Work Text:
Carver hears a clunk sound coming from one of the vents, sounding oddly flat in the echoey room. He glances at it. Nothing there. Footsteps behind them. Carver looks in the direction the sound was coming from. Nothing there. A hand reaches around the corner they’re about to turn, long fingers extending and grabbing onto the metal wall. Carver blinks, and it’s gone. When the two of them reach the hallway, there’s nothing there, but Carver thinks he hears a child giggle far away.
“It’s so quiet in here,” Isaac remarks. “It’s weird.”
His words send a chill down Carver’s spine. The two men continue exploring the building, now silent. At one point, Isaac says Carver’s name, but something about his tone feels off. Carver looks at him.
“What?” he asks.
“I didn’t say anything,” Isaac replies.
“Oh.”
Carver’s vision goes blurry for a moment when he turns his head back around. Then everything is different. Things around Carver have a flat look to them now, like he’s viewing them through a screen. The ground looks and feels distant when he takes his next step forward. Too distant. Too far away.
Carver falls. He’s falling, falling down, down. He thinks he bumps his head on something along the way to the ground. Sparks and thoughts scatter when his helmet scrapes against it. For a while, after his head makes contact with the hard floor, the only things he hears are his own unsteady breaths—inhale and exhale . . .
. . . inhale, in some more, and exhale . . .
. . . in and then out.
Carver’s head hurts from the fall. It feels like someone is jabbing their finger right into the soft tissue of his brain. Carver gets a few more calm moments, and then it all comes back.
They’re whispering.
So many voices all around him, so many people. Are they talking to him? Or maybe about him? About him. They’re talking about him. Carver had failed, failed everyone. Failed his family, failed them all, and now they’ve realized and are here to do what he couldn’t. They circle him, the voices. Around and around and around. Whispering to him and mocking him.
Whispering and mocking.
Not a single person reaches out. None of them attack. Not a single person tries to finish the job. None of them will kill him.
Carver still can’t make out a single word that the people are saying. Not until he hears her. Damara. Her distorted voice is clearer than the rest.
“. . . us whole. Join us. Join us, John.”
There’s something wrong with how she says his name. It’s not the same as she used to.
“Carver?”
The way that Isaac says his name is different. Real. The way that he puts his hand on Carver’s shoulder is real, too. Things start to shift. The world, ironically, feels alive again. Isaac’s hand squeezes. Carver reaches up to touch it, to confirm that it’s really there, that the man behind him isn’t just another hallucination. But something still feels wrong. It takes a few moments for him to realize what it is. Carver is standing. He probably has been the whole time.
“Are you okay?” Isaac asks, concerned.
“We need to destroy this fucking Marker,” Carver mutters.