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 Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2017 11:46 am
Gale hardly noticed the world around him dissipating, too focused on what the child had said.
My name is Alice.
The last time he had seen Alice had been on the beach, with Otto. He swallowed hard, Gale shifting from one foot to the other, careful to keep his voice neutral, Jinhai coiling around his thoughts.
"All right," he said, after a moment. "What are the rules of this game, Alice?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2017 1:27 pm
"You're silly," Alice giggled, using one hand to cover where her mouth should have been, "you made the rules. All you have to do is be happy."
Before Gale could ask what that even meant, everything suddenly shifted, the room, the people-
- And he was standing in the Death division office again. Sitting, actually, at the desk. He could feel the texture of the table, could hear himself breathing quite steadily, all of it felt real.
-"Boss? Boss?" It was Mark, and he was looking right at Gale. "I got your mission specs ready, we good to go?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:43 pm
He might have opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came.
Instead, there was a desk. And Mark.
Mark, who was speaking to him. Gale was trying to remember where he'd been beforehand - with Alice, that was right, in the mall. She'd been a faceless child. She'd told him about the happy game.
All you have to do is be happy.
Boss.
Gale stared at Mark, his mouth slightly opened.
"I, er - "
Boss?
"Y...yes," he said dumbly, slowly, trying to make sense of it all, his heart pounding in his chest. "I - yes. Thank you, Mark."
You made the rules.
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Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2017 1:39 pm
"Oh yeah," Mark scratched his chin stubble, though he seemed off, much cleaner than usual, "he's late. Sandy and me are taking bets to see who asks who out first."
"I'm not late," interrupted a surprisingly familiar voice. A second visitor walked into the office, and saluted Gale, his red hair slightly manageable just above his shoulders, now sporting around three piercings in one ear and about eight in the other. "Hey Gale, your division assistant reporting in for duty."
"Ben," Mark sighed, "We agreed on this. Because Gale has come of age we are calling him boss now. It's a sign of respect." He turned to look at Gale hesitantly. "You like being called 'Boss' right?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:11 pm
He was still looking at Mark, still trying to figure him out, still trying to decipher what, exactly, was wrong about this - except for everything. Mark was still Mark, and he was at this desk, and Mark was talking about Sandy - except, wait a moment, Sandy - and yet Gale was still Gale -
- and Ben was walking through the door.
Gale found he couldn't breathe.
He was over Ben's death - or at least, he had thought he was. It was years ago now, a not-so-distant memory of his first excursion into the Sahara, the feeling of fingers slipping from his and disappearing. And yet Ben's memory kept coming back to him, kept reminding him that he had failed -
Except here, he had not. Here, Ben was alive.
Gale sucked in a sharp, painful breath.
"Y - yes," he managed to say, his voice not quite level, but mostly. "Yes, I do. Hey, Ben - " Only the faintest, almost indiscernible tremor to the name. " - er, what kept you? Everything all right?"
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Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2017 12:39 pm
At the question, Ben suddenly coughed, and his ears went slightly red, "I had some- some mission reports that I was reading and they took a while." He scratched the back of his neck with his hand as he said it.
Mark rolled his eyes. "He was getting some boot-"
- "Anyway," interrupted Gale's division assistant, "about the mission. I sent an e-mail with all the data I could compile about it, you don't have to come if you don't want to Ga- Boss."
Mark too oddly gave Gale a sympathetic look at the mention. "Yeah, we got this. You just- you relax. We'll get her back."
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Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2017 2:00 pm
Gale gave Ben the same sort of suspicious look he was used to giving Lucky. Or Bix.
"Right, the mission." He cleared his throat. "I, yes. No, I'd like to come." Even if he had no idea what mission they were even talking about. Gale's chest was aching, his hands shaking a little as he shuffled the papers on the desk - his desk - just for something to do with them.
Mark's look was not missed. Gale dragged in a breath. "No, I - "
Who is 'she?' he wanted to ask. Except it felt -
"I want to come," he said again. "I want to, er...get her back. Too."
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Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2017 3:09 pm
Ben and Mark exchanged glances again.
"I thought you um, didn't want us to uh, say her name," began Mark, the slightly more hesitant of the two. He was looking at his shoes. "Err, sir."
Gale's assistant however, felt quite different on the subject matter. "Your sister," he began softly, "the other one. Leslie. We found her at a horseman base, she's still alive."
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 3:15 pm
Leslie.
It hurt, like an ache that he'd forgotten, like a pain welling in his chest that stemmed from a dagger long buried. Gale dragged in a breath so sharp it made his throat burn, his lips parting in an expression of stunned disbelief that he couldn't quite hide in time.
"I - " he said, his voice hoarse, mouth very dry. Gale pushed himself to his feet, trying to ignore the trembling in his hands.
"I'm coming with you. To get her."
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:51 pm
Apparently he was quite taller too, or everyone else had shrunk, because Mark and Ben looked significantly shorter now that Gale was standing up.
"Right," Ben said steadily, bracing himself emotionally for the countdown, "but we'll take over any time. Any time." He turned to Mark. "You got the portals set up for that Sahara location? If we want to make it before it gets bad we have to go now."
"Way ahead of you," quipped Mark, and then they were off down the familiar hallway across the lawn. Oddly enough, where the dorms and training fields should have been there was just a massive black crater that encompassed more than half of the main Deus courtyard. Around the black crater grew a strange assortment of blue-white crystals.
Mark and Ben didn't seem to pay it much attention, skirting the path down until they arrived at the lighthouse. "Ready when you are," they both said in unison, and then looked at each other and made faces.
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 12:41 pm
Gale managed a tight nod that wasn't quite able to mask the look of pain that fluttered across his eyes. The significant height difference between himself and the other two did, however, momentarily distract him from everything else, a frown tugging at his lips as he followed the others out onto the field.
The crater gave him pause; Gale stared at it, his eyes drawn to it, his heart hammering in his chest.
"What - " He made his voice sound more level, more official. "Er - is anything being done about, er - that - the crater?"
He stepped up to the lighthouse, trying to ignore the rapid pulse that kept making his chest tighten.
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 8:37 pm
Ben was jogging backwards around the steps of the lighthouse and paused for a second to stare at Gale, and then the crater, and then Gale. "Oh, I think that was there a little before my time, during the whole horsemen invasion thing during 1999. That area is seriously untouchable, most people just live out in towns anyway so it's not a big deal."
"Except me," interrupted Mark, I live in my office."
"That you do, my man, that you do."
It didn't take too much time for them to work out the portals, both of them arguing something about calibration settings and waiting for an incubation period for it before they finally got it working about fifteen minutes later.
"I'll go first," Ben offered, "then Gale can come in, and then Mark after he sets everything up."
When Gale arrived through the portal, the Sahara sands were pitch black.
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:09 pm
The horseman invasion thing during 1999.
Gale was still trying to process this even as he stumbled along behind Mark and Ben, his heart in his throat. There was still a fluttering of panic in his veins, an unsettled sense of tenseness that he couldn't quite settle, eyes flicking back and forth between each man.
It made no sense. It wasn't supposed to make sense.
What was it that Alice had said? It was hard to recall.
He stepped through the portal, Gale's gaze taking a moment to adjust to the sands.
"What the - "
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 6:17 pm
"This way," shouted Ben, sliding down in the cool sands. There wasn't even wind in the Sahara, everything was just eerily silent and still. "We should have landed pretty close to the base so keep your eyes ope-"
- Just as he finished his sentence an enormous centipede rose into the air, shadow towering over the two arrivals. Gale's assistant swore, and took out his first weapon. "You keep on going, I'll take care of it!"
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 10:08 pm
It was getting increasingly harder to keep his mind focused on Alice when they were on the way to get his sister. When he was the Division Leader, when he was taller than both Ben and Mark combined.
When Ben was alive.
They had not gone far. The centipedes were in Gale's nightmares, had been for years, and he staggered backwards with a gasp, instinctively summoning Jinhai, the rifle's weight familiar and reassuring in his grasp. If anything else, that was something he could hold onto.
Maybe.
"Are you sure?" Gale shouted, running across the black sands, trying to go around it.
"Be careful - "
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