8 Months Later, Portsmouth New Hampshire
The cold air bit like a hungry dog, the streetlights flickering like candles, the leaves scurrying like rats along the freshly tarmacked pavement. The tall shadowy figure idles slowly but with mysterious determination to the local dive bar, a sanctuary for all the towns unwanted degenerates, home for now. The stranger comes to a full stop outside the warmly glowing light outside the crimson painted front door, taking in a deep painful breath, ready to take one more leap, ready to try again, ready to die again.
The Ever Sleepy Suburbs
"I like this place, nice town, I mean I'm going to be bored out my mind but other than that, nice." Josephine Markum daughter of the acclaimed scientific mind carried the last box of useless trinkets they weren't able to part with into the new house, raven hair dangled precariously over her shoulders, mossy green eyes hiding behind medically prescribed sunglasses and her rampant enthusiasm illuminating the dim room. "It does seem very nice" David muttered unconfidently, the words hanging from his mouth like the saliva of a delirious man, clutching the photo, the only thing he'd taken from that abandoned office, the only thing that really mattered in there. Josephine's eyes followed her distracted and distant father, a look of exhaustion spread across her youthful formerly exuberant face, "Dad... It's been almost nine months now, of moving and running from what I don't know, I know not to ask about your work and I've never really wanted to know but I need something here, is this going to be permanent and if it is I need to know why?"
"We're staying here, I promise you that, enough is enough." Not exactly the answer she was looking for but the one she'd come to expect, she didn't exactly trust his word at this point, he wasn't a liar just optimistic and misguided and frankly unintelligent about anything that didn't involve a gear or a microscope but he was always vague, that's something she could count on, always trying to protect her the only way he knew how.
"I'm sorry, I need some air." David hastily utters as he can feel the vibration of his pre-paid mobile phone in his pocket, quickly sliding through the slightly open door and locking it behind him, this wasn't really a conversation he should be having on the street corner next to his house but it was definitely not a conversation to have in front of his daughter. "I can't be talking to right now, you know that!" The caller blasts into David's ear, words dripping with desperation and despair, he sighs as he prepares himself to ask the one question he never 'needed to know the answer to'. "I need to know about Laos, I need to know Garret."
A few seconds passed as David waited for an answer.
"...You know it's funny, I've moved to this damp Eastern European sh!thole in the middle of nowhere, not on any maps, the water freezes over in the latter half of august for Gods sake, you hang your jacket on the back of the front door and you're brushing icicles off for a half hour, inches of slow you get the drift... Laos was hot in december, real f&cking hot, knats in your boils hot but I've never been colder then I was in that factory, no AC, no cocktails on the rocks with little fancy straws but a horrifying chill, cold to the bone, cold to the soul. We opened something down there, something we should've left alone, something you stopped... something you postponed, something that's coming back open, something YOU can't stop."
"What do I..." Garret interrupts "Goodbye David...and thank you, I never got a chance to say that."
That same darkly clad figure watches from the adjacent house, cloaked in the shadow of broad daylight, watching the scientist as he snaps his phone in half, carefully removing the sim card and sliding it into his pocket. The justifiably paranoid scientist swiftly shifts his eyes to the figure... only to see nothing.
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