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Eldritch Horror? No, I'm A Doctor
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Ralph was the first one to speak.
He leaned forward in the small wooden chair, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face with both hands. A plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex sat on the dresser beside him, frozen mid-roar, completely unbothered by the fact that a war council was happening three feet away from it. A dinosaur poster on the wall stared down at him with cheerful indifference.
"We'll do it," Ralph said.
Every person in the room turned to look at him.
"We'll give him the inmate." Ralph dropped his hands and looked directly at Nox. His voice was steady, the kind of steady that came from years of making hard calls under pressure and knowing what it cost to sit on your hands instead.
"Heinrich Volker. S-rank. Death row. Super speed ability. Seventeen counts of murder during a psychotic episode three years ago. His execution is already scheduled for next month. The Empire has no use for him anymore."
Axel nodded, already pulling out his tablet. His thumbs moved across the screen, drafting the internal transfer paperwork in his head before he even started typing. "The math checks out. One condemned prisoner in exchange for actionable intelligence on a cult that's been slipping through our fingers for years. If what the doctor does with Volker gives us even a small advantage in the operation against the Children of the Mother Goat, it's worth it."
Daniel shifted in his chair. He was the only one still sitting with any real posture, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. His pants were inside out. Nobody had pointed it out yet, and he still hadn't noticed.
"Shouldn't we talk about this a bit more?" Daniel said carefully. "We're handing a living person over to a procedure we don't fully understand. We don't even know what's going to happen to him."
Ralph opened his mouth, but Kai beat him to it.
"Yeah, I mean, it does feel a little off, doesn't it?" Kai scratched the back of his neck. "Morally speaking. We're soldiers. We're not supposed to just hand people over to—"
"Hey."
One word. Nox said it quietly, almost casually, the way someone might say it if a friend started talking during a movie. He didn't move. Didn't raise his voice. Didn't shift his weight at all.
But every person in that room felt something change. Not the temperature. Not the air pressure. Nothing you could point to or measure with any instrument. It was closer to the feeling of standing at the edge of a very high place, when your body understood the drop before your brain had finished processing it. Every heartbeat in the room skipped by exactly one beat.
Kai's mouth closed.
The silence sat there for a moment, heavy and uncomfortable.
"It's for the plan," Nox said, his tone light again, conversational.
"You all want the cultists gone, correct? I'm offering you the most efficient way to make that happen. All I need is one man who was going to die anyway."
Nobody spoke.
"Good," Nox said, as though the matter had been settled five minutes ago and he was just wrapping things up.
Ralph cleared his throat and straightened up.
"Right. Then here's what we do. Axel and I will put together a full operational plan tonight and send it over to you. Timing, positioning, strike teams, communication protocols, all of it. We need someone at the transfer location tomorrow morning to receive the inmate in person. Keeps the paperwork clean and avoids anyone asking questions inside the facility."
"Where?" Nox asked.
"Army Corrections Command building. Central district. That's where we keep the high-security prisoners." Ralph paused, then added,
"Eight in the morning. I'll have everything ready on our end."
Nox tilted his head slightly, the plague doctor mask catching the lamplight from the small nightstand.
"Army Corrections Command building. Central district. Eight AM. Understood."
"And Doctor," Ralph continued,
"Please try to wear something a bit less conspicuous than your usual outfit when you show up there. The guards at that facility aren't exactly the calmest people in the world."
"I'll keep that in mind," Nox said.
Nobody in the room believed him for a second.
Axel stood and stretched, his back cracking in two places. His tank top rode up as he raised his arms, and he didn't seem to care at all.
"Then we have a deal. Everyone goes home, gets some sleep, and we regroup at the Corrections Command building tomorrow at eight sharp."
The officers began filing out of the children's bedroom one by one. Ralph went first, briefcase in hand, pajama top buttoned one off from where it should have been. Axel followed, tactical maps rolled under his arm. Daniel stumbled out after them, laptop pressed against his chest like a shield, still looking a bit dazed from everything that had happened in the last two hours.
Kai, Ash, and Jack were almost at the doorway when the bedroom door on the far side of the room burst open.
Emma came out first, barefoot in pajamas covered in little cartoon stars. David followed right behind her, rubbing one eye with his fist, clearly not having been asleep at all despite being told twice to stay in bed.
They both saw Nox sitting in the wooden chair beside the bed.
Emma's face split into a grin so wide it looked like it might not stop. "Mr. Nox!"
She sprinted across the room and threw herself at him without any hesitation whatsoever. David followed two steps behind, slightly slower but no less enthusiastic, and crashed into the side of the chair with enough force to rock it.
Nox caught Emma with one arm, his other hand steadying David before the boy could topple sideways. For a moment, the room was nothing but two children hanging off a plague doctor like he was a jungle gym, both of them talking at the same time.
"Are you leaving already? You said you'd show us the spinning thing again"
"David wants to see if you can make me go higher than last time, he's been talking about it"
"I wasn't talking about it that much"
"You were, you said it like six times"
"That's not six times"
Nox let them talk over each other for a few seconds. Then, without any visible effort, two tentacles emerged from beneath his coat. They moved slowly, curling around each child with a gentleness that looked wrong coming from something blood-red and inhuman. The tentacles lifted Emma and David off the ground in one smooth motion, raising them up to about waist height before beginning to spin them in a lazy circle.
Emma shrieked with laughter immediately. David grabbed one of the tentacles with both hands and held on, grinning so hard his face scrunched up.
"Higher!" Emma demanded.
"Not too high," Nox said. "It's past your bedtime."
"It's always past our bedtime," David pointed out.
"That's a fair point."
The tentacles lifted them a bit higher. Not dangerous. Not even close. Just high enough that their feet dangled above the floor and the spinning made their hair fan out around their heads. The two children laughed in that completely unselfconscious way that only kids could manage, the sound filling the small bedroom and carrying out into the hallway.
Every single officer in that hallway had stopped walking.
Ralph stood with one foot still on the top step of the staircase, staring back into the bedroom with an expression that could only be described as deeply confused.
Axel was beside him, arms crossed, watching with the analytical focus of a man trying to solve a problem that didn't have a solution.
Daniel had his laptop half open, as if he'd been about to check something, and had simply forgotten to finish the motion.
Kai, Ash, and Jack were the closest to the door. All three of them were watching in complete silence.
Ash leaned slightly toward Kai and whispered,
"Is that the same guy who made me want to piss myself during surgery?"
Kai didn't answer. He was too busy staring at Emma, who had just grabbed one of the tentacles and was now trying to climb it like a rope while laughing.
David, meanwhile, had released his grip and was dangling upside down, asking Nox to do it again.
"One more time," Nox said. "Then bed. Both of you."
"Promise?" Emma asked.
"Promise."
The tentacles spun them one final time, a gentle loop that ended with both children set back down on Emma's bed in a soft landing. Emma flopped onto her back immediately, breathless and still smiling. David landed on his hands and knees, shook his hair out of his face, and looked up at Nox.
"Same time next visit?" David asked, completely serious.
"We'll see," Nox said.
Steven appeared in the doorway, having come back up the stairs without anyone noticing. He looked at his children on the bed, then at Nox, then at the cluster of military officers frozen in the hallway behind him with expressions ranging from bewildered to existential crisis.
"Kids. Bed. Now," Steven said, his voice carrying the specific authority that fathers developed over years of practice.
Emma groaned but didn't argue. David was already lying down, pulling the blanket up. Neither of them said goodnight to Nox, which suggested they fully expected to see him again and didn't feel the need for formality.
Steven pulled the door shut.
The hallway was quiet for a moment.
Jack was the first to move. He turned and walked toward the stairs without saying a word, his pace just slightly faster than casual.
"Go home," Steven said to the rest of them. "All of you. Eight AM. Don't be late."
They went.
.
.
.
Steven waited until the sound of footsteps on the stairs had faded, then turned to Nox. "Doctor. If you'll come downstairs for a moment. Mary is still in the kitchen, and I'd rather she not spend the rest of the night sitting there with a pistol."
"Of course."
They went down together. The house had gone quiet the way houses do after too many people have been crammed into them at once. The air still carried traces of coffee and Ralph's cheap cologne.
Mary was at the kitchen table. The pistol was back in the cabinet under the sink where it belonged. She had a glass of water in front of her that she hadn't touched.
She looked up when they entered.
Steven stood slightly behind Nox, one hand resting on the back of a kitchen chair. Not quite protective, not quite casual.
Nox stepped forward and gave a small bow of his head. It was a precise gesture, formal without being stiff or overly theatrical.
"Mrs. Bright. I owe you another apology. Tonight was not at all the experience I had in mind when I came to visit. I should have contacted the Colonel beforehand instead of showing up unannounced. That was inconsiderate of me, and I am sorry."
Mary studied him for a long moment. A man in a black coat and a plague doctor mask, standing in her kitchen at eleven o'clock at night, apologizing like he had accidentally left a wet umbrella on her floor.
"You're very strange," she said.
"I've been told," Nox replied.
"But you did fix Steven's eye."
"I did."
Mary glanced at her husband. Steven gave one nod, the kind that carried more weight than most people managed in a full sentence. Mary looked back at Nox, and something in her expression settled into place. Not trust, exactly. An acknowledgment that this was real, and that her husband believed in it.
"Thank you," she said. "For that. But next time, call first."
"I will," Nox said. "Good night, Mrs. Bright."
He turned, walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped out into the night. The door clicked shut behind him.
Steven let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
"I need a drink," Mary said.
"Yeah," Steven said. "Me too."
.
.
.
Outside, the street had gone quiet. Most of the officers were already gone. A few tire marks on the pavement were the only evidence that anything unusual had taken place in this suburban neighborhood tonight.
Ralph was getting into his car when Kai jogged up to him, slightly out of breath.
"Sir. Quick question."
Ralph had one foot in the driver's seat. He sighed but didn't get in yet. "What is it?"
"Do you think the doctor actually likes kids? Because back there, when he was playing with Emma and David, he looked genuinely happy. Not acting happy. Actually happy."
Ralph thought about it for a moment, staring up at the streetlight overhead. A moth circled it in lazy loops, completely indifferent to everything happening below.
"I think," Ralph said slowly, "that Dr. Nox is a very confusing person, Kai."
"That's not really an answer, sir."
"It's the best one I have. Go home."
Kai shrugged and jogged back to where Ash and Jack were leaning against their vehicle. Ash had his arms crossed, staring at the Bright family house with the hollow expression of someone who had just lived through something he couldn't explain to anyone without sounding completely insane.
"So," Ash said as Kai climbed in. "We just agreed to hand a death row inmate over to the tentacle doctor."
"Yep," Kai confirmed.
"And nobody actually stopped it."
"Nope."
"Cool. Normal Tuesday."
Jack, who had been quiet the entire time, spoke up from the back seat. "Do you think the inmate knows what's coming?"
Nobody answered that one.
Daniel was the last to leave. He lingered by his car for no good reason, staring up at the Bright family house. The lights were still on upstairs. Normal family. Normal home. A Colonel who probably fixed leaky faucets on weekends and helped with homework at the kitchen table.
And tonight, that same normal home had hosted an emergency military operation briefing with an eldritch horror doctor in children's bedroom surrounded by dinosaur posters and stuffed animals.
"What the fuck is my life," Daniel muttered, and drove away.