Neckbrace had been kicking Legcramp in the ribs for about a minute before Agent 12 showed up.
‘Hey,’ he said, strolling through the headache-inducing barrier of the Dome, ‘I got held up by an evil-twin-from-an-alternate-universe situation. Wait, where’s the third wizard?’
‘The big guy knocked her into some other timeline,’ Agent 485 explained, ‘We’ll have to make do with two.’
‘Vampires,’ Neckbrace corrected, finally deciding to give Legcramp a break.
‘What about them?’ 12 asked. ‘Anyway, our lawyers say that the log cabin counts as an art installation due to how it exists outside the confines of perceptible reality, so building codes don’t apply. The big guy can stay for now.’
The undead monstrosity gave an enigmatic thumbs up.
12 wandered over to the vampires. Legcramp still writhed on the ground in pain, but the agent didn’t seem to care.
‘I’m gonna be taking you two to the FBSSOSST’s central hub now, but while we’re here I gotta show you something.’ 12 pulled out an ordinary-looking revolver from his coat. ‘This is what we call a Chekhov’s Gun. It’s kind of an initiation for new recruits. I fire a bullet into the Dome’s fifth-dimensional matrix, and it pops back out in some future chapter, hopefully to save you in the nick of time.’
‘What are the odds it actually helps us?’ Neckbrace asked.
Agent 12 aimed the gun at the barrier of the Dome and fired.
‘What was that?’ he said.
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As 12 led the pair, Neckbrace striding with confidence and Legcramp limping with a kind of twisted, angry version of confidence, through the poorly thought-out hallways of the Facility, Neckbrace learned a few things.
First, the scents of pine trees and rocket fuel, when mixed together, acted as a strong hallucinogenic.
Second, the sprawling Facility they currently were in was merely a resupply base for the FBSSSOSSS’s field agents, and nothing compared to the central hub.
Third, the melting walls were likely hallucinations, and even if the walls were melting, it was nothing to be alarmed about.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Fourth, the melting walls were NOTHING TO BE ALARMED ABOUT. Do not pay ANY attention to any walls that may or may not be melting. If you see a melting wall, do not acknowledge its existence. If someone asks if you have seen a melting wall, simply reply, ‘Walls? Never heard of ‘em! I only see floors!’
Neckbrace couldn’t remember what else she had learned.
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By the time she had regained her senses, they were sitting amongst dozens of identical agents in some kind of train. The windows were blacked out, and the only light came from softly glowing strips running down the centre aisle. Neckbrace was hungry, and the modern, perhaps even futuristic, interior of the train was only exacerbating the issue. Agent 12, sitting to her left and only identifiable only by his name-badge, handed Neckbrace a chunk of wood.
‘It’s from the leg of an antique table. Eat up,’ he said. ‘I know how much you wizards love vintage furniture.’
To her right, Legcramp was already gnawing on his. Neckbrace took a bite. It tasted like wood. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed some movement on the window. Neckbrace turned to get a better look. Beyond the windows that she had assumed were blacked out, were fish swimming alongside the train.
‘Are we…?’ she begun.
‘Underwater?’ 12 finished. ‘Yep. We based our central hub in R’lyeh because of the booming tourism industry. We should be there in about an hour.’
Some hulking leviathan swum past the train, its shadowy mass betraying none of its true form, save for a colossal, gelatinous eyeball. It slowed to keep pace with Neckbrace’s carriage. Barely lit by the luminous strip on the carriage’s floor, the leviathan produced two malformed flippers from the folds of its mass. They looked almost like human hands. The leviathan then shot fingers guns at Agent 12 with an enthusiastic ‘Ayyy!’ Agent 12 returned the gesture with a laugh, then noticed Neckbrace’s inquisitive glare.
‘Oh, that’s Agent 177,’ he explained. ‘He got cursed by a forbidden orb a few years back. Classic 177.’
Agent 177 gave a cheerful wave goodbye than swam away, presumably back to the dark abyss from whence he came.
Neckbrace found herself growing increasingly uncomfortable with the FBSSSSSSOSSS’s lax attitude towards eldritch horrors. Back on Venus, there were demons and creatures of the dark aplenty, but Venusians at least knew to steer clear of them. Neckbrace considered bringing this up with 12, but she didn’t trust anyone in the FBSSSSSSSSSSSS to be rational about anything. There was something else she wanted to know, however.
‘How many S’s are supposed to be in your acronym, again?’ she asked 12.
Before Agent 12 could respond, he was shot in the head. Neckbrace didn’t hear a gunshot, but a bullet had definitely gone straight through 12’s temples and busted a hole in the carriage’s window, too. As the train flooded with water, Neckbrace realised where the bullet had come from. Chekhov’s Gun. She would laugh at the irony if her lungs weren’t filled with water and also being crushed by four hundred atmospheres of pressure. She was used to pressure from years on Venus but this was a little much. Neckbrace passed out.
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She awoke with a serious headache on an inflatable raft in the middle of nowhere. Better than dying, at least. Marginally. There was one other, extremely soaked, agent on the raft with her. His nametag read 600.
‘So,’ he said. ‘This is quite the coincidence.’