Newton Geiszler curled up on the sidewalk, surrounded by silence as all the local people were probably long gone. His mind felt blank except for the buzzing that remained from being taken over. The nauseated feeling in his gut rose and fell as he tried not to throw up. The only valid conclusion to what happened to him surfaced. The Precursors. Everything he dreamt that night happened. His brain, his precious brain, still connected to the hivemind, no longer only responded to his commands. The beings that created the kaiju in order to claim the Earth as their own sunk their claws in with his permission and refused to let go. Terror had never sickened or paralyzed him as it did in that moment.
There was too much to process, too many implications, too many consequences. Once all of it hit him, he simply shut down, curling in on himself in the dark silence. He didn't know the time or where he was, but it didn't matter. The world didn't exist to him. He stayed in that position for a while until he heard a pair of lone footsteps moving toward him. Like a stone hitting a window, his state of mind shattered, reality rushing back to him as he looked up.
An older man with tired eyes, greying brown hair, and a thin face walked down the sidewalk, seeming scared and nervous. He moved at a fast pace as he furtively glanced around as if something might jump out at him. When he stepped into the area lit by the streetlamp, he looked down at Newton, who stared back curiously. The man jumped back a foot before shoving a shaky hand into his pocket to pull out a blade that gleamed in the light.
Newton leapt to his feet, hands up in immediate surrender as he backed away. "Dude, I'm not looking for trouble."
"Ich kenn dich. Bleib weg von mir," he said in a frightened tone. I know you. You stay away from me.
"Ich weiß nicht was du meinst. Ich habe dich noch nie in meinem Leben gesehen," Newton said, switching to his native tongue. I don't know what you mean. I've never seen you before in my life.
The man swiped at him and Newton moved swiftly back, avoiding confrontation. Newton flinched, wondering if he could outrun the maniac.
"Verschwinde, Dämon. Komm nicht wieder, sonst werde ich die Polizei involvieren!" he shouted as he scrambled across the street, facing away from Newton. Go away, monster. Don't come back or I'll involve the police!
"Ich habe nichts getan!" he responded. I didn't even do anything! Then he hesitated. "Unless… did I?"
Newton's body felt heavy to carry with the weight of the truth on his mind. He staggered back into the wall and stared as the man ran out of sight. He sunk back onto the sidewalk, feeling the cold air encase him, and he wondered how he was going to get back home. Some time later, he didn't know how long, he heard a familiar ringtone.
The sound was the cry of Mutavore, the kaiju that last attacked Sydney, from a sound byte Tendo has graciously recorded and given to him. He used to love it, yet when he heard the horrid cry on loop, it caused a shiver to run up his spine. His hands fumbled, searching his pockets for the phone he didn't know he had on him. He discovered it in his jacket, the roar growing in volume out of the muffled confines of his zipped pocket. Newton only spared a passing glance at the photo of Hermann on the screen, his face barely visible through the spaces of his fingers as he'd tried to block the camera. He hesitated, but pressed the answer button and brought the phone to his ear.
"Hey!" Newton said in a poor attempt at normalcy.
"Where are you!?" Hermann shouted, sounding like he could've been there with him, screaming in his ear.
"I'm good, thanks for asking," Newton replied with a small smirk to himself.
"This isn't funny, Newton," he hissed. "You've been gone all night. It's almost four in the morning. You left no note, no phone calls."
"Dude, when did you become my mother?"
"I am not your mother!" he said, his voice rising ever higher in volume. "I am your colleague and friend. You have been exhibiting symptoms of an unexplained medical condition. I have a right to be concerned."
Newton frowned, plucking at his shoelaces with his free hand. "Sorry, Hermann."
"You should be," he chastised, but with much less venom. "What happened? Where did you go?"
"Uh," Newton said as he tried to think of a way to explain his behavior. "Well, I went out for a walk, you know, and I, uh, I guess I got lost." He punctuated the last sentence with a nervous laugh.
"Lost? Newton, how could you get lost?"
"Not paying attention to where I was going?"
Hermann sighed and Newton could just picture him pinching the bridge of his nose before looking at him disapprovingly. It was just like after he would find things left in places they didn't belong. Mugs, plates, kaiju innards. Newton wished it could be that simple again.
"Give me a moment, I'll find where you are?" Hermann said, exasperated.
"What? How?" Newton said, stunned until he pulled his phone away from his ear and stared at it. "Hermann, did you chip my phone?"
"Must we argue about this now?" Hermann's tinny voice said as the sound carried from a foot away.
"I'm not a child, Hermann!" Newton complained at the phone screen.
"You have the behavior and emotional maturity of one, Newton. Just be happy I did or else you'd be stranded," Hermann said. Newton could hear the sound of his fingers gliding over laptop keys in the background as he pressed the phone back to his ear.
"Fine, I admit it's useful this once, but I'm taking it out when I get home."
"Do what you wish. I just hope you don't get lost again."
Newton grumbled bitterly to himself as he could feel Hermann's smug aura through the phone. A moment of silence followed as Hermann waited for the tracker to locate him but the silence lasted longer than it should have. Newton could feel his anxiety levels rise again, his mind racing at where he could possibly be for Hermann to take so long to respond.
"…Herm?" Newton said with all the care of a man dropped into a lion enclosure.
"What are you doing in Lichtenberg?" Hermann asked calmly, confusion feathering the edges of his tone.
Shock ran through him like a lightning strike as he processed that information. Lichtenberg. It certainly wasn't a leisurely walk away from their apartment. Newton felt so surprised he almost started laughing but didn't for fear he might throw up from all of the other emotions roiling around inside of him.
"Uh, hah, funny story," he said, swallowing down the bile in his throat. "Maybe one for when you pick me up?"
He could sense Hermann's anger flare and Newton flinched as if he felt it strike.
"You know where you are. Call a cab for yourself," Hermann said shortly before hanging up.
Newton flipped his head back in a huff of sadness and frustration, forgetting there was a brick wall behind him before his head collided with it. He hissed in pain as a blinding light passed before his eyes. Tears formed and fell both from the intense throbbing and his overwhelming array of emotions so powerful all he wanted to do was lay down on the sidewalk and sleep. He reached up to wipe away the streaks before anyone could walk by and noticed that dirt and grease covered his palms.
His teeth sunk into his bottom lip to hold back a second round of tears as he cleaned off his hands on his jeans. He didn't want to know why in regards to the grime on his palms or why he sat on a sidewalk in the Lichtenberg district. He didn't care anymore; he just wanted it to stop. The cold of night settled into his bones and he shivered.
He knew he had no choice but to call a taxi, though the last place he wanted to be was at home. Newton looked up the closest service and called, forced to wait in the harsh chill until it arrived fifteen minutes later. He picked up his freezing, weak, and stressed body and carried it into the backseat of the taxi. When the man at the wheel asked for his destination, he considered it for a long moment before answering.
"The Berlin Shatterdome. Danke."
A mix of relief for the present and dread for the immediate future settled in Newton's gut as he stepped out of the taxi after paying the driver, clearing away the flurry that warred within him. He absorbed the sight of the Shatterdome, a temporary sanctuary from Hermann's wrath and his own ruin, before walking up to the elevator entrance. He patted down his jacket for his keys and ID card, feeling thankful that he never picked up the habit of cleaning out his pockets.
After scanning his credentials to open the door, he rode the elevator down to his research floor. The resounding silence of nighttime inactivity made him uneasy even though he knew other people in other parts of the dome were probably still hard at work. The massive size of the dome made it so that he was as likely to run into another person at night as one man in a seemingly abandoned city.
He walked off to his lab, footsteps echoing off the walls in a way that made him think of a protagonist in a horror film, unaware and all alone until the murderer tried to grab him. Thankfully, he reached the door without being murdered and unlocked it, being sure to close it behind him in order to bring less attention to his presence there. He paused for a moment, taking in the darkness around him before flicking on light switches by the door to awaken the blinding fluorescents.
He glanced around the room, taking note of the changes after not being around for a few days. It looked considerably neater, which was something he stored away to complain about later. The interns appeared to be furthering their personal projects based on the amount of shelf space occupied and a few pieces of new equipment in the room taken from other, unused areas. The third change he noticed was the additions on Hermann's chalkboard. Newton guessed it was part of the possible breakthrough he had spoken about the other day.
The lines of equations didn't mean much to him from only a quick scan but he felt drawn to them somehow in a way he never had been before. He unconsciously stepped forward, moving toward the nearest table, and thought to toss his keys on it just to hear something more substantial than the blood rushing in his ears. He grabbed a chair that sat a few inches away and dragged it out, letting the feet scrape along the floor, before plopping down in it.
His eyes remained affixed to the white chalk lines even as he sat and adjusted his position until he felt as comfortable as possible in the hard seat. Their meaning didn't register with him but he found himself tracing over each number, letter, and sign with delicate care over and over until he could have recited it. His mind slowly fogged over and he felt so transfixed to the board that he didn't even realize it. The sight of the chalk boards dimmed around the edges until it turned black but in his mind, he continued to trace the equations.
Newton hardly remembered slipping into unconsciousness, but a pair of hands shaking his body alerted his mind to the fact that it had stopped actively working in the middle of what he'd been doing last. Whatever that was. A groan rumbled in his chest as he pulled his face from the metal table, breaking the plaster of drool that had been holding him there. His neck made a sharp complaint as he straightened his body out in the chair. He craned it around, trying to work out the kinks when he spotted the unreadable face of one Hermann Gottlieb to his right.
He froze, his muscles tensing as he fought to not shy away from him. "…Hey, Herm," he said, attempting a smile that quickly faltered.
The features of Hermann's face shifted just enough that Newton could see his anger. "You don't come home all night, leaving me sleepless from worry, then I go to work to find you here?"
Newton rubbed his sleep blurred eyes mostly to avoid Hermann's stare, not wanting to talk. He listened as the click of Hermann's shoes and cane moved along the floor and around the table. Quiet settled over him once more for a long moment until a reverberating crash startled him so badly that he jumped up from the chair. Hermann stared at him with the heat of a forge as he removed his cane from the tabletop to lean on it once more.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" he asked, his tone dark.
Newton flinched, moving his eyes to stare at his feet. "I didn't want to go home."
"And you couldn't have informed me?"
"You were upset," he mumbled.
"Well, Newton, what am I now?" he shouted, slamming his hand down on the table. He blew air hard out of his nose like a riled bull. "Don't answer that. I don't have time for this."
Shame burned on Newton's cheeks and in his chest as Hermann turned his back on him.
"Go home, Newton. I have work to do. We'll discuss this when I get back."
Newton opened his mouth to answer but he hesitated. What could he say? Any words that tumbled out wouldn't be any better than a band-aid on a gaping wound so he closed his mouth, grabbed his keys, and left.
Guilt chased him all the way from the Shatterdome to the apartment he shared with Hermann, making him feel so heavy and ashamed that he almost didn't want to walk through the door because he didn't think he deserved the roof over his head. Despite all of that, he didn't regret not telling Hermann the truth. In his mind, it was better that he remained angry at him then have to be in a constant state of worry and fear.
Not only that, but a small part of him, a tiny sliver at the back of his mind, felt panic about how Hermann might react. The both of them followed the path of logic and rationale. To learn that your work partner, your friend, was connected to the enemy they'd been fighting for so many years. The choices to be made were few: experimentation or death. To explain the connection or destroy it completely.
He knew Hermann wouldn't kill him, but he wouldn't keep the information locked away either. He'd seek help and Newton knew for certain that those people would have made the choice about his life no matter what he personally wanted. The image of his body strapped to a table with drills inching toward his skull stuck in his mind. It left him in a cold sweat as he finally entered the apartment, closing the door behind him.
Once within, he didn't quite know what to do with his time and ended up wandering around aimlessly. He felt restless without anything to release his pent up energy, a tiger pacing a small cage that continued to shrink. The idea of escape sounded appealing to the part of him that feared his imagined fate, but staying put was his best course of action. The apartment provided a familiar, comfortable haven and he needed to wait for Hermann to return. If he wasn't home when he did, that outburst of anger at the Shatterdome wouldn't be the last.
He busied himself by playing video games in a poor attempt to keep his mind away from reality, but the truth nagged at him all the while. Eventually, he gave up, throwing the controller at the floor in frustration. It smacked against the floor, bouncing a few times but it didn't break. Newton threw himself back onto the couch, burying his face in his hands.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? he screamed inside his own head.
He didn't expect a response which made him feel even more hopeless, but when the itch at the back of his skull started, fear spread through him like a virus. In a flurry of fright and anxiety he started slamming his hands against the side of his head as if to beat the voices away.
"No! No, no, no, NO!" He fought back against it pushing with his own mind, striking the bone encasing his brain until it started to ache.
It kept the feeling at bay but it didn't disappear entirely. Without thinking, Newton stood and rushed to the bathroom where he turned on the cold water in the shower. He shoved his head underneath, gasping as the freezing cold stream engulfed him. The shock cleared his head, stole his breath, and stole the heat from his skin. He welcomed every moment as the water flattened his hair and streaked across the lenses of his glasses. He didn't know how long he kept his head under, but the creak of the front door opening broke his trance.
He pulled away from the water and turned it off, its freezing touch lingering on him as it dripped down onto his shirt from his hair and face. With his hand, he tried to wipe away the water as slow footsteps moved toward him but only succeeded in moving the droplets around and soaking his hand. He grew aware that the itching at the back of his head disappeared, but the ache his self-abuse caused had only worsened. Regret at the action bloomed along with the incessant pounding just as a form stepped into the doorway.
"Newton?" Hermann said, brows knitted and mouth formed into a puzzled frown.
"Hey, Herm," he said, sounding distracted as he searched the room for a towel. He opened the door to a small closet and pulled one out, using the soft, fluffy cloth to dry his face. His glasses remained streaked with water tracks but that didn't concern him much as he ran the towel over his hair.
"What happened?"
"I, uh, needed to clear my head!" he said with a bright smile.
Hermann's frown deepened but he didn't press the issue further. Instead, he brought up the one from earlier. "We need to talk."
Newton nodded, slinging the towel around his damp shoulders. "All right, man. Let's talk."
Hermann walked off and Newton followed him into their living area where they both sat down, Hermann in one of the chairs and Newton on the couch. They sat in silence for a few long moments as Hermann looked him over before he finally spoke.
"What were you doing in Lichtenberg last night?" he said calmly, leaning back in the chair.
Newton groaned and rubbed his face under his glasses. "Hermann, I—"
"I don't want excuses, I want an answer," he replied, cutting off Newton's words as swiftly as a sharpened blade.
"I… I don't have an answer for you," Newton said, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees so he could stare at the floor instead of Hermann's face.
"Why not?" he said, his voice growing colder.
At first, he felt conflicted and ashamed. His weak excuses planted seeds of guilt causing him to mull over the truth on his tongue. Just as it reached the tip, about to burst out of him, an unfamiliar rage gripped his heart and turned his words sour. "I don't know, Hermann!" he snapped, looking him in the eye with newfound confidence. "Why does it matter?"
"Because you were gone all night and you won't tell me what you were up to!" Hermann countered, trying to keep his voice down as not to draw complaints from the neighbors. "I was worried about you and you're lying to me."
Newton felt the anger grip tighter, feeding and nurturing the beast that resided there. It felt unlike any emotion he'd experienced before. He knew anger, he knew it well, he knew it in Hermann's presence, but he'd never known it so pure and hateful. He couldn't control it. "I'm a fucking adult. I can come and go as I damn well please," he hissed as he pulled the towel from his neck and threw it to the floor. He was compelled to stand, towering over Hermann. "I don't have to tell you anything. What are you to me?"
Hermann stood up to full height, standing a full head taller than Newton as he stared down at him. Newton could tell from his eyes that his anger had lost its sharp edge, replaced with confused concern, while his own rage kept building, forge billows keeping the flames hot and high. "What's gotten into you, Newton? I'm your friend."
"Well, you act like a clingy fucking boyfriend," he replied, poignantly stating the final word with clear disgust. "God knows I don't need that in my life."
Hermann sputtered slightly, any response he could have formulated lost on his dry tongue. Instead he gaped at Newton, a flush rising in his cheeks that could've been embarrassment, anger, or a mixture in equal parts. Despite the surprise of it, he quickly collected himself and stormed out of the room, not bothering to answer or look Newton in the eye. He paused at the doorway and spoke in a dead tone without turning back.
"All I've done is try to help you."
Newton watched him go, unaffected by the comment as the flame still roared within him, until he heard the door to Hermann's room slam shut hard enough to make the walls shake.
Once alone, the fire of rage extinguished so suddenly and wholly that a sickening dizziness swept over him. The world under his feet spun, making him feel unstable enough on his feet to fall backward onto the couch. He covered his eyes with a hand, trying to ride out the nausea and light-headed feelings without the spinning sights to make it worse. A few minutes later, the sickness passed and left him with a prominent emptiness, one so deep and dark that it ached as if someone or something reached inside him and ripped a piece away.
He gasped hard from the shock of it as every word he'd just said returned to him in a dream-like fog. Stunned and unsure of what to do, his body curled up. His hands covered his face at first but they slowly migrated upwards until he buried his nose where his elbows met, trying to construct a cocoon for himself in order to hide and keep away from the world. Every word, uttered in his voice, but he hadn't spoken them. They echoed around in his head, causing him to curl up tighter until he couldn't anymore, but still he couldn't hide from what happened.
"I'm so sorry, Hermann, so sorry," he whispered to the leather couch, to the dust in the air, but not to the person he wanted to hear it. "It wasn't me. I didn't mean it. Any of it. I…"
His chest shook hard with deep sobs that reached the aching emptiness within. I deserve this, he thought. I let this happen.