WARNING: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence, body horror, and gore.
SIX: Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors
(START: 6 hours 56 minutes 13 seconds)
Traveling in the dark brought a new appreciation to the doldrums of Monarch's twisting floor plans. Madison abandoned a light tread in favor of running, ducking, and hiding. Most of the people under the thrall of the titan were in no rush to catch her, spawning out of nowhere in the darkness just to watch her. The rest remained suspended by the threadbare webbing growing out of the ceiling. Their faces were obscured, swimming in iridescent colors. It scared her, made her wonder just how much the titan was seeing through their eyes–if they were seeing anything at all. Did it want her to find her dad because it didn't know where to look?
Without meaning to, she recalled the way to the infirmary all backward. In the dark of the halls, what little she could see of them bore no markers that weren't covered in the mass, or matched the illuminated memory of the path. Was this the right direction? Madison kept going regardless, hoping she didn't just walk right by her dad.
Occasionally, she called for him. Sometimes he answered, sometimes he didn't. Reaching the outpost cafeteria didn't instill in her the bravery or confidence she'd once felt in Boston. In the narrow boundary of the flashlight, the biomass emerging from the water seemed less a human amalgamation and more like algae on rocks. In the corner of her eye, she saw a body slumped in the chair, unmoving. "Dad?" Her voice echoed in the silence, stirring the water.
"Still h-here." The voice coming through the walkie and somewhere across made her jump.
Panning the light past the man, Madison spotted the counter in the far-right corner of the room. Taking a risk, she walked through the water toward the counter. Dianoia's roar seemed to come from the pipes, rattling the walls. Hauling herself over the top, Madison dropped onto the other side, falling backward from the momentum. Mark lay at an awkward angle, his back against the base of the counter. She shone the light on his face, eliciting a flinch.
"Madison." He dropped the walkie in the water. Madison ignored the fact that his eyes reflected light before closing. She pulled him upright and into a hug, throwing his already precarious balance further off.
Mark held her fast to his chest. Some long-forgotten breath let loose with a sob as her hands gripped the back of his shirt. He half believed she was a delusion.
"How'd you get here? I thought you were in the infirmary?" Madison pulled away.
Mark dodged the light shining directly in his face. "I was?"
"Yeah, you–" Moving the light further down, Madison caught sight of what was keeping her father pinned. The biomass had grown around his legs, creeping up toward his waist. Mark followed her line of sight, paling visibly. "Huh," it was about all he could say. "I guess nothin' fell on me."
"We have to get this stuff off of you," Madison grabbed at the mass without hesitation, casting aside all thoughts of what it used to be. It stretched in her grasp, refusing to break apart. Mark watched her with a detached gaze. In the shadow of the light focused on his legs, Madison saw him mouth something. "What?" She let it go, it snapped back into black into place. Mark swallowed roughly, closing his eyes against a clear pain. "Fire," He seemed to struggle to say.
"How do you know?" Madison asked.
"Most animals don't like fire," Mark said.
Madison considered the information. Reaching behind her, she pulled the backpack forward, hefting it onto his lap.
"What's all this?" he asked.
"Some stuff I borrowed when I snuck in here." Madison was evasive.
"Of course, no one knows you're here," Mark sighed.
"Andrew knows," Madison admitted.
"Andrew? He let you come down here?!"
"Andrew didn't let me do anything. It's not like he could come here."
Mark nodded, rubbing the heel of his hand against his forehead. Madison huffed. "I was the only one who could fit in the vents with the backpack, and that thing was keeping everyone away from the outpost. I had to come!"
"You really didn't." His response was entirely too calm for Madison's liking.
Her nerves flared, anger boiling over quicker than she could manage it. "I'm not losing another parent, okay?!" she cried. Mark quieted, frustrated, but shamefaced. Madison yanked what she was looking for out of the bag. Mark recognized the zippo's smooth silver shape. "Emma's lighter. That's supposed to be upstairs in my office," he said. "I couldn't find it."
Madison thought to ask why her father had her mother's lighter. "I kinda borrowed it when you weren't looking." Madison flipped the cap back and began turning the striker. "Mom left most of our stuff in Boston before we went to Yunnan. Castle Bravo and the temp house are kind've all that's left of her, but there was nothing here. So–" She shrugged. "–I took it."
"I thought I lost it," he said.
"Would've brought it back. Honest," The tiny flame ignited, flickering. Madison lowered the flame toward the biomass. The fire clung to the red flesh, settling in one place. Mark watched with some trepidation as his daughter moved the lighter about around the substance around his leg. The wait seemed an eternity before it began to split and pop from the feet up.
They grabbed at the biomass as it shriveled away, Mark pulling left, Madison pulling right. The telltale sensation of pins and needles prickled through his legs. Letting the mass go, he aided his limited mobility with his hands, pulling his legs up to his chest. "Can you stand?"
"Barely," Mark said.
Madison stared, then looked down. He was missing the boot that was covering his injured foot. It was hard not to notice the inflamed skin around his ankle. "I'll help." Her father was taller than she was by a large margin, but her growth spurt had given her a minor leg up.
"Thanks," Mark huffed. "Give me a sec." Madison's pocket buzzed. Reaching into her damp hoodie, she checked the text message. "Ling pissed. Military wants to destroy outpost," she read aloud.
"What?" Mark almost tipped the backpack off of his lap. Madison caught it by the straps and looped them over her free arm absently.
"It's a text. Andrew says–"
"No, I know what the text said," Mark winced as the pins and needles persisted. "They'll kill everyone down here."
"Isn't everyone dead, anyway?"
"No, they're just under their control," Mark clarified. "But if they try to kill Dianoia, everyone will die."
"How do you know that?"
"Remember what Ilene said. Everyone potentially becomes part of them, like a hive mind." Mark pulled his sleeve up to reveal his forearm. "See?" Madison swallowed dread. Running down his arm were the same red veiny splotches she saw on the man and woman, who fell from the silver webs to pursue her. Trying to imagine her father in a similar situation–her stomach twisted in on itself. Her eyes moved to meet his. The iridescent sheen she remembered obscuring the faces of the unconscious danced in his eyes. "Are you–am I talking to my dad?"
"Yeah," Mark said. "That's why I didn't want you down here."
"How do you know if you're not you?"
"If I stop talking to you, you'll know," Mark assured her. "I'm not sure it knows how to use human speech."
"Do you know how to cure it?"
"Dianoia," Mark said, "Is not a disease, Madison. There's no curing us."
Us? "What—what do you mean?" Madison stared. "How do we get rid of it?"
"We have to get to Ilene," Mark gripped the top of counter and tried to pull himself up.
"Dad, how do we get rid of the titan without killing all you guys?"
Mark stopped moving, lowering himself back against the counter. "I don't know."
"You don't know, or you're not gonna tell me?"
There were very few times her father allowed himself to be a person—whole and vulnerable—in front of her. Before San Francisco, the delineation of "Dad" and "Mark Russell, Dog Lover" was clear. (Even clearer was the fact that she'd never know "Mark the Dog Lover" like her mom did.)
After San Francisco, the frightened, drunken mess of a man became the only identity he could provide, one she resented even now. After Boston, the separation of "Alcoholic Scientist" and "Part Time Dad" was harder to tell apart because they aspired to be the same person. It made the part trained by her mother to mistrust everyone hyper-vigilant. Dad's lied to protect you. Sometimes, scientists got creative about communicating the truth.
It didn't take old resentments to figure out he was playing in the middle.
"Why do you need to find Ilene? She's like the rest of you, right?"
"I'm not sure. We got separated. Help me up." Madison looped her arms through the backpack, then reached for her father's hand. Bracing himself against the frame of the counter, Mark helped his daughter pull his weight out of the water. Madison moved closer, bracing herself against his side. "I think Dr. Chen's upstairs. That's where Ling talked to her last. We'll have to go back the way I came."
"Okay, we'll start there," he said. Madison started forward, light shining toward the end of the counter. In their path stood a man with red veins wrapped around his arm, moving up his neck. Madison and Mark screamed as he pulled her down and away. They scrambled backward into the corner, Mark's arms around his daughter. Madison fumbled for something to fight back with.
Two women appeared at the top of the counter, looking down at them with vacant eyes. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Mark trembled. The man moved closer, his intent clear. Madison stared him down, frightened and pissed. Dianoia's roar was distant, but not so distant that she couldn't feel her father's arms tightening around her like a vise. "Dad?"
He groaned in response. Madison dared to take her eyes off the man in front of her to regard her father. Mark's head tipped back against the shelf, his jaw shifting. Like he couldn't speak. "Dad," she hitched. The surrounding water shifted. Without warning, her father's long leg thrust out, knocking the man–now too close to them–over with a Charlie horse of a kick.
There was a snap. The man's leg bent the wrong way, followed by an inhuman gurgle. He fell, thrashing in the water. Madison could hardly focus on the relief, her the impression of her ribs against her skin and clothes distracting her. "Dad, stop!" Her voice was small, lacking. Mark's arms seemed hellbent on crushing her. Twisting her hands around his, she grabbed his right thumb and pushed back.
The further back it went, the tighter his grip got. Letting her head fall back on his chest, Madison ignored the horrible snap of bone.
"Ah!" Her father's terrified exhalation followed the immediate departure of his arms from her waist. Madison scrambled away from him, careful to keep her distance from the thrashing body behind her.
Mark's hand was against his chest in an instant, expression twisted in pain and anger.
"Dad?" she asked.
"What?" The word was sharper than she expected. "What?"
"Are you … you?"
He shut his eyes against the throb of his head and hand. "Yes, it's me."
"C'mon," Madison climbed to her feet, pulling at his uninjured arm. Madison kicked the fallen man in the stomach as she clambered over him. Her father stumbled after, pulling his collar free of the grunting and groaning women hanging over the counter.
Madison held fast to her father, pulling him through the water and pulsing ground. She didn't focus on the reanimating bodies sliding from the tables or rising from the water. She kept her eye on the spotlight shining down into the dark. Their only navigator.
Dianoia bellowed, and Madison was jerked back with by the abruptness of her father's legs giving out. Her feet sank into the mass. She pulled his hand blindly, trying to urge him forward. "Dad! Dad, we have to go," she ducked under his arm, throwing it across her shoulder. "Get up. Dad, get up."
Mark was on his knees, body convulsing. In the light of her flashlight, she could see the blood-red veins weaving through his shirt, up his arm. "Dad!"
"No, no, no, no, no," the words spilled from his mouth like a cry.
Madison reared up, grabbing him by the sleeves of his oversized jacket. "I'm not leaving you."
"I wouldn't–" Mark gagged, blood and bile dripping from his mouth. "Wouldn't dream of it, kiddo." Madison breathed against the tightness in her chest as Mark hobbled to his feet. The mass tore away from his arms, retreating into the water.
Glancing down, Madison recoiled at the silver of red skittering atop the surface of the water. Not allowing herself to think about it longer than a second, she pushed through the water, fingernails biting into her father's wrist.
"Talk to me, Dad," she said.
"What about?"
"Anything." Just don't be quiet. "Please?" Like she figured how most of these people were before they became pod-people. "Tell me about that lady you met in college."
"Marissa," Mark corrected. Behind them she could hear water sloughing against the hallway walls, the wheezing breaths of other pod-people. The same trembly breaths her father was taking. "Marissa," Madison repeated. "What was she like?" She counted out four steps before she got an answer.
"Chatty," Mark sighed. "Could keep you in one place talking about one thing for hours. Usually about her guide-dog, Spike." Madison's picture of Marissa altered considerably. A woman no taller than her mother, blonde, blue eyes, maybe brown, guided by a dog.
"How'd you guys meet?"
"Orientation … I think," Mark said. "Actually, I crossed paths with your mom then, but Spike got a little too interested in my lunch, and I, uh, fell over him. Marissa … she was so embarrassed."
"Did you apologize?"
"To her, or Spike?"
Madison pretended to consider the question. "Her, obviously."
"No, I apologized to Marsha. I fell on her after I fell over Spike."
"Who's Marsha?"
"Classmate."
"Was she nice?" She asked. Mark jerked again.
"Who, Marsha?" He shivered. "High maintenance, maybe. Nice when she wanted something, but usually not."
"I meant Marissa."
"Oh –ugh!" The shiver became more pronounced. Madison pressed herself closer to his side, ears straining to track the bodies behind them. "Kind more than nice," Mark said. "I miss her. Sometimes."
"You can call her after we get out of this," Madison huffed, balancing their weight.
"Sure. I'll make a date of it."
"I'm serious. No reason you can't–can't be friends again," said Madison.
"I can name a few," he laughed.
They moved in that stalling pattern down the hall. Urgency pressed hard against the back of her mind, contrasting the slough pace they moved. The cloying sensation of being followed, watched but not harmed, heckled her. Bodies she evaded lay idle in the water, or stood slumped against the wall–reconnected to the biomass overtaking the outpost. The monster–the titan–knew she couldn't hurt it, maybe even knew there was no one that could help her.
She was disturbed by the sight of Monarch personnel hanging from the ceiling, floating in the water. Their faces were obscured by the same spill that was on her father's face. These were people who walked past her not hours ago, lost in their work, trying to protect titans.
The water grew shallow as they approached the main hall. Every few steps, Madison felt the biomass shifting under their feet, making feeble grabs at their ankles. Every few steps Dianoia howled, and her father's body seized up, the weight of his 40 some years bearing down on her without consideration. The bodies that once pursued her stood at attention, eyes staring off into nothing. Madison kept her gaze trained on the cone of light moving across the water until she could see the steps.
Mark went slack against her. They stumbled sideways, trying not to fall over. Madison sighed at the ragged sound of her father's breathing. There were worse things to hear. Like, "Can I ask you a stupid question?"
"You can ask one stupid question."
"How come you're not like Andrew?"
"How's that?"
"Andrew… when he tried to go into the vents, he kinda got stuck and he freaked out."
"Ah," Mark shivered. "Circumstances. I was—I was on top of him when—when we got trapped."
"I didn't know that."
"I was pinned by something. I don't remember what, but it hurt to move. And he was… he thought I was gone because he couldn't wake me up."
Neither she nor her brother had been totally aware of their parents' jobs at Monarch. Only that they were helping protect the environment and endangered species. That day in San Francisco was her first experience with the titans. The first time she'd seen Godzilla in action.
Screaming was about all she could do at the time, and separated in the scramble to get to shelter, assumed the 'monsters' got Andrew and dad. Emma was resolute, reassuring that they were fine, that they got to another shelter. "Stay strong, Maddie. They're okay, we'll find them."
Madison tried to consider what being trapped might've felt like for her brother, for her father. For her, that three-day gap between losing then finding them, blurred and intermingled with nightmares of the burning city. So much of what she could recall now, she constructed in her mind. Andrew didn't talk about it, Dad drank it down, and her mother…
"How's your foot?" Her lips trembled, the chill of the brackish water finally hitting her.
"Can't feel a thing below my knee," Mark answered. "Thanks for asking."
"You stopped talking." Madison gripped the water-slick railing, steadying herself when she felt Mark lean too far against her. Mark copied her movement with his uninjured hand, his movements jerky, and uncertain. "You stopped asking questions," A weak rebuttal, not an incorrect one.
"I was busy carrying you," Madison grunted, course-correcting as he leaned just a little too much onto her.
"Busy trying not to fall over," a delirious bit of laughter followed. Madison stumbled, expression troubled. Fingers wrapping around the railing of the stairs, Mark tried to steady himself, foot shifting clumsily in the water. "Sorry."
"One sec," Madison slipped out from around her father's arm and climbed two steps. More than a few bodies still spun idly above them. She tried to ignore them, slipping her hand over her father's shoulder. "C'mon, I'll help." Mark's ankle momentarily forgotten, he stepped forward and flailed when his knee buckled. Madison grabbed the front of his shirt, hissing against the yank on the nail from the nail-bed.
Mark landed knee first on the first step, ribs taking hit on the edge of the railing. The string of sounds spit from his mouth was guttural, amalgamations of speech and noise. Madison climbed down one step, wrapping her arms around his waist, helping him off his numb leg.
Leaning against the railing of the stairs, Mark kept his head down, eyes closed. Between in the ache growing behind his eyes and down his back, he couldn't devote much beyond a feeble nod to his daughter's, "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" The frantic once over of his ribs felt like tingles crawling across his skin, hardly human.
"C'mon, we're almost there," Madison tugged his arm. Mark waved her off. "Dad–"
"Give us a sec, I'm –" Tired seemed too feeble a word to describe it. Behind his eyelids he saw the light of Madison's spelunking headset moving back and forth, a sentry broadcasting fear.
"Dad…"
"Hmm?"
It felt silly, horrible, even, to tell her to leave without him. He recalled the disappointment and resolution on her face when he tried to 'rescue' her in Antarctica. The sharpness of her communication, that he failed so totally as a father that she'd sooner throw her lot in with a bunch of terrorists.
Her mother was reduced to ashes on the explicit message that he was it. There would be no one to shift the responsibility of their children to. As willingly unprepared as he was to honor that, every bone in his body was also ready to give up.
"Take a rest, she'll be fine," His inner voice, since Boston, had taken on the quality of Emma. The flat, no-nonsense airiness of her voice he couldn't forget. Couldn't forget, because he still watched their family videos, still heard the anger in her voice in Mexico.
"She knows how to survive without you."
Bickering and blaming each other in Boston had been such a salve, routine enough to pretend that the city wasn't about to become another ground zero. Without it, there was just his anger and grief, neither gave him the piece of mind that doing either in her memory was right. He couldn't save face with the people wanted him to condemn her, resented the people who idolized her actions as justice. Couldn't reconcile that...
"We lived long enough without you."
Couldn't reconcile that he needed...
"Let her go, Mark."
Madison's hand was on his arm. He couldn't feel it beyond the impression. "What did you mean before?"
"Before what?"
"About the titan." He could feel her urge him up the stairs. On his one good leg, he hoisted himself out of the water and onto the third step. "About it not being a parasite?"
"It's a parasite, just not how I meant." They kept moving up the stairs, one step at a time. Madison strained to hear anything that wasn't their breathing, the drip of water across stone surfaces.
"It's an animal, Maddie. And it's scared, angry, and defensive."
And she got that. On a fundamental level, Madison knew Dianoia was only acting in its self-interest. It was protecting itself, maybe it's territory, from other animals it perceived as a threat. Yet the power it seemed to wield over everyone caught in its web suggested a kind of rationale that made it more than 'just an animal'. Made it more like them, maybe just as cruel. It could be reasoned with, argued with. She wanted that to be true. "But what did you mean by you couldn't cure it? That it wasn't a disease?"
"The worst part of it all, maybe, is that I can't blame it," Mark continued on like he didn't he hear her. "I can feel—we can feel everything that their feeling, and–" He stopped, fingers shaking as he tried to gesture at something, anything, that words failed. "I can't, I can't–"
Dianoia lowed, drawing Madison's attention away from her father's faltering. The light she'd spied earlier flickered between the cracks of the broken emergency lift. The surrounding water took on an eerie ripple effect as vibrations slipped across the surface.
"You have to want to let go."
"What? I don't understand," she said.
"That's fine," he opened his eyes. The brown was gone, vanished beneath the shimmer. "You don't have to understand everything."
Madison stared. At the tip of her tongue was a question. At the ends of her fingertips, action. Both propelling her against what she was looking into. "Dad?"
"What—what do you," His voice trembled. "What do you need to hear to keep moving?" There wasn't much to consider in the massive space that felt smaller than a speck on the map. The flashlight was dimming. Her father's eyes seemed less present than before. It was just them and the titan moving, and acting through others. Through her father.
Please don't leave us, leave me, like Mom thought she had to. "Are you … still you?" she asked.
"Still me," Mark said. "Let's get to Ilene."
Madison didn't move.
"Maddie?"
It was a strange thing to see the concern on her father's face play out against the shimmer of his eyes. Two performances in one body. Moving against her instinct, she ducked under his arm and helped him up the stairs.
"If the titan gets what it wants, does all of this stop?" She asked. "Does it let you guys go?"
"You know better than that," Mark, haggard as he was, had the self-possession to be angry.
"What other options do we have?"
"Our option was prevention. The moment things got out of hand here, anyone compromised would stay behind. You were supposed to stay away."
"That wasn't happening," Madison said, more to herself than anything. "Godzilla–"
"He's not coming."
"You don't know that."
The sound of steel splitting startled them into a duck. The stairs lurched violently as the Dianoia's bellow rattled the foundations. Mark and Madison stumbled up the shifting staircase, holding onto the railing as it dropped, the concrete holding it in place, cracking.
Madison felt her father's hand grip the back of her hoodie and yank her forward. Unconsciously, she followed the momentum, landing hard on the ground. Scrambling back to the stairs, Madison grabbed her father's jacket sleeves and tugged. "Get up! Dad, the stairs are gonna collapse. Move!" she cried.
Mark hauled himself across the stairs, not moving as fast as Madison would like. She wrapped her arms under his armpits, sneakers sliding across the wet concrete. Mark pushed up the last stairs, his weight unintentionally falling onto his daughter. Madison squirmed under him, pushing against his sides. Mark rolled onto his side, winded from the exertion. The titan's roar amplified, every ache in his body grew tenfold—muscles freezing when he tried to move.
Madison crawled over him, heart rabbiting in her chest as she listened to her father struggle to breathe as he seized on the ground. Heat roiled from his shoulders as his back arched and his jacket tore, giving way to a mass of red tendrils reaching out for her. Her voice failed her, her mind ran blank, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
"Run…" The word was strangled from his throat, "Run!"
None of the commands registered. She watched the silver tendrils descend from the ceiling onto her father, spreading across the writhing of his back. Madison pulled her hand away from his arm, scrambling across the water slick floor.
Focus! She had to focus. Find Ilene. Tearing her eyes away from the writhing form consuming her father, Madison tripped her away down the hall, sneakers squeaking, sliding. Crashing against the guardrail, Madison propelled herself across the floor toward the what she believed was the doorway to the offices.
Pushing away from the railing, she ran, heart in her throat. As the light focused on the corridor ahead of her, she was pulled to the ground. Her arms barely rose to take the impact of the crash. The light of her headset flashed violently, then blinked out. Swallowed by the dark, Madison reached for anything—anyone—to stop her slide back into the tendrils of the titan.
Of her father.
(END: 6 hours 14 minutes 54 seconds)
Author's Note: I feel like I could probably drink myself under the table with the number of times "Dad" is used in a sentence in this story. Which is to say, "I hate being aware of that" (lmao).