Content Warning:

Detailed descriptions of imaginary violence and gore.

OCTOBER 1, 2022

A chill of goosebumps trilled on the land that housed Sloth’s Pit, dispersing from its unearthly form natural phenomena that sang of a coming horror: swaying trees, anxious tapping, hooting from the owls preparing to feast, fallen leaves rustling across the land, the hum of dealership car engines, ammunition being loaded, the focusing lens of a camera, worn concrete, the gentle sway of wind chimes birthing a sound more like a distant early warning.

Late, Colonel Robert Tofflemire of Site-87 supposed. A Late warning. Antithetical.

Had the bloodcurdling yet softening din of that windchime telling him to drop his gun and run existed at any point in 2018-- hell, 2017 if he was deserving enough, even earlier into years of the past if he was god-blessed... He knew for a fact he would’ve greatly appreciated it.

There stood Colonel Robert Tofflemire, knowing that at any point this coming month, he would cease to exist. That maybe this October would finally be his last.

At this rate he wondered how much he had left in himself. He did it last year, he did it in 2020, he did it in 2019, so on, so forth... Had Tofflemire been an idiot, he’d have said he was numb. Desensitized. He was neither-- the word he was looking for was ‘exhausted.’ Yet there he stood. Eyes trained upon the distant, dark horizon, where there was yet nothing to be seen.

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

A beep from a digital clock somewhere in the distance. Some quiet hums from cell phones from behind him, and some hushed apologies or grunts of irritation followed by shuffling, and more irritating disturbances to his current state of mind.

The September night was no more. What stood before Tofflemire was an October morning.

And it taunted him.

The night was so quiet, in fact, that the sound of his coworkers inhaling and exhaling trying to brace themselves was irritating-- and they were several yards behind him. He was stationed by the main entrance of Sloth’s Pit, where thickets and tall trees seemed to fortify the area, like it knew what was coming and was desperately trying to camouflage itself. Not like it hadn’t done it before, but in the past 2 years he’d been wondering if it still had the power or even the energy to do so.

A part of Tofflemire wanted to shriek at the top of his lungs, start shooting at nothing already, crunch his red-rimmed glasses between his teeth, tear out all of his poor chestnut hair he once cared so much for, both out of the hair tie that wrangled just how much of it he’d grown out and each individual follicle out of his scalp, and proceed to suffer a complete mental shutdown at the ripe old age of 33 years old.

Tofflemire felt like the night was laughing at him. Laughing at all of them. Like they were all putting on a show and getting paid to stumble over themselves. Thriving in his mental turmoil, at the snarl that had formed upon his lips.

Open, locks, whoever knocks...!

“Toffee.”

Tofflemire’s snarl grew ever so slightly at the sound of a woman’s voice.

“Toffee.” She repeated. “Toff. Bob.”

A beat.

“Robert.”

He didn’t respond to her. His gaze remained upon the dark road ahead of him, past the barricade formed out of concrete and backed by the raw muscle of his coworkers. He could hear so many of them, just barely in earshot, frantically asking each other questions or quietly doing a headcount.

“You hungry?”

Tofflemire flicked his gaze towards the clock. His jaw softened to shoot back at her: “It’s 12:02.”

“It is indeed.” She nodded, unphased by his surly tone. “Reese dropped off some cookies.”

His eyes just barely craned at the cookie he was offered, affixed just barely in his line of sight, not even bending his head or neck to get a better look. “Why?”

“‘Cause she poisoned them, and she’s waiting for us all to choke and die on them so she can embezzle our paychecks.” His companion grumbled. “And she drove over here to distribute the morale herself, you know. She’s actually stationed on the second checkpoint.”

He paused. “No raisins.”

“Just M&Ms.” She munched on another cookie, presumably her own. “They’re local, from Rita’s.”

“Mmm.” Tofflemire gently took the sweet from her hand, tilting his head over so slightly to the side. He looked back to the horizon ahead of him. “No changes to hume levels?”

“No.”

“Nothing crawling your back?”

“No.”

“No scarecrows popping out from the earth?”

“‘Less that means I gotta get your prescription, no.”

“Really, why’d Reese think to get cookies?”

She chuckled. “A treat for survivors. We’re surviving.”

“The worst has only just begun.”

“Staying alive nonetheless.”

Colonel Olivia Callahan was a native to Sloth’s Pit. She was born in the town, so were her parents, so on, so forth. So her speech quirks and her slight country twang wasn’t a product of growing up in the south-- why they had it in the midwest when plenty of others from the town had had bits of their own accents whittled away, he didn’t know. It was odd compared to the standard midwestern accent he heard a good portion of people in the town speaking with. Tofflemire wasn’t sure if it was endearing or annoying yet, which he accepted as a consequence of her sheer existence, her unabashed intrusion upon his life for nearly a year now.

He knew he had one very concrete opinion of her, though:

You’re not her.

Stop pretending you’re her.

To rub salt in the wound, nobody seemed to question her presence. Good old Liv, Livvy, Olive, Cal. Bob’s partner, his one and only, who had to tolerate his spontaneous, paranoid grumpiness ever since some odd November morning. The perfect girl next door to the entire Plastics building. Yet despite her strangeness, she fit the uniform perfectly, like she was meant to wear it. They were back in the faux FEMA-emblazoned bulletproof vests and full tactical gear they hadn’t worn in a good while. If anybody asked, the S&C Plastics building had yet another toxic spill.

Nothing about Colonel Olivia Callahan made sense to Robert Tofflemire. He knew this. She was in denial, though. Or she didn’t care enough in turn. She certainly wasn’t stupid-- the opposite, actually. She knew far too much about things that were beyond her line of business. Not that Tofflemire wanted to unpack it, the fear of repeating October 2020 too much to bear.

What he perceived as her lack of understanding was really reopening the wound, though.

Liv was his height, down to the exact centimeter. Her hair was both shorter and way thicker than his, choppy and dyed platinum blonde. Her black bandana with jack-o-lantern patterns, underneath the helmet Sigma-10 wore for protection, covered up her jet-black roots slowly growing back in. Her nose was slightly crooked and long, her eyes were dark and somewhat droopy. Tofflemire hadn’t met her parents, but there was no doubt in his mind that if they actually existed they’d be Ojibwe.

The last bit of the cookie managed to cram itself down Tofflemire’s dry throat. As a small cough from the crumbs and a deep sigh from finally eating for the first time in too many hours escaped his mouth, he found himself feeling emptier.

“Liv,” Robert managed, both physically and mentally, despite how wrong it felt, “has March said anything?”

Olivia Callahan shook her head, just out of his eyesight. She was much less preoccupied with the tension at hand than Tofflemire was. He felt himself scoff internally-- of course she wouldn’t get it.

He could hear a small chatter among some of the surveying civilians that had grouped up and gotten loud enough that they were audible several yards away. Despite the fact that the employees of Site-87 asked otherwise, they had still come to look at the barricade to see if there were any threats and how they were expected to respond to the events ahead of them.

The main road before them was just the primary road taken to enter Sloth’s Pit-- virtually the entire site held the perimeter, way beyond what he could see. Blocking the road was a massive, concrete-fortified blockade that had been cured in the sun for the past week, with a massive warning emblazoned on it in big black letters and legal jargon that made the once-welcoming town behind it look like a ghost town or secret Federal research facility.

No alarms had gone off regarding any passerby or travelers going through site checkpoints in the prior month, no concerning alterations to hume levels, no nearby Groups or People of Interest had been spotted in their immediate area...

Tofflemire got tense. Why hasn't anything happened yet?

Tofflemire looked up at the sky.

Everything is perfect right now. What could go wrong, what could go wrong, what could go wrong?

He halted, suddenly coming to senses about what he might’ve just done.

It was at minimum a $500 fine to utter that 4 word, 16 letter phrase within town limits, especially intentionally. Sloth’s Pit was narratively compelled-- for all its spontaneity, uttering that phrase even internally could mean anything between karmic inconvenience or life and death. Murphy’s Law may as well have been constitutional.

He looked around wildly, adrenaline and sugar shooting around every inch of his body and veins like his nervous system was a nuclear-powered elevator. His rifle was still loaded, pointed cautiously at the sky. Just who had he cursed? Who had he just accidentally fucked over? What was nobody seeing yet? Was his paranoia the product of the anomaly at hand? What had he unleashed upon the land?

Liv smiled at Tofflemire, a look so gentle he saw nothing but the venom of a poised snake in it. “You feel the sky falling, Rob?”

“It might just.” He hissed. “I did the thing.”

“The thing?”

He pointed at his head, waved in the air wildly, and made a throat-slitting motion with his thumb, his tongue sliding out of his mouth.

She widened her eyes with surprise. “Ain’t you a little harbinger.”

Tofflemire felt a snap deep within his soul.

“I don’t need you making it worse!” He finally yelled at her. “You don’t get it. You’ll never get it.”

Pointing his rifle out and away from them, he stepped towards her and got so far into his face she backed into a sign that read SPEED LIMIT 20, bumping her head.

“Look.” He said, in a hushed tone, close enough to her that his face would be the only thing in focus, his snarl forcing itself to soften. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what you think you are. I don’t know how you got into this hellhole.”

“Rob...”

“I know we’ve been over this.” his eyebrows remained furrowed. “I know that you think it, I know that everyone else in our squad thinks it, our entire force, the rest of the Site, even the ones who don’t know a single thing about me--” he waved his hands at the perimeter of Sloth’s Pit. “--I know my meeting with Palmer somehow got to them. I don’t know how, but I know it did. I just don’t think I am making it clear.”

He heaved a heavy sigh.

“I hate you. I don’t understand you. I don’t trust you. I don’t know why you’re here, or who sent you. I know you’re worried about me. I am not what you need to worry about. I’m worried about what you mean. What your presence means to me. What your presence means to every other damn person at this site, and all the fucking civilians.”

Not once did Olivia Callahan divert her eyes from him. Finally, it seemed he was reaching her limit, too. The ambiguous look in her eyes intensified, her mouth in an uncomfortable frown.

“I need you to leave me alone.” The Colonel continued. “I need you to stop offering me all these little truces. I need you to show some spine. I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me you give a single shit about what we’re facing. You are not fixing anything. You’re making it worse.”

She jutted her chin out like she was about to talk back, but swallowed it into a shuddering sigh.

A moment of silence sat between them. Tofflemire stepped away slightly, enough that she could see the road ahead. Liv adjusted herself from the off-center balance she sustained while being questioned. A shaky breath escaped her lips. Deliberating her choices, it seemed.

In her defense, he had no idea what he’d say in response to what he’d just said either.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand?

It felt good to dig his gritty fingernails into whatever her brain was made up of. It didn’t feel good to see what looked back at him. It looked human. Too human. A complexity beyond Tofflemire’s years.

Most snakes aren’t venomous.

A familiar tone hung in both of their earpieces-- both instinctively pressed into listening.

“Fine morning we’re having, eh.” Site Director Tristian Bailey’s tone was humorous, yet the coat of tension was unmistakable. “It’s 12:11. Levels are still good. Nothing in the distance.We have virtually every single device and detector out in all angles. Everything is functioning as it should. Everybody’s stable. Did y’all know it’s a Quarter Moon tomorrow? Something to look forward to, eh? Good work so far, everyone. This month isn’t gonna end any time soon. I’m proud of all of you. Stay strong.”

Simple but effective, he had to admit.

The Helen Units, the AI that essentially worked as a small GPS to find immediate people or locations of interest, additionally used to let Site Employees immediately communicate with each other without radios or phone calls, buzzed slightly as Bailey bid goodbye.

Although Tofflemire still hadn’t followed up with anything, Liv’s chuckle was heavy, failing to swallow a voice crack. “What is there to say that can’t be held against me in court?”

Restless, he pressed his thumb onto his knuckles and tried to pop his fingers for what felt like the fiftieth time in the past hour. Now was not the time to apologize-- if he was going to say he was sorry, he would rather genuinely mean it, and he wasn’t feeling sympathetic whatsoever.

A muffled noise brought his attention away from Liv, off closer to the rest of his cohorts. Liv followed his gaze. It was chatter-- loud at that. Shouting, potentially.

Tofflemire looked in the direction of the noise ahead, back at Liv, and back at the noise again. “The hell?”

Liv looked at him. “We’re supposed to be scouting.”

Tofflemire grunted. She was right, but their shouting wasn’t helping. He remembered why he was so upset in the first place.

And finally, a sign.

“Good fucking lord, Chris! Control yourself!”

The Colonels exchanged looks. The excruciatingly sour tone from the conversation was still present, but they were technically on duty. The threat didn’t necessarily have to be an outsider, they were just stationed to watch the perimeter specifically.

After a dark blue and white sign made of steel that read ‘WELCOME TO SLOTH’S PIT! EST. 1881’, they saw the accursed lack of control in question.

Doctor Christopher Hastings was a tiny little thing; it was a miracle so much neuroticism could even be sustained in his measly five-foot frame in the first place.

Despite the fact he was closer to forty than thirty, Tofflemire had heard stories of newer employees of the local liquor store requesting Hastings’ ID. Yet the fact the guy had lived long enough to get a PhD in Parabotany, one of the most infamously lethal departments of the Foundation, and dedicated said research to one of the several events that nearly killed him… It attested respect from Tofflemire, as opposed to chalking up Hastings’ continued existence to early Christmas miracles. Though he found it odd some people still mistook Hastings to be so much younger. Tofflemire came across him so much that he’d been able to get a good understanding of the Doctor in his years working in the same building as him.

His eye bags made him look like a raccoon, housing a hazel-colored thousand yard stare. His mop of blonde hair made Tofflemire look like he’d just stepped out of a fancy hair salon by comparison. So many nights spent staying up, neglecting his own sleeping schedule made Hastings’ hair wild, uncombed and shooting in all directions. There were two protrusions of his goldy locks caused from trying to keep his head up or gripping his hair out of stress that he looked like he had cat ears, or horns. He had just the right amount of muscle for him to not be defenseless in the profession of mysterious plants, and a small gut-- though it was recent enough that Tofflemire didn’t know if it was just his metabolism getting worse, or via habitually sharing beer with the amazonian coworker Hastings called his girlfriend. And even then, poor Christopher Hastings had to roll up the sleeves of the green sweater under his lab coat at least twice. His dark brown pants he only had to fold up once.

For a botanist, he was awfully pasty, and definitely looked like he needed more sunlight-- actually, that was a pretty common trend among the department members of Site-87. They may as well have been plants themselves, starving ones at that.

Doctor Jonathan West was a different story.

As opposed to Hastings, he was already well into his forties. Tofflemire had no doubt in his mind that he was just as if not more stressed and sleep deprived than Hastings, given his streaks of grey in what was otherwise coffee-colored brown hair, combed back but still fighting against him. West was just much better at hiding his exhaustion and somehow not letting it stop him: he also had incredibly noticeable dark circles, and a scar ran across his nose, jagged and ever so slanted. West was one of the people who’d been at the site the longest, having gotten an internship shortly after college and succeeding his predecessor as the Head of Nexological Studies. Tofflemire liked to think of Nexology as a ‘Farcical Anthropology’ of sorts; Nexology was just a matter of studying why and how the anomalous properties of Nexuses came to be, and how it affected the areas encompassed. Suffice to say he had no idea how West’s brain hadn’t imploded from trying to apply that to a place as bumfuck backwards as Sloth’s Pit.

He towered over Hastings, albeit that wasn’t hard to achieve. What helped West look taller than he actually stood, not just in comparison to Hastings but a majority of his coworkers, was the fact he had good posture. Years of doing paperwork and slowly transitioning to technology somehow hadn’t done a number on him. He hadn’t only inherited his predecessor’s title, but his attire as well-- wearing a full suit and tie to work every day was kooky for practically every single person except West. It was the most consistent way he and his twin brother, also Dr. West, were always differentiated. The Twins West were the only people who could ever pull off such a tacky combo of gala-material clothes and genuinely well-trimmed handlebar mustaches, in combination to the lab coat they somehow made as regal as possible. He didn’t have a theatrical personality whatsoever, he just so happened to dress like a Gilded Age gentleman. Or a fifties gentleman. One or the other, Tofflemire couldn’t make up his mind, he rocked the same old-fashion look and made it work regardless.

The only thing he seemed to be missing, on an official level, was his gentlelady. And Tofflemire hadn’t been making that observance baselessly-- Dr. Margaret Reese, who had gone through the effort to share cookies, one of which being well into Tofflemire’s own stomach now, had been rumored again and again to have been together with him for well over a decade. Tofflemire had no idea why anybody seemed to treat it like an affair, it wasn’t like they went out of their way to correct people when they were mistaken as a couple, nor did they have any other romantic commitments.

Tofflemire used to joke with--

With...

Tofflemire felt bile rising in his throat.

Tofflemire once joked about West having a stick up his ass that kept himself upright despite his rather curt personality, but he had softened his attitude in recent years, so Tofflemire hadn’t repeated it in a while. Suffice to say the stick might’ve been back in this very moment though. Both Doctors were about to claw the shit out of each other.

“Cease!” Colonel Tofflemire called out, a sharpness in his voice he hadn’t let out publicly in a good while.

Hastings was getting his thin and slightly flabby hands pulled back-- he had bits of blood under his fingernails, and in turn poor West’s wonderful mustache was stained by his own red dribbling from his nose.

It was nothing severe, but... fighting? He took them both as the petty type, not the kind that actually cared to pull out hair like highschoolers.

Agent Ruby Williams, the amazonian of Hastings’ heart, was the one yanking his thrashing body backwards. How someone as mellow as her ended up in love with such an anxious mess without balancing Hastings out, Tofflemire had no clue. But they’d been well over three years strong, so Tofflemire supposed he wasn’t one to talk. Ruby easily overpowered him, being taller than both of the men herself, twisting his arms into a basket hold like it was nothing.

Dr. Jonathan West had nobody forcing him to yield. He brushed himself off nonchalantly, his furrowed eyebrows not helping disguise the curt frown on his face. He didn’t rush to clean off his nose despite the fact it was dribbling-- Tofflemire assumed it was because his sleek black leather gloves were too new to be ruined. “I’m embarrassed on your behalf, Doctor Hastings. I mean that sincerely.”

“You think you’re hot shit!” Hastings yelled at West from the trenches of his own triceps. His vocal chords at least made him sound his age.

“I don’t think I’m anything.” West grumbled, in that weird posh tone that made it seem more as if he was raised in a mansion instead of a Seattle suburb. “I’m saying that you’re making a foolish miscalculation. You’re taking my words way too damn far.”

“I made myself loud and clear, men!” Colonel Tofflemire bounded towards them, getting directly in between them and forcing himself into their faces. “If Commander March were here, I’d know he’d be chewing your asses out. At ease, Williams.”

“...Yessir.” Ruby Williams let go of Hastings, who promptly wiggled out of her grip and directed his attention towards Tofflemire. She’d been hanging around Tofflemire enough in the past couple of months to know joking with him was no longer the possibility it once was. Especially with the way Tofflemire found himself imitating Commander March’s behavior and mannerisms.

“Hastings.”

“Robert.”

Colonel Tofflemire glared at him. “Don’t be cute with me, dipshit, I’m not your girlfriend. You threw the first punch?”

Hastings gave him that same look Liv liked giving him, as if Tofflemire was screaming like a cave monster when he was supposed to be President. “I felt insulted by Dr. West, Sir. I told him loud and clear that I think that us being panicked is exactly what the thing wants.”

“What thing, Hastings?”

“Whatever’s coming, Sir.”

Colonel Tofflemire’s eyebrows furrowed. “Akin to 2020.”

“Yessir.” Hastings looked like the shock of getting called out was making him think coherently for once, even gesturing wildly to help enunciate his point. “‘Thing’ being a general term, not literally a return to form. I believe the danger ahead of us will want a Newton’s cradle effect. Until we release our tension, the threat will not resume. When we retain a resting form, I believe that’d be the peak of general Nexus-wide tension. And it’d be virtually impossible to maintain calm across a population as big as Sloth’s Pit.”

Colonel Tofflemire nodded. “I see. West.”

“Sir.” West knew his place.

He pivoted to his direction, shuffling his feet. “Why did you respond the way you did?”

West rested a hand on his hip, making no such gestures. “Hastings claims that whatever entity will be persistent this month will want to attain both tension and a lack of tension. Newton's cradle remains stagnant if you retain the instigator sphere in the air and refuse to drop it, or drop the sphere without the release of potential energy. Yet assuming we all miraculously retain our adrenaline-charged anxiety and diligence for the entirety of October, I do not believe that will factor into what we will encounter this month and how we will approach it.”

“No, you said you were worried we were going to turn out like Amityville!” Hastings jabbed a finger at him.

“Let me explain myself, because I obviously failed to do so-- I did not fucking say Amityville, nor did I intend to imply it, nor do I see any reason to revisit discussion on it.” West thumped his chest and cleared his throat. “Furthermore, I have no reason to believe that, yet again, will this be the only issue pertaining to us in Sloth’s Pit alone. I believe we are being negligent towards our sister Nexuses, even if they insist upon a sustainable hume count. Roadkill County and Eventide are no strangers to regular conflict and combat on a daily basis, unlike us. I believe that a second opinion would have benefitted us, but I received no such opinions from corresponding Site Employees in the areas.”

“It’s all just theory.” Ruby accidentally blurted. She covered her mouth up promptly in apology, but Tofflemire just shrugged her off.

“Theory is never improper, there’s just a fucking time and place.” Tofflemire turned towards West again. “To make a point, Doctor: Say that we had a reason to not believe what the hume levels told us. What are the visual signs, in kindergarten terms?”

“Chaos or a general lack of activity, sir.”

“Do you see either?”

“I see a lack of activity, sir.”

“Yes, because you’re the eye of the storm.” Tofflemire gestured like the two were idiots. “In instigating a fight, I do believe the Nexus is telling you to get the hell to work or at least orient yourselves like the oh so upstanding citizens you are. Loving the productivity here. Making me feel like I’m 16 working at Michael’s all over again.” Colonel Tofflemire practically spat.

“If I may...”

For a beautiful moment in his life, Tofflemire had forgotten Liv existed. He found himself trying to not meet her somewhat puffy dark brown eyes.

“Granted, Callahan.”

“I do not think that the comparisons to earlier years are productive, but in explaining so I must confess hypocrisy.” Colonel Callahan paused for a beat. “2017 was when the Black Autumn attacked for the first time in decades. She and her superiors have yet to make a reappearance. For October 2018, the events were directly instigated by Bob and I-- I mean, You an’ I--”

Bob and I.

Liv was not there for 2018. Robert Tofflemire very distinctly remembered someone vastly different in her place. Nobody in the crowd made any indication of this. This was far beyond a long-con. Somehow everybody was in absolute agreement that the entire time, since Robert Tofflemire had first arrived in 2016, he had been assigned as a partner to the one and only Olivia Callahan. He felt his sugar-charged blood bubble in his throat again.

“--yet the threat that year had technically been present for much longer than our initial encounter with it in the months prior. In 2019, the threat was artificial. As Doctor West observes, it was not an event restricted to Sloth’s Pit, or even the US. We still do not have the full truth regarding the incident documented. And as Doctor Hastings observes, since we expected a pattern in the following years, we feared what came for us, and that ended up being exactly what instigated the threat that year. It would be redundant to assume what came of 2021 would be following us here, and similarly I believe it would be just as redundant to assume we can make accurate predictions on what will come of this month based on what happened in the following years. While Hasting’s theory would hold up in 2020, and by proxy West’s could have held up in 2019, had we had knowledge of what would have best prepared us for it, we should not be directly assuming the same can be applied to this year. They’d all be different tools for the wrong solutions. We dealt with everything in the moment then, and we’ve somehow made it out alive. It's much easier on our budgets to improvise with threats as they come, anyway.”

“Lord, I’d have thought you’d participated in our original conversation about this, Cal.” West chuckled, as Hastings looked at her with intrigue. “Thank you for the reminder.”

“You flatter me.” Liv shook her head. “I’ve been mulling this over for some time, without the constant anxiety. I don’t have any knowledge at my behest that would really benefit us beyond that.”

Or do you.

Model citizen...

Liv was not nearly as anxious because she’d never had to genuinely endure the chaos that was Sloth’s Pit in October. He wanted to believe her. He really did. He thought she very much made a good point, all the better that she was in a good state of mind to do so.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Colonel Tofflemire began again. “The past five years have been home to us fighting external threats.”

Liv looked at him. “Yeah.”

“Who’s to say that the threat won’t be internal, this time. It fits the structure, no? The threat comes in different shapes and forms. It’s tried to be us once or twice. Who’s to say it’s not already forcing its way into Sloth’s Pit?”

“...Bob.”

He saw Ruby put her hands on her hips. “Colonel Tofflemire, I see no point in pivoting a target onto the regular citizens of Sloth’s Pit.”

Tofflemire felt a fire inside of him die ever so slightly. “I didn’t intend for that to be the message, I meant internal as in the Si--”

“Jesus fucking christ, Robert.” Ruby gave him a scornful look that made Tofflemire worry that he was about to get sent to Palmer’s again. He may have outranked her, but she may as well have told him that he’d been dismissed and commanded him to resume his post. She fit the bossy older sister perfectly, it didn’t help that she was 2 years older than him, and 2 minutes older than her own twin brother. And just from being friends with her for so long, he automatically felt bad when getting talked back to by her. She could be getting fired next week and he’d still yield if she told him to. “I understand trying to get whatever the fuck that was in line, but if you can’t get yourself together, the month’s gonna fuck you hard.”

Now he felt like he understood why she and Hastings got along well together.

...Zero discipline.

Tofflemire felt like a boiling kettle. He felt himself open his mouth and almost say something, but slam his jaws shut before he could get much more out. He swallowed, debating on if it was worth making Liv think he’d calmed down, or actually try to pull the trigger on the verbal flare then and there. The seconds he stood there were agonizing. Long.

Hastings’ head shot back in the air before Tofflemire could decide what he wanted to do about his predicament. He looked around wildly, and then at the twisting road before them, and shot a finger to the darkness ahead.

“The thing.” He backed away, his voice slowly getting louder. “The thing.”

“Chris?” Ruby looked at him worriedly. “Chris, what’s wrong?”

“No, no--” Hastings grabbed Ruby by her bulletproof vest. “No, we need to get out of the way! Out of the street!” He yanked her, looking terrified out of his mind, his little racoon eyes wide in disbelief.

Tofflemire heard what he meant. He had no clue how Hastings’ hearing was so good that he could hear a low rumble so quietly in the distance, but he wasn’t crazy. Something was coming, and it made no effort to hide it.

“Sigma-10!” Colonel Tofflemire called, hustling to the side. “Fall in! Away from the street!”

He suddenly realized how awful this looked on his conscience. He and Liv would’ve been able to tell sooner, had they still been further ahead at the road.

The sea of Site employees that had been spectating scattered by the trees in the slightly steep trenches of the road, hiding in the slight slope and onslaught of trees that decorated most of Northern Wisconsin. Some civilians had already backed into the sides for a good while now.

Whatever it was approaching, it was approaching fast. The rumble was getting louder and louder, making Tofflemire wonder what would’ve happened had Hastings not caught the noise before anybody else could hear it. What sounded like a rapid march synced at a level that might as well have been impossible followed it, alongside the call of a slightly strained singing of an older man, and a tune to its beat that felt irregular, the roar of something with so much unexpected speed and power. He felt as if the ground beneath him might have been burning, filled with coals and sparks lapping at his feet from friction alone, like he was about to get left in a cloud of gasoline and the scars of tire on pavement.

Whatever gave Tofflemire that little taste of Talladega was...

...a small car.

Don’t you know she’s coming home to me?

Tofflemire’s father was a car guy; he would spend hours looking through massive books at cars ordered by decade. Even with the speed and darkness, he could still make out enough details about the car through the reflection of the headlights on the road alone. And every millisecond he got to look at it, the more dumbfounded he was.

You’ll lose her in the turn...

There was no way in hell the car being driven right now had been manufactured after his father was born. Before him was an antique, hauling the gas at speeds that should’ve been impossible, with absolute ignorance for the speed limit sign, and headlights so bright they could wipe out a herd of deer. It was a small, frail-looking car. It looked to be mostly black, save for some white that he couldn’t be sure was decal, some other kind of paint or replaced parts. The hood was tall and large, the wheels small, the license plate nonexistent, and there was no way there’d be room for more than two or three people inside.

I’ll get her, ah!

The fitting choice, considering the car, would’ve been The Boys Are Back In Town, or even Jailbreak. But the Tin Lizzy, somehow exerting the sound outside the car despite the lack of a stereo or a sound system whatsoever, was blaring--

⠀

PA-NA-MA