This is part 5 in the ongoing series “I’m a dark-web courier and these are my stories” Hopefully you’ll enjoy today’s story. Please check out the previous stories to understand how I got myself in this mess.
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
Now that post yesterday really had me spooked. I’m not gonna lie to you, I’ve been feeling watched lately. Which is particularly odd due to the fact that I’m working alone in a basement with no windows. I usually just shrug it off like it was nothing but that last post from myself…it had me startled. You see I wasn’t planning on writing anything for a while but it seems that god or whatever got other plans for me.
Now, who is that man I was talking about, why shouldn’t I trust him? When will I meet this figure? These were just a few of the questions I had after reading that last post.
Right now I’m trying to figure this thing out, so I’m reading it back and forth until…
Loud knocks could be heard from the glass door behind me.
“Hey Paul, get your ass out here I need you to meet someone!” I heard Miranda shout from outside the door.
“Coming right away!” I shouted back as I quickly closed the laptop
Now I can’t say I didn’t flinch when I heard the knocking from Miranda. I probably visibly jumped a little from my chair as the knocking was heard. I’m usually not the type to get easily spooked but it was something unnerving about the warning that I just couldn’t shake. I brushed off the light heart attack I just endured and walked out of my lab.
“Finally!” Miranda said as she stood up to meet me.
“Let me introduce you to my business partner, Jakob” she said with a half smile and that cheering tone she usually has.
Now Jakob wasn’t that tall, he had dark hair with a few gray hairs sticking out. Bright blue eyes and he was wearing a long trench coat. Jakob could use one less sandwich but he wasn’t fat by any means. He was what people would describe as chubby.
“Nice to meet you sir” I said and gave the man a firm handshake.
“Hey there, nice grip kid!“ he said with a slight chuckle.
“Thank you” I said while giving Miranda a slightly awkward look before I took a few steps back from Jakob.
“We should probably get going!” Miranda said to Jakob.
Before the left, Miranda turned around and gave me an understanding wink like she had just saved me from an awkward position.
I mouthed a quiet
“Thank you”
Before I returned to the lab to continue my studies.
Not long after this I was interrupted with a knock on my door. I turned around to see Jakob standing outside the glass door gesturing to me to unlock it. I walked over the door and u locked it before returning back to the soldering iron.
“Nice place you got here, what are you working on?” Jakob said enthusiastically.
“Nothing special,” I said, not taking my eyes off the Modem I was soldering.
“What’s this then?” Jakob asked curiously.
I turned around to see what he was looking at and it was then I realized who the man I had warned myself for was.
I solidified on the spot.
“What, how. Why shouldn’t I trust him” I thought to myself.
My thoughts were going haywire at this point.
“Miranda trusts him so why shouldn’t I?” I asked myself.
*snap* *snap* *snap*
It was Jakob. He snapped his fingers in front of my face.
“Hey you good there buddy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost” he said looking at me with a strange look.
“Y-ye” I mustered out.
“I have to go” I said hastily as I got my bag with the laptop and walked out of the lab.
“Hey, whe..” was all I could hear from Jakob before I had exited the room.
I hastily walked through the long underground hallway that led to a massive dinner hall. I rounded the pillar at the back of the dining hall to Miranda’s office. I opened her door without even knocking and closed it hastily.
“We need to talk,” I said with what I thought was a serious face.
“You alright there Paul?” Miranda asked, slightly concerned.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,’’ she said” both a little worried and intrigued at the same time.
“I’ve done it” I said
“What do you mean, have you done it, it? Or what?” She said surprised and excited.
“Yes, I mean no. Fuck it’s hard to explain” I said waving my arms in the air like a mad man.
“Alright alright calm down” Miranda said gesturing me to sit down at the chair in front of her desk.
“Tell me what’s up” she said, leaning back into the chair.
So I told her, I told her everything.
“Wow” she stuttered before scratching her head for a bit.
I just sat in silence, there wasn’t much I could say really, this whole thing was just weird. There’s not really a handbook that you can look at when it comes to time travel so you got to be fairly cautious.
“I get all that stuff” she said while not stopping to think.
“It’s just one thing I don’t really understand. Why shouldn’t you trust Jakob?” She said afterwards.
“Frankly, I don’t know” I said
“But it’s what it said” I followed up.
Now, this might all sound a bit confusing but trust me you’ll understand soon enough. You see I recognized Jakob, I couldn’t pinpoint why or where I had seen him but I was sure I had. He felt familiar like I’ve always known him somehow but I was sure I didn’t know who he was.
“Alright,” Miranda said worryingly.
“If all this mumbo is real, we better be careful” she followed up.
“For now we should pretend like nothing is wrong” I told Miranda.
She nodded slowly before gesturing me to leave the room. I did as I was told and walked back to the lab. I didn’t think about Jakob that much, I tried not to quite frankly. The hours went by without a word being spoken until Jakob cleared his throat and asked:
“Sooo, how’s the project going? How far have you come?” He said a little hesitantly.
“Ehm, yeah It’s going good, I’m just now finishing up what I’d like to call a flux disc reader” I said with a smirk.
But the face of Jakob dropped and we were interrupted by sirens shouting.
“Security breach, intruder alert, please make your way to the nearest security room”
It repeats itself over and over as me and Jakob looked at each other before he said:
“Well that was…unexpected” he said with a brief pause.
We took off to the nearest security room.
The security rooms were fairly large rooms made out of concrete, with spotlights in the ceiling highlighting capsule or pod-like
machines on the far wall of the room. In the middle of the room was a table with clothes that looked like something out of fallout 4.
“Hey, happily surprised to see you two here.” I heard Miranda’s voice behind us.
She shut the door behind her, locking it with a control panel on the left side of the door.
“That should do it!” She said brushing off dust from her hands.
Before I could react Jakob pushed me into one of the pods in the back of the room, closing it shut.
“Hey what the fuck man! Are you crazy?!” I yelled out banging on the pod glass window.
“It had to be done big red!” He yelled back, dragging out a gun from his back. He pointed the gun at Miranda telling her to be calm.
“You should have listened,” Jakob said.
The glass on the pod was starting to fog up and I felt dizzy. But I couldn’t stop watching as I punched the glass window.
“Come in fucking break already!” I yelled as the window started to crack.
My head felt more and more heavy as I started to fade out.
*bang* a gunshot was heard outside followed by a heavy thud into the concrete floor.
It was Jakob who had been shot. Miranda at her knees looking at someone in another pod.
“Wha-what? How?! It doesn’t make sense!” She stumbled out before I heard a voice:
“I’m sorry I have to” it said.
Miranda fell to the floor after being hit with some kind of stick shaped thing.
I passed out and woke up in the facility’s nursery.
*snap* *snap*the nurses fingers snapped
“Welcome back sleepy head” one of the nurses said
I sat up in the bed rubbing my head.
“What happened?” I asked the nurse in pain.
“What do you mean? We found you in those old security rooms whatever you were doing there” the nurse said with a smile.
I rubbed my face for a bit, realizing that it felt…different. I looked around the room realizing that it wasn’t the facility’s nursery I’ve seen before. It was something…else. It was the same room, don’t get me wrong even that picture on the wall with the men in black quote was still there.
“1500 years ago humans knew that the earth was the middle of the solar system, 500 years ago humanity just knew that the earth was flat. 15 minutes ago you just knew that we were alone in the universe. Now imagine what we just know tomorrow”
I always found that quote quite inspiring actually.
“Hey there hot shot!” Said a voice behind the nurse.
“You alright there” the man chuckled
I didn’t recognize the man, he was dressed in a lab coat with pens and instruments in it’s pockets. He held a clipboard under his arm when he approached me. The man looked to be in his 30’s slightly older than me. He had shoulder long dark hair and he was quite muscular.
“So how did it go? Was it a success?” The man asked while waving away the nurses.
I looked at the man with a confused look before I asked:
“I’m sorry but who are you and how did I end up here”
The man chuckled a little bit before continuing:
“You told me this would happen. My name is Earl and I took over after your disappearance 10 years ago. Your time travel project of sorts” he said with a grin.
“Let me show you our progression” he said, ushering me along through the facility.
The place I’ve come to know was the same at its core but everything looked so surreal, it was modern, everything was white and the lights hanging from the ceiling had a light blue glow coming out of them. I didn’t really listen to Earl when we walked through the labs and testing halls. I was too occupied thinking about what Jakob had said before. “It had to be done by Big Red” Why would he say that, how the fuck did he know about it?! Also why do I recognize him? I dove deep into my memories. I’ve never met this guy before. That’s when it hit me. I stopped dead in my tracks saying out loud.
“Fucking hell man!”
Earl stopped and watched me with a confused look.
“Ehh, you good there buddy?” he said with a half concerned smile.
“I got something that I need to do” I said
“Have you cracked time travel yet?” I asked Earl.
“H-how did you know?” He asked me, confused.
“It’s classified and no one knows yet. It was right before I found you I managed it.” He said, realizing what was happening.
“You’re not from around here right?” He said with a smirk.
I looked at him for a while before answering.
“No…No I’m not” I said with a serious face.
“What are we waiting for then!” He chuckled and quickened his pace.
We shortly reached one of the labs hidden down in the basement where a strange machine stood hooked up with one of the old emergency capsules that I had been standing in before.
“Huh figures” I whispered under my breath.
“Step right in” He said as he held his hand out, gesturing for me to step into the capsule.
I did as I was told as usual. Found that doing that is the easiest way to continue to be alive. Anyway, he started to hook up a few different cables onto me before handing me a loaded gun.
“Just in case” He said with a wink before he shut the door to the capsule.
Red flashing lights could be seen inside the room and a mechanical voice could be heard in the background:
“Please stand back while the red light is flashing. Please proceed with the given instructions”
The mechanical voice repeated itself multiple times, the sound started to fade out to whitenoise and I could see bright flashes of a color I’m not able to describe with words but the feeling I got was…emptiness. I felt nothing, It wasn’t a light it was more of an absence of light. The color blind people see. I guess you can say. when suddenly I could see again, and I could hear. Outside of the capsule I could hear the faint noise of 2 people speaking. It was Jakob. I could hear him repeating the words I’ve just recently heard him say.
“You should have listened,” I heard. I could hear myself pounding at the glass before the capsule opened and I stepped out…
*Bang* I fired. Jakob’s body dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes with his gun falling to the ground with him.
Miranda looked at me with a scared confused look before she burst out:
“Wha-what? How?! It doesn’t make sense!”
I picked up a metal pipe that laid on the floor beside me.
“I’m sorry I have to” I said.
With a sad face I heightened the pipe and hit Miranda in the head with the pipe.
Only a few seconds later security came rushing into the room.
“What happened here?!” One of the guards pointed the weapon at me.
“He tried to shoot her…I..I killed him…” I answered with shame.
You see I had never killed a man, and I wasn’t planning on doing so either. But I guess that in this type of industry it’s something that you eventually will have to do. whether or not you want to or not. It does not matter.
The guards lowered his weapon to my waist before nodding to the others to bring me out of there. They took Miranda to the Nursery where she woke up a few hours later.
“Wh-where am I” she said softly, still trying to grasp what had happened.
“What..happened?” She asked me, confused as to why she was in the nursery.
Now this was good, I didn’t want her to know about the time traveling…
I looked at her with a faint smile:
“Jakob turned on you” I said.
“That piece of shit” she coughed out when she tried to sit up.
“I was supposed to have an interview today with a new guy for your lab” She said with a small smile.
“Could you take it for me?” she asked with a smile.
“Of course I said” as I put a hand on her shoulder before leaving for the Office.
“Hey there is this the interview room” said a voice behind me.
I smirked as I turned around to see…Earl