More Founders Valley, Parts:
⤷ One ⋅ Two ⋅ Three ⋅ Four ⋅ Five ⋅ Six ⤷ Limspace Systems ⤏ Backrooms ⤏ Tales
ANTONIO CURTIS
A Backrooms Story
⤷ Massacre in the Founders Valley, pt. 6
"Silence is a sacred thing."
Inevitable death gives life meaning, just as silence is the sacred shadow of all the things that fill the world with sound and wonder. And to Porters, quiet was a connection to the Backrooms itself, whose natural state was noiselessness. Antonio had told this to his girls many times, in many ways, through many stories as they travelled.
Porter tales were passed by spoken word, for Porters were the nomadic carriers of culture for a humanity spread so remotely across the infinity of the Backrooms. From the grand cities like Alpha Point, Hartkirch, and the greatest seat of power within the united colonies — the Guild of The Commerce — to small outposts on the fringe of society and the mad isolationists beyond even those, Porters like Antonio connected them all with tales and stories from the wild lands of deep lim. Because of this, many Porter philosophies were universally known, and often stoutly agreed upon.
If you were a young domestic with the pale skin of someone who had never seen the Baseline sun, who had lived within the sanctuary of the Guild and had never travelled beyond the reaches of their secured central blocks, a visiting Porter telling tales of the wild would be an unmatched entertainment.
If you were lucky, a Master Porter might tell you the legends of Genesis and the Sacred Silence. That for perpetuity, there was naught but quiet — broken only by the first splicing: when the waking dreams of living things painted space with familiar forms and structures. The ignition of human cognition produced spaces — modelled from our proprioception, our aspirations, dreams, and fears. These were realities mapped to the deepest unconscious tendrils of the soul, erupting forth in spasms and spirals unending.
However, through it all, silence persisted. Antonio would say that in some places, you could walk for a million years in one direction and never encounter anything that makes a sound. When Antonio told these stories to his family, Karrin and Naome would listen in awe, eyes full of wonder, trying and failing to comprehend the scale of their world. The story taught them the safety and calm of silence. That quiet was comforting, for it was a return to the natural state of things before there were halls, and indeed, before there were monsters.
Now Alpha Point was silent, too. But for Antonio, it brought him only a sense of dread.
The quiet clung to the skin of every limp body strewn throughout the dead city and hid among the scattered fragments of broken things on the floor. The quiet crept alongside him, mocking him for his intrusion. It nipped at his heels as he stepped making him hyper-aware of the movements he made against the stillness of the slaughter. Diyos, even his heartbeat was too loud.
Antonio’s breath came quick and shallow, each inhale a whisper through his mouth. His hands remained steady, a testament to his learned practice; fumbling or twitching during a crisis was a sure way to get yourself stupidly exterminated. He held his composure like a surgeon poised with a scalpel above a patient’s thread of life. Still, every second Antonio fought the gut feeling to get as far from the Point as he could. To migrate his family away from this holocaust.
He had seen enough of the destruction to know there was no one left to save, so he ignored the carnage and made his way into the heart of the settlement, where he sought something more pressing than grief: the dataspace console.
There it stood: mounted against a load-bearing pillar, integrated into a workstation that was a tangle of wires, screens, and mechanical supplementary systems that were beyond his understanding. At the centre of it all was the main terminal: a bulging monitor screen that glowed in neon black and blinding fuzzy white. This screen, this incredible screen, was the node that connected Alpha Point to everything else. Consoles like these made the unification of the colonies possible.
But look at the size of it! He could never carry any of this with him. And even if he could, Antonio had no idea what components connected to what, how the mechanics of it functioned, or even what part of this computer was the dataspace console itself. How many pieces were accessories or externally used for inputs or display, and how many pieces were connected to the dataspace itself through strange quantum entanglement? If he removed anything, would he sever the connection Alpha Point had to the rest of the Backrooms? There was nothing to be done about it. This station had to remain where it was, in the heart of the massacre, alone.
If he could not relocate the console, he could at least tell the colonies what had happened here. But Antonio had never used one before. It had been a lifetime since he had even used a computer, yet he was undeterred. After taking a glance around behind him for threats, he turned his attention to the console's tangle of wires and devices, feeling gently around for some sort of input or activation switch.
The main terminal watched him struggle with a fuzzy light. On it was a sleepy blinking underline, awaiting input. So many switches, so many keys. Antonio followed his instincts and pressed a button that seemed appropriate, and the screen flickered into a flurry of activity.
All around him several circuits whirred and clicked and indicator lights flicked on and off as the console revved to life. On the terminal screen a small digital avatar poked its head out from behind lines of jibberish and pushed aside lines of code, wide-eyed and frantic.
An empty window popped up, clearing the screen of much of its visual noise, and started to scroll along with text.
Juna/16:12/ID:61678BU - Hello?! You just came online, is anyone there?
Juna/16:12/ID:61679BU - Alpha Point? Please respond!
Antonio typed a response, unsure of what exactly he was supposed to say. Fumbling awkwardly with the keys, he typed out a response with his index fingers.
Alpha.Point/16:14/ID:61680BU - this is antonio curtis
Alpha.Point/16:15/ID:61681BU - which outpost am i speaking to
The terminal responded.
Juna/16:16/ID:61682BU - Hello! My name is Juna. I'm not from any outpost, but I'm a friend.
Juna/16:16/ID:61683BU - Are you a Porter, by chance?
Alpha.Point/16:17/ID:61684BU - yes
Juna/16:18/ID:61685BU - What is the status of Alpha Point? I've been unable to contact the Founders Valley for quite some time.
Juna/16:18/ID:61686BU - They missed a check-in a few days ago, then another one, then another one, then another one…
Juna was rambling as Antonio typed his response. Her words spilled across the screen until he submitted his message.
Alpha.Point/16:19/ID:61687BU - the point is lost there are no survivors
Juna/16:20/ID:61688BU - As I feared.
Juna/16:21/ID:61689BU - Can you enter an administrative command for me? I want to access the cameras connected to this terminal. Rathin has kept them offline despite my nagging. I've been in the dark here for a while.
Antonio grimaced. None of that made sense to him. He also was acutely aware of all the seconds passing by — he didn't know what he expected from the console, but it was not this. Was this a waste of time? If there were cameras installed throughout the Point, a visual feed could explain the situation much faster and much more clearly than Antonio possibly could. He replied.
Alpha.Point/16:21/ID:61690BU - what do i do
Juna/16:22/ID:61691BU - I'll send the request. All you need to do is accept it.
The little avatar whisked away momentarily, before returning to peer at Antonio once more from within the dataspace. A new dialogue box opened up requesting access to the camera systems. Antonio accepted, and he saw the fuzzy little picture of Juna give a warm smile before leaving once more. A few moments passed until dozens of camera feeds suddenly popped up across the terminal and its auxiliary screens — scenes from around the Point crackled to life in choppy black and white images.
The entire city was on display. Every feed was more of the same: stillness. Just morbid snapshots of past violence and the horrible quiet of the aftermath.
Juna/16:25/ID:61692BU - I know there should be some words said about this, but I don't quite know what to say. It's horrible. But, right now, there are more important things to do than putting the right words together. I'm sending these feeds to the colonies.
Juna/16:26/ID:61693BU - I know it doesn't feel like much, but you've done a great service for the people of Alpha Point, Antonio. This tragedy will not go unnoticed.
Antonio felt conflicted. It was all he could do for them. There was no helping a single soul, no saving even a single child from the massacre. All he could do was deliver a message. It was a sick feeling of helplessness that only grew stronger as he looked through all the camera feeds. Was that truly all he could do?
No — focus. He had to remember the priorities at hand. The Palmers left on the fringe settlement outside the Point could do more to turn this situation around. They would immigrate to this dead city and do what they could to survive. Antonio had to put his family first. He shoved the feelings of hopelessness down into the pit of his stomach and knew he had to turn away from the feeds. He had to leave. There was already enough time wasted here, and he did all he could.
Suddenly, the little avatar of Juna reappeared in a flurry of warning signs, and a dialogue box covered the camera feeds. His heart sank as he read the words:
Juna/16:27/ID:61694BU - There is someone behind you.
A harrowing, stretched figure had crept up behind Antonio and was upon him before he could react. As Antonio whirled around to face the threat he aimed the crossbow that dangled from a shoulder strap under his cloak — but the stranger was ready for him. The man grabbed the weapon, held it tightly with a gaunt, powerful hand and leaned in towards Antonio, their faces just inches apart.
The stranger's voice was nasal, and his breath smelled like rancid fish as he spoke. "None of that now, little jackalope. I have a gift for you, if you'd be so-"
Instinctively, Antonio grabbed a blade from inside his cloak and swung. The glint of cold metal and swish of sliced air caught the stranger by surprise and he let go of the crossbow to dodge away from the blade, narrowly preventing a gash across his chest. With the grapple broken, Antonio wasted no time and swung again, a wide arc that aimed to plunge the knife deep into the Hunter's neck.
The stranger moved quickly to grab Antonio's wrist with a tight grip. It left Antonio's stance wide open and defenceless, the knife held harmlessly in the air. With a squeeze and a twist, the stranger tried to wrench the blade from Antonio's hand, but the Porter resisted the disarming — as images of Karrin and Naome flashed in his mind, he held staunchly onto the knife.
As the stranger tried to wrest the blade from his hand, Antonio took a moment to size his quarry up. He was almost naked, but adorned with a tangle of leather straps and strange buckles. Upon his back was an assortment of equipment — tubing, small mechanical bits and bobs, and pouches stacked upon even more pouches. The tubing ran from a machine on the stranger's back, and two hoses filled with red blood ran into intravenous needles secured to his arms, while another clear tube was fed right into his mouth — held in place by some medical framework mounted to his ear. His proportions seemed stretched; just a smidge uncanny, and his skin was so pale you could almost see every vein and artery through it.
Lastly, Antonio stared into the stranger's entity eyes. The left was mottled amber with a reptilian slit, the pupil black as charred bone. The right was cloudy, nebulous, but colourful; not unlike shifting ink dropped into milk.
He gasped, and the mestizo colour drained from Antonio's face. "Impossible—"
This stranger was not human. At least, he wasn't anymore. Those eyes were the eyes of a Hunter, sent from a place that not even Porters truly thought existed. They were the eyes of the Obsidian Infirmary, a place spoken only of in ghost stories meant to unsettle domestics and small children. The wretch before him was supposed to be no more than fiction — a boogeyman, a phantom. And yet, regardless, the Hunter was here; leaning too close to Antonio and trying to pry a blade out of his hand. A manufactured bodysnatcher created by the enigmatic despots of a place spoken of only in fairy tales.
Suddenly, it made sense. How else could an entire city be devastated so efficiently? As Antonio had crept through its silent halls, he had come up with insane notions to explain the massacre. The way people were laying, the finer details of the struggle, the lack of feasting entities… that perhaps there was a sickness of the mind that swept through the population and they fell upon one another in a murderous haze. But that was impossible. At least, it was more impossible than the simple answer grinning with bloodlust in Antonio's face. This man — this creature — killed the Point. There was no clearer explanaition.
As they stared at one another, the machinery on the Hunter's back clicked and whirred, and fluids began to slowly glide through the tubing and into IVs fastened into his arms. Antonio's eyes widened and his brow furrowed as he watched the milky substance slide along its journey.
The Hunter spoke again, breathing onto Antonio's face. "Listen, little, little guy, I just — I just wanna talk."
Despite his funny voice, the Hunter did not give up that strong, painful grasp. It made Antonio wince. His stomach churned with fear and a deep self-preservation.
Antonio gritted his teeth and snarled. "Go to hell, gago!"
And he squeezed hard with his thumb into the blade's handle, pressing a hidden switch. The knife began to fizzle and hiss and a moment later the blade launched from the handle in a brief plume of fire. The blade sang through the air and stabbed into the Hunter's flesh, digging four inches deep into the meat just above his collarbone.
The hunter screamed, released his grip in shock, and laughed in the broken way of a masochist when given a fix of pain.
Antonio wasted no time capitalizing on the opportunity. He would kill this demon. He pulled another tool from under his cloak and threw it at the Hunter. It shattered on impact, releasing a cloud of choking capsicum spray that engulfed the Hunter. The laughter turned to hysterical coughing. As the Hunter stumbled and clawed at his eyes Antonio strafed and lined up a shot, finally able to put his crossbow to use.
Antonio could not miss this singular chance.
With a heavy clank, the crossbow released a bolt that screeched towards the Hunter. It was a perfect shot.
But then something strange happened. Without even looking up from his hacking coughs and pained screeches, the Hunter's arm jerked to interfere with the missile. The bolt pierced his forearm and threaded his bones like a needle. Antonio balked as he saw it wedge succinctly between the Hunter's radius and ulna, swiping the kill shot out of the air and away to the side. And then; the rest of him moved strangely too. The Hunter's body yanked this way and that as if by invisible strings into a tall, rigid stance.
It was time to run.
A terrible fear crept into the back of Antonio's skull and grabbed his insides with an icy grip. It was a twisting, sinister dread unlike anything he had known before. Accompanying the dread was an overwhelming silence which fell upon him as he turned his heel to escape — a quiet that mirrored the corpses around him. Antonio noticed that the Hunter had stopped gurgling screams from in between his coughs, and his heart — which sprinted like a jackrabbit's — didn't make a sound. The shadow of silence enshrouded him as if death itself had caressed soft hands upon his ears.
Then he heard new a voice, from far away. It came from a place of darkness and spoke a single word.
"Cease."
The disembodied word froze Antonio and brought him to his knees in a stunned stupor. And just as the word's last tendril of sibilance faded, all sound and sense rushed back to him. That supernatural fear released its hold of his innards and slunk away from the top of his spine, leaving him shaky, weak, and disoriented. Lingering visions of lizard scales and darkness stabbed the corners of his mind. All he could do was draw in long, haggard breaths, and stare at the carpet.
The Hunter did not seem to feel the same weariness. He sauntered up behind the Porter, taking his time.
"You know I tried to be prudent."
Antonio tried to block the incoming strike with a sluggish raised arm, but it was not enough. The Hunter grabbed and threw Antonio's arm out of the way like a toy, and grabbed onto his Cheshire cloak. Antonio was lifted up, his feet dragging behind him, as the Hunter drew the Porter up to stare at him face to face.
The Hunter continued. "Tried to be uh — what's the word. What's the word? Tip, tip, tip of my tongue."
Antonio tried to resist, tried to move, tried to lift an arm in retaliation — with every fibre of his being he wanted to slam his fists into the Hunter's face, he wanted to rip the tubes out of him, he wanted to kick him into a slurry of gore — but there was no strength left in him. He could only stare back into the Hunter's eyes before the grotesque creature headbutted him hard, once, twice, and then dropped him pathetically to the floor.
"Cordial! There it is." he proclaimed, raising both arms in the air in a victory pose. "But then you had to go and almost kill me, and Avus didn't like that."
The bolt was still embedded in the Hunter's arm. He stared at it, holding his arm up against the lights and rotating it to see the puncture wounds on both sides. He prodded it with a curious finger but ultimately left the shaft alone, lodged between the bones.
Antonio groaned and rolled around on the floor, the control and feeling slowly coming back to his limbs. There was another knife strapped to his ankle — if he could only grab it. He stretched and fumbled and writhed, trying to get the tendons in his knees to bend and his fingers to reach out with a semblance of strength. So close… but the Hunter kicked him in the chest instead, knocking all the wind out of him.
"No more tricks little rabbit."
The Hunter placed a heavy sweaty palm against Antonio's head, pressing the Porter's face into the rough carpet. He brought his face down to Antonio's level, close enough to rub cheeks, and gloated through his crooked smile.
"Shame I'm not allowed to kill you. I wonder how much you'd scream if I strung you up and slowly degloved your tiny little fingers of all their precious skin?"
He gestured vaguely at the scene around them. "I mean, sure, I could do it to any of these other fine citizens, but they're already dead, so where's the fun in that?"
Antonio curled into a miserable ball.
"Kalolo… Bunso… baby girls, diyos, I'm so sorry." He sputtered between coughs.
"Oh, you lucky little guy. Wait right here." And the Hunter left the room.
Behind Antonio, against the column, the terminal screen had changed to display a locked-down interface. The console quietly screamed in blinking exclamation marks and requests for a security password, unusable by anyone who did not have a connection to the UNCB. Juna had secured the terminal but also had been watching — helplessly — through her camera eyes. A dialogue box stood out from the rest of the lockdown screens displaying a single message.
Juna/16:34/ID:61695BU - There was nothing I could do… I'm so sorry.
Antonio cried and clawed at the flooring, trying to catch his breath. What had just happened? There were so many questions obstructing his thoughts, so much worry, and so much pain blossoming in his forehead and ribs. His entire body felt like pins and needles, like a limb waking up from being slept on. He resisted the urge to be sick.
A few moments later the Hunter returned and gently placed a bundle of dirty cloth next to Antonio. He could hardly see it through the tears, but he saw it wiggle, and he heard the cooing of an infant from within it.
"As I tried to say, y'know, before you got so brave and stuff: I have a gift for you."
Antonio's eyes widened as he tried to comprehend what was placed next to him. A tiny arm tossed the cloth aside to reveal a smooth newborn, wiggling and so small. It couldn't have even been a month old. It could hardly even keep its eyes open, and it threw its small arms around in protest to the cold open air. Even through the pain and confusion, Antonio reached out to the bundle and tried to slide the child closer to him, into his chest, where it would be safe and warm.
The Hunter sneered and sounded almost disgusted from watching Antonio's attempt to comfort the infant. His job was done. He said one more thing before leaving the Porter and child in the heart of the silent city.
"That is the sole survivor of the Founders Valley."