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ruvviks · 6 months ago

Text

– Beginnings.

Characters >> Lily Castellanos, Nathan Dixon (oc), Sebastian Castellanos Total >> 3.5k words Warnings >> Alcohol mention Context >> The first chapter of my own TEW3, taking place some months after the conclusion of the in-game events of TEW2! You can read more about it all here!

It snowed in Krimson City.

The sky had been the same dull gray color since sunrise, snowflakes slowly cascading down and covering the street in a thick blanket of snow. A heavy fog held the city tightly in its grasp– an eerie atmosphere hanging in the thin afternoon air and low-hanging clouds swallowing entire buildings whole– and with only limited visibility on the road, traffic was forced to crawl by in slow motion.

While not an unseen phenomenon, it was far from a common sight for early January, only days after Nathan’s birthday. He had spent that day snowed in in his little apartment, had celebrated it alone; not as if it mattered much, he doubted Kid even knew and besides his ex-colleague from MOBIUS he severely lacked other friends to hang out with those days.

He stood motionless at the fence of the small playground located in Krimson City’s public park, gloved hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his long, black coat with the collar popped up to shield the lower half of his face from the occasional sharp gust of wind. He had not moved in a while, shoulders and tousled black hair covered in a thin layer of fine white powder, frost nipping away at the tip of his nose as his eyes followed a group of kids excitedly running around.

It did not take a genius to notice Lily was significantly older than the others there, but none of the kids seemed to mind. It came as no surprise to Nathan to see her there– she had not once lost her playfulness even after everything MOBIUS had put her through, and without a proper outlet for it in all her years trapped in the shadow organization it only made sense for her to want to have a chance at spending the remainder of her childhood like she had always been supposed to.

He watched in silence as she scooped up some snow in her pink and orange mittens, wincing when one of the other kids threw a snowball directly at her face; she was smiling, though, and quickly pressed the snow together to then hurl it back, the surprisingly well-aimed attempt hitting someone else on the back of their coat.

‘You’re startin’ to freak out the other parents, standing there like that.’

The corners of Nathan’s mouth lightly curled up upon hearing the familiar, low voice, not needing to turn his head to know who joined him on the other side of the fence.

‘Was starting to wonder how long it’d take for you to notice me,’ he said, his own voice a little rougher than usual on account of the cold, and his severe lack of proper rest in the past few weeks. ‘Was gonna give you another five minutes before I’d walk over to introduce myself. You’re getting slow.’

‘I’m getting comfortable,’ Sebastian Castellanos corrected him with a scoff, returning Lily’s little wave as she ran by the both of them– Nathan merely greeted her with a single nod of his head– before quickly shoving his hand back in the pocket of his green jacket.

‘No need to keep my eyes up anymore, Nate. Threat’s gone, MOBIUS’ gone. Life’s improving day by day.’

‘Good.’

Nathan wished he shared Sebastian’s sentiment.

If anything, life had turned rather sour for him after they had successfully gotten rid of a large chunk of MOBIUS several months ago. He had never expected to walk away from it alive to begin with– and now, without the steady income the organization had provided him with for years, he found himself struggling to get by.

He glanced to his right, gaze briefly meeting that of the ex-detective before he quickly averted his eyes and let them wander back to the playground, trailing over the various snow-covered playground sets.

Sebastian looked good, healthy– much better than the state he’d been in when Nathan had last seen him all those months ago. Part of him regretted not reaching out sooner, the sudden reconnection now an obvious sign that something was wrong; though the wiser part of him knew that had he stuck around the Castellanos family they would not have been able to move on and heal, which was the last thing he would have wanted to be responsible for.

‘What about you?’ Sebastian quietly asked, as if he’d been able to sense Nathan’s melancholy. ‘You look like you haven’t slept in days.’

Nathan scoffed, slightly tilting his head to look at his feet and he absently kicked some snow off his boots. ‘That obvious? Sure feels like it.’

He had teamed up with Juli Kidman to deal with the remainder of MOBIUS, after the Union incident. Of course the destruction of the STEM environment hadn’t led to the fall of the whole organization– it would’ve been stupid of them to link all of their employees directly to the mainframe of a single STEM device, despite the Superiors’ obvious lack of knowledge concerning the technology– and while MOBIUS had suffered massive losses, it would only be a matter of time before they would regroup.

But he was not there to talk to Sebastian about how their hunt was going.

Something else had come up.

Nathan’s silence did not go unnoticed and Sebastian turned toward him, leaning sideways against the fence with a concerned look in his eyes. He did not need to say anything– and neither did Nathan, as he slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets and removed one of his black, leather gloves.

The pale top of his left hand had a burned appearance, as if fire had scorched away skin and flesh– the wound only partially healed leaving it broken and torn clinging closely to his veins and bones. Though despite how recent he had received the scar, its appearance instead implied years long possession, and despite its severity it did not hurt at all.

He could tell by the look on Sebastian’s face the scar reminded him of someone.

‘Now, I know what you’re gonna say–’ Nathan started, but Sebastian cut him off.

‘I can’t do this, Nathan. I have a daughter–’

‘–I know.’

His voice came out a lot sharper than he had meant for.

‘I’m not asking anything of you,’ he said, his heartbeat pounding in the back of his throat.

‘Not this time.’

It had started as police radio chatter.

Late in the afternoon, Nathan had already been getting ready to go home. Kid had picked up a mention of Beacon– its doors long closed for the public yet the building remained in the heart of Krimson City, left to rot and wither away– supposed ghostly activity reported within its decaying walls, and she had wanted to investigate.

Nathan sharply exhaled and put his glove back on, exposed fingers growing numb in the freezing winter air. He leaned forward with his arms on the fence, to move a little closer to Sebastian; as if he was afraid someone would overhear them, as if they could make sense out of any of it to begin with.

‘He’s back, Sebastian,’ he defeatedly stated, and the other man lowered his gaze. ‘I saw him. He did this to me.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Wish it was.’

Despite hearing many tales, and having worked on his project for years as developer within the MOBIUS branch he had been part of, Nathan had never seen or met Ruvik face to face. The brilliant mind behind the STEM technology had always remained in the shadows; up until his death, after which his brain had become the core of MOBIUS’ very first STEM device.

Naturally so, when Nathan had run into the man while wandering the abandoned hallways of Beacon, his first assumption had been that he was asleep– followed by a brief moment of panic in which he had believed he was dead, or somehow back in STEM.

But Ruvik had touched him– had forcefully grabbed his hand to make him drop his gun and had left a burn similar to his own scars– and had then vanished the second Kidman had yelled out Nathan’s name, the old and presumed broken STEM device in the room next door whirring and humming as if it had never been deactivated in the first place.

‘I’m here to warn you,’ Nathan softly continued, eyes fixed on a random spot in the bright snow covering the playground and thumb absently running over the gloved back of his scarred hand.

‘We don’t know yet what exactly he’s here for, what exactly he’s tryin’ to do. Investigating as we speak, but– shit’s looking serious. Somehow reverse engineered the STEM signal to reach outward, expand into reality. Push itself out rather than draw people in.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Similar to the wireless connection that pulled you into STEM the first time round, but– without being pulled in.’ Nathan had to bite his tongue to stop himself from getting too technical. ‘An– An active environment in our world, if you follow, rather than on the device’s mainframe. Signal seems to be inactive still, but we’re gettin’ the readings. No idea how he’s planning to activate it yet.’

They had moved the device to their own headquarters, on the outskirts of town. Had needed to connect it to the second prototype– the device that had supported the Union environment, which they had taken from MOBIUS’ headquarters after wiping out its agents– in order to gain access to the mainframe, get any data extracted from it in the first place.

Their initial hope had been that it was nothing more than echoes– malfunctions in the STEM device caused by neglect promptly activating the wireless signal allowing shades from within to wander the Beacon hallways– anything but Ruvik’s actual return, however that was even possible–

‘Daddy!’

Nathan blinked, drawn out of his thoughts by Lily’s voice. He watched her run over to the two of them– the front of her coat, face, and hair completely covered in snow and a bright smile on her face as she attempted to wipe some of it from her forehead, but if anything her mittens just further spread it out.

‘I’m getting cold,’ she said, squinting when Sebastian reached out to help her with the snow. ‘Can we go back home soon?’

‘Of course honey,’ he replied, barely able to mask the exhaustion in his voice now that Nathan had explained the situation to him– and for a brief moment it was as if they were back in Union, radioing back to Kidman from the momentary safety of one of their established safehouses. ‘Don’t want you catching a cold.’

Lily looked up at Nathan and smiled at him– but she was a smart kid, and he watched her expression change as she looked back up at her father, head slightly tilting before she shook it to get some strands of her ink black hair out of her face, the single white strand in her bangs– matching Nathan’s own– a grim and constant reminder of her mother’s fate.

‘Is everything alright?’ she asked, and Nathan couldn’t help but wonder if she still associated him with MOBIUS, if she still associated him with the tests and experiments they put her through and if she still associated him with the STEM device, meeting one another within in some facility in the Marrow where he was forced to watch over her like a vulture at all times, all to keep the system stable.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he simply answered her, unsure if she would fall for his lie, but knowing it would give her infinitely more comfort than the truth ever could. ‘Just came to say hi.’

The breeze picked up, howling loudly in Nathan’s ears as if the whole city softly cried for him; the cold boring its way through his clothes and eating away at his skin, exposed or not, freezing him all the way down to the bone. He lowered his head– a futile attempt at shielding his face from the biting wind and snow, individual snowflakes cutting like knives across his forehead and cheekbones.

He watched Lily smile at both him and Sebastian again before running off to get back to the snowball fight for just a bit longer, diving behind the slide to get cover. His gaze was pulled back toward Sebastian– but said man appeared deep in thought, eyes pointedly fixed on something in the distance, head anywhere but in the present.

‘I gotta go back in,’ Nathan quietly continued; an unnecessary statement, the gravity of the situation like static in the air between the two of them, though to put it into words was to accept the harsh reality of it all– acknowledgement of what had to happen, what was going to happen, something he had not been able to do before.

‘It’s nothing like Union,’ Sebastian bluntly replied with a shake of his head, turning his back to the playground and resting heavily with his elbows on the fence. ‘He’s nothing like Stefano– nothing like Theodore. He doesn’t need a weapon or a core to draw his powers from, you get too close and it’s over. You understand?’

Nathan didn’t know what else to say.

He had never thought he’d have to go back into STEM after Union. He’d be alone this time round– no Sebastian by his side, no Kidman to radio back to. They had reconnected some old friends– Joseph, Yukiko, Esmeralda– but had no idea whether or not their consciousnesses would still be somewhere within STEM, and for all Nathan knew he would be diving into a world entirely of Ruvik’s creation, with the same horrifying creatures haunting it as last time, if not worse.

Of course he was terrified. All it took was one encounter with Anima and he would never see the light of day ever again.

‘You should go,’ Nathan said, pushing himself up from the fence and stuffing his hands back in the pockets of his coat, ‘get out of town while you still can. Grab a bag or two, grab Lily, take her on a– on a road trip up north or something, while we figure this out. Just in case he–’

He couldn’t finish his sentence. The thought of Ruvik succeeding and trapping the world in a constant state of STEM was something he would rather not think about.

‘–you know.’

An uncomfortable silence followed. And rightfully so– what else was there to say? The whole situation was ridiculous to begin with, and for Nathan to show up only now instead of at any other point in time, months of radio silence after nearly dying together in a simulation of reality lingering between real life and a dream–

He carefully watched as Sebastian shifted his weight from one foot to the other, able to study his face for longer now that the other man refused to make eye contact with him. He truly did look a lot better; Nathan could only assume the man had stopped drinking, and had been getting a much better night’s sleep.

Though despite the improvement in his appearance there was still that lingering sense of dread, the dark shadow that had washed over his face the second he had laid eyes on Nathan’s scarring and had realized what he had come to him for.

Nathan couldn’t blame him. But he’d had to let Sebastian know.

He licked his lips and nodded to no one in particular, ending the conversation himself by taking a small step back and turning back around to return to his car, drive home, drink himself blind and pass out to hopefully get some sleep in before he would have to dive back into his worst nightmare–

‘Hey.’

Sebastian’s hand on his upper arm was unexpected and Nathan hated how he could not stop himself from flinching, a reflex more than anything else, and he hated how it made Sebastian pull his hand away as if he’d touched fire, the tips of his fingers on Nathan’s body despite the layers he wore the first physical contact he had experienced in months.

‘Who is “we”?’ Sebastian quietly asked, briefly glancing behind him to see if Lily was still far enough away. A surprising question; though not out of character for the ex-detective, his curiosity piqued just enough for him to try and get a little more information out of Nathan before they would say goodbye and possibly never see each other again.

‘Me,’ Nathan plainly answered, ‘Juli. Used to be just us two but we gathered a team of old STEM developers to help us with this. They got moved on to other projects while we were working on Union– they removed their chips, came back for us.’

‘So all MOBIUS.’

Not even a question, simply a statement.

Nathan bit the inside of his cheek. ‘Ex MOBIUS.’

The atmosphere changed, a sharp tension bouncing between the two of them as Nathan straightened his back and lightly tilted up his chin. He couldn’t exactly place the look on the other man’s face, though by then knew him well enough to know his hesitation wasn’t caused by uncertainty, but moreso distrust.

‘Thought the program was meant to kill them all,’ Sebastian said, a somewhat hostile undertone in his voice that had not been there before.

‘Just our branch.’ Nathan paused, watching as Sebastian slowly nodded and mouthed a soundless “right”– not entirely sure what his reaction was supposed to mean, but he decided not to ask. ‘Already told you it runs a lot deeper than you thought.’

Myra's sacrifice had put an end to the Administrator's reign of terror– had destroyed his legacy, and all research and findings on the STEM system as designed by Ruvik and improved by MOBIUS. Whichever branches remained did not nearly have enough resources or knowledge to pull off something even remotely similar; and whatever scraps of code they could have gotten their hands on before Kidman and Nathan had wiped their systems clean would prove insufficient to provide them with a stable environment.

And even if they would make it that far– provided they’d be able to recreate the STEM device from written instructions alone, Ruvik's original blueprints lost to time and MOBIUS' own burned to a crisp in the aftermath of the Union incident's conclusion– the mental erosion Union's residents had suffered from and the Anima manifestations that had happened as a result had never been resolved, leaving any future STEM residents with the all but comforting promise of a similar fate.

'I'm diving in tomorrow,' Nathan said, knowing there was nothing else left to say. The breeze in the park was picking up again, sweeping snowflakes that were starting to feel more like hail than anything else into Nathan’s face with a lot more force than before, melting on collision and dripping into the collar of his shirt. 'First thing in the morning. Can’t waste any more time. In case you wanna come say goodbye–'

He reached into the pocket of his pants, then held out a note to Sebastian; handwritten, containing an address located on an abandoned warehouse site, not too far from Nathan's own home.

'–our headquarters.' He waited for Sebastian to take the note from him. 'No pressure, of course.'

No pressure.

The note was almost a blatant sign that Nathan wanted him to be there. He could not ask it of him directly– but gave him the option anyway, leaving the decision up to Sebastian instead.

But deep down Nathan knew that Sebastian knew that he really did not want to go back in alone– and if it had been up to him they had recruited Sebastian a week ago already, when things had first started to go wrong.

‘Do you have backup?’ Sebastian softly asked, as if he could look directly into Nathan’s head– asking the one question he had hoped for, with an answer to it that could easily enough change Sebastian’s mind about letting Nathan walk away if only he would play his cards right–

But despite how often he had practiced the entire conversation alone in his car, despite going over all the different things he could say at least a million times, just to get Sebastian to feel sorry for him– as selfish as it fucking was– Nathan found himself unable to speak.

He simply shook his head instead.

The other children and their parents were leaving, now. It was getting late, and colder, and Lily slowly wandered back to Sebastian to start dragging him back to the car if he were to take any longer than he already had.

Nathan looked up at the sky, eyes fluttering shut as he allowed more snow to drift down onto his ice cold skin, and he breathed in and out deeply before turning back to Sebastian.

‘They’re expecting more snowfall tonight,’ he said, locking eyes for only a split second and shooting a smile in his direction, as he began walking backwards into the direction of his car. ‘Don’t wait up. And– Drive safe, okay?’

Sebastian did not answer him.

It snowed in Krimson City, accompanied by a deafening silence weighing it down and choking it out, as if the whole city was expectantly holding its breath.

Nathan left.

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#nuclearwriting #kinda nervous posting this and also genuinely don't know if i'll keep writing because i haven't actually written much more yet LOL #i do really wanna work more on this because it's just nice to have for myself. but i'm definitely not gonna do the one chapter a week #that i used to do for king of fools. i don't know how i managed to do that like genuinely don't ask me #but yeas hi =] nathan introduction <3 obviously he and sebastian have already worked together during tew2 but i didn't feel like #writing about all of that just because it's basically what happens in the game except nathan is there. commenting on everything #this is the first part of the story where he gets to actually lead a bit more himself rather than just following sebastian around #and most of it will be written from his perspective if i do end up writing more =]#if i did my math and timeline right nathan did in fact already work for mobius when ruvik was still alive. so logically they could have met #but they didn't... closest nathan got was when he led the operation to burn the victoriano estate down after ruvik was killed #and then he wasn't there for beacon so he didn't experience any of that. and obviously in union ruvik wasn't there #so him running into ruvik as described in this chapter is the very first time they came face to face with each other ^_^

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