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In the sickeningly hot sands of the desert, thick humidity pouring down with every breath, Mark’s dissected by the sun—exposed to what lies beneath pearly white rib.
It's an ugly thing, he understands, cruel. Rotten, maybe, that something inside him, just gnawing. Fruit left to fester at the back of the fridge, sun soaked sweets buzzing with bugs, clusters of eggs lying underneath the skin. Mold left to bloom, freshly baked rot. But, it’s a hungry thing too, snarling, speckled reddish pink teeth, all bared and sharp in shape. It wanes in the quiet, but thrives the moment Mark burns, until he’s enveloped. Just a thing that makes others bleed.
(You could’ve stopped, before the blood kept at your jaw, up the elbow, up the chest. You could’ve, the copper finds its way back into your mouth, staining your teeth, a light, peach pink.)
(You could’ve, but you burn and burn and burn—)
Angstrom knew that much. Mark muses about it while laying before the unwavering sun, eyes fluttered shut. Angstrom knew before anyone did. Even Mark, or really, maybe Immortal, but Angstrom really knew, y’know, unflinchingly. He was never bewitched by the wave of Dad’s rolling red cape falling beside Mark’s shoulders, distracted by the flash, but something in Mark, festering, already long since spoiled, awaiting to emerge, half hidden mold. A thing with teeth. A thing like Dad. Just as cruel.
Angstrom was just trying to stop him before he ruined more—exterminating him, like anyone would do to the wild, hungry things that slip into quiet homes, drool along hooked, jagged teeth, pull the trigger. He was supposed to. Lure him out until he bit the bullet, gunpowder rubbed against his gums, but Mark’s got more bite than he’d thought, awfully toothy.
Before the sun, Mark’s fingers twitch, prickled by sun soaked sand, irritatingly hot. The way the skin sank, he remembers, right beneath his fist, before it swelled. The shell of crusted blood, burnt by the heat, the light. The sickening ease.
(You think of bruised apples, instantly turned blotches of darkened hue without being so much as grazed, and nearly balk at your own audacity, people to fruits, carrot sticks, sheets of a paper, even spider silk, easy to bruise, break, snap, tear—)
Mark breaths in the heavy air. Another in, another out.
He knows Angstrom went a tad too far, risking his Mom’s life, Oliver’s, so painfully undeserving, but Mark can’t exactly critique, anymore, when blood still stains on scar-less, smooth palm. He soared into the sky so fast it just burned off his body, sure, but the stars aren’t right here, and this sun is the only one he knows, and when he sinks back down to a planet he hardly knows, a dimension he’s caged in, the blood’s burnt off, stripped, but itches all the same.
Angstrom just tried to do the right thing, y’know. And now he lies beneath Mark’s feet, crumpled jaw still slack, battered chest, half beaten, caving in, by vicious hands, left swallowing sand. Comfort only lied in the few moments cradled by the crater, seconds Mark heaved, dry air and eyes blown, seconds spared before he’d died—a candle simply swept by the wind, instant. Mark buried him, solely by his own blood soaked hands, a tomb carved by such feeble fingers, tearing apart rusty, metal pillars until they curved. Poked the metal, burnt orange, as if clawed, to write his name, a final gift.
Now, there is no way home. There is no way out. He’s caged in. A bad dog collared by a rope, bound to a rotting home
There is no company but the sky, unyieldingly, scaldingly hot, and so irritatingly cold, cruel and biting. The sun basks in every drop of sweat running down his forehead, another drop of water lost as he shrivels. The very air lacked humidity, sometimes painfully dry, punishing. His hands shake, bloody, caked on, clingy. His eyes are burned with the memory, an undying, looping reels seared into his brain.
He makes his home floating above the sand. He curls up by Angstrom’s tomb, the only thing he knows, distinctive, in the stretch of hot orange sands, blue sky, and reddish orange metals sprawled towards the stars, curved in and rusted.
And for all Mark could kill with ease, death digs in its heels before it comes to him. He waits. Time is endless, eternal, and yet meaningless. Night is defined by nightmares, icy, cutting winds, but his own internal clock erodes quickly, and terror finds him whenever he tries slipping his eyes closed, day or night.
It doesn’t end.
And maybe it shouldn’t. It sucks, horribly so, but Mark’s crossed a line he can’t take back, betrayed his own promises, giving in to a sickening rage that demanded a pound of flesh for payment, when a simple disarm could do.
Along another indescribable day, his eyes rolled towards Angstrom’s looming tomb, as he laid before it, curled up small. It’s deserved, he thinks with another shiver. Deserved, as he sleeps beneath a weirdly starless sky. Deserved, as the days melt into nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Mark murmurs, voice cracked, long since chiseled by the quiet. A prayer for the morning, the night, steady routine.
Angstrom, in turn, rots.
He’s become such a quiet company. Mark can still hear his snarl of contempt, though, and nods himself, wordless, jerky thing. Deserved.
Monster, the wind whispers. Monster, the sky seems to sing, waving, scalding heat.
“I know,” Mark murmurs right back.
The air‘s too dry to speak, sandpaper rubbing his throat, and like usual, the conversation dies swiftly, suddenly. Instead, he replays snippets of other times, movie reels being his fluttering eyelids. No one’s visiting anyway—the distant bodies writhing at the edge of the sky, right when the sand’s kicked up high, staring, standing, wavering, right when the wind screams.
And with that, Mark starves. His stomach is beyond empty.
The empty sprawl of the universe could fit within it and he’d still lick his lips for more; it’s eaten itself, already, a black hole stuck on its own being, swirling internally with a troubling, bone deep pang. Mark’s above eating sand again, dry and powdery, unfilling—scraping up against dying pride—but not strips of metal. Freshly plucked from towering pillars of rust, anything between his teeth. Moments of fleeting lucidity convince himself it’s coppery jerky, simply tougher, thicker wads yielding to its teeth.
And yet, it’s never enough to soothe his stomach. Fleeting curbs of hunger.
(There are no maggots left in the sun, no flies swarming around the body, shoveling and wriggling up the sand, the tomb, but if he steers too close he can sniff it, baked meat, tough jerky, skin burnt and baked and wrung of moisture—)
(He smells it and smells it and gags, dribbles of bile looking around his teeth, as he spits it out, another dollop of water lost, and turns his eyes to metal sheets. His stomach twists. He can smell nothing but meat, meat, meat—)
Mark chews on iron-copper something now, like red-orange jerky, metal bars ripped off the bulk of the so-called bark. The night stretches into dwindling starry infinity, icy and biting, when something’s just off.
The air is on a wretched dry streak, but something sticks to the back of his throat, sparkling, fizzy. Like sodas of late memory, foamy drinks, sparkling waters, sweet carbonation. Mark seamlessly slides upward, floating—he’s never grounded, not anymore, less the itchy, biting sand clinging to him, too—and stares out into the open sand and sky and sun. He stills. Seconds stretch, or maybe they’re minutes, hours. Mark can’t tell, but wide eyed and unblinking, he sees it. A spark of green. A ripple of air. Then a rip, pinched and torn, before it swirled, sluggishly, like a dob of honey poured, widening further and further yet, until it sat big as a door. Then, even wider, a yawning mouth.
A portal.
And strangers step through.
Mark, hair past his neck and in his eyes, still chewing on one last strip of metal jerky, thinks nothing of freedom, but tilts his head as the sand billows like curtains drawn. He knew, at some point, he’d crack. Or, crack further. Mind spilled like yolk as an endless eternity of punishment stretched on, some living memories oozing out of his skull. He’s a broken shell for sure. Another marker of time spent, time lost.
Angstrom already stood at the edge of his vision, anyway.
Busted brain, bloody skin. He sneers at the roaring wind of sand storms, agonizing groans along his ear, fingers hooked and clawing. But the blurry wisps of Mom, Dad, and Oliver linger on the outskirts, always out of reach. Whispers on the wind. The fizzle before he can cling, before he can beg, and then, before he can even confess. Amber would appear, sometimes. William.
They’d writhe behind the horizon, twisting bodies as the sands spin, dizzying, disappearing. A taunt of company, barely tangible.
But the strangers are weirdly solid. They don’t fizzle out as Mark stares. They actually come closer. Not twisting farther, dissolving like dust, bursting into sky and smoke and sand. If Mark shoots straight towards them, or tentatively walks just short of their varying vanishing points, trying to hear the wind swept murmurs, they should burst into the horizon.
Instead, they pierce the thick swathes of quiet.
“Mark? Mark! I thought you said this stuff was accurate.”
“It should be accurate, Rex, he’s not a corpse, he could be flying around.”
“And yet, according to his calculations and his map, he should be right in front of us. But what?” A voice dramatically drags out, “there’s nothing here.”
“Then let’s check behind the giant rust tower, then?”
The twist of red-orange Mark strips pieces from, incidentally hidden by shadow, suddenly splits. There’s nothing but a burst of pink before it’s cleaved into tiny metal shards, raining down in needle thin scraps, glittering within the sand. All done with a tilt of the woman’s head.
Mark stares.
“Oh,” the guy, bathed in red and yellow, says while shrugging. “Okay, there he is. I told you so.”
The woman, short haired, dressed in pale pink, rolls her eyes. “Sure.”
“He’s been wrong multiple times before, man!”
“Clearly not now.”
“You’re getting caught up in the details, like we aren’t on a mission right now, so I need you to focus.”
She snorted. “Me? Like I’m not the one who—”
He groans loudly, “It was one time! And look, there’s our target, hey Mark! Come ‘ere, boy! Time to go home!”
She huffed a laugh, a smile hidden behind a hand. “Rex! He’s not a dog.”
“Yeah, but what if he’s feral?“ He pauses. “Eve, let him bite you.”
“If anyone’s gonna be bitten it’s you, first of all. And two, I’d dare him to try and bite me, and, hey, maybe let’s focus on getting this kid home? Remember that?”
“I’m just saying one of us can be indestructible, and one of us has fragile yet incredible skin. Make the sacrifice! It’s for a greater good.”
“Yeah, your greater good.” She puts a hand up, rolling her eyes, before looking back at Mark. Staring directly at him.
Unwavering bodies, their voices are pulling back memories—Eve and Rex, suddenly grown. Old as Mom, no, even older.
Still squatting, yet floating right above the sand, Mark drifts forward in one eerily smooth motion. The sky, the very air, become something lighter than water, the beach-side shores, chlorine rich pools, so he floats as if he swims, sometimes, floats and his body doesn’t move, pulled into directions like orbits, currents, or curling around the air like fish speed around the waves, a rolling body.
Still, they do not crumble into sand. Clarity only persists, unwavering. They eye him, and he eyes back.
“You think he remembers how to talk, or?” Rex drawls.
“Be nice, hello?” Eve snaps, then softens. “Hey, buddy, wanna go back home, right?”
“Turns out the world kinda needs you—ah fuck that, I sound like some stupid prophecy. This is dumb! Hey, hey, hey,” he snaps his fingers. “Yeah, over here, Mark, buddy, remember showers? Water? Beer? Go in there,” he says loudly and slowly, “And sleep in real beds again.”
Mark doesn’t—he barely speaks, admittedly, perhaps mumbling and muttering to himself with a low whisper, barely a push of air, hardly any energy spent. Confessions and apologies spoken like hushed prayer, his throat feels stuffed with thick cobweb.
Eyeing the portal, which stands behind them both, he floats even closer. Like a battering AC left to spit out air, the portal oozes a chill. He leans away.
“‘An’t go.”
Rex balks. “Okay, is that even a language—”
“He’s quiet, you complain. He speaks, you complain,” Eve says. “I’m seeing a pattern here."
“Um, shut up? That was barely a sound. It’s, like, a cough.” Then, Rex groaned. “What if his throat’s fucked up?”
“I can’t go,” Mark mutters again. A touch louder. Perhaps clearer.
“So, you can talk!”
“Clearly,” Eve piped up, but Rex had already poked a finger right at Mark.
“Dude, speak up. I’ve got, like, one good ear.”
“He said he can’t, geezer.”
“First of all, fuck you. Second of all, ‘can’t?’ Can’t? You have not bathed in who knows how long, and you can’t go back home?! It’s right there! We’re literally offering it to you! Free of charge! Emergency rescue! Divine fucking intervention baby, courtesy of Rex! I am fixing a whole debt thing right now, and you’re ruining it for me!”
“Okay, okay, calm down. You’re being rescued courtesy of me, Rudy, then Rex, by the way, but you can’t go home—why.”
Mark hasn’t blinked yet. Hasn’t for a while, if he remembers yet, when time blues and spins in a dizzying array. But, he does now—awfully sluggish, kinda cat-like.
They still don’t writhe, rolling under thick heat waves.
“I’m trapped.”
They should know as much. He whispered it to the ghosts of home, confessed, over and over again—what he is, what he’s done. Why he’s bound. He’s figured it all out, y’know, as stupid as he is.
“Trapped!” Rex shouts. “Trapped, he says! The exit is literally that way!”
“Rex, for two seconds, shut up. Mark, ignore him and listen to me. I’ve got no idea how long you’ve been here, but it’s time to go home. Remember that? Your Mom! Amber! Will, right? Remember, uh,” She snaps her fingers, “Pea? Ollie? Olive? Oliver! That happened around then, he’s a baby, and you gotta deal with that huh?”
“I can’t.”
“Well—hm,” she frowns.
“He’s got broken desert brain, that’s what this is. Can’t we just, y’know, drag him?”
At that, Mark laughs, dry and short and cutting. He twirls around the both of them, an almost playful swim through the air, and cautiously, pokes Eve—maybe these ghosts can go. But she doesn’t break into sand, a collapsing outpour, a mist shooting back into nothing but sky and sun and heat. His finger, a gentle prod, meets something solid. It’s not sandy. It’s not rock, not metal, not piercing sunbeams. Mark’s smile drops. He instantly zips over to Rex, who yelps at the speed, and the sand baked hands poking at his visors.
“Dude!”
Or, the head planted against his chest, transfixed by a softly beating heart.
“Okay, man, what the fuck? I don’t remember him being, like, clingy.”
“You’re here,” Mark breathes. His chest rises, over and over, lungs push and pull.
“Duh! That’s what we’ve been saying! What do you think—oh, wow, you really got desert broken brain. Hey, quick question, for real this time, how long have you’ve been stranded? Exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
Real. So incredibly real. Living muscle, human heart, unspilled blood. Fragile fingers awkwardly pet Mark’s hair, and then unsubtly shove his face away, still real. Mark leaps up and away from Rex after, leaving him sputtering, whiplash, his own fingers cracking, fiddling. He can’t hurt them. He can’t.
He’s rotten inside. It’s why he’s here, it’s why he’s been bound. Angstrom saw that! He knew that, knew it, he knew.
(There’s something wrong with you, awfully so, surely, festering as putrid, now rightly bound by a sun kissed leash of eternity—)
“Okay. Again. What the fuck.”
It’s a softer exclaim, and Mark can imagine the frown. Real frown. Real mouth. Real, living body.
“Yeah, I don’t—let’s just, uh, Mark can you just go through? For us?” Eve tries. “You gotta miss everybody, right?”
She’s alive. Here.
“I say just throw him and close it,” Rex mutters, presumably too low for Mark to hear, but it hits his ears, far too loud. He drifts deeper into the open sky, familiar yawning mouth, gummy, without a single lick of cloud as teeth.
They wouldn’t do that. They can’t.
But, Eve smiles. “Yeah, so just don’t panic?”
A lasso wraps around his ankle instantly, bubblegum pink. It’s cool, tight but it doesn’t squeeze. Real, in a startling clarity, unfamiliar sensation—not freezing cold, not bitingly hot, scorching. The next second, he’s being thrown, but the air is nothing but the sea, and he just stops short of the portal, a hair away from the looming, bright green. He’s pushed, but he doesn’t budge. He’s supposed to be here, live here, die here. It’s why he’s here.
It’s why no one came before.
“Well, fuck. Hey, just go. Go through. Go,” Rex says slowly, loudly, now, trying to shove him in. “Through. Go back home! You’re fine! You’re free! Come on, kid, just go home. Get going!” He whistles sharply. “Get!”
Free? They don’t understand. They can’t see it, but Mark holds the truth nestled close to his heart, buried beside pearly white ribs, surely stitched into his sternum. He is thing with teeth, he knows. Cruel and ugly and monstrous. He binds himself, rightly so, holds the leash tight on his neck, self muzzled by the endless sky and sun and sand. Nothing bleeds. Nothing dies.
He rips off the pink lasso, threads torn, sparkling in the sunlight.
“I can’t!” He hisses.
But when he turns around, there’s nothing but pink. A long, flat shield coming fast, shoving his body through, as Mark shrieks, wordless, and the lights bleed through his eyes, fractured, dizzying—where fresh, light humidity hits his skin. Clouds waft by as his vision settles. Nothing is harsh, all strangely gentle, cool. He breathes air that isn’t cuttingly dry and coughs, and lunges to the open portal—
“Rex!”
“On it!”
Explosions hit his face, searing hot and bright, but he’s faced the scorching sun before, eyes still blown open wide. It just feels like a warm breeze. He doesn’t falter, arm shoved back to the desert air, but a glittery pink mallet plows its way right to his chest, startling, hurtling him back, hidden by the light. He spins back to the portal, flying fast, but it’s shrinking, hardly anything to squeeze through.
“No!” A startled outcry rushes past his lips.
Mark grabs the very edges of the closing portal, and it burns. It fizzes and sears his very bones, but he tries to wretch it back open anyway, arms shaking by the strain, smooth, gooey edges now writhing like lightning. The two gape at him. The portal screams, writhing, but actually expands, slowly but surely.
“Go home!” Rex shouts, and throws another glowing, flashing coin.
Mark just darts his head forward and bites it before it can blow, sickening heat clawing at his mouth, smoke down his throat, seeping through his gritted teeth. But he swallows, the burn dropping to his very stomach, popping and fizzing.
“Oh okay, what the fuck! Eve!” Rex screeches.
The smile vanishes her face entirely, and Mark can feel a pink wrapping around his throat, and yanking him back, hard. She didn’t even move. Her eyes glow. Wisps of sand swirl around her, the kicked up sand glittering, twirling in tandem. He chokes, straining, shaking fingers to hold on, despite the searing burn. She walks up, closer and closer yet, as pure pink energy fizzles around her, static sparking in his very teeth. A sudden burn seeps around his shaking fingers, hotter, hotter than anything, and yet cold, freezing, stiffening—completely and utterly paralyzing. His efforts made idle, useless.
Slowly, it seeps into every finger. Pinkie. Ring. Middle. Index—
“No! Please!”
The portal writhes, prickling, shrinking.
“Go home, Mark,” she says, not kindly.
The very last finger strains against the portal’s shaky, fizzling edges, a dip into popping and spitting like a vat of bubbling oil. It burns. It hisses.
“Just go home,” Eve says, flatly. “Go help your world.”
Instantly, the pink shines from her eyes. His last, numb finger is pushed with a simple burst of pink, and the portal eagerly slams shut, but the last pop of green shows off the desert: a glaring Eve, and waving Rex, played for a mere shallow fraction of a single second, less than a blink—when the pink fades from her eyes, sensation snaps back into his fingers. Rex’s eyes already slide off him, body turning, dismissed.
Then, it’s gone.
Not a glimmer of green lingers. No speck of the air ripped apart for the portal to claw its way through, static buzzing in his teeth.
There’s nothing.
Mark’s hands shake. They’re not bruised, but scattered pink, bumpy flesh lay where the portal bit back. The stupid pink collar is still on, firm, and he grasps at it, a scream bubbling up in his throat as he tears it off, throwing it blindly. It whips through the air, puncturing the crowded bustle of clouds as he heaves. A stray piece of shattered pink falls to the ground. Vocal cords are shredded as he shrieks, pushed to dusty, rusty brink, a wordless, mournful howl, fury filled wail.
He’s not supposed to be here.
There’s no sand. No heat, cutting, dry, trying to peel open his ribs. It’s damp. It’s noisy. Horribly so, cars honking, sirens wailing, chattering crowds, a nearby drift of people towards the house with a broken, gaping wall, yellow police tape twirling like wind swept ribbons, a horrid swell, rising and rising and rising.
He needs to go back.
The air thins. His ears ache, his lungs ache, he aches. He’s clawing at the air now, swallowing back a frantic sob, frantically hoping that burn would come back, snagged on any possible green spark, something to bring him back to the sun and sand and sky. His vision swims, blurs, and a tear flows down his cheek, some ugly sound worming its way through his mouth, as his frantic swings at nothing bleed into him grabbing his very hair, and curling up into the sky, heaving.
The air he gulps is humid thick, some pungent stink of rain, and the noise, thrashing down his ear canal, like the clutter of shiny bug bodies making egg filled nests at the drum, and—
He hears her. His eyes widened, blown.
He snaps his head down and knows that roof, familiar tile he’s sat on before, legs swinging over. The edge slightly skewed, cracked tile, one finger following the fracture, angular, splintering grooves. Then his mom, his mom, stumbles outside the gaping mouth of a broken wall, as white suited agents buzz around her, ushering her into an ambulance. Oliver swaddled, a vicious cry that slams through his ears, even so far up high.
They’re alive. They’re—they’re actually here. That’s not right. No, no, no, that’s not right at all, because he can hear them, and this can’t be real.
A laugh bubbles out of his throat, and fingers find his hair, long, reaching for his eyes, always tickling his eyelashes, down his neck, his back. The sound doesn’t stop. The sun is not blaring down on him, trying to peel him open, every drop of blood not burnt, flaky, cakey, then swallowed by the sandy hills, so, so slowly.
And the ambulances still scream. Comm’s and walkie talkies pierce the air, and curled up, tightly wound, and he looks down, all the way down, past the yellow ribbons and the white trucks, and the crowd and he can hear her.
“—he took him! Vanished off into one of stupid portals, spouting that nonsense about dimensions, and all this nonsense, and I—”
Vitrolic, pure and acidic, falling from her lip, bitten, bloody. Her arm, he remembered, vivid in nightmares, was gnarly, bone glimmering in the sunlight, blood oozing into the living floor.
She would linger at the very edge of the horizon, before. Twist as the wind whipped, as the sand clawed against his skin. She seemed to scream back then, the hoarse cry of a sandstorm, arm bleeding against the sand, hair blown like an ink blot against the sky, one crooked arm lifted up with a blood soaked, gleaming nail pointed at him. It’d bleed into Oliver’s sob, bloated shrieks.
But now she’s swatting away a stretcher, boldly walking down the steps, sweeping past it as someone quickly ran beside her. They stop her, moving to touch her arm, dangling, bloodied, as she spoke with an unshakable vigor, a splint quickly fastened.
She’s real.
He sinks down, slow as the twirling leaves closer the crowds, pulled by invisible strings, but down, down, down he goes, until his feet are shy of the floor, never touching. He goes, like she is the twirling sand to collapse upon his touch, a screaming wraith before the night.
Instead, her eyes widen. Her words cut off, mouth agape, jaw still hinged. She even breathes, a subtle push.
“Mark?”
And a simple hug yanks the air from his lungs.
Her good arm wraps around his body, gently found his hair, then gingerly touching his cheek, his chin. There’s a warmth to it, a simple fact to leave awe blooming in his chest, a newfound tangibility, heavy, sturdy, real. Oliver, held by another agent, a responder bathed in white, even reaches for him, a tiny hand clasps onto his finger, squeezing hard.
Oh.
Did he die back then?
Was this a dream? And who was he to deserve something so sweet? So gentle? A life after the second he’d left, not burning from the undying sun, heat scorched infinity finally meeting an end. He was rotten. He’d deserved to be bound, muzzled, until he finally keeled over. What was this then? Oblivion? An afterlife made of memory? Some sick imagination stretching before his heart finally slowed?
(Or, is it real, and he’s nothing but greedy, monstrous and selfish, beastly thing still snatching from offered hands, nearly chomping on exposed fingers, blood along his teeth—)
(When will it stop? When will he just stop?)
Mark blinked, a sure yet sluggish thing, someone trying to pull him as he stayed, a statue within the air, unmoving. There was static in his ears. Everything had watered down. He looked down, at that hand, gloved blue, a stranger’s grip. His mother is trying to tug him, herself. The one good arm. They were talking, he thinks. At him. Probably.
Not that it did any good.
He didn’t stay rooted in the air, though. He let himself be tugged along. The ambulance. The hospital. He was holding Oliver at some point. The air was cold. Even icy. The lights were bright, shoes smacking, clicking against the shiny white floors. His hands were empty. The floors still glimmer. Nothing baked like the desert sun. Nothing slipped through his fingers, running, heat soaked sand, but maybe his soul had, maybe his body did.
Did he die?
“-rk.”
He was really here?
“Mark.”
Why was he here?
“Mark.”
“Hello, kid? Earth to Mark? What is this, Donald? Earth’s last defense’s gotten comatose?”
Fingers snapped in front of his very nose. The very noise feels stretched out, slowed from a scurry.
“Well, medic cleared him? As much as they could, sir, he’s only got so many identifiable organs.” A shy, meek laugh, before an abrupt cough. “The burn marks are new, but rapidly healing. Chem thinks he’s stayed in, um, wherever he was for a pretty long time, but they aren’t quite sure on the exact time frame. They’re still running labs on the pants and patches of blood, but it’s a while, sir. Years. They’re narrowing down the scope, but definitively a hot area. Sandy. Desert presumably.”
Mark blinks, sluggish. Time seems to bleed.
“Fine. What’s psyche say?”
Had it really been years?
“They’re not sure, sir. He’s not exactly answering questions, but they’re guessing around the ballpark of some kind of dissociation, maybe? It’s some kind of mental shut down. But, uh, some are trying to decide of his unique physiology is affecting—”
“Donald. Answers. We got any?”
“In summary, no. We have no idea what occurred, and there doesn't seem to be any magic, machinery, nor substances altering his mental state. There’s a spike of radiation, but that could be from the portal he came back through. Footage obtained does show us he was not very pleased to return—”
“The tantrum,” Cecil mutters darkly. “The hell was in there?”
“Eternity,” he mumbled, a measly puff of air. Home. Unheard, as Cecil paces, shiny shoes clicking against the floor.
“We don’t know, sir, but both psyche, med, and chem don’t think anything, well, good. We’re currently combing through any footage to identify what pink item was around his neck at time of return, but,” a shrug, a sigh. “There’s little we do know, sir.”
There’s a pause. “I want this fixed, Donald.”
“Of course, sir, all departments are, um, sir, he’s, uh—”
Cecil’s suit is real.
Fabric, cooled by the humming, industrial AC’s, was felt by Mark’s hand, his arm outstretched at last, a slow breech of movement. His once frozen body apparently thawed, still wrapped in the sun bleached, sandy, scratched up pants and blood soaked boots, long since browned, hardened, dug into the very heel, a subtle, measured nick cut off for the varying departments.
He looked awful. He felt awful. Every thought, few as they were, was resin bound, sluggish, gleaming, but left stuck—and still, childishly, Mark pinches the fabric of Cecil’s suit jacket. Holds it.
Donald, aptly, stares. Cecil, in a rare fashion, stood utterly robbed of the word to spew.
Mark was currently standing in the underground labyrinth of GDA’s wide stretch of the hospital floor, past his mother’s room, past Oliver’s, and stood pinching, strong index, strong thumb, Cecil’s suit. He holds like a struck shy, lost kid grabbing onto the nearest adult, somewhere in the bounds of being responsible, yet friendly shaped enough to grasp. His head tilts down, a shiny spotlight cast.
It’s navy blue.
“Donald.”
It’s cold.
“Yes, sir?”
“What,” Cecil hisses, “is Nolan junior’s space case doing?”
“Um, touching your jacket, sir.”
Mouths click shut. Shoes click against the floor again. Mark, hair drifting in his eyeline, suddenly sees a suit jacket ripped from his hand. A piece stays between his fingers. He doesn’t let go.
It’s cold. It’s real. He cups it into his palm.
He never imagined this. Never.
He lifts his head. Cecil, whole and alive, glares. Donald, eyes half hidden by sunglasses, frowns nervously. Mark could hear his heart pound. He could see his eyes through the dark film of the lens, the rapid flicker, watching. Twin squishy bulbs of white. Not rotting. Not caved in the socket, skull collapsing.
“Invincible? Markus? Mark? Are you with us?” Donald says, smiling too widely. “Are you alright? Can you speak?”
Mark stood. Mark stares. His existence lies robbed from his own perception, his acknowledgment, slowly thawed by the foreign, yet familiar touch of a suit jacket. The murky, muddled memory of Cecil, of people, of the GDA, of his mother, his brother, and then of Angstrom, of the desert, of Eve, of Rex, and back again to Cecil. He buffers. His mind, if it were gears, wound had run so harshly, so hotly.
But of flesh and blood and mind, he simply seeps back into his body—a broken faucet’s pour.
This was not oblivion. This was not a delusion. This was not a daydream, a daymare, a nightmare, a paralyzing grasp of what-if’s as the sun sunk below the sky and rose again, some fleeting, mocking idea of reality where the heat couldn’t touch him, where the world wasn’t made bare, scrubbed of life, this is real.
Mark is here. Like, actually.
But, he couldn't—he can't be here, actually, but he can be, and he is, but he can't, but is Eve and Rex, who couldn’t have been real but were, shouldn’t have robbed him of the sun and sky and sand, but had. It was dizzying. Something short of mad, but it struck through anyway, dug in its heels and existed, this newfound reality, this world, this floor glaring back up at him, glossy, reflective like some running stream.
The rubbery, pink pieces of his hand still throb, too, gently almost. The portal’s outcry, lightning’s bite over his palms, rubbery gum sprawled along the lines.
They itch. They burn. They ache.
(Real.)
He’s here.
(Real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real, real—)
He presses his fingers into a scarred palm, his hands meeting jagged nail.
(REALREALREALREALREAL—)
His palms nearly bleed.
Go home, Mark, Eve says, bold, brazen, ripping away from the desert. Go home, Rex shouts, over and over again, as if he wasn’t left there, bound there, ensnared and entombed for the rest of eternity until he finally passed.
Nail punctures skin. Red blooms. The ghost of that pink collar strains against his throat, pliers plucking at his fingers. A wordless cry worms its way up to his throat again, hands finding his hair, greasy, long, and perfect for pulling. He felt like a living implosion, surely, a grand rocking, earth shattering, heart sick explosion rattling in his very bones, trying to swallow the simple facts of existence again.
It was easy to feel like that in the desert. But he can’t whisper apologies to Angstrom anymore, he can’t, he can’t—
“I’m not supposed to be here,” he rasps.
“The fuck is this?” Cecil snaps. “He disappears for a minute and comes back like this.”
“Um, there, there, Invincible,” Donald mutters back at him, sheepishly patting him on the back as he quivers, a clipboard balancing in his other hand. He did not let go of the pen, though, which made for a weird knuckle rub, but the very sensation of touch crossed wires in Mark’s brain that had been fried, and the concept of comfort, tangible, existing, made him sob harder. Not the ghostly graze of memories, not the creep of sand brushing against his back, but real and warm, kept in tune with a fluttering heart.
“Donald.”
“Psyche insisted emotional support before could lead to a 16% increase in trust, reliability and thus performance,” Donald whisper shouted, “This seems like the most reasonable thing to do for him.”
There was a pause.
“And the GDA, sir.”
A click of the tongue.
“Invincible’s emotional stability is crucial if he’s acting as a primary defensive power.”
“Fix this. I want functional. This is not functional. This is a dysfunctional nuclear bomb.” Cecil hastily stalked off, a sharp click of his shoes.
“Will do, sir.” Donald pauses then, looks back at Mark, and then silently pressed a button along his jacket’s collar, tugging it close to mouth. The tinge of static buzzes in Mark’s ears. “Psyche department, we have a, uh, situation with Invincible. Available agents please,” he hesitantly nudged Mark as he rubbed his back with a fist, to which he didn’t budge in the slightest, more akin to trying a halfheartedly shove of a bulky fridge with his pinkie. “Come to hall 34Q-L of the left most medical wing.” Then muttering, low, “—get ready to test your theories.”