"You nearly gave us the slip there, Marshall." The man looked at him over the tops of his bifocal lenses. "No matter. You're right back here where you belong."
Marshall said nothing.
"Your attempt at escape was misguided, but I have been authorized to let it go this time. Do you understand, Marshall?" The man paused and scribbled something on his notepad. "I see you have food. Why don't you eat? I'm sure it would help ease the pain in your head." The man pointed at Marshall's food tray with the tip of his pen.
Marshall glanced over then returned his gaze to a spot on the wall behind the man.
"I'm going to explain something to you." The man leaned forward and held up the folder with Marshall's information. "Here at the Institute you are known as SCP-2987. When I go and make my report to my superiors, I will refer to you only as SCP-2987. When I write orders for your care or punishment, I will refer only to SCP-2987. In this cell, you can still be Marshall Sanchez, but only if you cooperate."
"What is your name?" Marshall's voice came out as an ethereal whisper, the result of dessicated vocal chords.
"You may call me Researcher for now."
"Then you may call me Forgotten. You left me to rot and die twice. The second time I got to have a little fun first, but you will forget me again. God help all of you when you do." Marshall's face twisted into a dry grin.
The Researcher nodded. "Fine, you will be known as the Forgotten as you wish. I would like to begin a series of tests concerning your abilities. You came in here initially because you have the ability to see into a random point of the future but for only thirty seconds at a time."
"What do I get out of doing this?"
"I'm sorry? I thought the answer was apparent, Forgotten."
"I don't see any upside for helping." Marshall smirked at the Researcher.
"If you help, we will eventually allow you access to other persons who have come to live here under similar circumstances to yourself. We can bring you to people who will never forget you."
"I just want to die. There's nothing left for me to do. I look forward and see a hollow life filled with unending experiments and rewards and punishments and all those things you keep writing and think I can't see but I can because I see everything from over here..." Marshall's paper-thin voice trailed off. "If you want, I could give you the results of all of your experiments right now."
"That would certainly be interesting. According to your last evaluation, you were unable to pinpoint the place in time that your future visions came from."
"Weeks of starvation and the distant paths of the future as your only companion can really change things, Researcher. I had an ability in much the same way that a baby has the ability to walk. Babies don't have the muscle or coordination to get up on their feet until they exercise through crawling and sitting up and all those little baby things they do." Marshall smiled truly now. "My visions were the equivalent of a baby learning to get up on all fours. I hadn't even started crawling yet."
"In what stage of development do you believe you are currently?"
"I can walk slowly. Your people forced me to run before I was ready and I fell. I won't make that mistake again."
The Researcher nodded and scribbled.
"Funny. Yes, I can read that. I'll do my best to describe it. You see me here sitting on my cot while you ask questions and scribble away." Marshall looked at the camera in the corner of the cell. "All the time, the possibility remains that I can stand up and get a peek before you pull your notes away. I look into that future for a moment and see what you just wrote. If I wanted to read my whole file, for instance, I would look down the future where that clot in your femoral artery breaks loose and hits your brain. You die in front of me in that future and I have time to pick up a few pages and read them. I just look into a future where I pick up different pages to read the whole thing. Pretty cool, huh?"
The Researcher shifted in his chair and swallowed. "Blood clot?" He would have kept speaking but alarms blared to life throughout the facility. Two guards burst into the room and pulled him out.
Marshall chuckled softly as the cell door closed. The sounds of combat boots tromping up and down the halls mixed with the sirens. Suddenly, Marshall saw a single, dark thread appear through the mists of the future surrounding him. The burning in his head subsided in the face of the horror contained in that string of fate. The path he would take was one of darkness and evil, but he saw, at the end of it, a form of freedom. If he could make the right decisions at the right times, he could steer himself toward that freedom. He wouldn't escape. He knew that now. But, if he could take advantage of this alarm, they would throw the doors open for him.
----
No matter how dead their nerves have become from lack of nutrients and water, people have always found it difficult to break their own bones. Even so, Marshall Sanchez, soon to no longer be Forgotten, picked the bones in his lower right leg and wedged them just right in his cot and dropped to the floor. He cried out at the sound even though he had not felt the pain. He got back up and pulled the broken leg out of the cot. He sat back and leaned his head back to take a breath. The next step was water. He took the cup from his tray and let a couple drops roll down his tongue to the back of his throat. When his foresight told him it was exactly enough, he stopped pouring and put the cup back down.
Marshall filled his lungs and screamed as loud as he could. The sound wasn't very loud, but it was pitiful and hopeless. The dark thread grew wider in his sight. He felt a strange presence nearby and he screamed again. And there it was at his door. The metal of the cell door warped and buckled until a dark hole appeared in the center. As it grew wider, Marshall saw that the hole wasn't in the door, but rather the space where the door should be. He smiled as something started to exit the portal.
The something stepped onto the cell floor with a wet squishing sound. Dark mucus puddled where the feet fell, and white tendrils of smoke rose from the puddles. Marshall sat calmly. He would be perfectly safe as long as the dark thread was maintained. When it was fully in his room, Marshall nearly stopped breathing. The thing was nearly his mirror image. The main difference, if Marshall were pressed to say and he would be, was the patches of skin that were fully rotting. That and the corrosive mucus that seemed to ooze from its pores.
"They call you the Old Man, don't they?" Marshall wanted to stand but both his leg and his vision prevented him.
"Silence, weakling." The Old Man took a step toward him.
"They will find you. You might be able to escape if you left right now."
"You and I will both be gone before they get in here." The Old Man took another step.
Marshall resisted smiling. Three levels below them, a group of children with healing powers were trying to resurrect a dead goat that their researchers had let them befriend and then killed. From there, three possibilities emerged. The children would succeed and be subjected to experimentation and torture for their secrets. The children would fail and be subjected to experimentation and torture to discover what went wrong. Finally, one child would remember a repressed memory about angels in heaven and look up for moment instead of concentrating on the goat. Marshall slipped into the future where the child looked up. His leg knitted and healed with a reverse snapping sound.
The Old Man stopped and looked at the healed leg. Marshall stood, no longer on the balancing point between death and life. The child would be the lone subject of horrible punishments at the hands of the researchers, but it was a small price to pay for his freedom.
"Not what you expected?" Marshall took a step toward the Old Man, now. He stood solidly in the dark thread now.
The Old Man looked from Marshall to the portal on the door and back then ran. Marshall took off after him, avoiding the puddles of acidic mucus with the strength and agility of an athlete. The portal closed just before Marshall reached it, but it didn't matter. He was on the path, and he knew exactly where the Old Man was going next.
--
Marshall heard a scream come over the PA system. They were baiting the Old Man just like he had, but the Old Man was no longer on the hunt. Marshall looked through the futures around him and found the one with the open door. He stepped into the hall and turned right. A security officer laid on the floor at the intersection of two hallways. Marshall took his taser and ran to the Old Man's next exit.
More than one security officer had been killed with acid attacks. The screams continued over the speakers, but the Old Man's position did not change. Marshall had to slip through one or two futures along the way to stay out of sight, but he didn't have to work very hard. The Old Man was a much higher value target. He had gotten to the other side of the facility very close to the Old Man's hiding place. The alarms and screams were behind him now.
Marshall opened the door to the janitor's closet where the Old Man hid. "Come on. We can do this all day or not. I can promise that coming with me will be much better than waiting on them."
"What are you? And don't tell me you have some kind of healing power. I'm not stupid enough to fall for that trick." The Old Man climbed the wall away from the shaft of light cast by the open door.
"My power doesn't concern you except that you can't run from me. They will find you or draw you out just like they always do, but you can run forever if you wished." Marshall stepped in but kept the door propped open with a mop bucket. "Couldn't you?"
"It's so much more fun when they run scared." The Old Man twitched when the screaming boy sounded over the speakers again. "I don't run. They do."
"But, you're the one in the janitor closet when you could be in your..." Marshall across the future for a moment. "your 'pocket dimension'."
"My pocket is not a hiding place." The Old Man spat at Marshall, but he had already sidestepped. The floor sizzled where the spit landed. "You did something with time. I know it."
"And if I did? It still means you can't run from me, and you can't beat me. I will find all the ways to avoid death and even pain. I've done it once here already. I solved a maze that could not be solved."
"And what great reward did they give for such a feat?" The Old Man smirked through rotting lips.
"They gave me full control of my power. Though, I don't believe it was by design." Marshall leaned against the door jam. "Come with me, willingly, or they will find a way to make you suffer. They are getting increasingly tired of your antics."
The Old Man shuddered at the next scream. They were being played on this end of the facility. "I really should go get him. He needs my help."
"I doubt it." Marshall put his hand in the pocket of his pants and grabbed the taser. "Look, you are running out of time. This ends up good for me no matter what you do. Just come on. I promise it won't be as bad as it has been." He reached out with his empty hand.
The Old Man climbed down the wall and started to reach out with a grin. Marshall pulled his hand back. "For a moment, I thought you were going to let me dissolve your hand." He glanced at Marshall's other hand. "What's in your pocket?"
Marshall pulled out the taser. "Just a little insurance in case things go bad."
The Old Man let out a raspy laugh. "That would melt before it could do any damage to me."
"Oh, it's not for you. It's for me." Marshall placed the taser back in his pocket.
"Most of the things around here are fantastic, but they make sense. You make no sense." The Old Man shook his head as Marshall slowly opened the door.
"If you could see what I see, it would make sense."
End Part 1, Marshall and the Old Man