Ethan almost worried about how gentle Karl was that night. Previously, the engineer had a rise in primal behavior, relegated to his physical relationship with Ethan–or so it seemed. Heisenberg always spent a lot of time on his own, but had begun doing so even more often with the garage's construction. Ethan had too much pride to admit that he missed the other. And his only real way of gauging Heisenberg's....instincts...were when they were physically together.
He couldn't bear to tell Heisenberg that the same name the engineer uttered with familiarity so dear, had also been on Miranda's lips. Worse, she'd called that name and Mia. What the hell was going on? The blond could only hope that his own mind wasn't as easily permeated as Heisenbergs, after Heisenberg had said the name. But the older man had changed topics again by peppering kisses along Ethan's fingers, in the hand that he held, moving up Ethan's arm and finally pulling the blond onto his lap.
They made love in front of the fire-quiet, but frantic, with the need and yet familiarity of their connection. It was as thrilling as their first time; Heisenberg's body was devoted to slowly, passionately consuming the man in front of him, and his touch was truly electric. Still, he was gentle, thoughtful, almost seeming to carry some extra weight behind his actions. Whatever they were, they were unspoken, and remained so, without his usual outlet of Ethan's body. It was unlike Karl; he put his entire soul into his physical interactions and even talked through them during sex. But he was quiet and contemplative there too.
Ethan found himself ruminating about it long after they'd moved to the bedroom, while Ethan was left alone in his thoughts, with the only accompaniment the sound of the thunderstorm and Karl's soft breaths on his chest.
He recalled, as he lay there worrying about everything, threading his fingers through Karl's soft hair, one of Miranda's notes, transcribed by Eva. He couldn't recall the note, but it beckoned to his worrying mind. It was upstairs on his desk. Ethan decided to reread it in the morning, and drifted into uneasy dreams that seemed guarded by a tall, wide figure in the shadows.
================
Miranda's Diary
On Consciousness And Creation
I have been experimenting with the possibilities of manipulating and reviving the consciousnesses stored within the Megamycete. There have been many sacrifices but conscious entities still survive here.
When a person dies, their consciousness is stored and preserved, but over time it becomes diffused and diluted, spread thin throughout the Megamycete and mixed with other consciousnesses and memories. Extracting and reassembling an individual who has thus diffused has proved a monumental effort. As an experiment I decided to see what would happen if I used different individuals' consciousnesses to create an entity.
Results:
The results were fascinating. I gathered fragments, re-spooled the threads, and succeeded in creating an individual, birthed anew in this realm. A success, to be sure, but while his unusual physique resembled a man I once knew, he was possessed of a deeply warped psyche and was missing a portion of his face.
Conclusion:
While manipulating memories to create a person is possible, the creations are flawed and unstable. It will not be possible to manufacture a suitable vessel in this way.
================
He had two questions, and Eva knew the answer to neither.
First–if consciousnesses became "diffused and diluted" over time, how was a man from medieval Romania still intact, speaking his own language and able to remember his own life?
Second-if this one experiment file was anything to go by, did it mean Miranda had access to...others within the Megamycete?
Ethan didn't dare to say either name to Eva, or even think of them...for one reason–it was too hard. Too much to bear, to think that Mia might be out there in some form. The blond refused to let his thoughts spiral down the same path they had taken for the three years he hoped she was alive. Whatever Ethan felt about it, he was certain that Karl's emotions would be an even longer, darker spiral on the topic of his family and Miranda.
The two blonds reread the file, discussed what little they could, and agreed to speak later as Karl whistled through the house, as if calling livestock, from downstairs. His voice was a deep rumble as he threatened to leave the two behind and take Rosemary out for ice cream.
The trek was moderately easy, and Ethan found himself happy, at peace to be back in nature. Backpacking was a hobby of his, hiking another, long ago. It felt like a different lifetime, and he considered as they ascended the mountain trail, that it was a different lifetime. The Ethan Winters with those experiences had died in Dulvey. Another Ethan Winters woke up, carried out the difficult task of surviving the night, and reconnected with Mia in an attempt to heal. That Ethan had become a father. And then that Ethan had died. Alone, in the snow, without a heart.
Heisenberg had seen to it that another Ethan Winters was here, ascending the trail with him as he cursed and muttered under his breath. It seemed Karl's Roma blood did course somewhere in his veins after all, as he paced. He was wary of this Witch's Pond, shaking his head every so often when Ethan inquired the reasons for his unease. Never so much had Heisenberg reminded him of the Iron Steed on his house insignia and Rosemary's book. He was headstrong, huffing up the trail as if it were nothing to him, and he was shaking his unkempt hair, tossing it behind him as the trees grew thicker.
He carried the same white-glint in his eyes that had been drawn on the stallion's profile; Ethan found himself avoiding Karl, but staring after him in amusement nonetheless. Might as well enjoy the view before dealing with...whatever they were going to have to deal with.
—-------
And there it was, just like he'd seen in the lower strata. The once-lake was certainly not as clear as it had been during Miranda's lifetime; it was stagnant, leaves floating on the strangely hued stillwater. As they approached, Ethan could almost feel the nature around him shift, as if it were not pleased with their arrival. Warning them to stay away? He canted his head, staring out at the tree-lined banks of the far side. It felt wrong.
Everyone was on edge, he realized. Eva was quiet, withdrawn. Karl was stomping around like a goddamn steam engine, and huffing the same amount. Rosemary was on Ethan's shoulders, and when he tried to set her down, she resisted with a cry. So he hoisted her up again.
"Heisenberg, can you....do anything?"
Karl stared at him blankly. He threw out an arm. "Such as.....?"
"If she really did come up here," Ethan began sourly, "Wouldn't you be able to sense the crystals? Don't they resonate with your powers?"
"Believe it or not, Winters," Karl said with faux-patience, "I don't have x-ray vision. And my powers would just turn this sad sack of a soup bowl into an electrified swamp, if that's what you're askin'."
"For fuck's sake," the blond muttered under his breath, removing Rosemary from his shoulders and passing her into Eva's arms. The other seemed to already guess his next steps, and she frowned, "Oh, you can't possibly–"
"Somebody's gotta," he answered, and kicked off his boots and socks. When Ethan made a point to stare directly at Karl, rolling his jeans up to his knees, the engineer shook his head again and turned away, as if he couldn't bear to watch the stupidity. The familiar sound of a lighter clicking broke the other's silence.
To Karl's back, Ethan taunted, "Instead of coming here, I could have just found the King again."
Flipped off again. This time, while Karl faced away.
The blond scoffed and turned back to the task at hand, his cocky smirk fading as he stared at the pale blue surface, thinking of dead skin. Veins. Oxygen-deprived lips. Other things that were as unsettlingly blue as this water. It was just salt, he tried to convince himself. Salt...and probably a lot of acidic rainwater circulated from the factory, decades ago.
Well, this Ethan Winters wouldn't ever need a tetanus shot, on the bright side.
Ethan waded into the water stonily; he was too strong-stomached to respond to much anymore. Other than the sharp stones against his bare feet, he was numb to the ick of the water. But he could not quell the uneasy feeling in his stomach that now blanketed the entire forest. It seemed that the animal sounds, the typical daytime scratchings and birdcall, all fell silent around them. Rosemary made a few disapproving sounds, but her language was not yet English, so Ethan could only proceed while feeling like she too was against this endeavor.
As the water licked against his knees, Ethan leaned forward to trace his pale hands underneath its surface. Feeling, sensing...for what? He didn't know. What, whoever, Miranda had unceremoniously dumped here, he supposed. But there was no Mold here, no network to attach them to. The voices he relied on couldn't even answer Ethan. He was walking blind.
The forest continued to grow still around him, sound stopping entirely now. His companions faithfully watched from the shore, doing their best to hide their own misgivings. As Ethan moved forward, he realized that even the sounds of the water against his legs and roving arms was gone.
It felt wrong to stand in the water, he realized as he winced, feeling, but not hearing, it lap against his thighs. Like walking over a grave. Many graves. Ethan felt nothing, no pull from the mold, as his palms moved through silky pale liquid. But he kept going, now dragging his toes blindly in front of his form and hoping they connected with only rocks, sticks, whatever gunk floated down there and slipped away from his feet.
Just when the blond was about to call himself an idiot and run out of the strange-feeling watery cocoon, his hand brushed something. A hand? Something grasped him, yanked his hand down further. Ethan's face almost landed in the too-pale water, and as he stared at it he caught his own horror-stricken reflection. Eyes widened, mouth open. Whatever had tugged on his hand let go, and something drifted into the fingers.
He already knew what it was. Ethan stood, pulling the object out of the water. A crystal. It protruded from his fingers, looking almost clear against his skin. He turned it over in his palm, feeling deeply unsettled. He could sense Miranda's touch, he realized, and that was enough to almost make Ethan drop the damn thing again. But now he saw that Eva extended one pale arm toward him, and he waded in silence back across the shallows until he stood near her.
Their fingers traced over it while Karl shook his head, a safe distance behind them. Rosemary even turned away in Eva's arms, mimicking Karl's gesture.
"Do you feel.......?"
"Nothing," she answered heavily. "This was a person," she decided as her fingers hovered over it. "Isolated, disconnected. A lost soul."
"There are hundreds of them in there, Eva. I know it. I don't have to dredge the lake, I just felt it." Ethan paused as Rosemary bucked, finally wanting to be set down. Eva obliged and the toddler ran behind the woman's skirts as Eva and Ethan exchanged another harrowing stare. "Maybe thousands, I don't know."
"What should we do with them?" Eva, for once, sounded stressed. Lost. She turned the hollow vessel over in her dainty hands.
"I don't know," Ethan answered solemnly. His gaze moved toward Heisenberg again; the other's face was mostly obstructed by cigar smoke. It seemed to cling to him, not wishing to leave the field of the engineer's presence, and venture into these haunted trees.
If Heisenberg had an idea about what, if anything, to do with the casualties of a hundred years of a madwoman's rampage, he kept quiet about it. Ethan held up the translucent rock. "Any philosophical ideas about where this essence might have gone?"
He could still see the scowl through the smoke. Heisenberg shifted, and gestured at the trees around them. His body language was obvious. You'd be stupid to ask, it suggested. And he had a point. The feeling in the air here was one of death, of wrongness. Not just a simple accidental extinguishing, or something that followed the rules of Nature, like the spread of a virus that took children's lives–children like Eva.
This was something else entirely.
But Ethan had felt it before. He felt it everywhere Miranda touched. He'd also felt it at the Baker home.
As if he were drawn by the will-o-the-wisp, Ethan found himself treading back into the silent blue. Soon his ankles, then knees, then thighs, were enveloped in what should have been chilly water-but he felt nothing other than a slight shift. As though silk drifted past him. He was pulled to listen to its silence, the utter lack of a single voice within. It was the opposite of a siren song. The call of the void.
Water had a voice, he mused, rain had a voice, trees and rocks all had what Karl called frequencies–a hum that Ethan could feel, and felt connected to. This had nothing. He wondered briefly as he lowered the heavy gem back to its resting place-if abandonment, death, to not exist here, was a choice for the pond and its inhabitants. Had the fish rolled over and died, knowing what lay beneath them? Did the water give up the way Jack and Margeurite gave up, begging for respite in the end? Or was this death of Miranda's a contaminant that took life without consent? Was it murder?
Ethan saw his frightened face in the reflection as he lowered the crystal. A lone tear made its way from his cheek, and broke the stillness of the water.
At once, every sound came rushing back to Ethan's ears.
And at once, the strangled cries of both Eva and Heisenberg pierced the air.
Ethan spun on his heel and nearly toppled into the water. The forest was suddenly alive, buzzing with energy. Birds shrieked, a massive spray of wings from nearby signaled a murder of crows departing. Karl and Eva had shouted at the same time after their strangled cries punctuated–
"No!"
"Rose!"
The latter was from Heisenberg, and sounded on a frequency of terror that Ethan had not heard from the man before. Hazel eyes wildly scanned the gap between them as they now turned to face Ethan.
Rosemary had disappeared.