revivalproject

Entry tags:

Sepsis

WHO: The Archivist, Captain America, the Wasp, and...Tony
WHERE: The Upside-Down, downtown Temba
WHAT: Tony checks out the gates, makes some mistakes
WHEN: Stranger Danger--AFTER the gates open, Oct 11-12th
WARNINGS: Event warnings (blood, mouth related body horror, sentient vines/tentacles, choking, 'animal' attacks), Tony warnings (alcoholism, suicidal ideation), Jon warnings (eye horror, no butt).

a. the library [for Jon]
Iron in the air could have explained the red skies, and the magnetic reaction. It could have even explained the curling, blackened plants around the foundation of the department store. Iron could be a poison. From above Tony came a warning cackle, making him glance up anxiously, searching for the beating wings of those things that had come to roost on the chimney of the forge, then decide he didn't have to wait to find out how many of them there were. He could get out of sight instead, and duck inside.

It seemed colder yet in the dark behind closed doors, and Tony scolded himself for not bringing a flashlight. He pulled his scarf up around his head for some comfort, tight to his ears and making his still carefully slow breathing sound like a wail that would draw the creatures straight to him. He held his breath, listening intently for any sign that he had been spotted, eyes straining in the low light to scan the abandoned shelves for any movement. It was just when he was deciding that he'd rather face some flying horror than the dark that he realized the crimson gleam reflecting so subtly off of tarnished and dusty cups and picture frames was not from some crack in the roof letting in the tainted sunlight.

There was a wound in the wall. Split through the stone and glowing, radiating its own sickly light, framed with slick, arterial tubes. It looked like an infection in the beams and plaster. Maybe it had started as a fracture from the earthquakes, but now it was a hole that should have let Tony see through to outside. Instead, it kept going.

It was even colder on the other side.

Almost everything else was the same, if Tony had to rationally quantify it, which of course he did in a running list constantly at the back of his mind while he moved. He knew exactly where to go, for example, to find a carefully packed bundle of survival equipment, including a flashlight to correct his earlier mistake, and cast the beam around the welcome centre to confirm it was the same dimensions, the same arrangement of burnt out lights, even the same camera mounted in the corner though it watched Tony with an unseeing eye. It was the infection that made any difference, mapping the city with those swollen arteries, tainting the air enough to make Tony wrap his scarf over his mouth as he slipped back through the square along the dry fountain, and choking out any sign of life. The trees were dead. The few people that Tony had expected to try to avoid as he made his way through the streets were gone. This city was empty.

To Tony, it was the library where this was the most evident. Jon's very presence that had become such an oppressive force that it had permeated the concrete slab was gone; a power so invasive that Tony's skin crawled the moment he crossed the threshold now leaving these halls feeling starkly empty and expansive. The walls were at least closer as he made is way down to the basement, intending to pass straight through to his workshop and the equipment inside. He paused at the door to the bedroom, his hesitation fractionally brief in his conviction that he was entirely alone, then picked his way carefully around the vines to climb into the hammock that hung there, abandoned.

The relief in the familiar comfort was so immediate and foundation deep that Tony considered he might have been dreaming. That this was a premonition, of what the city would be like after he finally succeeded, and gotten everyone home or on their way, and he was left to watch the city crumble on his own. He wouldn't be able to maintain the power grid, or the water processing alone; he probably couldn't manage the greenhouse, but a few plants to keep him alive enough to watch over the certain end of this miserable experiment. It wasn't so terrible, even alone, if he could be surrounded like this with the relics of the brief joy he had found here. He needed a drink.

The moment his eyes slitted open he saw the movement; a shimmer of dust knocked loose from the ceiling near the door. Tony kept still, watching its slow descent, feeling the anxiety ratchet slowly up his spine again until it was abruptly a taught, singing wire as the second one came; directly above him, it was easier to hear the distant thud that precipitated the shower of debris, and then the creak of the floorboards. Something had been watching his journey across the city, and it had caught up to him.

In that same room where the hammock barely swung with dying momentum, and simultaneously impossibly far away, the lights flickered and buzzed erratically. When they finally stopped, their faulty guttering jumped to the hall, dancing with the crackle of a live wire from one bulb to the next, making toward the stairs in a slow, waltzing rhythm. The lamp at the bottom of the staircase buzzed, pulsing with a held breath of anticipation, the light dim like the filaments were on the verge of burning out.

b. the garden [for Steve and Jan]
What had started as open, empty streets were becoming unavoidably populated. The beasts that roamed there must have felt similarly closed in, occasionally breaking in snarling scuffles between them, or bursting into cacophonies of Jurassic cries that left swarms in the sky scattering. More of them were going through those glowing gates, especially at night when the noises all seemed to swell and Tony could hear them through the door of his workshop. The distraction slowed his already pessimistic work, his shoulders tight and hair on end, listening for the first sound that came too close. He had to seal those wounds, stop the infection from spreading into the city that was still alive, and stop the tide of those creatures that poured out to terrorize whoever was on the other side. Nothing seemed to effect the torn walls, though. The closest Tony had managed so far was triggering the alarm that brought the snarling and screeching down on him, a jolt through the arteries like he was the virus that needed to be cleansed. The argument felt increasingly convincing.

What he didn't properly anticipate was the traffic moving in both directions. The creatures pouring out should have been an effective detriment to anyone considering going in, like some idiots. What he didn't expect to hear was a very human shout, the thumping and clattering not a feral chaos of teeth and nails in hot, quick strikes to gain territory. Tony's busy hands stilled as he strained to listen like he hadn't been the entire time, eyes up on the ceiling like he could make out some detail of this new configuration of fight through the boards. That was definitely a man. What kind of asshole had walked into this nightmare?

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Tony's light was steady. It was a cold, narrow beam barely reaching up the height of the stairs, fixed on the door leading out into the library that he stood watching, and listening for another step with his heart in his throat. He didn't anticipate a voice, so close that it had him whipping around to throw the light back down the hall he had tiptoed his way up, where there was nothing but the swirling ash that fluttered in his wake. "Boss?" Tony tried, a hissing whisper, cringing at the noise and glancing anxiously back up the stairs before he continued, "I'm not doing anything--I was just leaving, okay, I thought I'd go to the shop--," trying to rationalize what Jon would want him to stop doing. Up until he accepted that he was talking to a dark hallway and had to admit to it, "I'm going crazy."

There is a loss Jon finds himself at as he looks at the gathered mothcats staring up at the single burning light. Eventually he sighs, inwardly bothered by not simply knowing what's going on - Again.

"It's probably just the storm." He assures the mothcats, earning himself the attention of at least some of them. "Guess I have to ask Tony to check the wiring anyway once this is over. Pretty sure the lights shouldn't be doing this. Even during a storm." Jon pauses a moment and the Countess comes fluttering up to him. "You wonder where he is as well, don't you."

Two things could be true at once; Tony could very well be losing his mind, and that could actually be Jon's voice he could hear, too quiet to make out the words and only distinct in the rich burr that seemed to catch in Tony's chest and try to tip his head toward it, longing to press his face into Jon's throat. He must have been walking away--was that him up there, this whole time? What was he doing here? Tony got as far as bracing a foot on the bottom stair, ready to race up, flashlight swinging back around to the door at the top as he called, "Jon!" The only answer he got was the creak of the boards under his foot, then the burst of the door into splinters above him.

The flashlight hit the ground before the shards of the door made their full descent, and it went rolling across the floor until it was halted by a thick vine roping across the room, where it was left shining benignly down the long hall. In the dark behind it, Tony's retreat was a rapid few steps then screech of metal on the cold floor as he bumped into the desk, and groan of protest from the wood as he vaulted over it, scattering papers and sliding across a tape recorder to drop down and press himself into the black void underneath. He clasped a hand over his mouth and tried to listen past the pounding in his ears as heavy footsteps thumped ponderously down the stairs.

With the Countess settling on his shoulder and the remaining mothcats still busy with the unsteady light, Jon is about to head back upstairs when his attention as well as that of every present feline is drawn to the nearby deskwhen one of the tape recorders left there turns on, playing back a recording Jon made some time ago. The appears to have fixed itself in the meantime.

But Jon notices the light less and steps back to the desk, picking up the recorder with a scowl that then gets directed at the ceiling. "If you're trying to tell me something, you have to be clearer!" He announces and turns the recorder back off before lowering his voice again. "It normally gets blocked out by the storms..."

That was definitely Jon's voice, completely incongruous with the heavy footfall down the last step onto the basement floor, and the strange, throaty gurgle that followed. Worse, Tony couldn't figure out what exactly he was trying to tell Jon right at that moment; it didn't seem like the best time to try to make his apologies, and he certainly didn't have any convincing excuses prepared. Was that Jon? Whatever was out there seemed to have gone still, so Tony had to be very careful to make no shuffling noise as he tried to contort himself over and peer through the sliver of space between the floor and the facade of the desk, where he could see his breath swirling the strange fog that clung there, and creating a ghost of condensation on the concrete. There was the flashlight, pointing down the hall. And there was a very alien foot, that he really hoped was not Jon's. The voice must have been coming from somewhere else, possibly just echoing in his guilty head, his version of his life flashing before his eyes except it was just his failures. Just as Tony was considering that the failures were his whole life, that was just a normal life-flashing, he spotted the tape recorder.

That was a normal place to hear Jon's voice. Was it still on? Abruptly, before the tape recorder could make any more noise and lure the alien foot toward him, Tony flung a hand out and clicked the first button he touched.

The recorder in Jon's hands clicks on again, but this time it's the record button that is being pressed and Jon hurries to stop the device from recording over his already present recording. "Hey! This is not the time to throw a fuss! If you haven't noticed, there are monsters out there. Monsters that want to eat me and I can't do anything against them!"

Jon huffs and scowls at the device. The mothcats have all gathered on and around the desk, inspecting everything thoroughly. "I can't even find Tony. If you want me to do something for you, you have to do something for me first: Find Tony. Let me know he's okay." Jon growls and puts the recorder back on the table.

Tony didn't think he was being unnecessarily fussy, under the circumstances, and would also prefer that the recorder, or the Jon in the recorder, was not eaten by monsters, which was why he really needed it to be quiet, because the first sound had the thing in the room with them charging so viciously at the desk that the whole piece screeched across the concrete and almost shoved Tony over as they collided. He could hear the thump of the thing bracing itself on the surface above him before it let out an intimidating shriek. There was a pen in Tony's hands seconds ago, already disassembled by the time the creature ran out of breath, the spring twisted and mounted to expertly sling the plastic case of the pen under the desk and between the creature's feet. It went sailing across the basement floor to start pinging against the walls of he illuminated hallway. With a grinding tear of claws through the wood above Tony's head, the creature whirled around with another scream and went bounding after the sound, crashing after it with such determination that it tore plaster from the walls.

In the din, Tony snatched up the tape recorder again, bringing it so close that his nose was pressed against it and he could hiss under his breath, "Jon?" He was not completely convinced of his sanity, but he was determined that there had to be some logic to the exact way he went crazy, and even if his brain was a pool of slag he was not confused about where he was. "I'm right here," he might have been desperately telling both himself and the Jon he was pretty sure was some kind of real, even if he only existed in the tape recorder. Which was possible. They did just...appear because of him. Frantic to make some sense of this, he tried pressing several buttons, possibly recording himself for the object's convenience, repeating, "I'm here."

It hasn't been long since Jon had put down the recorder when the device suddenly springs to life, it's various buttons pressing down and jumping back up at random, causing Jon to back away in bewilderment. "W-wait. Hold it! You will only make them stuck!" He calls out and quickly picks the recorder back up.

Jon waits for the recorder to settle down, considering what may be happening. By all rights the Eye shouldn't be reacting like this. It isn't meant to understand what's happening. The most plausible thing Jon can currently think of is this being one of the ghosts, the apparitions they all see every storm, to try and make contact? Are these specters in the end more than images drawn from their memories?

"Okay." He says at last. "I- uh- I suppose you can hear me. So..." His fingers glide over the recorder's buttons. "If that's true, press fast forward, please."

The recorder was evidently not aware as Tony was that it was a recorder that was talking to him if it needed to test Tony's responses. He stared at it with some bewilderment for a second he didn't really have, wondering where the wiring was misaligned, why they could hear each other and not understand. He didn't have long for that question to settle into guilt (maybe that was what Jon meant when he said Tony wasn't listening, he could hear just fine, he just never understood), shocked out of it by the creature in the basement with him crashing back into the desk, sending it spinning around the pivot of Tony's shoulder against the wood. He did as he was told as the beast roared, swinging out from under the desk with the Jon Recorder clutched protectively against his chest were he could mash the fast forward button, then rapidly try to tap a stuttering S.O.S. as he went sprinting down the hall before the beat could notice he'd even left.

Since Jon doesn't have to deal with any monsters trying to eat him at the moment he has settled down at the desk with the recorder now placed on said desk before him as it gives him an affirmative reply.

So whoever is using the recorder to communicate with him understands him. That's helpful.

"Okay." Jon nods once. "Are you one of the-" He starts voicing his next question, but then the recorder starts tapping out a rather frantic rhythm which catches Jon by surprise. "W-wait! No- Wha...?" He stumbles over his own words but after a moment catches on. Which is when the flickering of the lights in the hallway picks back up again as well with the mothcats yet again being drawn after the andering lights. Jon remains with the recorder, however, frowning down at it.

"...S.O.S. ...?" He wonders aloud at the code only someone from Earth would even know. "Can you tell me who you are?"

In an act of desperation, Tony flung the spring he still clung to through the door to the bedroom, hoping that made any kind of noise, while he ducked the other way and had to stop himself from flinging the door of Jon's office closed behind him. He caught it just before it slammed, leaving him panting against the wall just inside, where he could peek through the sliver of the door at the creature throwing itself back down the hall after the commotion. Where he could also hear that very small voice, like it was getting further away, even though he had the Jon Recorder pressed up against his collar, possessive and desperate. "Why are you getting quieter now?" he hissed irritably at it as the creature screamed hungrily through the bedroom door, hunting the scrap of a pen.

The voice was getting further away, Tony did not enjoy realizing, because he should have known before now that the recorder probably wasn't talking to him, and he had just fled from some other source of Jon. He tipped his head back against the wall, eyes up at the ceiling with a frustrated plea for answers, like why Jon didn't know who he was talking to.

This city must have still been connected to the one that Tony had left. He hadn't gone far, after all. Those glowing doors must not have been the only way to get through.

It was a very slow and tedious process to convince the tape recorder to tap out T-O-N-Y while a monster grew restless in the room next door.

Jon patiently observes the recorder delivering its message and once the letters make sense, his eyes go wide. "Tony? How is that- Are you possessing the recorder? Or are you--" He cuts himself off, looking around, a frown forming on his face. "Is this really you, Tony? Are you here? Y-you're not a ghost, are you?" His expression settles into a soft frown, then morphs into a scowl. "Unless you're a ghost and only want to mock Tony's absence. If that's the case, then this isn't funny at all!"

Though he does have a bit of a record of those he cares about simply vanishing. Quite literally at times. But there is no way Tony will end up being swallowed by the Lonely. There just- It's not something that's going to happen.

At least Jon hopes so...

The voice sounded far enough away that Tony had to strain to hear, bringing the tape recorder up closer to his face again like it might help through the snarling and stomping of the creature. It could certainly hear the voice, drawing it back toward the desk and the stairs, grunting its frustration as it overturned the furniture and couldn't find the source of the noise. Jon must have still been at the bottom of the stairs, but not really, not these stairs, at least Tony hoped so because the creature was roaring again and going charging back up, like maybe that was the direction the voice had gone.

Tony held his breath, watching through the slit of the door, and listening for the thumping of feet above him as the beast went galloping across the library, knocking over bookcases and clawing at the walls. This must have been as good of a chance as any for him to come creeping back down the hall, trying not to disturb anything to make any noise, until he could very gently retrieve the flashlight. Eyeing the staircase nervously, he tried to swing the light around, searching the corners of the room for any sign of Jon beyond his voice. T-O-- he started tapping again as the dust came shuddering loose from the ceiling over his head, like maybe that would summon Jon closer, realizing as he did that this wouldn't have been the effective way to seduce Jon under normal circumstances. S-O-R-R-Y he revised, because he didn't really know what was. Coffee? Was the coffee machine here, and could he make it more quietly than the buttons of the recorder clicked?

Sorry. That response has Jon pause. It could be a very Tony response indeed. Unless it's not Tony and the ghost is simply apologizing?

"What are you apologizing for?" Jon asks, his eyes remaining fixed on the recorder. That's something that needs to be clarified first, obviously. At least in some way this already feels like he is actually talking with Tony.

Despite straining to hear it, the voice made Tony jump, swinging back around from his scan for something to help him summon Jon, to searching for the source of the sound. Maybe he and that monster upstairs could come to understand each other. Nothing in the room had moved, though; the voice travelled on its own, with no speaker that Tony could find as he crept around to check behind the thrashed furniture, and grew increasingly anxious without a workable theory or a reasonable answer to the disembodied question. Did it sound accusatory? The amount of things that Tony could be apologizing for was far too great to try to spell out in morse code, and had him crouching with the recorder hugged to his chest like getting smaller would help condense the issue.

T-O-O-M-U-C-H he eventually produced, which might have been the real answer anyway; he did demand a lot, like dragging Jon into this situation that he didn't even understand, and didn't offer much in return. C-A-N-T-S-E-E he tried then, only realizing part way through how strange it was that Jon also couldn't seem to see what was happening. Seeing was kind of his thing. Belatedly, Tony added ?-?-?

Seeing was indeed Jon's thing. A thing that gets very limited during an active storm, much to his dislike. Luckily by this time he at least has regained his ability to use his own knowledge during this time, which Jon still feels reluctant to properly accredit to one admittedly poorly planned trip into the caves.

"Too much of what?" Jon asks the recorder before the second resonse comes in only to add to a collection of half-sentences that make little sense. "Why can't you-" Jon starts another question but pauses when the question marks are added. "You mean me? W-well, no. I can't? I can't see anyone. Can you... See me?" He asks with a frown, looking around.

Great, they were both talking to a tape recorder. Tony might have been reevaluating the case for his sanity again. Maybe Jon had always been insane, he did talk to these things before, and it was somehow contagious, and now Tony thought everyone should pick up the habit as he crouched behind a desk in a dark room listening to an angry animal stalk the library above him.

H-E-A-R he eventually had to commit and answer, and just tapping that much out was already annoyingly laborious. He glared at the buttons, trying to come up with the shortest possible explanation for where he was, what was about to eat him, and what may or may not have been a thick enough barrier between them to save Jon from the same fate, if that really was Jon. If it wasn't, did it matter what Tony said? H-E-L-P he tapped out so slowly, hands shaking by the third letter and the clot of his breath in the air blooming thicker as his face got hot, and he gave a frustrated scrub of his burning eyes against his shoulder.

So whoever he is talking to can only hear him just as Jon can only translate these code messages. Luckily they both understand morse code. And English, apparently.

"How?" Jon asks. "How can I help you? I don't even know where you are." He casts a look around in wonder, his eyes scanning the various mothcats in their various spots, acting more restless than usual. Maybe they can see whoever Jon is talking to after all. At the very least they seem to sense something.

Jon usually knew what they were supposed to do, even when he didn't know where he was and had to argue Tony into setting a vampire on fire, so his bewilderment didn't make asking for help any less humiliating. Tony had to hug his knees close to his chest to press his head down and take a deep breath before he was tapping, B-A-D-U-P-H-E-A-R-U-S. There had to be better shorthand for disaster scenarios like being hunted by a monster in an the Mirror Universe. Tony should have hung out more with Steve's ham radio friends; they didn't seem so ancient right now.

Up? Which up? Something bad is likely meant by bad, which makes sense given that the city is being overrun by monsters.

Jon exhales as he makes a decision. "Tell me where exactly yu are. I will come and get you. The library is safe." A pause. "Ominous, but safe. M-maybe that is why it's safe, but- None of the monsters are here."

If there was a way to explain exactly where he was without spending the rest of his life patiently tapping out a novel in morse code, Tony would have very much liked to figure it out. For the moment, he settled with repeating Jon's language, hoping that was enough to make the necessary connections, H-E-R-E, and might have just sounded belligerent. Tony gave a desperate glance around, keeping the flashlight pointed against his chest now as he heard the monster stalking near the stairs again, mostly staring out into darkness and hoping all of that genius he pretended to be would grant him the insight on what was actually connecting them. What made the tape recorder unique, if turning over the desk hadn't seemed to phase Jon? That it was a tape recorder, of course; maybe that he had made it, it was part of him in that way. Tony started creeping along the floor again, searching for something else that was uniquely Jon's to try to prove what he meant.

"Here?" Jon looks up from the recorder and around. "Does that mean the monsters are.... Here? Where is here? You're not with me right now, right? Because if you were, you would see-" And he gestures to the empty space around himself, feeling a little foolish for doing so. "No monsters! Just myself." To which one may argue that that would still mean for there to be at least one monster.

"Please give me a location where I can look for you."

No monsters in the library, the normal one, where Jon kept himself and made dense with his presence, that was good, that was a positive to focus on, and it was only kind of frustrating in a not monster-related way that Tony had to talk himself around as he grew increasingly frantic in searching through the room for anything. Very soon, he was yanking drawers out of the desk carelessly, letting their contents spill across the floor so he could scan through them quickly, and not thinking about the racket they made until the roar echoed from the top of the stairs. This time, Tony didn't have the chance to bolt, scattering pens and paper as he scrambled just to get to his feet, and by then the creature had dropped to the basement floor and into the shine of Tony's flashlight where Tony could see clearly that he was looking at a predator.

Jon sits in front of the recorder for a while, waiting for a response that doesn't come and only leaves him frowning. Has he really been talking to Tony? The thought still feels off, given that morse code certainly isn't a language that translates any of Tony's antics very well.

When there still is no reply, Jon sighs, his attention being drawn to the yet again flickering lights nearby. The mothcats are also again drawn there. "Are you messing with the lights?" Jon asks aloud. Maybe there is a way to carry over Tony's antics after all.

Now that he was facing down the monster and didn't have to worry about attracting its attention, it must not have mattered if Tony finally shouted back at the voice, "No!" Some lights would have been helpful, the crush of the dark only amplifying the threat and making Tony clutch onto his flashlight to not lose it again just as possessively as he protected the tape recorder against his chest, even as the creature bolted across the room to lift him from the floor by his neck. By then, it had occurred to him that the unique element that he had been searching for wasn't Jon but electricity, and didn't that make a less-magical amount of sense, so his follow up consideration was a choked and half-formed, "Maybe!" Held aloft, while the creature roared at him, Tony was in the perfect position to throw a knee into the thing's gut, then lash out with the flashlight on its fleshy head as it doubled over.

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beholding_archivist - 2023-11-15 14:36 (UTC) - Expand

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in_extremis - 2023-11-15 18:20 (UTC) - Expand

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