Chapter Text
People were going missing.
Now, this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in Alaska. The state had the highest missing persons per capita in the country, which may have something to do with the fact that a majority of the land is undeveloped wilderness with miles between major and minor settlements. People owned guns more for defending themselves against wildlife than potential robbers or attackers.
It wasn’t the fact that people were going missing that was a concern, it was the fact that over a hundred had vanished on the same stretch of road within the past few months.
No trace. Not even their car, or goddamn tire tracks. Cameras police had set up along the road caught nothing, that is, if they didn’t malfunction. Just last month, an FBI agent on the case had gone missing. And last week, an entire helicopter.
After that, Alfred got involved. He wasn’t going to let anymore of his citizens fall victim to whatever was haunting the land. He closed down the road, and out of sheer paranoia made all air traffic go around the area. The settlements with citizens who commuted to Fairbanks would take planes to the city, paid for by state and federal resources until Alfred hunted down the culprit.
He didn’t know what to expect. He had his theories, but he didn’t want to be blinded by tunnel vision. The best option, he thought, would be to simply go see the area and hope the malady revealed itself.
So there he was, one hand gripping the steering wheel of a Ford Explorer, the other fiddling with radio stations. He typically adored drives like these, especially though expansive forests untouched by civilization. Conifers held a special place in his heart, always making him reminisce when he first made the journey to Oregon Territory with Lewis and Clark. Traversing “The Last Frontier,” miles more west than the lower forty-eight, it made him feel like a young teen again, seeing virgin lands for the first time.
There wasn’t any of that sentiment now. Just unease. A growing sense of isolation. Nations didn’t do well alone. They needed people. Not just to live, but also for their mental wellbeing. He loved to explore the wilderness, but ultimately, they were creatures of civilization. Prolonged deprivation made a sick nation.
He’s heard stories of nations whose ship capsized while in the middle of the ocean, many months later washing ashore a shell of themselves.
But he was in his own territory. He could teleport anywhere in the state at any time. He was just driving so he could bring along equipment to help his investigation. If he needed a break, Anchorage was just a jump away.
A song ended, and some insurance ad started to play. He turned the dial.
“...NASA released a statement about future problems the increased solar activity may pose, stating, ‘We are working with the Federal Aviation Administration to make sure incidents like this will not happen again. We are communicating with scientists all over the globe to monitor this unusually active period in the solar cycle.’ The head of the FAA commented saying that they are asking airlines to reschedule more flights for the night, but experts point out the risks posed by limited visibility and disrupting pilots' sleep…”
He turned the dial again.
“...Northern and Southern Lights were seen as far south as Los Angeles, California and as far north as Sydney, Australia Saturday night. Such widespread auroras have not been seen since the Carrington Event in 1859…”
And again.
“Sun is shining in the sky, there ain’t a cloud in sight…”
Oh thank God.
He leaned back in his seat, letting himself get lost in the upbeat lyrics. He smiled to himself. Only the English would make a song about missing a clear sky. But maybe all that dreary weather wasn’t such a bad thing if such a damn good song came out of it. Speaking of, he should give his father a call, it’s been a while. St. George's day wasn’t too long ago, Alfred should ask the old man how he spent it. Maybe dial Matthew as well, check in with him.
Honestly, he just wanted to talk to someone. The radio could talk and talk, but it was a terrible listener.
“Oh, Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why, you had to hide away for so long (so long), where did we go wrong?”
Alfred looked up at the blue morning sky ahead of him, only to find it violated with long streaks of green. He sighed and looked back towards the highway, the only mark of civilization in an endless sea of trees.
—
The camp was set up. The Ford was parked on a small clearing on the side of the road with its trunk open, exposing a number of instruments and screens. The radio was turned up, the music helping with the monotony of setting up the equipment and drown out the uncharacteristic silence of the forest. To the side was a ten foot tall antenna, and on the ground a large drone. It wasn’t fancy. They had already lost an expensive, military-grade reconnaissance drone once the investigation started escalating, and Alfred wasn’t about to flush another couple million dollars down the drain again.
His plan was for the drone to disappear. The drone was connected to military satellites, and Alfred would be fed its location in real time. Once it went offline, we would teleport to that location and hopefully find a lead, if not a culprit. Unlike a human, he didn’t have to waste time navigating unfamiliar forests or traversing tough terrain.
He took the controller and steadily took flight. Once hovering a few hundred feet off the ground, he switched to thermal vision and started to explore the area.
About a mile out, the camera went dark. A few seconds later an alert popped up on screen saying that connection had ended. As planned, its last position was recorded, and all Alfred had to do was calculate the distance and teleport there.
He took a backpack filled with medical supplies and rations in case he found any injured or famished survivors, a handgun in case he encountered kidnappers, a flare for other rescuers to find him in case they couldn’t travel, and a flashlight in case the search went on long. Though, the brightness of the auroras probably rendered it unnecessary.
He turned his head north, locating population centers to triangulate the location. He took a breath and jumped, leaving behind the equipment, the car, the radio, and the road.
—
Trees, utterly undistinguishable from one another, surrounded Alfred in all directions. Jagged needles jutted out from branches, encasing him like shark teeth. They pricked and poked his skin as he moved through the forest, and it immediately became clear how anyone who lost sight of the road could quickly become lost.
He couldn’t see too far ahead, rendering his high visibility orange jacket nothing but a poor fashion choice. He sighed, and began to scan the area. He tried to find a scent, something, anything. A whiff of gasoline, of food, of plastic, of blood. There was no scent of any human being in the area.
So, he climbed a tree. After fighting his way through dense branches, he could make out the landscape. Trees this far north weren’t very tall to begin with, so he didn’t have too far of a view. He couldn’t make out the road from here.
He sighed once more, and jumped back to the floor.
After an hour of absolutely nothing, he was considering jumping back to the car. It was really. So. Damn. Frustrating! A person is one thing, but how the hell does an entire helicopter disappear without a trace? Why couldn’t he do something as simple as find a single missing person. Hundreds had vanished from this very area, and he couldn’t find one! He didn’t even have a clue of what was making people disappear, which left nowhere for him to direct his frustration.
He kicked a tree. The trunk snapped and it fell to the ground with a leafy thump.
He cringed. Now, he had failed his mission and murdered a tree in the process. Great.
Alfred could hear the voice of his therapist in his head, scolding him. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You can’t save everyone, you can’t be on top of every little problem. Some things, humans can handle themselves.
But his therapist wasn’t here. She was back in Maryland, while he was in bumfuck-nowhere, Alaska, meaninglessly wandering around. And he should criticize himself. He couldn’t become a better person and nation if he pretended like he was perfect.
So many times he’d thought everything was just dandy, that things may actually be getting better, only to be blindsided by a nation, company, or politician because he hadn’t paid enough attention. It happened in 2001, 2008, 2011, 2020, 2025, 2027, 2030, 2038…
He was missing something. Something he hadn’t noticed. He was sure of it. He hadn’t been focusing enough on a particular aspect of the case, had overlooked an important detail, missed a crucial element.
The cars went missing too. They had to end up somewhere. Maybe they were underground.
Okay! He took a breath. Okay, he had another angle. He would go back to his car, drive back to Fairbanks, and get seismic equipment to see if there were any cave systems in the area. He would check satellite imagery to see exactly where and when the drone disappeared.
This, he could actually solve. He could find those missing citizens, dead or alive, and bring closure and hopefully comfort to those families. Make some citizens a little less anxious. He may not be able to control the sun, but he could control this.
He held his breath and jumped back to the car. He didn’t know why he still held his breath. Helped him concentrate, he supposed. It was a habit he developed when Arthur was first teaching him how to navigate his territory. His father always found it so cute how he’d puff up his cheeks before teleporting. It made him self conscious of teleporting in front of other nations. He still avoided it when he could, even though he didn’t puff his cheeks up like he did when he was fifty. Alfred wasn’t even sure Arthur was aware of his insecurity.
Why was he thinking about this now…
Maybe he should give his father a call on the drive back. The car had Bluetooth after all, and he would be better company than the radio, even on the opposite side of the Earth.
The car appeared before him, and Alfred immediately went to turn on the radio. He walked around the Ford to the driver’s side, but stopped in his tracks.
There was no road.
The car—and Alfred himself—were completely surrounded by trees.
He had parked by the side of the road. He was so damn sure because there was nowhere else to park! He had teleported to the exact location he had parked. If anything, it should be the car missing because an entire road just can't get up and walk away.
Alfred laughed at the stupid mental image of a road growing legs and walking away, because what else could he do?
He turned the engine back on, and then to the equipment in the back of the truck. The GPS there was connected to satellites, and should be able to tell him his geolocation. Clearly, he was somewhere in his territory, but he was hesitant to jump to Anchorage only to find himself even more lost.
As he waited for the machine to boot up, he checked his phone, hoping he had enough bars for Google Maps to tell him where he was. There was an email, recently sent by his brother.
He swiped down to read the preview.
“Hey Al,
You remember the Texas Deepfreeze all the way back in 21, right? Well I was thinking about that. The western and eastern intercoms extend throughout both the US and Canada, and in the case of a mass electrical failure of one, or god-forbid both grids, I think we need to either reinforce infrastructure or make a plan for alternative energy sources. Neither of us wants a repeat of what happened in Texas in the 20s or Quebec in the 70s. What you said about a test run to measure response time for a storm alert and emergency grid shutdown…”
He turned off his phone.
He couldn’t deal with this right now. He physically couldn’t because, as far as he knew, he was another missing person among over a hundred 411 cases. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
The loading screen on the GSP was stuck at forty percent, and Alfred was torn between resetting it or waiting it out and not losing progress. He decided to leave it loading and go turn on the radio. The silence of the woods was making him antsy.
He opened the door and leaned over to turn on the radio.
“Du lover mye meir enn du kan holde, Ikkje lær meg om løgn og om svik, Eg spaserer med deg over lik-”
And turned the dial.
“Родина, Еду я на родину, Пусть кричат: "уродина," А она нам нравится-”
And turned it one more time.
“This is CBC North, bringing Nanuvat the newest Canadian and international hits since 1961.”
And turned off the radio.
He jumped out of the car and slammed the door shut, the metal making a harsh thunk. He went back to the trunk only to find the GSP still stuck at forty-goddamn-percent.
Alfred went over to the back seat and hesitantly opened the door. He fished through a backpack, and found that box among his toiletries. He cringed at even needing to open it, but he forced himself to anyway. He combed through the contents, and was relieved to find not a single pill missing.
So, hallucinating wasn’t an option, at least not from those.
Then what was it? A natural gas leak? Or maybe his psychiatrist was a little too optimistic and he had really gone insane. He didn’t feel insane, but hey, who the hell knows? It’s not like a lot of people who end up in asylums think they need to be there!
He sat down against the tire of the car, not willing to leave it. It was all he had left of the modern world. Manufactured parts, synthetic materials, serial numbers and buttons, all human contraptions and ideas. He loved cars. They connected peoples to places, farms to cities, goods to stores. Roads were the veins of Alfred, each car a cell carrying nutrients and material to build and feed citizens and society.
The woods were not that. They were primordial. A nation could navigate perfectly in any city or town in their territory, but drop them in the middle of the woods, and suddenly they could be off by miles. Don’t get him wrong, he loved his national parks, and was quite proud of just how much of his land remained untouched by civilization, but sometimes a forest felt like a roommate—not a part of his home.
They were their own organism, with their own cells, organ systems, and processes, fundamentally different to how a society functioned. Alfred often wondered if they were sentient like nations were, but in their own, unfathomable way.
And now he sat alone in the belly of this beast. He pulled out his phone—a neuron, so to speak—driving communication between all the different layers of society. He dialed Arthur’s number.
It rang, and rang, and rang, until it went to voicemail. Nevertheless, he let the pre-recorded message play, only hanging up at the beep.
His phone hung limply in his hand. Alfred looked out into the woods, trees completely still. It was spring, yet very little snow for the time of year and latitude. Nevertheless, the area should have been filled with new life. Bugs, birds, and other critters were absent from the area.
There were trees as far as the eye could see, but it felt lifeless. It made his arm hairs stand up on end despite his jacket keeping him warm. He was sitting down, but his muscles tensed like he was about to sprint a marathon.
The forest felt empty, but fuck, he wasn't alone, was he?
He lifted himself off the dirt and spun around back into the car. His hands gripped around a loaded rifle, which he quickly pulled out of the vehicle and pointed back at the woods.
No noise except for the sound of his heartbeat reverberating throughout his entire body.
Then a snap of a twig. He held his breath, not daring to move.
At the sight of bright green, he shot.
The figure moved away at astonishing speed. As his ears took the time to recover from the sound, Alfred cocked the gun again, and swung the barrel towards where the thing had run.
It was silent again. Then a thunk from the roof of the car. Alfred turned around, but not quick enough before he was pinned to the ground, gun flung well out of reach.
He was pinned on his belly, an arm holding his head to ground that prevented him from seeing exactly who was on top of him.
Alfred stiffened at the sound of Russian, coming from a very familiar voice. "You are one cocky bastard. I know I should not expect common decency from you, but to shamelessly parade around my territory!"
That accent. That voice, so soft yet somehow so menacing.
Ivan. He shouldn’t be here.
Maybe he’s not.
Still, the weight on his back—the strain on his spine and compressing pressure on his ribcage—felt very real. Using his free arm, in a sudden heave he pushed himself up, pinning the Russian between himself and the car.
“Your territory?!” he snarled. “You sold Alaska to me, you fucking amnesiac!”
He grabbed the hand clinging to his hair, and gripped, making the bones in his wrist snap, crackle, and pop like a rice crispy treat. Naturally, his grip loosened and Alfred was able to scramble away.
He spun around, and finally got to look at the face of his attacker. Alfred didn’t want to think about how loud the voice in his mind told him that there would be nothing there when he turned around, but despite having been pinned to the ground by the Russian, he was ever so slightly relieved to find him still there.
He wore a neon green safety jacket, striped in reflective white. In black, bold Cyrillic, inscribed across his chest, was the word RESCUE.
The rest of his character was poorly equipped to be invading a foreign country. The more he examined Ivan, the more it became apparent that the Russian was in this neck of the woods for a very similar reason as Alfred.
He looked to the side of the car, where the road should be, and back to Ivan.
His muscles unwound. He turned away, not even bothering to retrieve the gun. He’s not real, Alfred concluded. He started walking back to the car door, hoping the heated seats would provide the slightest comfort to the fact that he’s officially a schizophrenic.
“Where do you think you’re going?” growled Ivan, who’d sat up to trail him. Great, so the hallucinations are following me now.
“Car,” he mumbled, unable to restrain himself from the urge to talk to someone, even if said person was just a figment of his crumbling sanity.
Ivan grabbed his arm before he could reach the handle. “You think you’re being funny right now?”
Alfred winced at the pressure. Not from pain, but from how damn real it felt…
“What are you doing here?” he seethed. He was smiling, but it was strained. He could pick out the slightest hints of fear slipping onto the Russian’s typical poker face. The crease in his brow, the stress in his jaw—he was alarmed by the situation as much as Alfred.
Wait. What the hell is he thinking? He looked away from that lilac glare and into the treeline. Each row of pines compounded behind one another, and the deeper he looked the darker it got. Each second longer he looked into the woods, the higher his heart rate rose, until he couldn’t help but look back at Ivan.
He let out a breathless laugh, visibly infuriating his imaginary company.
“What’s the point of even telling you? You aren’t even real.”
The grip on his wrist loosened, though he still held on. “What are you talking about?” he asked like Alfred had gone crazy. He almost laughed again, because his fucking hallucination was looking at him like he was crazy!
“Look around, Ivan.” He swung an arm in the general direction where the road once laid. “There was a road there. Now there’s not.”
Ivan cautiously glanced at the trees, like Alfred would pounce on him the moment he looked away. Like Alfred was the one playing pretend with him. Well in a way, he was—his mind was.
“And how the fuck did I get this car here? There’s no way through these trees. I can barely move through them. Like hell this Ford can!”
Ivan didn’t respond. He wasn’t holding onto Alfred anymore, and he wasn’t looking at him.
“Not to mention, I can’t fucking sense you. You’re in my territory, my proximity, and it’s like you're not even standing in front of me.”
He took a few steps away from Alfred, examining the car, the trees, the sky that grew brighter each minute the accursed sun inched closer towards the horizon.
“So I’m going to go sit in my rental, and wait for whatever stress induced psychosis I’m in to wear off. As you’re all in my head, which I currently have no control over as of the moment, you’re free to join me if you wish.” He looked away from Braginsky, hoping he could psyche himself into making the apparition disappear.
But a part of him didn’t want him to go, even with their history looming over them. He really didn’t want to be alone in these damn woods. And that part happened to include the wayward lobe of his brain inducing the hallucination.
But damnit, why couldn’t it be a nation he liked. Like dad or Mattie. Or literally any other nation he had a slightly better relationship with. It was a long damn list, and yet his subconscious had to pick the nation at the very bottom.
He entered the car and closed the door. He turned the radio back on, which was now spewing some Finnish death metal song.
The passenger car door opened, and Ivan slipped into the seat.
He didn’t speak at first, taking a moment to adjust the seat to his height. Alfred just closed his eyes, wondering if those pills would have any positive effect on him at this point.
“I’m not a hallucination.”
Alfred huffed. “That’s—”
“—exactly what a hallucination would say. Yes, but,” he turned off the radio, which annoyed Alfred to the point of looking at him, “I think we were out there for the same reason. You’re looking for your citizens too, yes?”
He hummed an affirmative. “Good people went missing. Thought to myself at least this is one thing I can do right.” Apparently not.
Good people went missing. And the hope their family felt when their own nation would head the investigation! It was so damn intoxicating, and overwhelming. And when he left Fairbanks and headed to the site, that high slowly faded, leaving only the dread of what he could say if he failed.
“And the initial investigation?”
Absolutely no progress. The more people looked, the worse things got. More people vanished. Things went missing too. Cameras…cars…an entire helicopter.
Oh.
OH.
He froze for a moment while his brain came to accept the fact that the nation sitting next to him in his car was not a hallucination, and another moment for his body to catch up with that realization.
And after the delay it hit him, all at once—that large machinery had inexplicably gone missing with no good explanation, and now his car was has inexplicably teleported from the road, and that he wasn’t hallucinating Ivan, and that he’d opened up to the Russian, and that his sworn enemy WAS RIGHT NEXT TO HIM.
He swung the door open and scrambled out, a little more frantically than he’d ever admit. Alfred went to retrieve the gun, to which Ivan correctly assumed that was his goal and quickly left the car to beat him to it.
“Alfred!” he called out, closing in fast. “Wait! Clearly, we’ve both become the victim in this situation.”
Alfred came to a halt, skidding across pine needles.
“It’s gone.”
Ivan joined him a second later, grabbing his sleeve. Why is he so damn grabby? Alfred didn’t make an effort to shake him off.
“What?”
“My shotgun. It’s gone. Like the road. Like those people.” He turned to Ivan, grabbing his arm in turn. “Like the fucking rescue helicopter that went to look.”
Neither of them let go of each other. They scanned the forest floor, spotting freshly thawed moss and pine slowly turning into peat. But no gun.
Alfred started to move backwards until his back hit the metal of the car. He slowly slid down the polished paint, dragging Ivan down with him. Once they were on the floor, sitting shoulder to shoulder, Alfred let go.
“I think we’re fucked,” Alfred stated. Because in all the months those people and vehicles went missing, not a single one of them popped up again.
Ivan didn’t respond. Alfred cast him a quick glare, and he saw the growing fear, dread, panic filling the Russian’s every feature. Ivan was not an expressive man, as were most Russians. Every expression of his was purposely crafted and performative.
But his enemy wasn’t playing pretend, Alfred could deduce that much.
“This isn’t Siberia,” he said at last, fear thickening his accent. “This isn’t Alaska.” He pulled something from his pocket. A compass, Alfred realized, old and antique, but the lack of tarnish on the silver told him it was well cared for.
It spun erratically, needle swinging from side to side, then quickly rotating a full three-sixty, before pendulating between directions again.
Ivan pocketed the compass, a useless device it now was. He didn’t look at Alfred. He didn’t look at anything. He was elsewhere, distant, mind as lost as they were.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere.”
Alfred looked back towards the woods. The sun was below the tree line now, Alaskan…? Siberian…? Arctic spring air creeping through their coats. The sun was no longer visible, but its ire was still bright, infuriating the nitrogen and oxygen in the air with brilliant ribbons of green, violet, and red.