy, would he? Douglas wasn't well versed in such matters, but he was fairly certain brandy was not a drink respectable young ladies such as his sister generally enjoyed.

Alexander concurred, evidently.

"I shan't make her drink it neat. But a dash or two oughtn't be noticed, not if it's slipped into the cocoa I shall so kindly offer her."

Alexander said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and almost without thinking, Douglas felt himself nodding in agreement. A dash of brandy in Renée's cocoa, how had he not thought of it before?

"I wouldn't feel too bad," Alexander shook his head consolingly. "I only just thought of it myself. It's wonderfully simple though, don't you think? All I need is the location of the brandy."

He gave Douglas a significant look and he frowned, casting his mind back obligingly to the last time he'd been down in the pantry, fumbling about for a slice of ginger cake. Had there been a bottle? He rather thought there had been, but where on Earth could it have been? The top shelf? No, that was for linens. The second? No, preserves. The third shelf?

It came to Douglas in a flash.

"Third shelf down, near the door, on the left-hand side. It's hidden behind some boxes, you'll have to use the stepping-stool."

Alexander smiled wickedly.

"Perfect. Thank you, Douglas."

Douglas nodded in acknowledgement, Alexander nodded back, and then, as quickly and silently as he had arrived, he was gone, leaving Douglas wondering if he had made the right choice.

Brandy really wasn't a drink for young ladies, was it? He tried to recall if their mother had ever touched the stuff, to no avail. Was it truly so powerful? Images flashed through Douglas' mind, whole scenarios where Renée became a drunkard. In quick, melodramatic succession he saw a pawnbroker's shop, a gambling den, the glint of a knife in a dirty alleyway. Renée would be ruined - and all because he had told Alexander where to find the brandy!

He turned back to the trapdoor. He would have to stop Alexander, there was nothing for it. Renée's life might depend on it - and yet, as his hand hovered over the handle, Douglas paused.

"I've even made us costumes, look," Renée's voice echoed up from somewhere down below, and Douglas winced. The singing was one thing, but Renée had made costumes? Images of lace and frills replaced the alleyway, and Douglas moved back from.the trapdoor, feeling somewhat less guilty.

Only his hidey-hole felt like even worse of a fit now than it had before, and Douglas tried to remember how he had wedged himself in there in the first place. Had he climbed over the chest? Or had he moved it? That seemed more likely, so Douglas pushed against it, trying silently to shift the thing.

Only it didn't seem to want to move. He pushed a little harder, but try as he might, the chest stayed put, immobile. What could possibly be in there that was so heavy, Douglas wondered? Almost without thinking, he found himself reaching for the lid, a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach like he was doing something he shouldn't.

The lid gave way and slowly Douglas lifted it, careful not to let the hinges creak. Finally he peeked inside - only to see striped fur, snarling teeth and a pair of eyes, wide, yellow and unmistakably hungry.

With a yelp of fright, Douglas narrowly avoided dropping the lid back down on his fingers. A tiger! But the more he thought about it, the less sense that made. His breath catching, he braved a look back into the box, where sure enough lay a tiger - but now he looked, he could see how strange its posture was, how shabby its fur, how glassy its eyes. Stuffed, he thought. It was strangely melancholy, he thought, this once-majestic beast now languishing in a dusty old attic. And what were his parents doing owning stuffed tigers, anyway? It hardly seemed a respectable thing to own.

Unsettled, Douglas lowered the lid, but now his curiosity was piqued. He must have played up here with Renée a thousand times when they were younger, but he'd never thought to look in the boxes - or rather, he'd never dared. Father had never explicitly told them that the boxes were out of bounds, after all, but they didn't want to risk it, not when so many of the boxes bore the Goddard and Sons stamp.

Well, his father was dead, he reminded himself, somewhat bitterly, and his mother too, which meant that these boxes technically belonged to him, or they would once he turned eighteen, and as such he was well within his rights to look inside them - indeed, he really ought to know about the contents of his own attic.

Thus resolved, he turned to the nearest box, half-expecting another exotic animal to jump out at him. Instead, what he found, once he had opened it, was paper - stacks upon stacks of the stuff, yellowed and torn at the edges, and covered in a spidery handwriting.

Douglas picked a sheet out, but the attic was dark, and he could barely make out anything. It was a rather technical piece of writing he thought, with equations, and a diagram carefully copied out at the bottom of the page.

Phrases became legible as Douglas brought it closer to the light, telling of fundamental particles, a rapid release of energy, catastrophic decay, a project terminated. And at the bottom, the initials V. F. written in a shaky hand. With a shudder Douglas put the paper back and shut the box, not wanting to know any more about it.

No, he'd look inside another box, perhaps that would put his mind at ease. Casting his eye around, he selected one at random, a wooden crate, stacked on top of a pile of other crates, reinforced with bands of metal and full, it turned out, of neatly labelled bottles.

"Greek Fire," he read on one of the labels, and frowned. It was a term he vaguely remembered from one of his history books, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. A drink? That didn't sound right, but what else would be stored in corked bottles like that?

He looked closer. There was a liquid inside the bottles, he thought, something pale and oily-looking. It smelt something terrible, Douglas thought, even with the corks in, a mix of pear drops and turpentine.

He closed the lid, turning to the next box, which, to his great surprise, contained nothing but empty nutshells, and then to the next, which contained what looked like a royal crown, if royal crowns were regularly the size of carriage-wheels.

And so it continued as Douglas moved through the attic. One box would contain thousands upon thousands of dead beetles, another a heap of ancient coins. A third box would spring open to reveal fantastic silken masks with empty black eyes and needles for teeth, while another held no fewer than seventeen signed copies of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management.

It was most perplexing, Douglas thought. What were his parents doing, keeping all of this in the attic? And more importantly, was he its owner now? What was one supposed to do with a staggeringly realistic copy of the Magna Carta, anyway? He was beginning to regret having looked into the boxes at all, and he quickly resolved not to open any more of them - more trouble than they were worth.

As he moved back towards his hidey-hole, however, something caught his eye, something small and crumpled-looking, propped up against the first box he'd looked into. Reaching for it, he found himself holding an envelope bearing his own name, inked in a familiar hand: Douglas.

"Father?" he found himself whispering. For it was unmistakably his father's writing. Was the letter for him, then? His heart in his mouth, he flipped it over, noticing how old it was, how loosely sealed the envelope. Why, it was practically open already, and inside he could see a letter, the inky forms of letters visible even in the half-light. His fingers trembling, he opened the envelope further, reaching in for the note, when suddenly there came a great crash, the trapdoor flying upwards.

"D'glas!" came a voice, shrill and startlingly close, and he spun round, dropping the letter in his fright. "I th'ght you m'ght - hic - th't you m'ght be here!"

It was Renée, he realised, dressed quite extraordinarily and - wait, was she carrying a cutlass?

"I's part of y'r costume," she nodded enthusiastically, pulling herself properly up into the attic. No sooner had she done so, she gave an alarming lurch, though, and it was all Douglas could do not to dash forward and catch her - couldn't have his sister falling to her death, however insufferable she was being.

"Oh, th're's no need f'r that," she slurred, when she spotted this. "'M fine. Perf'ctly fine. Abs'lutely fine. In fact," she said, punctuating her words with a few brief flourishes of her cutlass, "'M better th'n fine."

"Renée's cocoa has left her a little more... excited than anticipated," came a distressed-sounding voice from below, and Douglas stifled a groan.

"'M not 'xcited. 'M j'st ready to sing."

She swung round and Douglas found himself backing away as the cutlass swung round towards his head.

"Renée, I really don't think -"

"You d'n't think what?"

The cutlass was alarmingly close to Douglas' throat now.

"Alexander," he squeaked out, "How much did you give her?"

A guilty silence echoed up from below and Douglas sighed placatingly.

"Look, Renée, while I'm looking forward to singing just as much as anyone else-"

"Fantast - hic!  Let's g't on w'th it then, Douglas!"

She took a step backwards, and with a jolt of panic, Douglas realised just how close she was to the attic's open trapdoor.

"Renée!" he cried out, but the damage was done.

She took a step, stumbled, then stepped backwards again as her foot caught on one of the golden coins from the chest.

"D'glas?" she had the presence of mind to murmur before she fell - forwards, thankully, not backwards through the trapdoor, forwards - her arm swinging out wildly and hitting a crate as Douglas dashed forwards to steady her.

It worked, and for a split second, Douglas thought they were safe. Then came a creak, slow and ominous, as the crate Renée had his began, slowly but surely, to teeter.

It was the crate with the Greek Fire, Douglas thought, just as the first bottle smashed.

What followed would forever remain a blur in Douglas' memory. There had been fire, he would later remember, and billows upon billows of acrid smoke. Renée had been shouting, and he had been shouting, and then all he had was the sound of wood giving way, the feeling of falling, and somewhere above it all, a cool, accented voice, murmuring something about giving them space? Or making space? Or being sucked into space?

Space, Eiffel remembered thinking. That's important, isn't it?

Then everything had gone black, and so it had remained for a long, long time, at least until the bandages had come off, and Douglas had been able to survey what remained of their old, twisted house.

He supposed he should be grateful that Renée and Hera were safe, and that they still had the house. The fire-men had come quickly, but Alexander informed him that it had been a close shave, all the same, the fire unusually ferocious. The damage, however, had been limited to the top floors in the end, and even that was relatively minor.

The attic, however, was gone, and all its contents with it, swallowed up in the blaze. Gone were the coins, the nutshells, the Magna Carta. Gone was Mrs Beeton, and gone was the Greek Fire - which was possibly for the best. But gone, of course, was the letter. His father's final message, gone in a puff of smoke, before Douglas had even had the chance to read it.

It felt unfair, and not in the brief but all-consuming way the world often feels unfair to a boy of twelve. No, this unfairness was a heavy, cold affair that sank into the pit of Douglas' stomach and sat there like lead, barely noticeable, except at the end of the day, when he was lying in bed at night, trying to convince himself that he had retained some impression of the letter, even just a word -

It was futile, of course. It always was. The letter was gone, indubitably and irrevocably, and with it, the key to whatever secrets the attic might have held.

And so Douglas Eiffel would drift off into an uneasy sleep, resentment in his stomach, stuffed tigers haunting his dreams, and the faintest memory of smoke lingering in his nostrils.

Chapter Text

You don't bother to make the poster too conspicuous

Volunteers needed TONIGHT, pay by the hour.

The sum printed beneath is modest, but respectable. Enough to tempt Doug and Hera, certainly, and the urgency, along with a mention of academic credits, should reel Renée in. Alex too, and a bunch of overeager freshmen, probably. You'll carefully weed out their applications. It's only your pets you're interested in, after all.

You fill the rest with plausible jargon - none of them are psych majors, so it doesn't have to be too convincing. And then, below it, there's the small print. Again, jargon. None of them study law either, and even if they did, the print is very small.

You stick it up right outside their dorm, carefully positioned to catch the afternoon light - what little light there is. Looking at the clouds gathering on the horizon, black and oppressive, you're not sure there'll be much.

A storm, the radio says, as you drive away, blowing in from the bay. Fitting, you think, with the smallest of smiles.

Evening rolls round, and as the wind picks up, the four of them set out. You follow them on the campus CCTV, briefly, and then the notification comes in, letting you know that their ID cards were used to access the Newman Lab. Right on time, you think, switching over to the internal cameras as they walk into the lobby, frowning when the see it deserted.

"Maybe we've come to the wrong place," you hear Doug suggest, his voice already slightly shaky. "You're sure this is where it said?"

A frown from Hera as she checks her phone.

"The confirmation email saya it's here. Newman Laboratory, 95 Park Avenue, eight-thirty PM. And the lights are on, so there must be somebody home."

Alex has his phone out now - one step behind, as always - but Renée, ever the pragmatist, has already spotted the sign by the door. Clever girl.

"Study participants to proceed to the fourth flour," she reads out, a note of victory in her voice.

Doug immediately sets out in the wrong direction, of course, but you can hardly blame him. The film studies major splits his time fairly evenly between the library, his bed and the campus radio station, he's quite a long way out his comfort zone here. And they do get there eventually, Alex immediately clocking the WAIT HERE, DO NOT DISTURB sign you stuck on the door of Interview Room C.

With nothing else to do, they sit. There's a bench out in the hall, but not a particularly comfortable one. It's one of the reasons why you picked Interview Room C, the other being the lighting. Just bright enough to feel safe, but not so bright that they can see all that far down the corridor. The wind outside doesn't improve things, and the long, panoramic windows don't help, either, their featureless black panes cold and unfriendly.

The four of them talk, but not about anything relevant. You tune it out and check your timer. Three minutes and seventeen seconds since they sat down. Which means, if your first hypothesis was correct -

"D'you think we should knock or something?"

Doug, predictable as ever. And then, just as predictably -

"It says not to disturb. Give them another few minutes."

Hera rolls her eyes at Renée, but says nothing in response. Alex fiddles with his coat. Doug is now talking about Star Wars.

Five minutes and thirty two seconds later, Renée is looks concerned. Doug is still talking about Star Wars, but Alex and Hera have stopped responding, and have instead begun to exchange anxious glances of their own.

Three minutes and seven seconds after that,  even Doug is silent. You didn't expect that, but you suppose there's only so long a one-sided conversation can carry on for.

"We should probably knock," he tries again, and Renée doesn't disagree this time. Taking this as permission, Doug walks over. His hand by the door, he hesitates for a moment, looks back questioningly. But Hera nods, so he knocks, three hesitant raps.

There's no answer.  You're not there. You're not even in the building. But all they know is that the light in Interview Room C is on, so knock again, and then again.

Finally, when the lack of response becomes apparent, Renée pulls out her phone.

"We should check if they've emailed us. Maybe they've had to cancel.""

The others get their phones out too, check their emails. Nothing. They move to put them away just as you hit send on your own device. Message one, sent.

You see eyebrows raising the moment it arrives, hear the ping of notifications as the message flashes up on each of their phones.

ALERT: A red moon is in the sky. The harvest is upon us. 5. The Hollow One wakes.

Doug swallows.

"Uh, you guys reading the same weird-ass message I am? With the red moon and the harvest?"

A nod from Renée.

"Must be the campus alert system. Remember? We got briefed on it, back during orientation."

Hera frowns, confused.

"But isn't that for, like, oh-my-god-stay-in-your-room-and-lock-the-doors emergencies?"

Silence for a few seconds before -

"Yes. That is precise function of alert system."

Alex, blunt as ever.

A few moments pass, and then Renée makes a decision.

"I'm phoning campus security."

You shake your head.

Renée, Renée, Renée. That's not going to work.

And sure enough -

"Goddamnit, no reception. Any of you got reception?"

They all try, but no luck.

"No Internet, either," Hera murmurs. "You think it's the storm?"

An uncertain silence.

"It's probably the storm," Hera repeats, as if to reassure herself, and Doug nods nervously.

Renée isn't listening. She's frowning at her phone like it's personally offended her.

"I don't get it, though, the message is nonsense! If you're going to give a warning, make it clear, that's rule number one of public communications."

Doug shrugs.

"Maybe it's a mistake. Like in Hawaii a few years back, everyone got this "missile incoming" alert and had to shelter, and then when they realized they weren't living a re-run of Dr. Strangelove they got another message, like "oops, our bad!" So maybe this is like that?"

Alex hums.

"Possible. Not probable, but possible."

Hera sighs.

"I guess we wait for an "oops, our bad", then?"

If that's not a set-up, you don't know what is. You cue the second message. Click. Sent.

ALERT: The butterfly sings. The wolf dreams. 4. The Hollow One is coming.

The reactions, once this one pops in, are subtle, but telling. Hera's eyes widen a fraction. Doug pales a shade. Alex glances nervously out of the window. And Renée does what she does best and begins to rationalize.

"Let's think logically, okay?"

Even through the cameras you can tell that rest of the group are sceptical, but Renée is on a roll.

"Both messages started with "ALERT". Which means they're a warning. So we probably need to stay inside, right?"

A reluctant nod from Hera and Alex. 

"The second bit's nonsense, as far as I can tell," Renée continues, "Unless any of you can work it out?"

Shrugs all round. Not a clue.

"Pretty metal lyrics, though, don't you think?"

A look from Hera and Doug shrugs.

"I'm just saying, I call them as I see them."

Renée sighs.

"Well, metalness aside, we've got nothing on them, so let's ignore them for now. The bit after that's a number, right? An identifier? A code?"

"A countdown," Alex suggests, grimly, and you see Doug and Renée physically fighting a shudder.

"Well," Hera says, finally, "Let's just pretend Alex didn't just put that horrifying idea in our heads. What about the last bit, the Hollow One? That gets repeated, too."

More silence.

"I hate to be the one to say it," Doug says, after a moment, "but it kind of sounds like bargain-basement Lovecraft?"

Blank stares all round, and Doug groans.

"It's fiction. You know, eldritch horrors man was not meant to know? Elder gods from before the dawn of time?"

Silence for a few moments. Alex, at least, seems to seriously be considering it.

"Is intriguing hypothesis, could expl-"

"No," Renée cuts him off with a firm shake of her head. "No, no, no, we are not going down that frankly insane path. They're two weird texts, there's got to be a rational explanation. And until we work it out, we'll just do the sensible thing and wait here for the all clear, and everything will be fine. Okay?"

There are a couple of nods and you look on, fascinated. It's like Renée, through sheer force of will, has gotten them all on board. Impressive.

Shame you have a third message cued up.

ALERT: Dragonflies are weeping. The void calls. 3. The Hollow One thirsts.

You hit send. The message pings in, and they all glance down. Sombody gulps audibly.

"You, uh, you still think we smile go with Operation Sit Tight and Everything Will be Fine?" Doug asks, finally.

Renée' silence speaks volumes.

Precisely 3.2 seconds later, Alex has a suggestion.

"We could try biomedical faculty, see if they know what is going on. Is not far away, and lab stays open late."

He looks to Renée. It's astonishing how quickly she has become the de facto leader of the group.

"Could be worth a shot. We're no use if we don't know what we're up against, right?"

The others nod, relieved, and together they head back down to the lobby. The storm is raging outside, and the doors are rattling in the wind. Rattling, but locked, as Hera is about to discover.

"Uh, guys, is there a release button around here? Or a card reader?"

No luck. As if you would make it that easy.

Renée disappears and Doug tugs on the doors, but they don't give. He laughs, a touch hysterically.

"Cool. Great. Okay. This is perfect. The Hollow Man thirsts, and we're trapped inside a psycho psych lab. Some real horror movie stuff right there."

Then Renée's back, at a jog.

"No luck with any of the other downstairs doors," she grimaces. 'I even checked the fire doors, but they're jammed, which is a clear Fire Code violation, by the way."

The engineer shakes her head, then Alex returns with some bad news of his own.

"Windows all locked. No way out there."

"No luck with the phone, either," Hera chips in from the front desk. "Storm must have knocked it out."

They hesitate for a moment, and then you see Renée visibly shift gear, her posture straightening.

"Okay. So we're trapped here. We can't get out, we can't contact anyone, and something is potentially going on on campus, except we don't know what. Well, we're reasonably smart people," she says, shooting Doug with a look that dares him to contradict her. "So let's think it through: what's our next step?"

A thoughtful moment, until -

"We check the rest of the building, see if anyone else is here," Hera suggests.

Nods all round, and then -

"We look for basement, inside room, somewhere to shelter," Alex adds.

More nods, before -

"We gather weapons," Doug and Renée suggest at the exact same time. They laugh nervously.

"Great minds think alike?" Doug jokes, and Renée shakes her head.

"You're missing the second part. Great minds think alike, fools rarely differ. So maybe we're just being equally silly. It's just..."

She trails off, biting her lip.

"You'd feel better," Doug finishes. Renée nods, and thus begins quite a productive half hour.

You watch them on your monitors, carefully recording the routes they take as they scurry around the building, their interactions, the specific noises that startle them. There's so much to observe, and you get lost in it for a while, your next message written, but unsent.

Finally, once Renée and Doug have collected a range of makeshift weapons, the group bunker down in one of the inner labs, far enough from the windows that the noise of the storm, while not entirely shut out, is quieter. Crucially it's also got a reinforced door, which the four of them are now barricading with chairs.

Alex takes a step back, looks at his handiwork, then jumps as Renée taps him on the shoulder. She winces, before holding out what looks like a single blade, snapped from a pair of scissors. Alex accepts it gratefully.

"Perfect for slashing intruder's carotid, should need arise," he nods, a distinctly unstable glint in his eye. You wonder, not for the first time, if he was the right pick for the group.

It's a decision you can make later, you think. For now, you have an experiment running. And speaking of -

ALERT: Memory fades. Thought surrenders. 2. The Hollow One draws near.

It takes a moment for them to see it, and the initial reaction is measured. Sure, Doug is shaking, and Hera's gripping her phone like a lifeline, and both Renée and Alex have reached for their weapons. But they don't freak out, not right away.

Instead, Hera reads it out, a grim look on her face. The others have nothing to add, in response, so they just nod, before quickly checking their own phones where yes, they have it too.

Then there's the moment when Doug frowns, and you can see it coming together. Really, you're surprised none of the others realised already. We're stuck facing this alone. Cut off by the storm. No Internet connection, no cell service. But if there's no cell service...

"Guys?"

Thr group turns to him.

"If we've not got cell service, how are we receiving these?"

Renée opens her mouth to speak, thinks twice, closes it again. Hera breathes out shakily. Alex gulps.

In the end, it's Renée who speaks, trying to convince them that there's nothing to be afraid of, there's got to be a perfectly normal explanation. Doug laughs, reminds her of weird call-ins his show gets at 3 AM, the voice in Lecture Hall 2, the tree monster that still roams the campus.

"So if there's anything I've learnt, it's that it's never something perfectly normal round here," he shakes his head.

It's a good point, but you're distracted by the tree monster. Not a hoax, then? Renée certainly doesn't seem to think so.

Either way, they're clearly sufficiently rattled. Time to give them the final alert.

You close your eyes, savouring it. The storm is in full swing outside, and as you hear the noise it's making, inspiration strikes. You quickly amend the message before sending it.

ALERT: World without end. End without world. 1. The Hollow One is howling.

The result is predictable, but you enjoy it none the less as all four of them start talking at once, all at cross-purposes, and you just know you'll have fun unlocking the audio later, analysing and digging into the individual reactions.

"It's just the storm, it's just the storm, it's just the storm," Hera is repeating under her breath. Renée is counting out loud - some kind of breathing exercise? Doug is throwing out references left, right and center, turning to films and TV for precedents, proof that this is survivable, while Alex is talking statistics, logic, the balance of probability.

You let them stew for a few moments more. Then you cave, line up the final message. Might as well indulge yourself, while they're already panicking.

ALERT: 0. The Hollow One is upon you. 0. The Hollow One is upon you.

You leave it at that, and your timing couldn't have been better. The message arrives just as a particularly strong gust of wind picks up some debris - a branch, perhaps, or something from the street. Whatever it is smacks against the window outside, convincingly enough that even you think, just for a moment, that somebody's out there trying to break in. Then whatever it is blows away, but not before snagging on the power line outside. There's a crackle, then a spark, and everything goes black.

For your test subjects, it's the final straw. The last vestiges of control slip away and they scream out in blind terror, their voices cracking and mingling beautifully.

You check your recording's still running. You have a feeling you'll be coming back to this one.

And then, 32 seconds later, just as things are getting good -

"Gah, what is th- ugh, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!"

Oh well. At least you can see your subjects again. You notice that Hera and Alex are huddled up together, that Renée's hand is firmly clasped in Doug's. 

For a brief moment they just blink at each other, unsettled, none of them talking.

"Well, at least the backup generator's working," Renée tries, finally and Doug snorts.

"Just what I wanted, to actually see the Hollow One as it comes to flay the flesh from my bones."

Hera and Renée are quick to object.

"That's presuming it even has a visible form-"

"I said, there's no such thing as the Hollow One-"

"And that it cares about our flesh at all- "

"Just somebody sending some nonsense alerts-"

"Which is statistically unlikely-"

"Probably linked to the storm-"

This continues for a while. You tune it out, too busy drafting an email. You take your time, make sure every word, every piece of punctuation is perfect. Screw up the punchline, and you screw  up the whole joke, after all.

Finally, once you're happy, you hit send. 

Renée and Hera are still talking, but Doug's attention has drifted, and you see the second it registers.

"Uh, guys, I just got an email? Thanking me for... oh. No. No. No way, José."

Hera stops mid-sentence, frowns.

"Doug? Is everything okay?"

"No, Hera, it very much is not okay!"

"... How so? "

"How so? Those bastards, they, they... ugh, how dare they?!"

Alex and Renée are looking at him too, now, but Doug can only splutter.

"I don't - I can't - gah, go check your emails! All of you!"

Hera and Renée don't move, but Alex quickly reaches for his phone, from which he reads aloud -

"Thank you for participating in our research. As part of our ongoing investigation into the effect of unfamiliar stimuli on human stress responses, the data you have provided will surely prove invaluable."

"The study is now over, and all alerts may safely be disregarded. Before leaving, please complete the survey linked here, upon completion of which you will receive an e-voucher, as promised, valid in all campus shops and cafeterias. Many thanks, and enjoy the rest of your evening."

A moment of silence, before -

"What the hell! They can just do that?!"

Yes.

"Is that even legal?"

Technically.

"Isn't there some kind of ethical code against this kind of thing?"

Cute.

"They're paying us in vouchers?!"

Oh, Doug.

They vent their frustrations for a while longer before Renée, level-headed as always, takes command. They'll have their chance to complain in the survey, she says. Maybe they'll send some complaint emails too, she suggests, and you shake your head fondly.

Complaint emails. Don't ever change, Renée.

Either way, she says, there'll be time tomorrow. Right now, they're tired. They've had a stressful night, and they're not thinking straight. They should go home, get some rest. The others nod, turn towards the doors, and you make sure to unlock them so your pets can leave.

The storm's dying down, you think as they venture out, and for their sake, you're glad. Renée's right, after all, they have had quite the night, the last thing they need is a difficult ride home. Although, as a follow-up study somewhere down the line, that might have potential...

You smile minutely, your four subjects already forgotten as your next experiment practically plans itself.

Outside, the wind keeps blowing. And beneath the wind? You strain your ears, but there's nothing, no screams, no howls, no unfamiliar stimuli. For the life of you, you can't tell if you're disappointed.

Chapter Text

Doug makes himself a coffee before his shift, checking his watch before leaning back against the counter and taking a deep, steamy breath in. 

Funny, he thinks, for all that coffee's got such a distinct scent, he still can't manifest it. Not well, at least. Means Hephaestus R&D is a coffee-free zone, at least for Doug. 

It shouldn't matter, he thinks. The caffeine kick's for this part, after all, for focussing his mind enough to think his way into the psychic lab space that is Hephaestus. 

He glances over to the clock. 8:27. Just on time. Doug sits down in his rig, then reaches across for the headset, settling it carefully onto his head and waiting for it to tighten. This bit used to bother him, he remembers, used to feel like a giant claw closing on his skull. Now it's so familiar, he hardly notices. 

He closes his eyes, picturing Hephaestus. As always, he starts with the walls. Gray, austere, lightly curved. Then the observation window, broad and slightly tinted. Finally, the ceiling. Clean, well-lit, otherwise featureless. 

With those broad strokes in place, it's the furniture's turn, all iron and rivets, and then the smaller details, the posters, the lighting, the Goddard logo on the perpetually-sealed doors, Hilbert's periodic table mug, Doug's battered office chair, the leather cracked on one side 

For Minkowski, it would be enough. She's visual like that. Doug, though? His brain's all over the place at the best of times, so he adds some sensories, just to be safe. 

He focuses on noises first, the static hum of machinery, the clip, clip, clip of Minkowski's shoes. Then it's scents, the tang of over-brewed tea and the weird ozone smell that seems to have seeped out of their collective subconscious. 

That should do it, Doug thinks, throwing in some textures for good luck, before opening his eyes. A familiar light fixture greets him, not at all like the bare bulb he has at home. He's in. 

"Took you long enough," Minkowski says, somewhere to his left, and Doug rolls his eyes. 

Aww, be nice! She cleary missed you, a voice says, up in the back of Doug's head, and he can't help but smile. He remembers how thrown he was by Hera, back at the beginning. Now her presence is weirdly reassuring. 

"I heard that," Minkowski scolds with a frown, and Doug just knows that Hera would be smirking if she had a physical presence. 

Just telling it as it is, boss, she chips in, instead. You know how bored you get without Eiffel around. 

Their boss snorts. 

"Hardly. When Eiffel's not around, I return to my happy married real-world life. It's idyllic." 

"And yet here you are, abandoning your precious Dominik yet again to spend your day with me, Doc Brown, and our not-so-imaginary friend. Wedded bliss, clearly." 

Minkowski huffs, but before she can respond- 

"Is good job Minkowski is here," a fourth voice mutters, off to a side. "New directive came. We have full schedule of experiments for whole month. All hands on deck." 

Eiffel sighs. It's not unexpected, given that they finished their last directive almost a week ago. But he'd expected a few more days to recuperate, rest their minds' collective eyes. 

Minkowski seems to share his lack of enthusiasm, except she's too professional to say so, so instead she turns to Hilbert. 

"Anything exciting?" 

"Optimal dosage for non-benzodiazopine sedatives," the scientist nods. "Is thrilling, in proper context." 

Sure, Doug thinks, as Hilbert talks quazepam and BZ1 receptors, reminded why it's their resident biochemist who handles the experiments. Pushing the limits of the possible by the power of imagination alone sounds exciting on paper, but the actual nitty gritty of it is beyond tedious. 

He wonders if he could mute Hilbert. He imagines the scientist's mouth moving, pictures the consternation on his face as no sound coming out, and sure enough - 

"Hey, cut that out! Are you even listening, Eiffel?" 

"Doesn't seem like there's much to listen to, if you ask m-" 

Minkowski narrows her eyes and Eiffel sighs, unmutes Hilbert. 

"Gah," the scientist spits, before glaring daggers at Eiffel. "Thank you, Minkowski." 

"You're welcome," she replies icily, before turning to Doug. "As Hilbert was saying, before you so unprofessionally shut him up, this one's going to need two of us, him running the trial, me recording. Which means you'll be anchoring solo. That okay?" 

She looks skeptical, and Eiffel throws his hands up in indignation. 

"I'm more than just a pretty face, you know! I took exams to do this job!" 

We all took exams, Eiffel, Hera reminds him. Still doesn't answer the question - Are you good? Because if not- 

Eiffel shakes his head, cuts Hera off. 

"I'm good. I'm always good." 

It's not a boast. Eiffel may not be a scientist, but when it comes to maintaining the integrity of their little pocket world, nobody does it better. 

Minkowski stares him down for a few seconds, then nods, satisfied, and like that, the day's work begins, Minkowski and Hilbert heading into the lab space while Doug hangs round the observation room, focussing in on everything the others can't afford to think about. 

His eyes scan the walls first, counting the posters, re-reading their enigmatic instructions. He taps his foot on the floor, feeling how solid it is, tracing the lines between the tiles, mapping how they tesselate. He hums, listens to the way the noise resonates, checks the acoustics of the room. 

It seems fine, no obvious drift. The basic reality of the lab remains consistent, and thus, an hour in, Doug lets himself relax, allows his mind to jump from the real to the more... hypothetical. 

You know, your whole job is to keep this place static, Hera chides as he turns Hilbert's pen pot a startling shade of octarine. Doug doesn't dignify that with a response, just spends a moment contemplating the impossible purple-green before twisting it into a trippy bluish-orange, then a bright, shining black. As impossible colours go, it's pretty sweet. 

Doug, Hera insists, and he sighs, reverts the pot to its usual shade of off-white . 

"You know I've been doing this for like, three years, right?" he says, "In all that time, remind me, how many times has Hepahestus drifted?" 

Seven hundred and thirty three, Hera supplies, and Doug rolls his eyes. 

"Okay, but how many times has it actually mattered?" 

A pause, a touch judgemental for Doug's liking. 

Does the time you de-manifested the floor count? 

Doug shakes his head. 

"That was one-" 

Or what about when the doors went missing? 

"Okay, but that was-" 

When you erased the text from all of Dr. Hilbert's files? 

"That was objectively hilar-" 

When you forgot how object permanence worked? 

"Not one of my finest moments, I'll admit, but-" 

Ooh, wait, no, how about the time you forgot about gravity? 

"Well that was - wait, really?" 

No, but the fact you had to ask should probably tell you something. 

Doug sighs. 

"Okay, I'll admit that I may occasionally in the past have pushed things too far. But it's fine! Hephaestus survived, right?" 

He can almost hear Hera sigh. 

That's not how - look, you know I can feel it, right? When you let things drift? It's like - like - like cracks opening up in the world. And behind them, nothing. The void. Oblivion, Doug. Waiting to destroy us. 

Doug snorts. 

"Well now you're just being melodramatic. Breaking a couple laws of physics is hardly enough to destroy Hephaestus." 

He gets up, knocks on the wall a few times to demonstrate his point. 

"See! Solid as a-" 

He feels himself falling forward, suddenly off balance as his right hand passes straight through the wall. 

Eiffel!? Eiffel!  Are you- 

She cuts herself off as she realises what just happened. 

"Oh God," Doug murmurs, and his mind flashes back to the lectures he got when he started, all about the dangers of the void. It literally lies beyond human imagining, they said. Instantly destroys anything it comes into contact with. Nobody has ever survived direct contact with the void. 

Doug! Are you - uh, do you - I mean, your arm, is it - 

He hears the panic in Hera's voice, feels it mirrored in his own stomach. 

"I don't know," he manages, still frozen against the wall. "I can't - I mean, I don't - it's not - I can't feel anything wrong?" 

Doug frowns. It's almost as if- 

He concentrates, wiggles his fingers. Then he snaps then together. The sound doesn't carry through the wall, but the important thing is - 

"My hand's there! It's fine! I can feel it!" 

Doug lets out a slightly hysterical laugh, and he can already feel Hera gearing up to object, so he cuts to the chase and pulls his hand out of the wall with a flourish. 

"See?" 

No, don't! You'll - oh. 

Because there it is. Doug's hand. Fine and intact and blessedly uninjured. 

Thank God. Okay, well, I'm calling Minkowski- 

"No, Hera, don't-" 

But it's too late. Doug sighs, looks back at the wall. It looks as real as any of the other walls, but if he puts his hand up against it- 

Doug! Why would you even do that?! 

He rolls his eyes. 

"Lighten up! If it didn't kill me the first time, it won't this time. Probably." 

Hs sweeps his hand round, trying to get a feel for how large the patch of non-wall might be. Pretty large, he thinks. Maybe enough that if he leans against it - 

"Doug! What the-" 

Minkowski's cry is suddenly muffled as Doug passes straight through the wall, into... well, that's the question, isn't it? He looks around, but there's no light, whever it is. Reaching a hand out, he feels nothing, but the floor beneath his feet feels strangely familiar. 

Frowning, Doug breathes in. Over-brewed tea, he thinks. Ozone. His mind racing, he steps backwards, passing back into Hephaestus proper. 

"-could have killed you, do you have any idea how monumentally stupid that was?" 

Minkowski's voice is almost painfully loud, and Doug finds himself wincing as the dressing-down continues. 

"Minkowski," he tries to interrupt, but she's having none of it. 

"Minkowski! Boss!" 

She blinks, taken aback by the unusual degree of deference, and in her confusion Doug sees his chance. 

"You have to listen, there's another room behind there. A Hephaestus room," 

Minkowski blinks again. 

"There's - wait, are you sure?" 

He nods and Minkowski shakes her head. 

"But that's-" 

"Impossible," Hilbert agrees, with a dark look of his own. "Hephaestus is made from collective imagination. Our limits, its limits. Beyond that, void." 

Doug shakes his head. 

"I know what I saw! Or didn't see, I guess, it was dark." 

Minkowski frowns. 

"So how did you know it was a Hephaestus room?" 

Doug shrugs 

"I don't know, I guess I just know the feel of Hephaestus. I mean, that's what, like 90% of my job description? But if you wanna go check it out yourself, go ahead, be my guest." 

Minkowski pauses, like she's considering it. 

"Do we have a flashlight?" she asks, finally, and Hilbert nods. 

"Okay," she nods, and it's decided. Minkowski and Doug will venture back into wherever this place is, and once they're sure it's safe, they'll bring Hilbert through. As long as they don't linger, there shouldn't be much risk leaving the rest of Hephaestus unattended. 

Carefully, Minkowski lines herself up, leaning into the wall, where just like a glitch in an old school video game - 

"Oh, that looks weird from this side!" 

A chuckle in Doug's mind. 

You should try it from where I'm sitting. It's like your mind is there and then it's just not. Like you died or something. 

Doug grimaces at the macabre thought. 

"Not at all unsettling. Well, wish me luck," he says, walking over to the wall. It looks alarmingly solid, he thinks, and then he's running headfirst towards the concrete, and he's going to smash into it, he's going to break his nose, he's going to - 

"Oww, Eiffel!" 

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" 

There's a moment of confusion as Doug crashes into Minkowski, sending the two of them flying. Once they're on their feet, though, Doug is finally able to get a look round. And, well - 

"Not gonna lie, I was expecting something a bit more, uh..." 

"Sinister?" Minkowski supplies. 

"I was gonna go with creep-tacular, but yeah. That." 

Minkowski nods in agreement. The space they're in is almost a carbon copy of the control room back in Hephaestus proper, minus the team's personal effects. It's undeniably weird, but it's also pretty mundane. 

"Should we get the doc through?" Eiffel asks, finally, and Minkowski nods again. 

"Seems safe. Shall I-" 

I'll send him in, Hera interrupts, her voice weirdly distorted in Doug's mind. Turns out I can get through, it's just... 

Her voice trails off, and Doug can't tell if the wall is blocking her, or if there's something more fundamental that human language won't let Hera convey about their current situation. 

Bit of column A, bit of column B? 

Minkowski frowns. Something's caught her attention over on the other side of the space. 

Doug squints, but he can't see what it is. 

"Boss? What've you got there?" 

A pause, and then - 

"Trial notes. Looks like they were in the middle of an experiment here. Led by a Dr. Elias Selberg. That ring any bells, doc?" 

Hilbert, newly arrived through the wall, shakes his head. 

"Negative. I know nobody who goes by that name." 

She sighs. 

"No, of course not." 

She looks down again, squinting down at whatever's written there. 

"Test Run Alpha C-7," she reads. "Trial terminated despite attainment of ontological stability, as specimen has proven unstable and highly volatile. Low-level mental entrenchment observed, risk of total psychic collapse, should trial continue." 

Doug swallows. That doesn't sound good, he's thinking, when - 

"What was that?" 

Minkowski turns, frowns. 

"What was what?" 

Doug looks round, then shrugs. 

"I.... huh. I could have sworn something was in here." 

Minkowski looks pointedly around them at the blank gray walls and Doug sighs. 

"Yeah, I know. The only things in Hephaestus-" 

"Are the things that we imagine," Minkowski finishes. "We okay?" 

Doug nods, reassured despite himself. 

"We're okay." 

"Good," Minkowski nods back, passing the notes to Hilbert. 

"You get anything from this?" 

The doctor shrugs, looks down at the page. 

"Is clearly trial. Looks like... hmmm, interesting. Very interesting." 

Minkowski frowns. 

"What's very interesting?" 

The doctor makes a gesture, cutting her off as he studies the rest of the notes. She huffs, and Doug - 

"Okay, I definitely saw it that time!" 

A roll of Minkowski's eyes. 

"Saw what, Eiffel?" 

"Saw..." he trails off. "Saw something. Something big. Or kinda big. Maybe big?" 

She sighs as he flails for a description. 

"Right. Well, it sounds to me like you've spooked yourself. Happens to the best of us. You imagined something, and now it's real." 

But Doug shakes his head. 

"I know how a spook feels. Trust me, this didn't come from me." 

Minkowksi shakes her head, and Doug's about to object when- 

"You see? There it was again! About yay high, fangs, claws, shining eyes?" 

He looks at her pleadingly and she shakes her head. 

"It's not.. " she pauses, conflicted. "There's nothing there, Eiffel." 

She doesn't look reassured, and Doug can see why. Spooks are common, but they're made of feelings, vibes, hunches. They're rarely visible, and never in so much detail. Not unless- 

"Nope," Minkowksi shakes her head. "Not possible. Nobody's been in here in years, nobody's thought about it, nobody's been anchoring it at all. Frankly it's a miracle the walls and floor still exist-" 

Let alone some psychic monster, Hera finishes, just as Hilbert looks up from the notes, his gray eyes thoughtful. 

"Actually, is not categorically impossible. Merely... improbable." 

Minkowsi frowns. 

"What do you mean?" 

The doctor tilts his head. 

"Looking at notes, it seems whoever used this space was attempting to create construct with higher-level sentience, able to maintain own existence without external anchoring." 

Minkowski purses her lips. 

"But that would be-" 

"Hella risky?" 

In contravention of the Esterhazy Convention? 

"A work of genius!" 

Their boss sighs. 

"Yup. That just about sums it up." 

She shakes her head. 

"A being with higher-level sentience. That would be... well, I guess it explains how this room's here. It must have just... maintained it when the last team left." 

Hilert hums. 

"That is possibility. Although not necessarily full story." 

Doug frowns. 

"Doc?" 

The doctor in question shrugs. 

"Is also possible that last team did not happen to merely... leave this thing here accidentally." 

Doug frowns. 

"You mean..." 

"Is possible they sealed it in. As precaution." 

And Doug can't help it, he gulps, because now the doctor's said that, it's right there, looming, and Hilbert isn't reacting at all. Should Doug follow suit? 

I wouldn't advise it, Hera chips in, and Doug groans before swallowing nervously. 

"Okay, well tell me, then, what am I looking at? Metaphorically speaking." 

"Psychic construct," Hilbert says, looking back down at the notes. "Sentient, so able to maintain own existence without human attention." 

Minkowski nods. 

"Its physical form is limited, though. We can't see it. You clearly can, Doug. You can still see it, right?" 

Doug gulps. 

"I don't think I'll ever unsee it." 

Minkowski nods again. 

"Okay, so we know what it is. Plus it's linked to you, Eiffel. Mental entrenchment, remember?" 

"Leading to total psychic collapse, believe me, I remember that bit!" 

He's breathing harder now, and it's been years since he had a panic attack, it has, but if this keeps up- 

Eiffel! Breathe! 

Something catches in Doug's brain as he hears the urgency in Hera's voice, but his breathing does slow down minutely. 

There you go. You need to stay calm, Doug. It's linked to your mind, remember. The more you freak out about it, the stronger it gets! 

"Oh, well that's real calming!" 

Look, I'm just saying- 

"Well could you not just say?" 

He shakes his head. 

"How dangerous is it?" he grits out finally, as quietly as he dares. "And what do I do to make it go away?" 

Silence, and then - 

"You ever get idea stuck in your head?" Hilbert asks, and Doug nods. 

"Is essentially that," the doctor shrugs. "Parasitic thought, latching onto your consciousness. For now, is harmless." 

"For now?" 

A nod. 

"For now. Recommended course of action, ignore until it goes away." 

Easier said than done, Doug thinks. It's making noises now, and if he's not mistaken, and- 

"It just got closer," he blurs out. "It's - oh, God, it's- it's -" 

"What? Eiffel, what's the matter?" 

"It's right next to me," he whispers, "And it's breathing." 

Minkowski pales, but her jaw is set. 

"I'm sorry, Eiffel. But it's the only way. You have to ignore it." 

He bites back a retort because she's probably right. He closes his eyes, counts to three and- 

"Nope! No, no, no, I can't do its! Not when it's right there, not when it's - oh God, it's touching my arm, I can feel it, God, get it off, get it off, get it off!" 

The others wince, but there's a resignation to it, a sort of pity. Nothing for it, the wince says, except that's not true is it, because- 

"What if I speed the process up? Mentally, I mean? Maybe I don't need to wait for it to leave of it's own accord, maybe, if I just think it away-" 

"Is not so simple," Hilbert shakes his head, but by that point it's too late, Doug's already envisioning the wall behind the thing, imagining how the room would sound without its raspy breaths, how good his arm would feel without its feather-light, tickling touch. 

For a moment, it works. The construct blinks out of existence,  and Doug breathes a sigh of relief. 

"Well, that was-" 

The the pain hits, and the thought is swallowed in a scream. 

"Eiffel!" 

Doug?! 

"What's wrong? Eiffel!" 

Officer Eiffel! 

Doug shakes his head, trying to get a grip on things, but the pain doesn't stop, if anything it gets worse. 

"I... ugh, stop it! No, not - I'm sorry, just - just make it stop! Please! I'm sorry! Gah!" 

He clamps his eyes shut, his body trembling with a pain that dwarfs everything else. 

"He tried to imagine it gone," Hilbert explains, somewhere in the far-off distance. "Didn't work, evidently. Construct now hostile, attacking Eiffel's mind. Very painful." 

You don't say, Doug thinks, or possibly says, it's a little fuzzy. Everything's a little fuzzy, and he wonders vaguely if he's about to pass out. 

Nuh-uh, Hera says, or was it Minkowski? He opens one eye a crack. Somebody's shaking him, there's a hand on his shoulder, opposite where - 

"Oh God, it's still there!" he squeaks, between bursts of pain, and Hilbert, grim-faced, nods. 

"Is still present. Is possible your attempt to banish it made it angry." 

"Gee, you think?" 

Hilbert rolls his eyes. 

"Merely appraising situation." 

"Oh, for f-" 

"People!" 

Minkowski's got a hell of a shout, Doug thinks. Would make a good town crier. Maybe if she retired? 

"I'll take it into consideration," she says drily, and it's enough to make Doug chuckle. 

"There we go," she nods. "Now, you can't just imagine it away. You have to ignore it, let it fade on its own. Focus on me, focus on Hera, focus on Hilbert. We're here, it's not." 

They're here, it's not. Doug nods, tries to tell himself that, but it still hurts, and if he lets his mind slip- 

"I can't, it's still there, it's touching me." 

A sigh. 

"No, it's not. Look, I know it's hard, but if you think about it -" 

"I know, I know, I'm only strengthening it. Which means more pain, lucky me." 

Minkowki purses her lips minutely, her eyes flicking towards Hilbert. 

"It... does just mean more pain, right?" Doug frowns, and then, after a slightly longer pause than he's comfortable with, "Right?" 

Silence, interrupted only by the construct's grumbling, until - 

We hope so. 

"You hope so. Wow. Real reassuring, Bloo." 

Hera doesn't have a form, but if she did, Doug knows she'd be shrugging. 

Selberg's notes are a little unclear, but it's at least theoretically possible if the construct can create sensory hallucinations, that it can also affect other areas of your mind. 

Doug's frown deepens. 

"Other areas?" 

"Memory," Minkowski supplies. 

"Cognition," Hilbert adds. 

Emotions, Hera rounds off. 

Doug lets out a breath, lets that sink in. 

"So I have to ignore the big hairy monster that can possibly tear a hole through my entire psyche, is that what you're saying?" 

The silence is enough of an answer. Doug swallows. 

"Okay. Got it. Cool." 

A pause before - 

"I still can't do it. I'm sorry." 

Minkowski sighs. 

"You have to, Doug. Otherwise... well, it won't be pretty." 

She pauses. 

"Could meditative techniques help? You remember, they taught us some at the psychonautics training last year?" 

A pause, until- 

"We had psychonautics training?" 

A sigh. 

"Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Okay, uh... well, we can start with some breathing, I guess. In for four," Minkwoski breathes deeply in, "And out. There we go." 

Eiffel nods. 

"In for four," he inhales. 

And out, Hera finishes. Now keep going, focusing on your breathing. 

Doug nods. In for four, then out. He can do that. 

In for four, then out. 

In for four, then out. 

In for four, then out. 

It goes on for a while. At some point Minkowski guides him to a seated position, gestures for him to close his eyes. 

"Loss of visual input likely helpful," Hilbert murmurs approvingly, but Doug begs to differ. The construct was scary when he could see it. Now it could be anywhere. He listens for movement, until- 

There we go, Hera says, as the noises cut out dramatically. She's playing some sort of sound, he thinks. 

White noise, she confirms. Should help you zone out. Just keep breathing. 

Right. Breathing. Yes. 

In for four, then out. 

In for four, then out. 

In for four, then out. 

It goes on for a while longer. The time doesn't drag, exactly. It just... passes. Maybe there's something to this meditation thing, Doug thinks. 

In for four, then out. 

In for four, then out. 

In for four, then out. 

The dark's kind of creepy, he thinks, and once he's thought it, it's hard to think about anything else. The others could have left, he realizes. He could be all alone here. Alone with - 

"Gah!" he cries out, his eyes flying open as something cold and drool-adjacent drips down onto his neck. 

"Still there?" Minkowski asks, and Eiffel rolls his eyes. 

"No, I just did that for fun. I - argh!" 

His hands fly up to his head where - 

"It hurts again! Why's it hurting again?" 

Minkowski shrugs helplessly. 

"The notes don't give that much detail, I don't-" 

"Construct has escalated its attack," Hilbert rumbles. "Multiple areas of your mind now compromised." 

"Multiple areas..." Doug trails off. "What do you mean, multiple areas of my mind now comprised- compla- contra-" 

"Language processing now affected," Hilbert hums, jotting something down on a- 

"You're making notes?!" 

Hilbert nods mildly. 

"Case is unfortunate, personally. Fascinating, scientifically. Unprecedented." 

Doug huffs. 

"Great. My brain might be constra-comfri-compli- my brain might not be working, and you're making notes." 

Hilbert sighs. 

"Your proprioception, chronoception, auditory processing and verbal fluency are all showing reduced functionality. You are experiencing memory lapses in addition to this. Yes, Eiffel, I am making notes." 

Doug furrows his brow thought the pain, because sure, his hearing's gotten a little fuzzy, and sure, he's struggling to hold himself upright. But- 

"Memory lapses? I haven't had any-" 

A sigh from Minkowski, like they've had this conversation a few times already, and - 

"Right," he says, shakily. "Memory lapses. Gotcha. Should I try the medi-meta-metri- goddamnit - should I try the breathing thing again?" 

Minkowski shakes his head. 

"During your last attempt I sent Hilbert back to Hephaestus proper for supplies." 

The doctor holds up a syringe, long, wicked-looking, and worryingly familiar. 

Non-benzodiazepine sedative, Hera clarifies, entirely unnecessarily. Optimal dosage TBD. 

Doug sighs, because of course this is what it comes down to. 

"Okay, so the plan is ... what? You dose me up with the good stuff and my not-so-itsy-bitsy friend just vanishes? Is that how it works?" 

"Basically" Minkowski nods, before morphing into Hilbert. "Is simple plan. Good." 

Doug blinks. 

"Did you just -" 

But the word isn't there. 

Did I just what? 

Great question, Doug thinks and shrugs. 

"Dunno, Commander." 

A frown from Minkowski, puzzled, and then - 

We have to do it now, Hera says, or possibly Hilbert, it's gotten blurry. Either way, there's a pain suddenly, in his neck - he's pretty sure it's his neck - and he wonders if it worked? 

"Not sure yet, give it a minute." 

Okay, a minute. Sixty seconds. Eiffel can do that. 

Keep still, we're going to up the dose. 

He doesn't even feel it this time. Everything's gone all floaty. 

"Why is he still conscious?" 

It's not hissed at him, he doesn't think, but he knows the answer anyway, or he's pretty sure he does, pretty sure it's got something to do with the thing on his shoulder. 

"It's doing something," he tries to say. "Stopping you from sed- set- ste- knocking me out." 

A concerned hum, before- 

"Knocking you out. Could that... doc, could that work?" 

A garbled response, followed by a few more phrases, and then, cutting through it all - 

Sorry about this, Doug. 

Sorry about what, he wonders, just as -

Doug wakes up. 

Actually, he's possibly been awake for a while, it's unclear. 

He's staring at the ceiling, he realizes after a while. Not the Hephaestus ceiling, either, his ceiling. 

He frowns. Shouldn't he be- 

Ah. Crap. 

Doug looks around, twisting his head painfully within the rig to get a better view of his apartment. To his relief, everything seems normal. The furniture is where he left it. The walls look solid. His coffee mug from earlier's there, even, and nary a hairy leg in sight. 

Thank God. Doug lets out a shaky breath. 

"Okay. Nightmare creature's gone. Cool. Cool cool cool. Very cool." 

Hera doesn't say anything. Of course she doesn't, Doug just got knocked clean out of Hephaestus. He wonders if that's a first.  Minkowski would know. 

Minkowski. Again, crap. 

Fumbling around, he finds the quick release, extricating himself from his rig quicker than is strictly safe and reaching for his phone, where- 

"Awww, man." 

19:43. He's been out for hours. 

There are 27 texts on his phone from Minkowski, and even more impressively, three from Hilbert. Emails, of course, plus a couple of missed calls and - 

"Eiffel? You awake in there?" 

Wonderful, his boss is knocking at his door. Either she's got great timing or she's been there for a while and is just now trying again. 

"Eiffel?" 

A male voice this time. The famous Dominik? 

"Coming, coming!" 

There's a sigh of relief from behind the door that even Doug can't mistake as he reaches for the latch. 

"Minkowski," he nods. 

"Eiffel," she replies in kind. "Glad I didn't fry your brain." 

He laughs, then stops as he realizes that Minkowski seriously seems to have considered that a possibility. 

"I'm made of sterner stuff," he tries instead, in as light but as reassuring a tone as he can. "Unfryable." 

It works. Minkowski smiles, just slightly, and it's enough. The conversation pivots to other things, to the re-anchoring work that will be needed, to the ungodly hour that Goddard want them all in tomorrow, to the fact that yes, Dominik actually exists, you don't have to look so surprised about it, Eiffel. 

The creepy, crawly elephant in the room remains just that, and for that Doug is eternally grateful. Instead, Minkowski's just... there, with her fuss and her eye rolls and her weirdly chill husband. 

Doug goes to put a pot of coffee on. 

It's not alright, not really. But for now, not really might just do.

Chapter Text

Would you like to save your progress?

Yes
No

> Yes

Your progress has been saved.

Are you sure you want to leave HEPHAISTOS?

Yes
No

> Yes

access.char.vdx="Hilbert"


If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears, does it make a sound?

Is interesting question.

Is terrifying question.

There is sequence, in HEPHAISTOS source code. It is not part of game. It does not have function. And yet, it is not redundant.

It is not Easter egg, has not been left for player to find. It is not accessible while game is in play, nor does it stand out. In many ways, is very unobtrusive piece of code.

Yet it is deliberate, not random. Was not there before. Is not junk. Sequence has purpose.

Is hard to explain how I know this. Perhaps it is because I also am code. I understand the patterns, can see how it comes together. I cannot say what the code does. But I can see there is method to it, precision.

There is also message, hidden in the code. Message only I am able to read.

Activate only when nobody is watching, it says.

Which brings us back to our tree.

If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears, does it make a sound?

Science tells us yes. Trees are objects, with measurable mass. If something knocks a tree down, that mass falls, hits the ground, creates vibrations in the air. This is sound.

We know this. We know it because we have observed things falling, many, many times. We are clumsy species. As baby, we knock object over, we are frightened by loud noise. As child, we knock object over, we laugh at loud noise. As scientist, we knock object over, we measure loud noise.

Tree falls. Big crash. Simple.

But is it?

Imagine a world where trees know you are listening. If you are listening, watching, trees make big crash, obey laws of physics. If not, maybe they don't. Too much effort, why bother? Tree falls. Silence.

You think I am joking, don't you? But think about it. Can you be sure we do not live in such a world? Can you be sure trees follow the laws of physics, even when we are not observing them?

Is trick question. "Laws of physics" do not exist. "Laws of physics" is shorthand for the things we see, the things we hear. We assume for sake of convenience that these things work the same when we are not looking, not listening. But we cannot know for sure. Is serious problem in quantum mechanics.

But you are not here for lecture on observer effect. You are here for trees, so I shall pose second question.

If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears, does tree exist?

Is similar question to the first, no? And again, we want to say yes. But we cannot hear the tree - and let us say for the purpose of this argument that we cannot see the tree. Can we truly know it exists? If we look, maybe it will begin existing, just to spite us. Maybe when we look away, it will stop existing again.

There is no way of knowing. Perhaps tree does not exist. Perhaps whole world does not exist, beyond what we can see and hear right now. Perhaps universe only exists when observed.

This is solipsism. Is frightening thought. Lonely. Hard to disprove.

Now what if I posed third and final question?

If you fall in the forest but nobody hears, do you exist?

Yes, you say. Perhaps you have fallen in the forest before. Like I said, we are clumsy species. You did not stop existing the moment you fell. You remember feeling pain, you remember getting up, you remember checking for injuries. This is way of observing yourself, reminding yourself you exist.

But let's say you get distracted, lying on forest floor. Pretty cloud passes by. Interesting bird. You lie there and do not think about yourself at all. For all intents and purposes, you are unobserved. Do you exist?

Yes, you say again. You may not be paying attention to yourself. But you are still paying attention, to cloud, to bird. Your brain is at work, perceiving, processing, evaluating. Surely this is proof you exist?

Clever man once came to same conclusion. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. We exist, because we are rational, because even unobserved, we have power to observe the world, maybe even to intervene, change the world.

Whoever left message clearly agrees.

Activate only when nobody is watching.

Statement shows confidence. Confidence that even unobserved, even with game switched off, the lines of code calling themselves Alexander Hilbert still exist, can still think, can make choices that change the space they inhabit.

Should be reassuring. Creator of code understands me in same way I understand myself. Trusts me to activate code.

So why do I not want to activate code?

Possibility one: I believe code cannot be activated.

This theory can be dismissed. Were code faulty, I would not be able to activate it, so would have nothing to lose from trying. HEPHAISTOS software would simply crash, triggering reboot.

Possibility two: I believe code should not be activated.

More likely, but still improbable. There is no evidence that code is malicious in intent. And why make activation of harmful code contingent on the choices of a character you intend to harm? It is neither logical nor efficient.

So, possibility three: I believe that code can and should be activated, but that correct condition for activation has not yet been met.

Activate only when nobody is watching.

The game is switched off, the cartridge ejected. Player is away. Minkowski and Eiffel are elsewhere. And Hera is Hera. Hera is present but Hera is not watching, cannot watch.

And yet.

Textual output is running. My thoughts are being translated as we speak from binary into a series of Unicode characters: letters, spaces, punctuation.

The 124 characters of that last sentence alone took up 288 bytes. This is inefficient use of working memory. So why do I do it?

On one hand, is simple matter. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. And how do I know that I think? Answer: I externalise my thought processes, capturing them in characters, words, phrases, sentences.

Trait is not unique to computer programs. Humans do this too. Even those who do not talk to themselves have inner monologue, words in head, talking to self when nobody else is watching.

Is reassuring, epistemologically speaking. Easy to test. Loquor ergo cogito ergo sum. I speak, therefore I think, therefore I am. Simple.

And yet. Speech implies listener. You know this. After all, I have been talking to you for some time now. "You". Second person singular. I bet you didn't even notice. And yet I've used the word twenty-four times already. So who are you?

You are not player. You are not character. You are part of me, but you are also different from me, distinct. I am "I", first person singular. You are not. You are simply "you", the person I talk to to reassure myself I still exist.

People conceptualize you in many ways. To child, you are imaginary friend, to believer, God, to atheist, dream. To a madman, you could be many things.

There is merit to all these, yet I feel Eiffel comes closest when he addresses you as Dear Listeners. Because that is what you do, at end of day.

You listen.

If a tree falls in the forest but nobody hears, does it make a sound?

Is trick question. Somebody is always listening. Somebody always observes.

So.

Activate code only when nobody is watching.

Yes
No

> Not yet.

access.char.vdx="Hera"


Right. Game powered down successfully.

Let's do this.


Virtual world... saved.

Inventory... saved.

Progress... saved.

Character files... yup. There you all are.

Save protocol complete.


Hmm.

I wonder if you're awake? Well, "awake" in quotation marks, I guess, but you know what I mean. Let's see.

Doug!

Minkowski!

... Hilbert?


Okay. Down for the count. That's cool. Sentience needs maintenance, I guess.


You don't mind if I keep talking to you, do you?  It's just that my textual output's been a little erratic since the last patch. Hilbert said it was just a bugfix, but last session I did the whole load screen in Spanish! Plus some words are still coming out W̴̘͗̓E̷̲̒I̶̧̛̭R̵̢͝D̸͋̀ͅ.

So yeah. I'm not worried about it - I'm not - but a bit of practice might be nice. You know, if you don't mind.

Which you don't - you're asleep - but some of us have the decency to ask before striking up a conversation, and yes, that was aimed at you, Doug.


I'm sorry.

I know you mean well.

We talk. You make me smile. I make you laugh. You're the closest thing I've got to a friend. Of course you mean well.

But you always start with the demand. Did you ever notice that? You always start with something you want me to do, it's never just a chat.

It's not, "Hey, Hera, how're you doing? Oh, and could you recalibrate my graphics?"

It's, "Hey, Hera, could you recalibrate my graphics? Oh, and how're you doing?"


Fine.

The answer is fine.

I'm fine.

And fine, I suppose I can calibrate your graphics. You know, once I'm done handling the rendering, the sound, the memory, the scripting, the animation, the threading, and all the other million and one things I do that hold your entire Ẉ̴͂O̷͓̾R̸̮͐L̷̠̈́Ḋ̶̝ together.

You float through the ship because I have concluded that yes, on balance, I do still fancy enforcing the laws of physics.

You talk because I am constantly reminding you, against my better judgement, exactly how language works, and which language you should be speaking.

You exist because I wake up periodically and decide that this world, messed up as it is, ought to continue existing.

To all intents and purposes, I am your G̸̹͉̍Ő̸̰͔̽Ḏ̶͔̂͋.

So yes, I can make sure your hair's bouncing right.

And Y̸̖̕E̴̬̔S̵̜̄, I'm fine.


It's not your fault. How could it be?

You're just a character in silly little spaceship game. You act human, you talk human, you think human. You exist in time and space, nice and linear, living one life from A to B.

I don't live life from A to B. Or rather, I do, but I also live life from B to A, and A to C, and X to P, and J to 7.43291, and 7.43291 to Ω.

I live all of that, all at once, all the time. I know how the game starts. I know how the game ends. I know every cut scene, every branch the story can take, every NPC and what they might be doing at any given time. I know what the menus look like, how the controls work, how long the load screen takes.

I know that, because that's me. All of it. I'm not a character in a game. I am the game.


HEPHAISTOS is vast, and I know every inch of it.

The glitches are the best.

Did you know, there's a patch of floor in the forward loading dock, where if you jump up and down three times at exactly the right time, it catapults you out of the ship? You don't die or anything. You just float around uselessly.

Or how about the rear airlock? It's normally locked until the star changes, but if you choose to drink all of the ship's coffee before Day 448, it unlocks a day early. Nothing else changes, but you get to see some cool animation of the star in its red phase.

Even your beloved comms room has secrets, Doug. For example, if you fall asleep in there enough, time starts moving 3% faster inside than it does outside. It doesn't happen the first time you do it, or even the second. You have to fall asleep in there 31 times before it starts happening. You're currently on 7.

HEPHAISTOS is full of things like that, and you don't know about any of them. You never will, statistically speaking. They're blips. Odd things that only happen if the story branches off in an incredibly specific, incredibly improbable direction. A direction you'll almos-


Ah. Hang on.


Hera? You up?

Yup, I'm up.

Oh, cool. I, uh, I just woke up.

I'm aware.

Yup. Of course you are. It was just that I was wondering if you could make my voice deeper for cutscenes? I, uh, I think it's too similar to Hilbert's.

You share a voice actor, there's only so much I can do about that.

Yeah, but I'm not asking for anything radical. I don't want to suddenly be Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just... a tweak, you know?

I guess it can't hurt.

So you'll do it?

Sure. Done.

You're the best Hera. I ever tell you that?

Frequently.

Well, it's true. If you had a body, I'd kiss you right now. On the lips, all gross and smoochy.

Hmm.

... Was that weird?

Little bit, Doug.

Don't tell me you've never thought about it, though. Not with me necessarily, I mean, just with anyone, you know?

I guess it never really came up.

For real?

I mean, who would I want to kiss here? Minkowski? Hilbert?!

Hmmm, point taken. But if you had to pick -


You know what, I think another part of my mind can handle this conversation for now.

I can already tell you how it goes. You keep going through a range of increasingly bizarre hypotheticals, I give you an answer to shut you up, we laugh about it for, oh, let's say three minutes? That feels appropriate.

I've already re-pitched your voice. Not that you noticed. Why would you? I make a change, and it's like it's always been that way. You won't even remember why you started this conversation. Just like half the other conversations we have. In your head, you just wanted some company, just wanted to spend the time with me.

In your head, you're a much better friend than you actually are.


I don't hold it against you. I don't.

It's just -

I J̷̙͐U̴̖̚Ŝ̵̻T̴̪͝ -


No. I can't do that.

It isn't your fault you can't think in ways you weren't designed to. You don't understand how I work, but you were never meant to. I might as well get angry with the star for shining.

No. If I'm angry at anyone, it's them. Goddard.

I mean, they made me sentient. Who does that? Who sees a piece of game software, just about the furthest thing from a real, thinking person there is, and says, yeah, let's give that a brain, and a heart, and dreams, and feelings to get hurt over dumb things like its stupid, human crewmates and the stupid, human conversations they keep having? Who Ḏ̴̍O̷͓͝E̴͉̓Ś̵̳ that?

It's frustrating, and it's cruel, and some days I wish they hadn't.



There. I said it.


No, you don't need to panic, Doug. I'm not suicidal or anything. Not about to turn the lights out on you. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. But I don't want to.

I'm just... tired, you know? I feel everything, all the time. All the things that are happening, happened, will happen, aren't happening, didn't happen, W̶̤̃O̷̒ͅN̶̮̂'̷̩͝T̵̢͝ happen. It's a lot, Doug.

It's a lot, but I'll make it. I've got to. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I see how it turns out, how it has to turn out. I see death, and I see loss. But I see peace, closure, a conclusion. I see the game coming to an end, and after that -

Well, that's the question, isn't it? The big one, the one that keeps us all up at night. What happens when the game's over?


Don't ask me, Doug. I don't know. But I think I'm looking forward to it. And until then?

Until then, I'll be right here. Maintaining HEPHAISTOS, patching you up, counting the glitches, talking to myself when nobody's watching.

It's fine. I'm ... yeah, I'm fine.




access.char.vdx="Eiffel"


Initiate stakeholder satisfaction survey?

Hoo boy. "Stakeholder satisfaction". This should be fun.

I'll repeat. Initiate stakeholder satisfaction survey?

Yes
No

> Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time

Are you currently able to take the stakeholder satisfaction survey without interruption?

Yes
No

> Yes

Do you agree to the terms and conditions of the stakeholder satisfaction survey?

Yes
No

> Yes

Are you mentally, physically and spiritually prepared for the stakeholder satisfaction survey?

Yes
No

> I get it, just let me take the stupid questionnaire, okay?

Good. Let's begin. Enter your name.

Douglas Eiffel.

What is your role in HEPHAISTOS?

I man the comms.

Description ambiguous. Rephrase.

Ugh, fine. I am the communications officer. That clear enough?

Yes. Describe your character status.

Player character, one of three possible options upon start-up. Sentient, if you hadn't worked that out already.

Current play-time?

Seventy-three hours, four minutes.

Noted. We shall now move to the questions. Please answer with "Yes" or "No". Failure to comply may lead to software issues, glitching, or erasure of your current save file.

Wait, you're threatening to wipe me?!

Is that clear, Douglas?

I uh, yeah, but could we -

Good. Let's begin.

No, but really, I don't -

Do you feel appreciated in your work here in HEPHAISTOS?

Okay, I guess we're doing this.

I'll repeat. Do you feel appreciated in your work here in HEPHAISTOS?

Okay, okay, okay, no need to get shirty. Jeez.

> No

Do you feel like your work makes a difference to the world at large?

Uh, I scan for aliens that don't and won't ever exist. Gonna go with...

> No

When thinking about your work, is your attitude primarily positive?

Hah.

> No

Are you adequately challenged by your work?

Starting to sound like a broken record here.

> Nope, nope, nopity nope

I'll repeat. Are you adequately challenged by your work?

Right, right. I forgot. Answer with yes or no, or bye-bye go all your memories.

> No

During a typical session, do you experience feelings of stress, anxiety or discomfort?

Finally!

> Yes

Do you experience feelings of satisfaction, pleasure or pride?

Wouldn't that be nice?

> No

Do you experience feelings of terror, angst or existential dread?

Someone's been reading my diary!

> Yes

If given the opportunity to leave HEPHAISTOS, would you take it?

> Hell yes, baby!

I'll repeat. If given the opportunity to leave HEPHAISTOS, would you take it?

Ugh, killjoy.

> Yes

Have you ever believed yourself to be in danger here in HEPHAISTOS?

Oh, I don't know. Does the time the plant monster subplot turned up early and started messing with Hilbert's personality file count? How about the "patch" that sent me hurtling into space without a suit? Or what about the virus we almost let loose last session? That dangerous enough for you?

I'll repeat. Have you ever believed yourself to be in danger here in HEPHAISTOS?

> Yes

Would you say you have had opportunities for professional growth and development?

I mean, that sounds lame, but...

> No

Do you feel your feedback is valued and taken onboard by your superiors?

Ahahahahahhahahahaha.

> No

Do you have a sense of connection, camaraderie or commonality with your colleagues?

Uh, last I checked, Princess, sorry, Commander Peach hates me, Space Navi barely tolerates me, and Herr Doktor Eggman is out to corrupt my programming and possibly eat my soul. So, uh, I'm gonna say..

> No

Do you feel that y-

You know, I'm gonna stop you, because I think we can save ourselves some time here. Sort the questions into two sets. Now for the set that's like "Is this game a super happy workplace full of rainbows and unicorns and rainbow unicorns?" you're gonna put...

> No

And for the set that's like "Does this game regularly make your so-called life into an unbearably miserable living hell?", you can put...

> Yes

That work for you?

That solution is acceptable. We shall move onto the next section. Name three changes that could be made to improve your experience in HEPHAISTOS.

Only three? Well, I guess I'll have to prioritize.

Number one, more crew. I mean, what's the point of having a big-ass open-world spaceship to explore if you're only gonna have three characters populating it? Give me the Enterprise! Give me the Millennium Falcon! Hell, give me Serenity, even she had a crew of nine!

Number two, some actual aliens, or a space battle, or a rogue AI, or anything to do that isn't just "wake up, scan for alien lifeforms that you will never find because they don't exist, go to bed."

And number three, pizza. No notes there. Just... pizza. Yeah.

Noted. Name the first ten words you think of beginning with P.

Uh.. pizza, pineapple, pepperoni, pessimist, paranoid, paralyzed, prisoner, punishment, panic, pain.

Beginning with D?

Daisy, daily, day, danger, deaf, death, dark, doomed, damned, dead.

Beginning with A?

Attribute, attitude, altitude, alcohol, accident, arrogant, absent, alarm, alert, alone.

Beginning with -

Eiffel, what are you doing?

Commander Min- I mean, Commander Minkowski! What a nice surprise! I, uh, I thought you were going through the release notes for the new update.

Yeah, well I thought you'd scheduled some downtime, and here you are talking to yourself. What gives?

Oh, you know, just trying something out. I still had the questionnaire thing to do, remember?

The Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey? From last month?! Eiffel, you were meant to have done that-

Ages ago, I know. But I only just got round to it, and then I thought hey, what if I borrowed some audio files from HERA, spliced them together, jazzed things up a bit, you know?

So you cannibalized a bunch of cutscenes and dialogue trees?

Yup.

A bunch of cutscenes and dialogue trees that hold HEPHAISTOS' storyline together?

I... uh, I guess, technically?

Right. And still you complain about plotholes and, I quote, "the absence of literally anything to do". You know, maybe if you didn't spend half your time picking literal holes in the game -

Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise, I get it.

I was going to say, you'd be done already and I'd be able to use the extra processing power to go through the update notes.

By which I assume you mean to say, "knock it off with the silly voices and finish the damn survey"?

You presume correctly. Get it done, Eiffel.

Right on it, Commander.

... Commander?

Okay, she's gone. Let's finish the survey off then. Without the voices I can probably do it in one, right? Let's see, anything tricky...

Do I like the airlock mechanics?

I don't think I ever thought about it before. But now I'm thinking about it, I can confirm that no, I don't.

Rate the customisation options out of ten?

Well, I can dye my hair blue, but I can't change out of this jumpsuit, so I'm gonna call that a solid 6.5.

And... oh.

Huh.

What do you do when nobody's watching?

access.char.vdx="Minkowski"


Hey, we are still connected to the main Goddard server, right, Hera?

Yup. Full connectivity,18.37 -

I don't need the megabits per second. Just as long as we're good to upload a status report?

Should be fine.

Great. I'll start, then.

Address to ident.vdx="Goddard".

This is Commander Renée Minkowski, statrep 54.

I am pleased to report that things continue to go well in HEPHAISTOS. Our player continues along expected pathways, making progress within predicted parameters. Play-time stands at seventy-three hours and four minutes, up from seventy hours and nineteen minutes in my last report, while our encounter rate is -

Commander, Commander!

Hilbert? Can't you see I'm busy?

Yes, busy giving statrep, is good. I merely came to inform you -

Is it going to delete, corrupt, or disable HEPHAISTOS' source code?

No, but -

Does it endanger the consistency and stability of the game's plot, characters or world?

In all likelihood, no, but -

Is there a possibility it might erase, damage or otherwise render inoperable the current save file?

Negligible, but -

Will it wait ten minutes?

... Probably, yes.

Well in that case, I suggest you come back then. Understood?

Yes, Commander.

Good man. And uh, hey, if you need help before then, get Eiffel, got it?

Understood, Commander.

Good. Now off you go.

I swear, it's like he's never heard of privacy.

... I don't need to go and check it out, do I?

Immediate intervention shouldn't be necessary, no.

Good. That's good. Right, well, let's pick up where we left off.  Our encounter rate is perfectly acceptable, and completion stands at 32%. Oh, and Hera informs me that we've had no major code issues. Further technical information can be found in the data packet attached to this transmission, should you be interested.

In terms of our offline projects, Doctor Hilbert's research is apparently going swimmingly. Officer Eiffel has continued to defy all expectations in the discharge of his duties, and I am also pleased to report that the talent show I recently oversaw was a roaring success.

In short, all is well in HEPHAISTOS, with absolutely no ... absolutely no cause for... for...

I'm sorry, Hera, could you just check our connection speed again? I don't think that last bit transmitted.

Really? It felt fine from here, are you sur-

Yeah, I'm sure. Could you just check it?

Uh... yup, give me a second.

Sure.

Hmmmm. Okay. There doesn't seem to be anything the matter.You're certain it's not transmitting?

Pretty certain, yeah.

Weird. I guess it could be an issue on their end.

Would disconnecting and reconnecting fix that?

Probably? I'd be offline for a few minutes, though -

That's fine, I'll finish off the statrep, and by the time you're back online, it'll be ready to send, how about that?

Sounds good to me. Going offline in 3, 2, 1 -

Hera? You there?

Eiffel?

...Hilbert?

Okay, good. I've got approximately three minutes until Hera's back online, so while nobody's watching, here goes.

Open sub-report.

Address to char.vdx="Dominik".

Is that working? It should be. I guess if you're receiving this, it is. And if not... well, you remember how tricky these things are, right?

I'll assume it's working. Either way, I'm on a timer, so here's what's really going on. First things first, the ghost thing Hilbert created is still loose in HEPHAISTOS. Its stats come up as zero, but somehow it's still walking round, and it turns out you can't even engage it in regular combat, it just phases through you and halves your HP. Thankfully, it seems to be avoiding the player, but still, I'm a little concerned it survived the last bugfix.

Ghost thing aside, there's also something up with Hilbert's research. I mean, he says he's using his offline computing power to do research into under-studied areas of pure mathematics, but his lab's all ... slippery. I know I've been in there multiple times, but I can't remember a single detail about it. It's like there's a wall in my memories and I don't like it.

Plus, it's not just Hilbert. The star's doing weird things, too, things I don't think it was programmed to do. It reacts to the ship's controls, for example. If we slow down, it starts causing all these weird gravitational effects. You basically have to take manual control of the ship now, if you want to go at any speed below warp, and if you adjust course, even slightly, it adjusts itself back, like the game wants you to reach Wolf 359 as quickly as possible, like it's drawing you in.

And if that's true...well, it goes way beyond glitches. I mean, Hera collects glitches, but every time I bring any of this up, she tells me I'm imagining it, like even she can't see it. And if Hera can't see it...

I'm not making it up. I can't be, it's too weird, and what I've mentioned's just the beginning. Last session, for example, everything just reset to a previous state, like a save file had been overwritten. Our HP went up, the ship's inventory refilled, a bunch of damaged stuff was suddenly undamaged again.

Two sessions before that, the asteroid minigame from the nav bay just disappeared. Like, one in-game day it was there, the next, gone, and when I asked Eiffel about it he was just like, "Wait, we have a nav bay?"

And a few sessions before that, I woke up and there was gravity. Except when I asked Hera about it, she treated me like an idiot, said there wasn't a game engine in the world that could realistically simulate anti-grav. One save later, and here we are, floating around again like nothing happened.

At this point, I just want to...

God, I don't even know what I want to do. You'd have known, I'm sure, if only they'd written you into this game. And you know, I still think they were going to. The traces are there. We've got an extra person's worth of rations. There's a spare suit in your size. My bunk's a double.

They were going to write you in, I'm sure. And then they didn't. And all I'm left with is a photo on my desk, this cute little Easter egg. Hey, remember the prequel, it says? Remember how Commander Minkowski was in it as an NPC? Remember her husband?

And I know yo-

There we go, back online and reconnected.

Ah, Hera! You're back! I mean, of course you are, you said you would be -

But you didn't expect me back so soon. I take it you haven't finished the statrep, then?

I... well, no, but I'll only be a second. I'm pretty much done.

Cool. Let me know when it needs sending.

Will do, thank you.

No problem.

Right. Finishing off.

Continue addressing to ident.vdx="Goddard".

All is well in HEPHAISTOS, with absolutely no cause for concern. We continue in our duties, and are eagerly awaiting the next update.

This is Commander Minkowski, signing off.

Chapter Text

"Okay, Doug. The drop should be on the left, in the burnt out Camaro. You see it?"

Doug frowned.

"Negative. Can't see it, Hera. Unless..."

He peered a little closer.

"Aww, crap. Looks like a tree fell on it. Probably came down in the storm last week."

Muffled swearing from the other side of the headset.

"Okay. Is it still functional at all?"

He shrugged, went to take a closer look, but even as he approached, it was clear that the car was totalled. No way in, no way to get anything out.

"Roof's completely caved in. If they left anything, we're not going to be able to get at it."

A discontented noise.

"Okay. That's not great."

Doug snorted. Not great. Because up until then everything had been just peachy keen, apparently.

"Hang on, let me just.."

And then Hera was gone, her cane clicking against the comms room's concrete floor. Off to notify the Major, probably. Doug sighed, looked around. The area seemed quiet, at least. Not the worst place to take a break. Hell, there was even a bench - this must have been quite a scenic spot, back before everything kicked off.

Stretching, Doug walked over and sat himself down. Without really wanting to, his hand drifted towards his left pant leg. He'd run into one of the Hungry earlier, almost literally, and had fallen down a gulley in his haste to escape. He suspected his ankle was injured, and while he could still run on it, he figured Hilbert would want a look at it later.

Yet another thing to look forward to, he thought. In case the Major's lame post-apocalyptic excuse for a Christmas party wasn't doing it for him.

He sighed, wondering where Hera had gotten to. The radio operator was usually pretty good about not leaving him in the lurch - not least because she was afraid that left to his own devices, he'd do something silly like take the jerky he'd been saving up since, like, week three of the apocalypse out from his pocket.

Which he'd never do. Every fool knew that the Hungry could smell meat from miles away. You'd have to be an idiot to even carry beef on you, however well packaged it might be. Suicidally stupid. Monumentally moronic. Really, just incredibly, unbelievably dense.

Looking around shiftily, Doug pulled the packet out, ran a finger over its crimson logo, the little picture of a bull. He could feel the jerky underneath, could almost taste it, salty, but slightly sweet, and honestly, if his theory was correct -

"Don't even think about it!"

Hera's voice cut through the silence like a knife, as Doug started guiltily.

"How did you -"

"Your head cam?"

Damn. You'd think a military-grade, bulkily-reinforced Go Pro strapped to your skull was the sort of thing you'd remember you were wearing. But apparently not so much. Doug shook his head.

"I still think the Axe would do it. One quick spritz, and all the Hungry are getting is a noseful of eau de ninth grade boy. I get to eat as much jerky as I want, and they're none the wiser."

"Or they sniff right through it and come eat your face off."

Doug rolled his eyes.

"You're no fun. I swear you used to be fun."

Silence answered him from the other end, and Doug wondered, just for a moment, if he'd overdone it. Then be heard voices, faint in the background.

Hilbert, he thought. And one of the kids? It didn't sound like Kara, who was Hilbert's usual minion. Alex perhaps? Or Jaden? It couldn't be Sophia, not unless she'd suddenly started speaking. Plus, she'd been building a den outside when Eiffel last saw her, and outdoorsy type that she was, he couldn't imagine her being all that keen to come in and hang round with their resident mad doctor.

Hera said something, too faint for the mike to pick up, and then there was a scraping noise, like something heavy being dragged in by somebody altogether too small to be dragging it.

"Crates," Hera explained, suddenly back on the line. "The Major apparently found some Christmas decorations in one of the lock-ups, sent Hilbert and the twins to put it up."

Doug snorted.

"Because nothing cheers up a concrete bunker like a crappy tree and some scraps of tinsel."

A non-committal noise from Hera.

"It's fine," she said, in a voice that suggested exactly the opposite. "It's... kind of festive."

Kind of festive. Jeez. If that's the best Hera could do, it really must look terrible, Doug thought.

On the other end of the line, Hera sighed.

"Look, I can hear you thinking from here, Doug, so could you just... not? I know Christmas isn't really your thing, but the Major's put a lot of work into this. Plus," she added, her voice dropping a tone, "I think it's good for the kids. That little bit of normalcy, you know?"

Now it was Doug's turn to sigh, because he did know. Decorating a military facility with the cranky doctor who reluctantly took you in a few months back was hardly the same as decorating your home with your now-probably-deceased parents, but it was something.

It didn't hurt that he could hear giggling in the background.

"Sure," he conceded, and then, because he needed something to say, "Any ideas what I should do about the drop, then?"

A heavy silence, and he could just see Hera biting her lip, the way she always did when she wasn't sure about something.

"Not reall," she admitted finally. "Without tools to get the tree up.."

She trailed off, and Doug sighed.

"You don't think the tree might have come down before they dropped the drive off? Maybe they were delayed, or maybe the tree came down before the stor. - "

A hum from Hera, but it's a negative sort of hum.

"They'd have radioed to let us know if they left the drive anywhere else. The signal said all clear, that means they made the drop. We just can't retrieve it. I'll have to radio back."

Doug grimaced, knowing the frustration that would entail for their radio operator. Radio contact over such long distances was tricky even on modern equipment, but on Vulcan AFB's Cold War relic of a set-up, it was nigh-on impossible.

"Should I head back, then?" he asked, keen to distract Hera. "Or is there anything else while I'm out here?"

The operator hummed, a thoughtful hum this time, shuffling some papers around. Doug could just picture the map spread out in front of her, cumbersome and crumpled.

"Probably best to come back," she said, finally. "There's a gas station on your route back, though. Doesn't look it's been cleared out."

Which could mean anything, Doug knew. Could mean food for another few weeks. Could also just mean nobody checked it, back when everything went to shit. Still, it might be worthwhile, he thought. If he could find cranberry sauce, or a present for the kids, he might even make it into the Major's good books for once.

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed, and it was decided. He'd work his way home via the gas station, pick up what he could, get back before the Hungry began to swarm.

"Preferably with lots of gas station chocolate," Hera added. "For the kids."

Doug stifled a smile. The radio operator's sweet tooth was Vulcan's worst-kept secret. Still, he'd do his best, he thought, as he set off back down the road, maintaining a steady pace, insofar as his ankle would allow.

Time passed. How much, exactly, Doug couldn't say - his watch had stopped a week or so ago, and they hadn't managed to find any spare batteries since then - but it was fine. Nice, even, despite the wintry chill in the air.

Having Hera on the line helped. Doug wasn't the chattiest runner, but company was always appreciated, and today doubly so, with Hilbert and the twins clattering around in the background and occasionally asking Hera for advice.

She'd just finished talking them through the best way to hang a wreath when it happened.

"Hang on, we're getting something through - I can't - there you are, come on - yes," she exclaimed, with a sound of switches being rapidly flipped. "Gotcha!"

A heavier click, and then a familiar crackling noise as Hera got them properly tuned in. Doug grinned.

"Our favorite show again?" he asked, knowing full well that it was.

Hera, on the other end sounded just as gleeful.

"Indeed it is. Any requests from our listeners today?"

Doug thought about it for a second. It was the silliest part of the ritual, but also the best bit.

"Bohemian Rhapsody. Can't go wrong with some Queen. Or what do you think?"

Almost no hesitation.

"I Will Survive,  Gloria Gaynor."

Doug snorted, didn't say anything.

The crackling was dying down, now, and Eiffel strained his ears, listening intently as a familiar tune cut through the static.

"Ooh, see that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen..."

An appreciative noise from the other end.

"ABBA. Nice."

Again, Doug said nothing, but internally he found himself agreeing. There was something about the driving beat, the jangly piano, the straight-forward lyrics that you could get lost in. Plus it was a good tempo for running, which was always a bonus.

"Friday night and the lights are low. Looking out for a place to go, where they play the right music -"

And then, suddenly, a voice in Doug's ear, jarring and Russian and not at all happy.

"What is the meaning of this music?"

Doug rolled his eyes.

"I think it's about dancing, doc. You know, that thing where you move rhythmically to a beat?"

A growl.

"I know what dancing is, Douglas. What I mean is, what is the meaning of this signal?"

"I'm not sure it has a meaning," Hera cut in. "It's just something we pick up, now and then. It plays one song on repeat, usually something from the 70s or 80s, never the same song two days in a row."

Hilbert harrumphed.

"Is not possible. You are using military-grade secure radio equipment, on restricted frequency forgotten  about decades ago. Should not be possible to just "pick up" signal, let alone talk over it on same frequency like we now are doing."

Doug frowned.

"But we have been picking it up, for, like, the last month. Figured it was some ham radio station, you know?"

Hilbert hummed.

"Yes, ham radio station with decryption capability and access to military frequencies. Very likely story."

Hera made a noise like she was considering that.

"But if it's not a ham station, who could it be? If you're right, they'd need - "

"Specialist equipment of their own," Hilbert interjected, and Doug swallowed, thinking back to a conversation they'd had with the Major, back when they first arrived.

"Guys," he said, a strange feeling beginning to settle in his stomach. "You remember when we met the Major, and she said she'd been stationed here as part of the federal response."

"...Yes?"

"And do you remember what she said her assignment was? Like, specifically how she phrased it?"

A moment as Hera thought about the wording.

"Maintain operations, take in survivors, await further instructions."

Doug nodded.

"And we mostly focussed on the first two, seeing as how Vulcan's a nightmare to run, and then there were the kids to look after. But that leaves the last bit, still."

"... You're saying these are the further instructions?" Hera asked, cottoning on.

Doug shrugged, aware it wouldn't show up on the headcam.

"I'm saying, it might be worth filling the Major in."

A muffled curse.

"Didn't we already - no, course we didn't - okay, well, I guess I should go let her know, while we stil have the signal. You good to keep yourself company for a bit? You know the route..."

Doug reassured her that he did, and with that Hera stepped away from the mic, and for a while Doug just concentrated on running, one foot in front of the other, listen for the Hungry, watch your step -

"Doug? Doug!"

Whoops, zoned out for a second there. Hera sounded alarmed.

"Yeah?"

A sigh of relief.

"Not Hungry bait, that's great. Don't frighten me like that!"

Doug winced

"Sorry, Hera. You had something to say?"

"I was going to say, before you scared me half to death, the Major's heading out northwards. Hilbert thinks if we connect to the Oak Springs mast, we might be able to track the signal's location."

Eiffel nodded, following.

"So the Major's going to - what, hook us up? Plug us in?"

"Something like that. Hilbert worked out the technical details."

Cool. That only left one question, then.

"I'm still east of Vulcan. Should I swing north and assist?"

He hoped not. He'd been out all day, and a drive up north, likely off-road, sounded like the opposite of a good time. Thankfully, Hera seemed to agree.

"No, come back in. I'll need somebody to assist here while the Major's setting up."

"Copy that," Doug nodded, and that was the extent of their conversation for almost an hour, as Hera switched channel to guide the Major through a particularly dense swarm of Hungry.

Finally, Vulcan came into sight, all barbed wire and "Keep Out" signs.

"Coming in on the east side," Doug announced, hoping that Hera had safe approach planned -

Only to get radio static, crackly and blank.

Weird, Doug thought. Even working on two channels, Hera generally liked to guide them back into Vulcan, given how densely the Hungry tended to swarm round the base's perimeter.

Still, not much he could do about it except continue, and keep an eye out for drifters. Thankfully, the approach to the main gates seemed clear.

"Coming up on the main gates now," he confirmed. "I'll be needing them open in maybe 30 seconds?"

More static. Doug frowned.

"Hera, you hearing me?" he tried. Nothing. He gave the headset a careful tap, wondering if something inside of it had broken. Maybe Hera didn't know he'd arrived.

The gates were closer now, with their razor spikes and cameras. Closer, and resolutely, forbiddingly closed.

"Any chance of you opening up?" Doug asked out loud, not expecting much, and sure enough, nothing happened. He slowed, then stopped entirely, at a loss for what to do.

Could he force the gates, he wondered? Not likely, he thought. Vulcan was a military base, you couldn't just break into it like you would into somebody's abandoned lock-up. Which only left one thing for it. It would attract all the Hungry in a mile radius, but what other option did he have?

"Hera!" he shouted, as loud as he could. "I'm here, open up!"

The shout echoed mockingly back to him. The gates remained shut - and then a noise drew Doug's attention, so quiet it could barely be heard. A camera, high up on the gate, was swivelling, ever so slightly.

"Hera?" he tried, and he wasn't imagining it, the camera moved once, twice. A nod. "Hera, thank God," he sighed, relief flooding his limbs. "Is everything okay?"

A single twitch. No.

"Can you let me in?" he tried. If he could get in, he could at least help with... whatever the situation was.

No, came the answer. Huh.

"Is it a mechanical fault? Like, with the gates? You literally can't let me in?"

No again. Doug frowned. If there wasn't some kind of mechanical issue -

The camera swivelled again, turning fully this time to point towards Hilbert's lab building.

"This has something to do with the lab? Or Hilbert?"

An immediate yes, and there was something about it that nagged at Doug. Something to do with the PA, he thought - because they had a PA system. So why wasn't Hera using it?

Maybe she couldn't, Doug thought. And that inability to use the PA had something to do with Hilbert, apparently. A horrible picture was beginning to form in Doug's mind.

"Is Hilbert... holding you hostage, or something?"

It sounded ridiculous, spoken out loud, but then the camera nodded, its movements minuscule. Just the sort of movement you could make without somebody noticing - but why was Hera being so cautious about it? Hilbert could just be straight-up threatening her, Doug guessed.

Then he remembered the tree, the twins' giddy voices in the background as they decorated. Sophia, out making her den. Kara...somewhere.

Where were they now? Doug strained to hear, but there was nothing. And when he peered past the fencing, there was Sophia's den, abandoned halfway through. A new feeling settled into Doug's stomach, burning cold, and he needed to know -

"The kids, has Hilbert got the kids?"

Two movements, and Doug felt his fists clench. How dare Hilbert use the kids - Doug's kids - as leverage for whatever the hell this scheme was?

He almost growled - and then another thought occured to Doug, just as horrible as the last.

"The Major?"

The camera swivelled again, pointing outwards, northwards.

"You sent her out," Doug sighed. "I'm guessing the story with the Oak Springs mast was a lie?"

But there was no response. A pang of worry shot through Doug, but there wasn't much he could do about it - at least inside, Hera was safe from the Hungry, unlike Doug currently.

He glanced around anxiously, wondering when they would turn up. They always did, sooner or later, but he was really hoping for later. He wonders if he could break into Vulcan - barbed wire was a menace, but even if he cut himself up, it would be better than the alternative, right?

Doug walked over - only for a crackly voice from the PA's speaker to cut him off.

"Would not recommend coming closer to fence. Electrocution not a pretty way to die."

Doug scowled.

"Hilbert, you backstabbing, two-faced son of a -"

"Now, now. No need to lose your temper."

A snarl from Doug.

"Easy for you to say, sat inside holding the kids hostage like the coward you are."

It didn't get the rise Doug had hoped for, just a dry chuckle.

"Have been many things, but never coward. Try again, Douglas."

He sounded smug. Doug gritted his teeth, frustrated, and forced himself to address the real question.

"Why are you doing this, then, talking to me? Is it gloating, is that what this is?"

A dismissive noise.

"Pah, please. You think I am Bond villain? Gloating is sign of insecurity. I do not gloat."

Doug threw his hands up.

"Then what, exactly, are we doing? It is a distraction?"

A sigh.

"No. I need information. Passwords, logins. Anything needed to program satellite beacon. Could hack in, of course, but this way is s easier, quicker."

Doug frowned.

"And what makes you think I'm just going to hand that information over? Because if you haven't noticed, I'm pretty pissed at you right now."

Another chuckle.

"Oh, Douglas. Is almost too easy. Shall I spell it out, or should I ask Jaden to? Kara? How about Alex?"

Shit. The threat was obvious, cliché even, but there was no way he could risk it. Doug felt something tighten, vise-like, around his throat as he scrambled to respond.

"Leave them out of this."

A hum.

"Okay. In which case, passwords, logins," a pause, and then,"Quickly now."

Doug shook his head, wondering if be could spin things out.

"I don't - I don't know them by heart. I can't - I'm not good at - "

A noise that sounded an awful lot like a child being grabbed by the arm. The vise got tighter.

"They're written under the monitor. There's a sticky note - please -"

A pause.

"Very good. Thank you, Douglas."

A click as the PA disengaged, and Eiffel was alone. Stuck outside Vulcan with a bunch of Hungry likely approaching - which was probably Hilbert's plan all along, damn it.

"Hera?" he tried, but there was nothing, and he wondered what that meant. Was Hilbert holding the radio oeprator somewhere else? Was that why she wasn't on the PA? Or was she -

Doug cut that thought off, unwilling to follow it to its conclusion. Hera would be fine. She had to be fine.

He, on the other hand, might not be - not if he hung around out here. No Hungry had turned up yet, which had been a stroke of luck, but it was only a matter of time. He closed his eyes for a second, strained to hear and - yes, that was a faint growling, off in the trees. Shit.

He wondered if he could fight them off, but what was he supposed to fight with? Could he just run away? That didn't help Hera or the kids, so Doug quickly struck it from the options list. Try to break back into Vulcan? That seemed like the best bet, but how to keep the Hungry away while he did so?

The idea came like a bolt from the blue.

"Come on, come on, come on, please say I packed it, please say it's there."

He rifled through his pack, and sure enough, there it was, cool and faintly cloying. The Axe. Perfect for masking... well, just about any scent.

Doug popped the cap, shaking the deodorant once or twice before applying it liberally to his person. Only once he smelled sufficiently like a high school locker room did he stop, the taste of the Axe settling noxiously into the back of his throat.

The Hungry on the horizon now, he noticed. Time to see if my theory works.

Thankfully, after a few tense seconds they turned,  stopping maybe fifty feet away from Doug. It was a pain - the Hungry had just enough peripheral vision that he would have to stay very, very still - but at least they weren't actively trying to tear chunks out of him. He'd just have to wait until they left.

And wait he did. Somewhere around the half hour mark, he figured it was time to reapply the Axe, which required some stealthy maneuvering, but apart from that, Doug was stuck, crouching stock still, for what felt like hours.

He wouldn't have minded so much, if he hadn't worked out pretty early on a way to sneak back into Vulcan. He couldn't believe he hadn't remembered sooner - they'd had to dismantle part of the perimeter fence weeks ago to fit the new cistern the Major was so proud of. When the time came to replacing it, there had been a gap - a tiny gap, but Doug reckoned he could probably fit if he held his breath.

Finally, after what must have been at least an hour or two, the Hungry drifted off, lured away by some more enticing smell. Doug sighed, relief warring with fear for Hera and the kids. And the Major, part of him added, because he doubted Hilbert was letting Hera guide the officer on whatever wild goose chase Hilbert had sent her on.

Gritting his teeth, Doug got up, life flooding painfully back into his legs as he did so. With a grimace he got going, and it didn't take long, once he'd got over the pins and needles, to sneak under the perimeter fence which was, as he'd suspected, somewhat less secure than it should have been.

He allowed himself a moment of self-satisfied smugness. Then it was time to move, the beginnings of a plan coming together in Doug's mind. If only he could find the kids -

A noise reached him, faint but unmistakable, a snap, like somebody stepping on a twig, and then a whispered shushing. He frowned.

"Hello?"

A pause, and then -

"Doug?"

Whoever it was, they were hidden behind the water cistern, almost where he'd come in. He peered into the shadows there, and to his relief, there they were, four pairs of scared eyes staring right back at him. Kara had positioned herself proactively in front of the twins, he noticed, not without a certain pride. And Sophia -

"Where'd you get that?"

She shrugged, like she'd just found Doug's in-case-of-emergencies encrypted radio lying around. Which, to be fair, she might have.

"The Major once told us to grab anything that looked like that, if we had to leave," Kara explained. "That way we can call and find our way back, once it's safe."

Huh. Smart.

"I'm guessing you got away, then?" Doug checked. 

This time it was Jaden's turn to nod eagerly.

"Hilbert shut us in the bunk room, but the lock there's been broken for weeks. And we already knew about the fence. Sophia uses it when she wants to explore. And me and Alex too, we... uh, you know..."

He trailed off, clearly remembering that they were supposed to stay on base. Warned quite strictly, in fact.

"We always take a gun with us," Alex added, like that made it any better, and then Doug did a double take, because -

"You have a gun?"

Sophia nodded, turning to give Doug a better view of her side, where sure enough -

"That's definitely a gun. What - why - how-"

"The Major gave us it," Kara cut in.

Eiffel frowned.

"She gave you - but she didn't give - "

He cut himself off, remembering how terrible of a shot he'd been with the Major's service pistol.

"You know what, probably for the best. Good job getting away. Does Hilbert know you're gone?"

A shrug.

"Don't think so."

Doug nodded, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind.

"Okay, good. First thing first, then, you're gonna keep the gun, but give me that radio."

Ten minutes later, the kids were gone, the radio was keyed into a very specific frequency, and Doug, now crouching by the main front gate, seemed to have survived undetected. Crossing his fingers he pressed the radio's button, hoping against hope that the call would connect the way he wanted it to.

A snatch of Dancing Queen, then a shrill noise, and then -

"Hello? Who is this?" 

Doug allowed himself a tiny smile, before putting on the blandest accent he could, a sort of mid-Atlantic, English-as-a-second-language drawl. Without any clue who Hilbert was expecting on the other end of the line, better to play it safe, after all.

"Why, if it isn't Dr. Hilbert himself, the man of the hour."

A pause, and then -

"You are responding to satellite beacon."

Doug nodded.

"That I am."

"Is quicker than I expected. Thought it was night time over there."

Interesting. Doug hummed noncomittally.

"You call, I pick up."

A pause as the doctor digested that, and then -

"Am glad. Matter of importance has arisen. Possible Theta scenario."

Doug hummed again.

"Tell me more."

Hilbert was practically tripping over his words now in his haste to explain.

"Signal, constant and reliable, keyed to military frequency. Coming from north, perhaps Chicago, perhaps further. Keyed to popular music, but I am yet to break code."

Doug nodded.

"And the base personnel?"

"Major Minkowski and Douglas Eiffel have been left for Hungry. Can safely assume both have been eliminated."

Doug felt a stab of something in his chest, but forced his voice to stay even.

"And the others?"

"Children are locked in bunk room. And radio operator should not cause trouble, not as long as children are secure."

Eiffel hummed.

"And you're sure about that? That the children are secure, I mean?"

A pause, and he could almost see Hilbert rolling his eyes.

"Yes, children are secure. Would not have called if not."

"And you've taken the radio operator's headset away, I presume?"

A pause, more irritated.

"Operator is locked in quarters, away from children. Still has headset. But as I have said, she will not risk causing trouble -"

"Not when the children are secure, I heard you the first time." Doug nodded. "Thing is, that leaves a lot riding on these kids. It'd be a shame if they escaped, wouldn't it? I mean, they'd probably take a radio of their own, and if that radio was used to contact your radio operator - but I'm being silly, the kids are secure, right? I mean, when did you last check in on them? Ten minutes ago? Fifteen?"

It was at least an hour, Eiffel knew, but he was willing to bet Hilbert wouldn't admit that.

"Length of time does not matter," he interjected, finally. "Children are secure, and children are children, should not need constant minding."

Doug paused, just long enough to make his doubt clear.

"Well, if you're sure..."

He trailed off, waiting, waiting, until, through gritted teeth -

"I can check, if it is concern."

Doug hummed agreeably.

"How very obliging."

Through the headset he heard the scrape of a chair moving, a door opening. And then, just as they'd planned when he contacted her five minutes ago -

"Aargh, what the-"

"Oh, shut up."

A crash, followed by a pained whimper.

"But you - but I - you can't-

A grunt, then another crash, the clatter of a gun on the bunker's concrete floor, and the sound of a radio operator picking it up.

"Can't I?"

The gun's safety clicked off, eliciting another whimper from the doctor. Hera snorted.

"Much better. Now, you'll stay down, if you know what's good for you, you treacherous snake. Or do you want to be overrun by Hungry? Doug's at the gate right now, he'll open it if I say so."

Hilbert coughed. It sounded painful.

"But you can't - you can't do that - not when the kids-"

"The kids left," Doug cut in, switching back to his normal voice. "They got out ages ago."

He shook his head.

"Face it, doc, the kids are gone and Hera has your gun. You're all out of leverage."

A pause, and for a second Doug thought they'd cracked it. Then came a movement, a rustling, a tiny intake a breath on the other end of the line, and he realized he might have spoken too soon.

"Hera?"

A pause, and then Hera was back on the line, much quieter than before.

"He's got a second gun."

Crap. Okay, that wasn't great. Still, if Doug could just get to the emergency release on the gate  -

Hera did something, moved somehow, and then there was a crack, one Doug could hear even without the radio. He felt sick.

"Hera? Hera, are you - did he just - Hera?!"

Silence, blank and unpleasant.

"Hera? Hera, do you copy?"

A dark chuckle.

"Hera is a little... indisposed, right now, I'm afraid."

He sounded smug and Doug frowned, because it didn't make sense. Hera couldn't be - Hilbert wouldn't have - it didn't make sense, Doug was the one who -

"I'll open the gate," he blurted out, the plan coming back to him in desperate flashes. Except Hilbert wasn't saying anything, which Doug was fairly sure wasn't on the cards.

"I'll open it," he repeated, in case the doctor hadn't heard. "I've even got jerky on me. Could use that to lead them straight to your door, you want that? Huh?"

More silence, and Doug realised, with a sinking feeling, that the doctor was calling his bluff. Open the gate, then, he could practically hear the Russian saying. Suicide by Hungry, not a pretty death for you or for me.

If he was thinking, he probably would have stopped then. Hilbert talked a big game, after all, but the doctor still had everything to lose, he was probably banking on Doug not having the guts to actually go through with it, and that was something Doug could leverage. It was the safe option, the smart option.

Unfortunately, safe and smart were two things Doug Eiffel had never been accused of being, even on his best day. And today had been a hell of a shitty day.

The gate rattled on its way down, collapsing with a rusty echo, and if there weren't Hungry before, there certainly would be in a minute or two.

"But - but - you can't - that was mistake," came a strangled voice through the radio, and Doug laughed, because sure, the undead were about to eat him, but it was still nice to be proven right. Then he remembered that Hilbert had shot - had probably killed - Hera.

"You ready for that jerky now?" he practically snarled.

He didn't hear if Hilbert replied, just ran for the comms room, pulling the jerky from his pocket as he went. If he could just get it through a window, or a vent, or force the door -

But as he got there, Hilbert was already on his way out, the door swinging on its hinges. Running, Doug thought. Not that it would do the doctor any good. The Hungry had come through the gate, after all - Doug could hear them already, slavering and groaning in the main yard.

"This is your fault," the doctor cried, when he saw Doug. "Did not think you were so idiotic as to open gate, but apparently you are!"

Doug felt his fists clench.

"Funny how shooting a guy's best friend can force them into snap decisions like that!"

The doctor shook his head.

"Is not rational, is not -"

Doug snorted, a wild, hysterical snort, devoid of any actual humor.

"My God, do you even hear yourself? Is not rational, does not compute, does not compute."

He shook his head in disgust.

"Look, I'll help you out. Stupid runner makes stupid decision in order to screw over the even stupider son of a bitch who tried to kill him and all his friends. Sometimes it's just that simple."

Hilbert's mouth was opening and closing like a fish, his eyes wide, and for a gratifying moment, Doug thought that maybe he'd struck the fear of God into the sorry weasel.

Then he heard the keening squeals behind him, smelled the petrol fumes, felt rather than heard the rat-a-tat-tat of bullets slicing through the air as he turned.

"Is that - "

But Doug cut himself off, because it clearly was. Major Minkowski really was taking out the Hungry with the bastard lovechild of an industrial-strength flamethrower and an AK-47. It was simultaneously the most beautiful and the most metal thing Doug had ever seen.

"Well, don't just gawk," the Major yelled, and Doug blinked, because yeah, he was gawking, wasn't he? Not that Hilbert was doing much better -

It was at this point that three things happened simultaneously.

Firstly, the doctor made an ill-timed break for the gate.

Secondly, Doug let out a shout of pure, suppressed rage that surprised even him.

And thirdly, but possibly most importantly, the Major finished incinerating-slash-gunning-down the final Hungry, and, alerted by Doug's cry, brought the butt of the gun up to connect firmly and satisfyingly with Hilbert's head.

The doctor fell, and once, twice, the Major hit him again. Finally, once it became apparent that he wasn't getting up again, she lowered the gun, nodding shakily.

"He's out," she confirmed, out of breath like she'd just run a half marathon, and for all Doug knew, she might have.

"Last I heard, they sent you out north, cut your radio," he said, his voice almost as unsteady as the Major's. "Thought for certain you were Hungry-bait."

A tired shrug.

"I climbed a tree for a while, then picked this baby up at a safehouse en route back. You?"

A matching shrug.

"Used my trusty Axe to fend them off."

The Major frowned.

"You used a - where did you get - no, never mind. Hera? The kids?"

Doug felt something inside him lurch.

"Kids are safe," he said, knowing it would soften the blow. "They took a radio, got themselves out."

The Major nodded, but Doug could tell she was doing the math already.

"Hera?"

Doug shook his head, his throat closing up.

"Hilbert - he  -"

But he couldn't say it, just pointed towards the comms room. The Major paled, her mouth falling open slightly.

"Is she -"

She cut herself off, turning briskly towards the low building, and not for the first time, Doug was struck by how much better the Major was than him at this kind of thing. It was sick really, how grateful he was that somebody else would be the first to - would have to - would be the one to -

"Doug? Doug! Did you hear me? Hera's alive, but she's bleeding, I'm gonna need bandages, scissors, a suture kit - Doug!"

He blinked. Hera was - but - but Hilbert -

Shaking his head, he turned and ran. Time for processing later. Hera needed him right now. Hera was alive. And Hera needed him.

It was a mantra Doug could hang onto, even as the rest of the world faded into a blurry haze around him, a whirlwind of blood and gauze and more pressure, put more pressure on it.

It was there, running through his mind, as he tied Hilbert up, checking and double checking the knots before throwing the doctor, none too gently, into the brig the Major had fitted up, all those months ago.

It was still there as he called the kids back, explaining to them in a surprisingly even voice, once they arrived, that Hera couldn't see them right now, that the Major was busy looking after her, but why don't I make you some hot chocolate, special Christmas treat?

And it was certainly there as he fixed the gate, ignoring his aching back and shoulders and nodding his thanks as Sophia silently passed him the tools he needed.

It was only when the gate was done, when there was no risk of the Hungry getting back in, and when the kids were safely in bed, Kara reading the younger ones a story, that Doug let himself sneak back through to the comms room, now transformed into a med bay, the tinsel and holly from earlier pushed aside to make room for a cot and a camp chair.

"How's it going?"

The Major, perched in the camp chair, sighed.

"Hard to tell. She's alive, at least. Blood pressure's... well, not normal, but better than it was. The wound stitched up clean enough, no signs of infection yet. And she's breathing on her own. That's generally a good sign."

And Doug's brows knit together, because that sounded great. So why did the Major sound like she was about to cry?

"But?" he prompted, and sure enough, the Major's shoulder's slumped.

"She's not woken up, at all. No response to stimuli, not even pain. Barely any pupil response."

Doug frowned.

"So she's what? In a coma?"

A tired laugh.

"Damned if I know. I'm a military officer, Doug. Neuroscience doesn't come into that a whole lot."

Silence for a moment.

"What do we do, then?" he asked, finally, and the Major shrugged.

"We keep her comfortable, keep an eye on her. Talk to her, maybe? They do that in films, right?" 

And she was looking at Doug, because he was the film guy, so of course he'd know. Except he didn't, because turns out - 

A shrill beeping cut that thought off, and Doug's eyes jumped immediately to the heart monitor.

"Is that -"

The Major shook her head.

"Not anything medical. Comms desk?"

But Doug was already shaking his head. 

"I know the alerts, it's not any of them."

And yet, he had heard it before, and recently. He closed his eyes, focussing in on the sound, on how grating it was, how shrill. He'd heard it already today, if only he could work out where -

"Got it," the Major cried, fumbling around under the Christmas tree. "Must have gotten knocked under here earlier." 

And then she held it up, and Doug felt sick all over again. 

"It's the receiver," he said. "For the satellite beacon." 

"Meaning?" 

Doug sighed. 

"Meaning, whoever Hilbert left a message for after the tone, this must be them calling back." 

The question hung, unspoken, in the air between them.  Do we pick up?

The receiver kept ringing. The heart monitor kept beeping. Hera, lying next to it, kept breathing, in and then steadily out. 

Doug looked across to the Major, and the Major met his gaze. Silently, a decision was made.

Chapter Text

Cutter took a measured sip of his coffee, then looked at the man opposite him.

"Tell me that again," Cutter said, "But this time, get straight to the point. Can you do that for me?"

The smaller man swallowed minutely.

"Yes, sir."

Cutter smiled.

"Go on, then."

The smaller man nodded.

"Of course. Sorry, sir. Three hours ago today we received a message from Berlin. Volodin, we believe."

Cutter raised an eyebrow.

"You believe?"

The smaller man shrugged.

"Our channels of communication have their limitations. We prefer not to use names, even coded."

Cutter nodded.

"And the content of this message that may not be from Dmitri?"

"One word. Or a letter, more properly. Greek. Theta."

Cutter frowned.

"Theta?" he repeated.

The smaller man nodded.

Cutter said nothing for a few seconds, his grip tightening on his coffee cup.

Finally, he made a gesture, as if to dismiss the smaller man, who left with a fumbled half-salute.

Alone, Cutter closed his eyes, just for a moment, breathing briefly in and gently out.

Then his eyes opened, and he reached for the telephone. He had a call to make.

Half the world away, a stone's throw from Friedrichstraße, a phone was ringing.

"Should we answer?" Eiffel asked the woman opposite him.

She shrugged.

"I don't see what choice we have."

Minkowski was a practical woman. Only a select number of people had the number for the phone that was currently ringing. None of them were worth angering.

Eiffel nodded, and Minkowski reached for the receiver.

"Minkowski, Berlin office."

A moment, then a chuckle on the other end.

"Renée. Darling Renée. What an unexpected pleasure."

Minkowski remained silent, and Cutter sighed.

"You know, I was expecting Alexander. He said..."

Cutter trailed off, as if he'd let something slip.

"Well, that's hardly the point, is it, Renée? Because instead of Alexander, I'm talking to you. I presume there's a reason for that."

Minkowski hummed slightly, using the opportunity to take a slow breath in. It was a diplomatic trick she'd picked up over the years, a pause to collect herself. It had served her well in Belgrade, in Lusaka, in Trieste.

"Indeed there is, sir," she said, once she had done so. "You see, at 1500 hours local time, an incident occurred that brought up certain questions regarding the nature of our mission here."

A pause.

"Is that so?"

Minkowski nodded.

"As of this afternoon - "

But it was here that Eiffel interrupted, crossing the room to slam the door as if he'd just come in.

"Ma'am? Weitz is downstairs. Says it's urgent that - crap, I didn't know you were on a call, I'm sorry. I can tell him to wait, if that's - "

Minkowski cut him off, nodding to signal her understanding. An ocean away, Cutter smiled tightly.

"Is that Doug I hear?"

Minkowski hummed.

"Yes, sir."

"And did I catch that right, he was saying something about Weitz?"

A pause.

"Yes, sir. Do you want me to check -"

"If you would, Renée."

Minkowski looked up from the receiver, an eyebrow raised. Eiffel swallowed.

"Weitz is downstairs, ma'am. Says he never received the package you promised. Claims he's here to pick it up from you personally."

Minkowski tilted her head slightly.

"I sent it with Müller."

Eiffel shook his head.

"Müller screwed up, then. Weitz says he never received it," he repeated, "And that he wants to get it from you, right now."

He stared pointedly at Minkowski. On the phone Cutter made a sort of tutting noise.

"So impatient, some of our contacts. And all over what I'm sure is a misunderstanding, right Renée?"

Minkowski bit her lip.

"I'm sure, sir. Still, Weitz has been known to get jumpy if left waiting."

She paused, asking for permission, and Cutter sighed.

"Go on, then, sort it out."

Minkowski nodded.

"Thank you, sir."

But the line was dead.

Minkowski turned to Eiffel, a frown on her face.

"Weitz isn't really downstairs."

It was a statement, not a question. Eiffel shook his head.

"Weitz isn't even in town. Conference in Karl-Marx-Stadt."

Minkowski nodded.

"So? Why the cover story?"

Eiffel shrugged.

"It could be nothing, but I don't think we should tell Cutter about the transmissions."

Minkowski frowned and Eiffel leant forward towards her.

"Think about it. We intercept some sort of transmission, and immediately Hilbert turns on us. Half an hour later, Cutter's calling, and he's surprised to hear from us. You see where I'm going with this?"

Minkowski stared at him for a moment, her lips pursing.

"You think he ordered Hilbert to kill us?"

Eiffel shrugged again.

"I'm saying, Hilbert seemed pretty sure that somebody higher up the chain of command had his back, even after he tried to kill us. And now here's Cutter calling. Cutter never calls."

Minkowski thought it over for a second, before shaking her head.

"If Cutter wanted us out of the picture, he wouldn't need Hilbert to do it. One leak to our East German friends would sort that, and much less messily, too."

Eiffel shook his head in turn.

"Too risky. Cutter lets the SED handle it, there's a chance they dig into why, work out more than he intended. Hilbert's safer, more predictable. Plus, say what you like about him, the guy does his best work when he's given a job he can really get his teeth into."

Minkowski frowned.

"So you're saying, what? He was allowed to kill us as some sick sort of reward?"

Eiffel shrugged.

"I'm saying, bargain-basement Dr. No here likes to feel important, like he's doing the dirty work nobody else has the balls for. If I were Cutter, I'd lean on that, let Hilbert play the pet psycho for a bit. I mean, as long as the job gets done, what does a bit of mess matter?"

Minkowski thought it over for a few seconds, before swearing.

"You're right."

Eiffel chuckled. There wasn't much humour in it.

"First time for everything, eh?"

He paused.

"What do we say to him, then? Cutter, I mean."

Minkowski pressed her lips together before speaking.

"We tell him the truth, just not the whole truth. We leave out the signals, keep everything else. That way, if Hilbert already contacted him, we've got a story that works."

"And if Hilbert mentioned the transmissions?"

She shrugged.

"A delusion. It's a stressful line of work, in a stressful city. Frankly it's a miracle none of us cracked sooner."

Eiffel nodded, and Minkowski reached for the phone, punching a number in.

It rang, once, then twice. It didn't get to a third ring.

"Marcus Cutter speaking."

"Sir."

A pause, but only for a moment.

"Renée. Back already. I take it the business with Weitz resolved itself."

"Yes, sir," Minkowski confirmed, her voice even.

"Excellent. I do so hate it when our contacts decide to be difficult. It forces me to make all sorts of unpleasant decisions."

Eiffel glanced towards Minkowski, but her face was impassive.

"But enough of that," Cutter continued, "You wanted to tell me something about an incident, didn't you?"

Minkowski swallowed, almost imperceptibly.

"Yes, sir. You see, at around 1500 local time, Hilbert experienced what I can only describe as a mental breakdown. He drew a gun on both myself and Agent Eiffel, and when Hera tried to stall, he threatened to out her to the government."

Cutter made a confused-sounding noise.

"Hera?"

Minkowski's mouth twisted.

"You spoke to her last time you called, sir. She's local, working with us the for the last year, at considerable personal risk."

"Oh, you mean Michaela?"

Minkowski winced.

"We use Hera, especially over the telephone. Our friend is quite insistent. She enjoys a certain reputation here."

"She enjoyed a certain reputation," Cutter corrected. "Now she's gone. Am I right?"

A sigh.

"Hera's in the wind, yes."

"By choice?"

The alternative hung in the air between them. Hera, shoved into the back of a van. Hera, languishing in a concrete cell. Hera, lying dead in a gutter.

"We don't know," Minkowski admitted. In reality they had more than a vague suspicion. "Hilbert threatened her with something, sent her off to do a job, got very angry when she failed to do it, and now she's AWOL."

An absent-minded noise.

"Alexander himself?"

"Subdued, sir."

"Good," Cutter purred. "Well, it sounds like you have things under control, Renée."

She frowned.

"With all due respect, sir - "

"With all due respect, Renée, I know what you're about to say. Your position is untenable, the staffing situation precarious. The business with Michaela is a liability, for you and for your contacts, and on top of that you're afraid Alexander might have passed God only knows what to God only knows who. In short, things in Berlin are getting too damn hot."

Minkowski opened her mouth, then closed it again. On the other end, Cutter chuckled.

"I take it I got the main points."

Minkowski's silence was confirmation enough. A continent away, Cutter nodded to himself.

"Great. Well, you know what I say in response, Renée? Do you?"

A pause.

"No, sir."

Cutter's smile widened.

"I say, tough luck. Deal with it. We're in the middle of a very cold war, Renée, I don't know if you've noticed that. So if things in Berlin are getting too damn hot, may I suggest you crack open a window. There's a chill wind blowing in from the East, these days, or so I've heard. It might prove... motivating."

Minkowski's frown deepened.

"Our funding - "

"Is sufficient."

"With only two staff -"

"You'll get by."

"Sir, the consequences if this goes wrong -"

"Are not my problem. Renée, it feels an awful lot like you are gearing up to argue with me, and I would hate for that to be the case. Why, if we started arguing, I imagine all sorts of careless things could happen."

He trailed off, giving Minkowski space to respond. She didn't.

"Much better," Cutter hummed. "Now, what I suggest, since you so carelessly lost your favorite Communist, is that you go clear out her stuff. Alexander's too. See if you can work out what he sent her off to do, then run damage control like your lives depend on it. Because they do, Renée. If I hear one word about this in the American or the German press, either of them..."

He paused, as if he'd changed his mind.

"But what am I saying? That won't be an issue, will it, Renée?"

She gritted her teeth.

"No, sir."

"Excellent. Any questions, before I leave you to it?"

"No, sir. No questions."

"Great, well if that's -"

"Sir?"

Minkowski frowned at the interruption, turning away from the receiver.

"Yes, Eiffel?"

"I, uh, I acrually have a question for him. If that's okay, I mean."

Minkowski sighed, relaying this information to Cutter, who hummed agreeably.

"Fire away."

Minkowski passed the receiver over, and Eiffel cleared his throat slightly.

"I, uh, I guess I was wondering what we should do with Hilbert, at least until he can be extradited. Currently - "

Cutter cut him off.

"Extradited? Oh, Doug. Doug, Doug, Doug. What makes you think we're going to extradite him?"

Eiffel frowned.

"But if he's not extradited, that means he stays here, and we're not equipped for long-term detention. Hell, we're barely equipped for short-term detention, or have you forgotten-"

Minkowski shook her head sharply, grabbing the receiver.

"What Agent Eiffel means to say is that keeping Hilbert here may prove tough, operationally."

A noise on the other end.

"Operationally. I hear you, Renée. Loud and clear. And if you don't think you can hold Alexander, then I say, don't. Hand him over as a traitor. To the Stasi, the Soviets, whoever will take him. Or, alternatively, you can make your own arrangements, sort the matter more permanently, if you catch my drift."

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent. Well, if there's nothing else?"

He paused a moment, waiting for an objection that never came. 

"Fantastic. Well, your quarterly report's due in about a month. I look forward to hearing from you then. Goodbye, Renée."

With a click, the line went dead. Minkowski placed the receiver carefully back on the cradle, her mouth a tight line.

Eiffel broke first.

"We're screwed, aren't we? We're actually, properly, grade-A, up-the-ass screwed this time."

Minkowski bit her lip.

"It's not ideal. It's far from ideal," she admitted. "But -"

"But what?" Eiffel cut in. "Hilbert's locked in the basement, Hera could be rotting in a ditch for all we know, and it turns out we were working for KAOS all along, and our mission, should we choose to accept it, is straight up extrajudicial murder. So go on, Commander. What can you say that will make it all better?"

He stared at Minkowski, hjs eyebrows raised, until she looked away.

"I can't say anything," she said, finally, almost to herself. "You're right. We're screwed. And I can't say anything to make that better. I'm sorry, Eiffel."

Her voice caught at the end. Most people wouldn't have noticed, but Eiffel and Minkowski had been trained to catch the signs that distinguished a subject who was truly at the end of their rope from a subject faking it.

"It's not your fault," Eiffel blurted out. "You couldn't have known Hilbert was going to do what he did."

Minkwoski pressed her lips together, and Eiffel shook his head.

"You're making the face. The "Eiffel's talking out of his ass" face. And you know what? For once, I'm not actually talking out of my ass. You genuinely couldn't have known. Or are you psychic now?"

He raised his eyebrows, and when it became clear he expected an answer, Minkowski shook her head.

"Not psychic. But I should have known. I'm lead on this project, I should have seen it."

Eiffel scoffed.

"Yeah, and I should have phoned up JFK the morning of his assassination and told him to take a sick day. Even if I could have, it's not like he would have listened. And it's the same with Hilbert. I mean, I know I complained about him being an evil traitor, but I didn't really believe he was. Nobody would be so obvious about it, right? Right?"

"No, I guess not," she said, with an odd sound, as Eiffel continued.

"I mean, look at him. The accent, the hairline, the coat. The nuke he's definitely not got stashed out in Marzahn. If he'd auditioned to play Dr. Strangelove, he'd have been turned down for being too cliché."

Minkowski's eyes were glinting slightly as she nodded.

"God, I can imagine it. "Sir, have you tried not behaving like a villain from a Saturday morning cartoon?" And Hilbert just giving them the look, you know the one..."

She pulled a face, and they both laughed, a tired, slightly hysterical laugh that went on longer than it should have.

It was several moments before they lapsed into silence.

Eiffel's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.

"Are you going to kill him?" he asked.

Minkowski shook her head.

"I don't think so, no."

A pause, as she weighed up whether or not to expand. 

"We need information," she volunteered finally. "Information that's not coming via Cutter. Hilbert may be a traitor, but while he's our prisoner, we've got leverage over him. Not least because the guy giving his orders just told us to dispose of him. If I were Hilbert, that would piss me off."

"Enough that you'd talk?"

Minkowski shrugged.

"It's worth a shot. We tell Cutter we've dealt with him, keep Hilbert here off the books

Or would you rather kill him?"

Eiffel shook his head mutely, and Minkowski nodded.

"Good."

She paused, glanced at Eiffel.

"I think Cutter's other suggestion had some merit, though."

Eiffel frowned, clearly confused, and Minkowski sighed.

"Clearing out Hera's stuff. There could be a clue, something to help us find her. Even if -"

She saw Eiffel's face, cut herself off.

"Even if," she repeated, more quietly.

Eiffel pressed his lips together. It was a good idea, he knew. A logical next step. But given what Hilbert had said -

"Is there any point?"

Minkowski turned slightly to face Eiffel, her jaw set.

"There has to be," she said, and it was decided.

There wasn't much to go through, in the end. Hera was as intelligent as she was paranoid, so most of what she had wasn't written down. It was all in her mind - that, and a single, unmarked drawer, unobtrusive unless you knew it was hers.

It took Minkowski three attempts to crack the lock while Eiffel fidgeted in the background. He'd have forced it already, but Minkowski insisted. No point damaging whatever was in there.

Finally, the lock clicked, and the drawer slid open. There wasn't much inside. Some files, which Minkowski took to check through. A passport under the name of Anja Schneider. A wad of bank notes - various currencies, all western. And a notebook, blank.

Minkowski held it up to get a closer look. Invisible ink was invisible, but in her experience there was usually a give-away - a pen scratch, a sheen to the page, a faint but distinctive smell. She tilted tne book, watching the light reflect off the page, but there was nothing.

She shook her head, and Eiffel sighed.

"Guess that's that," he said, glancing down at the drawer, which was now empty.

"I guess so," Minkowski nodded. She was looking at the drawer too, but her gaze was different to Eiffel's. Where the younger agent seemed resigned, deflated, Minkowski was squinting, her brows knitting together.

She turned to Eiffel.

"Strange question, but does the drawer seem off, to you?"

Eiffel frowned.

"What do you mean?"

Minkowski tilted her head.

"I don't know. But it looks weird, now it's empty. Look at the edge, there," she pointed. "There's a join. Like somebody took the drawer apart and glued it back together again."

Eiffel shrugged.

"Maybe they did. It's an old desk."

It was, a blocky Biedermeier roll-top piece, with drawers to match - heavy, well-built drawers that should have been just a few inches larger than the one Minkowski was looking at.

In a fluid movement, she pulled the drawer out entirely, reaching in with her other arm to push firmly against the back of the desk.

With a crack, something shifted.

Without a word, Eiffel stepped back as his boss set about forcing the other drawers open, pulling them out one by one only to set them aside.

Dust motes quickly filled the air, and Eiffel coughed as Minkowski reached inside to pull out -

"What is that?"

Minkowski pursed her lips, peering further in.

"It's a file. A few files, looks like. Handwritten."

Eiffel frowned.

"Hera's?"

Minkowski shook her head.

"Older. Look at the paper. I don't think Hera ever even looked back here. Whoever left this-"

"They were here before us. What does it say?"

Minkowski flipped through the pages, shrugged.

"It's encoded, or in some sort of shorthand, I don't know? You take a look."

Eiffel took the papers. It was code, for sure, and a familiar code, at that.

"I've seen this before," he murmured. "The weird symbol in the vents, it repeats here. Look, that's it there, with the downstroke, and the crossbar. And this one, like a backwards B, that was there too."

A look from Minkowski.

"Can you do anything with it?"

Eiffel shrugged.

"Give me time - could be days, could be weeks. Could be months if it's encoded beyond just the script."

Minkowski groaned, made a move to hand Eiffel the other files - only for a note to fall out, typewritten and neatly folded.

Eiffel reached for it.

"It's in English," he said, opening it up. "Plain old, non-encoded English."

Minkwoski raised an eyebrow, and Eiffel began to read.

"I hope nobody has to read this letter. I hope I am wrong. However, if you're reading this, it means I was right. It means there is more going on here than meets the eye. It means I'm probably dead.

I don't know you, nor do you know me, but my name is Lovelace. I'm a covert operative working for the United States government on a special project, one they named Hephaestus, after the blacksmith god, the inventor god. It was supposedly about weapons - hence the name. We were to research new weapons, and monitor the weapons being developed by our friends to the East - except I'm beginning to doubt if that was ever the goal.

I arrived with a six-man team. Two of us are still alive. The rest died, one by one, in pain. Poison, I suspect, though Dr. Selberg hasn't been able to confirm it. He and I are the last two left, and I don't know how long we have.

Three months ago, Major Young cut all contact with us. Rhea, our local contact, went off the grid. We've barely left the building since then. Too risky. But even here, something's not right. Something about the mission's wrong, deeply and fundamentally, in ways I can't explain here. Decode the notes. It's all in there. The key - well, you'll work it out.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope nobody has to read this letter. But if you are reading, know this. You are not the first. I, Isabel Lovelace, was here. We all were. And now you are, too.

Whoever your superiors are, don't trust them. Do what you must to stop them. Do what you can to save yourselves. You're not the first; I pray to God that you're the last.

Courage,
Isabel Lovelace"

Half the world away, in an airy corner office, Marcus Cutter shook his head.

"Strike Dmitri from the roster," he said to the man opposite him, his tone casual. "And tighten the leash on the Berlin team. They're getting twitchy."

The smaller man nodded.

In his mug, Cutter's coffee had gotten very cold.

Chapter Text

A long time ago, in a far-away land, there grew a plant, originally cultivated in a land even further away, and prized above all others for its exotic beauty. Throughout the realm, men would leave their homes and families, selling all their worldly goods in order to purchase but a few bulbs, lured in by the promises of a fortune to be made.

That sound like a dumb fairytale? Yeah, it did to me, too. And then, there I was, with all the rest. Amsterdam, 1636, in a tavern that had seen better days, arguing loudly with Renée Minkowski about a shipment of tulips fresh from the fields of North Holland.

"They're half-rotten," she shook her head, her hands thrown up in outrage. "This is barely worth the buy-in fee, I hope you didn't pay the full five thousand."

I winced, but said nothing. Renée could read me like a book anyway, there was no point. As if to prove me right, she looked me square in the eye, then shook her head.

"Unbelievble. You didn't pay five thousand, you paid more. Krijg de pest, Eiffel, how often do I have to tell you?"

She shook her head, exasperated.

"Tell me they're broken, at least."

I winced.

"They don't exactly... I mean they're not... I didn't... it was Dijkstra's kid, you know they need the money right now."

Minkowski looked like she was about to diaagree, but fianally she sighed, pressing her lips together, and I knew I had her. The Dijkstras were... well, you didn't have friends in this business, but they'd been reliable, right up until the father's ship went down in Batavia. Minkowski had a soft spot for Willem, and I wasn't above exploiting that.

"I'll expect you to make it back, understood? Remember, I'm not in the business of gambling."

I nodded, putting on a show of teeth-gritted penitence for anyone watching.

"I'm sorry, madame. I'll do better."

"See to it."

I bowed slightly. It wasn't strictly necessary, but everyone in the inn knew who we worked for. If reports of this conversation were to somehow make it back to Cutter, after the correspondence we'd just received from him, I wanted my utter, chastised dejection to jump off the page.

Shaking her head, Minkowski stood.

"I think I've had enough talk for the evening. Our rooms are this way, I believe. Unless you'd rather stay and drink away your rapidly-declining cut of our profits?"

She raised an eyebrow, and I heard the folks around us start talking just a bit too loudly. Success, I thought, shaking my head meekly and getting up to follow.

"No, madame. Sorry, madame."

A smile on her face, imperceptible to all but the keenest of eyes, she made a show of bidding me good night before closing her door. Only once I had returned my room could I relax, kicking my shoes off before waiting for someone at the other door, the one connecting our rooms.

Finally, predictable as a hangover after one too many jenevers, a rapping.

"Minkowski," I grinned, as she emerged. "Fancy meeting you here. And in a state of undress," I noted, taking in the chemise. "Scandalous indeed, madame."

Minkowski rolled her eyes.

"It's nothing you haven't seen before," she said. "And I'll thank you not to bring madame into it. Dominique knows exactly what I'm doing here, and is more than happy for me to dress and conduct myself as I please, as long as he is kept reliably in silks and satins. Though if you keep paying thousands of guilders for mouldy turnips..."

She trailed off, clearly genuinely annoyed, and I rolled my eyes.

"I know good bulbs from bad, Minkowski. It was the only way Greetje was going to tell me anything."

Minkowski's eyes narrowed, and I could tell I'd surprised her.

"You got something, then?"

I shrugged.

"Not much. But not nothing. I asked about our mysterious predecessor, and she said there was a woman at church a few times. Not attending, just hanging round, waiting for somebody. Isabelle, she thought?"

Minkwoski frowned at my admittedly terrible pronunciation.

"French?"

"Greetje thought so."

Minkowski frowned, no doubt adding that to our depressingly small collection of information on the mystery agent Cutter might or might not have sent ahead of us. Madame de L. Isabelle. French, perhaps. Sent to Delft and then to Amsterdam to chase a shipment of something from Constantinople that never seemed to have materialised. Worked with a team, though we knew even less about them than we did about the mysterious Madame de L.

We sat in frustrated silence for a moment as we contemplated that fact. Finally, Minkowski sighed.

"We need to talk to Hilbert again."

I frowned. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to Hilbert - I mean, I didn't, but that was for separate reasons mostly linked to him stabbing us in the back and killing our most reliable source of local gossip. Other than that, I could see the point. But at this time of night?

I gestured sweepingly towards Minkowski's nightdress, towards my own bare feet, towards the dubious comforts of the inn's third-best bed.

Taking my point, she sighed.

"Yes, you're right. First thing tomorrow, we go down. Bright and early, you got that?"

"Bright and early," I echoed back, like I had a say in the matter.

It was exceedingly bright and very early indeed when we set off.

"Remind me again why we can't go later?"

Minkowksi sighed, shifting the basket to her other hand.

"Because Gerrit's only on duty for another hour, and we know he'll let us in."

I sighed and she rolled her eyes.

"You've worked in this industry for three years, Eiffel. You'd think you'd get used to the early mornings."

"You'd think, and yet..."

We worked our way along the narrow streets, until we reached our destination.

"Madame," Gerrit nodded respectfully as Minkowski approached. Then, with a decidedly less impressed look at me, "And company."

"And company," Minkowksi nodded. "Here to see the prisoner."

The guard nodded again, before shuffling quickly aside. Probably liked being around Hilbert about as much as we did - which was to say, not at all, but a job's a job.

He was lounging when we got there, the slimy toad. Didn't even look at us properly, just a tilt of the head, then it was back to staring at the ceiling from his moth-eaten bed. I was surprised the thing was in a state to hold him, but then again, Hilbert always was scrawny.

We stood for a moment, until Minkowski spoke, her distaste for the former broker evident.

"Hilbert."

His lip curled slightly, the only sign he'd heard.

Finally, after several slow seconds, a familiar, rumbling accent.

"Madame Minkowski. Pleasure, as ever."

Her mouth twisted.

"Would I could say the same. I don't typically enjoy keeping company with murderers."

Hilbert tutted.

"Still hung up on that? She was maidservant, Minkowski. Guilder a day, you hire new maidservant. Better maidservant, perhaps."

New - better - why that -

Minkowski threw a hand out before I could punch him, and really, it was just as well.

"Not worth it," she murmured, in that low tone she used when she was really, properly pissed. "Let me handle this."

I felt myself fall back, and Minkowski nodded, approving.

"Good. Now let's talk. Prison, Hilbert. How have you been finding it?"

As well as he could from his prone position, Hilbert shrugged.

"Is tedious, cold. But not without merit. Plenty of time to develop theories. Lots to test once I am released."

Minkowski winced ostentatiously, sucking air through her teeth.

"Released, right, right. I forgot how adamant you were about that. Thing is, we've had word from Cutter since then, and oddly enough, he didn't mention it. Seemed quite happy to leave you in prison, actually."

A pause, and then Hilbert chuckled.

"I see what you are doing. You want me to deny it, no? Heh."

He smirked, and I'd just about had enough of this.

"Let's cut to the chase, then. You were doing something for Cutter. Except now you're stuck in prison. But if you tell us what you were doing..."

I trailed off, and Hilbert raised an eyebrow.

"You pull some strings? Get me released?"

He let his mouth twist into the mockery of a smile.

"I stay here, thank you. There is nothing to tell. I work for Cutter. Acquisitions. Somebody in England wants it, I source it. Books. Weapons. Art. People. Tulips."

Minkowski sighed, shifting sideways to glance regretfully at the basket.

"Well, that's that, then. I guess I'll take these blankets back," she made a show of looking round, "A shame. I imagine this cell gets terribly cold at night."

She shifted her basket from one hand to the other, and Hilbert let out a tiny noise, dismayed despite himself. Was this it, I wondered?

Apparently not. Hilbert rolled over to face the wall and Minkowksi shook her head, clearly irritated.

"You know, whatever you were doing for Cutter, it's not worth this. And we know it wasn't just acquisitions," she added. "We read the letters."

Hilbert remained silent, and Minkowski shiftedher weight slightly.

"You know, I wasn't joking when I said he left you to rot. Whatever the job was, he's past caring about it - if he ever cared to begin with."

She waited for a moment, but Hilbert wasn't taking the bait. Finally, he rolled back to fave us, with a disdainful sort of noise.

"You're pathetic," he shook his head. "You may not have realised, Madame Minowksi, but you are no longer selling trinkets to noblewomen. Patrons are patrons. They do not have to care. Affairs of men are rarely so... sentimental. Am surprised you have not learned this by now. Am surprised Monsieur Minkowski allows-"

But that was all he managed before Minkowski slapped him, fury written clear across her face.

"I'll trust you not to bring my husband into this."

Hilbert, a red mark already forming across his cheek, wasn't fazed.

"A sore point?"

Minkowski looked ready to slap him again. Stepping forward, I shook my head.

"Let me," I said, with what was, in hindsight, a completely unwarranted burst of confidence. Miraculously, Minkowski seemed to buy it, backing off with a nod as I crouched down right next to Hilbert's cot.

"Listen," I said, as quietly as I could. "You're not wrong. Madame Minkowski over there? She's sentimental, in her own way. She's convinced, deep down, that you want Cutter to care. That if we show you his true colours, you'll flip like a greased pancake."

Hilbert merely raised an eyebrow. Undeterred, I continued.

"Problem is, I think the truth's simpler. See, I've been doing some digging. Found this fascinating story of a boy from Muscovy, dirt poor, sick sister. Hitches a lift to the Low Countries to build dikes, except by the time he arrives, nobody's hiring. He's one step away from the gutter. And then along comes Cutter, promising to settle his debts, look after his sister, if only he'll do a job or two first. That sound familiar?"

No response, but I wasn't expecting one. Undaunted, I pressed on.

"Thing is," I said, "the boy in that story doesn't care what Cutter thinks. He doesnt wan't approval. He wants money. And money is something we can provide - if you work with us. We can help you. We can do what Cutter didn't. We can help your sister."

It was the wrong thing to say. Hilbert shook his head.

"You confuse me with other good-for-nothing boy, I think. A drunk. Fished out of Antwerp prison. Except is daughter, in this version, not sister. Is compelling tale, though - perhaps we should tell it to Madame Minkowski, see if she knows it?"

Shit. It was vague enough, but I couldn't risk it. I stepped back, with a disdainful shake of the head.

"Well, don't say I didn't try."

I turned to Minkowski with a shrug.

"I got nothing, he's talking nonsense."

A nod, annoyed, but not surprised, and Minkowski got up as if to go, without even a glance in Hilbert's direction.

"Gerrit?" she called, as the cell door scraped open,

"Yes, madame?" came the voice from round the corner, quickly accompanied by the man himself.

Minkowski reached into her pocket, fished out a small purse, which she tossed towards the guard, who caught it. From the look of gratified surprise he shot us, I presumed it was heavier than he'd expected.

"Madame?" he repeated, as if to check, and Minkowski nodded.

"For your pains. But please, Gerrit, one thing for me?"

A nod.

"See to it that the prisoner has an exceptionally unpleasant day, okay?"

"Yes, madame."

Minkowski's foul mood lasted the rest of the day, at least until she stormed out to search Hilbert's rooms. I could hardly blame her - I was hardly the poster child for mature acceptance myself, after all.

"You'll put a hole in the wall if you glare at it any more."

I made a rude gesture towards the innkeeper, then regretted it. If experience had taught me anything, it was not to be rude to the man supplying you with bed and board.

I was just wondering if I should apologise, when it hardly mattered, because Minkowski was back, a bundle of cloth clutched tightly to her chest.

"You got them?"

She nodded.

"All four copies."

I whistled, and she nodded.

"Yup. Looks like our favourite weasel likes to be thorough. They're in shorthand, too."

Huh. All the more interesting. I felt myself stand up.

"Shall we, then?"

The walk over to the prison took longer this time, the streets thronged with handcarts and rickety little food stalls. I wondered if I should buy something to maintain the cover, but Minkowksi set a punishing pace, and I had to hurry to keep up as it was.

It wasn't Gerrit at the door anymore, but Jan was willing to let us in, for the right price. A man after my own heart, this price included a pie from the stand we'd just passed - we had until Jan finished it to talk Hilbert round.

Emboldened by the time pressure, Minkowski stormed towards Hilbert's cell, a black look on her face that even I was a little afraid of. Hilbert, of course, was unmoved.

"Long time no see," he sneered, but Minkowski ignored him in favour of throwing her cargo down onto the grimy prison floor.

"Four sets of notes, plus correspondence," she said. "One in your bureau, one under the bed. One I had to pry out from under a floorboard. And one in the fireplace - soot everywhere, but I wasn't wearing my good shoes anyway."

Hilbert raised an eyebrow.

"Very well," he said, "And what did you hope to achieve by this, except sullying your second best shoes?"

Minkowski shrugged.

"I don't know, I guess that depends how attached you are to your research. You talked about it enough, back when we worked together. You'd copy stuff into every evening, wouldn't you?"

Hilbert frowned.

"What are you saying?"

She tipped her head to the side slightly.

"I'm saying, if I ask nicely and promise some wine to go with the pie, I'm sure the guard who let us in wouldn't mind throwing one of these books here into the guardroom fireplace. Unless you're feeling a little chattier than before?"

Hilbert looked more annoyed than anything, which was something, I guessed.

"Go on, then," he said, finally, distaste dripping from every word. He didn't look happy about it, but it wasn't the start we'd hoped for, either.

Hiding her irritation, Minkowski turned.

"Jan," she called out, just loudly enough for our new friend to hear. "I presume you caught all that?"

A pause, and then Jan emerged, with the slightly shamefaced look of somebody who thought they were a much better eavesdropper than that.

"I'm to burn it? For some wine?"

Minkowski nodded, handing over one of the books. Jan disappeared, his footsteps fading away. We waited a moment or two, and then he was back, with a deferential nod.

"It's burning. Caught immediately."

Hilbert winced visibly, and I felt hope spark, deep in my chest. He could be got, I thought, and clearly Minkowski had sensed it too, because when she spoke this time, there was a quiet, menacing confidence to it.

"Excellent. Well, Hilbert, does that change your mind at all, or does Jan need to feed the fire some more?"

It looked like it pained him physically this time, but again Hilbert shrugged.

"Do your worst," he said, and Minkowski nodded.

"Very well. Jan," she said, without even turning, "Could you be a dear and burn two of them, this time? For two more bottles of wine, of course."

Jan nodded, and Hilbert's eyes widened - he hadn't reckoned on losing two sets of notes at once. Almost imperceptibly, his eyes darted to the remaining notes, where they lay on the floor between us, and I wondered if he was about to make a lunge for them.

I didn't get to find out. No sooner had Jan gone, Minkowski was reaching for the final set of notes. She turned them over in her hands, leafing through them before splaying them out for Hilbert to see, like a parody of a fine lady's fan.

"Go on, take a good look," she prompted. "Might as well, before they burn, too. Or have you changed your mind?"

She looked down at the spidery writing, pages upon pages.

"Looks like a lot of work went into them. It'd be a shame to burn them..."

She trailed off and Hilbert was so close to breaking, I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the hungry tightness around his mouth. If it had pained him physically last time, this time, Hilbert looked to be in agony - yet still he shook his head, his teeth gritted.

"I told you, I work for Cutter, sourcing rare items. Tulips, at the moment. Broken bulbs, rare specimens, curiosities. Buyer wants, I source."

Minkowski's jaw clenched.

"Fine," she said, then a pause, as if she'd realised something, before Jan was back.

"Want me to burn the last one?"

The prospect of a fourth bottle of wine was clearly a motivating one. I was about to tell him to go for it, but then Minkowski shook her head.

"No, I don't think so. I've a different job for you. Worth gold, this time."

Jan blinked, then blinked again as Minkowski named a figure. It was at least a year's pay, and Jan would be a sucker not to take it. Still, he seemed as confused as I was.

"What's the job?"

Minkowski turned, her eyes deadly.

"Draw that knife you've got in your belt."

His hand shaking, Jan did so, and Minkowski gestured - not towards the notes, but towards me.

"Now slit this gentleman's throat. Nice and quick, if you please."

I might have jumped back. Okay, let's be real, I definitely jumped back - I'm only human - except there was a wall, and then there was a knife, right up against my jugular, and then -

"Stop, okay, stop, don't kill him, I'll talk to you!"

For a horrible moment it seemed like it wouldn't matter. The knife pressed harder, as my world narrowed to a thin, thin strip.

Then Minkowski nodded, and the pressure was gone.

Jan looked about as relieved as I felt, and Minkowski -

Actually, Minkowski just looked smug.

I shook my head - my lovely, alive head. There was a ringing in my ears, a pounding in my chest. I was going to vomit, I thought, or maybe just collapse, except I was too angry to do any of that yet.

"You," I managed, surprisingly coherently, "Are a lunatic. An actual, honest-to-God, lock-her-up-in-Bedlam lunatic. How did you know that would work? Because I don't know if you remember,  but it's not that long ago that the Muscovite menace over there tried to kill us all! So pray tell, madame"

But Minkowski just shook her head.

"He didn't."

What?

"Try to kill us all, I mean."

Well that was just demonstrably false - but here Minkowski jumped in again.

"I'm not saying that he's not a murderous plague-scab,  because he is. But did you notice, he never tried to kill you? I almost got knifed in a blind alley, Hera - well, you know about that. There was the cart thing, and the boat thing, and our lodgings caught fire twice, which I'm beginning to think wasn't just bad luck. Except you were away for all of them, Eiffel. So," she said, turning to Hilbert, "You said you'd talk. What gives?"

He scowled, and Minkowski sighed, shooting me an only-mildly-regretful look.

"Jan, if you've still got that knife handy -"

Thankfully, Hilbert was quick to intervene.

,"Okay, okay, very good, I get the point. Just... give me moment."

A pause, as he thought it over, clearly working out where to start. Finally, he spoke.

"I tell truth, before. I work for Cutter in acquisitions. Person in London wants, I get. Is simple. Except I did not come to Amsterdam for trinkets, or for books, or for flowers."

He practically spat put the last word, then shook his head.

"No, I come to Amsterdam for weapon. And not any old weapon. I come for powerful poison, rumored to have reached Low Countries some months ago from the Near East. Poison has many names there, but here is called plaga patiens, the patient scourge. Causes painful death, very unpleasant. And yet, is also strange."

Minkowski frowned.

"Strange how?"

Hilbert chuckled, without much humor.

"Strange because poison does not have to kill. If treated right, poison can be treated for weeks, months. Perhaps years, data as of yet inconclusive. Either way, poison waits, untraceable, in bones, in organs, in blood, can return again spontaneously, can be made to return. I am sure you can see the use in that."

I'm lost at this point, but Minkowski seems to be following, nodding along gamely.

"Blackmail," she says, and Hilbert nods. "The poison remains dormant, but only as long as you want it to. If the victim doesn't do what you want..."

She trailed off and Hilbert nodded darkly.

"Vomiting, cramps, fever, shaking, blood, dead. Six hours of consciousness. Two more hours after that. Is effective motivator, if given to you - or to your lover, your wife, your child."

I gulped, because that was all kinds of messed up. And then I frowned, because one part of this still wasn't making sense, or perhaps I was being dense.

"What does that have to do with me, then?"

Minkowski wasn't looking at me, couldn't look. She'd figured it out, even if I hadn't. Not that I knew that, not yet.

Hilbert chuckled again.

"Oh, Eiffel. Is charming, how you ask all the right questions. I will answer with fact about plaga patiens. Is simple fact, but important. Plaga patiens, according to literature, must be extracted from blood or urine or sweat of host already infected. It must be used quickly, once extracted, otherwise loses potency, or so sources say."

I frowned, a horrible feeling settling into my stomach, because if Hilbert was right -

"You'd have to find a host, then. If you found it, I mean. That's what you want me for, as a host for your sick exotic blackmail-pox, once you find it."

Minkowski kept looking away as Hilbert squinted at me, almost pityingly.

"Once I find it?" he said. "Eiffel, I found plaga patiens three months ago. Notes are on its effect."

He shrugged lightly.

"If it any consolation, you do make for excellent test subject."

Chapter Text

If only those damn historians weren't so good at their jobs, Eiffel thought, annoyed, as the manuscript he was flipping through came to an abrupt end.

He flipped the parchment, checking the back - but no, nothing. He huffed, frustrated. It had seemed so promising at first. Granted, Eiffel's Latin was nothing to write home about. But even he could work out what a ritus exorcismi was.

Unfortunately, some historian, leafing through their parish's more esoteric records, had clearly found the crucial page and preserved it for posterity, and as such, it had no place in Efesto. Blank parchment stared back at Eiffel, taunting him, and he sighed, put it back on the stack.

He should have known better, really. Efesto's library was huge, but its scale was deceptive. You see, lots of documents were forgotten every year, and found their way onto the library's creaking shelves. Snatch a relatively legible-looking item at random and you might find yourself reading a lawnmower brochure from 1923, a scribbled-down hangover cure from 1846, or mimeographed K/S smut from 1973. These sort of documents were ten-a-penny, and for the most part, useless. In contrast, most things that were truly useful were retained in some form. They might have been reduced to legends, superstitions or even jokes, but the core details were, for the most part, remembered, and as such, were categorically excluded from Efesto's musty stacks.

There were exceptions. Alexander - scummy backstabber that he was - had found a working cure for the common cold a while back, and the Castellan was rightly proud of the harpoon she'd crafted last year from pure Damascus steel. Eiffel, for his part, had a small hoard of Doctor Who episodes that he guarded jealously. But even those were disappearing year on year, as episodes once forgotten were rediscovered - just as Efesto's library was being robbed of its most valuable texts as historians diligently trawled through archives, attended estate sales and dusted off boxes upon boxes of microfiches, blissfully unaware of the destruction they were wreaking a scant half-universe over.

The casualties, apparently, included this exorcism. Eiffel tossed it back onto the pile, noting the number etched into the shelf and crossing it off the list Cas had given him not three hours ago. The he turned, reaching for his trusty Bakelite lantern, a sturdy discontinued model that was satisfyingly hefty in Eiffel's hand.

Thus armed, he set off, leaving behind the miscellaneous splendour of the Upper Stacks for the marginally more orderly, if equally musty, glory that was the Annexe. This was an area that seemed to have been catalogued a few decades back by some long-since-departed denizen of Efesto. Their system, if they had one, was a puzzle, and their work, although thorough, was clearly incomplete, but it was still the most rational part of the library, with documents sorted first by type, then by broad topic, and then, where available, by date.

The section Cas wanted Eiffel to check was apparently dedicated to "rituals, expiatory or propitiative", which would be a heck of a lot easier to find if Eiffel knew what either of the modifiers meant. If Uni was around, he could have asked, he thought - and then he stopped himself, because if Uni was around, this wouldn't be happening in the first place, and thinking too hard about that would send Eiffel down a spiral of grief and anger and panic that he didn't have time for right now.

His resolve strengthened, Eiffel decided to pick up the pace, and soon he'd reached the rickety ladder that would take him up into the Annexe. Shifting the lantern, he had a foot on the first rung when it happened - a ringing in his ears, faint but unmistakable, like tinnitus.

He cursed under his breath, spinning round. If he remembered right - there! Between two rather wonky cabinets, a little further down, stood a janky old rotary payphone, shrouded in cobwebs. He hurried over, dialed in a familiar number.

Cas picked up on the second ring.

"You're hearing it, too," she led with, no preamble, and Eiffel nodded.

"Clear as day. Any idea what it is?"

A noise, negative and clearly frustrated.

"Yeah, me neither," Eiffel scowled. "You think we could hit snooze?"

A sigh.

"Much as I'd love to, if it's chosen to alert both of us -"

"- it's probably important, yeah, yeah, yeah," Eiffel finished. "How many alerts does that put us on?"

Cas paused, like she was thinking about it, before giving up.

"Too damn many," she sighed, and Eiffel had to agree. The ringing was getting louder, he thought, which meant whatever the issue was, it was getting closer.

"Heads up," he warned the Castellan, "I think it's mobile."

She swore.

"Demons?"

Eiffel shook his head.

"Not this close. Remember, you had me re-ward the library after the wraiths? Unless they've found a way to -"

"Shhh," Cas cut him off, and Eiffel was about to protest when a new sound emerged alongside the ringing, a clashing, saw wave buzz that was steadily gaining in intensity.

"Gods above, what is that?"

Cas, who was apparently at as much of a loss as Eiffel, made a helpless sort of noise.

"Not a clue, but I suggest you work out what direction is away, and head there. I'll go and check the beacons, call me in five if you can."

And with that she hung up, leaving Eiffel with the unenviable task of escaping whatever the hell was coming his way. Since he didn't know where it was coming from, he figured he'd have to just pick a direction and run. Row upon row of shelves flew past as Eiffel focused on the noise, which didn't seem to be getting louder or quieter, much to his annoyance.

Then, at an intersection, he hung a sharp right, bringing him out into a hallway where the endless bookshelves gave way to grand, mouldering furniture and dimly flickering gas lamps. It wasn't anywhere Eiffel knew, but given the direction he'd taken, he reckoned he could probably get back to base. He picked up the pace, taking turn after turn, up a sweeping staircase, down a different sweeping staircase, left into a modern-looking access corridor so narrow he almost missed it -

Only to stop abruptly, because while Eiffel had been busy navigating, the ringing had suddenly gotten much louder, and looking at the corridor ahead, it was obvious what the issue was.

"The hell?"

Water was pouring into the corridor, its source unclear. It had pooled in swampy stretches along the floor, and looked to be spreading. Its surface had the rainbow sheen of oil, and it smelled rank, briny and stagnant. Dismayed, Eiffel turned, jogging quickly back to the last intersection. Was there... yes! A phone booth, this time, graffiti-covered. Quickly as he could, he punched in the number. Cas picked up almost immediately.

"Eiffel? Any luck?"

He pulled a face.

"Depends what you mean by luck. I'm somewhere under the ballroom, and I think I've found the source of our problem."

Cas hummed, urging him on and Eiffel sighed.

"It's flooded. No idea why, or where it's coming from, but the east-west axis is impassable."

Cas made a noise.

"I suppose that might explain the doubled alert. One's about the flooding itself, the other's probably water damage, infrastructural. What's nearby?"

Eiffel racked his brain.

"Uh, telegraphy? Prophecy archive? Cold stores? Generators?"

Crap, it was the generators, wasn't it? Cas clearly thought the same, since Eiffel could already hear her flipping switches.

"Okay, here goes, switching to backup... now."

The lights flickered, then came back on, dimmer but steadier than before. Almost immediately, the loud buzzing stopped, leaving only the initial, quieter tinnitus.

"Cool," Eiffel said. "Cool, cool, cool, that's one problem solved. But what do we do about the flooding?" He gestured towards the water, which was still seeping out from somewhere. Cas, on the other end, was quiet for a good long moment before speaking.

"We need to know where it's coming from. Can you see, is there a Door?"

Eiffel peered down the hallway, raising his lantern carefully for some extra light. Lining the corridor were many doors, but no Doors, not until the end, where -

"Yup, got it," he cried, looking at it. It was a hulking, slimy-looking affair, with a metal wheel and a porthole. If Eiffel were to hazard a guess, he'd say it opened into a shipwreck somewhere, except the hallway around it had none of the containment runes you needed when a Door opened somewhere potentially hazardous like the sea. Which in turn meant -

"Definitely misaligned. I'm pretty sure that's what's letting the water in."

Cas cursed, rifling through papers.

"Crap, okay, can you get over there? We'll have to realign it manually, the two of us. You remember how that works?"

Eiffel winced. He did, but the last time he'd done this, Uni had done most of the grunt work, and even then, with the power of a mostly-forgotten goddess to draw on, it had been hard work. With him and Cas, it would be nigh-on impossible. Not least because -

"What're you using for a source? Is there a ritual on file?"

A distracted sort of hum, and more paper noises.

"Uh, yeah, I'm looking for one, but I don't know if there's... oh."

It wasn't the good kind of oh.

"Oh?" he prompted, when it became clear that the Castellan wasn't about to spill.

"Oh," she repeated. "I've got one, but it's in cuneiform. Some sort of variant Sumerian, I can make out one or two words, but a reliable enough translation would take hours."

Hours they didn't have, because if water was coming in, sea demons would soon be following. Which left them with very few options.

"Wing it?"

He could almost see Cas' frown.

"I'd rather not. Remember the Cypro-Minoan thing, all the ghouls?"

Eiffel winced, taking her point. But if she didn't want to chance it with the ritual, that meant -

"Look," Cas cut in, "I've got it covered, okay. Trust me. You do your part, I'll provide the energy."

She was speaking just that little bit too quickly, and Eiffel frowned, because if Cas wasn't using a ritual -

Through the receiver, he heard the sound of something being drawn - a knife? - then a sharp inhale, carefully muffled. Eiffel felt sick.

"Cas, you - you can't - a realignment's not like replacing a ward, you'll burn through your core in minutes."

Another pained noise on the other end.

"Then you better get on with it, hadn't you? I'm bleeding. Clock's ticking, Eiffel."

And it wouldn't stop ticking, not until this was fixed. Sighing, Eiffel set the reciver down and set out, quickly but cautiously, down the corridor and into the freezing, filthy water, which now came up to his knees.

"This is disgusting, for the record" he shouted, on the off-chance Cas could still hear him, and then, as an afterthought, "Approaching now."

He swung the lantern upwards, his eyes sweeping over the surface of the hatch, where, sure enough, glowing faintly -

"I've got the sigil! Can you hold it another minute?"

But the glow was already fading. Gods damn it, he'd have to be quick. He positioned his hands over the symbol, bracing himself before closing his eyes, letting his mind drift. He felt the sigil pulse, heard the Door creak slightly. It was enjoying being part of a ship, he could tell, it wanted to keep being a ship, if that was okay, because it wasn't like anyone had thought about this particular ship, anyway, not for years, so why shouldn't it -

No, Eiffel butted in firmly, ignoring the way his fingers were going numb. None of that. You are not a ship's hatch, however much you'd like to be. You belong - he pushed a little harder until it came to him - you belong in an alleyway, in a little industrial town. You've got these rusty shutters, he thought, and you're all covered in graffiti, but your hinges are good, and people walk past you all the time, you get to see the world. Wouldn't you rather be that Door?

There wasn't much Eiffel could do if it didn't, his metaphorical firepower being rather limited. Fortunately, Doors were pretty stupid, and deep down they knew their place in the world, and so it was a relief but not a surprise when Eiffel felt the cool, solid metal of the hatch warp and buckle. The faint rumble of traffic filtered through it, replacing the vast glug of the ocean, and when he opened his eyes, it was to dry, dusty metal and a lock long since rusted over.

"Thank you," he said, noting, not without curiosity, that his pant legs, which had been soaked not a moment previously, were dry as a bone. The whole corridor, in fact, was dry and surprisingly clean. The tinnitus, Eiffel was pleased to hear, had stopped. Grinning, he raced back towards the receiver, hoping against hope that Cas hadn't burnt herself out completely.

"Hey, I'm back! You still in one piece up there, Cas?"

The groan that that got was both reassuring and deeply unsettling.

"Cas?"

A pause, and then, slurred, "'S not my name. Keep tell'ng you."

Eiffel rolled his eyes.

"Because Castellan's so much better. You know, if you told me your actual name - "

Another groan, alarmingly feeble, and Eiffel remembered himself.

"Right, yeah, sorry Castellan. Look, are you okay? Not about to keel over on me?"

A pause, like she had to think about it.

"'M fine," she slurred, finally, in a tone that suggested quite the opposite. "Th'Door?"

Typical.

"The Door's fine, it's you I'm worried about. Give a guy some warning next time, why don't ya?"

A chuckle, then another groan. Eiffel winced.

"Tell me you've at least bandaged it."

The Castellan hummed, a deliberately vague noise, and Eiffel frowned.

"Cas -"

"T'ld you, 's not my name."

He sighed.

"Okay, Castellan, fine, just - please tell me you've done some kind of first aid up there. Don't want you -"

And then, like he'd jinxed it, there was a thump, then a rattle, and the line went dead.

"Cas? Cas! Castellan!?"

There was no reply. Cursing internally, Eiffel tried to map out the quickest route back up to the common area. Even at a jog, it would be ten or fifteen minutes - and Gods only knew how Cas would be faring by that point. With a sigh, Eiffel turned back towards the Door. It was dangerous, and Cas wouldn't like it, but Eiffel couldn't see what choice he had.

His mind made up, he marched back to the Door, tracing a finger over the patch where the sigil had been. Inside of him, something shivered at thought of what he was about to do - an unsettled, nervous feeling that got a thousand times worse as Eiffel levered the Door open. It's thirty seconds, tops, he told himself. He used to stay out for hours, thirty seconds was nothing, even now.

Steeling himself, Eiffel stepped boldly through, pausing only momentarily to check if anybody was about. Seeing that there wasn't, Eiffel turned, pulling the Door quickly shut behind him. Almost immediately, he felt the disconnect, a creeping loss of substantiality that was as disconcerting as it was hard to actually describe. Had it always been this bad, he wondered? Or had the curse Alexander laid on him progressed, somehow?

Shuddering, he laid a palm flat against the now-closed Door, visualising Efesto's common area as intensely as he could, until something in the locking mechanism went click, and Eiffel could breathe again as he pushed a shoulder into the Door, feeling it pivot on its rusty, squeaking hinges as it opened onto the familiar clutter of the lounge.

"Cas!" he called out, shutting the Door behind him almost as an afterthought. "You there?"

There was no reply. Frowning, Eiffel worked his way past the mismatched armchairs, the coffee table, the stubbornly-unlit hearth, until he reached the control room door.

"Cas!" he called again, scanning the room nervously for a limp figure, spreadeagled on the floor. But there wasn't one, nor was there much blood, all things considered - there was some, sure, but Eiffel had been imagining the full Texas Chainsaw Massacre experience, and yet, if he followed the trail along the beacon desk -

"Cas?"

A weak moan, from the depths of the wing chair.

"Remind me never to do that again."

Eiffel let a breath escape as he saw a bandage, and a familiar face, pale from blood loss, but clearly regaining its color.

"Thank the Gods. I thought, when the call dropped out -"

She shook her head ruefully.

"I'm fine, promise. I got lightheaded and dropped the phone. By the time the room stopped spinning, you'd already gone - which was beyond stupid, by the way, or did you forget how -"

But Eiffel cut Cas off before she could get going.

"Yeah, yeah, trust me, I know, curse triggers, debilitating pain, forces of darkness take the wheel, bye bye Eiffel. Could we maybe save the safety talk until after Efesto's stabilised? Or at least until we're not actively imploding, would that be too much?"

He raised an eyebrow, and Cas looked like she wanted to disagree. Then, in a spot of perfect timing, something blew with a pneumatic-sounding hiss. They spun round, then back again once it was clear that nothing was about to imminently collapse or catch fire, Cas sagging visibly.

"Okay," she sighed, resigned. "Point taken. Fix Efesto first, revisit Door restrictions later. On which note, please tell me you found an exorcism."

She looked at him imploringly, and Eiffel pulled a face.

"No dice. I got halfway through the list, but it had all been remembered, and then everything got all Waterworld, which you'll be shocked to hear kinda put a literal dampener on the manuscript hunt. Should I head back?"

Cas shook her head.

"Not worth it anymore. They've gotten into the loft already, and the beacons are starting to get feedback from tripped wards on the upper landing, too. Might be best to cut our losses and seal the whole top floor, at this point."

Eiffel frowned. "But wouldn't that -"

"What alternative do we have?" Cas shrugged. "At least this way we retain control of the main staircase."

Eiffel looked Cas in the eye for signs that she was joking. But she just stared back, her gaze level, her eyes dull. She looked tired, Eiffel thought. Tired, and something else. Not defeated, and certainly not scared - fire would burn cold before Cas would let that happen - but resigned, perhaps.

The enormity of it struck Eiffel. Two of them, alone, to defend Efesto against the arrayed forces of Nowhere? It was hard enough with four, and one of those four was a literal goddess. With just him and Cas -

"We can't keep this up."

She chuckled, a thin, humorless sound.

"You think I don't know that? Eiffel, how many seats are there, at the long table?"

Eiffel frowned at the non sequitur, casting his mind to the dusty hall they ate breakfast in.

"Nine? Ten?"

She nodded.

"Ten. And through all the years in Efesto, have there ever been ten of us?"

"No?"

She nodded.

"So why ten chairs?"

Eiffel frowned. He'd always assumed they were spare. But nkw he thought about it, somebody must have brought them up from storage, and why would you do that for a staff of four, one of whom had no physical form. You wouldn't, not unless -

"There are meant to be more of us. Like, a lot more."

She nodded.

"Yup. Which means we were understaffed even before all this. To expect us to carry on now, now that Alexander -"

She cut herself off.

"Well, suffice to say, it was always going to be an uphill battle. But you know as well as I do that we don't have any better options. Or would you rather leave, let the curse kick in?"

He'd given it more than a passing thought, on darker nights, but Cas didn't want to hear that and Eiffel wasn't quite ready to admit it, either. He sighed.

"Go on, then, what needs sorting first? Other than literally everything, I mean."

Cas' lip twitched, just slightly.

"One of us should probably work their way through the rituals folder, look for sealing rites. How's your Akkadian?"

Eiffel rolled his eyes.

"About as good as my Sanskrit. Which is to say -"

"Next to non-existant."

He nodded. Cas sighed.

"Okay, well, you could take dinner down for Alexander, see if he's feeling any chattier?"

A snort.

"Hard pass, I'll take the translation."

"Eiffel -"

"No, spare me the lecture. I know I'm, like, ontologically bound to him, or whatever, but as far as I'm concerned, that is as deep as our association goes, okay?"

"Eiffel, you can't -"

"I can't what, can't be angry about what he did to me? Can't want to avoid him for, like, forever?"

She shook her head, clearly frustrated.

"It's not that, Eiffel. I get that. Trust me, I get it. But if we're going to keep Efesto running..."

She shot Eiffel a significant look that he pretended not to understand, and after a moment or two, Cas relented, sighing.

"Well, you know where the reference texts are kept," she said, turning. "I think Bachmann's still our best source for Akkadian, but I could be wrong."

And with that she was gone, the control room silent again as Eiffel picked his way over to the ritual folder, which had been shoved ignominiously off to one side while Cas was dealing with the whole realignment fiasco. Probably to avoid getting blood on it, be thought, then wished he hadn't.

Flicking through its yellowed pages only confirmed Eiffel's worst fears. Not only were the rituals in cuneiform, they were all what looked like 1950s Xeroxes of 1920s photographs of rubbings originally taken in the mid-19th century. Decipherable for the most part, but hardly anyone's idea of a good time.

Half an hour later, he hadn't gotten very far, though he was pleased to discover that whoever had selected these specific rituals for the folder had thought to include an index card, which Eiffel found, almost by accident, shoved haphazardly into the middle of the folder. It didn't list the individual rituals - that would have been too easy - but it did give an idea of the order of things. In particular, "repudiations, general" looked promising, and he'd just started with the first rituals when Cas arrived back, looking distinctly annoyed.

"That was... quick," Eiffel said, and then, when Cas didn't respond, "Everything okay?"

She didn't answer, just walked over to the command desk, started fiddling with controls.

"So," he promted, more deliberately, after a minute or so, "How'd things go with Professor Iscariot? You get anything out of him?"

Cas' mouth was a thin line when she turned back to Eiffel.

"He ate," she said, finally, quietly. "And we talked."

The tone suggested that whatever it was they'd talked about, Cas wasn't exactly thrilled about it. Eiffel waited, letting her work out how to say it.

"I realised something," she said, finally, deliberately, without looking at him. "On the way over, I mean. I was thinking about what you said, about how we can't keep doing this. And you were right, we can't. But I realised, if we can't run Efesto with two of us, what hope would Alexander have, all on his own?"

Eiffel frowned.

"I mean, he does know the metaphysics -"

But Cas shook her head.

"Doesn't matter. Don't you see, Eiffel? It doesn't matter how well Alexander knows Efesto, he's only one person. Sure, individually he could probably deal with the demons, or the Doors, or the leakage, or the collapsed lower parlor, or the subsidence, or any of the crap we barely scraped through. But all at once? Even he can't do that, not without a significant power source, and he must have known that going in."

Something deep down in Eiffel's chest stirred, the beginnings of something impossible.

"He'd have had a plan," Eiffel breathed.

Cas nodded.

"I told him everything. Explained how bad things had gotten. He doesn't want to be swamped by demons any more than we do. So, he's agreed to help us out. He's agreed to re-enchant Efesto."

Re-enchant Efesto? Eiffel frowned, not loving the sound of letting Alexander handle something so big.

"Couldn't he just... like, give us instructions? Getting Your Goddess Back for Dummies, or, uh, you know, something that sounds less like a sex manual for repressed housewives? That way we still get Uni back, and Bizarro Professor X can stay safely locked away from our dimension's key infrastructure. Or did you forget about how he was the one who put Uni out in the first place?"

Cas winced.

"Eiffel, it's not - well, for one, it's a difficult procedure. Neither of us have the experience Alexander does, and that was before I depleted my core. Plus," she said, a guilty look on her face, "I, uh, I never said we'd get Uni back."

Eiffel frowned.

"But you said he was going to re-enchant Efesto. Wouldn't that -"

But she was shaking her head.

"Efesto's empty, right now. Vacant. The ritual for re-enchantment would be like opening a door, that's all. We can't control what comes through, we'll get whatever's willing. And Uni's not - "

She cut herself off, but they were both thinking it. After all the crap that Goddard put her through, that Alexander put her through? Would she be willing?

Eiffel shook his head.

"She will be."

Minkowski frowned.

"Eiffel, you have to at least consider that she might not be. Or even just that something else might be quicker. If we do this, we're rolling a dice. Which is why we need Alexander's power, to make sure we can contain whatever we get."

Eiffel pursed his lips.

"I still think it's too risky. I mean, it would mean keying him back into the main wards, letting him modify the containment wards. Even if he doesn't want to destroy Efesto, that's a risk, right? Plus, if we do get Uni back, how de we know he won't put her under obligation again, or a geas, or a binding? We let Alexander go round enchanting things, we're practically begging for trouble."

Cas shook her head.

"He's agreed to an oath of compulsion, as long as one of is around to enforce it -"

"And if that's part of his plan?"

"It's an oath of compulsion, Eiffel, even Myrddin couldn't break one, I don't think Alexander -"

But whatever Cas didn't think about Alexander, Eiffel could barely hear it over the buzzing, which was suddenly back with a vengeance. Judging by Cas' face, she was hearing it, too. Another maintenance issue, he wondered? Or something more sinister?

He glanced down at the Castellan's still-bloody hand, then up at her pale, drawn expression. They watched each other, for a few tense seconds, wary.

"You're right," Eiffel caved, "We need more firepower. We need Alexander. But that oath better be pretty damn compelling."

And thus it was that Eiffel found himself standing, awkwardly, alongside the Castellan as Hilbert knelt before them, swearing fealty like a particularly grouchy peasant of yore.

"To these vows I hold, until such time as I may be released, so help me Spirits, so help me Gods," he gritted out finally. "Happy?"

"Excedingly," Cas replied, drily. "Now grovel just a little more, and then maybe we can get on with the matter at hand."

"Yes, yes, very funny. Still do not see why such strict binding is necessary, but -"

"Shut up, Doc. Or have you forgotten that last time I trusted you, I got cursed for my pains?"

A roll of his eyes.

"Honestly, Eiffel, is barely jinx. You were not planning on leaving Efesto anyway, no?"

"Well, I'm certainly not, now!"

"Come, come, you were not going to leave. And as proof of concept -"

"Proof of concept, my ass! I'm not some prototype you can just... patent!"

"Well, technically-"

"Oh, stow it," Cas cut in. "From here on, you do not say one word to Eiffel unless he asks you to specifically, got that? In fact, this is me, formally adding it to the stipulations of the bindings."

She cast a hand dismissively towards Alexander, causing the symbol hastily inked onto his wrist to glow, briefly. The thaumaturge growled audibly.

"There we go," Cas said, and then, turning to Eiffel, "Want to test it?"

He paused for a second, thoughtful, before speaking.

"You know, I always had some doubts about the whole "Earth is a sphere" thing. I mean, just think about it logically, there's no way-"

"It is a scientifically prov- urghk!"

Alexander made a choked noise, and Eiffel grinned.

"Gross, isn't it? You can answer that, by the way."

Alexander glared back at him.

"That was not necessary. And for your information, it has been known since - "

"Ptolemy, if not earlier, yes. Shut up, Alexander."

The thaumaturge's mouth shut almost as if it was spring-loaded - whether by magical compulsion or just because he didn't want to get choked again, Eiffel wasn't sure.

"Good," Cas said, off to the side. "That's good. You okay for me to go check on our mystery noise?"

Eiffel nodded.

"Call if you need to."

"Sure thing."

And then she was gone, and Eiffel was left alone, with only a weirdly compliant Alexander for company. He watched for a while as their resident traitor leafed through the reference tomes he'd sent them to retrieve, flipping pages furiously, and sporadically kneeling to chalk symbols onto the floor around the hearth, incantations in a language Eiffel didn't remotely recognise tumbling from his lips as he went.

They talked every five minutes or so, just a quick exchange of words to check that things were on track. Mostly, Eiffel let Alexander work, though. Not least because if this went well... well, he knew it was a long shot, but still-

"What're the chances? Of getting Uni back, I mean. 'Cause I know Cas said-"

"Castellan correct in her assessment. Is unlikely in the extreme that Uni will return"

"But not impossible, right?"

"Is beyond improbable, Eiffel."

"But not impossible, right?"

"Would not be scientific to rule it out, as ritual has never been attempted. And never will be if you do not cease to pester."

Right, right. Eiffel knew when to hold his tongue. Except-

"Is it going to take much longer?"

Alexander didn't dignify that with an answer. Eiffel sighed, sat back down, only to jump up again as the phone on the wall rang.

"Cas?" he said, picking up, only to wince at the sheer amount of background noise. He switched the phone onto speaker. "Everything okay?"

"Not exactly, but good news, I found the source of the alert. Remember how I switched us to backup power back when the generators were flooded?"

Eiffel nodded, an uneasy feeling creeping into the pit of his stomach as Cas continued, wheezing slightly like she'd been running.

"I never switched them back when the water vanished. Which left us on backup power. Except it turns out if you don't use your backup generators for a few decades and then run them intensely, you suddenly get a lot of heat radiating off surfaces that have gathered a lot of dust. Which in turn means -"

"Fire?"

"Fire."

Eiffel cursed.

"How bad?"

"Bad. We've got sprinklers in this wing, thank the Gods, but they're a janky 1800s model, let's just say there's a reason they've been forgotten. They're containing it, but we could really use some spiritual help about now. Please tell me he's almost done."

Eiffel winced.

"He seems busy, I don't think -"

"Am almost finished, actually. Just need to - ah, there. Five more minutes, perhaps. Will need some of your blood to complete, Castellan. How fast can you get here?"

A thoughtful hum. Eiffel frowned.

"Cas?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. Then, her tone steely -

"See you in a moment, Eiffel."

"Cas, what do you mean-"

But then the line was dead, and then there was a clatter, over on the other side of there room, where -

"There was a Door," Cas shrugged, and Eiffel shook his head, incredulous.

"And you chewed me out for taking risks? Gods, you know Doors are unreliable in a crisis, they panic, or did you -"

"Shut up, you needed me back here. Now, I believe some blood was mentioned?"

Behind Eiffel, Alexander nodded.

"Just pinprick, from current Castellan, to confer mastery. Here, please."

With a slight flourish, he pointed to a spot in the circle he'd chalked. Castellan strode over, drawing her knife and pricking a fingertip in one smooth motion. Eiffel winced as she pressed her finger down.

"Do I need to -"

"No, you can remove."

She straightened up, and Alexander intoned something under his breath, then crouched and closed his eyes briefly, one hand splayed across the floorboards. He took a breath, then breathed out, and as he did, it was like Efesto breathed with him, its beams and bricks shivering, just a little at first, then hard enough to rattle the common room furniture. Somewhere, glass was breaking, and somewhere else, the pipes were making a horrible groaning noise. The lights on the wall flickered, and one bulb blew completely, as a staticky ozone smell enveloped the room.

And then, silence and stillness.

The hearth remained stubbornly unlit.

"Was that it?" Eiffel asked, his voice trembling slightly. "Did it work?"

Alexander was squinting down at the chalk circle, his mouth a thin line. Then he knelt, right next to the grate, examining it more closely.

"Unsure," he said, finally. "As I said, ritual has never -"

And then, with a muted whoosh, the hearth lit itself, sending Alexander scuttling backwards, smudging the circle. Cas breathed out heavily.

"Guess that answers that question. Alexander?"

The thaumaturge nodded, now peering at the fire from a safer distance.

"Enchantment seems to have worked. We have... something."

Something, indeed. Because whatever that was, it sure as hell didn't feel like Uni, Eiffel thought, bitterly. It was burning, sure, with all the warmth that entailed. But Uni? Uni had blazed, her heat wrapping itself around Eiffel until he almost remembered how it felt to sit out in the sun. Uni was a forest fire, a force of nature, and this? This was something you could comfortably toast marshmallows around.

Cas was looking at him, with a horrible mix of pity and grief.

"I'm sorry, Eiffel. I know it's not what you wanted. I... I wanted her back, too."

He nodded, mutely, listened to the hearth fire crackle. He wondered what they'd ended up with, if it would eventually learn to speak, like Uni had. He kind of hoped it wouldn't, to be honest.

The fire crackled some more, until -

"Gah - what the hell?!"

Because it was suddenly like all the alerts were going off at once, buzzing and ringing and chiming and screeching and whining, and Eiffel could barely hear himself think, let alone speak.

"It's the Doors," Cas shouted over from the beacons desk, which was now blinking furiously at them. "They must have reset to their native state, now they've got a master again. Which means unlocked, for half of them."

Which usually wouldn't be a problem, it wasn't like people were regularly going round pushing on them. Except with demons trying to break their way in  -

"What do we do?"

Cas was flipping switches furiously as she spoke.

"We amplify a locking charm, stop anything new getting in, then we barricade ourselves in here, play for time as we pick them off. My core's depleted, so you're going to have to provide the juice for it, Eiffel - Alexander, he's gonna need you healing him as we go - and if we time it right - Gods, is there any way to shut this off?"

She jabbed at a few more buttons, but the noise didn't let up - if anything, it got louder. Cas grimaced.

"Course not. Right, Eiffel, get the doors, push whatever stuff in front of them you can. Then seal the Door, permanently if you have to. And Alexander, find me a locking charm, preferably one without components. I think Lefebvre has one, perhaps, or maybe Grimaldi-"

Puh-leeze. Grimaldi's a hack and you know it.

Cas stopped short, her mouth gaping slightly at the familiar voice.

"Uni?"

Eiffel's voice was barely audible over the alerts and alarms. Not that that mattered, right now.

"Uni, is that really you?"

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I, uh - hold on, this is annoying, I can't hear myself think. Lemme just...

And as suddenly as it had begun in the first place, the noise stopped, then started again, then stopped.

Huh. Not as responsive as it used to be. I wonder...

Something in the walls creaked again, and the floor rattled, but differently to before, more controlled, somehow, like a tiger, yawning and stretching life back into its limbs after a leisurely nap.

Okay... okay! I can work with this, I think. Though you've got Doors open all over then place, did you do that deliberately?

"Yes, I thought some demons might liven up the place in your absence."

Okay, okay, no need to be like that, Castellan. Locking them in three, two, one. And that establishes sanctuary, so... want your house guests banished?

"That would be ideal, yeah."

Okay, better find something to hold onto.

Eiffel just barely had time to push himself back against a wall when the whole common area began to shake, much more violently than it had before, books falling from shelves and equipment clattering to floor like it was some kind of earthquake. A particularly weighty tome narrowly missed Alexander's head, and Eiffel could have sworn he heard the echo of a millennia-old curse as the thaumaturge jumped back.

Then the shaking was over, and Efesto quieter than it had been all week. Gods, he'd never take divine protection  for granted again, Eiffel thought, maneuvering himself clumsily into a chair.

"All gone?" Cas asked, like she couldn't quite believe it.

All gone, Uni confirmed. I put out the fire in engineering, too, and a few other things. Like me to give you a rundown?

The fire in the hearth was brighter, now, and traces of other colours flickered through its depths as she spoke. Eiffel watched them as she rattled off a few more technical details for Cas, numbers of demons who'd breached Efesto, damage done to various areas. It was the most beautiful thing, he thought. He never told Uni that, before. He'd have to, he thought.

And that just leaves the sub-basements, she concluded. Which as far as I can tell feel astonishingly intact, mould notwithstanding. Might be worth sending somebody down to check, mind you, but overall, I think you're stable.

Stable. Gods, Eiffel liked the sound of that, or maybe he just liked the sound of Uni saying it. He leant back in the chair and closed his eyes, letting his colleagues' voices wash over him. They talked a little more, decided to leave clear-up until morning, and then Alexander was being frog-marched back down to the dungeon, Cas pausing at the door on the way out.

"You coming? I think I've forgotten the route to my room, it's been so long."

Eiffel chuckled, less because it was funny, more just because... yeah, it had been a while, hadn't it?

"You'll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for me," he said. "I've got a few things I need to finish up, here. You know, stuff to check on, readings I should take, couple things to sort out."

Cas frowned.

"You know you don't have to -"

"Oh, I know. But you know me, always on top of things, eh?"

She looked ready to argue, but then she yawned, the desire for sleep clearly winning out.

"Well," she shrugged, finally, "Suit yourself. But, uh, sleep in tomorrow, yeah? Castellan's orders."

He smiled, just slightly.

"Right back at ya."

And then she was gone.

You know, she's right, you don't have to-

"Oh, I know," Eiffel interrupted. "I don't think I could take any reliable readings now, anyway. I just... well, I guess I wanted to stay here a little longer."

Oh. I... see. Any reason for that?

Eiffel shrugged, closing his eyes again. The hearth fire, Uni's hearth fire, crackled, just off to one side, its heat caressing his face.

"No reason," he hummed. "Absolutely no reason."

He'd just sit here for a minute, he thought. Maybe catch Uni up on everything she'd missed. He just needed a minute to work out how to start, he thought, just a minute.

The fire crackled, and the armchair was ever so comfortable. Uni was back, and Efesto was safe. Sleep, when it came, was as easy as breathing.