Panic roiled through the lab, and the back of Logan's neck was drenched in cold sweat. He looked over at Lee's wrinkled brow, the other man having sat down on the sidelines and gestured for him to do the same, the rhythm of his knuckles on the oak desktop causing his temples to jolt.
"Three days ago." Lee fumbled for a compass-like object from his trench coat pocket, the chain bobbing in the gaslight to create fine patches of light, "Signal receiver picked up an anomalous band near East London." The crisp sound of him flexing his fingers and snapping open the cover of the watch startled the chilly crows on the window pane, "Shirley was cross-locating and found the source to be coming from an underground cellar in the Whitechapel district, where our branch is based, but it turned out to be the Oak Tavern when we went there."
"You were tap dancing with a bottle of wine in your arms when we went in, and promptly threw up on yourself."
"You kept talking about how everything was a lie! Bullets were fired from that revolver as we spoke."
"Here." Anna leaned against the lab wall, fingertips lifting the hem of her sweater. Dark red scars coiled like centipedes on her porcelain-white skin, undulating slightly as she breathed.
Fear spread through Logan's mind, his pupils constricting suddenly as his leather gloves rubbed against the back of his chair with a harsh creak.
"Where's Shelly?" His head snapped up, the knot in his throat rolling over the taut line of his neck, "The one covered in compound eyes..."
"There is no monster." The cuff of Anna's wool sweater slipped, revealing a bandaged wrist, "The wound started to heal on the way Lee drove me back to base."
"No... Nope! I'm sure of it!" Logan's fingers dug deep into his curls, his nails making messy red marks on his scalp. Memory fragments were like a shattered kaleidoscope - the blush of Sherry's chatty face, the cigarette butts crushed by Anna's buckskin boots, the whiskey stains on his own cuffs...
Traumatic stress syndrome? Another one?
Vague speculation floated through Lee and Anna's minds.
Anna tried to assist Logan, who was half-kneeling on the floor, crouching down with a thin thud of buckskin boots over the titanium floor, and just as her right hand touched Logan's sweat-dampened leather jacket, the other man swatted it away violently. The rippling veins on the back of the man's hand grazed the mechanical watch on her wrist, crashing in the silence with the muffled clang of metal against bone.
"Nope! That's not the same outfit you were wearing, no, you guys!" Logan stumbled and knocked over the oak chair behind him, his bloodshot eyeballs reflecting the silver earrings swaying in Anna's left earlobe, "The fog that day could have frozen a man's eyelashes into ice prongs, and you were clearly both wearing ..." The knot in her throat rolled up and down audibly, her knuckles digging into her curled blonde hair to pull out a few strands.
"And what do you think we were wearing?" Anna pulled her hand back and wrapped it around her chest.
"Anna was .... What we were wearing then was... Deerskin boots...?" Logan realized with horror that he couldn't describe Anna's attire at the time anyway.
"Hmm... I do love these, so what am I wearing?"
There was a silence in response; Logan couldn't remember!
Logan looked Anna up and down as her eyelashes fluttered and her dark purple irises rippled in the morning mist. Twilight filled in along the lab window, her eyes as crystal clear as amethysts. The pale blue sweater rose and fell with her breath, the swan at the neckline suddenly lifting its wings in the backlight - it was woven from first shearling wool. The gathered waistline of the off-white pants startled a trail of streamers, and the rolled-up legs revealed silver anklets.
"I don't remember." Logan shook his head.
"What about me?" Lee pointed a finger at himself.
"Black suit with a trench coat." Logan wouldn't forget the back.
"Indeed." The gesture he raised toward Logan suddenly paused in midair, his knuckles reflecting cold light on the now snow-white satin, "The ink color hides the chill of the sleeve sword." Beneath that figure, a mechanical retractable-like device could be vaguely glimpsed hidden in the cuffs.
"But why? I'm wearing a wedding-like gown on my body!" Lee's face was a little put out.
"Really, what he said should be true." A tone of voice tinged with slight contemplation emanated from the shade green haired girl on the sidelines as Juno spoke up, "I also remember that Lee was wearing a black suit when he came in."
"Which means..." The cherry blossom-colored smile swirls on Mina's cheeks suddenly froze into frost, like a bud on a branch drenched in morning dew suddenly falling into a frozen lake.
"We've been affected by the 'Domain', or rather, we've been contaminated!" Li looked incredulous.
"Hoo-hoo." Logan gasped and collapsed to the ground.
It wasn't himself that had gone wrong!
"Report it immediately!" Lee pushed the dark button on the recorder that protruded like a cervical vertebrae, and the entire instrument hissed - it was working.
He flexed his fingers and snapped open the brass cap of the pen, blotting dots of ink and plum on the parchment-colored texture of the vellum roll, the tip of the pen skimming the paper like a swimming snake.
"Next!" A string of keys wrapped in ink fragrance broke through the air, in the twilight will be extinguished to pull out a silver arc, just like a meteor swept over the top of the astrological platform, Logan raised his eyebrows to intercept this wipe of cold light, the palm came from the icy cold touch, the pen is still snappy, the nib of the pen and the surface of the paper collision with the sound of the fine jingo sound.
"Your new place, 10 Baker Street, London, it's getting late, I'll take care of the rest." Lee didn't look up.
The afterglow was like blood, coloring the sky an intense orange-red. Anna took a few quick steps to Logan's side, "I'll give you a ride."
Logan turned his head, his eyes met, and in a brief stare, there was a moment of silence and a slight nod in response.
...
Anna looked up suddenly as the moonlight diffused over the steps, the cold light from her cell phone screen streaming over the hollow of her collarbone like a pool of moonlight falling into the snow.
"Save a number?" Anna asked.
Her earrings bobbed in crystalline arcs when she cocked her head, and her rose-colored nail polish glowed honeyed in the streetlight.
Logan froze and shrugged helplessly, "Uh ... I don't have one of those." He spread his hands, a few embarrassed, bitter smiles on his face.
"Almost forgot!" Anna pulled the sticky note out of her pocket, the paper rustling as she left the string of numbers suddenly squinting slyly, "I heard the special at the bar on the south side of town is called 'Bloody Twilight', it goes especially well with the color of your shirt, let's see me get you drunk and dance around holding a telephone pole!"
Logan stood in the tan doorway, watching the young girl's departing back elongated by the streetlight, an imperceptible smile hanging at the corner of his mouth.
The figure in view eventually disappeared around the corner.
The key turned slowly in the lock, making a crisp "click" sound.
Pushing open the door, everything inside the house was well organized, a simple one-bedroom, one-bathroom household. The living room is modest, a glass coffee table with a slightly old TV, like a pair of tacit understanding of the old partners. A few steps further in, there was the kitchen, separated by a fixed screen with a muted floral pattern, giving it an antique flavor in the late afternoon light.
Through the living room, Logan walked into his own room, a white desk was placed in one corner of the room, the table cactus vibrant. However, at this moment, his eyes were drawn to a sudden object on the desk.
It was a black envelope, with no addressee, which looked particularly mysterious on the clean white desktop.
Just as his eyes swept over it, an inexplicable impulse surged in the bottom of Logan's heart, as if a voice whispered in his ear, urging him to open it.
As if his hand was uncontrollable, he slowly reached for the envelope, and the moment his fingertips touched the envelope, a coolness came from his fingertips.
The envelope was slowly opened, and a piece of yellowed vellum came into view, mixed with the scent of freshly dried ink.
Logan unfolded the letter paper, and the handwriting was crooked, as if it had been written in a hurry.
"Dear ____ Lord.
Greetings!
I implore you to pay more attention to your watch and never let the number on it change randomly. Once the number falls below fifty, it will be a great crisis for us. I don't know your plans and goals, but no matter what, we will stand shoulder to shoulder with you and give you our full support.
-?"
Logan's eyes landed on the signature at the end, and his heart skipped a beat as an intense panic struck him.
He rubbed his eyes and looked closely, the name seemed like it was heavily wrapped in a layer of mist, obviously the words were clearly visible, but when he tried to recognize them, his mind went blank, unable to remember the words no matter what, as if the name had never existed in the world.
Logan stared dead on at the end signature, his eyes stinging from over exertion as the words blurred before his eyes.
Just as he was about to avert his eyes, something strange happened. On the blank horizontal line, as if an invisible hand was writing, the ink slowly seeped out, the words slowly emerged, Logan stared in disbelief at what he saw, it was his name -- "Logan".
"BANG!" Logan stepped back in shock, and in his panic, crashed into the office chair behind him, which fell to the ground with a loud noise that echoed through the empty building.
He picked up the chair with his hands and feet, and when he looked back at the desktop again, the black envelope disappeared without a trace as if it had never appeared.
"This ... How is this possible!" Logan exclaimed out of breath, his voice trembling with shock and disbelief.