That night, both Kailey and Tyson were both called to meet at Marco's apartment. Spacious, covered in weird art, it felt more like a gallery than a house. They both sat in his living room while Marco walked to the balcony with a canvas in hand, leaving it outside before sitting down in front of them. He wiped his hands, his clothes dotted with bits of paint with a tiny drop on his moustache.
"So Kailey, you say you that you believe *now* that the altered you saw that day may be the remnants of your father?" Asked Marco, planting his fingers on the small coffee table in between the three of them. Kailey nodded while looking at Tyson, he leaned back on the couch with his hands behind the backrest and his heels crossed.
"You say that there's a chance he turned back, whatever that entails, correct?" She asked as she leaned forward, joining her fingers in front of her. Tyson side eyed her, lifting his head to think. He bit his lips as he came up with a response, tilting his head sideways as he spoke. "Even my range of knowledge is... limited, but I can say that the altered itself is alive-" he huffed as he sat up "-there is a LOT that you guys don't know about altered, stuff that even I can barely grasp."
"The *altered* is alive?" Kailey asked, raising an eyebrow with a skeptical expression. "What do you mean by that? Is the person alive?"
Tyson cleared his throat, "death for us is complicated, we don't really die per say, we just... go back."
"Back to where?" asked Marco, Tyson scratched his chin and replied "the parallel of course."
Marco recoiled at the answer, to his knowledge an eliminated altered was as dead as someone like him could be. Kailey spoke again, "but this altered, my one, is he on earth right now?" Tyson glared at her, she had a deadpan expression. He closed his eyes, they could both see as they shifted in his eyelids, looking around rapidly, he frowned and opened his face, "I would say so."
Kailey looked down at the floor, "You would say so, so you're not sure?" He closed his eyes looking around, "while I can pinpoint where they are, I can't pinpoint WHO they are, I can only go off what their vibes are like." He pointed in front of him, as if pointing to a screen, "this one here, rural South America, at the very bottom of southern New Argentina. Near Puerto Armado."
Marco looked at Kailey who was still glaring at the floor, seemingly in shock. "You have family from before the Chilean revolution, correct?" She looked up, slightly confused before remembering he had read over her file. "Yeah, small village north of Chile, still there as far as I'm aware since it's not near any major cities."
Marco turned back to Tyson, "if you can't see them, how do you know it's them?" Tyson shrugged and leaned back on the couch. "on top of all the various boosts I get-" he flexed his arms, "I get one hell of an intuition when detecting them." Kailey woke up and headed for the door, "I got a few calls to make." They waved as she left.
Marco fiddled with his fingers before standing up and walking to the balcony. Picking up the now slightly drier canvas and placing it on an easel inside. The drawing was of a river in a dark and gloomy scenery, similar in style to the ones that were hanging all over the walls. "So Tyson-" he wiped his mustache with the back of his mouth, the single chip of paint falling on the floor. He picked it up, and flicked it with his fingers. He turned to the canvas and picked up a stencil and brush from it's side.
"-you say that altered can come back to life after dying here, correct?" "Yeah." "Is that also the case in the parallel?" "No, there it's more like woosh-" his hands making the motion of an explosion, "-their energy vanishes into the nearby area." Marco nodded, biting his tongue as he leaned in while stroking the brush over the water. "That's good, that means our efforts inside there aren't wasted." He dipped the brush into a cup on the coffee table to clean it off.
As he swooshed it around he glanced at Tyson who was now standing, looking around the room. "What about Gemini?" Tyson turned slowly with a skeptical expression. "Gemini... like the S-class Gemini?" Marco nodded silently and picked up more blue paint from the stencil.
Tyson smiled and closed his eyes, looking around, tilting his head side to side, his smile fading away into a frown. He licked his lips and spoke in a more serious tone, "not here." "But out there?" Asked Marco, to which Tyson nodded. "In a way, yeah."
A chill ran down Marco's spine. S-Class altered were more of a myth than an actual classification. Cataclysmic in nature, there was only a single record of one ever existing. Around 400 years ago, near the turn of the century, space exploration was ripe for the taking, many corporations were ahead of things like government regulation. Crew 0, comprised of 12 people, was the first to see the other side, a clean slate ripe for travel. For many years, travel was normal, larger galleons carrying more and more mining and farming equipment to far off worlds. It was around 2150 where the parallel was discovered, a far off land, a speck in the void where no life laid. A late crew 0 was the first to touch down and explore. They never made it back.
The only thing that flowed back to the ravine was an escape capsule, with a single tablet which had been completely wiped other than a singular file, named A-Gemini. As the story goes, the tablet held the picture of a single altered, the first and only of any. Like an angel from the bible, with many rings enveloped in wings.
But that was only a story, crew 0 never returned, but the tale of any record of such a being was as fantastical as any story you would tell a small child. While the classification existed, it was there as more of a "potential meter" similar to a 10.0 earthquake, the implications of which were enough to strike fear into anybody not well versed in the topics. It was unlikely, no, impossible.
Or so he thought, he stared at Tyson, who's usual confident mug was replaced by a more serious look. His eyes crinkling at the corner as his brow was slightly furrowed, as though angry. Marco placed the stencil and brush down, approaching Tyson. "Go home, I have a lot to think about."
Tyson left, Marco was left almost astounded, standing in his living room as he slowly slicked his hair back. A gust of wind came from the Balcony, like a silent explosion, he turned to see Lyle who was leaning on the balcony door, solving a Rubik's cube with one hand. "Interesting, huh?"