Chapter 1
It's been an eventful day. Marc has been shot, ended up in a mental hospital with his current nemesis as a therapist, and rescued his other personality from a sarcophagus. After all of that, one would think that it'd be difficult to be surprised anymore.
They would be wrong. Halfway down the hospital hallway, Marc stops in his tracks, stunned, and Steven follows suit.
"Not to alarm you," Steven says, in a tone that suggests what he's going to say will be deeply, deeply alarming. "But you can see what I'm seeing, right?"
Marc doesn't blame him for asking, because he was just about to ask for reassurance himself.
There's another sarcophagus.
And something's inside it.
It rattles, rocks from side to side, and thuds against the floor. Like something- someone- is bursting to get out. Marc and Steven exchange looks, both of them knowing that it isn't a figment of their imagination.
"You were in one of those things," Marc says. Steven nods, so pale with nerves that in a less urgent time, Marc would've forced him to sit down. "So... what the hell is in that?"
"I couldn't tell you," Steven says in a strangled voice. "But seeing as we're in a fever dream hospital, or a horror film, or hell, I think opening the sarcophagus with unknown contents would be a very, very stupid idea!"
"I opened your sarcophagus."
"Because I was screaming very loudly for someone to rescue me!" Steven's voice shoots up in pitch as Marc takes a step towards the sarcophagus. "Whatever's in there isn't saying anything- it might not even be human. It could be another Egyptian jackal that wants to rip our faces off! Why are you getting closer to it? "
Marc raises a hand to silence him, hissing, "Shhh! Someone might be calling to us, and I won't be able to hear them if you keep screaming-"
"I'm not screaming, I'm just advising you against going closer towards an object that almost definitely means us harm-"
"Very loudly! Shut up!" When Steven finally quietens, shrinking back against the wall, Marc edges even closer to the sarcophagus. It's stopped rattling, just for a moment, and now he can hear swearing, a string of vehement exclamations that are- wait-
"That's Spanish, right?" Marc stares back at Steven, utterly nonplussed. "Someone's speaking Spanish in there!"
"Oh my God, the jackal's Hispanic," Steven moans. "It can talk, it's got intelligence as well as lethal intent-"
"It's not a jackal, you idiot, that's definitely a human!" Marc's heart pounds even faster than before, which should be physically impossible. "There's someone else in there."
Steven flaps his hands about, as if to ward off what Marc's said. "So what are we doing? We're running, right?"
"¡DÉJAME SALIR!"
"We're letting him out," Marc says. And before Steven can utter a word of protest, he dives forward, wrestling with the heavy stone of the sarcophagus.
Steven makes a noise like a distant siren. "Of course you want to fight the Hispanic jackal, of course you'd do the most mad, mental, bonkers thing possible-"
But to Marc's surprise, he joins in the effort of pulling, cursing Marc all the while. Together, they wrench the sarcophagus' cover off- it proves to be far more difficult than Steven's was to remove. The second they do so, Steven falls back onto the floor, and Marc springs into fighting stance-
"¡Mierda! "
Marc lowers his fists, and Steven gasps.
Because it's not a monster that's burst out of the sarcophagus.
"Marc..." Steven croaks. "I'm not being funny... but..."
The new arrival turns his head towards them, glaring at them with the lethal intent Steven described just minutes ago.
"That bloke..." Steven scrubs a hand across his eyes, as if it'll stop him from hallucinating. "He looks just like us, doesn't he?"
"Yeah," Marc says faintly. "Yeah, he does."
Same face, same body. There's only one difference between Marc, Steven and this new man, and it's that they're all wearing different clothes.
There are three of them.
"Fuckin' finally!" the new one growls. "You took a hell of a long time gettin' me out of there."
Contrary to his prior Spanish profanities, he sounds like he's from Brooklyn.
Maybe this mental hospital isn't so fake after all... Maybe Marc is here for a good reason.
"Then again, I ain't surprised." The Brooklyn doppelganger rolls his shoulders back, shooting Marc and Steven an unimpressed glower. "You brats have always been slow."
"Marc?" Steven breathes. "Who...?"
Marc has no answers for him. The new man snorts.
"The name's Jake. Jake Lockley." They're all the same height, but he seems to tower over the other two. "And I'd say it's a pleasure, but we all know that's not true."
"Jake," Marc says blankly. "Jake?"
"Jake," Steven parrots, awestruck.
"Got it memorised?" Jake sneers. "So, brats, fill me in. Where in the goddamn hell are we this time?"