The elevator slowed, then came to a halt, hydraulics hissing. With another turn of the key, the doors slid open.
Sam let his arm slip away from Dean, and they stepped into a wide, high-ceilinged room. Something about it, about the heaviness of the air, the darkness in the corners, made it terribly apparent that they were deep under ground.
Computers lined the left and right walls, their screens dark, and actual file cabinets stretched across the back wall. The center of the floor was dominated by a large metal table encircled with aluminum folding chairs. Papers were scattered across its surface.
Sam took a quick glance at the papers, then sat himself at a computer and powered it up.
A blinking cursor appeared. LOGIN?
Sam entered his name and text scrolled past ending in C:/Users/SamWinchester/Dir. Sam read through the directory and noted the most recent changes on three security files: 'Operation Heaven's Gate', 'Operation Mermaid', and a cryptic audio recording with a string of random numbers in the title.
He stared with dread at the audio file, then his mind hovered between the other two. Arbitrarily, he chose 'Operation Mermaid.'
A video file appeared, a brief burst of static, and then it went to split screen. Night-vision cameras panned to show flat, grassy land littered with Army jeeps, and then in a disorienting spin the brothers could be seen facing each other.
Dean stood in the right half of the screen and Sam stood in the left, their faces ghostly, eyes glowing in the night vision. They wore headsets with cameras mounted at their temples. There was a narrow crack in the ground before them, and as Camera Sam looked to his right, Sam saw that the crack widened into a deep valley. Outlined by the pale moon, far away but approaching at an astounding speed, was an unbelievably huge, monstrous form, its tentacles writhing, its body blocking out the moon as it moved closer.
The video shook and a loud, otherwordly gurgling growl sounded through the speakers.
"Dean, you might want to watch this," Sam said. Footsteps, then he felt Dean's hand on his shoulder.
Camera Dean said, "Sammy, you ready?"
Through the speakers, Sam heard himself take a deep breath. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"I'll see you after this. If we get separated, we meet up at the cave, remember?" Dean said.
"Yeah. Don't make me wait too long," Camera Sam said, and Sam could hear the quiet fear in his voice.
Dean's camera panned down, showing a small table holding a bowl, the contents indistinguishable in the dark. He sliced open his palm so that blood dribbled into the bowl and then lit a match, the sudden brightness whiting out his half of the screen. Sam's voice came through the speakers then, strong and confident as he spoke words of power that tickled and throbbed in Sam's memory, resonated all through him. His voice became louder. He was staring at Camera Dean, and Dean was staring back, fierce resolution on his face.
The speakers crackled as Sam's voice deepened and seemed to double, a whisper dancing behind his normal voice. He spoke the incantation and the beast roared, and the cameras shook profoundly as the earth began to move.
Both cameras shuddered. Army jeeps teetered on the edge of the chasm and fell in. Geysers of lava shot up in the distance as Camera Dean glanced back and forth between Sam and the liquefying earth rising up before them in a mile-high wall of rock that stretched forever in either direction.
Camera Dean radioed in. "Denver is green light, how's Reno?"
Crackle. "Solid. You two got cover?"
"The caves aren't far."
Crackle. "We're getting some weird reports on your end, but tell Sam it's a go and then evacuate."
Camera Dean's brow knit at this vague piece of intel, but nodded and signed off, holding tight to his rifle as he looked to Sam. As he watched his baby brother slowly bring his upraised hands together, continental plates folding at his command with a horror sandwiched in between.
Lever-legged fish men rushed to stop them, but Dean raised his gun and punched holes in their heads while keeping his eye on Sam. An inhuman wail pierced the night, and Sam's side of the screen flipped ninety degrees, blades of grass bending in the wind.
"Sam!" Camera Dean shouted, hurrying over, "We gotta move, can you walk-"
Camera Dean looked up at a klaxon alarm, thinking perhaps the monster was lobbing comets again. Then the first mushroom cloud bloomed over downtown Denver, the jet wheeling round for another strike as smoke spread in a fast-expanding ring and then sucked all the debris back toward the center. Anyone inside would have been turned to human salsa.
Stricken, Camera Dean returned his attention to Sam. "Can you hear me?!"
"Yeah, I… Dean… "
In a confusing jumble of video images, Dean helped Sam to his feet. Sam's face came into focus, blood smeared under his nose and leaking from his ears.
"Sammy?"
Camera Sam wiped at a trickle of blood below his ear, his eyes dazed. "I can walk," he said, though he didn't sound so sure. "Did we do it?"
Dean's camera panned to the side, moving upward to survey the high, jagged peak of the new mountains Sam had formed, and Sam's camera followed, shaky.
"Yeah, we did it, Sammy. Let's go."
A Jeep came into view on both sides of the shuddering split screen, the ground surrounding it littered with the corpses of fish men, and then the feed shut off, leaving a blank window on the monitor.
In the file room, Sam huffed out a breath. "Jesus," he breathed. "We killed Cthulhu. We made… a mountain."