Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 115: Familiar Surroundings

By the time Isaac got to his childhood home, it was still in the middle of the night, only the slightly yellowish light of the streetlamps providing illumination. The entire neighborhood looked normal, so incredibly, unbelievably, painfully ordinary. Nothing like the charnel house the small town had turned into or the ordered chaos of the research camp, just a normal, peaceful neighborhood full of blissfully sleeping people.

… well, there was a couple having indecently loud sex two houses over and a group of people sat around a dying campfire, drinking beer and talking about politics in a low voice, but that was beside the point.

But this entire place was so incredibly peaceful, a calm oasis of peace in this entire, messed-up world, and he wished it could just stay that way. And hopefully, it would, but if it didn’t … there would be blood.

Yet … Isaac didn’t entirely feel like he belonged here, not really. This place was beautiful, sure, but the entire place seemed like a huge trap, like something nasty was lurking just around the corner to devour him whole the second he let his guard down. There was nothing there, of course, he’d checked, but that didn’t make the feeling vanish.

No matter how much he didn’t want to admit it, the battlefield had become his home, the place things made sense. This peaceful place … didn’t.

Isaac let himself into the house, not with his keys because the damn lock was old and pretty loud, but by simply walking through the door as if it weren’t even there. His boots went neatly on the shoe rack, jacket onto the coatrack, all perfectly normal, ordinary, despite the microscopic specs of blood that still discolored both. He’d cleaned his clothing as best he could and gotten almost all of it, but with his incredible senses, he could spot each remaining stain with absolute clarity. None of his family members would notice, mind you, but still …

He continued through the house, silently wandering through all the places he hadn’t seen for so damn long. The wall where his parents had marked his height as he grew, the dents he’d accidentally smashed into the wall when he’d thought he was a knight and swung around a toy sword with abandon. The wall of pictures drawn by the children, first by him, then his sisters, starting out with crude stick figures and soon evolving into something more beautiful. Well, theirs did, his had continued to be limited to stick figures.

Isaac’s face slowly grew into a sad parody of a smile, still recognizable as one, yet also unmistakably tainted by a bottomless ocean of sadness. They were all dead, the one’s he’d known for most of his life … but they weren’t. Those twelve years he’d gone back in time, those were dead, not the people, but for a pair of six-year-olds, twelve years changed everything. Twelve years took someone from being a little kid to a sort-of adult, and massively changed one’s personality. His parents were similar enough now as they had been near the end, but his sisters …

With another sad sigh, he continued to the next floor, sneaking a peek into Tanja and Viktoria’s room. They lay there on their beds, blonde hair splayed out on their pillows, thoroughly tangled up in their sheets only a little kid who still moved around in their sleep could manage. In other words, they were incredibly adorable.

He longed to hug them, hold them, squeeze them tight and never let go, but Isaac stayed his hand, for a few reasons.

First of all, if he woke them now, they wouldn’t go back to sleep for a while, and that would come back with a vengeance in the morning.

Then there was the risk of scaring them half to death, what with the whole ‘snuck into their room in the middle of the night’ thing.

Lastly, well, if he disturbed his sisters’ sleep, his mother would skin him alive, literally.

Convinced that they were safe, Isaac retreated back to his own room, and changed into a pair of his old pajamas. They still fit, but he hadn’t worn them in a couple of years and he’d gotten a lot more fit as he levelled up, so they were a little tight in places.

But that didn’t really matter, either. Isaac just yanked the dustsheet off his bed and flopped onto it, not even bothering to crawl under the duvet. He was asleep practically before he hit the mattress.

Of course, he had 75 points in Fortitude, so he didn’t get to spend much time resting. Paradoxically, the way to get around that was to further increase his Fortitude until he only needed to sleep for a few seconds a day because then, he could actually make himself sleep. Just plain sleeping was a good way to decompress, but it was currently unavailable to him.

When Isaac woke up, he turned in his bed and lay there, face up, staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. The heartbeats of his family pounded in his ears like the crashing of waves upon shore, reassuring him that they were all still here, still present, still … alive. What had happened in that small town whose name he’d never even learned, it had happened there, not here. Yet his mind continued to supply the things he’d seen there, superimposed with the images of his loved ones.

Damnit.

At least there would soon be something he could do to help change things. You got [Inspect] and [Privacy] at your first Evolution, your [Aura] with your second, and your third, well, it got you improvements for your family. Most of those were meant to be passed on to your descendants, but there were a few that could be given to other blood relatives as well.

Mind you, any advantages given by a bloodline could be achieved by a normal person as well. Children born with the Stats of a Level 5 human wouldn’t gain any Stat points by levelling until they hit Level 6, children born with an Aspect Skill would start out with one less Aspect slot, and children who had a [Skill] or two from the get-go would start out in the negative in regard to [Skill] points.

But once he hit Level 50 and evolved, he could give his sisters a serious head start. And if they grabbed a [Class] that greatly differed from his, they could have an incredibly powerful [Skill] they wouldn’t normally have been able to get.

At the very least, he could give his sisters [Hydra’s Regeneration] and a few extra Stat Points, it would give them a nice head start. Hardly a definitive or insurmountable advantage, but an advantage nonetheless.

So that was what he did for an hour or so, just lay in bed and think, but eventually, he was starting to go a little stir crazy. Sadly, it was still dark outside, meaning it was far too early for him to wake his sisters or start rattling around the kitchen.

Isaac rolled out of bed in the direction of the wall, falling straight through and out into the yard. The night air was cool on his skin as he walked towards the street. Glancing down at himself, he reassured himself that he was sufficiently covered to not count as ‘indecent exposure’. Sure, he was still running around in pajamas, which was weird, not hardly problematic.

As he walked through familiar streets like a sleepwalker, the asphalt rough under his bare feet, his mind continued to wander, throwing up images of his surroundings destroyed and ruined, strewn with the corpses of the people he knew here. Yet they were soon replaced by images of a brighter future, one where most of the current problems plaguing the world had been eliminated and humanity was reaching for the stars.

This brave new world was dangerous as hell, yet it could be so incredibly rewarding. This would end either with humanity’s extinction, or apotheosis, with very little middle ground. And Isaac would do everything in his power to make sure it was the latter that came to pass.

As the sky lightened and people started to come out of their houses, Isaac decided to go invisible while heading back home, phasing and jumping straight back into his bedroom. He grabbed an inscribed core from his pocket and headed down into the kitchen. Even if him rattling around in there while he cooked woke someone, it was 6:45, getting up now wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Now, Isaac was hardly the best cook, he was merely adequate in the kitchen, but he could cheat. Literally divine cuts of steak from the summer solstice Event, [Skill] enhanced herbs he’d convinced Raul to plant atop their office building, all retrieved from his storage space … sure, those high-value ingredients were absolutely wasted on someone like him, but they’d turn this from a decent meal into something truly fantastic.

Steak and eggs, put inside a ciabatta which he’d purchase as soon as the bakery opened as packed lunch, some regular scrambled egg and fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast, it should go over pretty well.

While the steak sizzled in the pan, Isaac left the house and crossed the street in a single massive leap, startling the baker just as he opened the door.

“Hi, I’d like to order four ciabattas, please.” He said, holding out a five euro note.

“Sure.” The baker nodded, heading back behind the counter. While he did that, Isaac leaped back into his kitchen, flipped the steak, and returned before the baker had even packaged up his order.

“So, you just moved into this neighborhood? It’ll be good to have someone here to deal with monsters if they crop up.” the baker asked, clearly, he hadn’t recognized Isaac.

“Actually, I’m just visiting, but I’m well acquainted with the police in the precinct a few blocks over, they’ll be able to handle anything that can reasonably crop up.” Isaac responded.

“So, you’re a cop then?”

“Nah, I’m the guy who trained them. But believe me, the only safer place in the city is the university with their [Mages].” Isaac assured him “I gotta go, though, steak’s in the pan and need to be taken out.”

And just like that, he was back in the kitchen, placing the sizzling slabs of beef on plates while tossing in onions to fry in the fat that had been rendered out during the frying process.

“Something smells good … ISAAC!”

He flinched slightly at his mother’s exclamation of surprise, but turned to face her with a slight grin on his face.

“Hey Mom, sorry for dropping by like this without announcing it, but I figured a phone call at 3 in the morning wouldn’t be appreciated.”

“True.” She said, stepping in and wrapping him in a tight hug “It’s so good to see you, I … I saw the news. That stuff was horrible, just … horrible. Please tell me you weren’t …”

“Don’t worry Mom, I was just researching stuff. Sure, there were monsters involved, but I can handle monsters.” He reassured her, then looked towards the door at the sound of two pairs of little feet running down the stairs.

“ISAAC!”

He caught the little blond missile in his arms, spinning her around to absorb some of the momentum, only for a limpet to attach itself to his leg a moment later.

“You can cook?” Tanja asked, looking up at him with the kind of wide eyed innocence that only a little kid could produce.

“Everyone can cook, you’ll need to learn as well.” Their mother said with a chuckle, reaching out to tousle her hair.

Tanja, of course, protested, but failed to safe her currently nonexistent ‘hairstyle’.

“Yes, I can cook.” Isaac added with a laugh.

“So, what are you doing here?” Viktoria asked as she squirmed out of his hug “I thought you had important work to do?”

“I did. Yesterday. Today, I thought I’d bring you to school.” Isaac offered “Is it so weird that I’d like to spend a little time with my baby sisters?”

“I’m not a baby!” Viktoria protested and stuck out her tongue, her sister joining in a moment later. This, of course, prompted their mother to scold them for the rude gesture, but Isaac just burst out laughing, earning him the evil eye from the matriarch of the home. He just laughed harder and so did his father, once he’d finally made his way downstairs.

It was all very domestic, very calm, and absolutely, chaotically, perfect.

Once the somewhat chaotic breakfast was over, his mother had finished grilling him over yesterday’s events and the twins were dressed, the three of them headed towards the school.

The twins had wanted him to fly them there, but Isaac had decided against it, compromising on carrying them on his shoulders, one on each. That seemed to have been an acceptable compromise.

“Bye, Isaac.” Tanja waved as she headed inside.

“Go kick some monster’s butt!” Viktoria added before following her sister.

Isaac headed off towards the university, but only after scanning the entirety of the building with his [Aura], making sure there was no frayed wiring, no badly stored, volatile chemicals and no spoiled meat being sold in the kiosk as a cost-cutting measure. Not that he thought there’d be any of that, but, well, he had to be sure.

***

“You know, you didn’t have to come in today, right?” Bailey said the moment Isaac walked through the door “Raul didn’t see half of what you did, yet he decided to take a few days off and went to talk to a professional.”

Isaac shrugged “That was his first massacre, I’ve seen worse. Still sucked, but I’ll get over it. Also, I did talk to someone, I went to see to my family, walked my sisters to school … I’m in a far better place than I was last night.”

“Sisters?” Amy asked “I’m guessing they’re a lot younger than you?”

“Yes?” Isaac asked.

“Oh, I can see it now. Future boyfriends aren’t going to have Dad give the ‘you’d better treat my little girl right’ talk, it’s going to be big brother Isaac giving the ‘you hurt my sister, they’ll never find the body’ speech.” She laughed.

“Alright, that’s enough.” Isaac sighed, shaking his head “Now, can we get back to work? I hear Professor Chandler is tickled pink at some of the herbs we got from the bodies of the monster and I haven’t had the chance to catch up yet …”

In the end, the day turned out very, very boring, and it was utterly perfect. No big fights, no moral quandaries, not even a hint of dead children, just normal time in the office with coworkers who were also good friends while feeling the thrill of discovery for the first time in a long while.

Isaac would enjoy it while it lasted, because in this world, it never did.