Chapter Text
October, 2025.
Dr. William Thurston, Director of ArchIve and longtime member of the Department of Metaphysical Sciences, could not sleep.
Well, no; that wasn’t entirely accurate. He could feel himself wanting to fall asleep. The rocking of the ship, the gentle noises of the swells as they lapped against the hull, the soft murmuring of his fellow investigators; all combined to form a susurrant, hypnotic hum pulling him toward slumber. He wanted to sleep. He craved sleep, in fact. But there was something in him, buried beneath the fog rolling through his mind, that knew, categorically, he could not fall asleep.
He pinched himself, hard. Uselessly; he already knew there were bruises forming in several places along his upper arms from three straight days of battling the siren call of sleep. There was a time it had worked, the first night. He had stayed awake for eight hours just by pinching his arm and resolutely focusing on the pain, letting it be his anchor to the bright waking world. The second night had been more difficult. The cigarette burns on his thighs could attest to that. By last night, he had almost given in even with the stinging, sizzling welts still fresh on his skin. The cutting had come then, the last thing he could think to do to prevent sleep from claiming him. His forearms and calves were sliced to ribbons, and the rest of the team was whispering about him behind their hands, their eyes dark with concern. He needed rest, they said encouragingly. He was working himself too hard. He was running himself ragged. They couldn’t do this without him.
They had not seen what he had seen.
It writhed inside him, the image he could not scrub clean from the backs of his eyelids no matter how he tried. He had drunk alcohol, so much it had made him sick. He had dived into the ocean and held his breath until dark spots formed in his vision and his chest burned, aching for air. He had even tried staring at the sun, once, hoping–praying–that solar fire would purge the stain from his eyes. He had only stopped when the whispering started. When the stares had gotten too heavy to withstand.
He was going to die. That, he knew for certain. But if he could just stay awake until then, perhaps he would be the only one.
When had it gotten so dark?
He gasped in a breath and jolted himself awake, just before plummeting off the cliff and into true sleep. Around him, the ship still whispered and hummed and rocked. Soothing, taunting, pleading. Begging him to simply…let go.
“I won’t,” he rasped. Speaking his defiance into the dark, as if something were there to hear. “You understand that? I won’t do it. I’ll die first.”
He did not know what was happening until the laughter became audible. It rolled around him like the swells, like the tides, filling the air in the room. Inescapable. Inevitable. His chest swelled with the sound, and he realized, belatedly, that he was drowning. He opened his mouth to scream. Darkness poured in. He could feel it twisting into every fiber of his being, winding itself around every organ, pulsing with every fire of his synapses, pressing against his suddenly-too-tight skin.
A whisper sounded in his ears, and it was ocean darkness and endless dreaming, and it was the voice of destruction speaking in words achingly sweet, and it was the approach of madness and the end of all things.
You already have.