by Byrd, Daniel
Guarding something?
“Seems like another giant bronze over brains bastard to me,” Hamilton growled under his breath.
“Sir!” Ren stepped past Hamilton and stood at attention.
Boss, maybe?
Hamilton wasn’t inclined to agree yet. “We’ll see.”
“Who have we here?” the man asked in a deep and husky voice, approaching the doctor. He was tall, wide, and very foreboding. It was nice to see another American, but at the same time, it was pretty shitty to see another American with all things considered.
“Sir, this is him,” Ren informed his superior. The new guy’s smile actually unnerved Hamilton a bit. It was like a kid staring at a new toy.
That’s not creepy at all.
He stuck a hand out that Hamilton carefully grabbed to shake. The squeeze actually popped something in the doctor’s hand, and Hamilton winced.
“Jackson Lewis. You must be Dr. Hamilton? I've heard a lot about you. Welcome. That is, welcome home.”
“Home?”
“Of course,” Lewis said as he released Hamilton’s hand. “This is your new home from now on, son. You'll be treated like family here, just like the rest of us.”
“What exactly is this home?”
Lewis held his hands out for dramatic effect as he stepped out of the passageway and looked up to the ceiling. “This is the headquarters of my vision. The preparation for my World to Come!”
There's that name.
Hamilton had to press for answers. “So, are you him?”
Lewis looked over his shoulder. “Hm?”
“The necromancer? Are you the guy who sent the messages?”
Lewis howled with laughter at that. Hamilton didn't think it was a funny question, but he wasn't about to tell the man three times his size that. “Son, I'm just the boss of the mercenaries around here. You can just call me Lewis if you like.”
“Then you can just call me Hamilton.” He was disappointed. Still no leads.
“No, I'll call you Dr. Hamilton. You earned that, after all. Who the hell would I be to disrespect that?”
He seems friendly enough.
“So did Tuefel,” Hamilton reminded himself.
“What was that, doctor?” Lewis asked.
“Nothing, just welcoming a feeling of nostalgia…”
“Well, would you like me to escort you to your lab?”
“Lead the way, Lewis.”
Lewis smirked. “I think you and I will get along just fine, doctor. Ren, you’re free to go back to your normal duties.”
Ren left without another word as Lewis motioned for Hamilton to follow him into the side passage. Hamilton’s eyes watched as the sword sheaths on his hips bounced with every step. He was the only person down here with his own unique load-out. Three swords, some kind of pistol and an MP7. Odd.
“So, doctor,” Lewis said over his shoulder, “tell me about yourself.”
What?
“There's not much to me,” Hamilton replied, trying to avoid as much talk about himself as he could.
“What do you do for fun?”
“That's…I-”
“I watch professional wrestling in my downtime,” Lewis said with a laugh.
“Isn't that fake?” Hamilton asked him. It was kind of hard picturing a guy who looked like Lewis enjoying what he considered a man’s soap opera. Lewis stopped and looked at Hamilton with a hardened eye.
“You know, a man was slapped on live television for saying that.”
“Are you going to slap me?” Hamilton asked hesitantly. Lewis just grinned before he continued walking. Hamilton made a mental note not to make fun of anything this man liked as he followed.
“Of course, that’s out of the question with the world the way it is now.”
No shit?
“I also like to just practice on the target range we have down here,” Lewis commented, looking back to Hamilton. “You a fan of sports?”
“I like practicing my aim,” Hamilton replied. At least it wasn’t an awkward topic. “One of my foster fathers got me into it. We went hunting a few times, but I wasn’t very good. The total silence just didn’t sit well with me.”
Lewis chuckled. “Nature is nice, though.”
Hamilton found himself reflecting on his foster family at the time. It was a simpler time, that was for sure. Then he realized he was falling for the small talk. There was nothing back then he wanted to bring up. “I prefer indoors.”
“Well, the range is free for you to use. Any preferences?”
“I keep a Jetfire. Simple and good for self-defense. It bit the hell out of me the first time I shot it.”
“Rifles?” Lewis inquired. Hamilton shrugged.
“I’ve dealt with some.” He tried not to smile a bit as he thought of all of the guns he’d carried with him to Washington. He didn’t get to use two-thirds of them anyway. “I prefer small arms. Just no revolvers. The weight feels wrong to me. Also, I like not taking longer than ten seconds to reload.”
“If you’re bad it takes that long,” Lewis remarked. Hamilton cocked an eye. “Also, you can fit larger calibers in revolvers.”
“Is that a quality over quantity argument?” Hamilton asked.
“It’s an argument that’s existed since firearms left the flintlock mechanism,” Lewis said as stopped before a glass-paned set of doors that were set in metal built into the rock. “This is it.” He pressed a button under a speaker to the right. “The guest of honor has arrived.”
“Send him in.” Hamilton didn't recognize the voice, but it sounded American too. Not as commanding as Lewis, but there was a hint of excitement. He wondered just how many people were inside. He hated working with a lot of people. Now his anxiety was acting up.
It's not the work you should be worried about.
“I'm worried about other things. Leave me alone.”
“Nervous, doctor?” Lewis asked him.
“Not really.”
Lies! Lies I tell you!
“Well I'll be leaving you now. I have some business to attend to elsewhere, so you just mind you manners and you’ll get along fine.”
“With who?”
“Bye, doctor.” Lewis left him there to contemplate the many scenarios playing out in his head as the doors slid open. Hamilton carefully stepped inside, and then the doors behind him slid closed with an audible slam. For a second he was confused, but then Hamilton noticed the metal walls with vents on each side of him. Realizing what they were, he held his arms out and twirled as he was blasted with air.
Missed this?
“So much!” Hamilton shouted over the noise. The hissing of air died down as the next set of doors slid open. Hamilton was still in his own world, oblivious before the British voice mocked him.
“Hamilton, you twit, get in here.”
No.
Hamilton stopped spinning. His back was to the lab, but he feared turning around to see who spoke to him.
“Stupid wanker, we have a lot to do!”
Hamilton’s arms were still up as he twisted his torso around to ensure he wasn't going completely mad. Dr. Edward Moriarty was standing with his arms crossed, a stern expression cemented into his face as he glared at Hamilton. He didn’t look like the older man who’d cheated death back in Washington. This man was the cocky, pretentious bastard that Hamilton knew years ago. This wasn’t right. Hamilton knew he killed Edward back in Washington. Hell, he killed the guy twice.
“I can almost deal with seeing Tuefel and Julia, but can you please just disappear?” Hamilton asked him. “You're the worst thing I could possibly hallucinate right now…I’m hallucinating, right?”
“Blabbering away as always,” Edward said as he approached. His hand was outstretched to grab Hamilton, so the doctor began to back towards the first set of doors.
“Evan, move along,” a voice said behind him. He dropped his arms and stole a glance at the wide form of Dr. Henry King, smiling as always. “You know, if you tried harder
I'm sure you and Edward could be friends.”
“And if you tried harder you could stand to lose ten pounds,” Hamilton responded, reaching out to touch King’s shoulder. His obese colleague backed away, and Hamilton clenched his hand into a fist, moving to strike the man. He swore the punch landed, but it only met the glass door. King was gone. Then the fat man let out a hearty laugh from behind Hamilton, back in the lab.
“I’m not used to you feeling like joking around. I’m afraid I’m well past my scrapping days, friend.”
Hamilton was stuck in thought. His eyes rolled up towards the ceiling. “Just what is going on up there?” There was no response. Hamilton wasn’t used to the silence. Still, it gave him time to collect his thoughts. “I killed Edward myself, and King was left strapped into a chair while the undead flooded the asylum. It was even confirmed that his body was found, right?” Nothing. “What do you know?!”
“Evan, go on in,” King ushered him. “Tuefel and the others are waiting.”
“What?”
A woman’s voice called out to him from beyond Edward in the lab, “We’re over here, Evan.”
Hamilton’s sight went further into the lab, where he saw a lone woman in a white dress standing next a table, hands braced on it as she leaned for a better look inside of the airlock. She smiled at him.
“No…” Hamilton uttered, taking a few steps out of the airlock and into the metallic room. Everything from the floor to the walls reflected the environment in a distorted manner, and the overhead florescent-blue lighting gave Julia the appearance of a ghost on her skin and dress. “Go away, all of you.”
“Shut up, twit, we can’t leave,” Edward informed him. “Not while we still have so much to accomplish.”
“There’s nothing to accomplish,” Hamilton remarked as he attempted to brush shoulders with the man he always knew as the ‘English bastard’ who could actually annoy him unlike anyone else. “Nothing else from the project anyway.”
“Yet, here you are.” a German voice spoke just over his shoulder. Hamilton spun around and swiped, but there was nothing there. Even King and Edward were gone. His eyes were focused behind him as he walked forward, but he brought his head around and jumped back at the sight of Dr. Frank Tuefel. He looked just as he did on the day Hamilton killed him. His head was bald, and he was donning his lab attire. His green eyes leered at Hamilton as Frank pushed his glasses up on his crooked nose. “I left you with my legacy. Why are you handing it to them?”
“Leave me alone, demon,” Hamilton snarled.
“Evan, this isn’t what I had planned when I entrusted you with the data.”
“You never gave it to me. I took it off of your body after I shot you through the head.”
“Evan, listen.”
Hamilton walked away from the mad German, heading towards the table where Julia still stood. “I never agree with my own thoughts, so why should I listen now?”
Julia’s expression was one of disappointment as he stopped before her and reached a hand up. “Evan, he’s right. Remember what he told you that day?”
He brought his hand back before it had even graced her cheek. “I only remember the pain he caused me, and I’ve seen the pain he’s caused in others. I don’t care about any of that. I only want to crush his legacy under my own foot. It’s not about saving the world; It’s about beating the bastard who used all of us to take the idea he sold us and twisted it into something else. Even then, I don’t know if I care enough anymore…I just want to live my own life again without all of this madness.”
“Evan-”
“Enough!” he roared. The voices were gone. His old colleagues had vanished. He was alone again.
I’m still here.
“Oh, joy. You’re back.” Hamilton commented as he looked at some of the instruments on the nearby table. A centrifuge, vials of an abnormal, reddish liquid and random notes filled the surface up.
“Do you talk to yourself often?” a voice called out from across the lab. It was the man from the speaker. Hamilton stood up on his toes and glanced past the equipment that littered the center of the place, but he still couldn't see anyone.
“More than I should, yet less than I need to at times it seems.”
I get lonely too.
“I'm never lonely with you, unfortunately,” Hamilton muttered as he kept scanning for whoever had addressed him. It spoke again, not far away.
“Well, it definitely makes you the unique one among Second Fall.”
“Please,” Hamilton replied. “King was fat, Moriarty was a dick, Tuefel was a deranged bastard, and Julia was…well, a woman.”
“Yes, yes, you were all snowflakes, weren't you?” The source finally revealed itself from behind a large recording device with film still spinning. He was a man who appeared to be in his thirties, not too young, but enough to betray any assumptions about his lack of experience with the world. His blonde hair was grown out and tied into a ponytail in the back with bangs that hung past his eyes. His straight smile reminded Hamilton of Edward a little. Enough to make him want to slug the guy already. At least his eyes were different, but then again they reminded him of someone else his mind was concerned with. The green shined brightly in the light. “Dr. Evan Hamilton. I never thought I'd see the day we would meet.”
Hamilton stood his ground and nodded his greeting. “So, I've met Ruthven and Lewis, and they both claimed to not be in charge of everything here. I supposed the third time is the charm?”
“Depends on who you're referring to. The boss? Well, no one really claims that role.” The man lifted some notes on a nearby desk and shook his head as he studied them. “However, you must be looking for-”
“A man who calls himself a necromancer,” Hamilton interjected, “so is that you?”
“Ah, der Nekromant is who you seek.” The man set the papers down and stood proudly. “Then search no further, Hamilton.”
Fucking finally!
“He is here, though I'm afraid he is quite busy.”
Fucking bullshit!
“He isn't really the boss, per se. He's more of a…” he waved his wrist about as he struggled to find the right word. “Figurehead.”
Who the hell is running this place? Ask. Just be direct. I'm tired of this cryptic crap.
Hamilton actually obeyed the voice in his head. “So who is in charge?”
“Well, Lewis funded everything after the fall of Tiamat Unbound. Trust me, I never have to complain about a budget. Ruthven, or whatever he's calling himself now, provided the intelligence necessary. Der Nekromant…well, you'll be able to discuss that with him when you formally meet.”
“So does everyone just get free reign?” Hamilton asked him. The man cocked his head to the side as he thought on that.
“Technically, I've never been told to halt any research I'm conducting.”
“Even if it's dangerous?”
“Why would you halt something dangerous?” the man asked, surprised by the idea alone. “That's how you stifle progress!”
You would have agreed a few years back…wait, do you still think like that now?
“That sounds wonderful, but I would really like to meet my new employer and discuss what it is I'm working on here.”
“Well, I was left with instructions.” The man pulled out a slip of paper from his lab coat. “Dr. Hamilton is to assist Dr. Hayter with research and development on the new strain of the virus, as well as tend to matters involving the preservation of specimen and care of the forces of the World to Come.”
“Does that make you Dr. Hayter?”
The man waved a hand dismissively. “Only if you prefer formalities.”
Hamilton nodded. He wasn't going to let him call him Evan. “Well then, Dr. Hayter, I was only told to bring the data, and Ruthven took that from me.”
“Oh, you mean this?” Hayter held up the flash drive that was removed from Hamilton’s pocket back in Berlin. Hamilton felt obligated to try and snatch it back, but Hayter pocketed it as
fast as he'd withdrawn it. “We’ll be using that extensively in our work. It's safe with me, so no worries.” Hamilton wasn't so sure about that, and Hayter must've seen it. “If Ruthven didn't trust me, I wouldn't have it. Besides, he can't do anything with it himself at the moment.”
The guy was good at peaking Hamilton’s curiosity. “Why’s that?”
“You'll see soon enough,” Hayter assured him, “which reminds me, I'm supposed to be doing something else. Come along, Evan, you can help me.”
Hamilton cringed. “Hamilton.”
“Hm?”
“Call me Hamilton if you won't call me doctor. Just don't call me Evan. Never Evan. Besides, we’re not friends as far as I’m concerned.”
Hayter gave him the most befuddled look, but shrugged it off and gave it no more attention. “Just follow me.”
Hamilton stood in place, curious as to what he was up to. The man disappeared behind some tarps, but then reappeared briefly when he realized that Hamilton wasn't following him. “Come along, doctor. You can't assist if you're not here, can you?”
You heard him. Come on, we get to work in a lab again! That's exciting, right?
A groan came from beyond the layer of tarps, and the overhead lights kept the shadows to a minimum. Hamilton had no idea what lay beyond his sight until he pushed the thick sheets aside and stared at a flat, metal table with a body atop it. The sight itself wasn't shocking, but when he realized who it was, his mind was thrown for a whole new loop.
What the actual fuck?
“Dr. Hamilton?” Hayter tried to get his attention. Hamilton was still a little stunned by what he was seeing. “Dr. Hamilton?”
Hamilton’s curiosity beat out his shock as he crossed his arms, studying the corpse carefully. “This is very interesting. Tell me, how did this come to be?”
“You can ask him yourself when we are through,” Hayter told him. “Right now, we have to ensure he will be up and walking again in just a little while. I'll open the incision in the cavity to drain the old fluid and whatever else has built up. I assume you’re familiar with formaldehyde?”