- Chapter 053 -

  Clear Skies

  A jolt, sharp and sudden, tore him from the thick, cloying fog of unconsciousness. Mark’s eyes snapped open, his head throbbing with a dull, insistent rhythm that was horribly familiar. He was slumped in his armchair, the one with the worn fabric and the perfect, body-shaped dent in the cushion. His armchair. His living room.

  The only light came from the television, a frantic, monochrome dance of snow against the gloom of the room. Its high-pitched, insistent hiss was the only sound, a sharp counterpoint to the dreary patter of rain against the windowpane. He could smell it, the damp almost metallic scent of a Manchester evening working its way through the slightly open window, a smell he could never mistake.

  A wave of extreme grogginess washed over him, his thoughts thick and slow, like wading through mud. He felt ill. A deep weariness that left his limbs feeling heavy and disconnected. He tried to shake his head, to clear the lingering cobwebs, but the simple motion sent a fresh spike of pain through his skull.

  It was a dream. It had to have been.

  Fragments of it still clung to him, vivid and strange. The impossible sharpness of mountain air. The rhythmic clang of hammers on anvils. The weight of a strange, fine blue tunic against his skin, and the phantom ache of a broken spine. He remembered faces, a kaleidoscope of characters that felt more real than any dream had a right to be. A pair of medics, one calm, a simmering pot waiting to boil over. A leather-clad huntress with a terrifying, beautiful beast. A grumpy jeweler, a cynical guildmaster, a quiet librarian.

  And a wheelchair. He remembered the cold steel of it, the frustrating, humbling reality of his own weakness.

  The absurdity of it, the sheer, fantastical nonsense, was a clear and definite sign. A fever dream, brought on by a brutal, week-long flu, perhaps. It was the only logical explanation his tired mind could offer. He pushed the thoughts away. It was over. He was home.

  He tried to focus on the wall clock, a simple, minimalist circle of black and white, but the hands were a blurry, indistinct smudge. He couldn’t tell the time. Something small and he had failed at it. The frustration was a tiny, sharp spark in the fog.

  He needed coffee. A real coffee. The thought was a lifeline, simple and achievable, manageable even in this sea of confusion. He pushed himself out of the chair.

  His legs protested the movement, muscles stiff and unfamiliar, and a wave of dizziness made the room tilt for a nauseating second. He gripped the arm of the chair, waiting for the world to steady itself. He must have been out for a while, a long, uncomfortable sleep in a bad position. That had to be it.

  He made his way unsteadily to the kitchen, his bare feet cold on the laminate floor. And then he saw it.

  The microwave.

  The small digital display was blinking, a silent, rhythmic pulse in the dim light. 0:00. Inside, untouched, was his bowl of pasta and meatballs. The task, completed an eternity ago, was still waiting. The cheerful, electronic ping he had heard in that first, disorienting moment in the forest echoed in his memory, a ghost of a sound from a world away.

  An entire, impossible lifetime of pain and progress, of gods and guilds, of dying universes and broken bones, had apparently taken place in the span of a single, thirty-second heating cycle.

  He just stared, the blinking numbers a final, irrefutable proof. It had been a dream. A vivid, terrifying, and monstrously detailed dream. But a dream nonetheless.

  He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, a ragged, shuddering sound of pure, unadulterated relief. He wasn’t a paradox or a part in some failing cosmic project. He was just Mark Shilling, a project manager from Manchester, who had apparently had a very, very bad turn.

  With a sense of weary gratitude, he opened the small cupboard, his hand finding a familiar, smooth ceramic pod. The coffee machine whirred to life with its familiar comforting sounds, the gurgle of hot water, the rich, bitter aroma filling the small kitchen. It was the smell of a normal Thursday evening. It was the smell of home.

  The coffee machine finished its cycle with a final, satisfying hiss, filling a clean mug with the dark, aromatic liquid. He wrapped his hands around the warm mug, as he stood there, waiting for it to cool just enough to drink, the last, sharp edges of the dream began to soften and recede.

  The impossible clarity of the mountain peaks blurred into the familiar, hazy grey of the Manchester skyline. The scent of pine and cold stone was washed away by the phantom smell of his own flat, a mixture of recycled air and the faint, lingering aroma of yesterday’s cooking. The faces of the people he'd met, once so vivid and distinct, were fading, their names and titles dissolving into a jumble of nonsensical fantasy jargon. Healer. Huntress. Gemsmith. They were just characters, ghosts born from a feverish, overactive imagination. Too much fantasy and not enough Sci-fi, he needed to adjust his media habits.

  He was safe. The crushing weight of a thousand lost years, of a dying universe, it was all just a story. A questionably good one, his mind conceded, but a story nonetheless.

  He took a slow, careful sip of the hot coffee, the familiar bitterness a welcome shock to his system. Still a bit unsteady on his feet, he made his way across the living room, the annoying glow of the static-filled TV casting strange shadows across the room. He needed to check on his real project, the one that mattered, outside of the constraints of spreadsheets and angry contractors.

  As he approached the corner of the room, he saw that the small LED on the 3D printer was glowing a steady, solid green. It was finished. The thought was a small, sharp snag in the smooth fabric of his relief. He had checked it when he got home, the Grey Sector print had still had hours left to go. He must have been sleeping in that chair for longer than he thought, a deep, exhausted sleep that had blurred the lines between a few hours and an entire evening. It was the only explanation that made sense.

  With a sense of quiet, proprietary satisfaction, he unlatched the perspex door of the printer's enclosure. The offensive acrid smell of cooling PLA plastic filled the air, the scent of a project successfully completed. He reached in, his fingers closing around the finished model.

  And he froze.

  A fresh wave of fog rolled through his mind. His fingers, expecting the complex lines of the Babylon 5 station, instead found smooth, angled planes and a perfect, symmetrical shape. He pulled the object from the print bed, his mind struggling to reconcile what his eyes were seeing with what he knew should be there.

  It wasn't the Grey Sector.

  It was a pyramid. A perfect, three-sided pyramid, its surface detailed with intricate, geometric patterns that he instantly, instinctively recognized. Stargate? A Goa'uld vessel from the Stargate series.

  He stared at the model, the grey plastic cool and solid in his hand, a tangible contradiction to his own certain memory. He was sure... he had been working on Babylon 5. He remembered the failed prints, the monster of filament, the crooked layer shifts. He remembered the quiet, triumphant satisfaction of seeing the third attempt finally holding firm. The memory was as solid and certain as the one of his leftover pasta.

  A flicker of unease, cold and sharp, pierced through him. He turned, the pyramid ship clutched in his hand, and carried it over to the small table where he kept his other completed projects, a growing fleet made from plastic and resin.

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  He set the new pyramid down beside the others, intending to compare it, to find some logical explanation for the discrepancy. A mix-up in the files, perhaps. A project he had started and forgotten about.

  But as his gaze fell upon the other models, his vision swam. The familiar, sharp lines of the USS Enterprise, the iconic silhouette of an X-wing, the sleek, organic curves of a Vorlon cruiser... they were gone.

  In their place was just a vague, indistinct blur of plastic. Featureless shapes. He blinked, trying to force his eyes to focus, but the details refused to resolve. They were just meaningless, fuzzy lumps of grey and white, ghosts of a hobby he couldn't quite remember. The harder he tried to see them, to recall their names and origins, the more the fog in his mind thickened. The only clear, sharp thing on the table was the pyramid. The one that shouldn't have been there at all.

  A wave of vertigo, sharp and nauseating, washed over him. He stumbled back, his hand finding the familiar, worn fabric of his armchair, and sank into it, the pyramid ship slipping from his numb fingers and clattering softly onto the carpet.

  He just needed a moment. A moment to center himself, to let the world stop spinning. The headache, which had receded to a dull thrum, was flaring again, a sharp, insistent spike of pain behind his eyes.

  He closed his eyes, shutting out the confusing, contradictory evidence of the room around him. The static hiss from the television, the blurry, indistinct shapes on the table, the impossible pyramid on the floor. It was all too much. He took a slow, deep breath, then another, his mind desperately trying to impose order on a system that was out of order.

  It was just a headache. A bad one. The kind that brings on confusion, double vision, even minor memory lapses. He must have printed the pyramid weeks ago and forgotten. The other models were just a casualty of his blurry vision. The explanations were flimsy, but they were something. They were a plan for making sense through the fog. He clung to them.

  He just needed to rest. To let the headache pass. To let the world settle back onto its familiar, predictable axis.

  He opened his eyes.

  Daylight, grey and diffuse, was streaming through the window. The frantic, monochrome dance of the television static was gone, the screen a blank, dark mirror. The low patter of rain against the glass had stopped, replaced by the distant, muffled rumble of morning traffic.

  He hadn't felt himself drift off. There had been no transition, no sense of time passing. One moment it was a dark, rainy evening. The next, it was morning. He must have slept, a deep, exhausted slumber right there in the chair, but the memory of it was a complete blank. He felt no more rested than before, only a different kind of tired, a weary confusion.

  He glanced at the wall clock. Still a blur. The hands were a fuzzy, indistinct smudge against the white face. He squinted, trying to force them into focus, but it was no use.

  He couldn’t go to work like this. The thought was a small point of panic. He had meetings. Deadlines. A project that depended on his ability to see, to think, to impose order. He couldn't do any of it with his head full of fog and his vision a mess.

  His phone. Of course.

  He reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the cool rectangle of glass and metal. A small, irrational wave of relief washed over him.

  He thumbed the screen to life.

  The display flared with an eye-watering brightness, white light that made him wince and snatch his head back. He blinked, spots dancing in his vision, and tried again, squinting against the glare. The time should have been right there, in the top corner, a neat, digital display. But like the wall clock, the numbers were a fuzzy, illegible blur.

  Frustration cut through the haze. He couldn't even read his own phone. Fine. He'd call. He fumbled with the screen, his thumb swiping through a series of blurry icons until, by muscle memory alone, he found the one for his contacts. He tapped the entry for his office.

  He raised the phone to his ear and waited for the familiar, reassuring sound of the ringing tone.

  There was nothing. Just a dead, flat silence.

  He pulled the phone away, staring at the screen. In the top corner, where the signal bars should have been, there was just a single, stark icon: a small circle with a line through it. No service.

  A cold kind of unease began to creep in. He was in his flat, in the middle of Manchester. He always had a signal. Always.

  He tried another path. Email. He swiped again, his movements now more frantic, and tapped the icon for his mail app. The screen refreshed, a small spinning icon of loading that gave him a fleeting moment of hope. Then it stopped. A single, brutal line of text appeared at the top of the screen, sharp and clear even through his blurry vision.

  No connection.

  He checked the settings. Wi-Fi was off. He toggled it on. The phone scanned, searching for the familiar name of his home network. Nothing. It searched again. Still nothing. Just a blank, empty list of unavailable networks.

  He sat there in the quiet morning light, the phone in his hand no longer a tool of connection, but a useless, dead piece of glass. No signal. No data. No Wi-Fi.

  This was not going to be a great day.

  He needed to get changed. He couldn’t go to work, couldn’t even call in sick, but sitting around in yesterday’s rumpled suit, creased into a topographical map of his uncomfortable night was not an option either. A shower, fresh clothes… small steps. A way to attempt to feel human again.

  As he shuffled past the small, puck-sized device sitting on the side table, habit took over before his brain could catch up.

  "Alexa," he croaked, his voice rough with sleep. "What's the weather?"

  He let out a short, dry laugh at his own foolishness even as the words left his mouth. No Wi-Fi. No connection. He was shouting into the void, asking a plastic hockey puck for answers it couldn't give. It was just another sign of how frayed he really was.

  The blue ring on the top of the device danced to life.

  Mark stopped dead, his laughter dying in his throat. The light swirled, a cheerful, cyan flare that shouldn’t be possible. There was no internet. He’d just checked.

  "Right now in Manchester," the familiar, synthetic voice replied, calm and unflappable, "it's 2 degrees Celsius with clear skies."

  Mark stared at the device, his mind reeling. It was working? Had the connection come back while he walked? A surge of hope, contacting work to warn them off him not being that would be possible..

  "Today," Alexa continued, her tone shifting slightly, "expect a high of 10 degrees and a low of minus 12 degrees."

  A pause.

  "Expect up to 5 centimeters of snowfall."

  The hope vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity that began to cut through the brain fog like a knife. Snow. In Manchester. In November. It wasn't impossible, but 5 centimeters? And a low of minus 12? It was… wrong. It didn't match the grey light coming through his window. It didn't match the muffled sound of traffic that sounded distinctly wet, not snowy.

  It was an anomaly. The device appeared to be working without a network. The forecast predicted weather that belonged to a different season, or perhaps… a different place.

  His mind raced, trying to find a foothold, a logical explanation. A cached forecast? A glitch? But before he could form a theory, a sharp sound shattered his train of thought.

  A knock at the door.

  It wasn't the tentative tap of a neighbor or the brisk rap of a delivery driver. It was two firm, impactful knocks.

  He turned, feeling a tinge of forgotten dread at people at the door. He hadn't heard the lift. He hadn't heard footsteps in the corridor.

  The door handle turned.

  It wasn't locked. He always locked it.

  The door swung inward, revealing the hallway beyond. But instead of the familiar, drab beige walls and flickering fluorescent light of his apartment block, there was… nothing. Just a vague, indistinct greyness that seemed to swirl like mist.

  Standing on his threshold was a man. He was tall, impeccably groomed, and dressed in a suit that was… wrong. The cut was sharp, modern, but the fabric shimmered with a subtle, iridescent sheen that belonged in a high-concept sci-fi film. The lapels were too wide, the collar too high, a vague, unsettling blend of corporate power dressing and fantasy nobility.

  He smiled, a smooth, practiced expression that didn't quite reach his eyes.

  "Good morning, Mark," the man said, his voice pleasant and polished. He stepped into the flat without waiting for an invitation, claiming the space with an easy, terrifying confidence. "My name is Clyde. And we are here to talk."

  Mark instinctively backed away, his legs hitting the edge of his armchair. "We?" he managed to ask, the word a breathless whisper. "Who is we?"

  Clyde's smile widened, becoming something sharper, something hungrier. He stepped aside, gesturing to the open doorway with a flourish.

  Another figure stepped out of the grey mist.

  Mark’s breath hitched. The fog in his mind cleared further, burned away by a flash of cold, visceral recognition. It wasn't a stranger. It was a memory given form, a nightmare made flesh.

  The name Eric came to mind, but his mind felt split, he could barely remember except for his absolute contempt for this person.

  He spoke with a laugh towards Mark as he entered, “Your companions are safe… for now.”