sixthiterationlogs | 001 ♙ open

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001 ♙ open

WHO: Jess Brightwell.
WHERE: The fountain, the town, and later on, the inn.
WHEN: July 25th.
OPEN TO: Anyone!
WARNINGS: Wet, grumpy teens and probably swearing.
STATUS: Open.

I. Fountain

Jess woke up to bone-chilling darkness. A wet darkness, some part of his mind supplied when a pressure pushed on him from below and he felt his limbs, sluggish and heavy, cut through liquid in an uncoordinated thrash.

Water. He was in water.

The jolting realization came too late to stop himself from doing the one thing he shouldn't do: open his mouth and inhale. The burn of frigid water in his lungs and up his nose instantly woke Jess up, and then panic was setting in for real, colder even than the gloomy water in which he was submerged. Instinct was a screaming voice in his head propelling him in the direction he'd been pushed. Up, he prayed. Let it be up.

Just when Jess thought he couldn't hold back the need to expel his lungs a second longer, he breached the surface, coughing until every muscle in his chest felt like it was spasming. He paddled his arms, fighting to clear his eyes, his movements made extra jerky by an unfamiliar weight on his back. The backpack was hardly as heavy as the fully-stocked travel packs he'd trained with, but between it and getting caught by surprise, he wasn't as graceful pulling himself from the pool as he would've liked. Half-rolling, Jess ended up in a sprawl, caught at an awkward angle on his side because of the backpack like a turtle flipped on its back.

If Glain could see this display, she'd have him running laps around the training field for the rest of his life and then some.

... Glain. The High Garda compound. The barracks.

Now that he wasn't in any immediate danger of drowning in his sleep, the questions were tumbling in. How had he gotten from there to here without waking up? Wherever "here" was.

Instinct told him something was wrong, horribly wrong, eclipsing the sweet relief at having air to gulp down. Wriggling out of the backpack, Jess pulled himself onto his knees and looked down at himself, and what he saw justified the renewed panic beating in his chest like a second heartbeat. He didn't recognize a single thing he was wearing. Where was his uniform? His belt with his tools? Anything? He reached for the bag--also unfamiliar--and tore into it, shoving aside more unfamiliar articles of clothing. Nothing. No knife, no Codex. Things he wouldn't leave behind and people wouldn't dare take from him. What the hell.

This was bad. It certainly couldn't be good.

II. Town

Later in the day, Jess could no longer resist the urge to get out from under prying eyes and take some air by himself, prompting him to head out into town on alone. Seeing was believing, and Jess needed to see what he was up against with his own eyes.

Keeping away from the main drag to avoid notice, he cautiously picked his way along the outer fringe of the settlement. Everything had a threatening newness to it that had Jess on high alert, pausing at every unfamiliar crack of a branch and checking over his shoulder at each turn to make sure he wasn't being followed. The town was larger than he'd expected and had the uncanny appearance of a set piece. Like an elaborate replica of a pioneer village that time had forgotten.

It's strange, ghost-like feel made Jess uneasy, and he put a concentrated effort into avoiding the view of windows, approaching from the rears of building until he was close enough to peer in through them. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet whoever lived in these ramshackle houses, if they were even occupied.

At one house, he tried a side door. The knob turned soundlessly under his hand. It felt like a trap. All of it did. This entire town. He'd never thought he would, but for once he missed his armored uniform and the heavy High Garda weapons that went with it. He'd feel safer with something besides a dull fear pounding in his head.

III. Inn

By all rights, Jess should be dead to the world after this rotten day--the cherry on a shite cake as he hadn't been averaging much sleep in the days proceeding this anyway--but no amount of mental and physical exhaustion could dull Jess' prickling nerves, even after day gave way to late night, and the quiet town grew even quieter.

He'd taken shelter in the inn once it'd started to get dark, seeing no better option, yet he couldn't bring himself to touch the abandoned beds. Eventually Jess crept into the front room and picked a perch near one of the windows, staring out into the inky darkness beyond with restless intensity.

He should rest. He needed to rest. He was running on fumes, stomach churning with hunger and unease both. But he just couldn't. He was used to the noise and bustle of Alexandria and having his fellow recruits around him in the barracks. This place was as quiet as a grave... and that was definitely not a comparison he appreciated, especially with how conveniently timed his abduction was when he considered all the variables at work. They'd been making moves against the Artifex, and suddenly he ended up in the middle of nowhere without his Library identification? Too well-timed.

Explanations chased themselves around his head--how he'd been taken, who would've taken him, who would notice him gone--and ended up at the same dead ends each time. Jess rested his chin on his knees, frustrating with each fruitless loop. The not knowing would kill him if the jaws of the trap he could feel closing around him didn't first.

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It's muffled, but the sound of the door opening and admitting a light pair of footsteps is impossible to miss. At least for Jess. It's not the easiest thing in the world to sneak up on a Brightwell and his ears are pricked particularly high this day... maybe ever since Thomas taken out of Ptolemy House. (Maybe before that.)

He lowers his legs to the floor from where he'd had them bent to rest his chin and watches to see if the owner of the footsteps steps into view. A brunette woman appears in the entryway. Older than him but around the same height; however, instead of grey scrubs like his, she's in a blue-colored set. They suit her, so she's got that going for her.

They mark each other at the same time, or so it seems to Jess, since she starts toward him not a moment later. He sits a little straighter, watching her progress. "Ma'am." Better to be mannerly until he can figure out who's friend or foe.

His gaze goes to her bag of goodies. The clunk of various items hitting the floor makes it difficult to guess what's in it, but his attention is mostly on her--on her accent, specifically. "Someone from the mother country," he observes, smiling faintly. London, too, he'd guess. "Just sitting. I don't know anyone to wait for."

He's been meeting people, but that's not really the same thing.

She tips her head to him in greeting, hardly hiding her smile of amusement when he speaks about the mother country, a touch grateful to hear a familiar accent. In New York and then Los Angeles, Mr. Jarvis had been that point of home and she's missing that, so far. There is Killian, of course, but they're hardly best friends at this point.

"Some people here know others," she informs him, "Or perhaps not knowledge, but it seems that we come from common timelines." She offers him a polite smile, aware that his apparent age shouldn't give her reason to bring her guard down, but unfortunately, it happens almost unconsciously.

"Have you been here long, then? I haven't seen you around."

He stands up to meet her to put them on more of a level. In doing so, he has to resist looking at his naked wrist, the sum of all that he's lost and all that's unfamiliar about this eerie town. Game face on, Brightwell. He won't show just far down his apprehension goes--and like a veritable iceberg, it goes pretty far.

"Timelines?" Jess repeats, brow scrunching. Common circumstances, he might have expected to explain a mass abduction. Common backgrounds, common locations, maybe. But common timelines? That's an odd way to phrase it.

His lack of comprehension probably gives away the answer, but Jess still says, "Since this morning and I have to say, it's not how I imagined my day going. Jess Brightwell." He offers her his hand. If nothing else, the day's given him time to steady himself, so his grip manages to be firm, nowhere near the jellylike consistency his limbs had taken when he'd first crawled out of the fountain.

"I'm from 1947," Peggy says, eyeing him speculatively and thinking that he's likely from somewhere in her future, but whether it's her specific future is the question. "I've met people here from 2016, who know of me," she clarifies. "So you see? Timelines," she clarifies, because she's yet to understand how it's possible, but she's come around to actually believe it to be true.

"Peggy Carter," she introduces herself in turn, reaching out to shake his briskly, with a firm nod. "It seems I've caught you right at the start," she notes, a hint of apology in her tone. "No one else was with you when you exited? Nothing strange happened, like an odd windstorm?"

What?

Jess shakes and releases her hand, but it's more of an absent movement without any conscious input behind it. He's still stuck on the dates she rattles off, both ancient history for him, as far as he's concerned. He'd been ten years old in 2016. The only significant meaning that year has is that it'd marked his first run-in with an ink-licker, an encounter that still makes Jess uncomfortable to think about.

He's gathered people here have some odd stories to tell, but this takes the issue of where everyone is from and when to a new level of crazy. He's careful not to let his incredulity show on his face. "No, sorry, I don't think I do see," he says after a beat.

Time travelling? Is that what she's suggesting? Kidnappings are a part of cold, hard reality, but that's the stuff of science fiction, not something Jess is primed to believe in.

"Were those things supposed to have happened?"

She shakes her head when he dismisses both events as not happening. It only puzzles her all the more because it doesn't make sense. Why were they brought in a group the way they were and who had set off those sirens? She's done her recon and she knows that no one had slipped away into town and certainly not with the familiarity to sound the alarm. And even if they had, how would they have known that something was coming?

"No, it's just that when I got here, both those things did. I wasn't sure if someone coming out of the fountain triggered it," Peggy admits, wishing that it had. At least then, there would be a pattern. "You've decided to stay at the inn, then?"

Jess tilts his head, unsure of what to make of her, or of what she's saying. He's normally quick to follow along, but he can't see the shape these dots are forming, and she's carrying on before he has a chance to make up his mind whether she's out of him or he is. Or this whole town is.

"Freak weather, or jumping nearly eighty years into the future? That last one would concern me a bit," he replies evenly. It's not everyday someone claims to be from the distant past, but he thinks he's handling it fairly well, all things considered. "Don't see I have much in the choice in the matter, seeing as how everyone I've met so far have said chances are slim I'll be sleeping in my own bed anytime soon."

The inn will do as a place to wait out the night, as he doubts he'll be getting much sleep, and then first thing tomorrow he'll start scouting. It's the best plan he's got.

"Not your own bed, but there are several houses." And once you got over the idea that you were crashing in someone's bed like Goldilocks, Peggy found them much more amenable as far as privacy went. Yes, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that someone was going to come home one day to find her there, but it's why she kept an iron fireplace poker close to the bed in the event she needed something to lash out with. "As far as the timeline goes, I can assure you that the eighty year jump is quite a bit frightening."

And yet, she seems to be closer to their current era than the others do. She's still utterly out of her depth, but at least she recognizes some of it from her childhood as things recently gone by.

"I'm afraid not much here makes sense, not to me," she confesses. "Maybe you'll have better luck."

"I've run into some people taking shelter in them. They're all abandoned, I hear." And if some of the others had been living here for upward of a month--an unthinkable amount of time--Jess supposes he can see the appeal of making the most of the amenities.

But he can't picture it for himself. Doesn't really want to. Getting comfortable is not an option today or any day.

Still, he appreciates the goodwill behind the suggestion, even if half of what she's said so far is a little bananas. "You're serious about the time travel, aren't you." It's more of a statement than a question.

"Yes, they are," she says, refusing to feel guilty about her trip out to some of them in order to start tearing it apart for whatever materials she might have need of. It seems silly letting things languish on the off event that someone might return in the future, when they're the ones who need resources right now.

"I'm very serious about it," she says. "I don't suppose there's anything I can do to prove it?"

"Unless you have your birth certificate in that sack, I don't know how one goes about proving the existence of time slips," he replies with arch humor. The smile he puts on suggests he's trying this all on the chin as best he can. "No disrespect intended, but being spat out of a park fountain into a town straight out of a history text that no one seems to know anything about, and now travelling through time...?"

He shakes his head. Jess' inherent skepticism is working against him, straining against his understanding that keeping an open mind is in his best interests. Rounding out the bottom of his list of possible explanations is theoretical pseudo-science used to entertain children.

"It's a bit much to take in. What does that mean for us, we've been dropped into the early 1900s? What's next? Aliens?"

"I left it in my other scrub pants," she deadpans, of the request for a birth certificate. She doesn't think that he's being too adamant or forward about what he's asking. The day she had arrived, she had been much worse. When he keeps going on, she winces slightly because she might as well tell him now before someone else gets the opportunity.

She feels awful, really, but he is going to find out eventually. "There are a few people here who are from outer space, so I suppose you might be able to refer to them as aliens," she confesses, giving him a sympathetic look. "Sorry?"

"Space. Really." This time, the flat incredulity is obvious. "So I should keep an eye out for little green men? Is that a major concern here?"

In any other situation, Jess might be grateful Peggy wasn't pulling her punches--he's not a delicate flower that needs coddling. But she's leading him by the nose on this one. She has to be. Or else he has to think she really believes this stuff, and that's... well, he doesn't know what to do with that.

Still, she's being nice enough and he's not exactly in a position to snub people, crackpot theories or no. Jess opts for what he hopes is a noncommittal shrug. "I'm not judging what you think," he says. "I don't care if fountain fairies are responsible for stealing us away, I just need to get where I'm going. The sooner the better. What else can you tell me about this place?"

"Well, one's quite ginger," is Peggy's reply. "The others are fairly normal." The fact that she's even discussing this in the plural is the part where reality keeps falling apart for her. None of it makes any sort of sense and she hates that because if there's one thing she appreciates, it's logic and facts and a plan.

She shakes her head as he asks for more. "We're in an era that predates even the technology I'm accustomed to and we seem to be the only residents," she says. "Apart from that, I really have about as much information as you do. We're all in the dark," she notes, a touch bitter.

He's on the verge of saying Are you sure he's not a Scot? but thinks better of it. Maybe it's better if they put the idea of time machines and space invaders to bed before Jess' headache gets any worse.

"What's this about odd windstorms?" Jess says instead, steering them back to the matter at hand. She could be a three-headed alien herself, but she's seen things he hasn't when it comes to this place and whatever game this is.

"When we first arrived," she starts, thinking that allowing the knowledge of what happened to be shared is a better idea than keeping it classified, because who knows who might have a piece of information that will end up being critical in helping them, "there was a siren that started up a few minutes after. It was deafeningly loud, but we couldn't track it to anywhere, likely due to the echoes in the canyon."

"And ten minutes after that, there was a windstorm. It kept pushing us towards...well, here. As if someone wanted us to take shelter, but not to linger at the fountain."

"You were in the group from a month ago?" Jess confirms.

In saying it, he has to push down the dread at the thought more and more people had been arriving in that time frame and every single one of them is still here. And don't even know where here is.

Scholar Prakesh's murder had had him walking a tight rope before all of this. Every minute of this pushes him closer and closer to that edge. What happens when he slips and lets the weight of the stacked odds crush him, Jess doesn't want to find out. Keep it together. They'll be expecting you to panic. So don't.

"Defense sirens don't just operate themselves. Someone had to be behind that and leaving us here without a means of reaching anyone. And no one's found the source yet?"

"No matter where we look, there's no infrastructure that shows us where anyone could have built such a thing, let alone sit there and operate it," she shares, feeling that frustration begin to bubble up again. It doesn't make sense and every time she talks about it only brings more frustrations to roost. "I'm afraid that no matter what we do, we come up against a wall."

And the trouble is that she's not used to doing that without being able to start slowly punching away at it to make it go away. "Though, maybe fresh eyes will help," she says, swallowing her pride to admit that one of these new people who have turned up might have the right outlook. Maybe they're just overlooking the obvious. "Have you found anything suspicious?"

"How much of the canyon has been mapped?" It seems a wide, open, impossibly large area to Jess from his view from the window. At this point, all his watching is doing is pouring more acid on the unease roiling in his stomach. He wants to feel on edge. It'll make him all the more determined when he heads out to scout tomorrow morning. "If it has an amplifier, a siren could be anywhere."

But he has the same determination as Peggy to break down walls. If Jess can't bring it down by force, he'll go over it. It doesn't matter what it takes, every day he wastes here is one less day he's searching for Thomas, and what's happening to his friend must be ten times worse than what he's seen happening here.

Peggy's comment earns a short, dry laugh. "It'd be quicker to list what isn't suspicious to me," Jess says. "And what I haven't found is just as suspicious. But I guess that's the point. This is psychological warfare."

He's had the entire day to come to that conclusion and it's the answer that fits best, as disheartening as it is.

"I've seen people out there, but what results they have, I'm not sure." It's something she's been wanting to do, but she lacks the measuring tools she thinks necessary to truly get a feel for the canyon. "It seems that we could use a group meeting to share resources, or we'll simply keep repeating the same things again and again."

When he calls it psychological warfare, she thinks that he's absolutely right. Everything in this place seems to be a mind game. She's used to staying aware all the time, but that had been during wartime when everyone had been on high alert and every day could be your last. She doesn't know how long that they can do this without running into exhaustion.

"Are you thinking of going out to map the canyon?"

Any way Jess spins it, getting on the same page is the better play than dividing their strength. The only thing he can do is nod in agreement. "That'd be a good plan. Who's in charge here? Anyone?"

There are so many blanks left to fill. What this place is, where it is, who to talk to, who's behind this. If this isn't the Artifex's retaliation, then what is it?

He still doesn't have an adequate explanation for how he'd been caught unawares and left to drown in a fountain, and that thought's going to haunt him, chasing away any chance of rest tonight. He knows himself--he'll be turning the last memory he has of being in the High Garda barracks over in his mind until he has an answer. It's going to be a long night and a hard day tomorrow, that goes without saying, but it doesn't stop Jess from saying, "First light tomorrow. They made one big mistake, and that was letting us roam free."

No one has made the power play to seize control or leadership, which is something that she's not sure she's relieved about or disappointed in. Orders would be helpful to follow (that's the soldier in her speaking), but the prospect of an unfit leader rattles around in her mind, making her wary (and that's the agent in her, aware what happens when someone who isn't fit to lead takes the reins). When Jess talks about exploring at first light, though, she's more than willing to throw her hat in the ring.

"I'll be there," she says firmly, because she doesn't want to miss out on any discoveries or acquisition of information. She might not want to put her name out there to lead, but she also doesn't want to be kept in the dark when it comes to developments. "What are you hoping we'll find, beyond that hopeful way out?"

Well, leader or no leader, it's all the same to Jess. He knows what he has to do--and if the others have any sense, they do, too. The soldier part of him that obediently takes orders is still in its infancy stages; the urge to act is a much bigger part of him with roots that run deeper.

Besides, the commanders he'd follow aren't here, and for all he knows, the High Garda did this.

While he's thinking this, the woman's response surprises him a little and Jess blinks. Hold on, what? "You want to come with me?" he asks with some uncertainty. He hadn't taken a partner into account. He'd assumed everyone would be out for themselves until they turned something substantial up.

Peggy gives him an expectant look, her brow furrowed slightly when he implies that she wouldn't have gone. "And why wouldn't I come with you?" she challenges as she rests her hands on her hips, giving Jess enough rope that he can hang himself plenty well with his response.

She's not going to offer him an out so much as wait and see what he has to say.

The reason seems obvious to Jess.

"Because you just met me."

There's an unspoken question in the words. Is going off with somebody she doesn't know not something she'd think twice about? He could be anyone. He could be dangerous. Or worse, he could be grossly incompetent and not know the business end of a gun from its grip. She'd have to wait and see and by then it could be too late.

It'd been a long week even before this; maybe the constantly having to look over his shoulder is getting to him, making him see everything through lenses of wariness. Dodging the Library hadn't left him in the most trusting of mindsets, and this town is the cherry on the paranoia cake.

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