11:26 PM.
The lights buzzed overhead, fluorescent and soul-killing.
Jack poured another cup of coffee with hands that shook just enough to spill it. His headache was going to split his skull open. The newsroom smelled like ink and burned energy drinks. Reporters clacked away at their typewriters like their lives depended on it. Maybe they did.
Not his, though. His job was to keep their mugs full.
"Hey, kid. Refill."
Hank didn't even look up. Jack put on a smile.
"Right away, sir."
He poured, peeked. Hank was typing a story about graffiti, only it wasn't about paint anymore. Jack caught words like "dangerous ideology" and "containment breach."
Bit dramatic, Jack thought.
"Thanks, kid," Hank muttered. "You should head out. It's late."
Translation: Get lost.
"Will do. Just emptying the pot first."
He made a few more rounds, scooping up fragments of stories in his head as he did. Riots, disappearances, some crackpot cult claiming the moon was bleeding again. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He was nearly out the door when Elliot burst in, out of breath and holding something strange.
"Radio delivery," Elliot wheezed. "Broadcast goes live at 11:30. Paid good money to get these in on time."
"Who paid you?"
"Didn't ask. Guy in a trench coat. One of those voices you remember. Said everyone needed to hear this."
The radio in his hands crackled—then shrieked.
Jack staggered. A sound like a thousand screams playing in reverse hit him behind the eyes.
"Peace is war and war is peace and peace is war-"
"Armageddon is upon us."
"A permanent ceasefire has been declared."
The voices layered on top of each other until meaning broke. His knees buckled. He wanted to vomit joy. He wanted to tear his eyes out from grief.
Jack Halden was not religious. But in that moment, he believed something had spoken, and it was true.
He had to know more.
His mind was splitting as he kept thinking those thoughts over and over before something seemed to click and he became lucid again.
He looked over at Elliot and saw his eyes were glazed over. His mouth seemed to split in two as he screamed in both horror and enjoyment.
It was a sound that couldn't fully be described by humans and Elliots expression was one Jack hoped to never see again.
He heard screaming behind him as well and turned to look. Everyone had jumped up from their seats and were running around. Some seemed to be celebrating while others were running for the door.
Hank was screaming about the bomb shelter nearby, while another journalist was saying he couldn't wait to tell his wife the news. Everyone was constantly shifting expressions and emotions.
It was wrong, it was impossible. Those were not faces anyone could make. It was a paradox.
It was chaos. Nothing made sense. Jack needed to get out of here as soon as possible before he got trampled.
Unfortunately, Elliot stood in front of him, still seemingly paralyzed.
He pushed through Elliot to get out and after a moment grabbed the radio from Elliots hands and smashed it.
"Elliot was fine. He wasn't suffering any negative effects." Jack felt compelled to speak in such a stilted manner.
Elliot seemed to regain clarity, looking around confused after the voices stopped speaking. For some reason, everyone inside was still incoherent. Their eyes were still glazed over.
It wasn't just their building. People were streaming out of every building within sight, yelling both praise and penance.
"We need to leave. Now." Elliot shook Jack, now terrified out of his mind.
"You got this radio from the station, right?" Jack asked Elliot, surprisingly calm. He felt as if a switch had been flipped in his head. The second that went back to normal he'd be a blithering mess.
"Yes, but that doesn't matter. We need to run." Elliot insisted. "If we get to the shelter fast enough and lock it, we could avoid the chaos and stay safe."
"And then what? We leave everyone like this?" Jack retorted. "We need to get to the radio station and figure this out."
"Figure what out? I'm a delivery guy!" Elliot yelled in terror. "You make coffee! Neither of us are qualified. We need to leave it to the police."
"Those police?" Jack pointed out a cop that was currently leaned against a wall, practically comatose. "They can't do anything."
"So then where do we go? What do we do?" Elliot asked.
"We go to where this all started, the radio station." Jack told him hurriedly. "If we stop the broadcast, we may be able to stop the chaos. We can save them."
"It's as simple as that? We go in, come out, and save the world?" Elliot chuckled dryly.
"Simple as that." Jack reassured him.
They ran together past the chaos, ignoring the inhuman screams. They ran as quickly as they could until they reached the radio station. Jack and Elliot hid in a bush nearby, looking at the station. By the front were 2 men who seemed strangely alright. They stood at attention, acting as guards at the entrance. One held a pistol in his hand while the other just kept his head on a swivel.
"We need to find some way around." Jack whispered to Elliot. "I get the feeling those guys aren't just going to let us waltz right in."
Elliot didn't respond for a few seconds; he just watched the guards. As Jack looked closer he saw that Elliot's eyes were glazed.
"We need to find another entrance. We need to find another entrance." Elliot muttered to himself, almost as if in a trance. For a moment, it looked like Elliot was back in the same state the radio put him in, before it looked as if a switch had been flipped
"I think there's an entrance over there." Elliot pointed to the west side of the building, the one facing the side road.
"I don't think there's a door over there." Jack told him. Jack had walked down that road numerous times and he knew for a fact there was no door there.
"Just trust me. Follow my lead." Elliot whispered before standing up and walking out the bush. He led Jack around the side while remaining out of the guard's view. They made it to the west wall and found a door there, unlocked and in plain sight. Jack could have sworn that door wasn't there before.
"See? I told you there was a door." Elliot bragged while opening it. He walked in and Jack hurriedly followed after him.
They entered what appeared to be a storage room full of boxes containing vinyl's of various music genres. As the door closed behind them, it seemed to meld into the brick wall before disappearing entirely as if it'd never been there.
"What in the Sam hell was that?" Elliot asked, surprised. "Doors don't just disappear at random."
"How'd you even know there was a door there?" Jack questioned him. "There'd never been one before."
"I don't know, I just knew I had to get inside and that door was the best option." Elliot told him, equally confused.
"We'll consider the ramifications of that sentence later." Jack told him, feeling for the door he knew had been there, but finding nothing. "Right now we need to stop the broadcast."
"And how are we supposed to do that?" Elliot asked him. "Did you see those guys outside. They're probably not the only people keeping watch around here."
"So we need to sneak in. You're good at that." Jack noticed Elliot give him an affronted look. "Don't give me that. I know what you get up to in your spare time. Papers aren't the only thing you deliver."
"Well, uh, that's not important right now." Elliot quickly deflected. "We need to, uh, stop the broadcast."
"Good to see you're on board now." Jack clapped him on the back. "I'll check the hallway to see if anyone is out there."
He peeked out the storage room door and looked into the hallway. To his right about 50 feet away on the other side of the hallway were 2 men.
One of them was muttering something under his breath, glowing a light blue color that carried over to the doorway they were guarding. It appeared to be a shield or barrier, as things could be heard crashing into it.
The other man appeared to be speaking as well, though Jack was unsure as to what effect it was doing
He moved back into the room and slowly closed the door that he had opened a crack.
He turned to Elliot and shook his head.
"It looks like the entrance to the broadcast room is guarded. One of the guys seems to be creating a barrier out of nothing and the other guys is just talking to himself." Jack told him.
"What do you mean, creating a barrier out of nothing?!" Elliot asked him. "That's not possible!"
"Neither is making doors appear or a paradoxical broadcast causing mass hysteria." Jack responded. "We are so far past what's considered possible that I doubt anything will surprise me."
"That's, uh, that's true, I guess." Elliot told him. "So what do we do now?"
"What were you muttering when you got us into the station?" Jack asked. "Maybe that can help us get further in."
"I was thinking that we needed to get in no matter what. I was thinking the destination was vitally important." Elliot said. "And then I just knew how to get in. It was like magic."
"Okay, so try and do that again. Try and imagine us slipping in unnoticed while the guards are distracted." Jack told him before peeking through the door again, watching the guards.
He heard Elliot begin to speak, though he couldn't make out what was being said. For a few minutes nothing happened, and he heard Elliot curse a few times in frustration.
But then a light to the left on them in the hallway fell. It made a loud bang as the light shattered, landing on a particularly dusty section of carpeting. The carpet then caught on fire, distracting the guards.
The guard holding the barrier dropped it due to distraction, while the other guard yelled out in alarm before rushing over to the fire, as if intending to stop it.
As the guard did that, something was launched from the room they were guarding and hit the barrier guard in the head, knocking him out. The other guard turned around and saw his partner knocked out before continuing to run towards the fire.
"Quickly! We need to run!" Jack hissed at Elliot behind him. Elliot seemed to be phasing out of existence slightly, becoming almost transparent.
"This will all fade for Elliot. The feeling is only temporary." Jack said. It felt like words were leaving his mouth without him having any input.
Once Jack got his attention and grabbed his arm, he seemed to stabilize. They sprinted to the room as the guard had his back turned and ran in.
"The hell is this?" Elliot yelled once they reached the room. Things were flying around and the room seemed far larger than it should have been. In fact, it appeared to be larger than the entire station.
There was a group of people formed in a circle. The world around them seemed to be deteriorating, including the way they just came. Impossible voices sounded, and geometric shapes never before seen by humans littered the walls.
The people themselves were no better. They were constantly shifting forms.
One of them appeared to be rapidly going through the aging process, quickly aging from a child to an old man before reversing back and repeating the process.
Another grew horns that towered above everything yet seemed as small as a pin.
Jack's eyes burned from just looking at it. Elliot seemed to be doing far worse, his eyes bleeding from their sockets.
"Elliot! We need to stay focused!" Jack yelled, grabbing Elliot's arm. "We need to stop them."
"How?" Elliot's eyes stopped bleeding. "We can't even get close."
"We need to try!" Jack yelled over the noise. "We can't let the town become like this. Elliot, we need to get to the center."
Elliot's eyes widened in realization. He quickly began to mutter under his breath, closing his eyes.
A path seemed to slowly open up. A place where the ground didn't shift and things stopped flying.
"There!" Elliot opened his eyes and yelled. "A path!"