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"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones I did not."
-Donna Tartt, "The Secret History".
Eight hours.
Checking the time on his watch did him very little good, but he counted nonetheless. It had been eight hours since communication went down between Griffin Station and Eagle's Nest. Since Dr. Maxis. Since his daughter sprinted into the pyramid. Since the dead began to rise under her command.
Dr. Schuster paced the room in hurried steps, shoes tapping into the metal floor, a reverberation of anxiety. They'd managed to carve out a small piece of the base to consider safe, the living quarters where he and fellow scientists had resided when not keeping up the charade for Group 935. A façade in flames. He checked his watch again. Eight hours and two minutes. Eight hours and three. Eight hours and four...
"Dr. Schuster," the dry voice of Dr. Groph cut through the silence, "we're on our own now."
"Nonsense," the other grit his jaw, swallowing hard, "Dr. Richtofen still has- there's still... We still have a job to do, he'll be in touch."
The older scientist clutched his head in his weathered hands, watching the pacing figure of Dr. Schuster through his brow. Inhaling slow, exhaling quick, he tried to draw air into his lungs in a way that didn't feel like drowning. Perhaps it was the fear. They knew what laid out there. Bodies that clawed and staggered through the facility they had considered a home, of sorts, bodies that had only been there because they had been ordered to put them there. To kill for the sake of a machine.
It made Dr. Schuster's stomach turn.
He checked his watch.
"Damn you, Edward," he muttered to himself, the tightness growing in his chest. Nerves clamored against his mind, lab mice in a crate, submerged in the sprawling dawn of terror. He bit the inside of his cheek. He glanced to Dr. Groph, saw him biting his nails. He understood then, that this was not only his nerves. They were both on-edge, and for good reason.
Eight hours and ten minutes.
Corpses shambled through halls beyond this room, beyond this wing of Griffin Station. Dead and groaning, throats wheezing nonexistent air into inoperable lungs. They'd barely had enough time to grab their pistols when Dr. Maxis had shambled from the floor, stench of blood pervading the chamber of the MPD, chunks of brain matter clinging to the capacitors. How he'd managed to come back, it astounded him, but through his own curiosity, he would not leave this room. Not yet.
He pressed his hand to the radio and attempted one more call.
"Edward, Griffin Station is-" he tried to shove the fear from his voice, leveling his tone until it battered at his chest, "Griffin Station is currently under attack by the Untoten. Dr. Groph and I are fine, but we cannot get ahold of you-"
Dr. Groph rose, turned the radio suddenly off, and sat back down.
He inhaled deeply, frustration knitting his brow together. "What the bloody hell was that f-"
"You think he's really coming back for us?"
The question sunk like a stone.
"Yes, I do, actually," Dr. Schuster replied, incredulous, "you can't truly expect me to believe he's leaving us here to die." A pause. His shoulders slumped. "Do you?"
"Do I what?" Dr. Groph peered at the other, exhaustion wearing into his features.
"Do you truly believe that Dr. Richtofen is leaving us here to die?"
For a moment, the German doctor didn't reply, watching the other with cautious eyes. Caution became worry, became defeat. He sighed, running a hand over his head, then rubbing his brow between the crux of his thumb. "I do."
The finality of this admission left Dr. Schuster reeling. He had known it, deep down, the gnawing at the back of his mind. The moment that communication was lost, he understood this. But there was something still, a piece of him hoped, perhaps boyishly, that this would be ended with a sudden reappearance of their friend - the same sudden reappearance he'd made those years ago, the vanishing act and the thirty days of no contact, an almost-Noah on an ark of expedition - and that this would all end as quickly as it started. The radio sat, metal box of taunting silence.
The sole thought reverberating in his head became, what do they do now?
Years of camaraderie between the three. They'd all met, that one fateful day, where Dr. Maxis was giving his orientation speech and droning on about something-or-other. It was short, but dull, and it had Dr. Schuster wishing to be anywhere but there. And when mention of cyanide came up in the speech, he stuffed down the jump of his heartrate against his throat. Dr. Richtofen had been seated next to him in one of those uncomfortable metal fold-out chairs, the kind that scraped the floors with every movement and would peel away with rust in a few years time in storage. The Heidelberg graduate smiled with teeth and cracked a joke about how dramatic that course of action seemed. He murmured it just so the other two next to him could hear, a whisper that ricocheted down the years.
He grasped the edges of the table and focused his gaze down at the radio. Carefully, he switched it back on. Static sputtered to life, much to the dismay and disappointment of Dr. Groph, who massaged his temples with his middle and forefinger in slow, even circles.
Above them, somewhere else in Griffin Station, an undead abomination knocked over a filing cabinet. The crash startled both of them, Dr. Groph rising with his pistol to check the door. Returning after a few moments, he shook his head.
Safe, for now.
"What do we do?" Dr. Schuster finally asked, practically pleading. At this point, what were the options? To die here, in the empty vacuum of space? To join the undead, under the control of the child? A game she played with no idea the consequences, too young to understand the gravity of her father's last words that lingered in the air long after his soul had fled his shell. But these men, they knew that they were damned. They'd known it long before this, from the moment that rat wound up on Griffin Station, a series of events was put into motion that could not be stopped. A rat from their experiments. They, in all twists and spasms of fate, had sealed their own damnation the moment they had joined Group 935. No, before that, long before, the moment they earned their degrees and began to work- no, before that, the moment they chose their universities- no. Before. The moment they set their eyes on this field of medical professionals, of researchers, of dedicated men who wanted to shape light into the world that dimmed itself in suffering. Medicine, technology, anything they could do to improve these fields, to lessen the suffering- no, he knew his own motivation.
He'd wanted to be a journalist once. But he had no choices, never had. And of Dr. Groph, he could only presume that he'd always wanted to be a scientist, a chemist. He'd always wanted to study mathematics and use this knowledge for something greater. But had he? Dr. Schuster had never asked. It felt foolish now, the embarrassment of the thought, creeping up his spine, along his vertebrae.
Did it make sense, then, for him to be angry? No, he couldn't reconcile that. Dr. Richtofen had been his friend, they had spent countless nights running on nothing but sparse meals and caffeine to keep working, every experiment Dr. Maxis threw their way was another task to complete, but their own experiments, the theories they formed when not working for Dr. Maxis, that's the path that lead them here. He couldn't reconcile the man he'd known then - bright-eyed, slightly younger than himself, with that gleaming, sharp-toothed smile - with the one that left he and Dr. Groph here to die. To rot. To join soil un-tread, to feel the dust of the moon around them, caving in until their bodies were among the ones buried outside. Well, risen, now.
Dr. Groph didn't answer for a while, darting his gaze to the door. This room was small, enclosed, it would be a wretched thing to get trapped in here. He inhaled and turned back to the other man. "We fight our way out, I think. We'll have to make it to the teleporter, but when we do that, we should be able to get out of here. From there, perhaps... Another facility? I don't know where, but anywhere else. At least on earth, we'll have better chances."
He was right. Supplies would dwindle to nothing up here, and with no way to replenish them... He shuddered to think of it. He nodded, grabbing his weapon. They would find better ones, there had been some vague testing of other weapons in Griffin Station, but for now, he had a simple pistol.
Dr. Groph looked to the door, and with a weathered hand, pushed it open.
The halls stretched long into the dark. The basement which the living quarters occupied was a dim-lit place, and now, the emergency lights flickered and beamed garish, eerie green light along the walls. He stood behind the other doctor.
Had he been a coward, to let Dr. Richtofen convince him to participate in this absurd experiment? To never put his foot down, to never tell him enough was enough? Even when he was asked to murder for the man, for the sake of science - that ephemeral, murky goal - he did it without question. His stomach lurched at the thought and he forced the nausea to subside. He had committed murder. Cold-blooded. Looked men in the eye and shot them down for the sake of filling some capacitor to some damned pyramid on the damned moon, of all places, and here he was. He wondered briefly if this was divine punishment. Inferno.
As though sensing his train of thought, Dr. Groph craned his neck to look back at him. "Christopher," he caught the other's attention, name tapping against the ridges of his teeth, "I think the Dr. Richtofen we once knew is long dead. This man is no friend of ours. Shall we meet him again..."
They seldom used one another's first names. It made Dr. Schuster wince to hear it in these circumstances. To know that this may be the last time they have a moment to breathe. And to use it to tell him this, he understood. He clutched his pistol tighter. "I'm well aware of what we'll do, if it comes to that."
Heart palpitations. Shaking hands. Both of them afflicted by this blight of fear. But it was beyond fear now, it was fury. Righteous, maybe, in the right circumstances. But what could be righteous in a land of atrocity? Was action or inaction the deserved course? Was anyone deserving of any of this, what had they done, when had their fates been sealed?
He knew one thing, as he and Dr. Groph made their cautious way to the MPD.
He knew the moment he laid eyes on Dr. Richtofen, he would show no mercy. And if he did, in those final glimpses of the other doctor, show it, he would know then that he truly had been a coward.
He could not know the future, and all it's sprawling entrails of connective narratives and lives, woven webs of deceit. He could not know that he would not kill the man he felt no warmth for - unless it were the fire of rage, perhaps - but continue to do his bidding. It was a weakness, a fondness for what had once been. A nostalgia so opaque it could cloud his judgment. He could not know that Dr. Groph, too, would continue with their plan until it could reach completion. That the three would be bound once more to each other's lives, and damned by it, in turn.
He checked his watch.
Eight hours and forty minutes.