Chapter Text
Base was quiet as it tended to when everyone was out on missions. Still, a house this big being so empty felt strange. Dust hung in the empty rooms and corridors and not even the flies that were usually trying to desperately escape their confinement, by flinging themselves at the glass windows, dared disturb the silence. The sun was beginning to dip down on the horizon. It was that time of year when days start getting shorter and colder and leaves change to yellow and golden.
Edgar was in his office organizing files. It was really nothing work but there wasn’t much to do anyway and he liked when things were organized. It was silly how excited he got about folders and Mikey would never let him hear the end of it.
A loud sound reverberated through the building suddenly. The sound of a transport. No one was supposed to transport here at this time. This was either a mistake or completely against protocol. Edgar stood up and reached for the drawer with his emergency gun. The door to his office swung open and hit the neighbouring wall leaving a dent.
“Shit sorry,” mumbled the intruder. An iteration. Older but not by much, a few years maybe?
“Well, hi Eddie,” the iteration smiled and sent a “sorry I don't know why I said that” look his way. Edgar noticed he was gripping the door handle a bit too tightly as if he would collapse the second he let go of it
“Please don't call me that,” he sighed and put the gun down, but not back in the drawer. All this was completely not in accordance with protocol “I take this isn't a correction.”
The iteration hesitated for a second “No.”
“Then it's an enormous propagation risk,” There had to be a good reason for an iteration from the future to come here without any previous notice. This didn't bode well to today's status as an uneventful day.
Edgar took a closer look at the iteration standing before him. He looked horrible. He was swaying slightly as if he was finding it hard to stand. His whole body was shaking almost imperceptively. He had a tired look on his face, a look that Edgar had seen many times before, in the mirror. But there was something else there. A look of defeat. The face of a man with a death sentence. Edgar didn't like the implications of what this face meant.
“What happens?” he asked. A part of him didn't want to know, but this iteration appeared out of nowhere, completely disregarding the protocol and acting strangely, and he liked to think he knew himself well enough to know he always did things for a reason. He had a feeling he wouldn't find the reason consoling.
“Nothing yet,” the iteration replied. There was a pause.
“How bad?” it was the only thing he could think to ask.
The silence that followed had the force of a supermassive black hole that suddenly appeared in his office and tore right through his shelves of neat rows of color-coordinated folders full of carefully organized files.
“In approximately 21 minutes and 37 seconds I am going to die," he said it the same way you swat a fly. Quick and precise and practiced. Not out of mercy or sympathy but efficiency. “There's nothing I can do. There's nothing anyone can do,” and then he just broke. He shattered into a million pieces and scattered all across the office. He took one shaky step forward and collapsed onto Edgar and he had to hold him up in an awkward hug of a sort. He heard a quiet, choked out “I'm sorry.”
Edgar found they were both shaking. He didn't know anything about what was happening or why but he understood enough. This was bigger than just this iteration. Something bad happens and it would affect him. The shelves of folders came crashing around them, the black hole pulling everything in, all his plans, his entire future, it was all sucked inside and ground into nothing. The dust floated lazily around them.
“Let's- let's sit down,” he offered. There was only one chair in his office so, after awkwardly turning the iteration around and sitting him down, he stood waiting for… something. An explanation. He was owed at least this much.
There were so many things that his brain just… wasn’t processing. Eldritch horrors beyond human comprehension aren't real but horrors beyond human comprehension sure are. Death, for example. You may think you understand something but you really are just aware of it. There's only so much a person's mind can take until it breaks. It's still an organ after all. And so it tries to focus on understanding other, simpler things. Faces, for example.
In the new light his face looked even worse than before. He was unnaturally pale, his skin was like chalk, like it had been crumbling away bit by bit. The bags under his eyes were almost purplish and he was still trembling slightly. This iteration couldn't be more than ten years older but there was no way of telling how many years he actually experienced.
"How?"
"Brain hemorrhage," he responded. This made things fall apart in his brain. And then put themselves back together into an image he didn't like. "It- doesn't even hurt. You just...go to sleep. And die. Don't even know it. And then..." he paused. The iteration was staring blankly ahead at nothing in particular. "You're alive again. It's like you woke up but you don't remember waking up and Mikey is there and he looks at you like-" he was rambling.
There was a fly. Buzzing around in the office. A barely noticeable black smudge in the air. It slammed its body into the window with a quiet thunk. And again. And again. And again. A little dot visible in the image outside the window one second and gone the other. An interference. A dead pixel.
Knowing things was... good. Knowing things meant you could take precautions. Knowing things meant you could do something about them. He began to form a list in his head. Learn as much as you can, eliminate all propagation risk, and then he could work from there. Everything was under control.