Isaac felt a sharp twinge in his back as he continued to hunch over his desk, eyes rapidly scanning over the deluge of information flowing across his monitors. He could feel the exhaustion of weeks of frantic activity clawing at his mind, desperately wanting him to succumb to the sweet ministrations of sleepiness, as the data blurred into an unintelligible mass of muddled text.

“No,” He thought, bringing some clarity to his fading mind, “If no one else can rest then I certainly can’t afford to either.” He brought a hand up to his face, banishing the lingering traces of fatigue and scrubbing at a surprising amount of facial hair. Isaac’s hand pushed further up, moving his rounded glasses, beginning to massage the tension across his temples and eyes. He chuffed to himself wondering as to what manner of horrid state he looked in before he began to refocus on the work ahead.

With his glasses settled again on the bridge of his nose, the dizzying wall of text snapped into focus. Countless reports stood before him, ranging from material logistic accounts and shipping manifests to external news reports and personnel transfer requests.

Most in Isaac’s position would have a bevy of assistants to lighten his workload but, in spite of his lush upbringing, he had no greater preference than to bear the weight of his place and succeed through his effort alone. This manner of thinking was certainly egotistical and highly destructive, but Isaac’s dogged stubbornness was not without its purpose.

A priority alert asserted itself at the forefront of his reports, minimizing his logs down to a singular strobing box of text —

“To Director Isaac Giovanni of Babylon’s Revival,

It is with a heavy heart I message you with the following information. At 02:45 this morning, talks to halt the hostilities between the Chinese and Americans in the Pacific have failed. Both sides have refused to undergo any further dialog and have been moving their forces to active ready stances. With the addition of increasing environmental catastrophes and global resource chains hemorrhaging under the weight of growing populations, the future looks to be a cataclysmic one. I know we both hoped that my fears would turn out untrue, that things would right themselves, but I’m afraid there are no further recourses available to me.

You have kept me aware of your company’s work; and I know with all certainty that since my confiding in you so few months ago you have likely been working feverishly to finish that project of yours. I pray it is close to its conclusion as both of us know that the coming conflicts may well spark a war that will scour much of our world. I am scared Isaac, but I hold out hope that that brilliant mind of yours and those that you have in your employ will manage to give more than just me the hope of a new tomorrow. Time is not on our side any longer my friend, if it ever was, and I am truly sorry I must burden you with such a horrible thing. Work quickly Isaac, you MUST succeed.

From, the only friend I know of you having, Lieutenant General Raymond Navarro, USAF.”

— The room fell away as Isaac read through the message repeatedly, a desperation and fear slithering through his core with each further scan.

“This was always the most likely outcome,” Isaac reminded himself, the magnitude of the situation dragging at his very existence like a merciless riptide, “all these hours spent at this desk in the near certainty the world would be turned on its head.” But now he was all too aware of how different the significance of a possibility was from true and undeniable fact.

The awareness Ray had given him of the situation had presented him with the impetus to work himself and his company at a pace many would consider ruinous. However, only now was Isaac realizing that such frenzied work had not been out of some sort of fealty to humanity or his friend, nor was it for the challenge of surmounting such a critical matter, or even in defiance of an end. It was all out of his fear…

Isaac closed his eyes, the message seemingly imprinted into the back of his eyelids, straightening to look towards the ceiling. “It’s always fear isn’t it,” Isaac uttered to none but himself, the empty expanse of his office providing to be no such responsive of an audience. He took a moment, inhaling as deeply as he could before releasing a long and shaky exhalation, his muscles popped and cracked with his efforts to loosen the immense tension suffusing his frame.

“No more time, not for introspection or my damned fears,” Isaac motioned towards his monitors, shutting them down, before making all haste out of his office. He pushed through the tall mahogany doors making the entrance to his office, taking a passing moment to relish in the coolness of their surface before pushing past into a lone hallway.

Either side of the hall sported gorgeous terrariums - the deep emerald greens, and dazzling arrays of rainbow hues of the foliage within - a stark contrast to the minimalistic concrete finishing of the corridor. The polished floor punctuated each of Isaac’s steps with a sharp click, their rapid tempo being the only sign of his agitation, in tune with his approach to the elevator situated at the hall’s end.

The dark wood paneled doors of the elevator opened, recognizing the director’s identification marker, on Isaac’s approach. His hands raced across the elevator’s control panel in seconds, the motion practiced from years of traversing to and from his office.

The elevator moved quickly and quietly to its destination, however with each passing moment Isaac’s anxiety rose; every beat of his heart - within the confines of the silent box - punctuated yet another step towards Armageddon. Isaac took another steadying breath, the elevator slowing as it approached its destination, before a gravelly voice uttered from the elevator’s speakers, “Arriving at floor 4: Department of Research & Development.”

Isaac barely waited for the doors to open before he was on the move again, stepping into the department’s foyer, he needed no time to orient himself towards the chief’s office.

Passing on quickened feet, Isaac’s surroundings flew past in a blur as his mind spun through thoughts of next steps, “An internal announcement would be ill-informed as it would do nothing, but spark panic, final testing and safety checks will have to be eschewed instead of expediency, distribution channels would have to be opened with sufficient availability and restrictions, an—”

Isaac’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt as he found himself standing in front of a recessed sliding door, the words Chief Project Manager: Nikos Paltridge, Ph.D., laser-etched into its composite metal panel.

“Sadly, the time for thought will be near non-existent from this point out,” Isaac closed his eyes; whispers of a past barely avoided scratched at an already battered psyche, the weight of the coming future creating faults in worn and battered safety mechanisms.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Opening his eyes Isaac set his shoulders, nailed a serious line to his lips and released a shaky breath, “tch, no better way to avoid catatonia than to run head-first towards cataclysm, huh?” before motioning at the door for entrance.

―――――――――

The door opened with a muted hiss, revealing an ordered and minimalistic rectangle, barren of even the most minor of personal effects. A bank of labeled filing cabinets lined the short wall to the right side of the room; a catalog perfect angled desk faced away from the bank, its white surface pristine, with monitors, keyboard, paper and writing utensils organized with an obvious care to detail.

However - as with every entry into Paltridge’s workspace - the remainder of the room presented the most complete introduction to the man’s full personality. The other two walls (entry not-withstanding) were covered in a floor-to-ceiling whiteboard inundated with erratic writings and diagrams encrypted in a chicken-scratch so thick as to appear as a distinct language all its own.

Much like his office, the progeniture of such modern hieroglyphics demonstrated a similarly dichotomous personal presentation.

Paltridge was crouched, just ahead, in the corner of his office, awkwardly contorted to continue writing upon the leading edge of the wall; surrounded by sheaves of paper near black in colour they were packed so tightly with script.

The man’s clothing, so clean as to appear as though it was taken straight from the manufacture floor; consisted of a deep maroon jumper, freshly pressed black dress pants, and brown oxfords shined to the point of iridescence. His physical appearance, however, ran in opposition to his choice in apparel.

Against skin so pale as to gleam under the light of the room, a tangled mess of dirty blonde hair sprouted with errant curls hanging over murky brown eyes, aloft deep bags of fatigue; indicating Paltridge’s fondness for a fanatical single-minded focus. His mouth was held in a tight line framed by thin lips cracked from years of focused chewing, and a hawkish nose stood prominently above, scrunched so deeply in concentration as to mar his face in shadowed crags and valleys.

Isaac would have lingered at the door, allowing for his partner to continue with whatever bout of genius had struck, but circumstances must. He could only beg Paltridge’s forgiveness and hope that his sudden appearance would not too wildly disrupt the man’s thinking… and mood.

Opening his mouth to gather the attention of his partner, Isaac was interrupted by Paltridge abruptly rising from his crouch and taking an about face towards his desk. The eccentric man glared past Isaac, eyes glassy and distant in thought, making way to his workspace, mumbling in a rolling and incomprehensible tone.

Watching the man stalk by, frustration flared hot in Isaac at Paltridge’s unawareness. He made to speak again, feeling no greater a desire than to lash out at the man, a heavy coat of indignation covering his tongue. Harsh words prepared to burst through the cracks in his composure before Isaac wrestled a sense of stolidity into place. His anxieties and fear were getting the best of him, fanning the embers of even the slightest of irritants into harsh and wild flames.

Through gritted teeth, Isaac hissed a heavy and emotion laden sigh before calling for his partner’s attention, “Nikos. Whatever you’re doing will need to be put on hold, we need to speak… now.”

Isaac’s words were greeted by a long moment of silence from Paltridge; the only sound being the shuffling of paper and the errant clack on a keyboard.

With irritation building within once more Isaac moved to speak when he was disrupted by Paltridge’s reedy and distant tone of voice, “Would you have asked the same of Chopin when writing his Nocturne or Curie in the throes of her work on radioactivity?”

Paltridge looked up from his work, eyes thinned in annoyance, voice beginning to drip with vexation and dismissal, “You would risk the loss of a magnum opus for what exactly?”

“Our lives and deaths, you asshole!” Isaac snapped back; any form of control utterly lost in the face of Paltridge’s unfortunate attitude.

Paltridge flinched back as though to avoid another strike in an assault, his face contorted in complete surprise at an outburst so absolutely unlike anything he had seen from Isaac before.

“I need to gather everyone to inform them of a rapidly approaching catastrophic event and…” Isaac’s sight began to waver under a flood of emotion.

Isaac turned away, desperately trying to wrangle any semblance of control over himself, the world spinning as the gravity of his emotional distress began to overwhelm him. He reached out with a hand to brace against a wall, coarse breaths wracking his body, his other clawing at the collar of his shirt.

“Am I having a panic attack?” Isaac mused distantly, his thoughts so drawn away from reality as to mimic the space between stars, “That’s rather… embarrassing. I thought I had gotten a handle on these years ago.”

Sweat drenched Isaac’s skin, his heart lurched within his chest with enough force to convince him it was putting cracks in his ribs with every cycle. He could feel his legs weakening under him, shaking like tree limbs in a hurricane, the attack nearly on the verge of felling him entirely.

Trapped in a gale of hysteria, Isaac looked to the only place he could for aid. Remnants of aged scars chafed under Isaac’s regard, old and weathered mechanisms screeched to life; their keening bringing buried memories from their graves.

His own little Pandora’s box unfurled, old demons raging to the fore in war with new and fresh nightmares. Under the cacophony of trauma Isaac grasped at a small and broken memory, feeling the sharpened edges dig seeping rents into a psyche on the verge of collapse.

“1,2,3…” Isaac rasped together with the scared and muffled sound of a once familiar boy, “12,9,5,17…” His panicked mind stuttered under the nonsensical counting of him and the boy, the numbers continuing even as the memory faded and only Isaac’s voice remained, “…53,27,4,31.”

Emotions beginning to stabilize; Isaac leveraged himself standing once again, legs having given out at some point during the attack. Clammy hands beginning to work closed his un-buttoned dress shirt, Isaac looked over to a wide eyed and frozen Paltridge still locked firmly to his workspace.

“Just…” Isaac sighed, his speech tired and coarse, “Just be ready to join everyone in the amphitheatre. I’ll explain everything once I gather everyone for a conference on the matter.”

Paltridge continued to stare, unmoving and unspeaking, before hastily snapping into motion.

Inspecting his current mental state, Isaac looked away from his partner’s movement, evaluating the fragility of his emotions. He could sense he teetered on a razor’s edge, the burden of an immutable future shaking him deeper than he could ever have judged.

He thought his decisions had been based off the inevitability of the war, of impending destruction. However now, running face first toward a truly foreseeable end rather than one of a more hypothetical nature, shook him viscerally.

He had been operating under a pall of denial, over working himself to avoid the reality of the situation. Expecting - despite evidence to the contrary - that those involved would choose survival rather than annihilation.

Isaac had allowed himself to rely on the one thing more dangerous than any amount of fear: hope. He found himself like a house of cards with the table pulled out from underneath… falling to pieces. Before today, there remained the possibility that not a single plan of his had to be put into fruition. But now, as he watched Paltridge with gathered items hurriedly exit past him, Isaac understood that there would be no future for him on Earth.

He was terrified. But at least he could admit it. “It won’t make what comes next any easier… but it’s a start.”

A forceful buzz dragged him back to the world of the living, drawing his eyes to his wrist pad. A line of text flashing upon its face —

Priority Voice-Message: TIA