Fiction: The Rift
Oct. 31st, 2011 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kethniName: The Rift
Character: Matt, random crossover character
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult scenarios
Word Count: Approximately 1480
Authors Note: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dragon6593who wanted:
In a effort to map/study Hiro's time travel powers Primatech screw's up and creates rifts not into alternate timelines but alternate universes. Leaving the earth exposed to all manner of monsters from these randomly occuring unstable rifts. Unfortunately the experiment kills Hiro so they can't undo what they did. Enter Matt and his crack team whose mission is to contain, kill, or if possible force the monsters back into the rift before it closes. Matt has a particular reason for heading up this mission, the head of Primatech security, his twin brother Eric was killed and eaten by the first monster that came out of the first rift.
Apologies for the random crossover character!
The cities were empty now and the team ran along the deserted streets dodging abandoned vehicles and the debris of the disaster. There was no way to hide yourself unless you went deep underground. Surface living had become impossible. To be on the surface was to live each moment waiting for hell on earth.
The team stopped behind a tanker and huddled to consult the scratchy and static-filled display which Claire held.
‘There’s a build-up energy somewhere around here she said,’ shaking her head at the same time.
‘Can you narrow it down?’ Matt barked.
‘If I could do that I would’ve done that!’
Matt set his jaw and looked away. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t his fault. Search and Destroy teams burned out quickly. But then everyone got burned out, sooner or later. The entire human race was slowly curdling as the constant fear and violence ground them down. Those that survived had watched people around them torn apart and eaten. They’d lived on the surface knowing that nowhere was safe. Nowhere. A rift could open on a street, in a home, in an office, a school, or even in the middle of a forest. And where there was a rift, there were the creatures. The monsters. Divergent evolution, Mohinder called it. Oh once, right at the beginning the rifts had opened now and then onto realities where there were humans. Confused, frightened humans, many of whom spoke some other language, or were in varying degrees of technological advancement, or even humans who were in fact mostly human but had tails, or prehensile feet but human. Humans travelled through the rifts by accident or desperation their instinct was always to stay in their own universe.
The monsters had no such compunction. They roamed far and wide, crashing through rifts and obliterating everything in their path. Mohinder had surmised that their own home was crowded and violent. They had seen female creatures laying eggs with the fecundity of insects. Was it any wonder then that on sight of a place with no fellow predators but an embarrassment of small, weak creatures that they stamped through?
Slowly the rifts had stopped showing humans or humanoids. On the occasion that rift opened up onto some quiet place scouts who risked going through saw destruction and chaos. One place, one alternate America on some other earth, had launched a nuclear bomb against the creatures. The scout had walked out to see scorched earth as far as the eye could see.
This earth, this America, had been the epicentre. An experiment. There is something in the souls of some humans that impels them to do anything, no matter how dangerous, how matter the consequences, no matter what little value there is in the doing of it, purely to see what happens. There is little else quite as dangerous. Primatech had assumed they knew what they were doing, as Primatech always assumed they knew what they were doing, and instead they had changed the fundamental laws of physics and doomed everyone, and everything, everywhere. It was only a matter of time.
The monsters were nothing. A distraction. The basic fabric of reality, of all realitites, was unravelling. The monsters were merely a symptom.
The monsters were everything. In a few days they had changed society forever. The cities had been abandoned, the creatures were attracted to them like aardvarks to an anthill, and those who stopped to mourn their dead joined them.
Hiro, the unwitting architect of all this destruction, had been the first to die and so the chance to change it had disappeared. That first monster had wiped out the entire science team and then the security team who had tried to contain it. Matt has seen the security footage. While some of the others ran or hid his brother stood his ground. Not in arrogance or bombast and not in some deluded belief that he would be affected but in the sure and certain knowledge that he had to hold it off to give everyone else a chance to evacuate. Eric would have never claimed to be a hero. Matt’s been around long enough to know that heroism isn’t grandstanding or making speeches. It isn’t waiting until someone can see you taking a stupid risk and isn’t doing something idiotic because you think you’ll put it off. Heroism is doing what you need to, because you need to, even when you don’t want to do it. Heroism is done without trumpets or accolades. It’s quiet, sometimes unnoticed, and if it gets you killed then it was because you chose that doing what you needed to was more important. Eric decided that allowing everyone else to escape was more important than his own life. Matt wishes that he’d chosen differently, but then that wouldn’t have been his brother.
‘I think it’s straight ahead,’ Claire says uncertainly, squinting at the small monitor.
Mohinder developed the monitor to give them at least of chance of stopping the creatures before they get established. There are a few dozen teams in the US doing the same work as Matt’s: finding the rifts and killing the creatures as they come through. Let the eggheads try to work out a way to destroy them on the other side of the rifts, in the other universes, Matt can only cope with trying to stop things getting worse. They get to the rifts, try to kill the creatures, and if they’ve laid eggs then they destroy those too. The creatures are too large, and the incursions are too frequent, for anything to be done with the bodies but take samples back to Mohinder. He hopes to engineer a virus of some kind.
Matt feels in his bones that nothing good will come from that, but they all have to do what they can.
A slit like a slash in the universe appears in front of them. They’re too close, far too close.
‘Fall back!’ Matt screams, waving a hand.
The team bolt back for cover, and find only the stinking and infested corpse of another monster. The smell has largely passed and besides they’re used to it by now. Matt sees without noticing that chunks of flesh have been sliced off cleanly with some sort of blade. Someone is living somewhere nearby. Someone will, with luck, be feasting tonight.
The tortured space screams as the rift widens. Matt’s team steady their weapons and pray, or curse, or make impossible silent promises to their loved ones.
And then a man steps through. A man dressed in a tweed jacket with shaggy brown hair that flops over his brow.
‘Ah, expecting trouble I see,’ he says, and gives them a vague but friendly smile. ‘Do you mind lowering the guns? Never been a fan of guns. Far too much chance of them going bang.’
Matt makes a gesture to his men and stands up. He walks out of cover and over to the stranger.
‘We didn’t think there were many humans still alive of the other side.’
‘No. None at all. Terrific tragedy but totally man-made.’ The stranger waves an object in his hand. It’s about the length of a pencil but much thicker, silver, and with a glowing light at the end. ‘Do you know the nice thing about man-made disasters Mr Soldier?’
‘I’m not a solider, I’m a policeman,’ Matt says automatically. Of all the nonsensical things that keep him going that is the most fragile and the one he grasps the tightest.
‘Really? The uniform and the gun fooled me. Not that I don’t like soldiers necessarily. I’ve known some wonderful soldiers. Wonderful chaps.’ For a moment the life and colour drains from his face. ‘Yes. But of course no-one is gone forever. What was I saying?’
‘The nice thing about man-made disasters,’ Matt prompts.
‘Yes!’ he beams a grin. ‘The nice thing about man-made disasters is that they can be fixed.’ He turns around and points the silver object at the rift. Matt watches in astonishment as it seals itself up.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Sonic screwdriver. I’m the Doctor, by the way.’
Matt nods. ‘Am I dead or just concussed?’
The Doctor flips the sonic screwdriver in his hand. ‘Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder I shouldn’t wonder but neither dead nor concussed from the look of you. Do you have a name?’
‘Matt Parkman. What do you mean, it can be fixed?’
‘I mean that your unfortunate Mr Nakamura wasn’t the only time traveller around.’ He slings an arm around Matt’s shoulders. ‘Now, how about you take me to wherever this whole unpleasant situation started and I can do my thing.’
Matt blinks and shrugs. ‘It beats being killed.’
‘That’s the spirit! Lead on MacDuff.’
‘It’s lay,’ Matt says, and blushes.'In the play, it's lay.'
The Doctor grins at him. ‘You’re surprising me already. I love that. Off we go!’
The End
Character: Matt, random crossover character
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult scenarios
Word Count: Approximately 1480
Authors Note: For
dragon6593who wanted:In a effort to map/study Hiro's time travel powers Primatech screw's up and creates rifts not into alternate timelines but alternate universes. Leaving the earth exposed to all manner of monsters from these randomly occuring unstable rifts. Unfortunately the experiment kills Hiro so they can't undo what they did. Enter Matt and his crack team whose mission is to contain, kill, or if possible force the monsters back into the rift before it closes. Matt has a particular reason for heading up this mission, the head of Primatech security, his twin brother Eric was killed and eaten by the first monster that came out of the first rift.
Apologies for the random crossover character!
The cities were empty now and the team ran along the deserted streets dodging abandoned vehicles and the debris of the disaster. There was no way to hide yourself unless you went deep underground. Surface living had become impossible. To be on the surface was to live each moment waiting for hell on earth.
The team stopped behind a tanker and huddled to consult the scratchy and static-filled display which Claire held.
‘There’s a build-up energy somewhere around here she said,’ shaking her head at the same time.
‘Can you narrow it down?’ Matt barked.
‘If I could do that I would’ve done that!’
Matt set his jaw and looked away. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t his fault. Search and Destroy teams burned out quickly. But then everyone got burned out, sooner or later. The entire human race was slowly curdling as the constant fear and violence ground them down. Those that survived had watched people around them torn apart and eaten. They’d lived on the surface knowing that nowhere was safe. Nowhere. A rift could open on a street, in a home, in an office, a school, or even in the middle of a forest. And where there was a rift, there were the creatures. The monsters. Divergent evolution, Mohinder called it. Oh once, right at the beginning the rifts had opened now and then onto realities where there were humans. Confused, frightened humans, many of whom spoke some other language, or were in varying degrees of technological advancement, or even humans who were in fact mostly human but had tails, or prehensile feet but human. Humans travelled through the rifts by accident or desperation their instinct was always to stay in their own universe.
The monsters had no such compunction. They roamed far and wide, crashing through rifts and obliterating everything in their path. Mohinder had surmised that their own home was crowded and violent. They had seen female creatures laying eggs with the fecundity of insects. Was it any wonder then that on sight of a place with no fellow predators but an embarrassment of small, weak creatures that they stamped through?
Slowly the rifts had stopped showing humans or humanoids. On the occasion that rift opened up onto some quiet place scouts who risked going through saw destruction and chaos. One place, one alternate America on some other earth, had launched a nuclear bomb against the creatures. The scout had walked out to see scorched earth as far as the eye could see.
This earth, this America, had been the epicentre. An experiment. There is something in the souls of some humans that impels them to do anything, no matter how dangerous, how matter the consequences, no matter what little value there is in the doing of it, purely to see what happens. There is little else quite as dangerous. Primatech had assumed they knew what they were doing, as Primatech always assumed they knew what they were doing, and instead they had changed the fundamental laws of physics and doomed everyone, and everything, everywhere. It was only a matter of time.
The monsters were nothing. A distraction. The basic fabric of reality, of all realitites, was unravelling. The monsters were merely a symptom.
The monsters were everything. In a few days they had changed society forever. The cities had been abandoned, the creatures were attracted to them like aardvarks to an anthill, and those who stopped to mourn their dead joined them.
Hiro, the unwitting architect of all this destruction, had been the first to die and so the chance to change it had disappeared. That first monster had wiped out the entire science team and then the security team who had tried to contain it. Matt has seen the security footage. While some of the others ran or hid his brother stood his ground. Not in arrogance or bombast and not in some deluded belief that he would be affected but in the sure and certain knowledge that he had to hold it off to give everyone else a chance to evacuate. Eric would have never claimed to be a hero. Matt’s been around long enough to know that heroism isn’t grandstanding or making speeches. It isn’t waiting until someone can see you taking a stupid risk and isn’t doing something idiotic because you think you’ll put it off. Heroism is doing what you need to, because you need to, even when you don’t want to do it. Heroism is done without trumpets or accolades. It’s quiet, sometimes unnoticed, and if it gets you killed then it was because you chose that doing what you needed to was more important. Eric decided that allowing everyone else to escape was more important than his own life. Matt wishes that he’d chosen differently, but then that wouldn’t have been his brother.
‘I think it’s straight ahead,’ Claire says uncertainly, squinting at the small monitor.
Mohinder developed the monitor to give them at least of chance of stopping the creatures before they get established. There are a few dozen teams in the US doing the same work as Matt’s: finding the rifts and killing the creatures as they come through. Let the eggheads try to work out a way to destroy them on the other side of the rifts, in the other universes, Matt can only cope with trying to stop things getting worse. They get to the rifts, try to kill the creatures, and if they’ve laid eggs then they destroy those too. The creatures are too large, and the incursions are too frequent, for anything to be done with the bodies but take samples back to Mohinder. He hopes to engineer a virus of some kind.
Matt feels in his bones that nothing good will come from that, but they all have to do what they can.
A slit like a slash in the universe appears in front of them. They’re too close, far too close.
‘Fall back!’ Matt screams, waving a hand.
The team bolt back for cover, and find only the stinking and infested corpse of another monster. The smell has largely passed and besides they’re used to it by now. Matt sees without noticing that chunks of flesh have been sliced off cleanly with some sort of blade. Someone is living somewhere nearby. Someone will, with luck, be feasting tonight.
The tortured space screams as the rift widens. Matt’s team steady their weapons and pray, or curse, or make impossible silent promises to their loved ones.
And then a man steps through. A man dressed in a tweed jacket with shaggy brown hair that flops over his brow.
‘Ah, expecting trouble I see,’ he says, and gives them a vague but friendly smile. ‘Do you mind lowering the guns? Never been a fan of guns. Far too much chance of them going bang.’
Matt makes a gesture to his men and stands up. He walks out of cover and over to the stranger.
‘We didn’t think there were many humans still alive of the other side.’
‘No. None at all. Terrific tragedy but totally man-made.’ The stranger waves an object in his hand. It’s about the length of a pencil but much thicker, silver, and with a glowing light at the end. ‘Do you know the nice thing about man-made disasters Mr Soldier?’
‘I’m not a solider, I’m a policeman,’ Matt says automatically. Of all the nonsensical things that keep him going that is the most fragile and the one he grasps the tightest.
‘Really? The uniform and the gun fooled me. Not that I don’t like soldiers necessarily. I’ve known some wonderful soldiers. Wonderful chaps.’ For a moment the life and colour drains from his face. ‘Yes. But of course no-one is gone forever. What was I saying?’
‘The nice thing about man-made disasters,’ Matt prompts.
‘Yes!’ he beams a grin. ‘The nice thing about man-made disasters is that they can be fixed.’ He turns around and points the silver object at the rift. Matt watches in astonishment as it seals itself up.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Sonic screwdriver. I’m the Doctor, by the way.’
Matt nods. ‘Am I dead or just concussed?’
The Doctor flips the sonic screwdriver in his hand. ‘Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder I shouldn’t wonder but neither dead nor concussed from the look of you. Do you have a name?’
‘Matt Parkman. What do you mean, it can be fixed?’
‘I mean that your unfortunate Mr Nakamura wasn’t the only time traveller around.’ He slings an arm around Matt’s shoulders. ‘Now, how about you take me to wherever this whole unpleasant situation started and I can do my thing.’
Matt blinks and shrugs. ‘It beats being killed.’
‘That’s the spirit! Lead on MacDuff.’
‘It’s lay,’ Matt says, and blushes.'In the play, it's lay.'
The Doctor grins at him. ‘You’re surprising me already. I love that. Off we go!’
The End
