Tech Support

Plot Bunny 1

Where

I woke up on a hard surface. I couldn't see much at first. Just the asphalt under my face, squishing my nose, and the darkness in my peripheral vision. It took a few moments for my brain to resume normal operations.

When it did I groaned. Loudly. What the hell hit me? I felt like it must have been a rather large mountain. I gathered my strength and positioned my arms so that my hands were pressed against the asphalt.

I pushed.

My body rose under protest. Whatever had done this to me, whatever sequence of events had conspired to bring me to wherever the hell I was, left me with a bone deep weariness so powerful all I wanted to do was lay down again. But I didn't know where I was or what time it was, nor how long I'd been wherever I was, so my body's complaints had to take a back seat to more important things like possible danger or even enemy actors.

Thankfully once I got to my feet, I found I was in a completely deserted space between two buildings. An alley, strewn with trash and various unspeakable organic residues. A couple dumpsters provided the red cherry on top of the shit sandwich that was my surroundings.

I chuckled to myself. Waking up in an abandoned, empty alley, surrounded by refuse. It was comically stereotypical.

Right, first things first, check myself. Baggy but decent clothing, check. Any injuries? Nope, just the weariness. That's good. Nothing too bad could have befallen me. Any technology on me? Nope, literally only have my shirt, shoes, and pants. Socks present, if frayed, but no underwear. No wallet.

A puddle on the ground allowed me to check my appearance in the half-moonlight, revealing that I was me. Unshaven, scruffy looking me, but still me. No age or appearance changes, which preliminarily ruled out a few of the more unlikely scenarios I was considering might have befallen me to wake up in such blatantly obvious a cosmic joke as the alley.

I stumbled about trying to get my bearings. No sense shambling out of the alley looking homeless and drunk. Just with one of them I was going to have a problem. I didn't know exactly what city I was in, but it was most definitely a city, judging by the tops of skyscrapers I could see reaching above the buildings on either side of the alley. The building on the other side of the street hadn't been that helpful in discerning my location. It was a simple coffee shop. What I could see of the lobby through the clear glass windows showed lights on and only a couple of people there. One had something that looked like a newspaper in front of him, but I was too far away to see any details. It was just a slightly rectangular light gray paper shape on the surface of a table.

It took me a few minutes, give or take, for my legs to get with the program. The weariness was slowly wearing off. It would probably be gone by morning, if my guess as to the time of night was accurate, but I didn't have that long. Even in the best cities in the world, you do not stick around in a deserted alley by yourself in the dead of night, no matter how safe you feel.

Not even in Canada.

So I brushed myself off as well as I could, checked to make sure I didn't have anything terrible on my face from the asphalt, tested my walking coordination once more, and left the alley.

Even across the street I still couldn't see what was on the newspaper. It was turned at just the right angle so everything became incomprehensible to my hindbrain, the part which processes language. I shrugged and turned my attention to the rest of the city. Or what I could see of it, anyways. The ends of whatever street I was on terminated in crossroads without continuing. One end had an abnormally tall skyscraper taking up most of the visible space. It had a gigantic sign over the entrance of what appeared to be some kind of emergency room rotunda you'd see at a hospital.

It was the name on that sign that stopped my heart from beating for a good three seconds.

"Medhall?!" I asked myself, disbelief suffusing my entire being.

I stood stock still on the sidewalk, staring down the sign like I could will it to be different. The glowing, healthy-blood-red Norse looking letters didn't change.

I knew that name.

Lots of my friends knew that name.

I also knew that no such organization existed. Anywhere on Earth.

I knew that for a fact given I'd done a few searches for it just for shits and giggles. No organization, corporation, company, or even fan group used that name.

Son of a BITCH.

I called up the map of this city, provided my hunch was correct and this city was indeed the one I believed it to be, from my memory. Photographic memory is incredibly helpful when you suddenly find yourself in another frakking universe. If that was the Medhall building, and it seemed to be, then if I followed this street away from it I should find a place where I could look out into the bay which would be there, if my hunch was correct. And if it was, my life in the very near future was going to be a lot more interesting.

And by interesting, I mean frak my life!

I took off at my top speed, stunted as it was by my weariness, down the sidewalk. Nobody was outside at this time of night. That was something I was immensely thankful for. I wasn't remotely interested in getting leered at, or worse, stopped, because I happened to fit the bill for 'homeless poor person'.

No matter how accurate that happened to be at the moment.

It was quite a few blocks till the other end of the street. I had been much closer to the Medhall building than anywhere else. Regardless of the distance I booked it like a man possessed, both hoping and fearing that I might be right, that somehow I had been plopped into the city most synonymous with a Powder Keg this side of the multiverse.

In a universe that was supposed to be just a story.

Just a bunch of thoughts from a wild man with a bow.

I was seeing a distinct lack of bowmen, and a metric shitton of real.

I eventually made it to the end of the street. I looked left first. I knew in my heart that what I was seeking would be to the right, but I was going to hold on to my denial as long as I conceivably could.

Nothing but a street leading further on into what looked like a business district, with shops and office buildings. Downtown, my mental map supplied. It made sense; that's where Medhall was supposed to be. If you continued that way through several buildings and blocks, The Towers apartment complex would sit. One of which belonged to Kayden Russell, or would in the near future, depending on when I was in the timeline.

I gulped and slowly turned my head to the right. It was a straight shot across the tops of the buildings lower down the slight hill the city resided on out to the dark, still waters of the bay. And shining like a light in the darkness, a star in the night sky, was an oil rig with a glowing forcefield around it.

The Rig. The Protectorate's headquarters in Brockton Bay.

Brockton Bay, the city I was standing in.

No doubt to it.

I'm not ashamed to admit I hyperventilated.