Chapter 4
“So then I realised I was inside an egg or some shit. But it didn’t seem weird, ya know? Seemed like I was supposed to be in there.”
Engineer listened, giving the occasional nod. After a long morning, the team were crowded around the kitchen table, waiting for Medic to come back from checking the respawn system. Soon as he’d finished treating him, the Doc had gone to find out why he’d respawned like this, rather than fully human. Heavy had of course gone with him; at his current size, a stray arm or misplaced coffee cup could mean a trip through respawn, if the system could even pick up something so tiny.
“But the next thing I know I’m breakin’ out an’ I’m surrounded by other birds, ‘cause I look down at myself and I am a freakin’ bird. In the dream I mean.” Scout continued, still on the ceiling. Attempts to get him down had failed, but he’d found out he could actually stand up and walk, no different from the floor. It was like gravity was reversed for him somehow, his dog tags pointing towards his feet instead of hanging down over his head.
“Hey! Put a sock in it, Mother Nature!” Scout yelled as Sniper yowled, rubbing his side painfully. He’d leaned his metal chair too close to the wooden crates Demo was sitting on, and the branch sprouting from the wood had jabbed him in the ribs. “I’m tellin’ a story here! So anyway, I was in this nest-!”
If he’d still had lungs, Engineer would have sighed. Instead, there was a slightly louder rushing noise from the thick plastic tubes curling around his neck, as they took used water away from his gills. He’d rigged up a backpack from parts of an old dispenser; water from a small storage tank was infused with oxygen and healing vapour, and delivered back to his nose and mouth via an adapted oxygen mask.
“And yeah, they were all WAY bigger than me. It was like my egg hatched too late or somethin’. But then I hear this WOOSH! And the other birds are all CAW CAW ‘cause their ma just came home with dinner!”
It’d taken him a good hour or two to put together, too. Any other day and he’d have had it done in half the time, but even the lingering adrenaline and constant attention of the Medigun couldn’t trick his new body into thinking it wasn’t drowning on dry land. That was how he’d woken up; trying to choke out a cry for help as his lungs shrank to nothing, tearing at his shirt as gill slits opened on his neck, his mouth filling with blood as shark-like teeth forced their way out.
“An’ then there’s all this pushin’ and shovin’ and I’m just gettin’ thrown around everywhere. Then one’a them finally kicks me outta the nest, and I try flappin’ my wings an’ shit but I just keep fallin’. An’ then my feathers kinda...fell out, and I see I’ve got fingers again...”
He looked up at Scout, who was flapping his arms and gesturing wildly, and then back at the small chalkboard in his lap. Normally it’d tell everyone what was for dinner, or host the occasional crude drawing by Scout, but until he got his lungs back it was his only method of communication. With little to say, he’d been using it to try and connect together what had happened. There was that huge thing at the center of Nucleus, and the terrible light he’d last seen streaming from the eyes of a newly-revived Redmond Mann. And this, he thought, looking at the delicate webbing between his right hand’s fingers as he continued to scribble in shorthand.
“An’ then I finally hit the ground, an’ my back’s broken or somethin’, cause I keep tryin’' ta move but I can’t...”
And then there were the dreams. It turned out they’d all had them. Soldier had been first, trying to explain his in a language that turned out to be an obscure Italian dialect. Spy had given up on translating as soon as he mentioned nazis and screaming trees, but then Demo had chipped in with his own equally vivid nightmare. He’d been back in Scotland, a child again, and playing by the shores of Loch Ness. And when he’d dared to stray near the water the sky had darkened, and a dead, rotting, but somehow still moving Loch Ness Monster had risen from the depths and swallowed him whole. All he remembered after that was falling into a spinning vortex, and seeing visions of his late adoptive parents before he woke up.
“An’ then the whole freakin’ dream world flips upside down, an’ I wake up on my freakin’ ceiling!”
Engineer didn’t think he’d ever forget his own nightmare. He’d been back at Nucleus again, but everything was stained with damp or corroded by rust, water dripping steadily from algae-covered rocks. The entire pit beneath the central point was flooded with murky water, and he’d arrived just in time to see Soldier struggling and shouting for help, before something pulled him under the surface. He’d dived in to save the man without a second thought, swimming past pipes crusted with barnacles, so deep he thought his lungs might burst. Dim light seeping through cracks in the metal lit his way. Seaweed swished lazily as he swam past. But as he searched for his missing team-mate the plants grew denser and denser, until they formed an impenetrable underwater forest. One of them wrapped around his leg, more of them wrapping around his neck and tightening like a noose as his struggles entangled him further. His air quickly running out, he’d bumped into something. He’d turned and looked at Soldier’s ghostly pale face, dead eyes staring straight through him, and realised he was surrounded. The whole team. Dead, drowned, their lifeless bodies wrapped in shrouds of seaweed and debris.
“What a touching leetle story.” Spy chuckled, knocking ash from his cigarette. “You always were like a small bird of some kind. Fluttering from place to place, making far too much noise...”
“An’ ah suppose YOO had a more interestin’ dream?” Demo asked, swinging his feet. Even with the long sleeves rolled up, his usual red shirt was far too large, looking more like a loose dress. “Ever’one’s told theirs ‘cept yoo, Pyro an’ Engie. And they cannae talk, so tell us yoors!”
“HUH-uh-HUH-uh!” Pyro clapped his hands excitedly.
“Zat is none of your business.” Spy took a long drag of his cigarette. Even though his suave demeanor had returned, he’d also resumed his chain smoking as soon as Medic left the room.
“Aw, come on Spy. Everyone else is tellin’ theirs.” Sniper grinned wickedly. “And besides. If ya don’t talk, I might see if these ‘green fingers’ o’mine work on, say, the seeds in something someone ate... ?”
“You wouldn’t dare.” A confident smirk crossed Spy’s face. There was a tense moment of silence as the two men stared each other down. Then Sniper suddenly jabbed a finger at Spy’s stomach, laughing as he quickly dodged, then glowered and folded his arms defensively. “Alright! Have it your way, you filthy convict.”
“Ahem.” Spy cleared his throat as he straightened up, the others looking on in anticipation. “In my dream I was sat at ze table wiz ze whole team, and we were sharing bread and wine. Ze Engineer mentioned zat someone was going to betray us. And when ze wine was passed to me, I realised ze team were all looking at me, for I had become ze BLU Spy!” He took a drag of his cigarette as he paused. “Naturally, I attempted to say something to explain myself. But too late; for I had been discovered, and I was incinerated by a blinding light!”
“LAAAAAME!” Scout gave a thumbs down, as did Pyro. “Man, that dream SUCKED! No wonder you’d make the crappiest freakin’ superhero outta all of us. Or supervillain, bein’ you. I mean look at me; who else walks on ceilings? Only freakin’ Spiderman! Hell, look at Snipes, he ain’t even a hot chick but he’s practically Poison Ivy!”
“Oh Chroist. Leave me outta this one.” Sniper tipped his hat and put his feet up on the table.
“Hey, come on man! Pfff, you’re no fun. Hey Pyro, what about you?”
It was then that the door finally opened. Everyone turned to look as Medic stepped inside, carefully shutting it behind him and walking over to an empty chair. He didn’t say a word; just walked over to an empty chair, sat down, and held his head in his hands. The tension in the air was almost tangible as he stayed there for a moment, a haunted look in his eyes, his face pale. Engineer could see the man’s lips tighten as he organised his thoughts, trying to deliver whatever no-doubt-bad news he had. Scout gulped audibly.
“I...am afraid it is as I suspected.” Medic reached into the pocket of his white coat to bring out Heavy, letting him sit on the desk, still stalling for time. “I checked ze respawn printouts. I checked ze printout from ze base-to-base teleporter logs. I even went outside, just to be sure...it seems ze transfer to Teufort vent ahead as scheduled.”
Loud coughing echoed around the room as Spy almost swallowed his own cigarette. Engineer felt his blood run cold. But the others just looked confused. “So...we ain’t at Nucleus any more?” Scout spoke up, nervously biting his thumbnail. “A-a-ain’t that a good thing?”
Spy’s fist slammed into the table. “NO, you juvenile delinquent! It ees NOT ‘a good thing’!” He coughed violently again as he stood up suddenly, his chair falling backwards with a loud bang, making Soldier suddenly grab his shovel and look around. Seeing no BLUs, he instead stared as the Frenchman strode towards Scout, looking his upside-down team-mate right in the eyes. “Do you have any idea how ze respawn system works, boy!?”
Scout shook his head ignorantly, causing Spy to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Ze respawn system uses teleport scans, you imbecile. When ze teleporter is used, it saves a copy of ze person who went through. Zeir clothes. Zeir memories. Everyzing.”
“So whut does tha’ mean?” Demo asked impatiently, his heels thumping against the crate as he swung his legs.
“It means we are STUCK like thees!” Spy kicked the fallen chair, clutching the sides of his head like it was going to explode. Pulling at his mask, he’d have torn his hair out if it wasn’t in the way. “It means I am stuck like thees! PUTIN DE MERDE!”
The door slammed as he stormed out, still swearing loudly in multiple languages. Engineer stared blankly at the chalkboard. If their old templates had been replaced with these, that meant a quick fix was out of the question. He’d held onto that vague hope that someone at RED, or the announcer or whoever would have noticed what happened. But then...something really didn’t add up. He hadn’t even thought about them being teleported, especially since the layout for living quarters was the same for every base from Badlands to Yukon...
“What’re we gonnae do now?” Demo broke the silence, brushing away a tear trickling from his functioning eye. “Ah cannae even stomach me scrumpeh like this...” Pyro patted him on the shoulder as he gave a childish sniffle, wiping his nose on his arm.
“I vill find a vay to undo zis, Heavy.” Medic sighed tiredly as he leaned forward. He couldn't disguise the tinge of sadness in his voice, as he looked at the tiny man who’d once been his giant guardian. “Even if it kills me.”
The cogs in Engineer’s head had already started to turn. He didn’t remember packing up his things...he didn’t remember unpacking his things either, but his room was the same as it always was. He didn’t even remember stepping onto the god-damned base-to-base teleporter!
“Wait...aw crap, we’re at that two-fort place again?” A look of realisation suddenly came over Scout, and he slammed his palm into his face. “Aw, CRAP! An’ if I go outside I’ll... I’ll rocket into space or somethin’! This BLOWS!”
The answer hit him suddenly. He pulled a rag from the pocket of his overalls. He looked at the equations on the chalkboard, then back to the rag. After a short hesitation, Engineer started frantically erasing his hard work. Dang it, they needed to know!
"Jag kan förstå vartenda ord som den där förbannade Spionen säger...Men jag kan fortfarande inte prata engelska... !?"
“You think wotever you just said is bad!? This entire bloody base is made of WOOD! I won’t be able to move, or see or-” Sniper stopped dead mid-sentence as Engineer slammed the chalkboard onto the table. There were only three words written on it. In clear capitals, each word underlined. CHECK THE TIME.
“Check the wot?” Sniper blinked, and glanced at his watch. “It’s about lunchtime, I’d say... ”
Engineer shook his head frantically, and pulled over one of the printouts Medic had brought with him. Finding the part he needed, he tapped it so insistently his finger almost tore a hole in the delicate paper, then went back to the chalkboard. His heart pounded as he erased and re-wrote; TELEPORT WAS YESTERDAY.
“Vas... ?” Medic looked over the sheets of numbers, rubbing his eyes, before he paused on something near the bottom of the page. “Mein Gott, he is right! Ze teleport took place yesterday evening, but none of us remember zis happening... ve haff more zan 24 hours unaccounted for.”
“Ve vere asleep for entire day?” Heavy seemed deep in thought as he rested his chin on his knuckles. “Surely, ees not possible?”
Medic set the paper down. “If zat vas true, it schtill does not explain how ve and all our belongings are here at Teufort.”
So they’d lost a day. 24 hours either spent sleeping, or somehow blanked from their memories as something within each of them changed in bizarre ways. It seemed that whenever he thought he was getting close to solving what happened at Nucleus, fate threw more obstacles in his way.
Engineer scratched his neck where the collar rubbed against it and picked up his chalkboard as he walked out, webbed feet slapping the hard floor. After all this, he’d be damned if a little old missing day was going to stop him figuring this one out. He just hoped he still had his grandpa’s notes stashed somewhere.
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“Ah’m fine. Really. Ye can leave.” Demo looked back at Pyro, who just tilted his head to one side. “Ah appreciate yer concern, but this i’nt the worst thing tae ever happen tae me. Not by a bloodeh long shot.”
Demo continued down the hallway, and though he could still hear Pyro’s odd knuckle-dragging gait behind him, he sighed and chose to ignore it. The wee firebug hadn’t stopped following him since the team meeting and his embarrassing breakdown. He didn’t need some bloodeh babysitter! He was still himself, still an adult on the inside, even if he did give in to some childish habits. He pulled his thumb out of his mouth as they entered Teufort’s courtyard.
“How’s the buildin’ goin’, Engie?” With those goggles and that face mask in the way he couldn’t really tell, but Demo was sure he smiled as he waved back to him. He’d never known a kinder man who still shared the same passion for blowing things up. “The ol’ hand givin’ ye any trouble?”
Engineer shook his head and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up with the Gunslinger, a tiny Combat Sentry beeping in front of him. There was a battle scheduled for tomorrow, and It looked like he had a plan, unlike the rest of the team. Heavy had been insistent on doing something to help out, even volunteering to sneak into BLU’s system of air vents and listening to their strategies. But Medic had said something about respawn and picking up small signals, and they’d argued until the Doc picked up Heavy and dropped him into a very deep pocket in his coat.
Demo carried on walking, past the door to their main respawn. It took some getting used to, everything being so much bigger. But he probably wouldn’t be doing any fighting anyway; he couldn’t swing his bottle of Scrumpy, his tiny wee hands fumbled the trigger switch on the Sticky Launcher, and he couldn’t even lift the Eyelander. So without him and Heavy, they were two men down. And it was unlikely that Spy was going to fight; last Demo had seen of him, he’d been stabbing his own pillow out of frustration.
The climb up to Sniper’s nest seemed to take twice as long since he was half his normal size, but after feeling his way through the leaves sprouting from otherwise dead wood he finally found the hatch at the top. Without Sniper around, the sprouts that emerged from the floorboards had withered and disappeared within minutes, and it seemed the same had happened with the wooden ladder.
“Oi! Sniper! Yoo in there, mate?” Sniper didn’t usually keep the hatch locked outside of battle, but no matter how much he pushed it refused to budge. “It’s me, damn ye! Open up!”
“Bloody roots gettin’ bloody everywhere...” Sniper’s footsteps made the boards above his head creak as he approached. There was the sound of furious chopping for a few seconds, and the hatch swung open, an outstretched hand grabbed Demo’s and helped him up. “Sorry ‘bout that. Y’brought Pyro as well?”
“Aye.” Demo rolled his single eye. “The big daftie won’t leave me alone.”
“Ahhh, e’s just worried is all. Come on then, Py - bloody hell, you weigh a ton now!”
Demo sat down on a crate, and looked around at the room. He remembered when they’d last been stationed here. At the end of the day, either good or bad, he’d usually end up in Sniper’s nest. He’d drink some scrumpy, maybe a beer if it’d been a particularly hot day, and talk about anything. Or just listen to some music on the radio. And maybe, if they were lucky, there’d be wonderful smells coming from the courtyard as Engie added the finishing touches to the ribs he was smoking for dinner.
But now, a shady canopy of leaves obscured the vaulted ceiling, and roots snaked their way across the floor. Between them, seeds that had drifted through the open window to land on the seldom-swept floor had bloomed into a carpet of flowers. They were of every colour imaginable, filling the air with sweet and subtle scents.
“Sort of...nice, isn’t it?” Sniper smiled awkwardly as Pyro poked at a cluster of red and orange flowers. Walking over, he sat on a cluster of roots, the flowers surrounding him growing taller in his presence. Touching a bud lightly with his fingertip, it swelled slowly and opened. “It’ll all be gone come tomorrow. S’almost a shame.”
“Yeah...s’..s’beautiful, mate...” Demo tried to hide his coughing, almost dropping the small silver flask he kept behind the crates. The scrumpy still smelled and tasted like cheap cider at the strength of whiskey, but it seemed he really had lost his taste for it.
“But...just look at us, eh? A roight sorry lot, we are.” Sniper leaned against the window frame, squinting as he looked over at the BLU base. The sun was starting to set on the strangest day any of them had ever had. “Half of us can’t even foight. And the rest? A mer-man, a monkey and a bloke made of elastic. Heh. Sounds loik the start of a bad joke.”
“Uh-huh...” Demo could feel his eyelid starting to get heavy. Maybe it was the scrumpy, or maybe it was the smell of the flowers, but one root-free spot on the floor was starting to look very comfortable.
“I just hope Truckie and the Doc know what they’re doin’. There’s got to be some way t’fix this. Wotever it is.”
“Mm...s’right...” It wasn’t just him, it was comfortable. And it smelled of heather and wet grass, like the fields where he’d lit his first fireworks as a lad. If he listened closely, he swore he could hear the buzzing of the midges and the slow, steady hiss of a lit fuse. At the edge of his semi-conscious mind, he felt a long arm wrap around him and carefully lift him off the ground.
“Yeah, go ahead an’ take ‘im back to ‘is room, Pyro...s’gonna take a bloody miracle to pull through tomorrow.”
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Radigan Conagher...what were you tryin’ to build...?
Engineer poured himself another cup of coffee, and jotted down some notes in his indecipherable shorthand. His grandfather’s legacy was spread out before him; everything he had ever dreamed up, designed or built was at his fingertips. He’d spent hours on these already, using specially angled mirrors to view the blueprints for the Frontier Justice, the Wrangler and the Gunslinger. And of course as per Mr. Mann’s instructions, he’d decoded the notes on the Life Extender Machine.
He retrieved a brown folder, stained with a coffee cup ring and slightly scorched by gunpowder. Despite its age, the words 'Maps Of Australium Caches' were still clearly visible. In his quest to extend Redmond Mann’s life, Radigan had managed to smelt an Australium alloy that released a vapour when exposed to electricity. A vapour that when collected and condensed, could breathe life into even the most ravaged body. But as the alloy decayed it lost its potency, and had to be replaced...which was what had happened to Mr. Mann’s machine. In desperation, RED’s scientists had rigged it to deliver what little was left of the concentrated Australium vapour, along with an electric shock to restart his heart.
He’d seen that glow in that insane man’s eyes, and again at Nucleus. He was sure they were connected, and he was sure that Radigan’s notes and diagrams would show how. Specifically, the ones he’d been unable to decode; no matter which way he looked at them, they didn’t seem to make sense. In fact, they didn’t even seem complete. He’d left them alone for all this time, thinking it was probably some pipe dream project Radigan had abandoned when Mr. Mann contacted him. But it was only now that he’d realised something unusual about the incomplete section: some of it wasn’t in his grandfather’s handwriting.
At first glance, the two sets of notes looked very similar. Both were written in a complex code, in the same colour ink and arranged in the same neat paragraphs. However, upon closer inspection, he’d found something was definitely amiss. The way they crossed their t’s, the way they wrote the number 4... if they’d been attempting to exactly copy his grandfather’s handwriting they’d done a pretty good job, but not quite good enough. But why? If someone else had found Radigan’s notes and attempted to add to them, why would they go through the trouble of mimicking his writing? That only left the possibility of a joint project, but Radigan Conagher was not a sociable man, and had been so protective of his inventions he’d had his blueprints buried with him.
Engineer stacked the piles of papers neatly to one side again, and leaned back in his chair to think. His chair creaked, joining the gentle rush of his aqua-respirator delivering fresh water to his gills, and the tick of his alarm clock to make an almost hypnotic rhythm. His mind cycled through the pieces of the puzzle again and again. It was all so incredibly frustrating. The incomplete notes... the light from the machine... the dreams... the missing day... the changes they’d all undergone... were they even connected at all? If each step he took brought him further away from the truth, was he even on the right path?
Reaching over, he plucked a nail from the wall in front of his desk with gloved, robotic fingers. Nostalgic feelings tugged at his heartstrings as he gently took the old family photo in his webbed hand. It was of him as a young man of 13, trying on the goggles that his grandfather had given to his father, and his father had given to him that very moment. Pa was laughing and smoking that ol’ cigar that never seemed to leave his mouth. “Jus’ you watch, he’ll grow into ‘em one day!”, he’d said, God rest his soul. As Engineer dried his eyes, he just hoped Pa couldn’t see him right now.