Earth
North Atlantic
German Naval Research Vessel Valknut
Six Years Ago...
Tracy shivered and sniffed wretchedly in his bunk, curled in a fetal ball and with his guts churning like ravenous, spined worms. One of the other passengers had been coming in and out of their cabin and out to the deck, repeatedly and on end approximately every ten minutes - and left the doors open every single time they left, letting frigid ocean wind howl down through corridor and into the cabin. Every single time, the odious woman would slam the door open, splashing thin sheets of water all over the floor, and obliviously begin babbling directly at Tracy about every stray and errant thought that had visited her since she had last terrorized him in her nasally, high-pitched voice, often standing directly by his bunk for several minutes on end to chatter rhetorical diatribes at him even after she had retrieved whatever miscellaneous tool from her pack. Evidently there was a nearby oceanic storm brewing that everyone was studying like it was some undiscovered cryptid. Normally Tracy might have had the nerve to indicate he was trying to sleep, but between his pulsating intestines and the biting cold from the wind blowing into the cabin he could hardly think straight or summon the fortitude needed to protest.
All Tracy wanted was to try and get some sleep, or at least lull himself into a fit of furtive torpor that would allow him to escape the wracking agony of his spasming gut - but time and time again, he hauled himself out of his bunk to shuffle morosely over to the cabin door in order to quietly shut it before haltingly hauling himself back up to his resting place to pursue slumber. It was the middle of the day as well, with thick rays of indifferent sunshine beaming through the cabin porthole, which did not help even remotely. So much for the supposed oceanic storm.
Minutes ticked by. Tracy's breathing began to even out and he began to warm as his body heat pooled within the blankets and banished the cold. His mind began to drift away from his churning stomach and for a half a moment, Tracy thought he might have blissfully dozed off.
The other passenger - whose name he really did not know, something dumb that started with B, maybe Bianca - had thrown open the cabin door again and was now unreasonably shaking at him, causing a new nail of anguish to drive through his abdomen with every light push and obliterating any chance of sleeping yet again as another draft of freezing air rolled into the room.
"Tracy, come on, you've got to come see this! Nearly everyone is out on the deck, it's headed right for us!"
Tracy's eyes dragged themselves across the far wall of the cabin - the porthole was dark. In the span of a minute the sun had vanished.
"I don't really think I should be going out during a storm-" He began.
"No, that's not it. Tracy - there are
lights!"
And so Tracy dragged himself out of his bunk and down the hall and onto the deck, where most of the other passengers and a good chunk of the crew ha gathered, leaning near the railings and upper balconies, some with cameras or recording with their phones - as the piercing rays of light beaming out from the roiling thunderheads above drifted across the shifting waves and bobbing hull of the
Valknut from above. Tracy blinked in disbelief as he took everything in, and began to process the excited murmurs from around him.
"-aliens!"
"-irst contact-"
"-the sea god!"
"-cient Atlantean ship-"
'Glad to know so many trained scientists still hold onto vestiges of traditional beliefs.' Tracy sardonically thought to himself. His eyes narrowed as he tried to get a good look at the lights above. It was hard to see exactly what they were emitting from, but from the silhouettes and the way they were undulating in their movement made it seem pretty apparent - to him at least - that they were just bog standard high-powered search lights. Maybe they were mounted on helicopters - though the heavy cloud cover above seemed too coherent, and he definitely could not hear any chopper blades.
There was a dull, booming sound, like a distant cannon being fired, and suddenly a massive harpoon shot down from the clouds above, pierced straight down through maybe-Bianca's head and body where she stood next to Tracy, causing ruptured viscera, shattered bone fragments and scraps of ruined, blood-mottled clothing to scatter in every direction. The harpoon pierced straight through her and tore into the deck plating, extending a triad of barbed clamps with a mechanical whine. Tracy fell flat on his rear, front and face splattered with gore as he looked on and upwards in shock - following the length of wound cable linking the harpoon to...something, up above in the clouds. He thought, for a moment, he caught glimpse of a silhouetted outline in the clouds - of something massive.
As he looked up, there was a rapid stutter of muffled explosions, and amidst the terrified screams of passengers and crew reacting to the first fired harpoon, five more descended from the nebulous mist above to spear into the
Valknut. One of the more hardened crew-members regained their composure and ran back inside the ship - returning moments later with a fireman's axe even as the whirring sound of motors began to echo down from above. With a heaving grunt and a wide swing, he chopped at one of the cables connecting the giant harpoons to the
vehicle above - and was forced to drop it with a panicked cry as a surge of arcing electricity leapt between the cable and the axe-head, before grounding into the deck of the ship - but not before the raw, coursing power that had discharged into the axehead set part of the wooden haft on fire.
Moments later, black rappelling lines descended from the cloud cover, and decidedly Human figures in black fatigues and armor broke through the cloud layer, rapidly trailing down along the lines to land on the
Valknut's deck. One of them landed right besides Tracy, still lying prone and in shock on the deck, and was gracious enough to daze Tracy into stunned senselessness by slamming the butt of their rifle into his face.
The dull, muted ringing in Tracy's ears muffled the ensuing deluge of screams and gunfire that followed. Fading in and out of consciousness, all that could occur to Tracy was that somehow, his roiling gut actually felt much better.
888888888888
Unknown Dockside
One Year Ago...
"No, I think you can go tell your boss to fuck himself."
The next thing Tracy knew, he was being hammered in the face by the dealer's grapefruit-sized fist, hard enough to send him stumbling off the pier to fall, flailing, back into the motor-boat he and the others had arrived in. He slammed head-first against one of the raised seats and agonizingly tried to pry himself back up off the floor as the now intimately familiar sound of gunfire started to rattle off back up on the pier itself. A shallow wave of water splashed itself across Tracy's face as a bullet-riddled body tumbled into the water next to the boat, followed by another - and then as he finally began to blink the pinwheeling stars from out of his eyes, the two surviving thugs that had been provided as muscle leapt into the boat and had shoved off, one of them steering and revving the motor to its limit while the other provided desperate covering fire.
All Tracy could do was sit back, drenched in water, his mouth open like a goldfish. He had overplayed his role - he had doubled down when he should have let it stand, and now the deal was ruined and they were two warm bodies short. Tracy blearily cast his gaze towards the two survivors, and realized - with a dread chill stealing across him as he did - that Walker was not with them. He had been one of the bodies falling into the water.
They were going to kill him.
888888888888
The Phantasmagoria
Two Days Later...
"You know, Tracy, I have to admit I underestimated you."
Tracy, handcuffed to a metal chair between two thugs and with an IV drip already hooked into his arm nearby, sweat profusely as the speaker shut the bulkhead down behind him as he entered the room.
The other man was on the shorter side - even shorter than Tracy himself - and had a deceptively lanky appearance, with bare arms on display under the rolled-up sleeves of his white jumpsuit that bristled with cords of muscle. He had a mane of dark, slicked-back and spiked hair and a wide soul patch framing his narrow, somewhat bony and angular face. He wore a pair of welding goggles over his eyes even now, but the rictus grin on his face made his mood evident.
"I could have sworn I reminded you every time I've seen you for the last few years that if you slipped up even once, I was going to torture you and then all of your worthless friends and co-workers in front of you and then toss you them all one-by-one into a scrap grinder, followed by you."
The man approached the stainless steel table across from Tracy and set a black tool-case across the surface, unlatching it and popping it open to reveal rows of sharp, pointed implements neatly arrayed in both halves. Reaching down to his toolbelt, the man carelessly unclipped and slid a multitool and a cordless hand-drill across the table as well.
"I wasn't expecting you to actually try and rough it out! I figured you were going to eventually try to break and
run! And even after that fiasco at the port, rather than try and make a break for it by diving over the side, you actually
came back. Willingly. Knowing what I was going to do to you...or well, the gist of what I was going to do to you..."
The man turned and boosted himself to sit on the tabletop as he finally turned to stare at Tracy through his welding goggles. "You've got an awful lot of nerve for a gutless coward. Of course, now I've got the real measure of you...just as terrified of your own guilt as you are of the idea of me quartering you with a hacksaw. Normally that might be useful. Normally I might think I'd be able to make better use of you..."
Tracy sucked in a nervous breath.
"But in demonstrating that you fucked everything up and also got Walker killed. So I'm gonna try and go for a compromise instead here. I'm going to
ruin you, and if you survive..."
With a burst of speed fueled by panic and desperation, Tracy leapt to his feet, swung the back-end of his chair against one of the guard's legs and head-butted the second in the gut, driving the air from the man's lungs and causing him to back up, hunched over and wheezing for air as his friend swore repeatedly and stumbled over, clutching at his legs with a grimace. The IV needle tore from Tracy's arm as he haphazardly started ambling for the bulkhead door leading out of the room.
He came short when the man in the jumpsuit clotheslined him from the side, knocking Tracy down onto the steel hull and then delivering a series of kicks to his gut and across the face for good measure. He then grabbed Tracy by the hair of his scalp and dragged him over to the table, where he raised Tracy's head before slamming it down onto the hard surface. With the entire room oscillating and turning different colors in Tracy's vision, he barely even processed the two thugs regaining their composure and approaching to hold him in place.
"Look what you went and did. Knocked the IV loose. That was how I was going to administer the anesthesia." The man in the jumpsuit tutted as he picked up the hand-drill and experimentally pressed the trigger, eliciting an electrical whine as the drill-bit began to rev and spin. "Now we have to do this the fun way. Protip for you, the more you move, the more this is going to hurt."
The man craned his head to match Tracy's orientation and treated him with another rictus grin as he pressed the drill bit against the side of Tracy's head.
"So feel free to go crazy."
888888888888
Some Time Later...
"Jesus christ. How is he not dead?"
"It looks like they used something to seal the hole they put in his skull."
"Then why the fuck did they not also stitch together the
everything they did to his scalp?!? And what the hell is going on in his mouth?"
"Look, I used to be a nurse, this is...this
is really bad, but he can recover from this. We need clean, sterilized bandages and maybe some duct tape. I'm honestly more worried about the hole in his mouth. We need actual antibiotics for that or that is going to become inflamed and probably get infected, and that will definitely kill him."
"Alright, got it, so we need sterilized bandages, duct tape, antibiotics, would you also like some gold bullion and flawlessly cut diamonds while we are at it?"
"Calm down, we can...we can probably work something out with the guards..."
"Setting aside the entire issue of
that, how long would he need to recover?"
"Well, assuming there's no lasting brain damage that we can't see? Puncture wounds start to heal at around three weeks. Maybe in a few months he might have skin over that spot again..."
88888888888
Present Day
Tracy winced as his cell door crashed open and harsh, intense light pierced into his vision, now long-adapted to complete darkness. He did not resist as he was bodily hauled up by two men in black fatigues and dragged out of the small room and through a number of hallways, before eventually being lead into a large interior workshop. Machining tables, lathes, metal-working extruders, and a variety of heavy machinery crowded the workfloor, and in the middle of it all was a somewhat cleared out space where the man in the white jumpsuit had arranged what appeared to be a combination conference table and breakfast nook, with stray, emptied bottles of alchohol, cans of motor oil, half a dozen disarrayed tool-cases and what looked, disconcertingly, like plastic explosives littering the surface.
"Ah, if it isn't that guy! Whatever your name is!" The man in the jumpsuit fired a pair of fingerguns at Tracy nonchalantly. "And how are we feeling this morning?"
Tracy, knowing better than to not answer, tried to summon up a response and ended up hacking out a rasping, heaving series of coughs from his parched throat instead.
"Always good to hear, lot of that going around." The man in the jumpsuit nodded sagely as he pointed to a nearby chair, which Tracy was forcibly seated in by his escorts.
"Now that we've reconfigured the parameters of your wetware into something marginally more useful, and assuming we still have a hard bead on that charmingly archaic guilt complex of yours - we've got a job for you. Catch!" The man picked up a large metallic case from the table and bodily tossed it to Tracy. He feebled raised his arms and just barely managed to grasp at it as it hit him, though it would still have fallen onto the floor if one of the men in fatigues had not steadied it for him. Now clutching the object to his chest, Tracy squinted with his eyes, still adjusting to the light, and took it in.
It appeared to be a briefcase made of polished, gleaming chrome. It had no hinges he could see, both its halves appearing to be adhered to each other without any external fixtures. Both halves were smooth with rounded edges, and looked to have been molded as single whole pieces. The only evidence they even come apart was a single thin seam separating them bilaterally, with faintly raised edges where the two halves came together. The seam itself was so thin and finely pressed together, it was actually hard to tell it was there, especially with his bleary vision. If his attention was not specifically drawn to it by the raised edges on either side, he could easily have overlooked it.
Set in the middle of one of the halves' sides was what must have been the locking mechanism - some kind of round display panel and tactile interface the size of his palm. It displayed what looked to him to be a bog-standard RGB color wheel, with extremes around the edges and white towards the center. Right in the middle of the wheel was a raised dial, with a red arrow indicating that it could be twisted along its side, and an inscription of tiny red lettering on the top that said 'Press Me.' A second, smaller display panel the size of a small LED above the color wheel seemed to display the current color selected.
On the other side of the case was a small plaque engraved with a message.
<Snipped quote by Tamper-Proof Case>
"You're going to be playing courier for us once again. You will be delivering that to a certain somebody. And hey, good news - no adult supervision this time! We're trusting you to do this all on your lonesome!" The man in the jumpsuit announced with all the countenance of a proud and doting father. "Oh and by the way we will definitely torture and murder all of your worthless associates if you try to run or do something stupid like rat us out. And then we'll probably package and donate their ground-up body parts as meat to homeless shelters and soup kitchens."
Tracy stared blankly at the man in the jumpsuit, who crossed his arms expectantly and looked back. "Well?"
"WhuACK-" Tracy hacked up again. "Whuagh...who am I...delerghering it to?"
"Glad you're onboard. That go-get-em attitude will take you places, whats-yer-name." The man in the jumpsuit smiled. "Listen carefully. Going to have to say this a few times and have you repeat it back to me to make sure you've memorized it."
The man in the jumpsuit cleared his throat, and then spoke. He went on for a moment. Tracy's eyes widened in disbelief.
"...What?" He croaked.
"Geez, KEEP UP will you? I
said -" And the man in the jumpsuit repeated the segue, word for word, doubtlessly having memorized it himself. "Now repeat that back to me."
Tracy open and closed his mouth, once. Then, squirming in his seat somewhat and clutching at the case in his lap almost as if for support, he opened his mouth and immediately fell into a coughing fit.
"Not even close." The man in the jumpsuit tutted.
"I could...use some...some water to clear my-" Tracy tried to say. Before he had even finished his sentence, the man in the jumpsuit reached for a half-emptied bottle of vodka and hurled it directly at Tracy's head. Tracy flinched and reflexively lifted the case to block it, with the bottle shattering on impact and the vaguely antiseptic stench of the alchohol spreading through the air as the vokda spilled over the case and him.
"There you go, bet you're feeling better already. Now, this time, I'm going to say that all one phrase at a time and you'll repeat after me, alright? So -" He spoke the first phrase. Tracy halting repeated it back to him. They went on that way until they had reached the end.
"Now repeat all that back to me." The man in the jumpsuit demanded flatly.
Tracy haltingly attempted to comply. He flustering got caught up on the fourth phrase, requiring the man in the jumpsuit to correct him after casually throwing a pair of pliers at his legs - after which Tracy started over, and although he hoarsely stumbled over a few words, he managed to reach the end.
"There we go! Clear as mud I trust! Now of course, since we will be sending you out on your own, we've got a few toys for you, and - well, it's not that we do not trust you not to lose the case - but we absolutely, definitely, completely do not trust you not to lose the case. We actually have a bit of a betting pool going on how long it will take you to lose it, but never fear! We have given you the tools to find it if that happens." The man in the jumpsuit snapped his fingers, and one of Tracy's escorts abruptly yanked the case out of his grasp and tossed it out and along the floor of the workshop. Tracy simply watched with a puzzled look as the case slid across the floor - and then...
Dawning on him like a the gates of hell shuddering open, a keening, piercing wail blossomed within Tracy's head. A resonating shriek, like a banshee with an angle grinder polishing off the edge of one of his femurs while a hurricane filled with nails in the midst of an avalanche descended on them. It was more than simply an unpleasant, undulating sound. It was a hollow, pitted sensation that felt like mites were burrowing into his bones. He could feel his organs individually warbling inside of his chest, could sense his blood curdling in his veins. Without wasting any time, he immediately fell out of the chair and began to dry heave drool and spit onto the floor, wretching up his empty guts repeatedly as his skull and eyes began to throb in response to the unrelenting clamor of the wail that was making his skin itch. A scant instant later, the faint tinge of copper flooded his mouth and a driving, biting pain began to corkscrew through his throat and along his spine while a mountainous, bass rhythm began to ebb in and out of his chest cavity. This, was hell. Even having a power drill taken to his head without anesthesia had been nothing compared to this. There was less raw, concentrated physical pain - instead it was a menagerie of dulled physical suffering distributed across every remote micron of his body and unbearable mental fatigue. He could feel his Heartbeat fluttering erratically in response to the *sound*, jacking up until it was pulsing as fast as a hummingbird beat its wings, adrenaline and cortisol shooting through every vessel in his body like rocket fuel.
Slowly, convinced that the entire world was ending, with the lights in the room seeming to brighten and dim in bursts and surges while his vision rocked and trembled, Tracy raised his head and looked over to where the case had fallen. The man in the jumpsuit crouched over it, beckoning Tracy over like a dog.
Fetch! Dragging himself achingly across the metal floor, with tiny cavities in his teeth and spots in his bones suddenly highlighted and punctuated with fiery clarity by the noise from within, Tracy inched closer and closer to the case - and then...
It took a moment to realize the wailing had stopped. The pain did not vanish. Every cell in his body did not immediately cease throbbing with exquisite anguish. The sound of his cerebrospinal fluid seething and boiling inside of him did not instantly abate. Draping himself across the case, Tracy simply lay still for - minutes? Hours? As he slowly came down from his reality of demented, buzzing static.
After a time, he finally flinched when he heard an audible snapping sound in one of his ears.
"Aha, there we go. Welcome back to naptime." The man said, slapping Tracy across the back - causing him to heave up nothing but mucous and spittle again. "If the case ever gets more than five meters away from you, that will start up. The feedback induction should align itself in the direction of the case and let you know what direction to go in."
Tracy simply stared straight ahead, his entire body shuddering violently.
The man in the jumpsuit let out a sigh of exaggerated exasperation. "Now now." He chided. "What do we say?"
"Wuhlp..." Tracy try, nearly biting off his numbed tongue. He tried again. "..Wuh...why...?"
The man in the jumpsuit laudged, stood up, brushed a stray bit of spittle off of his chest, and then treated Tracy to a healthy kick across the face.
"Because you were sent here just to suffer." He declared cheerfully. He then motioned to the men in fatigues.
"Get him on his way. Give him the duffel on the table and everything in it, it has some old junk I can bear to part with. You know where to drop him off."
888888888888
Lost Haven Harbor
Present
Tracy stared helplessly as the motor-boat that had dropped him off began to pull away from the pier, leaving him there, dressed in his old, tattered clothes with a suspiciously stained duffelbag and the comparatively gleaming and pristine case.
"If I were you, I would work fast." One of the men in the boat called out. "There's no real deadline, but you still probably only have until he starts running out of patience. Come back here once you're done if you know what's good for everyone involved."
The boat pulled away, and began to head back out to sea.
Tracy turned and, tears streaming down his face, took in the view of the City of Lost Haven.
This was where he would die.
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Izurich
