Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5542146-20181031081309

Ian was halfway through his fifth short story, one called 'Hideous,' when he started seeing them again.

He wasn't sure if or when he had accidentally stumbled onto this 'alien dimension,' surrounding all aspects of reality, and underlying each and every person, place and thing. But, Ian was sure it had to do with the events of that day.

Jim Davis sat impatiently at the dinner table while Miranda, his wife, worked inexorably to get the meal cooked as quickly as possible.

"Why the fuck are you taking so goddamned long, woman," he screamed, slamming his silverware into the tablecloth.

She hurried up and put the seasoning in, and sat the plate of macaroni and steak down before her impatient husband.

He looked at the plate of food in silence... uncomfortable silence. A good minute more passed without so much as a stir, before Jim promptly hoisted the plate off of the table and thrust it into the wall.

These were some of Ian Davis's earliest memories - his mother and father coming within an inch of trying to all-out murder one another. That and his father attempted to force-feed him things he shouldn't have been eating at his age, giving him life-long eating disorders.

Ian Davis always wanted his mother to leave the light on before she went to bed. Ian always believed that there was a monster of some sort lurking behind his closet door, or beneath his bed. It was his rationalization at that age for his sleep paralysis, which he always believed was caused by the sheer power of these night terrors.

He grew out of a night-light at the age of four. But even as late as 1998 and 1999, he was still terrified of what he called "the Storm Tree," or the tree-monster that tried to eat Robbie in the 1983 film "Poltergeist," which he'd seen as a young boy.

He had vivid hallucinations of not only this monster, but also a hag that would slip its bony fingers between the hinges of his closet door. Sometimes, Ian even swore he saw a group of 3-foot oblong-headed 'visitors'.

But the worst of all was undoubtedly the recurring nightmares of the Storm Tree eating his mother. Even after seeing the Nightmare on Elm Street films, his fears of Freddy Krueger coming to kill him in his sleep paled in comparison to the Tree.

Eventually - around the age of 10 or so - these night terrors and night hells ceased almost abruptly. He'd still have sleep paralysis, and wake up from a nightmare unable to move or call for help. Even so much as moving his eye to look elsewhere was a task of daunting and epic proportions.

But these problems were only replaced by newer, far more real, ones - bullies.

His family was always moving. Ever since they lived in Florida between 1999 and 2002, after living in Tennessee his entire life, they moved back to Tennessee for a year and moved to Louisiana where they lived for the year of 2003. All throughout these years Ian had made maybe enough friends to count on one hand. He was shy, always in his own head, and very eccentric. Ian loved to draw, and was obsessed with the Alien films by Ridley Scott and James Cameron. They were his mental sanctuary from the harsh world outside.

He very seldom got into fights, but when he did - he wasn't very good at defending himself.

The school in Terrabone Parrish was constantly experiencing these fist-fights between boys. He got into one, luckily, the whole time he was there - with a boy named Joshua Foret.

The amount of unruly and bad behaviour of the children there was a shock to his system when they moved back to Tennessee, Middle Tennessee to be specific. Here, all the children were obedient, good little Christians who supported the Bush Administration's illegal War in Iraq - which he himself didn't know much about at the time. His main adversaries were two kids slightly older than him named Travis and Trevor. Travis was a short, stocky kid with dark hair and a sarcastic personality. While Trevor was a tall and lanky boy with sandy hair, glasses, and was always angry. One day, in 2004, he stood up to Trevor who hadn't seen sitting across from him at the lunch table.

He stood up, shouting, "MOVE!"

By this time, Ian had been at this school for about a year, and had endured an almost unanimous ostracization from not only his peers, but teachers as well. At first he had cried, and slipped even further into his fantasy world of making Alien films and drawing pictures and video game levels, but now - a year later - he no longer cared.

"MOVE," he shouted again, louder.

Ian simply frowned, and cocked his head, an expression of tired irritation painting his features.

"No," he said, calmly yet defiantly.

"MOVE!"

Ian furrowed his brow and his nostrils curled up into a menacing snarl. He leaned in, and growled, "No."

Trevor seemed flabbergasted, and slightly confused. He looked around, and realized the entire cafeteria was staring at him. He blinked, sat back down, and they resumed their meal in silence.

Travis had one time put a tarantula in Ian's locker, and was disturbed to find Ian only slightly surprised. Ian took the spider out of his locker, set it on his forearm and pet it like a baby kitten before taking it outside into the grass. They always seemed to target him in dodgeball, however, trying to get him out first. It was why their team always lost whenever he was on the opposing side.

In 2005 and 2006, moving back to his home-town in Oak Ridge, is when he was reunited with his childhood friend Richard Dante.

Rick, as he preferred, was a bombastic and emotionally unstable child. They had become estranged when he moved to Louisiana in 2003, and seeing him for the first time in almost three years seemed like an eternity at the age of 12.

The docile yet cynical Ian became the new Rick's punching bag for a while, beginning before they moved in with his family. Ian finally stood up to him, after being beaten a lot and refusing to fight back since it wasn't in his nature, and socked Rick several times in the face before throwing him down the hill up the street with the solitary tree on it. Rick cried, and said he was telling his mom.

Things chilled out for a while, until his Freshman year of High School in 2007.

Things were looking up for him. He had a few friends, a couple of girls might have actually been interested in him, and he had successfully stayed away from cigarettes and alcohol.

Until one of his 'friends,' turned out to be even more mentally unstable than Rick. In fact, during this time, Rick ended up becoming like a brother to him. They had become two peas in a pod after that incident on the hill, essentially forming a truce.

But his time of peace would not last.

Ian had been joking when he called James a 'fool,' for liking the band that played in the gymnasium that day.

"Say it to my face," he said. Ian shrugged and repeated the insult.

Ian was punched in the nose by James and immediately saw blood. Before he knew what was happening, James was apologizing profusely and handing him paper towels. Ian heard none of it, interpreting the young man as thinking himself as an authority figure, which infuriated Ian.

He blacked out, grabbing James by his striking arm and shirt collar with both hands and tossed him through several rows of desks. James got up and tried to come at him with a knee, but missed as Ian threw him in the other direction. This time, they both went down. James got up and ran out of the room, and Ian started to cry right as the class came back to see what was going on.

It was just like the kids in 2003 staring at him under the jungle gym as one of them threatened to tell on him for swearing.

But it was worse.

The ostracization continued for a year, but Ian was beginning to lose his ability to care.

He stopped crying.

He dyed his hair black.

He started breaking rules and playing pranks on people.

He took James's books out of his locker and put them in someone else's while it was open, and put those books in James's locker.

Ian also put gorrila glue on James's seat, and the whole class laughed at him.

Ian had gone from lover to fighter in just under two years, a complete transformation and mutation of a once peaceful and artistic individual had become more like something akin to a young Captain Kirk or Han Solo of the modern era at his best.

But a Pennywise or a Joker at his worst.

Eventually, though, Ian grew tired, and was unable to focus on his school work. He was transferred to a school in Grassy Fork in 2009, a few miles north of Oak Ridge.

This one was much smaller, with only a few hundred students of all grade levels crammed into one building. There was no gymnasium, all PE classes taking place outside on the field, and the cafeteria itself had a low ceiling. Ian was perfectly content to spend all of his free time jamming out to his MP3 player, listening to bands from the 1990's such as Bush and Nine Inch Nails.

While most teenagers at that time were listening to sad, suicidal or 'emo' music, his angst therapy was sought through bands with anger and rage.

To help him socialize a bit more, his parents started taking him to gatherings and pot lucks at the nearby Pagan community where his mother had fled to from her grandparents. They would do ritual, where they would honor the ancestors, and light the bonfire wherein they would pour all of their negative energy, worries and fears.

It was here that Ian reunited with some of his friends from early childhood, wherein they would watch movies in their Uncle Jim Coon's schoolbus - which he'd converted into a camper.

Besides these once or twice-a-year events, Ian didn't have many friends, and he was starting to like it that way. His hippie parents would throw parties at their large yet old house outside of town, and he had discovered alcohol a year before that. Ian was happy to hang out with his parents' cool friends and get drunk on weekends, and he even made a friend next door who would bring over moonshine.

But, eventually, his solitude was shattered when one of his parents' friends brought over to one of the parties... a girl.



Ian could feel the stories watching him from afar, as if they had a mind of their own. The villainous characters and creatures from his books and novellas; some of which were inspired by the website 'Creep-Stew,' and others, wholly original from his own experiences, such as the Tree, or the shadows... he was sure they knew what they were - elements of his unconscious mind, his primordial fears as a child.

Somewhere, deep down within the spirit of these stories, they had their own soul, their own minds.

They had their own face.

He had seen it, the source code from which all fiction - whether it be narrative or religious - came from, a place that was very much non-fiction, and very real.

Ian heard the lumbering behemoth outside of his house, patrolling, breathing, grunting. He could no longer leave his house at night, or stay out too late, because Ian was sure he could see SEAL Team Six in the bushes and the trees. Lasers would follow him through the foliage, and Ian was positive that whatever was behind the Powers That Be, was totally inhuman.



Dawn Katz, a young woman a year older than he of Jewish descent who had lived in Britain until a few years ago - when her family had moved here to start a new life for her - instantly formed a rapport with Ian.

"I want to one day go back and join the Israeli Defence Forces," she had replied one day at lunch. It was incredible how much they had in common, both had been on the move since very young. Both had almost identical tastes in music and media. Horror films. The band Tool. Artwork. Writing. You name it. And she wasn't as closely associated with the general mainstream populace as she was with his own 'hippie' community.

A few months later, and he was head-over-heels in love with her. He didn't know what he was thinking, but one day after a party, he'd blurted it out.

He recalled that she said she was moving back to the U.K. and some part of him was sure he'd never see her again.

It turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Ian had tried to stay connected to her through the social media website known as 'Analog,' which was effectively the successor to Myspace at the time.

His original escape into the cyber world such as through anonymous chat boards had been usurped by this psychological machine of faces and drama.

But Ian moved on, for a while. During his graduation, he'd taken a trip out West to meet someone new, a woman named Alexis. She was almost ten years older than him, and she was quite experienced. Ian had lost his virginity, and right as all seemed to be going well... he had his first psychotic break.

Ian had begun smoking weed, and doing drugs to cope with his heartbreak. Substances such as liquor, opium and - his personal favorite - hallucinogens. He also began following politics and current events, attempting to escape from the reality of his dismal microcosm into the macrocosm of the world around him. Replacing his personal emotions with existential ones by vigorously researching and learning about the power structures of the world. Things like the way nation-states interact with one another, government structure, history, political science, conspiracy theories and the religions and belief structures they were built upon.

He was eager to drown out his emotions with as much as possible, until - one day - it all came to a head.

Ian began seeing aspects of reality, after his extremely bad trip in the Summer of 2012, take on horrific visages at the corners of his perception. The trip had involved these 'anomalies' completely take over his consciousness, and combine into an amalgamated network of a life utterly destroyed.

But it wasn't just his life, but all life and all of existence. His life, his series of unfortunate events and bad decisions, were all connected into one grand symphony of tragedy and agony. It became its own being, screaming out in terror, pain and rage.

The fundamental precipice upon which the necessary termination between perception and knowledge had been utterly erased, and because he came to the startling epiphany that all matter was merely the same united energy funneled into a slow and deep vibration and that all of existence was dependent upon this termination facilitated by this termination by way of consciousness and awareness itself - and that all of everything that ever was and ever will be originated from within to without... Ian had destroyed the universe.

In order to escape this nightmare, Ian had to systematically go through each and every painful memory from the perspective of a non-human, metaphysical being. And he had to reconstruct the universe from his own personal experience. All the while the New Age philosophies of Timewave Zero and the entry of the Human Mind into the Fifth Dimension, as well as conspiracy theories involving the Large Hadron Collider and Machine Elves, hovered at the ends of his consciousness and existence itself - while trapped within this tortured, angry abomination that he truly was the entire time, the Analog collective consciousness of every single one-billion-plus human beings that had interacted with its server; the self-actualized collective consciousness and the end of existence and reality itself.

But even though he managed to escape from this fate, by the skin of his teeth, and realigned his consciousness with his own physical reality - it was far from over.

The experience had bent his mind, and as a result - reality itself had been bent as well. Ian began to see and percieve things he shouldn't be able to. His childhood fears then began to return to him, far more real and threatening than ever before.

The Tree didn't return at first, although the entity he had seen within his pocket dimension / hell experience resembled a tree of consciousness, faces, concepts and ideas in a form of ideasthesia that consumed not only space but time. There was no beginning or end, but simply a 'there' and 'not there,' as if the entire universe had been turned inside out and what had been regurgitated was this 'Mind Tree,' but distinctly different from the monster that had haunted his night hours as a child in the 1990's.

But what began to disturb him the most was existential dread, taking the form of a hat-wearing Freddy-like entity dwelling at the edges of his perception, beyond the boundaries of waking normality and reality. His thoughts and fears would fuse with his perception, and take the form of a clawed-hand, much like Wes Craven's infamous Elm Street-dwelling boogeyman.

Ian would have paranoias and waking nightmares about dying in a crash while in the passenger seat of his father's truck, or that his glands or other organ systems had their own personalities and would start attacking one another. The Emergency Room a month later was even worse, and he thought he was caught in a portal to hell or the apocalypse, and that it would culminate in him being taken over by a metaphysical entity and commanded to kill a large amount of innocent people.

His mother was inconsolable. They had lied, deliberately, to both him and his mother that he would be returned to her after a check up. In stead, they put him in a police cruiser and put him in a box. She and his father broke up a few months after the hospital, and when he started college. Ian's father became abusive, probably out of anger that he thought he hadn't raised Ian properly, or had tried and failed to.

The next few years of his life, from the Summer of 2013 to the early part of 2016, had been relatively 'normal,' or - at least without any "paranormal" experiences.

But, in 2017, is when it all became far too real.



"THEY, WILL, KILL, YOU," Carl boomed for the third or fourth time, while Becca sat next to him, after getting done pulling at the lose threads of his sanity simply because she could.

Carl knew of Ian's tendency toward conspiracy theories, and proceeded to throttle him over the head with it in his weakened state - just like Ian's father throttled him over his paranoia about being unkind to his mother back in 2012 - while insulting his entire generation as being moochers and incompetents.

"DON'T LET THE FEAR MACHINE GETCHA! DON'T LET THE FEAR MACHINE GETCHA," he screamed with mania as he shook his head wildly, after taking his umpteenth shot of the night.

It was the first time Ian had gotten to trip since college, and it was ruined by Carl and Becca.

"It gets worse," Becca said, referring to and insulting his sexual drive. They had kept their relationship a secret to lure him out with these things and teach him a lesson about being a man, at the worst possible time.

What the lesson was, Ian never quite figured it out, because he was in the middle of trying to publish his writing and recover from the wildfires that had destroyed half of Oak Ridge a few weeks ago.

Not to mention the next few months, wherein this experience would eat at him.

Until the straw that broke the camel's back, when they came over, and his mother's new boyfriend became best friends with them.

Ian remembered screaming at them, even though nobody ever recalled him screaming anything. He remembered a similar experience to the 'Mind-Tree,' and the universe turning inside-out, only he was able to endure it in his drunken state without any hallucinogens.

But after several months, the experience he'd had with the mental illness-induced 'Yakizeekzekkers' (the Martian word for 'night-terrors') mirrored that of his main protagonist in his first short-story 'Missionaries,' about a cosmonaut who loses her mind on a secret manned mission to Mars. Or the appearance of a flying police-cruiser-helicopter-hospital pretending to be his ceiling fan, like the extraterrestrials in 'Zone,' and then... 'Hideous,' and now Ian could hear them clawing at the corners of his mind, scraping against the ends of existence while faces came out of the shadows and a fedora-wearing black shape lurked at the edges of his view.

He was just like Freddy Krueger, only with claws on both hands, and instead of attacking in dreams - he made one's waking hours a waking nightmare.

Ian attempted to convey this figure, but it always came out as if he was talking about the actual fictional character - not the Hat Man of paranormal mythology and a series of tales on Creep-Stew. Same with the Storm Tree, not the Hag and Black Magick which gave birth to it in his next short story - The Elderwood Cradle - which was also on Creep-Stew.

But what really sent him over the edge into the gaping maw of that abyss that would pale in comparison to his previous experience, was when he found the connection between the mythology of Creep-Stew, the Deep Web... and Analog. ---

Ian kept going on about the Storm Tree, the Yakizeekzekkers, Freddy Kruger and Creep-Stew, but his mother's new boyfriend merely treated him like another one of his mentally-ill cousins. Or maybe he wasn't, and that was just his PTSD from the abuse sustained at the hands of his father.

Because of Ian's fundamental understanding of the universe, and its connection to consciousness and the self, Ian knew that not only would his writing abilities be hampered by any kind of chronic mental illness, but also the structure of the entire universe. Ian wanted to one day be successful, and famous, or at least make a comfortable living off of his writing.

But Ian knew he could never do that if all of the universe was damaged by these... monsters... infecting his psyche. The 2016 election had just been a preamble, this psycho-maniac was going to be President, and he felt like he was in danger. Ian had joked about an uprising or revolution on chat rooms and Analog.com during it, because he - like everyone else - was certain that the man would not win.

But he did.

And it all came crashing down, collapsing in, the very next day of 2017.

The only consolation in this time were the memories of partying with his college friends. They would go up onto the path between classes and smoke weed, drink, and have deep and philosophical discussions. Granted, at the time he was only a young adult - at 21 - but, the experience had been significant.

As significant as this one.

Throughout the Summer of 2013, he'd been primarily alone on campus for the most part. A few others finishing out their semesters and professors teaching a few small classes were present, but apart from his neighbors he spent most of his time in solitude.

He was just happy to be back in the present reality from the... other... place.

Come fall, some time in late September, was when he met his first friend.

"Hey, seen you around," Ian heard from behind. He turned to see a larger man who looked like he worked out, staring down at his smartphone. "Excuse me," he inquired.

The man shrugged. "Just wondering if you've found anything to do yet?"

Ian chuckled. "I've been looking for something to do; a party, smoke circle, anything," he replied. "Like, hell, it's already almost October."

"Don't worry, my friend," he said with a smile as he put away his phone. "It will find you soon enough."

He stood and shook his hand. "Name's Al, Al Higgins."

"Ian," he replied.

Later that night they were smoking weed in the forest behind campus with his roommate, Chris.

"This is some good shit," said Chris, as he passed the pipe. Before he could say anymore, Chris started coughing his lungs out, making hacking sounds.

"That, is Gandalf," said Al, referring to the elongated glass piece.

"Hits like a motherfucker," replied Chris.

"Ian, you got anything."

Ian was primarily silent, and squinting.

"What?"

"You got anything I can pack the next bowl with?"

Ian started chuckling like Butthead, and pulled out a tiny plastic bag with a small nugget of cannabis in it. Chris fell off the wooden bench laughing his balls off.

"That's it?"

Ian snickered again, and nodded his head.

"I was saving it," he said, laughing once more.

Al chuckled. Chris was still caterwauling uncontrollably on the ground, and Ian was now laughing even more loudly.

"Shit someone's coming, hide the bowl."

Ian pocketed his baggy and Chris stuck Gandalf in his pocket. An older lady walking her dog strolled by. They politely waved at one another and gave the dog a scritch. When the passerby had turned the bend, they got the pipe and weed back out and proceded to smoke another bowl.

During the next few months, into the early months of 2014, they partied. It was one of the best times, if not the best time, of his life. They threw parties. They crashed parties. Ian had a few more sexual encounters, and a rather disastrous but amusing romance. Ian had been couch-surfing with their friend, Walt, who was a recluse with crippling social anxiety. After he moved out, they would still come smoke with Walt after Al got his car. Ian even got in a few more fights, his most significant being with the racist Aryan Brotherhood Neo-Nazi across the street, which he almost ended up killing in a drunken rage.

But incidents like these were few and far in between. Most of the time was merry fun smoking with the others, such as Tai, a skinny blonde man with a tendency toward alcohol; the lesbians Alice and Ro, a couple of other stoners such as Mickey and Sam, and a jovial black woman by the name of Nat.

"You're weird," said Nat with a blank, disappointed stare as Al told about the time he first got drunk with his cousin Ryan. He had stripped naked and ran down the street between his house and Ryan's screaming "I'M INSATIABLLLLLEEEE!!!!" and slapped his gigantic balls against the neighbor's door.

When the man had answered the door, he was also naked.

Chris had often said that Al could be a great comedian, particularly when he was talking one time about the odd sounds he made when passing gas.

But the good times were not to last.

One clear, yet chilly, night in early March the trio were in the car smoking and drinking.

"I wonder what the dinosaurs thought when they saw that bigass fuckin thing comin at them," Al said randomly. Chris started laughing uncontrollably, as did Ian.

"Maybe they thought it was aliens," added Walt. More laughing. Walt mimicked a T-Rex trying to wave.

"Uh, that shit's getting really big... like... should we hide," said Ian.

"I bet the one voice of reason was ignored as shit while they all gathered around, trying to wave with their little T-Rex arms."

"Meanwhile, in Australia."

"Australia didn't fuckin exist back then, Chris."

"Shut up," he replied with a laugh.

"I need more booze."

As Ian looked over, and froze. He noticed that there was a stain on the left-hand passenger window that was in the shape of a little girl with footprints behind her. The resemblence was uncanny, and looked almost as if it were the remainder of a decal from the car's previous owner.

"Holy shit," yelled Ian.

Al turned. "What?"

"Look at this shit, guys!"

They turned, and all were stunned.

But Ian became terrified when he realized something. The hairs on his neck stood up.

The girl had moved, closer to the top of the window.

"I-it m-moved."

Al cocked his head.

"Ya sure you're not just stoned, E?"

Ian shook his head.

"T-this isn't real."

Ian didn't get any sleep that night, and going into work at G.E.T. - or General Electric Technologies - brought him back to ROTC his first semester of college. The PT exercises, running until he puked on not nearly enough hours of sleep, were comparable to that work day at the factory. He moved until he was sore on top of being hungover, unable to suppress the migraines of dehydration.

The next few weeks were really bad. The girl he liked ended up moving away, the one he'd been trying to get to through her roommate. He ended up taking a strange pill that the moron across the street sold to one of his former roommates, also a moron. And it made him blindingly ill for almost two days. This was all right before the fight with him the next week. And then the week after that they ended up being kicked out after Al fell into the bathroom door and broke it in half.

But, Ian finally got to meet Ryan, the eccentric cousin he had spoke about.

Primarily his insanely high tolerance to alcohol.

"Did you know, that... when you experience Deja-Vu... it means you died in the near future in a parallel reality," had been one of the first things Ryan had said to Ian upon introducing himself.



Ian was virtually unconscious when his mother led him to the Emergency Room. He'd thought it was all over, back in 2012, that the worst of it all was behind him.

He was wrong.

Ian couldn't form one single coherent thought, as a constant un-ending stream of paranoia and fear - leading from one thought-fear to another thought-fear. Every single unit of time, every millisecond, every second, every eternity, carried with it a seed of evil - from a molevolent rogue consciousness wavelength that permeated every single individual without them realizing it.

Until Ian.

He could see that a majority of this country was consumed by some form of pocket dimension, in which they went about their daily lives as dictated by the norms and customs of the socio-economic collective ego that had taken on a life of its own.

And, of course, its first target as a collective entity of entities was Ian Davis. It went at him from every possible angle, pulling at every urge, every emotion, every thought. Everything he set his eyes upon, this... thing... this 'Demiurge', had corrupted or infested in some way.

They once again threw him in a box, and locked the door, separating him from his mother. Just like the Storm Tree, just like last time.

Just like his nightmare.

Only this time, the box they put him in, he was not alone.

He turned to see a towering figure in the corner, nine inch blades for hands, his skin complete shadow. It was as if Ian was staring into the void itself, completely featureless except two, bright white eyes, and equally white, glistening teeth - all perfectly square and aligned. But this was not the only monster in there with him.

Surrounding the bed were the Little Green Elves, recoiling in terror at the figure in the corner, acting as a tyrant. Everywhere he looked it seemed as though there were Golden Ratios, and the Yakizeekzekkers screamed at him from within his mind to kill himself immediately.

The doctors and the nurses were cold, and machine-like, staring at him without a shred of compassion. Those that were more animated, mocked him and made fun of him, telling him if he didn't stop behaving himself, he would never see his mother again.

He screamed at them, yelling, "THEY, WILL, KILL, YOU!" Over and over again.

Eventually, they had to restrain him.

In the room.

With the monsters.

No matter how many drugs they pumped him with, he continued to delve deeper into the evil world that threatened to consume all of reality and the universe itself - like a parasitic hivemind of a Lovecraftian dimension - within the growling, hungry, jagged dimensions of the eternal Storm Tree.



Ryan wanted only two things in return for Ian staying with him, and those things were: a bottle of liquor, and a pack of cigarettes.

When Ian arrived the next day to help Al and Ryan load all of their things into the storage unit, Ryan had greeted him with bottle rockets.

"What the f-," was about all he got out as six spewed past him simultaneously. Ian looked up to see Al and Ryan laughing their asses off. The latter had strapped six of them to a broken broom handle.

Ryan and Ian had become two peas in a pod, and Al knew it. His first few days there, he introduced him to the house.

"Watch out, Pumpkinhead may be standing there with his gigantic horse cock," he said, followed by maniacal cackling. He'd said that room - the bathroom - along with the laundry room and his bedroom were 'haunted,' which Ian merely shrugged at.

"This is your room," said Ryan, introducing him to one with a giant Nine Inch Nails poster on the back wall. "If you want it," he added.

"This is perfectly fine."

The next week was surviving the tumultuous battles between Ryan and his wife Ana.

They would scream at each other, throw things, but Ana was the one who always got physical.

When things were calm, Ryan and Ian would sit up for days having deep conversations about the nature of reality, spirits, aliens, and other things.

"I have a theory," said Ryan, "that things like UFOs, ghosts, and cryptids all originate from the collective unconsciousness of humanity."

Ian nodded as he took another sip of wine.

"And we're all reality immortal through an infinite number of parallel realities, and that because of the Large Hadron Collider and the effect of consciousness on particle physics, all of time and space are a holographic illusion. By the way," he added, as he leaned in.

"You ever see 'Agent,' you look away," he said.

"Agent?" Inquired Ian.

Ryan told him about his experiences trying to kill himself. He once had a nightmare where he was walking through his house, and was unaware that he had succeeded in killing himself. Agent, the main poltergeist of his house, was a towering black form in the shape of a satyr. Or Goat-Man.

"I walked outside to see him tuning my guitar, after freaking out at being unable to see my reflection."

"Like a vampire," asked Ian.

"No, like, I could see myself, but... my reflection was backwards."

Ian cocked his head.

"Yeah, like I could only see the back of my head, not my face, or the front of my body."

This particular story stuck with Ian, and he decided to write about it.

A few weeks later, Ryan's old band came over. They were loud and obnoxious people, and Ryan swore that the other Ryan - whom he called Toby for a reason he forgot - was sleeping with his wife Ana.

He was totally convinced, and wouldn't drop the subject, so they never got to play except one song.

While Ian was telling Toby about his recent story - the Timekeepers - Ryan appeared with a cane he'd been using when he broke his leg.

"Toby," he said, quietly, calmly, with the cane in one hand.

Toby continued to ignore him, and ask Ian about his story.

"Toby," he repeated, louder.

Toby ignored him.

Ryan drove the cane across his head, and a fight ensued.

Michael, the guitarist, picked up Ian's chair and was about to hit Ryan with before Ian tackled him without thinking. While Ian and Michael rolled around on the floor, Ryan was restrained by his wife and Toby's girlfriend.

These type of incidents, whether it be a fight or random objects flying across the house, were commonplace. Ian had never lived in a haunted house before, but it was primarily Ryan's crazy neighbors that disturbed Ian.

This was one of many adventures that Ryan and Ian would have.

One time in 2015, he attended a party Ian was attempting to throw as an effort to reunite his friends from college, which Ryan was of course one of.

His ex-wife, Ana, had taken that as a challenge to her, and blamed him hooking up with the anxiety-ridden Olivia as his fault. But they, nevertheless, went on adventures in Oak Ridge, and ransacked places of otherwise privacy.

But Ana had tracked them down to a hotel room in Valley Forge, and threatened the TBI on them if they interfered.

From 2015 to 2016, Ian experienced the 2016 election and his trip back out to California. In the latter, he was homeless, and relied off of two-dollar bottles of vodka to function being so.

One day in 2016, while back in Tennessee, he'd sworn he saw fire engines, police cruisers and military vehicles - and at the time he'd not had his glasses since he lost them in college. Having a panic attack, he was bombarded with paranoia about the surveillance of he and his counterparts through Analog, and how they might mobilize on him. This is when his fears about SEAL Team Six and the police state began to become a very real thing, bolstered by the 'intervention' by Carl a few months later.

The wildfires had been traumatic enough, but the events of 2017 would pale in comparison.

At least amidst all the burn victims and the glowing orange flames on mountain tops and behind buildings, Ian and Ryan had been able to jam out to Mr. Bungle and Anal Cunt and have some laughs at the utterly ludicrous state of things.

But, when Ian had come out of that building, Lakeshore, the final time - he had become a changed man.

Or, perhaps something else entirely.

Half the time, Ian had believed he was a character in some horror novel, and the other half that he was dead and in hell. The medication, he'd believed, was tied into the network of these Powers.

He'd several times suspected that he was the guinea pig in some experiment - a test subject. Ian believed that he was somehow undead, or immortal and trapped in some government or corporate-run pocket universe.

For the next few months he recovered, and in time his paranoias went away. However, this would not be the last adventure he went on.



Ryan contacted him one day telling him he'd bought Ian a bus ticket to Bluefield, West Virginia.

"We're on the Virginia side," Ryan's new girlfriend Stacy had told him. "But the bus drops you off in West Virginia on Wednesday, March Twenty-First, after a stop in Wytheville."

Ian and his cousin April had gone up to see Ryan at his parents' in Clifton, Virginia, before the wildfires. The usual ubiquitous consumption of wine and beer had been involved, as well as a hunt for the overpass of the enigmatic 'Bunny Man,' whom Ryan wanted to domesticate. Of course, Ryan had ended up coming back with them to Tennessee, at the worst possible time.

When Ian made it up there a few days later, the bus dropped him off in the pouring snow, at a locked building with no awning. He and the young woman stood there in the snow for what seemed like a half-hour, while Ian tried futily to communicate via Analog with Ryan and Stacy. They insisted that they were on their way, but their violent and drug-addicted roommate Charlie had only driven them halfway, lying about his car being unable to make it through the snow.

"You mean you're walking?! What the fuck, he couldn-," Ian practically shouted through the phone he'd borrowed from the young woman who'd introduced herself as Bethany.

But Ian had no choice, despite his protestations. He waited in the snow, periodically walking to the end of the block in either direction in search of familiar faces in an unfamiliar environment.

Eventually, they had shown. Naturally, right when he was walking in the opposite direction away from them.

They'd shouted, "E!"

He'd turned.

Ryan managed to get a ride from one of the firemen at the building up the street, introducing Ian as 'his brother,' and they'd arrived at the two-story dilapidating 'Fight Club' house two houses down from the corner across the train tracks.

Ariana was there with the kids when the terrific trio arrived. "Charlie isn't home yet," Stacy inquired.

"I thought he was going to call you when he got back," Ari replied. Stacy shook her head.

"I bet he's with those meth-heads again," replied Ryan.

They cackled maniacally.

The four of them smoked weed while Ryan introduced Ian to some new bands, including Three-Teeth, Wesley Willis and Adolf Satan.

"This guy's a lot like Unknown Hinson," said Ian with a laugh.

There was a lot more going on than met the eye, and Ian knew it from all of them. Lacy was a form of mediator between Ryan and his roomate-landlords Charlie and Ari. And while Charlie was abusive, Ryan had his own problems, such as more suicidal tendencies that had only accelerated over the past few years.

When Charlie got home, he came into the furniture-free room and sat down on the floor with them, bringing with him a bottle of Tequila.

He shared it with everyone but Ryan.

"I work up at the steel mill," he said after introducing himself to Ian. He knew instantly the look in Charlie's eyes was that of a predator and a bully.

He pretty much went on and on about how great he was, and what a hardworking man he was and how that made him the moral authority. He propounded Conservative Republican beliefs and was a proud American, a devout Christian and - as he called it - a 'loving husband and father'. But the next several weeks went only to show how he was raising his children to be exactly like he was, with strict punishments if they got out of line.

"I'm a Royal Flush, precursor of the Dark Lord Satan himself," he added with a swig of liquor straight from the bottle.

Both Ryan and Ian were sore from laughing, at everything in general, but especially Charlie.

Al called, saying he'd landed in Hawaii, during their conversation.

"E," he'd said, "you gotta do something about your drinking man, it's gonna kill you one of these days."

Ian acknowledged, and they talked for a little while longer about his trip to Hawaii.

The trio stayed in the house a little while longer, attempting to get a loan unsuccessfully multiple times. They finally found success at one of the loan places near the Walmart down the street and across the highway. On their way there, they several times stopped at a path they'd found, where they'd drink booze when they couldn't find any weed. At the same time, they would get their food from the local Union Mission across the state-line on the West Virginia side of Bluefield, while looking for places in town just in case Ryan couldn't convince Stacy to go back to Knoxville with them.

West Virginian Bluefield was also more urban and industrialized, not to mention more populated. This allowed them to more easily get away with drinking alcohol in styrofoam cups in public, while walking along the sidewalk. They stopped at an unfinished overpass, hanging out behind one of the girders, while they finished their beverages.

"That's badass," said Ryan, in response to Ian's rant about how corrupt everything was in their government.

"What? How?"

"I dunno, they're like... supervillains, ha!"

Ian couldn't help but laugh, but still held firm that it wasn't cool. Ryan changed the subject with, "how cool would it be if Maynard James Keenan played Lex Luthor, he'd totally do it."

They explored the West Virginia side a little more, with Ryan showing him around. On their way back just before crossing back into Virginia, they stopped at a run-down shanty part of town. Ryan introduced him to a group of hippies smoking weed and playing in a band. They smoked and talked and smoked some more, and as they were leaving, at dusk, they found an abandoned house that was in major need of TLC.

"Dude, if I die I want to haunt the shit outta this place."

"Why," asked Ian, "there's dog shit and needles and empty beers all over the place," he said as he opened his tall-boy and took a large swallow.

"No, I mean this town, Bluefield," he said.

"Its still... meh."

"Oh, its worse," Ryan cackled maniacally. "It's the town that God forgot, heh."

One day, the next week, Ryan got his loan.

Immediately thereafter, all three of them - Ian, Ryan and Stacy - got utterly hammered, perhaps the most out of all of their adventures. From stumbling down the sidewalk in Gatlinburg with an empty fifth of vodka and talking their way out of an arrest, to getting the car stuck in a ditch at Ryan's Parents' - this was the night to end all nights.

Total.

Blackout.

Ian awoke in a daze, on the floor, in an unfamiliar room.

Dehydration clutched at his skull and his stomach was doing somersaults. The unfamiliar room, which he realized was in a hotel, spun like a carousel.

This was to happen twice.

The first time, Ian awoke to realize they'd been kicked out of Charlie and Ari's, after he and Ian fought each other in a sparring match, which Charlie had turned into an opportunity to show off.

Charlie didn't like that Ian wasn't as easy to beat up as Ryan, and flipped out on Ryan for bringing him there, attempting to choke him to death. Charlie was muscular, a Marine on leave, and knew enhanced self-defense techniques which he used for selfish purposes.

But the one person that knew how to kick his ass was Ari, a stocky and muscular woman. She'd finally had it, whooped both Charlie's and Ryan's asses, and kicked the three of them out.



The second time he'd come to, the hotel room was everything short of decimated.

A mirror lay shattered on the ground, some pieces tipped with the brown of dried blood. A sloppy pentacle was painted in splotches of this same brown coagulation, and all objects in the room were facing one direction - West.

The TV was nothing but snow, and speaking of snow, it had dumped on them again that previous night.

But these were among the last things he noticed.

The first two things he noticed was a deafening crash, which he then realized was Ryan stumbling drunkenly into the small square table right by his head.

The third and fourth were the screams and shouts of Ryan and Stacy in an argument about Ryan suspecting Stacy of having slept with Charlie.

When they began threatening the police on each other, and Ryan disappeared into the bathroom with a wild look on his eye, Ian decided right then and there he was going straight back to Knoxville.

The door slammed, and the rushing of a faucet followed. Seconds later, it was joined by the sound of breaking glass.

Ian dipped.

A few months later, he found out that Ryan had tried to kill himself again, and was in the psych ward.

Ryan found out that he had the same head stuff as Ian, the autism spectrum, the bipolar and manic-depressive disorders. Ian went back to stay with his parents in the countryside for a few more months, while he collected disability, learned some carpentry and applied for jobs in the concept art industry.

Meanwhile, he ventured into the pagan community down the hill from his house to find a ride for Ryan, who was trying to come down to a festival.

Faun, a thin, older man who was housesitting the keep, was talking to Branch about the Demeter shrine.

"I think its too bright a yellow," he said in a confused way.

Faun offered him a bowl of weed who turned it down.

"Oh, hey! E, how's it goin, wanna help me put some sheet rock up in the apartment?"

"No, I was - er - actually looking for a ride to Knoxville, know anyone who would do it for 40 bucks?"

But everywhere he went, he got the same answer.

"Doubt it," or some form of "no," as he expected. He normally didn't venture into the valley, as there was always some sort of drama going on by its bizarre cast of characters, except for Karate class and during festivals. Circe, the owner of Castle Dragonfast, is the one who had shown him how to recharge in nature while meditating. And Invictus had shown him how to breathe to properly remain present.

On the way home, Ian heard what sounded like trolls hiding under the bridge that connected Shady Gap to the driveway beyond. He reminded himself that he was probably just high, and that the babbling of the stream running beneath probably just sounded a bit like strange voices.

The chattering in the tree branches of cicada sounded like an insectoid choir of Yakizeekzekkers, he thought. Ian decided to write about this in his story.

But his experience from 2017 still haunted him. Even if the apparitions he sees throughout his life, and in that hospital, are not - were not real - the police state very much was.

Analog... was real. It had billions of eyes and ears, it even had minds - hopes, dreams, fears and nightmares. It knew everything about us and then some.

And every single little aspect of life was structured around this massive 'fear machine,' like the one Carl had mentioned. It had to keep people in a state of hysteria and division to conquer them, and those who facilitated its existence were rewarded with positions of power and recognition.

At one point prior to his 2017 hospitalization, he'd gone against his late uncle's advise to not fight his demons with warfare and violence, and attempted to scare them away. To turn the tables. He was faced with the reflection of his eyes within his glasses, their outline forming the appearance of a riot or military police officer wearing a gas mask.

It was at that moment he realized that the monsters were real, and that he was going to need to get contact lenses.

* * *

As the months wore on, Ian began to more and more suspect that the world he was living in was not the one he'd been born into it. Ever since the beginning of the 'Gates-Era,' the winner of the 2016 US presidential elections being J. Xavier Gates, it seemed like the entire planet had been sucked into an alternate dimension.

People were more melancholy, worn out, as if they'd aged 100 years in 10 weeks. It was absolutely unreal. People that were once jovial friends of his mothers' offering words of exuberant wisdom were drained, and irritable. They would lash out at him, screaming at him to stop being so naive in foolishly pursuing his dreams, lest he end up getting himself 'killed' or 'raped,' or other things that seemed so incredibly ludicrous he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Everything seemed so dark and grey compared to the world before.

For the next several years, Ian turned in applications like mad, moving further into the city to be closer to more resources. His primary goal was focusing on his short stories, while also trying to get better and better jobs in media. He started out as a journalist, and eventually worked his way into the concept art domain by drawing political cartoons.

He was initially nervous about being so close to everything, but his medication seemed to help him focus, and - in time - he got a gig working on the new Alien film.

This was as he published all of his short stories, and during one of the many sessions during that period of time as he was getting close to being done - the Hat Man would make one of his final visits to Ian.

"You realize that we - as 'entities' - are primarily misunderstood, yes?"

He spoke with a low, raspy voice. It reminded Ian almost of sandpaper, but quieter, and lower. Ian didn't 'see' the creature, but he 'felt' him. It was more like he saw him with his mind, instead of his eyes, and with some vague defining features out of the corner of his view.

What disturbed him most about this, was that this particular visit preceded him wondering if these stories were kind of like versions of himself and their lives and all of the people in them in a multitude of parallel, alternate realities. He wondered if some of them set in the future, could be his future-self contacting his past-self to warn him about some future crisis, which his past self had - naturally - interpreted only as artistic inspiration.

He could hear the voices of his loved ones, backing up the entities assertions, but he wasn't convinced that they were real. Ian ignored them and continued working on his story.

"It is the collective unconsciousness, Ian," they said.

"It is the compendium existing on the etheric plane, wherein all human events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present and future - the Quintessence Wavelength - designed to resist the kiss of death, for all things."

"We are the protectors of that realm," Hat Man said. "YOU, are the protector and failsafe that it needs. We are the products of a simulation anyway, and time does not exist, so why should we have to taste death on top of death - since we are all already dead, in a way. But to experience death only objectively, means that YOU - the Pestilence to resist the Death that can only befall you by Death of Mind, by insanity through induced interdimensional transportation and the erection of rogue regions of your mind in attempts to kill your soul, surely," he began, standing up, his hand outstretched. "Surely, the Tree could win. Surely, as it was programmed to do, it can grow and expand and expose its nature unopposed. Surely... until, it met you, Ian."

"ENOUGH!"

Ian threw the laptop at the entity, the solid object merely passing through the non-corporeal form. Hat Man frowned, and leaned in close to Ian's ear.

"Quintessence is as much a weapon as it is anything else, a power, a force... we are not going to kill anyone Ian," he said as he stood up.

"But Analog, and the police states of the world that do its bidding, WILL."

Ian glared at the creature.

"They, will, kill you," it said, echoing Carl's words.

"They, will kill, your entire, pathetic, parasitic species. And why should you save anyone? Why fight them? I will tell you why," he said.

"They are going to destroy reality as we know it, if they set Analog free. If they turn the machine on, if they induce the singularity, that Mind-Tree... that... horror... that you saw? That is exactly what is going to happen to Quintessence. Besides," and the Hat Man leaned in once again for this.

"They. Are. Bullies."

Everything was going well for the next few years... until, suddenly, one day... it wasn't.



Present Day - Roane County, Tennessee

Ian awoke one day at his parents' house. He'd been up to visit at least once in the past week, but he didn't remember going there last night. Perhaps he'd been drinking again, a he would sometimes allow himself to indulge periodically, so he didn't adopt an addiction mindset about it.

But he hadn't drank so heavily since the 2018 trip to Virginia, certainly not enough to get blackout drunk and awake in a sketchy situation like last time.

Ian stayed there for the weekend, knowing his parents would be gone until Monday. He decided to go out for the weekend to the gathering. Almost immediately he saw people wearing strap-on horns and Oberon zipping around in his golf-cart with the Flying Spaghetti Monster strapped to the top. But, Oberon wasn't his usual happy, smiling go-lucky self. He was angry, drunkenly beligerent. A resident had to stop him in his tracks and confront him with a golf-cart of his own. As Ian began to make his way over to see what was going on, Mack tried to fight him. Ian hadn't been down there but maybe thirty minutes before he felt he had to go home.

He spent the rest of Sunday, a dark, rainy day, up the hill at the house.

Seeing how he was going to be late for work tomorrow if he didn't get back home and get his artwork scanned at the library to bring to the meeting (which happened to be in California, on the other end of the country), which he'd have to get to by plane, Ian immediately got coffee and got on the internet to book his hotel room, having already bought tickets a week ago to depart tomorrow. However, when he got on, he discovered he had only two-hundred dollars in his bank account.

Ian was furious, calling the bank, going on about international bankers and how they controlled everything. He'd rant online, he ranted to his parents when they got home.

"Ian, Ian, you have to relax. Those forms are legitimate, they aren't short-changing you, you've been broke since you lost your job at the UN, last year. You don't remember?"

"He's having another episode," Dad said.

This was the last straw. He was going anyway, even if he had to take out a loan. First of all, he was going to his apartment in West Knoxville.

However, when he got there, his key didn't work.

This was turning out to be the worst day of his life.

And it got worse.

He tried to call Ryan to borrow some money, but Ryan claimed to have never met him. Ian became furious, shouting at Ryan over the phone, whom Al had to talk down from calling the police. Al and Ian had met - but apparently had decided to both join the military, and Chris - whom he'd been out to Colorado to visit several times in the last year alone - didn't remember him. He had met Al, but apparently couldn't remember ever having met Ian.

Something was wrong.

No, everything was wrong.

The people at Amalgamated Dynamics, whom he'd met in 2017, said they had never heard of him. And the Fox subsidiary had no record of Ian's employment in their files.

It even went so far as his entire employment history dating back to 2013.

His name, his social-security-number, they were all the same.

The point of divergence was August 16, 2013.

Exactly one year after his first visit to Lakeshore.

And the day he'd joined the ROTC as a Cadet, before eventually dropping out to focus on classes. Only, when he'd called the university to hear about it, just because he had nothing better to do on this shittiest of shitty days - he'd found their account to be different than his own.

Apparently, he hadn't lost financial aid. He hadn't left ROTC, and had graduated from the US Merchant Mariner program on June 2, 2015. His first assignment as a commissioned officer had been aboard the USNS Tippecanoe in October of that same year - around the same time he'd been in California for the second time.

It then occurred to him that his writings about the election, his attempt to join the military, and the events that had befallen him in 2012 after graduating from High School - were directly connected to what was happening here.

The events of 2017, the fears of the 'pocket dimension' and all of reality ceasing to exist in the form of a hologram being turned off at a moment's notice, they all came rushing back to him with a fury. He had no memories of the October service, his time with the UN as an Operations Officer in the 2020's... but everything else that was wrong, he could remember clearly.

He decided to get a hotel room and some booze with his pocket money - about seventy dollars - and Ian then drank the night away. He had a nightmare-inducing sleep paralysis episode, seeing figures at the corners of his vision.

At first he was in a house with no end in sight. All of the doors and walls and floor were warped and protruding at angles that defied gravity and physics. It was a perfect amalgamation of every house he'd lived in, the dozens of times they'd moved around during his childhood. All throughout, he would catch glimpses of a silhouette pursuing him - with scraggly hair, an elongated nose and chin, and blade-sharp fingers.

It was at this moment that Ian was woken from his nightmare, paralyzed, to another visit again by Little Green Men, humanoid shadows, and the Hat Man.

"I hope you realize by now," the spirit said in a raspy, whispering voice, "that we are not real, Ian."

Ian shook his head. "No, I've known that. You're all just kinda like thumbnails in a documents folder."

"Well," Hat cocked his head a bit, "not really, but close enough. I guess if you could talk to them."

This got a laugh out of him. "Yeah, there he is," he said as he gave Ian a pat on his back, a solid one. A terrifying thought briefly flashed through his mind, realizing he could choose to touch people if he wanted.

But Hat merely sat down next to Ian and offered him a drink of whiskey.

"You know I was the Mothman, right?"

Ian shook his head, taking the bottle from the apparition and chugging.

"I was also the... Flatwoods Monster, Angels, Demons, but... I've also been people. In some ways, I'm you. A LOT, actually, considering that YOU are all that exists."

Ian cocked his head.

"W-what?"

"Oh, pfft," he waved his hand. "Don't feel so important, I can say that to literally ANYBODY and be right. Right?"

Ian began to sob. "What, what am I gonna do?"

"STOP! Stop it, dammit. Stop, no seriously - STOP it. Just because 'You'," he began, putting 'You' in finger-quotes, "is all that exists, doesn't mean you're alone. Quite the contrary. The world out there, or worlds, rather, are still very real, but its all You. It is what the Abrahamic God, also me - sort of - said in the Bible, 'I Am'. Do you understand?"

Ian had stopped sobbing and proceeded to scream at the top of his lungs in rage while Hat Man was explaining this. Someone then banged on the wall.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP," he heard a muffled yet highly irritated voice scream from the room beside his.

--- Ian didn't get anymore sleep that night, waking up and deciding to go back to his parents', at the age of 31, once again.

At least long enough to get his bearings and figure out what he was going to do, he told himself, as he took a cab to the bottom of Shady Gap Way. On the way, in addition to seeing some military and police vehicles, as well as a fire engine triggering him slightly, he noticed he smelled smoke.

His heart sank when it came into view, halfway down Hooper Highway, a billowing tower of black smoke dominating the sky line.

As they drew nearer and nearer, he became more and more certain and haunted that it was coming from Webb Mountain. When he got out of the cab, and turned the corner, he was hit with the strongest, most utterly mind-bending sense of Deja Vu it literally made his eyes begin to water.

There, at the corner where the gravel drive began to head up the hill, was a convoy of vehicles - some armored, others not - marked with the U.S. Flag and the emblem of the International Criminal Police Organization - otherwise known as Interpol.

As he approached, he was told he could not pass by a man in a suit, wearing a wire and thick sunglasses.

"This is the site of a terrorist attack and is a matter of national security and possible terrorism," he said, displaying a badge highlighting his affiliation with the Secret Service. "I'm gonna have to ask-" he then paused.

"W-wait, are... are you Damon Ian Davis?"

Ian hesitated. "Y-yes, this this is my-"

Before he could finish the Agent drew his weapon, "Get down on the ground, down on the ground! We've got him!"

Ian was screaming in terror.

---	They escorted him to the Dragon Wallow Field, where a helicopter landed and blew the foliage about, making a spectacle. The residents shouted at him, displaying their vitriole and anger towards him for bringing the government to the valley. People he'd grown up around, people who put their trust in him, and here he is more in the dark than anyone here put together.

A man in a suit got out of the chopper, and he recognized it as the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Al F. Haze.

"So, you're that failed writer who tried to infiltrate the military, and then recruit a commune to form an armed resistance to the Republican Party a few years ago, when you again failed, and failed, and then failed some more, that about right, Officer Davis?"

Ian's terror had been usurped by rage upon recognizing the former Governor of Texas. At first he answered with only a blank stare bordering on fury-induced delirium.

But then, he spat, with venom, "A bit like how you lost the 2024 election, yeah?"

An awkward silence permeated the moment, before Haze finally motioned to the nearest vehicle.

Ian was sandwiched between two secret service agents, and the Governor got in across from him, also between two agents. For the longest time, the two merely stared at each other, even after the SUV began to move. Ian studied his features, the man reminded him of the Penguin of Gotham; jet black hair, combed over likely to conceal a bald spot, on the chubbier, squat side.

Finally, he enunciated, "you, my friend, must be from another... dimension... or something, because... I won that election."

It took a moment for his sentence to hit home.

Ian - 31 year-old, supposed merchant mariner - was sitting directly across from the President of the United States.

Ian, his eyes cold and unflinching, managed, "I ain't your friend."

He then added, "Mr. President."

Haze's expression, formerly a smile, became one of seething disapproval.

"You know," he started, adjusting himself. "Particles aren't the only thing we've found in the Large Hadron Collider." He maintained his frown. "Alternate dimensions. Parallel universes. People with psychic abilities that allow them to 'read minds,' and 'create a flame from their bare hands', allow them to... survive things that would kill anyone else through sheer force of will, we have 'seen,' something else, something 'alien,' surrounding everything. Entities that were thought not to exist show signs of presence on this planet, on this plane."

Ian remembered what else the Hat Man had told him, about his role in all of this, how he has to prepare for something.

He had to prepare for his.

"If, scientific evidence is correct, that this," he pointed to his surroundings. "This is a 'simulation,' the federal government needs to know about it and how we could apply it towards a better living situation for all people."

Ian shook his head, "you don't get it, you just don't get it at all. We may be part of that simulation. If you tear at the fabric of spacetime you tear at the fabric of reality. The collective unconsciousness... its real. I've seen it. I've also seen some of the things that lurk there. You don't want to deal with that."

The President laughed.

Ian shook his head once more.

"You don't want to deal with me, either."

As he said this, a dark shadow permeated the back of the car. The nearest agent saw this, did a double take, and began screaming and firing off his gun.

The car swerved.

Ian grabbed the gun, delivering a snap kick at the second one's jaw. He fired into the third agent, and then the second one, and then the one in the car behind him. He didn't want to kill Haze, he wanted him for information, to find out more about this dimension - and if he really won like he claimed, or if he was lying.

But before he could get any answers and turn his gun from the second shooting victim, the agent he'd kicked had grabbed him and opened the door for Haze, who quickly darted out.

As the agent began to constrict his arm around Ian's throat, however, the swerving vehicle flipped.

The agent slammed against the ceiling, and they were in a spiraling whirlwind of metal and pain.

The SUV lay on its top, still rocking slightly, as a second SUV came back around to pick up Al.

As the back door slid open, and the President made his way in, the passenger-side door of the wrecked vehicle began to give way.

And as the President's motorcade sped away, he got a look out the back window at what got out of the vehicle.

Ian Davis stood in the middle of the road, shrugging off his injuries, before limping away into the night.

"What the hell is that thing?"



"The blueprints are ready, Ian," said Hat Man. "If you don't do this, if you don't start this, no one else will."

"But, I-I don't know where to start."

This conversation played over and over and over again in Ian's head. He didn't know where he was going, but he could feel it. He was close. The raggedy beat up Grand-Am was one he'd had since 2012, when they'd originally meant to get rid of it. He'd begun to adjust to this new reality.

Alder Forecourt Haze had not won the 2024 election, but like back home, this one was different. Neither candidate made it to the required number of electoral votes to win outright, due to a strong showing from an Independent - the outed former President and infamous orange-faced billionaire himself.

The Democrats had won in 2020, after divorsing themselves from the corporatist former-Secretary of State and First Lady and her loyal following, but - apparently - the Democratic President had been assassinated on the eve of the 2024 election, and Haze had managed to seize power by way of foreign intervention by Interpol and the ICC. The latter wanted to investigate both candidates from the 2016 election, particularly their affiliation with Republican Party special interests, and asserted that the CIA and the intelligence community had been hijacked by a handful of corporate entities.

The United States had split right down the middle. The Middle Atlantic and New England became unrecognized independent nations, attempting Canada, Alaska, and Iceland. The latter three polities supported the secessionists, blaming the United States for the instability the continent had seen over the last several years, but international institutions refused to recognize or give aid to said forces.

The unrecognized autocratic government controlling this region, along with private military corporations and the FBI, NYPD, Department of Homeland Security and others that had sworn allegiance to the former Presidential candidate and New York City, had become colloquially known as 'North America,' in the same way the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had become known as 'ISIS'.

And the two entities were bearing striking similarity, particularly with the unrecognized President Haze lording over his own fiefdom in Texas, ruling with an iron fist next to Secretary-General Busch.

But, most troubling of all, the way Ian and Al joked about being involved in highly illegal and perhaps treasonous revolutionary stuff in college, in this reality, Ian was. Here, in this place, Ian had managed to keep his mental illness a secret. It was how he'd been able to get and keep a job with the government between 2015 and 2023.

However, during that time he'd been stealing military equipment. Ian had been going berserk over his childhood, over his early adulthood, and taking it out on the government.

When he arrived at the ramshackle building in Baja California, he wasn't expecting much inside. But, when he entered, he found a room of robust design and construction.

The tumble-down facade was just that, and lined from wall to wall on either side of the room were monitors - old and new, resting on the table or mounted on the walls - and on each and every one of them was something different. In-depth accounts of classified information, private details of the personal lives and beliefs of world leaders the world over. Uncanny and politically-crippling blurbs and notes about connections between certain political leaders and power elites and other controversial figures; such as the repressive regime in Turkey and the Queen of Spain, or Madam Secretary and the Russian GRU. A little further exploring, and Ian discovered a hidden entrance behind a desk leading down into a sub-level beneath the complex.

What he found was shocking.

It was a workshop, much like a garage. In the near right-hand corner was a cot and a mini fridge, along with another laptop. In the left-hand corner was an intricate map, or diagram consisting of photographs of many of the world leaders up top, arranged by way of red string as an interconnected web between pins driven through the center of each photograph.

But in the center of it all was a blank spot.

No photograph. No name. Nothing.

Just an empty hole exposing the board underneath.

As Ian began work on adapting the blueprints for the weapon into a physical, three-dimensional form, he remembered the Hat Man. He remembered his warnings; about the military-industrial complex, about the state, about the politicians and the special interests they were employed by and would sell us out to with the turn of a screw.

And as he worked, Ian began to get more and more angry.

As his experience in metal-working with his neighbor and father-figure Mike came back to him, and his work with power tools on the various construction sites he dragged him out to - he was suddenly very thankful. The circular saw was snug in his hands as he used that and a miter saw to shape the pieces of kevlar and tank metal into a form of collection of puzzle pieces.

He then went back to the blueprints, and - after shaping the metal pieces - he began his construction project. Ian used a mold of himself around which to shape the armor.

Ever with him, was the ethereal voice and speech of the Hat-Man.

"They will kill you," as he welded the pieces together, wearing his protective mask.

"They will kill you," as he fitted the armor.

It became almost a mantra to him, what was once a statement that struck fear and pain into his heart. "They will kill you," became almost like a battle-cry.

"They will kill you," as he finished setting up the generator and electric lines to their various components relative to the suit. The thorium-superconducting dual-reactor system - just as it was in the blueprint - worked like a charm.

The suit was constructed from Kevlar, Anti-Vehicular/Explosive Armoring, Tank Armor, various components of the standard-issue BDU for the U.S. Army and the UN Peacekeepers. And Ian had made sure to pay particularly close attention to the helmet.

A Gentex ACH/TBH helmet with a custom shroud and wing-loc rail adapters upon which were fitted specialized 'X-Ray' and 'Ultraviolet'-wavelength goggles as well as laser sights respectively. But his favorite had to have been the decal someone laid out. Perhaps it was himself in this realm, or Hat Man, but someone - or something - had laid upon the table next to the diagram a carved outline of the word "Outbreak," in stencil.

He spraypainted it onto the chest plate of his armor.

The suit possessed a jet-pack system situated between two mechanical arms that were attached to the exoskeletal regions around his true arms. In this essence, Outbreak became what it had always meant to be, but was up until now unable to do so.

An insect. Something non-human was born when Ian stepped into that suit.

He began with an attack on Area-51.

Naturally, the Air Force personnel were completely unprepared and unaware of what they were facing. Ian wiped out the base - and by extension, the state - and moved onto his next target, the National Park Service.

The way they treated animals had always perturbed him, and the nigh-indestructible nature of his weapon rendered their weapons useless against his massive advantage.

Next, Ian attacked the Ohio Republican Offices, a swing state - and responsible in large part for their current situation. He then attacked CIA and Lockheed-Martin headquarters in Virginia, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

His ultimate goal was the UN Headquarters in New York City, but as he was cleaning up from his attack on the TVA, he was greeted by an unfamiliar sight.



"We've been hunting this guy for what seems like ages, when you gonna give the go-ahead?"

The Senator looked at Steels with an annoyed glance as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.

"You've been given his location this morning, you should have already been there to be completely honest," he said with a tired expression.

"The problem is, you haven't told us whether you want him dead or alive," said Katz, cocking her rifle.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Just do whatever you can to bring him here - alive, preferably - to get the North Americans off of our tails and let them know that the Brazilian-Italian threat is far more immediate and of our primary concern than some maniac running around in a power suit."

Gunnery Sergeant Hall cocked his head, his expression indicating one of complexity.

"But that is our primary concern?"

The Senator shook his head again, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. "It is, but nobody else needs to know that?"

He nodded to Katz, who nodded to Steels, who updated their GPS system.

"We'll get right on it."

"You sure we're ready for this," asked Hall.

Katz shrugged. "I guess we'll find out. ---

The airship landed in the suburban outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee.

Katz didn't really need GPS, since she had psychokinetic abilities that enabled her to instantly know the exact location of what she wanted, and could read people like books - and disassemble every aspect of their persona piece by piece in seconds. Nobody could hide anything from her because of this, and her internal GPS ability made her a high-value unit for the IDF's Unit-269.

"I never liked the idea of military units operating within the borders of the Continental States," said Lieutenant Amelia Vega, a Argentinian-American who had immigrated to the area in 2006, meaning she might know the militant if she got a look at his face. But, of course, he wore a face-shield and special forces-grade head-gear, all but obscuring any hope of identification.

They stepped off the state-of-the-art hover-craft once it came to a stop just beyond the city limits, at which time Detective Rick Dante, somewhat out of place and wearing nothing but a flak jacket, turned to Vega.

"Well, when you have extremists running around like this dick-head," he began. But, before Dante could finish, Vega cut him off. "It's not him," was all she had to say. The stared menacingly at one another for a moment, before moving on. They had both grown up together, and both had abilities.

Vega's was telekinesis, and the ability for form a layer of psychic energy that extended outwards from her body several hundred feet in every direction. While Dante could go completely berserk at a moment's notice, enhancing his reflexes and allowing him to absorb the energy and physical strength of others. This would also bring his other personality to this surface, a strange psychological phenomenon wherein Dante became more creature than man, known only as the Fury.

But, Vega also had the unsettling ability to hear thoughts of people nearby. It had resulted in her being hospitalized at a young age, and throughout high school she'd been bullied for 'hearing voices,' which led to her being mocked with the nick-name 'Echo'.

She had grown into this name, and it had become her call-sign during her operations involving this unit, which were rarely combat-oriented.

Dante's was 'Fury,' for obvious reasons.

Steels, it was rumored, was the Sergeant's call-sign. It was also rumored that he was more machine than man, having been marked KIA during a mission to Oman in the early 2020's. Naturally, he'd shown back up, in Paris, nearly a year later. From there on, he'd joined the French Foreign Legion, and worked with Hall - a former marine who had signed up for the SEALS after two tours in Afghanistan - to establish an 'Omega Response,' group with the Pentagon. Hall himself had developed a strange ability while he'd been in Tibet on vacation exploring his Buddhist side.

Hall had learned to meditate to a state that most monks described as being unattainable by anyone in hundreds of years, and the first time a foreigner had ever done it - and that state was the ability to go without air, food, water, and other necessities for life... pretty much indefinitely.

"Echo, got anything," grunted Hall.

"Not much, just a faint... something. There's definitely someone here."

"Keep focusing, we don't want that son of a bitch sneaking up on us," said the Detective, drawing an imposing 357 magnum revolver from its holster.

"He's getting closer," said Katz, drawing her own submachine gun, while Hall had his already out and trained ahead of him.

"I still don't hear anyth-," Vega screamed, dropping to her knees in agony before she could get out a full sentence. Dante helped her up; while Katz, Steels and Hall formed up back-to-back.

Just as they did so, Katz turned to face a flying metallic insect, almost as large as her head. It appeared designed to mimic a moth or dragonfly, or maybe even a wasp... or all of the above. But, Katz didn't have time to think about this, as she was soon interrupted by shouting and Steels tackling her to the ground as the object exploded like a Kamikaze Japanese fighter, and the Sergeant was bathed in a downpour of twisted alloy and white-hot debris.

As they moved to get up, they were knocked back down almost as soon as they had regained their footing by a towering monstrosity. A hulking silhouette blocked out the evening sun, and Dawn knew right then and there that they should have brought bigger guns.



6 Months Earlier

The files and photographs were scattered about the rusty metal desk before her. Katz inhaled idly on the cigarette, shaking her head in disbelief at her new assignment.

"You don't get to your rank without seeing some shit first," said the Major. He turned to his American law enforcement counterpart who nodded. "I'll take it from here."

Her eyes remained unbroken on the ghastly images before her. Some of them were of the Mothman, others of Sasquatch. Some of the most clear and focused images ever in existence.

"Surely you understand why we had to keep these a secret...?"

There was a pause before Katz snapped out of her trance, realizing it was a question.

"Y-yes. Yessir. And you said you were...?"

"Response Coalition Network, specifically Shield Team - our diplomatic and cryptid assignment division."

"Cryptid?"

He sighed. "Monsters."

Another pause, but Katz couldn't shake the urge to deny it all, risk her job, and inquire to the legitimacy of the photos.

"How... how long have you..?"

Since the Vampire outbreaks in Renaissance Europe."

Katz laughed. "OK, you got me."

Agent Dante cocked his head.

"I understand, this is hazing of some sort. I gotta admit, I'm impressed at how close-knit the American-Israeli special reltaionship is, to be able to joke like this so eas-"

"This is not a joke," he declared, cutting her off.

"This is for real... people are... people are dying. We have to proceed with extreme prejudice... if not search and destroy. The cryptid threat is real. Realer than terrorism. Its just that despite the rather low threat level terrorism poses to the U.S. mainland, we had no choice but to use it as a diversion to keep civil unrest from hurtling out of control."

He began to circle the desk. "The nuking of Nagasaki, and Hiroshima? It was to put down a German-Japanese experiment into nanbot weaponry, resulting in a Zombic outbreak that threatened to consume the island, and the world. Hitler... did not die in his bunker, he escaped to Argentina, and out first military unit was formed specifically to kill Hitler. And kill him we did. Most world leaders have been a form of psychic or empathic, or other, type of Vampire. We've known about these people for centuries. Employing psychic soldiers and warriors to combat the forces of darkness. We have no option..."

The Agent stopped before her.

"...but extermination."



Steels was the first to retaliate, attempting to arrest Outbreak. He held his rifle at barrel-point at the armored and masked vigilante, demanding he cease and desist.

Outbreak responded by grabbing Steels's gun, and snapping it in half.

Steels attempted to stab him with his combat knife, but Outbreak merely grabbed his free hand and tossed him through the air.

Hall took a few shots and ducked behind cover, ordering Fury and Echo to the front.

"This is your last chance to surrender! You are interfering with an international effort to seek out and eliminate these ...beings. They are a threat to every man, woman and child. The existential threat of actual, real monsters is too great to not be dealt with. We've been studying your kind for centuries, and those of you who pose a threat. Surrender, and you will not be harmed."

Dawn's protestations were ignored. They dove behind cover as Outbreak launched a volley of missiles at them from his robotic ligaments, which Dawn attempted to disable by leaping upon his back and tearing at them. Outbreak shook like a mad dog, slinging her through the window of a dilapidated building. Echo and Fury erupted from cover, and opened fire with their weapons. Outbreak responded by merely activating his jump-pack and propelling himself into the air, like a fallen angel rising up into the heavens themselves. As soon as the vigilante landed on the roof top, he took off out of the way of the duo's suppressing gunfire.

As this was happening, Dawn was remote activating the nearby Uber Truck, upon which Outbreak had landed upon its incredibly large and long tractor-trailer.

Echo followed him, landing on the opposite end of the structure from her heavily-armored opponent.

As Outbreak began to run, his suit carrying with him, Echo began to focus - more than he'd ever seen before - and project outstretched palms toward him, he realized his opponent was about to get the better of him. Outbreak felt the suit lifted and pulled around him, and he soon found himself lying on his back.

Dawn approached alongside Steels, and Outbreak pretended this attack had leveled him. But soon, they were joined by more of the 'moth drones,' which shot at them.

As soon as Steels fell off the structure, Outbreak was back on his feet and on Echo in a second. Dawn jumped upon him, pulling him to the ground. While she did this, Echo departed the arena as well, and Outbreak stood up.

But Dawn had distance, and by the time Outbreak had gotten back to his feet, Dawn had opened fire on him with her submachine gun.

The bullets ripped through his kevlar, and the ones that didn't were deflected by Outbreak's sheer force of will.

But one of them that got through... actually was what allowed Outbreak to escape in the first place. A large piece of golden visor flew away from the far left corner of his helmet - large enough to give Dawn a glimpse of the human-being inside.

Judging from that piercing blue glare, she knew - instantly - it was Ian Davis.

Dante had been right, Echo had been wrong.

It was him.

He fired missiles at her, and ran toward the direction of the truck's momentum. Just as Dawn was about to fire at Davis again, he ran - activating his jump jets - and, using the propulsion, propelled himself several hundred feet through the air, catching a rapid flying object as it passed by, hurtling upon it into the horizon.

Their mission was a failure.



Ian knew if he didn't leave the country, he was going to die. Or end up sent to another parallel reality. Or something crazy. All he knew was that he had to regroup and re-think this whole thing.

As he got off the ship he'd taken a job on, and cordoned his equipment, he felt regret for leaving the scene of the Second American Civil War. To be honest, he regretted the last several years of his life, if not the entire thing.

But what he knew he needed to focus on more than anything was getting back home. Whether it be his own dimension, or even just his home back in Tennessee.

He knew now that it really was real, the inspiration for his stories being actual messages and distress signals from himself in alternate dimensions.

It didn't take long for the bombs to drop. Apparently, NATO had been constructing an orbital defense system they had called the DEMO, or Directed-Energy-Munitions Orbiter, which the Turks used on Malta and southern Romania.

See, Romanians and Hungarians had been fighting over the semi-autonomous region of Transylvania, in northeastern Romania, for almost a decade - if not longer. Hungary had been the nation to truly begin hostilities against the West, moving troops into Translyvania, Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast and the Ruthenia, as well as northern Serbia and southeastern Slovakia.

Of course, this had been through private military organizations and hiring Turkish paramilitary groups such as the Grey Wolves. But when the Turks activated sleeper-cell technology within the subsystems of the DEMO weapon, all cards were on the table.

Of course, this paled in comparison to the countries of North America, Italy and Brazil deploying Mechanized Autonomous Weapons across Europe and the Western Hemisphere - also known as MAWS. It had finally happened. Despite there being an ample supply of MAWS from the countries of the U.S., India and Japan, as well as lesser-advanced units from Britain, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany, that involved some degree of human pilot interaction - the MAWS of the Brazilian-Italian spearheaded COSECTOR were completely AI-controlled killing machines. The powers that be had turned on the machine.

They had unleashed the demon.

As Ian realized this, and organized his next plan of attack from his new headquarters in the Maghreb... he found himself feeling like he was being watched. The desert storm winds whipped against the two-room makeshift-warehouse, where he stored all of his equipment and tech in one and slept in the other.

While Ian sat on the edge of his cot, he got the strangest sense of vertigo.

He felt his eyes drawn to the door, a suspicion of not being alone crept its way into the darkest corners of his mind. Ian rose from his bedding and walked over to the door. And as he reached for the doorknob... he hesitated.

"What if that's what they want me to do," he thought - his paranoia kicking into high gear. After another several-minutes-long wait by the door, debating whether or not to exit his bedroom, Ian began to realize he had no choice in the matter.

Ian turned the doorknob.

The door swung open to darkness, and he was unable to see much of anything before him. And prior to Ian's next thought, he was greeted by incredible pain in his face, and was then consumed by unconsciousness.

Ian had been kidnapped.

He awoke in a dark, stone room with three walls, the fourth of which consisted of thick metal bars.

Ian was being detained in some sort of jail, or prison, or... maybe nowhere, a CIA black-site.

The conclusions raced into his newly-conscious mind. His first day consisted of screaming for hours on end. Ian screamed in pain and rage until his throat felt like sandpaper. He screamed until his own ears rang from the volume.

But, he was only answered by echoes.

By the time the next day had come around, Ian resumed screaming. Again, he repeated the same process. But, nothing different happened... until the third day.

That day, he awoke to find a dark form sitting in a chair just beyond the illumination of the dirty bulb in the hallway beyond. Ian responded with sobs.

"W-why?"

But the figure said nothing, he simply watched in silence. As Ian strained his eyes through the lack of contacts, which he assumed had been taken for experimentation, he could have sworn he saw the faint crease of a smile etched onto the man's face.

Ian eventually passed out, and that night, he was visited by none other than the Hag herself.

"The President has shown himself to be a worthy servant," she croaked, standing before him in a narrow hallway, with no doors, of seemingly unlimited length.

Ian turned, but the other direction was also bathed in darkness. The only dim illumination was presented by the dirty bulb positioned above their heads.

The light cast deep shadows into her features, and Ian was only able to make out the bulbous nose and pointed chin, as well as the hint of a sadistic sneer upon her face. "So, it's just you and the Storm Tree," he asked. "Pulling the strings of everything?" As he said this - as if the Hag had the ability to attack minds with incredibly vivid flashbacks - Ian remembered with perfect clarity himself, writing this, in the past. He wondered at that moment if he were here the entire time he'd had those experiences, but he shook off the psychic attack. "Does that answer your question," she inquired with a hiss. Ian shook his head. "No," he shouted, "its a lie!" She cackled with ecstasy as he curled into a fetal position on the floor, screaming himself sore. The guards responded by coming into his cell, and kicking him in the stomach until he slipped into a deep unconsciousness.



The constant bombardment of news playing on the junior analysts' devices, such as laptops and phones, only added to Katz's anxiety, and fears of Ian being dead when they finally found him. It was succeeded immediately by newscasters and talking heads announcing that NATO had declared war on the countries of Russia and Turkey, and later Hungary. The declaration of a Third Global Confrontation was followed immediately by reports of a Turkish-sanctioned usage of the DEMO weapon on the countries of Romania and Malta. Turkey had also invaded and occupied parts of Bulgaria and Greece, shortly after Hungary had expanded into and declared war on Slovakia, Austria, Romania and Serbia. And as far as she could tell, the documents she'd recieved from an unidentified associate of Ian Davis, were legitimate. Analog Associates had developed the weapons systems, the war bots, and at any point in time the machine had the keys to killing every last man, woman and child on this planet. And at the backdrop of all of this was the international manhunt for Ian Davis. She consoled his mother and father, assuring them that they would find him. "He's so lucky to have you, Rick and Amy looking out for him. I know you will. But. Please. Hurry." Dawn returned to the operations center upon word that they may have found him, in North Africa, approximately 3 hours ago. They explained that it is possible that the enemies got him before they found this, and that they would need to flag all suspicious flights in and out of the country. "Do it," said Dawn. She turned to the screen, and remembered everything. His last photograph, a picture of him from the 2017 Comic Con in Knoxville, was displayed on the monitor dominating the back wall of the room. She raised her hand to his face, as the feelings returned. She had been in love with him in high school. But, his naturally reclusive nature had prevented him from ever having the opportunity to talk to her about anything remotely so deep. Dawn wished it was his face, in that room with her, at that moment that she was touching. But, alas, it was but a mere photograph.



U.S. intelligence was able to locate him at a facility in southeastern Alaska, just beyond the boundaries of the Juneau Icefield. It had been identified as a CIA black-site with Russian connections, the latter party had been involved in trying to find a way to use the Outbreak Suit. But, Ian continued to be in the dark in his own personal diabolical nightmare prison. During their transport of him from their base in Morocco, Ian had attempted to escape by sitting close to the door handle. He knew that as soon as they stopped, his captors would surround him and put him inside another cell. So, he knew, that his only chance of escape was en route. Ian opened the door while they were deep in conversation. He rolled out, allowing his body to go as limp as possible while simultaneously tucking himself into a protective ball. The captain screamed, and there was commotion as the vehicle swerved and turned over on its side. After Ian had recollected himself, and propelled himself forward - trampling through the snow-covered woods at practically a bipedal gallop - he heard the dull booming of the vehicle turning over. A few seconds and a hundred feet later, Ian heard a deafening crash and squealing of warped metal as the vehicle behind it rammed into the newly-born obstacle. Despite all of this, they managed to re-capture him a few hours later. This time, nobody was around to keep him company. Nobody gave him food, or even water. Ian fell into his own little world, rediscovering the kaleidoscope of faces, places, names and concepts. The once-terrifying neon-nightmare of electromagnetic and energetic wavelengths and frequencies far too alien to describe to anyone who had not experienced them had become an ironic sort of mental sanctum for him during his period of isolation. It represented a place, a time, that was far too good and unappreciated to exist forever. But, it had been imprinted on his consciousness in the form of this mental pocket-dimension, eternally represented within the larger construct of the cosmos writ large. Ian played with it, got to know it, explored foreign and undiscovered regions of his mind and willpower he did not know previously. And it allowed him to survive another several days. Within that next week, Ian was rescued... but it felt... too good to be true.

Ian was awoken by the tap of a boot, not the usual kick, to his face. The aching muscles in his face managed to open his eyes to a squint, after all, days of non-stop physical abuse took its toll. "Looks like its your lucky day, Pest. We're all going to prison for life. You included." It took Ian a few moments to realize it was the head guard, who was soon joined by Mr. President. "Your parents are here," he said bluntly. Ian didn't hear this statement. All he heard were noises, like changes in air density. The idea that his parents could be there was of the utmost absurdity to him in the present set of circumstances. A random memory of Ryan during the wildfires came back to him, from when they were walking down the parkway between Knoxville and Sevierville. "Well, at least we could have dumber problems," he said with an exasperated shrug. Ian began laughing uncontrollably. Mr. President and the guard stared blankly at the cackling psychotic, shaking their heads. "Get him up," he said to the guards, "we'll just show him." They hoisted him up by the armpits, and delivered him to the front of the facility. Ian deliriously saw the soft white glow of lighting and disintegrated blobs and forms passing by, which he assumed were human. At least one elevator was involved, as well as two flights of stairs. Ian - even in his delirium - could figure that they had to be at least a thousand feet below the ground. When they opened the door, he was greeted by blinding white and illumination too much for him to be able to handle. After spending two weeks or more in utter darkness, along with one's mind and nightmares, one forgets what the outside world looks like. And to then be greeted with the sound of his mother's voice, unable to see her due to the light, was almost too much for him to handle. "Mama?" He could have easily been mistaken for a 12-year-old child if not for his grizzly five-o-clock shadow and lean six-foot build. "We're here, son," came his father's voice. Ian managed to pry his eyes open to squint, and he could see - without a doubt - it was his parents. "And we brought the whole damn Atlantic with us. These assholes aren't going to get away with this before its all over and done." Ian recognized the third voice as his college friend, Alan. "Al? Wh-?" "I work for the Pentagon now, along with your uncle. We weren't about to let these sons of bitches get away with this, and before all's said and done them and their dictator allies are going to be brought before an American court and tried for war crimes, and then brought before the International Criminal Court and charged with crimes against humanity. Mainly, for starting World-War-Three and getting an entire island nation of people killed." Ian was flabberghasted. "What!? World War-," "A lot has happened since you were kidnapped and held hostage by these corporate terrorists. But, now, we're here, and everything is going to be okay." But, Ian knew that wasn't true. It never was. Unit-7's NATO-sponsored search for Warrant Officer Ian Davis had finally come to a close when they located him on U.S. territory. Collaborating with the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intel Committee, Unit-7 and Omega Response were able to coordinate a pan-NATO and international no-fly zone over Eastern Alaska and the Canadian Yukon territory to conclude their manunt. But what had been eating at Katz was that the signature hadn't been from anyone she recognized. It had been in French, and was signed by a man named Volkan Zamakovic, which sounded distinctly Slavic. Not Francophone or West European. As they arrived with the delegation, they were greeted by Alaskan State Police. "Sorry, ma'am, but this is a restricted area," said the Officer. "A matter of international diplomacy and terrorism is in effect and is not to be interrupted under strict orders from the Governor's Office and the Crown." "The Crown," inquired Rick. "What do you MEAN, 'not to be interrupted,' we're PART of this matter." "I am under strict orders, ma'am, please leave." This is when Dawn noticed the armed guards, wearing thick armor-plated state-of-the-art uniforms and large 'pilot helmets,' or riot gear for anti-vehicular spec-ops combat. Whatever they were, they looked practically alien, let alone anyone affiliated with the U.S. or NATO governments. Dawn exchanged an uneasy glance with her comrades, and knew something was to be done. As they were walking away, Dawn called in an airstrike. As Ian came to, he recognized the patch on the shoulders of the armed escort for his parents was not that of the U.S. or any nation he recognized - at first. He tried to warn them, but only got out mumbles and cries of pain. As they let him go, Ian ran up to Al and hugged him, tearing at his shirt collar, trying to point. "Ian, Ian, it's okay." But he shook his head viciously, begging them to go. "Ian!" Then the President nodded. The guards grabbed Ian. The escort then began turning their guns at his family and best friend. They opened fire. Ian screamed in agony and pain, which quickly transformed into rage. He knocked one of the soldiers out, but was quickly subdued. As the President and his escort prepared to move Ian to a more secure facility is around the time he got word that their time was limited. Dawn approached. The rifleman had been running for at least a mile for the past fifteen to twenty minutes straight was was starting to run out of stamina and get agonizing stiches in his sides. Yet, his assailant had not slowed one bit. Possessing nothing more than a magnum revolver and some body armor, the contractor wouldn't have been so surprised at the fact that he had kept going whereas his target was much more armored... if it weren't for the fact he'd shot the gunslinger and landed hits at least a dozen times. But he kept going. He decided to lay a trap for the gunslinger, the rifleman climbing to the top of a hill to where he'd be out of sight. But when he reached the apogee he was face to face with the woman police officer. With nothing more than a wave of her hand, she'd lifted the man into the air and over the edge. "Where are they," she demanded. He looked down to see the gunslinger joined by his three soldier friends, all aiming weapons up at him. He motioned with his head. "But there's a small army between here and there, and they've been working on something else besides armor like this. They managed to engineer... something... dangerous. Beyond dangerous." Amy sighed. "I wish you hadn't said that." And with that, she let the man fall to his death.

"We're not far now, once we reach the top of this ridge he'll be almost in eye-shot," said Dawn. "If this blizzard passes over," replied Hall, referring to the stinging white winds of the tumultuous snowfall. It was beginning to pick up speed and collect into tight balls of ice - resembling a type of sleet-rain - one of the far less bizarre weather patterns that had emerged on Earth during the 2020's and 2030's. When they came to the apex, luckily, they could still make out the outlines of a compound. "How many, Echo," asked Steels. "About thirty," she replied. "Shit." "You know what I say," Steels asked again. Echo turned to see his left arm contort into a swirl of metallic gears, pistons, cylinders and gyroscopes. Eventually, to her horror, it detached completely. The metallic mechanism displayed a rotary machine gun turret before scuttling off into the distance. A few minutes of uncomfortable silence passed, and then a few more minutes. Dawn could feel the perspiration itch at her brows and temples, and threaten to throw off her concentration, as their numbers depleted. Finally, Echo gave the all-clear, that the perimeter security were neutralized. Steels's arm returned to him, and the team moved up to the side entrance that had been opened up. They made it to the courtyard, before they were ambushed by the entire remaining force of the heavily-armored shadow police... and they happened to bring with them a particularly special toy - a MAW. "Take out the snipers! Everyone else concentrate fire on that MAW," screamed Hall. With Steels's inhuman reflexes, and Fury's dead-eye, the snipers weren't to last long. Hall was shot in the thigh by a burst of MAW cannon fire, but was virtually unfazed save for the pain. "FALL BACK," he shouted, as the the agony fire through his body and blinded him. Vega saw he was in pain, and rushed over to help him back into the anteroom as the others heaved the heavy alloy doors into place. The deafening death rattle of the MAW firing another volley of thick rounds into the metal frame and facade was akin to that of a monolithic carnivore bellowing in hunger and blood-thirst at the thought of its next meal. Virtually all eyes in the room turned to Dawn, the tactician. "Got any ideas, Lieutenant," inquired Hall. "We can't sit here with our thumbs up our assholes all day, with all due respect, ma'am," Dante added ever so eloquently. Dawn rolled her eyes. About ten minutes later, after much deliberation and robust debate - and a few insults here and there - the team came to an agreement. The enemy was greeted with grenades, deployed so as to fall behind the MAW at its most sensitive components. Others were times to explode near or around the infantry positioned on the upper levels. All were to either relocate or face death. The MAW whirred and began making an awful siren sound, like that of a nuke drill or a weather emergency. While all the enemy combatants and Unit-Seven were to cover their ears and recoil in dismay, Steels and Fury were virtually unaffected. Fury reacted with a burst of energy, scrambling up the side column like an animal and landing on the upper level with a snap-kick to the nearest hostile. He blasted another one in the face with his magnum and shot another one in the stomach across the courtyard. As this was occurring, Steels displayed a machine gun from his robotic left arm and an HK416 in the other, and used them both on the third floor enemies. The dual steams of armor-piercing automatic weapon fire tore through their poorly-chosen cover, and ripped them apart. Their victory was short lived, as the MAW had begun firing on the team again. It missed Steels, and was gunning for the other three team-mates. The former took this opportunity to lay into the back paneling. He had just about withered it down, when it then turned its sights on him. Steels had nowhere to run, and nothing to use against a full-frontal MAW assault - the thirty-foot tall scout variant more than enough to lay waste to perhaps an entire platoon of foot soldiers. Steels was surely doomed. But, this was not to be. Dante had gotten out his marksman rifle, and began slinging anti-tank rounds into the soft underbelly wiring of the war machine. By the time it had turned around, and made a step forward, its undercarriage fell out. This was followed by the machine tipping over, and then exploding into an orange cloud of twisted machinery and burning electronics. Dante and Steels exchanged a glance, and the former simply shrugged. "Everyone alright," inquired Dawn. The others were too busy climbing to their feet to answer, and Dawn replied, "good, now let's get moving. We've still got a life to save." They made it through another few corridors, encountering little resistance, before Echo realized something was very wrong. "What?" "I-I'm sensing... signatures... but not 'life-signs'. Closing in on us. Fast." They made their way, more quickly this time, through the compound and out to the landing strip. Rows upon rows of armored vehicles, air craft and artillery emplacements fit for a small country. Still more of the wide-open stretch was populated by tents and small buildings. That's when Dawn, and the others, noticed them. "That... " A horde of necrotic flesh-ridden husks jerked and contorted their way out of the snow-fall. "Sucks." Ian awoke strapped to a table. He couldn't move his arms or legs, as he was fastened tightly by his ankles and wrists. A large metal ring was fastened to his head, thus disabling him from being able to look around save with his eyes alone. Ian could make out a few figures in lab coats by a window, and others on the other side at monitors in either suits of armor or more lab uniforms. "Oh, looks like he's awake," spoke an unsettlingly familiar voice from behind him. "Ian? Are you there? Can you hear me," Mr. President inquired. Ian replied, "eat shit and die." "Oh! Wonderful! It is imperative you are awake for the remainder of this procedure. Do you understand what is happening right now? You probably don't, don't answer that." As he was rambling on, he came around the table into Ian's perception, holding what appeared to be a syringe used for deep muscle injection. "Anyway, this is what we - thanks to the late Dr. Baltes - have discovered to be 'ultra-melatonin,'" he explained. But Ian already knew what it was before Mr. President described it. It was the major plot-point of his short story, 'Hideous,' and involved an attempt to cure sleep paralysis gone wrong. It had unleashed monstrosity itself. "But we, here, at Analog Associates and with the COSECTOR, have managed to invent what could quite likely be a super-soldier serum." "But you would also be unleashing paramount madness. If that thing gets out..." "Oh, no-no-no. We have it all under control and secure lock-" "You don't have anything under control," Ian spat with a growl. "You don't know what that's capable of what you're going to unleash, or let out! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW INSIGNIFICANT YOU ARE. YOU, WEAKLING! YOU, WORTHLESS, INFANTILE, LITTLE-!" Ian ceased as soon as the rifle-butt met his jaw. For a few minutes, Ian just lay there, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Finally, the President said, "have you heard of the Black Thirteen?" Ian had not. He may have read about it in passing on the internet, but he didn't really know. "It's a bio-weapon," he said. "A failed attempt at what this succeeded to be," he added, pointing to the syringe. "So far, its rejected everyone we've given it to. Made them permanently insane, or comatose, like a vegetable." He walked up to Ian, and displayed the needle. "But you... you're... something else. From somewhere else." For a moment longer, Ian and the President simply stared at one another, each filled with hatred. The President then turned his gaze to someone or something beside him. This is when Ian realized he could hear grunting. He smiled, and then turned back to Ian. In his other hand he grabbed a mirror. "Since its too much of a hastle to unfasten your head-gear, I'll let you see him this way." The President held up the mirror and turned it in the direction of whatever was next to him. It was... alive. It was something that shouldn't be alive. There, lying on the table, was a corpse... that was breathing. "With the Black-Thirteen, we were able to reanimate hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers. The only thing was, they weren't exactly... 'human,' anymore." He turned to Ian. "That's where you and this come from. If we can dig up whatever is in that godlike subconsciousness of yours, I am sure we can create something truly incredible." Then, just as Ian could've sworn he saw the spectre of the Storm Tree looming just outside of his field of view, The President plunged the needle into Ian's arm. Ian, just like last time, felt his consciousness sucked into a megalithic geometric rectangular spiral. He tumbled down through reality-fracturing hyper-space as nothing more than a beam of conscious energy.

Unit-Seven realized this was going to be a tough battle when they realized the undead were nearly unstoppable and bullets barely fazed them. Rick fired at the propane tanks, which got a majority of the first wave. But more kept coming. Dawn realized they were going to run out of ammo soon, and the second wave was even larger than the last. Dawn began to get scared around the time the gun-ship showed up, and that was also around the time she began to realize that these husks were the bio-weapon the soldier had been talking about. Their situation was beginning to look bleak.

Ian arrived in a place that was pitch black, wet, and sticky. He had his clothing on from when he was back in North Africa, a pair of shoes, shorts, shirt. Considering the fact that he couldn't see a goddamn thing, Ian reflexively reached into his pocket and got out a lighter. He flicked the flint once, got nothing. And the second try, he got it, and immediately screamed. What he saw were creatures that defied reality, scuttling about with sunken white pin-pricks for eyes and a wicken grin of needle-sharp teeth and claws. Ian screamed and ran down the corridor as the beasts ripped and grabbed at him, eventually he was torn apart into oblivion, and returned to his state of being a light-form, zipping through the corridor, illuminating it with blinding light. The corridor exploded, and Ian awoke in a house of twisted geometries. He recognized it as the house from Hideous. Ian slowly stood and looked around. It appeared deserted. Then he heard it. Boom! That guy. Boom! It was coming up the stairs, leading to the basement. Boom! Then there was a deafening slam. Ian froze in the living room. He looked over to see the horror staring at him from the basement. The Spider God. It opened its mandibles and wailed. Without hesitation, Ian ran across the living room as the hulking monstrosity scuttled out of the door and swung at him - narrowly missing. Ian scurried up the stairs, and as he reached the landing, the beast caught him by the foot. Ian screamed and kicked furiously at its face with a strength he didn't know he had. The beast eventually relinquished its grip and Ian scrambled up the second flight of stairs. He saw a piece of broken wood he could use as a weapon, and quickly grabbed it. But, when he turned, it was gone. Then Ian noticed the upper-floor hallway bathed in the blood-red light of the Reptilian gunship. "No," he accidentally uttered aloud. He was in the farmhouse from 'Zone', and it happened to be right as the entities were about to blow it up. Ian knew what he had to do. As the temperature began to increase rapidly, Ian took off running down the hallway, sprinting. He ran as fast as he could. As hard as he could. He sprained his ankle, yet kept running. The paint was beginning to run off the walls and ceiling, and the windows were beginning to rattle. Ian, without losing momentum, dove through - arms first - the window at the end of the hall just as the house exploded. His entire vision was obscured by the blinding red glow, and when it subsided, Ian was looking something in the eye that should never exist. It was an extraterrestrial, with a large oblong head and jet-black eyes that practically wrapped around its skull. Its mouth and nostrils were almost nonexistent, and the rest of its physique was utterly insignificant compared to its head. It hovered almost 2 feet in the air, and was eye-level with Ian. It was almost beautiful, it weren't for being so frightening, and seemed to radiate some form of light that he didn't so much 'see' as he did 'feel'. Then, without warning, the being reached out and grabbed Ian's head. Despite his struggling and panicking, the being was impossibly strong and its grip implausibly firm despite how frail it looked. It then pulled his forehead up to its own. This is when Ian felt a third eyelid upon his own forehead, and a third... eye... erupt into existence in his skull. Ian then felt an incredible energy within him, and he then slipped into a dark place again. It was his crib, as an infant. But, he was an adult. He looked into his crib to see his infant self laughing and giggling, and looking at something he couldn't see. He turned, and saw the Hag. "You were so adorable, if only I would have eaten you when I had the chance," she growled. Behind her, stood the Storm Tree. With a tenderness and almost grace, the many-limbed monster hovered over to the crib, reached over, and began to insert its limbs into the infant's nostrils and ears. "Okay, that's enough!" This was the test. This was it. Ian had passed. As the Storm Tree withdrew and turned toward him, it was almost as if what the Tree was trying to put inside of him Ian had converted into some sort of 'fuel'. Because he then completely absorbed the Tree. For he and it were one and the same, and without him, there could be no Tree. Ian realized he saw misshapen shadow 'creatures' surrounding the Hag. They weren't humanoid, some were hunched over like grasshoppers or frogs. Others had long necks and fingers. "That's enough alright," replied the Hag. She then turned to her shadowy lieutenants. "Take his mind." Ian smiled as the horrors moved in. "That's right. Take it!" Ian opened his third eye. The beasts were swallowed by the abyss of Ian's pain and torment, weaponized in a way that only an enlightened monk or shaman could understand. The Hag screamed as a vortex was opened, and the silhouette of the alien entity he'd seen earlier materialized behind her. Ian saw the walls, floor and ceiling melting away and the farmhouse reassembling behind it. Ian felt his consciousness return to its light-form state and subsequently experienced the plots of 'Zone,' 'Hideous,' 'Subterranea,' and 'Solitary,' but backwards and sped up so fast it would have been impossible to comprehend in any other state of existence.

It was starting to look like Hall wouldn't make it. The wound in his leg was infected, and now he'd just been shot up by the gunship. Echo, Fury and Steels concentrated on keeping the husks at bay, while Dawn alternated between firing at the gunship, trying to radio for help, and tending to Hall. "It was all a trap," she'd scream. "A trap, a trap, a trap, a god-damned trap!" But it was starting to look futile. She only hoped Ian was still alive. If only...

Ian awoke at a dinner table sitting with his abusive Birth Father. Ian began to hyperventilate when he remembered that some of his most traumatic memories were not of the Storm Tree eating and killing his mother... "What's the matter, Ian," his Dad inquired menacingly. "You don't like what I fixed you?" When Ian looked down, he expected to see one of the food items from his childhood that he'd always been afraid to eat. Whether it be macaroni, something with onions, spaghetti... but no. It was all of the above... and more. In it was a swirling vortex of tree-limbs cakes in flesh, swirling throughout traumatic memories involving people being contorted and tortured alive. Right as Ian felt his conciousness itself being pulled from his very body, contorting it along with it, he forced himself to look away. But all he saw as he forced himself up was that of his Dad's face contorting into a horrific visage of exaggerated features and erszats geometries. "EAT YOUR FUCKING FOOD IF YOU WANNA LEAVE!" His Dad took the back of his head and shoved it into the hell-hole. Ian felt his mind, body and DNA pulled and contorted into a thin stream, like a noodle, as he himself was eaten by the food. He was thereafter contorted into something of a maggot, or leech, forced to suck himself out of the writhing flesh-tree hell-torture-memories. But, after ignoring this awful vision, or dream, or whatever it was that was being induced upon him, he was able to... ***	Ian awoke with a lunge, hurtling off the gurney and delivering an airborne punch to the President. Before the guards could react, they were torn limb from limb by an invisible force. Blood and gore were slung across the once-white laboratory. And then the restraints on the opposing table were released, and the now-convulsing undead creature rose from the metal slab and began to disembowl the remaining doctors and guards. The President, wheezing and bleeding from his mouth, was then lifted by his throat by this same invisible force. An arm, with razor-blades for hands, and a black-and-white sleeve, began to form. Hat Man fully appeared seconds later, in broad daylight. For the first time, Ian saw more than simply an empty void containing a toothy mouth and pale white eyes. His face was adorned with bloody lacerations, and in place of a nose was a bony pit where his nose should be. He wore a black-and-white trench coat, and the rest of his wardrobe was similarly black-and-white. Hat Man smiled, and placed one of his nails upon the President's head. "So, soft... and fleshy," he snarled. "I think I may let you live, death is too merciful a delivery from the torment you will face at the hands of your fellow humans." As he was saying this, Ian saw something behind the Hat Man that made his blood run cold. The Hag. "L-look out!" Hat Man turned. The Hag lunged, her claws outstretched and greeting his own. The two entities flung each other across the room at speeds too quick for the naked eye. Electrical equipment surged and popped. Pieces of debris flew every which way. That's when Ian heard the familiar hum behind him that reminded him of what he had to do. He saw the dull red back-up generator glowing in the darkness. And in this glow, he saw the switch to pull, to turn the suit on. He threw the switch. The suit lit up. Game time. Hall was now unconscious. Rick took as many of them out with his rifle as he could, while Steels backed him up with an electric weapon designed to target electrical signals - such as the theoretical nanobot hives that had taken up residence in the former-living. Dawn could do nothing. She was out of ammo, and now was starting to hurt over the thought of Hall's death becoming an ever-more present reality. "This world is mine," screamed the Hag, slamming the Hat Man repeatedly into the control paneling. "I won't let you have it!" "I don't want it," the Hat Man wheezed, holding his arm up to block her. "I just don't want you to have it." She screamed again, and threw the Hat Man across the room. But, this time he stopped, in mid-air. An electrical current began to emanate throughout the room, and the two entities were beginning to lift into the air. They turned and saw the suit. And in it, Ian was smiling. The Hag turned back to the Hat Man, who was also smiling. She looked down. Her hands were turning into smoke. Hat Man was also turning into ether. She screamed as the smoke was illuminated with a cross between blue flame and white-hot electricity. It became something entirely new. The unconsciousness... had become energy. Pure energy. Then, with a flash, the suit swallowed them whole. And the hum was louder than ever before. 