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spookyspaghettisundae · 7 months ago

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The Impossibility of It

Chloe Grant could hear the thunder of rotors through the soundproof glass on the twentieth story of Future Proof’s headquarters.

A black unmarked helicopter, landing atop the skyscraper, had captured her entire attention.

Or it happened to be a convenient distraction from the conversation at hand. An uncomfortable conversation that Grant had sought out herself, and also been dreading all the while.

“Would you rather reschedule?” asked Rebecca Chao. She couldn’t quite finish the sentence without a hint of sarcasm.

Grant chewed on her lip until she spotted Chao observing her nervous tic, then made a conscious and forced effort to stop doing that.

She peeled her gaze from the vista of Austin’s skyline. The chopper had landed, though the noise of its thundering rotors still reverberated through the panes.

“No, uh, no,” Grant stammered out, sighing in between, “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

Chao folded her hands on her lap. She stared at Grant with a perfect poker face.

“We’re not wasting any time here. Not to step on your toes, but I think you were long overdue for a session. There’s only so much mental stress our field operatives—or really anybody—can tolerate before it starts affecting their—our—private lives.”

Grant sighed again.

At this point in time, she wasn’t sure what her private life even was.

With the way reality kept shifting with each change of the timeline, her own life felt alien to her.

The corners of Chao’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile.

“Maybe you could… inspire Mister Carter to see me, too.”

Grant scoffed. Smiled fully.

That would be the day.

“I’m afraid you won’t get Carter in here unless you mandate therapy sessions for field ops.”

Chao’s lips curled and her eyes narrowed.

“Now, there’s a thought.”

Her pen clicked. The doctor scooped her notepad off the desk and scribbled down a note.

“It’s just… I know who I am, but I am not the me who this world used to know before I returned to it through the temporal Anomaly… if that makes any sense. Everybody must have gone through life knowing another me, and although our experiences should mostly match, I… I keep running into these… differences.”

“Like your intimate relationship with Miss Bennett?”

Grant only nodded in response.

“I wish we had more concrete insights into how the Anomalies and temporal disjunctions truly work. We are, together, exploring terra incognita here. A weak solace, perhaps, but in some ways, you are a pioneer.”

“Well,” Grant said, clicking her tongue, “I did sign up for it, didn’t I? I could just quit, couldn’t I?”

Chao stared at her. Instead of answering those questions, she scribbled down another note on her pad.

“I’m quite—not—I’m not quitting,” Grant stumbled over her words. “No, there’s lives at stake.”

“But your own life is a concern. There’s no shame in self-preservation. We all need to protect ourselves.”

Grant pinched the bridge of her nose. Felt a headache coming on.

This wasn’t what she hoped to hear in the session.

“Are you worried you are dissociating?” Chao asked. “I am very sorry—it must be difficult to negotiate the differences between the life you knew before the temporal shift.”

The helicopter on the rooftop had quieted. The ensuing silence in Chao’s office became almost ghostly as a consequence. Grant now almost yearned for the distraction of noise.

Chao’s question lingered in the air like a phantom, haunting Grant, floating around the back of her head.

Chao broke the silence and said, “As I was saying, this is terra incognita for all of us. You are under no obligation to perform as the Chloe Grant people expect you to be. You only owe it to yourself to be who you want to be. And if that’s more in line with the timeline you come from, then that is who you are.”

Though Grant found a shred of comfort buried within her words, she pursed her lips, and part of her instinctually rebelled against Chao’s advice.

“What are you�� are you suggesting I should break up with Dan?”

Chao’s eyes widened and her brow furrowed.

“I was not suggesting any such thing, no. Not even close. I—”

The phone on Chao’s desk buzzed with obnoxious volume. An incoming message.

The doctor shot a glance down at the small device’s now-glowing screen.

Grant said, “No, it… it feels right, I think. Like it was going to happen anyway? The more I think about it, the more I can see it, or could have seen it, or whatever. Uh—”

In stark contrast to the rest of the session, it was almost like Chao hadn’t listened to a single word she said since the phone’s buzzing. The doctor just stared at the text message on her phone’s screen.

“Doctor? Am I… interrupting something?”

The furrow on Chao’s brow arched even higher. She looked up from the device to meet Grant’s gaze, then shook her head.

“No, I am sorry, I apologize. It’s… please forgive me. I should answer this.”

Chao picked up the phone and her thumbs tapped away at a reply.

Grant stifled a sigh and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The sun was setting on the horizon, painting the city in pink light.

Chao put the phone back down, then asked, “Now, where were we?”

Grant shook her head. “No, it’s… nothing. I think I’ll manage. Just talking has helped. A lot. That was Spencer, wasn’t it?”

The corners of Chao’s lips twitched again.

“Yes, but he can wait.” Her glance to the silent clock on the wall telegraphed her next statement. “We still have fifteen more minutes.”

On cue, the phone buzzed again. Chao’s gaze darted back down to it, locked onto the screen, reading the next message intently.

It was also fifteen minutes before the end of office hours.

But their unusual line of work here had a habit of sneaking up on them and saddling them with overtime. All the time.

Grant grinned through her final sigh of the day, as if she had run out of breath for it.

“Shall we?” she asked Doctor Chao.

Chao’s entire expression hardened. It had to be something serious.

She nodded at Grant.

“In fact, yes, we are both being called to join a meeting. Downstairs.”

A chill ran down Grant’s spine.

Like a premonition of terrible things to come.

They packed up and left the doctor’s office, cutting the session short. Grant wouldn’t be losing sleep over it. She hadn’t been lying or exaggerating about how the talking had helped somewhat, though she was skeptical if anybody could help her at all.

If anybody could even understand—truly understand—what all of this felt like.

The CEO, Malachi Spencer himself, had summoned Doctor Chao to the basement levels. Riding the elevator down with their top-clearance keycards, Grant learned that Spencer had summoned her, as well. She only missed the summons because she had switched her phone to airplane mode for the therapy session.

Spencer probably knew about the therapy now. There was no point in asking how Chao handled confidentiality. The normal rules didn’t really apply around here.

Future Proof tended to play fast and loose with morals and ethics.

To sleep at night, Grant told herself that this was in humanity’s best interests.

The two women exchanged no words as they marched down the long and harrowing hall through Containment’s sub-level.

Their taciturn walk delivered them into a forcibly sterile medical examination room. In deeper solemn silence, they slipped into HAZMAT suits. Donned the visored helmets. Ensured everything was sealed airtight.

White clouds enshrouded them, hissing, as they crossed through the airlock. Electronic seals beeped and clicked, and they entered the quarantined room.

Even with only the smell of plastic to meet her senses, Grant thought of rotten meat upon seeing the body on the metal examination slab.

That thing wasn’t human.

It wasn’t saurian, either. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she had seen such a thing before—

In the Crossroads of Anomalies. Chasing the man in ancient armor.

The sight of it up close stunned her so deeply that she failed to notice all the faces staring at her upon her entrance into the examination room.

The creature was only vaguely humanoid, featuring almost twice the body mass of a grown man. Its arms were longer than its legs, and all its limbs were wiry with hidden power, tipped in freakishly long fingers, and deadly claws. Mottled gray flesh reminded her of aliens from outer space, especially with the head’s strange form and toothy maw, and a metal, futuristic device crowning its skull—with wires and hooks clearly protruding from the flesh, attached to the organism’s head.

It had been riddled with bullets. A surgeon had extracted all of them.

“Doctor Chao,” said Spencer, every syllable cutting like a knife. “Agent Grant. Good of you to join us. We’re brainstorming here and all red-clearance personnel is encouraged to weigh in with any theories they can come up with.”

Grant sidled up to the autopsy table and stared into the exposed insides of the carcass’s open torso. Stretchers kept tissue peeled apart, and the organs reminded her of what one might find among a human body’s innards.

She asked, “What are we looking at here? Where did you find this… thing?”

Stantz, their PR manager, was among the people gathered around the table.

The HAZMAT suits they were all wearing made it hard to tell everybody apart, but Grant immediately recognized his smarmy tone.

“I pulled some strings. United States special forces, led by a certain Captain Dariel Rose, as you all know, took down this specimen with extreme prejudice. Unlike the wise foresight of Future Proof here, Rose and his men gunned it down, butchered it in some truck or back alley, and only handed it off to us after we, uh, twisted some screws on his thumbs.”

Grant wasn’t interested in the specifics. Especially not with Stantz’s delivery thereof. The rest of the gathering had probably already discussed it to death, anyway.

Doctor Solomon stood at the head of the autopsy table, just next to a tray harboring a scalpel and other sharp implements. He wiggled his fingers like he was antsy to cut the specimen some more.

And he said as much. “Yes. This would be the second autopsy performed on the specimen, though not by us. I appreciate the almost Victorian theatrics of having an audience.”

Doctor Burch shuffled awkwardly where she stood next to him. She stared at Stantz, expecting him to share something more about their new specimen on the table, or about the circumstances on how it ended up here.

Spencer and Stantz stood by the clawed feet of the abominable creature. Stantz’s arms stayed crossed, like he was protesting something. Meanwhile, Spencer exuded the same presence as he always did—a knife in human shape. Even wearing awkward-looking HAZMAT gear instead of his usual expensive tailored suits did little to diminish Spencer’s domineering energy.

His deathly glare swept across his employees before locking onto Solomon.

“Feel free to bring Doctor Chao and Agent Grant up to speed with your theories so far.”

Solomon shrugged and gestured in the round, urging the others to speak up.

Carter stood across from Solomon, on the opposite side of the table. He looked tired and grumpy, as usual. His gaze bounced back and forth between Grant and Mischchenko, as if he was expecting either of them to say something.

Standing right next to Burch, Mischchenko tilted her head and shot Grant furtive glances. She then cleared her throat, muffled by the HAZMAT suit, and repeated what she must have already said earlier.

“It combines physical traits of simians, felines, humans, and—this is the weird part—a shark. Note the teeth,” she said, pointing two yellow-gloved fingers at the creature’s toothy maw.

Grant leaned over the body’s head to take a closer look. Indeed, rows of teeth lined the mouth, and they looked as jagged and triangular as those of vicious, serrated sawblades.

Though the creature had no fur, she could vaguely see the resemblance to apes and wildcats both—especially with what she had seen of the creature in its living form, darting between the Crossroads’ Anomalies.

Unable to stop scanning the creature’s odd features, she asked, “Well, is that really that odd? Something from the far future could… evolve into this, on our planet. Right?”

“I said the same thing,” Mischchenko muttered with a hint of resignation. She then nodded to Burch.

Burch continued in her stead, saying, “It’s from 2,000 years into the future. I have no earthly idea how anything on our planet would evolve this fast.”

Another cold shudder shook Grant’s spine.

2,000 years into the future.

The impossibility of it arrived in waves.

“Wait,” Chao interrupted. “How do you know it’s from 2,000 years into the future?”

“Allow me to answer that,” Spencer said, cutting in. “The very Anomaly that this building was built on top of harbors a connection to that specific time. This is not the first of these specimen that we examined. Burch carbon-dated a dead one we retrieved from the future, and this predator—we dubbed it the Apex Predator—is native to that time.”

“That specimen wasn’t sporting this, though,” Solomon said, using his scalpel to tap the metal device attached to the creature’s skull.

Chao’s face twisted. She looked as insulted as Grant felt—even at their clearance level, secrets had been kept. Some people had been in the savvy about certain dealings at Future Proof, while others, like them, had been kept in the dark.

Solomon still tapped the metal device with the scalpel.

Grant jutted her jaw out at it and asked, “What the hell is that?”

Solomon shrugged.

“Some sort of bio-mechanical implant. Perhaps a cerebral augmentation, or something to control the specimen. It’s not transmitting or responding to Wi-Fi signals, however, so your guess is as good as anybody’s. Once we extract it, I’m excited to pick it apart and find out what makes it tick.”

He smiled.

Mischchenko said, “I’m more concerned about what it suggests, because it—”

Spencer cut in again. “The future of our planet looked bleak on every one of our early expeditions through the Anomalies, Agent Grant. Apocalyptic, one might say. And this implant on the specimen’s head, suffice to say, it tells us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is someone in the future who is experimenting on these feral animals. A perplexing outlook, given that that the future is arguably unsuitable for human life.”

Early expeditions? Again, with the secrets—Grant couldn’t stop a frown from surfacing.

She asked, “Why isn’t any of this on record anywhere? Why weren’t we briefed about these… things?”

Was this why Ruiz was leaking information to Corsino and Celeva?

She glared at Spencer. The fire in his eyes matched hers, yet ever so coldly.

Carter arched a brow. He had been thinking what she said out loud. He locked onto Spencer with shades of the same burning intent.

Spencer fired back, “Everything we do is on a need-to-know basis, and now you need to know.”

Grant almost spat her words out. ��As I reported in my last debrief, and described to the best of my ability, this is exactly the kind of specimen I sighted in the Crossroads. Would have been good to know about these things, you know, before they kill us. This thing, how powerful is it?”

A dark chuckle escaped Carter and he nodded at Stantz. “Bozo over here says it managed to gut three ex-Marines like fish before they took it down with a couple hundred high-caliber rounds.”

“Not how I put it,” Stantz said, “but I am neither a pedant nor do I feel like correcting the talent.”

Carter leered at him with a toothy grin. Though he stared at Stantz, his grumbling was directed at Spencer when he asked, “You rethinkin’ that no-exploring-beyond-the-Anomalies rule now, boss? Seeing as you used to send people through, all willy-nilly. Or did I misunderstand that just now?”

All he garnered was a thin-lipped smirk from Spencer. The CEO spared him no remark.

“Though my curiosity is overwhelming,” Solomon said, “curiosity, as we all know, killed the proverbial cat.”

Spencer broke eye contact with Carter to fixate on Solomon next. “You? You out of all people are now recommending against Anomaly expeditions, doctor?”

Solomon gingerly placed the scalpel back down onto the tray and shook his head.

“No, not at all. Though the consensus is—and I’m inclined to agree with Doctor Trémaux on this—that anything we do beyond the Anomalies could bear disastrous consequences for the present. Disastrous. I don’t think we can stress this enough.”

“Duly noted, doctor. The—”

“Hey,” Mischchenko interrupted them.

Everybody’s gaze followed where her index finger was pointing.

To the tiny, blinking red light on the creature’s cranial implant.

“It was doing that,” Grant said. “The one I saw in the Crossroads.”

Then it all happened so fast.

Yelled someone, “Restrain it!”

But the thrashing had already begun. All reactions followed too late to prevent disaster from unfolding in their midst.

The creature—despite its open chest cavity—began lashing out.

It was alive. So deadly, and alive.

Spindly limbs, ending in sharp claws, thrashed about. People fell, stumbled backwards, raised arms in defense, only to see the yellow-suited material on their arms get slashed to ribbons. And blood sprayed.

Blood sprayed everywhere.

Shouts of confusion and agony and panic all competed for attention, and all of them lost that competition in the explosive chaos.

The yellow of Doctor Solomon’s HAZMAT suit was splashed crimson from the chest down. The head of engineering screamed at the top of his lungs.

Before Grant could even blink twice, Carter was on top of the monstrosity, catching it by its thick neck in a powerful chokehold. His other gloved, meaty fist pried at the strange cranial implant, like he was trying to rip it off the creature’s skull by hand.

On instinct, Grant had shoved Chao out of the way, sending her flying into Stantz and Spencer, sending them all crashing into the floor like a set of human domino pieces. Lucky for them that she has acted without thinking, because clawed feet had threatened to slice their bellies open in the creature’s thrashing rage and rampage.

Carter’s swearing was cut short as something slit his throat—

It all happened so fast.

Instead of intelligible words, he emitted guttural choking while he choked out the creature, and yellow-gloved fingers, stained red, slipped from their grip on the monster’s cranial implant.

He staggered away from it, unable to hold on any longer.

Burch stumbled away with the horrifically injured Doctor Solomon, pulling him away from the specimen, while Mischchenko sprung into violent action. She yanked a heavy microscope off a nearby table, and slammed it down on the creature’s head. Two blows was all it took, cleaving the red-blinking device from the Apex Predator’s skull, to the tune of tearing flesh and cracking bone.

She ducked away before a flailing claw could eviscerate her.

The heft of her blows had torn off what Carter had been trying to rip away by hand, and the bloodied piece of mysterious tech clattered onto the floor, spraying puddles of blood and scattered brain matter. Then the tiny red light atop the device winked out. Went dead.

The Apex Predator thrashed around one final time, then its deadly body fell limp on the metal slab again.

Carter had landed on his ass, gripping his neck, and Grant was quickly upon him. She applied pressure, but it all happened so fast—the blood pumped out between her gloved fingers at an alarming rate.

His wide eyes—piercing blue eyes—stared into Grant’s. Then they stared through her as the life faded from them more and more, fading more with every pumping squirt of blood from his neck.

Though the circumstances had changed, she watched Carter die.

Again.

Not in Midland’s desert. In the basement levels of Future Proof.

And as she’d admit in her next session with Chao, she dreaded the thought that it wouldn’t be the last time she’d watch him die.

At the very least, she would see him die in her dreams.

Over and over again.

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