Felix stood in his mother’s office, waiting on her to hand him the sealed files to be delivered to the archives. He was counting on it. After a few more signatures and a couple minor edits, she printed off the paperwork, put it in the binder, labeled it, signed it, and handed it over to him. “Now, go take that down to the archives, along with this filing order,” she handed another sheet of paper to him, “and give it to the clerk. She will file it for you. Then, you’ll be done helping me for the day. Alright?”
“Yes, mom.”
“And Felix.”
“Yes?”
“You’re alright? You scared me and your father half to death on Tuesday night. And we both find it concerning that you had lost so much of your faith.”
“Don’t worry, mom. I’m ok. The past couple months have just been pushing me over the edge, is all. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at home, Mom.”
“Love you, bye.”
Felix walked out of her office, and into the even more deathly-white, sterilized-smelling halls of the main hospital. He took an elevator with a couple nurses still in their scrubs, and went all the way down to the basement. Although, it did take several frustrating minutes, as many stops were made. At last, the doors opened to the archive sublevel, and he walked directly to the clerk, handing her the file with a smile. She wasn’t much older than him, redheaded, full cheeks, slender figure. She ran her eyes up and down him as she put the file in a ‘To-Sort’ stack and rested her arms on the desk as she made direct eye contact. “You know, I get off at seven. I leave work at six. Catch my drift?”
He could feel his cheeks blushing. “Look miss…”
“Call me Cristina.”
“Look, Cristina… while I’m flattered, I kind of have a girlfriend.”
“Oh shit!” It was her turn to turn red, and she did so completely, her cheeks like hot iron. She then went about sorting files and working on the computer, doing anything to not have to look at Felix.
Felix chuckled a little. “We all say stupid things sometimes. Have a nice day.”
She replied only meekly. “Yeah. Bye.”
Felix returned to the elevator, but didn’t go to the ground floor. He instead went one sublevel up, to the storage rooms. He only hoped that his six hours of diagramming the security cameras would work. Otherwise, he’d be in handcuffs before he could say ‘morphine’.
Felix lay on the couch, his head resting in Daphne’s lap as she ran her fingers through his hair and scratched and massaged his scalp. Despite the dinosaur-iffic sounds coming from Jurassic World as it played on the TV, Felix wound up falling half asleep right then and there, losing all track of time. Eventually, he woke up when Daphne stopped scratching his head, and he sat up to see her on her phone. The movie had ended. She smiled at him and put her phone back in her pocket. “Just my parents. They’re insistent that I go home soon.”
“Damn. Just when life was getting good.”
“You fell asleep on me!” She retorted.
“You didn’t say a word. I think you probably enjoyed it.” At this point, he was sitting right next to her, their arms around each other.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, babe.” She pecked him on the lips, and then got up, brushing some of the dog hair off of her, to little avail. Sampson sat up from where he lay down napping, taking notice of her imminent departure. Felix then walked with her towards the front door, Sampson scurrying downstairs almost on their heels. At the door, Felix turned her around with a flick of his wrist as he held onto her hand and gave her another kiss. “You’re in a bit of a good mood today, aren’t you?”
He smirked. “I’m Italian. Romantic is just how I roll. Go home. I’ll call you later.”
“See you around, loverboy.” She then walked off, got in her beat-up Beetle, and took care of a couple things on her dashboard and phone, idling in the courtyard.
Sampson twitched and bobbed back and forth like a racehorse chomping at the bit, whining as he stared at Daphne’s car. Felix snapped his fingers and shushed the dog. “That’s enough boy. You can’t go home with Daphne; that’s not how this works. Besides, you hate her father, remember?” Sampson responded by growling and walking away. After a couple minutes, Daphne drove off into the night, and Felix closed the front door as he checked his watch. Seven thirty. Catalina said she would be at the rendezvous at eight. Felix rushed upstairs, grabbed his jacket, gloves, and scarf, along with a few other essential items, including his folding knife. He ran downstairs again and found his parents. “I’m going to meet Catalina and Jasper at the movies. I’ll let you know if I wind up spending the night at Jasper’s house.”
“Alright. You drive safe, you hear me?” Leonardo demanded.
“Yes, dad.”
“You have the traction control on?”
“Yes, dad.”
“You checked your tires?”
“Yes, dad.”
“Your headlights aren’t burning out?”
“They’re LED lights, dad. You know that.”
“Your phone is fully charged?”
“Yes, dad.”
“You know your exact route, and where you have to dodge bars?”
“For the love of God, dad, yes! I’ve planned everything accordingly, like always. I know you’re concerned for me, but the odds of another drunk driver careening into me are low. It was a freak accident by no fault of mine.”
He father sighed, and put down his book. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Go on, Felix. Call us to let us know what your status is.”
“Love you both. Bye.”
“Drive safe, Felix.” His mother said.
Felix ducked around the corner and out of sight, towards the front door. However, he silently cut through the kitchen to access the storage room, and quickly accessed the hidden compartment in the back, where he pulled the mysterious rifle with the crimson ammunition out, taking only fifteen rounds, including those still loaded in the weapon. He picked up the strange back device he had taken to calling the Ouroboros, and carried it on one hand as he slung the rifle over his shoulder and quickly replaced the panel, turnout out the lights, silently closed the door, and walked out the front door without his parents ever seeing. He pulled his keys from his left pocket, and jangled them around a little so he could get a grip on the key fob. The truck’s motor came to life, quieter than the old one. He missed the diesel truck, but after it was totaled, Leonardo insisted on finding the safest truck physically possible, which turned out to be the one sitting in front of Felix. The turbocharged V6 was all well and good for working and getting around, but it didn’t sound nearly as satisfying. Still, Felix was lucky to get another truck at all. After the accident, Felix’s father became incessantly paranoid about Felix every time he was in any vehicle, and simply refused to let Felix drive. However, a few weeks earlier, Felix’s mother had talked Leonardo into getting Felix his own vehicle, for practical purposes. They couldn’t chauffeur Felix around forever.
Felix set the rifle and the Ouroboros on the back bench seat in the crew cab, and got in the driver’s seat. As he drove off, he used the voice command system to call Catalina. Without her and Jasper, his plans were moot. As the line picked up, Felix called out. “Hello?”
“Hey Felix. I have Jazz with me. He’s tired, so he’s sleeping in the shotgun seat right now. We’re waiting by the highway. Where are we going?”
“When you see my pickup pass by, just follow me. I can’t explain everything right now, Cat. It will make more sense for you to see.”
“This better be worth it. He’s in a grumpy mood.” In the background, Felix heard a faint ‘I heard that, Cat!’
“See you when we get there.” Felix hung up the line and drove, knowing that what lay ahead could likely be more dangerous than that night two months earlier.
“You’ve dragged me out here in the middle of the night to go to a decrepit army barracks? The fuck is wrong with you, Felix?” Jasper griped.
“Shut up and go with it. Cat, come in the building behind me. Pull Jasper out of his chair, we’ll have to carry both him and it through.”
Catalina moved to Jasper, but he pulled himself out of the chair, crawling on his arms up the couple steps into the building. Felix had a huge duffel bag slung over his back, and had the strange rifle shouldered, half looking down the scope towards the end of the hallway and the tunnel entrance. Catalina pulled the chair in, and Jasper hopped up in it, determined to roll himself through the rusted and fallen-over bunks. Felix turned on his headlamp, and Catalina did the same. She pulled out her knife as she checked the bathrooms and a couple closets filled with empty gun racks. She found the cluster of grenades in the toilet, and stepped back, calling out to Felix. “I think this used to be the grenade bouquet, dude. What happened?”
Felix answered matter-of-factly, keeping an eye on the tunnel entrance ahead, which was covered in scorch marks from the grenade he had thrown those weeks earlier. “Lyev and I disarmed it. The kid’s good. I wound up using one.”
“You used a grenade!?”
“It’s complicated. I might have killed something, might not. We’re about to find out in about two minutes.”
Jasper rolled in front of Felix and stopped him, shoving the barrel of the rifle to the side. “Felix, what is this all about? Just tell me!”
“I will. But first we need to get inside.”
“We are inside!” Jasper and Catalina both shouted at him.
Felix nodded towards the gaping hole in the floor behind the others that they had failed to notice. “No, in there. We’ll need to lower you, Jazz.”
Jasper pivoted around, and his jaw slacked as he saw the scorched tunnel entrance. “Did you use a grenade to blast that?”
“No, the hole was there the whole time. I used the grenade later on. Things got a little… dicey. Now let’s get moving. We may not have a lot of time.”
Jasper crawled out of his chair, and folded it up as he sat on the ground. Felix jumped into the hole first, checking down the long tunnel to make sure there were no surprises. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, and went back to the hole in the floor, where Catalina held onto One of Jasper’s arms, lowering him into the pit. Felix then took a hold of Jasper’s other arm, and caught him before he could take a hard fall. He eased Jasper onto the ground, and took the wheelchair from Catalina as she lowered it. Felix unfolded it, and held it still as Jasper climbed back in. Catalina took a deep breath as she looked down, and jumped into Felix’s waiting arms. He caught her, but they still both hit the ground hard and rolled a few feet. She got up, brushed the dirt from her shirt and leggings, and pulled Felix back up onto his feet. Felix then shouldered his rifle once more, and began the descent into the tunnel. The others followed, Jasper keeping his hands on his wheels to keep from accelerating down the slope. In the middle of the blast marks, a semicircle with a gradient trail of perfectly untouched rock lie there as if someone, or something, had shielded itself. Felix checked to make sure that the safety on the rifle was off. About five minutes later, they reached the giant metal doors, and Felix handed off his rifle to Catalina. “You point it at the middle of that door, and if anything comes through, you bring it down.”
Without another word, he went over to the holographic console, expecting the puzzle to come up again. However, when he inserted his hand into the designated zone, the lights automatically flashed blue two times, and a soft, warped voice spoke, almost as if heard underwater. “Welcome, foreign user. Please proceed. Warning, blast door edges are sharp.” Felix ran back over to Catalina to see that both of their jaws had completely dropped, and the grating of the opening doors caused the rock floor to vibrate enough to make Felix’s feet go numb. Jasper turned outright pale with nausea. Once the doors were fully opened, the three walked in, not seeing any other person around. Jasper managed to roll up some ramps to the upper central level, which Felix finally realized was the command platform.
Catalina walked along the chemistry table, running her fingers along the smooth metal, gawking at the elaborate setup. She turned to Felix. “What is this place!? This is crazy! It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie!”
Felix slung the rifle over his shoulder as he looked at the supercomputer along the right side of the wall. He replied to Catalina as he overlooked the screens. “This is where I found the rifle I’m carrying. Lyev and I discovered all of this. We don’t know what this place really is, but this can’t have been made by humans. Although, everything in here seems to be in… shit… it’s like Spanglish, but Italian-based. Ita-glish? I have no clue. When I was last here, everything was in some kind of absurd cipher I couldn’t make heads nor tails of. I’m starting to think it was another language. One I’ve never seen the likes of before.” As he stared at the rapidly refreshing and recalculating computer bank, the words slowly began to turn more English, with only bits of Italian here and there. “It’s responding to your presence. The language is changing because it’s going for the common denominator.” He walked away from the computer and joined Jasper on the command platform.
His paralyzed friend had rolled over to the weapons racks, and was handling some kind of huge, pistol-like device with a maniacal grin on his face. “Dude, these guns are sick! They’re so advanced that it makes the Covenant weapons from Halo look like child’s play!” He leveled the weapon, and feigned charging it and kicking his arms with recoil. “Pew. Watch Sabrina Tymm call me a cripple now.” He chuckled in a rather disturbing manner, and Felix picked up the weapon out of Jasper’s hands.
Felix placed it back on an empty section of pegs on the wall and turned to Jasper, crossing his arms. He shifted his glasses on his nose to relieve the pressure for just a second. “Jazz, we’re not here to collect tools to end lives with.”
“Then why the fuck did you take the rifle when you found this place with Lyev?”
He hesitated, and he could feel his face burning hot with nervous blood. “I… think about it, whatever made this place could’ve posed a threat to my life and Lyev’s. Of course I picked up the weapon.”
“A sniper rifle in a confined bunker?” Jasper questioned. “You don’t have to play Halo or be a soldier to realize that’s a dumb idea.”
“Only weapon I was familiar with. Anyways, I’m going to get to the real reason we’re here tonight.” Felix walked over to the strange console and empty display stand set into the wall. He set his rifle against the console on the wall, and put down the duffel bag, from which he pulled the Ouroboros. The strange device immediately captured the attention of both Jasper and Catalina. “I found this hanging in this display. If you notice, it is rather shaped along the lines of the central nervous system. If you give me a moment with the interface on this console, I need to confirm my theory.” He turned away from them, and worked with the console, trying to find his way through the strange, almost organically-arranged menu system. Eventually, he found a diagram of installation, which showed a human subject, and a list of effects and symptoms. Among them was ‘nerve tissue regeneration and enhancement’. And it was all Felix needed. He backed out of that section, and eventually worked his way through the system to find a command line that said ‘open installation table’. He pressed it, and the hooks for the Ouroboros folded away, and an advanced, actually comfortable-looking surgical table slid out. Arm restraints swung out from the sides of the table, and leg restrains extended from the end. The head brace made it abundantly clear that the patient was to lie face-down.
“What are you going to do here, Felix?” Catalina asked, more than slightly afraid.
Felix looked right at Jasper, unblinking. “I’m going to install the Ouroboros on you, and I’m going to make you walk again, without spending enough money on therapy to put you through med school twice. The lame man will be healed.”
Jasper lay on the surgical bed, unrestrained. He was breathing deeply, trying not to freak out. “Felix, how is this going to work?”
“You leave it to me. I’ve got the console right here next to me, and I’ll follow its instructions. I have some medicines I lifted from the hospital, and you won’t feel a thing. I think.”
“You sound real fucking confident back there.”
“Just stay calm, Jazz. Cat’s looking for anything in the chemical cabinets that’s a sedative. You’re walking out of here on your own two feet, Hell or high water.” Felix returned to working with the interface, and pulled up some more diagrams. “Also, I’m letting you know now that there are ten spinal taps along your entire back, along with a few other spikes, so you’ll be hurting.”
“WHAT THE FUCK MAN ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME NO FUCKING WAY FUCK THIS SHIT GET ME THE FUCK OUTTA HERE I—” He suddenly stopped ranting as Felix put one loose strap over each arm, tied a tube around Jasper’s arm, and injected a full ten milliliters of morphine directly into his bloodstream before letting the rubber tube go. Jasper exhaled sharply as the painkiller flooded through his veins like an icy wave.
Catalina came up topside from the chemical platform and kneeled down under the front of the table to look Jasper in the eyes. She put her hands on either side of his face, gently rubbing to try and calm him down. “It’s ok, Jazz. Everything is going to be alright. Please, just look at me. Shhh. Just relax, please.”
As she attempted to pacify Jasper, Felix wasted no time in securing more straps around Jasper’s head and arms. He took a scalpel and sliced the back of the shirt open, pulling the flaps to either side. Before continuing, Felix picked up the very small syringe of concentrated sedatives and injected Jasper directly into the other arm. Jasper relaxed further, and Catalina began to speak more quietly. Felix bent over, and looked at them, but neither of them noticed. Jasper’s face had gone blank, only half-conscious, and Catalina focused too much on Jasper, her face in more agony than his, and a single tear rolling down the inside of her cheek. Knowing that he could not waste any time, Felix held up the Ouroboros device, and aligned it with Jasper’s body. After seeing it would fit, Felix took a cotton pad and wiped down Jasper’s whole back with rubbing alcohol to sanitize the area. Once done, he tossed the alcohol and the cotton pad into the duffel bag, and picked up the Ouroboros, holding it above Jasper’s body. He slowly rested it on Jasper’s back, allowing the tips of the spikes to come down at once so they would rest and not penetrate the skin, not until Felix could examine the console more closely. Assuring that the device was aligned properly, he then turned to the computer to input some commands and see what he could find. Suddenly, the lights on the device changed color for the first time, from a dim bluish-white to a pulsing blood red. The console locked down, and the warbled voice that had greeted them spoke again from the computer banks. “Warning. Patient detected as critically injured. Initiating emergency self-installation protocol.”
As a piercing whistle came from the Ouroboros, Catalina leaned to her left and stood up beside the table next to Felix. “Felix, what the Hell is this thing do—”
Suddenly, the Ouroboros seemed to contract on itself, the spine arching backwards, and all the tendrils curving up into the air and away from Jasper’s body. Without any warning, they all flung themselves back down with a ringing metallic snap, driving the spikes directly into flesh and bone, and inserting the spinal taps all the way in, leaving the metal of all the device’s parts flush with the skin. Jasper awoke the instant this happened with a bold-curdling scream, an unearthly howl of such agony that Felix had no idea humans were able of making. The scream continued for almost a full minute, and when Catalina and Felix went under the table to look at his face, his nose was bleeding and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Jasper’s whole body shook violently throughout and after a full, heart-stopping minute, the tremors stopped, the scream subsided to a faint whimper and eventually silence. Felix rushed to the wall, and found that the console showed Jasper’s vitals, a slowing heart rate and slowly declining blood pressure coming off of a spike that should have killed any human. But Jasper’s wildly abnormal brain activity caused Felix the most concern: sometimes nonexistent, sometimes off the charts. Gamma and Beta waves were elevated beyond those of any expectation, and all in spite of Jasper being utterly unconscious. But what baffled Felix the most was the presence of a high amount of Delta activity, which should have been virtually nonexistent for a borderline-insomniac adult. But Jasper’s other vitals were stable, and he took a deep breath before turning to Catalina. Before he could say anything, the warped voice spoke again. “Patient stabilized. Temporary cellular regeneration acceleration initiated. Central nervous cognition protocol permanently activated. Estimated time for partial recovery: twelve hours. Estimated time for full recovery: indeterminate, cannot extrapolate. More data required.” The voice stopped, with no indication on how to question the voice further, nor from whence it came, Felix turned to Catalina.
“You should go up topside, call your parents and let them know you’re spending the night at a friend’s house. Say it’s Daphne, I’m sure she’ll cover you. When you’re done, I’ll go up and call my parents and tell them I’m at Jasper’s house.”
“You’re right.” She barely managed to choke back her tears. Her fear could almost be smelled in the air. “Wait, hold on.” She pressed a few buttons on her phone, and raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Wait a sec. I have a signal down here. Full bars. I’m going to call now.”
Felix pulled out his own phone, checked it, and shrugged as he confirmed the signal. “I’ll be damned. Whoever built this bunker must have really loved to use their phone.” He called his mother, and let her know he planned on spending the night at Jasper’s due to the late hour. After a short conversation, he hung up and walked over to the far left side of the command platform, just down the stairs from the platform of abominations. Felix leaned against the railings, exhausted. Catalina stood next to him in the same manner, and let out a heavy sigh. They felt as if they had almost lost Jasper again, and in front of their own eyes. For all real purposes, Jasper did come quite close to death. She looked over to Felix. “Hey, you did it. You got the device on him. Now we wait.”
“Yeah, but what happens next? I don’t know if it will heal him. Everything indicates that it should, but we don’t know for sure. For all we know, he’ll be dead by morning, or he could be just peachy. It’s all just so unpredictable I don’t know what to think.”
Catalina put her hand around his shoulder to console him. “Believe me when I say this: you literally cannot be more afraid for him than I am. You have no idea how much Jasper means to me. I can’t imagine having to live without him. He’s just always been there, for years and years. He will pull through. I haven’t given him permission to die on me yet.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Felix looked down over the railing, and squinted a little as he saw something on the floor below. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a cloth from his pocket before putting them back on and squinting yet again to make sure that it was really what he thought it was. “Well, ain’t that just interesting.”
“What is?”
“When Lyev and I found this place, he wound up chucking his cookies after we discovered the abominations on that platform up there. He yacked over this railing right here.”
“And?” She leaned forward, and looked down to the floor below, seeing exactly what Felix was so intrigued by.
“Whoever keeps this place running cleaned it up. There’s still a stain in the rock.”
ravenmountain 