Zephyr is in a dream.
The young blacksmith is dreaming about simpler times, when he could ignore the chatter of chaos, escape, and hatred. He faintly hears his father making his mother laugh, in broad daylight, as they are walking back to the shop. Catherine then proceeds to look straight at Zephyr, with her glowing, caring motherly eyes that promises him safety and protection. She touches his faces. Her palms feel warm and comforting.
Then, the bright sky turns dark, as he sees nobody else but the heavily breathing doctor. He's carrying on his shoulder the unconscious body of Catherine. Zephyr can hear but the thumping sound of his heartbeat pumping through his chest.
The young boy is grinning his teeth, clenching his fists and walks forward.
This time he can do something. This time he can change destiny. This time he can save his mother and terminate this miserable nightmare.
His walk quickly shifts to a fast-paced sprint, as the village disappears behind him.
Zephyr keeps pushing forward, he keeps running with the intent to catch his mother and rescue her from this perverted man's grasp. The distance keeps getting wider between them. The doctor, hidden behind his mask and his goggles, simply looks at the general direction of the boy before continuing forward.
"N-No! Stop right there! Come back!"
The young Zephyr, in a mix of order and plea, reaches his hand towards his mother. He cannot see the face of his unconscious mother behind her long lustrous hair. The gap between them only gets larger and larger.
Zephyr is in denial. He can save his mother! He believes he must do it! He starts to cry as the thought of giving up sinks in.
"I won't... I WON'T GIVE UP! GOD DAMN YOU SCIENTIST!"
The young blacksmith screams in rage and distress. Begging, demanding his mother back.
"I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!"
"Woah woah slow down! My goodness!" Retaliates Alister, taken aback by the sudden violence of the young man.
Zephyr looks around, mystified by the hunter's presence.
2067.
October 23rd, 6:35AM.
He's still in the Bottomless Pit.
He's still with the last two people on this planet he'd want to spend time with.
He's still alone, without his family, without his mother.
Eylventh and Urth wake up after hearing the boy scream. The assassin looks at him, in a crouched position, as if he's looking down on Zephyr rather than checking up on him. They have a small stare down.
"You..." States Zephyr with a demeaning tone.
"Me what, brat? I look after you while you sleep, and this is how you thank me? Don't you dare jump scare me again."
Zephyr wants to scream, Zephyr wants to cry, Zephyr's emotions are just trying to burst out.
"You know, I just realized this." Reflects the doctor quietly. He is barely audible enough to be heard by his companions. "One of you could take Eylventh and fly back to the surface, one step at a time. Pretty sure that reptile can lift one of you back."
Alister gets up, confused by this statement.
"Now's the time you decide to tell us. Are you high? What is wrong with you, saying that while we are knees deep in this garbage? And going back where these lights are? Absolutely not! Bet the second they'll see our asses they'll blind us to death."
The doctor doesn't argue back, staying silent. Zephyr looks at him with an angry demeanor, like someone who just wasted his time.
"We had a way to leave way, and you have the balls to say that now??"
"I was lost. I didn't think this through. I am giving you a way out however, and the location of my lab. Since my creatures seem to like you, Eylventh could help you. I'll need Urth however."
The bullfrog shows resistance in regard to this decision. It has a fondness for the boy. Eylventh on the other hand shows slight preoccupation by this situation. It nonetheless prepares itself to fly.
This isn't the way Zephyr wants the doctor to cooperate. This isn't satisfying the hunger to make Riley pay. Torture, body parts flying everywhere, that old pervert screaming for his life, that is what Zephyr wants. That is what drives him to pick up his torch blade and point it directly at the doctor's neck.
"Hey, Zeph, put that thing down." Orders the assassin.
"SHUT UP ALISTER! GET IN MY WAY AND I'LL KILL YOU!" Responds the enraged teenager.
The blacksmith's skin starts cracking again. Alister, fresh off his disruption from earlier, hasn't recovered the mental fortitude to challenge Zephyr. He backs off. Zephyr's attention stays focused on Riley. He's waiting for a reaction. He's waiting for a squeak, anything that indicates fear in this foul scientist.
Nothing.
"You spent the last decade experimenting on Catherine Pierce, my mother, as well as other people! You did vile things to her, and then killed her! You're a stain on mankind! You think I'll just walk away!? I'll gladly be judge, jury and executioner! You must SUFFER!"
Zephyr's tone is threatening, but the doctor is not responding the way he desires, staying quiet. Alister's watching this unfold, bewildered. Something is different about Riley J. Smith. If he's feeling any fear, he's dealing with it well. This intrigues the hunter more than anything.
"ANSWER ME, COWARD! You want us to just take that escape route as a price of consolation!?"
"If you see it that way, then it's on you." Replies Riley. "You made it clear you wanted your mother's whereabouts, to confirm for yourself if she's still alive or not. I'm giving you that opportunity to go look for her."
"We both know you killed her, so you can shove that opportunity up your ass! I will punish you!"
The doctor begins to sweat. Other than that, nothing. Zephyr is at a loss for words.
"If you're wondering, yes boy, I do fear you. But it's because I fear you that I must confront you head on."
"Confrontation! What a joke! Keep talking all you want! I won't let you-!"
"You won't let me get away, yes, I know. Things have changed. I have to change. Besides, your skin is already broken. For someone who asked us to keep our emotions on check, you don't seem to practice what you preach, Zeph."
"The next time you call me Zeph I will split your head apart!"
Riley J. Smith smirks, nostalgic.
"Catherine really chose your name poorly. Zephyr is easier to say in French or German than in English. Zeph on the other hand sounds far more universal."
Zephyr, gone mad, tries to pierce the scientist's neck. Not counting his little combat experience, the scientist has enough instincts to push the torch blade away before Zeph can kill him. Surprised, Zephyr takes a step backward before charging another attack. Alister takes this opportunity to return a favor long overdue, performing a spinning back kick to the young blacksmith that sends him flying to the ground, and creating some distance between the boy and Riley. Zephyr is livid.
"Sorry Zeph. That judge, jury, executioner thing? It ain't gonna cut it."
"Are you out of your mind!? You confirmed it yourself, this guy's a monster! Riley J. Smith is scum! He deserves to die!"
"Yeah, and in any other circumstances, the last few days would have never happened. He would have died. But this is different. I've got to know something, and I'll figure it out now."
The scientist finally gets up.
He laughs with more pep in his step.
Both Zephyr and Alister are looking at him, astounded.
"What a life. All those sacrifices, all these discoveries in the last two decades of my life, to end up in the claws of you too. What a weird life indeed. Still, those are the cards I've been delt with, so as promised, no more mind games. I need your help."
Zephyr shakes his head in consternation.
"I... What did you just ask me??"
"If you're that keen on being judge, jury and executioner, then I'd like you to be useful in return. So, we make a deal. The three of us, no, the five us, animals included: we'll discover the Bottomless Pit, together, and truly figure out what is going on."
Silence.
"Okay so you ARE high." States Alister, bewitched.
"I am not high, assassin. In fact, I am reclaiming the idea you borrowed from me. You must have been high that day." Retorts Riley in a joking matter.
This new attitude is leaving all sorts of surprises for the hunter, so much so that he has no verbal response to give the scientist.
"I am fully conscious of what I am doing." Continues the doctor. "I am moving on. I am going down there, in the belly of the beast, to the last floor of the Bottomless Pit. Hopefully the next creatures don't try to blind us to death, eh?"
Forging forward.
Those two words ring in Zephyr's mind like a bell. It's Riley reminding him those words that infuriates him.
The doctor is a completely different human being. Zephyr refuses to buy that narrative, laser focused on his enemy, but Alister is left in awe. Did what the hunter say out of spite, governed by his self-hatred, really had that much of an impact on the doctor?
That seems too good to be true.
That man has done so much wrong to so many people. Alister is hard pressed to find evidence that the infamous scientist could have a change of heart profound enough to kill his inner demons.
Obviously, it's not that.
"Doc. After all the torment you caused and received, what pushes you to keep going? What are you seeing here that we don't?"
"There's nothing to see Alister! He's manipulated people like me and you that way! Don't-!"
"Zeph, shut up! This is beyond human reasoning right now! Flaunting the deaths of those people to his face has done nothing productive. Taunting his death hasn't resulted in shit either. So Riley, you're gonna answer my question."
Absolute nonsense. Zephyr remains appalled. When you're a killer yourself, when your senses of morale are that low, you'd look at that vile scientist nonchalantly. He should have seen it coming. He can't trust Alister too.
The problem is that bit of intrigue inside of him. The young blacksmith too wants to understand the scientist's agenda and reasoning. In denial, Zephyr looks the other way.
"Alister, Zephyr, I have a been a failure all of my life. No matter how far my experiments went, no matter the kind of advancements I made, I have always failed. I failed at my duty. I failed those I wanted to impress, the few supporters that stood by me, while I was dissecting corpses. I see them every day. Every day, the ghosts ask me what this will lead to, where do we go from here… And then there's those that talks about Contraband."
"Con… Contraband?" asks Alister.
"Right. Contraband. I have no idea what Contraband is. But some of those ghosts I see speak of a catastrophe that happened in a world different from ours. And Catherine's unknown origins, her dialect, her background, I had to know if she had any connections to those. In the past, she refused to cooperate. I thought things would change when, after the village booted me and your family out, she… requested to leave with me."
That part of his story caught Zephyr enough that he's looking at the scientist again. Riley looks at the boy. Chagrin can be seen on the doctor's face.
"Catherine followed me out of the village, of her free will, to Old York. I did not experiment on her, nor did I do anything repulsive to her. I asked her questions. She refused to cooperate once again. There's no use hiding it, I did entertain beating the information out of her. She sneaked out of my lab unnoticed before I could. That was a few days after coming back from Gallows. My hypothesis is that she's somewhere in Old York, or maybe left somewhere else. I have no clue."
Disbelief.
"That's… That's impossible! You're lying! You did kill her! Alister said…Y-You did.
" I… Look he did do all those things, but your mom's specifically, I just said it to further my own agenda." Admits Alister, with a touch of embarrassment.
This is nonsense to the boy.
Aboslute. Nonsense.
To the teenager's dismay, the scientist convays principle, a desire that burns in his heart. What Zephyr sees is not the bastardized version of a man, spoiled by the Bottomless Pit's promises of knowledge, nor the egomaniac that sacrificed his good will and morals for the sake of foolish, lofty goals...
He can see it.
A glimpse of a man that has longed to understand the world, not to control it, but to put an end to the mystery, a closing chapter on this event that struck the earth with such cataclysmic power, it disrupted the course of history, and changed the trajectory of mankind.
"Perhaps, Zephyr, your best bet at revenge for your mother would be to punish me, to shatter my dreams, to make me a failure again." Continues the scientist. "But it's either I fail one last time or I win, just this once. I am a betting man. I have betted on the Bottomless Pit my whole life. Like your grandfather told us, even me, I will forge forward."
The blacksmith is speechless.
Violent rage.
Hearing these words from Riley makes him snap.
His whole body is shaking, so does the platform they stand on. His skin cracks under the pressure. An orange glow bursts out like flames and illuminates the entirety of the Bottomless Pit. Soon, it's the whole of the pit that trembles like an earthquake.
This nightmare, this insanity. He wants it all to end. Seeing this, Alister pushes the scientist to the ground, afraid of what's about to happen.
The temperature rises. It's unsustainable from their distance. Zephyr is aiming for suicide and taking them with him. Riley notes that this heat, this pressure, it was not present the first time the boy blew himself up. Urth tries to get close, but the bullfrog can only screech when he gets near the heat. He's undiscernible under the glow.
It's at this moment Alister is hit with what can only be described as an eureka moment. The hunter goes for one last reasoning with the boy:
"ZEPHYR! LISTEN TO ME! YOU JUMPED IN THERE WITH US! I TALKED ABOUT THE BAIT! HE MIGHT HAVE FORCED YOUR HAND, BUT YOU WERE GOING DOWN THERE BEFORE WE CAME, RIGHT!?"
No response.
Heat intensifies.
Alister forges forward.
"I ASKED HIM THAT QUESTION, SO WHAT ABOUT YOU!? WHY ARE YOU HERE!? WHY WERE YOU GOING DOWN THE BOTTOMLESS PIT!?"
Zephyr stops. Alister stagnated the explosion. Seeing this is working, Alister keeps pushing.
"You don't have to tell us if you don't want to. We both hurt you and it's not now that you'll start trusting us, I know that. But, IS DESTROYING YOURSELF NOW, REALLY ACHIEVING THAT GOAL!?"
The glow slowly diminishes.
Zephyr's skin starts to recompose itself.
An intense amount of steam leaves his body, as the orange glow gets dimmer, leaving the flashlights to illuminate the pit again.
Flabbergasted. This is the power the young boy was bestowed with. Expressing all his negative emotions in the form of destructive blasts of energy.
He knows Riley's purpose for being here. What is his own purpose?
Zephyr clenches his fists in rage, letting the tears flow out like a river.
"I... I made a promise to him". Whispers the blacksmith to himself.
"I made him a promise, that I would forge forward." He drops on his knees. "Please dad. Give me strength."
Alister and Riley looks at his direction, confused by what is happening.
Before the vengeance, before being reminded of his mother's killer, there was something else that pushed him down in the depths of the pit.
"You can leave the cycle, so leave this cycle."
His father's words to him.
He places his hands together, face down, sobbing. He prays.
Through the pride, the anger and the sadness that floods out of him like a waterfall, in front of who he considers his arch-nemesis, forcing the open wounds out, he prays.
The scientist and the assassin see this as a queue to leave the boy to his devices. He needs time to find his peace. They wait.
#
2067.
October 23rd, 9:25AM
"Riley!"
The scientist wakes up from his nap in panic before seeing Zephyr. The young man is crying, his fist clenched.
"Oh woah what is happening?" Asks a confused Riley to the boy.
"If… If wh-what you say is true, about my mother I mean… That she's still alive and you d-didn't do anything… then-then we're on the same page. For now, I'll…I'll… DAMNIT, I ACCEPT TO COLLABORATE!" Screams the boy, tears still flooding.
Alister is watching while walking towards them, a soft smile on his face.
Zephyr wipes the tears away and does his best to regain composure. He goes to pick up his bag, his torch blade to look at Urth and Eylventh. Urth croaks at him and Eylventh starts flying around the boy. This places a faint smile on Zephyr again.
It's tough, but it's doable. Even Alister watches with a sense of pride.
"I wish I could be as carefree as you two right about now." Says Zephyr to the creatures. "Come on, let's go". Still an emotional wreck, he wipes more tears from his face and grabs back the serious attitude.
As the young blacksmith approach to the assassin and the scientist, the two animals follow him.
"Riley... You're gonna need that." Zephyr hesitantly throws a flashlight. Riley catches it with no difficulty.
"Okay... Here's what's gonna happen. Doc, me and the kid aren't chum pals, far from it. I still want to beat the shit out of him for the embarrassment back at the surface."
"That was a pretty good kick." States the scientist.
"Could have been better. Not only that, but I got my agendas against you. Since the mother situation seems to be dealt with-."
"I never said it was delt with! Riley seemed sincere enough and so, for the time being, I'll let it slide. If I learn in anyway shape or form that you DID do something to my mother, you're dead."
Death stare. Riley gulps.
"Alright, that's cool." Says Alister, smirking. "I think with our heads out of our asses, we can put our beefs on hold and see what this place is about. Almost out of rations, environment that wants to kill us, nice trip overall. We might as well explore and spend our last days seeing what no human from up above as seen. Let's try to keep it civil. Let's focus on what's around us... Let's focus on what's lurking in the dark."
Riley opens his flashlight and proceeds onwards to the next platform. The rest follows suit. This temporary partnership, although not in congruence with anyone, is a necessary alliance to move forward.